#'safe' in quotes because isolation is not real safety

[uncle-fruity]

There's also an element of self-policing. If you're afraid that you're going to get assaulted every time you go out alone, the more likely you are to isolate yourself inside. The more likely you are to believe that you need an escort when you go out. It's harder to feel confident and self-reliant if you're afraid of strangers. It's harder to do things for yourself when you feel weak. And so a lot of women feel like they don't have autonomy to go out at night or go out alone & live in fear that something will happen to them. They don't live full & happy lives because someone/society has convinced them that not only are they a perpetual target, but also that they would not be able to fight for themselves if they needed to. And, in my opinion, this mindset opens those women up to a very real kind of manipulative, controlling domestic abuse which is far more common than random attackers on the street. So yeah... idk, women. I think it's good to take defense classes or do anything at all that you need to do to feel more confident to move about freely in the world. You don't have to accept the narrative that men are by default more powerful than you, that you have no control in an assault situation, or that you must keep yourself quiet and out of the way to be less of a target. You can be powerful and capable and that isn't to say you shouldn't stay aware of your surroundings or write off *any* potential threat as harmless, but rather to say that it is not as common as you are being led to believe and you have more options than to shrink back and let the fear take you.

Idk like I think there's a really misogynist way that women are expected to consider being murdered and assaulted as like 1000x worse than anything else that could happen and do everything possible to avoid it and like it's unarguably bad! But constantly whenever I mention going hiking or whatever people are like 'omg you're going camping alone as a woman??? what if you get murdered?????' Actually by far the way I am most likely to die doing that is... some sleep deprived or drunk driver crashing into me on the way there! But no one tells you to avoid driving, meanwhile there's so much pressure on women to like, always stay in other crowded super safe areas or at home to Protect Their Virtue and it's like lol I would actually rather live an interesting life doing things that I enjoy

[tired-but-willing]

I feel the need to defend Gwen after seeing people's takes on her, so here we go.

Major spoilers for Across the Spiderverse under the cut.

Let's start at the beginning of the movie. Gwen's father has a gun aimed at her, and is trying to arrest her, even after knowing it's his daughter under the mask. Miguel and Jess step in. Gwen is brought to the Spider place thing.

Right away we establish this: Miguel and Jess have taken Gwen from a place where she was isolated/in real danger, and took her somewhere safe.

Now, let's look at other aspects of the movie. Keep in mind— it's still in theaters, so I can't review the script. Any quotes and citations may be slightly different to what actually happened. I'm going off memory.

When Gwen is in Miles's universe, she has a conversation with Jess that puts things into perspective. If Gwen messes up, Miguel will send her back to her universe. Where she has no home, no money, no friends, and her dad— a police captain— knows her identity and is seemingly willing to shoot her.

Miguel has taken this child and to keep her in line, has placed the threat of returning her to a dangerous environment over her head. Now, before Miguel fans read this, please know I do like his character. This doesn't mean I can't criticize him and find faults in his actions.

Now, let's go over her interactions with Miles. Gwen keeps extremely vital information from him. Miles has every right to be distraught. However, Gwen isn't acting as a criminal mastermind. She's following Miguel because it's all she can do. If he takes her watch— there's only one thing left for Gwen. Her universe where she's unsafe. And this is exactly what Miguel DOES do when Gwen upsets him. He disables her watch and forces her back. Thankfully everything turned out fine, but what if it didn't?

Miguel knows what went down between Gwen and her father. He was there. And yet he— a man who collapsed an entire universe— sent her— a kid who didn't want to hurt her friend— into an environment where she could be shot. By her father, nonetheless.

It should also be noted that the first thing Gwen does when she's no longer under Miguel's influence is go after Miles to save him. After the talk with her father, of course.

My main point here is that Gwen does make mistakes: but we as viewers need to understand that she's not acting maliciously. She's a child who had nothing else to fall back on; no safety net, nothing. I hate to see people treating her as if she orchestrated everything just to hurt Miles.

[straw-beret]

what's up with the pacman machine in the link click opening?

well friends, I'm about to cobble together some information that is so irrelevant to the main plot!!

(also: i came up with this theory prior to episode 11 coming out, but when it did, it only really solidified it for me).

more under the cut :) and spoilers for the most recent episode of link click (episode 11 season 2)

if you know me from my most recent link click post, you'll know i am unnaturally obsessed with the claw machines of the season 2 opening.

But wait, what's that third machine in the middle? The yellow-ish one that's sort of dimly lit?

it's a fucking pacman arcade machine.

a pacman arcade machine that doesn't appear in the show itself.

being me, i had to go on the most unnecessary deep dive into what the hell the relevancy of this pacman machine could be. it's jammed between two of the claw machines in the intro but mysteriously absent in the episode itself. and while i don't have an explanation for THAT (if anyone has an idea, pls lmk!!), i do have some info on the game.

when you start up a game of pacman, this is the general visual you're going to get:

In my opinion, the most important thing to note is the colours of the ghosts. Notice we've got three in that box: blue, pink, and orange. And outside we have red. Do these colours happen to remind you of anything— or rather, anyone?

that's right. the link clickers are the ghosts in Pacman.

All jokes aside, I do think there's at least a bit of merit in this observation. Because red— i.e. qiao ling, is isolated from the power users.

(pink could be either of the Li twins, for convenience's sake i'm just going to assume it's Tianxi for one bit of speculation i'll explain later).

Why isolate one of the three original mains from the other two, and instead have a new character take her place?

Because, as I speculated before in my claw machine theory, qiao ling is not safe!!! in both the claw machines and Pacman, the symbol/motif associated with Qiao Ling has been positioned on the outside of the box.

Now, a character being in the box doesn't guarantee safety, you'll know this especially if you've seen the most recent ep (s2e11) and the trailer for ep12. However, it does provide something of a line of defence— i.e. the box is sort of a symbol for the fact that CXS, LG and LTX are power users.

Qiao Ling was the very first person to get possessed by red eyes, she is the most 'vulnerable' of the OG 3 in that sense. aside from her martial arts realness, she can't defend herself on a supernatural level. she no way of teleporting out of a fight like CXS or seeing into the future to predict her opponent's moves like LG could.

qiao ling, as a normie, is isolated from the power users and thus more at risk to being harmed by the enemy. For the ghosts, it's Pacman, and for the link clickers, it's this motherfucker:

crustlord of the century Qian Jin.

I think pacman is supposed to symbolise him on account of 1. the yellow eyes and 2. the fact that he's out to get basically every single one of the ghosts:

QL

CXS

LG

LTX

Hence why this theory works a lot better with LTX as the pink ghost instead of LTC— Tianxi betrayed QJ, and the one thing he hates most is betrayal.

I feel as though the AI patterns of the Pacman ghosts sort of align with this too:

"Each of the four ghosts has their own unique artificial intelligence (A.I.), or "personality": Blinky (Red) gives direct chase to Pac-Man; Pinky (pink) and Inky (blue) try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man, usually by cornering him; and Clyde (orange) will switch between chasing Pac-Man and fleeing from him"

"Each ghost's name gives a hint to its strategy for tracking down Pac-Man: Blinky always chases Pac-Man, Pinky tries to get ahead of him, Inky uses a more complicated strategy to zero in on him, and Clyde alternates between chasing him and running away."

^^ those two quotes are from the Pacman wikipedia page, a robust source indeed. in the first quote I put the colours of the ghosts in bold and by their proper names for reference.

If we assume Pacman is QJ and Red ghost is QL, and we remember how she bitch slapped QJ in episode 3 season 2:

I'd say that at the very least the AI behaviour + QL's actions are somewhat correlated. And i'd say that the AI behaviour of the other ghosts lines up with their respective characters, LG being strategic and CXS being a bit more chaotic in his approach. As for Xixi, well, we kind of haven't seen enough of her to say.

but "via," i hear you say, "Li Tianxi got fucking murk'd in episode 11, AND she's the one with red eyes! why isn't she the red ghost, and not qiao ling?"

I see you and I hear you. Both QL and LTX have associations with both red and pink, and in fact upon first coming up with this theory i thought LTX was the red ghost as well. But considering the placement of the Pacman machine (between the claw machines+around the rabbits, see my previous post for details on the stuffed rabbits and their relevancy) as well as official art and in-show costuming, I figured that it made more narrative sense (and theory sense) for QL to be the red ghost. Plus she's just more heavily associated with red than either of the Li twins, who are costumed in more light pastels

for reference, I put TC both in and out of drag above^^ and in his xixi cosplay, he wears almost entirely pink.

back to the theory. Qiao Ling's ghost is on the outside; and the stuffed rabbits that I'm almost positive symbolise her are piled on the outside of the claw machines. Surely this isn't a coincidence, right?

this all comes back to my theory that Qiao Ling, as the outsider of the group, the only one without powers, and the last to be informed of all the supernatural happenings, is going to meet a certain fate either by the end of s2 or around the start of s3. And I think the show has tried to set it up from the start.

Although Qiao Ling didn't become incredibly plot significant until I'd say about halfway through S1, we saw a few glimpses of her that were framed to highlight her vulnerability. Off the top of my head, I can definitely think of the horror-movie esque way s1e3 opened, where a strange man, later revealed to be Chen Xiao, approaches her from behind after appearing in a dark alley. Plus there is of course, her possession by LTC in s1e11. So from the get-go, she is framed as the odd one out of the main 3, and the most at risk.

then we get to the intro of s2, with the stuffed rabbits and the pacman machine, and it starts to come together, as stupid as that may sound. the writers are foreshadowing that something is gonna happen to Qiao Ling, and given the way everything connects, I'm of the opinion it could be death, or possibly grave injury.

that's all i've really got to say! curious as to what others might think of this, because it's all founded on the colours of a fckin Pacman game lol.

_

having seen the e12 trailer for s2 and qiao ling looking like she was gaining a power, I wonder how the finale is going to play out and if it will fit with the visuals and symbolism in the intro. oh well, we'll see!

also good LORD these posts take a long time to make!! let me know what you think, and also if you've got any clue as to why the Pacman machine appears in the intro but not the episode. Maybe IP reasons, although i don't see why they'd end up including it at all in the intro if copyright or IP was a concern. anyways, that's all!

[shxoxo555]

blog post 2

The idea of an Earthseed community was introduced to me in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Two real life examples that make it necessary to create an Earthseed community are natural disasters and pandemics. I would be seeking shelter from environmental changes that will harm the community such as earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, tsunamis and many more natural disasters. Also the pandemic introduced us to adapting in isolation and figuring out how to navigate life from hom to stay safe. "All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change." (Parable of the Sower Butler). In the application of this quote to my community I will express the importance of embracing change. Afterall change starts with the help of one person. "The Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars. We are Earthseed. The Life that perceives itself Changing." (Parable of the Sower Butler). I will use this quote to explaining to my community that change is beautiful and we should not be afraid of change. I will create my Earthseed community in Qatar. I chose Qatar because it is statistically the safest country in the world geographically. Qatar is a very low risk country from any natural disasters. I would be open to accepting people from all ethnicities, religions, and sexualities. In a case of natural disasters or a pandemic I would love to help as many people as I can in my community. However I would not accept people who would harm my community and its members. I will not accept people whos morals do not align with the communities and selfish people who would be willing to risk the communities safety for their own self gain. My leadership model for the community is "let your heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27). I want my Earthseed community to be resilient in the face of change and any other disasters that may come our way. I want to be someone the community looks for guidance and advice. I would like to create an advanced version of a solar panel that will generate electricity. It would be auto-generated and ethically sourced. It would be an efficient transition for my community. I will make my Earthseed community learn how to be self-sustainable. I will plant all types of fruits and vegetables and raise livestock as well. I will make sure the kids in my community receive a well rounded education as well. I will make it mandatory to learn as a community and make sure everyone is educated and helping out. I want the children to know about all types of plants and how to raise livestock as well. Everyone will have assigned roles and responsibilities to contribute to our growing Earthseed community.

[lacourdesmiraclesblog]

A very special thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Bloom Books, for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review of this book! Follow me on instagram @seeds.of.imagination for more book content!

Jennifer Hartmann’s novel, Lotus, is a captivating story that I would recommend to any reader interested in romance, thriller, or mystery novels. While the novel is able to appeal to readers with different interests, Hartmann maintains the integrity of a unique, strongly-developed, and interesting read. Oliver is such an adorable character and I would protect him at all costs!

Although the book does contain content that may be triggering to some, I appreciate Hartmann’s responsibility as the first page of the book addresses content warnings for long-term abduction and childhood sexual assault. The use of a Content Warning page should be normalized in the book industry, and I am glad Jennifer Hartmann takes the mental health and safety of her readers seriously. That said, I also appreciate that while these themes are a primary part of the story, Jennifer Hartmann does not overuse or abuse these themes in an attempt to shock or disturb the reader. Not only is Jennifer Hartmann responsible in her motivation to warn readers about difficult subject matters, she also addresses these subject matters in a respectful and thought-out manner that is essential.

“Lotus” tells the book from two primary perspectives, with interludes from other character perspectives throughout the book. The story follows Oliver, a man who has escaped a long-term abduction, and his journey to adapting to real life and healing from his trauma. In a counter-perspective, the reader experiences Sydney’s point of view. Sydney, Oliver’s childhood best friend and both current and former neighbor, is relieved at Oliver’s escape, but haunted by the trauma of his disappearance and the lack of answers. Together, Sydney and Oliver must navigate what their past, present, and future will mean as two people who have meant so much to one another.

While I was initially nervous to read this book because of the dark themes addressed, the book was able to make me feel such a wide spectrum of emotions far beyond those of pain. Oliver’s isolation as a long-term abductee enables him to have an intelligence and appreciation for things in life that are beyond many of us. In many ways, it has made me think of the isolation many of us experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many have felt that this isolation has led to a deep loss, and perhaps even a stagnation of emotional intelligence, the depiction of Oliver has instead given me hope to what we as humanity may have learned and grown from that we would not have otherwise. Although the book addresses the grief of lost time, the primary emotion I felt while reading this book was hope. Not only is the book completely different from what I expected, but the plotline led to my immediate investment. Safe to say, I was hooked, and read this book all in one sitting.

While initially this book seemed a bit too predictable, the author did a wonderful job of completely shocking me with a twist I could not see coming! I believe the planning behind the plot was incredibly well developed as it appears the author had great intentionality behind the shift from a sense of predictability to complete shock!

Although hope was my primary emotion, I still appreciated the wide variety of emotions I felt while reading this book: shock, fear, love, hate, anger, sadness, reflection, amusement, inspiration, and tension. The author was able to beautifully balance the multiple genres of mystery, thriller, and romance. I felt each aspect of the book was given a moment to shine, and I appreciated the book’s ability to address my craving for each genre. I especially appreciated the book’s romance as it was unlike any other I have previously read. I feel it can be summed in part by my favorite quote in the book: “there is no logic in the way our hearts beat.”

“Lotus” contributes to the conversation of childhood sexual assault in a meaningful way, but I would love to see this topic be addressed further in a secondary novel focusing on the victim’s growth and healing from the trauma. I especially appreciated the point of view of a survivor’s friends and family, and the difficulty of navigating a loved one’s healing. This perspective was a very interesting and essential take on how harm cannot be solitary and discriminant, and has a ripple effect on everyone around us. In this book, I learned how when helping those around us harm from trauma, mistakes are inevitable, but compassion and patience are essential.

Finally, my only, very small, confusion is there seemed to be a small plotline hole regarding a part of the discovery of a mystery. Whether or not this is intentional as a commentary to the ineffectiveness of the police in this scenario, I am not sure. I would love to see this addressed, but I will not go into further detail here as I cannot spoil the book!

I would absolutely recommend this book to any reader interested in these genres, and I believe it can be read from a wide variety of ages. I look forward to reading more books by Jennifer Hartmann, and I cannot wait to see what she writes in the future!

[feralmoonlight]

HEY HI IT’S ME

A Creature. An Absolute Gremlin. Approach with caution.

A more current list of my au projects(a work in progress) and my art without 30k ish reblogs sprinkled between them can be found at @feralssinbin

Welcome to my little hole on this glorious hell site. My ask box is always open for questions, pokes, suggestions/requests, or a fun little AU ask game where you throw me a bone(idea?Scenario?quote?Something?) and I unleash a wave of rambling at you in return as my brain runs wild with ideas :D Rude asks will be laughed at and consumed like the most delectable treats >:3

I am... Honestly super proud to have ended up as part of the DCA Fandom (and now FNaF by extention??? I avoided it like the plague for so long and now here I am lmao). The people here are so warm and welcoming and absolutely full of the kind of crack that makes me grin and I love you all! My ‘day job’ is pretty much doing furry art commissions and helping take care of my grandmother, but my free time and fun time is spent here, simping in the daycare and showering people with the little fragments of my soul that still exist in the form of scribbled art and drabbles of writing <3

As a heads up, I live in the Sin Bin, and while I will try to tag anything overly suggestive/nsfw leaning, I am also a complete space cadet and my judgement on that kind of stuff is horribly skewed on what’s safe and what’s naughty(see day job. my sense of shame is like wet tissue paper lmao)

Art Stuff~  #Feral Scribbles (I DONT KNOW WHY THE LINK KEEPS BREAKING i keep copypasting it from the address bar but it’s being dumb)

My AO3~ and also my writing tag #Feral Writes for various bits and pieces that don’t make it to AO3

Unorganized Tagging and current projects list Under the Cut

BELOW IS SORTA OUTDATED. MOST RECENT AU HEADCOUNT IS HERE.

Various AU tags will appear somewhere once they exist

Pirate AU that needs a name eventually~ New name is too long for a decent tag sooo yea (also name may change) - You and Me and the Devil Makes Three

Forgotten But Not Gone the abandoned daycare AU thing

VampireWerewolf AU Uh... yeah what it sounds like hehehehe

AU Hoard various AU things that just... exist? or the start of AU ideas that get tags later

*

And some more shit I need to organize and merge with above~ BUT these are some(most) of the things I’m working on for writing currently!

Forgotten But Not Gone - 10 year old abandoned daycare with  one very lonely and unhinged isolated animatronic Fazbear Ent didn’t bother to pick up.

You, and Me, and the Devil Makes Three - PIRATE AU where reader is a dock hand that accidentally gets loaded as cargo on a pirate ship and now they’re a stow away. The captain’s aren’t thrilled

First Night Jitters - Boy, isn’t it a great idea to schedule the new hire’s first shift at closing time. When the lights go out. And the repurposed security detail is bored?

Dangerous Haven - Its hurricane season and your dumb ass was out in the storm(supposedly for good reason) gets hurt, and seeks safety by breaking into the pizzaplex when the powers gone out. Thank goodness the animatronics have an emergency override protocol in times like these, right?

Sometimes It’s Worth The Risk - You like robots. No. You REALLY like robots. And you just got an acceptance email you get to start working at the most technologically advanced pizza joint in the country. Jackpot. Time to woo the lanky boys, if only they understood why you were being ‘so weird’. (Surprise, they do)

Bite You Once, Bite You Twice - Vampire/Werewolf AU. SO. Sunny is a vampire, right? Well, he’s also a werewolf, because sure why not, and that side of him manifests as Moon (same entity, very different personality shift), and YOU are the new neighbor that doesn’t want to be here, but taking a job from him to help keep his yard tidy is at least something until you get a real job. What’s that? Lemonade? Sure I’ll step into your parlor mysterious friendly stranger. Wait why am I sleepy…

Once Upon Some BULLSHIT( >:C Language!) - A Choose Your Own Adventure style starting point that’s been backburnered for above projects that will basically be ‘commenters choice’ on what to do next, cause these are always fun to do between things, but this might also get scrapped BECAUSE I keep getting bigger ideas and this is a very side project thing.

Hands On Experience - Self indulgent drivel from me of the newbie finding out that the boys are just very touchy. No real plot, just some hands on time with the guys at various points of your employment. Some sweet, some awkward, some steamy, some uncomfortable. Look. I’ve figured out what this fandom is about with them and… Let me have this XD

The Doordash AU (title pending) - STAY AT HOME RECLUSE ARTIST ORDERS FOOD AND IT’S DELIVERED BY A FRIENDLY SUN ANIMATRONIC. Friendship. Angst. Romance? Bromance? I promise there is plot here, I rambled about it, the crack turned into a serious thing, why does this keep happening.

Strings, and Stripes, and Stars - AYO Red string of fate is playing mind games and you are more than confused about this pull that keeps yanking you around to a place of your nightmares. You have always hated big bulky costumes, mascots, those weird uncanny animatronics you see at themeparks and shitty kids restaurants. They make you uncomfortable on a level that borders into phobia territory. SO WHY do you keep ending up losing your mind and walking through the doors of THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE example of EVERYTHING you hate? Oh sweet fuck why are they so tall…

Let The Current Flow Under the Horizon(renamed, might get renamed again)- Self indulgent Mermaid AU that has fleeting bits and pieces of ideas and no real plot yet so check back on this one in like, a bit…The only thing I know for sure is I think I am going to make this one uh, naughty cause there’s so few decent nsfw mermaid fics out there. Team Monster Fucker, where you at? Tastefully, of course!

Face Value - Human disguise AU maybe? Maybe?? >w>; Not sure if developed enough to write yet but… There are many ideas that need to be sorted.

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Oh man I was scrambling trough tumblr tag and I saw this LB quote about Aleksander: "The Darkling is beautiful, I wanted to create a leader who was charismatic, appealing, a dictator you could imagine yourself following, an antagonist you couldn't just dismiss. [...] The Darkling is beautiful and broken and had a rough childhood, but he's also a brutal, manipulative monster with no regard for human life. He's dangerous because he's seductive, because he evokes sympathy.

…I just don’t even know when to start with this? Can she come off as anymore ignorant and offensive by trying to sound so woke. I mean “beautiful and broken���?! Are you kidding me?!

(Book Spoilers. Trigger Warning: Trauma and Mental Health)

Hmm well I'm not sure you could really sum it up as a 'rough childhood' more like a rough life filled with alot of trauma that has left him isolated and struggling to form human connections. Also I'm not sure I like the term monster for someone who is made the way they are through trauma and also the line about him having no regard for human life is just false he has lines he wont cross which is why he didn't harm the grisha children in book 3 and he was never going to because he values their lives. To be honest though I had some issues with the way LB dealt with trauma and mental health in the books. Not just with Aleks either but with Sergei too, actually I found the way she treated Sergei and his mental health in the last book rather appalling. Sergei is established as being severely traumatised by losing Marie to the point where he struggles to function properly. I think out of all the characters in the trilogy he's depicted as having the worst trauma, all the other characters have bad dreams and what not but Sergei really does find it debilitating and he struggles with day to day tasks like eating, sleeping and even just walking/travelling takes its toll on him. But Alina's attitude towards Sergei at times was troubling. To be clear though I'm not blaming the character for this as it was just the way she was written but she seems to consider Sergei weak and his mental health a hindrance. Here are some extracts from R&R the first is right after Sergei accidently revealed Genya's real name to Nikolai:

I shot to my feet. “What happened?”

“Sergei let her real name slip. He seems to be taking to heights about as well as he took to caves.” I released a growl of frustration. Genya had played a key role in the Darkling’s plot to depose the King. I’d tried to be patient with Sergei, but now he’d put her in danger and jeopardised our position with Nikolai.

Sergei was nowhere to be found. Probably a good thing, since I didn’t have time to give him the pummelling he deserved.

And like I understand that this must have been a frustrating situation but Alina knows that Sergei is struggling with his trauma and that he didn't mean to cause anyone any harm. I can understand her frustration but I really don't like the line about the 'pummelling he deserves'. I just don't like the suggestion that a person who is clearly suffering from a mental health issue deserves to be punished for making a mistake because of his trauma. Here's another instance where Alina is annoyed at Sergei:

Sergei had slowed us during our fight with the militia. He was unstable. I could apologise, offer useless words, but I didn’t know how to help him, and it didn’t change the fact that we were at war. Sergei had become a liability.

Again I get the frustration but again I have issues with the suggestion that because they are at war Sergei should just pull it together. Or even this image that's being painted that people who have mental health issues are just a burden on those around them. People in real life who suffer with similar mental health issues like depression and anxiety often worry about feeling like a burden to their loved ones so this could be really triggering for them. Then there is this from Baghra:

“We came to find you. What’s the matter with that boy?”

“He’s had a hard time of it,” I said, leading them away from the tank room.

“Who hasn’t?”

“He saw the girl he loved gutted by your son and held her while she died.”

“Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each man makes of it."

This one really troubled me because its like LB is saying that you can control your own trauma or decide how the trauma is going to effect you. It's again this suggestion that Sergei is weak because he struggled with his trauma more than others did. But the part that actually kind of disgusted me when I read it and I actually had to stop reading the book for a bit because of how much it upset me is how the characters talk about Sergei after his death. Alina had sent Sergei away because she felt he had become a liability and he then went back to the darkling and told them all the information he had on Alina and co. This move was obviously one born of his trauma and was made out of desperation. On several occasions Sergei has said he is struggling with feeling safe and no matter how hard he tries he never feels safe. Alina even tells us that Sergei had gone back to the darkling looking for reassurance and safety which really makes sense, this man grew up at the LP the one place where grisha could be safe, he grew up under the protection of the darkling. Then he chose to stand with Alina and went through the trauma and grief of losing the woman he loved horrifically in an attack against the LP which was his original safe place. He then never feels safe again so it would make sense for him to go back to what previously had made him feel safe, the LP and the Darkling. But this is what the other characters say about Sergei after he is killed by the darkling:

I sat beside him, unsure what to say. I remembered sitting like this with Sergei in the tank room, searching for words of comfort and failing. Had he been scheming then, manipulating me? His fear had certainly seemed real.

Abruptly, Zoya said, “I should have known Sergei couldn’t be trusted. He was always a weakling.”

Though that seemed unfair, I let it pass.

“Oncat never liked him,” Harshaw added.

Genya fed a branch to the fire. “Do you think he was planning it all along?”

“I’ve been wondering that,” I admitted. “I thought he’d be better once we got out of the White Cathedral and the tunnels, but he almost seemed worse, more anxious.”

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, “I’m glad Sergei’s dead. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to wring his neck myself.”

Steel is earned. Adrik had that steel, and so did Nadia. She’d proven it again in our flight from the Elbjen. A part of me had wondered what Tamar saw in her. But Nadia had been in some of the worst fighting at the Little Palace. She’d lost her best friend and the life she’d always known. Yet she hadn’t fallen apart like Sergei or chosen life underground like Maxim. Through all of it, she’d stayed steady.

And yes again I understand why they feel betrayed but they knew that Sergei was struggling and instead of understanding that Alina is accusing him of manipulating her and Zoya is saying he couldn't be trusted and that he was a weakling. To be honest it kind of reminds me of the way people talk about the darkling. Instead of recognising their trauma and trying to understand they jump straight to well they were a bad, untrustworthy person who was manipulating me.

Then there is the last part where Alina is thinking about how Adrik and Nadia are strong because although they faced trauma they were able to keep going and keep fighting but not Sergei, Sergei was crippled by his grief and his trauma and this means he was weak. Maybe its because I have struggled with crippling mental health issues myself where I couldn't even get out of bed let alone do anything else but I just found this implication that Sergei was weak really offensive to those who do struggle that way. People deal with trauma in different ways and whilst some people can fight through it and will just have a keep calm and carry on attitude others can't, others just fall apart, but that doesn't make them weak. I also don't think this 'just carry on and push through it' attitude towards mental health issues is necessarily a healthy message. If you need help then you should ask for it and be able to have access to it. LB could have used this as an opportunity to show a character who is severely traumatised getting support and help to work through his trauma and heal. But I feel like nobody really helped Sergei and any comfort or support he got seemed to be grudgingly given and there was more of an attitude of I'll try to help you because your issues are a hindrance to me than because any of the characters actually cared about him and wanted to help him.

Sergei and the Darkling were both characters that were 'beautiful and broken' but neither one of them was given the support or help they needed. Instead they were painted as either weak or as a monster. So what kind of message does this send to readers who also struggle with trauma and mental health conditions?

[sullustangin]

Fearful Avoidant Attachment and the Single Spy

Caveat:  I’m not a counselor of any sort, and I’m applying labels to fictional characters.  Don’t take this too seriously.

This post has been kicking around in different forms in my prompt document for awhile.  I will start posting my Yavin fic this weekend.  A major element of this fic will be the dynamic between Theron and the playable character/love interest.  Their interactions will be informed by how I view his attachments. I’ve put some of this into the fic series already.

“Attachment” in the Star Wars universe is the idea, according to George Lucas, that Jedi should love everyone but not get attached.  “Attached” in this context is possession, greed, being willing to do things for individuals rather than the greater good, and ultimately the fear of loss.  Attachment is a negative concept in Jedi philosophy.

However, I would argue that while this philosophy is in the back of Theron’s head, Jedi attachment concepts are not what makes Theron’s personal life messy.  It’s the personal context surrounding that teaching and his life events that shape this.  So let’s look at real life attachment theory. 

In its most basic form, attachment theory is the idea that children need to develop a positive relationship with a caregiver to turn out ok. If the child is neglected, then they will have problems forming healthy attachments to others.   There’s a lot of caveats to this theory.  Some put the threshold of ‘must have positive relationship by x age’ to age 2 or age 5.  Others state that this is problematic, because if a child loses their caregiver and passes into the hands of a less affectionate or downright abusive caregiver, then their positive attachment formation by age x doesn’t count for much.

There are several different types of attachment that a person can have.  A secure attachment is what most healthy relationships are rooted in. People feel safe and secure within themselves and within the relationship. Jedi can be attached in this fashion, even if they don’t call it this; the Jedi have orderly boundaries and a clear understanding of what their associations entail. They have care systems for younglings and padawans, which were like pre-modern apprenticeships.   They are secure within themselves as Jedi and in their relationships outside the order.  They are at peace.

An insecure attachment has a flaw in it; something is wrong in how the person relates to themselves and others in relationships, platonic, romantic or otherwise.  One type is dismissive or avoidant; the attachments are actively avoided, so the person is often isolated and rejects others and their friendly overtures.  Another type is anxious or preoccupied; people tend to get very clingy or possessive with anyone they latch onto, which can cause the relationship to self-destruct (hi, Anakin).

Then there is fearful avoidant attachment, the label I think fits Theron Shan, our favorite high-quality spy and absolute emotional disaster.  In theory, Theron tries to avoid deep emotional attachments because he’s scared of being left behind or not having those attachments reciprocated. At the same time, he desperately wants those attachments and relationships, but the potential of failure makes him avoid or even sabotage the relationship.  That results in an on-going war between Theron and his feelings. To quote Psychalive, “the person [he wants] to go to for safety is the same person [he is] frightened to be close to. As a result, [he has] no organized strategy for getting [his] needs met by others.”

Why does Theron have attachment issues?

Some accuse Satele Shan or Jace Malcom of being “bad parents.”  There’s a problem with this premise: although there is a biological relationship, neither Satele nor Jace had a parent-child relationship with Theron. Jace didn’t even know Theron existed until the child was 26, so he couldn’t act in any capacity.  Satele gave Theron up to be raised by someone else; she opted out of the role of mother and did not talk to him as mother-and-son until Theron was 26.  There isn’t an abusive or neglectful relationship here because there isn’t a relationship, period.  Much like romantic relationships, it’s better to have no relationship than a bad one. Jace and Satele didn’t raise Theron.  They were strangers to him until he was an adult.  They were never his caretakers.  Who did Theron have attachments to?

Theron was raised by a Jedi named Ngani Zho, who had been Satele Shan’s master when she was a padawan. After Satele gave birth in a cave on some planet, Zho took the child and raised him as his own son.  This was irregular, honestly.  Jedi younglings that express some sort of control over the Force are typically put into a creche at the Jedi Temple; we’ve seen this in the Star Wars prequel films.  Guss Tuno references this in SWTOR, as he was chagrinned to be in class with a bunch of five-year-olds in bathrobes.  Theron was raised by Zho directly and they were constantly traveling, based upon comments we read in The Lost Suns comic and in the novel Annihilation. Theron never entered the creche because he never manifested signs he was Force-sensitive – not even a little like Guss.

Zho traveled with Theron until the boy was an adolescent. Then, Theron was told by Zho to travel to the Jedi Temple at Haashimut to receive more training; he could do no more for him.  The trip through a desert nearly killed the boy.  When Theron had recovered, it fell to Master Till’in to tell him he would not be a Jedi.  Ever.  

Instead of telling Theron or notifying Satele about the boy’s lack of Force aptitude, Zho sent him onward and then disappeared.  There is no indication that Zho told anyone where he was going or why.  When Theron met Zho again at age 23, the Master’s mind was scrambled and confused; he couldn’t give any answers to Theron about anything.  Was there a mission he had been set on?  Or did he just wander off on his own?

For storytelling purposes, it’s convenient to pair Zho’s departure with the aftermath of the Treaty of Coruscant.  In the year Theron turned 13 (3653 BBY), the Great Galactic War ended with the Treaty of Coruscant, wherein the Sith Empire enforced demands on the Republic.  The Sith won. Zho leaving could be tied to this (through a mission or quixotic urge), but the source material isn’t clear on the timing.  

Theron’s life suddenly became very uncertain.  His entire life had been built up to becoming a Jedi.  To some extent, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Theron probably felt like he was a failure.  We know he tried to fix this; in The Lost Suns, he acknowledged pursuing access to the Force through the Matukai Force tradition – being an ascetic. In Annihilation, he recalled and took particular umbrage at the “arrogance” of the Jedi – those that made him feel like any other path was second (or third or less)-best. This diminished over time, but the revelation about his lack of Force Sensitivity probably left Theron feeling very insecure about himself and who he was as an adolescent/young teen.

In terms of his relationships, Zho was gone with no forwarding address.  The man Theron called his father was no longer reachable, and for another ten years, there would be no closure as to what happened to him.  Zho had actively endangered Theron by sending him through a desert to Haashimut.  Did he gamble that the boy’s Force Sensitivity would manifest in a life-threatening crisis or something?  Who knows? Theron never went into the Jedi creche, so he didn’t have close peers or friends beyond pen pals at best.  Theron had not spoken to his bio parents at all to this point, and he probably didn’t know many (if any) non-Force Sensitive kids.  With his expulsion from Jedi society, Theron’s entire relationship network was gone.

This is important to understand -- Theron had been raised to not have attachments that would lead to selfishness or fear of loss, but he was raised to be able to love and care for others.  He lived in a structure that fostered good psychological attachments (secure attachments) to the order and to his fellow sentients without possessiveness or jealousy. Theron knew his mother gave him up. He knew one day Zho would give his care over to another Master.  He knew one day, he would leave the Temple to go out into the galaxy.   Theron knew how the galaxy worked and his role in it...

..and then it was torn away from him.  No more masters, no more knowledge of what came next, no way to ever work with his mother as a Jedi.  His life to that point had been an illusion -- he was never able to access the Force, and Zho knew it.  This left Theron as insecurely attached, as nothing that he anticipated for his life would ever happen, and he knew nobody that would accompany him into this new life. 

External to all this, the Republic Theron was raised to serve was on the losing end of war.  How the galaxy worked, as far as Theron knew to that point, was going to change.  After Till’in told Theron the truth, all we know is that he spent some time in Haashimut before going elsewhere. We the viewer have no idea what happened to Theron from adolescence until he was 16, when he entered SIS per Annihilation.  This may be a canon math/timing error, or it could be reasonable; Theron might have been able to get permission to join a government organization at 16.  If Theron was in foster care or a ward of the state or something else, whoever was involved didn’t make an impact worthy of mention thus far in SWTOR canon.

Theron described Zho in The Lost Suns as “never reliable.”  That was a 23-year-old looking back.  Yet, he referred to him as his father in Annihilation three years later, and even eight years later in SWTOR: KotFE, he mentions that “Master Zho would be proud.”  This seems contradictory.  Additionally, in both The Lost Suns and Annihilation, SIS Director Marcus Trant expressed concern about Theron and his issues.  Theron was a workaholic.  Being a workaholic is actually a sign of having attachment issues; a person attaches themselves to work, not people   Theron expressed desires to run away, go on vacation, and do new stuff… but he never did these things – couldn’t get away from the job.

Attachment theory states that a child has difficulty with attachments if they are abused or somehow neglected by their caretaker. The desert march definitely strikes me as falling into one of those categories, but again, Zho’s logic isn’t readily offered up to the viewer, nor are many details about Theron’s life as a traveling youngling.  That all said, Zho’s traumatic departure probably caused attachment issues that had no other herald.

Why do the labels “fearful” and “avoidant” fit Theron?

Theron Shan as the player met him in Forged Alliance SWTOR was a professional.  Flirting was ignored, mildly acknowledged, or, rarely, fully reciprocated. There was no physical contact between Theron and his asset. This doesn’t seem off or irregular until his romance is compared to that of Lana Beniko. She didn’t have the same issues expressing affection for her asset on Imp side; she touched their face and gave them a hug by the time the spies went under deep cover after Rakata Prime. Even if the player did not romance Lana, Lana herself was keen to make a team and bust open the conspiracy; she wasn’t as willing to go it alone.  

Avoidant people tend to refrain from contact, and they like being independent.  They don’t do well in teams.  Sound familiar?  Fearful avoidants also have the concern that they will fail their partner or that their partner will fail them.  If the player was Imp side, Theron was a jerk well into the Rishi storyline.  Eventually, Theron did come around.  His dialogue and follow-up letter reflect the fact that he actually did want these connections and attachments.  He enjoyed the time he had with the player.  

This is particularly pronounced if Theron was romanced by the player on Rishi and Yavin; first physical contact occurred on Rishi with a kiss.  If the player was Pubside, the fade-to-black and his comments on Yavin indicate they had sex.  Those episodes of affection, paired with the Pub post-Yavin letter and dialogue, really emphasize the connection that was formed.  Interestingly, Theron did not get a fade-to-black with the Imperial player. One might argue that he knew they were going to leave him, and so he couldn’t –wouldn’t—get attached.

…. And then Ziost happened. Theron refused to ask for help. He didn’t want to depend on that attachment.  He was distant on Ziost, regardless of how far the relationship went, and if Pubside, he declined a drink afterwards.

Whatever transpired between Ziost and the Eternal Fleet Incident, it’s clear that a romanced Theron and the player never defined their relationship.  There were certain boundaries that never were crossed.  He’d “like to think” the player is dreaming of him, but he didn’t want to presume.  Even after Theron got into a romantic relationship on Odessen, he still struggled with his ability to be attached, as evidence by his letters and expressions of affection and concern throughout the KotFE/KotET expansions.  

One might argue that the traitor element of the Nathema Conspiracy was partially caused by Theron’s attachment issues: his independent streak, his inability to ask for help, his lack of faith in others to do the job right (not telling anyone the truth), his lack of faith in himself (his willingness to understand why the player might dump/exile him). If romanced, he gave one of his Holonet messages the subject line “I love you,” but even then, he did not clue the player into his self-made mission.  Certainly, the Nathema Conspiracy happens because of Theron’s desperate desire to save the galaxy and the player at any cost – including the relationship itself and his life.

For those who let Theron live, the attachment issues have faded as Theron has gotten engaged/married and/or reformed a relationship with his bio parents… or the writers have moved on from Lana and Theron as companions.  Regardless, we have to keep in mind that Theron is closing in on 40, and he has grown as a character since he first appeared in Star Wars media at age 23 (baby and adolescent only in flashbacks).  His issues with his relationships, the Jedi, the Republic, and his bio parents have changed over the course of 17 years.  In the last story patch, people who have romanced Theron received letters from both Theron and his mother about how good the player is for him, and it’s very satisfying to see how far he has come.

How does this label of ‘fearful avoidant’ manifest in your fanworks?

Since not everyone is into fic, I’ll drop this behind a cut. 

Basically, my version of Theron wants love but is terrified of all the feelings and closeness that come with it.  When people get close, he draws away, but still wants them to be close.  Theron has had good relationships, but if it gets too serious, he runs.  That’s the case for his last major relationship prior to my oc; his Mirialan girlfriend was drawing a tattoo to mark their relationship, and she wanted him to meet the parents. Theron noped out of there pretty hard by taking a long mission off Coruscant and sort of forgetting to tell her.  There are several times where he takes a big step with Eva (my oc)– disclosure, physical intimacy, caring for her or letting her care for him – and then he just doesn’t contact her for the next few days.  He dives into work to avoid her.  Toward the end of their initial relationship, that will turn into weeks and months.  He is freaked out when he does things with her that are intimate, sexual or not.  He has a lot of fear that he will be left again, so he leaves first. 

Theron also sets up a lot of rules and boundaries that the partner has to dance around to get in.  After 300,000 words, I just completed a slow burn with the Rishi kiss, because Theron wouldn’t get involved with Eva until after the op to expose the conspiracy was over.  There will be more rules once they get to Yavin.  

When I was doing research on this, I read a clinical study that found that people with avoidant attachment issues are particularly fastidious about safe sex.  They don’t want attachments to their lovers in the form of a disease or a child.  Anxious attachments tend to eschew this and take the risk so they can be bound to someone. This is part of why I gave Theron a male birth control implant, but there will also be reference to his back-up (condoms) and back-up back-up (PreP) to ensure there aren’t any adverse consequences for him.

Theron is often alone, but that doesn’t make him lonely by default.  In part, that might be due to his avoidance of attachments.  Dude can pick up people at a bar and get laid. Theron isn’t adverse to sex, just intimacy.  He can find someone to hook up, but that doesn’t mean there is anything beyond sex attached to it.  Theron can and does get dates, and he can have relationships ... but that doesn’t mean he can make a healthy connection to the other person.  I think his issues are more emotional/internal than they are caused by not getting enough physical contact or affection from others.  People want to love him.  People reach out to him to be friends or have a relationship.  He just doesn’t want it; he avoids it.  I imagine that this is partly the case with Jace and his SIS coworkers.

The last fearful avoidant feature I’ll give Theron in my series is the tendency to idealize relationships after they’re dead and over. When the relationship is no longer available, it is held up and made glorious, partially to enable the person not to pursue a different relationship; it’ll never be as good, so why try?  This also calls in the tendency for fearful avoidants to fear not only screwing up the relationship themselves, but that others won’t live up to their expectations. Theron is a mess after the Eternal Fleet incident and never moves on from Eva.  It’s reasonable when he thinks she’s alive, but for a good two years, he thinks she’s dead… and he can’t.  With anyone else.

Unlike the game, I eventually send Theron to a therapist to deal with the fearful avoidant attachment issues.  I figure if I’m going to give a fictional character a real-world label, I need to give him a real-world solution that might work.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 16, part two

(Masterpost of All the Rewatches) (Previous Post) (Canary’s Pinboard of Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes

Just A Box of Rain

The brothers find Jiang Yanli and tell her what happened. Pro Tip: a good way to deliver bad news is like this. 1. say "I have bad news" so the person can be prepared for a shock 2. clearly state the bad news. 

Standing in front of the person with tears streaming down your face and looking away when they try to meet your eyes is not, actually, a super effective method for delivering bad news. 

This episode continues to be punctuated by closeups of characters' hands as they respond to events. 

Yanli clutches her broken lotus pendant, cutting her palm and bleeding as she weeps.

Not-at-all symbolic rain drenches the three of them while they cry, standing apart and not comforting each other.

Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep You think that you're gonna drown Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep With all this rain falling down

(more after the cut)

They upgrade their boat with repaired seats and a real oar, and move along toward a hopefully-safer location. 

The scenery continues to be gorgeous, and it appears to be actually really raining on this river or lake. We see Wei Wuxian's hand on the boat's oar as he takes his siblings to what he hopes will be safety.

Maybe you're tired and broken Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken

OP is valiantly resisting dropping a chunk of "Don't Pay the Ferryman" lyrics in here, because projecting European symbolism onto Chinese media is not my bag. This scene does carry a lot of weight, though, showing Wei Wuxian’s sadness and isolation, his ever-growing distance from his siblings and reminding us of his servant status. While his siblings sit under shelter with tears falling down their faces, Wei Wuxian stands in the rain, laboring to protect them and not letting his own tears fall.

It's totally reasonable that Wei Wuxian is the one to man the oar, right? I'm sure Jiang Cheng is the more exhausted of the two of them even though Wei Wuxian started off his day yesterday getting whipped FIVE times by the Zidian and ended it by being choked for 45 seconds.  

Self-Isolation

They reach an inn, where Yanli has a fever, maybe from being left outside all night while her brothers failed to work out any of their interpersonal shit, followed by getting extremely rained on for hours and hours. 

Wei Wuxian carefully puts on a bright, optimistic face for her, practicing for his future fake happiness after the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Cheng sits and has a lot of feelings, totally not helping while Wei Wuxian tends to Yanli. This is not typical of him and just shows how deeply shocked he is by what's happened; usually he is extremely attentive to Yanli and careful with her health.

Wei Wuxian tries to get Jiang Cheng's attention, so that Jiang Cheng can take over caring for Yanli while Wei Wuxian gets medicine. Jiang Cheng is busy staring into the middle distance, and won't respond.

This is Wei Wuxian realizing that absolutely nobody is going to help him.  

Wei Wuxian goes out in his distinctive robes with no hood or anything, to buy some fever medicine, and is quickly surrounded by guards.  They hear "we caught him" and run off, leaving him be.  

What Wei Wuxian doesn't know, that we learn in Episode 50, is that Jiang Cheng and his death wish decided to take a stroll, and seeing the Wen soldiers approach Wei Wuxian finally snapped him out of his reverie.  So he let himself be caught in order to draw them away from Wei Wuxian. 

Let's talk about this choice. In terms of clan roles, Wei Wuxian is absolutely the expendable one. Jiang Cheng became the clan leader when his father died, and knew it from the moment he saw his father's body. 

So far he's 1. Tried to go back to fight and die, against his parents' express instructions 2. left his sister alone in an inn with a fever 3. given himself up to be killed in place of his chief disciple, when it's his disciples' job to die for him, if it comes to that. All but two of Clan Yao's disciples died to protect fucking Captain Blowhard, for goodness sake.  

All of these actions are emotionally super understandable; he's young, he's had a terrible shock, and he's an emotional guy who's never heard of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. And I'm not here to defend feudal power structures. But perhaps Jiang Cheng shouldn't ring the "YOU PROMISED" bell quite so loud in the future, considering his own relationship to his obligations. 

Wei Wuxian begs Yanli to stay put and stay safe while he goes to find Jiang Cheng, and he promises to take Jiang Cheng back from the Wens. Yanli clutches his hands and asks him to promise again that he will rescue their brother, and that they will all go to Meishan together. But for once Wei Wuxian is completely honest, and disentangles his hands and sets off without another word.  

More running ensues, this time in the rain. To quote Adam in Season 7 Episode 1 of Spooks, "all this traumatized running is starting to really annoy me." (Spooks is the shit. Don't watch it if you like characters to have a lifespan longer than a mayfly's)

Camera Operator: Finally, a little appreciation

Wei Wuxian arrives in Lotus Pier, and can we just take a second to appreciate the decor of this place? Look at that tile floor with the cobblestone border, and the bamboo wall panel behind him.

He grabs the first Wen he finds, who turns out to be a much-needed friend.

Rescue Me

The Untamed is the tale of a man’s devotion; devotion so strong it transcends clan allegiance and even death. And that man’s name is Wen Ning.

Initially Wei Wuxian chokes him, like bros do, until he recognizes him and lets him go...

...only to immediately grab him and demand to know if he had a part in the massacre. Wen Ning stays pretty calm, seeing the angry side of Wei Wuxian for the first time, and explains that he heard about what happened, and is there to help.

Wei Wuxian absorbs this and lets him go, giving us a closeup of their hands together, with Wen Ning not so much resisting Wei Wuxian's grip as giving a steadying grip of his own to his best friend.

Wen Ning, who Wei Wuxian saved from one water demon, has already saved Wei Wuxian from one horrifying animatronic dog, and does not actually owe him a life debt at this point. Wen Ning has defied his sister and his entire clan and flown to Lotus Pier with a team of minions, with the specific intent of fucking things up for Wen Chao to the best of his abilities, simply because "Wei Wuxian is a nice person." 

Wei Wuxian isn't feeling like a nice person just now, however, thinking that he can use Wen Ning as a hostage to...what, trade for his brother? Wen Chao would probably be happy to kill Wen Ning himself, but his dad needs Wen Ning as a way to control Wen Qing, so maybe that plan would work.

Then Wei Wuxian sees this small pouch hanging from Wen Ning's belt, and it stops him in his tracks.

For once we are not given a flashback to explain his thinking, so I’ll provide one

The talisman he gave Wen Ning to protect him, now protects him from Wei Wuxian himself. He lets Wen Ning's arm go, and tries to think of another plan. 

Wen Ning already has another plan, and has come to Lotus Pier prepared to enact it. 

Wei Wuxian can't believe he's found someone to help him. In a moment of wrenching vulnerability, he asks Wen Ning to save Jiang Cheng and to retrieve the bodies of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan. Wen Ning immediately agrees. 

Wen Ning then embarks upon the least sneaky sabotage campaign of all time, chatting to the guards while messing with the wine, and generally acting like a person who is up to something. 

Nobody respects him enough to worry about it, though, and the party proceeds as planned.

The banquet is set up in the cleaned-up courtyard of Lotus Pier The Yunmeng Supervisory Office, and features dancing girls performing in the center of the beautiful carved paving, and corpses hanging in the doorway. 

I bet Jin Guangyao hires this same dance troupe for his future parties.

Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao sit at the main table, snuggling and being gross, but mercifully not necking on-camera because this is a 100% no-necking show. The drinks are sent around and Wen Chao tells Wen Zhuliu to drink up. 

Wen Zhuliu is busy gazing wistfully at Yu Ziyuan's corpse.

Let's face it, Wen Zhuliu is the only dangerous person in this place at the moment, so what he does next is the make-or-break for Wen Ning’s plan. 

Wen Zhuliu smells his wine and immediately can tell something is wrong. He takes a long moment to consider the situation, eyes on Yu Ziyuan, and then downs it, letting his emotions--perhaps something in the neighborhood of remorse, perhaps simple disgust at his craven supervisor--get the better of him.  

In the morning he will be able to tell Wen Chao with 100% precision exactly what the drug is, probably from smelling it right here. This is the only miscalculation Wen Zhuliu makes in the whole show, and it eventually costs him his life.

Wen Zhuliu has no reason to think this decision will hurt him. It's definitely impossible for Jiang Cheng, whipped and crushed, to avenge himself and his parents. But Jiang Cheng, with Wei Wuxian’s help, is going to achieve the impossible. 

We end with Wei Wuxian hiding while he waits for Wen Ning, as strung out as we have seen him so far, although he's got worse mental states ahead of him on his journey.  He doesn't know yet if he was right to trust Wen Ning, and the episode ends with him, cold, wet, and miserable, waiting to find out. 

Next Episode: Still miserable, but with a cape! Soundtrack: 1. Patty Griffin, Rain  2. Grateful Dead, Box of Rain

[jungshookz]

Christmas at Cee’s House - Happy Holidays 2020!

with november officially out of the way… happy holidays, everyone! 

december is my favourite month out of all of the months because a) my birthday, but also b) ripping into a neatly wrapped christmas present fills me with a type of ecstasy that truly cannot be described :’)

it’s safe to say that celebrating the holidays this year is going to be pretty different for us all. instead of perhaps flying home to celebrate with family and close friends, social distancing and other important(!) safety precautions have made it so that we’ll be celebrating the holidays isolated and spending half the time dealing with glitchy zoom calls and “wait can you say that again the audio’s lagging”’s! with that being said, i know that some of you may be celebrating the holidays alone…. but not anymore because now you’ll be spending it with ME! whether you celebrate christmas, hanukkah, kwanzaa, ōmisoka - i’m right there with you, my friend :-) now scoot over and make some room! 

here’s what’s going to go down: i’ll be posting a drabble at the end of every week for the entire month up until january 1st (because obviously we have to celebrate saying goodbye to garbage 2020 while optimistically hoping for a better 2021) AND i’ll be posting an additional drabble on my birthday just because… it’s my birthday! i’m not scheduling posting times or anything because i do not possess any kind of punctuality whatsoever so the drabble will be posted at a random time on the day :-) as some of u may know i enjoy dropping drabbles randomly and then disappearing for six hours right after that <3 

the masterlist (which will be posted later this week) will be updated on the morning of the day of posting with a quote from the drabble just so you get a little sneak peek of what’s to come. 

none of these drabbles are pre-written which means i’ll be writing them by the week - i have a rough idea of what i’ll be writing for each drabble, but i’m still going to encourage you to send in holiday-themed requests because honestly your guys’ brains are ten times juicier than my little prune-sized one!

also i know that posting holiday-themed drabbles is really not that big of a deal and that literally every writer here is doing it and i’m probably being :-) annoying :-) about it AND that i probably didn’t need to make an ugly invitation card but!!!! i can’t help that low quality graphic design is my *~passion~*

this holiday season may be different, but let’s continue to stay positive and test negative! 

cee(nta clause)

p.s. by the time this month is over you’re going to be so sick of me 

p.p.s i’m making hot chocolate if anyone wants a mug 

p.p.p.s i originally titled this post the c in christmas stands for cee but i changed it to christmas at cee’s house because it sounded cozier but i still wanted to let u know that the original title was a real knee-slapper 

[verycleverboy]

Welcome to October 7th.

(cough cough)

Where we are today:

After spending the weekend at Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment of his COVID-19 infection, President Donald Trump returned to the White House yesterday afternoon, where he is expected to continue treatment under quarantine.

The slim hopes there were that Trump would calm down and take his current situation seriously--and yeah, I know, but some people are just born suckers--were exploded yesterday when Trump's first full day out of the hospital was highlighted by an almost incoherent tweet storm, followed by a declaration out of nowhere that long-stalled talks over a second stimulus package were dead until after the election, and everyone had been instructed to dedicate their undivided attention to the Supreme Court nomination. The response was instantaneous: one spur-of-the-moment tweet shaved 600 points off the stock market before closing.

He walked back the stance slightly later on, saying he'd be willing to sign off on just the personal stimulus checks, part of a piecemeal approach that Democrats have repeatedly said was a nonstarter. For those who were depending on extended unemployment relief or waiting for a federal lifeline for their small businesses (or even larger ones, in the case of the airlines), the message from Trump and his party, with 27 days until the election, is what it's been all summer: Help isn't on the way. You're on your own. Please suffer quietly while we play confirmation games in the Senate.

The above would appear to demonstrate that the President’s emotional state is even more unhinged than usual, and the speculation (not to mention a certain style of headline) has been zeroing in on the manic episodes that are a known side-effect of the steroid treatment Trump has been taking. The impression is that there’s still a lot that’s being kept from us, and the main thing the West Wing has been open about since the President’s diagnosis is that they have no intention of being open about anything related to the current state of affairs.

Physician to the President Dr. Sean Conley maintains that Trump’s recovery is continuing in a positive direction, but the memorandum begins with the one line that has been casting a long shadow over any hope of honesty:

“I release the following information with the permission of President Donald J. Trump.” 

In 2015, Trump’s personal physician Dr. Harold Bornstein released a hyperbole-laden assessment of the then-candidate’s health status: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." Like Conley’s status report, there we no real negatives. The main difference was that Borstein’s letter sounded a lot like a Trump-penned press release. 

Borstein later revealed there was a reason that letter sounded so Trumpian. "He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter." 

Folks, this could be some hard-earned paranoia talking, since there’s no major reason to assume that a Borstein level of hijacking is happening with Conley, apart from his Walter Reed declaration that he was intentionally skewing towards optimism over the weekend while dodging (and sometimes backtracking on) a lot of key questions. But if some of us feel like we smell a rat in a sunshine-and-rainbows status report, it’s because that rat was caught in this particular corn crib once before.

HIPAA rules entitle every American citizen to a certain expectation of privacy when it comes to medical records. If you want to allow even another member of your family to be able to talk about your condition with your doctors, you have to sign off specific names. That means the onus of allowing transparency in the case of Donald J. Trump, a man whose health (for better or for worse) has international implications, falls on the full consent of Donald J. Trump himself. But since Borstein’s revelation came days after members of the Trump Organization seized his Trump-related medical records in what he characterized as a “raid” on his office, it’s safe to assume that’s not going to happen....not until it’s too late, anyway.

Meanwhile...

The Trump/Pence team continues to openly mock the medically-recommended safety measures that, had they been applied consistently, would've kept the President out of the hospital. Trump is still making the claim that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu, which by any metric is demonstrably false and highly dangerous, while Pence and his team made a last-minute attempt yesterday to flex on the previously agreed-to plexiglas guards in front of the podiums. His debate with Kamala Harris is scheduled for tonight.

Since Trump loves Citizen Kane, while not necessarily understanding that Kane isn't the hero of the movie, let's end this wall of words with a quote that he probably hasn't figured out yet either.

“You're the greatest fool I've ever known, Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson. And you're going to get more than one lesson.”

Will Trump's next lesson come from the disease or the electorate? Either way, we're in for a long, dark October. Stay warm, everybody.

First Lady Melania Trump, who did not join her husband at Walter Reed, continues to rest at the White House during her recovery.

Other confirmed positives for COVID-19:

(This is not intended to be a complete list, and is based on news reports concerning those who are known to have been in contact with other infected individuals in connection with recent events. Status changes and additions since yesterday’s megapost will be listed in bold. Updated throughout the day as new information becomes available from the CNN, NBC News, and CBS News live update pages, supplemented by other sources.)

White House

Hope Hicks: Began showing symptoms on Wednesday, tested positive on Thursday morning. Was not in attendance at Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination event on September 26th.

Nicholas Luna, personal assistant to the President: Luna is a “body man”, whose duties require him to be in close proximity to the President at all times.

Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary:  She was not aware of the Hicks diagnosis when she addressed the press on Thursday.

Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to the President: Was already working remotely and self-isolating, announced positive test on Monday. His wife, Katie Miller, is Vice President Pence’s director of communications, had coronavirus several months ago.

Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt, members of Kayleigh McEnany’s staff.

Assistant White House press secretary Jalen Drummond: Another McEnany staffer who tested positive Monday morning

Unidentified staffer: Military personnel directly assigned to support the President in the Oval Office and residence, diagnosed over the weekend per CNN.

Three initially unidentified members of the White House press corps and an unidentified staffer who works with the media. Per the White House Correspondents’ Association president Zeke Miller: Individual #1 attended a Sunday briefing and tested positive on Friday after exhibiting symptoms on Thursday. Individual #2 (later confirmed to be Michael Shear of the New York Times) was part of the press pool which traveled to last Saturday’s Pennsylvania rally; also exhibited symptoms on Thursday and tested positive on Friday. Individual #3 was in the press pool for the Barrett Rose Garden event and also travelled with the press pool on Sunday. #3 exhibited symptoms on Wednesday and tested positive Friday afternoon. The press at the Barret event were confined in a crowded “penlike enclosure” behind the invited guests (per Washington Post).

Campaign personnel

Chris Christie: Attended the Barrett nomination event and was part of Trump debate prep. Christie, whose asthma puts him in a higher risk group, checked himself into Morristown Medical Center as a precautionary measure.

Kellyanne Conway: Attended the Barrett nomination event and was part of Trump debate prep. The initial news came in the form of a string of snarky Tiktok posts on Friday from her daughter Claudia, followed much later by a confirmation from Kellyanne herself.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel: Isolating at home since September 26th, tested last Wednesday.

Bill Stepien, current Trump 2020 campaign manager: In the White House on Monday, in Cleveland for Tuesday’s presidential debate, traveled with Trump and Hicks aboard Air Force One afterwards.

US Congress

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Per CNN: “Johnson was not at the Amy Coney Barrett ceremony because he was quarantining from a prior exposure, during which he twice tested negative for the virus, according to the spokesperson.” He was exposed “shortly after” returning to Washington.

Sen. Mike Lee, (R-UT): Attended the Barrett nomination event.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC): Attended the Barrett nomination event.

Military

Admiral Charles Ray, Vice Commandant of the US Coast Guard: Recently attended several meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Nearly all the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including chairman General Mark Milley, are in precautionary quarantine.

Gen. Gary L. Thomas, assistant commandant of the US Marine Corps

Others

University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC: Attended the Barrett nomination event. Jenkins was told that he didn’t need to wear a mask to the event after he and other guests tested negative at the White House.

Thirteen employees at Murray’s restaurant in Minneapolis: Catered a party attended by President Trump on September 30th, although none of them were in close proximity to the President.

Confirmed negatives:

(Because of the nature of COVID-19, this list is subject to change.)

Mike and Karen Pence: The Pences have been testing daily since the announcement of the Trumps’ diagnosis.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner: Recently traveled with Hope Hicks

Barron Trump

Eric Trump: At debate.

Lara Trump: At debate.

Donald Trump Jr.: Flew on Air Force One to Cleveland debate, did not fly back.

Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff

Pat Cipollone, White House counsel

Dan Scavino, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media

HHS Secretary Alex Azar

Attorney General Bill Barr

Defense Secretary Mark Esper

WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany

Justin Clark, deputy campaign manager

Rudy Giuliani: Was in Trump debate prep.

Jason Miller: Was in Trump debate prep.

Alice Marie Johnson: Flew on Air Force One to Cleveland debate.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett: Barrett and her husband had coronavirus earlier this year and recovered, per AP News.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA): Tested out of "an abundance of caution” because of Steve Mnuchin meeting earlier this week.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Few on Air Force One to Cleveland debate, did not fly back.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez: In front row for Tuesday’s debate.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO):  Attended the Barrett nomination event, was seen there without a face covering.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE): Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK):  Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

All of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Status unknown as of Tuesday midday:

Kimberly Guilfoyle (at debate)

Alyssa Farah, White House Director of Strategic Communications

Robert O’Brien, national security adviser (tested positive for coronavirus in July)

Tiffany Trump (at debate)

Derek Lyons,  Counselor to the President

Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-IA), Senate pro tem: Declined to be tested, claiming physician’s advice as his reason; attended a meeting Thursday with Sen. Mike Lee.

30-50 donors who were in close contact with President Trump during an in-person event held at Trump’s Bedminster golf club on Thursday night. According to the official story, the event was held hours before President Trump’s positive test came back, but Hicks’s positive came back immediately before he left (although for a variety of reasons, the validity of that timeline is up in the air).

And because they’re stuck in this story, too:

Joe and Jill Biden: negative, committed to regular testing on all campaign event days.

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff: negative

Previous megaposts, in case you’re a masochist: October 2 3 4 5 6

[margridarnauds]

margrid arnaud das music-i mean marie antoinette das musical for that ask meme

LET’S GO

 Top 5 favourite characters: Margrid, Orléans, Louis, Marie, Fersen

Other characters you like: Lamballe, the kids, Robespierre, Danton, Immortal Marat

Least favourite characters: Hébert, Bertin, Hébert, Leonard, Jacques Réne Hébert, Drouet, Hébert...

Otps: Margrid/Orléans, Marie/Louis....I COULD ship Margrid/Lamballe and Margrid/La Motte but let’s be real I’m not going to, Marie/Orléans in a very specific way (namely Bitter Ex Friends)

Notps: Hébert/Margrid, Fersen/Margrid, Hébert/Orléans

Favourite friendships: Fersen & Margrid, Lamballe & Antoinette, Orléans & Lamballe (not canon to the musical, but was a historical Thing), Orléans & Margrid when I’m not actively shipping them. 

Favourite family: Marie’s family, especially her dynamic with Margrid (LET ! MARGRID ! BE ! THE WEIRD! AUNT!) and Louis’ odd dynamic with Orléans. Really, MA is just the story of one very, very dysfunctional family. 

Favourite season/book/movie: 2018 Toho Production. 

Favourite quotes: .....showing myself for the Orléans Stan I am: “Oh, cowards, tremble and sleep!” Mitsuo Yoshihara’s delivery SELLS it. Honorable mention: “Just the smallest of sparks is sufficient to set dry grass into an inferno - I just need to promise them a new world where they can live in.” 

That and the from the final song, the entire cast: “Can we change the world for ourselves? What can we do to break the chains of violence? What is equality? When will people finally learn from the past? Will revenge ever end? That answer can only be yielded by ourselves!” 

Best musical moment: There are some REALLY good moments in this musical - Margrid calling the wrath of God down on the aristocrats during “Blinded by the Light of a Thousand Candles”, the reprise of “Blinded” when the poor join in with Margrid, the entirety of “I Am The Best”, the key change in the Korean version of “Kill the Snakes”, the part during the March to Versailles when the other women join in for the first time to tell Margrid they aren’t going, Fersen’s low note during his first love song with Antoinette, the bit during “The Only Thing I ever Did Right” when Fersen comes in for the first time and he and Antoinette duet,  the bit during The Jacobin Club when the entire Jacobin Club steps out together and swears to bring down Antoinette, the bit during “Eyes of Hatred” when Margrid and Antoinette’s voices blend PERFECTLY, the bit during the trial when the crowd begins to apply pressure to Antoinette while Margrid realizes how fucked up things have gotten. 

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: I was trying to not be predictable.....but look. I lose my shit every time we get to “I Am The Best”. Because they really DID give Orléans the single best song in the musical and expected us NOT to stan. That and when he takes his final bow, because he gets a reprise of the song WITH electric guitars because, yes, he’s an extra bitch. 

When it really disappointed you: The 2021 Toho. I could devote an entire post to how that production disappointed me, even outside of my personal ships, but like. It was a disappointment from beginning to end and I’m actually happy that it’s out of Tokyo now. 

Saddest moment: Margrid sobbing after Antoinette’s death and then having to wipe the tears off her face to meet the tribunal. And then the look on her face at the end....

Most well done character death: Marie’s - Literally the entire musical has been leading up to this and the scene itself makes a wonderful use of callbacks and musical cues to give it this sense of TENSION throughout the entire thing, which builds off of that earlier scene where Hébert confronts Margrid. We know that Antoinette is going to die - There’s no way of avoiding it, but we still are wondering what’s going to happen. What’s Margrid going to do? Is she going to risk a life of security for the sake of the woman she’s started to feel sympathy for? Are these two women ever going to come to terms with one another, with the answer being yes as Antoinette by calls Margrid by her name instead of “the girl” and Margrid gives that last, dangerous bow. 

Favourite cast member: I’m not generally big on following individual cast members, but PROBABLY Sonim? 

Character you wish was still alive: I. Might have toyed with a few ways of keeping Marie alive in the past. 

One thing you hope really happens: Really, really hoping the upcoming Korean production is good. Like, that’s the extent of my ambition after the last Toho. 

Most shocking twist: Lamballe’s Death. I have NEVER seen anyone come in prepared for it in over 2 years of streaming. *I* was shocked when I saw it because I literally never expected a Japanese depiction of Marie Antoinette to get into the September Massacres, especially do THAT extent. And it really is the point where, suddenly, you realize that NO ONE is safe. Up until this point, no one’s died. The Royal Family’s imprisoned, but there’s a certain romanticism you can find in the situation, the idea that, hey, now they’re a happy, nuclear family. Then, the show distracts you with that discussion between Marie and Margrid so that they it can SLAM the knife into your back. And, from that point, no one’s safe. Literally anyone in the cast can die, to the point where people do, genuinely fear for Margrid’s safety by the end. It’s probably one of the single best twists I’ve seen in musical theatre, because it sets the stage for the last twenty minutes brilliantly. 

When did you start watching/reading?: You know? It had to have been back in 2013. A subber that I liked had JUST finished Rebecca das Musical and had moved on to Marie Antoinette, and I thought “Well! Kunze and Levay came out with a Mar’ie Antoinette musical? I’ve got to see this, it’s going to be good!” 

Spoiler alert: It was not good. I made it twenty minutes in, got to the brothel scene, and never looked back. Which means that, actually, I only BARELY missed Orléans’ song. 

Favourite location: Antoinette’s bedroom - Those crazy sons of bitches REALLY replicated Antoinette’s ACTUAL BED to use. 

Trope you wish they would stop using: Stop trying to make Fersen/Margrid happen, it’s not going to happen. In general, there’s this idea that Margrid MUST be totally, absolutely loveless, and I don’t really see it. I’ll be the last to say she hasn’t had a hard life, but there’s this need to ISOLATE her that I just don’t really vibe with. I’m not even saying in an inherently romantic sense (in canon...I wouldn’t actually WANT to see, say, her and Orléans making out on-stage), but just in terms of having genuine connections. 

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: It really does a wonderful job as far as developing two separate female characters - Which shouldn’t be THAT HARD, given you have plenty of musicals about multiple guys all the time, and yet SOMEHOW....

Also, Margrid in particular is phenomenal, as a character. It’s definitely not uncommon for people to go in for Marie and end up really, really attached to Margrid and her development. 

Funniest moments: Hébert nearly getting hit with a door, Margrid peaking under her ball gown while it’s on the rack and Orléans dragging her away, the Stars and Stripes Gown....

Couple you would like to see: .....Orléans/Margrid. I know that I say I don’t want them to actually be CANON canon but also I would NOT complain if they did. Especially after the 2021 Toho production, it’s what I deserve. 

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Park Hye Na as Korean!Margrid would kill me, I know it. 

Favourite outfit: Besides Orléans’ 2018 coat (4ever in our hearts), special props to Antoinette’s golden gown in the opening. WHAT a character introduction. 

Favourite item: Margrid’s little knapsack she keeps on her. 

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: I own a ballpoint pen and a program from the 2021 Toho run - One of these days, I keep meaning to buy the German libretto so that I can translate it. 

Most boring plotline: BERTIN AND LEONARD. (But, in all fairness........look, they’re annoying, but also, when they’re gone, you do miss them, because that’s when shit gets fucked.) 

Most laughably bad moment: The entire 2006 Toho Cast exists just to be one very long laughably bad moment. That and, tbh, the German. Special props to the Brothel Scene. 

Most layered character: Margrid. Marie is ALSO a very layered, complex character, but Margrid gets special props because, off the top of my head, I can’t REALLY think of another female protagonist, in a musical, like her. Not saying they don’t EXIST, but I’m saying I haven’t personally seen them. 

Most one dimensional character: ...2006 Orléans. He Who We Don’t Discuss. 

Scariest moment: See above for Lamballe. 

Grossest moment: Hébert's final confrontation scene with Margrid. 

Best looking male: Kim Jun Hyun’s Orléans. *Wow*. 

Best looking female: Jang Eun Ah’s Margrid. Once again. *Wow.* 

Who you’re crushing on (if any): ...both Orléans and Margrid. Predictably. 

Favourite cast moment: Furukawa Yuta pranking Mitsuo Yoshihara by giving him “poisonous” things for his birthday, because “You are Duke d’Orleans and I am Fersen. You are poisonous and I am passive aggressive.”

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The ball at Versailles. One of the most STUNNING scenes I’ve ever seen. Whoever did the lighting deserves all the accolades in the world for creating a scene that’s surreal, seductive, and gorgeous 

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Not an ERROR, but I’m really, really interested in the story of Jeanette Arnaud, because this woman really haunts Margrid’s entire life but there’s so LITTLE we know about her and Margrid’s feelings about her. How long did her affair with the Emperor last? Did she always know he was the emperor during their affair, or did they meet under different circumstances? Fersen was clearly able to figure out that she was a mistress of his, so how public was the affair? And, if it was that public, does it mean that she was a servant, or was she, at the very least, middle class? How did he find out her mother’s identity? Why didn’t Orléans double-check himself? Does Margrid have any living grandparents or uncles/aunts? How old was Margrid when she died? Did she die before or after Margrid was kicked out by the nuns? (In the German, it’s very clearly the former, but who knows?)

I feel like there’s a really, really dark, tragic tale underneath all this about a young woman who ended up paying the ultimate price for falling in love with someone above her station, but it’s one that’s kept to literally only a few sentences. 

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: Probably about.....five or ten minutes into the Toho, with the Palais Royal scene. I knew, from the time I saw Furukawa Yuta on stage as Fersen, that they’d changed things around, and then seeing the changes that were made, I was able to go “Oh! It’s good now!” I feel like the moment where I REALLY fell in love was “I Am The Best” because that had been a scene I’d been REALLY concerned about from the German and then Mitsuo Yoshihara casually came in there and owned it. 

[multifandomfanficreclist]

James Bond Mass Fic Post

These are all 00Q unless otherwise stated.

**

The Courtship of Mr. Bond

In which Bond is a retired naval commander with too much house, Q is a mechanical engineer with too many sisters, and they have lengthy conversations about decorum, bonnet-ribbons and philosophy in Regency England.

~

“I just thought you might go pay a visit," his mother suggested.

“Me?” Q asked, aghast. “Pay a visit?”

“He must be starved for proper gentleman company, now that he’s settled in so far from London--”

“I am far from proper gentleman company.”

“--and perhaps if you befriended him he could introduce you to some nice heiresses.”

“Heiresses?” Q repeated, baffled and horrified. “What in the world would I do with heiresses?”

***

Offline

Bond isn't sure what to think of the new Quartermaster, of the high tech gear and the way the man is always in his ear thanks to mandatory ear pieces for all agents. The old Q hadn't required those things after all, and everything had worked fine. But Bond is a risk now, after Vesper, seeming to kill without noticing, without caring, and there are quiet rumors that he wont seduce his targets anymore, and that his drinking is out of control, so Q is told to keep a sharp eye on him and his mental health. Bond is irritated with the constant presence of Q, but somehow their traded insults turn into teasing jabs, and then genuine affection, and eventually they move from talking via earpiece on missions to texting every day, with messages growing more and more explicit as time goes on. But Q is nothing less than professional whenever Bond is around, and the agent has a hard time reconciling the aloof Quartermaster with the teasing devil that has him bringing himself off desperately at night to the naughty texts. Q is a man connected to his tech, and Bond is a man living in the field, and the only way to be together is offline somewhere. But which one is going to take the first step?

**

Sweet As

It’s not—the word has so much damned stigma, really.  He’s not stupid.   He likes it all: the slow, sweet drag of something thick and lovely inside his body and the fast, beating pulse that comes from fucking himself so hard and fast his wrist cramps up.  He just hasn’t seen fit to add anyone to it.  To sex.  With him.  So sure, he’s a—well, technically.

***

A Harsh and Dreadful Thing

And the first thing James asked was: "Why does my head hurt?"

And Q answered: "You got shot in the eye."

Bond blinked with his good eye. "Well, shit."

**

By No Ordinary Means of Communication

Q can’t help but wonder how, exactly, his life has come to this.

(The one where Bond discovers post-it notes, Q discovers how not to talk about feelings, and together, they fight crime make things far more complicated than necessary.)

***

Prowl

Because there's nothing Bond likes better than getting someone by the back of the neck.

"He tried not to think of guns or knives or straight razors, of explosives or blood or the soft throats of women. He tried for a moment not to think at all.

...he was being touched by the most dangerous man he knew, and the hazard of it snared him like a bird."

**

Smash and Grab

Sometimes Bond found suave wasn’t entirely the most reliable option. Sometimes the smash and grab approach was far, far better.

***

Where You Are

An Omega unable to create life is a creature to be pitied, or at least, that is what society says. Q is fine with it, really. He had never wanted children anyway...and settling down with a mate never truly sounded appealing. So he’s fine with it: being alone, bearing no children. It’s fine.

Until it isn’t.

**

Adjust as Needed

This was part of a pile of 00Q disability-and-kink fics I just found randomly sitting in my Google Drive. Enjoy a Q that is both badass and realistic about his energy needs.

CW: Brief unsolicited groping by an intoxicated stranger.

***

Yours, J.

Bond sends letters. Q is vexed. Q-branch starts a betting pool. There are an appalling amount of sweets. Also, 002 is a bit of an arse.

**

Redamancy

If you write something on your skin, then it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well.

James doesn't quite fall in love over physics discussions and cheeky book quotes scrawled over his heart, coding and riddles inked onto his skin, but he comes close. He does.

And then he actually meets Q.

***

Curtains

Indulgent domesticity. No real plot to speak of, just Bond and Q moving in together as friends after Q is targeted and his place burnt down, and slowly progressing to being a couple.

**

Lay it Down

Bond and Q agreed: their relationship was nothing more than physical. Until it suddenly isn't.

(Or alternatively: The one in which Q gets sick, Bond takes care of him, and the truth comes out.)

***

Skyfall Lodge

After Silva's escape from MI6 custody, Alec Trevelyan drags MI6's new, brilliant Quartermaster to the safest place he knows: Skyfall Lodge, home of reclusive ex-soldier, James Bond.

Grudgingly, Q accepts the technological isolation as necessary for his own safety, and he begins to regard Bond as a possible diversion to pass the time until Silva is eliminated and it's safe for Q to return to London. He never expects Bond to become so much more.

**

Blue Eyed Monster

Yes, this version of 007 was a terrifyingly smart agent, and M wondered long and often whether it had been a good idea to promote him to the position.  Usually, the title was the dangerous part - being 007 meant deadliness - but this time, M feared that a certain man with ice-blue eyes and scruffy blonde hair had dragged in more danger to the title than it had previously possessed

Enter MI6's new Quartermaster: an unassuming, bespectacled genius with no mind for subterfuge but plenty of genius behind a dry smile.   Curious 00-agents and young boffins don't always mix in predictable ways...

***

Quriosity

COMPLETE!  Bond finds himself increasingly curious about his enigmatic Quartermaster.

Excerpt:

"Your prior hotel is no longer secure, I will direct you to a new location. Your luggage has already been transferred. A field agent and medic from the Diréction Générale de la Sécurité d'État will be waiting at the side entrance. I have cleared them both personally." In contrast to his crisp dry English, Q's pronunciation of the French words was fluid and flawless, the throaty tone of the fricatives sending a surprising jolt of awareness straight to Bond's cock — all the more remarkable given his degree of blood loss.

"You're wasted on Q-branch, you have the voice for a phone-sex call-in line." The words slipped out of Bond's mouth without forethought, although he had plenty of time to think in the sudden pause that came afterward and stretched on for endless moments. Bond hadn't realized until now how Q was always there, with an immediate reply. In all their banter Q had never before been at a loss for words. Ever.

**

The Haunting of Skyfall Lodge

All his life, Q has seen ghosts. For years, he's searched for scientific proof to back up what he knows to be true. Finally, he starts a YouTube channel to chronicle his adventures of exploring haunted sites.

His latest location: Skyfall Lodge.

[singwhenyoucantspeak]

okay imma make a big meta post about Alex Levy right now. there will be spoilers.

I think the character of Alex Levy, was for me, what really made The Morning Show so fucking good. And that’s because I absolutely have a love hate relationship with her. And she makes some extremely HORRIBLE decisions and she is arguably not a good person. But her complexity and the way we are able to understand why she did what she did was soooooo important. Alex was 100% complicit in what happened to the other women working on tms. and she knows it. But I think the line she says when she’s in the car with Mitch about how she “knew about what was going on in theory” but reading the actual quotes from the women and really having to confront what they went through that was different. And suddenly she couldn’t handle it anymore. I think it is very human that Alex was compartmentalizing and I think the way she compartmentalized and distanced herself from all the other women she worked with was a coping mechanism.

We know that Alex was also a victim of the extreme misogyny and patriarchal system that was in place within tms and uba as a whole. She is constantly struggling to be treated with respect and given autonomy and she is NEVER given the same amount of respect or power as Mitch. I think Alex, probably subconsciously, made the decision at some point, that if she was going to survive this job and survive her position as the “successful female anchor” she had to create an illusion, both for herself and for those around her, that she was untouchable, that she had achieved assimilation into the system and WAS ONE OF THE BOYS. it’s clear it is a boys club with all the horror that that entails, so Alex chose to delude herself into believing that she had somehow broken into that club so that she didn’t have to face or confront all the ways in which she very much was NOT treated as one of the boys. And in order to maintain this illusion, she had to distance herself from all the other women she worked with and convince herself that she was somehow superior to them, that she was somehow better than them, that she would never allow herself to be treated they way that they were treated. Even though she is still CONSTANTLY being treated like shit by the men around her. It seems like she is able to convince herself that every roadblock she runs into or double standard in which mitch is given preferential treatment is actually an isolated incident rather than her being a victim. Obviously she knows this isn’t true, but she has to force herself to believe it, because dealing with the way she is treated like shit all together in aggregate would be too much to handle. So she moves on from one situation to the next and doesn’t allow herself to engage with how all of these situations are related and work together to disempower her. She creates this illusion as a way to cope with the situation and survive, because if she wasn’t able to make herself believe in this illusion she either would have had to just quit, or she might have even been driven to suicide. Because one thing that is clear about Alex, is that whether she admits it or not, she is always acting from a place of fear and panic. I don’t think she has felt safe in that job for a single day. And it shows.

But this does not excuse her complicity. Because by distancing herself from the other women, by creating this illusion, she could not help them and they could not help her. And in order to distance herself, she had to convince herself that she was better than them, and then she had to actually ACT like she was better than them, which was extremely harmful. But what I think was so brilliant about the show, is that we see how fucking difficult it was for her to maintain this illusion. Her illusion of success and superiority is CONSTANTLY on the brink of destruction. And then Bradley comes in and shows her that THERE IS ANOTHER WAY to be. There is another way to deal with all of this pain and fear, and that is through coalition and support of all the women around her, rather than through self alienation in order to avoid the pain of acknowledging and confronting what is happening and how powerless she actually is. So throughout the season, Bradley is like consistently introducing these little cracks into Alex’s illusion. And of course then when Hannah dies, we see her illusion completely shatter. She can’t downplay the impact of Mitch’s actions anymore. She can’t downplay her own part in creating a toxic environment. She truly didn’t know that Hannah had that experience and by this point, she knows, because of Mia, that Hannah would never have felt safe talking to her or anyone about it. And I think Alex sees clearly that the way that she treated Mia especially, solidified her reputation that she was not a safe person for the other women on tms to trust or go to for help. And I think previously, this was the entire purpose of the illusion. Because if no one could come to her, then she didn’t have to deal with it, she didn’t have to confront it, she could create her own bubble of fictional safety. But the illusion shatters and Alex breaks.

This is important because it shows how yes, women can be complicit in their own oppression, but it also shows how women are also in most cases powerless to stand up for each other. I imagine that when Alex was the young up and coming journalist she had similar experiences, but at that point there were much fewer women in the field in general and she had no where to turn to. So she couldn’t conceptualize of a situation in which women having each other’s backs and working together could actually bring about change. She couldn’t believe in the possibility that her advocating for these women would do anything other than get them all fired, her included. So she came up with her own way to cope with that hopelessness and she hardened herself to it. And of course the harm that THAT decision caused eventually came back to her, and she HAD to confront it. Ultimately she could not escape the fact that it was a cowardly decision and that it hurt a lot of people. But it is also clear that the system was rigged against her from the beginning so there was no real RIGHT or MORAL choice for her to make. Sure, she could have done what Chip did and sacrificed her entire career, but then what would that achieve if the risk didn’t pay off and she couldn’t actually topple the king? the process would just repeat. So she mad a bad choice, and she did some bad things, those things had real consequences, but the show did justice to the complexity of the situation and made it clear that she existed in a system in which she had no real power.

[thelonely-archivist]

TMA 170 thoughts

Because the new episode comes out soon I wanted to put out some thoughts that I’ve had on the last episode because it was one that I can’t get out of my head no matter how many times I listen to it.

I guess content warning for talks of isolation and depression and everything that came with the episode

First off Martin is a character I relate to a lot especially now with the world going to hell and I share his fear of isolation. This episode being a look into martins thoughts puts a lot of his character through the series into perspective.

The episode was broken up by what seems like a few different recording sessions each one split after Martin begins to seek Jon and beginning with him once again finding a tape recorder. It gives an interesting look into how the lonely distorted time for him through out especially since we don’t get any semblance of Jon’s POV during this episode to go off of.

The episode starting with him talking to himself with the tapes being a way to anchor himself and make himself feel less alone is an important part of what makes this episode work. Despite the fact that up until recently Martin has been shows as the most anxious character he in no way is a vulnerable one putting himself last to every one else. The talking to himself or the recorders in this case would be the only time us as the audience would get to hear him be vulnerable. We in this case are like the watcher or the beholding as we get this voyeuristic look into martins inner thoughts. And as I said I relate to Martin, this is a thing I do talking to myself and only being vulnerable when I think I’m alone, which is what made his initial confession that he didn’t like himself all the time more poignant in my mind. The acknowledgment that this is something he would never say out loud with people around. He even says “it’s nice to have some one to talk to. It can make you go strange” even though he knows he’s alone.

Then there’s the forgetting, Martin forgetting things periodically through out the episode being a very unhealthy coping mechanism magnified by the lonely. The idea of pushing everything away and just forgetting the world exists being something common of depression and at the same time forgetting the people he loves to take the pain away of shutting them out. Because the thing with being afraid of isolation and depression linked to it is even though your scared of being alone you often choose it because your afraid if you tell anyone they’ll leave you and it’ll be out of your control. It’s kinda like self torture. He then admits he doesn’t think he can do this on his own showing the mental tug of war he’s currently facing hopping some one will swoop in to save him even though this is something he wouldn’t admit if Jon where there.

This contrasts to the next part after he forgets again. He seems happier talking to the tape recorder before he begins to talk about his childhood. The subtle change shows a manipulation in time between the two recording sessions showing that the lonely has drug Martin back in after he started to become more conscious of his mental state and stress. And just like the last part he begins to pull himself out even going as far to acknowledge “I’m not suppose to be here” and that there are “people who love me” even though they seem out of reach. his mind went straight to Sasha as the first one he remembered then to “ not Sasha” two sides of a coin for Martin it seems. As Sasha the real one represents a sense of safety (which makes sense as grounded a character as she was) and “not Sasha” being one to take away the safety the lonely manipulating Martins safety into intrusive thoughts of being alone and unwanted especially. Which is why when he remembers and calls out for Jon it’s a clear attempt to fight this idea of the self isolation especially since you can hear his tone change from the sort of dreamy nostalgia to a more panicked voice calling out. I’m also convinced that this moment is the moment Jon realizes he’s not there and starts to look.

That starts the next recording session where he again seems happier talking about poetry (I want to hear his poetry). In this one he remembers the statements and the eye giving the idea that at this point he’s more present. He again reiterates how it’s nice to talk to some one as if the lonely has him in a loop. He begins to talk about how he feels unwanted by everyone around him quoting things he often hears and heartbreakingly he is obviously mimicking Jon specifically in season one when he was much more aggressive. This not only shows the lasting affects jons words had on him but gives way to the most interesting revelation about martins character that after listening to this episode changes the way I’ve perceived him looking back at past episodes and his story arc with peter Lucas. And that’s that Martins been depressed the whole series and that he truly doesn’t care about what happens to himself as long as the people he cares about l, who he sees as better then himself are ok and thrive.

The moment when he is repeating his own name reminds me of a scene from my favorite movie (the perks of being a wallflower) where the main character (high on weed) remarks about how when you say your name enough times in a merror it starts to not feel real. It shows Martin losing his identity in dissociation, but referring to himself in I guess kinda the third person shows him rationalizing his thoughts and desires to himself. When he says Martin is a name that sounds like it wants to be warm and safe, he specifically is talking about himself but can’t admit to himself he wants to be warm and safe.

With the other person Martin finds this is purely speculation. I think it’s not a person at all but the lonely showing Martin a very distorted reflection of himself. I say this for several reasons one being that the nature of this fear is the lonely it is unlikely that this fear domain would let those who dwell it it be together in any capacity. Second Martin asks the person their name and they can’t answer this is right after the moment with Martin obsessing over his own name and how in the end when it seems the stranger asks Martin his name he momentarily can’t remember. But possibly the most interesting of all is the fact that Martin asks if it’s their house and the stranger says yes. The same house Martin has been referring to as his own the whole episode. And for me that connection was actually one of the most damning pieces of evidence. And when the stranger asks him questions like “who are they?” And “is there any one looking for them?” it’s really Martin asking these questions a darker part of him. He ended up running away from the stranger or as I see it running away from himself. And this leaves his completely alone where he utters out loud the thought “no body would care if I lived or died” and at that moment that includes himself who he just left.

This is when he admits he’s scared and that he is losing himself who he just left. His next thought that he doesn’t think he minds all of this shows he is beginning to become unwittingly complicit to the lonely and to his own mind. Or in psychology terms he’s submitting to learned helplessness. Believing it’s easier to just not fight anymore. Thinking he deserves it and that he wants this. The lonely and his mind are trying to keep him trapped which is something very common with depression and isolation making you think you want it and you choose it. Which is what makes the next part in my opinion the most important part in my opinion.

Starting with him saying “No” and facing the fear he feels and acknowledging that other people are feeling the fear he feels. That he’s not alone. Rationalizing to himself how he got to the point where he is now and remembering Jon again but this time not going back into another loop of forgetting and remembering. Then there’s this line the most important in the entire episode

“You - You are Martin Blackwood. Yes. You, you didn’t choose to be here. Jon is coming. (stronger) I am Martin Blackwood, and I amnot lonely anymore; I am not lonely anymore. (voice shaking with effort) I want to have friends; I - no, I have friends. I-I’m in love. (heh) I am in love, and I will not forget that; I will not forget. (stronger) I am Martin Black-“

This moment when Martin seitches from saying you to saying I is him accepting that this is him and not someone foreign to himself he’s reassuring. It’s him choosing to see himself as someone who is valued and worthy. This is something that for many can be hard to accept but is a first step to being able to heal. He realizes nothing can change or get better unless he wants it too he’s no longer waiting for Jon to save him he’s saving himself and breaking away from the lonely. And this lets Jon find him.

Then there’s Jon who once he finds Martin instead of dragging him out gives him a choice. Saying if he wants to stay that Jon won’t stop him. This is important because it’s Jon giving Martin comtrol letting him take the lead. Something Martin hasn’t really had even saying he often felt like he could only fallow. Jon realizes that On this martin needs to be able to do it himself and decide for himself. Jon is patient and doesn’t push which shows his love for Martin.

And finally the last exchange is Martin finally being able to admit to himself he’s not alone anymore that the comfort and fear that comes with loneliness has been replaced with love and hope and now at the end of the world he feels alive. And all of that is shown with the last line

“No. No, not anymore.”

These are just my thoughts on the episode and how I understood it. I compared it a lot to things I have been going through so it may not be perfect. Thank you for reading the train wreck that is my thoughts.

[irispublishersmedicaljournals]

Iris Publishers - Current Trends in Clinical & Medical Sciences (CTCMS)

Can Emergency Medicine Become Redundant?

Authored by Andrew Hague

Injury and illness

Injury and illness are the two medical problems. Injury can be sudden and requires emergency treatment. Illness is incremental and treated progressively.

Doctors are role models

Much work is done to prevent illness. We see this in better hygiene, personal and social; washing hands and sanitation. Lifestyle affects health and people are advised on diet and exercise. The equivalent advice from doctors about emergencies and injuries is missing. In all societies, doctors are role models. We all grew up thankful for the attention of a doctor at some stage. They brought us into this life and will see us out. Seldom do they pronounce on politics and although they have a good income are never seen as having more than their fair share of wealth. People respect doctors and this status should be used by doctors to influence behaviour. Doctors, whether they like it or not, are role models. What they say, is influential.

Causes of injury

There are four classes of causes of injury:

4. Misfortune

From the first of carelessness to the last of misfortune, the chance of avoiding disaster gets less which means that a doctor has less influence. Nevertheless, statements by doctors will be heeded and when it is understood that the doctor invites redundancy this advice will be respected. We wish for the same from the police and fire brigades. Indeed, the fire service devotes a lot of effort to inspecting buildings for fire safety. Do the police invest time preventing crime or is that left to the deterrent effect of sentencing and punishment? In many cases, it is hoped that people will be careful to avoid injury but still they turn up at the A&E in pain and talking about accidents. Investigators admit that the truth is there are no accidents, only mistakes that were avoidable.

Consequences

A child has no concept of consequences. Over time, by trial and error coupled to imitation, the process of conditioning adds to the memory bank and the child becomes an adult aware of the consequences of their actions. People who have not acquired this knowledge should be recognized by doctors for their ignorance which will become evident in frequent visits to the clinic. Their teachers will have already identified these people at school as slow learners. It is in these encounters that doctors have a role to play. Interestingly, the accident prone are not always those scoring low in education. There are many explanations for mistakes. The person who does nothing may stay safe but achieve nothing and the ambitious may push the boundaries of sense to explore beyond. This is the consequence of having the brain we acquired when we mutated into homo sapiens.

Carelessness

There is an assumption that tidiness is safer than a mess. Do more accidents happen in a messy or tidy workplace? I do not know but from my own experience and this includes owning a factory for many years, a mess is not the cause of mistakes and tripping over wires. Where there are obvious dangers, people are alert and avoid them. When there is deceptive safety, one’s attention can wander letting the day dreamer trip or walk into a half open door. Our brains are not born to cope with neatness. The cave and the jungle floor are always a tangle and walking depend on watching where to put your feet for every step. Only since manufacturing required orderliness has a clear path become essential. This allows carelessness.

There is the often-quoted story of two mountaineers trying to find their way to the Royal Geographical Society through the back streets of London. These men had climbed the world’s mountains and then one of them tripped over the kerb when crossing the road in London and broke his leg. As a doctor, what can you advise to prevent such mishaps? Obviously, the fellow was safer on Mount Everest than the paved streets of London.

I visit many countries and complain when I cannot drink the tap water and walk at ease in the towns because of the holes in the pavements. However, I do admit that the locals never seem to fall on those pavements and neither did I; I had to watch where I was going. Carelessness is thus a response to a deceptively safe situation. Add some dangers, as our cavemen-forebears expected, and there should be fewer accidents. Modern manufacturing which is as automated as possible has reduced the chances of injury. Earlier methods often allowed the operator to injure themselves.

Working a fly press involves placing the component under the press tool and swinging the handle to bring the tool down with a load of anything from 5 to 50 tons. Repeating this cycle ten times a minute creates a rhythm of complacency. When the left hand moves before the right hand instead of the other way around, the hand can be under the press with disastrous consequences. Later improvements were to install guards; the guard came down before the press. That resulted in some cases of the guard trapping the hand preventing it being withdrawn from danger. The operator had to wait a second, which can be a long time in these circumstances, for their hand to be amputated in one blow.

Eventually, designers arranged for the descent of the press to be controlled by two buttons, one a shoulder’s width away from the other so that both hands had to be on a button before and whilst the press came down. The release of one button would stop the descent of the press and interrupt the cycle. Automatic pick and place machines have mostly replaced human press loading and it is only where labour costs are so low that investment in automation cannot be justified that workers are exposed to dangers. Automation is criticized for creating unemployment.

It increases productivity and safety. Only the setter, the person setting the tools under the press, is in danger when preparing a new tool in the production process. As the setting task is not repetitive with each step having to be thought about, the injuries are fewer. Setters were in danger if someone switched on the machine not realizing there was a person at the back or inside. These calamities not only resulted in death but led to claims of manslaughter incriminating the person who switched on the machine and the employer. The answer was for the setter to isolate the machine and withdraw a key to the control box, lock it and keep the key in his pocket so that the machine remained inactive until the setter switched on again.

Recklessness

This is where we remember the story of the boy cycling around the house and as he takes his hands off the handlebars he shouts, “Look Mummy, no hands”. A few minutes later he reappears and shouts, “Look Mummy, no teeth”. Due to his bravado, he had crashed. The same happens driving cars at speed, playing with knives or generally showing off. The need to be reckless, seen more in youth than maturity, is shuffling into pecking order to find a place in the hierarchy of society. Less skill means more crashes and you slip down the scale of ability. Balance a football on your nose and the crowd will cheer. Humans play these games because they position each person where they can best support the tribe.

Modern society does not depend on physical skills. The computer nerd is today’s leader. When a doctor explains to the children at the local school that fooling about is dangerous, some sense may prevail and lead to fewer injuries. Recklessness will persist because the desire to show physical prowess is innate. With education essential for survival today, the clever ones are revered, and this will influence our species as physical strength and agility is less desirable in the gene pool compared to mental ability. All species adapt to the environment or become extinct.

 The human environment is changed by our own behaviour and we are these days in the midst of an evolutionary shift. The damage we inflict on the environment causing climate change is expected to lead to our extinction. It certainly will but only if it kills us before we kill ourselves by preventing deaths through extended longevity so that adaptive mutations cease. This is a medical emergency beyond the ability of emergency doctors.

Aggression

Lack of fear and aggression goes together. When a wild dog approaches a group, it will sense the meek one who is afraid and attack. This is enabled by the electrical circuits and magnetic fields by which brains operate and is how humans and animals can relate to each other. As a doctor, you will have learned little about this at medical school and yet it is fundamental to behavioural studies and cancer [1]. Aggression is useful in primitive society when dealing with predators, less so in a civilised society. The military employs soldiers trained as commandos, to operate behind enemy lines and, where necessary, kill with their bare hands. Such a person, who can emerge from an assignment and look unperturbed is almost unknown. When the fictional James Bond peals off his diving suit and walks nonchalantly into the bar for a drink shaken and not stirred, he is nothing more than entertainment. The brain does not work that way. An actor can play the role to the cameras but in real life, the adrenalin and tension involved dominates the soldier and, for many of these people, rehabilitation is difficult.

As a doctor, dealing with the effects of aggression, especially when coupled with alcohol and drugs, is a nightmare. To stop it would amount to eliminating those people programmed to be aggressive. Either they find a role in the security forces and we hope they obey the law, or they become useful to organized crime. The doctor will sense these attributes in a young person. I doubt they can be ameliorated. The only way is to direct that person into a role where they can be useful, and the military is an opportunity.

Misfortune

This is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is little a doctor can do to prevent victims being struck by misfortune. Awareness of danger is everywhere. Entertainment media dwells on buildings exploding, cars flying off the road and rolling down the mountain, jumping out of a plane and landing safely in a haystack. I feel that this awareness diminishes the sense of danger rather than creating risk avoidance.

News programs refer to natural disasters. They are not disasters. Avalanches, earthquakes, floods and forest fires are natural phenomena that have occurred since the earth was formed and will continue after our species is extinct. In many cases, they are predictable and thereby avoidable. Modern weather forecasting can give two days’ notice of a cyclone or hurricane, time enough to move people to shelter. Living on the side of a volcano where the soil is fertile is always tempting but the gases rolling down from the crater can be poisonous and when the volcano erupts the lava is destructive. You don’t need to be a doctor or a geologist to warn of such dangers.

This is where the sober, thoughtful advice of a doctor carries a lot of weight. Every community has its danger areas. It may be the high cliffs, a motorway, a mosquito ridden swamp, places where the unsuspecting can get into trouble. Tell the community leaders. They will listen to you. Fences can be erected at the edges of the cliffs and busy road and the swamp can be sprayed to control the mosquitos. Always present a solution to the problem and be sure you have no relationship with the contractor who will carry out the work.

Psychology

Preventing injuries involves more psychology than physical medicine. Psychology still falls within the skills of a doctor. There is little scope for direct action. The best a doctor can do is influence and advise and it is by being a doctor that notice will be taken of your advice. The inevitable conclusion will be that humans are accident prone and seek rather than avoid trouble. The doctor is then expected to repair the injuries just as a garage would fix a car damaged in a crash.

I have left their hyperlinks in place. The extent that the injuries can be traced back to psychological causes differs. Certainly, a disturbed mind leads to suicide and violence and very likely to road crashes. Many years ago, when I was teaching sociology to an adult college class in which we were studying criminology, I proposed a cure that I still believe is the only cure and is in most cases impossible; the cure for criminality is to sentence the criminal to a good home. Here is a murderer. Please love him. The explanations were made by John Bowlby in the 1960s and earlier. His best-read book is Child Care and the Growth of Love [3]. Only by parental love can a child acquire empathy and be able to pass love on to others. These bonds are essential in human groups and exist in all animals. Recent botanical research adds to this insight by finding electrical relationships between plants. A person who grew up unloved can be expected to not fit into society. They will not accept the common rules of behaviour and be unaware of others’ feelings. Without empathy, cruelty is easy. Should this individual become a parent, the children will also lack bonds.

Doctors will recognize these people and their disruptive, often temporary, families. They are crimes and injuries in the making. What can a doctor do to prevent future mishaps? On the face of it, very little. Most doctors work inside a bureaucracy and there will be no scope for interfering in a patient’s private life, for that it is how it will be perceived. In earlier times, religious leaders would step in, but their leadership has given way to the smart phone screen which cannot love, only excite and provoke. Sociologists call it alienation and anomie; being cut off from society and having no feeling of belonging. If this were the lack of vitamins or a virus infecting the blood, a doctor could and would do something. The affected (instead of infected) patient is equally in need of help but seldom is a doctor seen as the person to turn to. Eventually, it will be the police and their aim are to pass to the courts, then prison. Society offers no cure despite knowing the cause and suffering the consequences. If what cures is medicine, then here we need social medicine. I contend that doctors apply medicine. If it is not the police to become involved, at least it will be the emergency doctor stitching up knife wounds.

Even amongst well brought up people there is a range of temperaments from placid to impetuous. Impatience can cause injury. Think of bad driving or pushing in a queue. Does such an irritable person need a tranquilizer? Theoretically, extreme behaviours could be chemically restricted, a technique sure to cause ethical arguments. People self-administer their personality shift with alcohol in one direction and caffeine in the other. I advise against both drugs, but they are popular. Medically there is no safe upper limit for alcohol. Coffee is fully accepted, approved and big business. Politicians create laws, companies lobby politicians and consumers accept laws. I love coffee, its taste and smell, but I read my own senses, and something tells me to be wary; minimize on coffee. Look after the brain for a healthy body. Anything that affects the brain is dangerous. This does not include listening to Beethoven.

I have little sympathy with addiction because I see it as selfinflicted. More compassionate souls feel sorry for those who cannot stop doing something. In the context of injuries, think of speed and racing. The winner is the one who placed their life most at risk. That is stupid but the audience loves it and next time greater risks will be taken. Confined to a racetrack, only the participants get hurt. On the open road, you and I can be hit. I remember a doctor assigned to a Formula One racing team explaining that every bone in their star driver had been broken at least once. Didn’t that put him off? No, he is addicted, and nothing will stop him. At the end of the line, the publicity was increasing the sales of something.

Trauma Infection

The first action on a trauma patient brought into Accident and Emergency on a stretcher, assuming the bleeding has been staunched by the medics, is to treat with a CellSonic VIPP machine to kill all and any infection. The intense pulses will penetrate to catch germs thrust into the wound. Importantly, stem cells of the right type in the right quantity will be delivered in the blood to exactly the right place by the immune system responding to the pulses. The blood will automatically have more oxygen and growth factors to aid healing. All this can be done before the doctor arrives to inspect the patient.

Professor Richard Coombes, an orthopedic surgeon of Charing Cross Hospital in London always said that CellSonic VIPP machines should be standard equipment in all emergency units. After the wounds and bones have been set, use the CellSonic again to kill any infection. This can be instead of antibiotics or allow a much lower dose of antibiotic. The benefit is saving the patient from developing antibacterial resistance and reducing the contamination of local rivers whereby antibiotics travel through the patient and the sewage system to rivers where fish and surrounding land are contaminated.

Conclusion

Doctors can help to reduce the demand for emergency medicine. It requires an extension of their usual skills into the therapy of psychology and social manipulation. Humans have brains which search for change. In the process, they hurt themselves and each other and call upon doctors in an emergency. If a more placid life is desirable, emergencies will be rare but that is not the current trend. Expect more horrors. To read more about this article: https://irispublishers.com/ctcms/fulltext/can-emergency-medicine-become-redundant.ID.000503.php

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