#.. day-to-day social encounters even if it's not acknowledged by most people. and therefore that might help in why they're very..

[omarwolaeth]

Thinking about how souls canonically do exist in universe, and how that might correlate to seeing different people as one in the same, all because their souls are identical (pieces of a whole)

[dailyrothko]

i really loved your comparison between art (especially abstract art) and wine the other day. i've mentally drawn parallels between the two myself, but more often i find myself comparing art and both jazz and classical music as i am a musician trained in both types ("trained" in this case meaning i went to many schools for it, and have a long string of teachers i can thank for making me the creative i am today).

in a lot of ways, i have found that people like to appear knowledgeable about the two types of music rather than enjoying them for the sake of experiencing textures in sound we likely don't encounter regularly in everyday life. i keep asking myself if it's because these are two types of music americans associate with leisure and education—and therefore with money and status—and find themselves intimidated to admit they're either simply uninterested in the form (reasonable!) or to say they don't fully understand what they like about something they've heard but enjoy it no less.

this is a very long-winded way of asking: do you have any thoughts on best practices to encourage people to a) think less about how their reflections on art will come across to other people around them and to b) indulge in the parts of their journey with art where they're still getting to know what they're looking for when they come to a new piece of art?

(i'm currently struggling with not sounding preachy when i try to explain to young students that i want them to not let their wonder reflex just happen without acknowledgment; i want them to hold that feeling and turn it over, and gently prod at it to see all its angles)

I don't know anything about teaching. I didn't go to college and I don't have any formal education really to speak of to illuminate the experience you're having. The teachers I liked best gave me something challenging to do and I liked it because they had enough faith in me to expect a level of understanding. I don't know if that works on everybody but I do think some people are just waiting to be challenged by something they can't entirely ignore. However it would be a lot of diagnostic work.

I think I might play a class music without telling them who it is, particularly if you can find some things with interesting back stories that people couldn't guess. it might help sever this idea that there's some kind of hierarchical quality about music.

People are always talking about technique these days in endless YouTube videos and on social but those are for other musicians generally. As you must know there is a kind of "great guitar player" who nobody can stand to listen to except other guitar players. And this is for the most natural reason in the world, that people are attracted to self expression, the courage of it and the sensuality and the ideas that come out of the sincerity that great artists have.

But that doesn't mean we interpret the same way as the artist. If you look at Tarkovsky using cinematography composed like Russian paintings in his movies, most of those allusions are lost on viewers because they don't know the original art, but his intention was not to be clever, it was to put film in the same bedrock where classic painting and music reside in even if the message was delivered subliminally.

When Kierkegaard wrote about Don Giovanni he certainly didn't have a record player to listen to it over and over again and write rhapsodically about minute details. Here is a great thinker expressing his love for music but concluding that he felt if he understood Mozart completely he would not understand Mozart at all.

People love to divide music in the sense of technique to call one thing superior to another but if you take technique in a larger sense we all know that it means something more than some kind of clinical mastery. In the way that Ezra Pound thought about it, if you find subject matter that's worthy, you will then develop the technique to express it.

I mentioned these examples because they were things that I just thought of randomly that speak to taking the arts out of some kind of social hierarchy and trying to bring them back to the importance of how the individual feels.

I think it's possible that the more you can disconnect the art from some outdated looming academic monolith, the better chance you have of getting people not to worry about how acceptable their opinion is.

In art sometimes I mention Bill Traylor whom I like very much, but there's absolutely nothing technical, pretentious or aspirational about him. His art works from his own personality and energy without some prodigious ability to create likenesses.

On a slightly different level you can also explain some musical concepts by talking about Bud Powell and Monk. Monk has far leas conventional technique but Bud Powell would be the first person to tell you that Monk was superior because of his mind. Or as Rothko said "all art is the portrait of an idea."

Maybe it would also be instructive to parallel a few sophisticated examples in popular music with some not very sophisticated classical or jazz music. It doesn't always go one way.

Anyway I'm sorry I can't be more help, it's kind of a social puzzle. Maybe even splitting people into smaller groups would offer a smaller audience and therefore less pressure to impress. Or do some thing where people offer their opinions anonymously and after they're all heard you can ask us somebody wants react to those without the burden of being confrontational.

Or just tell them what Townes Van Zandt said: "There's two kinds of music, the blues and Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."

Sorry I couldn't be more help

[star-anise]

I read your post about trauma and I'm trying to make sense of my parents treatment of me as well as my own diagnoses. Is anxiety itself trauma? Or a result of trauma? Its the stress response itself not calming down. I think I was and am emotionally neglected. My parents are not sympathetic. I'm adhd anxiety depression my whole life. That post about learning new social situation techniques really resonated. What are the treatments for neglect? Besides plain old cbt and mindfulness and anti anxiety meds

Trigger warning: Child abuse, child neglect, emotional neglect

Anxiety can happen because of a wide variety of reasons, from medical to situational to genetic. It could happen out of the blue to a totally healthy adult. Or it might be a symptom of trauma and a bad childhood. PTSD used to be classified as a kind of anxiety disorder, but we now understand it's a lot more complicated.

I'm very sorry your family aren't sympathetic and don't get what's up with you. I want to make it very clear that it is not your fault that they aren't sympathetic.

It's not your fault for not explaining things clearly enough. It's not your fault for not being a more lovable child. It's not your fault for being emotional or oversensitive. It's not your fault for not communicating your needs in a way they can hear. Their treatment of you is not your fault.

That's important not just because it feels good to be absolved of blame. It's not a meaningless platitude. It's a nicer coating on what can sometimes be a very bleak truth. That truth is:

There is nothing you can do to make your family be sympathetic to you.

I am so, so, so sorry. You can spend your entire life turning backflips, you can learn interpretive dance, you can become the world's leading expert in your field, you can get hit by a car and find out you have cancer, you can be as sympathetic and understanding about their reasons for neglecting you as they could possibly want, you could do everything in your power to be a good child, and none of that will ever give you the power to make your parents be sympathetic to you and what you've been through.

Sometimes parents do learn and grow and change and work to repair the damage done while their kids were children. But that's because of their own issues and experiences and reasons, not because of anything their children have done. Many parents keep being oblivious and neglectful even when their children have become everything a parent could ever hope for.

Actually, an amazing number of my adult neurodivergent friends have had the absolutely excruciating experience of hearing their parents say, in essence, "Hey adult child! The other day someone I respect way more than you told me about [your condition], and I was astonished! They told me that thing you've been telling me for years, and it blew my mind. I now realize that this is a real part of your life! Wow, it sure would have made a difference if I'd done that thing you've been begging me to do for years now, huh? Hey, have you heard about this handy behavioural technique you've been doing every goddamn day of your adult life? It sounds like it would really help!"

Like, even if your parents ever Get It about your specific disorders and conditions, they're extremely likely to salvage their self-esteem by refusing to ever seriously acknowledge how much it's hurt that they've failed you.

And what that means is: You have to plan the rest of your life as if they will never be sympathetic.

That might mean never giving them any say over your medical care or personal life choices. It might mean not living with them, not turning to them when you need a supportive community, or not letting them play a large role in the lives of any children you yourself may have. It might mean having to build your own support network that doesn't include your family at all, because you can't count on them to care when you're in distress. It can really suck to have to keep giving up the dream that one day you'll be able to count on your family to nurture you emotionally, but I promise that it sucks less than being continually disappointed with no backup plan.

Researching emotional neglect can be really difficult because a lot of the best research psychology as a field has achieved on the topic comes from really extreme forms of neglect and abuse. Exactly the kind of neglect and abuse that society waves in the face of the "merely" emotionally neglected: "So what if you didn't get hugged enough! You had enough to eat, a roof over your head, and they never hit you! They weren't even mean or malicious! Stop whining!"

And... look, if you've just broken your legs and you're in a wheelchair, who would you rather learn about using a wheelchair from: someone who can easily walk everywhere all the time, or a double amputee who's been using a wheelchair for years? The first person can probably get around more easily, but the second one can tell you a lot more about the specific challenges and skills that will be central to this phase of your life.

That's the frame I propose for research: Your life might not have been as bad as the case studies you read (though it's probably worse than your family is willing to admit, because invalidation is itself a form of emotional neglect, and this is so common there's even a poem about it) but the issues they encounter and the skills they require are probably useful to you, too.

With that in mind, check out books about early childhood neglect and trauma like The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry, which talks about the parts of the brain and developmental stages that can be impaired by toxic stress in childhood, and the various forms of treatment that can address each one.

As far as CBT, remember to focus on behaviour, not just cognition. Reading about using touch to self-soothe is good, but less powerful than using that knowledge to find a blanket you love to touch, and wrapping yourself up in it whenever you're upset. Neglect means that you failed to get repeated, predictable experiences of being comforted. Healing therefore means getting that practice in as an adult: Creating thousands of daily, repetitive experiences of being cared about. Caring about yourself, and finding people who will care about you.

Maybe also give Dialectical Behaviour Therapy workbooks a try? They're designed for Borderline Personality Disorder, which can be seen as a specific subset of complex trauma. Like, if the effects of childhood abuse and neglect were a rainbow, BPD might be red-orange. But what makes DBT useful is that it has examined which skills and coping mechanisms vital to emotional health people with BPD most commonly weren't taught/never learned/need more practice on. The curriculum might not overlap completely with your own needs if you fall into the yellow, green, blue, or violet aspects of C-PTSD, but it's a good starting place when you're inventorying skills and habits you want to strengthen.

Good luck? I hope this helps!

[etherealxgenie]

Why Lila is Marinette’s Own Fault || Miraculous Why?

(Before I begin, note that this is my opinion over the topic and am no way am bashing anyone’s love for the ship and/or character. I respect who and what you like, therefore expect the same courtesy. However, if this is something you cannot handle, please click the back button as this will be a heavily discussed topic. No flames allowed. Other than that, enjoy.)

So usually in the story, there’s always one or two mean girls who is out to get the main character for some kind of superior reasons to justify. And there’s no reason as to why they act this way just for the sake of being mean.

Like the Ashleys from “Recess”, who tend to pick on kids just for the fun of it sometimes or cause they’re popular.

Same can go for Libby from “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” who was out to get something for what she wants or just to be superior to the other kids in school.

For Miraculous, we already have that kind of character, Chloe Bourgeois, who is the daddy’s girl of the Mayor to get what she wants. And until we had some small character development in season two (which season 3 took it away!!), we had no reason feeling sorry for her and she was just for the convenient plot in the social life for Marinette in the series.

And then… there’s Lila.

Before I get into hand in this, let me note that Lila is not a good person at all in the show. She’s a liar, a manipulator and will do whatever she can to get what she wants. She breaks into homes, steals and molests pretty models. She’s been pretty shown to be just selfish without consequences and unless we get a background story of why she acts this way, she has no excuse. Especially when she teams up with hawkdaddy to now have permission to invade and spy on Adrien whenever she wants? Fuck that.

So in Volpina, Lila is introduced as this pathological liar to get attention in season one. She obviously goes for Adrien cause he’s the famous model after all. Reasonable considering as the new person looking for attention, you seek out the most popular/famous person in the school. That would Adrien.

Though considering with her connections, it would’ve been smarter to try and impress Marinette instead if Lila did her research before she came into the scene. But of course, new person so she wouldn’t know, but whatever.

And we can see Lila easily just says things just to get Adrien’s approval and such.

And so, Marinette follows them around (stalking? really?) because Tikki points out Lila has the book Adrien took from his father’s vault and threw it in the trash.

Now the SMART thing to do would’ve been to see how Adrien would handle the situation and wait for him to leave, if to acknowledge Adrien has a mind of his own and knows when to walk away (which he does). Or at the very least, try to distract them as Marinette while Tikki retrieved the book.

But… no. You transform into Ladybug to lash out at a girl PUBLICALLY, for anyone including Adrien to hear, just to embarrass her and call her out on her lying because she… “hates liars”.

Marinette, you fucking lie ALL the time! Most of those times to Adrien! And I’m not just talking about when in regard to being Ladybug, you hypocritical- (groans)

I can list plenty of episodes: Gamer, Aninmaestro, Ikari Gozen and hell, even Reverser counts! If she hadn’t lied about Marc’s book, Nathaniel wouldn’t have torn it! (sighs)

And before you all start jumping at me saying Lila got what she deserves, I only agree partially. Ladybug, as a public figure and heroine, practically the face of Paris, acted irrationally lashing out at a bystander because of lies which were or were not believable. Lila was broadcasting a post or making the news, she was trying (poorly) to impress a boy. Ladybug gave Lila the Regina George treatment.

Yeah, so you caused an akumatized situation and Lila hates your guts. Hell, I would hate you too. That’s like a celebrity jumping at an innocent bystander when they’re whispering to their friend about a rumor that only the two of them were talking about. You can’t jump to try and stop them and should just let it dispel on its own. At that point, Lila had no real power but you just influenced her.

And… oh boy did things get worse because of this.

Look season 3 was trash (except for moments in certain episodes) and I feel talking about the infamous ‘Chameleon’ physically hurts me but… yeah gotta point out a few things. The whole episode was unrealistic, and it was an obvious ploy to be sympathetic to Marinette with Lila back… but… you’re not fooling me.

So, Lila is still on her lying game, being able to fool the students and the staff?! Okay if you believe a student has so many disabilities without any paperwork proof, you can actually get fired for that for fraud. As someone who worked with education before, that’s just pure incompetence.

So yeah, Marinette comes to school seeing the seats changes to accommodate Lila and upright begins to plot to discredit her for her lies. UM… what happened to trying to start over with Lila after failing to do so the first time?

Oh, that’s right. She gets that way (at least partly) because Lila is sitting next to Adrien. I can understand if it was because they rearranged the seating without her say so but let’s face it. Lila sitting next to Adrien was her real trigger.

So since Marinette failed to acknowledge her mistake the first time, she spends all day trying to prove Lila is lying and in return the class is angry at her. Alya even comes to point out that Marinette is jealous of Lila.

And you know what? Alya is right.

Alya knows at least what Marinette is capable of doing so when it comes to Adrien and how far she’s willing to go. Remember that Alya is the one who encouraged her to break into his locker and steal his phone. So of course, she’s worried Marinette is gonna do something to the new girl.

I don’t blame Alya for doing one of the most competent things in the show: Warning Marinette to NOT go off the handle without proof and not make herself look bad in the process.

And because Marinette failed to do so… she made Lila her enemy AGAIN. It was bad enough you had her as your enemy as Ladybug, but now you get to deal with twice the drama!

Your own fucking fault, Marinette.

Also, the advice Adrien gave? I don’t blame for him for it and neither should you. Yes, his advice is not perfect, but with the options he has on his plate, its hard to do something otherwise.

For every encounter Adrien has had with Lila, it ended up with her being akumatized or a disaster no matter how he tried to handle her. We didn’t get to see how he would resolve in Volpina because of Ladybug’s intervention, but he would try at least in Chameleon and try to get her to see she didn’t need to lie and actually tried to befriend her. At this point, Lila was already triggered by Ladybug and Marinette so she just might have to take Adrien by force instead.

At that point, Adrien just wants to stay away and which he was trying to tell Marinette don’t interact with Lila or confront her cause there’s no way to do so at this point. Maybe he was trying to tell her to wait until her rumors got discredited, but he didn’t say it clear enough for her to understand.

And keep in mind, Adrien is a sheltered child with little to zero social skills taught to him by Nathalie and Gabriel. Hell, we don’t know how his childhood was really like even with Emelie around either and Adrien seems more like the pacifist unless he needs to absolutely step in. And he did by cleaning up Marinette’s mess in ‘Ladybug’. So now he’s gotta suffer being around Lila more because of Marinette making Lila her enemy.

But once again, this is bad writing as the writers of the show obviously forgot what it’s like to live in reality. In the real world, Lila would be immediately discredited without any proof the moment she came back. Not to mention, some of the class have their own connections and have more braincells proven in the previous episodes. Google search and such. A 5-year-old wouldn’t believe these lies in these times. Hey, I believe that because I once had a kid in kindergarten during my time as an afterschool art teacher look at one of my books I illustrated before and said they liked the ‘graphics’.

Kids are fucking smarter nowadays than you think.

The only reason anyone would believe Lila’s lies is if she’s magically influenced with some kind of ‘silver tongue’ spell or something and honestly? It looks like that’s the reason.

I dunno if Thomas Astruc or Zag is trying to insult the kids/adults or insult themselves to say Paris people aren’t that smart. If it’s the latter, you should see what you are doing because I don’t want to believe that because that’s disrespectful.

I know it seems I’m trying to stand up for Lila this portion, but I’m just looking things in a  more realistic and logical way. Did Lila take things too far? Yes, waaaayyy too far and should be arrested for it since she works for Hawkmoth. But it could’ve been handled better and that makes Marinette at fault too.

Part of me wonders if she’s done this before because in Zombiezou, she also causes Chloe to ruin her gift for Ms. bustier. If Marinette didn’t antagonize Chloe in the locker in front of the class, maybe she wouldn’t have done anything. Again, I’m not saying Chloe was justified, but if that was the reason, yeah I can see her doing it for payback.

So to all those fics where I’m supposed to be ‘Boo-hoo’ for Marinette because of what Lila did? Fuck you guys because you need to dig deeper into the story to see both sides and not just make it a pity party where Marinette is the innocent victim.

It’s called “Cause and Effect”.

And considering she made Lila her enemy, Marinette is gonna get effected enough because that’s how karma works.

[morphinethevaccine]

Dazai and Chuuya’s reaction to finding out their sister is dating their former partner

aide-mémoire: Dazai and Chuuya’s reaction to their sister revealing to them she’s dating their former partner. You can find the Astushi and Akutagawa version of this post here, where ‘partner’ is switched for rival.

Two words: whiny and dramatic. Chuuya Nakahara? With his sister? Of all the men in Yokohama you could have ended up with? Please, someone say it isn't so. Dazai is going to act as though you just relayed to him something utterly horrific, like proof existence is a social construct and therefore suicide isn’t physically possible. 

Considering its Dazai, he already knew, or at least suspected there was something between you and his former partner. Even if he did figure it out beforehand, that’s not going to stop him from acting devastated and pondering aloud how you could wound him so by waiting to tell him of this tragedy (at this point, the appropriate response is to clunk him on the head and tell him to cut the theatrics.)

Expect to hear a barrage of unflattering commentary about Chuuya, proceeded by a list of reasons why he’s the last person in the world you should be dating. 

Some of them might make sense (you wouldn’t want to increase your proximity to the mafia, would you?), but the majority will just be plain petty and mean-spirited ("Couldn't you have at least picked someone tall enough to see over the kitchen counter?" "Osamu, that isn’t an actual reason."). Chuuya’s not good enough for his sister. He probably groans and tell you to dump him, please. He wants you to be happy, yes, but God, he can't stand the thought of his sister dating Chuuya.

Isn’t going to keep you two apart if you insist on dating him, but can get real annoying. Often manages to show up wherever you two are. Doesn't matter how secret you've kept your plans. Dazai will find out and he will be there, nonchalant no matter how much you eye him with suspicion. 

"...Don't you have to be at work?" "Oh, Kunikida gave me the day off." (This is a lie, for he did not—just stop by the ADA after your date with Chuuya to confirm it with a very livid Kunikida.)

Tends to pop up in your place of residence uninvited, when you just so happen to inviting Chuuya over. Or calls you at inopportune moments for the silliest of reasons. Do not be surprised if while Chuuya is leaning in for a kiss your phone rings for the fifth time that night, just so Dazai can ask if you know where the sock he left on his nightstand is.

You know the trope of two people having dinner together and an unwanted third person comes and pulls up a chair? That’s Dazai. Only he’s going to act as though Chuuya isn’t even there and only talk to you, which, surprisingly, seems to make Chuuya angrier than if he had actually acknowledged him. 

Or, halfway through Chuuya’s threats for him to screw off, gasp in fake surprise as though he just now noticed him, insisting he hadn’t seen Chuuya there, with him being so small and all. Dazai does not let Chuuya forget the fact he’s dating his sister: it provides Dazai with more reasons to tease him. 

“My sister happens to be an absolute beauty. At least you don’t have bad taste in everything, Chuuya~” “Why you—!”

Despite his antics, Dazai knows his ex-partner well and doesn’t doubt Chuuya has pure intentions. Seeing how you blossom, and how satisfied you are with the relationship, he’ll eventually lighten up on being a bother on your end of it. Chuuya, however, will remain fair game.

No. Just no. Please tell him you've got a questionable sense of humor and it was just a poor taste joke, because Chuuya is absolutely vexed. While his anger is undoubtedly directed at Dazai, who he recognizes as having a strong manipulative streak, he's also going to be a little annoyed with you because what the actual fuck are you thinking? Did you hit your head on something? Surely you can’t possibly like Dazai... can you?

Chuuya doesn’t rule out the likelihood Dazai sought you out as a way to get under his skin. He doesn't have the fullest trust in Dazai to not screw with your feelings or put you in uncomfortable situations.

In short: Chuuya’s not happy, and twice as bothered if you actually seem genuinely into Dazai. He's not as worried about you being in physical danger as he is about you getting your heart broken. Dazai's got a history, and Chuuya of all people knows this. Nor does he trust Dazai’s ends justify the means tendencies. 

He’ll be a little exasperated, telling you, “If you were that desperate I could have gotten someone to take you out every once in a while. Anyone is a better option than that guy.”  

While he definitely wants to limit your involvement with the Mafia—if he had to choose, he’d much rather rope a subordinate of his into taking you out when you desire, seeing as they would be someone he could better keep tabs on and bully.

Chuuya doesn’t mind you being mad at him if it's for your own good, but he’s quick to realize barring you from seeing Dazai won’t stop you from doing it. You’re mature enough to make your own decisions, and if you’re firm on seeing him, the most he can do is seethe (and... threaten Dazai’s life.) 

And besides, what is he supposed to do? Lock you in your room? If you're passionate about your decision, there’s not much more he can do about it but, at the very least, use his influence in the Mafia to make sure you’re at least physically safe at all times.

Due to the fact Dazai isn’t above rubbing the fact he’s dating you in Chuuya’s face, for your brother’s sake, avoid situations where they might encounter each other. It’ll be unavoidable at times, with Dazai inviting you to places he knows Chuuya will be—and Dazai not being forthcoming to you with his reasoning for choosing those places—because he enjoys the ticked off, bothered expression Chuuya has when he sees the both of you out together, holding hands or being affectionate. 

Knowing Chuuya is less inclined to respond to confrontation with you around—clearly figuring the sight of him attempting to beat the crap out of your significant other would upset you—Dazai will be more smug than usual. 

For you, Chuuya will bear encounters with gritted teeth and obvious irritation, making sure to pull Dazai to the side before the both of you depart, muttering, "Just you wait. If you mess this up, I will get you." 

If you still insist on seeing Dazai in spite of his warnings, best believe he regularly tells you he’s willing to kick Dazai’s ass any day of the week if you request, and keeps an eye out for how things develop. If Dazai makes it clear he's serious about you, with time, Chuuya will gradually relent on his opposition, though not without a cursory threat of "Break her heart and I break every bone in your body, asshole." And he's more than willing to make good on that.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.5.4 “Madeleine In Mourning”

These chapters are just Hugo bouncing all over the place with his views on women. @secretmellowblog made a great post about Valjean’s character development re: women and sexism, but this paragraph is all Hugo.

“To be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--on of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.” I really want to know what Hugo means by “nothing is complete” and what it has to do with blindness. Happiness isn’t complete until you lack one of your senses and therefore must experience happiness in a different way, maybe? I don’t know. This chapter is weird and gross and I don’t like it very much.

Right before reading this chapter, I reached a section in the Hugo biography that mentioned that as a 20-something year old adult, Hugo had a bizarre habit of staring directly at the sun in order to see the vivid lights/colors that happen when you close your eyes after looking at bright light (which, what the hell Victor Hugo). It started to affect his vision from at least 1828. He equated blindness with Homer and Milton, both great poets, and apparently wrote that he hoped he might go blind one day. I think part of this long paragraph about a woman being the helper of a blind man was influenced by thoughts of Milton, who was helped by his daughters to whom he dictated parts of Paradise Lost.

Hugo was also very jealous when it came to his wife Adele. A lot of the lines about possession and power in this section remind me of the excerpts and anecdotes about his jealousy as a young man. (For example, he was retroactively jealous of her brother having to share a bed with her once when they were young, he was jealous of a male painter friend of hers, he was jealous when he saw her lift her skirt to cross a muddy street and thought someone might have seen her leg. He also wrote her letters that sound similar to this paragraph in their weirdness about power and love.) Hugo excused his jealousy as a measurement of his passion, but that’s clearly not the case. This section is kind of a weird subconscious revealing of that insecurity. Possession and power comes from a kind of “weakness” or lack rather than a passion. You have power over someone because you’re helpless and require their help, so they would be a bad person not to give you assistance and attention, even if they might not want to. Your happiness is their sacrifice. Happiness is having control over someone by having little to no control over yourself. Hugo, that’s not love, that’s manipulation.

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; this conviction the blind have.” I think this line gets closer to other themes in the book. People being loved in spite of themselves (or in spite of what they think of themselves) is a recurring theme in this book, especially around Valjean.

Hugo slips from talking about literal blindness into figurative blindness in the middle of this paragraph, and the feminine turns abstract as well. “A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty. The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it. And that soul, found and proven, is a woman.” I think it’s interesting that this whole paragraph talks about love from a woman entirely in a nurturing sense, and not at all in a romantic sense. Instead, women are Love from a perspective of caring or motherliness. This is also a little odd considering the number of women in this book who are either not motherly at all, or who are nurturing but die. As Mellow said in their post, Valjean gets put in “motherly” roles for both Fantine and Cosette. Here, though, Hugo emphasizes that love and devotion from a woman is “God made palpable” and erases any sort of doubt of oneself and makes the heart bloom. This effect that Hugo describes here only really seems to happen between Cosette and Valjean, and then between Cosette and Marius.

I’m a little confused about the Faubourg Saint-Germain quarantine line. At first I thought it was talking literally about the actual Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris, which was a hub for Ultra royalist politics and heavily Catholic during the restoration. But now I think it’s referring to the Ultra area in Montreuil-sur-Mer and likening it to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. I suppose it would make sense for the local Ultras to dislike Valjean: he put in place a lot of revolution-type ideas like various mutual aid systems and large, selfless monetary donations, and he wasn’t big on socializing and moving up the ladder, which would probably make them suspicious. But his apparent connection to a Bishop and his mourning for said Bishop indicates a certain amount of religiosity that the Ultras would probably respect.

“In my youth I was a servant in his family.” I’ve always loved this line for its obvious double meaning. The people of Montreuil-sur-Mer are going to interpret it literally. This does him double benefits, because it means not only is he a religious person connected to the church in a personal way, he’s also someone who is connected to a (formerly rich) royalist family. But Valjean also quietly implies that he sees his past self as only a youth even at forty-something years old before he encountered Myriel. He had not started to grow up and change until the bishop gave him kindness and opened his eyes to religion. He also places himself as a servant. According to wikipedia, being a “Servant of God” is the first step towards canonization in the Catholic church and indicates a certain level of piety. I just think this is really interesting from the angle that Valjean always seems to view god through others. This time, he is a servant of Myriel, and therefore indirectly pious. It also acknowledges the power Myriel has over him, in the way that the bishop claimed his soul for god and for good.

I just made a post about Petit Gervais and Savoyards in general, but as far as I can tell Savoyard chimney sweep children were all over the country and it seems as though they were essentially anonymous. Getting their names is partly important because then they become someone, but I think it’s also Valjean secretly hoping that maybe one day Petit Gervais himself will show up. Hugo doesn’t say how much money Valjean gives the Savoyards that pass through M-sur-M, but I’d wager it’s 40 francs.

[blarhiv]

Pre-Debut Fan on Shipping and KM

Guys,one wonderful Anonnie decided to bless us with so well written article.So,please,read it <3

Anonnie,thank you for sharing with us your thoughts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BE WARNED VERY LONG SHIPPING/KM POST AHEAD!!!! 

First of all, I just want to clarify that I’m a KM supporter. By my current understanding and my own personal definition, this is to say that that while I believe in the possibility of these two individuals being in a real-life relationship, I am at peace with the reality that it is also conceivable that they are merely very close, wonderful friends. I will get to KM a bit later, but I first want to go through some general commentary on the statement of the fandom in regards to shipping first. I’ve tried to be as respectful as I could and so, things have gotten quite lengthy indeed. 

PART 1: Shipping and Fandoms

Shipping Wars

My first point of major contention lies in shipping wars—in quick and easy summation, I truly really fail to understand shipping wars.

It doesn’t quite make sense to me that there are individuals warring over which ship is real when, no one in the band has ever confirmed a heterosexual relationship, never mind an in-band relationship. So, why fight about it when we can enjoy the lovely bonds between human beings and celebrate good, ostensibly healthy relationships?

If shippers were really into their “ship” (for lack of better terminology) for the bond between those two people, I feel that it is imperative to acknowledge what complete injustice one is doing by participating in something so meaningless and hateful as shipping wars.(Now, despite my refusal to get involved in shipping wars, I do empathize and understand those combating the wretched comments and criticisms these toxic individuals in the fandom say about undeserving band members. But I still do implore people not to argue over with some of these hyper-volatile, toxic individuals about why their perspective is inherently flawed because these people are highly unlikely to entertain a healthy, open discourse about a difference in opinions.) 

And at the point where shippers are determined to evince the realness of their ship, I think their intentions are automatically highly suspect.

Why?

If one is truly trying to celebrate the connection, the supposed love, and the affection of said ship, there absolutely shouldn’t be a pressing need or compulsion to prove others wrong for not sharing the same perspective as yours. 

At that point, it becomes less about a celebration of love and more about selfish gratification—whatever it is that may be incentivizing said shipper (And there are, unfortunately, a plethora of self-serving reasons people ship which are not limited to the fetishization of gays/Asians, the determination not to have their dreams of being with a band member to be shattered by their significant other being a female, the egotistical compulsion of needing to be “right”, etc.). And if one is shipping with the genuine intentions of supporting a potentially LGBTQ band member or generally supporting two humans demonstrating great love (whether it presents itself in a platonic or romantic expression), it needn’t matter what the label or status of that relationship is. 

So, if one is supporting with selfless intentions and a sincere desire to see members happy, there’s no point of arguing about the “realness” of a ship because at the end of the day, all the ships in the band are real—because they all have honest, genuine relationships with one another as friends. Shipping Real People 

This is also a highly controversial subject and I believe it is mainly due to the lack of boundaries people have set in place when they participate in shipping real people.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with real people ships—but only under great constraints and self-monitoring. Most people who ship real people do so because human beings are naturally drawn to and attracted to love—that is to say, people love love. That’s why people enjoy romantic movies and relationships between characters on television shows. That’s why writers like to write about love and photographers take pictures of things and people they love.

However, the problem lies in people who take liberties with how seriously they can invest into a real person ship or how entitled they begin to feel towards someone else’s life.

This is where para-social relationships come into place—through the use of social media, fans are given ultra personal ways to interact with celebrities causing them to believe that they’re connected to their idols despite the reality that it is a one-way relationship. These celebrities do not know you—and therefore, they owe you absolutely nothing in regard to their personal life. And so, I absolutely do not condone writing or tagging or demanding things from any real-life ship (ie. VLives, Twitters, fan meets, InstaLives, etc.) where one could be causing the human being distress or pressure. They are, at the end of the day, real people with real feelings and real lives—and we, as fans or spectators at best, are simply entitled to no components of their life.

I think there are instances that you can comment on a celebrity’s life and have it be a perfectly innocuous encounter. For example, it’s quite alright to appreciate and feel second-hand joy at seeing two people whom one respects and follows as a fan looking happy with their potential partners (as in the case of KM) or commenting supportively on a confirmed real-life couple’s Instagram photos (Justin and Hailey Bieber, Michelle and Barak Obama, Hyuna and E’Dawn, Cara Delevine and Ashley Benson, etc.). Feeling joy at seeing someone else happy or commenting something cute and chill on a real-life couple’s picture doesn’t cost anything nor does it harm anyone. But if you, as a fan, begin to demand things from said people if the real life couple breaks up (Justin Bieber-Selena Gomez, Cole Sprouse-Lili Reinhart, etc.) or you hate the real significant other after one half of a popular ship is revealed to be dating someone else (Zendaya-Tom Holland-anonymous girlfriend), that’s when you’ve got a real problem and you need to reassess what you’re doing. If you are going to ship a real-life ship, do it sensitively—don’t personally bother these people with your unsolicited advice and woes, they don’t care about your ships, they just want to live their lives.

Fetishization and Homophobia

Another deeply problematic that comes with the shipping territory is the fetishization.

There are, unfortunately, many fans that like the idea of a real ship right up until the point there’s a possibility where the members might actually be part of the LGBTQ community. It’s sexy and sensual, a “guilty pleasure”, to imagine the idea of gays, but the actual concept of homosexuality as a real part of someone’s identity is somehow unacceptable to many fans.  This is definitely a problem in the Asian music industry. 

While girls fawn over the boy-boy interactions on stage, these same young women are equally likely to be disgusted by the existence of actual homosexual men trying to celebrate their love on the streets—and the KPop industry feeds into this by via methods like encouraging fan service between members or the Pepero game.

This is deeply disheartening as there are, without doubt, LGBTQ members in this industry—we may not know them by name or face (aside from Holland), but they certainly do exist. And how sad is it to imagine that the closest to acceptance these human beings will ever attain for their sexual preferences is on stage for the gratification of fans who won’t even support them if they actually come out? If you only enjoy same-sex interactions on stage, feeling repulsion or deterrence in supporting a gay or lesbian idol based on their sexual preferences, you probably have some soul searching to do. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is the tendency of same-sex shippers to modify a harmless interaction between members as they make jokes or innuendos that splatter a hue of raw sexual essence onto the moment—this is, in part, some fetishization. We should try to avoid this as gay men are trying to escape the sexualized view a large majority of people have about them. 

And KMers are guilty of this—after all, sometimes when a boy says he wants to do his laundry, he really just wants to do his laundry.

So, this is something else to keep in mind. 

General Homophobia

How many times have bloggers received comments about how X members can’t be gay or how if X is gay that the anon can’t be a fan of that person anymore? I’ve definitely read several too many in my time and these are all exemplifying comments of people who house internal homophobia.

Unfortunately, the need to explicitly state and prove homosexuality will always be a symptom of the heteronormativity of most societies—and I do understand why it happens and it’s not always a malicious assumption.

What I peacefully and regretfully do not understand are aggressive fans who flagrantly deny the possibility of any other sexuality aside from being straight—these instances really make me suspect these are mainly female fans that can’t stomach the possibility of their idols not being into their gender or are straight up homophobic without any other reason. (That being said, I also don’t encourage any same-sex shippers/supporters to make assumptions about sexualities either. It’s fine to support and to suspect the possibility of a same-sex relationship, but there should always be that margin for error since none of these idols are definitively out.)

Conclusion to General Shipping 

TLDR; my basic point in the first part of this ridiculous essay is that, we should really all respect one another as members of a single fandom. And beyond that, we should all respect the people whom we are shipping, taking great care and using our sensibilities to ensure we aren’t making real people uncomfortable.

PART 2: KM

History as a Fan of BTS

So, I just want to clarify that I am a pre-debut BTS fan. I literally read about JM and JK a couple days before they were due to debut and as a huge hip-hop fan, I was immediately interested in their concept. I instantly fell in love with JM’s voice and JK’s multi-faceted talents (and live vocal skills)—that is to say, I was most interested in these two members from the very beginning. As of recent days, I have detached myself from the fandom, preferring to keep a great distance away due to the toxicity and negativity I’ve unfortunately been privy to as the fan base grows bigger and bigger—and it really does make me incredibly sad. I’ve always been into BTS for the music—they were what I listened to bussing up to school as I admired the Cyphers by the rap-line, the gorgeous fluidity of JM’s melodic voice, the deep resonance of TH’s voice, and JK’s talents as a quality, consistent singer despite his age.

And now, sometimes the ship wars and solo stans are louder than the positive members in this community. Luckily, I’ve found a small niche of BTS blogs and KM blogs that have made this experience a lot easier (for KM blogs, many thanks to people like blarhiv, slowlybutobvious-jikook, gaja-aegiya-gaja, chaotic-jikook, singwriteluv, jiminkoo, etc.)

Shipping as a Whole

Now, as for the shipping component. I want to clarify I’m a very selective real-person shipper—I don’t look for mere skin ship or overt proclamations of love or popularity of ship.

Of course, these are initially the easiest features to discern a shippable “ship”, but I’m well practiced in the KPop industry and know these factors between members are virtually useless in discerning romantic interest. 

On top of being a selective shipper, I also think it’s safe to say I’m pretty respectful about shipping as I always try to maintain reasonable skepticism and I’ve never commented anything about shipping on any forum that could make the involved individual uncomfortable. With all that being said, the beginning of BTS, I did not see ANY SHIPS that I could’ve deemed suspicious enough to be considered real.  They were all just young kids that were trying to pave their path to success and just boys messing around on their early television appearances whilst trying to promote their albums.

And even when YM and TK began to gain traction as the fandom’s decidedly largest ships with some believing them to be “real”, I still didn’t see it—and this is said with utmost respect to their closeness and respect for one another as teammates, colleagues, and close friends. 

Undoubtedly, their interactions were playful and adorable, but there was nothing in how they interacted to rouse any suspicions whatsoever. I would view their interactions as commonplace as any other men in regular friendships—with their culture and their age and their jobs in consideration.   Again, I never understood people who truly believed in the validity of these ships.

Now, to be fair, I have, of course, also participated in casually shipping a few members for fun too. For example, I thought Sope was cute and I was drawn to VM’s friendship as well—JM and TH were so ridiculously cute and close, it was nearly impossible not to casually ship them. In the earlier years, since I believed there to be no "real" ships, I was on board with other casual shippers but was greatly confused by those who believed the big three ships (YM, NJ, and TK) were actually real.

My View on Early KM

I first started tuning into KM when I saw a particular Bomb clip of JM and JK messing around with a phone app where their voices were autotuned. Whilst JM was laughing, JK just had his face crinkled up with the softest look on his face. I was like, “huh”—but it definitely wasn’t enough for me to begin thinking it could be real.

Since it was one isolated incident, caught directly on camera, it wasn’t nearly enough evidence to make any logical inferences. At that point, I’d just be jumping onto the train of delusion. While on the subject of early KM, I also want to take this opportunity to quickly give my take on this malicious narrative that JK doesn’t like JM—as a pre-debut fan, I’ve never bought into this.

Between JK’s self-proclaimed shyness towards JM’s unadulterated fondness for him, JK’s proclivities to drop honorifics on camera even from the beginning, JK telling JM he teases his hyung because he likes him—I was almost flabbergasted when I first caught inklings of it.  

This is such an outrageous vilification and outright character assassination of a young kid in his teens who didn’t know how to deal with his hyung’s affections, despite having always confirmed and reassured JM that he does, in fact, like him. 

The fact that so-called fans to this day still try to drive this narrative despite the fact that JK has set fire and gasoline to this toxic roller coaster ride of lies and delusions is actually unfathomable to me. Never mind the exact type of relationship KM have, it’s just so distinguishably clear that JK really, really likes JM judging by the amount of time they spend together and how beautiful JK’s smile is when he’s around JM. 

The Shift

Essentially, I casually shipped Sope, VM, and KM at some point—they were my favourites to see interact and I was always cooing over how adorable their bonds were with one another. And if I’m being frank, I was especially partial to the latter two ships because of how attentive and caring JM is to his younger members.

JM’s kindness has always touched my heart.

I find JM’s interactions with people the most fascinating based off the fact that he is just an enthralling, ethereal human being with this gorgeous voice and enormous heart—and for that, he was my very favourite member always.

But, of course, I am a KM supporter.How did this happen?

Well, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head at the infamous back hug at 2015 KBS Music Festival—especially since it was JK being so unusually expressive and forward with his affection. But perhaps this was a cultural thing? I definitely felt some cognitive dissonance as I tried to explain the strange, almost romantic aura of the moment using logic despite sensing that this string of reasoning didn’t sit quite right with me. But again, one isolated incident is a whole lot of nothing in the world of skin ship and KPop. 

But as we all know, at this point, we got see KM get closer and see their relationship develop and I was really all for it as I was incredibly pleased by that personal growth in JK as a maturing adult and the joy it conversely seemed to bring JM with this newly matured JK.

JK’s Development

A large part of my transition over from casual to serious “shipper” is actually because of JK. I’ve always viewed him as a talented individual, as aforementioned, but other than that there was certainly other larger personalities that caught my eye quicker—between JM’s big heart, JH’s enormous personality, and TH’s quirks, he was definitely quietly existing in the background when he wasn’t performing. But he really just grew into himself and I think any fan can see that.

There’s all the general ways he grew up, his physique and his facial structure and his height, but more than anything my heart softened immensely when I began to see what a beautiful soul this boy had always had. I’m not saying that he’s not without flaws—because another a huge problem in the industry is the fans’ tendency to idealize their idols past the mortal realm of making mistakes or having character flaws—but anyone can see he’s clearly matured.

The way he treats JM only gets better and better with each year.

And I genuinely don’t feel that it’s delusional to say the way that he treats JM is vastly different from any other member. He is kind-hearted with a dreamy view on the world and he’s good to his hyungs after everything they’ve done for him when he’d been a child, but he’s that in tenfold around JM. To say he doesn’t play favourites when JM’s involved is being willfully ignorant because there’re so many recent examples alone (the way he splashes water on SJ vs. JM, the way he roughhouses other members vs. JM, the way he gives JM a big pancake because of an impending punishment vs. SJ in same predicament, the attentive way he watches JM in interviews over other members, the way he monitors JM's health via food and drink, etc.).

I also want to mention as a disclaimer that these comparisons aren’t made in any type of malicious way or with the intent of discrediting relationships between JK and other members. It’s simply instrumental in understanding why such a large population of non-shippers have been drawn to KM as a potential real pairing versus any other pairing. If everyone stopped inserting their own captions and interpretations of JK’s actions and only had the source material in front of them, no misleading historical content to waylay new fans with a tired and counterfeit narrative, it’s pretty clear that JK displays incredible fondness and tenderness towards JM in a conspicuous manner.

It doesn’t make his relationships with the others any less, it just makes his relationship with JM just that little bit more. It’s not about putting down or undermining the other relationships, it’s just about acknowledging the reality of JK’s obvious magnetism towards JM. If a fan really cares for JK, it’s almost cruel to disregard the fact that his face lights up when he’s with JM (WeVerse picture, JM punching him on the shoulder, FaceTime picture, VLive, etc.) and his voice softens when he speaks to JM (Run episode with JK slating, Run episode playing palm game, Run episode asking JM if he’s ready, etc.).

These examples aren’t delusions, it’s reality—the evidence are quite literally in photographs or videos. As a longtime fan, I honestly and sincerely mean this—JK has become a handsome man in my eyes not because of his appearance (though he’s undeniably good-looking) but because of the way he treats JM and others he cares for. As the years pass by, his heart and soul has become more and more beautiful in my eyes. I can’t attribute it fully to JM, but I can certainly say that my heart melts when I see his interactions with JM—not because I am a shipper/supporter but because as an empathetic human, I am viscerally drawn to humans with kindness in their hearts. The man treats JM so, so well. I know I keep repeating this but it’s just a grave injustice to ignore how much JK cares for JM. Never mind your projected desires and your biases, just look at what’s in front of you and just appreciate that enviable, lovely bond. Even if people will choose to disregard romantic overtones in GCFt or the meaningful lyrics during the times JM shows up in GCFsai or the fact he has the most screen time overall (which is fine), it'd be prudent to at least acknowledge the fact that JM is incredibly treasured by this young man.

JMs Shift

Another thing that made me suspicious was the transition of JM’s behavior as well.

I find it harder to read JM than JK in many ways—perhaps it’s just an introvert relating with follow introvert—but there are differences in his behavior that also made me question things as well.

It’s obvious that JM used to be a little much for shy, introverted JK in front of the camera and that that behavior tapered off as the years went by. I do think a large part of it is due to JM growing up (although I do suspect some part might be due to vicious fans who might’ve hurt his feelings about his personality) and reigning himself in. But even then, he was still visibly touchy and affectionate with JK—just as he is with all his other members—whether he was petting his head, openly calling him cute, or what have you.

In my view, the most telling thing about JM is how careful he seems around JK—something in his behavior feels tailored in a way that’s still affectionate towards JK but in a way not to rouse suspicion even if the body and eyes don’t lie.

I’m not sure if it even makes sense, but I do sense a certain sense of caution about how JM treats JK in the public eye in comparison to JK who reliably wears his heart on his sleeve. He seems to be more aware of cameras and the public eye than JK does. It’s really hard to verbalize, but I’ve sensed a discernible change in how JM treats JK—it’s not bad or worrisome, it’s just different.(Although, they’ve gradually become a lot more carefree this year.)

Time Skip

I don’t want to bore everyone anymore than I already have, but the point of how I became a more serious supporter compared to my origins as a casual shipper is based off suspicious trends and continuous patterns in the boys’ behaviours over multiple years.

Even now, I continuously try to translate the boys’ body language, vocal tone (when speaking to each other vs. another member), facial expressions, and constant mentions of one another as a platonic demonstration of affection. And some interactions are pretty harmlessly adorable, just a little something to wet the lips of any casual shipper, but with the surmounting amount of moments it becomes really hard for even the most logical person not question the nature of their relationship.

KM and Ship Wars

Clearly, the progression of their relationship has been the target of incredible hatred and frustration on the parts of hostile members of other ships and it’s gotten to a point where they’ve resorted to subterfuge to try pilot a plane missing a wing—that is to say, they’re trying to keep an aircraft based on intentional mistranslations, vicious lies, and carefully crafted stories of events that have been disproven afloat.

The incredible discrepancy between what sorts of behavior can be categorically classified as fan service seems to conveniently shift based on whatever is keeping the fragile balance of their dreams alive despite evidence to the contrary.

The moment we try to discount or negate the relationships a member has with another one in the name of a ship, there’s absolutely a problem that needs reassessment—this goes for all fans including KMers. 

KM and Coming Out

I want to clarify very firmly that if you are a true supporter of KM, one who selflessly wants their happiness above everything (which includes everything from the potential of KM having other significant others, KM being single, KM being involved in a fling, etc.), you absolutely do not want or need them to come out. 

If they do come out, of their own choice and volition, you can happily support them, but you do not need or seek this from them.

And may I carefully remind people that if you want them to come out for the sole purpose of feeling vindicated against other shippers, you’re not a true supporter and you’re in this for selfish reasons. So, if you imagine your first instinct will be an outcry of “I told you so, I’m right” with the express purpose of throwing it in another ship’s face, please evaluate your role and incentive in being a KMer. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or if you’re wrong—all that matters are these incredible boys who inspire people on the daily are happy, healthy, and well. I honestly want their happiness and safety over a confirmation of a relationship any day and I really encourage all supporters to feel this way as well. In a conservative Asian society, it wouldn’t be easy to maneuver as an openly homosexual man. I implore you to consider the occurrences of hate crimes in more liberal countries. It’s not going to be an improvement, only likely to be a far more isolating experience, in a more traditional country with homophobic tendencies as the majority sentiment. So, while I know most reasonable supporters feel this way, this is a reminder to toxic shippers to stay in your lane and stop demanding things from other human beings that owe you nothing—they don’t owe you pictures of WeVerse, they don’t owe you selfies with one another on Twitter, and they don’t owe you a coming-out story to prove your ship right.

Conclusion

To sum up, I’m not saying that KM  is real for sure.

No one can know that except their personnel, their friends, and their family—or sadly, in a conservative country, perhaps even just themselves. The point is, we as fans, absolutely cannot know for certain.

And this is mainly why I'm not too concerned or bothered about timelines or specific dates. We don't know and there's no point (for me) to delve this far into the realm of speculation. But to each their own as long as you're not being invasive to KM! 

However, I’m not unconfident in saying that if they are not real, the likelihood of any other same-sex relationship in the band is highly unlikely—though not impossible.

I also want to reassure everyone that I love the bonds between all the members and encourage everyone to understand that even if you favour or don’t favour one member over another to realize that your opinion really doesn’t matter in comparison to how BTS feels about one another—they love one another. 

And at the end of the day, shipping isn’t so important that we need to fight over it.

After all, if all we’re trying to do is support love, then shouldn’t we be doling it out to?

And with that, I’m out!

Thank you to anyone for reading and keep well and healthy everyone!

PS Thank you very much to Blarhiv to allowing me to use her blog as a platform! This very, very special individual we should all treasure in the KM community!!!❤️❤️❤️    

(omg anonnie this is too cute тттт Thank YOU).

[japanessie]

Hi Shelly! I'm sorry you're feeling blue! I was going to ask that about Taka and Hiro, too, but was worried I'd get too upset but since someone else asked anyway...It just kind of made me wince with hurt for Hiro when a few years ago Taka ranted on instagram about privacy (for his own life, not about his family). Like, where was your voice when your own fans were BULLYING your baby brother or when they posted on a forum after the ONE time Tomohiro finally showed his face, they asked if he was...

[2/3] Adopted! He already had issues being on camera (hasnt been on since, cant blame him). So, Hiroki looks too much like Taka but Tomo doesn’t look enough? They’re his little brothers, I think bullying BOTH Little brothers is when the time to speak up is. I’m not saying the bros cant handle themselves but I just feel Hiro, aside from mfs, has been on his own. It would be nice if his eldest brother took responsibility for his so called “fans” who attack his family and stood up… 

[3/3] Sorry it just hits close to home. I know what it’s like 2 not have your older bro there when u need him most. When he leaves u in a house burning with hatred (i got to hear my parents accuse each other of cheating while my bro was out smoking & drinking. It makes me wonder what Hiroki heard when no one thought he was listening). I dont mean to take it personally or anything, I just feel like Hiroki & I are very similar. It’s why I like mfs. I’m sorry, I just have no one else to talk about it to.

−−−−−−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−−−−−−

Hi 😊. I combined your messages together into one for easier reading

First of all I’m sorry for the pain that you personally had to go through. I hope you’re doing okay 🤗. At the same time though, I see uniqueness besides similarities in everybody’s situation. 

1. Someone who is broken can’t be a crutch for someone else

In a traditional family setup in many cultures, even more prominent in Asian cultures, the eldest child is always the one assumed to carry responsibilities of looking after the younger ones. In a family crisis situation, while the younger ones theoretically have the one they can turn to, the eldest child has nobody and is usually left to fend for himself and everybody else. 

Some elder kids have the inner strength and maturity to carry it at young age but some really struggle with it and only develop at a later age. Your brother and Taka seem to be in the latter category. Like Taka, your brother walked out because he was hurting and that was the shortcut way he knew how to surpress it and to stay away from what was troubling him at home. He couldn’t be your pillar when he was broken himself. Just like Taka who took the quick way out and his story had been well documented. 

Also, a lot of times, someone who feels worthless doesn’t understand why anyone would feel hurt to see him walk away. I’m sure Taka himself only fully began to understand NOW, as an adult, the hurt he caused Hiro when he walked away back then. In his mind, he was a loser. Not doing well in school, stressed out over the parents’ marriage breaking up, not getting along with their father, very unhappy and not knowing where his future was heading. Certainly not someone for little Hiro to look up to. How would he look after Hiro when he could barely take care of himself?

* The Moriuchi brothers in those days when they used to be around each other a lot, before OOR moved out of Japan 😊

2. Some people need to pull themselves together first before they can love others

That dark period in Taka’s life was not something he’s proud of. He acknowledges it in interviews and his lyrics. Even OOR members admitted that Taka wasn’t exactly a pleasant person to deal with when they first found him. But once he got his life on track, things fell into places. He made amend with his father and got back the Moriuchi name. While Taka couldn’t give back the years with him that Hiro lost, he let Hiro hang around his friends and be a part of his life back in that way. 

Even Hiro never denied the perks of being Taka’s brother. The most significant was when one of Taka’s close friends K from Pay Money To My Pain befriended Hiro and how that friendship led to the formation of MY FIRST STORY. 

Think again, would Kei Goto a.k.a the late K simply befriend a random underaged high school kid just like that? I highly doubt it 🤔. Hiroki Moriuchi was NOT some random high school kid. K and Taka were buddies and Hiro the high school kid was Taka’s little brother. I doubt Taka would let his little brother hang around someone he didn’t trust. He knew Hiro was in good hands. All these happened only after Taka got his life back on track and was able to be the big brother figure he was meant to be for Hiro.

3. Taka publicly standing up for Hiro would be bad for Hiro’s image

Yes, it would be counter-productive for Taka to do so. You see, the ROOT of the hate and cyber-bullying towards Hiro stemmed from how easy things happened for him because of his family connection. If Taka had spoken out, it would make Hiro appear weak and ultra-dependant on his big brother. 

“Duh! Not only he got a band because he’s Taka brother. Now, he needs to be protected like a baby!” 

Hmm … does that sound good to you? We also need to see things from the haters’ perspective too, you know. Oh, with Papa being a multi-millionaire? Trust me. Hiro would get even less respect if any of his family members had spoken out for him. The bullying might get even worse. 

As for Tomo, anything his family members say would bring unnecessary attention to him. He appeared on TV that one time because of his job at the station. Otherwise, he’s very private. It’s unfair on him if his famous family gives more reasons for the public to scrutinize his life when that’s the last thing he wants. 

4. Being seen publicly as a brave independent fighter would be far more beneficial for Hiro

It worked well for Taka. He only started displaying his bonds with his parents AFTER he had firmly made a name for himself even though they had been on good terms since the early days of OOR. Likewise, Hiro would be less relatable to many fans if he is constantly being taken care of by his more famous and successful family members. Isn’t that the public perception Hiro is still trying hard to break away from? 

Not just the Moriuchi, I have never seen being publicly defended by family members work well for ANY celebrity in the world. It may work for ordinary folks but things work differently for famous people. 

I do support Hiro but I think even his most ardent supporters would agree that he somewhat gives off these “baby” vibes. MFS members themselves seem protective towards him. They let him be mischievious, loud and boisterous with them but they’re always there to hug him when he cries. Therefore, independence from his family would balance that out nicely.

5. Taka made a conscious choice to speak only for himself because he knew any reaction to it would be directed to him and ONLY him

As opposed to Taka speaking out for any of his family members, whom the public might hurl the hate and negative reaction to instead. 

Things just work differently for celebrities. In a way, to minimize the bullying towards their loved ones, staying out of their public battle a lot of times is the better way to go. By not bringing more attention to it. 

Likewise, none of Taka’s family members said anything when Taka had to face a barrage of criticism and angry reactions at the time. The ones who publicly defended him were his friends and peers. Guys like Mah (SiM) and Masato (Coldrain) among some. For celebrities, somehow testimonies from people they have worked with or even strangers they have encountered hold much higher values than family members. 

With their chosen careers, backlash and criticism come with the territory. That’s what their parents want to instill in the two brothers. “You have chosen this path. Learn to deal with it.“

6. Rude fans are rude fans nonetheless

Rude people don’t suddenly become angels just because their idols ask them to. Just look at the backlash against Taka. It was quite brutal. Just like how Hiro got pictures of a woman pooping by his haters, I saw a photo of a “hairy ding dong” for Taka among some, along with truckloads of really scathing words. By his own fans (or should I say “ex-fans"?). If this kind of fans are willing to treat Taka like that just from ONE social media post, then nothing good can come out of it if Taka had said or done anything about Hiro’s haters. The ones who would cheer him would still be the same ones who already support MFS anyway. 

Remember when fans were speculating that OOR’s song Right By Your Side as being dedicated to Hiro? Those who like MFS thought it was a sweet gesture but those who don’t like MFS used it as an excuse to say, “Look! Taka wrote a song for Hiro. Yet he still wants to call Taka his rival. What a low life!”. Yes, I’ve personally seen comments like that. So, see? Whatever Taka does regarding Hiro, mean-spirited people will still find a way to set fire to it.

7. There must be more than meets the eye

Fans went nuts when the brothers wore this pair of pants. I doubt it’s a coincidence that Hiro suddenly is comfortable wearing Taka’s look when he used to be sensitive about being called Taka’s copy before.

But that’s not even something new. in January 2018, Taka posted a photo of himself wearing this Monster’s Inc hoodie at Disneyland. That same month, Hiro was wearing that same Disney hoodie at his 24th birthday party.

Heaven knows what Taka had said to Hiro in private especially after MFS Budokan show 🤔. At the end of the day, they are family and though I also know many families who cut ties from each other, Taka and Hiro clearly are the ones who keep theirs 😉.

2 more cents

I feel that Taka is doing the right thing by staying away from Hiro publicly. Not responding to the negativity surrounding Hiro but still letting fans know that his little brother has his full support.

[writing-promp-ts]

[A demon has been following you around for years now. It doesn’t really do anything other than stand in the corner of your vision, but one day, you decide to confront it anyway. ]

---------

Okay, this was getting ridiculous.

I walked down my street in the warm air. Thank goodness the weather finally decided upon a season for the week otherwise it would have been a miserable march from the corner home. I went as fast as I could because I didn't like being outside alone. Thing was, I wasn't alone.

I was never alone really.

I don't remember when I first saw her. This girl with black hair and this open flannel shirt awkwardly shifting on her heels as she stared at me. I don't remember when I realized she had red eyes and these enormous black wings like a crow or a raven. I don't even really remember when it occurred to me she never left my line of sight.

I just knew that it had been years and this clearly inhuman girl has been stalking me for as far as my memory stretches with her. It might sound odd, but I've never called the cops on her. I don't know why. Maybe because if she was a demon (there was like, a 90% chance) she was the most antisocial one I'd ever encountered.

My feet grinded to a halt and I saw her stop as well out of the corner of my eye. I turned to face her and she turned to follow my gaze. After watching her try to find what I was looking at for a few minutes, I spoke up.

"Okay this has to stop."

She turned looking extremely confused and began furiously searching around to find who I was taking to.

"I'm talking to you demon girl."

She blinked in shock and looked taken aback by my remark. She glanced around nervously before hope bloomed on her face.

"You can see me?" She asked.

"Uh, yeah. I've seen you for years." I told her.

She frowned.

"Why didn't you talk to me then?" She asked with a frown. "It hurts to be ignored for 15 years only find out you could see me all along."

"Why would I talk to some strange girl who obviously hasn't been attending church recently?"

She huffed appearing to be offended by my remark. Regardless, I did note that she didn't deny my 'demon girl' remark so I decided to roll with that assumption. If I was wrong, she could correct me later.

"Besides, no one else talked to you either."

"Well they couldn't see me."

"I didn't know that then. I thought you were just in really big trouble."

"It's still not very nice..." She mumbled.

"Alright, what's your name and why are you following me?"

"My name is Raeyn and I'm just as confused as you about following you." She confessed. "I was at home enjoying myself with the fire pit and the next thing I know, I'm made to follow the world's most antisocial girl I've ever seen."

"I'm not antisocial." I defended automatically. "I just have boundaries and personal time."

Raeyn snorted loudly.

"Personal time that lasts for seven hours and boundaries the size of the Great Wall of China." She remarked. "I've met orcs with more socialization."

I perked up.

"You mean all those fantasy races are real?" I asked trying to seem off handed.

Raeyn smirked as if she could see my eagerness to know. Or she just knew me that well. It finally struck me that she'd had nothing to do for the past several years but to watch me grow up. When you only had one movie available for movie night, watch it until you've dug out every hidden meaning right?

Raeyn probably knew me better than my best friends and my family at this point. Of course she saw through my tough girl act.

"Yeah," she said drawing me back to the conversation at hand. "There's faeries, fairies- those are not the same thing by the way- elves, orcs, goblins, demons, trolls and contractors."

She gestured to herself when she made the contractor reference.

"What's a contractor?"

She blinked before giving me a dry look.

"It's in the name. Really. We just make contracts between species and races or organizations. We specifically do it because we can make them magically binding and therefore unbreakable without consequence."

As she explained I found myself giving her a good look over. After all, when no one else mentioned her I assumed she didn't deserve to be acknowledged when I was kid. Then when I grew up, staring at people was weird.

Now though, I decided to truly look at her.

The open flannel with a white shirt beneath it hasn't changed, it wasn't even dirty somehow. Maybe she didn't need to wash her clothes or she such them into my laundry at home. We'd have to talk about that later amongst other things. She bore black jeans paired with combat boots and her hair was a mess thrown lazily into ponytail for convenience.

Though, said ponytail want very useful as many wispy strands of hair had broken free of their constraints and were waving through the air proudly.

I had just decided she was trying too hard for that bad girl look when I realized she was snapping her fingers in my face.

"I know I'm not but please ogle when we're not having an important talk." Raeyn said with amusement.

"I wasn't ogling you."

"Of course not hun."

"I hate you."

"No you don't. But where do we from here?"

"What do you mean?" I asked blankly.

"Well, I can't do anything without you which means you have the official verdict." She informed. "I would prefer we handle some of my contract but if you wanna finish out college, go right ahead. It's not like I can stop you."

I stayed slightly mulling over each option. On one hand, college is the sure fire way to go. The normal way and I'm almost finished- really, I only have two months left for my bachelors degree. But then, with this I would literally be working with supernatural creatures.

"Does contacting pay?" I asked her cautiously.

Raeyn frowned at me in confusion.

"Of course it pays. Why wouldn't it? World peace or not, I'm not sitting down at a meeting between the Faerie Queen, Elven Lady, and Her Highness of the Faries without a good sum of money." She said firmly.

I thought it over a bit more and then shrugged.

"Oh what the heck. Sure, beats algorithms."

"Great because I was supposed to meet a troll and centaur soon and I thought I was gonna have to cancel."

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews The Witcher III Wild Hunt (2-year Anniversary Review)

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is perhaps my favorite game to come out of the PS4/Xbox One/Wii U-Switch console era. It’s won tons of awards and was game of the year for many people in 2015. I didn’t get into the Witcher series until Witcher II: Assassin of Kings was a free download for Xbox Live members in 2016. 

After I finished Witcher II, I immediately went to Witcher III and my god, talk about an amazing sequel. It was bigger, it was better, and for being the end of Geralt’s story, it did a great job for making newcomers such as myself, not feel lost at all.

I’m going to be spoiling the game so if you haven’t played Witcher III, definitely play it before going into this review.

The story of Witcher III, revolves around Geralt of Rivia, a witcher looking for his adoptive daughter Ciri alongside his on and off again lover Yennefer of Vengerburg.

Geralt will travel through large open world zones during his quest. Velen took inspiration from the Polish and Northern German countryside, Novigrad is reminiscent of the Polish city of Gdańsk during the medieval era, and finally you have the Skellige Isles, taking inspiration from Ireland. Each of these areas are massive and beautiful to look at. It’s easy to forget that you’re in a world currently being ravaged by war or filled with monsters until you stumble across areas that give you a stark reminder that there is a war happening.

One thing that I love about the game is how it handled decisions. There’s no clear good or bad decision, everything has a shade of grey. Sure there are choices that sound better in the short term, but it could have long term ramifications that could come back to haunt Geralt. One example is Triss’s quest line in Novigrad. Sure, you’re helping mages escape the city to where they no longer have to fear for themselves, but by doing so, you give the witch hunters a new target to pursue, which are non-human races such as elves and dwarves. However, if you don’t help mages escape, than later in the story Geralt’s dwarven friend, Zoltan, can help him with a jailbreak. If you do help the mages, Zoltan won’t be able to assist Geralt due to not wanting to face the wrath of the witch hunters.

Even the types of decisions you make are fantastic as well. All of these choices are actions that Geralt himself would make and do in that situation, it’s just a matter what you believe would be the overall choice he would go with. With many choice based games, dialogue options cover many aspects of a character archetype, because normally, you are making a character and are taking that character on the journey. In this case, Geralt is a character, he has his own beliefs, likes and dislikes, and dialogue choices reflect his specific personality rather than a personality a player would create.

It’s also why some aspects in gameplay are limited such as crafting. Geralt is able to craft oils and potions on his own as long as he has the formula and the ingredients. Applying the proper oil and drinking the necessary potions are necessary for fighting monsters in this game, which I’ll discuss more about later. When it comes to making armor and swords, Geralt has to seek out a Blacksmith to make these items as Geralt himself doesn’t have the kind of skill set, therefore he has to seek out a person able to build these items.

I also love how story quests and side quests interact with one another. Main story quests could go differently if you’ve done some side quests that relate to that specific quest and vice versa. Also the fact that side quests have just as much weight as the main quests make them feel more important and worth doing for that extra bit of lore or for that impact it could have on the main story.

As well polished and built the Witcher III is, it does have some minor glitches being an open world game. Sometimes you’ll find objects just randomly floating in air. Occasionally the input to talk to NPCs won’t work and you’ll have to either step back and walk forward to have the prompt reappear or just reposition Geralt himself for the NPC to talk to you. The fact that Geralt can either die or get heavily damaged from ridiculously low heights is also highly annoying and instills a fear of any small dropping points.

Another issue I would like to point out is that it’s not exactly the most socially inclusive. A lot of the main women are highly sexualized and sometimes feel that they’re nude for the sake of it. There are moments where you can choose anti-LGBT dialogue options when you encounter those characters, which I found exteremly baffeling that it was an option considering Ciri is bi and Geralt seems supportive in the dialogue they exchange. I get it, it’s a choice, you don’t have select those options, but the fact that they’re there to begin with just leaves a bit of a bad taste. Let’s not forget the entire ocean of white people in this game. I’m sorry, but including two people of color in a DLC just doesn’t cut it. Does it break the game for me? No, but I think not acknowledging that this exists within the game is even worse.

As mentioned previously, monsters have certain weakness and you are expected to exploit those weakness when fighting monsters. Using the proper tools to easily take down a monster feels great and makes you feel more invested in the world as you have to research these creatures in your bestiary to know their weaknesses. 

Going above and beyond to take on an extra tough enemy or a monster clearly above your level although feels great at first, it’s quickly brought down when the experience gained is very little and the loot isn’t something that equates the struggle you went through. It’s just a bit disappointing that you’re encouraged to research monsters and exploit weaknesses and when you do just that, the rewards just don’t reflect that.

There’s also one quirk with dialogue as well that’s honestly more funny than terrible, but the way it happened just made it more memorable to me.

This instance is going to a wake party with Yennefer in Skellige. She’ll comment on how she likes that Geralt is growing out a beard. Now if Geralt does have a beard in this instance, it makes sense, however if Geralt is clean shaven, Yennefer will still make the comment which I always found that to be a funny little programming quirk. It’s obvious that this response was to happen when Geralt has a beard and the programming within the game was supposed to read that. There are a couple of instances that NPCs will react to Geralt’s appearance and the reaction is appropriate in those moments. But the beard moment, always brings out a chuckle.

Granted for a game as massive as Witcher III to only have a few minor issues, it’s actually rather impressive. However, I will admit that it has been four years since it’s initial release and there might have been more bugs then, but now it’s a mostly smooth experience.

As mentioned in a previous post, I do refer back to this game a lot for professional research as well. CD Projekt Red used a branching writing program known as Articy Draft, a program I use in my day job. I’ll do different decisions, I’ll change the order of when I do quests and just imagine how the branching dialogue looked within Articy and the type of variables used to determine how certain events play out.

One also can’t talk about Witcher III without mentioning Gwent, what is perhaps one of the best mini-games within a game since Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad. Gwent is an easy to learn, but tough to master card game at the start. It’s tough at first as Geralt doesn’t have many cards at his disposal, but once you finally get a win, the dam starts to break little by little. Geralt will begin winning more powerful cards that can be added to his deck. Eventually it does get to a point where everyone becomes a bit easy to defeat as you gain more powerful cards and build your deck for effective strategies. Regardless it’s a game within a game that you can easily get lost in. 

Witcher III also set what many gamers regard as the “Golden Standard” for how DLC should be treated. Witcher III includes 16 free DLC additions ranging from additional quests, items, additional costumes, and Gwent cards. Then there’s the two paid DLC expansions, Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine, which involves two new stories.

Both of these expansions also add additional gameplay mechanics to make Geralt stronger, which you will need to take advantage of for Blood and Wine as monsters and enemies in that particular expansion are a bit tougher than in the main game and Heart of Stone.

Blood and Wine also contains my favorite quest in the entire game. The quest is called “Paperchase” and it’s hilarious. Something about a legendary monster slayer still having to adhere to the bureaucracy of a bank to get a reward for saving a guy years ago is just amazing. It shows that not all great quests have to involve you having an encounter that puts you on the edge of your seat.

The Witcher III is a game that deserves the praise and reception it has received. It has made a mark on the RPG genre that many developers are taking note and implementing in their games. The most famous case being Ubisoft with the Assassin’s Creed series by following a similar dialogue decision based structure and having side quests impact the main story and vice versa. This is a game that has earned its status as a modern classic, which I’m sure will keep that status for a very long time.

As I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone on Tumblr or any denizen of the internet, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt receives a 5 out 5

So far it’s been quite an interesting two years on this site. Frankly, I expected to just be a reviewer that would continuously scream into the void. To my surprise, I’ve had quite a few of you that like and share my posts adding more to the conversation whether you agree or disagree. I’ve also recently passed the 50 reviews milestone as well so the 50 and the two year mark happened rather quickly!

Here’s to the march on getting to 100 reviews...at some point!

[dememarquette]

INITIATION

Adria's promotion came without precedent. You can call Ashwater the trial run, but that was do or die. This? This is procedural. Her own unit. A task force specially designed for beating up monsters- and no, she's not returning to HBO.

Her run-in with the demonic ring and Invidia was exactly what the city needed to see. It was a story built for the presses. Executed with the idyllic mixture of good sleuthing and novel ass-kicking, her stunt hit the news cycle with a vengeance. After that, funding was on board and the tax dollars came rolling in. Ashwater ripped the band-aid off supernatural phenomena, and the rest of the world was waking up. This began with Modena, and it'd launch with Adria. It was only right that she'd be in the first team on the field. She earned the pioneer position. No one else had a résumé that could compare, and the better part of America that wasn’t composed of undead abominations was there, cheering her on. And if you asked her? Glory reached its pinnacle with her office. Watching her name's stenciling peel onto the glass was a vindicating moment. She came from a town most GPS’s have mapped as Corn. The office was a symbol. It culminated all those long, restless hours of knowing she could be doing better while she was stuck signing off parking tickets. ....Even so. It wasn't a twist she was expecting. Don't get her wrong- she was honored. Thrilled! But saying she was vanguard in a new and exciting development of law enforcement seemed... Well, braggadocious. And when she was feeling awkward about the incessant waves of praise, Demetrius was there to both confirm and fix it by making it actually bombastic. At around the fifth time of him repeating the title of her newfound position with accents slaughtered from various James Bonds, she came around. Adria Kyriakoulopoulos, lead investigator of Modena Paranormal Investigation Unit. It had a ring to it. Secretly, Adria found herself repeating it in the mirror too. She couldn't ask for anything more badass. And with all the boring set-up and paperwork out of the way, her new badge came with a celebration. City-funded. This was an induction of an entirely new branch- there's no way history would be made quietly. Modena knew how to party and anyone who was anybody in law enforcement or civil service was there. It had it all: catering from businesses city-wide, open bar, and live music. No one knew how this would shape the city, country, or future so everyone wanted their foot in the door. (Including Julia, who regrettably did not make the guest list.) Ashwater's sweethearts arrived as a pair. 'Fresh to death' didn't cover it. Demetrius spent hours picking at his suit the week before, and even longer getting ready this morning. Adria would have just snagged something off the rack, and spared the sales team (yes, team) the headache but that is strictly forbidden in Demetrius' company. She was roped into the tailored route too, only a little bit against her will. Without her braid, she leaned into her new snipped cut. This made her ensemble riskier than her usual formal affair. It flaunted an open back: sheer in all the right places, and hugging her curves where it mattered. It was a tasteful parrotail that cropped at her knees, confirming both that she DID have legs, and it was out to drive Demetri crazy. If he hadn't confessed to Buzzfeed, he would have given himself away tonight. It was all eyes on her. While they separated to schmooze as the party started, he always found his way back. "Congratulations detective." He bumped into side. He toted a flute of champagne in one hand, her waist in another. "How's it feel to be living the X-files?" "Overwhelming." She said, with a small smile. He found her mingling on the outskirts of the crowd, enjoying the buzz of party-goers without actively participating. Socializing of this magnitude required breaks. "This, I mean. I think I'm better at punching monsters than cocktail parties." "Maybe you should've thought about that before wearing that dress. Everyone's watching." It was true, but only somewhat for the reason he meant. Adria had been dodging conversations all night. The ones she couldn't escape usually started with 'How do you do it? What's it like?' and her responses were always along the lines of 'You stab some. Others you have to decapitate, sometimes burn, but it all depends-...' They weren't exactly the edge-of-your-seat anecdotes the masses were hungry for, and she wasn't theatrical enough to give a good statement. Still. It was exhausting, but fun. "How about you? Are you having a good time?" "Of course. Though, people keep thinking I'm jumping back into the ring too. Like me? In a cop uniform? Please." "Aw, really? Modena needs you on call," She smirked. "What if we encounter a big bad guy and desperately need lamp post across the street shot out?" "Ha ha. Don't forget, you're the one who gave me lessons." She nudged his side- not to take credit since he's turned down six lessons since, but in general contentment with the moment. Demetrius had gotten over his reluctance about Adria making herself a bullseye to the otherworldly, and the both of them were loosening up. She felt great, she looked great, and now that Demetrius was 'allowed' to go on record being her plus-one? She couldn't ask for more. Life was good. "I understand you're hiding out by the gross appetizers for anonymity, but would you like a drink Detective Kyriakoulopoulos?" "Sure." "And what would you like?" "Surprise me." "Oho, you won't regret that," He winked. "I will be right back." That cocktail turned into two. Then three. And when Liam was on the phone? Four. Between the second and third they cha-cha slid to the floor. People knew better to butt into their moment, or were informed ‘courteously’ by the princess of the hour. From that point on, the party might as well been just the two of them, and that suited both just fine. The DJ's had fun with the playlist. Records ranged from fan-favorites, ironic Halloween staples, to radio smash hits. And though they were getting tipsier with each passing song, it went unsaid that the obligatory slow jam up next was a redeeming moment for their last disastrous slow dance. It wasn't a scar that necessarily needed healing but it certainly felt nice to amend it. Her head settled on his shoulder. At the first romantic strum, their eyes shut and fingers laced. They fit into one another naturally. Uninhibited and undisguised- just the two of them in their own world. It was perfect. This sublime peace lasted thirty seconds. Adria heard it before he acknowledged it: a grimace and low whine barely audible over the tender notes of the piano. She withdrew from his chest to find his brows set in deepest degree of apologetic she'd ever seen. Horrifying. "Deme-?" "Excuse me- sorry." He stepped back, panicked. "One moment. One- hrrk-" He darted off. Couples swayed around her, picturesque under the dreamlike strobes. At the height of the night, Adria was alone. She stiffly excused herself from the floor. Plopping into a seat off the side of the stage, she nestled among the lamenting women in heels and elderly. The plan was to wait and flag him down, but Adria is not patient. She had nerves of acid: caustic and thorough. Sitting on standby lasted all of five minutes, and when disaster thoughts started eating her alive, nothing was stopping the cop from barging into the men's bathroom. Social propriety be damned. "Deme?" She kneed the first stall in, then the second. "You in here? Deme?" "Uuugh." "Deme!" Adria shoved into the third only to jerk back like she stepped on a mine. "Jesus. What did you drink?!" "Same thing you were." He said miserably into the bowl. Monster pastries weren't looking too cute on their callback, and neither was he. His pristine bangs moments before were mussed, tangling with his fingers as he supported his head in his hands. His collar was undone, and he slouched on the seat like it was the only thing keeping him from the floor. "Don't tell anyone I can't hold my liquor." She dropped to his side, rubbing his back. "Are you okay?" "Been better." "Stupid question- should we go? I can call Liam. I'm going to call Liam." He groaned, rueful voice echoing in the bowl. "I don't want to ruin your big day." "I've had enough 'Congratulations on being good at killing things' for one night. It's fine-!" The door squeaked. A random attendant walked in, popping their moment. "Uh-?" Adria poked her head out the stall. The look was damning on her knees, "Hey we’re occupied, all of them!" "Aren't you-? But- this is the men's-" "What'd I say! Go!" Flustered, he bolted and found a potted plant somewhere else. Deme looked over his shoulder- pitiful, but in good spirits. "Pretty sure you were the one breaking the law, officer." "It's my party, I can kick people out of the bathrooms if I want. C'mon, let's go." She hefted his arm around her neck. After one more false alarm, they headed back to her place. He desecrated one taxi en route. After narrowly doing the same to her doormat, he spent spent the night in her bathroom until ultimately retiring to the couch, garbage bin in hand. Adria peeled herself off at around 8. Fiddling in the kitchen gave her something to do. It was nonsensical but she still found a way to take blame. Making breakfast felt like fixing last night. Demetrius wasn't conscious for a good while after, and when he did wake up, she was going to send him back for another eight. He looked like garbage. His blonde hair looked like he slept on a balloon, and the dark circles that rimmed his eyes suggested he'd been sucker punched for symmetry. It scared her enough to where he got the first word. "I'm taking the week off," He declared. She forfeited a plate. "That's a bit of an overreaction for a hangover." Not that she disagreed. She had been ruminating alone for hours, therefore amply prepared. Breakfast came with a tall glass of water and an Asprin. His Starbucks order was already queued up, but overall the effort wasn't necessary. He looked down at her offerings queasy, like she was out to poison him. "Is it? Doesn't feel like it." "I mean. Can you even do that?" "Sure. I can get a substitute." She revoked the waffles without hard feelings. "I don't think your fan-base will like that." "We've already gone over this. You're more than a couple notches higher on my priority list." She stopped mid-turn. Nowhere was she in this equation. "Me? What does this have to do with me?" He shrugged, poking at an egg on a side plate only to watch it tear. Technically they were past the awkward feelings, but it always had time to rear its head. It didn't suit him, and when he looked as pathetic as he did right now? She took it personal. "I dunno. I never get to see you anymore." "What? We spent all weekend together. Where is this coming from?" "You're going to be working all the time..." "It won’t be different than it has been!" "Except when you slip off radar undercover?" His gaze locked with hers. Unable to look away, she receded back into her seat. "Or when you have to investigate some nocturnal freak, and you sleep through the day? You're always going to be busy. And with the new unit, I won't see you until next year." Troubled, she found it hard to argue. Everything was too new and intimidating, but to have problems arising before day one on the field? No one knew what they were dipping their feet into. Especially not her. "Yeah well." She frowned, slumping a little too. "...Is this going to be a problem?" His apprehension melted, eyes widening at the unexpected outcome. "What? No." He compulsively he reached across the table. He snagged her hand in his. "Nooo. This is my way of spending more time with you. At least the first week, while everyone's ansty." "...I'm not antsy. Are you antsy?" "I'm not antsy." He said, putting more effort into faking the lie than actually lying. Somewhat soothed, she rubbed a thumb over the back of his palm, catching onto where this was going. Or at least, she thought she did. "I guess what I'm saying is- you go get all the stress of saving Modena from Godzilla, and I'll be here to hear all about it." "Yeah." "...And maybe we can think about condensing our living situation when you're comfortable." She blinked. What he meant took a second to sink in. And while it was clear as day, it still had to filter through a wall of disbelief before she allowed her heart to be set. "...Really?" "Maybe..?" He smiled, hopeful. - - - The next day she dove into work. Far from anxious, she was energized. The future never looked so bright. And gross! When she wasn't pinning apartments for consideration, she was drawing big fat X's across hot spots on the map. Turns out when you're looking for monsters, it's easy to find them. Ghosts, vampires, banshees. Or the lesser known critters like something called the 'Gowrow' slinking around the Great Lakes. This wasn't Ashwater, this was large scale. These were pockets of creatures that have been here for centuries with roots as old as the cities themselves. They owned the properties, they ran the shops. Some accusations were thrown around that they were running for office. (The department was determined to not get political just after it inception. Or at least, not while everything was circumstantial.) Nevertheless, she was kept busy. And after a long day's work of pouring over night cam footage and house calls regarding suspicious smells, she'd come back to her apartment, where Demetrius was. "-and then I kicked down the door. They screeched, just like the things under Minnie's house, do you remember?" "I do. But do you remember when you were satisfied doing traffic stops?” He countered. “I sure don't." She propped her legs across his lap, still working a towel through her hair. It was impossible to tell if the notably short shower was a result of the four feet lopped off her head or the chipper mood. "Right? I really feel like this is good for me." "I can tell. Look at your eyes. It's like Stephen King with a nightmare. I don't understand it but if it's working for you, I'm glad." She grinned. There was no denying it. Being a detective was exciting but this was the next step. "And what have you been doing?" "Hey," He warned. "You can't seriously be expecting me to follow-up after a house elf drug bust." "Try anyways." She teased. He drummed against her knees. "Hm. Well. I spent the day laying the groundwork for community events later this year. How does a Oops I Did it Again themed confession night sound?" "Awful." "Right? I'm excited. I didn't get too far, though. Still feeling off." She draped the towel over her shoulders. "You know Ian got sick at that party too." "Yeah? Figures he's a lightweight." She rolled her eyes when he actually meant it. "Martina's cousin, too." "Huh...maybe it was something in the food?" "Maybe." She thought. Though she had eaten off his tray until it came to fishy hors'devours with names she couldn't pronounce. But an eleven year old wasn't touching salmon mousse cups either. "You rest easy then, okay?" "Aye-aye." - - - After her first couple days, beginners luck wore off. It's not that they weren't getting intel. Everyone had their stories. Tip lines rang off the hooks- it's just they weren't getting anywhere with them. Adria would try to make rendezvous with a witness, and they'd disappear. Stake-outs weren't active. Shops of interest shut down, and their owners went on holiday. Work plateaued. Overnight Modena's horror problem was drying up and leaving the department to scratch their heads. "What is going on?" Adria brooded into her steering wheel. Her partner, Peter, shook his thermos as if its contents hadn't gone cold ages ago. "They heard you were taking the city by storm and decided to pack up. "Yeah right. They couldn't get enough of me in Ashwater." He shrugged. For once, he had no wise aphorism to offer. They sat in the car for another uneventful four hours before turning in. She had nothing stranger to report than the ridiculous outfits people will be caught in public in. She came home that night, wound up and irritable. "Every day can't be a winner," Deme consoled. She was stabbing into leftovers like she'd injure the abstract concept of Modena's Lack Of Supernatural Crime by proxy. "Yeah, but nothing? It's like they fell off the face of the Earth. I get it, these guys are supernatural or whatever but that doesn't mean you can just disappear." "Except that it might?" "Unlikely!" She threatened him with a fork. He surrendered, two hands in the air. "You're right! So what now?" "We got one more place to check out for the Dover Demon problem." She said. "This little diner. The owner's story didn't match up with the rest of the accounts so we were going to ignore it as some guy seeking his five minutes of fame, but I guess we have no choice." "Good luck." The next day he turned up dead. "Jesus Christ." Adria held her nose. What smelled worse? The body, or the rotting lunch meat? The answer was both. All of it. The corpse was affixed to the ground with every utensil in the shop. It looked like the killer's intent wasn't to kill but to perforate. Blood spattered like a blender without it's top, leaving a scene so grisly that you'd have to be a true skeptic to believe this was done by a human hand. Adria wasn't one. It screamed occult, and when the crime scene turned up without any physical evidence despite being a snuff film outtake, it was safe to say everyone was onboard with that theory. It was awful. Aggravating, to have another lead go cold before pursued but the part that Adria couldn't get over was the timing. This guy had been shouting crazy nonsense for months. He published columns in Fortean Times. The FCC banned him from radio bandwidths- and this was all long before the unit popped up! It's only now that something felt threatened enough by him to off him? It didn't sit right. While forensics grasped for straws in the alley behind the shop, Adria left early. "What are you doing home?" Demetri blinked. He was fitting the key to her door. Startled, he offered a confused peck as she shouldered out of her jacket. The way she shoved it onto the rack was already a glaring indication something was wrong. The gun belt, thankfully, was set down with more delicacy. He shut the door quietly behind him. "...Are you okay?" "Today was a bust." "Again?" "Yeah. The guy was dead. The last witness!" "Jeez..." "Before, the case hadn't escalated to homicide. This is- all this!!- ugh." She sighed, attempting to expel the drama with her lungs. She was done with it. Demetri couldn't say anything comforting. Not in a way that mattered because she was just going to get angry if she thought about it too much. The scope is limited, but the eventual toll this could take on the city's faith in the MPI was a problem. How could anyone promise protection against the vague and general idea of Monsters? Before it was under control? There was no reference for handling these issues either. Other teams in the unit were having the same problems, if not worse. They actually looked to Adria for guidance. It was the helplessness that pissed her off. He sensed this. Settling onto the sofa, he patted the spot beside him as a tense reprieve from pacing. "...What now then? You can't just scrap it." "I can't." She took the bait. "But I guess we have no choice but to backtrack, and wait on the lab. I have a stack of cases that need my attention. Getting somewhere on one of them might inspire me." "Other cases?" She looked over, in the middle of combing through her hair with her fingers. He was rapt, but it was something about the way he asked. Maybe in the vein of jinx- superstition perhaps. She didn't know what prompted her to reply the way she did. Even doing it felt ridiculous, but Adria had spent enough years ignoring her gut and paying egregiously for it to not give in. Just this once. "We're also working a case on vampires.” She said. “There are suspicions of them at the casino." It wasn't a lie exactly. There were actual accusations, but they more or less seemed fabricated. "Reports say they’re taking care of people that can't pay up. A traffic light camera caught something promising, of all things. Can you imagine?" "Does this mean more undercover work?" He asked, with a salacious wiggle of his brows. "I'm not going blonde again." "Psh no. But black might be fun. Mysterious~" He shut one eye, picturing it between the angle of his thumb and finger. "I almost want in on it. Almost." "Maybe. We're still thinking about it, but I'll let you know if we need a human sacrifice." She frowned. "Speaking of looks, you look like you're doing the whole vacation thing wrong." "Sorry- should I go get a tan on top of my apartment building?" She wanted to laugh but she was serious. He was jaunty as ever, but he didn't seem to be looking any better since the party. The spaces under his cheekbones were hollowing, standing out too much on his lean babyface. On topic, she wasn't sure vampires would want him at all. "Is all this worrying you?" She asked. "You can be honest." He averted his eyes, evasive. It was the manner he always did when she was broaching sensitive topics without adequate warning. She barreled ahead, anyways. This was about her own worries just as much as his. "...Between this and the move-in thing we talked about, I don't want you making rash decisions just because you're worried. And not for the right reasons." The misdirect he could handle. "Right reasons? Adria...I'm always going to be worried. But that's going to happen whether you're fighting boogeymen or pickpockets." He said. "You're doing great work out there. There's no way I want out of it, or to be across the city while you do it. We're a team still, even if we're no longer matching." She snorted. "We were never matching." "Even if I don't get to play with your transponder anymore." "You weren’t supposed to do that either-!" "You're no fun." The evening devolved in to pleasant, familiar bickering. The stress from work melted away, and the next morning it became clear her home life and work life had a funny way of staying in sync. There was a breakthrough. After locals caught police presence in the area, more came forward. There were plenty of people willing to corroborate the deceased was insane (and not in the right-all-along way), but a few recounted strange activity that morning. He closed up merely a half hour after open, denying the lunch rush. Regulars were peeved but chalked it up to his usual antics until around noon when the upstairs neighbor’s dogs started barking. She insisted her chihuahuas were well behaved, special, wonderful angels who would never make a fuss unless something was wrong. It was easy to assume she was also crazy until a peek through the building's air system where the dogs were barking left a trail. The vents tunneled directly to his kitchen. From there, there was new residue to work with. Not human, and not natural. Adria headed back to the office to type up her report. She left the long soliloquies exalting inbred teacups dogs out of evidence, but the rest looked promising. Jazzed from the progress, she hadn't noticed Ian materialize at her desk. "Hey-o." "Hello," She parroted, not paying him any mind. He knew her too well to be offended. Amused, he waved a hand between her face and the screen until she docked back on Earth. "I said, Hey-o~!" "Oh- OH, Ian! Hi." "Someone's invested." He peered at her screen. It was split between photographs of gore, and what looked like sparkly powdered sugar down the ventilation system. "Neat. Has anyone told you that you type loud, by the way? Really loud?" "I've heard that before." Her seat twisted. She opened her palms for a kit-kat. He always snatched one every time he passed the receptionist's candy bowl. "Did you come over here to file a noise complaint?" "No. Not today." He tossed it. She caught it, flawlessly. "I was actually wondering if you got anywhere with the Victory Spire case?" "...Victory Spire?" "The casino?" She had heard him the first time but it wasn't registering. The case, as far as it concerned the police department, had been tossed out. There wasn't any evidence of missing persons or undead activity. Camera footage was flimsy at best. It was one of the first files put before them when the unit began, and seemed to be nothing more than people rallying against recently turned gambling legislation, and finding any reason at all to disparage it. Calling it paranormal was topical, and a red herring. "No?" She hesitated. Perplexed, Ian looked down at his paper. Adria never felt the urge to snoop more than she did now. Ian was dealing with his own workplace drama, extending from the fuzzy lines of where monster rights began and end, and nullifying actual evidence by acting too hasty at a scene. His interest in what's on her plate was unwarranted, much less cases she made up last night. "Huh." He rubbed his chin. "Okay. I must be confusing it with last night's Buffy marathon." "Must be..." He shrugged it off. "Oh well. Catch you later, alright?" "...Seeya." Following that weird encounter, Adria hit the brakes. Shutting it down her computer, she threw her on jacket and tore out of the building. She was a cop, but today had no problem breaking the speed limit. This time, to Demetrius' place. She racked her brain at every stop light. The pounding radio was shut off so she could think clearly, but it always came back to one conclusion. There was no situation she could come up with where he'd be in the same room with Ian. Or text. Or communicate at all unless a call to Adria's office accidentally misdirected, and even then she was sure Demetrius would over-act or hang up the phone. Them shooting the shit about case files wasn't feasible. But an office error wasn't making sense either. She had to ask. Where her newfound detective skills benefited her ability to lie, Demetri's exemplary talent stagnated. She knew- knew- she'd be able to tell. This would happen after a quick pit stop. She decided to surprise him. And by surprise, she did it in the general way police officers know how which is with an unannounced police raid. She didn't have a warrant, but she did have take-out. "Deme!" She bumped her hip into the door. It swung shut behind her, leaving her to waddle into his sleek bachelor pad with arms full of pretentious salads and deli sandwiches. To her immediate alarm, his apartment was dark. At first, it didn’t look like anyone was home until a confused 'Adria?' piped from the next room. He wandered out into the hall, bewildered and fixing his tie expertly without looking. While she knew he could do it blindfolded and handcuffed (lord knows she couldn't get one of those undone on her own, this coming from awkward experience), doing it in the dark habitually was...odd. "Uhhhh," She dropped the bags onto the dining table. "Did you miss your power bill? Is that why you've been crashing at my place?" He snorted, flicking on the lights one by one. "What brings you by?" "I had another bad day at work," She lied into dinner. Amazingly, it helped when caught off-guard. "Thought I’d spoil us to get over it. Also I didn’t want to cook." "Ohhh…” He cringed. "Unfortunately I just ate...Mind if I pop it into the 'fridge?" Adria was skeptical. It hadn't truly occurred to her until he said that, but from this angle, it looked like he hadn't eaten in ages. She usually knew when he riding the latest diet trend. More often than not, she was dragged into it herself, but that wasn't the case here. "Not at all..." He dipped into the kitchen. Time fleeting, she shot to her feet. Normally she was comfortable enough at his place to do whatever she wanted, whenever, but today was cloak-and-dagger. If her gut was speaking to her before, it was screaming now. Something was wrong. What exactly it was? Adria didn't know. She was going off zero probable cause, only the certainty she'd find her answers tonight. With that in mind she stalked down the hall, bounding towards his room. That felt like the right place to search, but she didn't manage to get that far. She stopped at the bathroom. It was dark. Those lights were off (of course) but what seized her attention was the mirror. It was veiled. A towel, tossed over the glass. This was weird in most contexts, immeasurably disconcerting in this one. Shooting one paranoid glance behind her, she pared a corner. Slow. Dread eased her movements to a crawl as reminders from every horror film said she'd regret what she found underneath- Nothing. The towel anticlimactically dropped to the sink. Underneath was a mirror. Just a mirror. She leaned in, scrutinizing her reflection like she'd find discrepancies with a squint. The Adria staring back at her moved as she did, at the right time, and the right way. The mirror itself behaved like any hunk of glass should, if not ever-so-slightly more flattering than what you'd get at IKEA. She opened her mouth to ask, this investigation taking bizarre, silly turn but as she did, Deme passed. "Adria?" She strangled a scream. Reflexes yanked on her nerves to slam the door just as he checked his room. "Oh, jeez." He muffled from the opposite side. "You scared me-!" She slid down the door. Words failed her. It had been a glimpse. A split second of him passing the glass, but it was enough for adrenaline to kick it into high-gear. That wasn't Deme. It was more reminiscent of a medical diagram. One of the nervous system, in the graphics that looks like spaghetti noodles trailing back to the brain. Similar, but on crack. Instead his skin puckered around the lines. Fat, discolored veins breaching the flesh, wiring into his face. His eyes were black masses, darkness for the ducts to filter into. "You okay??" She kept both hands fastened over her mouth, hitting the lock with her elbow. He was out there acting normal. The concern in his voice sounded so painfully real that if she had missed it, she could've gone the whole night none-the-wiser. Was she supposed to forget what she saw? How was she going to get out? Could she be convincing talking to her infected boyfriend? She couldn't. God, she knew she couldn’t. Her stomach revolted at the thought- those lines were ridged like grubs. Unable to summon the courage to reply, she tried to think rationally. She had her phone with her. Meaning, she had Martina. She wasn't the best at opening these conversations, but frankly clarity wasn’t on her mind. [7:36] Check your cousin in a mirror. She sent, ominous. Martina replied back as one would when issued that esoteric request. [7:37] What?? [7:37] Do it. Just do it. Silence. She nervously fidgeted as Demetri's concern continued through the door. "Adria...? Do you need anything? Meds?" "N-no!" She stressed. "I'm fine!" "Are you sure?" "Positive!!" Outside, Demetrius seemed to be catching on. What that meant only spelled out more trouble for her. "Oh- don't mind the mirror thing! They were doing roofing renovations." "Makes sense!" She called back. It totally did not. She diverted attention to her screen. It vibrated with the response. [7:41] Oh my god. what do I do?? whats wrong with him??!! [7:41] Don't do anything yet. Don't overreact either. I'm going to call Moreau STAT. With that, she exited the bathroom like a SWAT drill. Deme watched her whiz past. Had he been any closer, he'd have been hockey checked through the wall. "Uh-?!" "On call!" She said, rushing through the front. Gun belt was snatched at last possible second. "With what??" "More gambling vampires!" The door slammed. She shuffled down the hall like her life depended on it. For all she knew, it did. Moreau was on the other line before the elevator was down one floor. "I need you to look something up for me." The next call was to Martina. - - After one very brief and distressing phone call, her ex-office mate was corralled into a hotel. Following what they'd seen, it didn't feel safe to go home. It didn't stop the reminders, though. Deme's texts went unanswered. She sent his calls straight to voicemail, and after enough of them she smothered her phone completely. Martina hadn't stopped rambling, frantically trying to articulate what she saw in her baby cousin. "Angel looked like- like- a monster. Those things? I saw them move-! Like a hose, when you switch the water on-" Martina hadn't made the transfer over to the new department. She felt her skills were best spent against humanity's worst, so dragging her into this mess hit Adria with an intense wave of guilt. But after what Moreau said? There was nowhere else to turn. "I know. Deme too." "How-??" "Moreau thinks it's something called the Amazonian Saginata. It only develops in males." Her fists tightened on the wheel, composure paper-thin. "It takes over the body's nervous system post being ingested." Martina retched. "Ingested?" "Y-yes. They operate off the host's memory, making them mostly undetectable because they have all the information. But they're parasitic in nature, and they're kind of like bees, with hive-mind." "What?" She reeled. "How do we fix it? Can we fix it?" "Yes. With salt." "Salt? What do you mean salt?" "Salt is actually repellent for a lot of these things. Witches, demons, spirits-" She chewed her lip. In Ashwater she had it on hand at all times. In Modena, she’d need to pick the habit back up. "So we need it blessed?!" Adria had asked the same thing. "...No actually. just regular salt." Martina's horror shifted to confusion. "I think...Demetrius knows the most. We start with him." - - - They were armed as much as they could be with a condiment: four tins of Morton Salt shoved into Martina's purse, with half a can dissolved in a water bottle. Resolve steeled, Adria finally returned Demetri's call. "Sorry for everything. I got in over my head." "Are you serious? That's your excuse?" He fumed. She had to hold the cell away from her ear. "I was worried sick! I couldn't even get two words out of you! Or a text? What, were they right outside my door?!" She stifled a shudder. Martina was silently chanting 'ew ew ew' passenger side in her cruiser. The last thing they wanted to hear was how much a bug wearing her boyfriend was missing her. "I know. Listen, I'm sorry, but you know my job! I'm heading back to your place now. Or are you at mine?" "Still at mine," He heaved a sigh. Adria recognized it as same one he had at the hospital- angry, but relieved. It was almost impressive if not viscerally disgusting. “Okay. I’ll be there in five.” "I'll leave the light on for you." He derisively joked. "...Thanks." The call dropped. The ladies issued themselves a terse pep talk after parking. Their plan of action was foggy, but this was Deme they were talking about. A seatbelt's won a fight before. Two trained officers of the law could handle it. Maybe with a little struggle, but it'd be a piece of cake. They hoped. There wasn't a plan B. Outside his apartment, Martina stood off to the side. Her purse was readily accessible over her shoulder while Adria's anxious expression took center-stage at the peephole. She knocked and waited. There was a short shuffle from within before he opened up. "I hope you don't mind I brought Martina over.” Adria breached the threshold. “She was called to the scene with m-" Everyone froze at the characteristic click of a gun. "I do, actually." From around the corner, a familiar face stepped out. His gun was aimed directly to Adria's forehead. "Ian?!" "Drop your weapons." He ordered. Then, pointedly to Martina. "And knives." "I mean really, Adria?" Demetrius rubbed his eyes. "I thought this was going to be private. Weren’t you the one having issues about our personal lives on screen?" "You invited Ian!" She balked. Ian gestured for them to step inside. His sight never left Adria's head, and her mind wasn’t forgetting his range scores. The man was a bonafide sharpshooter, and his quick draw was unparalleled. He whipped his pistol, a nonverbal cue to get on their knees. Both complied. Adria tried to think, her train of thought shooting off into five different directions. If she got close enough for a gut punch, she could disarm him. If one of them distracted, the other could tackle him. If- Demetrius caught on before Ian. His face split into a smirk as he took a leisurely step backward, thunking right against Ian's barrel. "Little warning~ Deme may need this, but I don't." Adria paled. The pistol was point blank. She was willing to risk a bullet, but not in Deme. Martina swore under her breath, but Ian-parasite was already looking done from the melodrama. "Do we have you listening now?" "Yes..." She resigned. "Good, because we're only going to ask once.” Deme said. “Me and this asshole here? We're here on an assignment. You-" "I'm not an asshole," Ian frowned. Demetri paused his manifesto. "Yes. I know you're not. But you know how it is-" he vaguely gestured his head, like it was an obvious reference. Ian seemed to understand, pensive. "...Yeah, I do think you're an asshole too." “Great.” Adria was about to lose her goddamn mind. "ENOUGH bonding!" She shouted. "What do you want?!" "Right. So here's the deal. We want your unit to dissolve." "You're poking into dangerous territory and destroying our ecosystem." "Which I doubt you care about, since you decided you owned the place. Kill all the locals, and where does that leave us?" He asked, waiting for answers from his audience. "That's right- preying on your citizens. Guess what? We don’t want them either. We’re fine working with immortal folk. But scare them all out of town and what do you get?" Deme lifted his button-down. His ribs underneath were looking ghastly. Layered over it, Adria imagined what it'd look like in a mirror, fleshy valves waving between his bones. "Say, how much longer do you think this one’s got?" "We can't do that..." She whispered. Suddenly it was coming together. Demetri's espionage, Ian's detrimental rookie mistakes. They were working in tandem to discredit the branch. "It's not in our power." "You hear that? She says she can't." "That's unfortunate." "You know that decision comes from people a lot higher up!” She argued. “We need time-!" "Now that's an excuse. This kind of thing? It doesn't need time." He said, disappointed. "We can try to do this procedurally. Or we can destroy the agents one by one. Your choice." Martina and Adria looked to eachother but weren't going to be given time for counsel. "It’s eaaasy. Make the calls, babe." Demetri winked. "Fine!! Okay, fine." She said. "I will quit. Right now. If Ian quits too, that will only leave two agents..." Demetri's brows lifted, encouraged. "-You can’t run a whole unit off two, and they aren't going to find replacements that quick. They'll shut down the department, especially with how things have been going lately. No one has to die." "Oh? Is this true?" He looked to his consprator. Ian nodded, taking this news just as well. "Yeah. Sounds solid." Three were on the same page. The forth- "NO!" Martina shot up. Ian's aim instinctively drew to her, treating her as hostile. "This is terrorism! Do you think the city is always going to buckle under? Just because a couple of bug-guys scare us?!" "Martina-" Adria begged. "Don't ‘Martina’ me! I can't believe you! Giving up like this!" Adria flinched. Shame was already eating her up from the inside. It didn't need echoed in real time. Seeing this, Deme was compelled to move forward, but restrained himself. Fortunately, Ian took pity too. Without any physical gesture or decree, the priest received the motion to go swipe the girls' guns off the floor. The cop hoisted Adria off the ground. Martina’s eyes darted between the three of them. "What? No! What are you doing with her?" "Getting this over with," relented Ian. "You can chat her ear off later." “What?! Bring her back!” Ignoring her, they absconded to his porch. The glass shut behind them. Martina shifted back to the priest, lip curled. "You're disgusting," She spit. "Even my cousin? A child? What are you doing with him?!" Deme fiddled with the pistol, disinterested. This wasn't the same issue as the one he practiced with in Ashwater. His already stunted learning curve was further impeded. "Well we don't control who joins us. I thought that was obvious." "What does that mean?" "It's random." He looked up. "Who knows how many more of us are out there? And how many more there will be? Don't bother guilting Adria, by the way. This was going to happen regardless." Deep down he couldn't shake the impulse to protect. Martina wouldn't see it that way, just like he didn't see her ankles move. Her toes touched ground, poised for a runner's start. "It's not like we wanted to do this, you know." He went on. "We just have to. Give us credit." She would- Depends if this worked or not. Meanwhile on the porch, Adria dialed. "Hello, Chief Brian, uh. Sir." She stilted, shivering in Modena's night air. "This is Detective Kyriakoulopoulos." It was 11 PM. By some miracle, she got ahold of the police commissioner. Ian loomed. His demeanor relaxed into a easy but attentive lounge against the wall. No code words were going to be used. He knew them all, making this conversation tricky. She kept that in mind, but she wasn’t out to convince. Just buy time. "I don't mean to call you this late, but I need to discuss my employment. The MPI-..." She watched Ian's weapon. His gun was trained to her lower stomach for a long and painful death, but otherwise he played it casual. He was ready to take the phone, standing idle to toss in his own resignation for convenience. Before she got to the good part, a disruption triggered in his head. He pivoted. Alert, his arms swept to the apartment. He shot a round through the glass. Her eardrums threatened to shatter with the door. A mere second prior, Martina had tackled Demetrius. He wasn't as skilled as his partner. The priest's trigger finger pulled, but he neglected to remember the safety. The gun ticked, but she had him grounded before he knew what was going on. His counter fizzled, as one expert maneuver had him flipped onto his stomach, with an arm contorted behind him. "SHIT- hey! IAN, HEY-" Ian was synced with incredible precision. He was operating through drapes but the blind shot was enough to rattle both women. "Enough!" He warned, cloth billowing. "Let him go or I'll kill him!" Martina flinched. The bullet pierced the wall, and though it was random, it was one too close for comfort. This wasn’t going to plan, but one thing they went over in the car was that the parasites were capable of seeing through multiple sets of eyes: Demetri's, and Ian's. One point of view was wriggling under a petite woman, and the other was ripping down curtains to put her in his crosshairs. No one was watching at Adria. She dropped her phone. In the same movement, she ripped the cuffs off her belt, and slammed them onto Ian's wrist. He fired one more wild shot before Adria nailed him in the gut. The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling while he went down. Before his weight took her with him, she shouldered him into the banister and locked him there. His other hand was free, the armed one. He swung. His wild arc struck Adria across the face and the force knocked her back into the door frame. She held back a cry as shards of glass embedded into to her skin, shredding her palms. His focus left Adria to turn back to Martina. Her head was staring perfidiously down the sights of his glock. That took priority. “NO!” One well aimed kick to his knee caps fixed that. Ian buckled, howling in pain as his pistol hurtled to the asphalt. It narrowly missed a pedestrian. He was disarmed, but it wasn't enough. In what looked like the shutdown of his sensory systems, he forgot his busted kneecap to pulverize his wrist instead. It jerked like a jackhammer, showing no signs he'd hesitate to break every tiny bone in his hands. Out of options, Adria struggled to her feet to deliver a violent uppercut to his jaw. One shot, and he was out like a light. Demetrius didn't put up enough of a fight to merit the formality.  - - - In an extraordinarily sensational newsbreak since its inception, the MPI resulted in an investigation of its own. All male attendants were called into the station and screened. The state never had to issue warrants based on a endo-corporeal parasite infection before, but there was no time like the present. It'd be the first of many arrests to break records. Meanwhile the culpable catering team was triangulated, tracked, and charged. Guilty parties were arrested (and dissolved, literally) while victims were admitted into the hospital. Modena's most menacing epidemic since tuberculosis was easily treated with limb restraints and a routine saline drip. It worked like a charm. The purging stage of detox was as gross as one could figure. Vomiting bugs was literally Adria's worst nightmare. While she loved and supported Demetrius to death, after their attempt at self-medicating went south, she did so from a distance. He wasn't technically awake so she refused to feel guilty. The detective relied on the staff to update her on his progress, and when he no longer hissing at the idea of S O D I U M, they gave him the all-clear. He stabilized in a state of disorientation. His brief was carried out in the most euphemistic, unrevolting manner possible. It wasn't pretty, but he got the picture. All he had to hear was 'bugs.’ He knew Adria was worrying herself into hyperdrive, and that made his own anxiety take a back seat. Their golden rule was only one person could be a wreck at any given time in this relationship, so when she walked in he put on his best game face. Her eyes widened, surprised. A few hours in the PCU did wonders. While still on the frail side, he looked so much better. (Adria didn’t, but it wasn’t nothing a few stitches couldn’t fix.) "My hero~" He cooed. She resisted the urge to use her compact. That bug had worked her over too well this past week. Consider her faith shaken. "Do you remember anything?" That was her cop voice. Amused, he tilted his head. "All of it." "All of it?" "Yup. Or at least I think I do." Demetrius punched a button. The backside of his bed levitated him up to a seated position. "It's weird, actually. More like a surreal dream. Well, nightmare, I guess." "You guess?" "Yeah. Nightmare. I don't enjoy have bugs wiggling around in my intestines but I didn't think that needed said." She'd taken a seat on the edge. Unsatisfied, he cinched her closer by the waist. "Why? Does this mean you're not going to tell me about your day anymore?~" "I certainly have good reason not to." She pouted. She wasn’t upset with him. Her apprehension wouldn’t last, just like the weirdness didn't. Already the were falling back into their normal rhythm- but that was the whole problem, wasn't it! She couldn't tell what was or wasn't him! And with that considered, one detail had been troubling. Gnawing at her, since this whole damn situation came to light. "So...did you mean that whole moving in thing?" "Hm?" "It offered- uh. Maybe nevermind...” "...Moving in together?” He offered. Her facade instantly crumbled, leaving evasion in its wake. Maybe a little disappointment. He was quick to remedy, “No. No, I meant that.  It didn't get that out of nowhere...” “Yeah...?” “I mean. I was going to ask, but.” He sank. “I going to find the right way to do it.” And it decided for him, in the exact opposite way. He had hoped she'd forget about it. It would've been easier. A reset maybe, so he could pitch it again with flair in mind. But before he could suggest- "I accept." She dropped into his chest. Burying her face, she squeezed him so tight his vital signs monitor went off the charts. (It was actually from the dislodged IV, but both liked the romantic idea better.) He grinned, petting the back of her head and letting his eyes drift shut. Perhaps it was easy for him to say, but everything turned out pretty okay. Most of it would be on her to fix. Later. For right now, this. "You know..." He murmured into her hair. "I might have bug breath, but are you sure you don't want a kiss commemorate?" Her response was muffled into his gown. "No."

[anamedblog]

Archaeology, Sports, and ANAMED

by Vera Egbers, ANAMED PhD Fellow (2018–2019)

Max von Oppenheim (sitting on the chair) during breakfast, 1913 (by Hausarchiv Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie., Köln)

Without a doubt, archaeology is a colonial science (e.g., Effros and Lai 2018). In particular, the birth of “Near Eastern” archaeology—as it is still called today—revolves around the imperial awakening of European nations like France, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany during the late 19th/early 20th century.

Though specific individuals of that time might have had different motivations, that is, to prove the authenticity of the bible, or to accumulate extraordinary artifacts for newly established national museums and thereby gain some fame and influence, the discipline was always connected to notions of political interests in the region, to the feeding of orientalist thought, and to power struggles among European nation states.

In the course of the 20th century, the political situation of both Europe and the Middle East changed drastically, leading also to shifts and adjustments in archaeology. But the remnants of the formation of the field are still active today and difficult to overcome. We publish mostly in English, German, or French, only gradually moving towards abstracts and full articles in Arabic, Kurdish, and a little more so, Turkish. Military technologies like drones or satellite-imagery are often used without the consent of local communities (see Pollock 2016 for further detail). And even the way we present many of our data is obviously rooted in the thinking of borders and territories—there are hardly any archaeological publications without maps showing the extent of the empires or chiefdoms under study. As O. Hugo Benavides recently stated during a talk at the SAA Annual Meeting, archaeology is in fact not about the past, but about the present (similar see Benavides 2003). More specifically, it is about politics and the question of how we connect past and present, hence creating a past for our self-understanding. It is valuable to wonder why we still undertake this colonial endeavor, why we archaeologists want to deal with the past and also—after Foucault—what this doing does?

For me personally, a major part of being an archaeologist is exchange, travel, and sociology. In a healthy way, the discipline has lost its former allegedly greater political meaning (something some scholars still seem to refuse to acknowledge) and turned—at least partially—towards social theories that seek to understand both the socio-cultural structures of the past and their meaning and influence on the present. In this realm, archaeological projects started in recent years to study and consider the impact excavations have on the local communities they are based at—and vice versa (see Rosenzweig and Dissard 2013).

“View of the village of Tepe from the mound of Ziyaret Tepe” (Photograph by A. Wodzińska)

While only rarely the hierarchical dichotomy between workmen and -women on the one side and (foreign) researchers on the other can be overcome, I believe that already the awareness of the “excavation-doing” in a community that lives at or next to the archaeological remains is an important step towards acknowledging the two-sided endeavor each research project is, as well as the effect it has on all members involved.

With these broader thoughts in mind, I pondered about my life as a doctoral fellow at ANAMED in the heart of Istanbul. Many topics came to my mind, like the street musicians that are so much a part of our daily soundscape, yet being such strangers to us even after all this time; or the disappearance of Syrian forced migrants that were so present at Istiklal Caddesi just a few years ago, but have become almost invisible now.

Here, I want to dedicate this second part of my blog-entry to something seemingly more trivial. Having now lived for almost seven months in the Merkez Han building of ANAMED, I noticed an almost incidental “collaboration” established with the fellowship that had been going on between fellows and locals nearly unnoticed for years—a connection that goes quite literally under the skin: the gym. Working all day with the mind, a physical compensation is vital to maintain a healthy balance of the two. Just a ten minute, hilly walk away from ANAMED, at a lively corner of Cihangir, a group of fellows registered at a sports club and is using its facilities to do Pilates, Yoga, or “Total Body” workouts.

A lively corner in Cihangir, around the Firuzağa Cami” (photo by “Behlül'ün Gezi Rehberi)

As random or insignificant as this might sound, it literally shapes our bodies and hence our connection to the space we chose to temporarily live at. The buzzing backdrop of trashy electro-pop music, the smells of sweat and moving bodies, the Turkish instructions (“Nefes tutma!”), as well as the smiles and chats with familiar faces contribute to a sense of belonging and community.

Weekly Schedule of the Gym

Of course, other than being an archaeologist that settles down in a village for a couple of months each year, we invade the gym as customers and as such possess a greater influence on the way we are treated and heard. As workwomen and -men on excavation, the position in regard to underlying power relations is not the same. Yet in both cases there is more to it than a simple “employer-employees” or “seller-customer” relationship. A space with room for exchange and interaction between otherwise unconnected people is created, laying the base for the possibility of benevolent mutual curiosity, personal growth—or just some fun.

Questionable Quote at the Gym’s entrance

For instance, each Thursday a handful of people meets in front of the gym and runs for an hour in the streets of Istanbul—to Maçka Park, the Golden Horn, up until the Marmara Sea. Everything you see, you hear, you experience, is shared with the ones you are jogging with. There is for example the young Turkish personal trainer, who is trying to become an actor, or the Turko-British writer that could talk for hours about languages, not to forget about one of the owners of the sports club, who revealed to me that ANAMED-fellows had been members of his gym for years now and therefore he knows exactly how long most of us are living in Istanbul and why we are here. While this is not part of the official agenda of the ANAMED-fellowship, it is worthwhile reflecting upon such small-scale encounters and the ways they become a part of the creation of somehow globalized subjects. When perceived and acted out self-consciously, it has the potential to set a subtle, miniature counterpart to the globally growing threat of nationalism and segregation. Apart from all this idealism—doing sports after a long day in ANAMED’s study room is also simply a lot of fun!

Street dog and cats on the way home to ANAMED—a motivator to relax too!

Bibliography:

Benavides, Hugo. 2003. “Seeing Xica and the Melodramatic Unveiling of Colonial Desire.” In ‘Social Text’ 76, 21(3), 109–34.

Effros, Bonnie and Guolong Lai, ed. 2018. ‘Unmasking Ideology in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology: Vocabulary, Symbols, and Legacy’. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, University of California, 2018.

Pollock, Susan. 2016. “Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare.” In ‘Annual Review of Anthropology’ 45(1), 215–31.

Rosenzweig, Melissa and Laurent Dissard. 2013. “Common Ground: Archaeological Practice and Local Communities in Southeastern Turkey.” In ‘Near Eastern Archaeology’ 76(3), 152–58.

[owlmylove]

big ask, how do you make friends?(not you as in you but as in the general all of us you does that make sense?)

aight strap in kiddo. heres how to win friends and influence smiles

first: find people that seem cool, or interesting to you. this is nowhere near as high stakes as it may seem because, though you may not know it yet, you don’t have to commit to being friends with someone just because you get to know them. we all make brunch and coffee date promises that will eventually go unfulfilled, not because we’re terrible people but rather we realize we’re better suited to hanging out with others. so, tldr: find cool people and don’t worry overmuch about it

now, find a way to talk to them. this depends on A. how often you see this person annnnd B. your own confidence level.  

if you see a cool person and don’t immediately know how to approach them, the easiest way in the world to make friends is to open with a compliment and go from there. this sounds ridiculous, but I’m currently at a large university and I literally make friends every day. most of the time, that’s prompted by complimenting them. I once told a girl outside starbucks I loved how she was working that croptop, and she almost yelled with joy, complimented my hair, and demanded to ask for my instagram. if someone is in a rush I naturally don’t interrupt them, but I have stopped by other people’s tables or seats in cafés before to inform them how much I like their outfit/hair/earrings/messenger bag. after they fawn over the compliment, proceed to small talk. 

small talk takes practice. 

and thats okay! most things in life do! you’ll get better the more you do it - I swear to god I’m the proof. 

bounce off whatever response they give to your initial compliment and, most importantly (and easiest for you!) keep the focus on them. try to end most - but not every one! - of your thoughts with an open question for them to keep the conversation rolling. complimented their jewelry? (usually a v. good pick, people take pride in their jewelry. sidenote, try to compliment things people choose: clothes, books, shoes, accessories. although “you have incredible eyes!” is a great compliment, it’s awkward as an opener because it A. requires you to have looked them in the eyes for a long period of time before talking to them and B. sounds like a pick up line. [I wait until I’ve been talking to them for a while before I acknowledge how wow, I’m sorry, the light just hit your eyes and they’re gorgeous! I’m sure you get that all the time, but wow.]) 

ask them where they got their bracelet. if someone got it for them, ask about the gift-giver. if they don’t remember where they got it, laugh and say that all the best pieces in a wardrobe are the ones you forget where they came from. give an example of your own, if applicable. try bouncing from complimenting their hair to asking where they get it done and maybe make a joke about how you wish you could bring a professional negotiator to your appointments, because otherwise you’ll ask for a trim, the stylist will give you a buzzcut, and you’ll say “oh thats perfect, thanks :))” almost everyone has had that experience, I promise.

I should also acknowledge: I’m writing this as a cis female. I can (and do) compliment a lot of people, mostly women. But I’ve been told that if you’re male-presenting, then giving such compliments to people of any gender might be seen as flirting? As such, for those who don’t present as girls: give compliments in a way that feels right for you. One of the best drive-by compliments I recently got from a guy was while I was late for a performance, striding across campus, and a guy passing by just said “Hey, I love your style,” without breaking stride or trying to force a conversation. No matter what you identify as, if you’re worried someone will think you’re hitting on them be sure to keep that air of, “I don’t mind if this conversation comes to a natural conclusion.” Even if you desperately want to be their friend, desperation is easily detected and can be as uncomfortable in platonic contexts as it is in romantic ones. 

so don’t lean in too close, don’t force extended eye contact or stare, and don’t compliment any body parts unless you think you can do so without being suggestive. casually mirror their body language when possible (if they’re leaning their cheek on one arm, wait a beat or two before propping your chin up similarly) to make them feel like you’re attentive and similarly minded.

if you can immediately tell you have a common factor with a person, go for it. if someone’s reading a book you’ve read, or a book you want to read, or a book you wrote, sit sorta near them, glance their way and, acting as if you’ve just now recognized the book, ask them how they’re enjoying it. if they’re a deep reader and go “huh?” as your voice drags them up from the literary depths, give a self-effacing smile and say “Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt. That’s just one of my favorite books. How are you liking it so far?” this leads to any other question about a book you can imagine. 

ditto any t-shirt about a form of media you’re familiar with, or patch or sticker or pin. all of those are just nerd flags flying high in pursuit of like-minded people to talk to. trust me.

once you’ve made enough small talk and, if it’s working well, try finding a “to be continued” thread. could be “oh, you come to this coffee shop every morning to? well maybe I’ll see you next Wednesday then! it was nice meeting you, have a good day c:” orrrr maybe it’s “awww your dogs adorable!! here’s pictures of my pet/any other vaguely related to the conversation thing on instagram. [insert photo sharing, wait until you both stop actively looking at the photo] oh here, what’s your instagram? I’ll follow you!” open the search tab and hand it to them so you don’t have to worry about mistyping. 

also a very, very good method is to find something you can relate to the present conversation that you might not be able to immediately show. so an article, video, a picture you can’t-find-right-now, friend’s name, movie review, the name of this really cool bookstore you found in Annapolis because they mentioned they’re going there soon (if you really don’t mind bullshitting, find out where they’re traveling in the future, claim to remember a bookstore/museum/etc. you went to once, years ago and say oh shoot, what was the name? it was a pretty cool place - I’ll think of it tonight at like 2am. I can send you the name whenever I think of it if you like? [pause for answer] okay great! here, whats your number? and then go home, google some cool places, and text them a few hours later.) anything that gives you A. a way to continue this conversation and B. an excuse for not doing so immediately and, therefore, C. the chance to get their name & contact info.

now, if this isn’t just some cool-looking person you’re meeting for the first time, but someone you see regularly in a residential, academic or professional setting, start laying the groundwork for friendly vibes before you make a move. smile when you see them. if they’re a classmate, try sitting a lil closer (but not crazy close.) pay attention if they speak up in a group. if they drop something, and you don’t have to take extreme steps to do so, pick it up. if someone drops something across a lecture hall, don’t go running for it. but just close-lipped small smile + eyebrow flash when you see them and, after a few of these, try for a nod and/or a grin. if you’ve spoken to them at least once, if only to pick something up for them, you can try a “hey!/hello!” with a smile if they seem receptive to it. if you haven’t spoken to them yet, you’re welcome to try it if they seem receptive, but I usually wait.

if you don’t see this persona regularly, but semi-regularly, you need to evaluate whether the times you encountered them is significant enough for them to remember. please know this has waaay less to do with whether or not you’re memorable, and more to do with how much data our brains sort through every single day. think honestly about this, and decide this: when you eventually introduce yourself to them, would it be stranger to admit you remember the first time you both occupied the same space, or stranger to pretend to have forgotten?

I have a classmate who I vividly remember meeting for the first time, but we never really spoke until on instagram recently, 2 years later. So I never made a point of mentioning our meeting, until he actually referenced it! Then I went ahead and mentioned the highly-specific detail which made him so memorable as a question I was unsure of - “Ahaha yeah, his class was great! Weren’t you the one who _____?” 

Try never to be presumptuously confident in social settings until your conversational partner indicates it’s appropriate. It is almost always more polite to allow yourself uncertainty.

case in point: my default when friends are introducing me to people who I’ve seen around a few times is “Oh! Hello, I’m ___, haven’t we met before?” Assuming you have met before (even and perhaps especially when you know for a fact you haven’t) is SO MUCH SAFER than asking “have we met?” When they respond in the negative, we haven’t, you get to say “Oh, really? I guess I’ve just seen you around so much, I could’ve sworn we were introduced. Well, it’s so nice to officially meet you!” and then proceed with small talk, ideally including whoever your third party member is or, in the event of being one-on-one with this prospective friend, try asking them some questions about wherever you’ve been seeing them (so what do you think of our biology lecture?) OR compliments (Oh, I just noticed how awesome your watch is! where did you find that?) OR any other question you like. proceed with the small talk until one or both of you seems ready to leave, there’s a decent enough lull in the conversation, OR you’ve found a “to be continued thread” which you can string up before making your goodbyes. 

(Sorry if I’m exhausting this post with too many conversational examples, I just know how much younger, more-anxious me liked the idea of having a script to fall back upon)

don’t worry if you don’t get a contact method after the first conversation! you have spoken to the person, laid the ground work for a follow-up conversation, and that’s awesome. keep interacting with them when you see them, but be mindful of how interested they seem in interacting with you. the worst thing is to always stop and wait for a conversation when someone just wants to get on with their day. if they seem impatient, or busy, just say “hey! good to see you c:/have a good day c:/your hair looks great [insert name]!” and carry on. 

Friendships aren’t formed by constantly forcing conversations with a person. They’re formed by being mindful of those around you, considering people’s perspectives & emotions, and having a positive presence people want to be around.

you can shoot them periodic texts or DM’s, depending upon the contact method. best to start off is to send or discuss things relevant to your IRL conversation. if that starts a whole new text convo: awesome!!! if it fizzles out; let it fizzle. wait a few days/week/etc. try asking them for a book or music or coffeeshop recc, because people fucking love an invitation to offer their opinion (what do you think this novella of an answer is?) and then springboard into your own tastes, things you like and dislike, and see how well your views and tastes align. remember, talking to a potential friend is just like an interview! you may feel like you’re under examination, and need to win their attentions, but you’re interviewing them for the position too. 

finally, go ahead and invite them to hang out. you can do this waaaay earlier if you have sufficient reason/confidence to do so: if you compliment someone’s superhero shirt, and they say they can’t wait for the new movie next week, and you can’t either, say this! say you’re planning on going [insert date] if they wanna come get their mind blown with you and/or go halfsies on the pricey popcorn. 

also, naturally: if you’re in a coffeeshop and both clearly plan to be there again sometime soon, establish when you’ll see them next. when you do: don’t seat yourself at their table unless A. they invite you to or B. they’ve been clearly invested in talking with you for more than a few minutes, at which point you can say “Do you mind if I sit?” and then boom! coffee friendship!!! which is also the best way to deal with the natural, awkward pauses that come between topics - you can both reach for your cups as you think of ways to continue

But: if you don’t have the excuse of “here, wanna study for the next exam together?” or “carpool to work together?” or any of the above, go ahead and find something you think they might like too. If you have other friends who’d be down, and who aren’t super abrasive or wild or super super shy personality types, go ahead and try to make it a group hang. “Hey! Some of my friends & I are going to the movies on Friday night if you’d care to join!” orrrrrr invite them to grab coffee if that’s not where you usually meet them, or invite them to an outdoor market or some cool event (ideally with free admission!) like a live concert or gallery showing, etc. etc. 

If you only have their instagram when you first hang out with them, take a picture of them over the course of the night (not a selfie unless they ask for it.) I know how people feel about getting photographed, so I always take a bunch, tell them to try different poses, and then let them swipe through and pick their favorites for me to send them. offer the same, and tell them instagram/social media messagers kill the image quality if they don’t already know. Boom! now you have their phone number, and now they feel good about themselves bc of you. Woooo, positive correlations! if they want to take pictures of you, even if you’re squeamish around cameras, go ahead, laugh and let them go for it. otherwise, refusing the picture skews the friendship towards their ego, and suggest, if only subconsciously, that you like them more than you like yourself. 

from then on, it should be pretty smooth! see how the hang out goes, decide whether you want to keep hanging with them (as I said, you have that right!) and then text them when you want to. and as you spend more time interacting with them, and grow more comfortable, you might have some of Friendship Bonding Moments™ I’ve encountered. such as: being told I played a minor role in someone’s weirdly vivid dream, anytime someone sent me a post/song/video/article of clothing/picture of a dog and said it reminded them of me, sending me a new song they love and demanding I listen to it, asking for my opinion on what they’re going to wear tonight, and/or whether they should post a picture to instagram, someone randomly calling me up to say they’re headed to my favorite diner at 2am, do I want to come? (~Just College Things~), telling me they made extra dinner/food/baked goods and do I want some?

and then, congrats! you have made friends! if you really like them, and enjoy this sincerely and/or ironically, feel free to make them a friendship bracelet to immortalize the event once you feel comfortable enough with them

(although I have also promised to make friendship bracelets for people I have just met + had very positive conversations with, preceded by “Okay, that’s it, we’re friends now. You can expect your friendship bracelet in 3-5 business days.” and they all, without fail, freak out over the mere thought of a friendship bracelet and the implication that we are now officially friends. this works on people I met like, less than 5 minutes ago. it’s also really easy to say “you can expect your friendship bracelet in 3-5 business days. Here, what’s your instagram/phone number? I’ll text you!” bear in mind: don’t be presumptuously confident. gauge their level of enthusiasm before you ask for their contact details, or take the joke too far. but know that most will almost immediately say yes, because even adults who may laugh at the thought are still just little kids deep down, and everyone wants a friend to like them enough to make them a friendship bracelet)

if you’re looking for more than just casual friends: time, conversations and empathy all help to turn casual acquaintances into friends you can trust & rely upon. asking how they’re doing if it seems they’re having a rough day and actively listening, offering advice (only if they want it) or food or an indulgent stress relief hang out, or asking (one of the rare times presumptuousness is okay!!) if they wouldn’t mind letting you vent about a coworker or something frustrating - any time you encourage them to emotionally share with you, or you offer to share your emotions with them, will help solidify your friendship. as much as I hate admitting when I’m sad to my close friends, those that I do admit it to are the ones I trust & rely upon the most.

finally, most importantly and, yes, most clichédly: be yourself. The more a friend learns about you, the deeper the friendship. Never lie about yourself for the sake of impressing a friend, or all that effort you’ve put into making a friendship will be built on false grounds. you’ll never be comfortable or relaxed around someone you have to act around, so don’t! if someone doesn’t like you for you, they’re not worth your friendship in the first place. I may sound like Dr. Seuss or Hallmark, but I’m serious. 

Okay cool, so it’s 4:33 am and I should be studying for me french final in 6 hours, but hey, here’s like 3,000 words of rambly social advice and scripts. should I write a book about this? I feel like I could write a book about this. Hmm. Maybe thats just the espresso & caffeinated chocolate talking. please weigh in on book or nah in the comment section below

Anways, I hope with every fiber of my sleep-deprived soul that some small part of this goliath answer could help you! And if, in my stupor, I outlined every possible scenario except the ones you actually needed to know about, don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll try my best to assist. Now go forth, make friends, and be you! ♥

[continuations]

World After Capital: Laying a Foundation (Needs)

NOTE: This is the last post for the foundations section from my book World After Capital. In it I propose a catalog of basic human needs. As set out earlier much of today’s confusion around scarcity results from our willful conflagration of needs and wants.

Needs

The definition of scarcity that I just introduced is based on the notion of needs. To argue that there is a shift in scarcity from capital to attention thus requires an agreed upon set of needs to show that we indeed have sufficient capital. Can we make progress in defining what constitutes a set of basic human needs?

I am not proposing that this is a simple task. What follows should be considered a way of starting a dialogue. A list of basic needs is a piece of knowledge. As such it can be improved over time through the process of critical inquiry. You can critique my list by pointing out flaws, you can also propose changes to my list, or you can publish your own list altogether.

One of the benefits of my approach to writing World After Capital out in the open, and with revisions tracked, is that you can see how my thinking on needs has evolved over time. In an earlier version I tried to group needs into categories such as biological, physical, and social. But the boundaries between those seemed rather arbitrary upon further examination. So in the current version I am distinguishing only between individual and collective needs, where the former will apply to a single human wherever and the latter are the needs of humanity as a whole.

Another challenge in putting together a list of needs is that it is all too easy to confuse a need with a strategy for meeting this need. For instance, eating meat is one strategy for addressing the need for calories, but humans can acquire calories from many other sources.

Individual Needs

These are the basic needs of the human body and mind. Without them individual survival and flourishing is impossible. A single individual has these needs even when isolated, such as traveling alone in a spaceship.

The first set of individual needs comes from keeping our bodies powered, these include:

Oxygen. Humans need on average about 550 liters (0.55 cubic meters) of oxygen per day [28]. The exact need of course varies with factors such as the size of our respective body and the degree of physical exertion. Our most common solution to this need is breathing air.

Water. We need to drink on average between 2-3 liters of water per day to stay hydrated [29]. Again various factors such as body size, exertion and temperature will affect the exact need.

Calories. To power our bodies we generally require between 1,500 and 3,000 calories per day, again depending on body size, activity level etc [30]. We solve this need by consuming food. The best way to do this, however, is surprisingly controversial and poorly understood for such a basic need. In particular, the mix between proteins, lipids and carbohydrates is subject to ongoing debate.

Nutrients. The body cannot synthesize all the materials it requires, including certain amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Therefore these must be obtained directly as part of our nutrition. This too is an area that is surprisingly poorly understood, meaning which nutrients exactly we really need to acquire externally seems unsettled. There is a wide range of food consumption strategies that seem to support the human body.

Discharge. So this may be a bit gross but we also need to get things out of our bodies again, including expelling processed food, radiating heat and exhaling carbon dioxide. A lot of human progress has come from better strategies for solving our discharge needs, such as public sanitation. For fans of science fiction, like myself, dealing with the problems of discharge is an interesting limit on our ability to cloak ourselves.

The second set of individual needs relates to the operating environment for humans. From a cosmic perspective, humans have an incredibly narrow operating range, which is provided for, without technological assistance, only in a few places even right here on Earth. Here are some of our basic operating needs:

Temperature. Our bodies can self-regulate their temperature within a limited range. We have a need to control our environment to help our bodies with temperature regulation. Common strategies to meet our temperature needs include shelter and clothing.

Pressure. Anybody who has gone diving knows that our bodies do not handle increased pressure around us very well. The same goes for decreased pressure (one of the reasons air travel is exhausting is that planes do not retain sea level pressure).

Light. Most humans would be hard pressed to do much of anything in complete darkness. The Bible introduces light right away with “Let there be light” in the third verse for the Book of Genesis. For the longest time the solution to our need for light was simply sunlight, but much of human ingenuity has gone into the creation of artificial light sources.

The third set of individual needs arises from dealing with a complex and ever changing environment. As we go through life we encounter challenges that we need to overcome. This results in three fundamental individual needs:

Healing. When we damage our body in some fashion it needs to heal. The human body comes equipped with extensive systems for self-healing including combating many foreign substances (including vomiting, diarrhea, antibodies). Beyond a certain range, the body needs external assistance to heal. Here too we have developed many solutions, and often group them under the term healthcare.

Learning. We are born quite, well, stupid. We even have to learn relatively basic skills such as walking and the use of tools. When we encounter a new situation, we need to learn how to deal with it. We group many of the strategies for solving the need for learning under the heading education, but other solutions include self study, experimenting (gaining experience) and parenting.

Meaning. As humans we have a profound psychological need for meaning in our lives. It is what keeps us going. Religion and religious beliefs have long been a key strategy for solving this need. As I have argued in the section on Humanism, there is an objective basis for human meaning rooted in knowledge. Another key strategy to solve this need comes from our interactions with other humans, including having others acknowledge our contributions to a project or simply our existence.

This last set of needs may strike you as being at a much higher level than the earlier needs. It is tempting to try and sort individual needs into a hierarchy, as Maslov did. That seems intuitively appealing but is misleading. All of these needs are essential. As a thought exercise, picture yourself in a spaceship and try to remove any of the above.

Collective Needs

Our collective needs by contrast arise from living together in societies and sharing space and resources. Meeting these needs is what allows human societies to survive and advance.

Reproduction. Individuals can survive without sex, but reproduction is a need for societies as a whole. As humanity we have already learned how to solve the need for reproduction without sex. In the future there may be altogether different solutions for reproduction in the sense of the continuation of a human society (whether here on Earth or elsewhere).

Allocation. Despite abundance in the digital realm, access to physical objects and resources has to be allocated. Take a chair as an example. Only one person can sit in a chair (comfortably) at a time. When there are multiple people we need a solution for allocating the chair between them. That's why allocation is a collective need. If you are by yourself you can sit on a chair whenever you want to as there is nobody else to take it up.

Motivation. This may seem like an individual concept but it exists as a collective need in the following sense: Societies need to motivate their members to carry out tasks and follow rules. Even the most primitive societies have solutions for this problem often in the form of rewards and punishments.

Coordination. Whenever there is more than a single human involved in any activity, there is a need for coordination among the participating humans. Take a simple meeting among two people as an example. In order for the meeting to take place they need to show up at the same place at the same time. We have developed many different communication and governance mechanisms to address this need.

Knowledge. As I have argued in the prior sections on Optimism and Humanism, this is the central collective human need. Without increased knowledge a society will encounter problems that it cannot solve and will be decimated as a result. History is full of examples of societies not having enough knowledge, such as the Easter Islanders or the Mayans. This is not about what any one individual has learned but rather about the body of knowledge that is accessible to society as a whole. Much of the later parts of World After Capital are about solutions for generating more knowledge faster.

These collective needs may strike you as overly abstract. But this is the logical result of identifying needs, instead of solutions. Governments and laws, for instance, are examples of solutions to some of these collective needs. But so are markets and firms and more recently networks and platforms.

Enablers

Now you might ask, what about energy? Don't we have a need for energy both individually and collectively? It would seem that individually we need energy to maintain the temperature of a house. Or that collectively we need energy to power our communications infrastructure. But as those two examples show, energy is not a direct human need (either individually or collectively). Instead it is an enabler of specific solutions to our needs. Some solutions will require more energy than others.

Here are four foundational enablers. I am listing them in the Needs section, as readers have at times proposed these as additional needs and I had in a prior versions included them among Collective Needs.

Energy. For the longest time humanity relied on direct sunlight as the primary source of energy. Since then we have developed many ways of generating energy, including better ways of capturing sunlight. Producing more energy and having it available in concentrated and highly regulated form via electricity has made many new solutions for human needs possible.

Resources. In early human history all resources were simply found in nature. Later we started both growing and extracting resources. Many modern solutions have been made possible by access to new kinds of resources. For instance, mobile phones give us new solutions to individual and collective needs. Building mobile phones is enabled in part by some esoteric raw materials, such as so-called rare-earth elements.

Transformation. Energy and resources alone are not enough though. To enable most solutions we need to figure out how to use energy to transform resources. This involves chemical and physical processes. Capital, as in physical capital such as machines, has been a crucial enabler for many new solutions to human needs. For instance, a knitting machine can transform yarns into clothing at high velocity. Clothing is one of our key solutions for maintaining the human operating environment.

Transportation. The final foundational enabler is the ability to move stuff (using stuff broadly to include people). This is another area in which we have made great progress over time, going from human powered transportation to animal powered to machine powered, including planes, trains and automobiles.

Again I have chosen these enablers at a high degree of abstraction on purpose. Coal-fired power plants provide energy (in the form of electricity) and so do solar panels today and nuclear fusion at some point in the future. These three examples have dramatically different characteristics but they all are fundamentally energy enablers.

This is my current working version of needs (and enablers). I have now revised this section fairly substantially for a second time. And while I fully expect further changes, I believe it now properly sets up my argument that there is sufficient productive capital in the world for meeting our individual and collective needs, including further development of the four enablers.

[pagh03thomassen-blog]

Preparing And Attaining Objectives The INTELLIGENT Way.

In the past, leisure time was actually certainly not thought of as an opportunity to veg out," yet as option to work toward one's enthusiasms as well as interests, an electrical outlet for the sides of a guy that were certainly not boosted in one's job. But first, complete acknowledgment: I have actually certainly never utilized on the internet platforms to find possible times. If you intend to receive medical, exceed the ultra low quantity illusionists and also technically do at your greatest at each exercise you are going to need to make use of psychophysiological feedback. Having a budget places limitations on just how much you will definitely spend on different types. A press + social show which is gone to by any person that's anyone within this business ... and also right now Buckets & Spades of course! Unhappy people have the tendency to shut one eye towards just about anything good in this globe in anxiety they may be sidetracked off just what's wrong. I wanted to chat with buddies about my writing, but accomplishing this was actually unwise due to the fact that this demanded a book-length description. At times the consistent just accommodates the spot so properly that individuals which need to know better don't provide you any thought at all. Our team can't create folks feel bad." That was actually that motivation that led her to reject her intuitiveness. Given that irritation is just one of the essential elements from Crohn's disease, individuals frequently utilize it as an all-natural anti-inflammatory. There is actually such a potential for clumsiness that I think being Facebook buddies before you have had at minimum a few (clean) dates is actually a bad tip.. The ability to bring folks and tasks to lifestyle could be established in other means, and fully grown attributes like private task, integrity, liberty, and self-constraint are actually hardly exclusive to the residential collection. And also keep in mind - a friend with benefits is not an one-night stand and he is certainly not a. stranger. Besides those 3 huge targets, I consistently possess the everyday target from learning something new every day whether through analysis or through speaking with other individuals. Having a female friend around you will automatically remedy this insecurity and also after you know her for a couple of weeks you won't also bear in mind how it feels to be tense around a woman. I delivered my friends and family house, travelled up the iron spiral staircase to the rooftop, as well as found the amount to the religion on my cellphone. Similarly, the chances of the Universe arriving in this particular problem are therefore reduced that our company should think twice about what this implies. I accept you that the excellent arise coming from the absolute most typical of spots; the excellent are those who choose not to stay as they are actually; the terrific are actually those that count on their effectiveness. Too often, people fill on their own up with academic levels because their genuine experience and also expert assets in the real world" are actually flimsy. This is actually not regarding you viciously amputating at friendly relationships, yet considering that are the absolute most crucial people in your life, and which you are visiting put initially.. To present, I fight with figuring out why my separation cost me so many pals. If the body and blood from Christ is actually provided to our team a spiritual food items, this stands up to main reason that this is actually the most close factor The lord could probably offer to an individual being still on earth. You might (however possibly do not) notification that this doorstop is actually molded like an Alvar Aalto Savoy vase which is actually since this was actually directed in an original jar which was actually after that pulverized to allow out the mold. They do not discover that there are literally billions of prospective friends available as well as great deals of folks that you are visiting get to know on your trip with lifestyle. If you want to be identified along with agoraphobia, your signs and symptoms have to comply with certain requirements listed in the American Psychiatric Affiliation's Diagnostic as well as Statistical Handbook from Mental illness (DSM). Here is actually a listing from reasons why individuals weblog and exactly how writing a blog could help your expert or private lifestyle. The harm to your credibility is actually two times as severe if people can not trust your phrase. It was shot like an online TV tension, offering this a sense of proximity, like you were seeing all these points, excellent as well as bad, happen to true people in real time. I've possessed folks look past me and direct inquiries to my coworker, just because he's a man that's virtually twice my grow older. Your supervisor or even employer might have you around to encounter your brand new co-workers, however even when they perform, they probably won't introduce you to everybody. Plastic braces have earlier been attempted in the 40/50's, yet developments including the renovation from innovation way that our experts now generally have a Sat Nav to show people how you can get teeth to the required shape. I have actually resided in a speak along with some of his other friends by means of somebody's gathering, I am actually certainly not shocked that everybody are actually being actually managed the same. If that's your type) that your buddy has pained your feelings is actually a vital action to emotional reconstruction, acknowledging to your own self (as well as to an individual close. That's only a matter of your time till you find someone as well as locate on your own in a relationship. According to the Mayonnaise Clinic, some people along with liver disease C do not need to have treatment considering that they possess merely slight liver oddities. In preschool, they are actually finding just what a friend is actually. In http://ayantalesprit-manger.info/ , friendships both grow and become extra difficult. The room is visiting be used for the boys as well as their close friends that will being available in to their teenage years not long. This is actually due to the fact that it is actually very easy making close friends when there is no have to satisfy the other, when you could be genuine as well as be on your own. I entered into fighting styles, and also there is actually a considerable amount of wonderful psychology there certainly, and a ton of wonderful bits and also details, however no true well organized method of thinking about de-escalating people. And if you can not keep the axe from acquiring near to your foot, you are actually visiting appear like a details facing the girlfriend as well as her moms and dads. Another crucial details is to interact along with the people they interact along with too. Keep in mind that you are actually defending people and also expect that they'll have your back.

For Give Curry, a past specialist entertainer and currently qualified bike fitter, the answer was actually preparing out on a monster cycling experience along with 3 buddies along the Blue Spine Mountains at the asian end from the United States. Folks slouch as well as neglect to Like/Tweet/Pin unless you provide a great easy switch to push. What concerns very most is actually that you respect one another's viewpoint and point of views and also continue being friends regardless of the differences. They knew that that was actually a deal-breaker, yet they did just what folks right now are carrying out, which is, they mentioned, Yet! http://ayantalesprit-manger.info/avertissement-bioretin-de-test-et-de-lexperience-exposes-comme-faux/ 's also opportunity to cultivate new close friends; cultivate brand-new partnerships along with folks that are fully grown like you. Thy empire happened, thy will certainly be done on earth as it is in paradise." So as the dirt chooses this specific vote-casting cycle, permit's continue to wish that.

[your-dietician]

Psychotherapy With Students From Mainland China

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/psychotherapy-with-students-from-mainland-china/

Psychotherapy With Students From Mainland China

A wide cultural gap exists between Western-trained college mental health clinicians and mainland Chinese international college students, which we as clinicians attempt to bridge in counseling sessions. Our interventions aim to help these emerging adults cope with life in a different society, progress in their psychological maturation, and become their own individual while staying in connection with their family and culture of origin. In therapy, we delve into a number of languages beyond the spoken ones: the idiom of cognitive behavioral skills, the vocabulary of emotions, the physical symptoms of emotional distress, and the language of therapy itself. We take into account the student’s immigration history, and the sequelae of the multigenerational trauma wrought by the social upheaval of the Cultural Revolution and China’s one-child policy. Multicultural counseling competencies help us devise culturally appropriate interventions while guarding against imposing Western social expectations or stigmatizing differences in separation/individuation patterns in Asian families.1

Constituting the largest number of international students in the United States,2 mainland Chinese students underutilize counseling sessions. They are concerned about cultural stigma and have doubts about the efficacy of the treatment, and therefore often wait until they experience a crisis before reaching out for help.3 This struggle is well-depicted in the animated 8-minute movie “My First Sessions” by New York-based filmmaker Wendy Cong Zhao.4 The story follows Fan Jiang, who overcomes her initial hesitation to therapy and begins to open up to her therapist. Much to Jiang’s surprise she feels accepted, not judged. After completing her master’s degree in counseling in the US, Jiang is now co-leading a mental health start-up in China. In conversation with the authors, Jiang revealed that talking to strangers about interpersonal conflicts or psychological distress is not in the toolbox of an average Chinese individual. Even though young people in contemporary China have heard about psychological counseling, psychoeducation about the therapy process remains insufficient. They often have little experience in formulating mental health concerns in psychological terms and imagine talking about them to be unhelpful.

Case Vignette

For reasons of confidentiality, we changed any identifiable information in this composite case. The scenario describes a frequently encountered reaction in psychotherapy with many mainland Chinese international young adults. This can be understood in the context of several generalizable themes regarding this specific population. 

Mr L, a 19-year-old freshman from northern mainland China, had difficulty making friends in an American university. Even though his English was quite fluent, adjusting to American social customs (eg, saying hello to strangers, making small talk with unfamiliar schoolmates) was uncomfortable. He experienced these interactions as superficial, or fake. Unsure about how to connect socially, he felt isolated and homesick.

He presented to the counseling service of his college with symptoms of depression and anxiety. The intake coordinator informed him that he would be referred to a bilingual therapist, which he happily agreed to. During our first session, I greeted him in Mandarin, his native tongue. For reasons I later came to understand, the student responded in English. He explained that speaking Mandarin would be too painful for him because it reminded him of happier days back home. He stated his goal in therapy was to get advice on how best to overcome anxiety and self-criticism.

He was an only-child from an affluent family. During childhood, he was often left in the care of his grandparents or a nanny, while his parents were attending to their expanding business. At age 12, the family enrolled him in an international boarding school in China. Students in these private boarding schools are privileged. They can apply to overseas universities directly and do not have to prepare for the widely feared competitive Chinese local college entrance exam called Gao Kao.5 

In our second session, he spoke Mandarin. When asked about the language switch, he explained that he was feeling better and therefore did not mind speaking Mandarin. Our sessions continued in his native language but were peppered with English expressions.

He filled his therapy sessions with accounts of events and facts without acknowledging any personal feelings. My attempts to help him identify his thoughts and emotions were met with staunch resistance. As time went on, he became increasingly dismissive of my interventions, and criticized our efforts to identify feelings as “too Western” an approach. He believed that paying such close attention to emotions resulted in rampant rates of depression in the US and therefore should be avoided. He often denied feeling anything. He looked dysphoric and fell silent, because he was frustrated at not getting useful advice from the therapist. We found ourselves at an impasse.

Historical and Socio-cultural Factors in Mainland China

Social upheavals in 20th century China pushed millions of families into survival mode. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) forced one-third of Chinese youth to leave home for reeducation programs in rural areas.6 In addition, families suffered separation through other forms of forced labor or imprisonment. The mainland Chinese students in treatment with us were often unaware of how their families lived through decades of war, famine, and political terror, as their elders tried to protect them from the painful past. 

China’s one-child policy (1979-2015) ended only recently. The current cohort of mainland Chinese international college and graduate students in the US belong to the one-child generation. They are the sole carrier of the older generation’s hope for a more prosperous and successful future. Attending a prestigious university in the US is a dream come true for the parents and grandparents, helping them compensate for their own lost opportunities for higher education.

The decision of a Chinese family to enroll their young adult children in universities in the West, thousands of miles away from home, is motivated by a host of factors and often requires advance preparation in the student’s childhood. Many prosperous Chinese families choose to register their children in boarding schools at quite an early age, believing these schools to be educationally superior to day-schools. For children, it is adaptive to refrain from expressing sadness or anger about these separations from their parents dictated by cultural norms and economic ambition. Educational attainment is a filial obligation and economic exigency trumps yearning for family togetherness.

When boarding their children in this culturally normative fashion, the parents may not be aware of the unconscious repetition of the traumatic family separations they themselves were subjected to during the Cultural Revolution.7

The Complexities of Acculturation in Late-Adolescence

The student in our vignette entered an international boarding school when he was an early adolescent. He was launched on an educational trajectory aimed toward higher education overseas. His lack of control in this preordained decision-making process resulted in sadness, homesickness, and grief about being exiled from his familiar community. These sentiments would be worth exploring in therapy; however, the student had never been permitted to question his parents’ plans for him. He expressed his anxiety by being frustrated with what western psychotherapy had to offer.

Acculturation to a foreign society while transitioning from late adolescence to adulthood and forming one’s identity is extremely challenging. Chinese young adults grow up in a quasi-monolithic authoritarian society; they are typically not encouraged to express emotions or differences of opinions but are educated to function as a cog in the collective social machine. Being asked to articulate their personal reactions in the service of individual freedom leaves them in a state of identity and value confusion.

The most frequently encountered psychological and psychiatric issues in mainland Chinese students are social isolation, mood and anxiety disorders, eating disorders,3 as well as low self-esteem, procrastination, and maladaptive perfectionism. Acculturation stress can trigger these issues or exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions. Unfamiliarity with talk therapy and mental health stigma constitutes another barrier to treatment. Asian students in general and only-children in particular are hesitant to reach out for professional help and prefer a more directive style.8

The Many Languages Used in Therapy

In dynamically-oriented psychotherapy, we explore childhood memories, which can easily cause a loyalty conflict for the student. The centuries-old Confucian practice of stipulating filial piety, obedience, and indebtedness to the parents is still at the center of a child’s moral development in modern China.9 Given these cultural and moral tenets, any questioning of the parents’ authority might provoke feelings of shame and guilt that the student needs to defend against. Seeking advice from a professional authority figure rather than confronting family conflicts aids the students in protecting their loyalty to family and culture of origin. 

The vast majority of mainland Chinese students have sufficient English-language skills to get them through language tests and coursework. They acquire English as a second language from textbooks primarily as a practical tool for professional activities, not for the description of emotions. With family and friends, they still speak Chinese, think in Chinese, and use Chinese words to describe experiences. Speaking English in therapy will require a translation in mind.

Although having therapy sessions in one’s native language is a major advantage in a multicultural context, it is not a magic wand. In addition to the linguistic translation, Chinese students also have to reconceptualize psychological concepts in order to communicate their inner world to a counselor. Studies have found that non-English languages have fewer words describing emotions, and that cultural-specific variance is significant.10 Chinese culture rarely encourages one to verbalize one’s feelings. There is also evidence suggesting that Chinese parenting style promotes less emotional valence to memory sharing.11

Many Chinese students rely on somatic complaints to draw attention to their emotional distress. They often present to primary care physicians but are reluctant to acknowledge underlying psychological suffering. In therapy, they often defensively bypass their emotions and define their experience as culturally normative. By way of describing their quandaries, they may quote 1 of the very popular idiomatic Chinese sayings called Cheng Yu.12 These idioms are usually quotations from ancient Chinese literature. Used in a psychological context their meaning can be blurry and is reminiscent of proverbs or cultural clichés. As Mr L liked to say, “Shun Qi Zi Ran,” or “go with the flow.” This saying is derived from a concept of Taoism, which he cited as a reason for not wanting to make any decisions that could elicit conflicts. However, therapy can feel stuck in the superficial if this culturally normative defense is not further explored.

Sometimes, the shared native language and cultural knowledge can hinder, rather than facilitate the progress of treatment. The role of speaking the mother tongue in a foreign country, together with the specific associations and transference issues that it elicits is a topic worth in-depth examination. Understandably, recent immigrants would prefer counselors who speak their native language. While this preference may be motivated by convenience, communicating in one’s native language can generate intense and possibly overwhelming affective states. Psychoanalysts who treated Holocaust survivors post-WWII in German or Yiddish highlighted the association of the mother tongue with the emotional weight of early childhood experiences and attachment.13 Later psycholinguistic studies also found that emotional and physiological reactions to taboo words are much stronger in the native language.14

A native-language-speaking therapist also adds more than his or her language skills to the therapy. Invariably the students will wonder about the therapist’s immigration history and their political stance. Because expatriate communities typically are small, Chinese students will benefit from a specific reassurance of confidentiality.

For students who are fluent in both Chinese and English, the choice of language or a language switch can carry meanings beyond what is communicated semantically. Analyzing the meanings of native words in the second language (ie, English) facilitates exploring topics that might be traumatic or too emotionally charged to discuss in the original language. In the vignette above, it was tremendously helpful to use English to carry us through our first session when Mr L was overwhelmed by sadness and grief.

Hopefully, the case presented here will inspire therapists to become proficient in multicultural counseling techniques. The Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development has operationalized multicultural counseling competencies.1 Counselors are encouraged to become knowledgeable about the cultural background of mainland Chinese students, who (especially at the beginning of therapy) might best respond to cognitive behavioral interventions. For a bilingual therapist, it is crucial to examine the impact of the native language on therapeutic relationships. Simply matching the student with a therapist who is a native Chinese speaker might not be a universal solution, because this commonality is not sufficient to create a therapeutic connection. Depending on their immigration or trauma history, students will have specific preferences. In university orientation sessions, mainland Chinese international students might respond well to bilingual handouts to educate them about process of counseling services. Peer-to-peer outreach by other Chinese students might increase the recently arrived students’ ability to navigate the new society and make them confident enough to seek help. Finally, counseling staff might suggest that university student services create affinity groups that are not clinically focused.

Acknowledgement

Drs Qi and Kring acknowledge the contributions of the College Student Committee in the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP): Alexandra Ackerman, MD; Helene Keable, MD; Malkah Notman, MD; Lorraine Siggins, MD; David Stern, MD; and Julia Shiang, PhD.

Dr Qi is a psychiatry resident at NYU School of Medicine. Dr Kring is a college mental health psychiatry specialist at NYU Student Health Center.

References

1. Arredondo P, Toporek R, Brown SP, et al. Operationalization of the multicultural counseling competencies. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development. 1996;24(1):42-78.

2. Institute of International Education. Infographics and Data – United States. 2019. Accessed January 19, 2021. https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insights/Project-Atlas/Explore-Data/United-States

3. Zheng K, West-Olatunji CA. Mental Health Concerns of Mainland Chinese International Students in the United States: A Literature Review. VISTAS Online. 2016. Accessed January 19, 2021. https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/vistas/article_20fcbf24f16116603abcacff0000bee5e7.pdf?sfvrsn=62a9442c_4

4. Zhang H. “My First Sessions” Explores the Relationship Between Therapy and Culture. The New Yorker. July 29, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/my-first-sessions-explores-the-relationship-between-therapy-and-culture

5. Liu GXY, Helwig CC. Autonomy, social inequality, and support in Chinese urban and rural adolescents’ reasoning about the Chinese college entrance examination (Gaokao). Journal of Adolescent Research. 2020.

6. Zhou X, Hou L. Children of the cultural revolution: The state and the life course in the People’s Republic of China. American Sociological Review. 1999;64:12-36.

7. Brassard MR, Chen S. Boarding of upper middle class toddlers in China. Psychology in the Schools. 2005;42(3):297-304.

8. Yoon E, Jepsen DA. Expectations of and attitudes toward counseling: A comparison of Asian international and US graduate students. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. 2008;30(2):116-127.

9. Ho DY-F. Filial piety, authoritarian moralism, and cognitive conservatism in Chinese societies. Genetic, Social, General Psychology Monographs. 1994;120(3):347��365.

10. Moore CC, Romney AK, Hsia TL, Rusch CDJAA. The universality of the semantic structure of emotion terms: Methods for the study of inter‐and intra‐cultural variability. American Anthropologist. 1999;101(3):529-546.

11. Wang Q. Chinese socialization and emotion talk between mothers and children in native and immigrant Chinese families. Asian Am J Psychol. 2013;4(3):185.

12. Wu C. On the cultural traits of Chinese idioms. Intercultural Communication Studies. 1995;5:61-82.

13. Greenson R. The mother tongue and the mother. Int J of Psychoanal. 1950;31:18-23.

14. Harris CL, Gleason JB. Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics. 2003;24(4):561-579.

Source link