#I am going back to my roots back when I had an entirely different url

[bigbad-tardis]

Have you tried being 14, the final chapter of the manga you’ve poured your life into is finally out, you’re on vacation, everything is right with the world, you start reading the chapter and all the ships you’ve been waiting for are basically canon… and there it is the moment where your fav characters are finally going to admit their feelings and then instead of “I love you” the words you’ve been waiting for, she is invited on a 100 years quest???

Because I have and it’s been a very long time since then and I haven’t recovered yet.

[cursedfortune]

♛ ME LOL

[ ♛ ] send me a url and i'll tell you the following; @kneelbeforeagod

my opinion on;

character in general: What beautiful, powerful green bean did you put into my soup here?? Zamasu (and Black) were characters that I always had strong opinions for and was disappointed in seeing the execution of. But damn, do I love them still. Especially in the context of DB they are such unique villains. I both cheer on for them to get some fucking help but also want to knock them out cold. Or put them in the evil containment jar and shake them up like, enjoy, we call this ride the scrambler or some shit. how they play them: I love how you write this boy/these boys. You never neglect Zamasu's roots but you don't allow them to diminish his ambition. I love the thought put into Zamasu vs Black, the differences between them that you've elaborated on. From feelings to perspectives to how they go about things due to the differences in their bodies now - how that change alone has fractured both versions into being entirely their own. I enjoy seeing how you explore his competence, what emotions he is capable of but simultaneously unable to handle, or the sheer madness he has thrown himself into because of one obsession or another. I fucking LOVE seeing what provokes him to make each and every decision, whether it's impulsive or thought out - and that you take the time frame the situation and act accordingly. Each personal headcanon you've shared with me so far I adore. There's nothing that I don't love about your portrayal, okay?? the mun: Ilu. I've had a blast talking and getting to know you, shooting the shit for a while. You've always been max chill to get along with and I enjoy our banter so much, you destroy me every time we chat sagdfhgfj my god. But like, we vibe. We simultaneously progressed naturally and backwards all at once and I'm so okay with that. Being friends is real good and I enjoy you not just for rp stuff but as a person, too. I appreciate your support and checking in on me and just all around being fucking rad, especially when I'm still a mess of a thing trying to socialize. You're always clear in expressing yourself which makes things really fucking nice and I never am second guessing shit. You're just swell, wonderful and real cute and fuck you if you disagree dude x'D

do i;

follow them: Hell yes. You were one of the first peeps I followed and chatted with when I came back to the rpc on here on my prior blog. And defo one of the first when I switched to this one. rp with them: Yes. Hell yes. want to rp with them: Always. I feel like our potential for content is just endless, ahahaha. ship their character with mine: UHHH I guess we do?? I love it even if I have no name for the mess they are. I love how we just cracked our knuckles at first and were like, "let fused Zamasu go fucking off cause Mortem can regen and take it" and it has grown into different au's, an entire timeline, backstory, alternate endings. Like. These two and their back and forth of punishing one another, him trying to kill her off for good and Mortem trying to exhaust him of this concept into potentially restoring some aspect of him that could be a decent god. Since... all sentient life is wiped out. Or being threatened, in earlier plot points. Like, it's such a harrowing journey for the two of them and they are both villains to one another. Which is absolutely hilarious because a lot of their views and points and efforts are so similar, expect how they go about it and the extreme negativity he ends up drowning in makes their path part. Boi. I just love seeing what new reactions she gets from him. But likewise, the rawness he pulls from her is also wild to me. There are no games between them and I love it. Even the content with Black is just a disaster I live for. And any of our stuff that isn't on the verge of murder and has more of an emotional weight to it is just fascinating and HURTS ME because goddamn. I hate what we've done if only because I love it so much x'D

what is my;

overall opinion: Good. You're a good bean. You write good things. You've put a lot of heart and soul into your content. Even your other bloggo is fucking good shit. I focused on these two since they are your pride and joy tho. I'm enjoying how our content has developed, friendship has grown and I just have a good time with you. I'm thankful you've been supportive and I'm always here to support in return. Thank you for spending time with me and writing with me and just everything. ;////;

[agir1ukn0w]

Attention Reylo Fam!

After hearing some disturbing rumors on social media that Lucasfilm may be considering pulling back the release of The Rise of Kylo Ren in order to change some major plot details of Ben Solo’s journey to becoming Kylo Ren (specifically his involvement in the destruction of Luke’s academy), I have decided to write a letter to Lucasfilm asking them, if the rumors are indeed true, not to do so. Obviously it is more than likely that the things I’ve been hearing are no more than supposition, given that I’ve only seen them on Tumblr, however I would still like to voice some of my concerns and the collective concerns of the fandom to Lucasfilm if there is a small chance they will receive my letter and take it seriously.

I have just finished my first draft, and I wanted to post it here so that you may read it and give me suggestions on things I should change or add on in the comments. I value the input of my reylo family, and I want to be as truthful and accurately representative of the feelings of the collective fandom as I can. I will post the draft below the cut, and also, if you would like your name to be included in the signing of the letter (either your blog url or, if you are comfortable, your real name), please let me know and I will add you to the list.

Dear Disney Lucasfilm Ltd.,

I would like to preface this letter by saying think you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all the wonderment and inspiration that you have given me these past four years of my life. These movies, tv shows, books, etc. have been a cornerstone of my cultural upbringing since before I can remember and I personally believe that Star Wars is the single greatest tale in the history of the world. I thank you with all my heart for carrying it forward so honorably.

That being said, I still very much believe in this story’s potential to be a beacon of empowerment for those who feel so disenfranchised and even oppressed in the real world. I still believe that this story is capable of making children look up and believe in themselves and their power to make a difference.

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand the reasons why you made the choices you made with regards to Episode IX: TROS. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. No work of art can possibly please everyone, and I would also like to thank the cast and crew for working so hard and putting their entire souls into these projects these past several years.

This has all been a roundabout way of coming to the main point of my letter to you. Specifically, this letter concerns the character Ben Solo.

I’m sure that you have been hearing and seeing a variety of heated emotions on social media concerning the fate of this character. The first time I met him way back in TFA, I knew that he was someone special; even then I felt a very deep connection with his struggle and began to root for him. The arc that you gave him in TROS was beautiful, and everything I really wanted to see. I’d been hoping for his redemption for a long time, and to see it so beautifully acted on screen was truly inspiring. Although I must say that I really could have done without his death, for the purpose of this particular letter, I will digress from that opinion, even though I know for a fact that I am not the only one who holds it. At the end of the day, Ben’s storyline was fulfilled because he overcame the darkness within him, helped Rey to defeat the ultimate Evil, and brought her back to life with his love. I couldn’t have asked for more.

However, I have been hearing rumors on social media which are very concerning. A few people have suggested that Lucasfilm plans to pull back the release of the comic The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule in order to change some of the major details of Ben Solo’s story to better fit with what happened in the movie. Specifically, I am referring to the very important fact that Ben actually didn’t kill his fellow students in cold blood and that he didn’t set his uncle’s academy on fire. I don’t know if this rumor is even true, and I pray that it isn’t. The fact that I have as yet only seen these rumors on social media leads me to believe that there is little probability to it.

However, I cannot convey to you the depth of my despair should they turn out to be true. And I know that I am not alone. The fandom has already seen the plates, clearly showing that it was not Ben who set fire to his uncle’s academy. It would be a huge mistake to completely redo them now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that you would lose the good faith and trust of many people in this fanbase.

I have written this letter to implore you all at Lucasfilm, if these rumors are indeed true, to please rethink your strategies; Speak with your fans directly, understand their viewpoints and how important this character is to so many. I won’t tell you how much I personally love and care for the character of Ben Solo so as not to take up too much space in the letter, but there are many others who love him feel a much deeper connection with the character than I. Should you chose to do this, you would not only be drastically changing important details of the character’s life, but you would also be taking his own past from him. So many dedicated fans will feel disenfranchised. Furthermore, your sales would go down drastically. I cannot tell you how devastated the vast majority of your fans would be. We all want justice for Ben Solo, and if we cannot have it through him living a long and happy life, we deserve to see it through the truthful telling of his past.

Both Disney and Lucasfilm have been major centers of hope and inspiration for me throughout my life. The messages that you send, that even those who have made terrible decisions in their lives can be gravely misunderstood by others, and that they can always make things right, is extremely important to me. And the story of Ben Solo is one which I have followed closely since I saw The Force Awakens for the first time. I believed in his ability to redeem himself even before the information that what happened at Luke’s academy wasn’t his fault came out. Even when it was assumed that he had killed his fellow students, I believed in him because that is what Star Wars is about. Belief, hope, and understanding. In The Last Jedi, Leia says, “Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night.” I have held on to that message ever since I heard it, and it has gotten me through many tough, emotional times in my life. I know that you respect your fans, and we as a fandom have not given up hope that you will do what is right for these characters.

Once again, before I close out this letter, please accept my deepest gratitude for all that this company has done to bring Star Wars into a new generation, inspiring us to go forward and create our own stories and modern myths. I am, and always will be proud to be a Star Wars fan.

Sincerely,

…………

Let me know what you guys think, I am excited to mail this letter!

Peace, Love, and Reylo💜

[simonalkenmayeris-still-dead]

That Post (2/???)

Just between you and me and everyone reading this post, I would not have started with “how this began”.  I’d have got straight to the point.  Nobody really wants to read the backstory, they want to know the terrible things I’ve done and the horrible consequences that are going to come of my actions.

Simon says he asked me why I used his name in my url.  That’s not true.  He asked whether I was afraid of trademark infringement, and only just fell short of an explicit threat to take me to court.

In the time between me starting to write this and his followers spamming my blog, he’s written another post alleging that I had some sort of contact with him prior.  That’s also untrue.  He might be mistaking me for another tumblr user with a similar name, but I did clarify that I was not that person.

I expect Simon’s writer was assuming I would be so intimidated that I would back off.  They definitely didn’t expect to be speaking to someone who’d already considered that they might be threatened with legal action and had checked to make sure that what they were doing was perfectly legal.

I voluntarily told him why the blog is called Simon Alkenmayer is dead, because it seemed to be making him upset.  You can see the entire exchange here.

When Simon says he “asked” me to stop using his name, he means he asked me to stop, after he tried to threaten legal action.

Simon then lists a bunch of reasons he told me for needing to change the blog name.  And this is true, but none of them are particularly realistic.

To put this in perspective, I need to emphasise that Simon is not a real person.  He is a character someone made up and is roleplaying as.

But sure, I’m using his intellectual property.  I was not at the time using his intellectual property, aside from referencing his name on my blog, which is to be expected, considering I was using my blog to record his responses to me.

Even if we agree that I might end up in the public eye, and I might make missteps, which he seems to take for granted (flattering), there’s no reason to believe we would be confused.  For one thing, he is a fictional character whereas I am a real person.  For another, nobody is getting Michael B Jordan, actor, mixed up with Michael Jordan, basketballer, and they only have one letter difference in their names.

And the dangerous, angry people who target Simon are part of his plotline.  If they exist, it’s as weirdos trying to prove he’s not real, and have no reason to target me, since I also don’t believe he’s real.

Then, instead of calling me The Fool, or even just Fool, as it says on my blog and which would actually be kinda funny, he lets everyone know he’s going to refer to me as “isdead”.  This person thinks they’re a trans ally but they can’t even figure out how to use the correct name? Obviously, he’s trying to copy the fact that I’ve said I’ll refer to his writer as Si, which I only did because I need a way to distinguish between the character and the writer, and I really want to give Kristina the benefit of the doubt here.

But mainly, I want to point out that the sentence where he does this begins with the word heretofore.  Simon’s writer probably thought it was a suitably old sounding word, and it really is. Unfortunately, it means “up until now” not “from now on”.  He really should have used henceforth.

It’s excessively picky, and I’m only mentioning it because Simon lived during the time when these words would have been used.  And later on in this rant, he complains that one of the reasons people hate him is because he never breaks character.  Except that he breaks character all the time.

I’d like to be clear that I’ve never said that I used Simon’s name in homage.  I’ve said it was a reference.  If I have used the word homage, I would have been referring to a homage to Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, not a homage to Simon.

But I don’t think I’ve ever used that word, it implies a level of interest in Simon that I’ve never had.  I think he’s used it here because he likes to say and imply I run this blog as an attempt to lash out after he didn’t pay me attention I thought I deserved.

Simon then tries to accuse me of not caring about his feelings. Which is true.  Simon is a fictional character and I do not care about his feelings because like the character, they don’t exist.

His writer is certainly very angry about me using Simon’s name, but they’ve made a choice.  They have decided that it’s more important to them to remain anonymous than it is to stop me using the name.

When I’ve said that I have a right to use Simon’s name, it’s merely in the way anyone can use any name.  Simon’s name is not trademarked and you can’t copyright a name.

He’s then gone on to try to explain the original conversation, which I’ve already explained above, so I’m not going to cover it again.

I don’t see why Simon is trying to stain my character by saying I called him a liar, since he admits he did say the wrong thing.  I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume someone is lying if they threaten you with legal action that they can’t go through with.

Simon then tries to assert that the pen name is actually protected anyway, which is simply untrue.  I’m not attempting to profit off this blog, and libel does not cover products, or fictional characters.

It’s also worth noting that libel must be untrue, which I don’t think anything on my blog is, or I wouldn’t be writing it.

Simon goes on to say that he blocked me because I was lashing out in a negative way, but I was just refuting what he was saying.  I know I’m not the only person who he’s blocked because Simon didn’t want his followers to see any inconvenient truths.

I wasn’t actually openly hostile to Simon for a long time, although I doubt he sees it that way.  I used to go to his blog and ask anonymous questions, and then reblog the screenshots to my own blog to point out the inconsistencies in his characterisation or the conflict in what he said, and what my research had produced.

When I first created this blog, I wasn’t at all interested in proving anything about Simon, I was interested in the experiment, and how well Simon’s writer had researched the character.  That’s one of the reasons I quickly lost interest in him, because it seems they don’t even do a cursory wikipedia search on most things.

I haven’t sent an ask to Simon since September of this year.

Simon also references his IP tracker as though it lets him know when I’m sending him asks.  Either he’s bluffing, or he doesn’t have one.  If Simon had my IP address, he would know that the three other people he’s referenced in this rant aren’t me.

It’s convenient for Simon to say that I think he’s a villain because he didn’t want me to use his name. What could be more petty? In actual fact, I think he’s probably well meaning and more dangerous because of it.

He then goes on to list a number of things I’ve allegedly done, that prove my blog is a hate blog – is this the thing I’m being called out for?

It seems to me that the thing Simon dislikes about my blog, aside from the name, is that I don’t run it the way he wants.

He himself says, in his FAQ, that to interact with the experiment, you don’t have to consume anything that isn’t free. So it’s interesting that he’s suddenly accusing me of not reading enough of his book.

Simon thinks that his blog isn’t literature, his followers seem to think it’s not literature, but it is still an interactive storytelling medium.  That’s what he’s using it for.  Simon’s opinion doesn’t change that the blog is part of his canon.

For someone whose writing is fairly average, Simon is very good at using emotive language when he wants something.  His blog is a community, the rest of the internet is a cesspool.  One that I’ve been rooting around in, apparently.

What actually happened is that I was sent an anonymous tip off which I then investigated.  And I didn’t “accuse” Kristina Meister of anything other than being the person behind Simon.

And I’m not sure you can call it fielding mean spirited asks when those asks are about Simon.  What the person writing Simon, and what many of his followers seem not to understand, is that I’m critiquing a fictional character.  There’s no reason for me to tell people not to send asks pointing out Simon’s flaws, because Simon is part of the fiction.  He’s part of the critique.

And if the person writing Simon doesn’t understand that distinction, they probably need to take a bit of a break.

The reason I’ve not brought forth a single argument that gives Simon pause, is because nobody can. Regardless of what they say or even what they think about themselves, I don’t think the person who writes Simon is open to persuasion. I’m not writing this blog for Simon’s benefit, I never have been.

You can see it in his attempts to paraphrase me.  I don’t think Simon’s antisemitic for referencing the lizard people conspiracy, I think he’s antisemitic because in reaction to the observation about antisemitic tropes in his work, he doubled down and referenced the lizard people conspiracy in an attempt to lure me into sending him angry asks.

Which I didn’t do, but other people did, and he thinks those people are me.  Thus, why I say he probably doesn’t have an IP tracker.

The reason I don’t engage with Simon using logic is because there is no point, and even if there were, I don’t think he would understand.  I have studied logic, and his writer doesn’t even bother to google historical periods he allegedly lived through.  Why would I waste my time with that?

I don’t hate Simon, I just don’t think he’s a real person, and I treat him as accordingly.  That’s allegedly what is experiment is investigating, but he interprets it as hate.

[authenticcadence18]

30 Questions About Me

THANKS FOR THE TAG @bugaboo-n-bananoir ILY!!!!

(Nick)name: Cadence

gender: cis female

Star sign: Pisces

Height: uhhhhh I am not sure, it’s taller than 5ft at least

Time: night! (Well I wrote most of this last night, but now it’s the evening of the next day!)

Birthday: well I’m a Pisces, so my birthday is between Feb 19th and march 20th!

Fave band/group: Pentatonix! Or For King and Country. Or the piano guys, the vitamin string quartet, Voctave.....also Phineas and the Ferbtones👌

Fave solo artists: I really like Lauren Daigle, and Jackie Evancho used to be my FAVE. Aaand idk if this counts but Michael Giacchino! love his scores, especially the score for Inside Out. There’s also this guy called Clay Kramer on YouTube who makes KK Slider covers of popular music, his stuff gives me so much seratonin😅

Song Stuck in my Head: Well I’m listening to music rn and “I’m Me” from Phineas and Ferb is on so I’ll say that! (I’ll revisit this one when I finish the list and update it with whatever song i’m listening to/is stuck in my head then) (ok the music has since been turned off and now I have “Status Quo” from High School Musical stuck in my head so! There ya go!) (now it is the next day, and I’ve got “when the party’s over” stuck in my head...i think these three songs are an accurate reflection of my taste in music🤣)

Last Movie: uhhhhh oh yeah, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! It was SO GREAT because Jay Baruchel plays the main character (and the main character is super awkward), so I felt like I was watching Hiccup from the How To Train Your Dragon franchise learn magic and it was GLORIOUS. And also Nicholas Cage is great. And I liked the love interest in the movie as well!! She had a role to play in the story and felt authentic and genuine, which I appreciated!

Last Show: ok well the last show I watched by myself was Phineas and Ferb! Specifically, the episode with the Mardi Gras block party and then the one where Candace and Stacy compete in an obstacle course against Isabella and Ginger (omg wAIT ginger and Stacy are sisters and Isabella and Candace are GOING to be sisters mY HEART I—AH🥺). I hadn’t watched those episodes in forever, so they were really fun to revisit! I think the last actual show I watched was Kids Baking Championship or something, lol. (Those kids are AMAZING. So skilled!)

When i created this blog: November 2019! It was riiiight after the season 3 finale of miraculous aired and absolutely wrecked my emotions. I had some fanfic written that I’d never posted and had been thinking about making a tumblr/ao3 for awhile, and seeing the finale made me finally go, “.....you know what, yeah. The finale is aired, no more spoilers.....it’s time to make a blog.” So I did! And I posted my first fic! And I’m so happy i did :)

What Do I Post: a bunch of multi fandom stuff XD. This blog started off as 90% Miraculous, 10% other fandoms I like...but now it’s just kind of a hodgepoge of my favorite fandoms (with a focus on Phineas and Ferb, lol). I reblog a lot of posts, and then I post original stuff too! I write fanfic, nowadays for Phineas and Ferb but for Miraculous in the past (and probably in the future!), I draw art (mostly Phinabella art because I’ve been drawing them since i was 11 and it feels good to return to my roots), and OCCASIONALLY I will write an analysis post (I’ve got one in the works rn actually 👀), attempt to make a meme, or dip my toe into salt just SLIGHTLY before quickly backing away, lol. If I were to list the fandoms I post about in the order of how frequently I post about them, I’d probably say: Phineas and Ferb, Miraculous....and thennnnn everything else is pretty random and depends on the day, lol.

Last thing i googled: Jay Baruchel 😂. Couldn’t remember how to spell his last name!

Other blogs: this is my only blog! Sometimes I think about making a separate blog for my art and writing, but I am not sure if I should or not....maybe I will someday, but idk. I also have an AO3 for fanfic and an Instagram for art! All are under the name “authenticcadence18.”

Do I get asks: sometimes, yeah!! Sometimes I reblog ask games/prompts and get some asks for those (I’ve got so many prompts in my inbox I want to write/draw things for...ah it’s fine, I’ll get to it eventually😅), and sometimes lovely people will leave thoughts or nice messages in my inbox🥺💕. I’ve got a specific tag for all those nice messages so I can read back over them whenever I need a boost!

Why this url: it’s a music pun! When a song/section of a piece of music ends with a dominant chord resolving to a tonic chord (if you’ve read a certain fic of mine you should know allll about dominant and tonic chords👀🤣), it’s called an authentic cadence! There are different kinds of cadences, and authentic ones are my favorite. One example of this is “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I also use this blog to be my authentic, fandom-loving self! So I like authentic cadences, and also, I’m Cadence and using this blog to be authentic! Woo! (And 18 is just my favorite number, lol) I’m glad I ended up choosing a name that doesn’t tie to a specific fandom becaaaaaause this ended up being a multi fandom blog!

Following: 232!!

Followers: 292!!! (THANKS SO MUCH Y’ALL ILY 💕)

Average amount of sleep: wellllll for the past week and a half I was sick so I was probably getting 9ish hours a night (because I would sleep in really late, lol). but NOW? In my immediate future? I suspect my average amount of sleep is going to go down because I’m really bad about staying up late even when I have to get up early😅. Hoping to be good about getting at least 7ish hours a night!

Lucky number: 18! But y’all probably already guessed that, lol.

Instruments: my voice, piano, ukulele, viola (but it’s been a HOT minute), aaaand i used to be able to play guitar but then I got a ukulele and forgot all the guitar chords. (I also dabble in songwriting! I primarily use voice and piano when writing music.)

What I’m wearing: my favorite sweatshirt (that was last night, rn I have on a tanktop), some leggings, and socks!

Dream job: I’m currently learning to be a teacher, and I LOVE teaching and working with kids so that is definitely a job I’m really excited about!!! I would also love to portray characters at Disney or something (well, maybe not at Disney because I hear they’re strict, but like....I want to be Rapunzel or Anna or something, that would be so fun). OR, I would LOVE to work in tv animation somehow, be it voice acting, writing scripts/music, and/or story boarding. basically if I could do what Dan and Swampy did for Phineas and Ferb/Milo Murphy’s Law, I would LOVE THAT. (Especially the writing music part. Getting to write music for established characters and get PAID for it would be SO COOL.!.!.!) Also I think it would be so fun to write Disney storybooks! Like, those books that are about Cinderella baking a cake or Ariel befriending a seahorse, stuff like that. Those brought me a ton of joy as a child!

Dream trip: I want to visit alllll the Disney parks someday😅. (Not right now because, ya know, Covid...but someday!)

Fave food: uhhh i really like pizza. And popcorn. Also hummus and guacamole!

nationality: American

Fave songs: “Times” by Tenth Avenue North; “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (I made an entire playlist of just this song when I first started writing my fic of the same name, so I like the original and a ton of covers of it!), “Show Yourself” from Frozen II, “What Might Have Been” from Phineas and Ferb (and lots of other songs from that show, i made a whole post about that once but I can’t find it, oof); “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle; “Thank You” by Pentatonix; “I See the Light” from Tangled; “Your Hands” by JJ Heller; “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran.....i like a loooot of songs so this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think that’s good for now, LOL! (As soon as I post this I’m going to remember another song I love, lol)

last book: I got the book Unbirthday for Christmas! It’s basically Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, but if she’d never gone to wonderland and things went horribly wrong there. (I think, I’m not that far into it yet, lol)

Top 3 fictional universes I’d love to live in: 1. DANVILLE, PLS. Especially as a kid, I SO would’ve loved to hang out with Isabella and Phineas and the rest of the gang! Danville is so vibrant and unique and people are always randomly breaking into song there, that’s my kind of place! 2. Fairytopia (from the Barbie movies!) because I could be a fairy OR a mermaid OR BOTH and eat seeweed to breathe underwater even if I wasn’t a mermaid. Like, that’s the dream right there. (I’ve always loved mermaids and fairies, lol!) 3. Maybe San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6? All of the technology in that universe is really cool! And I would love to eat a noodle burger, lol .

Oh! That’s the last one! Wow! This was so FUN!!!!!!! Thanks again for the tag, Maddy!!!! :)

I’ll taaaag @sketchy-panda @macaronsforchat @simplynewyorkbound @inkjackets and anyone else who’d like to do this! (And pls don’t feel pressured to play at all, or answer all of the questions! I was definitely vague with a few of my answers, lol)

[saltpepperbeard]

A Jotato’s THG Story (novel?)

So a few days ago, the lovely @everlarkedalways asked me to Weave My THG Tale™. And, in being VERY on brand in regards for my THG Story, I’m late to the party lol! Mostly because of work, partly because I was avoiding Ballad spoilers, and a tad bit because...I’m a potato. BUT, now that I am free of any large projects and finally have Ballad in my hands, I’m finally able to look past my potato roots and talk about how a certain wATER POTATO ARCHER CHANGED MY LIFE lmao.

Ara has jokes though, let me tell you. “Keep it short” l m a o; THIS IS ABOUT TO BE A NOVEL AND WE KNOW IT. ARE YOU READING BALLAD? HERE’S A NEW 500 PAGE BOOK FOR YOU TBH-

I’ve told this story a few times before, but it’s always delightful to look back on things and see all the twists and turns I’ve experienced with this franchise. The most notable being, I started out HATING Hunger Games lol!

I was in ninth grade when THG started to become like, a global phenomenon. Everyone was reading it, everyone was talking about it, and it was everywhere. And for whatever reason, instead of actually sitting down and, idk, GIVING IT A TRY LMAO, my reaction instead was to DESPISE IT. Guess it was that edgy, irate, “I’m ABOVE the general masses ha look at me,” fresh-out-of-middle-school mentality. And also, my justification for hating it so much was along the lines of, “Wow it’s just a series about kids killing each other? WHAT’S THE APPEAL???”

Which like fjlksjdksds...If I could look back on my early 2012 self?

She had no idea what was in store for her lmao.

Anyway, the premiere of the movie came and went, and I was still hard set in my ways. THAT WAS, until that same summer. I can’t exactly remember which clips I stumbled upon first? But I know I came across the Joshifer+Liz Banks interview, and also a ton of Perfectly Legal Movie Clips™ on YouTube. Both of which silently chained my soul without me realizing LMAO. I remember thinking that the main actors were so cute and played off each other well (AGAIN LMAO, GIRL, BIG STORM COMING), and also remember being totally intrigued by all the clips I watched. It was mainly clips of Katniss in the arena, and I think it made me realize that wow hey, there’s an ACTUAL STORY HERE, WITH A FEMALE PROTAGONIST NO LESS.

The story gets a tad fuzzy for me here, but I do believe I got the books and quickly read through them shortly after I essentially watched the entire movie on YouTube through clips jdksljdks. I can’t really recall what I thought about the books really? Because, I think I BREEZED through them. I was so excited that I just ZOOMED TF THROUGH. I inhaled the series in one GIANT GULP. I think I even read THG in a single day jdlsjklaads. It definitely wasn’t a cautious read through to get a better sense of the detail and literary devices. 

BUT, despite my excitement, I still hadn’t reached the God Tier “OBSESSIVE” stage yet. The light bulb hadn’t fully come on yet. It wasn’t until late 2013 when Catching Fire came out that I REALLY STARTED TO GO BALLISTIC LMAO. Actually, one of my fondest THG memories comes from this time, because I think it was really like, the OFFICIAL starting block for my obsession.

I was riding on a bus to a Theatre Competition, and my best friend had just gotten the CF Soundtrack for us to listen to. I remember being absolutely enamored with it- Mirrors, We Remain, and Lean in particular. And idk, something at that point just kind of told me that Catching Fire was going to be my anchor. Sure enough, after the competition was over, said friend and I went to go see the movie together.

And I astral projected lmao. I ACHIEVED HUNGER GAMES ENLIGHTENMENT. THE LIGHT BULB SWITCHED TF ON.

I was quick to see it again the following day, and I think saw it another two times in theaters after that. I also started drawing fanart of it, and looking for more pictures/interviews. And the want for more content, the DESIRE to go crazy about it, is what eventually lead me to finding the fandom here on Tumblr. I had had a Tumblr since 2012, but never really used it with a purpose. But when I realized there were people posting all sorts of stuff about THG? Boom- another light bulb. I followed tons of people, and officially changed my url to what it is today. “Star’s” for my internet alias at the time, and “Mahogany” for my love of Effie/that Iconic Line.

HOWEVER LOL, Tumblr would lead me towards a different side, something I didn’t expect to get pulled into so hard at all. Because, I distinctly remember coming on one night in December of 2013, and seeing @joshmopolitan and a few others posting about Josh going to the UK game. And that of course, lead me down the Celebrity Rabbit Hole, and lead me towards the Chaotic, Wonderful, Crazy-

JOSHIFER FANDOM.

((Also, before you crinkle your nose, *raises cane* BACK IN MY DAY, EVERYONE SHIPPED JOSHIFER LOL. *Snow voice* DON’T LIE. Like, everyone thought they were cute to some sort of degree, or believed they were going to get together. Shoutout to the Joshifer Golden Days, man.))

And thank goodness for it tbh. Because it was JUST when I was itching to write fanfiction with everyone else, and just when I was struggling HARDCORE with writing Everlark. @joshmopolitan and @youarebeingridiculous were sort of my introductions into RPF, with @youarebeingridiculous giving me nudges towards my first Everlark fic, before also nudging me towards my first Joshifer fic. And when my first Joshifer fic garnered attention/when I had a blast writing it? ANOTHER. LIGHT. BULB LOL.

So I was dead af from that point on. I was absolutely drawn in. Even though I was still invested in THG, Joshifer was definitely my main focus from 2014-2016ish. I was there for the typical ship wars, there to read and write all the fanfiction, there to read all the theories, and there to partake in all the crazy moments. Shoutout to Cannes 2014 in particular lmao; I was in the car and my phone started going off like CRAZY, with many of my friends SCREAMING at me about the events/articles that had transpired.

Being attached to Joshifer also allowed me to write my first, and so far only, full length, These Words are a Lie. It started out as just a four part series, two parts of which I actually published. Befffooorrre getting to the third part and realizing I had WAY too much to deal with/explain/write, which consequently lead to me pulling them down and expanding upon them! And thus my messy, lovely, 25 chapter peanut journey started lmao. Though I look back on it now and realize how disjointed it was, I’m so thankful I was able to see that story completely through. I’m also very thankful for the SUPPORT and following it got. Wouldn’t have gotten through without y’all! 

ANYWAY LMAO, because this is my THG story and not my Joshifer story, let’s get back to that. 2014 was WHACK because...LG was utterly tripping with its promotional material. And to think, it was just the START of odd/lacking promo, seeing as they were SOMEHOW WORSE WITH MJ2 LMAO. But even though I was incredibly salty at the time, it was so fun to be mad and chomping at the bit with everyone else lol. The SUFFERING OF NOT HAVING ANY NEW CONTENT BROUGHT US CLOSER TOGETHER. Also, going to Best Buy to watch the teaser trailer under Heavy Guard??? Was an EXPERIENCE LOL??? But man was I so stoked to get my poster and pin, because that was some of the first merch I got!

ALSO, MJ1 was the time where I got the idea to create a small YouTube series called “Tributes React.” I really really wish I could have been in the fandom earlier, because it would have been, dare I say, FIRE LOL to react to more than just the MJ1 and MJ2 trailers. But it was so so fun regardless, and everyone’s participation was incredible! And now all of our early, embarrassing, INTENSE fangirling is stuck here/memorialized forever PFFFF.

And, not to mention, Fran Solo himself watched one of them. Someone tweeted the video at him, and he tweeted back that it made all the hard times worth it. MY GREATEST FANDOM ACCOMPLISHMENT RIGHT THERE???

And finally getting to watch MJ1 in theaters lmao omg. I went with my friend before, and also one of my guy friends. And the entire time, he was HARD STARING AT ME WAITING FOR ME TO CRY LOL. SO HE COULD TEASE ME. AND HE GOT HIS WISH BECAUSE OF COURSE THE LAST 30 MINUTES OR SO UTTERLY RUINED ME. I remember shivering so so SO bad when the rescue mission for Peeta started, and having to hold my friends’ hands when they were creeping through the Tribute Center, and utterly SOBBING when Peeta attacked Katniss. Because...hello...I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again...WAY WAY MORE INTENSE THAN THE BOOK LMAO??

And then came the beginning of the end. I remember that promo time was even DRYER for MJ2 lmao, and that we were all DYING. Like, I think the big trailer didn’t release until like, SEPTEMBER??? WHICH...LG WHAT THE ACTUAL-

And we were also back to watching trailers in Best Buys jfkssdkdlsk. My Best Buy was also DUMB and didn’t have any posters, but @infinitegraces​ was awesome enough to send me numerous copies! Bless you, thank you; I had them on my wall all through college lol! DESPITE THEM BEING A HAUNTING REMINDER OF HOW HARD LG SMACKED US LMAO.

Despite my salt towards the INITIAL promo though, the premieres and what not definitely lead to MJ2 having a special place in my heart. I had just gone off to college, and was a timid, lonely little freshman with nowhere to turn. But the fandom was there for me, and MJ2 promos/premieres gave me something to be excited for. It all kept me going through that ROUGH first semester, and was there for me before I met my best friends. So thank you MJ2, and thank you all for sharing that excitement with me! <3

Also, I’d like to mention that I was SO desperate to continue the tradition of seeing the premiere with my friend thaaaaatttt...I left for Thanksgiving break two or three days early/skipped class JUST to make it back home in time to see it with her lol! I WASN’T HERE TO PLAY GAMES, Y’ALL. THG > ACADEMICS APPARENTLY PFFFF.

After that though, things kind of quieted down. I found friends and activities in college, the movies were done, and Joshifer was dying out. It lead me to use Tumblr sporadically, not posting AS much as I had before. I still had tons of love for everything, and still enjoyed coming on whenever I did!

Then I sort of stumbled upon our “renaissance,” like the lovely @everlarkedalways​ posting re-reads and re-watches. It tugged me in again, and made me excited to post content! I also branched out and began to write Everlark, and began talking about them/the books/meta more than I did in my earlier years. 

And of course, said renaissance lead me to attending TOASTCON LMAO. Which I somehow managed to name. On accident. *Dabs unironically*

That of course, was such an amazing experience. Going to movie filming sites has always been on my bucket list, so getting to go to HUNGER GAMES SITES??? WITH FANDOM PEOPLE???? GOD TIER??????

I was also suffering from major panic/anxiety problems that summer, having just graduated college and being thrown out in the Real World™. So once again, THG and its fandom were there for me when nothing else could be. And despite me feeling off mentally, despite me feeling plagued by fatigue, I still thoroughly enjoyed meeting everyone/having such a once in a lifetime experience. Also, getting to FLEX on my friends when we watch the movies and go like “I WAS THERE! I WAS THERE!! I WAS THERE!!!” is...A Time PFFFF.

Then of course, I started working a full time job, and shifted a bit away from Tumblr/the fandom. Not DELIBERATELY; more like, I was too Mentally Tired to really do much after work. But now that Ballad is here, and now that we have new content once more? I feel like I’m waking back up. Hell, I even went to Atlanta to see MORE film sites right before the virus started to make its rounds.

And so here I am lol! A SEASONED THG VET WITH SEVEN YEARS AND COUNTING UNDER MY BELT. I would very much love to tag everyone who had an impact on me, and/or who I’ve interacted with and shared fun times with over the years. But A. Everyone really out here CONSTANTLY CHANGING THEIR URL’s, and B. The number would be Too Great and I would inevitably forget someone on accident.

SO THEN, if you’re reading this, and we’ve ever shared some kind of THG experience together, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. THG has been such a wondrous experience for me, and it’s lead me to meet all sorts of amazing, talented individuals. It’s also been there for me during darker times, and has supported me in every way possible.

I love you all, I love being here, and HERE’S TO MANY MORE TAGS/RAMBLES IN THE FUTURE LOL! Like lmao, a new movie, you guys??? WHAT??? TRIBUTES REACT ANYONE???

-Jotato Out <3

[thedoctornumber11]

Munday post

I figured maybe this week I’d do a different type of Munday.  Most of my long time roleplay partners already know me quite a bit and I also try to introduce myself to newer partners as well, however I figured this could be a good chance for everyone to really get to know me.  I’m including everything under a read more not because long post and also because I know not everyone likes seeing this type of thing.  It’s just a bunch of random facts about me and my favorite things along with a munday pic under the cut.  I didn’t want to just throw out a munday picture like most would do.  I’ve done that plenty of times before and there’s nothing wrong with it, I just felt like doing something a bit more unique and different this time that might really give people a chance to get to know me :D

So long post under the cut.

So, first off, my name is Derek.  I’m the mun.  I just recently turned 30 and I’m from Indiana.  I work in a preschool, essentially as a glorified baby sitter.  I help the teachers get their breaks.  

I’ve been interacting on here since November of 2013 and I’ve had this exact blog with this exact URL the entire time.  I wanted something really generic and not just a quote or something like that.  I first tried TheEleventhDoctor, but obviously that was taken so this ended up being what I went with.  As for the theme, it too was made a VERY long time ago.  The TARDIS theme with the opening doors on the TARDIS actually used to be quite popular when I first started interacting on here, particularly with the Doctor Who RP fandom.  Although I’m the only one I see with it these days, if you go looking for older Doctor Who blogs that have gone inactive you are actually likely to find a few other blogs with it.  As for the background picture, I found that one myself except for the part with Matt Smith/The Eleventh Doctor edited on.  That part was done by someone I used to interact with who just surprised me with it one day and unfortunately isn’t on Tumblr anymore :(  Having been on this platform for so long I’ve obviously seen a lot of blogs come and go and I miss every single last one of them :(  However I also enjoy everyone I currently interact with and would recommend almost any of them.  Seriously, if anyone is looking for new people to interact with, let me know you are looking for people and what fandoms you enjoy and I can probably recommend a few blogs!

Outside of Tumblr RP, I enjoy video games, yugioh, reading comics, general super hero related stuff, watching movies, playing Pokemon Go (I help run the local PoGo community) general board games, watching my shows, figure collecting, and cosplay, most of which I’m sure is stuff many of you also enjoy.  My fandoms include Doctor Who (obviously), DC, Star Wars, The Legend of Korra/ATLA (I’m one of the few that likes LoK more than ATLA), Marvel, Star Trek, Firefly, Power Rangers, The Walking Dead, Yugioh, Pokemon, Sherlock, general Nintendo fandom, Digimon and Harry Potter.

Here’s a few things about me in list form.

My favorite musician is Weird Al Yankovic.  

My favorite book is Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robbison.  As someone who’s been diagnosed with aspergers syndrome myself, this book really spoke to me in my original read through and since then I’ve purchased it multiple times.  I own at least three or four different copies of this book, partially because I kept loaning it out to people.

My favorite book series is the Harry Potter series.  Don’t ask me for a favorite book in the series, I love them all about equally.  

As for comics, right now my favorite thing I’m reading is the Power Rangers series that Boom is putting out.  Some of my favorites of all time include Power Ranger Soul of the Dragon, the Star Trek TNG/Doctor Who crossover, the Power Rangers/Justice League Crossover, the original Spider-Gwen series, Poison Ivy Cycle of Life and Death, The Dark Knight Returns (I know anything Frank Miller related is a bit controversial but I enjoy it for what it is) and Batman: Hush.

Favorite movies include UHF, Scott Pilgrim VS the World, Captain America The Winter Soldier, Captain America the First Avenger, Avengers End Game, the Justice League movie, anything and everything DC animated, anything and everything Spider-Man related (yes, I even like Spider-Man 3 although it wasn’t as good as the others), anything Star Wars related although I’d say Force Awakens is my favorite one, the 2017 Power Rangers movie, Serenity, The Lego movie and it’s sequel, Yugioh Bonds Beyond Time, Mystery Men, Galaxy Quest, all the Star Trek movies, the corny 90′s Mario movie, the Doctor Who movie, and Detective Pikachu.  Really, any of the Marvel and DC movies could probably make this list as well, I’m not super picky when it comes to movies.

Favorite TV shows is something I am a bit pickier about.  Doctor Who is obviously on the list, and I’ve watched and enjoyed most of the Marvel and DC live action stuff although I have a huge preference for the arrowverse and 70′s Wonder Woman.  Animated stuff tends to vary but a lot of the older stuff from the early and mid 90′s seems to be best for that.  Power Rangers is obviously on the list as well, along with The Walking Dead, Digimon, Avatar the Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, Sherlock, Yugioh, Firefly, and off the top of my head that’s about it.  Everyone always assumes I’m huge into anime as well, but I’m not actually that into it.  Just not my thing.

Now video games has potential to be my longest list as it’s easily my favorite medium of story telling due to the interactivity.  First off, Nintendo and Playstation are my general consoles of choice.  Nothing against Xbox, I have a lot of respect for the brand but I can’t really afford to have three consoles (even though I wish I could) and Nintendo and Sony have more offerings for me personally.  I also do dabble on PC a bit, but I don’t really have a high end PC and it’s mostly just for Sims.  That being said, my favorite games and game series include Watch_Dogs, The Sims, Mario (mostly the “main series,” 3D games and 2D platformers but I do enjoy some of the off series stuff like Mario Kart and Mario Party as well) , Pokemon, Super Smash Brothers, The Force Unleashed series, Injustice, most of the Spider-Man games, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, most of the Batman games, Wario Ware, The Last of Us (still haven’t played the sequel yet.  Waiting to get it for cheap after seeing reviews), Days Gone, Control, Horizon Zero Dawn, No Man’s Sky, 51 Worldwide Classics for Switch, No Man’s Sky, the Tony Hawk Games (still haven’t played the new one yet), Time Splitters, The Movies, Hulk Ultimate Destruction, Zombies Ate My Neighbhors, Kirby, The Legend of Korra game (the 3d one, not the really bad one for 3DS), Donkey Kong, Street Fighter 2, Punch Out, Metal Gear Solid 5 the Phantom Pain, Sonic Heroes, and the list could go on and on.

My favorite drink is root beer or chocolate milkshakes if that counts

My favorite alcoholic drink is probably just a basic screwdriver tbh

My favorite food is Cheeseburgers, although Chicken Pot Pie is also a top contender tbh

My favorite color is green

My favorite Doctor is Eleventh obviously, but Thirteen, Two and Twelve are tied for second

Favorite companions are Amy, River (if she counts), and Donna

Favorite New Who episode is The Eleventh Hour

Favorite Classic Who story is Genesis of the Daleks

Since I’ve mentioned super heroes a lot, my favorites are Batman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man, although Supergirl, Batgirl, Captain America, Scarlet Witch and Black Widow are also pretty high on the list.

Favorite game in the Pokemon series is X and Y

Dragonite is my favorite Pokemon

Favorite 3D Mario game is Odyssey although Sunshine would be next up on the list.

This is my only Tumblr RP blog.  I also have an ask meme blog and I used to have a personal but I haven’t logged onto it in years.

I’m on discord and I do add people from Tumblr on there, but I mostly only use it for Pokemon Go tbh

I spend every Wednesday and Sunday at the local comic book shop playing Yugioh

For anyone wondering in relation to that last fact, my current competitive deck Barrier Stun.  Some of my favorite casual decks that I play or have played in the past are Lightsworn, Blue-Eyes, E-Heroes, Greed, Sacred Beasts, Penguins and Six Samurai.

In the last decade I’ve moved about 3 times

I own pets!  I have one dog and one cat currently, but a few years back when we lived in a more country like setting, we owned 7 cats and 2 dogs at maximum.  Most of them died of old age over the last few years.

Before my current job I used to work at Walmart.  Long time followers of the blog may remember that I hated it there.

I don’t have a whole lot of writing experience outside of Tumblr tbh.  While I do enjoy writing on here, it’s the interactions itself that makes it fun for me and while I’ve tried to write a few things myself, it’s just not the same as roleplay.

Anyway, I just sort of wanted to do something different for munday besides just posting pictures of myself so I hope anyone who read this enjoyed it.  Here’s a pic of the mun to go with it.

[shadowfae]

3. How did you discover (and confirm) your hearttype?

I have two hearttypes, shadowhearted and faehearted, and they were actually the first identities I figured out! To no one’s surprise, they make up my url, because when I first started this blog, I thought I was ‘kin of both of those things, and was still trying to figure out the rest of my identity.

For being shadowhearted, my best guess on discovery is that I always felt like I was made of shadow. How much of that was unrecognized Absol and Luteia emotions, I don’t know, but I went my entire childhood wanting to be and voraciously projecting on anything that was shadow-aligned in element, looking for something I couldn’t name. 

You could strip away every part of me and leave me bare, and I would still be with shadow. I can be gentle and gracious and helpful, and I will still be with shadow. It’s so intrinsic to who I am and how I was built that while I can’t say I am a shadow, I can say that the nebulous concept of it is what the rest of me was built on. I read Cat Valente’s A Monstrous Manifesto and wept, I still have it memorized, because it struck me right in the shadowhearted feels. None of them were me to a T, but they were family, they were friends, they were known to me, and I could see bits of myself in them. I’m not any one cut and dry monster, but I’m a monster, because I was built on shadow.

For being faehearted, I spent way too much time reading Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (did you know it’s a trilogy??? I didn’t!!!) and wanting to be a part of that. I didn’t really recognize the shape my wings took, but I could feel them, I knew faeries were always going to be the gateway to understanding myself, even as a small child. So when asked “Well you’re more than just shadows, and you don’t like winter shadowy places and go Nope!, why’s that? Why do you feel at home in the green, if you’re shadow?” my answer was “Well I think it’s because faeries are a lot like me? I think I’m fae?” and it settled better than anything else in my life ever had, but wasn’t an exact match.

Even with my kintypes fully aware to me, part of me still goes back to the fae. I mistook it for my Ranisson kintype and had to sort that whole shtick out and it wasn’t fun. It literally wasn’t until I met a trollkin at Othercon last year who was trollkin because their surname was literally “Valley Champion” in the local language because one of their ancestors was a troll who had championed that valley where they lived and I was like “Hey dumbass! You’re not quite Fair and will never walk away from them because you’re fucking Celtic!” and that answered that, I think. (I’m Irish and Scottish on my father’s side. My mother’s a lot of different types of European, my dad is English, Scottish, and Irish. His mother was half Scottish half Irish, and his father’s mother was the same; so if we go by amount of heritage, those two have the most, and it looks like they won out.)

I’ve always known that if as Luteia I hadn’t been a demon, I would’ve been Fair, and just being made of Kcalb’s magic doesn’t make me any less tilt-your-head-and-squint-and-you’re-Fair. And I can’t say I don’t know if I’m only faehearted because the summer’s brief romance that is my humanity is trying to claw its way back to its roots, or if it’s only thanks to Luteia, or if it’s a mixture of the two or something else entirely.

But I’m pretty sure it’s my heritage yelling at me. I’m also pretty sure I won’t find out until I take a trip to Ireland and Scotland and see the hollow hills for myself. I’ll find out if I sit upon the moors and weep because I found my way home. It’s a while off yet, but I’ll do it. I may not have all the answers yet, but I know how to find them, and that’s reassuring enough.

[gremsbian]

you say the story of how you came up with Sirsha is long and a story for another day... it's another day, and i wanna know the story

okay idk if it’s That Long but it sure is a very out of the way and was the result of several years worth of events, and we have to go all the way back to when I was 14 years old...

I didnt have a presence on the internet much until I turned 14 and activated my tumboler dot com account. now idk abt yall, but in middle school we had assemblies every year about internet safety and the number one thing was to hide your identity and not reveal any personal information. and so. i did that. however, due to me being very extra and lost in the idea of having my own Secret Identity I crafted an entire backstory for my online tumblr identity. 

in my first few months as a tumblr user I introduced myself as Charlotte Roberta Phoenicksen. Idk where the fuck the last name came from and why i did it but Charlotte Roberta has a background in itself. basically I loved the name charlie and like any kid between the ages of 10-12 (because i was very immature) i thought the name bob was the funniest thing in the world, and i decided that my name would be Charlie Bob, and I elongated that into Charlotte Roberta so I could pass off Charlie Bob as a nickname. But Charlie Bob was too normal.... once again i changed the spelling to.... Charlee Bawb. 

one more bit of trivia i wanted to declare my math friend group as the knights of the square table since we sat at a square table but none of them cared because i was weird and i was autistic so i didnt realize that no one else was into my crazy friend group ideas but anyway i declared myself Sir Charlee Bawb of the Round Table. thus my first url was sircharleebawb and yeah. the history of Sir Charlee Bawb is pretty insane as well but for now all we need is the name and origin. 

Eventually I realized saying my real name was not Bad so I started going by my actual name (at the time) and everything was fine and dandy until that time i thought i was a trans boy bc of internalized misogyny due to my lesbianism but thats also another story and I went by Henry and then Ash but then I realized i wasnt a boy so I went back to my birth name and identified as a cis woman. However, the history of Sir Charlee Bawb remained in my heart and it remained close to me because of just how in depth I made her backstory and identity...

Fast forward to my hmmmm possibly junior or senior year of high school? I decided to boot up a game of pokemon platinum bc i really like it and when it came to naming my character i was unsure of what direction to go. im the kind of gamer who never used my real name when playing video games, i always liked to make up names, so this was no different. however, no matter what name i came up with i didnt get too attached to any... until i decided to start thinking about my roots. 

for the first time in years, Sir Charlee Bawb returned to my mind. no way i was gonna name my character Charlee or Bawb or any variation thereof but.... when i looked at the full name together, sircharleebawb, i noticed the first bit... Sircha. somehow it stuck out to me, but it wasn’t quite right. I quickly solved that by figuring out a pronunciation I liked which was sir-sha, not far off from sir-cha at all. And so, the name Sirsha was born. 

I thought Sirsha was a new original name I had come up with but i later learned abt the irish name Saoirse which is pronounced like seer-sha but Sirsha is just different enough I suppose. anyway it was a name i loved so much ever since then i’ve always used it as the name for my video game avatars. 

fast forward again to uhh. Now? last month more like. i have been incredibly depressed lately and i just had no motivation or source for happiness and i finally decided  to do a Deep Dive into my mind which is not something i’ve done for years. ive always had trouble with my gender identity, as i mentioned earlier i thought i was a trans boy but then went back to being a cis woman but... i realized that i know im a woman but it just did not feel right? Ive been a supporter and huge advocate for nb lesbians for ages of course but like the thought i could be one never crossed my mind until i straight up questioning my relationship with my gender. 

another long bit later i decided to officially non my binary and i love my old name, which is Hannah, and I’m okay being called Hannah, but for fun i wanted to try out a new name along with new pronouns. i knew then and there that Sirsha was the name i would choose, and after literally just a few hours of beginning my experiment I realized that i am Sirsha and suddenly... a lot of my depression seemed to leave? this is several years worth of stress yall and discovering myself after so long was such a relief it was disorienting but.. here i am. 

my name is Sirsha, my gender is Sirsha and also lesbian. I’m a woman when I love women but outside of that I am just Sirsha, and my name means everything to me since it’s so personal and it just feels right. so yeah backstory finished thank u for coming to my Sirsha Talk

[coolkidstable]

guess who’s back!

it’s been like a week but i am BACK BABY! as you can guess i have mixed feelings about that entire series, which were amplified by the fact that i actually went to that game - yes, game 4 - as a (slightly early) birthday present from my brother. this is truly just 2.3k words of me being emo and getting personal, but it helped me process everything. and sorry for the lack of a read more but i’m on mobile lmao

i made it clear to both family and friends that i wanted this series to be a close one, for the home team to win each game, and for it to be a hard fought series that shows just how good both of these teams are. (maybe this wasn’t as clear on tumblr, but the decision to step away was made abruptly, though i’m very glad i did it.) that, well, didn’t happen. the canes are a great team, and their success wasn’t a fluke. don’t even try to suggest that. but this series didn’t work for them, for reasons that i really don’t know but may be revealed with time. who knows. regardless, it was a fantastic run and while i wish the ending wasn’t so bitter, i’m so proud of this team and all that they accomplished this season. the future is bright, and this time “next year will be better” isn’t just a hope - it’s a promise.

i really wanted them to score a goal, though. i love tuukka, and i want him to win those two trophies so badly, but i was really hoping he’d give up a goal. obviously, the canes’ chances of coming back to win the series were slim to none, but one last goal would’ve been a way to end the season on a somewhat promising note. and it’s weird and a bit sad that i went to 3 home games this season, and didn’t even get to hear raise up in person - two shutouts and a whalers night for which brass bonanza played instead.

that’s not the main reason, though. i was at this game with my brother, whose main team is the canes, who just got back into hockey late last season, opting to root for his local team over his childhood rangers and getting to see such an incredible run. he just wanted to see a goal to ease the blow, and i was right there with him. it was expected, though, and he’s not crushed or anything. he went to some pretty special games this season, including both the first storm surge and the first playoff win, and he knows that the rest of our family is happy. and really, that’s what it all comes back to - family.

the first bruins game that i have even the vaguest of memories of watching is the 2010 winter classic against the flyers. i’m not even 100% sure if i watched any of it; i just remember asking my dad why they were playing outside and catching glimpses of the game while he watched. he and my mom, once diehard bruins fans, had become fairweather fans upon moving to north carolina in 2003. the bruins, quite frankly, sucked, and games were rarely on tv. meanwhile, the patriots were quite the opposite. the bruins soon started to improve and began to creep back into our lives. i remember the 2011 cup finals, and not knowing a single player other than zdeno chara - the Tall One - and tim thomas - the Brick Wall. i don’t remember much else, but i was there in some capacity.

then came 2013. a series against the leafs. a historical game 7 comeback from a 4-1 deficit. i remember watching bits and pieces of this game on two different TVs - first the main one downstairs, where my dad was watching, only because it was the playoffs. he didn’t watch or care about regular season hockey - i didn’t even know there’d just been a lockout. when he gave up on this game, he went upstairs to go to bed and turned on the tv for background noise while i hung around to say goodnight. we were almost done when nathan horton scored the first goal, and from there, we watched history unfold. i was losing my mind - was this what i’d been missing out on?

from there, i watched the rest of the playoffs, and i haven’t looked back since. first i watched this young undersized rookie defenseman by the name of torey krug take the rangers by storm, then i watched the bruins hand the penguins‘ asses to them in a swift 4-game sweep that began with a shutout on my birthday, and then i watched the bruins lose a hard-fought series against the chicago racistlogos in the blink of an eye. it was a rollercoaster of a postseason, and i spent most of my free time learning about the game and my new favorite player, who i must regretfully admit was seguin. every game brought me closer to my dad, as before the game 7 comeback, i’d never join him to watch sports, or anything, really. in turn, it allowed him to reconnect with the sport he’d once loved most of all.

the next season was a good one as well: my first full season, the first game i ever attended in person, and the bruins winning the president’s trophy. that season ended in disappointment, but it was a good run, and i grew an appreciation for every single member of that bruins team. (nowadays, i guess that attitude is what the kids would call my brand.)

halfway through that season, i discovered hockey tumblr. i didn’t really make content or liveblog or even talk in the tags, and i never made any lasting connections, but still, it was a community that i greatly enjoyed. it also opened my eyes to other teams, and i started to experiment with the whole having more than one team thing - yeah, those were my stars fan days, among other questionable choices that aren’t important right now. this is also where the canes first came into my life, though not as a true second team until much more recently. things were changing, and not always for the better.

the 2014-15 season was fun, though i wasn’t able to watch as many games due to not knowing about r/NHLStreams or anything of that nature. regardless, the bruins just simply weren’t very good, and the season ended in disappointment. a few months later, hockey became very disappointing for reasons i won’t get into, and this coincided with my second emo phase (see: my current url). i ended up jumping ship for bandom tumblr and the life of a panic! at the disco stan.

still, i kept up with the 2015-16 season a little. it kinda sucked, but it was fine. i still loved the team - i just wasn’t really invested anymore. and maybe it was for the best given how busy school was that year. the next season went much the same, only this time, the bruins made the playoffs, i had just about given up on using tumblr at all, and there was this new kid on the team named sean kuraly.

the 2017 playoffs were odd. i hadn’t watched many games that season, and i hadn’t watched a bruins playoff game since the last time i was truly invested in hockey. still, it wasn’t like a switch flipped and i suddenly stanned the bruins again. i spent all the games in that series playing pokémon moon while occasionally glancing at the screen to see what was happening. i wasn’t even truly playing the game; i’d already beaten it and was merely trying my hand at shiny hunting a jangmo’o by hatching dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of eggs, nicknaming them, and randomly trading them over the internet. it was mindless enough to pay attention, and pay attention i did.

it was kind of like the rangers series, on a smaller and less successful scale. much like torey krug before him, sean kuraly came out with a bang and made bruins fans love hockey again - or maybe i’m just projecting. regardless, you know he scored the 2OT winner, and you know about the kuraleap. i don’t remember how many jangmo’os named sean, kuraly, and sean kuraly i traded to the lucky people of pokémon sun and moon wondertrade, but the humber was definitely higher than 52. the bruins did lose the series, but i was interested again.

when the 2017 draft happened, i felt a special connection to it by virtue of these boys being the right age to be in the same high school graduating class as me. this draft piqued my interest in a way no other since 2014 truly had (unpopular opinion on 2015, i know, especially considering my favorite player was drafted fourteenth that year), and you know what? it had been a few months since i’d been active on tumblr, but i searched a few tags and started peaking back at hockey tumblr. i was almost convinced i should dive back in and redo my account for the second time, but i had college orientation to worry about, and by the time i returned, the motivation was lost.

until the 2017-18 home opener. you all know i love jake debrusk, and you probably know he scored his first nhl goal in that game (alongside charlie mac). you’ve seen the video and/or gifs of his dad crying. but beyond all that, it was just a damn good game. i had so much fun watching it - in boston, no less, because finally, after all those years trapped in my hometown, i was where i wanted to be - that i just had to get involved with hockey tumblr again. watching on my own wasn’t going to be enough, i knew.

and so, tumblr user @david-pastrnak returned. honestly, that season was fun, but the first half felt like a blur - likely just because it was my first semester of college. i even went to my first bruins home game in november, and though it wasn’t a good one, it was fun. they picked up the season with a win against tampa on the day i met my favorite band, and somehow, that seemed important. soon i saw my first live bruins win on td garden ice, and even went to a few more games, during which i watched as my grandma grew to love hockey and the bruins, bringing us closer together. it was around this time that i truly embraced the hurricanes, too, and having that second team that i truly care about and love has made being a hockey fan so much fun. it was also around this time that i rediscovered my love for writing. things were changing for the better, but they were only getting started. even when the bruins lost in disappointing fashion to the lightning, i knew things were going to be okay - better, even.

the off-season was mostly uneventful, but towards the end and into the beginning of the season, i ended up in a few group chats with others on here. some of these are still active while others are not, but regardless, i connected with a lot more people, got better at making conversation, and, most importantly, found some of the best friends i’ve ever had. you don’t really expect to meet a lifelong friend on the internet, never mind several, but i’ve gotten incredibly lucky!

this season has been special. i started going to games more often, grew to care about every member of this team more than i’ve probably ever cared about the entire team, and made some incredible friends who i’m blessed to know. and beyond me, this season has been incredible. you know that if you’re reading this, so i won’t get into it all. there were ups and downs, there were moments we thought we’d be golfing in april, and now we’re going to the stanley cup final. the last time this happened, i had just started watching hockey and was still learning. i was also a literal child who still thought i was straight. a lot has changed since then, and somehow, this stanley cup final feels like a culmination of everything i’ve been through with and because of this team. winning the cup isn’t just about how happy it would make jake, how much tuukka deserves it, or whether sean would hand it to danton or vice versa. it’s not about watching to see who helps wags lift it without damaging his injured hand further. it’s not even about watching the look of pure joy on pasta’s face and thinking back to his draft day and my bold, unwarranted, yet correct claim that he would be one of, if not the best player to come out of the 2014 draft. no matter how much they mean to me, winning the cup isn’t about the players.

winning the cup this season would be a celebration of all the friends i’ve made, the stories we’ve shared, and the connections we’ve made. winning the cup would be a celebration of how much closer hockey has brought me to my family. shit, winning the cup would be a celebration of kureinen and all our fun memes because why the hell not?

winning the cup isn’t about the players, or the team, or the parade, or the bragging rights for fans of boston sports. winning the cup is about the deeply meaningful and even just the fun ways in which hockey and the community on here have positively impacted our lives.

and even if we don’t, it’s okay. this season has been by far the best i’ve ever watched, and no matter what happens, it’s one i’ll always remember.

but hey, if we do, i’ll get my first tattoo to commemorate it. speaking of playoff promises, from now on, i’m going to have to talk like anders bjork on here so checkurohhhhhhhh

[corinnejay42-blog]

Reduce, Trim Mp3, Music Or Music Direct On-line Free

Welcome to Mp3Juice - Search Engine Web site imp3juices is a search site specializing in downloading songs and tool. For hermelindao42.hatenadiary.com his fourth album, Www.mergemp3.com There Will Be Dub, Zoungla returns to his roots and mp3 merger explores the original sources of inspiration that motivated him to embark on a psychedelic musical journey. Goodmorning Ozora" begins your day with a stroll by way of the magical lands of Ozora, a competition of significant significance to Zoungla, as it helped bounce-start his career. Homage to the Dub Masters" pays tribute to the grasp psybient artists that impressed Zoungla to dive into the world of psychedelic music. Moreover, Zoungla brings you again to 2013 and remixes Younger Man" from his first album Entwine. Altogether this is a nostalgic album to throw on and benefit from the basic grooves of some good ol' dub. MP3 will not be the most effective format beneath any circumstances, however its sound quality is way from horrible. The settings used to encode an MP3 are critical. Default settings used to encode a WAV to a 128kb MP3 will lead to a crummy sounding file. Tweak the ripper to encode at 320kb or use "Extreme" quality and the ensuing file will sound excellent. My LAPTOP feeds a dedicated 100W amplifier related to basic JBL studio screens and if the source file sounds bad, I am gonna hear it. Encoding as per my earlier put up results in information that sound almost indistinguishable from the unique. Simply to fulfill my curiosity, I transformed a WAV to 320kb MP3 after which back to WAV and burned it to a CD together with the uncompressed unique. I played the two songs back to back on my car stereo and guess what - there wasn't a lot of a difference between the two. SoundCloud Downloader is a simple on-line software for downloading any music tracks from SoundCloud. It is free and very straightforward to make use of and also you get prime quality mp3 for any monitor. Simply paste the track page link in URL area above and hit the download button. It extracts the monitor uri(hosted on SoundCloud's server) from which you'll be able to straight download or save the mp3 monitor in one click. Ensure you paste just one url at a time, within the above enter box. I've been creating music on GarageBand, which provides a number of choices when exporting the ultimate venture. My two most important strategies are to either compress the track as an MP3 at 320kbps or to export the tune without compressing it all, and then converting it to an "Apple Lossless Model" also called an ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) or an ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder). The brand new format doesn't seem as an ALAC or an ALE. It seems with the m4a file extension as a result of it's a container format which might deal with both lossless and lossy codecs. However, once I do that, I still have extremely high bit rates which take up lots of reminiscence, but when reminiscence is not a difficulty for you, m4a is normally going to be better than MP3 (however not always). Wherever you may be, you'll be able to simply search and obtain songs you've at all times wished to have. Gone are the times when you have to mentally keep in mind a music's title or artist and rush back residence to entry the pc simply to download the track. Most often than not, you end up forgetting the music title and artist and have to go looking the music utilizing elements of its lyrics as a substitute. Do away with the hassle with a few of these finest music and MP3 downloader apps for Android.

Where do you get new music? Do you purchase CDs or buy music from digital stores like iTunes and Amazon? Even now, in the era of quick Web and smartphones, free MP3s will not be easily out there. However, there are some websites like MP3Jam that provide their admirers with MP3 songs free-of-charge. To fill your MP3 participant with totally different tracks you simply have to obtain MP3 songs you want and switch them to your participant. Really, the need to download songs is kind of debatable since Freemake Music Box for iOS was released. However in the event you nonetheless want saving the passionately-adored compositions on COMPUTER and add them later to a portable machine for offline playback, uncover the record of finest web sites to obtain MP3 songs for free.SoundCloud essentially serves because the YouTube of music importing, which means anybody can upload their tracks to the positioning before specifying whether or not they're out there for download or strictly for streaming functions. Furthermore, the location touts a particularly lively user neighborhood and one of many sleekest person interfaces of any web site on our listing, one conveniently lined with a navigational bar on the top and direct access to the service's accompanying cellular apps. Artists might not always provide free downloads of their music, but the labels almost always do. Honest warning: SoundCloud's had a bit of monetary hassle lately , so you might wish to visit the site quickly and go on a downloading spree simply in case the site goes kaput.You no longer have to search for a website to download music because you can now use the MusitcTube app which one can find in your app retailer to download songs whenever you want. Should you don't wish to use up the area in your cellphone, you can hearken to them immediately from the app too. This app will make it easier to take heed to songs from individuals which might be new to the world of music. You'll even be able to make sure that you have the proper of sound quality while you obtain music from this app. With this app you will get a number of websites to download music.Jamendo offers a large selection of music obtainable via Inventive Commons licensing and is among the largest sources to select from. Free Jamendo apps for Android , Windows phone, iPhone, and iPad are additionally out there. The positioning covers 1000's of artists, and the number of accessible tracks runs into the tons of of thousands. It has a nicely organized person interface that enables users to browse tracks, not just by genre but additionally by Most Downloaded, Newest Releases, Most Played and extra.It could sound loopy, but you can find free music on… Wikipedia It is media library just isn't that large and consists of largely classical tracks. Yet, in the event you enjoy listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Wikipedia is a right choice. The main downside is navigation. There are not any genres, high quality selection or search field and as a substitute of a music\artist name you see an entire URL. When you still need to obtain a track from Wikipedia, then copy the hyperlink you need and open it in one other tab. Preview the monitor. After that proper click on it and select Save video as… or Save audio as… depending in your browser and save the track in your COMPUTER. It'll be saved inogg format. Chances are you'll use free Freemake Music Box to play it.

[rkxblue]

happy #rkfifth !

i told myself i wasn’t going 2 do this b/c ... i’m lazy bean, but here we are anyway! let’s get it!

but anyways starting off rookies was kind of like a vacation to me, rp wise. before rk i had my own rp that lasted a while but during 2013, there was just some drama between members that i constantly had 2 deal with and honestly it was like ... dragging me down, making admining seem like a chore and i loathed logging on to the main b/c i knew there would be some shit w/ these certain people that i had to deal with. so seeing rk in the tags being a different kind of idol roleplay ( and shout out rk for being a trendsetter ) /and/ the fact that reserves were filling up so quickly for a new rp, i quickly sent in a muse.

and it was a little ... idk at first. i did feel out of place considering most came from a different rp in the beginning and i wasn’t, and on top of me being v awkward w/ talking 2 people on instant messengers, there was a bit of time where i felt like i didn’t fit in and almost dropped like 2 weeks after i joined, LOL. luckily at the time a lot of things were going on which helped w/ plotting and meeting new muses, and everyone was super friendly and nice and that’s what kept me here!!!

so then rk turned from a vacation you didn’t want to leave from -- i ended up slagging off p majorly on my responsibilities as an admin at my own rp for a while because i was having such a good time at rk -- it rly brought back my love for rp and muse and tbh if you look back at rksunyoung’s archive back in 2013 - early 2014, i don’t think i’ve ever written as much on tumblr as i did back then, LOL. rk has definitely had it’s ups and downs and i’ve dropped both of my muses before -- but it wasn’t too long before i was bringing them back because there really isn’t a place like rk within krp. that, along with the dedication between both members and admins, is why it’s lasted so long and is still thriving with a super active dash after five fucking years. that’s crazy!! i think i remember mei saying something similar on twitter -- but when i see old rp friends and they ask “omg ur /still/ at rk???”

so it’s obvious to see why this rp went from feeling like a vacation to a home, right?? it’ll always have a special place in my heart  ♡

anyways moving on to my characters too -- when i first brought rksunyoung, now miss rkxblue, i never thought that she would last more than a couple of months, much less be involved with so many things within rk’s history!! it’s ... p wild to think about, especially since i’m someone that has a hard time committing to hobbies and such. it’s been a fun ride watching her go from someone who was wild and reckless and had a problem with love and a little bit of anger issues to someone whos a lot more well rounded, a soft idiot LOL. she even finally got herself the sweetest boyfriend after four years of being shipless on the rp, which i still can’t wrap my head around because denying herself love and believing that it doesn’t exist was one of her /things/ for the longest time. the list of stuff she’s done is so long and now that it’s lead to her finally debuting it’s ... scary yet exciting for her, to be honest, she thought she’d be a trainee forever!! i’ve had a lot of ups and downs with her muse as well, to the point where there was like years ( i think ) of inactivity on my end and she should have 4238972389 more points than she does atm because of that. i do feel sorry for her b/c that was just me being lazy ofc, but in the end i’ve gotten my shit together on her and have been pumping out replies p consistently this year and plotting w/ trainees which has done wonders for her muse. and although hyomin was literally /the/ perfect fc for her considering her personality, the fc change 2 yura has also helped majorly with my muse and it’s been so much easier to plot and reply and even with her characterization too.

as for miss rknvna!! she hasn’t had as much development as sun, aside from her tumultuous rls with a former song minho and being a royal trainee during her first run, and that’s mainly been due to my laziness again jfkafl;a. the good thing tho is that i’ve finally been able to experience life as a rookie with her, considering the times my girls have become trainees were v quick ( sun’s first time was like a week or two after the rp opened, then 3 months after i rejoined w/ her, and nana became a trainee only a month after she joined the first time ) so it was nice to experience the freedom that came with being a rookie!! since 2018 has been sun’s year, i’m going to focus on nana for 2019 so that she can branch out more!!

i guess before i move on i should give shoutouts to all my other rkmuses throughout the years whose lives were so short that i can’t even remember their urls LOL -- my song jieun, park kyungri, goo hara, and choi jinri muses!! i’m sure there’s at least one more that i’m forgetting, but they all lasted around 2 weeks so...

but i also want 2 thank rk for allowing me to be more social as well!! i’ve said this in the last anniversary post i wrote 25238957 years ago but i used 2 have a phobia of sorts when it came 2 instant messengers, so i didn’t rly have one when msn was popping and therefore, didn’t talk 2 many people ooc wise in rps. i made an aim when i came to rk and just ... diving in and talking to people helped out a lot with that, even if i do still get anxious from time to time w/ just simply messaging people. :(

i’m a shy individual ( and for some reason its only exacerbated online??? idk fam ) and unconsciously rather private as well, so that definitely hinders me from making friends as much as i would like to, but it’s a day by day process!! it’s something i’ve come 2 terms w/ as of late and will seriously work on within the next year! but even w/ me being the way that i am, i’ve been able 2 meet a couple of people that have made my experience in rk just a little bit brighter so a ( very brief ) shout out 2 them ~

to maria ( @rkjinkis ) : my sweet angel!!! i’m so glad that rk brought us together because you’ve honestly become one of my closest friends from this rp and in general tbh!! ur so super sweet and caring and a blessing 2 my life, just as much as jinki is to ahyoung’s!! i’m sorry that sun is too independent for her own good but she’s working on it okay!! baby steps!! i love how genuine u are and how we can rely on each other through thick and then, and honestly i want the world for u and more. i love love love LOVE u so much, and i’ll make sure u never forget it!! thank u for being my friend and my source of happiness!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to hamin ( @rksoohyun ) : despite the fact that we knew each other from snu it was rk that actually got us 2 start talking and i’m so grateful for that!! u literally are the cutest girl in the entire world and ur just as outgoing irl as u are online; seeing morning musume ( a group i thought i would never see live ) w/ u was truly a highlight in my life!!! and ofc soohyun will forever be nana’s fuckin child and she’ll always be rooting for her happiness!! i love u u sweet buttercup and i can’t wait until ur back so i can talk 2 u again!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to mei ( @rkariel ) : man i admired u for the longest b/c i’ve always loved the way u write and ur characterization of tiffany / ariel, so when years ago nick told me that u were actually paying attention to the minana plot and threads i was so shook i nearly tripped over myself LMFAO. i’m happy that we actually started talking b/c of that tho!!! it’s so easy 2 write w/ u and i honestly have so much fun regardless if we’re just talking about our characters, getting carried away on dash or twitter, or hurting each other w/ headcanons!! ariel has become nana’s rock p much and w/o her i’m not sure how she would of fared her time w/ mino w/o her and their discussions!!! i hope that we can become closer in the future!!

to razel ( @rkcheri ) : hiya boo!!! ik we don’t rly talk anymore but i still wanted 2 mention u b/c u were one of my first friends in rk when i felt kinda lonely, and that was definitely one of the reasons i was able to stick around!! i loved writing w/ u b/c ur writing style was always so unique that i could actually point u out whenever we were in past rps together and it’s an honor 2 even write w/ u fjkalf;a. i’m sorry that sun is such a shitty friend and i’m looking forward 2 the day jihyun kicks her ass about not telling her about jinki b/c she deserves it LOL. but just, thank u!!!!

to amy ( @yienrk ) : are u surprised ur on here?? HAHA we don’t talk too much either but i do appreciate u checking up on me whenever i’m down and just generally being supportive and nice!!! also i’m in awe about how knowledgeable u are about idols in general ( i remember one of our first convos being about how sixteen came 2 be and the collapse of all of jype’s trainees and such ) and i love yien and nana’s supportive relationship too!! i can’t wait 2 see how they develop, and i hope 2 get closer 2 u in the future!! ; u ;

to eclipse girls ( @rkariel , @rkaudrey , @rkhaseul , @rkjennie , @rkyeri ) sun couldn’t of asked 2 debut w/ a better group of girls and i’m so glad that they harmonize w/ each other so well!! i’m excited 2 see what debuting brings for them!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and a shoutout 2 snu crew too ( piper / hoonji, nanu, @rksang, @rktomu, @rksoohyun , @rkjinhwan94, @rkpcy ) : even tho ik majority of u probably won’t see this i’m still tagging and talking about y’all anyway!!! i have so much fun reminiscing w/ u guys whenever we can, and i’m happy that i’ve grown closer too u all as well!! i’m sorry i was such a shit admin back in the day, and what brought y’all together was bad circumstances, but i’m glad it’s something that we can all look back on and laugh at now. i miss being together w/ all of u at once but i hope y’all are doing okay!!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and naturally, the admods too!!! thank u guys for putting up w/ all my shit whenever i was in a slump or i sent in points late or fucked up the points ( honestly kyle u are such an angel for real LOL ), and for just keeping the rp in tip top shape!!! ur the back bone of rk and we couldn’t of made it this far w/ each and every one of u and ur contributions and dedication 2 the rp!!! i’m super proud of u guys and am proud 2 call u my admins!!!!  ♡

and ofc shoutout 2 everyone that i’ve ever plotted and threaded w/ in the past and present -- i’m super shit at replying 2 those in general so thank u for being patient w/ me even though i don’t deserve it. i don’t know how else 2 end this b/c i’m also super shit at ending things so uh.... happy fifth year anniversary rk!!! here’s to many more!!!

[paleorecipecookbook]

RHR: A Three-Step Plan to Fix Conventional Healthcare

In this episode we discuss:

The patient case that inspired the book

Who is this book for?

The mismatch between our medical paradigm and chronic disease

Drug companies and conflicts of interest

How clinicians can help create a new paradigm

The three core problems and how to solve them

What this new paradigm looks like

How do we pay for this? Is it scalable?

How allied providers are the key

Show notes:

Unconventional Medicine by Chris Kresser

Special offer for RHR podcast listeners - get the audiobook free if you buy the book by November 12th.

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[smart_track_player url="http://ift.tt/2yiM0Yd" title="A Three-Step Plan to Fix Conventional Healthcare" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. Today we’re going to do something a little different. I am bringing on a guest host, Tony Federico, he’s the VP of marketing for Natural Force Nutrition, a physiology editor for the Journal of Evolution and Health, and a longtime contributor to Paleo Magazine, and also at Paleo f(x), which is where I met Tony, I think, originally, and I have interacted with him the most. And he’s moderated several panels that I’ve been on and I’ve always been impressed with the way he’s done that, the intelligent questions that he asks and just his balanced perspective on ancestral health and Functional Medicine, and this movement overall. Today is the day that my new book, Unconventional Medicine, comes out. It’s now available on Amazon, and I wanted to ask Tony to come take over the podcast and talk with me about the book because I know he’s really interested in all these topics and he’s read quite a bit of the book himself, and I thought it would be more interesting to have a conversation about it than for me to just sit here and do a monologue. So Tony welcome to the show and thanks for being here. Tony Federico:  Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, Chris. It’s always fun, when we’ve had the chance to chat, as you said. Whether in person or on podcast, I’m always happy to jump in and dish on health with you. Chris:  Fantastic. So, you have read a little bit of the book and we chatted a little bit about it via email, so let’s dive in. Let’s talk a little bit about this book. And for me it was really, it felt like the most important next step that I could take in order to get this message out about ending chronic disease. Tony:  Yeah, I got my copy of Unconventional Medicine a couple days ago. I just so happened to have some time off yesterday, and the next thing I knew I was 80 pages in. Chris:  Nice. Tony:  So, I have to say that, as somebody who’s been in the trenches, I worked as a personal trainer for 10 years, I could really relate to a lot of the things that you were saying in the book, and we’ll get into why a little bit later on in the interview. But you know I just am really impressed with what you put together here, Chris. So let's just, let's get into it, and the first thing that I actually wanted you to maybe tell me a little bit about was how you open the book, which I think is a really great story about a patient named Leo. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Leo and his story and kind of how that inspired you to go down this particular path of unconventional medicine.

The patient case that inspired the book

Chris:  Sure, yeah. So, Leo was an eight-year-old boy that I treated in my clinic a few years back, and I wanted to start with his story because it's, unfortunately, a typical story, much more common than, of course, we would like. And it was powerful for me, it was a powerful experience. It's what actually led to me writing this book. So, like way too many other kids of his age, he was suffering from a number of behavioral issues. He was initially diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Eventually they settled on OCD and sensory processing disorder. He would throw these just crazy tantrums where he'd end up crying or screaming inconsolably, writhing on the floor, and this would happen for seemingly the simplest of reasons. Like trying to get his shoes tied as they were going out the door, not cutting the crust off his sandwich in just the right way or getting a stain on his favorite T-shirt. And he was really rigid around his behavior and its environment, everything had to be just right, just the way he wanted it to be, or else he would fly off the handle.

Is a new healthcare paradigm affordable? Scalable? You bet.

His diet was extremely limited, he only ate a handful of foods, pretty much all of which were processed and refined. So crackers, bread, toaster waffles, that sort of thing, and this is part of the kind of OCD-like tendencies. And any time his parents would try to introduce new food, he would go totally ballistic. And they were worried about nutrient deficiency, but they didn't feel like they ... they were just worn down. Any parent who has a kid like this will understand that. It's just they didn’t feel like they had the resources to battle him at every meal. And they took him to a bunch of doctors locally, and that’s where they got those diagnoses. Initially they were kind of relieved to have those, but then after a while they realized that they were just simply labels for symptoms. And when they asked what the treatment was, you can probably guess the answer: medication. Tony:  Something to do with drugs. Chris:  Something to do with drugs. Yeah. And when they asked how long he would be on that treatment, you can probably also guess the answer. Tony:  The rest of your life. Chris:  Yeah. Shrug of the shoulders, indefinitely, maybe he'll grow out of it, that sort of thing. And they weren't excited about the idea of of medicating their son, but they were also aware of how much he was suffering, and they were suffering, frankly, too. They decided to give them a try, starting with Adderall, and then they progressed to Ritalin and then antidepressants. And certainly the drugs did seem to help with at least some of the symptoms, but there were a couple issues. Number one, they also caused some very intractable side effects like headache, abdominal pain, irritability, and most significantly, severe sleep disruption. And they had a couple of other kids that were younger than Leo. So they were not happy about the sleep disruption. Nobody was because it was brutal for them and also brutal for Leo. Kids need a lot of sleep, and if they’re waking up throughout the night, that’s going to make ... So that was in some ways worse than the original symptoms they were trying to treat. And then Leo's mom had done quite a bit of research on the effects of these medications and she was scared. Particularly for children and adolescents, some of these drugs have some pretty scary side effects and long-term risks. So what really stood out to me, and I mentioned this in the book, is that not once during this entire process of seeing all these different doctors, primary care provider, psychiatrist, eventually behavioral disorder specialists, did anybody even hint at the possibility that something in Leo's diet or some other underlying issue like a gut problem or nutrient deficiency or heavy metal toxicity or something like that could be contributing to his symptoms. It wasn't even broached as a possibility at any time. Fortunately, Leo's mom, one of her friends followed my work and sent her a couple of articles from my blog. One was on the gut–brain–axis, and I think the other one was on the underlying root causes of behavioral disorders. And so that's what led them to bring Leo to see me, and long story short, we were able to ... we did a bunch of testing, found issues that you might guess at. So, disrupted gut microbiome, SIBO, fungal overgrowth, gluten intolerance, but also intolerance of soy and corn and rice and buckwheat, which were major ingredients in a lot of the processed and refined food products that he ate, and arsenic toxicity because rice milk was the only other beverage he would drink aside from water. And we know that rice products can be high in arsenic. So, we, over several months, it definitely wasn't easy to address these problems because of his OCD-like tendencies and his picky eating habits. But after several months he was like a different kid. His teacher even called home and was like, “What have you done with Leo and who’s this kid that you’re sending in?” Because it was a big issue for her. They often had to come to school and pick him up early because of the behavioral problems. And his diet expanded; he was eating foods he would've thrown against the wall just months before, he was more tolerant of disorder, more relaxed in his environment. They were able to travel for the first time in a long time because he wasn't so anxious in unfamiliar environments. His physical symptoms had improved significantly. So they were just over the moon. They couldn't believe it, and toward the end of our treatment together, she said something that really struck me, which was there’s so many kids out there that are like Leo and they’re suffering, they’re not finding help in the conventional system. Tony:  Sure. Chris:  And their doctors and parents are not even thinking about this stuff. Like it’s not even in most people’s consciousness that if a kid has a behavioral disorder that you should look at these physiological issues. It’s not, for 99 percent of people they don't even go there because they don't know. Tony:  Yeah, I mean I think that that was—reading about Leo and reading about a story and certainly there's people that I've known, myself included, who have had very similar experiences—I think it's great to have a narrative like this that you can really connect to because then when you tease it apart, all the pieces really make sense. It makes sense why having doctors treat symptoms has failed, it makes sense why a lack of communication between the health provider network that was supposed to be serving Leo failed. It makes sense why it didn't work when you actually start to tease it out. But then we’re still all, well not all, but most of us are still going down this path and it's an exercise in futility, really. You have an eight-year-old kid who's on powerful stimulant medications, he’s on antidepressants, and it was bad enough for his parents to reach out and to seek those interventions as solutions, and then the side effects are even worse. And that’s just something that just gets you right in the heart. And like you said, he’s not the only one, he’s not the only kid. His parents are not the only parents. And frankly, his doctors are not the only doctors because I can guarantee you that that probably doesn’t really feel good for the practitioner, for the healthcare provider to not get results as well. And they’re working with what they’ve got. Chris:  Absolutely. Tony:  And trying to use the tools they have. Chris:  Yeah, I mean, let’s be clear about this. Everybody is doing the best they can in this situation. The parents are doing the best they can, in the vast majority of situations, parents just love their kids and do everything possible that they can to help their kids thrive. I’m a parent, I know that that’s how I relate to my kid. I know that every parent I know, that’s how they relate to their kids. And I would even, I would say that’s true for doctors too. The vast majority of them are trying to do the best they can with the tools that they have and in the system that they’re working within. And that’s the rub. Tony:  Right. Chris:   It’s like most doctors I’ve seen have been caring and they’ve wanted to do the right thing, but the question is, can they do the right thing in the conventional medical system as it exists today? And, of course, that’s largely what the book is about.

Who is this book for?

Tony:  Yeah, so let’s kind of speak to that specifically. And we’re talking about doctors, we’re talking about medical professionals, we’re talking about patients, and then we didn’t mention it, but where I fit into this formula or potential formula as an allied healthcare provider, as a personal trainer/health coach, is that your audience for this book, do you really see that kind of triad is who you're speaking to here? Chris:  Yeah, definitely. I think if you look at the cover of the book, the subtitle is “join the revolution to reverse chronic disease, reinvent healthcare, and create a practice you love.” So that last bit would suggest that it's mostly for practitioners, but that's not true. It is really for anybody that is interested in the ideas of reinventing healthcare and reversing chronic disease. And, in fact, I would argue that that change is going to be initiated by people, primarily by people that are not practitioners. So it's like a grassroots, bottom-up approach, where a good example is with my training program, my ADAPT training program, now that we've been training practitioners in this approach for the last couple years, we always ask people how they learned about my work or how they learned about the training program. And in a surprising number of cases, the answer is from their patients. So these doctors or other practitioners, their patient brings an article in that I wrote or brings something in, tells them about me, and to their credit they’re open-minded enough to go and check it out. And then they like what they see and they end up taking the next step. So people even who have no intention of ever becoming a healthcare practitioner, I think would really benefit from this book if they're interested in these ideas. And then certainly, as you mentioned, licensed healthcare providers like medical doctors or nurse practitioners or physician assistants that are currently working within the conventional paradigm but have already seen its limitations and want to do something different but don't yet know what that might look like. And then people who are outside of the conventional paradigm but are already practitioners, so acupuncturists, chiropractors, naturopathic physicians, etc., in many cases they’re already well aware of the limitations of conventional medicine, which is why they chose to go down a different path. But speaking personally as an acupuncturist myself, I also saw some limitations in the traditional Chinese medicine approach, or at least some differences in the way that I wanted to practice it. I was looking for something that could incorporate modern diagnostic testing and create a more systematic approach that included ancestral diet and lifestyle and some of the other things we talk about in the book. So, I think many of those practitioners can benefit from the book from that perspective. And then you have the growing and already large number of people like yourself who are personal trainers, health coaches, nutritionists, etc., who I really think are going to play an increasingly important role in this revolution to reinvent healthcare. Tony:  Yeah, it so important now for people to really, for patients to be their own advocate, and I don't think we’re living in a time where I remember with my grandparents—if your doctor said something, it was basically gospel and you didn’t question it and you didn't think about it. Now, the first thing people do when they experience a symptom, it's Dr. Google first. So it's super important to equip and arm patients with good information, which I think this book does. Here's a path, here's a path forward for you as a patient. But then it's respectful of the role of doctors, and you highlight many situations where conventional medicine is great. If you break your arm or get in a car accident or have a heart attack or whatever the case may be, yeah, you need a doctor, and you need to go to an emergency room and you need those types of interventions. But it's really in this kind of gray area, it’s really not gray, it’s actually quite clear. And we could probably specify a little bit more, but there’s this middle zone where somebody’s not acutely injured, they’re not acutely in a disease state. They’re in a chronic disease state, or they’re just unwell. And it’s hard for a system that is all about pharmacological interventions, surgical interventions, to deal with a more subtle approach. And that’s where that whole middle ground and acupuncturists and massage therapists and everybody who's in that middle zone. I had clients constantly when I was actively training, constantly asking me questions where I was like, you know what? This is really something they maybe should be taking to their doctor. But guess what? The doctor only has 15 minutes under pressure to see as many patients as they can. I had a friend who was a physician in France. And he was telling me about their medical model, and he would spend tons of time with his patients. And it was actually incentivized for prevention. And here we see some maybe misplaced incentives, and perhaps you can speak a little bit more about that.

The mismatch between our medical paradigm and chronic disease

Chris:  Yeah, so, going back to your original comments, I think that the most important thing for people to understand is that our medical model, when it comes to our medical paradigm, is that it evolved during a time when acute problems were the biggest issues. So in 1900, the top three causes of death were all infectious diseases, tuberculosis, typhoid, and pneumonia. And the other reasons people would see the doctor were among those you mentioned, like a broken bone or a gallbladder attack or appendicitis. Tony:  War. Chris:  Right, injuries, trauma, etc. And so the treatment for that's pretty straightforward. It wasn't always successful, of course, but it was straightforward. You know, if the bone was broken, you set it in a cast. If the gallbladder was swelling, you would take it out. If someone was having appendicitis, you’d remove the appendix. So that's pretty ... it's one problem, one doctor, one treatment. Pretty straightforward. But you fast-forward to today, it's a totally different healthcare landscape. Seven of the top 10 causes of death are chronic disease rather than acute problems now, and 86 percent of the healthcare dollars we spend go toward treating chronic disease. And unlike acute problems, chronic diseases are expensive, difficult to manage and usually last for a lifetime. They don't lend themselves to that one doctor, one problem, one treatment kind of approach. The average chronic disease patient requires multiple doctors, usually one for every different part of the body in our system, and is taking ... Tony:  Specialists. Chris:  Right, specialists, they’re taking multiple medications in many cases, and they're going to be taking those medications for the rest of their life. So far, it's really, our conventional medical system is amazing for these acute problems. But it's the wrong tool for the job for chronic problems. So that's one issue, and it’s really important to point that out, because we just went through the whole healthcare debate again with the Affordable Care Act and the current administration’s proposal for a replacement, which has not come to fruition. But throughout that entire discussion, it really bothered me that there was an elephant in the room. All the discussion was around insurance. Like, who gets insurance and who doesn’t. And that’s important, it’s important to talk about that. But we have to recognize that health insurance is not the same thing as healthcare. Tony:  Yeah. Chris:  Health insurance is a method of paying for healthcare. And that’s really crucial to get that difference. Because my argument in the book is that there is no method of paying for healthcare, whether it’s the government, corporations, or individuals, that will be adequate and will be sustainable under the pressure of growing prevalence of chronic disease. It will bankrupt all of us. Government, the corporations, individuals, whoever is responsible for paying for the care will not be able to do it unless we can actually prevent and reverse chronic disease instead of just slapping Band-Aids on it. Tony:  I think the analogy you gave in the book was rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “Making a few small tweaks to our current system and expecting that to work is like rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic as it inexorably sinks into the ocean. Too little, too late.”  Chris:  Yeah, exactly. That’s the argument about insurance. As the whole ship goes under, sinks under. The other problems you mentioned are very real also. So we have a misalignment of incentives, like the insurance industry, for example, doesn't benefit when the cost of care shrinks because they only make more money when the overall expenditures rise. So it's actually not in their best interest necessarily to seek out the most cost-effective solutions.

Drug companies and conflicts of interest

Chris: And then of course, we have drug companies. People are pretty well aware of the conflicts of interest there. It’s in their interest to sell drugs, and even when that’s not in the interests of the general public or the patients or the doctors. In many cases, it’s not in their interest either. So the best example of this is a recent one. We’re in the midst of an opioid crisis, the worst we’ve ever seen by far, and the DEA has been wanting to create new regulations that restrict a pharmacy’s ability to sell opioids in ways that will protect people. So, for example, there was a pharmacy in West Virginia in a town that was tiny. It had like 30,000 people in this town, and they had ordered something like nine million opioid pills in the last year. It was clearly a front, like there’s clearly something shady going on there. There's no way that 30,000 people in that town needed nine million opioid pills, and yet there are no regulations to actually prevent that from happening. And so, the DEA had proposed some regulations to just safely protect people from that kind of thing. And the Big Pharma lobby basically shut that down and they played a big role in writing a law that limits the DEA's ability to do that kind of regulation in the midst of the worse opioid crisis ever. And to put this in perspective, we hear a lot about the gun lobbies and their control. They spend about $10.5 million lobbying Congress, I think, per year. And Big Pharma, they spent $250 million. Tony:  Wow. Chris:  Twenty-five-fold higher. Tony:  It's really tragic. I actually, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, but I grew up in South Florida, which was kind of ground zero for the opioid epidemic. And I remember in high school down in Miami and West Palm Beach, and kids would get a hold of a contact or whatever, somebody that had a prescription and basically would end up being a de facto drug dealer vis-à-vis a pill mill, etc. The kid across the street from me died, multiple kids in my high school died, multiple kids went into in-treatment programs, some of them battled addictions for decades. Some of them got out of it. Very few got out of it. Some of them didn't and have continued to be plagued with either switching from pharmaceuticals to street drugs like heroin, etc., and then we can see what's happening there. And that's just one example. If we look at drug consumption in the United States, is it that Americans are just that much sicker and we’re in that much more pain than people in other countries? Because we’re consuming far and away more painkillers than any other country on the planet. And I would venture to guess that you could say the same about antidepressants or ADD medication. It's very much a case of misaligned incentives. And incentives are working in the sense of the pharmaceutical companies are doing very well. Chris:  Yeah. Who are they working for is the question. Tony:  Exactly. Chris:  We’re the only country aside from New Zealand that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising, and I think that's a big part of the problem. But it's not just Big Pharma. We also have conflicts in medical research that, of course, are related to Big Pharma because they pay for two-thirds of all medical research. We have broken payment models, where there's no real incentive or reward for good performance, and in fact, you could argue it's the other way around because doctors are compensated for, usually based on the number of procedures they order and the number of patients they see. So to your point about the doctor in France who is actually incentivized to prevent, rather than just treat disease, we don't have that at all, it's the opposite. And so there are a lot of deeply entrenched issues that we certainly need to address, and that's not essentially what this book is about. There are other books that cover that material really well, and frankly many of those issues are outside of our individual control as clinicians or practitioners.

How clinicians can help create a new paradigm

Chris: We can work toward addressing them, and I think we should, but the good news is that I think that the bigger changes that we need to focus on individually and collectively are addressing the medical paradigm which we’ve talked about, creating a medical paradigm that’s better suited to tackle chronic disease. Addressing the mismatch between our modern diet and lifestyle, and our genes and our biology, which we've, of course, talked a lot about on the show before. And then creating a new way of delivering healthcare that actually supports this new medical paradigm and this more preventative approach. Because those things are all within our control as clinicians. Tony:  Yeah. I like how you posed the question, and it was kind of a cool little, I think it was, not Hiroshi, but the person who is in charge of cooking at a Buddhist monastery. And basically a young monk comes up to this older man. He’s like, why are you doing the grunt work, basically washing rice out in the courtyard? And he says, it was like, what was it? “If not me, who? And if not now, when?” And I think that that’s really kind of the core of setting all this stuff up. Talking about the problem is really in the service of pivoting to the solution, and I’m a big believer in thinking globally, thinking big, but acting locally, hyper-locally, like yourself. Chris:  Yeah. Tony:  And then the people around you and who you can touch and impact. That’s ultimately where the power comes from. So let’s talk about that. What is in people’s power. And you started to describe some of those pillars of a new model. And you describe it as the ADAPT framework. And I don’t know how much you get into this on your regular podcast episodes, but to just kind of lay it out, ADAPT from a big-picture perspective. How does that actually address some of these systemic issues from an individually empowered stance? Chris:  Yeah, great question, and before I even go into that, I just want to say I agree that I think the change is going to happen on different levels. So, because a lot ... we’ve talked about this stuff at conferences or even some people who’ve already read the book. They say, oh, this is fantastic. I’m so excited. But how are we going to deal with Big Pharma and the insurance industry and these misaligned incentives and all of that? And can we ever deal with that? The answer is we’re not going to deal with that overnight and it’s going to take a while to unwind those things. Tony:  It’s the chronic disease, is what you call... Chris:  Exactly, exactly. And I use that analogy in the book. But the good news is that changes can happen very quickly on an individual and local level. And there’s already a lot of evidence of that happening. So my own clinic, CCFM, tripled in size in the last three years alone. We have Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, launched by Dr. Mark Hyman, has just blown up like crazy. I mean they started in this tiny space. Now their 17,000-square-foot space, it takes up the whole second floor of the Glickman Tower at Cleveland Clinic. They've got a waitlist of 2,500 patients from nine countries around the world. This is really exciting! The Cleveland Clinic is always on the forefront of the newest trends in medicine, and the fact that they've invested that much money in this speaks volumes. Then we have groups like Iora Health, an organization based in the Rocky Mountain area that’s reversing diabetes using health coaches. So there are lots of really interesting produced concepts, and there's going to be more and more of these. Like we’re doing a pilot program with the Berkeley Fire Department where we’re working with their new recruits to help, we’re implementing a wellness program. Tony:  That’s awesome. Chris:  To reduce injuries and help with recovery and optimize their performance. And if that goes well, there’s been interest from the wider fire department and in the city of Berkeley as a whole. Robb Wolf’s done some incredible work with Reno that we’ve talked about before. So I think the change is going to happen more quickly on this local grassroots level, and then that's going to start to get the attention of people on a state and federal level. And then it will start to get really interesting.

The three core problems and how to solve them

To answer your question, in my book I basically lay out three core fundamental problems with the healthcare system in the US. And these, I argue, go even deeper than the misaligned incentives and Big Pharma and all of that stuff, although they’re, of course, connected. The first is that there is a profound mismatch between our genes and our biology and our modern diet and lifestyle. And I'm not going to say more about that now because almost everyone listening to this podcast knows exactly what I mean. The second problem is the mismatch between our medical paradigm and chronic disease, which we just talked about. We need a new medical paradigm that is better suited for chronic disease. And then the third is that the way we deliver care in this country is also, it's not set up to support the most important interventions. And we’ve touched on that too, where the average visit with the primary care provider is just actually eight to 12 minutes. Tony, you were talking about 15 minutes. That’s luxurious in our current model. The average amount of time a patient gets to speak before they’re interrupted by the doctor is 12 seconds. Tony:  Wow. Chris:  So I think it’s pretty clear that if a patient has multiple chronic diseases, which one in four Americans now do, one in two has one chronic disease, and they show up to the doctor’s office and they're on multiple medications, and they had been presenting with a whole set of new symptoms, there’s absolutely no way to provide high-quality care in a 10-minute visit. So we have to change our, not only the paradigm, but also the way that care is delivered. So that was my premise. So it follows then that my solution would address, I would hope at least those three points, right? Each of those three deficiencies. So the ADAPT framework combines an ancestral diet and lifestyle, which addresses that mismatch between our genes and biology in our modern diet and lifestyle. And then Functional Medicine is the new paradigm of medicine that is based on addressing the root cause of health problems, so we can prevent and reverse them instead of just suppressing symptoms. And then the third component is what I call a collaborative practice model, which links licensed providers like medical doctors, nurse practitioners, with what I call allied providers, which include folks like yourself, Tony, health coaches, nutritionists, personal trainers, etc., to provide a much, much higher level of care than what doctors are able to provide on their own. So, again, we're not trying to replace doctors in any, or even conventional medicine. We need people to do colonoscopies and remove cancerous tumors and use all of the incredible amount of training and expertise and skill that they’ve acquired over a lifetime of practice and study. We absolutely want that, but we need to add stuff to that that's not available now. Tony:  What that really says to me is, emphasize the importance of community, of connection, of collaboration. We’re social creatures, we’re tribal by nature. That’s another kind of Paleo/ancestral health part of the puzzle. And it would be foolish to think that we can dissect out and silo out all these different aspects of our lives without consequence. I really like this idea of bringing everybody into the fold, and it’s not saying that you can go to just the naturopath, or you can go to just the health coach. Because like I mentioned already, I certainly would’ve been ill-equipped to handle plenty of issues that a client would’ve brought to mind or brought up in conversation during a training session. But it would’ve been really great to say, ah, here's the Functional Medicine practitioner that I recommend you speak with, and to have a good relationship with that person and to be able to, as a health coach, help my clients better by getting them in touch with the right person. And that’s having this network that can really support people throughout their health journey whether it’s just feeling better and more energy, or addressing something like diabetes or hypertension. Which certainly there’s a place for all the players in that kind of scenario.

What this new paradigm looks like

Chris:  Absolutely. And let’s use an example just to bring this to life for people. So, imagine you go to the doctor and they do some blood testing for your annual physical. And they find that your fasting blood sugar is 96 or 97. Your hemoglobin A1c is 5.5, and you’ve got triglycerides that are 110, 120, maybe 130. Currently, what would happen is nothing, usually. Tony:  You’re not sick enough yet. Chris:  Yeah, all of your markers are within the lab range, they say, and that means you’re normal, and so you might get some vague advice about make sure to exercise and follow a good diet. And thank you very much, that’s it. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, of course. There’s some practitioners who can get a lot more proactive about that. But I can’t tell you how many people, patients I’ve had that have been given that basic line with those kinds of lab results. What could happen is this. The doctor says, “Well, you know, if we think of blood sugar disorders on a spectrum, on the left you’ve got perfect blood sugar. On the right you’ve got full-fledged type 2 diabetes. You’re not on the right yet, you don’t have type 2 diabetes or even technically prediabetes, but you’re progressing along that spectrum. And what we know from a lot of research is that if we don’t intervene now, that you’re going to continue progressing. And in fact, we have studies that show that the average patient who has prediabetes, will progress to full-fledged type 2 diabetes in just five years if it’s not addressed.” So what we want to do is be proactive here. We want to intervene now because it’s much easier to prevent a disease before it occurs than it is to treat it after it’s already occurred. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to set you up with our staff health coach, and they’re going to give you all the support you need to adopt a better diet. They’re actually even going to take you shopping, they’re going to come to your house and clean out your pantry with you, and they're going to give you recipes and meal plans and give you ... totally hold your hand and do everything that they need to to get you on this diet. Because we know that information is not enough. We’ve got lots of studies. I can tell you as a doctor, go eat a healthy diet, and hey, we know that that’s probably not going to happen. Most people know what they should be doing, but they’re not doing it, and it’s not because of lack of information. It’s because they need support, and we’re here to support you. We’ve got this health coach. Furthermore, we've got this great personal trainer named Tony. We’re going to set you up with him and we’re also going to set you up with a gym membership. And the good news is, your insurance is going to pay for all this. They’re going to pay for the health coach, they’re going to pay for the gym membership, they’re going to pay for your sessions with Tony. And in six months’ time, you’re going to come back here and we’re going to retest your blood markers and I can almost guarantee that if you stick with the program, you’re going to have normal blood sugar by that time. And throughout that period you’re going to have weekly check-ins with a health coach, you’re going to have training sessions. And not only will your blood sugar be normal, you’re going to lose weight, your energy levels are going to go up, your sleep’s going to get better, you’re going to feel more confident and empowered because you’re making these changes, and you’re going to feel like a different person. Now that’s totally possible.

How do we pay for this? Is it scalable?

Chris: I can hear some people saying, “Oh, how are we going to pay for that? That’s ridiculous.” Tony:  Is it scalable? Chris:  The question we should be asking is, is treating type 2 diabetes scalable? Because I mentioned this in the book, it costs $14,000 a year to treat a single patient with type 2 diabetes. So let’s imagine that this patient progresses. We don’t intervene, five years later they have type 2 diabetes. All of a sudden the healthcare system is spending $14,000 a year paying for that person’s care. And let’s say that that person gets diagnosed at age 40, which is still reasonable these days. The age of diagnosis is dropping more and more, and then let’s say that they live until they’re 85 years old, which is also possible because of our heroic medical interventions that keep people alive a lot longer than they might have been otherwise. So 45 years living with type 2 diabetes, that’s a cost of almost $650,000 for one patient to the healthcare system. Tony:  And that doesn’t even touch on the lost wages, cost to employers, when someone’s on leave, loss of productivity. And then the cost to the family members. Chris:  Absolutely. Tony:  People that are actually, are helping the patient, their health is going to be going down too. Chris:  Yeah. Nor does it touch on the qualitative aspects. Being immobilized, not being able to play with your grandkids, all of that stuff. But let’s just even forget about that for a second—$650,000, okay? And then the CDC recently came out with statistics saying that 100 million Americans have either prediabetes or diabetes, and 88 percent of people with prediabetes don’t even know that they have it. Which means they're almost certainly going to progress, right? If you do the math and you multiply 100 million people times even $14,000 for one year, you get a number that’s so large, I don’t even know what it is. It’s like a google something. It’s like, it has so many zeros after it, I don’t even know how to characterize it. But then if you multiply 100 million times like 20 or 30 years, it’s more money than there is in the world. It's like it's not going to happen. Tony:  Not sustainable, not scalable. Chris:  Not sustainable, not scalable. So let’s say in our example that we ... the healthcare system spends $10,000, which is way more than would be necessary, but let’s even say we buy the person’s groceries for three months. And their gym membership and their trainer, and their health coach, and those weekly, let’s say we spend $10,000. We’re just super generous and we spend $10,000 for that six-month period. Again, the research and my clinical experience indicates with near certainty that if the person is at that stage of not even prediabetic and we intervene, there’s like almost no chance that it’s not going to, we’re not going to be able to normalize that person’s blood sugar. And if they do that and they stick with it and they are able to do that because they now have support rather than just information, we’ve just saved the healthcare system $640,000 over the course of that patient’s lifetime. And that’s a conservative estimate, as you say. We're not including even the indirect costs. Tony:  Right, right. Chris:  I think that this is not only possible, it's going to become necessary. And whether we get there with a proactive approach where we decide to move in this direction and we make these changes or whether we get there because we absolutely have no choice, we’re going to get there. Tony:  Yeah. I mean it really sounds like we can’t afford to not do this. Chris:  Exactly. Tony:  And if we get to that point where we continue down the reactive path and we wait until there’s a total collapse, it might be too late, just to put it frankly. And it’s going to come out at a huge, not just financial cost, a huge human cost. Chris:  Yeah, it’s going to be, we can use the chronic disease metaphor again, it’s a lot easier to prevent a problem or reverse it at an earlier stage than it is to wait until the patient is essentially on life support or the healthcare system is on life support. It’s harder to reverse it at that time. And that’s of course why I’m writing the book now because I want to get this message out as far and wide as I can. Tony:  Yeah. If not now, when? If not you, who? Go right back to there.

How allied providers are the key

Chris:  Exactly. And one more thing about that is the amazing thing, the beauty of this is that it takes about eight years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to train a doctor. And it takes a certain kind of personality and a certain kind of comfort level with science, and a lot of prerequisites. It’s not for everybody. And there’s a ... already we have a shortage of doctors, and that’s predicted to get worse. I’ve seen estimates that suggest by 2025 we’ll have a shortage of 52,000 primary care physicians. So that’s a big deal. [insert image] So we already don’t have enough doctors, it’s already going to get worse, but if you think of healthcare as like a ... I have something in the book called the healthcare population pyramid. And you were referring to it earlier, Tony, where at the very top of that pyramid you’ve got 5 percent of people who are in really acute situations. So they’re in the hospital or they’re in an intensive outpatient care setting. They need the conventional medicine paradigm as it exists, and it’s fantastic for those situations. Then you’ve got another 25 percent of people in that kind of high middle of the pyramid who are dealing with some pretty serious chronic health challenges. So they require more regular care, but they’re not sick enough to be in the hospital or in any kind of ... they’re living their lives, but they’re struggling a lot. A Functional Medicine practitioner/clinician usually working in concert possibly with the conventional specialist of some kind is a really great option for that 25 percent of the pyramid. But then you’ve got the 70 percent at the bottom. So these are people who do, may have health issues, but they’re more minor, so they might have skin problems, or a little bit of brain fog, some difficulties sleeping, some GI issues. And these can be definitely debilitating and total pain, but they’re not at the level of that 25 percent. My argument is that in many cases these people could be very well served by a health coach or nutritionist with good training. And possibly seeing a Functional Medicine provider once or twice a year, or something like that. And the thing is, we can train people in a year or two without an extensive science background to be very, very objective in this role. Because they’re mostly working with patients on changing their behavior. If you think about it, most of the risk factors for chronic disease come down to the wrong behaviors. Eating the wrong diet, not getting enough sleep, not exercising, or exercising too much, or any number of things that come down to choices that we’re making. And so if a skilled health coach who’s trained in things like motivational interviewing and coaching to strengths and other evidence-based principles of facilitating behavior change which we have a ton of research on, they can be incredibly effective for that 70 percent of the population. That's the majority of the population. So we’re totally underutilizing these practitioners, and my argument is that they’re going to play a huge role in this future of medicine. And that's of course one reason why we're launching an ADAPT Health Coach Training Program next year to complement the practitioner training program that we've been doing. Because I want to create this ecosystem we've been talking about where you have all of these different types of practitioners working to the maximum of their training and ability and scope of practice and supporting each other and therefore providing the highest level of care to patients. Tony:  That certainly kind of perks my ears up hearing about the ADAPT health coach option and something that I’m personally interested in. So who knows? Maybe I can get in on that. We can talk about it again in the future. Chris:  Yeah, for sure. For sure. Tony:  So, for this particular book, for Unconventional Medicine, people are fired up, they’re hearing about it, they’re like, “Okay, this resonates with me. I’m a practitioner, I’m an allied health provider, I’m a patient, I’m ready. Now’s the time. This is it. We’re going to do this.” What’s the best way for people to get their hands on this thing? Chris:  Well not surprisingly, Amazon. They have the best way to get your hands on anything. So it’s available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook. We’re hoping [the audiobook] is going to be out today, the day this podcast is released. But it might be another two or three days. They’re just taking their sweet time to approve it. I narrated the audiobook myself. So you podcast listeners, I figured you might be into that, since you like to listen. Tony:  They know your voice. Chris:  Yeah, and just listening to something instead of reading it perhaps. So to that end, we have a special offer for podcast listeners, because I appreciate your support and I know many of you are already part of this movement, and some are wanting to get involved. So if you buy that paperback or Kindle version between now and Sunday night, you’ll get some really cool bonuses. The first is a free copy of the audiobook. So again, we wanted to include that for podcast listeners, since we figured you guys and gals are probably interested in audio. But there are two other things that are really, I think, fantastic. And one, they’re both tools to help you be more confident and persuasive and factual when you share your passion for Functional Medicine and an ancestral diet and lifestyle. Because we’ve had a lot of questions from people, both practitioners and non-practitioners alike. They say, “Oh, how do I talk about this stuff to my sister at Thanksgiving?” Tony:  “Isn’t that that caveman diet?” Chris:  Yeah, exactly. All of our ancestors died when they were 30, so why should we even care? How do you respond to those arguments? Or if you start talking about Functional Medicine and maybe one of your conventional medicine colleagues says, “Oh, that’s just, I saw something on Science-based Medicine that said that was all just hooey. There’s nothing to it. How do you respond to that?” So what we wanted to do is give people the ammunition they needed in a respectful way. You know, this isn’t about getting the better of somebody. It’s about responding in a factual and convincing but respectful way. So we’ve got two different, we’re calling these the Power Packs. And one is for practitioners, so clinicians, health coaches, nutritionists, trainers, etc., and these are facts, research that you can reference and persuasive reasons for your clients or patients or colleagues to consider this Functional Medicine and ancestral diet and lifestyle approach. And then we have one for non-practitioners called the Supporter Power Pack. And these are smart answers and compelling comebacks, again respectful, for those common objections that you hear when you start talking about this stuff with your friends and family. So these bonuses are available until Sunday night [November 12, 2017] at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. So you’ve got a few days to act on that, and you can go to ... we set up a special link for you to get these and that’s Kresser.co/bonus. That’s Kresser.co/bonus. So head over there to get your Power Packs and your free audiobook, and that’s after you purchase either the paperback or Kindle. There’ll be a place where you enter your order number and we ask for some information just to verify, and I hope you enjoy those and get a lot out of them. Because they were actually really fun to put together. Tony:  Yeah, I think the audiobook is huge. I like to listen to audiobooks when I’m driving around town or outside getting some exercise. Chris:  Yeah. Tony:  So, no excuses when you make it that easy. Chris:  Yeah, yeah. So, Tony, thanks so much for doing this. This has been really fun to talk to you, as it always is. And I appreciate it. Tony:  Actually, I wanted to throw in one extra little special thing, as we mentioned, at the top of the show. I spent 10 years as a personal trainer in the trenches, I was involved with Paleo Magazine for many, many years, going to all the events, and for me kind of an evolution in my professional life was, how do I impact more people? How do I help more people? And at first I was working one on one, and then it was as a facility manager helping other trainers and coaches get better. And then I was able to scale it up that way. And last year I had an opportunity to join the team over at Natural Force, which is all-natural, nutritional products, and I basically said, “You know what? I’m going to go all in on this because if I can touch a million people through really good, high-quality nutrition, that’s me maximizing my impact and really kind of living my purpose.” So one of the things I wanted to do today is put it out there for anyone listening who maybe uses collagen or MCT oil or whey protein. We really bend over backwards to source the best ingredients in the world, no additives, all that stuff. Everything is as clean as we can possibly make it. It takes a lot of work, working with manufacturers. Kind of like what you were saying, how patients have to know how to talk to their doctor. I don’t think people really realize, and I didn’t realize until I got on the inside, how much work it is for a brand to work with their manufacturers to convince them to get outside of the conventional mold. So it’s the kind of unconventional nutrition is really what we’re pushing here. So I set up a discount code for any Revolution Health listeners. Go to NaturalForce.com, use coupon code “unconventional” and get $10 off plus free shipping on your order. So I just want to put that out there as just a little extra bonus for anybody, and I would certainly love to help in that way and really get some good, high-quality nutrition into people’s hands. Chris:  Awesome. Yeah, and there’s so many ways people can help, and I ... at Paleo f(x) we’ve see the growth of companies that are serving this space, and it's amazing. Like the products that are available now. I had breakfast this morning, I had some eggs and kale and parsley and a little bit of bacon in a couple of cassava flour tortillas. Breakfast burritos. Whoever thought I’d be having a breakfast burrito again? Tortillas are made from completely cassava flour. They’re autoimmune friendly and they’re grain-free tortillas. It’s incredible. Tony:  I think I might have some of those in my fridge as well. Chris:  Yeah. I mean there’s so many things. And these people, they’re serving this movement with that kind of work. So it’s great to see. Tony:  It takes a village, man. Chris:  It does. Thanks again, Tony. I really appreciate it. Thank you, everybody. So again, Kresser.co/bonus to pick up your free audiobook and the other bonuses, and I hope you can all join me in this revolution to reinvent healthcare. We need you, whatever your background and goals. Take care, everybody.

Source: http://chriskresser.com November 08, 2017 at 04:12PM

[wumbleberry-fc]

All of them :P

1:Full name

Alexander David Walter, but please call me Pete

2:Age

18

3:3 Fears

I’ll die early and break my promise to my best fried to not die for “many, many years to come,” getting anything- even water- in my eyes or close to my eyes, my parents finding out about my beliefs and kicking me out

4:3 things I love

My best friend, my best friend, and, um, my best friend

My best friend, cuddling/hugging, and being cold

5:4 turns on

Uhh, I only get “turned on” if I haven’t ‘done the deed’ in a while, but I don’t really have any stimuli that can sexually “turn me on” consistently.

6:4 turns off

Honestly? Nakedness. And also…… gosh, I don’t know. My lack of sexual attraction is not helping me come up with an answer…

7:My best friend

My best friend is Rachel and she is a first violin in the top orchestra at my former high school and we met through a school club and we had lunch every day almost all of my senior year and she is the best and I love her

8:Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation? Asexual, or on the Ace spectrum at least.

9:My best first date

Uh, what in my life classifies as a date? I’m so ??? on everything, but….. I’m going to claim that I haven’t had a true first date with anybody. However, I did go to dinner with someone (who was forced to go with me by her parents 1/10 would not recommend at all) before the homecoming dance in my freshman year and the pasta wasn’t terrible and we did have some moments of sustained conversation…

10:How tall am I

6′ 1″ (186 cm)

11:What do I miss

My best friend, getting to eat lunch with my best friend and another of my closest friends every day at school, the high school clubs and band, marching band, my AP Gov class, playing games with people

12:What time were I born

11:55 am on a Monday

13:Favourite color

Onyx, cerulean/cobalt

14:Do I have a crush

I wouldn’t classify anything I have as a crush right now, neither romantically nor platonically

15:Favourite quote

“You’ve got opinions, manWe’re all entitled to ‘emBut I never asked

So let me thank you for your timeAnd try to not waste any more of mineGet out of here fast”

from the song “King of Anything” by Sara Bareilles

16:Favourite place

Next to my best friend. Otherwise, the city where I grew up.

17:Favourite food

A cheeseburger with an egg on it. A bun, a burger patty, american cheese (or cheddar), bacon, an over-easy egg, and lettuce. Plus, I love biting into the burger and then letting the runny yolk drip onto the fries and if I’m lucky, some cheese will also drip onto the fries over time and so I can have cheesy, egg-y fries and they just taste so good

18:Do I use sarcasm

Yeah, I would say so.

19:What am I listening to right now

The ringing in my ears from my hearing damage

20:First thing I notice in new person

Their faces (more specifically, their lips)

21:Shoe size

Men’s 11-12 Wide

22:Eye color

Blue most of the time

23:Hair color

Dirty Blond

24:Favourite style of clothing

Whatever is clean, or if not, whatever I can slip on in a few seconds. Often a T-shirt and basketball shorts

25:Kiss someone that starts with the letter “R”?

Yeah

27:Meaning behind my URL

I play the tuba and wanted to join the Jesus SquadTM

28:Kiss someone that starts with the letter “M”?

No

29:Favourite song

“She Used To Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles

30:Favourite band

Panic! at the Disco

31:How I feel right now

Unstimulated

32:Someone I love

My best friend

33:My current relationship status

Content

34:My relationship with my parents

I’m not all that open with them and don’t feel that it’s worth it at this point to let them into my personal life

35:Favourite holiday

Christmas, honestly. It’s one of the two times I get to see all of my mom’s family, guaranteed, and it’s much better than Thanksgiving

36:Tattoos and piercing i have

None, and I don’t want any either

37:Tattoos and piercing i want

Oh. Well, what I typed five seconds ago still stands, I don’t want any.

38:The reason I joined Tumblr

Uhh, I’m not going to say… Let’s say the puns, yeah, the puns…

39:Do I and my last ex hate each other?

She should hate me, but I don’t hate her. I just feel incredibly guilty…

40:Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?

My best friend and I try to say good night every night.

41:Have I ever kissed the last person you texted?

No

42:When did I last hold hands?

Sunday

43:How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?

However long it takes to find clothes and get up

44:Have You shaved your legs in the past three days?

It’s been a good two years or so I think, but I want to do it again

45:Where am I right now?

My living room

46:If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me?

I wouldn’t be drunk, alcohol in no way tastes anywhere close to as good as root beer does

47:Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?

However loud it needs to be for me to clearly hear it, and loud if I’m trying to drown out noises I don’t want to hear (the television about once a week average)

48:Do I live with my Mom and Dad?

For 11 more days and then whenever I’m not at college, and we’ll see after I graduate

49:Am I excited for anything?

I’m going to my best friend’s first cross country meet of the season today and so I get to see my best friend today!!!!!

50:Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?

My best friend

51:How often do I wear a fake smile?

Talking about my life or the future or anything around my parents and church friends

52:When was the last time I hugged someone?

Sunday

53:What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me?

I’d be really confused but I’d support and accept it

54:Is there anyone I trust even though I should not?

I only fully 100% trust one person, and I’m fairly sure the people I’ve talked to on here aren’t bad

55:What is something I disliked about today?

I once again didn’t do anything productive towards getting ready for college

56:If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

Barack Obama would be pretty neat to meet

57:What do I think about most?

My best friend

58:What’s my strangest talent?

My buddy, I have no clue. Probably making alright sounding composition things with no knowledge of theory or anything.

59:Do I have any strange phobias?

emailing people, talking on the phone with people

60:Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

I don’t like filming, but I also am not the most comfortable in front of a camera at all times

61:What was the last lie I told?

Probably something related to emailing my professor about renting a tuba for band

62:Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

Video chatting online is better than talking on the phone, but both are fifth out of five methods of communicating that I detailed up yesterday for my best friend.

63:Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

No, and probably not. I do think aliens exist, but I don’t believe in aliens? Like, it’s rational to think that given the entire space, aliens have to exist, but also any thoughts we have about aliens don’t strike me as believable??

64:Do I believe in magic?

No

65:Do I believe in luck?

Yes and no, it depends, it switches back and forth. Kinda like if I believe in a monotheist God.

66:What’s the weather like right now?

Recovering from the ash from the wildfires. Also we’re transitioning from summer drought to our rest of the year “This is why Seattle has the reputation it does” weather, slowly but surely over the course of the next month before it truly kicks in mid-October.

67:What was the last book I’ve read?

The last book that I read start to finish every word was probably Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”

68:Do I like the smell of gasoline?

Not particularly, no

69:Do I have any nicknames?

(Hot) Pete, and my last name

70:What was the worst injury I’ve ever had?

Split open my head and needed a couple stitches when I was 8

71:Do I spend money or save it?

If I had any self-control or discipline, I’d be that rich teenage white boy you hear a lot in the media

72:Can I touch my nose with a tounge?

No.

73:Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me?

Same as yesterday, the stuffed animal, pillow, and folder are all still here and my hot pink tie is still in my room about 40 feet away

74:Favourite animal?

I feel uneasy around pretty much any non-human sentient being, and then most human sentient beings as well. I just… don’t know how to answer this question honestly

75:What was I doing last night at 12 AM?

I was finishing up answering the rest of the asks last night at around midnight

76:What do I think is Satan’s last name is?

Satan is just a myth to scare people into being “better” people, where “better” is just a specific lifestyle dictated by whoever managed to gain influence in the doctrine and teachings of the religion.

His origins also come from a time where surnames and ‘last names’ were not a thing, so Satan is most likely a stand-alone name, much like Plato and Zeus.

77:What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?

“She Used To Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles

78:How can you win my heart?

I’ll be the judge of that. It just… happens. Rachel, Kyle, Grae, Haley, Katie, Hot Luke, and others just……. existed, and then pretty much somehow they just became a big part of my life and I…. I just love them

79:What would I want to be written on my tombstone?

That I was a beloved friend who made a positive difference in their lives

80:What is my favorite word?

Aaaaahhhh! I know so many words, like, more than 5, and there are so many good ones!!!!!! Right now, I’m feeling music as the best word of the moment.

81:My top 5 blogs on tumblr

No. This is so rude. Why? Why must I single out a few blogs and tell the world that the interaction we’ve had isn’t enough for me and that you’re just not special enough to me? I refuse to do this.

82:If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?

“I love my best friend, gay people are amazing, fund the arts, respect the arts, respect people who work the “undesired” jobs, work to protect the environment, and try to do things that make you happy while not harming other people or sentient beings.”

83:Do I have any relatives in jail?

Not that I know of

84:I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power?

I’m firmly in the teleportation camp. I hate being late and I’m not a fan of travelling.

85:What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

Hygiene-related questions… please…. I’m working on it…. let me be…..

86:What is my current desktop picture?

The default background

87:Had sex?

No, ew.

88:Bought condoms?

Never actually seen them accept in memes and once during health class in freshman year

89:Gotten pregnant?

No

90:Failed a class?

Yeah….. and it was the second semester of APUSH too…

91:Kissed a boy?

On his hand, which I’ll count

92:Kissed a girl?

Yeah

93:Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain?

No

94:Had job?

I became a CYO volleyball referee and reffed two seasons so far.

95:Left the house without my wallet?

Often, and since I’ve been driving, only twice (although one was driving up for a the campus tour at the college I ended up choosing, which was about 5 total hours of driving that day, a week after I got my license). I try to remember it when I go out because I saw a few months ago a post on here saying how valuable it is in case of an accident or something and the person has an ID, and I’ve been watching crime dramas for years and having an ID is always good.

96:Bullied someone on the internet?

Good heavens, no!

97:Had sex in public?

No! Ewwww, God that’s even worse

98:Played on a sports team?

I sooo miss volleyball, and soccer was fun too

99:Smoked weed?

I hope to be able to say no until I die

100:Did drugs?

I occasionally took my prescriptions… for like 2 months… whoops

But no, not for the intention of getting high or anything, I hate drugs, even advil and tylenol

101:Smoked cigarettes?

Fuck cigarettes (and no, I haven’t)

102:Drank alcohol?

A drop of an IPA when I was 13 and a sip of a red wine when I was 16 (with parental supervision that time), and nah, it isn’t my thing.

103:Am I a vegetarian/vegan?

Show me a well-prepared vegetable that has a decent flavor and I might be open to eating them more often

104:Been overweight?

Ever since I was like 2

105:Been underweight?

Never

106:Been to a wedding?

I think I’ve been to 5?

107:Been on the computer for 5 hours straight?

what do you think I do every day?

108:Watched TV for 5 hours straight?

So many wasted hours...

109:Been outside my home country?

Not yet

110:Gotten my heart broken?

Actually? Seriously? Like, more than just butt hurt over an infatuation? No, not really

111:Been to a professional sports game?

A couple baseball games

112:Broken a bone?

My ulna and radius, just above the wrist, on my dad’s 48th birthday back in fifth grade when I tripped over my two feet in the middle of our street and landed poorly. We didn’t go to the hospital for like 3 days

113:Cut myself?

Like, as in self-harming? No.

114:Been to prom?

No, freshman homecoming was off-putting enough for me after the aftermath…

115:Been in airplane?

Yeah! Flying is great!

116:Fly by helicopter?

No

117:What concerts have I been to?

I apparently went to two The Wiggles concerts when I was a baby, and since then it’s only been school concerts

118:Had a crush on someone of the same sex?

I think the desire was enough to elevate it past a mere infatuation, but it wasn’t like a full-on crush if you know what I’m saying.

119:Learned another language?

Not fully… I’m that kind of white person (minus the complete snobbish elitist attitude)

120:Wore make up?

It isn’t bad, but it’s too close to my eyes for me to be comfortable, and it’s wayyy too much work to do like every day just to look better than my meagerness. I’m already bad enough with basic hygiene, this would be too much (although I guess if I cared that much about it it might help this problem…). I’ll gladly wear it for a show, though.

121:Lost my virginity before I was 18?

The concept of virginity is complete bs to oppress women and “weak” men and is only fun in the ‘sacrificing a virgin into a volcano’ trope but even then I don’t like it (again, sex is gross for me, so no)

122:Had oral sex?

I have kissed and been kissed on my lips, various spots on my face, and my hands, and that’s it.

123:Dyed my hair?

No

124:Voted in a presidential election?

No, but I registered to vote on my eighteenth birthday this year and I voted in the primary elections back in August and I can’t wait to vote in the November elections because VOTING IS IMPORTANT ESPECIALLY IN NON-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS WHEN ONLY A VERY LOW PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION VOTES!!!!! LIKE, IT’S DISAPPOINTING THAT ONLY ABOUT 50% OF THE POPULATION VOTES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, BUT THAT NUMBER DROPS TO 30-40% IN MIDTERM ELECTIONS AND ONLY 10-20% IN LOCAL-ONLY ELECTIONS (READ: ELECTIONS IN ODD-NUMBERED YEARS) AND THOSE NUMBERS BREAK MY HEART AND WE NEED TO VOTE MORE BECAUSE VOTING IS THE EASIEST WAY TO HAVE SOME LEVEL OF PARTICIPATION IN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS AND IT IS IMPORTANT FOR THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TO BE HEARD AND IF YOU ONLY VOTE IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OR NEVER AT ALL, THEN THE PEOPLE WHO FAITHFULLY VOTE EVERY YEAR, AKA RICH OLD WHITE CONSERVATIVE MEN, ESSENTIALLY HAVE ALL OF THE VOICE IN THE ELECTIONS AND WE DO NOT NEED TO HAVE EVERYTHING ABOUT OUR GOVERNMENT DECIDED BY RICH OLD WHITE CONSERVATIVE MEN IF YOU’VE EVER READ ANY HISTORY TEXTBOOK OR REALLY ANYTHING, YOU SHOULD EASILY BE ABLE TO SEE WHY! PLEASE VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION!!!!!!!!!

125:Rode in an ambulance?

No

126:Had a surgery?

Do stitches count? Otherwise, no.

127:Met someone famous?

No

128:Stalked someone on a social network?

Too many times, sadly, and sorry

129:Peed outside?

Yeah

130:Been fishing?

No

131:Helped with charity?

I’ve volunteered with some non-profits, but I don’t think I’ve done so with a quote “charity” unquote.

132:Been rejected by a crush?

Probably? Most things were minor infatuations that I used to think were crushes, so I’m not sure. You could say that the most recent potential qualifier rejected me, but I would beg to differ given things now

133:Broken a mirror?

I was a reckless child

134:What do I want for birthday?

More time to spend alone with my best friend, more time to be with my best friend, a sudden influx of cash (and/or guaranteed financial stability), root beer and food and people to play games with

135:How many kids do I want and what will be their names?

Zero (0). However, if I do have kids, I’d probably adopt them, and I’d probably let them choose their names. Otherwise, I really like the names Luke, Pete®, James, Haley, Sara, Nicole, Alex (particularly for non-binary or female identifying persons), Rachel (though I probably wouldn’t name my kid that bc it’s too special for me), Hannah, and Emily.

136:Was I named after anyone?

My parents don’t say so.

137:Do I like my handwriting?

I’ve spent a long time crafting this efficient style, so yes. Also I have like three style to choose, my Most EfficientTM style, my All Caps (with the first letter taller than the others) style, and my fancy style with all of the tails at the end of the letters, the a like this font has it, the curls, anything I find to be   fancy   *jazz hands*

138:What was my favourite toy as a child?

Probably my little cars that I would move around on my city roads carpet along with a motorcycle that made had a brief jingle and then a simple noise that was super cool for 6-8 year old me

139:Favourite Tv Show?

Phineas and Ferb, or How I Met Your Mother

140:Where do I want to live when older?

Ideally, somewhere here in my hometown, I just love it here.

141:Play any musical instrument?

I can make a sound, but is it really playing? *suspenseful music crescendos*

142:One of my scars, how did I get it?

My Aunt re-married when I was 8 and the guy had a son a few months older than me, and we babysat him for a month during their honeymoon. Well, this boy wasn’t a good influence on me at all, but that’s beside the point. I thought he was… you know what, that actually is the point, but…. I though he was cool, and he could do things and did things that I wanted to try.

Well, one day, we laid out flat a futon and covered it with all the cushions and pillows from the couch that was also downstairs. Then, he grabbed an exercise ball, put it on the futon, got on it, rolled across the futon over the pillows, and stood up on the other side of the futon when he was done and I was so impressed, it blew my mind that he laid his midsection on the ball and rolled the ball like 6 feet and didn’t move or fall off of the exercise ball as it rolled.

So I tried it. And at the end, I slid off the ball, but not to land. I didn’t know how he stayed horizontal, and it showed, as I fell forward and slammed the side of me head into the corner of a cabinet right next to the far side of the cabinet. It hurt, and so I didn’t try a second time… until he successfully did it again a few minutes later. So I, desperately wanting to do it right and be “cool” like him, tried to do it again.

And I hit the exact same part of the side of my head on the corner of the cabinet again, almost exactly how my run went the first time. After the second hit, my head really hurt, and so I put my hands to my head, ran halfway up the stairs, and began to cry.

Also know that I was going through a phase where I loved to fake cry. I thought imitating the sounds of crying without the tears was one of the funniest things. And my mom hated it. She was a stay-at-home mom at that point, had been from a few months before I was born until my youngest sister entered elementary school with us. And so she was at home all day, every day (hence the babysitting). So, for the two months of summer by that point, my fake crying obsession was driving her up the wall.

Back to the story. Now, I’m sitting on the staircase, hands on my head because it hurts, tears forming in my eyes and my voice beginning to make all the crying sounds that I made when I was fake crying all summer so I guess my imitations were spot on. But after about a minute, I decided remove my arms from my head, and I looked at them, and there were lines of blood all the way from my fingers to my elbows and drops had fallen from my elbows onto my sock, and I shrieked.

I immediately went back down the stairs to the office where mom was on the computer, and the tears were coming almost as steady as the blood, and I was full-out crying. My mom, who was looking at the screen and thus only heard me crying, lashed out angrily, telling me to stop bothering her with that freaking fake crying. That is, until I got her to look at my arms. She took me upstairs and cleaned me up a little, but, while my bleeding slowed significantly, it didn’t stop.

After about 3 hours, my dad came home from work, and the bleeding still hadn’t stopped, and so we went to the hospital. I ended up getting 5 or 6 stitches, and when my hair is cut short enough, you can see the small white line.

That’s the only scar that I definitely know that I have. I haven’t really done anything physically risky since. That’s also pretty much when I stopped crying all that much…

143:Favourite pizza toping?

Extra cheese. Otherwise, sausage.

144:Am I afraid of the dark?

Only if I’m trying to sneak through somewhere and I can’t see where exactly I’m going

145:Am I afraid of heights?

Yeah, I would say I have a mild fear of heights. Specifically if I have to go down somewhere (like downhill slightly and there is a sharp decline on one side), or if I have to jump more than like 3 feet

146:Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?

I’ve been reprimanded for going out for most of the day and not saying anything, just disappearing for like 6 hours on a Sunday morning

147:Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?

I never try my hardest

148:What I’m really bad at

Emailing people I need to, cleaning, hygiene, contacting people, calling people on the phone/talking to people on the phone, doing what I need to do

149:What my greatest achievements are

I graduated from high school, I won an CYO volleyball championship in sixth grade, I won a math competition in 7th grade (by guessing better than 19 other 7th and 8th graders from two different schools), and I…….. I haven’t really done much yet, nothing truly worthwhile (except maybe hs graduation)

150:The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me

I can’t think of anything, really. Although some acquaintances of mine made anti-Semitic “jokes” in front of me during summer camp this year and it bothered me a lot

151:What I’d do if I won in a lottery

I’d buy a large enough apartment to have space to wander around (picture Castle’s apartment from the show Castle, and pretty much like that but a little less opulent and I don’t need all the ornate luxuries around. Just the space of like 5-7 medium/large open rooms with a comfortable bed and a non-cramped bathroom or two, and a nice big kitchen for all the food I’m going to have.

I’d always have root beer in stock, along with some snacks that I like, and I’d have whatever foods my friends like because my closest friends would have invitations to come at literally any time (like, this is for max 6 people), and I’d like to regularly meet up with my closest friends and I’ll treat them to nice filling dinners at the local diners, Denny’s, wherever they want, even McDonald’s or whatever, and I’ll tip really well, like at least $50 dollars because those people are always so nice, and I’ll splurge so much on my friends.

I’d also donate a bunch to all of those people who really need it that I see come across my dash, and I’ll donate a crapload to my high school band because they meant the world to me, and I’d FUND THE ARTS BECAUSE THE ARTS ARE IMPORTANT.

152:What do I like about myself

I like that I love the arts and that I play the tuba and that I am getting into writing music and that I write poetry and that I love my friends especially my best friend and I like that I try to be positive and supportive of the LGBTQ+ community and that I actively try to make the world a slightly happier place most of the time

153:My closest Tumblr friend

Katie

154:Something I fantasize about

Getting to spend long periods of time with my best friend, having a bunch of money to spend on my best friend, being happy

155:Any question you’d like?

What is your favorite video game that you own that you’ve never seen elsewhere and is likely not well-known at all?

I love the game Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords for the Wii, and I can play it for hours upon hours for days and not get bored. It’s a really fun game with a long storyline that is entertaining and original, and I just love playing it and have literally only ever seen it at our house since my mom somehow found it and bought it like 7 years ago.

(yes, I made that question up myself)

Thank you for asking all of these!!!!!

(when I copied and pasted it to a google doc in case the computer shuts down and I lose the whole answer, it said that I had 4825 words and it took up 17 pages. So, yeah, this is 4867 words long!)

(And I was right, the everything disappeared and so I had to post it early so I could go back and edit it, so now it’s 4900 words long in total, after editing.)

[programmingcorner-blog]

Upgrading your AngularJS application to Angular

I am a full stack developer which, for quite a long time, meant for me working mainly on the back end part of the application and touching the front end only to either reuse some components prepared by the front end team, or to make, let’s call it, a dummy view and… well you guessed it leave it for the front end team to make it more sensible. Back then I was living a joyful life not really caring about all the frameworks, bundlers and other stuff used to make the app’s appeal. But nothing lasts for ever and finally, due to some staff rotation (that’s a great euphemism), I was maintaining and developing pretty much everything, which obviously included also the dreaded front.

Since now I was sort of in charge I thought it would be a great idea to at least try to modernise everything that could be modernised. As the app predates Angular it was developed mainly in AngularJS (actually it was a mixture of many different technologies - I guess every programmer working on the code added something that excited him at that moment, leaving really diverse environment) so my best idea was upgrading it to… Angular.

In this post I’ll try to explain what I actually did, how you can upgrade your app from AngularJS to Angular, how to use Angular components within AngularJS components and vice versa and how I resolved routing issues.

It begins with a simple step

Actually there are many articles and posts on upgrading AngularJS to Angular (e.g. Victor Savkin’s Migrating Angular 1 Applications to Latest Angular in 5 Simple Steps). Also the official Angular documentation can be of use. I am not a pioneer here, but I have some experience in upgrading actual application.

First thing you will discover when you start digging is that you don’t really need to upgrade old code to upgrade your app. Angular provides UpgradeModule which is an NgModule allowing you to transform your app into a hybrid running both AngularJS and Angular code.

Simple, right?

Well… if you are lucky enough and the structure of your AngularJS code is… structured (i.e. you’ve got your components, directives, controllers, services and factories imported and declared in modules that are exported and then further imported in parent modules all the way down to the root module) without any quirks and other exotic features then you are ready to go. Otherwise you need to work on that first.

Next step is creating an Angular app - root module will be sufficient for start:

import {NgModule, Component} from ’@angular/core’; import {BrowserModule} from ’@angular/platform-browser’; import {UpgradeModule} from ’@angular/upgrade/static’; @NgModule({ imports: [ BrowserModule, UpgradeModule ], bootstrap: [AppComponent], declarations: [AppComponent] }) export class AngularAppModule { constructor(public upgrade: UpgradeModule) { } }

It is important not to forget to inject UpgradeModule in constructor as it does most of the magic!

And finally bootstrapping:

import {platformBrowserDynamic} from ’@angular/platform-browser-dynamic’; import {AngularJSAppModule} from ’./angular-js-app’; import {AngularAppModule} from ’./angular-app’; platformBrowserDynamic().bootstrapModule(TaxCubeNg2Module).then((ref) => { ref.instance.upgrade.bootstrap(document.body, [AngularJSAppModule.name]); });

With the above code the AngularJS application will be bootstrapped within the Angular application and both apps will run in parallel. Especially in case of big applications this is a great starting point as you don’t need to rewrite entire code to enjoy features of the newer framework and migrate your old code gradually (or even leave it as is).

Steep route

Of course this isn’t the end of the story. Not yet at least. The first issue I had after bootstrapping both apps (except for bundling it, but bundler’s configuration is a material for a different post, as it was specific for some choices that were made in terms of bundler itself and some configurations and optimisations made in the past) was fixing routes as no matter what address I typed in the browser it was always redirecting me to the AngularJS landing site in the best case scenario only flashing Angular view for a brief moment.

In general, if you create a hybrid app, at least for some time you are condemned to use two routers, i.e. UI-Router and @angular/router, which means that in the content section of your app (and maybe in some sidebars, headers and footers) you’ll have those two one right next to another:

<div class="content-section"> <div></div> </div>

Most of the articles suggests here creating a routing handling strategy and providing it in your Angular root module (routing handling strategy is a small class implementing UrlHandlingStrategy which, when provided, tells Angular’s router which of the URL’s should it support). This maybe useful as you don’t really need both of them to work at the same time but actually it didn’t fix the problem I came across. No matter what I typed into my routing handling strategy it didn’t exactly gag UI-Router. It was like one of my exes, it always wanted to have the last word and always when it got URL not matching its resources the sucker redirected to the landing site before the handling strategy even kicked in.

The solution to the above was actually a very simple trick, although as usually in such a cases I spent tons of time reading more and more articles and Stack Overflow threads and adding to my code couple dozens of lines to no avail. What I finally did was adding a new state in my $stateProvider in configureRoutes() function. I named it “ng2″ and added an empty template as the content view:

$stateProvider.state("ng2", { views: { "content@": { template: "" } } })

Moreover for the $urlRouterProvider I created custom otherwise function which redirected all the Angular app’s URLs to that state, showing nothing in ui-view and keeping UI-Router on the leash:

function otherwise($injector, $location) { $injector.invoke(["$state", ($state) => { const url = $location.url(); if (url === "" || url === "/") $state.go("main.app.home"); else if(url.toString().toLowerCase().includes("/AngularApp")) $state.go("ng2"); else $state.go("main.app.notFound"); }]); }

Upgrade - using AngularJS elements within the Angular code

So far I found three different cases of using AngularJS elements within my Angular code:

Simple one

If your directive or component is just a tag and you don’t need to pass any properties, e.g. you don’t bind to it any variables or functions then just use it as you’d do it in your AngularJS code, simply add the said tag in the HTML code. You’ll need also to add the

CUSTOM_ELEMENTS_SCHEMA const to your @NgModule schemas section, so Angular knows that you are using elements that weren’t explicitly declared, but that’s pretty much all you need:

@NgModule({ schemas: [ CUSTOM_ELEMENTS_SCHEMA ] }) export class AngularModule { }

Upgrading directives and components

Here it gets slightly more complicated. Angular cannot communicate directly with AngularJS elements so you’ll need to create a wrapper translating what you want to achieve to concepts better understood by Angular. Provided that your AngularJS directive looks something like this:

function angularJSDirective() { return { // ... scope: { firstInput: ">", secondInput: ">" } } };

You’ll need to create an Angular @Directive extending UpgradeComponent class:

import { Directive, ElementRef, Injector, Input } from '@angular/core'; import { UpgradeComponent } from '@angular/upgrade/static'; @Directive({ selector: 'upgraded-directive' // selector which you'll use in your HTML }) export class UpgradedDirective extends UpgradeComponent { @Input() firstInput: any; // possible be specific type @Input() secondInput: any; constructor(elementRef: ElementRef, injector: Injector) { super('angularJSDirective', elementRef, injector); } }

If you declare the above wrapper in your @NgModule you can use it like any other Angular directive.

The only catch here is that sometimes your AngularJS elements are dependant on AngularJS objects, e.g. $scope. This can be resolved by creating and declaring providers, e.g.:

export const ScopeProvider = { deps: ['$injector'], provide: '$scope', useFactory: ($injector: Injector) => $injector.get('$rootScope').$new(), };

Services (providers)

Similarly to the $scope provider mentioned above you can create wrappers for any of your AngularJS services.

const AngularJSProvider = { deps: ['$injector'], provide: 'angularJSService', useFactory: ($injector: Injector) => $injector.get('angularJSService'), };

Than declare it in the @NgModule in which you want to use it:

@NgModule({ providers: [ AngularJSProvider ] })

And simply inject it in the constructor.

constructor(@Inject('angularJSService') private angularJSService) { }

Downgrade - using Angular elements within the AngularJS code

In case of downgrading Angular elements the things are even simpler. You can use downgradeInjectable function and declare its result as a factory in the AngularJS module where you need it. Than use it as any other AngularJS service.

import { AngularService } from '/angular-modules/.../angular-service.service'; export const angularJSModule = module("angularJSModule", [ /*...*/]) //... .factory("angularService", downgradeInjectable(AngularService) as any);

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and it proved to be at least somewhat useful to you.

If you have any questions, comments or remarks regarding the above the comments section is yours.

[finnsjourney-blog]

Moving Day

Yesterday was moving day. I barely slept the night before. My body was, and still is, full of anxiety, fear and excitement. 

I brought Asher to school knowing that I wouldn’t see him until the weekend. My anxiety level was high with leaving Finn so close to his transport but I needed to see Asher. His energy and light give me so much hope. My idea was to go get donuts, a rare treat, however he was adamant that he wanted a muffin. We sat and ate our muffins and talked about the week. How Papa and Grandma were going to stay with him for a few days and then when the weekend came he gets to join us in Rochester. He was ecstatic that we will have NEW playgrounds to check out.

Back at Children’s they had done everything to prep Finnegan for his road trip to Rochester. It was so calm when I got back. Lots of hugs and tears. They have become our family. The team, beyond even the doctors and nurses, have seen us through the darkest days of our lives. I’ve squeezed their hands and cried on their scrubs. It was hard to say goodbye.

When the transport team showed up it got real. I broke down sobbing. I’m not entirely sure if it was fear or happiness, maybe both. I was scared because I knew what they were going to do in order to get them on the Mayo’s ECMO but I was happy because I knew that this was the next step in our adventure. Rochester, heart, heal. Things happened quickly. I was so happy to see Dr. Rood. She wasn’t supposed to be on but she came by to say goodbye. She stood next to me when they took him off ECMO and held her breath with me during the minute long transfer. Once they had him up and running on their machine it was a matter of untangling lines, switching him to the stretcher and before you knew it they were on their way via ambulance. Jeff and I not far behind. Driving the longest road of our lives.

I’ve never been one to worry about the weather, but with the precious cargo that ambulance had on board I was terrified. It was gray, misty and foggy a metaphor of what I was feeling internally. “Please don’t rain or snow” I kept  saying to myself on the way down. We drove separately and actually beat the ambulance. Jeff and I waited impatiently until greeted by our transplant NP and coordinator. A whole new family to get to know. Nurses, doctors, coordinators, everyone. The team is much larger here because it’s a teaching hospital so there are added bodies and names to remember. It was a relief when we saw Dr. Johnson, our first familiar face. 

The transport team found me as soon as they could to tell me that he had a successful trip. A little bit of balancing with the heart rate and blood pressure, but nothing to worry about. They settled Finn in and did a lot of baseline work. Echo, x-ray, ultrasounds and lots of labs. The team here at Mayo is so complimentary of our friends up at Children’s. They keep reiterating what we already know, that they took tremendous care of Finnegan. He was so stable by the time they had to transfer him that it made Mayo’s job easy. Another reason to love our Children’s friends.

This morning it was wonderful to see Finn’s face. He looked as content as one can in this situation. The atmosphere in his room was calm. During rounds there was a lot of information to discuss but ultimately not a lot of changes to his care. He is listed, he needs a heart. We have to keep his other organs intact and ideally get him of ECMO. We know the longer he is on it, the higher the risks are. As of today the rest of his body is holding up. As of today he needs ECMO. If he starts to tell us he doesn’t we can wean support but today he needs it.

We will figure out our new normal. Hopefully just in time for it to change again and that change will mean he gets his gift. Until then we follow Finn’s lead, support and love him. I am so impressed with the Mayo team already, even though I woke up today missing my Children’s family. 

For now my son is stable and on the list. He has a whole new group of people helping and rooting for him and that isn’t a bad thing. I love that little meatball so much. He has been opening his eyes and squeezing my finger. It’s obvious he knows that his daddy and I are there. His heart rate and blood pressures have been stellar and we hope to maintain that. Our intensivist, Dr. Van Doran is just amazing. She is already talking about starting nutrition! The idea that he will be getting breast milk, albeit extremely small amounts, is exciting. That is my job as the mommy, feed the baby. Our nurse Mandy already has seen that I want to be active in his care and is encouraging me when possible. Everyone has been so kind and generously put up with my question asking. Jeff is even asking them now, there is so much more to learn.

Children’s was our training. Transport and listing was the starting line. Now we begin the race. The problem is, we don’t know how long the race is. 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, Iron Man? We don’t know so we have to pace ourselves and our expectations. I’ve been told this is the hardest part, the waiting. The staying “healthy” so-to-speak. 

Along the road we are going to need encouragement, water, nourishment, support and occasionally to be carried toward that finish line. We know that we have the right family, friends, work and medical to help and support us and for that I am grateful. 

You are one loved kiddo, Finn! On your mark, get set, GO...

- 

Speaking of moving, I had started this tumblr page for myself and my son. A sort of online baby book of our adventures. I had done the same for Asher previously. With the turn of events I have decided to change the platform to be something a little more organized and easier to sort, tag and revisit the incredible journey. Therefore I will be updating the following page going forward: 

http://finnsheart.blogspot.com/

It will still be my raw and unedited account of what we are going through and I welcome friends to follow along if they so desire, just a different URL. 

May 2nd, 2017