#“How to Cope With Your Son Being Very Kind and Awesome To You Despite The Fact That You're a Stain on this Beautiful Earth (Like a Pro!)”

[applebunch]

one time chelmsworth gets WAY too busy to sort through his own belongings after a move so he asks vincenzo if he can do it for him (chelmsworth thanks him 7 times) and vincenzo is having a GREAT day until he starts picking up books like "The Deadbeat Dad’s Emergency Guide to Last-Chance Redemption" and "An Inadequate Parents’ Guide to Unearned Love" and "What To Do When You're a Terrible Father with the Best Son in the World and You Wanna Blow Yourself Up".

[epicene-humanoid]

some trans Jeff thoughts:

he realized he was trans in elementary school and just went fuck it I'll just start introducing myself as Jeffery and see if anyone decides to stop me (as we know, jeff winger can get away with almost anything)

he got top surgery the second he could afford it (around the same time he started at his law firm), and probably bribed someone to keep it a secret

"I'm jeff winger and i would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with" are the words of a man proud of his transition

he's really insecure about his fashion sense, which is why he mostly dresses like the douchey guys at his firm in the start of the show, he thought you can't go wrong with the sleazy lawyer look

he will never admit it but he feels super good about the dean hitting on him, because the dean is a (cis) guy, acknowledging that Jeff is more manly than him

i think he starts out stealth and comes out to everyone one by one, probably starting with abed because he knows abed won't judge him and will probably just see it as an interesting backstory.

abed just says it's cool and maybe worth a prequel exploring Jeff's transition, and jeff asks him to predict how all of the members of the group will react to him coming out.

abed's predictions:

britta will be over-the-top supportive and do a ton of research about trans history, probably put together a slideshow just to prove how progressive she is, and jeff will be a little bit weirded out, but also touched that she did all that for him, though he would never let her know that

shirley will be confused, because she doesn't know how someone she trusts and knows so well could be part of a group she was raised to hate, but ultimately realizes that there's nothing actually against the lgbtq people in the bible, and, as a cool character development arch, starts to advocate against use of the bible to justify bigotry

troy will just think it over and decide that Jeff's physique and coolness are even awesomer knowing how much work he'd had to put in to be like that, and respects Jeff's manliness even more

annie will give him a hug, say something sweet about how she'll always love him, and worry about his health, because even she read somewhere that taking testosterone makes you more likely to have a heart attack, jeff will explain that the risk is still only as high a cis guy, and she'll be the one to always remind him to take his shots

peirce will say at best say "jeff winger used to be a chick?" and at worst call him a slur, either way there's sure to be a lot of misgendering from him, and pestering to know Jeff's deadname (needless to say, Jeff just doesn't tell peirce)

the whole group goes out of their way to keep their beach trips a secret from pierce (the girls don't want him there anyways, he's too liable to be creepy) even though jeff knows that even if pierce saw his scars, all he would have to do is make up a story about some childhood accident and pierce would never question it

sorry this ended up being super long. can I hear some of your headcanons for him?

YES ALL THIS!!! yes yes i’m fully accepting this as canon oh my god

i’m about to type a whole ass ESSAY at midnight because i have been DYING to talk about this for months ajfdksljk,,, this is going to be obscenely long and i might end up adding even more to it as i continue to rewatch the show because there is truly no shortage of trans jeff content (especially when you’re trans and see transness in every little thing ajdkslfkjs)

spoiler warning for literally everything about this show under the cut <3

i 100% agree, i feel like he realized he was trans super young, especially since in the show we see him as a little kid a couple of times. 

like look at little jeff with the oversized sweatshirt and little ponytail!! that’s childhood trans fashion. not to be dramatic but part of me thinks that jeff’s dad left before he fully came out to his family (which gives him even more angst about it, because until that one Thanksgiving episode, he’s never able to prove to his dad that he’s a better man), but part of me thinks that his dad left after he came out (which adds that spicy i-should-have-stayed-in-the-closet guilt that he has to work through). 

either way, because his dad wasn’t there, he had to base his concept of masculinity on something else, which was becoming a lawyer!! there’s some line that’s like “after the dust and divorce papers were settled the only man i looked up to was [the lawyer guy]”. like, replacing your father figure in your mind with the concept of “a job where you can talk your way in and out of anything and distort other people’s concept of reality”? that’s trans.

 and the fucking THANKSGIVING EPISODE... i struggle to watch it without crying hehe <3 yeowch! the dichotomy of willy jr. being the “wrong” kind of man because he’s “too soft” but jeff also not being enough despite adhering to all the social standards of masculinity... fuck!! this whole scene of him telling his dad “i am Not well adjusted” and talking about how he gave himself an “appendix surgery scar” when he was a kid and he still keeps the get-well-soon letters from his classmates under his bed? oh my god. the implication of people loving him not despite his scars but because of them?? trans. i can’t think about this episode for too long or i’ll start yelling.

OH and this scene? where he talks about how his mom got him a girl costume for halloween?? and everyone said “what a cute little girl” and after a few houses he stopped correcting them?? and “once the shame and the fear wore off, i was just glad they thought i was pretty”?? THAT’S TRANS... the man needs validation oh my god... and then in all the halloween episodes we see he has these ultra-masculine costumes (a cowboy, David Beckham, one of the fast and furious guys even though he never watched the movies, a boxer with his DAD’S boxing gloves... god) costumes are about becoming something else and he always chooses to be hypermasculine and that is trans.

THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION EPISODE!!!!!!! being uncomfortable during P.E. is a queer experience. period. but him being specifically uncomfortable in the clothes someone else is assigning to him? trans. “are we gonna talk about clothes like a girl? or use tapered sticks to hit balls around a cushioned mat like a man?” TRANS. and him eventually stripping in public? celebration of transness. and the fact that he eventually becomes comfortable in both the uniform and his own style!! trans!! god i love this episode. 

AND AND AND!!! the gay dean coming out episode!!! where it’s the three of them discussing the best way for the dean to come out as gay despite not entirely identifying with that label!! so we have both frankie and the dean who are sort of ambiguously queer, and jeff who’s a stealth trans man who’s probably only out to only the study group at this point. this scene where the dean and jeff have this like eyebrow communication while frankie is talking is just so cute. queer-to-queer communication. “I am so curious” “oh?” “intellectually.” “oh...” ajfdksljfk this scene just screams high school GSA to me and i love it so much.

and SPEAKING of the dean!! i totally see you on that. i feel like jeff has some internalized homophobia/biphobia (like he’d throw punches over someone else, but when it comes to himself he has a lot of shame). and also seeing the dean so confident in all his different outfits/costumes has a weird affect on him bc it’s like “okay, the dean, a cis guy, can do that, but i as a trans guy could Not because that’s Breaking the Rules”. which, like, throwback to the halloween thing. of course there’s no right way to be masculine, but mr. winger does not know that.

another thing!! the episode where their emails get leaked? that includes his emails with his therapist. fuck!! he was outed to the whole world in that episode!! no wonder he was so fucking angry!! this whole episode (and really any time he mentions his therapist) is so interesting when you think about them as a person he talks to about his transition. OH which adds to the thing with the dean!! “and you told your therapist you wanted to be alone this weekend” and “not you jeff, i know you’ll be visiting your dad” ”I told you to stop reading my emails”. luckily his study group has his back and just makes fun of him for emailing astronauts lmao

and WHO can forget “they’re giving out an award for most handsome young man!!!!” what else is there to say about this line besides: he’s trans. you know he didn’t get awarded enough for being a handsome young man when he was a kid, and no amount of compliments when he’s fully-grown can really make up for that. some people crash a kid’s bar mitzvah to cope with the fact that they struggled to be seen as themselves when they were a teenager <3

also his weird relationship with pierce? where he kind of hates him (understandably lmao) but at times has this almost-friends-almost-father-son relationship with him? especially in this episode where he’s forced to bond with him and ends up having a good time by accident (at a barber shop no less, the perfect place to Be A Man with your Man Friend). idk what to say about him besides the fact that pierce says his mom wanted a girl when he was born and made him dress like a girl (and his middle name is anastasia!) so if they’re gonna do any bonding over transness it’s gonna be that. 

okay one last thing and then i’ll shut up for the night. this episode kills me (and almost kills jeff hahahahelpi’mcrying). it’s a very Trans thing to not be able to visualize your future self, it just is. growing up trans at the time he did? i don’t know what kind of future he saw for himself, but i’m so happy that he ended up with a group of friends who became his family and love him the way they all do. i’m so emotional over this asshole it’s ridiculous. 

in conclusion:

they’re trans, your honor <3

[selfawarejester]

HALO: SHADOWS OF REACH — A REVIEW BY A SOMEWHAT ENTHUSIASTIC FAN

Alright, so after forever and to much demand (okay, that's a lie, no one asked for this), I've finally finished my review of the newest installment in the Halo novels: Shadows of Reach. Obviously, there are spoilers inbound.

RATING: 8/10

This could've easily been a ten if not for some parts of the story that irked me, but overall a fun read— I'd read it again.

A VERY LONG SUMMARY (OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, SO PLEASE TELL ME IF I MESSED SOMETHING UP)

Welp, the first half is just John being very emo about Cortana and pretty much ignoring his teammates' emotional states (a large part of the book is that, actually), and introducing old wise man Major Van Houte, no nonsense Crew Chief Stella Mukai (who made John laugh, huzzah!!) and Lieutenant Maks "Hotshot kid" Chapov (don't get too attached). They perform intricate aerial maneuvers and the likes to avoid being spotted, but they are and they crash.

After a couple close encounters with Banished banshees that act like Keeper banshees for some odd reason, three-quarters of Blue Team gets their cans kicked by actual Banished banshees and get separated from Linda-058 and Special Crew (which are the flight crew btw). Whilst heavily wounded, they are held at gunpoint by the Viery Militia who also make fun of them while at gunpoint. (Rude, but also very funny). Militia Leader Lady assumes that they're there to help them liberate Reach (and refuses to let John tell her otherwise) and gets pissy about it afterwards - but she's under a lot of pressure, so it's fine - and Fred is Concussed™, leading to ridicule and shade from John and Kelly for pretty much the rest of the book.

There's a lot of stuff in the middle about the Viery Militia, so hightlight reel: John manages to ask his doc a personal question (Go, John!), and he and Kelly are driven to meet the commanders of the Militia by sweet Bella Disztl, five time winner of the Tantalus-10,000 (don't worry if you forget, they bring it up in every scene she's in). I like Bella, partly because she looks like my OC, but in general. Unfortunately, she falls prey to the Halo driver curse and bites it later on in the book.

Despite a lot of angst and distrust once the commanders find out BT is not there to help free Reach, they decide to take the Armory from the Banished and call in reinforcements from Infinity.

As they launch the assault on the Banished armory, everyone without MJOLNIR (and Chapov and Van Houte who are out of range) gets knocked out due to lack of breathable levels of oxygen in the tunnels (and they talk about the brain damage that's caused when your oxygen is cut off for a few minutes, which makes me and all the other RvB fans sad) and the Spartans are forced to do it alone, shocker. Chapov saves the day with an innovative tactic to take down massive amounts of Banished vehicles, go Chapov!

We finally get to see Halsey (who finally has a prosthetic arm), Lasky (who likes to say heck) and Palmer (who is still Very Done with basically everyone), so that's cool.

There's a second attack on the armory as the Banished try to take back what is theirs, and here is where Bella dies :( But, on the other hand, a hundred and twenty Spartans (which is still super shocking to me) save the day. Palmer and Blue Team have a very odd interaction wherein Palmer is treated like she's in the wrong despite being perfectly reasonable?? (I'm just going to read this part one more time because the first time around was at 2AM) Anyways, Palmer takes over freeing Reach and the Spartans go to the Highlands to finish their actual mission.

So, I've neglected to mention Castor's arc in the book because it's basically all the same thing, so highlight reel: There's a badass Sangheili called 'Gadogai who works for Escharum. This dude is the right hand man of Atriox, aka the big boss. Anyways, Deukalion (where are my TW fans at?!) and Ballas are dokabs of two of the other Banished clans who are fighting over the pioneers' land, like a bunch of bitches, instead of doing their jobs and Castor's really mad about it. Castor continually demonstrates his cleverness but as always misses a key factor and his plans get screwed. Also, Orsun's son is around, so that's cool. There's lots of Jiralhanae politics and crap that I'm not really going to go into here. Also, Veta Lopis and the Ferrets are there with their kick-ass hairstyles. Escharum shows up and Castor's ploy to let BT guide them to this Portal to the Ark finally works out and things are going good for the Keepers' Leader.

BT finally makes it to the mountains, and after a fun aerial chase, Chapov is mortally wounded and manages to take out, like, four Banshees before he dies. The Banished go for the Portal while BT rush for SWORD base, there's another large scale fight with Jetpack Brutes and Longswords and Broadswords, but BT makes it to SWORD base, and Fred goes check out the corridor to the Portal (which they get into after a lot of events). They grab three cryo-bins and a box with a sabre symbol on it, and John manages to mess up his wounded legs and is very nice to Kalmiya's fragment. Sweet.

The Freta reunion is painfully brief, and leaves Fred with confusion and a message capsule. The Portal is opened, the Keepers turn on the Banished, but ultimately no consequences are reaped (shocker) and Gadogai jumps ship over to the Keepers. Cortana is alerted by the Portal and a Guardian is showing up and everyone hauls ass away from Reach.

Captain Veronica Dare is still alive (yay) and gives Fred part of the message because "it's none of ONI's business" which is amazing and awesome and once again, yay. Halsey is pained by how much Blue Team had gotten beaten up (which I am still confused by) and Palmer and the rest of the UNSC forces are stranded on Reach.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It was definitely lots of fun, I'll give Denning that. They finally brought in that slipspace crystal from First Strike which I've been bitching about forever, which is cool.

However, lots of elements from his previous books touch over in this one, like continually getting the badass, untouchable Spartans absolutely pwned and the subtle traces of sexism surrounding his treatment of Kelly, Linda and now Palmer get on my nerves.

One thing that bites at me was that Kelly got shot in the goddamn chest and she was just doing perfectly fine. Her coping with it was not shown at all. It gets more and more obvious with each book that Denning is pretty much clueless on what to do with either of our badass Spartan ladies, which is discouraging, especially compared to the amazing force-of-nature that is Veta Lopis!

And I really didn't like the fact that John was just sad about Cortana. I mean, there's no actual conflict about the fact that Eviltana (who I will always think about as a different person from my blue bby) is a mass-murdering fanatical bitch. Like she's just misunderstood and not an actual dictator. And he doesn't seem to give a damn about any of the Spartans obvious signs of trauma over any of this stuff. He just dismissed Kelly's valid concern about saying Cortana's name, which is kind of OOC, but okay.

That being said, they better not make another Cortana model, because that was something Actual!Cortana was very messed up about; being replaced like that. If they do, they better make it very clear that she's a different entity, like Kalmiya.

Congrats and thank you for reading through all of this stuff! Hope you enjoyed, and feel free to hit me up regarding anything Halo!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Yoshikage Kira

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

“You can call me Yoshikage Kira. I'm currently 33 years old. Not that you'd care, but I reside in northeast Morioh's villa district. Also, I've yet to marry. In order to make a living, I work for Kame Yu department stores. After a long day's work, I return home no later than 8 PM. I don't like smoking, but do enjoy the occasional drink. I'm always in bed by 11 PM, and I make it a point to get no less than 8 hours of sleep each night. Before bed, I drink a warm glass of milk. It's always coupled with 20 minutes of stretching to decompress from the long workday. Sweet dreams are the usual result of this. I then awake as refreshed and recharged as a newborn child, ready to take on the day's challenges. And after my last checkup, I was given a clean bill of health. For as long as I could remember, I've done everything in my power to live a productive life that allows me to pursue a lasting inner peace. This may be a foreign concept, but I choose not to concern myself with winning or losing, life's troubles, or enemies who bring sleepless nights. That is how I cope with this backwards life we find ourselves living. It's what brings me happiness in a world fraught with hardship and misery. Of course, if I were ever to engage in combat, I would win the battle without question.”

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is an absolute wealth of fantastic villains, some of the absolute best fiction has to offer. Villains like Dio and Funny Valentine and Diavolo and Pucci have become iconic among fans for their crazy personalities, quotable lines, powerful stands, unique designs, and overall character. But one villain stands out as perhaps the greatest creation of Hirohiko Araki, the villain of what is arguably the best part of the franchise: Yoshikage Kira of Diamond is Unbreakable.

Kira is the remorseless serial Killer who has been living in plain sight in Morioh for years, killing women and taking their hands to be his “girlfriends.” He miraculously was never caught despite being active for over a decade, due to a combination of sheer luck and his incredibly dangerous Stand Killer Queen. The utterly terrifying part is that for the most part he seems like an absolutely normal, average guy who otherwise wouldn’t stand out too much in a crowd (well, by JoJo standards anyway, he does dress a bit too colorfully to fit in to a crowd in the real world). This is also what makes him so great as a JoJo villain: even among the others, he stands out. Kind of ironic, all things considered.

Actor: The dub chose to grace Kira with the voice of D.C. Douglas, who you may know as Albert Wesker or Legion. To say that his voice work is perfect would be an understatement; he truly sells Kira as a normal guy while at the same time leaving an air of uncomfortable dread around every word Kira says. And when Kira snaps… brrrrr. Douglas really outdid himself here.

Motivation/Goals: Yoshikage Kira simply wishes to live a quiet life, free from the worries that the common man has. He just wants to live and brutally obliterate women until the end of his days, never being caught or facing justice. This is the gist of his character when first introduced, but of course, things change when Josuke and the gang get on his tail; he then goes out of his way to escape them by stealing the identity and life of a man named Kosaku Kawajiri, and when even that fails due to Kawajiri’s son catching on to him he gains a new ability so he can simply obliterate them all. The long and short of it though is that Kira is very much your typical serial killer pushed too far, though with his abilities, Kira is a lot more than “typical.”

Personality: Kira’s personality when compared to other villains like DIO is actually very subdued. For the most part, he is very calm, collected, and doesn’t really ham it up to any great extent. But when he does, it’s usually extremely terrifying; just look at the scene where he invades the couple’s apartment and kills them if you need evidence of how utterly terrifying Kira can be when he raises his voice

All that being said, once Kira gets Bites the Dust all bets are off. He becomes a lot hammier, though none of it feels like a betrayal of his character; it more feels like after all his desperate attempts to escape and all the fear of being caught, he is finally winning. And then when he starts to lose… it does sort of bring back memories of DIO after drinking Joseph’s blood, with how unhinged and even maniacal he starts to become.

Final Fate: Kira has the honor of dying twice within the span of a single episode. First comes when he is pushed into the path of an oncoming ambulance, which accidentally backs up over his head, killing him. Kira’s spirit ends up on Reimi’s street, and together with Arnold she succeeds in making Kira turn around and face the hands of the wicked spirits that live there, who proceed to tear him and Killer Queen apart and drag them to oblivion.

Both deaths are fitting and have a sense of irony to them. An ambulance reverses over him and tears off his face, just as he did to Kosaku Kawajiri; there’s also the fact that his face being mangled by the wheels of the ambulance technically gives Kira the anonymity he so craved. Then of course there is the fact that Kira is dragged off by the object of his desires, torn apart and brought to a place where he will never again experience a quiet day.

Best Scene: For Kira in his original appearance, it’s almost definitely his brutal murder of Shigechi. When he’s Kosaku Kawajiri, the final activation of Bites the Dust and his final fate really take the cake.

Best Quote: You know there is only one quote that could possibly go here. The single most famous thing Kira ever said. And while the dub unfortunately had to censor the line because there are some words you just can’t say on TV, the line still managed to be as epic as promised even if it did have a bit of unintentional hilarity to it:

“When I was a young boy, I remember discovering Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic Mona Lisa while leafing through a tome of the master's works. It was my first time laying eyes on her! The beauty before me, well, it aroused something in me... it gave me a rock hard cock!”

The “cock” was bleeped out in the broadcast. I just love how this drops all the pretense and subtlety of the manga’s translation, it’s really beautiful and really showcases just how desperate and unhinged Kira has become.

Final Thoughts & Score: As has been noted and alluded to, there is a hilarious irony to Kira. By being a JoJo villain who does his best to appear as average and mundane as possible, he stands out compared to his garish, posing, flexing, hammy peers in the series. Of course, this really does just help make him all the more intriguing and unique… which, if he were real, would just frustrate him all the more.

Frankly this is the easiest 10/10 I have ever given to a villain. I hardly even have to think about it. Kira is just my absolute favorite villain subjectively speaking, and even objectively he’s just a fantastic character who fits the story so well. The ultimate enemy of a man who can fix anything is a man who can blow up everything, it’s pure brilliance, like a shining diamond perhaps. Then there’s his design, which just oozes cool, as well as Killer Queen’s design and myriad powers, which are likewise insanely awesome. Is it any surprise that he’s my go-to inspiration for when I design serial killer OCs?

There’s also just how he contrasts with the part as a whole. Diamond is Unbreakable is very relaxed and laid-back, plot wise. Compared to the previous three stories, which were all about fabulous muscle-bound vampires trying to take over the world, this is just a simple story about a gang of teens trying to find a killer and protect their town. There’s a lot of wacky situations and side characters, and overall the tone manages to stay fun and lighthearted… until Kira steps on the scene. Kira’s every appearance brings in a lot of dark, terrifying, and truly gruesome moments, and even with some of the levity provided such as his rambling about the erection he got from the Mona Lisa he still manages to be incredibly creepy and unnerving until his dying breath.

Kira is just an utterly fantastic villain with cool powers, a great voice actor, and two really fun playable appearances in All-Star Battle (Kawajiri’s Great Heat Attack is one of my favorites, it’s so funny). And while it’s obviously sad but still expected such a fantastic villain has to die, we can all take solace in knowing that some day in the distant future we will see him again (sort of) in Part 8. Still, it’s doubtful it will fill the hole Kira has exploded in the hearts of JoJo fans everywhere. 

[winryofresembool]

Kid!Ed fic: The Sky He Lost

A/N: Tadah, @silverfangirl15! Here is your gift fic! Your wish was: “Young Ed and Al before their mom’s death” and you wanted to see how they reacted to Hohenheim leaving. This fic is definitely more Ed focused but that’s because Al was so small at that point I don’t think he understood the situation as well as Ed did. And because I’m me, I had to include some kid!Edwin too :P But I still hope you enjoy! I am quite proud of this fic, but it wouldn’t have taken the form it did without my awesome beta reader @randomlyopeneddictionary who was so very helpful, so thank you once again ♥ And thank you to @criis55 too because you gave me plenty of ideas too ♥ Now, just enjoy and please do review because trust me I want to know!!

Characters: Ed, Trisha, Al, Winry

Genre: hurt/comfort (the Best genre) 

Words: 3509 

Warnings: get some tissues for some Trisha angst maybe

AO3

“Boys! Winry is here!” Trisha Elric yelled at her two sons.

A couple of days had gone by since her husband* had left the house, but she had barely seen her sons since then. Edward seemed to start taking an interest in his father’s book collection, and since Alphonse followed his big brother everywhere, he was also hidden behind a huge book pile even though he had just recently started recognizing letters. Trisha didn’t really know what to think of this change. It seemed to be her sons’ way of coping with what had happened with their father, but Ed seemed to take it to the extreme: last night she had found the golden-haired boy so much like his father asleep in Van Hohenheim’s library, tears streaking his face and his cheek pressed against a hard book cover. During the day he was acting tough, as if trying to convince her things would be OK, but the wet-cheeked little boy she had carried into his bed at night proved otherwise. He thought Hohenheim wasn’t coming back. And he didn’t take that information well. Trisha’s heart clenched even more when she realized the book Ed had been reading was one his father had read him and Al before bedtime countless of times.

Shaking her head to stop her train of thoughts, Trisha was relieved to notice that her boys did bother to come down from the library this time. A day after Hohenheim leaving, their kindergarten mate Pitt had tried to ask them to come out and play. That time Ed had stubbornly claimed he didn’t feel like playing because ‘playing was for kids’, and Pitt had had to leave with a disappointed expression on his face. Winry seemed to be a different story though.

Trisha had always thought her sons (especially Edward) had a soft spot for the neighbor girl. Sure, Ed and Winry got into arguments a lot, but they always made up in the end and had fun playing together, at least until they got into another argument. One time a boy from kindergarten had wanted to walk Winry home, and Ed had seethed with anger for the rest of the day. Another time Ed’s teachers informed her Ed had punched someone at the kindergarten, and when she asked why he did it, he explained: “he said Winry is stupid.”

“But Edward, you told Winry the same thing yesterday! How is that any different?” Trisha scolded him.

“It IS different! I don’t mean it.” Ed said quietly, staring at his feet awkwardly.

“Oh? Have you told her that?” Trisha wanted to know.

“No. Should I?” Ed asked, suddenly looking ashamed.

“Of course you should. One day she’s really going to think you think she’s stupid,” Trisha noted, casually continuing her work after that and leaving Ed to consider his words.

After that Ed seemed to speak to Winry slightly nicer, although being the two stubborn kids they were, that didn’t prevent them from getting into occasional fights. Alphonse, despite being the youngest, was usually the one who managed to calm them down. That was a huge relief for his mother because she had enough work to do even without getting between the kids’ constant arguments.

Trisha wondered if Pinako had told Winry about Van Hohenheim and she had come to see if she could cheer the boys up. Based on her happy expression, though, she started suspecting that Winry hadn’t heard the news yet. When she and the boys sat down in the kitchen to drink some orange juice and eat freshly baked pie, Winry started explaining the reason for her excitement.

“Mum and dad are coming home for a visit tomorrow! We just got the letter!”

“Oh? That’s nice!” Trisha said, worried her sons (or rather, just Edward) would not react well to the news because of their father. She could already feel Ed’s glare on her.

“They’ll not believe their eyes when I show them how much I’ve learned since they last saw me!” Winry continued excitedly. “I can already build a toy car from steel. And one day I will build an automail limb, I swear.”

“Big deal,” Ed huffed. “When our dad comes back, we can already build a life size car with alchemy, right, Al?”

Trisha glanced at her son sadly. His words contradicted with how he was acting when he thought no one was seeing, and she knew he was just putting on an act.

“Of course!” Al agreed, even though he was more interested in eating his pie than participating in the conversation.

“Wait… what has happened to your dad? He isn’t here?” Winry asked, frowning as she processed the information.

“Nothing happened to him,” Ed said, his voice telling Winry to not ask any more questions.

“He… just has an important mission somewhere,” Trisha added, but Winry wasn’t stupid. She could see something was going on. Just when the little girl was about to ask something, Ed got up from his seat and took his plate and drink with him, storming out of the room.

“What was that about?” she asked once Ed was out of hearing distance.

Trisha decided it was better for Winry to know the truth. “I think… I think he got upset when you told about your parents… because the thing is, we don’t know when my husband returns. It could be soon, but it could also take years. I don’t think my husband knows it either.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Winry said, really meaning it. “I can go and talk to Ed.”

She thought her experiences on absent parents could be helpful to Ed. However, it turned out she was wrong, because soon Trisha could hear Ed’s carrying voice all the way to the kitchen:

“I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP! IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! AND WHAT DO YOU EVEN CARE, YOUR PARENTS ARE COMING HOME TO SEE YOU SOON, RIGHT? SO GO HOME AND LEAVE ME ALONE.”

Winry ran back downstairs, tears falling down her face. She didn’t even say goodbye to Al and Trisha when she pulled her shoes on and left the house.

Even though Ed had always been more challenging to raise than Al, there weren’t that many times that Trisha had truly gotten angry at her son. Usually he understood himself when he had crossed the line and tried to fix the situation in his own way. But this time his mother couldn’t just stand there and see him hurt his best friend just because he was hurting.

“Edward Elric,” she started threateningly. “I will not allow you to talk to your friend that way. Do you understand? Winry was only worried about you! She wanted to help you. You had better apologize to her when you see her again at the kindergarten tomorrow.”

“What? I’m not going there! You said we…” Ed tried to protest, remembering well how Trisha had promised the boys could take a few days off so they could spend more time together.

“You are going there. And you will apologize to her. I will ask Winry personally if you did.” Trisha didn’t want to admit she did have also another reason for sending the boys to the daycare the next day. She had a doctor’s appointment, just to make sure… but it was far too early to worry the boys with that yet.

“Fine,” Ed growled and hid his face behind a book to let his mother know he was done talking about this topic.

Trisha didn’t give up so easily, though. Sitting down on Ed’s bed, she took the book from his hands and set it on the table out of the boy’s reach. Ed groaned and gave her the darkest look he could master before burying his face into a pillow. If there was something that made him regret his actions faster than anything else, it was his mother’s sad eyes, and he couldn’t let himself fall into that trap again.

Sighing, Trisha finally spoke:

“Edward, we need to talk about this. I know you are hurting. Please, talk to me. Tell me what’s in your mind.”

“I… I think dad hates me.” She could finally hear a broken voice from under the pillow.

“Why would you think that way?” Trisha asked. In her opinion, Hohenheim had always showed he cared about the kids a lot… Although, now that she thought of it, he did it in his own, reserved way that may be hard for a child to pick.

“Because he just left! And didn’t even say anything!” Ed shouted and threw the pillow on the floor with anger. “What kind of dad does that?!”

For a moment Trisha didn’t know what to say. “Ed… you may not believe me right now, but… he definitely doesn’t hate you. He cares about both of you so, so much.”

“Then why did he leave?” Ed asked bitterly.

“Because he had to,” Trisha tried to explain patiently. “You are too small to understand, but one day you will…”

“I’m not small!” Ed protested, simply the use of the s-word making him furious.

“That is not what I meant.” Trisha sighed again, her patience starting to grow thin. Still, she continued calmly: “Just listen to what I have to say now. Remember how your dad made you the swing? Or read you one of his books? Or bought Al that cat plush even though I said you guys already had enough of them? Or comforted you when you had nightmares? Does a person who doesn’t care do that?”

“I… I don’t…” Ed stuttered.

“You may not understand this yet, but the reason why he left without saying anything was because the thought of seeing your sad faces… it hurt him so much. Like you are hurting now.” She put a hand on Ed’s heart, trying to make Ed understand. The little boy finally reached his breaking point and inched closer to his mother, sobbing uncontrollably against her shoulder until his breathing got calmer. He had fallen asleep. Trisha stroked his hair, mumbling quietly even though he couldn’t hear her anymore: “Please, forgive him. One day… one day, you might need each other.”

After setting Ed back in his bed, Trisha noticed that Al was standing behind the door, apparently too afraid to come inside. “Come here, darling.” Al did just that, sprinting onto his mother’s lap.

“Will brother be OK?” he asked worriedly.

“He will, Alphonse, I’m sure of it.”

As she hugged her youngest son tightly, she felt thankful Al was still too young to understand the whole situation. Quietly, she sent her prayer to the stars she could see through the window: “Hohenheim, please come back soon. Before it’s too late.”

…

“Stupid kindergarten, stupid Winry, stupid mum.”

The next day, Edward and Alphonse went to the kindergarten like planned, but Ed wasn’t particularly thrilled about it. Normally Winry, who occasionally joined the boys so she could play with kids of her age, would have walked with them. This time, however, Pinako and she were walking with Charlie, a boy from their class, and the two kids seemed to be having a lot of fun together. That didn’t help to ease Ed’s annoyance towards the girl, and when they finally arrived at their destination, he didn’t feel like apologizing to her. When Winry glanced at his way briefly, she looked so sad and hurt that it only made Ed angrier. He didn’t understand it was because he was angry at himself for making her so upset for a stupid reason. After all, it was like his mother had said: she only wanted to help.

Until lunch the day progressed quite normally; playing outside, crafting and other typical kindergarten activities. Even Ed managed to forget about the upsetting home situation for a moment. But once the kids sat down to eat their meals, one of the boys asked: “Hey, Ed, is it true what my mother said? That your father just left?”

Ed simply glared at him, clenching his small fists. He had never liked this boy because he was constantly bragging about a great new toy he had gotten or a new place his dad had taken him to see. The boy had also spread some rumors about seeing Ed and Winry kissing when they were walking home together, which was entirely untrue. Ew, Ed thought, Winry had girl cooties and was way too annoying that he’d ever want to do that! Finally, he managed to retort:

“I don’t know, Tom, but I heard that you are getting a fist in your face real soon if you don’t shut up.”

Tom eyed Ed suspiciously, wondering if the golden eyed boy would really attack him in front of all the kindergarten teachers. He knew Ed wasn’t afraid to fight but usually he wasn’t that forward about it. He was his mother’s golden boy and didn’t want her to know about his shenanigans, or that was at least what the other kids claimed. But still, Tom had to admit he was slightly afraid of the smaller boy.

“You… you don’t want to fight me here,” he answered, although uncertainly, and decided to move to eat at another table.

From the corner of his eye Ed could see Winry looking at him with an expression that was hard to read. There was anger in it, but also a hint of… sadness? Worry? Ed started lapping food into his mouth in an outrageous speed pretending he didn’t notice anything, and the little girl sighed. That was so typical Edward behavior.

“What are you staring at?” Ed suddenly stopped eating, making Winry realize she must have been watching him longer than intended.

“Nothing.” Winry glared at him and rose from the table as well, joining Nelly who had already finished her lunch.

“Big brother… didn’t mum say you should tell her you’re sorry?” Al noted once he had listened to enough Ed’s mumbling under his breath.

“But she doesn’t want to be apologized to,” Ed growled and told his little brother to mind his own business.

…

It was almost time for Trisha to pick the boys up, but Ed still hadn’t managed to apologize to Winry. After the lunch she had stuck with her girl friends and tried to ignore Ed the best she could, although when she thought Ed wasn’t watching, she still threw worried looks at his direction. Maybe Ed would have stayed quiet the entire day if Pinako Rockbell hadn’t arrived before Trisha to take Winry home. At first the girl’s face lit up with excitement because she thought her grandmother had come early to tell her her parents were finally home, but the excitement soon turned into tears. Ed overheard Pinako saying:

“I’m sorry dear, there was some big incident and your parents need to stay there for at least a few more weeks… Your father said they are not sure how long exactly it will take. But don’t worry, I’m sure they will come back soon enough. They sent you a lot of hugs and kisses.”

Ed was used to seeing Pinako as the strict grandparent who made sure Winry wasn’t slacking off, and who wasn’t afraid to yell at him and Al too whenever they did something she didn’t approve of, so this soft side surprised her. Her parents’ return must have been really important to Winry.

Suddenly it occurred to Ed that Winry’s situation wasn’t really that different from his. He had never before stopped to think that Winry must miss her parents a lot, but now that he saw Winry’s expression, he understood how she felt. And he felt bitter for her friend. How couldn’t her parents understand she wanted them home? Surely there would be other doctors that could help around while they were gone! Ed couldn’t stand that and decided it was finally his time to apologize.

“Winry…” he said surprisingly quietly when he approached her. Pinako watched the two of them curiously.

“What do you want now?” Winry hissed, narrowing her eyes like a cat and swiping her tears away. “If you came here because you…”

“No! I mean… Listen… I’m sorry. I said some mean things yesterday. I didn’t mean them.”

Winry wasn’t expecting Ed to apologize, so she stopped glaring at him and nodded, waiting for Ed to continue.

“I just… dad and…” he stammered, trying to get full sentences out of his mouth. “Can we go to your place?” He asked suddenly. “I don’t want everyone staring.”

“You will have to tell your mother first,” Pinako noted. “She wants to know where you two are. Alphonse, will you come with us?”

“Sure!” the younger Elric brother exclaimed and excused his friend with whom he was building sand animals. The teachers knew the Elrics lived right next to the Rockbells so they just nodded their goodbyes when the trio left with Pinako.

…

After having dropped Al off (Ed claimed someone had seen a kitten at their yard the other day, so he happily stayed home trying to look for it) Ed and Winry went into Winry’s room to talk. Both sat down on her neatly made bed, Winry pulling her legs closer to her body as she was waiting for Ed to start the conversation. Ed looked around for a moment, taking in all the metal toys and some failed experiments Winry had in her room. She had once told him making them made her feel less sad. Based on the amount of toys, she must have felt sad a lot lately… How had he failed to notice?

“So…” Ed started awkwardly.

“So…” Winry repeated.

“I… I think I understand how you feel now.” Ed blurted out eventually, shifting uncomfortably on the bed.

“Huh?” Winry asked, confused.

“You’re mad at your parents, right?” Ed elaborated. “Because they are not here.”

“I… I don’t want to be!” She said quickly, her voice shriller than usual. “I know those people need their help! So I’m trying to understand…”

A weird feeling Ed didn’t recognize filled him for a moment, when he realized his friend had entirely different approach to her situation than he did. Winry tried her best to endure, even if it hurt.

“But sometimes you still wonder why they don’t just stay here,” he finished for Winry.

“Yeah… What if they don’t like me?” she asked, confirming Ed they had similar suspicions about their parents.

“Don’t be stupid!” he exclaimed. He had seen Winry with her parents many times and he knew they cared. Besides, this was Winry, his best friend they were talking about. “Of course they like you. How could they not?”

“W-what do you mean?” Winry asked.

Ed blushed slightly. He wasn’t used to telling what he really felt. “Y-you’re the nicest person I know. Well, maybe after my mum,” he was quick to add. “When you’re not throwing stuff. Anyway, I still think they would have to be pretty dumb to not notice that.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me.” Winry looked at him with awe. “Sometimes I’ve thought you think I’m stupid because you always repeat that…”

“You’re such a gearhead.” For the first time in days a tiny smile played on Ed’s lips. “Of course I don’t think that way. You’re my best friend!”

“And you’re my best friend,” Winry answered, trying to brush the wetness away from the corner of her eye before Ed could see.

“Hey, are you crying again?” Ed, who had of course noticed, freaked out, always hating to see her cry.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a happy tear.” Winry tried to calm him down. “Thanks, Ed. I’m feeling much better now. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed… I worry about my parents a lot… And I was worried about you and Al too. I’m really sorry about your dad.”

“The worst part is hearing my mum crying,” Ed said quietly. “She doesn’t cry in front of us but sometimes she withdraws into her room and I can hear her… And then I get so angry at my dad!”

“Your mum said he has some important mission,” Winry noted. “Sort of like my parents.”

“It doesn’t matter how important it is, he still left,” Ed growled, although the sharpest edge was already gone from his voice.

“And now you are worried he hates you,” Winry finally understood what Ed had been talking about this entire time. Gently, she nudged him on the shoulder. “Hey, I’m sure he still cares about you a lot. He would have to be pretty dumb to not.” She repeated Ed’s earlier phrase and ruffled his hair like he always did when he tried to comfort her.

“When you say that… I feel I can almost believe it.” Ed answered, and leaned his head against her shoulder, which was easy because she was quite a bit taller than him.

Maybe that conversation didn’t remove all of Ed’s worries, but he felt a lot lighter after talking with Winry. It made him understand he wasn’t alone with his issue.

* I know Hohenheim wasn’t officially Trisha’s husband but it was the simplest solution to call him that way.

[sharpdressedbman]

A Tribute to Chester: Life, Death, Rebirth, and How He Lives on in Memory

How do you properly memorialize one of your childhood idols? Are you supposed to scream, cry, and gnash your teeth? Or do you put on noise-canceling headphones and block out the ambient noise of the outside world for a while? All of these are difficult questions to answer. I guess that’s why they’re rhetorical. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since Chester Bennington passed. So in a way, this simple little essay is how I can honor him. It feels nice to write something that isn’t fiction or related to a blog for a change[1]. Let’s see how it goes.

Part Zero: Notes from the Underground

I must confess that I was never a member of the official fan club, the LP Underground. I suppose in retrospect that’s how I could have proven I was a legit fan despite never seeing them live in concert except via live stream. But even then, that was a rare occasion. I do remember a t-shirt I got from Hot Topic when I was 12 or so – it had the faces of all of the guys gathered around the classic script font of the band’s logo.

I don’t remember what happened to it. The last time I remember wearing it was in August 2014. I supposed by then I had outgrown it. But still, buying whatever merch I could and getting all of the CDs and eagerly anticipating the next music video all had to count for something.  I knew the names of all the guys, even Mark Wakefield, who was never an official member, and Phoenix Orion (Dave Farrell?), who left before Hybrid Theory but was back in time for Reanimation – more on that later.  

But I digress. Let’s get on with the real meat of why we’re here. In terms of structure, I thought it would make the most sense to go album by album, discuss some memories I have associated with each, and attempt to unpack why they remain so important to me even as time has marched on since then. Growing up with the band, as I’m sure many of you did, you might feel a similar connection that you never fully grasped until the night of the tribute show in December 2017.

Part One: Hybrid Theory

#Forfeit the game/Before somebody else/takes you out of the frame and puts your name to shame/Cover up your face, you can’t run the race/the pace is too fast, you just won’t last. [HT Track 4: “Points of Authority”]

Although Hybrid Theory came out in October 2000, I think the first time I heard it was for another month or two after it came out. It’s still one of the most vivid memories I can still recall, the first time “Papercut” blared out of a cd player. I was sitting in the basement at my buddy Andre’s house and we were playing Perfect Dark with our mutual friend Alberto. It was honestly the perfect soundtrack for the game. Here’s what I said back then: “Dude, who is this? This is awesome!”

               “It’s Linkin Park.”

Even then I thought the name was cool, the way that they intentional misspelled Lincoln – the rule of cool and all that. Elementary school hadn’t even ended yet, but it was still part of my formative years, musically speaking. Before then, I had never discovered any music on my own – my friends had always shown me. My parents didn’t raise me to enjoy music – I hated classical and most of the “standards” went over my head. My parents were still throwing karaoke parties. My old neighbor John showed me James Brown. That’s how I latched onto my first favorite song of all time “I Feel Good”. Then came Third Eye Blind, another early love of mine. But that’s a story for another time, as is my recollections of Limp Bizkit. This tale is about LP.

I wouldn’t realize it at the time, but Hybrid Theory would continue to be one of the most important albums to be me as I left elementary school and hit middle school. The days of Perfect Dark and WCW/nWo Revenge began to fade[2] as Diablo II and Starcraft emerged. The sound of Chester’s howls and Mike’s swagger along with the rest of the bands driving instrumentals provided a backdrop like you wouldn’t believe.  “In the End” stood out in particular, although as middle school came to an end, it became clear that those reasons weren’t ones I wish to discuss here, now. Ask me again another time. It was at the end of middle school (hell, even before) that I confronted the notion of how deeply uncool I was, and probably tangled with imposter syndrome, anxiety, and depression long before I knew what any of those terms meant.

I already knew I was an introvert who was much more inclined to stay inside playing video games, reading, or writing instead of going outside to play street hockey or anything like that. That shouldn’t have meant that I was an easy target for bullying, but hey, it was the 90s and then the early 2000s, so what could you do? LP helped me cope, even if I couldn’t always express my anger in responsible ways.

I think here is a good place to stop and point something out: mental illness has been something that has been immensely important to me – it affects me and I know it damn sure affects my wife and mother in law. I went through a very dark time in my life roughly five years ago that LP also helped me pull out of – but I’ll get to explaining that more in-depth later on. Right now we’re still in the HT era; I just wanted to talk a little bit more about my motivations for writing this piece.[3]

Part Two: Reanimation

#Keep that in mind/ I designed this rhyme/ when I was obsessed with time. [RA Track 3: “Enth E Nd]

Full disclosure: when I first heard Reanimation, I thought it had its moments. But it wasn’t something I could listen to end-to-end and love every single song. Heck, even HT wasn’t like that, since some of the songs had to grow on me. The video with the robots and aliens having a war while the disembodied robot heads of the band sing the remixed version of “Points of Authority” by Jay Gordon of Orgy was definitely awesome, but I don’t know, I had mixed feelings about the album that took years for it to resolve into me think of it as one of the LP’s early era classics that would culminate with Meteora and Live in Texas.

I have a very distinct memory of popping this cd into the car’s stereo while we were out in…Houston? Taiwan? The details are blurry now because it’s been too long. Seventeen years was a long time ago, and 2002 me was simpler, less refined, and yes, much dumber and naïve. On an emotional level, “p5hng me Aw*y” stood out, and even though it wasn’t actually a true Linkin Park song, “It’s Goin’ Down” stood out from this time period too.

Part Three: Meteora

#I’ll never fight again, and this is how it ends…I don’t know what’s worth fighting, or why I have to scream, but now I have some clarity to show you what I mean… [MA Track 9: “Breaking the Habit”]

Meteora is one of those albums I more clearly associate with Diablo II and Starcraft more than any other games. Just something about the overall darkness and broodiness of the album really fit both of those games. Also, this essay project is making me want to go back in time. Not really from a nostalgia standpoint – okay yeah I guess from a nostalgia standpoint. But it was during this era that I really started to enjoy their music videos. Believe it or not, for the longest time, not all of the songs on the album were rated five stars. I used to be stingier with that rating that I am now. It took a while for some of the songs to grow on me, but “Somewhere I Belong”, “Faint”, “Easier to Run”, “Breaking the Habit”. “Nobody’s Listening”, and “Numb” were instant standouts. I’m still not sure what happened to my original copy of this album. The last I checked, I had a burned copy, but not the real deal.

Part Four: Live in Texas

#When I look into your eyes there’s nothing there to see/nothing but my own mistakes staring back at me# [LIT Track 8: P5hng Me A*wy – Live]

Man, I remember this too. It must have come out six months or so after Meteora did, and grabbing it from Kmart was one of my best days. I think it was also the first LP album to have the dreaded Parental Advisory sticker on it, and this is probably the album I blame most for me disliking the edited versions of songs. Sometimes edits can be clever, but when they’re just bleeps or certain naughty words are blanked out, then it gets annoying. Then again, I probably wasn’t a stranger to this concept thanks to early exposure to Third Eye Blind and Limp Bizkit, as I mentioned before. Was this the first time I heard “live” performances of LP? I think it was, and it probably stoked my eagerness to see them live in concert. Alas, it was never to be.

Part Five: Collision Course

#Yeah/Thank you, thank you, thank you, you’re far too kind#  [CC Track 4: “Numb / Encore”]

It’s fitting that as I pick this up on (7/21/19) it’s the day after the 2 year anniversary. I meant to have this finished by the 20th, but it just didn’t happen. Plus “Numb/Encore” was one of the first songs that started up on this go-through of the playlist. If you’re interested in listening to it, I can direct you to my Spotify profile! Numb is one of those songs that have taken on new meaning since his death, but out of all the collaborations on this mashup album, I think it’s the one that works the best sonically and thematically, especially with the juxtaposition between angst and bravado[4].

Part Six: Fort Minor & The Rising Tied

#So sick, if he’s gonna think/That the good lord would come take him/I’m shaking him, “Wake up, you son of a bitch!”#  [TRT Track 14: “Red to Black”]

It was four years between the era of Meteora and Minutes to Midnight. In between that time, there was a sea change. First there was the mashup with Jay-Z, and then this came along in November 2005. I remember being more stoked for it than probably any other music that I discovered that year – and this was when Fall Out Boy, 50 Cent, and Coheed and Cambria dawned on me, among others. For those who don’t know, Fort Minor is/was Mike’s side project. He’s since done other solo stuff under his own name but between then and now he would bust out verses from The Rising Tied and incorporate them into existing songs. I always thought that Red to Black was the most LP-sounding song on the entire album and that for the longest time I thought Chester used Jonah Matranga as an alias and it wasn’t a separate person.  

Part Seven: Minutes to Midnight

#In this farewell/There’s no blood, there’s no alibi/Cause I’ve drawn regret/From the truth of a thousand lies/So let mercy come and wash away# [M2M Track 6: “What I’ve Done”]

In the interest of time, these entries are probably going to get shorter and shorter. At this point, I just want to get the damn thing over with. “What I’ve Done”, the lead single was the one that struck me the most at first; I remember LP making a big deal about how they wanted to start a new sound after leaving their classic era behind. The music video was awesome, and I think LP was one of the best choices for the Transformers movies. I always thought that “What I’ve Done” would make a great wrestling song. Not necessarily as an entrance theme, but as a hype video for a PPV or a feud or something like that. EWR back in the day helped reinforce that belief though I can’t exactly remember what I associated it with – anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The day that I got this album was the same day the shooting at Virginia Tech happened. Finding out that the shooter was a mentally ill Asian dude spooked me. In today’s parlance, I was shook.[5] That’s something that has always stuck out even though it’s something I’ve not been fond of discussing, for obvious reasons. Still, for our purposes here, it is for once, actually relevant.

Part Eight: Dead by Sunrise and Out of Ashes

#Don’t want to lose my innocence/Don’t want the world second-guessing my heart/Won’t let your lies take a piece of my soul/Don’t want to take your medicine# [OOA Track 2: “Crawl Back In”]

The melodies that emerged on Minutes to Midnight, especially when it was Chester’s turn to take the mic, evolved. They turned into another platform for his music: the side-project Dead by Sunrise and their only album, so far as I know: Out of Ashes. I lump this album in with Welcome to the Masquerade by Thousand Foot Krutch and Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin. All three emerged during my sophomore year of college[6], which was another difficult year for me. I think that is when I had the most trouble sleeping, either by choice or for other reasons.  Out of everything LP-related, I think I have given this the least amount of attention. It’s probably time for that to change, ten years later.

Part Nine: A Thousand Suns

#Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds/I suppose we all thought that, one another# [ATA Track 2: “The Radiance”]

If Minutes to Midnight was an attempt to step out of the shadow of Hybrid Theory, then A Thousand Suns represented an aural breakaway. It was vastly different, integrating more spoken word and turning up their signature sound to 12. I can’t remember exactly if it was in 2009 or 2010 that I was meant to go see LP as they rolled into DC. Ultimately, I couldn’t go because of a lack of transport. It all ended up moot anyway because that was the show that got canceled because of Chester being sick. Trying to dig up that post on Facebook is probably beyond me now because it’s a day late. Maybe someday I’ll be able to find it again because those days were golden (at least my pathetic little eulogy for him that I wrote two years ago.)

Part Ten: Living Things

#Fly me up on a silver wing/Past the black where the sirens sing/Warm me up in a nova’s glow/And drop me down to the dream below#  [LT Track 6: “Castle of Glass”]

So if LP had been striving to break away from the sound that made them famous, it was at this point where they were “Nah bro” and went full bore back around into an ouroboros[7] of awesome. While the vast majority of A Thousand Suns[8] had to grow on me over the intervening years, Living Things grabbed me by the throat and never let go. It followed the Hybrid Theory blueprint to a T. After all this time, “Castle of Glass” still stands out as my favorite from the album, but as is often the case, it’s hard to pick favorites.

Part Eleven: Recharged

#When I was young, they told me, they said/Make your bed, you lie in that bed/A king can only reign ‘til instead/There comes that day it’s off with his head# [RC Track 1: “A Light That Never Comes”]

The less said about this, the better. It had its moments, especially “A Light That Never Comes” which showed me the potential of Steve Aoki. But the memory that stands out most clearly about the day I got this album was getting a case of Hell or High Watermelon beer. I think since I got it from Record and Tape Traders, it was the day I found the TARDIS socks for Ally and sent them to her later that week. As you probably gathered from the cluster of footnotes, this was deemed my least favorite “official” LP album, and that ranking has held up in the last six years. It does to Living Things what Reanimation did to Hybrid Theory, but for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to enjoy it more.  

Part Twelve: The Hunting Party

#Cause you don’t know what you’ve got/it’s your battle to be fought/until it’s gone# [THP Track 7: “Until It’s Gone]

Ah, here we go. LP seems to follow patterns in the creation of their albums. Cause roughly a year after Recharged, there came The Hunting Party. After A Thousand Suns came and went, it seemed like LP was on a creative lull. But then we got LT, Recharged, and THP in three straight years. This came out in 2014, and it’s hard to believe that five years have passed already. To this day, I still think that my favorite part was all of the guest appearances on their album, especially from collaborators they hadn’t featured before then, like Daron Malakian and Tom Morello.

Part Thirteen: Welcome

#First time I did it, yeah I’ll admit it/I kinda hit it and quit it and left y’all hanging# [“Welcome”]

In all honesty, this should be a footnote for The Rising Tied. It came out 10 years later, as a way for Mike to tip a wink and a nod at all his fans that were still waiting for a full-fledged sequel. Fate had other plans, though. I can still remember helping to clean Tidewater while this song blared through my headphones.  This probably became one of my most played songs of 2015.

Part Fourteen:  One More Light

#Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do# [OML Track 9: “One More Light”]

We’re almost to the finish line. I was super excited for One More Light because it broke a drought of no new music until 2017[9]. The song One More Light became more poignant after his passing. I hope it still makes him proud.

Part Fifteen: Afterword

So where do we go from here?  Honestly, not even the remaining members of the band know. They’re not actively looking to replace Chester, and as a group, they’re still officially on hiatus. I didn’t even touch on any of the DVD or special edition releases that I’ve barely heard. I guess in a sense they’re honorable mentions, but without having listened to them, I can’t form any honest opinions or associations for them.[10]

[/mrhahn]

     [1] It seems fitting that I mention that shirt I got as a twelve-year-old because that’s when I started picking up on writing as a hobby. It was a way to release my imagination and translate what I had in mind into a story, even if those early stories were embarrassingly bad. These footnotes will serve to flesh out those asides since they’ll more than likely distract from the main narrative I’m trying to spin here.

         [2] Although Revenge remains iconic! Even to this day, I still long for an N64 and another copy.

[3] Chester struggled with MI too, even though hardly anyone knew it. It’s what ultimately got the best of him.

[4] My fascination with Genius Lyrics is really helping me to analyze and better understand the meanings of the words.

[5] It didn’t help that he bore an uncanny resemblance to me…

[6] 2009, how time flies!

[7] Not sure how to spell this dang word.

[8] I regarded it as my least favorite LP album until Recharged came out. More on that later.

[9] It wasn’t until that I built the playlist that inspired this essay that I learned that there were some other singles issued between The Hunting Party and One More Light. These tracks include “We Made It” with Busta Rhymes, which actually fell between Meteora and Minutes to Midnight; “Not Alone”, which was between A Thousand Suns and Living Things; and “Darker Than Blood” with Steve Aoki that was between The Hunting Party and One More Light.  

[10] One was called “Frat Party at the Pankake Festival” and the other one was “Road to Revolution”, I think?

[cheylouwho]

South Park: The affect of Abuse and ACEs on Behavior

One thing that’s been a hot topic in the SP fandom as of late is the discussion of how the behavior (both past and present) of the child characters are affected by the experiences we’ve seen/heard about in canon. Today we’re going to talk a little about three of the most damning cases; Cartman, Tweek and Butters.

Disclaimer 1: This analysis will contain several mentions of childhood trauma such as abuse, neglect and sexual relations. Please be mindful that you have been warned.

Disclaimer 2: This is for the sake of analysis and application of knowledge that I (and those in the SP analysis discord) have. We are in no way professionals. I am only a preschool teacher so my knowledge in the field of abuse and neglect is limited to what I’ve been taught and what I have witnessed/experienced. Please take the speculation with a grain of salt… maybe even the whole shaker. Just dump it in your mouth and enjoy almost 4,000 words of fully sourced “its not that deep, fam”.

Preface: What We Know about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Before we can really dive into this whole thing, we need to discuss ACEs. These are, to put it simply, traumatic events that occur during childhood that can have lasting effects on a person’s social/emotional, cognitive and even physical development well into adulthood. They’re mostly used for identifying children/people at risk and for research. It’s pretty interesting how that’s done, so I implore you to research more if you’re curious. These experiences can include:

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Emotional abuse

Physical neglect

Emotional neglect

Intimate partner violence

Mother treated violently

Substance misuse within household

Household mental illness

Parental separation or divorce

Incarcerated household member

(Source)

Given we’re talking about Cartman, Butters and Tweek, I think you can see why I bring this up. Taking a look at this list and the canon evidence we have in show, it’s easy to say that they’ve all experienced some of these traumas. Two more important things from the source article should also be noted for the sake of this analysis:

ACEs cluster. Almost 40% of the Kaiser sample reported two or more ACEs and 12.5% experienced four or more. Because ACEs cluster, many subsequent studies now look at the cumulative effects of ACEs rather than the individual effects of each.

ACEs have a dose-response relationship with many health problems. As researchers followed participants over time, they discovered that a person’s cumulative ACEs score has a strong, graded relationship to numerous health, social, and behavioral problems throughout their lifespan, including substance use disorders.

“Chey, what the fuck are you on about? This doesn’t make sense!” you might be saying. To truly understand how these ACEs apply to these three kids and how they affect their behavior, let’s take a look at them on a case by case basis.

Cartman’s Case

Eric Cartman is probably the most interesting child in terms of applying the ACEs checklist, as well as other knowledge about abuse and neglect affects on children. We know, from canon, that Cartman lives with his single mother. He’s a low-income family. His mother has been/may still be a sex worker. He’s is very inclined to violence and seems obsessed with sexual topics. It’s very interesting to note that towards the beginning of the series, while evidences were present, Cartman was a lot more innocent. As the show went on and some of these ACE experiences actually happened in building canon, it’s worn on him and shaped him in real time into the character we know today.

ACE 1: Sexual Abuse. It’s been strongly implied that Cartman has been sexually abused.Here is a not-so-short list of examples from the fanon wiki (source). It’s long winded and detailed, so here are a few notable points (as well as some that I’ve added myself).

Engaged in inappropriate/sexual behavior for his age, such as “touching wieners” with one of his cousins (le petit tourette), giving handjobs (Fat Butt and Pancake Head), insisting on measuring penises of his classmates (TMI), putting Butters’ penis in his mouth (Cartman Sucks)

Has been sexually abused by his mother/because of his mother (An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig)

Has been abused by several adult men ON SCREEN (The Simpsons Already Did It, Cripple Fight, Cartman Joins NAMBLA, AWESOM-O, The Return of Chef, It’s A Jersey Thing)

There’s also the strong point that Cartman has come to associate sex/love as something undesired, humiliating or painful. Again, the wiki wonderfully spells these out, but I’ll summarize. Cartman constantly treats any form of sexual or romantic relations as rape and assault. One example is in the Coon and Friends trilogy, he believes a woman having a consensual relationship with a man in the park is being “raped” and needs to be saved. Another example is his expressed sadness at the New Kid’s “dad fucked your mom” backstory in FBW. Another one that is not often touched upon in his reaction to Tweek and Craig’s fight in Tweek X Craig, in which he exclaims wholeheartedly that the two of them getting into an alteration is “sex” and seems intrigued to watch what’s going to happen. He also uses sex as a form of humiliation. I’m sure this is common knowledge at this point but his infatuation with making Kyle suck his balls in Imaginationland but also in his culmination of Butters’ photographical humiliation (AKA, sticking his penis in his mouth).

It’s not talked about on the ACEs website, but children who are sexually abused are likely to exhibit disdain (but interest) in sexual relations and acting sexually mature for their age.

ACE 2 and 3: Emotional abuse and neglect. Now, before I start this, you’re probably going to say, “BUT CHEY! Liane loves and dotes on Cartman! That’s why he’s spoiled!” Boy, do I hear you, but I’m going to explain myself. While Liane does spoil Cartman to hell and back, I’d like to argue that it’s empty. Liane may often tell Cartman she loves him, she also uses tactics such as bribery (food and other things Cartman likes), neglect (Cartman has said in canon, and she’s admitted herself, to being too busy to deal with him due to being a single parent), and also exposes him to things he should not be exposed to (sex, drugs). She treats him like a friend or a companion rather than her son (Tsst) which allows Cartman to have free reign. But free reign is not always out of love and care. I’d like to argue a lot of Cartman’s power is from lack of parenting and involvement in his life.I’m sorry if this part isn’t phrased too well; I had a hard time articulating it.

This may also be why Cartman has such a mixed relationship with his mother. He’s fed the idea that things are okay and great, that nothing is wrong, and he literally eats it up. He’s not outwardly talkative about what goes on at home, and when he is, he seems to regret it immediately. His disdain for his mom may not be purely “selfish greedy child”, but completely justified “abused child”. As phrased wonderfully by one of our server members, “that’s why he calls her a bitch and all those kinds of things yet still protecting her whenever they try to rip on Liane. Because that’s the kind of love he’s used to.”

Furthermore, consider the situation around Cartman’s birth. Liane was young, drunk and the town “slut” (their words, not mine). Cartman’s father’s identity had to be hidden and there’s no doubt that took a tole on her. I’d imagine being a young, single mother is not the path she wanted for herself. I tend to think of it as a cycle- Liane doesn’t want to deal with her child due to his behavior so she checks out of the situation, actually making Cartman’s behavior worse and so on and so on. Another possibly related scene could be in “Cartman’s Mom Is A Dirty Slut”, when she still outwardly seeks an abortion for her 8 year old son.

On a slightly unrelated note, this may also be one of the reasons for Cartman’s infatuation with Kyle. He seems to mistake the traits of abuse/neglect (anger, fighting, etc) as love due to how his mother treats him. This is why he thinks Kyle enjoys his company/likes him as a friend despite how much Kyle pushes back.

Other likely ACES: Witnessing intimate partner violence (his mother is a sex worker and he’s claimed to have been in the room during these acts), mother treated violently (FBW’s little Liane arc gives me bad vibes), substance abuse within household (I forget which episodes specifically but Liane’s done drugs), parent separation or divorce (absent father figure).

Cartman’s Conclusion:

Cartman has a grand total of SEVEN potential ACEs. The reason why I started those two additional facts at the start of this is because they are culminating (several often pop up and are related to each other) and affect behavior and relationships. Cartman’s behavior, while obnoxious and impulsive at best and downright despicable at worst, can be somewhat explained by the experiences he’s faced. Abuse, neglect and sexual assault have led him to search for forms of power and control in his life, whether that be over himself, his mother or his friends. His views of the world are shaped by what he’s seen and felt. Unlike Tweek, however, he doesn’t have much of a support system, and with the “sugarcoating” under the guise of love and care, he’s less likely to get the help he needs. His risks for childhood and subsequently adulthood are very high.

Butters’ Case

Butter’s is your stereotypical abused child in terms of his behavior and coping mechanisms. I believe that even casual show-watchers would agree that he’s in some deep shit. Unlike Cartman who is a lot more nuanced about displaying what he’s experienced, Butters is naive and innocent and resilient. He easily follows what others (CARTMAN) ask of him. He assumes a more submissive role in his life, working hard to make others happy and put them first to avoid trouble. He’s an easy target for bullying and being humiliated or used. He says things out loud without noticing their implications to what has happened to him.

Unlike Liane who covers her (probably unintentional) neglect with the guise of love, he has no such outward statements from either parent. The closest we get is “this is for your own good”, but there is no loving undertone, it’s purely corporeal.  Their abuse is right in his face; it’s physical, it’s mental, it’s terrible. Steven Stotch is the primary abuser, and while Linda has done her fair share of harm, she’s generally more passive. She even states in Grounded Vindaloop that she “lets [Steven] handle the grounding”. Steven Stotch, as of FBW, is also a victim of abuse, showing that he’s perpetrating it in a cycle (you’ll notice this theme a few times in this little essay).

It’s clear as of season 20 that the effects of constant abuse have finally worn on Butters, due to his angry outbursts and sudden shift in attitude (if you want to look at it from a character standpoint and not as lazy writing cough cough). He’s hit a breaking point in what he can take, and the more he’s been exposed to his ACEs (like Cartman’s case) the more behaviorally challenged he’s become.

Another aspect to consider is his relationship with Cartman. Both share similar ACEs, but cope with them in different ways. Cartman chooses to be a controller to earn back what he’s lost, while Butters is more suited to take a backseat and follow. This is why they, despite having a very dysfunctional friendship, stick together. It may appear that Cartman is the only one benefiting, but I believe it’s more mutualistic based on their respective coping mechanisms.

ACE 1: Physical Abuse. Butters has been shown to be physically abused time and time again by Steven. He’s been hit, talked about being hit, and the biggest piece of evidence that scares the shit out of me personally is that Steven pulled off his belt and prepared to hit Butters in front of his classmates in Grounded Vindaloop. Corporal punishment has been shown time and time again to be detrimental to children’s psyc, which aligns given how Butters acts.

ACE 2: Sexual Abuse. Butters has mentioned in The Return Of Chef that he has been sexually abused by his uncle, which does not surprise me in the slightest. Butters, unlike Cartman, goes the total opposite direction of how to cope with this sort of experience; he’s blissfully unaware of what has happened and rather than let it consume him (ex. cartman) he brushes it off as no big deal. Whether this means he is truly unaware of the connotations of what was done to him or if he’s purposely repressing it is unclear, but the evidence is there that it did happen.

ACE 3 and 4: Emotional Abuse and Neglect. This one is abundant in examples. Steven appears to play a lot of mind games with Butters, whether it’s demanding he stop having nightmares (The Death of Eric Cartman), getting in trouble for looking a certain way (How To Eat With Your Butt and The List), or simply for being bullied. They constantly ground him for things that he has no control over, simple mistakes or things that he was not even involved in. I believe that Steven, similar to Cartman, takes the helplessness from childhood abuse and hurts Butters in order to feel in control of himself.

Other Possible ACEs: Household mental illness could be argued as one of the ACEs Butters experiences, although not officially confirmed in canon. I do believe that Linda has some form of mental illness due to her behavior in Butters Own Episode. Although not listed in the article, Steven’s infidelity and the tension that causes on his and Linda’s marriage is also a potential ACE, especially given that Butters was directly exposed to that whole fiasco.  

Butters’ Conclusion:

Butters’ innocence is likely a form of coping mechanism for what he’s encountered during his life. Constant physical and mental abuse have worn on him over the years, turning him more bitter and forcing him to act out. I believe this also can be accredited to his mental break in season 19’s “Safe Space”, as this is the big start of his downward spiral. Unlike Cartman, there is no cover-up for his abuse being simply that- abuse- so being able to divorce himself and his emotions will be easier for him if he were to receive support or help in some form.

Tweek’s Case

Tweek is an interesting case because while he does have emotional abuse, neglect and and forced substance abuse (coffee and/or meth addiction), he also has canon mental illness that exists outside of how he’s treated. The abuse and neglect of his parents only amplify the effects of said illness. I’ve had a selection of anons over time talk about his potential (though not confirmed) mental state, most agreeing it’s some form of panic disorder (the Tweaks claim it’s ADD, but this is really just a load of bullshit and we all know it). He is often exploited by his parents (ex. “Having a homosexual son is good for the business” in FBW) or outright lied to for the sake of business. They often brush off his worries or ignore him completely.

ACEs 1 and 2: Emotional Abuse and Neglect (EXPLOITATION). The Tweak family are no strangers to emotional abuse and neglect. Right from Tweek’s character introduction, we know something isn’t quite right. His parents feed him excessive coffee, which is later revealed to be laced with meth (did you know that meth increases body temperature, as well as caffeine overdose raising heart rate and induces anxiety? (X) Would you look at that evidence). They also frequently blackmail him into work through the threat of “selling him into slavery”.

His defining traits are usually watered down to “spaz”, and more recently, “homosexual”, hinting that his parents really don’t pay much attention to him to know much more than that. They either ignore or hardly acknowledge his fears and worries, leaving him to cope with anxiety and personal issues completely alone. He’s clearly unhappy and potentially aware of his shitty situation- in Tweek vs Craig, he slams his head against the table repeating that he “want[s] out” and that “you never help me”. In Tweek x Craig, his parents only seem to take interest in his developing relationship due to the rest of the town and their desire to look good. If you use this as anything to go off, most of their “parenting” is feeble attempts to keep up appearances.

In SOT, it’s strongly implied that Tweek is the one to usually pick up meth deliveries from Kenny’s house. This is another form of abuse, though I’m not sure if it’s exactly emotional, that he’s forced to endure. A ten year old child should not be exposed to those sort of environments, let alone be involved in the trade of drugs.

ACE 3: Substance Abuse in the Household. Whether it’s coffee, meth or other form of drugs, there’s something going on in the Tweek home that I am certain counts for this ACE. As stated in the preface, higher numbers of ACEs contribute to higher likelihoods of substance abuse- what if the child is already unintentionally abusing substances? He’s got coffee with METH INSIDE IT. I don’t think I need to go much further. There is also the possibility that with his misdiagnosis of ADD, Tweek may be provided access to other drugs for substance abuse. Meth is actually used as a way of treating ADD (X) and could be in reach for him. There’s also Amphetamine (X) which has noted side effects of "excessive grinding of the teeth,... profuse sweating,... and tics..." which could be related to his behavior. This is all purely speculation, however.

Tweek’s Conclusion:

Tweek’s struggle with mental illness is not helped by his parents frequence abuse and neglect. He’s often blackmailed into situations he doesn’t want to be in. Similar to Cartman, his forms of abuse are often sugarcoated as love, making it a little less obvious for him to pick up on. In contrast to Butters, however, he’s much less of a follower and can throw a punch when he needs to protect himself. He’s incredibly resilient and has managed to, despite early substance addiction and neglect, hold strong and even overcome massive obstacles. Of course, these are partly due to his newfound support from...

The Effect of Solid Support: Craig, Heidi, and Liane

Creek shipper or not, there is no denying that Craig has played a massive role in Tweek’s recovery. While Tweek appears to be very naturally resilient despite the odds stacked against him, the presence of someone who will actually listen to his problems and not brush them off is a huge step in the right direction. With Craig, there is a sense of trust and understanding as well as respect. He’s treated as more than a few buzzwords or free labor or any slew of hurtful remarks. His fears are able to be acknowledged and sorted though, whether it be Craig’s logical talk-throughs or someone to pat his back and say “that sucks and it’s okay” (Put It Down). Ever since the introduction of Craig as his boyfriend, we’ve seen some interesting steps in the right direction.

S21’s main theme of relationships drew a lot of interesting parallels between Creek and Heiman, namely the difference between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship. Similar to Steven Stotch, as mentioned in Butters’ case, Cartman went from abused to abuser in his relationship with Heidi. However, this was not always the case.

In early S20, Heidi was in search of her own form of support after being abused by society, simply put. She was able to find this in Cartman, who was dealing with a similar situation at the time after being “murdered” by his friends. Her presence did arguably turn him around for awhile- he seemed much happier before his self-destructive tendencies and self-doubt came in full swing. The cycle was perpetrated- Heidi wasn’t what he needed, so he went from abused to abuser. Heidi could be argued to have turned into another Cartman because she faced a watered-down version of his interpretation of “love”, aka abuse.

Let’s consider another pivotal moment for Cartman: TSST. This one is such a telling episode. While Liane is the source of most of his issues, when she was able to step into her role as a parent and provide the structure and support Cartman needed, his entire personality turned around. It wasn’t until she began treating him like a friend or companion again that he slipped back into his old ways.

Between these two scenarios, I believe it shows that if the patience and care is taken when dealing with Cartman, there is the possibility of healing. Heidi failed because she too was equally vulnerable and not in the right headspace, ultimately harming both of them (this does not excuse how cartman treated and manipulated her, BTW). Liane failed because she fell back into her cycle instead of sticking with what she had built up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, despite sharing similar ACEs, all three children we’ve discussed have different forms of coping and managing their trauma. The abuse that Butters has faced is easier to “remove” from his life due to no emotional (love) being involved in corporal punishment; however, Tweek and Cartman’s abuse have longer lasting repercussions because they’ve accepted and adapted as “that’s just the way it is”. That’s not to say they’re beyond help; all three, if done soon like in Tweek’s case, can be used to heal.

I leave this post with a sort of “call to action”. While we are talking about purely fictional characters and situations that “aren’t that deep, fam”, there are actual children suffering from these kinds of experiences. If you are aware of them, or see the red flags, please don’t hesitate to get help or find someone who can. Nobody should be like Eric Cartman and display serious red flags but slip under the radar. Thank you very much for reading my long, LONG analysis.

Special thanks/credit to the south park analysis discord ( and @dumbthotticusplayer2) for helping brainstorm/discuss :)

[nightblink]

Blink Reads Oathbringer - Chapter 120

Only one chapter, because this was the kind of doozy that got a play-by-play and ended up being long enough to stand on its own.

Chapter One-Hundred-and-Twenty – The Spear That Would Not Break

Ooooo, yesss, 'Rough map of the Battle of Thaylen Field', good. I love having city maps like this to help us visualize.

Kaladin's even believing that he failed the windspren, now, the ones that gathered when he was close to speaking the Fourth Ideal. Oh Kal. For some reason I don't think you 'being down on yourself' is the reason you couldn't swear. You knew that you wouldn't mean it. You weren't ready for it, and that's all right. You can't- you can't push recovery, or coping, or ability to deal with an issue, not like that.

Kaladin vs Amaram – a fated face-off- oh shit Amaram just downed the smokestone. WELL THEN. One bonded Radiant versus one… human just about to- “bond”? host? an Unmade

---

Haaaaah, and there Adolin goes again, self-deprecating about the ill-fitting jacket he'd patched together to lighten Shallan's worries and appear steady despite how unstable he is on the inside. Oh man, but that 'Go. Save the city. Be Radiant, Shallan.” [CLUTCHES HEART] L o rd, but you can just hear the love and admiration that he's pouring into those words, each one of them honest to the core (except, of course, the “I'll be fine.” But that's on a different level entirely.)

There's another scene that I'd gladly pay to see done in good animation – Shallan raising an army of illusions, each glowing like a Radiant, and Pattern's fractals running ever-so-subtly over the shape of him-as-a-Blade.

'The illusory Adolin glowed with Stormlight and floated a few inches off the ground. She'd made him a Windrunner.' 'I… I can't take that.' [claps hands] Hello. Again. Self-worth. Issues. And this time combining his feelings of inadequacy with his memory of her looking at Kaladin – Windrunner, standing tall and heroic, windspren sweeping around him like sparkling starlight – when he breathed out slow and it felt like his hopes started to seep out along with that breath.

No scream from his sword – but he thanks her. Maybe, over in Shadesmar, she can even hear him. Maybe.

---

AIGHT TEAM AWESOMENESS TIME (lets use awesomeness rather than Friction for things like that because lbr it just kind of sounds Wrong otherwise)

Hearing Szeth refer to Dalinar as master just makes me shiver, it feels… not quite wrong, as he chose this person to follow, trusting their judgment, but it definitely feels weird

Nightblood, you definitely eat people. It's not the same method as humans eating thing, but it's the same sort of principle.

Szeth really, really needs some quiet, no-death time, but with people around. A place where he's at least accepted to be. And despite Nightblood being… Nightblood, the sword is good for him. Companionship. I can't wait to see what his bonded highspren has to say about that, though.

---

Right, so. Amaram can just fuck off already. As if he wasn't bad enough already, now he has the sheer gall to tell Kaladin to thank him? “I created you, spearman. I forged you.” Oh get down off your high horse for once in your goddamn life, Amaram. The world does not revolve around you! You are not the lynchpin on which the turning of time rests!

Look at this goddamn weeb with his dual-wielded Shardblades. Fuck up his day, Kal. Fuck up his life.

'One taken in bloodshed, at the cost of Kaladin's crew. The other, Oathbringer. A sword given to ransom Bridge Four.' And wielded by Amaram, who put Kaladin's brother on the front line and took Kaladin's freedom. Branderson's not even trying to hide the symbology here, he's outright stating it. (Kal you are such a Hufflepuff, istg, and I love it)

Yikes, and there starts the transformation. Amaram's probably going to look distorted and sprouting crystals by the time this fight ends.

---

“Hello, old friend.” GODDAMN, I DIE. Dalinar you'd better come out of this alive.

---

Yet another scene that I'd like to see justice done to via animation is this one of Shallan, light swirling around her and expanding from her feet as everyone she's ever drawn comes to life-through-light around her.

[winces] Of course her parents would trigger old trauma and start causing her to falter and retreat. But… her alternate personalities. As unhealthy as her coping mechanisms may be, these two do usually lend her a reprieve (not strength, no matter what she thinks – that is hers and hers alone, as the Real Person) when she needs to lean on them.

---

Adolin: [casually collects a squad of Thaylen soldiers]; Jasnah: [does not need any help whatsoever]; Adolin: ...okay then, next-

Once again we have mention of those “geometric shapes” that we saw with Dalinar when he jumped down the chasm to tap Venli out of the vision, and I still wonder if that's proto-Shardplate or not, especially since Dalinar was unhurt as he dug his fingers into stone to slow his descent and now Jasnah casually tosses a man through the air, nbd

[insert lots of quiet shrieking that will be followed up on in my Adolin Notes post] tldr: Horrors of war (he's gonna have nightmares about this) and so, so many self-worth issues.

Aww yisss, heirs teaming up to go get Navani and Fen out of being cornered, good, because I need both Navani and Fen to survive this battle and their strengths aren't in battle prowess

---

Hmmm, so is the Perpendicularity going to fade over time since Honor is still shattered? That's kind of the feel that I'm getting from what Ivory is saying here.

Jasnah can just wave her hand and a squad of soldiers is Soulcasted into smoke with hardly any effort. Oooof. Yeaaaah, I imagine even Jasnah, who did such in Kharbranth with no regrets, would feel rather horrified at the ease with which she just dispatched those men.

Ah, the Perpendicularity has closed – good to know. 'He had been the storm, and had somehow recharged the spheres – but like a storm, his effects were passing.' That tells us a little more about Dalinar's current state as well – because despite the Stormfather having a large fragment of Honor's power now, they are still 'just' a Bondsmith-pair (though I'm still thrown by and dancing around the whole I am Unity thing, because. goddamn.)

Ooooo, with the worlds this close and Soulcasting as easy as it is- you're gonna pull what we see on the cover and close the wall gap, aren't you, Jasnah?

---

Now Szeth and Lift are getting close to the Singers who aren't Fused – many of whom never wanted to fight in the first place. And you two know if your quarry headed this way or not?

It's an interesting split in the Skybreaker reasoning here – Nale sits out the battle, bowing to the Parshendi as the true keepers/rulers of the land, but Szeth maintains that since this 'law' is the 'product of the many', and his own experiences show how flawed that can be, that he cannot follow it. I'm… still very confused and torn over Skybreakers.

OOOP THERE'S THE ONE WITH THE RUBY they did know where they were going to find her

Okay Sanderson but now that you've put the thought in our heads, we need at least one chapter in a future book where Lift is sitting around with Nightblood and teaching it the filthiest, filthiest language she possibly can in all the languages she knows.

Once again, the greater power of the Radiants' Surgebindings prove to be a deciding factor over the Fused's Voidbindings – and Szeth has experience in the air. Which he's going to need, since now that he has that ruby he's got a target painted on the back of his head.

---

I'm thankful that it's Adolin who told Navani about Elhokar's death. Kaladin… Kaladin saw it happen, and he would have catapulted right back into the moment and into the self-blame and overwhelming grief if he'd had to be the one to tell Navani that her son – one of the people he'd sworn to protect – was dead on his watch. Adolin, on the other hand – they're family, and while Adolin doesn't blame himself to the level that Kaladin does, ever since Kholinar he's been in Grieve later mode. He hasn't given himself the time and slackening of self-shouldered responsibility to process the feelings over Elhokar's death, though he's been mulling over the consequences of what it means logically for the entirety of the Shadesmar journey.

I can't even imagine how this must be for Navani – the second time she's mourned the death of a child. Even if the first time, Jasnah eventually returned, that doesn't change the fact that Navani had to mourn both her children.

As soon as his shared moment of grief with his aunt is over, Adolin is assessing the situation and formulating strategy, taking charge without breaking stride and giving orders to the Thaylens – interrupted by Jasnah being goddamn amazing (hah, she DID Soulcast the wall whole again, and how) – and then changing strategies on the fly due to the new fortification. He's so very far from useless, and yet, this seems to do nothing to alleviate that insecurity.

...Adolin, you're damned good with a Shardblade, but that's a thunderclast. Y'know, the twin of the thing that crushed Lift's lower body earlier? You don't have Radiant healing powers! If that thing so much as clips you you're fucking toast. I know you probably want to help your brother, (you want to be useful,) but without Plate or stormlight healing, that's... very close to a deathwish.

---

Oooop, yeah, Amaram is going all crystalline on us. It's not having any apparent detriment on his physicality so far, though with him wearing Plate that could just be hard to tell. Gotta give him one thing, though: Amaram is really good with the Blade, and doubly so with that dual-wielding stance. It wasn't going to be easy for Kaladin in the first place, and now he's bonding with an Unmade.

Oh yeah and don't forget your job – whatever Dalinar's doing, he needs to focus on it and not get killed. That'd be great.

I can't remember – has Kaladin ever felt the Thrill that we've known of? I can't remember it happening even in an offhand reference as opposed to on-page.

When did Amaram get a Shardbow?! Is that Sadeas' old bow that he's shooting at Kaladin with? I… well, that's appropriate, but I'd rather not see Kaladin hit with a spear-sized arrow.

I wonder just how much the swallowed gem + Unmade bonding is going to change Amaram. Bonding with a spren doesn't change the Radiants so physically (yet), but we see here that Amaram's sprouting more crystals from his body – crystals that are piercing through his Plate from the inside out! - and considering what voidspren do to the Listeners/Singers, I wouldn't be surprised if Yelig-nar evicts his soul once it's done changing his form.

Okay, Plate or not, grabbing a Shard-lance is a ballsy move.

---

'Dalinar walked through the mist, and each step was a battle he relived.' After all this trauma relived, the only way you're going to sleep this night if you survive is by passing out from sheer exhaustion.

It's interesting to know that the Thrill isn't a drive to kill, per se, but just to fight – it simply takes that to the extreme end, keep on fighting even when you've won, keep on fighting until there's nothing left, even then keep on fighting there is only the fight

---

'Jasnah existed halfway in the Cognitive Realm.' As great as that must be for her to Soulcast powerfully and on the fly, it… probably isn't good, technically speaking. The 'normal' people who use Soulcasters seems to end up like this over time, and even if the physical effect wouldn't apply to a Radiant in the same way, it's probably still not safe, or even a good idea.

Still. Jasnah can just reach forth and command air to become stone. That is awesome.

'“Bad?” she asked Ivory. “It is,” he said from her collar.”' Uh oh. And saying that about Shallan going through the amount of stormlight that she has… we know that there are effects/repercussions to simply holding stormlight (increased impetuousness, a drive to act) do we know if there are any downsides to using too much stormlight? A sort of burnout, perhaps?

Just. Casually soulcasts a wall of pitch in the air and then sets the Fused that come through it on fire to bun and writhe and die horribly. No big deal. And then slices through the next with the Ivoryblade. Simple. Elegant. Effortless. Very terrifying.

Ah- that's fair, and not the 'bad thing' that I'd originally considered: Shallan's burning through enough stormlight that there won't be enough left for anyone else to do anything (as opposed to somehow having a negative effect on herself). Damn, I didn't realize that she was going though that much stormlight, if she's nearly cleared all the field of spheres around them of energy!

Fingers crossed that Jasnah can help Shallan, and that neither Renarin nor Adolin dies fighting the thunderclast.

---

Dun ruby? Did he or one of the other Radiants breathe all of the light from the King's Drop? I'd thought it was still infused!

'I think they would have flown like you instead of falling down, if they'd really wanted to be saved.' That. That's not how it works, Nightblood. Also you can't exactly be a 'noble sacrifice' when you're you. And on that train of thought – what would it take to destroy such an Invested, sentient object like Nightblood?

'He did not win by dying.' And you actually do understand that, in more ways than just related to the immediate battle at hand – you've faced death, more or less experienced it, and have seen and decided for yourself that it is not the answer that you'd once wished for.

I continue to love this trio's dynamic. Lift and Nightblood are far too quickly becoming friends for Vasher's future sanity, though.

What is 'deevy'. Is that Nalthian or something that Lift actually recognises, I can't tell

Yessss, time for Lift to show off those skills – not the Radiant ones, but those that she honed by stealing people's dinners.

---

'She'd made thousands of illusions. Each one… each one was her. A portion of her mind. A portion of her soul. … Each one of her illusions that died hit her with a little shock. A sliver of her dying.' Aaaaand you're another one that's not going to be sleeping tonight unless you just collapse into unconsciousness. The soldiers have at least had some experience with this sort of battle, but you… this is really your first battlefield of this kind, and you're not only fighting it all on your own, but in a very strange but intimate way, with parts of your very soul.

She's gotten a lot better at her illusions, though, perhaps partly though the sheer power that she's able to access to power these, but that combination of Lightweaving+Soulcasting backed by all that light feels a lot like Kaladin's airbending of the highstorm even as he drew light from it back during Part 1. I'd bet a handful of spheres that what she's doing here is one of the Lightweaver-unique Surge manifestations.

Veil and Radiant are supports, anchors for her mind, but Shallan is the one doing this, not hiding behind a false mask to do so.

Oh? What do you need Shallan's help for, Lift?

---

AMARAM. CAN. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

[winces] A sword may be better for breaking Plate than a spear, but the problem is that you're much better with a spear than a sword, and there's a fair chance that Amaram might be better facing off against a sword, assuming that he's trained Blade-against-Blade. And I think you realize those problems too.

WHOA WAIT WHAT AMARAM'S PLATE IS SHATTERING- 'Beneath, his ripped sock revealed a foot overgrown with carapace and deep violet crystals.' Um. Well then. Carapace and crystal. He's growing his own armor, isn't he?

Oh shit and he has access to surges now. That first one looks like the Stoneward's use of Tension that we saw in Dalinar's initial flashback to Aharietiam in this book, but that second looks more like Friction! Unless it's a use of Cohesion or combined Cohesion-Tension that acts like Friction? It's possible that while the Voidbindings are analogous to the Surgebindings, the combination that a Fused may have is different from the Radiant combinations. And while he's not… technically a Fused? Ish? Sort of? (What do we call this sort of bond.) he's obviously obtained access to at least one if to two or even more Voidbindings or Surges.

And now it's two against one, and Kaladin still has to keep an eye on Dalinar to make sure that nothing's going after him. Greeeeaaaaaat. This is not going to turn out well.

---

Speaking of not turning out well, Adolin I know you want to be of use and help your brother but, uhhhhh you do know that that thunderclast only needs to get one hit on you without your Plate and you're smushed, right?

And you're alone, even better. Renarin was caught in the crowds, I believe I saw? Um. This is. Just about suicide and I think you know that and that's. Mmmmmmmmm- (Of all the things I wish these brothers never had to share...). It’s going to be half-miracle and half breaking the limits of his goddamn skill if he’s going to survive this for any length of time. Seeing a soldier get squished right in front of you isn't inspiring any confidence

………………

'“You want to fight it, don't you? It reminds you of when you were alive.” Something tickled his mind, very faint, like a sigh. A single word: Mayalaran. A… name?' Right, hearing a spren's voice – not out loud, but in your head, from a spren that shouldn't be able to do anything but scream.

….if that's not a proto-Bond of some kind then I will eat a goddamn mushroom. He hasn’t said any Words, but he’s definitely cracked enough for a bond. Even so, though, WoB is that it’s very, very difficult, nigh-impossible but not entirely so to revive one of the dead-by-broken-Oaths spren. If he’s even edging towards managing that... there’s no way that it’s going to come without consequences. With spren and human both broken - that wouldn’t be a normal Radiant Nahel bond; even if they manage a Bond there’s going to be something different about it. (....hah, another thing that the brothers would share, what is it with the Kholins and strange bonds?)

Oh, great, so even if you dodge, the sheer force of the thunderclast hitting the ground in an attempt to smash you can knock you off your feet. Fantastic.

!!! Somehow, in all of that noise and the roar of adrenaline, you manage to hear a child's whimper and dash back to save them, then proceed to parkour through the collapsing buildings as it strikes at you and then reverse back with speed to blitz its legs. I mean I still want Renarin to get here asap because you can't last forever, but I'm at least not as worried for your life as I was before, considering this display.

….yoink?

---

'It returned every memory he hated about himself. War and conflict. Times when he'd shouted Evi into submission. Anger that had driven him to the brink of madness. His shame.' Everyone is going to need a good, long series of therapy sessions after this is over, but you most of all. Oh Heralds, you most of all.

The thrill reacts to his thanks like a favoured axehound to its master's praise, reveling in his acceptance. It loves him, in its own strange, twisted way.

---

Venli! Back to you, finally – you weren't pushed back with Odium and the others when Dalinar opened Honor's Perpendicularity, and I am curious.

Rhythms are overlapping, drowning each other out, and yet, amidst all that chaos, she can pick out one of the old Rhythms, a Rhythm of her people, not of Odium, and the way that she can feel Timbre, like a magnified version of Maya's whisper not two pages before-

...I was wondering if it were possible for Parshendi to become Radiants. I thought I read somewhere that there'd never been a Parshendi Radiant before. Hah. While Dalinar might technically have been holding his hand out to Amaram, the message came across to someone else entirely. 'You can change. You can become a better person.'

You have Words.

'I choose!' Oh man, that gives me shivers. Not as much as 'you cannot have my pain', but damn that sent a jolt down my spine.

Okay, it's really silly, but I'm cackling myself out of my chair at the thought/sight of Venli hunching over, shoulders curling, practically talking to her chest.

'Journey before destination.'

[EXCITED SHIVERS]

(I do wonder, though, especially considering what we've seen of this Avalanche, if all of this generation of Radiants is something new, different from before.)

---

I am very amused but not at all surprised that Adolin can recognise sets of Shards on sight, even though he likely hasn't seen them in person before.

2v1 is better than nothing when you're facing a thunderclast (especially when this guy can take hits and you can't) but I still want Renarin there asap (WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE US BACK-TO-BACK KHOLIN BROTHERS, SANDERSON)

oh yes and then of course it ignores the bait and goes straight for Adolin. Fantastic, it holds grudges.

….did. did you just throw an over-six-foot-long Shardblade like it was a knife. And that's a move you somehow practiced.

his ability to read/react in battle situations is (tbqh) disgustingly good but that 'judging the shadow of the thunderclast's hand and dodging so it landed with him between the fingers'? What the actual fuck is your reaction time

...not good enough, apparently. Ouch. Even a glancing blow is enough to badly injure. (Broken rib, injured arm and injured leg (unknown severity), possible further internal injury)

Seven heartbeats. Panic conveyed to his mind as a warning, unprompted.

So. Uh. That's a thing.

Except then Thunderclast. He is so fucking lucky that that stomp didn't hit him or he'd be paste.

[winces] Between the previous injury from the sideswipe, the drop, and now the fall, his leg is busted. He can't run. He can barely even stand. But there's Maya again, reaching for him (there are no heartbeat counts no indication of summoning since the rooftop collapse and I wonder if that's significant or not) and-

Oh thank fuck Renarin is finally here

HAH THAT'S RIGHT YOU'D BETTER STEP BACK IN FEAR. A Shardbearer is one thing, but a Radiant? Whatever spren is animating the thunderclast, it recognises that glow of stormlight, and know that its death is nearing.

“I can handle it, Adolin. Just go! Please.” AHHHH, RENARIN GETTING TO BE THE ONE TO PROTECT HIS BROTHER THIS TIME I LOVE- (I still want back-to-back brothers sometime but this is awesome so I'll forgive BrandoSando for now)

………...Adolin is going to have nightmares about the thunderclast smashing Renarin for the rest of his life. That said, Jesus fuck what a fucking TANK- looks like Regrowth use in battle isn't just for healing others, but will accelerate the stormlight healing to the point of well I just got flattened by a boulder but that's okay I'm good

Seriously, though, Truthwatchers and Edgedancers must be just goddamn unkillable

Handing the Mayablade over is not something I'd expected, but better that Renarin have someone at his side that's uninjured and won't have to dodge every single blow and can instead focus more on the attack.

---

'Szeth of the Skybreakers had, fortunately, trained with all ten Surges.' Which means that you've already practiced with Division even though you're not trained with the power that you'll use as an actual Sybreaker, and you know what the other Surges look like and what to expect from them, which is more than any of the other Radiants here have.

Szeth on ice skates is something I need to see art of now

PFFFFFT okay I know that technically a Radiant doesn't have to transfer the stormlight with their hands, but for Szeth to do so with his face just sends me cackling

YOU GOT THE RUBY GO GO GO

Ahhhh, that's what you needed Shallan for. Good job on the switch; they definitely believed it, and now you have time

[winces] Yeaaaah – even if the Thrill never had a hold on Szeth, it'll take the memories of the fighting and the killing and break him all the more, and he does not have the stability to come out of that all right.

But what of Lift? How will the Thrill affect her?

---

Um. Well. Looks like that transformation that Amaram's experiencing is not a painless one.

Unless we see another Surge use from him (which would mean more than two Surges), I think this confirms that Yelig-nar confers the Surges of Tension and Division(?), given that he's burning stone like we heard that the Dustbringers could do from the TWoK prologue and saw Malata do to Taravangian's table.

Ouch. This fight is really showing just how bad it can be for a Windrunner(/Skybreaker) to lighten themselves when their opponents are coming in with blows hard enough to fling them across the battlefield. Also he is once again getting dangerously low on stormlight, and unless he wants a successor-scene to the aerial chase he had in Shadesmar that ended with him plummeting, he'd better be very judicious and efficient in his stormlight use.

Um. Okay so- “Syl. Syl, that was a Lashing.” - confirmed that the Unmade can confer Surges beyond the strict two-Surge-limit on their host. That. That is terrifying.

Gotta agree with Kaladin that's it's not entirely Amaram that he's speaking with right then. While Amaram may still be present, he's been twisted even further – first by the Thrill and then by Yelig-nar – to a point beyond what probably even Meridas Amaram alone would have gone, despite being an utter shitsack of a man.

Then again, I could be wrong. The revelation of the Heralds 'betrayal' could very well have been a no-turning-back point for him, going over to Odium instead out of anger and hurt and spite when he found out that the Heralds he so trusted and believed in were revealed to be already on Roshar, and not as holy as he'd thought.

“After I was forced to kill your squad, I… hurt.” 'After I was forced-'? Oh, you despicable, putrid barf-stain of a human being, I hope one of those amethysts is stabbing you in the balls right now, because what the hell is that passive acceptance. Nobody forced you to murder men for a Blade. This is definitely your fault and you have zero remorse and I am going to cheer when you finally get your face stabbed like you deserve.

Igniting the air?! Oh fuuuuuuck, that's new- note, Division doesn't require solids or liquids it can just. Pull a full Colonel Mustang and ignite the air. Greeeeaaaaaat.

“Then why do you still hurt?” Oooo, that struck deeper than any of his physical hits have thus far, and it's making him angry and unstable – both of which could make him reckless and sloppy.

!!!!! UM. That's. Well then. That's a pretty sickening transformation. Here I thought he'd end up with more of a crystal carapace, but no, this is…. He's a hollowed geode curled around that dark light.

Oooop, yeaaah, and there he goes into the air – Kaladin's domain indeed. Especially with Kaladin so close (yet so far) from the Fourth Ideal, and with far, far more practice in the air, Amaram can't hope to match him.

Daaaaamn, but what an epic sight, Kaladin floating down like a wind spirit himself, the storm still raging in the background, hovering above Amaram as the light of Hatred flickers and fails - “All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.” How very Stoneward of you in that moment, Kal, especially with that parallel between ten spears and ten Heralds.

Aw, shit. Looks like the Fused got smart and brought backup, and now there's barely any Light left for you to fly/heal/Lash with. This is not good.

---

RENARIIIN – HELL YEAH MAN, YOU DID IT

Very good fighting indeed, especially when you're not used to battle – though the technicalities of battle with humanoid enemies is one thing, and going up against a thunderclast is entirely another, you still made it through the adrenaline and the nerves and the fear and you pushed through.

I think it already fears him, Glys; it feared him from the first time it saw him. Also Glys is really excitable and it's adorable.

Huh. So – a 'beacon' of stormlight, and that… did it force the voidspren to flee the thunderclast body and return to the Everstorm, then? I can't imagine that it was a powerful enough light to purge the voidspren into nonexistence, but this scene is a little sketchy on the detail of what the power is/is doing. WE NEED MORE DETAILS, SANDERSON.

Is this an echo of your worries from earlier, back in the temple, Renarin? Or do you mean you saw yourself die in battle – do Truthwatchers have some sort of psuedo-Atium-like ability?

---

...Shallan is Not in a mentally stable right now. Hopefully Jasnah gets there soon because this whole flowing identities thing in the midst of the effort of keeping her illusory army up, that army dying, and the energy drain of the slowly decreasing stormlight is very worrying.

YES thank the heralds there's Jasnah- ooooh, shit, but two of the three Shallans are illusions and the 'Shallan' one isn't her – this is, mmmmmmm… every new paragraph comes with a new name, Radiant to Shallan to Veil and around and around, the personalities not so much bleeding over into one another as flickering, each step accompanied by a different face. This does not bode well. It seemed like she was healing a little in Shadesmar, but this is as bad as if not worse than she's ever been, Veil and Radiant pulled into prominence by the stress.

For all that Jasnah hates teaching, she certainly doesn't hesitate to infodump on Shallan when the opportunity presents itself, even if that opportunity is when they're still in the middle of a battle! This is giving us-the-readers a lot of information on Soulcasting, as well as giving Shallan something to focus on – and it's not like the stream of information is keeping Jasnah from being utterly badass and fending off any Fused that approach, so it's not quite as inopportune as she might believe.

---

'He was… unaccustomed to being able to do things like this. Not only using the Shardblade, but being physical. He'd always been afraid of his fits, always worried that a moment of strength would instantly become a moment of invalidity. Living like that, you leaned to stay back. Just in case.' I'm so, so glad that Renarin's finally getting the chance to step forward and do these things that he's always wanted to do – what is a moment of freezing up in a fit if he can heal from getting smeared by a thunderclast, after all? I don't think its likely that the stormlight 'healed' his epilepsy, though I'd have to wait for a WoB to be sure – but it sounds like the stormlight might be acting as a sort of buffer? idk, I don't know enough about epilepsy to give any kind of informed opinion

All of this sound and activity and frenetic energy sounds like it's playing hell on his nerves, oh man. You've gone through so much today, Renarin, it sounds like you need some serious recharge time after everything's done here.

Uh oh. Yeaaah, a thunderclast was one thing, but twelve small, fast Fused with weapons, and your stormlight running out… that's not something you can face right about now.

OH GOOD they have spanreeds to Urithiru; they're not entirely in the dark about why their forces aren't coming through

[narrows eyes] I'll bet that their inability to contact the Kharbranthians isn't an accident, but not in the way that they're thinking it is.

“There's nobody else.” R e n a r i n. He knows this could mean his death, even with stormlight healing, but then again, when has that ever stopped him? Certainly not in the first book when he tried to charge out, and not in the second when he stepped out into the ring to help his brother. But this time, no one is stopping him. No calls of 'That's not for you. You can't do that. You're not well.' This time, they're seeing Renarin Kholin as the man who can step forward and make a stand.

'Not very noble or brave, now was he?' Hah, it looks like you're one more that doesn't understand the definition of bravery, 'Rin.

Fffffffft, damn, but those stained-glass visions are still the coolest shit. 'These had always been right. Until today – until they had proclaimed that Jasnah Kholin's love would fail.' But it didn't. It didn't, in the greatest middle finger ever to anyone who thinks that Jasnah Kholin cannot feel.

AAAHAHAHAHAHA BOOOM, here come the REINFORCEMENTS. ENDGAME, MOTHERFUCKERS.

---

Shallan is still personality-flickering with no sign of stopping. She needs an anchor of some kind or I feel like this is just going to keep going, and that's. not healthy.

“We're getting too good at pretending.” YEAH, NO SHIT, Y'THINK.

“You don't have to worry. After I rest, I'll recover and settle down to being just one. I actually… actually don't think I'm quite as lost as I was before.” ...okay that's heartening but I'm still worried. That alone isn't gonna stop me worrying.

Oh, great. Looks like the humans aren't the only ones with reinforcements.

---

Yessss, Renarin giving orders like the prince he is! Lopen/B4 following them without a hint of hesitation!

Three shardbearers and two thousand troops? Plus B4 in the air once again and tackling the problem of the Fused? Considering how many of the Sadeas troops have already likely been defeated and the fact that the vast majority of the Singers have absolutely no battle training? It wouldn't be a complete rout, but the tides have turned to where the end outcome is a certainty, I believe.

D u d e, twenty times you healed yourself from getting smacked and/or smushed by that thunderclast-! Hooooly fuck, you're a tank, Renarin.

Carrying an injured Rock all the way down to the Oathgate had to be a trial without stormlight. Good thing they all know how to heave a heavy bridge!

“I think I used up all my Radianting for the day.” I feel you, Renarin. Working the Gate means you'll still be helping but won't be required to interact, and it'll be quieter. Not exactly recharge time, but it's the closest you'll probably get for now.

SUDDEN ROCK HUG. Ahhh, that's a nice thought, Rock, but sudden hugs from not-family prooobably aren't the best thing for Renarin. (Though he does need some time just Being Around his Bridge Four friends for a while, I think.)

'Renarin settled down nearby on some steps, trembling from it all, but grinning anyway.' Good. Even overwhemed and with the city buzzing too-loud around you, you can grin wide. You were awesome today, Renarin, and you deserve every second to bask in that.

---

Lift doesn't seem affected at all by the Thrill, at least from the outside. The Nahel bond can't help guard against its influence, but perhaps her boon/curse from the Nightwatcher can?

You are going to try to capture the Thrill. 'You lure the spren with something it loves.' At least Taravangian gave Dalinar some good advice at least once. And the Thrill… it does love Dalinar, is familiar with him, was probably all but bonded to him during those past years. If anything could tempt the Thrill into that ruby, it's Dalinar.

'“Thank you,” he whispered again to the Thrill, “for giving me the strength when I needed it. … Now, old friend, it is time to rest.” It… it really is amazing to see just how far Dalinar has come, from the first flashback and through the books up until now, and see how it all shaped him, each step of the way, so he could make that decision – and this one – at the crucial point.

---

I'm worried that you're not going to last long enough, Kaladin. Outrunning all those Fused takes power, and you're running out.

[winces] This is just a beatdown, and it's painful to watch. For every step he manages to get ahead, something else rises to take away that clawed-for advantage.

Well, shit. And there's the last of the light.

….except that they're turning tail-? OH, THE THRILL-

But Amaram didn't run. Amethyst-creature that he is now, despite the crack in his gemheart, he's still able to rise and make his way over to the broken, injured Radiant.

'Bridge Four.'

[quiet, internal screaming]

---

Looks like the Rosharans have their own version of '300 Spartans vs the entire Persian army' legend. It doesn't look like they're even going to need the battalion of reinforcements from Urithiru, though, because with the capture of the Thrill, they're collapsing like puppets with cut strings. Some are choosing to stay and some are choosing to split and run with the retreat, though, which. Hmmm. They're not under Unmade influence, but yet they're choosing to go with Odium's forces anyway? I'm actually surprised that there's not more of them that are simply too shell-shocked to move.

And the Everstorm passes as well, its power sucked away – why? Did it take that much energy to stay there in one spot in the first place, or does the removal of Nergaoul and the fleeing of Yelig-nar diminish its power here, or did Odium simply decide that he wasn't going to waste any more of his effort on this battle?

---

GOOD Lopen got light over to Kaladin so he's not lying there suffering from all the pains of his broken body

Haaaaaaaah – Rock broke his vow of pacifism. He'll probably be the next to swear Words, or at least do so soon, I think. We caught a glimpse of the cracks during his POV chapter, and this might well be the tipping point; he killed to protect.

Rock drawing the bow does indeed beg the question of how he did it if stormlight's not enough, and even if he was a Windrunner already, which apparently he's not, gravity and air pressure aren't gonna do squat against a bow's draw weight.

Another scene that needs to be done justice via art – the light breaking through as Dalinar kneels on the stone, the ruby that holds the Thrill (old friend) held gently, Lift resting her hand on his shoulder.

Tears of joy, maybe, but also of relief, and regret, and pain. There's nothing simple about it.

[bandbacktogether]

Coping With Partner Loss

New Post has been published on https://www.bandbacktogether.com/resources/loss-resources/partner-loss-resources/coping-with-partner-death-loss/

Coping With Partner Loss

Death, regardless of the details, is capable of devastating those it leaves behind.  Brother, sister, son, daughter, mother, or father – all losses are significant.  Although commonalities exist amongst people who have experienced a certain type of loss, individual grief is as unique as the person experiencing it and their relationship with the person who died.

While we are hesitant to categorize and careful not to compare, we do acknowledge that there’s merit in recognizing commonalities.  Shared experiences tell us, if nothing else, that we are not the only ones. And if other people have had struggles similar to our own, then maybe our grief isn’t as crazy as it sometimes seems.

Please also see grief, grief and grieving, partner loss, and loss for more information.

There are a number of reasons why grieving the death of a spouse, fiancé, girlfriend, boyfriend, or significant other is difficult.

Also, we are going to use the term ‘partner’ and ‘significant other’ for the purposes of this article because they apply broadly, that’s our thought process and we’re sticking to it.

Losing someone you love, someone you’ve spent a good deal of your life with is very painful. There are a number of shocking emotions that bubble to the surface – anger, guilt, shock. Sometimes, the sadness you feel over the loss of your husband or wife can overwhelm you and make you feel as though you are drowning.

As hard as this is, these are normal reactions to the loss of a husband, wife or partner.

So what happens when it’s YOU who loses your partner? Or someone you love?

Why Is Partner Loss So Challenging To Grieve?

There are very few easy deaths for loved ones to have to grieve, partner loss (among the death of a child) is one of the hardest deaths to cope with. Here are but few reasons why losing a partner to death is so very complicated.

They Were Your Best Friend

People who have lost others, such as dear friends, find this loss hard to grieve. Most people consider their partner as their best friends, which compounds the loss. You not only lose your spouse, but you also lose your confidant, the person who knows you best.

They Were Your Person

When something dreadful or awesome happened, who’d you call? Just day to day stuff, non-emergent calls? Most people opt to call their person; their partner. They may have been the person who understood letting you be upset, then knew how to calm you down. They’re the one’s who knew almost everything about you – favorite food, favorite shows, favorite everything. Likes and dislikes, no one knew you better. You may forget some days after their death that they’re gone and find yourself trying to call them.

They Were Your Co-Parent

When most people think about losing a partner, they’re thinking about an elderly couple. Obviously, this is not always the case. and there may be Parenting is hard; being a single parent is harder; being the single parent of grieving children is one of the hardest.  When your co-parent has died, all responsibility falls on you to keep your children safe, clothed, and loved.

They Gave You Unconditional Love

Whether or not you agreed on every thing, love is accepting. Your partner knew your deepest, darkest secrets, how crazy you were, how flawed, but they loved you anyway. When you’ve become used to unconditional love, it can feel cold and dark when that unconditional love is gone.

They Were the Only Person Who Truly Knew You

Perhaps your partner knew how you took your coffee and how you liked your eggs.  Maybe they knew your weaknesses and fears; where you came from; and what you’ve been through. It can be comforting to be ‘known’, but this kind of ‘knowing’ is not easy to come by and takes a long time to build.

They Paid Attention to Your Needs and Well-Being

Everyone is selfish some of the time, but overall, your partner looked out for your needs and tried everything to keep you happy and health. After expeireicing having someone like this, losing it can be very scary and isolating.

They Gave You Comfort And Physical Needs

Everyone needs to be comforted. This is universal. Having someone always there to comfort and physically hold you is a wonderful thing, however once it is gone, it may seem like you’re isolated and alone. Your partner may have known what to do, but no one else does.

Missing the Little Things

It’s only natural to grieve and miss the sweet little things your partner once did. At the same time, you may actually miss all the things that drove you crazy about him or her.

Living With Unresolved Guilt and Regret

It’s normal to feel guilt and regret about t things that happened in their relationship with the deceased, even if it occurred years before the person died.  Perhaps you wish you had treated your partner better, perhaps they never forgave you for something, maybe you regret something you said, maybe you regret not saying enough, or maybe you feel guilty for the fact that you survived and they died.  The battlefield of loss is fertile ground for the coulda’s, woulda’s, and shoulda’s that are typically seen in grief.

Your House Is Empty

After cohabiting with a person for many years, coming home to complete and utter silence can be awful. Most people would do just about anything to hear their partner’s “noses” around the house – their messiness, snoring, talking, singing, video games being played. Your bed will be half-empty at all times, making you feel majorly lonely.

You See Your Kids Miss Out On A Lot

Every time a milestone happens – father/daughter dances; mother/daughter sleepovers; proms; weddings; drivers licenses – you have to live with the knowledge that your child’s excitement may be somewhat tempered by grief over the absence of one of their parents.

Secondary Losses

Most partnerships include a division of labor: one cooks, one cleans, one takes the garbage out, one balances the checkbook. The chores that you’ve not been in charge of are now in your purview. You may have to re-learn how to do something you’ve never done before. There are endless logistics to this: you may need to get a job, childcare may be difficult to secure, paperwork from a death is incredibly complex, and you may even not feel like yourself any more. Balancing life after a partner death comes with a lot of pressure and responsibility

Being on Your Own is Hard

It’s hard to go from having a partner in life, to doing everything on your own.  It’s not that you can’t cope with life on your own, but you got used to the security and comfort of having someone at your side.

You Mourn All The Things Your Significant Other Will Miss

You may grieve for everything your partner will miss (has missed) out on.  Special moments, having children, having grand-babies, retirement – and other things your significant other would have loved .

You Mourn The Things You’ll Miss Out On, Too

After someone dies, it is normal to grieve the past as well as your hopes and dreams for the future.  After your loved one has died, you will mourn for all the things you had dreamed of sharing with them.

Pressure to Do Right By Them

If you’re the next of kin for your dead partner, the responsibility to make decisions is your job. Maybe you’d discussed end-of-life care, DNRS, estates, belongings, and funeral arrangements. Maybe you hadn’t, so you simply have to guess. In the best cases, the extended family agrees with you and supports you, but there are also people who fight you to do what”s right by your partner. Regret over decisions made at the end of a person’s life can make struggling with grief even more complex.

Special Days and Anniversary Reactions

Of course you’ll miss spending those “special days” with your significant other. This may be coupled with an anniversary reaction that triggers your grief and feelings of loss.

\You worry about being truly alone

You were supposed to grow old with your partner, and perhaps you worry that you will spend the rest of your life alone or lonely now that they have died.

Death Threatens Who You Are

Are you a wife?  A husband?  A widow? A widower?  After years together, being someone’s partner was a huge part of who you are. On your own, don’t be surprised if your identity changes.

Relationships Between Family and Friends Changes

Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, people grow distant and they lose touch. There are a million reasons why, but sometimes losing a partner cuts your support system in half.

You Have To Live The REST of Your Life Without Them

And without them, this feels like a really really long time.

 You’re single again

Having been partnered off for years, you are now the single person in the room. It’s an isolating feeling.

Third Wheel

Many people who have other married friends have partners that are still alive. Going out with these friends can make you feel awkward and uncomfortable.

You Now Worry About Being Completely Alone

You were supposed to grow old with your partner, and often you may worry that you will spend the rest of your life alone or lonely now that they have died.

Dating After Death

Oftentimes, before you’ve even felt any desire to date again, well-meaning friends will push you to get back out there. If you’re not ready, tell them so.

On the other hand, there will be people who judge you for dating again (so soon?) after your partner dies. It’s a sticky situation for sure.

Your New Partner

Dating someone deeply in mourning can be incredibly hard. Your new partner may not understand why, if you’re dating him or her, aren’t you over your dead partner. It takes an incredibly amazing new partner to understand this:

Death doesn’t END a relationship or feelings about the dead partner

Make every effort to let the deceased’s memory into their life

You can love a person in the present, while continuing to cherish a significant other who has died

How To Help Yourself Heal From The Loss of a Partner:

Losing someone who has been a part of your life for many years or decades can rock you to the core, your grief overwhelming you. Going from a twosome to a single is beyond painful, and it may be hard to learn to cope with this loss.

Physically, one of the most important things to do is to continue to take care of yourself – take your medications, see the doctor, and make sure you’re eating and drinking properly.

Take the time you need to grieve the loss of your partner. There is no time-table on grief and no set schedule in which you should be “over” it.

The more significant the loss (and the loss of a husband, wife, or partner is very significant), the harder the grieving process may be.

Remember, everyone grieves differently. Just because someone you know didn’t feel the same way you do doesn’t mean that either of you are wrong – grief is different for everyone.

Do your best to not play the “what-if” game. There is a lot of self-imposed guilt in those scenarios.

Ignoring the pain will not make the grieving process go any faster. It’s really important to face up to that ugly grief and let it out.

You don’t have to be strong. It’s okay to be weak. Losing a partner is a major life change, and the grief can be very consuming.

It’s okay if you don’t cry – not everyone cries to express their grief. You grieve in your own way in your own time.

Don’t let anyone else pressure you to “get over it.”

It’s common for other people (and yourself) to misunderstand how long it takes to adjust to a new life. It’s common to take far longer than a year or two, and that’s okay.

Lean on your family and friends, even if your pride hates it. This is the time to let people know what you need from them.

Join a support group for other people who have lost spouses. Grief is a lonely time – being surrounded by people who know how you are feeling can go a long way toward combating loneliness.

Talk to a grief counselor or therapist. Often times, someone trained in working with bereaved individuals can help you come up with new coping strategies for working through your grief.

Take care of yourself – physically. Get enough sleep, eat properly, and exercise. The mind and body have a powerful connection, and it’s important to take care of your body while your mind sorts through the grief.

Express your feelings in a tangible way. Write letters to your deceased spouse. Create a memory book. Put old photos in an album that you can look at.

Plan for grief milestones – birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays hold a special emotional significance. Expect that these milestones will be extra hard the first years without your partner.

Never, EVER allow someone to tell you how you should be acting, behaving, or feeling. If they try, cut them off until such time as you can explain why what they said or did was not acceptable.

How To Help A Loved One Who Has Lost A Partner:

When someone we dearly love loses a husband, a wife, or a partner, it is a shock to everyone around them. It can be almost impossible to know how to help someone who has lost a partner. Here are some tips for helping your loved one work through their grief over the loss of their partner.

Beware the Widowhood Effect: the first 3-6 months after your loved one’s loss are critical for their very own existence. Many people who have lost a partner have died between 3 to 6 months after the loss of their partner. It’s generally believed to be a combination of psychical and psychiatric complaints brought on by all the emotions of your loved one that result in a reduced immune system (among other issues) that can lead to death. Social contact has proven to be something that helps a loved one continue to survive the Widowhood Effect.

This makes visiting and checking in on your bereaved loved one as often as possible and encouraging him or her to get back out into the world.

It’s common to misunderstand how long it takes an bereaved individual to adjust to a new life. Some may adjust more easily than others. Stay close to your friend as his or her life changes – it’s a long battle.

Be present for your loved one – they have just suffered a major loss.

Listen non-judgmentally and compassionately. Your kindness will never be forgotten.

Remind yourself that grief is as unique as the person experiencing it – there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. Grief simply is.

If you’re close to your loved one, assist with funeral planning. There’s a lot that goes into planning a funeral and reception, and these tasks are both devastating and require a lot of work.

Stay with your loved one if they would like and help to answer the door, the phone, or emails that may arrive.

Help your friend to organize any paperwork, medical bills, and other things associated with partner loss. That way, bills are paid on time, and your friend doesn’t feel he or she has one more thing to deal with.

Reach out to your friend. Call. Keep calling. Send text messages. Email. Do this frequently, even if they do not respond. Sometimes it’s all they can do to survive. But know that hearing from you can make a world of difference.

Continue reaching out, long after the funeral has ended. Support, by then, has probably dropped off, and it’s likely that your friend is really beginning to feel the loss of his or her partner.

Remember anniversary dates and help your loved one during these awful times. Birthdays, anniversaries, the day of the loved one’s death – these are all days that will be a lot harder on your loved one. Help by remembering to call, send a card, visit, or otherwise be there for your friend.

Cook frozen meals that your loved one can easily heat up. Many grieving people forget to eat, so having something around that’s easily prepare-able can make a huge difference.

Offer practical help – do a load of laundry while you’re visiting. Pick up some groceries at the store. Offer to run errands or accompany your loved one on errands.

Grief makes it very hard to do even the simplest things – sometimes having someone else around can give them the strength to brave the store or pharmacy.

Losing a partner, especially if it’s been a spouse of many years, will make them feel more alone than they ever have. If possible, spend some time just being with your friend. It’s hard going from being a twosome to a single.

Offer to go to weddings, funerals, and other situations in which their partner’s absence won’t feel as devastating.

Have a weekly dinner arranged to go out (or stay in) with your friend to give them something to look forward to.

So many of us want to “fix” the situation for our loved one, but it’s impossible. We cannot fix our friend, we cannot replace their partner – what we can be is a friend. Be there to love them and support them.

Be patient with your loved one. The range of emotions that grief puts us through runs from depression and anger to guilt and sadness. Patience is necessary and important.

Let them talk about all of the ugly emotions they might be feeling – allow them to do so in such a way that they do not feel as though you are judging them.

There may be legal issues involved if the deceased has a complicated family situation (overbearing in-laws, stepchildren, ex-spouse). Offer to help your friend navigate the waters of how to grieve while dealing with the emotions of others closely involved.

Your loved one, especially if you still have a partner, may not want to discuss their loss with you. It’s almost impossible to know the unique pain of losing a partner unless you have been there yourself.

If your loved one grieving his or her partner does not feel comfortable discussing the loss of their spouse, suggest local support groups for bereaved individuals.

Remember: you don’t have to have been a close friend of the family to go to the funeral and wake. It’s appreciated to see that many people are also mourning the passing of their partner.

Remember that the pain of losing a partner will never heal.

Take any signs of depression very seriously. Here is a page about depression for your reference.

Take any talk of suicide very seriously. This is a life-threatening emergency. Read up on suicide prevention here.

If your loved one speaks of suicide, call 911. Do not hesitate.

What to Say When Someone Has Lost A Partner:

Acknowledge the death by saying, “I just heard that your husband (or wife) died. I am here if you want to talk about him (or her).”

Express concern, “I’m so very sorry that you lost your wife (or husband).”

Be genuine without hiding your feelings, “I wish I knew what to say, but please know how much I care.”

Offer support, “Please tell me what I can do for you.”

Ask questions, “How are you feeling?” without assuming you know how the grieving person feels.

How NOT To Help Someone Who Has Lost A Partner:

It’s hard to know what to say to someone who has lost a partner. While we’ve talked about what TO say to someone who has lost their husband or wife, we haven’t discussed what NOT to say. Here are some suggestions for what NOT to say to someone who has lost a partner.

Do not expect that your loved one will “get over” their loss on a set time-table. Grief and grieving is unique to each person.

Don’t change the subject if the deceased individual comes up in conversation. It may be uncomfortable for you to talk about, but the person who is grieving wants to feel as though their husband or wife is not forgotten.

Don’t use “he” or “she” in conversation while referring to the deceased. Use their name.

As everyone grieves in their own way, don’t chastise your loved one for being “too happy too soon” or “wallowing.”

Should your loved one begin to date “too soon” after the loss of their spouse, remember that it’s neither your place to judge or understand coping mechanisms.

As always, avoid platitudes. Special mention goes to “He or she is in a better place.” It’s dismissive of the tremendous loss, and without knowing the religious background of your grief-stricken loved one, it may not be something they actually believe.

Don’t say, “I know just how you feel.” Unless you, too, have lost a partner, you do not know how they feel. That comment can cause a lot of anger as it feels dismissive of the loss.

Don’t make assumptions about your grieving friend based upon how they appear. Some people are excellent at hiding their emotions.

Do not dismiss your friend’s varying range of emotions. Because we each grieve in our own way, we may not experience the same emotions – there are no right or wrong emotions involved in the grieving process.

Avoid telling your loved one about your own grief experiences.

Do not compare grief – grief is different for everyone.

Do not offer unsolicited advice about “getting over” their grief. They will NEVER be over their grief.

Don’t offer reasoning about how they should or shouldn’t feel.

What NOT To Say To Someone Who Has Lost A Partner:

“You’ll get remarried some day.”

“He/She was lucky to have lived to such an old age.”

“It was God’s will.”

“He’s/She’s in Heaven now.”

“Be thankful he/she is not in pain any more.”

“Think of all the good times you had.”

“You’ll feel better soon.”

“Count your blessings.”

“You have so much to be grateful for.”

“Time heals all wounds.”

“Pull yourself together – be strong!”

“I know exactly how you feel.”

If you have any suggestions to add to this page, please email us at bandbacktogether@gmail.com!

[ronaldmrashid]

Adopting From Foster Care: Clarifying The Fears And Misconceptions

One of the biggest benefits of financial freedom is the ability to spend more time helping other people. Although writing about building wealth is useful and donating money is good, adopting or fostering a child reaches a next level of kindness. 

Today’s post is from Jillian at Montana Money Adventures. She has adopted not one, but four foster children. People like Jillian are an inspiration. I hope her story helps you better understand the foster care system. I was going to write a post about what I learned at a foster care training seminar I attended, but Jillian’s post is so much better. 

On my very first date with my husband, I mustered the courage to ask him the one question that would be a deal breaker. “How do you feel about adoption?” His answer was encouraging, so I took a deep breath and asked one more question, “How would you feel about adopting from foster care?”

It might not seem like first date kind of conversation, but I’ve never been one to waste time. I was passionate about being a family for kids who desperately needed one, and any future spouse needed to share that passion. Three years later we adopted our oldest son, a teenager from foster care.

The need for foster/adoptive parents is enormous. There are currently over 100,000 children in foster care available for adoption and waiting for a family to step forward. Over 20,000 of those kids will “age-out” of foster care each year, never finding a forever family, and will go into adulthood alone. They are often ill prepared and lacking the support needed to flourish as adults.

The need for foster care adoption is growing rapidly due to increased methamphetamine use across the US. 10 years ago, most kids removed from their biological families were school aged kids. It was in school that teachers would notice the abuse and neglect. Now more babies are born addicted to meth.

The threshold for removing a child is extremely demanding (unlike 20-30 years ago), but meth addicted babies aren’t able to go home with their birth parents. Because meth is extremely addictive, and drug rehab resources scarce, many of those parents don’t sober up in order to be the parents their children need.

Over the last twelve years we have adopted twice from foster care. Our oldest son, Micah, we adopted when he was twelve. Then two years ago we adopted a sibling group of three kiddos. The two groups of kids who struggle the most to find families are older kids and sibling groups. Those are the kids that pulled on my heart the most. The kids that everyone had passed over, and might not get another chance for an awesome family. (I will use the term “family” but that doesn’t mean a married wife and husband. Any adult willing to come alongside these kids is “family,” and the states won’t discriminate based on age, marital status, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation. And “awesome” doesn’t mean perfect!)

There are some common misconceptions when it comes to adopting from foster care. After adopting four kids from the foster care system, speaking to foster-adoptive groups, and my husband’s former work of licensing adoptive families for hard to adopt kids, these are the most frequent concerns we have heard.

5 Common Concerns About Adopting From Foster Care

1. The kids in foster care are criminals or bad kids.

There are over 400,000 kids in foster care currently. They aren’t criminals or bad kids. They are in foster care at absolutely no fault of their own. Their biological parents just can’t care for them right now. These kids have experienced horrible trauma, abuse, neglect or drug addiction. Then they were removed from their home, which from an adult perspective is a good thing, but it’s a horrible loss for the child. They just lost everything they know. Their parents, their bedroom, all their toys, their friends, maybe their school. They might have been separated from siblings when the social worker couldn’t find a foster family who could take all the kids together. Those things might not have been great, but it was their whole life. They are hurting. They don’t have the words, comprehension, or ability to express all that hurt. They don’t fully understand how to process the trauma they have seen and lived through.

They try to cope the best they can. And often it comes out sideways. Instead of asking for a conversation and hug, they might throw things and yell. Instead of talking about how they are worried about their biological siblings (because it was the 7-year-old who always took care of mom when she was high) they might throw a tantrum.

But it’s one of the most beautiful parts of being a foster and adoptive parent. Slowly, bit by bit, they change. Right before your eyes. As we love them through the behaviors, as we pull them close, as we help them wrap words around the hurt and confusion they feel, they become their true selves. In small moments you see how sweet they are. You discover that they are actually crazy smart and awesome at school. They are funny and witty. They become people who are passionate and sympathetic for others. It’s the hurt, trauma, and loss we see at first. But if we stick with them, and love them through the hurts, we get to see the transformation. Of all the parts of our story, adoption is the most amazing and rewarding thing I’ve been privileged to be a part of.

Do you want a perfect child for your family?

Or can you be an awesome family for a child?

There are about 1000 miles between those two question.

The child you foster/adopt won’t be perfect. They are dealing with a lot. But if you can be an awesome family for a hurting child, that is what they most desperately need (reminder, “awesome” does not mean perfect). A great family could change everything for them. Their entire life trajectory can shift.

2. It’s expensive.

Private adoption is expensive and overseas adoption is expensive ($20,000-$40,000). Whereas, adopting from foster care has very little, if any, upfront cost. You might wait in line for years to get a baby from a private agency. Whereas, the kids in foster care have waited years for you. Because 100,000+ are waiting, and very few people are getting in line for them, the US government has tried to remove as many of the financial barriers as possible to help these kids find forever families.

Typically the government will cover the cost for your home study, training, and adoption filing costs. If your child has ongoing needs, your state might help with that even after you adopt. There are special tax credits for adopting kids the state deems special needs (that could be a child of certain races, sibling groups, those with disabilities, or older children). If you adopt older kids (over 16) they qualify to receive the full FAFSA amount for college despite your income.

The cost to adding a child(ren) to your family is still high. Primarily in terms of time. All kids take time. These kids might need a little extra time. Knowing that I wanted to adopt was a large motivation for striving to create more financial freedom. We have been able to take our 4th and longest mini-retirement while our kids needed us most. Over the last 15 years, we have built up enough passive income to cover all our expenses. It’s enabled us to really lean into what is best for our family in each season and only take on work that fits our families lifestyle. FIRE absolutely isn’t a requirement to adopt, but it’s been a huge help for us while adding a high needs sibling group to our family.

We had very low upfront costs with our adoptions. I would say overall the costs are similar to having biological children. We did buy a minivan ($10,000) and extra furniture ($3000). I left a full-time job ($30-40k a year) for two years before this mini-retirement to be a stay at home mom. Our kids came with 12 appointments a week for the first year!

We also do more planning for the long term costs our kids might have. I have no expectation of them being 100% fully independent and self-sustaining at 18. Very few kids these days are, and that might be even more the case with our kids.

Jillian and her family

3. The kids might be returned to their biological parents

There are two ways you can adopt from foster care. 1) You can welcome kids into your home whose parents are currently working a reunification plan.

Those parents are trying to make the needed steps to get their kids back. If those biological parents are able to be reunited with their kids, that is the priority. If not, your state would look at other biological family members who could care for them.

Out of the 400,000 currently in care, 300,000 fit in this group. If those first two options aren’t possible, the state would most likely ask the foster parents to adopt the child. That is how we adopted our sibling group of three. Because of their needs and behaviors we were their 4th foster family, which added to their delays and challenging behaviors. The Child Protection Services would prefer just one foster family from start to finish, but that is rarely the case. We were there foster parents for 1.5 years before we were able to move forward on the adoption.

In the past, this could be a very long journey, sometimes lasting 5-10 years. The government finally wised up and acknowledged that isn’t healthy for kids to live in limbo for that long, not knowing where they belong. Now the federal mandate is 18 months. Birth parents have 18 months to work a reunification plan before the courts move towards terminating parental rights. It doesn’t always go quite that way, but it’s closer to that timeframe now than in years past.

Or option 2) The other 100,000 kids who are just waiting. Their birth parents rights have been terminated and they are free for adoption. No other biological family was a healthy fit. Now they wait. And hope. For someone to step up and take a chance on them.

You can see profiles of many of the waiting kids on Adopt US kids plus all the information to get started as foster/adoptive parents. It’s often easiest to adopt kids from your own state, but you are legally able to adopt kids from anywhere in the country. This is how we adopted our oldest son. He was already available for adoption. We lived in Virginia and he was from Nebraska. The federal government mandates a six month trial period, where we were his foster parents, to make sure it’s a good fit for everyone. After that, we were able to officially adopt him.

4. There is a waitlist like with private adoption.

The need for foster-adoptive parents is overwhelming. Unlike private organizations, the states aren’t allowed to discriminate based on religion, gender, marital status, orientation, etc. They are just looking for awesome people. It doesn’t matter if you’re single, gay, young or old (although you have to be an adult, over 21 in most states).

The process is invasive and long. The first step is to contact your local child protection agency and get signed up for classes. After you finish the classes you will go through background checks, overly personal questionnaires, a million rules, and constant delays. The need is great, but they want to make sure you are qualified/prepared to be an awesome family.

It also takes far longer than it seems it should. Between your first phone call and a child arriving at your home, it could be anywhere from 6-18 months.

The foster care system is overwhelmed right now and funding is always tight in social service agencies. If you are adopting in order to have an amazing experience in the approval process, well, that won’t happen. You will meet some of the most amazing people on Earth. Dedicated, hard working, passionate social workers who have given their life for this cause. But they won’t have time to return a phone call. Just FYI.

5. It will end badly and it’s not worth the risk.

I once heard that 30-50% of people consider adopting at some point. In reality, only 2-4% of Americans ever do. I think the gap might be due to not really understanding the process/options/ or how to start.

And fear. Mostly fear.

What if it all goes wrong? What if I’m not up to the task? What if the kid is horrible or dangerous or ruins our family? What if they don’t love me? What if I don’t love them? What if they go back to their biological family and my heart breaks so much that I never recover?

We fear the worst and are paralyzed by it. There is risk. But there is always risk in anything worth doing.

My best advice: Do your research, ask good questions, stay open minded, and just start the process. Calling your local Child Protection Service office isn’t a forever commitment. Signing up for the classes isn’t a forever commitment. Looking at the kids on Adopt US kids doesn’t mean they are moving in tomorrow. It’s a long process. So if you really are interested and feel like you could be a family to a child, just start.

And if everything goes wrong…you can’t waste good.

Micah

Our first adoption had the worst ending that I could imagine. At 20 years old, our oldest son died. He was Type 1 diabetic when we adopted him. Diabetes, along with his behavior, educational delays, and emotional problems were the reasons he struggled to find a family. Eight years later that disease took his life due to a case of mild food poisoning.

After eight years of being Micah’s mom, I had to bury my child. I had to write his obituary and pick out songs for his funeral. It was the worst possible ending to our story. The grief and sorrow nearly crushed me.

But you know what? I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. For eight years I got to be Micah’s mom.

Through all his struggle and challenges, I got to watch him grow into a strong, compassionate young man. He was better for having been part of our family, and I was definitely better for being his mom. I grew just as much as he did during those years. And his story changed those around him. That time and that work mattered. Even though I would never wish that pain on anyone, all the good and love we poured into him wasn’t wasted.

No matter how your story works out, all the love you put into these kids, it won’t be wasted. You can’t waste good. In the things that matter the most to us, there is always fear. There are always unknowns.

Our adoptive kids are adorable. They are sweet and kind and simply amazing. People comment all the time about how wonderful they are and how they would love to “take them home.” Part of me wants to say, “There are about 100,000 kids just waiting for you.”

Once you know the kids who are waiting, who need a home, it changes everything. They aren’t a number, but a real person that you would do anything for. I would cross oceans for my kids. I’ll go to battle to defend and protect them. There is always risk, but my kids are worth the risk. So are the 100,000 kids waiting and the 300,000 in limbo in foster care.

Additional Foster Care Resources:

This was the short movie I (Sam) watched in the training seminar which made me realize a foster child may not want to leave his/her parents at all, despite a bad situation. I also learned that despite one’s good intentions, there may be triggers unbeknown to you that may set off a child.

Additional information on adopting (Childwelfare.gov PDF)

College options for older adopted children (Nacac.org)

Meet the kids waiting for families (AdoptUsKids.org)

Jillian writes about creating a life with more financial freedom, adventure, and mini-retirements over at Montana Money Adventures. The rest of the time she is hiking in Glacier National Park, chasing 5 kids, gardening and drinking imported black tea.

After attending a three-hour training seminar at Braid Mission in SF, Sam will be joining a team to mentor a foster child once a week this winter. It’s his small way of getting more involved in a world where much help is needed. Perhaps you’d like to join him if you are located in the Bay Area.

The post Adopting From Foster Care: Clarifying The Fears And Misconceptions appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from https://www.financialsamurai.com/adopting-foster-care-clarifying-the-fears-misconceptions/

[good-ole-trash]

The Significance of Day by day Keying in Process

Such as something inside life, practice tends to make excellent. More than likely you've got learned that will announcing in advance of. There is superb reality to the current fact. If you want to accomplish a single thing around existence, you will need to make yourself to on a daily basis train. Including patio furniture from playing that violin, competitive around physical activities, and perhaps practicing a person's writing out capabilities. To be able to improve ones own entering capabilities next you will need to invest yourself to day by day keying practice. Day to day writing out put into practice could be the critical to your typing accomplishment. Neglecting to practice can be certain that whatever results you earn around pace together with precision can be wasted after some time. There is no uncertainty to sort it out. Maintain with the cutting edge abilities so to increase ones typing, you need on a daily basis keying in exercise.

In this contemporary culture, keying could be the major to getting an awesome position. The majority of work opportunities have to have some degree involving laptop computer work, and additionally knowing how to help type quickly and additionally competently could make anyone far more marketable as compared to ones own fellow workman who merely “finger pecks” in the keyboard. It is possible to truthfully status, this learning to kind can be an expenditure within your vocation long run. Quite a few open colleges have got accepted the importance of writing out and maybe they are promoting young children so that you can lifestyle a time put aside meant for day to day typing put into practice. Teaching children the proper strategies to entering although they've been small is definitely vital step to being sure your upcoming success. No-one can have imaginary 40 years ago, precisely how fundamental the online market place is usually to your day to day activities. Nowadays, lifestyle and not using a pc, and also unsure how to fully grasp the internet, units everyone at a computerized issue. Comprehensively understand this little ones learn how to choice, benefit from Message, use research equipment using the web, in addition to cope with office environment programs. Day to day keying in practice is essential to generate all those assignments effortless, hassle-free, in addition to trouble free. There's lots of keying in matches which might be invested in or even found without charge using the web that can motivate young people with their daily entering practice. Numerous typing games make available interactive show tutors, rewards based on levels, and lots of mp3 to remain children aimed. Working with one of these simple applications is actually a powerful way to inspire your son or daughter's on a daily basis keying practice although designing a particular atmosphere that is excitement. Your child don't also realize that they're actually “working” in the completely new competency despite the fact that playing a lot of these games.

People need to have on a daily basis entering put into practice to boot. To stay valuable, enhance a continue, together with create a person's performance with your career it's best to enhance a person's typing tempo and additionally clarity. There's only one-way to further improve a keying in capabilities: daily typing exercise. Adults will discover that there are quite a few terrific programs that are available 100 % free on the web which can be geared to grownup individuals that have very limited keying competencies. Even adults show wonderful achievements the moment actively playing writing out activities. Matches tend to be a powerful way to operate on skills, they will absolutely eliminate the component of worry and studying comes about in the entertaining natural environment. As a result of taking part in entering mmorpgs, you will discover that day to day typing practice gets to be simple. Designed for grownups which surely have some sort of active itinerary, doing work daily, increasing young children, and additionally owning a house, on a daily basis keying exercise means taking part in keying in mmorpgs following on from the young people are typically bed furniture in addition to before retiring for any night time.

Day by day typing train is definitely important to be able to helping to make increases within entering speed together with correctness. Simply by applying constantly, people will quickly realize serious adjustments in your operate capabilities or in the house laptop computer benefit from. Better everyone form along with employ your new skills, you will discover this fast messaging, E-mail, together with producing message docs becomes simpler, easier, and additionally error-free.