I usually get along well with people but I always felt like I'm missing a special type of connection. I always imagined having a relationship would be someone like a bestest friend with physical attraction included. What I'm really looking for is someone whom I can really feel a connection with. I don't understand of flirting and such that dating requires. Probably because growing up I have been and still am an introvert and spend most of my free time on me time because finding good company wasn't always possible. Now I'm working on my social aspects and beside real life trying to expand my horizon online as well. Who knows maybe my soul mate is much away?
Now personality. I would describe myself as kind and calm, easy to get along person. I try to be emphatic and understanding as much as possible. Like I said I'm not the active social type but weirdly I do like being social if I'm drag along with friends, family, work whatever. I used to be very quite with people I just met but now I'm getting better with conversations as well.
I'm the nerdy type. I'm a computer engineer and love learning about everything I can read about. I'm also a good reader but last few years its been seasonal, I read couple of months and stop couple of months etc. still I love reading when I find a book that interest me.
I'm into calisthenics, weight lifting, martial arts, running, swimming basically any activity. I can't do them all same time obviously but I cycle through them and do some form of activity. I love being physically active.
I' am a dog person and love my dog (she is the bestest friend sorry that position is filled, but you can have her as bestest friend as well). Jokes aside I love all animals, I have also a red eared slider water turtle. I love playing with cats and birds as well.
I love anime, manga and video games. I play mostly single player games but love playing multi with friends as well. If you are into that, we can play together too.
I have a weird taste in music I think. I like rock, metal and classical. My favourite band is les friction. Favourite classical piece is mozarts lacrimosa. I listen to other genres as well if some song interest me but I usually hang on to these. I also like synthwave and phonk as well. Also I love listening to anime, game, movie and series soundtracks. They just make me feel like I'm into a fantasy novel.
Little bit of a physical description. I'm 5'9" blonde and have blue eyes. I have a fit build but have few extra pounds around belly area that I' am working on.
I think its best to get to know each other first with texting then we can do calls and such then If we stick we can meet irl as well. Agewise I want someone same age as me or younger but not older please. Lookswise I don't have much preference beside weight. No overweight people please and plus points if you are fit, would love to have a partner that I can workout together with not a must though. Also no drugs and smoking please as I don't use them as well. I'm ok if you like to drink but I rarely drink because I like optimizing my health. Still would enjoy a few glass with you everynow on then not a huge issue. If you feel interested do send a chat or dm request with a short introductio and a picture of yourself please and I will return with mine.

Story time, everybody! This is a long but good one. Grab a coffee or tea and your favorite snack and get comfortable for this one. I promise it’s worth the read.
Last summer, my MIL (a Boomer herself) became very sick, diagnosed w/cancer, & opted for hospice care instead of cancer treatment. Start to finish of this whole ordeal was about 6 weeks. From the time we found out to her death, that is. It was a very stressful and horrible time.
Enter stage right: Boomer Aunt & Uncle. Related to MIL through marriage. Uncle is DH’s father’s brother. MIL & FIL divorced many years ago when DH & SIL were kids & FIL died quite awhile ago. Aunt & Uncle remained friendly w/MIL. During this 6 week ordeal, DH kept in regular communication w/Aunt & Uncle. So much drama w/that pair. One day, they were going to drive out here to see her while MIL was still lucid and able to talk. Oh, but they’d have to drive at night because since it’s summer, it’s too hot for Delicate Flower Boomer Aunt to be out in the sun.
And then they wouldn’t show up, but no phone call from them to say they’d been delayed. Almost daily back & forth from them for 4 weeks. At one point, Uncle said (I kid you not) to DH, “Well, is she about to die? Because if she had awhile still left, then I don’t want to drive all the way out there for nothing.” OMG, WTF?! DH was very gracious and said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m telling you what the doctors have told me. Now’s your chance to see her while she can still talk. It’s up to you.”
So fast forward to Labor Day weekend and the days leading up to it. By this point, SIL was making almost weekly treks from several hours’ drive away to spend time w/MIL. All of the grandkids had had a chance to say their goodbyes and MIL was in a nursing home with in-nursing-home hospice care provided. Could still talk and carry on a conversation, but was spending more and more time sleeping.
DH called Aunt & Uncle yet again and laid it out for them. Told them that word from the hospice nurses was that MIL probably wouldn’t make it to the end of Labor Day weekend, so if you’re going to come, you better do it now. MIL’s favorite cousin came to visit from a few states away. By the time cousin got there to see MIL, though, MIL couldn’t talk. It was rough.
The next day, Aunt & Uncle barreled into town in their ridiculously large mega-camper van thing, which they proudly declared that they’d purchased used for about $65,000. Would have been faster & easier for them to fly here, but no…Uncle has had an intense fear of dying of COVID for 4 yr now and is convinced that if he gets on an airplane, he’ll catch COVID from another passenger and will die. But whatever.
Prior to their arrival, Uncle said to DH, “well, can your mom still talk? Because if she can’t talk to us, then maybe we don’t want to come and maybe we’ll just go to the funeral later on.” DH, again being gracious, told him, “I’m not going to tell you what to do. The nurses have said she probably won’t live through the weekend, so if you’re going to come, now is your last chance. It’s your choice. Do whatever you want.”
So they showed up. In the middle of the night because “Aunt could die in the heat if she’s outside.” They even wanted the nursing home to extend visiting hours just for them because, you know, Aunt could die in the heat if she was out in the hot sun for even 5 minutes. Thankfully, nursing home nicely said, “F no. That’s disruptive to the rest of our residents.”
Aunt & Uncle, accompanied by DH & Favorite Cousin, visit MIL. DH & I stupidly agree to let Aunt & Uncle shack up at MIL’s house while they are in town to say their goodbyes. The litany of complaints and demands from them was insane. Here they are in all their glory (and, by the way, at this point, MIL hadn’t been in her house for about 6 weeks):
- Told DH & SIL how they need to have a funeral for MIL, despite MIL making it clear that she wanted no funeral services.
- Told DH & SIL that MIL needs to be buried. Got mad when told that MIL wanted to be cremated. Guess what, Aunt & Uncle? Nobody cares about your opinion on this! Only DH & SIL legally get to decide what happens to MIL’s remains!
- Uncle told DH that he was still mad at DH for wearing sneakers to DH’s grandfather’s funeral when he was a kid (DH’s family couldn’t afford dress shoes for him at the time). He shut up when I said, “DH is a 51 yr old man. That happened when he was, what, 13? 14? How many more years are you gonna hang onto that? Get over it.”
- Uncle told DH, “You better dress appropriately for MY funeral.” I almost blurted out, “If we even GO.” Seriously, though, when Uncle or Aunt kick the bucket, I’m not going to the funeral. After this ordeal, I’m pretty much done with them.
- Insisted on sleeping on MIL’s bed in the primary bedroom
- Complained about dust bunnies in the corner behind a table next to MIL’s bed. Hey Aunt, the vacuum is right over there if you’re bothered by it.
- “You know, we really don’t appreciate how you & MIL didn’t clean the place up before we arrived.” DH said, “Sorry, but spending time with my dying mother was a bigger priority.” My SIL lost it with them 1 time during this whole ordeal and shouted at them, “THEN STAY IN A HOTEL LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!”
- Brought Aunt’s cat w/them despite us telling her not to. MIL had 2 cats who were still living in MIL’s home during all of this (MIL’s BFF was feeding the cats daily while MIL was sick). Introducing a new animal to the household would have been really stressful to MIL’s cats. Aunt & Uncle didn’t care. Uncle said, “You don’t understand. Aunt’s cat is like her child. She doesn’t go anywhere w/o the cat.”
- Let Aunt’s cat roam free throughout MIL’s house despite them saying that they’d keep the cat in the primary bedroom during their stay.
- Got mad at DH and said, “Your mother’s cats tried to kill Aunt’s cat.” SIL yelled, “that’s because YOUR STUPID CAT was invading my mother’s cats’ home & territory! We TOLD YOU BEFORE YOU DROVE OUT HERE not to bring your damn cat but you did it anyway. THIS IS YOUR FAULT!” all of the cats were fine. It was not an attempted murder. Aunt’s cat got swiped on the nose by MIL’s male cat because Aunt’s cat is a pampered idiot.
- “DH, you knew we were coming and you didn’t stock MIL’s fridge with any food we can eat. We’re really offended by this.” DH & SIL let them have it with this one, yelled at Aunt & Uncle that they’d all been spending all of their spare time at the hospital, Aunt & Uncle had a FRICKIN’ REFRIGERATOR in their mega-van, for God’s sake, and on their multi-hour drive to MIL’s city, they’d driven past COUNTLESS grocery & convenience stores in which they could have stocked up on food for themselves. Because, after all, if you’ve been glamping your entire adult life, wouldn’t you already have stocked up on food beforehand?
- “Well, we’ll just order grocery delivery.” Nope, can’t do that. MIL’s house too far out for grocery delivery. “Ok, DH, you go to the store and buy food for us.” Why couldn’t they do this themselves? “Oh, since COVID in 2000, we don’t go into grocery stores anymore. You know, because we could catch COVID and die,” followed by 15 min of rambling about Uncle’s Five Favorite Ways He Is Going To Die. Talking about how he’s going to die when my DH’s mother LITERALLY IS DYING. But they were ok w/DH going into a grocery store. So one could say that they’re ok with their nephew getting COVID and dying. Huh.
- Never paid DH back for the $100 he spent buying groceries for their 5 day stay.
MIL then died while Aunt & Uncle are in town. Some highlights of what happened after that:
- Aunt telling us that we needed to spend $30-40k fixing up things around MIL’s house before it’s put up for sale. Literally said this a few hours after MIL had died, so her body was barely cold at this point. STFU, Aunt, nobody wants your interior design advice right now. “But you know, I have a degree in interior design.” Great, here’s a gold star just for you, nobody cares.
- Aunt insulted dead MIL’s antique furniture, especially calling out 1 furniture piece that DH & SIL have bickered about for years (i.e., who gets that piece when their mother dies). Aunt said it was big, bulky, and ugly and doesn’t fit her own personal décor. I have a frickin’ PhD in passive-aggressive thanks to MY family, so I said, “Well, then it’s a good thing that it won’t be living at YOUR house now, is it, Aunt? DH & SIL will sort out whose house it goes to and we’ll make sure it’s not yours.”
- Repeated comments from Uncle about how Aunt is going to die of heat stroke, followed by SIL finally shouting, “THEN WHY DID YOU COME HERE?!”
- Uncle talking the entire time about wanting to take Aunt to the ER because she was feeling dizzy & having heart palpitations upon standing up or getting up from laying down. We kept thinking, “Please don’t go to the ER. You’ll never leave.”
- Uncle talking about how Aunt could be having a heart attack, how Aunt could die. Meanwhile, MIL HAD LITERALLY JUST DIED HOURS AGO. At 1 point, I said to them, “Well, since this is all clearly too much for you, maybe it’s best for the 2 of you to get on the road and go back home. You know how hard it can be when you’re dealing with medical problems while traveling. I’m sure that you’d want to be closer to home and seeing doctors who you’re familiar with.”
- DH drove home Sun. evening of Labor Day weekend because he was burned out and needed some rest.
- SIL drove the several hours’ drive home back to her house.
- DH asked me to stay behind at MIL’s house to make extra sure that Aunt & Uncle actually leave.
- Boomer Aunt & Uncle declared that, once again, because Aunt could die in the sun, they’d have to drive at night. Target Go Time was 10:00 pm.
- While Crazy Boomer Uncle was packing their mega-van, Aunt kept insisting that if I was going to spend the night there instead of driving home to my house, that I should sleep in my dead MIL’s bed. Heads up: I didn’t do that. I slept in a different room. MIL’s bedroom was her private space, her area of respite. I’m not gonna sleep in the dead woman’s bed, you idiot.
- In the almost 4 hr it took Uncle to pack their mega-van, he kept pausing to talk yet again about his favorite topic: all the ways he & Aunt are going to die. Keep in mind, that, again, MIL had died just a couple of days prior. You know…the entire purpose of their trip…to visit the dying woman. But no, it’s all about them.
- Aunt insisted that I didn’t have to stay there w/them while they packed the van. I told her, “yes, I do. DH asked me to. I’m here to make sure that you actually leave.”
- Aunt & Uncle finally left at 1:45 am on Monday a.m. on Labor Day.
- Literally zero phone calls from them after that. Not even a few days or a few weeks later to be polite and ask DH or SIL how are they doing. Radio silence. At Thanksgiving & Christmas, no communication from them either. If there isn't pomp & circumstance for them, then they aren't interested.
I told DH that once Aunt & Uncle are finally on their death beds, I’m not going there to pay homage or kiss the ring. I’ll send some flowers to their funeral, but I’m not taking time off of work to travel to go to their funeral. Not after the way they behaved and were so rude and disrespectful and “ME! ME! ME!” when DH’s mom was dying. F that. Life is short. And you know what? Time is a valuable & limited commodity. Don’t waste your time on rude assholes. Especially rude Boomer assholes. Don’t put up with crappy behavior just because somebody is older than you. And just because you lucked out and made it to a milestone year like 70-something trips around the sun, that doesn’t give you justification to be a rude prick.

The astronomical growth of the Chinese economy in recent decades has reshaped global power dynamics, with an impressive 9% average yearly growth since 1978 (World Bank, 2023) sparking predictions of China surpassing the United States as the biggest economy measured by nominal GDP (BBC News, 2020), and has caused some to even posit that China will be able to rival the US in power (Tucker, 2023).
However, a more nuanced examination reveals complexities in China's economic development model and its intersection with foreign policy. This paper delves into the evolution of China's economic rise, emphasizing its high-savings, investment-led growth model and its profound global implications. The inherent connection as well as tension between China’s domestic economic policies and its foreign policy will be examined.

China’s economic rise and the development of its economy over time

To understand how China has managed to join the ranks of the most influential players in the global economy, and what consequences it has for its foreign policy, it is essential to understand its political economic development model. Additionally, for the argument of this paper it is important to understand how the Chinese economy fits into the global economic puzzle.

A short history of the Chinese development model

From an economic perspective, societies can improve standards of living in a number of ways: increasing employment, improving the efficiency of workers, or expanding production through investment in capital equipment. Crucially, all of these factors highlight the importance of investment for development (Klein, Pettis, p.68, 2020). When domestic production is running at maximum capacity, there are two major development models (often applied simultaneously) that economies can follow to pay for additional investment (Klein, Pettis, p.68, 2020): On the one hand there is the ‘high savings model’, which transfers resources from domestic consumers to businesses and the government who save more than they consume. This thereby creates a trade surplus because it raises domestic production relative to domestic demand (Klein, Pettis, p. 68, 2020). On the other hand, there is the high-wage model, which transfers resources from the rest of the world by raising imports relative to exports in an attempt to attract foreign investment by raising domestic demand, increasing the trade deficit (Klein, Pettis, p. 68, 2020).
Authoritarian political culture and high centralization made the high savings model a logical option for the CCP. From the 1990s onwards, the Chinese government started to transfer spending power from ordinary Chinese people in order to subsidize domestic investment and foreign consumption, which meant the high savings model would end up becoming the development model China pursues until this day (Klein, Pettis, p. 108, 2020). Even though household income would increase greatly due to the substantial economic growth that these investments generated, households consumed an increasingly smaller share of economic output as savings increased as a share of the economy (Klein, Pettis, p. 108, 2020).
China utilized several internal transfer mechanisms to supress consumption and increase savings which included: currency manipulation; regulatory measures such as expropriations; unfavourable lending conditions for consumers and favourable lending conditions for elites with political connections; and lastly, the hukou system which deprived internal migrant workers of social security (Klein, Pettis, pp. 108-112, 2020). As a result, the decrease in household spending relative to GDP during the 1990s and 2000s was significantly more pronounced than the increase in investment (Klein, Pettis, 2020, p. 108). This led to a significant surplus in the current account, amounting to around 10 percent of China's total economic output by 2007-8 (Klein, Pettis, 2020, p. 108).

Untenable numbers

Global investment on average represents 25% of GDP (World Bank, 2023), and even though it is normal for a developing economy to have a higher rate of investment, China’s investment share of GDP sits at an exceptional 43% (World Bank, 2023). With a GDP of almost $18 Trillion accounting for ~18% of the world’s economy (World Bank 2023), China’s economic imbalances have great implications for the world economy, and at the same time the state of the world economy has great implications for China.
In his recent blog, Michael Pettis (2023) argues that with a share of only 13% of global consumption while having a 32% share of global investment, the Chinese economy cannot sustainably grow at 4-5% with the same model as it currently follows. Pettis (2023) argues:
Every $1 of investment has required approximately $3 of consumption globally to sustain it during this century. In China, however, $1 of investment is balanced by only $1.30 of consumption. If the global relationship between consumption and investment held over the next decade, an increase in the Chinese share of global investment from 32 percent today to 38 percent in a decade would require that the rest of the world disinvest to accommodate China’s domestic imbalances. (Pettis, 2023)
The following sections will discuss how China’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, in combination with changing geopolitical circumstances has made global disinvestment extremely unlikely.

The evolution of Chinese foreign policy over time

As explained previously, the Chinese rise as an important actor in the global system has been facilitated by foreign consumers who consume the excess production which underpaid Chinese workers cannot consume themselves. Hence, China has great interest in maintaining the current global liberal trade regime, from which it has greatly benefited following its accession to the WTO in 2001. Seeing as trading relations with Western countries are of paramount importance to China’s economic prospects under the current economic model it pursues, it should be in China’s interests to avoid antagonizing the West. This section will explain how the historical Chinese stance allowed or its rise within the international system, and why its current stance undermines its future.

Chinese foreign policy pre-Xi

For a long time, Chinese foreign policy had been led by a quote of Deng Xiaoping in reaction to the international backlash to the Tiananmen Square incident. Around this time, he told other CCP leaders that their reaction should be to “lengjing guancha, wenzhu zhenjiao, chenzhuo yingfu” (observe calmly, secure our position, cope with afairs calmly) (Chen, Wang, 2011, p. 5). The foreign policy debate in China would long centre around this stance, paraphrased as “Tao Guang Yang Hui” roughly translated as: “hide your strength and bide your time” or “hide capabilities and keep a low profile”[1] (Chen, Wang, 2011).
The relative low-profile of China meant that other great powers not only tolerated its rise in the global system, but they also increased their ties with China dramatically, Western companies poured into the Chinese market to take advantage both of cheap manufacturing (caused by aforementioned reforms and industrial policy) and the large Chinese market. Between 1980 and 2004, US-China trade rose from $5 billion to $231 billion (Council on Foreign Relations, 2017).
Another guiding principle in the Chinese rise within the international system was the supposed “peaceful development” of China, a concept where progress and expansion were based on the historical philosophy of the “Middle-Kingdom” in which a non-confrontational approach was valued highly (Stevens, 2014, p. 1). The peaceful development narrative has persisted until this day but has arguably been more of a soft power campaign as of late to counter the “China threat” discourse (zhongguo weixie, 中国威胁) (Sørensen, 2015, p. 8), which has taken hold among foreign powers. The “China threat” discourse refers to a narrative that frames China as a potential menace to global stability and established international norms. This discourse encompasses concerns related to China's military modernization, economic influence, territorial claims, and geopolitical ambitions. Wang Yi, currently the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, called this discourse an “outdated Cold-War mentality” which has “no place in the new era of globalization” (Wang, 2013). Crucially, Wang's statements along with the "China threat" discourse within China concerning globalization, demonstrate an acknowledgment of the adverse consequences stemming from China's assertive actions in the realm of foreign policy. Wang went on to reassure that “China would never seek hegemony in the world” (Wang, 2013).
However, sentiment within the Chinese government started shifting around the 2010s (Stevens, 2014, pp. 1-2). The combination of the great financial crisis in 2008 and the resource intensive US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with the symbolic achievement of holding the 2008 Beijing Olympics, made some government officials believe that the balance of power was shifting, and that China should be more assertive towards a declining US (Stevens, 2014, p. 1). This was not truly a dramatic shift, which was to come later, with a new leader taking the stage.

Chinese foreign policy after Xi

The ascension of Xi Jinping as Chinese leader has dramatically altered the way China interacts with the world. Bolstering development was no longer the only priority. A new moral objective inspired by the century of humiliation had entered the picture. Essentially, Xi Jinping has changed Chinese state identity within the international system. Under Xi Jinping, China no longer lay low and started to figuratively stand up, from 2013 the new guideline was to be “Fen Fa You Wei” (奋发有为, “striving for achievement”) (Sørensen, 2015), with the ultimate goal of achieving the “Chinese dream”.
The Chinese dream is inspired by historical revanchism, with the ultimate goal being the great “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, in which China regains its international status, rights and power (Sørensen, 2015, p. 10); reminiscing over times when China made the rules as hegemon within East-Asia. Essentially, Xi Jinping slowly and methodically started reconstructing Chinese state identity within the international system. This rhetoric has attracted negative attention in the Western media, seen as carrying sinister implications for the international order (Sørensen, 2015, p. 5). In 2017, Xi definitively departed from keeping a low profile. In his (im)famous “new era” speech at the commencement of the 19th party congress, Xi presented statements that appeared contradictory to Wang’s 2013 remarks. Xi asserted that Beijing would no longer shy away from world leadership and would aim to promote its model around the world: “It is time for us to take centre stage in the world and to make a greater contribution to humankind […] [China is] standing tall and firm in the east”. (Xi, 2017)

Chinese assertiveness antagonizes the world: The rediscovery of industrial policy, protectionism, and economic deterrence

Beyond long speeches and articulate rhetoric, Chinese assertiveness has manifested in such numerous ways that it is difficult to name every incident. The most prominent examples include its aggressive military posture in the Taiwan strait and the South China sea, where the Chinese military and coast guard have initiated numerous hostile encounters over the years. These encounters have prompted the EU and US to voice strong opposition to the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) actions, with the US calling PRC actions “unlawful” (Reuters, 2023) and the EU “emphasising” that parties should “respect freedom of navigation” and settle disputes “through peaceful means in accordance with international law” (EEAS, 2021). However, more direct confrontations with Western powers have taken place in the economic realm. In 2005 Robert Zoellick, then Deputy Secretary of State of the United States urged the Chinese to become a “responsible stakeholder” within the system, as a result of Chinese hostile actions however, these hopes have been given up; the EU has labelled China a “systemic rival” (EEAS, 2023) and the Sino-American competition is no secret. The West is now changing its geo-economic policy according to the perceived “China threat” that Wang Yi (2013) was worried about.

Chinese economic coercion

Through its strategic use of industrial policy China has managed to forge several dependencies for the West, notably in the area of green energy, where it dominates the refining of rare earth minerals, the production of electric vehicles and batteries (Hárven, 2023). China has been abusing such dependencies through economic coercion (Cha, 2023). In a testimony to the US congress, Senior Vice president for Asia and Korea Chair at CSIS Victor Cha, perfectly articulates the consequences of Chinese economic coercion:
China’s economic coercion has become part and parcel of its foreign policy against many trading partners. Countries that interact with Taiwan, support democracy in Hong Kong, oppose genocide in Xinjiang or offend any other “core interests” of China face discriminatory, non-WTO-conforming sanctions and embargoes. Targets of this weaponization of trade since 2008 range widely. Eighteen Western and Asian countries, including Japan, Lithuania, Norway, and Australia, and over 123 private companies, including Walmart and the National Basketball Association, have been targeted precipitating tens of billions of dollars in economic damage. (Cha, 2023)
Cha (2023) went on to call on the United States and like-minded partners to consider a “collective resilience” strategy to deter China’s economic coercion. Even though Cha (2023) recognizes that most targets of coercion are asymmetrically dependent on China, he highlights that there are still a number of export items these countries possess on which the Chinese market is “highly dependent” and “in some cases almost 100% dependent”. If states come together to promise collective retaliation, Cha (2023) argues, it would be enough of a deterrence to Beijing to cease its aggressive behaviour.
In Europe too there has been a response to Chinese economic coercion, with the introduction of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which went into force on the 27th of December 2023, providing the EU with means to deter and respond to economic coercion acting as a deterrent for future coercion by China (European Commission, 2023).

The rise of industrial policy and protectionist measures as a response to the fragmentation of the Liberal International Order

A more serious concern for China is the rise of industrial policy and protectionism in states that have until now acted as a sponge for excess Chinese production. Arguably, this is the most serious threat to the Chinese economic growth model. In the United States, the concept of economic decoupling from China, as advocated during President Trump's tenure, may have been an extreme interpretation of this viewpoint. However, the Biden administration has sustained and expanded specific policies aimed at reviewing critical supply chains, enhancing investment screening and export controls, and allocating substantial subsidies to national industries (Gehrke, 2022). In a similar vein, the European Union (EU) has also been actively pursuing strategic autonomy in response to the evolving landscape of global economic interdependence. A catalysing factor in the rise of European industrial policy has been the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Chinese alignment with Russia in the conflict, leading some to say that this has been the starting point of a fragmentation of the Liberal International Order (Costa, Barbe, 2023, p. 2). There are strong signs that the dependence on China is viewed in Brussels in a similar vein as the one with Russia. This was signified by a statement by Ursula von der Leyen in the State of the Union of 2022: “Lithium and rare earths are already replacing gas and oil at the heart of our economy. [...] The not so good news is – one country dominates the market. So, we have to avoid falling into the same dependency as with oil and gas.” (Von der Leyen, 2022).
As a response to this dependence the Commission introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act (European Commission, 2023), which seeks to reduce EU dependence and was adopted last December. In addition, the EU is bolstering its industry through the Green Deal Industrial Plan and is seeking to apply tariffs to products which are produced with a lower environmental standard than within the EU through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (European Commission, 2023). Similarly, the United Kingdom, under Project Defence, is exploring ways to diminish dependence on key imports from China, while Japan has elevated its bureaucratic infrastructure to monitor new technology and economic security threats, including potential risks associated with foreign dependence (Gehrke, 2023). Additionally, India's economic and technology policy, encapsulated by the term "Atmanirbhar Bharat" (self-reliant India), has become a focal point under the Modi administration (Gehrke, 2023). ECB research from 2019 indicated that if trade tension were to escalate significantly in the future, global trade would decline significantly. Based on the previously mentioned policy initiatives, this scenario seems more likely than ever, with potentially severe implications for the Chinese economy.

Implications for China

As mentioned earlier in this paper, the rest of the world would have to disinvest to accommodate Chinese investment-led growth. Seeing the discussion above, this seems like an extremely unlikely outcome. Critics might argue that the CCP has been aware of the problems its internal imbalances generate, for it can simply choose to escape the investment-trap by sharply increasing consumption, which it is already attempting to do under its “Common Prosperity Policy” (Koty, 2022). However, here Michael Pettis’s (2023) calculations can assist with finding out whether this is manageable within a reasonable timeframe. Michael Pettis makes two optimistic assumptions regarding China's rebalancing process. Firstly, considering China's historical high investment levels and the recent surge in its debt-to-GDP ratio, Pettis (2023) suggests a sustainable investment share might be lower than the global average. However, for this analysis, Pettis (2023) assumes it can be as high as 33–34 percent. Despite being one-fourth below the current level, this would still make China the world's top investor for the next decade. Secondly, based on Pettis's (2023) perspective, there is an assumption that China has a decade to bring its investment share to a more sustainable level, with GDP growth outpacing investment growth, reducing the investment share by nearly 10 percentage points to 34 percent. However, to achieve such a transformation Pettis notes that GDP growth would have to outpace investment growth by 2-3 percent per year, which would in turn necessitate consumption to outgrow GDP by 2-3 percent per year.
Pettis (2023) notes that the above will be incredibly difficult to achieve, as slowing investment growth will require a painful transformation in which construction jobs are lost and household income growth would have to be accelerated drastically through either direct transfer in wages or indirectly through a more generous social safety net. The challenge with implementing transfers lies in the financial burden they pose, and only three sectors can viably shoulder this responsibility. The first sector that wealth could be transferred from is the affluent, who consume a much lower share of their income, but seeing the size of China’s population this would have a smaller impact on consumption than it would have in economies like that of the US (Pettis, 2023). Pettis (2023) argues that the business sector is also an unlikely candidate, as jeopardizing China’s manufacturing competitiveness will likely be difficult given the “vested interests” which have been shown to have a significant influence on CCP policymaking, with Le Keqiang once saying: “It is now more difficult to deal with vested interests than it is to touch the soul” (Spegele, 2013). The last option is the government, specifically local governments, since the central government has explicitly stated reluctance to bear the costs of adjustment (Pettis, 2023). According to Pettis (2023) it would technically be possible to do this, but seeing the limited room for choice the Chinese government has as explained above and the trickiness of reversing four decades of direct and indirect transfers from household savings into investment (Pettis 2023), Beijing might very well fail in this task which might lead to a global overproduction crisis, or it might resort to a softer foreign policy stance. There are signals that Beijing is attempting to rescue its foreign image by going on a charm offensive and softening its stance, with China’s controversial “wolf warrior diplomacy” falling out of fashion, with prominent “Wolf Warrior” Zhao Lijan being “banished” according to Foreign Policy (Palmer, 2023). Additionally, China is presenting itself as an international peacemaker, although it is unclear whether this is a true change in policy or simply a “cosmetic change” (Harper, 2023).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the interplay between China's economic trajectory and its foreign policy shapes a complex narrative that underscores how domestic policy can influence foreign policy and vice-versa. This paper highlights the inherent tension between the investment-based Chinese economy versus its assertive global posturing. Xi Jinping and the CCP have arguably hurt the PRC’s economic prospects by poor coordination between the political-economic and foreign policy domain.
The response of the West to Chinese economic coercion and the nascent disintegration of the liberal international order underscores the pervasive implications of China’s economic course. The implications for China are substantial, encompassing the formidable challenges associated with rebalancing its extremely unbalanced economy and contemplating potential adjustments in its foreign policy to address global reactions. As the international community grapples with the ramifications of China's ascendance, the CCP faces a critical juncture. The decisions forthcoming will not merely shape China's trajectory but will wield strong influence over broader global economic developments and geopolitics.
[1] Some Chinese officials like the former deputy chief of the PLA have argued that the phrase is more benign than it sounds, due to difficulties in translating the phrase to English. (Chen, Wang, 2011, p.9)

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Ig remember seeign a short clip of someone using an extension to grab and drag a beat marker to change the project tempo in that small area. i can't find it again. does anyone know what this is called and how to do it?
Is there a way to speed up and down but not just linearly? ease in/out for example?

I am completely open to scrutiny because I am aware that this is not healthy. That wouldn’t even qualify as an astute observation with how blatantly clear it is.
I say “internalised” because I often catch myself talking myself down because of my height, which is exactly what heightism stems from. It’s become a disturbing thing.
For example, I feel defective in a naturalistic sense. I have relatives who are born with birth defects, and I would never compare my woes to others who are truly disabled/ with defects that impair their personhood.
But I feel like me being short is somewhat defective. I would never call any of you defective for being short, but I have no qualms believing that for myself.
I’m the shortest guy in my family, by far. I also happen to be the one who isn’t the most social. I happen to be the one who isn’t “enjoying their youth” so to speak.
Overall, it feels strange. Out of place.
I’m expecting a mothership to enter Earth’s orbit in my lifetime.
And I expect that I will get beamed up into a ship full of short men and women, so we can go to planet where short men aren’t scrutinised for being born different.
(In theory, that planet would still have the same issues)
I don’t feel like I belong here is what I’m trying to voice with that horrible analogy.

Now don't get me wrong, both games are great. It's just that this one mechanic makes BOTW so frustrating to me to a point where the enjoyment is sucked out of it for me. And the mechanic in question is the weapon system. I just can't stand it. It's not even the fact that the weapons broke too easily, it's finding new weapons. It felt like battling enemies always resulted in a net negative, I felt like I hardly got my hands on weapon that were even decent. Fighting monsters felt so wasteful that I eventually just started avoided them all together to keep the only good weapons I had from being used.
I feel like TOTK took everything that ruined my experience with BOTW and fixed it. The fusing mechanic was such a saving grace for this game. Weapon were much easier to replace and it gave me incentive to hunt out monster parts for better fuses. It became extremely worthwhile to invade enemy camps. I pretty much always ended up with a net positive from these encounters. My only complaint about the fuses is that some of the weapon can honestly look a little bit ridiculous, but it mostly depended on which monster parts you used. And to top it all off, I eventually learned that you can actually repair your weapons so now that I have some silver lynel horns, I know they won't even go to waste.
I finished the main story of Tears of the kingdom about of month ago, and while I've been playing to complete the shrine and upgrade the ancient hero's aspect, there was something that felt just a touch unsatisfying and it took me a little to really figure out what it was. And I realized that I pretty much preferred everything else in botw and the only thing that made me enjoy TOTK more was the weapon system. I mean there were a couple other things, I really enjoyed the building mechanic and I think it was a fun way of implementing the puzzle aspect of Zelda to the open world even if it might've needed a few touch ups to perfect. I also prefer Ganondorf to the generic monstrosity that is Calamity Ganon, but's it's certainly not a deal breaker. And the master sword pull was pretty special I do have to say.
Botw had so many things going for it which is why the firkin weapon system is irking me so much. For example, I personally thought the story and setting were much better. I truly appreciated the post apocalyptic world that BOTW had to offer, the game had a great introduction and the final battle was awesome, especially if you did the divine beasts. I really liked the memories and I think the reason I liked them better is because I liked that you were finding pieces of Link's memory that he lost, as opposed to TOTK where you find out information that would have really been useful if Link just opened his mouth to the characters wondering why Zelda is acting strange. And I really do miss the guardians, not because I liked killing them but because they were terrifying in a way that the gloom hands didn't quite live up to. I mean they'll snipe you down from your paraglider. And I do have to say, the sages were implemented significantly better in my opinion. Both story wise and gameplay wise.
I just had to get out some thoughts about the game and thought this would be a good place to see if anyone else might've shared the same feelings. Again they are both fantastic games and I would recommend them to many people. They truly are some of the best games on the Nintendo switch. I'm not sure if I'll ever fully come around to breath of the wild's gameplay unfortunately. Maybe someone here in the comments may be able to offer some thoughts that may change my perspective

I've done this before, but I wanted to do it again because it's fun and I like talking about headcanons!! (these operate under canon divergence stuff that are canon to my fics, not canon itself)

• Ashido gets swept up in shipping to the point where she will ship anyone and anything if they have ONE positive interaction. even if they have a negative reaction, she might still ship it. She shipped Bakugo and Tokage because Bakugo was into her, and was shocked when Tokage didn't reciprocate.
• Pony does not know how to use chopsticks. Monoma tries his hardest to teach her how to use them, but eventually, he gives up, and makes her use the learner chopsticks, which she despises.
• Kendo has promised the 1-B dorms a pizza party that she'll fully fund if they can keep the dorms chaos free for a week. that pizza party still hasn't happened.
• there are several people in the hero course of have obvious crushes that they'll never act on because they think the other party isn't interested. Examples are Tsuyu & Uraraka, Tokoyami & Aoyama, Komori & Kuroiro, and Pony & Monoma
• Shiozaki and Kamakiri do a lot of gardening together. The 1-B dorms have never looked so lively.
• Tokage, in a bid to piss off a crushing Bakugo, said she was dating Midoriya, and kissed him to seal the bit. Poor Midoriya was only going to the 1-B dorms to ask Shiozaki for help with [Black Whip] following its manifestation, after Tokage suggested they talk to her about it. Both of them "pretend" to be dating, not realizing after three months of cuddling, holding hands, making out on each other's beds, and going on dates that they are indeed together and in love. Kamakiri is beyond exasperated by the time they figure it out.
• Tokage is annoying as shit in the 1-B dorms. she deliberately hides her head in certain spots, or crawls her fingers up someone's neck like a spider. In retaliation, there is now a "dinosaur cracker tax" whenever she does this. pranks are far less frequent.
• Kodai has brought several pieces of furniture from her room at home. The 1-B dorms are now overflowing with beanbag chairs
• Iida acts as if relationships will get in the way of hero studies. Uraraka catches him trying to flirt with Hatsume later that week. He's never lived it down.
• Todoroki saw Ashido's ship chart, and saw he was paired with Yaoyorozu. He promptly burnt it, said "that's inaccurate, don't spread misinformation", and went to go brood about Sero not asking him out yet.
• there is a running joke that Fukidashi and Midoriya would be perfect for the opposite class. Monoma, in fact, almost succeeds in swapping them, but is stopped by Kan.
• Tokoyami, Yanagi, Kuroiro, and Dark Shadow hang out all the time late at night, calling their time together "revelry in the dark". Shoji, who has been invited to these late night meetings, can't understand the name.
• Bakugo's previous bullying has a massive effect on Midoriya, and has gone unresolved for years. It was only even noticed when a keen-eyed Tokage noticed he was deliberately getting a question on his homework wrong, which opened a huge can of worms.
• Sato worked hard to train his quirk properly, and felt like an idiot when he figured out that he was overloading himself. Midoriya and Monoma helped him with that distinction, and now he's improved considerably.
• Yanagi has the most obvious, desperate crush on Kendo. Thankfully, Kendo reciprocates quite handily.

So, some time ago I tried to figure out how that whole screenwriting thing works...

• holistically (I read a lot about conflict, weaknesses, goals, obstacles etc. and from my perspective it was difficult to understand all connections between all these terms)
  
• fundamentally (what are basic mechanisms behind all these terms, are they really that important etc.)
  
• universally (so, to keep it at basic level to fit all of it into almost any mainstream story)
  

But here's the thing, I can't write about all of it, if it's detached from a screenwriter, because it's good to know context to understand everything else, so I want to keep everything connected and make sense out of it.
So, let's start from the talent.
I read a lot about it here and there, probably like everyone else - you need to be talented, talent is important, you're not talented enough for this or that, blablablabla...
The thing is it doesn't explain anything. Like what exacly is that talent? What does it affect and how? Why some people just aren't too good and others are perceived as very talented.
Like we have young Picasso (I could probably talk about Mozart or some famous screenwriter here, but somehow a painter is more appealing to me as an example), way before he went into cubism. So, Picasso starts early and he makes cool paintings, so already at young age we can consider him very talented. But of course no matter how talented he is, he doesn't start with realistic, sophisticated paintings. His first pictures contained simplified shapes, bad lighting, wrong colors, same stuff all of us made at the beginning, nothing worth mentioning. So, what happened later? One thing, he was definitely passionate about it, so he spent a lot of time, drawing and painting stuff, but does it explain his fast and enormous progress? I guess not, because I doubt many people his age (even commited to painting) were able to achieve his level as fast as he did so early. So...
I would say talent was just his potential to improve himself at specific pace, but also it was a potential to reach specific level. As very talented individual he reached high level very fast. So, less talented people would improve themselves at slower pace and they wouldn't be able to achieve that level and at some point they would just stop at average, or maybe even worse level.
Ok, great, but level of what? How talent actually translates into improvement of quality of somesone's art? Like we have someone who is quite talented, he spent some time on some artistic activity and at some point his stuff is just better. It's still not really clear how that talent connects to the process of creating better art.
And that leads me to taste.
Again, let's say we're painting a picture, so we're making a sketch. Now, it's important to forget about what we've learned about composition, anatomy, architecture etc. so let's just focus purely on taste. So we're sketching some very abstract entity.
We make a sketch and, well, it's bad (which is fine), so we fix it and we fix it and so on, till... we just stop fixing it, because we reached the level of quality we accept. It looks good (from our perspective), so we judged quality of that sketch based on our taste.
So, talent slowly (or at faster pace) improves our taste to some level and that taste helps us to judge intuitively (not critically, using for example theory of composition) quality of our work.
Same with composing music or just screenwriting. We write a scene and it's... bad. So we fix it and we fix it till we perceive it within our taste as acceptable. Of course maybe our taste is still on average level, so we're fine with something which is (according to industry standards) average and we're not aware of that.
So talent affects how fast and how much we can develop our taste, but what develops taste? This, I believe, is quite obvious. For a screenwriter it's all about watching movies, tv series, playing video games, reading comic books, books and screenplays, so overall experiencing various art directly connected with what we do.
Does writing (practice) also improves it? Probably yes, in a way. Like it teaches us specific approach and each time we start new script we follow that approach more and more, like trying to not overwriting (especially dialogues), keep it clear and simple, overall removing unnecessary stuff. So in a way it's also improved, not intuitive, rational process.
So, to put it simple

• let's say your talent is on average level (probably like most people, including me, which is completely fine)
  
• you spent some time watching movies, so you improved your taste to average level (at average pace determined by talent and with hard cap at very good or maybe even great level of taste limited by average talent)
  
• you write first draft
  
• it's bad and you see it, so you improve it within limit of your taste
  
• now the draft is on average level
  
• you go back to watching more movies, but also writing alone improved your taste
  
• you write next script, you fix it, and it's definitely better than the previous one, at quite good level (according to industry standards)
  
• so you repeat the process
  

All right, let's talk about voice (and style).
So, I think it's quite important thing to address - a voice is not a style. I see that misconception everywhere, so I wanted to start from this bold statement, but now let me back up a little.
I often read here about managers looking for screenwriters with strong voice, but what it really is, how it affects writing, why it is so important.
It seems really simple, like they're just looking for a soldier who wrote about war. Or a former lawyer who wrote court drama. Or someone from specific minority who wrote about that minority. The list goes on.
So, obviously they have knowledge about subject they explore. But is it enough? Soldier knows how to reload a gun, how it looks like to be in a middle of firefight or how to operate military equipment, but we can learn that (at acceptable level required in a screenplay) quite fast from easily accessible sources.
So there must be something more to it.
The way I see it, it's more about overall perception shaped by many observations determined by vast amount of knowledge about specific part of reality someone acquired over a long time.
Ok, but perception, observations and knowledge about what? I bet it's obvious - people. Who they really are, how they behave, how reality affects them, but not just common reality, but very specific, unusual reality, not entirely explored by everyone else. Same with any minorities, another professions etc. All of that determines characters in stories.
So, is it really that necessary? In my opinion it's like asking a question is it important to create characters that are interesting, because they make unusual, original, unexpected and therefore interesting choices, so obviously yes, but I think it's more about the question what determines someone's voice.
There are plenty succesfull screenwriters, who are just... screenwriters, who just watched a lot of movies and read a lot of scripts and if we assume voice is determined by our perception of other people, at the most basic level we can just rely on our personal experience and what we learnt about people from... art, because art (movies, tv series, comic books etc.) explores people.
But I wouldn't say all sources are equal. Limiting yourself to art (and reading screenplays), limits acquired knowledge to something which was already made and seen by many. Life of an average screenwriter isn't probably very unusual either. That - if we exclude unusual profession or being part of specific minority - leads to social sciences - books, articles, interviews - which are probably the best - both regarding efficiency and learning about unexplored areas of our reality - sources to shape voice (especially if that knowledge is easily accessible through internet). But again, a person of average talent and very good taste that already watched thousands of movies still can achieve anything and there are plenty examples or different approaches that lead to successful career. At the end, if the result is entertaining (more about it later), that's all that matters.
So, again, to put it simple

• we learn from our own experience, our profession, social sciences and art about people
  
• that knowledge leads to interesting observations that shape our perception on people and thus, our voice
  
• we implement that voice into characters we write, defining who they really are, how they behave, what kind of decision they make on every page in every scene, from the most important ones to most subtle changes in dialogues etc. to make them more entertaining
  

So voice is not really a style, which is just a way we describe what is happening. Some have minimalistic style, some go into purple prose, some prefer vivid, but quite short descriptions. That description may show author as bitter, cynical, joyful, but it's still disconnected from his perception on people that affects directly actions of his characters.
So, does style really matter? I guess it's main purpose is just to entertain a reader, but it barely translates into what we see on the screen (of course producers, agents, managers etc. may have some preferences here regarding being entertained in a specific way, so I would say it's subjective and opinions vary, but in comparison taste and voice are still crucial).
If you disagree with anything or if would you like to add something (also if you just see it different), write a comment, I'm here to improve my approach (even writing about it alone helps me to organize this subject), so any feedback is appreciated. Next part coming soon.

handmades - [ ] AA/E/1A handmade - [ ] AA/E/1P handmade - [ ] Ari/E/25lvc Handmade - [ ] AS/E/25lvc handmade - [ ] Noc/25ws/15fr handmade
Fixers - [ ] Medic/50c/25lvc fixer - [ ] Exe/E/25lvc fixer - [ ] Q/50c/90 fixer - [ ] Q/50c/15fr fixer - [ ] TS/E/1P fixer - [ ] Tro/25ws/25lvc fixer - [ ] J/25ws/25lvc fixer - [ ] Noc/50c/25lvc fixer - [ ] Ari/50c/25lvc fixer
Railways - [ ] AA/50c/25lvc Railway - [ ] Ari/E/90 railway - [ ] Q/25ws/50bs railway - [ ] Q/50vhc/90rw railway - [ ] Q50c/1P railway - [ ] Q/50L/1A railway
Assortment - [ ] AS/50vhc/25lvc combat rifle - [ ] B/50LD/15V compound bow - [ ] B/E assault rifle - [ ] B/50LD/25lvc radium rifle - [ ] Exe/SS/1S pipe wrench - [ ] Q/50c/90 holy fire - [ ] Inst/E/90 .50cal - [ ] A/50LD/15fr Gatling laser - [ ] B/50c/25lvc cultist dagger - [ ] B/50LD/25LVC ripper - [ ] B/25ws/50bs laser rifle - [ ] Mut/E/25lvc elders mark - [ ] Exe/E/15vats LMG - [ ] Jug/E/25lvc radium rifle x2 - [ ] Mut/25ws/25lvc revolver - [ ] Q/25ws/90 sub machine gun - [ ] Q/E 10mm sub machine gun - [ ] Q/25ws/1A pipe pistol - [ ] Q/50LD/15vats plasma pistol - [ ] Q/50vhc/1P radium rifle - [ ] Q/50LD/25lvc Radium rifle - [ ] Q/50LD ultracite laser pistol - [ ] Tro/E/DRWA LMG - [ ] TS/25ws/25lvc Tesla rifle - [ ] Q/50vhc/90rw Tesla rifle - [ ] AA/SS/1S multi purpose axe - [ ] AA/40PA/1S shishkebab - [ ] AA/50c/15fr flamer - [ ] Q/50c/25lvc assault rifle - [ ] Q/50c/15v assault rifle - [ ] Q/E/25lvc assault rifle - [ ] Q/25WS combat rifle - [ ] Q/50c/25lvc combat shotgun - [ ] Q/E pipe bolt action rifle - [ ] TS/25WS/90rw Gat plasma - [ ] TS/E 419 range legacy dragon - [ ] TS/50c/15fr alien blaster - [ ] Exe/E/15v pipe pistol - [ ] Q/50c/1A elders mark - [ ] AA/25ws/25lvc laser rifle - [ ] B/SS/1S Mole miner gauntlet - [ ] B/*/90 (legacy Gatling laser) - [ ] B/25ws/15v laser rifle - [ ] B/50c/25lvc assault rifle
Enclaves - [ ] AA/25DWA/15fr (EPF AFB, SS, RS) - [ ] AA/25ws/15fr (EPP AAB, RS) - [ ] Ari/50vhc/50bs (EPF AFB, SS, RS) - [ ] ARI/50c/25lvc (EPS SS RS True sniper) - [ ] Ari/25ws/25lvc (EPR AA, SS, RS) - [ ] B/50c/1P (EPR, SS, RS true auto) - [ ] B/50c/15fr (EPR Aligned short, SS, RS) - [ ] B/50vhc/50bs (EPP AAB, RS) - [ ] Q/50c/1P (EPR AAB, SS, RS) - [ ] Q/50vhc/25lvc (EPP) lvl 35 - [ ] Q/50vhc/25lvc (EPP Aligned short, RS) - [ ] Q/L50bs (EPP, True auto, RS) - [ ] TS/50c/25lvc (EPR AAB, SS, RS - [ ] Q/25ws/1P (EPP, Algined sniper, RS) - [ ] Tro/bash/15ff (EPR Aligned sniper, RS, SS) - [ ] Exe/25ws/25lvc (EPF AFB SS, RS) - [ ] B/50c/15v (EPF, AFB, SS, RS) - [ ] V/15AP/25lvc (enclave aligned splitter) - [ ] V/50c/25lvc (EPR AAB, SS, RS) - [ ] V/50c/50bs (EPR SS, iron sight) - [ ]
Armor pieces - [ ] Full set of mixed AS//Sent marine armor (1 AP, 2 Rad resistance, 1 End, 1 int) - [ ] Ultracite jet pack left arm (legacy) - [ ] Uny/+1int/FDC sturdy raider right arm - [ ] OE/25PAWR FSA Right leg - [ ] Cham/+1int/WWR USA chest - [ ] Uny/AP/JWR USA left leg - [ ] Weightless/25PWWR FSA left arm - [ ] OE/1E/sent marine left arm - [ ] OE/7LeD/AWR metal left leg - [ ] Van/1E/WWR combat chest - [ ] Uny/AP heavy combat right leg 2
Apparel - [ ] Deathclaw mask x2 - [ ] Raven mask x2
Wishlist: Weightless/AP/WWR FSA chest
Grolls - [ ] AAE90 LMG - [ ] AA2525 non ult laser - [ ] AA40PA1S shishkebab - [ ] B2525 fixer - [ ] B2525 Handmade - [ ] BE25 fixer - [ ] BSS1S Mole miner gauntlet - [ ] B2590 AGL - [ ] B2515v non ult laser - [ ] B50c25lvc assault rifle - [ ] Mut/E/25lvc elders mark - [ ] Q50c15fr fixer - [ ] Q25ffr50bs railway - [ ] Q50C1P railway - [ ] Q50c25lvc assault rifle - [ ] Q50c15v assault rifle - [ ] QE25 assault rifle - [ ] Q50L25LVC Tesla - [ ] Exe/25/25 enclave flamer - [ ] TS50c15fr alien blaster - [ ] V50c25lvc enclave auto
Raider PA - [ ] Mut/7%LED/WWR torso - [ ] Van/AP/FDC LL - [ ] van/7LED/JWR RL
Excavator - [ ] MS/H&T/WWR LL - [ ] MS/1E/JWR torso - [ ] OE/fire/JWR left arm - [ ] OE/Poison RA
T-51B - [ ] MS/Rsent left arm - [ ] OE/1int/FDC right arm - [ ] Van/1s/JWR torso
X-01 - [ ] Bol/cryo/energy torso - [ ] OE/7LeD/energy RL - [ ] Van/7led/BS left leg
T-45 - [ ] Bol/7LeD/WWR torso - [ ] Noc/AP/WWR right arm - [ ] OE/fire/rad recovery left leg - [ ] OE/AP/WWR left arm - [ ] OE/fire/poison Right leg

Post Synopsis

This write-up will discuss LittleBigPlanet’s humble origins, its place in the market in 2008, its unique features and mechanics, and a brief summary of the games, impact, and news following the first game. It will be broken down into five sections listed below.

• I. Introduction
  
• II. Origins of Media Molecule
  
• III. General Game Overview
  
• IV. Post-LittleBigPlanet 1
  
• V. Closing
  

I. Introduction

With the advent of the Internet, user-generated content has become an increasingly common phenomenon, and in the last ~20 years in particular, it has propelled entire platforms to become major media centers and empowered users to explore and express their creative side. In 2006, Time named “You” as their person of the year, referring to the millions of users who had contributed user-generated content to websites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, and others, and Business 2.0 and ABC News gave similar accolades to "You" in 2006. In the realm of video games, user-generated content has practically become a genre in itself, with modern examples like Minecraft, Roblox, and Super Mario Maker amassing millions of players and building dedicated communities around them that have persisted for years.
LittleBigPlanet was one of the earliest examples in the console space built around the concept of user-generated content. The tools available were top-of-the-line and the best available for a console game at that time. But its appeal as a game went beyond just its robust level editor: the multiplayer and network features, the customization options, and the inviting art style and family-friendly image filled a much-needed niche in the early PS3 library. Its broad appeal enabled it to become one of Sony’s flagship series.

II. Origin of Media Molecule

Rag Doll Kung Fu, The Room, and the Formation of Media Molecule
Media Molecule was founded in January 2006 by four former employees of Lionhead Studios – the studio behind Fable and Black & White. Before forming Media Molecule, members of the team worked on Rag Doll Kung Fu in their free time, and even starred in live action cut-scenes for the game. After presenting the game to a crowd of 300 people at GDC 2005, Mark Healey was approached by both Valve and Nintendo to bring the game to their platform, and ultimately worked out a deal with Valve to put the game on their then new digital platform Steam. Rag Doll Kung Fu was the first third party game on the platform.
Around this same time, the would-be Media Molecule founders built a tech demo called “The Room.” The Room featured elements of creation that would later form the framework of LittleBigPlanet – players could mold objects out of clay and move objects around the room. Valve was interested in hiring them to develop The Room or another project, but it never came to fruition. The Room also featured portals the player could move between. Coincidentally, Valve would hire the students behind Narbacular Drop – which used a similar portal concept as its central game mechanic – that same year (2005) to expand their concept, and eventually create Portal in 2007.
Soon after their work on Rag Doll Kung Fu and The Room, Mark Healey and three other Lionhead Studio employees – Alex Evans, Kareem Ettourney, and David Smith – resigned on the same day to start up their own company, which they called Media Molecule. They turned in their notice to Peter Molyneux, one of the founders of Lionhead Studios, and a man Healey had worked with for around 15 years, between both Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead Studios. While he was disappointed to lose four talented developers on the same day, he wished them well and was happy that they were striking out on their own, rather than taking jobs at Valve.
Initially, the team didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted their game to be outside of a few general principles. In a 2007 interview with GameSpot, Healey had this to say:

“The idea was to make the most ambitious game we possibly could," Healey said, "and most importantly, get somebody else to pay for it.

Healey went on to talk about the tumultuous nature of working on a creative project:

"What we're aiming to do with the game we're making is somehow give that to people and take away the tedium," Healey said.

Meeting with Sony and Development of LittleBigPlanet
In the initial talks with then President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison in January 2006, Media Molecule presented a demo called “Craftworld” starring Mr. Yellowhead – who would later be featured as a collectible costume in LittleBigPlanet. Craftworld was a physics-based side-scrolling platformer, with no button presses – the character’s movement was wired to the exact physical movements of the analog sticks, which was a novel idea at the time. Instead of using PowerPoint, Media Molecule made a live demo play within their presentation. Alex Evans recalled the meeting at the Develop 2011 Conference in Brighton:

“Our first meeting with Phil was meant to be a 30 minute pitch for our idea for a game called Craftworld that soon turned into a 3 hour brainstorming session,” explained Evans. “Phil said all sorts of buzzwords that hadn’t really hit yet. He said it should be driven by DLC and that it should be free-to-play, have a social core and premium, paid-for content.

This is interesting, because this model didn’t really exist yet on consoles back in January 2006 – the infamous The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s horse armor DLC (today it’d be called a microtransaction) was still three months away. However, Sony was working on PlayStation Home around this time which shared these core tenants and was being pushed by Phil Harrison. Despite these initial talks, LittleBigPlanet ended up releasing as a $60 USD game rather than a free-to-play title, though microtransactions in the form of costumes and DLC level packs did make it into the game. Sony would revisit the idea of a free-to-play LittleBigPlanet title in the form of LittleBigPlanet Hub, which was planned to launch in late 2013, but the project was canceled, and presumably the work for it was carried over to LittleBigPlanet 3, which was also sold as a $60 USD game.
Soon after their meeting with Phil Harrison, Sony agreed to fund the project for six months, after which they’d need a playable prototype ready to demonstrate. This was later extended by another three months, as the demo after the initial period was reportedly “unfocused and unplayable.” Alex Evans recalls debugging the game the night before the presentation because the game slowed to a crawl when a fourth controller was added. The game was revealed at GDC 2007 for two reasons, according to Phil Harrison:

“Firstly, I wanted to demonstrate the future of games, which was service-based projects: always on, no end to them. And secondly, to communicate the idea about the user being the creative manager of content. LittleBigPlanet and Home were perfect examples of that.”

Media Molecule would go on to release LittleBigPlanet in October 2008. In less than three years, the team went from a vague premise to a landmark title for the PS3, as well as the second highest rated game of 2008, according to Metacritic. It’s interesting that the team didn’t really have a clear idea of what they wanted to create before their leaving their jobs when LittleBigPlanet feels like such a spark of creative energy, which coincidentally is the premise for the game itself.

III. General Game Overview

The Market in 2008 and LittleBigPlanet's Unique Appeal
As the 2000s wore on, and particularly with the arrival of the HD consoles, it seemed AAA platformers were being phased out. Studios known for their platformers in the 1990s and early-mid 2000s, like Rare, Naughty Dog, and Sucker Punch, were moving away from them, leaving Mario and Ratchet & Clank to carry the genre in the late 2000s. A platformer wasn’t exactly what people thought of as a “next-gen” experience on the HD consoles at the time (PlayStation 3/Xbox 360). It seemed more studios were focused on bringing about more realistic experiences, typically ones that had guns and/or cars. LittleBigPlanet released in a year with games like Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Resistance 2, etc. – games that prioritized realistic graphics, gritty settings, and cinematic set-pieces.
However, if there was a way to make a platformer feel next-gen rather than iterative of the design we had seen for over a decade at that point, LittleBigPlanet achieved it, by utilizing network features and user-generated content as its central focus. The story mode acted as both a fun adventure to play through as well as a showcase of what was possible with the extensive level editor, which allowed players to share levels online and access a database of levels from users all around the world, and even use user-created objects as collectibles in one’s own levels. Its appeal was broadened beyond just the scope of a conventional platformer though, as users would utilize the level editor to create more experimental levels - like this museum level featured in Mm Picks. LittleBigPlanet 2 would expand on this concept further.
The handcrafted art-style was an excellent complement to the game’s vision as a vehicle for level creation, and it allowed parts to be glued together without looking amiss. The idea of customization was extended to the player's character: Sackboy acted as a blank canvas that could be customized, but his knitted nature didn’t look out of place on marketing with nothing on. The soundtrack featured licensed music and spanned all different eras and cultures yet somehow formed a cohesive package – much like the nature of putting together a level using various parts and materials.
Curation Tools and Mm Picks
Sharing and playing community levels was a seamless experience held up by some awesome curation tools. You could play levels off the game’s servers without going through a download process. Additionally, levels featured tags for categorizing types of levels, hearts for bookmarking them, a five-star rating system (later changed to a thumbs up/thumbs down), a comment section, and the ability to view the profile of users to see their levels and favorites. These features are all ubiquitous now and were likely inspired by YouTube’s curation tools, but it was by far the best infrastructure in a game with online level sharing on consoles at that point. Additionally, LittleBigPlanet benefitted from the rise of outside media platforms, namely YouTube, as a way to showcase levels on message boards.
Adding to these curation tools was Media Molecule Picks (Mm Picks), which were community levels branded with Media Molecule’s emblem, signifying their exceptional quality or experimental ideas. This was before Twitter became ubiquitous and developers – and businesses in general – had less direct interaction with their users. Mm Picks were instead posted to their website and even included embedded YouTube videos of the levels, though they did join Twitter seven months after the game’s release, in May 2009. It was a novel thing to see the developer of a game take part in the community of a game in that way, and it was personally the first instance I recall seeing of something like that (as primarily a console gamer at the time). Media Molecule went a step further by including 18 users to create bonus levels for the Game of the Year Edition of the game in 2009.
Additionally, Media Molecule added water in the Pirates of the Caribbean level pack in December 2009 after much clamoring for it in message boards. It’s possible this was already in the works since they had to work out the licensing with Disney in advance, but the trailer seemed to acknowledge that Media Molecule had heard the requests for water in the game. Unfortunately, it and many other cross-promotional level packs are now unavailable to download due to licensing agreements expiring. At the time, DLC seemed liked a great fit for the game, as every added item to the game multiplied what was possible with the game’s level editor, and the frequent level kits would regularly reinvigorate interest in the community. However, many are now inaccessible through practical means (not all level kits were included in the Game of the Year Edition).
Multiplayer
LittleBigPlanet made no concessions with its multiplayer – it was four-players locally, online, or a mix of the two – in story mode, community levels, and creation mode – it featured both cooperative and competitive elements, but the game could still be experienced as a single player experience if desired. Other games usually come with a caveat – either they’re local or online only, provide multiplayer only in certain designated modes, and/or limit the number of players to just two. There were some camera issues in local play in certain fast-paced and/or vertical levels, but the widescreen helped make the game feel less crowded than it otherwise would have (widescreen had just recently become ubiquitous on the HD consoles during this time).
LittleBigPlanet also incorporated a lot of elements that amounted to just goofing around, like slapping your friends, painting them with stickers, grabbing them, and making smiley faces after watching them fall to their death. As inconsequential as these qualities might seem when typing them out like this, people got a ton of mileage out of these.
The competitive play didn’t really work in favor of the platforming levels, but the more experimental, survival-based levels did lead to some fun competition. Chasing leaderboards, collecting all prize bubbles and keys, completing a level with no deaths for rewards, and completing optional co-op puzzles led to a great deal of replayability among the story levels, so there was plenty of reason to jump back into them with someone new, especially since the game had plenty to reward you with in the form of objects, stickers, costumes, and bonus levels.

IV. Post-LittleBigPlanet 1

Sackboy became Sony’s family-friendly mascot and was featured in many advertisements during the Kevin Butler-era. He has been featured as a playable characteskin in games like ModNation Racers, Minecraft, Fall Guys, and Sony’s platform fighter PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale. The series has regularly showcased the new features of Sony’s hardware: the PlayStation Eye and network features in the original game, the PlayStation Move controller in Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves, and the touchpad in the PS Vita game – although in recent years, it seems Astro Bot has been positioned to showcase these features more than Sackboy’s games (the VR headset and DualSense controller).
There were eight LittleBigPlanet/Sackboy games released between 2008 and 2014, plus a ton of DLC content – since then there have been just two (the last one was a 2023 mobile runner title), neither of which include the creation tools the series was founded on. However, Sackboy: A Big Adventure did retain the cooperative multiplayer, which I believe is an important part of the series’ legacy and isn’t as easy to transition to a 3D platformer. Media Molecule stepped away as the main developer after LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011), acting as support for some of the later games. They’ve since developed Tearaway and Dreams, though many of the studio founders have since left the company.
LittleBigPlanet 2 and 3 carried over levels from the previous mainline game(s) - it was nice to know users' works were being preserved. However, there were many bugs in LittleBigPlanet 3 when accessing levels from the first two games so it really wasn't the ideal way to experience them. Sony had shutdown the servers for the PS3 games in September 2021, so it was the only way to play a lot of these old levels for awhile.
Unfortunately, the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers – and therefore all uploaded community created levels from the first three mainline games – were just recently shutdown after being compromised by hackers in January 2024. While the story levels remain, it’s disappointing to know you can only re-experience part of a beloved game, and not the game in its whole. Many of the levels people remember the game by are now lost to time, after 15 years. The ending of LittleBigPlanet even highlights the community levels, as if the ending of the story mode is just the beginning for the rest of the game.
Showing future generations LittleBigPlanet will always come with the caveat that there was much more to the game than they’re able to experience, unlike other classics like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as there are custom servers that have retained some of the more popular levels. It goes to show the love the community has for the game.

V. Closing

LittleBigPlanet's slogan of “Play, Create, Share” was superbly executed on all fronts – falling short in even one of these areas would’ve been enough to taint the whole experience: without good gameplay, it wouldn’t be worth making levels, without good creation tools, it wouldn’t be worth sharing levels, without good sharing and curation tools, it wouldn’t be worth keeping a vested interest in playing the game and engaging with the community. But it went even beyond that, with a great art-style that complemented the game's vision of creation, excellent and all-encompassing multiplayer, and active engagement from Media Molecule with the community, through Mm Picks and DLC. It really seems like the type of game that would’ve taken a second game to get right, but instead they got the first game right and made an even more incredible sequel. It brought something uniquely its own to the PS3 in 2008 and earned its place as a flagship PlayStation series.

I've been thinking a lot lately about FF16 and can't help but come back to this feeling of being bereft. It's a fantastic game without a doubt, but to me it feels like it's missing so much. I play 10 or 12 and I look at 16 and wonder how these games are part of the same franchise. The pacing, the philosophy, the spirit of the game itself is so vastly different to its predecessors, but I also can't help but imagine how much I wish 16 was more like them. It has the philosophy of an action game, and is in no respects an RPG, however much the developers may claim otherwise. The story is streamlined and easily digestible, full of action and spectacle. It has a more sidelined cast to accommodate for a more focused and simpler narrative. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think the problem is that this is a game being marketed to people who are used to the opposite. Final Fantasy, at least in my experience, is known for it's long, emotional journeys, full of deep philosophy, varied perspectives, charming, diverse characters and complex layers that go above and beyond anything you would conventionally see in a game. And while FF16 does embody some of these aspects, it doesn't prioritize them like it should. Despite the developers claiming otherwise, I believe it's clear FF16's focus was on action and gameplay, and story was a secondary focus. One of their biggest selling points was the Eikon fights which certainly delivered what could easily be considered some of the most fun boss fights in the entire franchise. But I think that in the end this change in focus was a mistake, only compounded by their attempts to advertise it to an audience they weren't building it for. I agree with the argument that Final Fantasy has always been about pushing boundaries, but there comes a point when the franchise undergoes so much change that it becomes unrecognizable to the fans. And when that happens, fans realize the games they know and love are no longer being made, and they move on to other things that satisfy that craving they have. There has to be lines drawn if the franchise is to survive, otherwise the name has no meaning and it may as well be a new IP. FF16 is an action game made for an RPG audience, and that's why it's so divisive, because on the one hand it's a fantastic game, but on the other it's not what the audience is looking for. I find myself among the latter wishing that FF16 was more of an RPG. I wish the story was slower, more layered, I wish that the characters traveled together more and that we got to see their varying perspectives more, and while I adore the Eikon fights, I wish they hadn't come at such a steep cost to the rest of the experience. I keep looking at FF16 and seeing what could have been, and it puts me at odds with the other part of myself that had so much fun with what was made. It disappoints me even more to know that FF16 came from the team who created FFXIV: A Realm Reborn and it's Heavensward expansion, the latter being a fantastic example of a great RPG story.
All that said, I'm relatively inexperienced in this fanbase and I'd like to hear how others view it as well. I find myself having a hard time coming to peace with it and I'd like to hear how it fits in with people who know the franchise better than I do.

Spoilers for Chainsaw Man and Attack on Titan
I really dislike it when authors make sure that the main characters overcome an obstacle that would normally require to kill some enemies, and they manage to do it without casualties because they (the authors) don't want them to be possibly questionable or straight up unlikable
This rant is as low effort as it gets, I only have two examples, one case that does what I critisize and one that does it the right way. I'm sure there are many more and better examples, but this topic came to my mind after the conclusion of the most recent CSM arc so that's all I have for today.
-Chainsaw Man: the most recent arc was the prison break arc, Asa and Famine had the task to rescue Chainsaw Man from a Public Safety detention facility that is super protected by several devils, hybrids, PS officers and all kinds of advanced military technology. Chainsaw Man is a big deal so it's obviously very well hidden and protected. Anyway, our heroes manage to make their way into it by taking over their own turrets, and that causes no casualties. Fine, nobody was behind the hole they made to the wall, it's not out of the world. After that they accidentally break free the three amigos. In the meanwhile there's this eye patch PS officer that is supposed to be the villain of the arc. Anyway , as they run into several armed soldiers, Famine pulls out her pigeon devil, orders him to kill them, but of course the devil just cuts their weapons and clothes. This is a bit forced, the explanation being that under Fami's control the devils are weaker (I don't even wanna imagine what a full power falling devil is capable of). Then they run into Katana man and Nail fiend, and Asa makes them join with diplomacy. Fair and very appreciated. He brings them to CSM's location, and there are three funny guys from the scientific department who had the job to mismember him and put the pieces in different boxes. The loser squad breaks in and they reassemble the body, but of course nobody touches the psychos that did that. And finally, (a very bad conclusion for an otherwise great arc), the deus ex machina Quanxi comes to the rescue of eye patch. Even if in this case Quanxi initially opposes the main guys, she's still a very beloved character, so the author made sure to make her look badass, destroying everyone to stop the conflict, but of course without killing anyone, even if she obliterated Nail fiend (fiends are weak af, Quanxi is notoriously OP, Nail should have definitely died with that blow). And who kills the, let's call him main, villain of the arc? An unnamed character that is one of the many CSM zombies that break out of the cell that detained them! So the only actual death of this arc that was supposed to be bloody as hell is a supposedly morally worse character that gets killed by an unnamed zombie! This was supposed to be Public Safety's most secure facility, but they got away from it with CSM so easily! Fujimoto really did go out of his way to make sure that Asa and Fami would get out of the facility with CSM but without casualties.
-Attack on titan: here's an example of an author who doesn't shy away from making his characters look morally questionable when they are. Context: Eren is marching with his rumbling with the goal to destroy the world. A few Paradisians join forces with Marley's warriors in order to stop him. From the Marley warrior it's nothing strange, since they are trying to protect their homeland (and the world), but for the Paradisians this was a big moral dilemma, because sure saving innocent people is the right thing to do, but at the same time the rest of the world hates the "demons of Paradis", so they would be basically doing something generous that the other side would never do for them. Anyway, even if it's insanity, even if they could live luxurious lives inside the walls with no threat of outside enemies, they still decide to act like true SC members and launch themselves in the flames of hell to try and stop Eren. However, in order to do so, they have to leave the island and steal the plane, something impossible to do without causing some victims. In fact the Jaegerists are watching the port exactly for this reason, to make sure that nobody could even try to stop the rumbling. Armin tries to find a way to do it with diplomacy, without local victims, but it soon fails, and they have to get blood on their hands. And they do it. No asspulls, no bullshit, no power of friendship, they just get real and realize that there's no other way. One of the strongest scenes is Connie, looking at Daz and Samuel, his old comrades, who are asking him in tears why he is betraying them, and Connie thinks back at Bertholt when he was in the same position of betrayal, when he was doing something terrible "for the sake of humanity", and he realizes that he is the one who has to pull the trigger for the greater good this time. They get blood on their hands and they definitely look bad for it. In the anime they even doubled down on it with that Mikasa sequence where she makes sushi out of two corpses of soldiers (personally I didn't like that addition, it felt an unnecessary overkill, but that's beyond the point). So yeah, the point is that Isayama isn't scared to make his main characters look bad and morally questionable when it's due.
I labelled this as anime and manga because I only made examples from manga, but it applies to any form of media in my opinion.
Several edits: typos I noticed while rereading

Goals may enhance any of the six aspects of wellbeing. Moving towards valued goals or attaining them may increase positive emotions, engagement in skilled activities, development of relationships, meaning and purpose in life, accomplishment and physical health.
That is, striving for goals (the journey) and goal attainment (arriving at the destination) can both enhance wellbeing. Goals can vary on many dimensions, including size (small or large goals) and time-frame (Short, medium, long term) and importance (highly valued, lesser valued). Here, we are considering large, long term, highly-valued goals.
Research on goals shows that they have a number of positive functions.
· They channel effort towards goals and so give life direction.
· They motivate us to keep going and not give up or be distracted.
· They help organise information, skills, and strategies in terms of means and ends.
· Where goals are related to fulfilling basic needs (e.g. acquiring food shelter, or resources) they facilitate survival.
· Where goals are long-term and highly valued (e.g. helping others) they can give life meaning. Without a vision for the future and highly valued goals to work towards, there is a risk of becoming aimless, unmotivated, and disorganised and wasting time doing things that are not valued.
· Highly valued goals create motivations to plan, discover new information, master skills, use strategies, stay focused, resist temptation and distraction, monitor progress, get feedback, take corrective action, manage time and resources effectively, meet deadlines and interact with other people in ways that facilitate goal attainment.
The downside to setting and pursuing highly valued goals is that these processes may sometimes lead to negative effect. There are two main reasons for this. First, goal setting highlights the discrepancy between the current and desired future state. If goal attainment is viewed as a prerequisite for happiness, ruminating about failing to attain goals or actual failure may lead to unhappiness. Secondly, the positive effects of reaching goals are usually transitory – habituation and the hedonic treadmill come in to play. We adapt to positive events such that they quickly become the new normal. However, the positive effects of achieving goals may be prolonged by savouring success. A second strategy is to focus attention on the process. Goal pursuit rather than goal attainment: enjoying the journey, not just the destination, is associated with greater wellbeing. This is particularly true when pursuing long-term, highly-valued goals.
Goals that involve doing activities rather than acquiring possessions, or that involve creating new experiences rather than changing circumstances, are more likely to lead to sustained increases in happiness and wellbeing. We adapt to changes in circumstances more than to changes in intentional activities. Because of this, goals that involve intentional activities have longer-lasting positive effects. Beyond the point at which our basic needs are met, vast increases in material possessions do not lead to commensurate increases in happiness and wellbeing. Because of this, goals that involve doing activities and engaging in new experiences lead to greater wellbeing then acquiring possessions.
Goals that involve approaching a valued outcome (for example, doing kind things for others) usually lead to greater wellbeing and goal attainment than those that involve avoiding an undesirable situation (for example avoiding conflict with others), and there are various reasons for this. It is easier to pursue and monitor progress towards approach compared with avoidance goals. Approach goals elicit more positive than negative cognitions because they focus attention on desirable outcomes. However, for adaptive functioning, a combination of both approach and avoidance goals is necessary, and individual goal preferences may determine the optimal balance of approach and avoidance goals for the wellbeing of any particular individual.
Goals with the following characteristics are more likely to enhance wellbeing:
· Appropriate to your life circumstances.
· They are intrinsically rewarding.
· Aligned with the basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness.
· They involve doing activities (more than changing circumstances).
· They engage in valued experiences (more than acquiring possessions).
· They approach valued outcomes (rather than avoiding undesirable outcomes).
· Your goals fit together harmoniously (and don’t conflict).
· They are visualisable / tangible and challenging (rather than fuzzy and easy).
· They inspire a high level of commitment (rather than little commitment).
· They can be monitored to give corrective feedback on progress.

Hello All! I’m originally from WNY, but my Gramma’s people were all in the Wilkes-Barre/Dunmore/Scranton area. So, for just about every summer and occasionally Fall, at least one visit was made down, especially when my Great Gramma was still alive, and my Gramma’s sisters.
In October 2007 my Spouse and I decided to honeymoon in Philly to check out the art museum ( yeah, to shout “ADRIAN!” too, lol) and head a bit out of the way and visit Scranton because I couldn’t wait for my Great Aunt L to meet the love of my life.
Long story short, my Wife became very sick, and we decided to head home early. So no detours through Scranton. On the way back towards NY, we were getting close (or in between) the PA Appalachians, and the Allegheny region.
My Wife was the principal driver, so as we were zipping past woods everywhere around the thruway, I suddenly see a raggedy, torn piece of poster board, with a raggedy looking flannel shirt nailed or hung over it. The sign had big awkward words written in magic marker. It said “BARBARA. FOOD.” Under the sign, there was a white kitchen garbage bag full of something, and a silver mixing bowl next to it.
Unfortunately, my Aunt passed away on Christmas Eve that year, so New Year’s was spent in Scranton for my Aunt’s funeral and to catch up with relatives. My grandparents were so shot; the whole situation had taken a serious toll on my grandparents, so we offered to leave early and drive them home, since my parents wanted to stay and visit more.
At the time we lived in Rochester, so if you know the route back to WNY, it’s pretty simple; 81N, pass through ’Cuse, then 490 home. About 30 miles past the Allentown exit, again in the wooded, heavily mountainous section of 81, I freaked. There was a crude post and sign and set up just like on the western route home.
This sign was crudely duct tapped, and said “LINDA. HEER. HEERS SOME FOOD. ANOTHER flannel hung on a nail, this one green plaid, and not red. A pile of filthy soaked clothes and a sneaker sat on top of it, and an additional cardboard square with an arrow pointing towards the cliff face and the (I guess ) the woodlands above.
Can anybody tell me if they ever recall seeing stuff like this? It was so unnerving and sketchy, we still bring it up once in awhile. Thanks to anyone who can shed light on this, or recalls seeing either sign!

I've been a near 50 year watcher and have gone back through youtube and seen the show from the beginning, watching every episode available. I stopped watching it about a year ago, maybe a bit longer than that. It started going downhill when there would be more staff than punters in the Rovers and I was so sickened by the white supremacist storyline that I would ffwd through those scenes and stopped watching not long after. Now that they have basically destroyed the show and Toyah's character with this absolutely fake stillbirth after the SA story I will not be going back. I always said, and my family knows this, that I'd never stop watching Corrie. It's been the only show I watched for years, I don't watch anything else. But I'm done. That they would go back and blatantly change history like this is giving the middle finger to long time viewers and destroying the characters and the decades of show development. I'm done, there isn't anything they could do to get me back. I'm not just some middle aged viewer either, there are my kids who have watched over the years and they stopped when I stopped. I'm not sure who they are gearing these new stories to but I don't see them successfully bringing in a new generation of viewers to keep the show going. They have ruined it, it is nothing like it was when it was created, not even like it was 5 years ago. We had stories about the factory girls making a stray cat a union member so Mike Baldwin couldn't take it to the pound, and Stan and Eddie trying to get a "3 piece set" for Hilda, who's never had a stitch of new furniture in her life. Our hearts broke as the building collapsed on Ashley, as Hilda had to go to the corner shop for a phone call and found out Stan had passed away at the hospital, as Judy lay dead in the garden while the twins cried and Gary ran in from the wedding and begged her to wake up. We have watched babies born and grow up on the street to have their own babies. So many of the actors have been on the show for decades, who remembers teenage Kevin and his bushy moustache driving down the street and splashing a girl standing on the curb who turned out to be Sally in a very short skirt. What a way to meet. Or 17 year old Gail's antics with her fun roommate Suzie while they were living at Elsie Tanner's house (now Eileen's house). That these actors are still there decades later is what we love, the continuity, the history, knowing who they are like our own friends, family and neighbours. It connects us to the street and keeps us coming back. But this repeated sensationalism with utterly unreal storylines are driving longtime viewers away and we're not coming back. I'd rather watch nothing than watch this. It's like going to your favourite mom and pop restaurant and finding out it's been turned into a McDonald's.
So have you stopped watching the show?
View Poll

As the title states, I (33 M) f'd up by being a homophobic piece of shit when I was in senior high. Basically there was this new kid who had just moved into town and was now attending my school, in a matter a days news of the kid who i'll call Karl, spread throughout the school of him being gay. 

Now, this school was super religious when it came to stuff like students committing crimes and kids being gay, so when thi though he tried to hide it, it was still pretty obvious.
So one day, my friends and I decided that we were gonna f around and bully the new kid. One of my friends thought it'd be a good idea to make a ketchup bomb, this essentially was a bottle of ketchup that had baking soda added to it and it was then shaken. Then came lunch time, with the bottle of ketchup and a little package of baking soda I sneaked behind Karl and mixed the two components,shook and closed the bottle, well this little prank went south really quickly as the ketchup bomb exploded everywhere and made a loud sound. I, ofcourse got 3 weeks of detention and the other guys who were involved got away scott free.

 Time came for detention and as I walk into the little detention room, guess who's there, Karl of all people. He's just sitting by a window drawing but that was soon cut short as the vice principal who gave the detention led both me and Karl down to the schools basement, there, waiting on us was the school janitor. Without hesitation he handed us cleaning equipment and we were then told that we'd have to clean our schools dirty basement which contained mountains of boxes and old school supplies. Karl and I were left alone and unsupervised for 3 hours to clean the basement. For the entirety of the first hour we workd in silence as we moved and sorted these items,during the second hour he tripped and fell while carrying one of the boxes and i went to help him up. But he swatted my hand away,brushed the cob webs off of himself and got back to work. But not long after, he turned to me and said " you did it because I'm gay? The ketchup bomb, you made it go off all over me just because you don't like that I'm gay." I stared at him not knowing what to say, I had never been confronted about my shenanigans up until this point so the only answer I could give him was "yea, I don't like you f*gs ." I then smirked an continued to look at him. 

He slowly walked towards my, thoungh i was tall he still towered over me. He came extremely close to my face and whispered "I know you like boys too, uh-huh I see how you watch those guys in the locker room after they shower." I was confused and shocked, I never thought anyone had seen me looking at other boys and even if they did, it's not like they'd think anything of it because everyone thought I was straight and so did I.

He was still close to my face after he said this, so I grabbed his face and kissed him. I don't know why, I just felt someway about him in that moment. I then pushed him away and we both stared at each other with a blank expression, then I began to beat him, I was scared that he'd tell someone so I beat him, and pretty bad too. The vice principal heard the commotion and burst in only to see Karl on the ground and me hovering over him. He asked what happened and I replied " he tried to touch me". 

My lie led to Karl being expelled and his family who were the nicest and most calm people packed up and left our little town never to be seen again. I remember seeing Karl in the back seat of their car with his head tilted down as they sped off into the unknown. For the months that followed, I could not stop thinking about the kiss,I began to question if my whole life was a lie and why I was so extremely homophobic.
Grocery store
Fast forward 15 years, here I am married to a man. Crazy right? Well yesterday my husband (33M) who i'll call Matt,and I went grocery shopping and while collecting items he goes off to find some beans. About 7 minutes had past and he hadn't returned so I made my way to the canned goods isle and there I see my husband with the beans in his hand talking to this tall, slender person with long hair who at first, I presumed to be a woman because of their feminine facial structure. So thinking this is one of his friends I slowly approached,extend my hand and smile ready to greet this person, then we locked eyes ...I.could.not.believe.it ... it was Karl. The look on his face went from pure joy to that of a person who had just come face to face with the grim reaper. Karl looked absolutely mortified at the sight of, without saying a word he rest his cart of items on the flood and walked so fast that he nearly sprinted out of the store. I stood there in shock unable to utter a word. " that was strange " said my husband. I didn't reply, I simply pushed the trolley towards the checkout area and then to the car all while maintaining a blank stare and being speechless. Once we got in the car that's where Matt rapid fired rounds of questions at me, he said things like " were you two a couple?" , " did he bully you as a child or something?" Well this question made me break down in tears and I explained " No, no you've got it wrong, I was the bully." I cried so hard that I began to gasp for air, Matt tried to call me down but the only thing that worked ways be pulling over and getting out of the car. When I had finally calmed down about 15 minutes later, I explained to Matt how I was the bully, how i beat Karl after I kissed him and lied on him which resulted in him moving out of the town. The same mortified expression adorned Matt's face, he was in disbelief at what I had just said because he had also been bullied terribly in high school. We got back in the car and continued our drive in silence, it's been a day and things still seem weird between matt and i.
TL;DR- I was homophobic in high-school and ended up beating a gay kid who my husband ran into later in life

There are several specific form of art, such as caricature, comedy, grotesque, joke, etc - that discourage pathological behaviours by making fun of them.
Unfortunately, the recent prevalence of the "showing = promoting" attitude threatens such forms of art - for example, pieces of art that show a protagonist fighting racism and depict the racism with extreme attention of detail are blamed for "being racist".
I guess that's the today's youth - people who haven't experienced what was happening in the 20th century, when it was posts making fun of the Jewish people that spread the antisemitism, which eventually resulted in WW2. If those posts were met with this "showing = promoting" attitude, they would be seen as promoting Judaism.
If the "show positivity only" trend continues, people will forget about the negative stuff, and become vulnerable to it, making content similar to those XX antisemitic posts effective again.
​
I guess history is cyclical in nature, so some things are unavoidable, but I'd say it's best to educate young people about history, including the historical art, to make them more aware and to reduce the impact of history repeating itself.