#<- this progression cracks me up. pathologic.............3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[meirimerens]

it's been a while I carry still

I do believe I always will

inside and out something that happened, or that might have happened, or that I dreamt, or that was dreamt to me, or that was dreamt of me, or that was torn from the page, or that will happen in another story

[cheri-translates]

[CN] Season 2 Summary (Volume 3: Ch 6 - 9)

🍒 Warning: Detailed spoilers from S2 🍒

Along with the update on 3 June 2021, the CN server released a “Plot Review” which contains bullet-point summaries of S2 :>

Volume 2 Summary: here

You and Shaw are in the middle of the railway tracks. Watching as the train gets closer and closer, Shaw shields you, leaving the tracks

All of a sudden, two more people make an entrance. Shaw hides you, then confronts the two of them by himself. They appear to be investigating something. It’s a pity that before they can ask about anything, the entire passage collapses abruptly

Fortunately, Shaw brings you out safely. The misunderstanding between the both of you is cleared up

With your deliberately designed “trick” during the conversation, Shaw tells you that he came here to investigate a historical ruins. Since you’re also investigating it, you hope that Shaw can share and exchange resources

“Fine, I promise you.”

You head to the Black Swan building to attend a board meeting. During the meeting, the members of the organisation once again use the “Small Syringes” incident to criticise you. The BOSS, Victor, doesn’t say a word

“Without my permission, you’re not allowed to do investigations in private.”

Knowing that Victor is worried about your safety, inexplicable emotions occupy your heart

Afterwards, you realise that Victor met with a second shooting incident at the roof of LFG last week! Very quickly, you discover that the weapons were purchased by Gray Rhino. But these overt clues seem to be part of a scheme, making you recall the Evolver assassination incidents from before

In the evening, you’re held under duress by Set, an ex-member of Black Swan. He is seeking to find experimental records related to CORE from 17 years ago

According to information he somehow acquired from Gray Rhino, these records will appear in an auction this evening. At this moment, Victor appears, and willingly follows along

At the venue of the auction, the surroundings suddenly turn pitch-black following a loud cracking sound. In the chaos, you decide to seize this opportunity to search for that document. Unexpectedly, someone got to it first. Based on the memories you read, the document should have been entrusted to a bank, and placed in a safe vault

However, when the safe is opened up, there’s nothing inside. It turns out that this incident was a trap

Pretending to have the documents, you plan to flee with Victor while tossing them to Set. However, Victor brings you to a lift in the depths of the safe vault. What’s above is actually a building of a bank

In a small room, Victor stands before the window, looking at the quiet and pitch-black street. For now, the both of you are safe

“We need to find a way to leave.”

Victor heads outside. While you’re pondering over the incident in the room alone, the surveillance monitor outside the door shows that someone’s coming. After a moment of contemplation, you leap off the balcony, planning to use the balcony underneath the window as a buffer

While falling, you can feel time pausing for an instant

Because Victor was worried about your safety, he used his Evol

The car meant for the evacuation has been prepared. After having a change of clothes, Victor takes you out of this place. Perhaps furious at how you acted presumptuously without considering your own safety, Victor remains silent during the journey

You understand that he’s worried about you, and try to show that you’ve reflected upon yourself

“At all times, you have to take care of yourself for me.”

In the Black Swan building, the two of you analyse that the dangers from yesterday seemed to be a test. Victor gives you a document - in the capacity of a punter, he has entered the Hunter Game

His trust, a sense of security, and the motivation to get things done - you know that these are things Victor has given to you

"All you have to focus on is taking large strides and continue running forward.”

After parting ways with Victor, you return to your usual work

“Miracle Finder” has been receiving extensive attention recently due to the past spate of incidents

You discover that Lucien has expressed his support for the show on the internet

After expressing your gratitude to Lucien, you invite him to a hospital which exclusively admits Evolvers for treatments. There, you interview people who have used the “Small Syringes”, gathering materials for a show

In the middle of an interview, the director of the hospital tells the both of you that a few Evolvers who used the “Small Syringes” experienced pathological changes. However, Lucien points out that the pathological changes may not have a causal relation with the “Small Syringes”

You and Lucien delve further into the topic of Evol. When the topic of Evol and evolution crops up, he invites you to attend an external class he’s conducting at a museum which has “evolution” as its theme

The next day, you head there as agreed

While having a look around, Lucien engages his students in a scientific debate related to “evolution” and “sacrifice”

His thoughts have never changed. However, your way of thinking has changed from before, back when you had no idea about anything

You notice that there’s a stone tablet in the museum with the symbol “8″ engraved on it

“The beginning and ending of a civilisation is akin to this symbol - its start and end are linked together.”

After sending the students back on the bus, you and Lucien take a stroll along the seaside. All of a sudden, you hear an inexplicable electronic sound announcing that the both of you are currently in the Hunter Game

While discussing with Lucien whether the game could be an imitation of the experiment from 17 years ago, you ask him to hide in a police box that you can “see”. At this moment, you suddenly find yourself falling back into the museum from earlier. But when you take a careful look, the surroundings turn into a patch of empty space

Only now do you realise that everything you “saw” earlier could have been an illusion

On the other side, Lucien never actually saw that police box you mentioned. Right now, he can see that you’re in an open and spacious room, feeling around the walls

Lucien realises that there seems to be a glass separating the both of you. Neither of you can hear the other party

Lucien places his hand on the glass. At this moment, you happen to press your hand there too, covering his palm which is separated by the glass

“Why... why exactly are you...”

You finally locate the “hidden button” separating illusion from reality, leaving this strange space and joining Lucien

The abrupt electronic sound rings again. Before you, the scene instantly morphs into an abandoned building. Other players chase after the both of you, engaging in close combat

You and Lucien discuss your current situations in the game, and how to escape

“We have a simpler way.”

Making use of the folding space, Lucien instantly brings you back to the seaside during the stroll earlier

You ask Lucien if he believes that the world can go backwards while making forward progress

Lucien says that if civilisation exists in a cycle, it is possible for the world to reflect the past. But the further one walks forward, the more opportunities one has to seize one’s own destiny

“Being able to persist in your dreams is already very good.”

A few days later, Shaw takes you to the antique store to exchange leads as promised

“Returning to the main point, get that painted scroll, and be gentle.”

Faced with your series of questions, Shaw says that these symbols are merely totems. No one knows what’s within the ruins, and wanting to get in poses great difficulty

While speaking, a man clothed in black barges in, demanding leads from Shaw

Naturally unwilling to give in obediently, Shaw and the man are embroiled in a fight. In order to assist Shaw, you work together with him. By overturning a gigantic water jar, the water guides the electricity, successfully striking the man clothed in black

Not wanting the man to leave, Shaw sends you away in a hurry

“I’m tired. I’ll leave the investigation to you.”

Behind you, a wounded Shaw sits in the antique store by himself, his body temperature abnormally high

You and Savin are at the airport to pick Kiro up from his overseas trip where he “took a breather”. In actual fact, his location was unknown. While you’re feeling uneasy, and didn’t expect him to actually appear

When you and Kiro return to the rehearsal room, he quickly pulls you into an embrace

You repeatedly ask Kiro why he had to remain in the arena the last time, what happened afterwards, and why he had to hide it from you

“But when you’re with me, I always can’t help but worry about you, and hope you can be as far away from this place as possible.”

You suddenly receive an anonymous phone call which tells you to put a stop to today’s news conference. However, you ignore it

When the event is about to begin, Savin can’t be found. While you’re feeling confused, you and Kiro receive a disjointed call from him. Locating his position, the two of you realise that he’s on an empty train which should have ceased operations, but is moving forward

Ah Liu, who has the ability to transfer objects, sends you and Kiro onto the train to find Savin. Aside from that, you spot a youth

This youth is called Xiao Nan, and he has an Evol related to magnetic fields. He’s the one who made the train move, and plans to cause the train to go off the rails, crashing into the civilians who have gathered to attend Kiro’s conference for his new song. He had warned you about cancelling the conference, but you had failed to note just how critical the situation was back then

Through sieving through Xiao Nan’s memories, you discover that Gray Rhino had instigated him into doing work for the organisation as he was bullied and humiliated since young for having Evol

The youth wants to leave this extreme organisation, but he’s afraid because he has done wrong things. Kiro reassures him by talking about his own experiences in youth, which are similar to Xiao Nan’s. He also tells the youth that he has to face his difficulties with courage, and find his place in the world

The youth is finally swayed, and he does his best to stop the train

Unfortunately, the train continues to travel due to inertia. Kiro tells you to leave first and evacuate the crowd in the plaza. Meanwhile, he will stay behind to think of a way to stop the train

In order to draw the crowd away, you change into a teddy bear mascot costume, announcing that this is one phase of Kiro’s announcement of his new song

The fans are successfully drawn away, but you end up being chased by them. When you’re at your wit’s end, someone suddenly grabs your hand. He removes your headgear - it’s Kiro

“Not a minute or second late. I’m punctual for the appointment.”

Kiro brings you through small corners to leave the crowd, then returns to the stage at the conference, bringing the event to a perfect end

During the celebratory banquet, Kiro sees that you have a worried expression on your face. He reassures you earnestly that as long as you’re by his side, he’s happy

The night grows dark, and a dash of silver flashes on the roof of the Black Swan building - it’s Helios

He appears to be talking to someone

I’m not helping you to do anything. You have no right to give me orders.

Not long after you leave the building, Helios hops back in, and he sees the experiment report you left behind

“I command the both of you - forget everything that happened earlier.”

You receive a call from Gavin - he needs your help

In the STF, Gavin mentions that he has a unique witness, and he needs the help of your Evol to read his memories

It turns out that someone was shot at the train station, and the witness happens to be an elderly man who is blind. You do your best, concentrating to sense what you can. Unfortunately, you aren’t of much help

While Gavin sends you back, the both of you pass by a stall. You make the impulsive decision to pull him along to play a shooting game

While leaving, the sky suddenly begins to pour. Gavin removes his jacket and covers the roof of your heads

“Let’s go. The journey isn’t long. I’ll send you home.”

You suddenly recall that in high school, Gavin coursed through the curtain of rain just like this. Everything seems to a certain miraculous overlap

Not long after, another Evolver dies an unnatural death, and you realise that the victim is Xiao Nan

Faced with the death of this youth, you’re unwilling to sit by and do nothing. While investigating the scene of the crime, you spot a suspicious man. Chasing after him, you arrive at an unfinished building. Unexpectedly, you meet Gavin in the building

You explain why you've appeared in the building to Gavin, and he tells you that he’s currently on a mission, and suggests that the both of you look around for leads

“Right now, staying by my side is the safest.”

When you step on a protruding object, a gigantic explosion causes the ground to turn into an artificial precipice. The man who lured you here reveals himself

During this confrontation, the ceiling above you explodes and collapses. It seems that this was a trap to lure the STF over

You toss out a mini flash bomb, then pull Gavin along to escape. After conjecturing that there are many automatic explosives in this building, Gavin holds onto you, using his Evol to send the both of you to the 30th floor

After finding the main device and wanting to dismantle it, the man appears again, lifting his gun and taking aim at the device

The man is extremely enraged with the STF, as though the STF has concealed an important truth

You confront the man while Gavin focuses on dismantling the device. At a crucial point, you shoot the man in the lower leg to stop him from taking action. As expected, Gavin successfully dismantles the device

“Only when you're alive can you find the truth that you seek.”

Likely moved by Gavin’s determination, the man chooses to trust Gavin, and asks him about something before he leaves

You and Gavin finally leave the building. He carries you as he flies into the city. Feeling his warmth, you feel incomparably at ease

Right after reaching the ground, a young man dressed in uniform requests for you to cooperate with him in an investigation, as you’ve become a suspect for the Evolver assassination incidents. He also provides evidence that are stacked against you

Even though all the evidence is unfavourable to you, Gavin says that he will investigate the truth of the case, and will definitely protect you

“Regardless of position, I’ll never let you get caught up in danger.”

Volume 4 (Ch 10 - 13): here

More S2 content: here

A detailed translation of Gavin’s part is available here! 

[pass-the-bechdel]

The Good Place season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

49.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twelve of the thirteen; seven of those are 50%+, and two of those are over 60%

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Eight who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and three who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Eleven who appeared in more than one episode, three who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Solid; the nature of the show is such that they really need to be making a concerted effort to reflect positive, progressive morality, and as such faults in the content would also almost certainly be considered faults in the show itself (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent! It’s a wonderful ride, whether it’s your first time through or not. Just delightful.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

So, let’s talk about plot twists. In the current entertainment landscape, it seems like everyone is intent upon ‘subverting expectations’, and the good old-fashioned plot twist is very much swept up in that, since a subversion is almost always going to play as a ‘twist’ by definition. The unfortunate thing about this current landscape is that it’s rife with ‘subversive twists’ which are really just bad storytelling; they’re only there because of some pathological fear of predictability, or worse, because the creative minds just want to feel cleverer than their audiences by delivering content that no-one saw coming, serving their own egos at the expense of coherent narratives. If your ‘twist’ is about your own (supposed) intelligence, if you’re baiting the audience by playing into a common trope and then laughing at them for thinking you meant it, if you’re changing the story out of nowhere just for shock value without bothering to build toward the twist because you’re too afraid that someone might figure it out before the reveal...that’s not a real twist. It’s not even a real subversion, it’s just a bad-faith gimmick. It’s not there for the story at all, it’s there to make the writer feel special, because apparently feeling special for delivering quality storytelling isn’t good enough anymore. A proper, genuine plot twist should:

1. make sense in the context of the narrative (it should not be tonally dissonant or jump the tracks into a different genre)

2. make sense with the content of the narrative (it may recontextualise previous events or character choices, but it does not contradict or ignore them in order to function)

3. be foreshadowed (if it comes out of nowhere, that’s not a twist, it’s a random event. It’s a deus ex machina. There’s no story in it if it isn’t built into the fabric of the narrative)

4. ultimately further the storytelling (if it has no consequences for plot or character, it’s a shock-value gimmick, not a real twist).

The above points do not guarantee that a twist will be good storytelling and not just a subversive contrivance for the fuck of it, but they should at least ensure some logical cohesion and protect the integrity of the plot instead of sacrificing it in the name of empty surprise. That covered, it’s easy to see how – even (or perhaps, especially) in this twist-saturated tv landscape we currently inhabit – the big twist for season one of The Good Place still manages to be – in technical parlance – dope. The writing protects the twist not by being ‘too clever’; it simply offers a decoy issue to drive the plot. Eleanor is a Good Place fraud; that’s the first twist in the plot, and it compels the entire season forward. Other twists - Jason’s reveal, Eleanor’s confession, the introduction of the ‘real’ Eleanor - set the stage for this being A Show That Has Twists, but in a way that makes so much contextual sense that it doesn’t set us up to be looking for the next one (a common problem for those shows that rely on ‘cleverer than the audience’ twists - they’ve set themselves up as mysteries for the audience to unravel, and then they kill their own storytelling as they twist in knots trying to keep ahead of millions of intelligent viewers). The Good Place actually tells us outright that something is wrong with this supposed ‘happy afterlife’, it just fools us into thinking that we already know what’s wrong, so that we don’t see the signs of the truth for what they are. Crucially, however, it doesn’t matter if you figure it out before Eleanor does. You can have your suspicions (or have had the show spoiled for you in advance), and you can still appreciate and enjoy it as it unfolds, you can pick up the clues and have a good time with them, and that’s something that all of those gimmicky-subversion plots out there are missing. Their ‘twists’ are not proper functioning pieces of the narrative, and so the story doesn’t work if you already know the reveal; there’s no juicy build-up to enjoy, or worse, you expose your own illogical contrivances or outright plot holes that were created in the course of writing a crappy twist just to feel relevant. The Good Place works because - like any good story - it isn’t about the twist. It’s about the journey.

An important part of what makes the twist work also is that it interweaves the sins of Tahani and Chidi with the discissions of morality without drawing too much attention to them; if all four humans had simply been frauds, it would have been narratively empty, especially if the reveals were coming late in the piece. Jason’s works because it comes out early, and because the Jianyu cover is interesting and distinctly different both to Eleanor’s ploy and to the behaviour of the rest of the neighbourhood, but if the others had turned in the same way it would have been too contrived, too easy, and it would toss out the personalities we had gotten used to (which would violate Good Twist point #2). Since the show DOES pull that trick with Michael (which works because he’s the architect of the whole situation, not a pawn within it), it’s essential that they’re more subtle with Tahani and Chidi’s reasons for being where they are, and in playing it as they do they also reinforce the show’s central deliberations on morality. It’s an inspired framework for approaching what are traditionally considered ‘heady’ themes (and y’all know I’m into it), and every decision about how to approach and balance character behaviour is coming from a position of ethical consideration, weighing not only the acts themselves, but how they compare to the moral theory of various different and conflicting philosophies. It just goes to show that you don’t have to make something ponderous and inaccessible in order to have a cerebral conversation through television - you can do it just fine with afterlife comedy.

As I noted above the cut, the nature of the show automatically lends itself to careful consideration of any feminist and/or progressive content, and as such it should keep a pretty clean bill throughout, or risk cracking its own concept. I do wish they would come out stronger on the queer side of things (as I said in the episode posts, they really aren’t vague about the idea that Eleanor is attracted to women, but her saying words about hot women is still not delivering a lot on the representation front, especially when she is known to do more than say words when it comes to dudes, and the only other queer content we get is the fact that Gunnar and Antonio are soulmates, and that doesn’t technically mean they’re romantically or sexually involved (especially since they’re fakes anyway, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing)). In the mean time though, we have a female lead, 100% on the Bechdel and an essentially balanced number of male and female characters abounding, plus some really nice variety in racial backgrounds (and great names to go along with those - it’s a bit of a peeve of mine usually when show’s include multicultural characters but land everyone with Anglicised or ‘white-friendly’ names. Let the Bambadjans of the world keep their names). We’ve taken a clear stance on even ‘benign’ sexism (i.e. the stuff that’s just men saying inappropriate things - ‘just a suggestion! just a joke! just trying to get a reaction out of you, why are you so sensitive?’ - it’s all literal demon behaviour here), and I won’t pretend that I’m expecting them to get into the real nitty-gritty, but that’s ok. I’m happy to have something which is making a point of not being problematic, because such refuges have real value. So, maybe there won’t be a lot for me to tease apart as the show progresses, but that’s not a bad thing. At the moment, we have green lights across the board, and that’s a hard thing to find. I’m going with it, and we’ll see where we end up. 

[bayern-moni]

Ship Asks: El Cid x Mine

Author's little den: This is dedicated to @lamaquego that 4 months and 10 days ago asked me to write for her a fanfiction about these two characters and how their "love story" would unfold in a less unforgiving AU than canon. I have to say sorry to you because I'm not able to fulfill that promise, I tried but in this period just can't bring myself to write anything more than these posts, which are a sort of relief for me. So, this is for you, in exchange for that fanfiction that, like that love story, never was. I really hope you can like it 😁

For all the others who just read this post, enjoy it and spread word of this nice ship 👍

*

(AU: Mine lives after the Gaiden's events)

*

How would they describe each other to loved ones who haven’t met their partner yet?

El Cid: "She was a friend a long time ago. No, perhaps it was more than that. She was my favorite rival" (To Lacaille). Apart from that, don't be fooled by her elegant appearance, she was and still is an incorrigible pest.

Mine: The most stubborn man I have ever met! Although he seems quite intimidating at first sight with his sharp looks, he's quite funny to poke fun at. It was one of the few past times I had back then when the three of us lived together in that forest house.

(Don't trust if he says mean things about me, it's only envy)

How do they let their loved ones know they are dating?

They don't. Nobody cared if these two were comfortable enough to convey the news, because their "loved ones" just knew. Felser had called it since the very beginning and I mean it. Little Sasha had started sparkling with joy and didn't shut up about it for days, always trying (and failing) to stalk the couple. She was too happy that El Cid finally decided to have a life. Sisyphus became insufferable for the same reasons. Instead, the others never suspected anything: the doubt about capricorn having feelings at all was like a huge ham over their eyes.

Who still blushes when their partner compliments them?

You'd never guess it ;)

Who is most likely to check how their day is going?

When they were little kids training to reach the perfect blade, each in their own way, both often happened to forget about things like time etc... So the one that made sure nobody fainted from exhaustion was Felser. Then, growing up, the situation stayed the same got a little better. Now, Mine worked consistently less than him having left behind the obsession her dream had turned to, now she worked as sword-maker/sharpener in Rodorio -sometimes she even gave lessons to Lacaille-, but surprisingly El Cid is the one writing her more often asking for things like how the day at work is going, or just to hearing her complain about her clients. Mine writes more about the lines of "Did you remember to sleep this week between the trainings, you Spanish stakhanovite?"

(ok, the anachronism is necessary here)

Who gets jealous easiest?

None of them.

Who is the happy morning person and who is grumpy and just wants to go back to bed?

Starting from the fact that a "happy morning person" is more than not an aberration of nature (Kardia's words), the answer is that both are the grumpy type of morning people. Both Mine and El Cid are used to wake up to go and train at the crack of dawn since they were kids, but it doesn't mean they are happy about it. She is the one who complains loudly about it, but go ask Dohko what happens if he practices his new instrument at the early hours of the day. If you dare, I mean.

Who takes the longest to get ready and who is the most tidy and organised

Both are most tidy and organized, but El Cid reached a pathological level at it.

What annoys them the most about their partner? Would they change it if they could?

Mine is annoyed by his self destructive training schedule because she sees it is eating at him and plus they rarely get to spend a lot of time with each other because of it, but differently from Sysyphus and the others she does understand his motives and drive to become the holy blade himself. She literally consumed her whole soul for a similar goal, after all. She wouldn't change anything, though. Not even his emotional constipation.

El Cid could list a very long list of pranks that annoyed him. But nothing about her specifically. Only the fact that she let herself corrupt her noble dream in a demonic obsession. But he does not put it against her. It wasn't her fault, after all, she didn't want it, it just happened.

Who likes seeing the other wearing their t-shirt?

First of all, they don't even know what a t-shirt is. Secondly, she mostly wears women' kimonos (and quite revealing, now that we're at it), so I don't think it's a great mystery why they don't possibly exchange their clothes. Even if once Mine tried to bribe him during a bet, obviously, he vehemently refused and nothing could be done about it. Mine, instead, just doesn't like shirts.

Who plays pranks on the other?

Once, Mine used to sing in the shower with a very awfully shrieking voice with the sole goal of annoying his partner, who just happened to be a very light sleeper at the 3 am. Then, they were reported to the local police and she reluctantly stopped much to his relief.

Who says ‘I love you’ first?

El Cid. The trauma of seeing her revived as Phobetor's illusion and being forced to fight her to death broke every ounce of restraint left. As soon as they found each other again (because it's my AU and I can), that was the first thing he said. He couldn't take other blows on his too fragile heart. Risking waiting too much until she'd slip from his grasp again was out of question. By the way, he almost canonically said it in the end of the Gaiden so it's not too farfetched. She obviously understood this urgency and was delighted to declare that now they could really love and care for each other openly. In a real relationship. Then, she demanded a date, but this is another story.

Their reaction to the other beating them at something

Mine beats him at something: She gloats for the rest of the month, he's extremely annoyed and his pride battered, but he refuses to show it externally. If someone pokes him for it, though, he's met with a truly icy glare.

El Cid beats her at something: He looks like it couldn't go otherwise, Mine screams at him for a hour because he supposedly had cheated and then plans her revenge with Sasha. Because she embodies fair play.

Their favourite activity to do together

Talking about their shared dream and challenge each other at who reached the best results and showing their progresses.

The song that describes them the best

The Calling - Wherever you will go

Which one is most likely to get arrested?

Mine, definitely.

Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror?

He's too mature for these things, she'd instead rather use more refined method of writing. Like a good old note written in bloodlike tomato sauce saying "Remember to go to the grocery store", or something like that, to make him have a heart attack in the morning. She says it wakes you up like nothing else. He just see them with a raised eyebrow.

One headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart

Reality

One headcanon about this OTP that mends it (or the plot of the fanfiction I should've written but couldn't)

Mine doesn't disappear when Phobetor is defeated and the mirage of Catalania turns out to be just that, an illusion. Instead, she finds herself to have been really revived by the dream god's power, much to both her and his breathtaking happiness. It's something none of them even dared to dream, the possibility of having a future, even if the prospect of the Holy War still stood as a Damocles's blade on their neck. Lacaille just becomes their self-proclaimed adopted son, no matter how much El Cid protested that it was ridiculous (she supported him, btw). They arrive at the Sanctuary where she is immediately welcomed with a mix of curiosity and respect by most of its saints. Curiosity because nobody ever saw a Japanese woman and she not even was a saint. Respect because nobody in their right mind had ever imagined El Cid of all people bring a woman between them, so she had to be really special. However, she is friendly with everyone and soon becomes friend of Sysyphus (their favorite topic of complain about El Cid's habits) and then, the little Sasha when she was brought there a couple of years later. The girl was delighted to be with another woman, just like she was with Calbera. After the war, El Cid survives, always because I can, but he's affected in daily life by the loss of his dominant arm and just doubles his training schedule for making up to his handicap, although Mine herself often berates him for it worried about him. Sasha is deeply saddened to see his inability to adjust to a life that doesn't involve war and death and orders to both of them to go and live their lives together in any place they want, like free and ordinary people who deserve to live happily after all they were put through. Like she did with Yuzuriha and Yato in Jamir. Both understood it and tried to do their best to fulfill the goddess's wish, even if life isn't always without problems. They did manage to get a happy life together and that's what is important.

Asks weird questions in the middle of the night

Sysyphus. If it were a modern AU, he'd be the typical insecure friend who phones you at ungodly hours of the night to ask you advice about his problems. And El Cid would be the friend who at first would answer it (because it could be something important) and then leaving the phone in the fridge until the call expires. Mine just would be amused at their antics and frustrated her sleep was interrupted.

Who can't keep their hands to themselves?

Phantaso

What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

Ask Felser if you really want to know. It's your only hope, because their lips are sealed shut on mutual accord.

First impression of each other? Was it love at first sight?

Absolutely not (they both nod). When they first met they had a strange impression of each other, like the other was an alien, staring with a confusingly fascinated air that made Felser to chuckle, amused.

She was a Japanese little girl, so lithe and short that made people doubt she was that age, with strange red eyes that he had never seen before (he'd see them again only when Tenma'll cross his way). But after the initial surprise, he descovered she was a mischievous little pest, who loved getting him exasperated only for the satisfaction of snatching a reaction out of him, with the complicity of the oldest of them. But her dedication to her work as a sword sharpener was truly something to look up to. He really believed she'd manage to create the perfect blade infusing her soul in it, like he was trying to do to his body.

To her, instead, he had seemed like a little crow. A scrawny vampire-like-pallid kid with eyes too sharp and old for his age, too responsible and silent, the perspective of spending years training together seemed boring at the time. But his accent was funny, like he tried very hard to get rid of it and learning their common language, just the way she did with hers (in the meanwhile it was Felser who translated for them). As it was his grumpiness in the morning or the fact he was so unused to gentleness that the moment he received a good word or gesture immediately clung to it like a lifeline. But still, he was too rigid, even for her who was the same. A perfect Nagagire who needed her to enliven his brutal training sessions. After all, she's sure the best holy sword would be hers, but who says she can't have some fun in the process?

No, it definitely wasn't love at first sight. But despite the beginning, they gradually recognized in each other such a determination, a desire to go beyond their maximum limit, the same burning, inextinguishable, complementary dream both lived to fulfill (together, possibly) that attracted them like a magnet. The very Catalania was the tangible proof of that.

Does their work ever interfere with the relationship?

Read: Why do they need to have a serious chat?

[sextonsharpwinhalstead]

Ships: Could They? Would They? Should They? Part 2

So, the last time I did this I said that the sky was the limit and I meant it! (LOL) Also there are a few ships that I know are rare (my beloved rare-pairs) that weren’t even hinted at; as well as some obvious ageism issues and exclusion of cast members so here we are with Part 2. Also, I’ve taken liberties of developing each one with bits and pieces of canon and fanon.

*Side Note*

I don’t expect this to be as popular as the other; mostly because these characters aren’t as popular in the Tumblr Fandom.

April Sexton/ Natalie Manning

Ship Name: Mexton

Why They work: Both Nat and April have a great balance of hard work, drive, and compassion for their patients. They are both strong, inspirational, and have been disappointed or heartbroken in different ways by the men they have let into their love lives. April’s nurturing side would be great with Owen, and Natalie could step up in a stronger personality role for April who is often backed into a corner or allows herself to be taken advantage of. Dates would consist of breakfast in bed, gushy text messages, and Natalie serenading April with her violin.

Why They Won’t: The show was really awful about using their friendship to boost Natalie’s needs and if we went off of that then Natalie would be horribly not-supportive when April is going through hard times. April is a catholic Afro-Latina and from a pretty strict upbringing, being out wouldn’t be easy in those worlds. Also, I honestly think if April were to get into a femme relationship with anyone it’d be with Sarah.

Natalie Manning/ Sarah Reese

Ship Name: Meese

Why They Work: The episode when Natalie and Ethan removed a prototype from the little body-hackers stomach opened the nerdy-world of a young Natalie Manning we as an audience were not privy to before. But that girl still exists within in her and it would probably be a draw for nerdy Sarah. I could see them on dates to the Smithsonian, playing the crossword over breakfast in the morning, and playfully arguing over peer-reviewed medical journals. They’d borrow each other’s scrubs and Natalie would quiz Sarah on her boards; and missed questions would mean Sarah would be doing the laundry. Sarah would be in awe of seeing a classically trained violinist whose back-up was being a doctor and Natalie would easily bond with the prissier parts of Sarah’s personality. However…

Why They Won’t: Canonically, Sarah made it clear that she does not want children and Owen (although rarely seen or spoken about since season 1) is very much a part of Natalie’s’ life; it’s a deal breaker folks.

Sharon Goodwin/ Daniel Charles

Ship Name: Choodwin

Why They Work: Meticulous, wise, funny, and successful these two have always put their careers first (even to the detriment of their personal lives). When they talk you are for sure there is a story accompanied with their advice/musings. I could see late night coffee dates where they slowly disclose little surprising pieces of their history, maybe Sharon worked as a casino showgirl to pay for school and Daniel performed his own experiments with psychedelic medicine made popular in the 60’s (on himself). They have a friendship that slowly turns into something more and they don’t feel the need to label it; they just let it be. This is the mature, relationship goals, we all want and the peace that healthy drama-free love actually is.

Why They Won’t: There is a reason Daniel has been married 3 times and none of it seems good. Also, even though the show hasn’t mentioned much of her, Daniel has another daughter (aside from Robin) who Sharon would need to warm up to. Also, if we take into context the age of his daughter; we should ask ourselves how long it’s been since his last divorce and if he is even in a position to date again; Sharon too. I would hate to see some of his baggage and demons hurt Sharon when she’s had her heart broken not once (Bert) but twice (losing her first love to parasites) on the show. In all honesty I could live my entire life not seeing her cry again.

Will Halstead and Sarah Reese

Ship Name: Ralstead

Why They Work: Smarty pants. Everyone on this show is brilliant and has to be especially to be doctors, but there is smart-nerdy side to Will that seeps out in all kinds of episodes; he geeks out over medicine a lot. We have seen Sarah develop into someone who is way more confident in her abilities and willing to challenge the rules a bit more than she was in season one. They could meet on these overlapping personality quirks and interests. There would be dates where they traded off into nerd-world and then into classic fun.

Why They Won’t: Sarah is a lot more progressive socially than Will. I could see her being offended on a regular basis with some of his not so subtle sexist ways. Also, the show hasn’t stated yet but I can see Will being into more traditional life-steps: house, marriage, kids. We know Sarah doesn’t want kids and I wouldn’t be shocked if we found out she wasn’t into marriage either.

 Jeff Clarke/ Ethan Choi

Ship Name: Cloi

Why They Work: Bros’ that think they’re bros and then end up in bed together. They would’ve been bonding over their past lives in the military, swapping war stories, and trying to one-up the other in crazy hi-jinks from the past. I could see this ship beginning as the two of them going out and picking up women, having beers, and playing games but then eventually leading to quieter activities like staying in; instead. One thing would lead to another and they would wind up in bed together. I could see them being each other’s “first” in that regard.

 Why They Won’t: Machismo and homophobia would be the main stumbling blocks for this ship, one or both of them would not want to make the relationship public and it wouldn’t seem like a problem, but could you see how hard that would be in episodes like Monday Mourning? Or Cold Front? I think it would stress the little ship and it’d crack.

Will Halstead/Ethan Choi

Ship Name: Chalstead

Why They Work: Smart, hardworking, and both Chief Resident (although at separate times) these two could work. However, I could see this being another “secret relationship” but not because of homophobia but purely for professionalism. They are both incredibly focused at work and no one would even know they were together unless told. But at night and on the weekends the two can be found in bed reading medical journals, summing up the weird stories of the ED, and trying different restaurants.

Why They Won’t: Although both professional; Will is still the attending and higher on the totem pole. Even if they could be professional they are both still a bit egotistical and the fights would spill over into their home. Also, the rigid professionalism would begin to take a toll. I mean who doesn’t love a quick peck on the cheek from your partner or spouse before starting work?

Maggie Lockwood/ Will Halstead

Ship Name: Lockstead or Halwood (honestly, they have so many possibilities)

Why They Work: There are all kinds of ships that happen naturally on Med and Maggie and Will are one of them. They have a great friendship and on some ways canonically she is his only friend. A supportive friendship is always a great basis for a romantic one. This ship would be one where we watch as Will pines over Natalie and even dates Nina all while not realizing that the one person he doesn’t have to hide anything from is Maggie. He realizes out of the entire staff he is the only one that has met her family and she constantly looks out for him. In other words, the person you love has been in front of your face the entire time. She is feisty and not push over, something he definitely needs, and he has just enough confidence to take a powerful personality like hers on.

Why They Won’t: The nonsense Will has displayed with his treatment of Natalie and Nina. His behavior with Jennifer Baker; all of it would be a turn-off to Maggie. She is a charge nurse who understand order within the chaos but order none the less and that mess in season one with Will would’ve turned her off; also no one wants to be second pick…let alone third.

Maggie Lockwood/Sharon Goodwin

Ship Name: Goodlock or WinWood (a ton of name possibilities here too)

Why They Work: Maggie always has everyone’s back and none more than Sharon’s after Bert leaves. I could see Maggie bringing Sharon food, making sure she took care of herself, and sitting with her at night so she wouldn’t have to eat alone. They would reminisce about the old days of nursing together and Sharon would push Maggie to pursue more within that field. And although Maggie has expressed attractiveness to men like Connor and Jeff, women; in particular, make comments all the time on the attractiveness of both sexes without any romantic interest. In other words, the show has never clearly stated that Maggie is straight. Hanging out could lead to co-habitation, and then maybe more.

Why They Won’t: I could honestly see Sharon being into Maggie but then running from her feelings because it’s not what she’s used to. Also, this show has done NOTHING with Maggie as far as her interests go, she is work, work, work and so is Sharon; so, when would they have time to truly nourish this new avenue?

Jeff Clarke/ Sarah Reese

Ship Name: Cleese

Why They Work: This is the “It gets better” “Let me show you the ropes” ship. Sarah and Jeff could bond over the indecision they both have had in their careers. Jeff being military, then a fireman, and now a doctor. Sarah in the field but confused about which discipline to go into, emergency medicine, pathology, and then psych. She’d be shocked that he was flirting with her (just replace Noah in that “I watch you” scene and that’s how she would be). He’d be in awe of how smart she is. There would be a few dates and some really hot hook-ups…

Why They Won’t: …Before they realize there just isn’t a future there. He is a bit older and is still trying to get his footing and she is focused on being the best in psych. They would care for one another but would probably realize there isn’t enough common ground to sustain a relationship. They’d part ways amicably. (Also this is actually the rarest of ships as I don’t think these two even shared a scene together! photo courtesy of ChildofLoki)

Jeff Clarke/ April Sexton

Ship Name: Clexton

Why They Work: They both have heroic personalities. They are the type to go above and beyond to do the right thing in helping people and that compassion would be there but for each other. April helping Jeff dress his wounds after he is accidentally shot etc. Before White Butterflies, when we as an audience realized Jeff’s sole purpose on the show was to show Natalie’s ability to move on, I thought it would be a lot more fitting or realistic if he had been on the roof with April and almost kissed her. He always came across soft, and kind around her. He was the only one to implicitly express condolences to her about her miscarriage and then ask her how she was holding up. It was just that easy and no one else could do it. I could see him taking her for a drink and then they would hang out a little more and then….

Why They Won’t: But there is still only one resident spot and it went to Noah. How juicy the story-line could’ve been if they had decided to put Jeff and April together and then there would be tension about who got the residency, their break-up would be inevitable because Jeff (being the admirable person he is) wouldn’t want April to feel conflicted. He’d try and get the Hawaii residency and it would be this really sad ending to a “what could’ve been” ship.

Connor Rhodes/ David Downey

Ship Name: Dhodes

Why They Work: Connor respects brilliance and Downey was just that; brilliant, but also adventurous, wise, fun, and caring. His talent was renowned and that was what Connor would hope to be one day. Connor was not unlike Leah Bardovi in his wide-eyed admiration of David Downey. I think David saw a lot of himself in Connor as well as limitless amounts of potential. But often there were times when he looked at him that made me go…hmmm. It’s easy to cast Downey as the father-relationship Connor never had but it would also be a bit sexist of us to believe that men too can and do fall in love with other men because of “daddy issues.”

Why They Won’t: Cancer. Downey would still be sick and he probably wouldn’t want to begin a relationship knowing how heartbroken Connor would be that he couldn’t fulfill it (think “Me Before You” levels of unconsummated love). The scene when he emptied his ashes in the ocean would be even more serenely heart wrenching.

Sarah Reese/ Daniel Charles

Ship Name: Cheese

Why They Work: Could you imagine?! This would really be an illicit affair; Sarah sleeping with her mentor?! They’d be sneaking around and we’d be wondering why? How? All I could say is that the line would probably begin to be crossed after the Monday Mourning episode. Sarah being one of the few people to show concern for him, maybe she checks on him at home and vice versa for him. Seeing the other out of the work profession and opening new avenues for conversation could happen. Sarah doesn’t seem like the type to care about marriage and kids and that would work for Daniel because he doesn’t seem interested in doing either again.

Why They Won’t: Let’s be real…eww lol. Aside from the obvious father daughter vibes, this ship has platonic written all over it. I would hate to think the show would cross that line and put them together. Also, Daniel would be risking a lot of his integrity starting a relationship with a subordinate and the messy psych dynamic would be…well messy.

[youmightfindyourself]

What follows is a version of a lecture given to the students of Columbia University’s writing programme in New York on Monday 24th March 2008. The brief: “to speak about some aspect of your craft.”

1. Macro Planners and Micro Managers

First, a caveat: what I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience, which is what it is—12 years and three novels. Although this lecture will be divided into ten short sections meant to mark the various stages in the writing of a novel, what they most accurately describe, in truth, is the writing of my novels. That being said, I want to offer you a pair of ugly terms for two breeds of novelist: the Macro Planner and the Micro Manager.

You will recognise a Macro Planner from his Post-its, from those Moleskines he insists on buying. A Macro Planner makes notes, organises material, configures a plot and creates a structure—all before he writes the title page. This structural security gives him a great deal of freedom of movement. It’s not uncommon for Macro Planners to start writing their novels in the middle. As they progress, forwards or backwards, their difficulties multiply with their choices. I know Macro Planners who obsessively exchange possible endings for one another, who take characters out and put them back in, reverse the order of chapters and perform frequent—for me, unthinkable—radical surgery on their novels: moving the setting of a book from London to Berlin, for example, or changing the title. I can’t stand to hear them speak about all this, not because I disapprove, but because other people’s methods are always so incomprehensible and horrifying. I am a Micro Manager. I start at the first sentence of a novel and I finish at the last. It would never occur to me to choose among three different endings because I haven’t the slightest idea of the ending until I get to it, a fact that will surprise no one who has read my novels. Macro Planners have their houses largely built from day one, and so their obsession is internal—they’re forever moving the furniture. They’ll put a chair in the bedroom, the lounge, the kitchen and then back in the bedroom again. Micro Managers build a house floor by floor, discretely and in its entirety. Each floor needs to be sturdy and fully decorated with all the furniture in place before the next is built on top of it. There’s wallpaper in the hall even if the stairs lead nowhere at all.

Because Micro Managers have no grand plan, their novels exist only in their present moment, in a sensibility, in the novel’s tonal frequency line by line. When I begin a novel I feel there is nothing of that novel outside of the sentences I am setting down. I have to be very careful: the whole nature of the thing changes by the choice of a few words. This induces a special breed of pathology for which I have another ugly name: OPD or obsessive perspective disorder. It occurs mainly in the first 20 pages. It’s a kind of existential drama, a long answer to the short question What kind of a novel am I writing? It manifests itself in a compulsive fixation on perspective and voice. In one day the first 20 pages can go from first-person present tense, to third-person past tense, to third-person present tense, to first-person past tense, and so on. Several times a day I change it. Because I am an English novelist enslaved to an ancient tradition, with each novel I have ended up exactly where I began: third person, past tense. But months are spent switching back and forth. Opening other people’s novels, you recognise fellow Micro Managers: that opening pile-up of too-careful, obsessively worried-over sentences, a block of stilted verbiage that only loosens and relaxes after the 20-page mark is passed. In the case of On Beauty, my OPD spun completely out of control: I reworked those first 20 pages for almost two years. To look back at all past work induces nausea, but the first 20 pages in particular bring on heart palpitations. It’s like taking a tour of a cell in which you were once incarcerated.

Yet while OPD is happening, somehow the work of the rest of the novel gets done. That’s the strange thing. It’s as if you’re winding the key of a toy car tighter and tighter… When you finally let it go, it travels at a crazy speed. When I finally settled on a tone, the rest of the book was finished in five months. Worrying over the first 20 pages is a way of working on the whole novel, a way of finding its structure, its plot, its characters—all of which, for a Micro Manager, are contained in the sensibility of a sentence. Once the tone is there, all else follows. You hear interior decorators say the same about a shade of paint.

2. Other People’s Words, Part One

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone. I gather sentences round me, quotations, the literary equivalent of a cheerleading squad. Except that analogy’s screwy—cheerleaders cheer. I put up placards that make me feel bad. For five years I had a line from Gravity’s Rainbow stuck to my door:

“We have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function… zeroing in on what incalculable plot?”

At that time, I guess I thought that it was the duty of the novel to rigorously pursue hidden information: personal, political, historical. I say I guess because I don’t recognise that writer any more, and already find her idea of the novel oppressive, alien, useless. I don’t think this feeling is unusual, especially when you start out. Not long ago I sat next to a young Portuguese novelist at dinner and told him I intended to read his first novel. He grabbed my wrist, genuinely distressed, and said: “Oh, please don’t! Back then, all I read was Faulkner. I had no sense of humour. My God, I was a different person!”

That’s how it goes. Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

Recently I came across a new quote. It’s my screen saver now, my little scrap of confidence as I try to write a novel. It is a thought of Derrida’s and very simple:

“If a right to a secret is not maintained then we are in a totalitarian space.”

Which is to say: enough of human dissection, of entering the brains of characters, cracking them open, rooting every secret out! For now, this is the new attitude. Years from now, when this book is done and another begins, another change will come.

“My God, I was a different person!”—I think many writers think this, from book to book. A new novel, begun in hope and enthusiasm, grows shameful and strange to its author soon enough. After each book is done, you look forward to hating it (and you never have to wait long); there is a weird, inverse confidence to be had from feeling destroyed, because being destroyed, having to start again, means you have space in front of you, somewhere to go. Think of that revelation Shakespeare put in the mouth of King John: “Now my soul has elbow room!” Fictionally speaking, the nightmare is losing the desire to move.

3. Other People’s Words, Part Two

Some writers won’t read a word of any novel while they’re writing their own. Not one word. They don’t even want to see the cover of a novel. As they write, the world of fiction dies: no one has ever written, no one is writing, no one will ever write again. Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while he’s writing and he’ll give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. It’s a matter of temperament. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style.

Yet you meet students who feel that reading while you write is unhealthy. Their sense is that it corrupts voice by influence and, moreover, that reading great literature creates a sense of oppression. For how can you pipe out your little mouse song when Kafka’s Josephine the Mouse Singer pipes so much more loudly and beautifully than you ever could? To this way of thinking, the sovereignty of one’s individuality is the vital thing, and it must be protected at any price, even if it means cutting oneself off from that literary echo chamber EM Forster described, in which writers speak so helpfully to one another, across time and space. Well, each to their own, I suppose.

For me, that echo chamber was essential. I was 14 when I heard John Keats in there and in my mind I formed a bond with him, a bond based on class—though how archaic that must sound, here in America. Keats was not working-class, exactly, nor black—but in rough outline his situation seemed closer to mine than the other writers I came across. He felt none of the entitlement of, say, Virginia Woolf, or Byron, or Pope, or Evelyn Waugh or even PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. Keats offers his readers the possibility of entering writing from a side door, the one marked “Apprentices Welcome Here.” For Keats went about his work like an apprentice; he took a kind of MFA of the mind, albeit alone, and for free, in his little house in Hampstead. A suburban, lower- middle-class boy, a few steps removed from the literary scene, he made his own scene out of the books of his library. He never feared influence—he devoured influences. He wanted to learn from them, even at the risk of their voices swamping his own. And the feeling of apprenticeship never left him: you see it in his early experiments in poetic form; in the letters he wrote to friends expressing his fledgling literary ideas; it’s there, famously, in his reading of Chapman’s Homer, and the fear that he might cease to be before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain. The term role model is so odious, but the truth is it’s a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind. I think of Keats. Keats slogging away, devouring books, plagiarising, impersonating, adapting, struggling, growing, writing many poems that made him blush and then a few that made him proud, learning everything he could from whomever he could find, dead or alive, who might have something useful to teach him.

4. Middle-of-the-Novel Magical Thinking

In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical centre of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and food shopping and dog feeding and reading the post—I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping with your brother her face is a gigantic semi-colon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle. The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses. You sit down to write at 9am, you blink, the evening news is on and 4,000 words are written, more words than you wrote in three long months, a year ago. Something has changed. And it’s not restricted to the house. If you go outside, everything—I mean, everything—flows freely into your novel. Someone on the bus says something—it’s straight out of your novel. You open the paper—every single story in the paper is directly relevant to your novel. If you are fortunate enough to have someone waiting to publish your novel, this is the point at which you phone them in a panic and try to get your publication date brought forward because you cannot believe how in tune the world is with your unfinished novel right now, and if it isn’t published next Tuesday maybe the moment will pass and you will have to kill yourself.

Magical thinking makes you crazy—and renders everything possible. Incredibly knotty problems of structure now resolve themselves with inspired ease. See that one paragraph? It only needs to be moved, and the whole chapter falls into place! Why didn’t you see that before? You randomly pick a poetry book off the shelf and the first line you read ends up being your epigraph—it seems to have been written for no other reason.

5. Dismantling the Scaffolding

When building a novel you will use a lot of scaffolding. Some of this is necessary to hold the thing up, but most isn’t. The majority of it is only there to make you feel secure, and in fact the building will stand without it. Each time I’ve written a long piece of fiction I’ve felt the need for an enormous amount of scaffolding. With me, scaffolding comes in many forms. The only way to write this novel is to divide it into three sections of ten chapters each. Or five sections of seven chapters. Or the answer is to read the Old Testament and model each chapter on the books of the prophets. Or the divisions of the Bhagavad Gita. Or the Psalms. Or Ulysses. Or the songs of Public Enemy. Or the films of Grace Kelly. Or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or the liner notes to The White Album. Or the 27 speeches Donald Rumsfeld gave to the press corps during his tenure.

Scaffolding holds up confidence when you have none, reduces the despair, creates a goal—however artificial—an end point. Use it to divide what seems like an endless, unmarked journey, though by doing this, like Zeno, you infinitely extend the distance you need to go.

Later, when the book is printed and old and dog-eared, it occurs to me that I really didn’t need any of that scaffolding. The book would have been far better off without it. But when I was putting it up, it felt vital, and once it was there, I’d worked so hard to get it there I was loath to take it down. If you are writing a novel at the moment and putting up scaffolding, well, I hope it helps you, but don’t forget to dismantle it later. Or if you’re determined to leave it out there for all to see, at least hang a nice façade over it, as the Romans do when they fix up their palazzi.

6. First 20 Pages, Redux

Late in the novel, in the last quarter, when I am rolling downhill, I turn back to read those first 20 pages. They are packed tighter than tuna in a can. Calmly, I take off the top, let a little air in. What’s amusing about the first 20 pages—they are funny now, three years later, now I’m no longer locked up in them—is how little confidence you have in your readers when you begin. You spoon-feed them everything. You can’t let a character walk across the room without giving her backstory as she goes. You don’t trust the reader to have a little patience, a little intelligence. This reader, who, for all you know, has read Thomas Bernhard, Finnegans Wake, Gertrude Stein, Georges Perec—yet you’re worried that if you don’t mention in the first three pages that Sarah Malone is a social worker with a dead father, this talented reader might not be able to follow you exactly. It’s awful, the swing of the literary fraudulence pendulum: from moment to moment you can’t decide whether you’re the fraudulent idiot or your reader is the fraudulent idiot. For writers who work with character a good deal, going back to the first 20 pages is also a lesson in how much more delicate a thing character is than you think it is when you’re writing it. The idea of forming people out of grammatical clauses seems so fantastical at the start that you hide your terror in a smokescreen of elaborate sentence making, as if character can be drawn forcibly out of the curlicues of certain adjectives piled ruthlessly on top of one another. In fact, character occurs with the lightest of brushstrokes. Naturally, it can be destroyed lightly, too. I think of a creature called Odradek, who at first glance appears to be a “flat star-shaped spool for thread” but who is not quite this, Odradek who won’t stop rolling down the stairs, trailing string behind him, who has a laugh that sounds as if it has no lungs behind it, a laugh like rustling leaves. You can find the inimitable Odradek in a one-page story of Kafka’s called “The Cares of a Family Man.” Curious Odradek is more memorable to me than characters I spent three years on, and 500 pages.

7. The Last Day

There is one great advantage to being a Micro Manager rather than a Macro Planner: the last day of your novel truly is the last day. If you edit as you go along, there are no first, second, third drafts. There is only one draft, and when it’s done, it’s done. Who can find anything bad to say about the last day of a novel? It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word. The last time it happened to me, I uncorked a good Sancerre I’d been keeping and drank it standing up with the bottle in my hand, and then I lay down in my backyard on the paving stones and stayed there for a long time, crying. It was sunny, late autumn, and there were apples everywhere, overripe and stinky.

8. Step Away from the Vehicle

You can ignore everything else in this lecture except number eight. It is the only absolutely 24-carat-gold-plated piece of advice I have to give you. I’ve never taken it myself, though one day I hope to. The advice is as follows.

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second—put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year or more is ideal—but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go onstage and read from them. It’s an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your own novel is two years after it’s published, ten minutes before you go onstage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all the pieces of deadwood, stupidity, vanity and tedium are distressingly obvious to you. Two years earlier, when the proofs came, you looked at the same page and couldn’t see a comma out of place. And by the way, that’s true of the professional editors, too; after they’ve read a manuscript multiple times, they stop being able to see it. You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in 12 different versions. It’s the head of a smart stranger who picks it off a bookshelf and begins to read. You need to get the head of that smart stranger somehow. You need to forget you ever wrote that book.

9. The Unbearable Cruelty of Proofs

Proofs are so cruel! Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Proofs are the wasteland where the dream of your novel dies and cold reality asserts itself. When I look at loose-leaf proofs, fresh out of the envelope, bound with a thick elastic band, marked up by a conscientious copy editor, I feel quite sure I would have to become a different person entirely to do the work that needs to be done here. To correct what needs correcting, fix what needs to be fixed. The only proper response to an envelope full of marked-up pages is “Give it back to me! Let me start again!” But no one says this because by this point exhaustion has set in. It’s not the book you hoped for, maybe something might yet be done—but the will is gone. There’s simply no more will to be had. That’s why proofs are so cruel, so sad: the existence of the proof itself is proof that it is already too late. I’ve only ever seen one happy proof, in King’s College Library: the manuscript of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. Eliot, upon reaching his own point of exhaustion, had the extreme good fortune to meet Ezra Pound, a very smart stranger, and with his red pen Ezra went to work. And what work! His pen goes everywhere, trimming, cutting, slicing, a frenzy of editing, the why and wherefore not especially obvious, at times, indeed, almost ridiculous; almost, at times, indiscriminate… Whole pages struck out with a single line.

Underneath Pound’s markings, The Waste Land is a sad proof like any other—too long, full of lines not worth keeping, badly structured. Lucky Eliot, to have Ezra Pound. Lucky Fitzgerald, to have Maxwell Perkins. Lucky Carver, we now know, to have Gordon Lish. Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère! Where have all the smart strangers gone?

10. Years Later: Nausea, Surprise and Feeling OK

I find it very hard to read my books after they’re published. I’ve never read White Teeth. Five years ago I tried; I got about ten sentences in before I was overwhelmed with nausea. More recently, when people tell me they have just read that book, I do try to feel pleased, but it’s a distant, disconnected sensation, like when someone tells you they met your second cousin in a bar in Goa. I suspect White Teeth and I may never be reconciled—I think that’s simply what happens when you begin writing a book at the age of 21. Then, a year ago, I was in an airport somewhere and I saw a copy of The Autograph Man, and on a whim, I bought it. On the plane I had to drink two of those mini bottles of wine before I had the stomach to begin. I didn’t manage the whole thing, but I read about two-thirds, and at that incredible speed with which you can read a book if you happen to have written it. And it was actually not such a bad experience—I laughed a few times, groaned more than I laughed and gave up when the wine wore off—but for the first time, I felt something other than nausea. I felt surprise. The book was genuinely strange to me; there were whole pages I didn’t recognise, didn’t remember writing. And because it was so strange I didn’t feel any particular animosity towards it. So that was that: between that book and me there now exists a sort of blank truce, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

Finally, while writing this lecture, I picked up On Beauty. I read maybe a third of it, not consecutively, but chapters here and there. As usual, the nausea; as usual, the feeling of fraudulence and the too-late desire to wield the red pen all over the place—but something else, too, something new. Here and there—in very isolated pockets —I had the sense that this line, that paragraph, these were exactly what I meant to write, and the fact was, I’d written them, and I felt OK about it, felt good, even. It’s a feeling I recommend to all of you. That feeling feels OK.

This lecture appears in her new collection “Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays” (Hamish Hamilton). © Zadie Smith

[fqtoxicity]

New Post has been published on My Quin Story

New Post has been published on http://www.myquinstory.info/the-dark-history-of-the-fluoroquinolones-part-1/

The Dark History of the Fluoroquinolones: Part 1

This article is part one in a series exploring the history of fluoroquinolone antibiotics viewed from a unique perspective trying to uncover insights on their propensity for harm.  

Introduction

The Fluoroquinolone (FQ) family of antibiotics harbors a dark side.  A very dark side. Thousands of people have fallen ill with adverse events after taking an FQ. Many of them experience devastating and progressive adverse symptoms which encompass symptoms ranging from psychiatric and sensory disturbances to problems with muscles, tendons and nerves.  For many these adverse events continue long after stopping the drug, becoming chronic, long lasting, and permanent.  Even more insidious is the ability of this family of drugs to cause adverse events long after stopping the medication.  One study recently uncovered that users could develop permanent peripheral neuropathy up to six months after stopping the medication (1).   

Despite all this, the FQ family of antibiotics continue to be commonly prescribed with over 32 million prescriptions in the U.S. alone in 2015 (2).  The FQs go by many trade names such as Levaquin, Cipro, Avelox, Floxin and more, with many now prescribed under their generic names.  In a study published last year, researchers reported that FQs are still the third most commonly prescribed antibiotic for adults (3).

As a sufferer of Fluoroquinolone Associated Disability (FQAD), I believe that this pharmaceutical family has an inherent flaw in its foundation, so to speak, that impacts how they interact with the human body.    Call it a gut feeling or an intuition, I believe this flaw runs out like a thread or as a spreading crack in the foundation of a large building.  This inherent weakness was present from the very beginning in nature and was subsequently carried forward through later generations. I also believe that any pharmaceutical that is developed from this core, or pharmacophore (the scaffold on which others are built), whether antibiotic, antimalarial, antiviral, or anti-tumor, is threatened by this inherent idiosyncratic flaw and that flaw can tragically affects the end user.

A Dark Side

I believe that we can go back and trace an under-appreciated thread of adverse interactions from the distance past to the present. This adverse side, or darker side, has always been present from our first exposure thousands of years ago and exists through today’s synthetic descendants and will probably exist well into the future.  Often times, this adverse interaction escapes notice by researchers and medical authorities, through its ability to hide in plain sight by mimicking other pathologies or separating cause and effect by delayed events, or late effects, that occur long after exposure.  It remains cloaked to both the professional and the end-user making it one of the deadliest instigators in modern history.

I have been dealing FQAD for well over twelve and a half years now. During that time, I have interacted with hundreds, if not thousands, who, like me, have found out the hard way that this family of drugs harbors a dark side.  Their stories are usually always the same; they were not aware that this family of drugs had such a propensity for harm, nor were they aware that, in many individuals, the chronic health symptoms did not go away upon discontinuation of the medication.  On the contrary and for many, the adverse events triggered chronic conditions that last indefinitely, disrupting, disabling and denying the ability of many individuals to live a productive life.  Also, to add final insult to injury, many professionals in the medical establishment deny that these drugs could even cause such problems. 

It is a serious question that begs asking, how in today’s enlightened and technologically driven society could a large portion of our society literally fall prey to an unseen enemy that is supposedly intended for good? Despite the outcry from thousands of victims, cautions the FDA, and ominous warnings from a few brave researchers, how could some of the world’s most prescribed medications be the suspect at the root of many of today’s modern vague, ill-defined mystery illnesses? The answers to these questions, which sound like chapter headings right out of a grand conspiracy novel, are staggering because the implications of such allegations, if true, are preposterous and deserve everyone’s attention.  Combine this with the unsettling fact that there are countless reports of discrimination, ridicule, ostracization and abuse experienced by patients, and even some medical professionals, who suggest these outlandish and absurd possibilities are.

Inspired Synthetics

The Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are compounds produced totally by synthesis.  However, like many synthetic drugs, they have their chemical basis as “natural product mimics”.  In other words, their chemical structure was synthesized based on chemical structures that are seen in the natural world or inspired by such structures.  Although tweaked and modified, without the original natural source as more than an inspiration these substances would not exist in the world today.

A pharmacophore is a part of a molecular structure that is responsible for a particular biological or pharmacological interaction that it undergoes. The Fluoroquinolones basic pharmacophore, or active structure, although synthetic, is based upon the quinoline ring system (4,5).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a quick journey back in time and take a brief look at some pertinent history from a unique perspective: A perspective that goes back well before the conception of quinolone family of drugs. 

Andes Mountains

The Andes in South America are the longest continental mountain range in the world at about 4,300 miles long and varying between 120 to 430 miles wide with an average height of about 13,000 feet.  Our first stop takes us back a thousand years or more to the forests of the lower to mid-elevations on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains.  In that area, the healers of indigenous Quechua people used the bark from a medicinal woody tree for its healing properties. 

The bark of the tree when chewed or dried and powdered was used by the native people to relax muscles and stop shivering.  Unbeknownst to the native people at that time the shivering was probably caused by Malaria.  Moving forward, stories of the medicinal powers of this tree were noted in early journals of the Jesuits Priests in the 1500’s who served the area populated by the Quechua people.  Jesuits, who had long collected the bark in Peru, promoted its use wherever there were Jesuit missions. The Jesuit Priest Agostino Salumbro (1541-1642), is believed to be the first person who connected that the bark of this tree could be used for curing the symptoms of malaria.

Cinchona Tree

It is believed the woody tree’s name was based on the Spanish Countess of Chinchon, the wife of a viceroy of Peru.  According to folklore, she contracted malaria and the indigenous people persuaded her to bathe in a pond located beneath one of the trees.  She noted that the water tasted bitter and after a few days she was cured of malaria.  The Countess of Chinchon and her husband were credited with bringing the bark back to Spain although the exact facts surrounding this story are debatable.

Carl Linnaeus the Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern biological naming scheme of binomial nomenclature named the tree, Cinchona, after her. Regionally, the bark was more commonly known by several other names such as Jesuits’ Bark, Peruvian Bark or Cardinal’s Bark (6,7).

Many natural treatments today are often looked upon as less harmful than man-made synthetic alternatives. Although this can be true in certain circumstances, it can also be a very dangerous assumption to make as natural substances can also carry the risk of adverse reactions and events, and the bark of the Cinchona tree was no different.   Though generally considered safe in low doses, the cinchona bark can cause what is known as cinchonism (8).   Cinchonism is a syndrome of adverse reactions and events tied to the bark that encompass severe headache, abdominal pain, convulsions, visual disturbances and blindness, auditory disturbances such as severe ringing in the ears, paralysis, and collapse.

Malaria

Almost everyone in the world today has heard of Malaria.  Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and some animals, and it is caused by parasitic protozoans.  Malaria causes very unpleasant symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches but in severe cases it can cause yellow skin, seizures, coma, or death. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the malarial symptom’s months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms with partial resistance developing.  However, if a person does not have continuing exposure to malaria, resistance usually disappears over months to years.

Malaria has always been a terrible plague for mankind and as recently as 2015 there were 296 million cases of malaria worldwide resulting in an estimated 731,000 deaths (6). Since it was considered such a scourge, a natural substance such as the bark of the Cinchona Tree, that seemed to cure, or at least treat, malaria, for many, was a Godsend. 

Uncovering Adverse Events

Just like trying to get an accurate picture of adverse events to pharmaceuticals today, getting an accurate picture of adverse events centuries ago to a natural substance is even harder, as a matter of fact, it is quite difficult.   But if we do a little detective work, we can peer behind the veil of bias and data gathering problems and piece together a rough adverse event profile which gives us a glimpse of a darker side of cinchona bark.  When we look at it in more detail, we see an adverse event profile that will ring true today for those familiar with both antimalarial and quinolone adverse event profiles and those unfortunate enough to personally experience them.

The first ‘official’ documentation that something was amiss was noted in The Journal of the American Medical Association, established in 1883. Documented in its September 1889 issue, a rarer and graver form of cinchonism was first noted.  It documented that the graver forms of cinchonism “may be due to a peculiar susceptibility of the individual.”   Interestingly, it goes on to say that “there is an indefinite area in which idiosyncrasy appears to determine toxicity, in which there can be no ‘a priori’ determination of the danger line.”

In other words, some people could have adverse events related to the alkaloids of the cinchona bark and that these adverse events where idiosyncratic, not related to the size or frequency of the dose.  In an eerie foreshadowing, the article goes on to say that even though the general medical consensus shows that these severe adverse events are ‘thought’ to be rare by the medical establishment of the time (late 1800’s), there shows “indubitable evidence that their absolute frequency is by no means small.”

In a déjà vu type of situation, the AMA journal goes on to state that “the general medical public has failed to properly appreciate these dangers…” even though intelligently documented and reported observations of adverse events have appeared in specific journals of the time.  

The adverse events described in the article focus mainly on severe visual damages, but they run the gamut to encompass many of the symptoms that we see today in anti-malarial and quinolone toxicity. Some of them are, severe vision problems, muscle spasms, epileptic convulsions, cardiac issues, circulatory disturbances, tinnitus, deafness, gastrointestinal problems, vagus nerve paralysis, and neurological symptoms described as “nervous perturbations.”(9)

History can teach us much, but it seems we humans fail to learn from history.  Edmund Burke was a British-Irish statesman said, “In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.” Whether by sheer ignorance, or blinded by the popularity of having a treatment, or other nefarious reasons, like today, the medical community of the time failed to appreciate the adverse events of cinchonism, even though they documented its existence and prevalence.

Quinine

The popularity, or should I say notoriety, of the powers of the cinchona was initially spurred on by Jesuit priests. Supposedly, the planting of cinchona trees outside of South America was initiated by the Jesuits. Also, the constant need for malaria medicine motivated the British and Dutch to bring cinchona to their colonies by smuggling it out of the Spanish colonies and establishing plantations in Asia (10).

As scientific inquiry blossomed, researchers went on to discover the secrets that the Cinchona Tree’s bark held.  The tree is very medicinally active containing a variety of powerful alkaloid compounds.  These powerful alkaloids are chemically based on the quinoline ring pharmacophore and one of them became quite well known as the drug Quinine.

In 1820 French chemists Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (1788-1842) and Joseph-Bienaime Caventou (1795-1877) isolated quinine from cinchona bark (11). As I mentioned earlier, due to man’s expansion into the tropical areas of the world, Malaria became more recognized as a lethal disease worldwide. Because of Malaria’s prevalence, the potential dollar value of quinine inspired research into its finding a synthetic mass produced alternative.

After 1890 Quinine became the predominantly used alkaloid from the cinchona. One of the reasons for quinine’s popularity was due to a change in supply from the South American to Javan cinchona bark.  Javan cinchona bark became more readily available and it contained a higher proportion of the quinine alkaloid. Quinine is a white crystalline alkaloid that exhibits numerous medicinal properties such as having antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory properties and has a bitter taste.  On a side note, chemically, Quinine contains two major fused-ring systems: the aromatic quinoline ring (which we are interested in) and the bicyclic quinuclidine (12).

The science of synthetic organic chemistry underwent a revolution in the late 19th century, partly in response to the need for new mass produced antimalarials. Ironically, although fairly easy to isolate from the Cinchona tree, quinine is hard to for man to duplicate synthetically.  In 1856, William Henry Perkins, an 18-yr-old English chemist, set out determined to synthesize quinine. Perkins learned much but failed in quinine synthesis. If wasn’t until almost a hundred years later that Quinine was successfully synthesized in 1944 but because of difficulties in the process it still has never been synthesized on a commercially economic scale.

Quinine, because of its worldwide use for malaria was viewed as fairly innocuous substance by medical professionals and the general public alike.  So much so that it was used in drinks and the creation of ‘tonic water’ as a prophylaxis.  However, like cinchona bark Quinine has a dark side.

Quinine’s Dark Side

Adverse events to Quinine can be severe and life threatening. These adverse events, like those found in the cinchona bark and later synthetic ancestors, are of particular concern, because these reactions are not dose-related and their occurrence is unpredictable (13).  Often, patients never connected later health issues with their ingestion of quinine, often blaming it on other sources such as malaria. Reports of potentially fatal quinine hypersensitivity reactions, particularly quinine-induced thrombocytopenia, can occur rapidly within days or it can occur after months or years of use.

Adverse events of Quinine run the gamut and include, neurotoxic effects (headache, tinnitus, vertigo, visual disturbances, confusion, respiratory depression), gastrointestinal disorders (anorexia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain), cardiac conduction disorders (tachycardia, bradycardia, palpitations), blood disorders (hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia), hypersensitivity reactions (skin reactions, drug fever, bronchospasms), arthralgia, convulsions, hypotension, kidney failure, weakness and death. (14)

Looking back at documented adverse events from long ago we see paradoxes that exist still to this day. Often, adverse events to medication go unnoticed or unreported because they get blamed on the illness or the sickly state of the patient.  It seems that the drug is usually the last thing suspected for any adverse event in the short term and almost always long term.  It would be impossible to realize how many individuals suffered long term adverse events to these medicinal products based on the quinoline ring but in hindsight we can assume there were many.

Could this thread of idiosyncratic adverse events, tied to the quinoline ring structure, carry on downstream in certain robust pharmaceuticals that were mimicked off its structure? 

Join me in future parts of this series as we try to answer this question and more. 

Stay tuned to My Quin Story for the Dark History of the Fluoroquinolones part two:

Dye, Synthetic Antimalarials, and Pharmaceutical Giants Coming Soon…

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[chriscoles96-blog]

A Day on Delivery Suite

I was expecting to be on the high risk labour ward today as was my mentor but we'd been placed on the low risk side to do inductions. I did a lot of documentation this morning, seeing women one at a time and seeing what they needed. At 11:06 I went into one of the rooms as the woman was screaming in pain, I supported her to focus her breathing on the gas while we commenced her on CTG to see what was happening. Her contractions had definitely picked up. Her waters broke at 11:08 and the propess she's had for her induction had come out. A vaginal examination was done to assess her progress as she was pushing involuntarily. On VE she was fully dilated, head still a little high. We transferred her to the high risk ward to be delivered so that she could be offered one to one care. I supported her with her breathing to try and calm her which seemed to work well. Her care was handed over to another midwife and student and we left to come back to our other ladies for induction. It was a shame that I couldn't stay with her as I'd been with her for the morning but unfortunately there was a student with the midwife on the other side. Five minutes later we were transferring another lady who was premature whose waters had gone two days before, the ctg trace was suspicious boarding on pathological. She was found to be HIV positive at her booking appointment, this along with her other risk factors of her waters being gone for more than 24 hours, the baby showing signs of distress she was to be transferred to speed up her labour. Later on it was found that her baby was breech and with these complications the doctors decided that a caesarean may be the safer route of delivery for her baby. I'm glad that I followed my instinct when this woman said she'd not been feeling her baby move as much as she normally did. Even though she'd had a CTG an hour before and everything had been fine. I'd put her on to monitor for half an hour and it showed that baby wasn't too happy, his/her heart rate dropped for 2-3 minutes. After thirty minutes we noticed and decided to leave her on and get the doctor to review, in this time baby's heart rate dropped again and this is when she was transferred! This just shows that you should always follow your gut instinct and should always listen to what a woman is saying to you. Today we really hit the ground running it was an extremely busy day for me and the induction of labour midwife. We got a transfer from A&E who had come in for cellulitis of the left knee but was transferred upstairs to the labour ward as she was 39 weeks and 3 days pregnant. She'd turned up with no notes and an obstetric history of two previous Caesarean sections. She also admitted to using/taking heroin and crack and smoking. It ended up turning out that after leaving prison she hadn't seen a midwife for her antenatal care - it makes me wonder what she was planning to do about delivery of her baby. The obstetric registrar decided that a planned elective section for later that day was the best plan due to her obstetric history. She was taken for section, a female infant was born at 18:02, it had trouble breathing and seemed to struggle as it began grunting and was full of mucous and yellow stuff - which could have been a sign of an infection. The baby was transferred to the neonatal unit for further treatment and the woman was to recover and then go downstairs to have her knee cleaned - joint washed to get rid of the infection as it was inflamed and swollen. We brought three more women in for inductions of labour as three beds were now free. I did a lot of putting women on CTGs to check fetal wellbeing prior and post propess. The midwife was lovely - it's a shame that all the nice ones aren't sign off mentors.