Source.

I think about this graph sometimes. Or, rather, I attempt to think about it, and find I can't wrap my head around it. What was it like to live in a world where parents routinely outlived their children? In the world. Until about a hundred years ago, the world where parents routinely outlived their children was the only world that had ever existed.

From Antonia Fraser's The Weaker Vessel, about life for women in 17th-century England:

William Brownlow kept a meticulous recording of [his wife's] child-bearing from 27 June 1626 when their first child Richard was born, who died in October of that year, down to the birth of their nineteenth child twenty-two years later... At one point, between 1638 and 1646, seven children, born at almost exactly yearly intervals, died in a row: Thomas, Francis, Benjamin, George, James, Maria, and Anne. William Brownlow's exclamations of grief as each new tragedy struck show some attempt at reconciliation to the workings of providence -- "Though my children die, the Lord liveth and they exchange but a temporal life for an eternal one" -- but absolutely no diminuition in grief. Little George, his fifteenth child, managed to live from October 1641 to 29 July of the following year; when he died, his father wrote, "I was at ease but Thou O God hast broken me asunder and shaken me to pieces."

Or take the case of Peter the Great, quite possibly the most powerful man on earth for much of his reign: of his fifteen legitimate children, eleven died before their fifth birthday and a twelfth only made it to age six and a half. The chart above has a more expansive definition of "child" (to age 15) and even by its count, Peter the Great and the Brownlows were particularly unlucky. But still.

The other day, at a book sale, I picked up the diaries of Martha Farnsworth, who grew up in Kansas in the 1870s; her only child was born in January 1892 and lived five months. You can read the entries yourselves: January 24th, "The dearest, sweetest little treasure ever a mother had"; April 15th, "I can't thank God enough, for sending this baby into my life"; May 23rd, "My little treasure, don't get sick, for it makes mother's heart ache and ache"; May 31st, "My heart aches with fear"; June 27th, "God sent the angels for her and her terrible suffering ended and mine commenced."

And then I put the book back and went to pick up my kids from school.

And I think now: Martha Farnsworth would trade places with me in a heartbeat. Two children, both of them well past the age of five. One of them missed school today with a cold. I'm not worried. If you zoom out far enough I am in a cohort of the luckiest parents who ever lived.

So why don't I feel my good fortune more?

Part of it, granted, is that constant grateful joy is not necessarily the most useful tool in the parent's toolbox. Sometimes you have to stop thanking God that your children are alive and start pointing out to them that if they're going to borrow your phone then they need to tell you when someone's trying to reach you (for example). But in theory one can correct them, or have activities separate from them, and still think, "Wow, I'm a lucky dog," all the time, because if your kid is alive and healthy and growing then you are a lucky dog all that time.

I want to make a larger sociological statement, about how "X doesn't make us happier," for whatever feature of the modern world X, maybe should have very little value as a criticism. The tenfold decline in child mortality has to be one of the most profound shifts in human history; if we can take that for granted, then there may be no limit to our ability to make lemons out of lemonade. But I can't criticize other people for failing to do what I seem very bad at doing myself.

personal gobshite tumblr void diary thats actually bad.

oh boy gotta love a return of the eating disorder i thought i was through with :^) this is soo much fun, love this for my brain :^) god i am just like. exhausted. the reason i have been going ham through the eps of c/r last month is because its theatre of the mind and there’s no like. significant physical body visuals i need to obsess over & it’s 4hrs of immersion at a time. anyway cant admit this at all offline so onto the tumblr diary it shall go. if i have not spoken to u in a month and u know me offline or online this is whyyy & i am sorry here and i will apologise in ur dms at a later date. anyway my uni top tip: dont get an eating disorder! it ruins all.

AHiT Analysis: What Does Snatcher Think of Vanessa?

For my first write-up on A Hat in Time, I've decided to go with a topic that I think is very interesting due to its ambiguity, and that I've seen some pretty wildly different takes on: What does Snatcher think of Vanessa? This will be an analysis of what I believe to be most likely based on all of the evidence I've been able to identify.

[This post will cover the base game and the Seal the Deal DLC. The canon status of Vanessa’s Curse is dubious, but I don’t think it necessarily contradicts what I’m talking about here. If there’s interest I can go over it in another post.]

In the base game, Snatcher does not talk about or directly acknowledge Vanessa a single time. His contract instructs Hat Kid to go to the manor, but doesn't mention Vanessa at all.

You would think there just isn’t enough information for a conclusion in that case, but I think what exists is actually pretty illuminating.

In Chapter 1's storybook Time Rift, the Mafia Man explains how it was created: he was hit by a falling Time Piece, and the rift was created from his memories.

The Tale of Queen Vanessa involves two characters, so it could feasibly have been created from either (or both) of their memories. However, I believe it was created from Snatcher's.

The physical location of the rift is in the ruined area behind Snatcher's tree house, practically on the opposite side of the Subcon Woods map from Vanessa's manor. Environmental details in the level itself are suggestive of Snatcher, with things like the thorny vines, armchair, rug, and potion bottles appearing. Conversely, no assets from Vanessa's manor are present.

Despite this, the book is, by its title, about Vanessa, and is illustrated with heavy focus on her, while the prince is in the background in most pages he appears on.

The first pages go out of their way to establish Vanessa as a kind person. She and the prince are happily in love, and she's beloved by the children who would later become the Dwellers and Subconites when the kingdom freezes. In his memories, there’s no indication anything was wrong with their relationship, even though diary entries in the manor show her behavior towards the prince had been controlling well before the incident depicted in the book. Snatcher remembers Vanessa and his relationship with her fondly.

Even though the book is made from Snatcher's memories, it first shows a scene where the prince appears to be seeing the florist, with huge emphasis on how heartbroken Vanessa is, and then reveals that this wasn't the case. Snatcher doesn't think the misunderstanding was unreasonable on Vanessa's behalf; the framing of the sequence legitimizes her interpretation of it by showing it from her perspective first.

Snatcher seems to believe he deeply hurt Vanessa, and views her becoming cursed as a tragedy arising from a simple and avoidable misunderstanding. Vanessa wrote about chaining him in one of her diary entries, meaning his death was at least partly premeditated, but from his perspective, the events depicted were totally incidental. Even in the frames where he’s being taken away, Vanessa crying is still in the foreground. The last two pages parallel each other, suggesting that what happened to Vanessa isn’t any less terrible than what happened to him.

Snatcher appears nowhere in Chapter 3 Act 4; the closest he comes to acknowledging Vanessa is sending a Subconite to tell Hat Kid she isn’t allowed to use her hats. This was likely done for gameplay reasons, like the Ice Hat interfering with stealth gameplay and the Sprint Hat making it easier to outrun Vanessa if the player is spotted, but it’s still an in-character decision by Snatcher.

This is one of two times he limits Hat Kid’s ability to access her hats, the other being in his boss fight. In this case, he wants Hat Kid to retrieve the Time Piece from the attic, so it’s strange he would make it harder for her. I can think of two reasons:

Snatcher just doesn’t want Hat Kid to know anything about him and is trying to limit her use of the Dweller Mask, which reveals secrets. As it’s a mask, by technicality this is pointless and she can use it anyway.

Snatcher doesn’t want Hat Kid to hurt Vanessa. He doesn’t take her umbrella away, but he doesn’t take it in his own boss fight, either.

As Snatcher doesn’t talk about Vanessa at all otherwise, and she only appears in one level, this is all the information in the base game.

In Death Wish mode, Snatcher never sends Hat Kid back to the manor, but he has four pieces of idle dialogue that reference Vanessa, although he never mentions her specifically by name.

"You know, they always say love is a warm feeling... But in my experience it's been positively chilling."

"You might think the embrace of death is the coldest thing there is, but I can tell you from experience... it's not."

"Ah, you should have seen her back in the day. Like dynamite with a laser beam, you know."

"We all have a soulmate - supposedly. I mean, I know I do. She's waiting for me! I don't see anyone waiting for you, though."

The first two are similar. They’re both jokes (if you could call them that) about his death, and seem to have a bitter tone to them, but they’re a bit ambiguous, particularly the second one. It sounds like he’s saying Vanessa is colder than death, but the snow coming in through the window in the second to last storybook page suggests he froze to death due to Vanessa’s magic, so is he really referring to her here? It’s unclear.

The third one, just in case you didn’t know, is a reference to a Queen song about a call girl. Snatcher mentions his ex four times in the entire game and one of those times is to tell us how hot she was. There’s no ironic or sarcastic undertone here. He still thinks this. Moving on.

In the last one, though, he explicitly calls her his soulmate and acknowledges she’s still looking for him. The line isn’t read in a way that particularly suggests he’s being sarcastic about it, either. As a matter of fact, he’s jokingly telling Hat Kid she might not have a soulmate, in contrast to him.

Due to the limited evidence available and the ambiguity of his Death Wish dialogue, I don’t think other interpretations are unreasonable, but the bulk of evidence suggests that Snatcher doesn’t hate Vanessa: he cares about and misses her, to the extent that the storybook about her made from his own unconscious memories doesn’t acknowledge any of the things she wrote about in her diary.

Final verdict:

SSO Horrors

A post diving into how dark this franchise’s storyline gets and ideas for a horror game that will never actually be created. SPOILERS for the SL books and SSO storyline.

This idea originally came to me after reading the second book of the SL trilogy, The Legend Awakens. Props to Helena Dahlgren for the Pine Hill Manor scenes in that book; I was completely left on the edge of my seat the entire time. Linda’s whole experience was definitely an unexpected thriller for the children’s genre; cutting her leg on a broken window, exploring an old creepy mansion owned by the centuries-old psychopath that was targeting her, her friends, and their horses, being chased down halls and having to barricade herself in rooms to be protected from the apparent non-human dark riders (not to mention the way Dahlgren describes the animal sounds and scratching that they made, chills), and, to top it all off, nearly dying from sepsis due to her cut becoming infected.... if that’s not horror game material, I don’t know what is.

If you can’t already tell from the title of this post, I am a huge fan of the horror genre. The suspense-packed and often deep moral stories are always a fun watch/read. I personally am currently making my way through some classic Stephen King books that I haven’t read yet which was sort of what inspired this post.

Taking a look at SSO’s storyline on the surface level, we see a classic dark vs. light story, with horses and female heroines as the main points. However, there are quite a few darker elements hidden among the story quests, most of which would only be noticeable to the eye of the older audience of the game. The potential for this plot to be upped to a more mature level as far as darker themes go is definitely there. Regardless, the already existing underlying themes have some heavy themes...

- Teenagers, around the ages of 15-19, have been tasked with saving the world from a demonic entity. They have been granted special powers to do this with. These powers however can be extremely dangerous, as we see with both Alex and Catherine with their Lightning Circle incidents, in which they almost killed living beings. These factors combined would no doubt take some sort of psychological toll on the Soul Riders, as they are so named.

- Brainwashing and cult-mindset was a huge theme brought up with Justin’s kidnapping. He was abruptly cut off from the outside world, had his memories removed, and his mind artificially filled with thoughts of Garnok and world domination. It’s clear when he is rescued and goes back to his home that he’s depressed; his Midsummer dialogue a year back was “My dad thought it would be good for me to get out. I don’t do that much anymore” (not exact but close enough). When he talks to his mother during the memories quests the first thing he jumps to seeing her pregnant with him is “I wonder if she’d would be so excited if she knew all the terrible things I did”. To add to that, upon getting Justin back home, Thomas tells our character “If he keeps having these dark thoughts, I’ll have to turn to the druids.” That in itself was pretty unsettling. All this dialogue was put there to draw attention to the mental affects of literally having your brain tampered with.

- Elizabeth’s story was probably one of the saddest in my opinion. She had to stand by while her friend group fell apart, one going on to die, one going missing, and the other two continuing to split away from her. She then felt it was her responsibility to make up for her sisterhood’s failures, staying with the druids and eventually helping recruit new Soul Riders. Seriously though, imagine that. She saw what pain the magical war brought to her and her friends; knowing that she was pushing four more kids into a situation like that would’ve been devastating (here comes the morals vs. duty idea). Our character must have been a whole other level of that feeling. She saw what Catherine went through with her magic - the fear, the near madness. Then of course she goes on to imprison her close friend’s son (it appeared from the quests that she was closest to Catherine so that just adds to the pain). And to end it all, she sacrifices herself to save a girl who she considered a daughter.... jeez. - Catherine is another issue here for obvious reasons. A teenage girl is entrusted with goddess-level powers, then nearly goes psycho from the inability to control them. You can clearly tell from her last few diary entries how exhausting that was and how happy she was to finally have a somewhat normal life with her husband and son.

- And finally of course we have the DC gang. Mr. Sands is a basket case all on his own, a man who has used mind control (arguably in my opinion one of the creepiest forms of dark magic out there) on numerous victims including his own grandson, a man who legitimately worships a demon, and not to mention has it out for a bunch of teenagers. His whole backstory with Rosalinda made me feel some sort of sympathy for his character (he watched her nearly be drowned to death), and I’m actually quite curious as to where they’re going to take that. Also, The Nightmare Institute? That could be a horror game within itself. All we know so far about that place is that humans and animals are tested on with dangerous materials (ex. Mr. Anwir). Let’s not forget to mention the dark riders who apparently have animal qualities now? (as it was described in the SL books) Ok so we can clearly see that SSO’s storyline gets a bit dark. But just imagine; a Pine Hill Mansion first-person POV game, where you’re in a situation similar to Linda’s, or even one in DC or the Nightmare Institute. Honestly this entire storyline could be turned into some Resident Evil plot lol.

But that being said, as much as it’s fun to speculate these types of things, I enjoy SSO’s storyline just the way it is. It’s enjoyable for me as an older player, but it’s also filled with great moral stories and motivation for young children, especially girls. I love the atmosphere of female empowerment, and it’s especially unique to SSO because around the time of it’s initial release, that wasn’t seen much in video games.

Might start during these ‘chat’ or ‘random things that come to my mind’ posts more often.

@chancewaynes asked for my personal opinion on I’m with the Band in the comments of my previous post, but I decided to make another text post and share the amazing, top voted review on the book’s GoodReads page that I think is pretty much all that needs to be said on the memoir. [That and I don’t feel like writing a long post trashing Pamela because I kind of already did that two years ago, lol.]

That said, even though I’m recommending the GR review, there are a couple of things I disagree with the writer on, since she seems to ultimately like Pam more than I do, heh. One is that I don’t agree Pamela didn’t/doesn’t have internalized misogyny. She blatantly says more than once in IWTB that when she was young, she would wish the wives and girlfriends of her unavailable faves/hook-ups were dead or lost. Early in the book she mentions how she once wrote a fanficy play when she was in school where Jane Asher has a horrible death and Pamela gets to have a fairytale happy ending married to Paul McCartney. Later on Pam says she wished Anya Butler would fall into the ocean so she could be with Chris Hillman. Things like that. These thoughts might be considered normal fangirl behavior, but it’s still toxic toward other women. It’s also really noticeable Pamela was insecure and nervous about the teenage ‘baby’ groupies who were about to ~steal her men and groupie thunder with the way she not-so-subtly describes Melanie Griffith and Lori Maddox in the chapters on Don Johnson and Jimmy Page. Using terms like ‘infant terrible’ and ‘nymphet’ while all but calling them Lolita is not a good look.

Pamela was clearly NOT a feminist when she wrote this memoir 30+ years ago with the way she revolves her life and image over how all the men she’s attracted to respond to her. She obviously pulled that feminist angle out of her ass when she joined social media as an attempt to keep herself relevant and seem more progressive. [Also, in case people don’t know. Pamela originally went on record back in 1970 denying she and her friends were groupies, and didn’t embrace the label until the mid-1980s.]

The main gist of this book to me is that it’s just not well written or narrated. Pamela writes like a 12-year-old, and she’ll try to claim it’s intentional as a way to make the pages seem like a tween girl’s journal entries, but she comes across immature in both her vintage scans and the new commentary. She can’t seem to differentiate between a crush, a fling and a legitimate significant other even by the time she’s an adult. She spends a lot of time saying things like, “Why does Chris keep leaving??” or “Why haven’t Don or Jimmy proposed yet??” and I kept wanting to be like, “Maybe because you act like a middle-schooler?” 

This isn’t some ‘groupie feminism’ manifesto. It’s just a lengthy, decade long diary on a woman who didn’t really have much talent of her own and chose to spend all her time partying and fooling around with famous people because she was really horny. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you [or anyone else involved] aren’t hypocritical assholes about it. 

Okay, this ended up way longer than I intended, so hopefully this is the last post I have to spend a significant amount of time critiquing Pamela des Barres; and I can now get back to my usual posts and reblogs of quality music, movies and other celebs/pop culture, lol. TYFYT...

Dude what is it abt gifted students being drawn to pw. like sure he's seggsy but did we all just stumble into this sad guy with eyeliner and thought "it's free real estate" and read his books or what

i mean i just think in order to be super into the whole secret diary thing you have to actually really like to read and write and also like puzzles/mysteries to an extent.

also im not trying to come across as a complete asshole even though i absolutely am. but i think the fact that a lot of his entries are stream of consciousness (sometimes drug fueled) poetry separates out the whole “omg the curtains are blue for no reason!!! fuck you mrs johnson 9th grade english!!!” people.

and the fact that a lot of it is very very messed up also separates out the YA lit “great gatsby shouldnt be taught in schools because it says stalking is ok” and also the tumblr “whatever i deem real literature is fine but coffeeshop AUs are morally terrible because it encourages the sexual harassment of minimum wage proletariat workers” crowd

its also like that scene in freaks and geeks where they drag on the road to filth. theres a lot of legitimate criticisms of kerouacs writing style and petes has similiarities (as kerouac is an influence), and i would say theres a lot criticisms of his too. i would say gray is a roman a clef like on the road is. and like kerouac pete was undoubtedly also high on benzedrine (and ambien and xanax and god knows what else) when he wrote. but i mean kerouac was famous for a reason, something about it spoke to people, just like you can say fall out boy suck and are cliche misogynistic rock pop trash but theyre way more popular than most rock bands will ever be because something about them broadly speaks to people

Dear Diary 36

I’ve written in you less and less of late. This makes for less of a chronicle of my life if I don’t write in you diligently doesn’t it? Well, to be honest, I don’t feel like I need to remember every detail of my life. Especially with everything that’s been going on lately.

However, not all of it has been dark spots. Some of it has been grey, some of it has been bright. I’ve been wading myself through uncharted territory and I can’t say I’ve always made the best or correct decisions but I’m also not perfect. 

I wrote in my previous entry that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now that my troupe was...the way it was. I didn’t know what my purpose was here in Eorzea. If I’m honest with myself, I’m still not entirely sure. I’m frightened, nervous, and there are times when I feel alone. The people who I thought were my support - it’s a mystery if they ever really cared about me (which I’ll get into in a bit) - turned out to be a source of immense pain. I’m trying to recover from that but I wish I could explain to people how difficult that is. How hard it is to trust again when family betrays you.

There’s insecurities there that weren’t before. When I spoke to Sid, I initially told him that it probably wouldn’t make a difference if I left to return home, because everyone had their lives and everyone would eventually move on with their lives. I said that, but I didn’t really mean that. To be honest, I was just scared. It’s easier to leave than to be abandoned, easier to walk away than learn later you were never wanted or needed. Easier to pull away than get rejected.

But my whole life I’ve been running. I walk forward so I can run from something that’s been chasing me. I felt like this time if I moved forward, without looking back on what I’d gained, I’d lose something really precious. And I felt like something in me would break and never recover.

I spoke with Sid for a while at the Bojza camp - it was helpful. I wasn’t looking for answers, I don’t think I was. Maybe just some clarity from my chaotic thoughts. It was easy to talk to him. He was kind and patient with me as I rambled. He didn’t try to push me in any direction, and I was grateful. I wanted to know a bit more about him, I felt maybe he understood a bit of what I was feeling. I thought maybe if I understood him, it’d help guide me to a decision. Was that selfish? Writing that down, it almost sounds as if I was using his feelings and experiences. But I also genuinely wanted to know more about him. I think he’s an interesting person that carries a profound sadness, but it also seems he’s managed to find happiness and a sense of purpose. 

That’s what I want, a sense of purpose again. Sid wondered if maybe what I’m searching for is what I lost - my family. I conceded that maybe that was it. But I’m just so hesitant in calling another group family again after what happened. I spent half my life with those people, and none of it was real. I loved them, but I was just a means to an end for them.

It would break me, shatter me beyond repair, if I fell into that trap again with everyone currently in my life.

I want to, I so badly want to believe and trust in them. They’ve been there for me, they’ve helped me, healed me. Cared for me during this whole ordeal. Hells, they have bled for my sake. And of course, I have not hesitated to jump into the fires for them as well. But that’s completely different from fully giving my heart. I just...can’t. I’m trying, but every time it’s like something cold and hard grabs hold of my throat and claws down, screaming I’m a fool. Fear consumes me, and I feel as if I’m drowning.

For now, I’m just content to be here. Sid helped me organize my thoughts and realize my path lies here. I want to heal here, and be around the friends who have shown me care. I want to relearn how to believe in true bonds again. I want to walk forward and see where the road takes me, and I don’t want to be afraid - I don’t want to do it alone.

That’s what I’ve decided.

I managed to tell Quin (Leo?) a bit of this, I hope I didn’t worry him too much. I was a bit under the weather when the truth came out, I’d been shot on the battlefield and was recovering - but it was a good talk. It’s amazing, when I first met Quin, I don’t think I had a good impression of him, and I don’t think he had any real impression of me. Now I think of him as a silly little brother. 

Speaking of, Quin and Erith got fake married! That was...interesting? I probably should have done more to stop it but it wasn’t official so I didn’t really see the harm. Uh, save for Erith putting Quin at shotgun point. I don’t know, I don’t really like getting between their dynamics because they have a really unique relationship but it’s quite clear they deeply care for one another. So I just go with their antics. Should I though? Am I enabling bad behavior?  [There’s a drawing of a dizzy Zahra along the margins]

I wonder if festivals bring out romance? There were quite a few couples seeking blessings and marriages, so I guess maybe they do? Erith was looking for a husband for Bernon so there was that. I didn’t really know how to feel about it. Not really lonely? Wistful, maybe? I can’t say I’m looking for a profound relationship, but I think having someone to laugh with and share small moments with would be nice.

Maybe...not quite the same as what Erith and Quin have. Being at shotgun point is frightening. I completely understand why Quin started drinking. Heavily.

I’m rambling, but my mind has been all over the place. I’m avoiding talking about what’s really going on in my head because I’m not sure if writing this down, reliving it, will be easy.

I’m talking about my confrontation with Sahrin.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I demanded answers from him. I think I was expecting him to explain why Sai did what she did. I was hoping he’d smile at me and tell me everything was a misunderstanding, or that they’d been acting on their own accord and he hadn’t know anything.

I didn’t mind Gail putting pressure on him - she understands what it means to be a leader, and how hard it can be to have people do things behind your back, and the heavy responsibility that leadership entails.

I also realize what I’d done to him - I appeared out of no where and threatened him into a meeting right after he’d seen everything he’d built up burned to the ground. Of course he was confused, of course he wanted answers. I’d given him nothing. I’m sure he tried to look into it on his own, but he likely didn’t get very far since he’d been gone so long deal with Armand and was unaware of all that’d been going on.

No one is omniscient, but I wasn’t entirely in a caring mood. People I had once cared about deeply had tried to kill me more than once - I was tired.

Father once told me that there are always two sides to a story, and what you know is always just a small part of a whole. He said it’s always good to know and understand the full picture of things, but never let that knowledge influence how the ending needs to be written. And if I can help it, I should always be the one holding the quill to those short chapters in my life.

Sahrin told us about Sai and Esila, and then he told us about the foundation of the troupe and what its original purpose had been. The first troupe they’d all been in - I knew they had worked for the government covertly, doing their bidding under the belief they were serving their nation. Even if it was unpleasant, someone has to do it.

Sahrin and the others felt the troupe wasn’t looking at the real threat - the Empire. And I suppose I can understand their fear. With the way the empire was expanding, the idea that Thavnair would have remained a free nation forever was questionable at best. The Empire wanted to be a world power, once they’d conquered all they’d truly desired, why not take Thavnair too?  Would we had really been able to stop them, if they had truly put their forces to it? 

"We’ll be on their list eventually.” was a legitimate fear. It was one I’d heard on the lips of some nobles and commoners growing up. Not everyone liked the Empire in Thavnair. Not everyone felt the arrangement we had was beneficial. For all the ones who welcomed them for business and trade, there were those who feared them. 

I guess Sahrin had been one of those people. He’d become frustrated with his troupe and decided to form his own. Except he couldn’t be normal about it, no. He took others who had anti-Imperial sentiment and they all decided they were going to bring in children to train and raise them - and by raise I mean brainwash - into perfect anti-Imperial fighting tools.

I cannot express the emotions I went through upon hearing that.

I mean, yes, it’s preferable to bring children into a troupe’s fold because it’s easier to train a dancer when they’re younger, more flexible, and their minds retain things easier, than to start them when they’re much older. I’m going to try and give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that’s what they - no, what Sahrin was thinking when he started this. I don’t want to think of Sahrin as a bad person. There’s just a part of me that refuses to do that.

But I can’t...forgive him for creating the troupe with those intentions. It really doesn’t matter that ‘he grew a conscious’ with me and changed his mind. Congratulations, I guess? Maybe one day when I’m not feeling so angry I’ll send him a cookie for deciding not to be quite the terrible person he could have been.

Okay. I’m feeling petty. And angry. And hurt. But his admission ripped the floor of my reality right out from under me. I admired him, looked up to him - I had wanted to be like him. I had wanted to grow up and eventually be a role model to others because of him. And then to learn all of that had been based on a foundation of lies - that I had initially been nothing more than a tool for his ambitions...

Even if he had changed his mind, clearly the others hadn’t, and that hurts. And he knew that. He’d known and I guess had been trying to change them. But you can’t change people who actively choose to hate - even if they feel their cause is righteous. There is a right way to go about change, and using - hurting - children is not it.

Sahrin helped us decipher some of the letters, and it honestly made a bit more sense when he put them into perspective. It looks like Esila really was trying to sell me out to some guy named ‘Darling’. I don’t know why he wanted me so badly, but apparently, Cecilia was getting traded to Sabe, and I was gonna get sold off in some auction had everything gone well. In exchange, I guess they were going to get their audience with Orhan and incriminate Sahrin. Sahrin guesses this was all to get a connection back to the old troupe.

They wanted a way back to the old troupe so they lied, cheated, and were even willing to kill to do it. The warmth, smiles, all of those good times we had were all fake.

I was at a loss of what to believe in. I felt like an idiot for falling for their schemes for so long. I should have seen it - hadn’t I grown up surrounded by scheming adults? I should have known better by now.

I told Sahrin I never wanted to see him again, and then after that the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I know everyone came back to my apartment. I served them drinks and sandwiches. I wanted to make sure Quin was okay. Outside of that, I don’t remember much. They left and I remember taking Bitey and  Fènghuáng away. I still haven’t gone back to the kennel to pick them up. 

I went back to my apartment and I just...suddenly I hated everything about it. It reminded me of home, of my troupe -  and everything went white, then red. My heart felt heavy and my eyes burned. I think I screamed. I know I cried. And then I fled. I ran and ran and ran. Until my legs turned to rubber and my lungs screamed and I fell down...somewhere. I didn’t recognize the surroundings. I think I was around a lot of trees and sand. I just know the breeze felt good against my skin, and the grass was cool and comforting. 

I cried, an ugly, gulping, gut wrenching cry - until there wasn’t anything left. And then I sat back against the cliffs and stared up at the sky until the sun rose. I didn’t want to return to the apartment, so I didn’t.

And then the next day I went and dyed my hair black. I need to find some white clothing, to mark the passing of the troupe, my family, and for Esila. The Esila I knew and loved - not the one who wanted to trade me to I guess slavers. The woman I had known to be a good person.

I will mourn her death, because she had lived, and she had brought me joy, even if it had been made of lies.

Pharmacovigilance Services

Pharmacovigilance or medication thriving in layman language. Pharmacovigilance is the science that partners with the affirmation, gathering, seeing, evaluation, and speculation for the bothersome results of cure things. Cure watchfulness in general joins the evaluation of data and ensured parts given by the clinical advantages suppliers. Pharmacovigilance very bases on the negative responses of prescriptions, portrayed as the reaction to an unpremeditated and stunning medication. It in addition joins the failure of the medication. Riches like maltreatment and wealth of the course of action and medication straightforwardness during pregnancy offering little appreciation to the absence of a subverting influence are considered to accomplish a confining fix response.

Pharmacovigilance is crucial for pick the ease of use and the impacts of any medication. Any pharmacovigilance alliance focus goes through amazing clinical assessment arranging a special clinical research training This is one of the monster divisions of any medicine association. Any pharmacovigilance support from an overall perspective merges four phases.

These stages include:

Pharmacovigilance Detection Process: This is the essential stage in the caution correspondence of any medication. It starts with the prospering data that comes a couple of sources, which might be either alluded to or unconstrained. Those that are gotten considering the focused in on information assortment structure the alluded to information sources. These wire clinical starters with one or three stages and post-publicizing, including interventional and non-interventional studies and evaluation. Alluded to sources moreover join worked with structures that have an especially depicted general flourishing explanation and a steady and clinical clarification. Alluded to sources also solidify changed activities discussion picked drug coalition. Unconstrained sources are unconstrained and those which are gotten with such a courses of action. These sources all around join legitimate orchestrated subject matter experts, molding reports, patients and clinical advantages suppliers, award suppliers, web, diary, books, and different assets.

Pharmacovigilance Assessment Process: After the basic blueprint of all the significant information, ICSR assessment is driven. This assessment dominatingly combines:

1. Triage: This time of potential unpalatable occasion report hardens the fundamental farthest reaches of building up the credibility of an ICSR. Any wide ICSR ought to generally have a certain patient, an undeniable editorialist, suspect solution, and an upsetting occasion.

2. Data Entry: Any prescription partnership keeps up its own reasonable instructive summary. Resulting to underwriting, very far are gone into this guaranteed information base. The further strolls around information part blend picking reality, coding the bargaining occasions, investigating causality, evaluating naming, and confined and reasonable story making.

3. Questioning Process: Any explanations and assembles fumbles are raised and cleared during this time of the evaluation.

4. Reviewing: Physicians and different experts study the flourishing rules that underscore reality, causality, naming, and so on

5. Closure of the case: The finished report, including the amount of the cutoff centers, is submitted to the key orchestrated subject matter experts. Learn Clinical Research Courses.

Appreciation and Analyzing the Drug prospering profile: The information amassed is considered and separated to comprehend the security profile of the plan utilizing an unpredictable advantage risk appraisal report which joins information assembled from a wide degree of clinical starters and unconstrained introductions for which a peril advantage evaluation is driven. Express bargaining response follow-up questions are utilized to get made data on separated expected terrible responses. A danger the board plan and progress security update report is likewise made. Signal evaluation is additionally planned.

Doubt for the unpleasant results: This stage is the last period of pharmacovigilance. Performing minimization of peril exercises to resuscitate the quick diagram of the thing portrayal, a flyer of patient data, checking and bundling, and genuine status of the medicine is done in this stage. This stage besides merges the seeing of this minimization of risk works out.

Worked with effort in the field of pharmacovigilance outlines the establishment of the WHO program for overall medication checking. These reports are for the most part bankrupt down locally and could incite activity inside the veritable country. The WHO program decision of any nation assists them with staying aware of essentially obscure investigates and reports that are made all through the planet. When there are different reports of a specific medication, this venture may incite an ID of a sign which could be dangerous to the human body.

Ecopharmocovigilance: Procedures for seeing the remedy spots and the horrendous impacts of these courses of action on the climate need paying little respect to the FDA. An idea including brand name pharmacology and pharmacovigilance turns around this space. The exercises of ecopharmacovigilance join developing the genuine variables open on the conventional consequences for the plan, use of standard threat the board plans, following new information on the responsiveness to the climate, peril seeing insistence, and so forth. There are several pharmacovigilance courses that focus on this aspect of the field.

watching/rewatching heavenly creatures against my better judgment: a liveblog

no offense to whoever jim is but dedicating this movie to anybody but Honora.........Not A Good Sign

the way the (fake? recreated?) newsreel cuts off but AFTER the antique use of the word gay....the side eye is real

i’m sure its to establish tone of setting or whatever but this intercut feels really cheap and the fact that they intended to film it in the exact spot the murder actually happened and kate winslet at least claims it was traumatic to shoot...HELLO???  two minutes into Heavenly Creatures and I'm already ready to fight Peter Jackson (and men in general

wasnt at least one of them if not both still alive when this movie came out? the raw screaming and cloying contrast of this opening scene was already bad but the fact that they did extensive interviews with people who knew them and also possibly at least one of them is still alive like......Just Fucking Make A Documentary Peter

i’m not GLAD its tasteless but theres some vindication in my being legitimately Horrified/traumatized by it as a teen wasn’t, like, an overreaction or me being a wuss

not SHAKY CAM and then CLOSE UPS of the BLOODY FACES like i get what youre going for but my GOD get some SUBTLY dude

i know its the 50s and New Zealand but the unironic use of the phrase “Mummy” and lines like “it’s Mummy she’s terribly hurt” screamed with like otherwise convincing conviction is going to be a Problem for me (though not necessarily a problem with the film. just like. Immersion.)

yes i AM stalling from actually watching the movie by taking these notes, thank you

they really had Kate Winslet covered in blood scream “help us” covered in blood in the first 3 minutes of the movie huh

i didn’t realize they put how pauline’s diary entries are all the real person’s words IN A CAPTION IN THE ACTUAL MOVIE like oh my GOD peter why the FUCK did you not just make a fucking DOCUMENTARY

its because he couldn’t use fucking cgi if he did a documentary, isn’t it? peter.

why does this title card include their middle names are there really that many Juliet Hulmes in the fucking world obviously not or she wouldn’t have had to change her fucking name

WHAT is this LOGO

IT’S 1994 PETER WE ARE TOO FAR REMOVED FROM THE 80S FOR THAT TO EXPLAIN THIS, IT IS NOT 50ISH AT ALL, THE COLORS CLASH, I’M LOWKEY OFFENDED BUT ADMITTEDLY REACHING ABOUT THE USE OF LAVENDER IN THIS CONTEXT, NONE OF THESE COLORS ARE ON THE NEW ZEALAND FLAG, THEY WEREN’T NOTICABLE IN THE SHOT OF CHRISTCHURCH, WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING?!

this whole movie is gonna be as garrish as this logo, huh? is that what the logo is designed to tell us?

please let them cut to the beginning now where things will by virtue of the story hopefully have to be less....Whatever This Is

well it hard cut to a shot of the latin ensigna on the girl’s high school floor (we know its a girls high school bc the old timey after school intro reel told us so hamfistedly) so So Much For That

we really established that melanie is Not Like oTHEr Girls/is nerdy by going from a bunch of close ups on identical shoes (of minors) to melanie (A MINOR) adjusting her suspenders under her student gown huh. thats the first we see of the underage nerdy teen murderer huh. thats really what we’re. i don’t even know the ways thats offensive honestly the layers are confusing. like pauline is allegedly confused by her garters despite probably having had to wear them for God knows how long

not a real movie criticism but WHAT have they done to poor Melanie’s HAIR

lmao for a movie allegedly about humanizing these girls, the first shot of Melanie as Pauline with her all dark haired amongst these blonde women with perfect princess leia buns all singing hymns but she is not singing she is SCOWLING is so.....................uh........

OH MY GOD......THE ACTUAL AUDACITY OF HAVING THEM PUT UP A A CAPTION THAT SAYS THIS IS CHRISTCHURCH GIRL’S HIGH SCHOOL 1952 AFTER THAT INTRO................PETER......I FUCKING KNOW.......I SAW YOUR CHEESY CLEARLY 50S INTRO REEL THAT LITERALLY ONLY NAMED THE GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL AND NOT THE BOYS.......THERE WERE TEENAGE GIRLS IN THE INTRO....EVERYONE IS WEARING UNIFORMS.......IF ANYTHING AT MOST U COULD MAYBE PUT THIS BEFORE SINGING CHAPEL HYMNS BC NOT EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT MORNING CHAPEL IN SCHOOLS BUT NOW THAT THEY ARE LITERALLY IN A CLASSROOM....PETER I CAN’T SAY YOURE KILLING ME BECAUSE I’M COMPLAINING ABOUT YOUR TRUE CRIME MOVIE BEING TASTELESS BUT COME THE WHOLE FUCK ON MAN

Pauline is pouting in what is admittedly like.....i could see a real teen being like this but in a movie it just comes off as camp and over the top....same w Kate as Juliet but Juliet specifically drawing a dragon getting slain instead of what she was supposed to be drawings is like. well you know what its st. georges and the dragon so maybe thats more subtle than compared to the fucking BTW THIS IS CHRISTCHURCH HIGH SCHOOL card.....

frankly i think the issue is i cannot tell if this movie wants me to think of these two as outsiders who are oppressed by The Man (or The Mom) just Not Understanding Them, and i think it is, and uh i guess technically thats true but mostly it seems to be because they willfully don’t do as they are told and thus are super annoying, and while thats kind of a shitty thing to say about kids we already know they end up MURDERING SOMEONE so like. What Do You Want Me To Do.

i was going to make a joke about how Kate Winslet would make a good adult Hermione/JK Rowling and then I remembered Juliet Hulme literally became a famous author under a different name writing murder mysteries and I Am SUFFERING

mr parker is telling honora parker why not have the fish she bought “now, when its fresh”and that is literally the first we are introduced to them and im pretty sure its not a reach with how economical the film has been so far to assume the subtext of that is supposed to be seize the day bc tomorrow isn’t promised and like HEY PETER JACKSON? YOU CAN’T FUCKING DO THAT WHEN THE CHARACTER IS A PERSON IN REAL LIFE WHO GOT MURDERED BY HER DAUGHTER.

Cannot tell if im meant to find them unlikeable in whcih case then all their unappealing traits are hamhanded rising Horror And Foreboding which i dont like, or theyre again supposed to be kids who feel Unseen in whcih case it honestly might be worse? because like? your dad is just joking around with a fish while paying mostly attention to your interest? your mom believed you when you said u got an a on your thing and then backed off? literally my concern with this movie was it was going to make me sympathize with these Literal Murderers too much and instead its reinforcing the narrative of like “no actually these kids just suck plain and simple” which is uh. idk if thats how people work but in terms of what i know jackson said he was trying to do that’s. that’s the exact opposite of the story he wanted to tell, so.

bro i cannot tell if this boy is supposed to be a neighbor asking to borrow the record player and is now Overwhelmed with his crush on Pauline, or if he is Pauline’s brother. but, you know, we needed a title card to establish we were in a high school

so uh. we’re just gonna introduce the idea that juliet is super enamored with injuries out of nowhere huh. with kate winslet doing weird over enunciating her words in a purposeful way like a midcentury movie version of a villain? and making weird unsettling breathing things, and pauline-melanie is still glowering constantly? which, side note, ive seen melanie give more convincing glowery performances. its not that her acting is bad its just something about the way her hair has been styled to make it like theres a literal dark cloud over her physically-hunched-over-at-all-times face......The Subtlty, Peter, Where Is It.....how are you making literal real people seem FAKE

i cannot stop thinking about the trope in 90s queer movies where the person questioning their sexuality rents all lesbian movies in the videostore awkwardly because they are thirsty to Learn and heavenly creautres is shown in at least one of them. like wheres the fanfic of them popping that one in the vcr. what was THAT reaction. 

oh no....the Believing Them As People And Finding Them Relatable Has Started....this is good for the movie but Bad For Me

(okay honestly the hard turn into fantasy land was a bit rough for the movie as well but also i think thats the Choice its going for so like. fine.)

oh my God....these are the same shots of running as the beginning when they were running from the murder.......Not Sure How To Feel About That but it at least captures the state of mind more accurately imo

i know its to establish their big feelings about their fantasy world or whatever but youd think since weve barely seen their friendship forming over anything else at this point theyd make “of course it matters” about, like, juliet respecting pauline’s stuff

the camera angles and zoominess are probably meant to keep the audience constantly reminded that These Are Murderers or Something Is Not Right or whatever by keeping them discomfited and disorientated or whatever but here’s the thing: i don’t like feeling that way! and it seems like a cheap way to get around how real life doesn’t work like tropes, warning signs are different than foreshadowing, etc! JUST MAKE A DOCUMENTARY PETER.

OK I know theres some class commentary going on here but the way pauline is hunched into herself all the time truly gives it like a fucking over the top igor vibe and its like Please Chill Movie, esp bc the murderers themselves at that age at least would probably be super into that

DO YOU GET IT? THEY WERE HAVING FUN AND THEN THEY GOT TOO INTO IT AND PAUL HAD HER BIKE DRIVEN OFF OF THE ROAD? DO YOU GET IT

also dont get special interests or u will be a social outcast who kills her mom. brought to you by: THE MAN WHO WOULD SHORTLY THEREAFTER DIRECT THE L ORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN HELP ME.

you absolute goddamn motherfucker, if you make these kids who said in interviews after theyd already admitted to murder that their relationship was never romantic kiss and thus EXPLICITLY promote the all lesbians are murderers trope with REAL PEOPLE who ARENT EVEN LESBIANS im gonna

this music is a lot

are they gonna TAKE THEIR CLOTHEES OFF???

hey so peter its not in close up so maybe this is actually on me but filming a 17 year old without a bra on in a white tank top jumping around sure is a choice you made bud

KATE WINSLET IS DOWN TO A BRA THIS IS NOT A DRILL

so like i dont want to be mad about a clearly chaste kiss on the lips between two girls in their underwear with said chaste underwear thing also being portrayed in a chaste way because i mean thats kind of a great thing that should occur in cinema more often and its neither strictly platonic nor strictly romantic so its like acknowledging that they were “diagnosed” with homosexuality (i think??) later on without like making it A Thing that they were Lesbians and thats why they KILLED but also like.....its 1994 dude, come on. i feel like thats somewhat comparable to silence of the lambs having that bit about “buffalo bill isn’t a REAL trans person” in terms of representational damage control to greater society. altho this sequence is much more sympathetic than any with buffalo bill, obvs.

they just have a candlelit shrine in the woods now with no lead up to how this escalated or whether or not their parents know or like. insert joke about juliet hulmes candle budget here.

the rejection of heaven right before introducing their alternate reality Thing sure is a choice

honestly this whole thing has big “if you are a stan of someone that means that like the eminem lyric you will lock your gf in a trunk and drive off a cliff” energy

okay melanie’s eager sucking-over-her-lower-teeth acting choice is ABSOLUTELY a thing jackson would only include to make this kid look FUCKING DERANGED and idk how to feel about it

okay there is NO WAY MELANIE WAS NOT DIRECTED TO ACT LIKE PAULINE HAD A CRUSH ON JULIET, I FUCKING HATE THIS

the ~ominous~ shot of orson welles going over the water fall, foreshadowing dislike from these girls = death? Peter Jackson fuck all the way off.

Not as important as being tasteless towards real people but: if this shit was just a fictional horror movie it would be a camp classic that i would love unreservedly, and that just makes me more angry about the whole thing, bc now im stuck hating it ferociously instead. also this shit got a BEST SCREENPLAY NOMINATION like can you fucking IMAGINE?

why the fuck did i actually download this movie instead of reading the screenplay like i do with all horror movies i think are too tasteless to watch? I Am A Fool.

its christmas, did juliet ever replace that marlo record? for a movie all about their friendship i know literally next to nothing about it. and like. YOU CLEARLY HAVE PAULINES DIARY, WHEN DID SHE START WRITING IN IT. I FEEL LIKE THIS IS GROUND YOU COULD HAVE COVERED.

Theres a teen girl here and i have no earthly idea if shes pauline sister or cousin or anything

oh she just got gifted the diary, as if peter jackson could hear me and told me to shut the fuck up (no i will not, hobbit man)

it might be to establish classism but considering honoras hand looked like exactly the same as juliet’s when she did eventually shake it, the Weird Focus On It just seems very OH REMEMBER SHES GONNA FUCKING KILL HER

“I wouldn’t want my private business discussed with complete strangers” imagine writing this line for your fictionalized version of a real murder and putting it in the mouth of the murdered woman who you are making a movie about

NOT INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF JULIETS MOM HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH “PLEASE, CALL ME [FIRST NAME]” AFTER THE MOM SAYS MR WHATEVER

Did.....this script subtly shade Juliet Hulmes’ mom based on perceived promiscuity 

oh ok the family call pauline by her middle name sometimes, prior complaint retracted

oh its a BOARDING HOUSE [insert but christchurch high school needed a caption complaint here]

God, I get why the extent of these kids being relatable freaked me out when i was 15, but now its less “am i a fucking MURDERER???” and more “big name authors really are fucking Like That, huh”

hey you know what i hate? speaking of big named authors being Like That, i just thought “God, the fucking Grindelwald/Dumbledore vibes”, and then realized that.....the Dumbledore aunt who it doesnt make any sense for to exist and is only mentioned in the spinoff shortstory that is basically a conversion therapy “Being gay makes you a murderer” tract......is named........Honoria. I. I REALLY HOPE THATS A COINCIDENCE. LIKE THAT’S A COINCIDENCE, RIGHT? PLEASE?

God the killing of the family member and regretting it...........i swear im not like making this about hp bc i cant empathize w a murder unless i relate it to fucking garbage book series, i am like LEGITIMATELY CONCERNED about whether or not this is yet another of jkr’s tasteless real world influences that come out of nowhere in the 7th book forward

so we’re skipping 2 months...honestly im fine with that just Noting in case theres something that feels Missing later

peter said “finally, some fucking cgi”

i had another complaint but got distracted by-- oh no i remember its that unless i get DOCUMENTATION on mrs hulme calling pauline foster daugher im getting mad at the homoeroticism

what i got distracted by was the movie appearing to shame mrs hulme for wanting to fuck her HUSBAND now?

i can see the argument for shooting this movie how the girls appeared to have percieved the world when its them actually in a headspace similar, but doing big sound of music esc shots of pretty spinning hills all cinematic when juliet is having a grounded very nondramatic experience of being upset is like....Bad imo. its like capital R romanticizing the story as opposed to just speculating on how they might have experienced it

this sweeping romantic music is making me Once Again want to fight Peter Jackson

honestly this kind of narrative only really works if youre guility rooting for the kids So Like. This Bad, actually! This why DOCUMENTARY would be GOOD. sympathy within the confines of REALITY ONLY.

isnt the basis for this entire thing juliet being upset that she goes with the parents i get why shes upset at them abandoning her again its just that NARRATIVELY, BECAUSE ITS A FICTION AND NOT A DOCUMENTARY, IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE. ALSO IT DOEES NOT MAKE SENSE TO INTRODUCE AT THE SAME TIME JULIET ENCOURAGING VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS FOR THE FIRST TIME. EVEN IF IT HAPPENED THAT WAY IN REAL LIFE. BECAUSE NARRATIVE RULES. BUT LIKE OBVIOUSLY YOU SHOULD TELL THE STORY AS IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IF YOUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THEM. ERGO *DOCUMENTARY*

if i was less sleepy there would be something to be said about peter jackson’s version of two teenage girls’ vision of The Elysian Fields and by extensioin the gays run away to the elysian fields trope being like. it looks exactly the fucking same as the landscape they are on right now but with more manicured hedges a few outdoor fixtures and unicorns that look exactly like regular horses. even tho these girls are movie buffs and its the 50s so like. fucking boris karloff makeup exists, dude. and juliet’s rich and international.

if they kiss again especially here im gonna SCREAM

butterflies but theyre Bigger

okay heres the diary entry lets see how accurate the above is

the fucking Longing in Melanie’s eyes as she cuddles up to kate in a clearly Couple’s Pose while the REAL DIARY ENTRY OF THE NON LESBIAN IS BEING READ, i fucking hate you peter jackson get FUCKED

“everything is full of peace and bliss” ah so again peter jackson’s interprettation of that from this teen girl’s perspective is.....that.

this fucking hard cut to kate winslet pretending to be in labor, i can’t

i cant believe its called heavenly creatures after them, like, rejecting actual heaven and passing off their responsibility for their actions on like. being the only special snowflakes who can get into afterlife dimension or whatever.

EXTREMELY GONNA NEED TO KNOW IF THE REAL LIFE PEOPLE WHO REFERRED TO THEMSELVES AS THE CHARACTER NAMES PRETENDED TO BE THOSE CHARACTERS DURING PRETENDING TO HAVE A BABY TOGETHER OR IF THATS SOME SHIT PETER JACKSON AND THE SCRIPT WRITER THREW IN TO MAKE IT MORE GAY, WHCIH THE MURDERERS *WERE NOT*

Okay yall i jhavent slept all night and kate winslet is now reading her stupid story to the class and the words “empress deborah” for the billionth time is for some reason my breaking point, at least for now, i need to sleep or eat breakfast or something before i can Take This again, thank you for your interest and time if you read thus far

Parenthood can now and then feel secluding, particularly in the event that you don't have a mother clan to go to. It could be anything but difficult to fall into the snare of reasoning only you're, since you feel alone, especially in the event that you've chosen to take a break from your profession and are presently finding that your day by day social circle is really without different grown-ups.

Luckily, there are a lot of assets for any mother with a web association out there. We're discussing baby online journals and mother sites, which mean to associate with you by being applicable and honest. Ordinarily, mother bloggers online will end up turning out to be companions IRL, and through these sites another network is shaped. Also, regardless of whether you don't feel alone, after crafted by a mother blogger can in any case advantage you by giving accommodating and engaging peruses. What do you have to lose?

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1. Protective

Including genuine records from mothers, this site is involved pieces that are instructive and furthermore too relatable. A portion of my top choices incorporate "While you were resting: I watched you change into a baby" and "A letter to my girl concerning why I returned to work."

2. Prattle

This mainstream site is controlled by none other than Disney. It highlights articles by contributing writers about a scope of family subjects, including pregnancy, child rearing, amusement, and plans.

3. mom.me

A site planned by mothers for mother, it's a spot for you "as a mother, and you as a lady, as well," including articles by guardians who have children in various life stages.

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I previously found Jacqui's blog directly after the terrible going of her child, Ryan, to whom the blog is presently committed. She expounds on adapting to his misfortune; life and love with her better half and girl; and her child cordial plans.

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5. Startling Mommy

This child rearing site is a self-depicted "lively network of a great many guardians, united by a typical topic: Parenting doesn't need to be great." Expect to discover some comedic pearls on here!

6. Momastery

This blog — composed by expansion survivor, mother of three, and persuasive speaker Glennon Doyle Melton — is as inspirational as it is contacting. In case you're needing some jolt of energy point of view, this is the place you'll see it. Melton is viewed as a sovereign of the mama blogger world, and her top of the line diary was an Oprah's Book Club read.

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Charged as a "survival reference for new mothers," the site is a genuine reference book of first-time mom information and tips, including deets on pregnancy, baby item audits, and that's just the beginning.

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As the title would maybe demonstrate, this blog has a comical bend to it. In case you're in the mind-set for lighter perusing material that is as yet educational and relatable, look no further. You can appreciate many, numerous classes of substance here, as "Asshattery," "Unnerving Shit Series," and a proven mother top choice, "Is It Safe?"

9. Snapshots of Musing

Bold fitting — this present one's my blog! It's an assortment of my thoughts as a spouse, mother and that's just the beginning. It's my expectation that through association and joint effort, this space will assist with encouraging the strengthening of ladies and mothers.

10. Romy and The Bunnies

Named after the originator's girl, this blog is extraordinary for stylishly slanted perusers. Expect loads of charming style spreads, interviews with mothers in the design business, and return photographs of chic big name mothers, as Audrey Hepburn, with their kids.

11. Tear + Tan

The style planner Jenni Kayne made this blog, named after little girl Ripley and child Tanner, to narrative the everyday goings on of her family's California way of life. Also, the entire family (counting their mutts, Chachi and The Dude) is evident uber cool.

12. A Cup of Jo

Established by previous magazine editorial manager and current columnist and mother Joanna Goddard, this current one's both tastefully and mentally captivating. Make certain to look at her parenthood around the globe arrangement, which dives into the child rearing acts of different nations and is particularly intriguing from a worldwide ladies' privileges viewpoint.

13. Settling Story

Is it true that you are a mother to twins? You'll unquestionably need to make a beeline for Joanna Venditti's blog. The mother of four is known for telling it to perusers as is it — remembering for a post-pregnancy body certainty blog entry that became famous online. From analyzing her cesarean and vaginal conveyances, to evaluating fun play-date thoughts, she shares everything.

14. Unfenced Kids

This blog ought to be required perusing for helicopter guardians. Lenore Skenazy began her blog in 2008 as an asset for killjoy 'rents to enable them "to bring up sheltered, independent kids (without going crazy with stress)." Thanks to its inexorably applicable topic, Skenazy's blog have since been highlighted on "The Daily Show" and "The View," just as in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

15. Rockin' Mama

Charged as a "way of life asset for the cutting edge mother," Caryn Bailey has been blogging about child rearing, plans, travel, and innovative exercises to attempt with your children since '07. Bailey's blog is really only a ton of fun, and you'll unquestionably leave with a couple of thoughts you need to give a shot with your family.

16. Well informed Mama

This is an incredible asset for any mother who's stressed over the effect innovation has on their youngsters' life. Leticia Barr's famous blog includes a ton of supported substance, yet in case you're willing to filter through that, you'll find certifiable item surveys, internet based life know-how, and bunches of tips for best screentime rehearses in your family.

17. Y Travel

Australian couple Caz and Craig Makepeace (extremely, those are their names) co-made this blog to share their energy for voyaging — and their profound conviction that experience looking for doesn't need to end when you have children. The Makespeaces travel with their two self-taught little girls everywhere throughout the world, and their rousing web journal and Instagram feed will give you genuine FOMO (or thoughts for your next excursion).

18. Love Taza

Naomi, additionally know as Taza, shares undertakings from her existence with her significant other and three children in New York City. The blog handles subjects, for example, parenthood, family life, travel, nourishment, and "life's straightforward delights."

19. Reclassifying Mom

Mother business visionaries should look at this blog for assets on building their own organizations. Monica, who began the blog as an approach to interface with other ladies who were battling with their work-life balance, offer counsel on both blogging and parenthood and offers her own work and family encounters.

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Make by Nashville mother, Scarlet Paolicchi, this blog is an asset for families, child rearing, family exercises, suppers, travel, and home stylistic theme. Red offers plans, make thoughts, and exercises to do with the children, just as tips for developing your own wellbeing and way of life.

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Including assessments of ladies and men from around the globe, Mom Blog Society gathers legitimate surveys of items and administrations and articles to help guardians.

22. Soule Mama

Mother of five Amanda Blake Soule expounds on her family life living in an old farmhouse in Western Maine, where she and her family raise animals, develop vegetables, and "make loads of things."

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Jackie is the proprietor of her blog Moments of Musing, where she expounds on her life as a spouse, mother, and all the more living in New York City. She works with overcomers of personal accomplice viciousness.

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trigger warnings: it’s really not the main topic of the post, but there are a couple of suicidal ideation mentions

so clearly the personal diary blog died. i guess i’ll have to restart it sometime soon. but anyway. i talk here first. since i guess people read here for their News Involving Me. which is not much news, actually. my life is very routine. go to work, eat, mess around on the internet, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. honestly, writing blog more than anything is to help me remember stuff, especially entertaining stuff i can look back on years later and laugh at. i deleted my sec school blog, which makes me kinda sad, because my friends keep digging up gems from their blogs and i’m like holy shit i DID That?!?! i DON’T REMEMBERRRRRR and it makes me sad that i don’t have MY own POV of the incidences to reminisce about. so i try to keep one now so that when i’m 45 i’ll have stuff to laugh at. well, if i live to be that age. yes i know my life is infinitely better now that i’ve moved out and got a job and live on my own terms but trauma and suicidal ideation don’t just disappear overnight. every now and then i still feel like i’m so broken and no matter how good things get i’ll never be able to be properly fixed, i’ll never be able to be a proper human being who’s “in touch” with their feelings and all that and that i should just die. cuz feelings are just so like, eugh, argh, what is that?!?! it hurts. it hurts so much from how intense it is. even good feelings, like when i see my friends, it’s like oh god, i love you so much, i’m so happy to see you but it’s almost like the love manifested as one of those alien chest-burster things and is literally trying to tear its way out of my chest, it hurts. and i literally can’t even tell you how much i love you and how happy i am to see you because it’s all i can do to keep a straight face and not burst into tears which is utterly contrary to what i want to express. ugh. feelings. why must they beat you over the head with a baseball bat. 

aaaaaanyway. so i already talked about this on facebook but since tumblr and facebook have totally different audience i shall repeat this with some changes. also because on facebook certain people follow me so i cannot very well say some shit so i’ll say it here. 

official confirmations and paperworks and what not are months and months away and honestly life isn’t going to be much different no matter what outcome is but i’m just gonna say it anyway because i need to get it off my chest - i have applied for asd assessment. appt could be anywhere from oct 2019 to jan 2020 but i wish they’d get it over soon because i keep swinging between like “yeah, well, why not? might as well know now than when you’re like 50″ and “GOD you’RE DISGUSTING why would you even CONTEMPLATE the NOTION”. cuz there is this...acquaintance i have from sec sch, whom i Do Not Like, who luckily doesn’t follow this blog (i believe) who’s on the spec and like part of me is vehemently against the idea of being in ANY demographic in common with them. they also got a recent - well, not that recent anymore - dx and like - part of me just.......DOESN’T WANT to be seen as like, oh, so you’re gonna be like them, get a dx to excuse all your TERRIBLE behaviour over the past .....8? 9? years? and i know it doesn’t make sense - like, that’s absolutely not - look, whatever i am or am not i don’t expect nor want anyone to give me any slack for whatever “difficulties”, if i behave badly that’s all on me and i take full responsibility - gAAAH i am not making sense. like, sometimes i just feel dirty thinking about it. like my god why would you do that. only people looking for excuses would look for a dx well into their adulthood when they’ve had plenty of time to learn the ins and outs of human-ing. you doin this because you a lazy scumbag that doesn’t want to put in effort to learn the ins and outs of hooman-ing. aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. i wish someone else (other than aforementioned Person I Do Not Like) was doing it with me so that at least i wouldn’t feel so absolutely disgusting. at least then it wouldn’t feel like excuse/attention-seeking behaviour because then i’d be able to look at this other person i like doing it as well and be like “well see it’s legitimate they have also learnt how to function as an adult human and they have friends and job but they are also doing this too so you are not a failure and a shit for doing this because THEY’RE not a failure and a shit, and they’re doing it too!” the good thing about long wait is that at least i don’t have to worry about should i cancel it or not. maybe they’ll call me when i’m in the dungeons lab and have no reception and my phone won’t register the missed call and then they’ll close the case, or maybe they’ll just plain forget xD 

so that’s that, and inktober is coming, and the boss wants me to draw mouse brain lateral cross sections at different developmental stages for his upcoming paper; many many busy things, so i’m going to sleep now. hopefully i can get into the habit of writing at least a short entry every day so i have stuff to read when i’m 50. GOOD NIGHT.

Omru: Noteworthy

[Entry One]

Dear Diary,

  Where to begin? It’s been seven days since my traveling companions and I left the sanctuary of our secret underground puddle cave base of operations for the last time. The leader of our band of talented and attractive adventurers, Pazaz, trusted me with navigational duties. We packed up all of our belongings, sealed the cave with some kind of shamanistic earth magick, and off we left to find my childhood home. The Shrouded Hollow.

  Let the record show, here and now within these yellowing flimsy pages that I never once claimed to be great at geography. Or was that math? No, that’s geometry. Yes. Geography. Directions. Yeah, better way of saying that. Oh how I wish for a way to erase the ink stains. Suppose I could scratch them out, but I think doing that just ruins the whole page. Could rip this one out and start all over.

No. I’m here, nibbling on some roasted lizard on a stick, and I’m doing this thing. Setting the record straight.

  Ahem. I am terrible at directions. Just, I have no idea how it keeps happening. All my life I’ve been directionally challenged. There’s just something that ticks in people's brains that never quite clicked within mine. In fact, that’s why I left home, or should say, stayed gone. My people have always held nomadic tendencies. We travel in groups, wagons, caravans. We settle down for a spell, talk, trade, play, and then we mosey on out again. There are usual spots, and most people can track one of us down just by visiting our family or friends.

‘You need to see Jino? Yeah, he’s headin up towards Riverdraint County.’

Note: Riverdraint County is a fictional location. I think. It might exist outside of Vul’dun, who knows. Not me, that’s for sure.

  Anyways, yeah, one day I left to go find my own treasures. I wanted to bring back something jaw dropping, something that would make my uncle poop his pants from envy. It took me three years to find my way back to the Hollow. It wasn’t shame, I found a lot of cool stuff. Hey, that’s been my whole life. I gotta knack for finding really cool stuff. I just always end up seemingly random ass places.

  Up to this point, that’s just something people have come to expect from me. Personally, I try not to set out for anywhere in particular, that way I’m technically never lost. I’m spontaneous. It’s different. Cooler.

  Here’s an example of what I’m writing about. A few years back, I met with this really cool cat. Well, he wasn’t a cat, he was a troll. A troll with a magic recording box. Anything you said into the box could be replayed right back at you. Very nice. This troll was really into the way I talk and sing. Okay, mostly the singing. So I agreed to learn a few of his songs and sing them into his box. He was so excited, he offered me gems, jewels and a seat at his table back in Dazar’alor. All I needed to do was meet with him the following night at the same location we were in. To me it was just a random rock in the desert, and perhaps the most intelligent thing to do would have been to camp there and wait it out. But waiting was boring, I was young and wanted to go out for ‘just an hour’.

To this day, I have never found that rock again. Never heard back from whats-his-name. The singing gig was donezo.

  What does this have to do with anything? Blah. I can’t find the Hollow. Been there a hundred times. I think I’m almost there, then bam, nowhere near it. I tried to explain this to Pazaz and Luft, though they told me just to keep trying. Well, Paz said that. I’m still not convinced Luft is real. She’s invisible. Not the kind of invisibility I mastered, the poofy cloudy sneaking kind. No, she legitimately has no physical form. That said, I’m also half convinced that if she -is- real and Paz isn’t some desert stranded bedlamite, she totally fist bumped me once. I felt a breeze across my knuckles anyways.

 Paz is cool, though. He’s funny, smart, entertaining and has a lot of world wisdom. I could sure use a helping of that. The more he talks, the smaller my experiences feel. My whole life has been in this one little box of a desert when there’s been a whole world out there ripe for exploring! Not that I was unaware of life outside the sands before. It just, I don’t know, it didn’t seem as appealing before hearing about people who are from there.

  Not much has happened. Day after day I get turned around. Survived three days of the same sandstorm, that sucked. Oh and I found a small abandoned little hut with a leather bound book. The back was ripped off and most of the pages were missing. What wasn’t missing was blank. That’s you! You’re the book. Never had a journal before, so I figured I’d start now.

  Gonna head back out, hope we don’t come across any more of those dwarves. Oh! I forgot to mention the dwarves! Yeah, they have giant manes along their faces and they’re really muscular. And total drunkards. Like, falling down drunk, kept tripping over their own boots in the sand. They tried to rob us, but they couldn’t even walk a straight line. They could, however, throw an axe with incredible accuracy. I lost some fur on my tail that day.

  Anyways, yeah, time for some more navigational responsibility! I hope this is the start to a new daily routine.

Yours,

Omru

----

[Final Entry]

Dear Diary,

  I found it. Home. It was here all along and it only took us two weeks to get here.

And it’s just been utterly destroyed. The Setherak burned down most everything. Sons of bitches.

  Paz says that the snakemen have mostly been defeated. The Faithless. Technically there are good Seths and bad. The Faithless did this, but they were taken out by the Horde. Sands thank the Horde for this retribution.

  Still a lot to do, though. We have a lot of wagons to repair, a lot of stuff to retrieve and/or replenish. That brings me to my point. I’m leaving you here, hidden beneath the rocks of my old burrow spot. Why? Two reasons, primarily.

  First and foremost, this was my childhood home. I’m leaving for the great unknown. Well, unknown to me, but Paz has actually filled me in on quite a lot. I’m going to a magical place called Durotar to escape this hellish landscape of dried land, oppressive heat and next to no water. Durotar was named after a great Orc cheiftain. Orcs are like goblins with bigger bodies and smaller brains. That’s what Paz says. Haven’t met any yet.

  Oh and reason number two. There’s no more pages lift to fill out. I knew this book was in bad shape, but I guess I turned it over one too many times or something. I dunno, there’s just this page and the one before it. Kind of a crappy diary, huh? Honestly though? I would have lost interest in writing anyways.

So to whoever finds this, the most intimate of my personal writings. Come find me in lush Durotar! 

  Paz has already left ahead of me. Something about the maelstrom, which is a hole in the planet’s ocean or something? I dunno, the guy talks to the elements. However, he left me with a map, a compass and directions to Dazar’alor.

  Oh, speaking of Zuldazar, the Faithless somehow summoned an ancient dark monstrocity here in Vul’dun. I didn’t see it, just hearsay but enough say it to believe it. They say it cracked open some giant wheel in the troll capital. I don’t know what their politics are, the trolls have always been hit or miss to me. But any enemy of the Faithless is a friend of mine.

Running out of room to write. Shite. Guess I should end it here then.

Come Find Me, Omru

--

Back to the Beginning {TVD 1x01 Review}

OK! So we’re starting from the beginning, every Friday between 9pm and 10. Considering that I haven’t like sat down to watch a full episode of the past seasons of TVD in a few years and my memory might not be the greatest I think I will start with my usual disclaimer: I will write my thoughts in real time so if I make a mistake at the beginning of this post, it will be corrected by the end. There will be anti-Damon and anti-Delena sentiments (I’m only mentioning these two because it’s the beginning of the series), I will probably bring up other shows and call attention to misogynoir, racism, anti-blackness etc. Gotta admit, I’m a little excited to start from the beginning, it’s been a really long time. Ready? Let’s go. 1. OK Stefan’s voiceover over the foggy woods is still HELLA campy though. I remember I saw this and was like, Fadi (my friend), are you really making me watch this? YES. She was so fucking insistent. 2. Yeah the foggy night and dark road, it’s very horror movie, very cinematic. 3. Them hitting Damon is reminiscent of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” They even gave Damon a growling noise when he feeds. 4. Listening to the score for season 1, really emphasizes how much they misused the cues in season 8. The scary cue works here because people are running, getting snatched up on a dark foggy night, it isn’t just walking through the Salvatore house. 5. Jenna is legit a mess, like, right away, Elena is like drinking coffee and really chill, like do you not have a presentation today? Go. 6. Damon sending the crow to hit Bonnie’s car is like … Literally from the minute he’s introduced, he’s terrorizing her. 7. Also Kat is a stronger actress than Nina, even the way Bonnie says, “And I was like put this woman in a HOME already”, she has more presence than Nina. 8. “She looks a hot … can I say tranny mess?” “No that’s over.” And totally inappropriate. I completely missed that before. 9. LOL Elena’s “No comment, I’m not going to say anything” when Caroline walks away is delivered really well, yo you two secretly hate each other and that should’ve been explored more. 10. Stefan’s jeans actually look a little ridiculous in the pilot, though. Like they don’t look like they fit well. When Bonnie and Elena sees him in the office. 11. Jeremy is legit like a drug dealer though. That’s kind of a big deal. 12. “You need to chill yourself” …. … … Did KW and JP like consult any teens when they wrote this script? 13. And her fight with Jeremy is actually pretty muted. I’m an only child but my closest friends are older siblings and they’ve told me of times when their younger siblings were fucking up and they would like literally BE there all the time, they would walk them to class, sit with them at lunch, be like, so where are we going today? Elena threatens to do that but never really follows through and it always bothered me that no one held an intervention for Jeremy or set up a meeting with a counsellor. 14. It is still the cutest thing ever when Stefan catches Elena staring at him in class. 15. I do like that in season 1 they dress like they’re teenagers though. 16. “Shoo, that’s what I thought.” Yeah, Elena, stand up to that bird. 17. No, seriously, from a purely objective point of view I can see why the cemetery scene would be the scene that made KW and Bob Levi and JP go ecstatic because when the scene begins Nina seems a little nervous, which I get, it’s the pilot, but when the scene goes on and the dialogue keeps going, she and Paul just have that energy, the way she smiles, the way they stare at each other, there’s legit chemistry there. 18. Yeah, those jeans need to go. And Paul I love you, but your pilot haircut is nooooooooot working. 19. Like you look like a hedgehog, honey. The diary entries actually make this REALLY angsty. 20. LOL Vicki is actually pretty mean to Jeremy though. “I don’t want to announce to the world that I deflowered Elena’s kid brother” and Jeremy has these puppy dog eyes when he says, “And deflowered and deflowered” and it’s like awwwwwwww, you’re way too young for this. 21. “I’m meeting Bonnie at The Grill”, it’s not even Bonnie and Caroline though. 22. These Stelena stares are KILLING me. It’s different seeing it within the episode than clips. 23. The way Matt says, “I feel weird calling her … She broke up with me” all of them are so YOUNG and have these really innocent faces and it just makes everything seem so MEAN. 24. “Any siblings” “None that I talk to” so when Elena tells Damon in the next episode, “Stefan never mentioned he had a brother” I mean he didn’t say that he didn’t either, he admits to having siblings. I feel like I’m going to keep a tally of all the times the show forgets its own script to propel DE. 25. Yoooooooooooo I didn’t remember we get a shot of Stefan topless in the pilot when he’s putting on his shirt. *sigh* so gratuitous. I love it. 26. Those jeans are terrible though. 27. OK but really, WHO IS ZACH AGAIN? He says “Uncle Stefan” so like how does that work? 28. Stefan being blamed for Damon’s shit from DAY ONE. 29. Paul’s intense gaze is damn. 30. I also like how in history class they never discuss enslavement. Mmkay. 31. “You’re upset about something.” “No it’s just Bonnie, she’s … You know what, never mind. You’re here.” And from Day One Bonnie’s issues are ignored. 32. Paul and Nina look really good walking next to each other. 33. Tyler legitimately treats Vicki like shit. 34. “Jeremy. Is that you?” Yes, Vicki, Jeremy can create fog now. 35. Also Damon is so fucking extra with that fog. It’s unnecessary. 36. “I just want to let you know that I still believe in us and I’m not giving up on you” oh Matty, it was never you. Don’t worry though, you get a bench. 37. So Vicki is on the ground with blood on her neck and Jeremy is like “It’s Vicki” and Elena is like “oh my God” and NO ONE is taking out their phones to call 9-11.They just stand there until she opens her eyes. I mean, I guess. 38. Ian’s hair is RIDICULOUS. 39. I don’t understand how Damon got such a following, I find him thoroughly uncharming. Like he just talks SO MUCH. 40. “Damon, after all this time, after all these years can’t we just give it a rest??” “I promised you an eternity of misery.” How fucking petty ARE you Damon? 41. Ian isn’t menacing. 42. “How come the guys I want never go for me?” “I’m not touching that.” Bonnie is hilarious though. Like oh hell no, do not drag me into your messy shit. 43. Vicki and her black nail polish. So high school. 44. Matt’s eyes are actually really blue in the pilot. 45. I am so fucking glad the diary voiceovers disappear eventually. It’s just, it’s too much. 46. And Stefan and Elena overlap. Omg. No. 47. Damon looks creepy as fuck staring at Caroline. 48. I won’t lie though, Stefan constantly coming to Elena’s house, if it were me I’d be like sooooo are you just going to keep showing up? Like she isn’t a little bit weirded out that this guy keeps just showing up at her house? 49. And she can just invite boys into her house at how late at night? OK so my review is over! I’m definitely excited to be doing these every Friday. It’s funny though because pilots are meant to establish what the show is going to be about and what’s centered in the pilot is Stefan and Elena and their desire to get through their respective dark times. The supernatural element is secondary. It’s first and foremost an SE story. Until next week!

*NOTE* To avoid confusion: I’m not saying what Stefan did is comparable to Damon, Damon was terrorizing Elena for kicks, I’m just saying that Stefan comes across as intense in the pilot and I would be like dude you are at my house a lot but it makes sense because Stefan isn’t acting completely human because he isn’t one, throughout the episode he’s trying to train himself to be more human.

Book Roundup -- March 2017

The Gilded Cage by Vic James.  2/5.  This book really bothered me, because it started out strong.  Essentially, it’s a dystopian/urban fantasy story in which the UK is run by the Equals, who are Skilled--magically empowered.  Those without powers are required to put in ten years of slavery, though once they’re eighteen they get to choose when they do their years.  Luke is sent to what’s basically a workhouse, whereas his sister Abi and the rest of their family is sent to work relatively cushy jobs at the manor home of one of the ruling families.  This was all very interesting, except Luke’s storyline rapidly became a typical rebel against the machine dystopian story, while Abi was discovering the secrets of this fucked up family--until she fell in love with the Boring Brother.  Nope.  Nah.  There were a million viewpoints as well, and ultimately too many cliches.

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller.  1/5.  I feel bad about giving this a bad rating because its cover is adorable and the author seems nice.   But I can’t pull punches with this one.  Basically, this is about Alosa, the titular daughter of the pirate king who lets herself get kidnapped by lesser pirates in order to steal a map.  The idea sounds like fun fare, and I wasn’t looking for anything super historically accurate or intellectual.  I was expecting something POTC-esque.  But like... Elizabeth Swann at least cared about functionality.  Within the first thirty pages, Alosa had gone on and on about her clothes and her need for corsets and I was like listen girl I’ve worn corsets you’re not swashbuckling in that shit???  Like I’m all for weaponized femininity but no???  The whole thing read as parody or satire, which I’m cool with too, BUT IT WASN’T FUNNY.  Every bit of dialogue was flat and delivered in a straightforward manner.  Alosa’s inner monologue was boring and every other paragraph felt like an info dump.  Just no.

Beautiful Broken Girls by Kim Savage.  2/5.  After sisters Mira and Francesca commit suicide together, Mira’s one-time love Ben begins finding notes left in the seven places where they touched.  In doing so, he’ll discover why the girls killed themselves.  This book gets points for the writing style, which was evocative and lovely.  It also has an interesting focus on Catholic ritual, especially stigmata.  But honestly, it was just a downer throughout.  It’s not that you expect a happy, upbeat book when you’re reading something about teenage suicide (don’t do it!).  However, The Virgin Suicides tackled the same subject matter with an air of mystery and depth.  These characters all seemed shallow and boring.  The book also deals with the issue of pedophilia rather poorly, in my view.  It romanticizes the survivor as “damaged” and “broken”, and it’s just... not well done.  Good idea, poor execution.

The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle van Arsdale.  2/5.  Essentially, this is the story of Alys, who, after an encounter with the soul-eating twins outside her village, feels connected to them as she grows up.  The soul-eaters are feared by her village, as is the terrifying Beast.  After discovering that she has certain powers, Alys must balance her village’s fear of witchcraft with her own desire to get to the bottom of the twins’--and the Beast’s--origins.  I felt zero connection to this story, which disappointed me greatly because the first few pages were so compelling.  I just didn’t care about Alys--I wanted to know more about the twins.  The prose was lovely, but everything was far too internalized for me.  I’m sure some people would love this, though!

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer.  4/5.  Clearly, I was going through a reading slump.  Therefore, I picked up something completely different.  Krakauer is a very good writer; but I’m not going to lie, I was worried about this.  I’m always hesitant when men choose to write about the sexual assault of women--it can be botched very quickly.  Krakauer, towards the end of the book, owns up to his own privilege and ignorance, which I appreciated. He approaches the topic with sensitivity; he interviews the rapists when possible; but he doesn’t pretend that he isn’t biased, and here that is good.  Krakauer believes in these women, he supports these women--whether or not their rapists were found guilty in court.  This is extremely difficult to read and quite graphic, but worth the time.  A revealing look at rape culture in America.

Long May She Reign by Rhiannon Thomas.  3/5.  This tells the story of Freya, twenty-third in line to the throne when most of the royal court--including everyone in line ahead of her--is poisoned at the king’s birthday celebration.  Suddenly queen, Freya must not only deal with adjusting to a role she thought she’d never have, but the issue of who assassinated so many nobles, and what they’ll do next.  This book had a great premise; it approached relationships in a different way that I suspect will appeal to readers tired of romance; and it gave us a likable protagonist.  But I think it just read too young for me.  Freya is interested in science, which means that she spends much of the book trying to solve the murders like she’s a cross between a mad scientist and a detective.  I was more interested in the courtly goings-on, and that side of things didn’t ring true for me.  But it wasn’t bad.  We just didn’t gel.

Hunted by Meagan Spooner.  4/5.  This Beauty and the Beast retelling is peppered with Russian folkore, and gives us our Beauty in Yeva, a young huntress whose father goes missing in the woods.  Upon discovering his body, she is taken captive by the Beast he was tracking, and finds herself imprisoned.  I could say more but it would spoil a lot; this story is definitely very much a fairy tale take on BatB.  Retellings have been hot for the past couple of years, and it was nice to see one that more along the lines of Robin McKinley than Sarah J. Maas, though both have their places.  Spooner’s writing is lovely and lyrical--and she tackles some of the darker aspects of the original fairy tale sensitively.  (Yes, she confronts the Stockholm Syndrome issue.)  It may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s engaging and well-written, with a smart heroine and a legitimately scary beast.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.  4/5.  After hitting her head a the gym, Alice loses the past ten years of her memory.  She thinks that she’s twenty-nine, happily married, with her first baby on the way.  In fact, she’s thirty-nine, about to be divorced, and a mother of three.  Not only is her relationship with her husband Nick terrible; she’s also barely speaking to her sister Elisabeth and barely recognizes herself.  Moriarty has a great way of being both entertaining and kind of good at navigating the human psyche.  Her characters are all flawed, all realistic--Alice and Nick’s issues are real ones, and they aren’t easily fixed.  Not gonna lie, as someone who recently watched her parents go through a hideous divorce, this was difficult to read at times.  But I was also pulling for Alice and everyone she loved to make something good of their lives, because they were endearing, they were people you wanted to see happy.  Moriarty is good at slowly unfolding reveals as well, and I didn’t expect one issue in Alice and Nick’s marriage to be what it was--but it was much more nuanced than what I’d been assuming.  At times this got a little corny, of course, and it’s not quite as edgy as Big Little Lies.  But I really enjoyed it.

The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers.  3/5.  Seventeen-year-old Placidia marries thirty-two-year-old Confederate Major Gryffth Hockaday right after meeting him; she’s somehow compelled by him, and he needs a mother for his infant son following the death of his first wife.  The pair spend two nights together, during which they quickly fall in love--only for Hockaday to be called back to war.  After over two years’ absence, he returns to find Placidia much changed, and rumor has it that she both bore and killed an illegitimate child while he was gone.  The book is in the format of letters and Placidia’s diary entries, slowly telling the story of what actually happened while Hockaday was away.  The morality here is very gray and nuanced; in many ways, what actually ended up happening was more mature than what I expected. (Although one aspect of the story--a crucial aspect--I found so obvious that the reveal wasn’t even really a reveal, and that was... disappointing, not gonna lie.)  While it’s definitely a compelling read, I had to dock it from four to three stars because I felt like Rivers gave a pretty dated portrayal of slave-master relations in the book.  It felt very “Gone with the Wind”.  Placidia owned these people, but the realities of that were kind of glossed over, and some moments felt very “happy slave” to me.  It’s worth the read for the mystery, but other aspects could have been much better.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.  4/5.  After thirteen-year-old Cecilia Lisbon commits suicide, her four sisters become gradually more sheltered by their parents, leading to eventual disaster. The events are narrated--rather creepily--by a chorus of neighborhood boys obsessed with the Lisbon sisters.  This story is probably familiar to you; but if you haven’t seen the movie yet, read the book first.  Both are great, but the movie is actually very faithful to the plot and feeling of the book, so I feel like I lost something by seeing it first.  Like, definitely see it, it’s a great movie.  Just read this first.  Eugenides gets the weird, obsessive natures of teen boys so well--and the Lisbon girls just kind of destroyed me.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.  4/5.  In 1959, four members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered in Holcomb, a small Texas town.  Deciding to try out a new style of creative non-fiction, Truman Capote traveled to Holcomb, getting to know who the Clutters were, the investigators, and most importantly, the murderers--Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.  Capote’s following of the case and the eventual captures of Smith and Hickock would become “In Cold Blood”.  This book is honestly more disturbing than I thought it would be.  I’m into true crime, but something about the way Capote writes just hammers home exactly how chilling these murders were.  At the same time, it’s clear that he had a lot of sympathy for the devil--specifically, Perry Smith.  Part of what makes this book so fascinating Capote himself and the way he chooses to portray things. 

A Year Of Ravens by Stephanie Dray, Kate Quinn, S.J.A. Turney, Vicky Alvear Schecter, Russell Whitfield, and E. Knight.  4/5.  This collaborative novel tells seven separate stories, all surrounding Boudica and her rebellion.  From Roman soldiers to druids, a variety of different perspectives are given, shedding light on the grayness of the rebellion.  I can’t really call this an anthology, because everything is connected and works very well together.  The only one of these authors that I consistently read is Kate Quinn (her entry to the novel is one of my favorites, of course) but everyone did at the very least a decent job.  The only story I didn’t connect with is Russell Whitfield’s story of Agricola, a Roman tribune--but that’s not his fault, and it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the novel as a whole.  Kate Quinn’s The Warrior is super interesting, focusing on an aging champion of Boudica’s and a Roman woman he took as a slave during the rebellion; E. Knight’s The Daughters is just heartbreaking and excellent, telling the dual perspectives of Boudica’s daughters; and Stephanie Dray’s The Queen is also especially memorable in that it tells the story of Cartimandua, a client queen with a story very parallel to Boudica’s.  As a whole, I definitely recommend checking this out if you want some fast-paced, surprisingly intelligent historical fiction.

A Song of War by Kate Quinn, Christian Cameron, Libbie Hawker, Vicky Alvear Schecter, Russell Whitfield, Stephanie Thornton, and S.J.A. Turney.  4/5.  Another collaborative novel by the same team (give or take a few members), this tells the story of the Trojan War, from Paris and Helen’s elopement to the fall of Troy.  Again, it’s in seven parts, told from the perspectives of everyone from Odysseus to Cassandra and Philoctetes, avoiding some of the more traditional viewpoints of Hector, Paris, Helen, and Achilles.  In some ways, I found this story more engaging than that of “A Year of Ravens”.  Maybe it’s just because I’m more interested in the Greeks than the Britons, but there was something about this book that was so... tragic.  Without beating you over the head with sadness.  It was very gripping, but there was a sense of doom throughout each story.  For the most part, I found it to be pretty evenly split between the views of the Trojans and their allies and the Achaeans.  With a couple exceptions--Paris and Helen are portrayed in a really unflattering light.  I see why, and Helen had enough pathos where I... got it.  (She was Helen by the way of Cersei, in my opinion.)  But the characterization of Paris bothered me.  It seemed pretty shallow, and honestly I’m kind of tired of Paris being portrayed in a straightforward, cowardly manner. His backstory lends itself to some really interesting issues, and I feel like the traditional “ugh Paris stealing women and shooting people with arrows nOT FIGHITNG LIKE  A MAN” reeks of toxic masculinity.  On the other hand, Achilles, who usually is either glorified to hell or trashed, gets a really nuanced depiction here.  I kind of just wanted everyone to get that, and for the most part a lot of people did; so the whole “pretty snakelike girly man archer Paris” thing really stood out as weaker characterization.  He doesn’t have to be great, but like... I don’t know, isn’t there something compelling about someone who’d be smart enough to take everyone out via arrows but dumb enough to start a war over Helen?  Just my take.  With all that being said, I still really enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the Trojan War and fast-paced historical fiction.

The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George.  1/5.  This is the fictionalized beginning of Nero’s life, from his first memory to his second marriage--and it’s actually going to continue with a sequel, which needless to say I will not be reading.  Honestly, I think I’m done with Margaret George.  I love her “Memoirs of Cleopatra” and really like “Helen of Troy”.  But I couldn’t stand this book.  I won’t pretend to be an expert on Nero, and maybe he wasn’t as bad as he’s cracked up to be...  But I’m also pretty sure that he wasn’t the constant victim George presents in this book.  At like, three, this kid is critiquing the political moves and morality of Messalina.  (Who is presented in a stereotypical manner, as is Agrippina the Younger.)  He’s never the one at fault; people always do things without his permission, especially if they’re female.  (Excepting his lover, Acte, who I assume was an original character?)  The thing is that as this is a fictional autobiography, Nero not being aware of his own faults makes sense, especially if he’s mad.  But George does the same thing here that she did with her “The Autobiography of Henry VIII”--except she might take it further here, it’s been a while since I’ve read the older book.  Even when we see the perspectives of others, they’re just like “poor Nero, being led astray by X vile woman”.  And I just...  He’s the fucking emperor, let’s get real about how much responsibility he may or may not have had.  It was boring at some points and offensive at others, and honestly, I’m kind of disturbed by how eager George is to leap to the defense of powerful men who victimized and killed the less privileged.

Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch.  2/5.  Upon the death of her mother, teenage Lina is sent to Florence, Italy, to live with Howard--the father she’s never before met.  Soon after her arrival, she not only meets a boy--the charming Ren--but is given her mother’s journal, which should answer the questions of what happened prior to Lina’s conception, and why her mother never told her about Howard.  Basically, I expected a fun, beachy read from this.  The author apparently spent her high school years in Florence, which to me added a certain level of authenticity--in theory.  Maybe her Florence was different from mine; but nothing about this fault authentic.  Especially the part in which Howard took Lina to a pizzeria right outside the Duomo.  I don’t buy a guy who’s lived in Florence for nearly two decades giving a girl her first pizza at the Duomo.  I went to a pizzeria outside the Duomo once and literally had pizza in Piazza del Duomo again.  Aside from that snobby little gripe, I found Lina pretty irritating--yes, she was going through a lot, but she seemed to be super dismissive of the experience of living in Florence--and I guessed the twist like...  Thirty pages in?  Maybe others would enjoy this, but it’s not for me.

Book of the Month: A Year of Ravens.

Wrestling’s Painful Darkish Aspect: Inside a Pile-Up of Tragedies

Getty Pictures; Shutterstock/E! Illustration The recognition {of professional} wrestling is simple. Hundreds of thousands of followers stay up for annual extravaganzas like WrestleMania and pack arenas to see their favourite heroes and villains go at it within the ring. Since its debut in 1985, Wrestlemania has featured appearances by everybody from Aretha Franklin and Muhammad Ali to Pamela Anderson, Child Rock and the present president of the USA, who’s a long-time good friend of World Wrestling Leisure proprietor Vince McMahon. Fox signed a $1 billion, five-year take care of the WWE for rights to air Smackdown beginning this fall. The WWE (beforehand the WWF) has additionally proved a powerful launchpad for stardom outdoors the ringt, too, with WWE icon Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson now one of many highest-paid actors in Hollywood, Dave Bautista a beloved member of the Marvel Universe and John Cena proving he is a comic book heavyweight, too, in motion pictures like Trainwreck and Blockers. On the flip aspect, after retiring from UFC, Ronda Rousey is now having fun with a second chapter as a WWE star. But in addition deniable is the truth that wrestlers, irrespective of how staged or fastidiously choreographed the motion is, put their our bodies in danger each time they enter the ring—as many athletes do, solely with the assure that they’re going to be doing outrageous stunts. Owen Hart was 33 when he died after an tools malfunction brought on him to fall 78 toes throughout his ring entrance throughout WWF’s Over the Edge pay-per-view occasion in 1999. The WWF settled a lawsuit filed by the household for a reported $18 million in 2000. In the meantime, the present had continued, and when it was re-aired for the primary time 15 years afterward the WWE Community, Owen was fully edited out of the published. The Denver Submit through Getty Pictures To make certain, Hart’s deadly accident throughout a dwell present was a freak incidence, however accidents are a given. Final 12 months, talking as a part of the Lakers Genius Talks sequence, the place the L.A. Lakers have superstars from totally different industries come communicate, Johnson recalled powering via essentially the most heinous harm of his profession whereas battling Cena throughout WrestleMania 29 in 2013. “On the 15-minute mark, ‘bang!’ I really feel one thing pop and I am like ‘What the f–k?'” the Hobbs & Shaw star recalled. “I am laying there and each of us are out. I stated ‘Oh f–k, one thing is occurring.’ 85,000 folks and I form of roll over and stick my hand down in my trunks as a result of I needed to verify no bone was protruding.” With no bone protruding and having a split-second to resolve, Johnson in fact stored going. Ron Elkman/Sports activities Imagery/Getty Pictures “On this planet of wrestling, when you will have a giant present like this, a giant important occasion that your complete present is predicated round,” he defined. “The wrestlers will come as much as the 2 folks in the primary occasion, in some unspecified time in the future, all all through the evening within the locker room and be like, ‘Hey, thanks for the home.’ What meaning is thanks for drawing—serving to draw 85,000 folks—and placing a whole lot of f–king cash in my paycheck. We acquired a whole lot of ‘Thanks for the homes’ that evening.” The Rock is clearly one of many greatest success tales in Hollywood. However the ache that many wrestlers undergo via over the course of their careers, and the issues they do to take care of the ache, can not help however overflow into their lives outdoors the ring.    When Mickey Rourke performed Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a broken-down onetime star with a private life in shambles, in Darren Aronofsky‘s 2008 movie The Wrestler, he stated on the time that he did not base the entire of his character on a real-life wrestler, however there was a persistent rumor that The Ram was impressed by Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who battled substance abuse throughout and after his ’80s-’90s heyday and ended up estranged from his youngsters. Saturn/Kobal/Shutterstock “That’s type of a fable that the film is predicated on Jake Roberts,” producer Evan Ginzburg informed Wrestle Zone in 2018. “What occurred was I took Darren Aronofsky and the manager producer, the cash man, and the display author to a conference. On the conference there have been in all probability 20 wrestlers: Albano, Moolah, Mae Younger, Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff and so forth and… there was no one there. It was unhappy. There was like, actually, a dozen or two dozen folks there. There was in all probability extra wrestlers than followers. Iron Sheik’s head was down on the desk sleeping, actually sleeping in the course of all of it. We simply noticed some very unhappy issues alongside the way in which.” “It is unhappy to say what has occurred to Jake is just not that authentic a narrative for professional wrestling,” Aronofsky stated on NPR’s Day to Day in 2009. “We met so many guys who had comparable journeys, who have been large stars and simply did not maintain themselves and ended up in actually, actually horrible conditions.” In the end, Randy the Ram “was a composite,” Ginzburg informed Wrestle Zone. “Darren revered them as performers, artists and athletes,” he continued, “however he needed to inform the true story about how these guys generated hundreds of thousands however they do not have hundreds of thousands for essentially the most half. It is the identical in [the wrestling documentary] 350 Days. The promoter will get the lion’s share.” On March 31, Final Week Tonight With John Oliver featured a section lambasting the WWE, and Vince McMahon notably, for exploiting the expertise, bodily and financially. “Many followers legitimately hate him as a result of whereas the WWE has made him a billionaire, many wrestlers say he is handled him terribly,” Oliver stated. In 2015, a mean contract paid $500,000 a 12 months, with high offers going into the seven figures. The wrestlers are thought of impartial contractors versus full-time workers and, whereas the WWE will cowl 100 p.c of the price of any work-related harm and subsequent rehabilitation, wrestlers are liable for getting their very own insurance coverage. “Anybody who makes the type of cash that they make can simply afford their very own healthcare,” McMahon informed the Connecticut Submit in 2010. “Most impartial contractors have their very own healthcare.” Featured within the Final Week Tonight piece was WWE Corridor of Famer Bret “Hit Man” Hart (who, by the way, Evan Ginzburg referred to final 12 months as one of many wrestlers “who did do properly” financially, versus some), who stated, “All these wrestlers which have broke their backs making this dwelling for years find yourself with nothing when it is over, after which they form of take you out again they usually put a slug at the back of your head and dump you out within the—,” he paused. “However that is the lifetime of an expert wrestler.” MediaPunch/Shutterstock Bret, 61, and Owen Hart have been among the many 11 kids of late skilled wrestler Stu Hart and his spouse, Helen. (Stu, by the way, lived till he was 88.) All the seven brothers both wrestled or have been concerned backstage, and their 4 sisters married professional wrestlers. Bret’s 2007 autobiography Hit Man: My Actual Life within the Cartoon World of Wrestling utilized hours upon hours’ price of audio diaries he stored throughout his professional profession, which began within the late ’70s. He labored on it for years, getting waylaid by a stroke he suffered in 2002 following a bicycling accident. Hart’s had a tumultuous relationship with the WWE, which he left in 1997 (when it was nonetheless WWF) for the rival World Championship Wrestling. Hart formally retired in late 2000 however returned to be inducted into the WWE Corridor of Fame in 2006, after which once more this 12 months along with his crew, The Hart Basis. (WCW folded in 2001 and McMahon finally purchased the rights to its archive.) Hart told A.V. Club in 2009 that he did not miss the bodily act of wrestling within the least, however he missed the camaraderie and the followers. Requested about what was then the latest film The Wrestler, he stated he thought the appearing was nice, however it selected to deal with one specific perspective. “Once I watched it, nearly as good because the appearing and story was, I assumed that individuals would suppose there was no excessive finish or reward,” Hart stated. “There’s a whole lot of higher tales. Wrestling was a great life for me. I had some dangerous issues occur, however the fact is, I had a good time.” Rmv/Shutterstock In the meantime, the WWE slammed Oliver’s report as inaccurate and invited him to WrestleMania 35 the next weekend to see for himself what kind of operation they have been operating. He did not attend, however on the finish of his personal present he ran a clip of an outdated wrestling business spliced with a voice encouraging whoever gathered at 82,500-seat MetLife Stadium subsequent Sunday to chant in favor of the expertise’s entry to retirement accounts, employee’s comp and household and medical go away. “I am not saying the followers ought to do this, or make indicators, or make heaps of indicators. I am simply saying, I actually hope they make their voices heard on this,” Oliver urged. Whereas the Final Week Tonight section was wildly applauded by some, particularly by those that have little interest in wrestling in anyway, the response was combined locally, with a lot of outrage coming from on-line pundits however the stars themselves sounding extra measured. “All people’s entitled to their very own opinion,” Paul Wight, the WWE star referred to as Huge Present, told TMZ Sports after Oliver’s piece aired. “All people’s acquired their very own experiences and the way they really feel. I’ve had a hell of a profession. I’ve had a whole lot of accidents. I knew from day one, stepping via the ropes, that it was not a straightforward job, it was a job that I used to be going to place myself in danger. And, you recognize, I took the paychecks, I took the celebrity, I took the fortune, and people are the dangers that occur. “That is simply a part of the business, and the business’s modified,” he added. “It is achieved all the things it could possibly to guard the athlete and create longevity for the athlete. I am 47! I am nonetheless rockin’ and rollin’. They’re doing one thing proper!” “Previous to airing, WWE responded to his producers refuting each level in his one-sided presentation,” the WWE additionally acknowledged. “John Oliver merely ignored the info. The well being and wellness of our performers is the only most essential side of our enterprise, and we’ve a complete, longstanding Expertise Wellness program.” The WWE applied its wellness program in February 2006, a number of months after star Eddie Guerrero died out of the blue of coronary heart failure at 38 after years of drug abuse. It consists of cardiovascular and mind perform testing, as properly well being care referrals and drug testing (for leisure substances) to make sure that wrestlers are in compliance with a Wellness Coverage. But there stays an eerily lengthy—and rising—record of former wrestlers who did not make it out of their 30s and 40s, not to mention their 50s and 60s, and never together with unhappy accidents resembling what occurred to Owen Hart. George Napolitano/FilmMagic In 2007, Chris Benoit, a world champion in WWE and the competing WCW, killed his spouse, Nancy, and 7-year-old son earlier than hanging himself at their Georgia dwelling, a stomach-churning tragedy that unfolded over what authorities decided was a three-day interval. He had been scheduled to compete for a 3rd world championship on June 25, the day their our bodies have been found, on Uncooked; the occasion was canceled and a three-hour retrospective on Benoit’s life and profession ran instead. As soon as extra particulars in regards to the murder-suicide began to return out, nonetheless, the WWE clamped down on official mentions of Benoit at occasions and began to erase him from their archives. Benoit’s demise prompted a renewed dialogue in regards to the long-term results of steroid use and repeated head accidents; it was later reported that the 40-year-old’s mind resembled the mind of an 85-year-old with dementia. He was additionally stated to have been devastated by Guerrero’s demise in November 2005 and had been appearing erratically, not only for weeks or months, however for the final couple of years of his storied profession. On the identical time, a few of Benoit’s fellow wrestlers refused to consider he killed himself or anybody else, that he had been simply effective the final time they noticed him, and conspiracy theories that he had been murdered alongside along with his household linger. Chyna, as soon as the largest feminine star in wrestling and dubbed the “Ninth Surprise of the World” earlier than the WWE launched her in 2001, died of an accidental overdose of pharmaceuticals and alcohol in 2016. She was 45. Within the final decade of her life she was nonetheless a well-liked determine within the wrestling world, and followers went nuts when she made her debut for Complete Nonstop Motion Wrestling on Influence! in 2011. However she additionally grew to become recognized for releasing a few intercourse tapes and doing porn, saying that she discovered her adult-entertainment household extra welcoming than the ladies round her in her wrestling days. Although she all the time denied having an dependancy drawback, she admittedly used medicine and appeared on Superstar Rehab With Dr. Drew in 2008. In 2015 she revealed on Opie and Jim that she had tried suicide earlier than and been hospitalized for psychological well being points. John Shearer/WireImage for BWR Public Relations Unintended prescription drug overdoses additionally brought on the deaths of 43-year-old Brian “Crush” Adams, whose 7-year-old son discovered him unconscious in mattress in 2007; 33-year-old Andrew “Check” Martin, who OD’d on oxycodone in 2009 and was later discovered to have extreme continual traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is linked to repetitive head trauma; and 29-year-old Lance McNaught, who died of coronary heart failure triggered by combined drug intoxication, in August 2010. McNaught, who wrestled as Lance Cade, had been fired from the WWE a minimum of twice for substance abuse-related points, first in 2008 after 5 years beneath contract and once more in April 2010. The WWE paid for his first journey to rehab, based on Deadspin, however he was let go the second time after admitting to drug use and returning to remedy. Months earlier than he died he referred to as the WWE’s Wellness Coverage a PR transfer, fairly than an try to actually assist the expertise. “Vince’s stance [is] they do all this as a result of they care in regards to the expertise,” McNaught told manager Kenny Bolin, host of The Bolin Alley podcast, in April 2010. “Bulls–t. They care in regards to the picture of the WWE and also you care about the truth that Congress was having…hearings about this. That is what this comes all the way down to.” Lance’s father Harley McNaught told Connecticut’s The Day that his son had began abusing painkillers after struggling a knee harm and receiving a prescription in 2004. He had undergone surgical procedure on a busted shoulder in 2008 as properly. “It damage me to see him wrestling in ache,” Harley McNaught stated, “however you discuss to any considered one of them, when you attempt to climb the ladder and get a spot, you shut it down [due to an injury] and also you lose your spot and go proper again to the underside. So it is, ‘Right here, take just a few painkillers, make the world go away.'” Speaking to the Fee on Oversight and Authorities Reform as a part of a 2008 congressional investigation into drug use in skilled wrestling within the wake of what occurred with Chris Benoit, when requested why the WWE had began providing to assist present and former expertise receive remedy, McMahan said, “Two phrases. Public relations. That is it. I don’t really feel any sense of accountability for anybody of no matter their age is who has handed alongside and has dangerous habits and overdoses for medicine. Sorry, I do not really feel any accountability for that.” Jim Spellman/WireImage “I may need met him as soon as,” Vince’s spouse, Linda McMahon, who had beforehand been WWE CEO and on the time was a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, informed the Connecticut Submit when requested about McNaught’s demise. She stated that the WWE may no extra be held accountable for what occurred to McNaught “than a studio may have prevented Heath Ledger‘s demise.” (Mrs. McMahon misplaced to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal; extra lately she served as head of the Small Enterprise Administration beneath President Trump earlier than stepping down in April.) Earlier than McNaught’s demise, Eddie “Umaga” Fatu, 36, was launched from his WWE contract in June 2009 for violating the Wellness Coverage for not the primary time and refusing to go to rehab; he died that December from a mixture of acute toxicity (from painkiller hydrocodone, muscle relaxer carisoprodol and anti-anxiety drug diazepam), coronary heart illness and liver failure. Chris Kanyon had threatened suicide within the weeks previous to his brother discovering him lifeless in his New York residence on April 2, 2010, subsequent to an empty bottle of antidepressants. He was 40. “All people already is aware of that in the event you get damage, you recognize, work via it since you’ll lose your spot,” Lance McNaught informed wrestling e-newsletter PWInsider. “…You understand, guys do not set out to do that, they do not got down to be problem-makers, most of them a minimum of. You understand, and I do not wish to be part of an organization that claims one factor after which does one other, particularly at that degree with, you recognize, the media consideration that this has gotten since Eddie and Chris has handed away. That is rubbish to me.” With renewed scrutiny on the McMahons because of Linda’s Senate marketing campaign on the time, through which she was highlighting her expertise as a profitable businesswoman, naturally publications have been digging into simply what kind of a enterprise the WWE actually was. A money-maker, for certain. However what else? “It’s a very financially profitable firm,” Wrestling Observer Determine 4 editor Dave Meltzer told the New York Times in July 2010. “However, boy, there have been a whole lot of our bodies discarded within the constructing of that firm.” Paul Hawthorne/Getty Pictures On one hand there are the bodily accidents and the harmful lengths many wrestlers have gone to with the intention to powerful them out, with some falling into addictive spirals that they did not survive. In recent times, there was a concerted effort to speak extra about psychological well being by itself, despair not being a situation that discriminates between the profitable and the struggling, although it could possibly actually be exacerbated by bodily ache. Hulk Hogan opened up in 2009 about sinking into despair after his marriage imploded—and that one evening, numbed from mixing rum and Xanax, he put a gun to his head, solely to get a cellphone name proper then from boxer Laila Ali, who he starred with on a revival of American Gladiators. “She referred to as with no agenda, simply to say hello and test on me,” Hogan recalled on Today. “It snapped me out of it. At that second I switched gears. I acquired sick and uninterested in being sick and drained. Her voice saved my life, it actually did.” “Battle and ache is actual. I used to be devastated and depressed,” Dwayne Jonson told the U.K.’s Daily Express in 2018. “I reached a degree the place I did not wish to do a factor or go anyplace. I used to be crying always.” His mom had been suicidal too and he recalled watching her attempt to stroll into oncoming site visitors when he was 15. His worst time, he recalled, got here earlier than he conquered the wrestling world, however it opened his eyes to the struggles of others, in all arenas. “We each healed however we have all the time acquired to do our greatest to concentrate when different individuals are in ache,” he stated. “We have now to assist them via it and remind them they don’t seem to be alone.” Mediapunch/REX/Shutterstock “It is Could. It is Psychological Well being Month … in the event you’re depressed and issues aren’t going your manner, there is not any motive to really feel alone,” wrestler and MMA fighter CM Punk stated on Atlantic Metropolis’s WMGM-FM whereas speaking about Ashley Massaro, a former WWE star who died in an apparent suicide final week. “Simply attain out to someone. Textual content a good friend. Name someone. There’s hotlines. There’s methods you may get assist.” The WWE honored Massaro throughout its Could 19 Cash within the Financial institution PPV occasion. She had gained the 2005 Diva Search and was with the WWE till 2008. She additionally competed on Survivor: China in 2007. Sources told TMZ Sports that she hanged herself in her dwelling in New York’s Suffolk County and was pronounced lifeless at a close-by hospital. She’s survived by an 18-year-old daughter. Massaro was considered one of 60 former professional wrestlers who sued the WWE in 2016, alleging the group failed to guard them from concussions and different repetitive head trauma, expenses the WWE denied. Per NBC News, a federal choose dismissed the swimsuit final September, calling among the claims frivolous and saying others have been filed past the statute of limitations; she additionally ordered the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Konstantine Kyros, to pay the WWE’s authorized charges. The record of plaintiffs additionally included Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Joseph “Street Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis, Paul “Mr. Fantastic” Orndorff, Chris “King Kong Bundy” Pallies and Harry Masayoshi Fujiwara, referred to as “Mr. Fuji.” Fujiwara died in 2016 at 82. Snuka died in 2017 at 73. Each have been later discovered to have had CTE. Snuka had been indicted on third-degree homicide and manslaughter expenses in 2015 for the 1983 demise of his girlfriend however was discovered unfit to face trial after being identified with dementia. Bundy died in March at 61. “I stand for skilled wrestlers who face the prospect of dropping their id and consciousness to the consequences of a latent occupational illness that robs them of their sanity, consolation of their households and recollections of all the things they achieved entertaining the hundreds of thousands of people that love them,” Kyros, who has additionally represented NFL gamers in comparable lawsuits, wrote to the Related Press on the time. Kyros additionally launched an affidavit after she died that exposed a declare that Massaro had alleged she was sexually assaulted throughout a goodwill journey to Kuwait and was informed by higher-ups on the WWE to not report it. The WWE fired again that Kyros was exploiting her demise—and that Massaro had later apologized for being concerned with the lawsuit. “WWE is saddened by the demise of Ashley Massaro, and we reiterate our condolences to her household,” learn the assertion obtained by Wrestling Observer Figure Four. “Nevertheless, we remorse that her lawyer Konstantine Kyros, who filed a number of instances towards WWE, misplaced all of them, and was sanctioned a number of instances by the Court docket for repeated misconduct and false allegations, is utilizing Ashley’s demise to additional his malicious marketing campaign towards WWE by releasing an affidavit that she submitted to the Court docket and later apologized to WWE for being concerned with, so we want to make sure issues crystal clear.” If Massaro had ever informed them she had been assaulted, “we’d have reported it instantly to the Base Commander. At no time was there ever a gathering with Vince McMahon, Kevin Dunn, John Laurinatitis or different firm executives through which she informed them of such a declare and was instructed to maintain it quiet.” Matt Roberts/ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com In the meantime, all the fashionable wellness initiatives on the planet could not have come round in time to assist a few of wrestling’s elder statesmen, guys whose primes got here within the days of much less oversight and fewer consciousness, resembling James “Final Warrior” Hellwig, who died of a coronary heart assault at 54 in 2014 simply three days after being inducted into the WWE Corridor of Fame. He had additionally signed a multiyear deal to be a WWE ambassador after an nearly two-decade estrangement from the corporate. “No WWE expertise turns into a legend on their very own,” Hellwig informed a Monday Night time Uncooked crowd on April 7, the evening earlier than he died. “Each man’s coronary heart at some point beats its closing beat. His lungs breathe their closing breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse via the physique of others and makes them consider deeper in one thing that is bigger than life, then his essence, his spirit, might be immortalized by the storytellers—by the loyalty, by the reminiscence of those that honor him, and make the operating the person did dwell without end.” The wrestling world and past was quickly devastated by the 2015 death of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, whose star had transcended outdoors the ring due to quite a few TV and film cameos. On HBO’s Real Sports in 2003, Piper name-checked an assortment of medicine he’d abused all through his profession, prescription and unlawful. “You get this going and then you definately begin consuming alcohol,” he stated. “Lethal mixture. You convey cocaine into the image.” He sniffed. “‘Does a line, it is time to battle, no downers there. You understand, let’s go—however it might be good to have a little bit painkiller in you as you go in, or rather a lot. And whoom, so now you come out of the ring, it is 10:30 and also you’re excessive! How are ya?!'” Piper had soured on the enterprise of wrestling by then, however he returned to it simply the identical. Todd Williamson/WireImage “What would you will have me do at 49?” he requested rhetorically. When my pension plan I am unable to take out until I am 65? I am not going to make 65.  Let’s simply face info, guys.” He was 61 when he died in his sleep because of cardiopulmonary arrest cacsued by hypertension. His demise certificates listed a pulmonary embolism as a contributing issue. “I truly acquired an opportunity to take a seat down and discuss to him for a pair hours earlier than this battle,” Ronda Rousey, who used the nickname “Rowdy” with Piper’s blessing, said on Fox Sports 1 after UFC 190, recalling how she visited Piper at dwelling just a few weeks earlier than he died. “I did not have time for something, however I used to be like, ‘No, I’ve to go see Roddy. I’ve to go to Piper’s Pit.’ We talked for hours. I even informed him, I promised I am gonna do the identify proud, ‘I am gonna do you proud, I am gonna go beat this chick.’ I informed him that. And she or he did. Additionally among the many family names that wrestling has produced was Randy “Macho Man” Savage, who died in 2011 after crashing his automotive right into a tree. It turned out that the 58-year-old had suffered a coronary heart assault behind the wheel and misplaced management of the car. Official reason for demise was artherosclerotic coronary heart illness. Russell Turiak/Getty Pictures “He had a lot life in his eyes & in his spirit, I simply pray that he is comfortable and in a greater place and we miss him,” Hulk Hogan tweeted after listening to the information, considered one of numerous members of the wrestling group to pay respects. “I am fully devastated, after over 10 years of not speaking with Randy, we have lastly began to speak and talk.” Savage (actual identify Randall Mario Poffo), affected by the lingering ache brought on by slamming right into a mat hundreds of instances, had retreated from the wrestling world within the final years of his life, however was stated to be taking advantage of retirement. “He labored on his home, he was busy along with his animals, he married once more, and he took us to our physician’s appointments—issues he missed all these years when he was wrestling,” Randy’s mom, Judy, told Bleacher Report after he died. He too had adopted his father, Angelo Poffo, into the wrestling enterprise. Savage’s first spouse was famed wrestling supervisor “Miss Elizabeth” Hulette, they usually have been a celebrity couple however cut up bitterly in 1992. Elizabeth died of a poisonous mixture of painkillers and vodka in 2003; she was 42. (She and Hogan’s spouse have been pricey mates, which factored into Savage and Hogan’s eventual estrangement.) 2018 noticed the deaths of a number of older members of the wrestling group. Leon Allen White, referred to as “Vader,” had stop consuming after being alcoholism for years however was affected by well being troubles. He stated in 2017, after being identified with congestive coronary heart failure, that he needed to die within the ring. He underwent two coronary heart surgical procedures in 2018 after which died on June 18 after spending a month within the hospital with pneumonia. He was 63. On Aug. 13, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, 63, suffered what seemed to be a seizure and fell, fatally  injuring himself. He had been identified with early onset Alzheimer’s. Thomas Billington, the “Dynamite Child,” misplaced using his left leg 20 years in the past, had suffered a stroke in 2013 and had coronary heart hassle; he was 60 when he died in December. Additionally final 12 months, Brian Christopher Lawler—who as soon as shaped the champion WWF tag crew “Too Cool” with Scotty 2 Hotty and Rikishi—hanged himself in a small-town Tennessee jail cell on July 28. He had been arrested for DUI on July 7—his third DUI total—and evading arrest, and his father, professional wrestler Jerry Lawler, had been engaged on getting him into rehab. Brian was airlifted to a trauma middle in Memphis and placed on life help, however was declared mind lifeless on July 29. “That is from the final time that the three of us have been within the ring collectively,” Scott Garland (Scotty 2 Hotty) wrote on Instagram in tribute. “Brian and I have been totally different folks outdoors of the ring. We by no means traveled collectively, by no means roomed collectively, and by no means actually frolicked collectively. However, EVERY single time that we went via that curtain, we made magic collectively. Magic that can by no means get replaced. We have been TOO COOL. I’ll miss ya BC.” Solofa Fatu Jr. (Rikishi) wrote, “Brian’s dwelling spirit was all the time his ardour for journey and love for the wrestling enterprise!! What I’ll carry with me most is the Grandmasta’s infectious smile and depraved snort however most of all is his ardour to entertain every & each individual he ever got here in touch with.My condolences and respect goes out to King @realjerrylawler brother Kevin Lawler and your complete household. I am sry for our loss ??” Kevin C. Cox/Getty Pictures Every week later, Jerry Lawler stated on his and Glenn Moore’s podcast, Dinner With the King, that he was dwelling a nightmare—and was nonetheless processing what went fallacious. The Hardeman County sheriff had informed him, “‘He stated, ‘Jerry, my jail goes to be one of the best place for Brian for the subsequent few weeks. He stated, ‘I am going to personally keep watch over him and he’ll be protected right here.'” However it doesn’t matter what occurred, it did not change the truth that his son was gone. “You understand in the event you acquired a child, inform them you like them, as a result of I did not do this sufficient with Brian,” Jerry stated. Jeff Jarrett, who gained quite a few titles and was inducted into the WWE Corridor of Fame final 12 months, paid tribute to Lawler’s ability and charisma and wrote on Instagram that, in the course of the three years they labored collectively, Lawler had made him a greater wrestler. Jarrett, who spent time in rehab in 2017, additionally acknowledged the very actual drawback his fellow wrestler had suffered from. “Through the years the Brian I, and so many extra, knew grew to become lined up in ‘life’…The illness of dependancy is actual, it’s totally darkish, and it is deadly if left untreated. Brian, love ya and I’ll miss you my good friend.” A happier ending is not inconceivable, although. Jake “The Snake” Roberts beat most cancers in 2014 and fellow wrestler Diamond Dallas Web page arrange an Indiegogo page to crowdfund his former mentor’s $9,000 shoulder surgical procedure. “I had life, however I poisoned it,” Roberts stated in 2016’s The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, which chronicled his journey with Web page. (He had referred to as the 1999 documentary Past the Mat, which centered on him, Mick Foley and Terry Funk, a hurtful pack of lies, however apparently the behind-the-scenes have a look at him was solely the tip of the iceberg.)   Scott Cunningham/Getty Pictures, Jason Kempin/Getty Pictures Three journeys to rehab on the behest of the WWE hadn’t helped and he had misplaced his household. However then Web page, who had helped handle his personal continual ache from wrestling with yoga, stepped in to assist—with Roberts’ sobriety, his weight, his mind-set, all the things. “Everybody thought I used to be nuts,” Web page told Bleacher Report. After an interminable sequence of progress beset by relapses, it was the compassion (and cash) that poured in when Web page arrange the Indiegogo fund that lastly helped get Roberts over the hump, when he realized how a lot folks within the wrestling group nonetheless cared about him. Asking for $9,000, they raised nearly $30,000. There have been relapses after the 2016 movie’s comfortable ending, which confirmed Roberts being inducted into the WWE Corridor of Fame in 2014. However Roberts had re-emerged into his group and was not dwelling as if he not cared about dwelling. “I am simply on the market now making an attempt to take pleasure in myself,” the now 63-year-old star told the Asbury Park Press final 12 months forward of 80s Wrestling Con, the place he was a visitor of honor. “I’ve had these exhibits and I discuss to folks, go to with them, take some photos, and discover out the place they have been at throughout that point of their life, who they have been going to see wrestling. I like listening to these tales, man. It makes me really feel fairly good, makes me really feel like I did not waste all that point again within the day.” https://www.eonline.com/information/1044009/wrestling-s-painful-dark-side-inside-a-pile-up-of-tragedies?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories The post Wrestling’s Painful Darkish Aspect: Inside a Pile-Up of Tragedies appeared first on Kartia Velino. https://kartiavelino.com/wrestlings-painful-dark-side-inside-a-pile-up-of-tragedies/