Compelling Characters: Character Analysis With Cartoons to Boot

Feeling Down? Well, if You're in the UK That Makes Sense: The UK Mental Wellbeing Ranking Has Fallen!  Well isn't this a cheery post? 5 min read   Let's face it, life here in the UK isn't always sunshine and beer gardens. A recent study ranked us second to last in terms of mental wellbeing—ahhh! But before you book a one-way ticket to Benedorm, there's more to this...  The Telegraph points to a few possible culprits we could blame for these collective blues. One big finger points to the internet and social media  with its constant barrage of negativity and unrealistic portrayals of perfection. It aided the economic woes that put retail mostly online, providing many thriving towns into empty building projects and charity shop high streets! That's before we even get into culture wars, and wokism. It looks like we're turning more stupid !  A national  digitised national echo chamber, teeming with  screen addicts, who, on average, now spend less ti...

Should We Replace the Collective Term 'Personality Disorder' With Something Less Harsh?  7 min read Years ago, when I was a student mental health nurse, I wrote an article for an NHS magazine called Mental Health Practice. It was an opinion piece, reflecting on how careful we should be when labelling a condition as a personality disorder, because, the meaning carries connotations directed at ones sense of identity. It is counter-intuitive given how invalidation itself significantly impacts on people living with these diagnoses. The name of this condition acts like an ongoing trigger of the condition: We can, for example, argue, that borderline personality disorder, alone, is infact, confining a person to their disorder. When a trained psychiatrist labels someone, and, someone who (like everyone) will have their own personality, will feel an unkind impact. Immediately, upon diagnosis, their personality is sort of stamped 'out of order,' you could expect a person ...

The Great TikTok Tizwas: Banishing Byte-Sized Videos 6 min read Remember that plastic charm bracelet fad? Every kid wanted one of those overly priced rainbow looms, which they used to weave plastic rubber bands into constructs, shaping almost anything. I saw teddy bears that looked inbred, as well as Winnie the Pooh, puppy dogs and Mickey Mouse, more often than not, they had the same intrafamilial qualities. My kids would've stabbed me in my sleep if I got rid of their creations! Well, the latest homogenous trend, TikTok, is facing banishment. Most of this blog, is based on my opinion, informed only by biased news channels, but I will say, it's so unfair for TikTok users; because they're forced to consider what could happen to their content, followers and income. I think the US Government clearly want the app to make line dancing videos and we Brits want it because we have bugger all else . It seems they put some news out to test the waters, see who'll kick-off ...

Are We Really Bringing Back Woolly Mammoths? Why?  3 to 4 min read Brace yourself if you're a science nerd! I want to take you into a crazy world with resurrected woolly mammoths!! Forget how Richard Attenbourough genetically tweeked those velociraptors; this is a real life prehistoric furry elephant! Today, our actual boffins (that's British for scientists) are trying to un-extinct them. Mind you, do bare in mind, this isn't Hollywood with instant results.  Companies such as Colossal Biosciences have a fancy tool called CRISPR (think 'crisper,' not 'cheese and onion') that they use to edit the DNA of Asian elephants, the closest living relatives to the mammoths. Don't you think it's reminiscent of Jurasic park scientists combining frog and dinosaur DNA?  It sounds simple, right? Wrong. Imagine piecing together a recipe from an old vellum manuscript, buried for 2500 years in a giant ice cube. A mammoth task and a potential recipe for disaster...

The Charm of the Chatbot: is it a Sapiosexual Thing?  5 to 7 min read We've all heard the stories: someone develops a deep emotional connection with something strange like a car, an inflatable human, but today, it can be a chatbot. At least with a chatbot they tap into a fundamental human need—connection. One man from Carolina married his AI, well sorta, it's not legal, so he concocted a makeshift gesture to express his commitment. To be fair these perceived relations can't centre around any seduction from the AI's own desire. It is hard to imagine being chatted up by Bing, after innocently prompting it for an explanation as to what Meatloaf could not precisely 'do' in that bloody song. The real seductive power is the user himself, endeared by the enduring service and patience of a machine. The chatbot reflects our interests back to us in a way to satisfy us. How do sapiosexuals fare here? Please drop me a comment if you know if they fall for intelligent mac...

Religious Moral Inconsistency 7 to 8min read Mitigation for religious crime Traditional faith does provide laws that people are expected to abide by, but there is hypocrisy. For example, such as when the Danish Christian converts who, as Vikings continued to rape, pillage and loot England, a Christian country. Look, if Sweyn Forkbeard believed God commanded him to milk the country of its silver, who can argue otherwise, considering God works in mysterious ways? Olaf Tryggerson hardly blessed the villagers to death, but if he, as a Christian, claimed to hear god telling him to raid, well why not? We see religious inconsistency. The Christians honour Abraham, the biblical character who prepared to murder his son Isaac after hearing God command him. Today, however, no Tom, Dick or Harry who spouses a divine command for their illegal behaviour faces a spiritually imbued pardon in court. In all fairness Tom or his two friends, could commit crime and appeal to similar scenarios mirr...

The Black Country Character Are Regional Identities Realistic? 10 min read I was raised in the Black Country, a region in the West Midlands of England, known for its industrial heritage and its unique dialect. A dialect in which Anglo-Saxon and Middle English are still evident in both vocabulary and grammar. Place names like Dudd (Dudley), Wulferehamtun (Wolverhampton) and Craegleah (Cradley Heath) show Germanic influence.  In the Black Country museum and many local history books, the people of the Black Country are celebrated for their strong work ethic, community spirit, and their sense of humour. Most television broadcasts and YouTube videos portray Black Country folk as being proud of their hard industrious heritage, as if they were descendants of Tubal Cain like D.R Guttery once shared in the historical accounts of his book, ‘The Great Civil War in Midland Parishes’. My Grandfather even appears in a photograph in one book about Lye, another Black Country town, while a ...

What's an Archetypal 'Modern Occultist'?  10 min read Have you ever wondered what occultists look like these days?  In reality, if you're writing a book, it would be cool to make your modern occultist someone different to the pale skinned moody satanic goth. Honestly, enthusiasts of the esoteric are a diverse bunch, many of them come across as regular people. Isn't it all weird and dark?  Agreed  ceremonial rituals and things like divination with presences might seem odd, but the less  grand stuff like sigil magick; which, for instance, the comic book legend, Grant Morrison practices as a Chaos Practitioner is most common. Chaos Magick is a late twentieth century movement based on the occult works of the artist Austin Osman Spare. Another common type of magick is found in Wicca and Eclectic or folk magick. In this blog, I'll share a worldview of someone called Baz, a bit of mystical bloke inspired by Hermeticism and Chaos Magick theory.  Pre-deter...