#UNLESS THE CONTRACT SHE SIGNED IS ACTIVELY PREVENTING HER FROM DOING SO

[do-deca-dangit]

I'm so excited for tpot 15. I hope basketball does something in it because I HATED that she came back from being kidnapped and forced to sign a dubious contract while being taunted by a powerful being that saw herself in her, and is the same powerful being that basketball has been trying to figure out and warn people about, only for her to not even bring it up to anyone even after appearing in thin air in front of everyone like. Did nobody ask her where she was? Hello? You guys were LOOKING FOR HER

[scuttle-buttle]

WC: 2261

Rated: M

Tags: angst, medical issues, pregnancy complications, hurt/comfort, anxiety, brief mentions of medical procedures but no gore, nothing is technically sad, fluff, papa laszloooo

A/N: honestly tho I am sorry. also i maybe cried a little writing this, which is a first. also also everybody is fine in this it's just emotional

Blame @hardlyinteresting

🧠

"Three weeks…. Three weeks little bean…" you mumble as you rub your protruding stomach after a particularly harsh kick to your ribs. The chair was a sweet relief to your ankles after a long day at work and doing some light chores around the house all afternoon. You had three weeks until you hit 39 weeks into your pregnancy. As much as you were anxious you were ready. Ready to not feel like a bloated whale. Ready to not have sore feet. But most of all, ready to hold your baby girl.

Laszlo had been trying to convince you to take it easy and start maternity leave early, but you resisted. The last thing you were about to do is nothing. Most first pregnancies went late anyway, you'd argued, so you didn't worry about it yet. I’m pregnant, not dying - give me another week, you'd told him.

What you didn't tell him was about the headaches. Or how sore your legs were. Or how absolutely exhausted you'd been feeling the last couple weeks. Whenever he would ask if you were alright or offer a foot rub you would just brush it off as third trimester woes. You didn't want to worry him.

You were sat in an armchair in the parlor, feet propped up, damp rag over your eyes. The droning from the tv had your nerves on edge. All you wanted to do was take some tylenol and feel better, but you had been knocking back more than was probably safe the last few days so you went without.

A sudden pain shoots through you causing the rag to fall onto your chest. “Ohh...ow? OW!” You sit up straighter as the ache persists; the dull throbbing in your upper abdomen unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. Were you in labor early? Did she just kick in a bad spot? No no - surely the pain would’ve died down by now had that been the case. Unless? Can babies kick so hard they rupture something? Did my kid just bust my liver? Your thoughts run rampant as you wait, in vain, for the pain to go away. The pricking behind your eyes and in your temples only made it more hellish. Pressing your palm to the spot does nothing, nor do the breathing exercises you had been taught.

When five minutes have passed by without relief you make the choice to call out for your husband. “Laz?” No response. “Laszlo!” A beat passes; nothing. You swallow through your building nausea.

“I swear to fucking-” you growl as you snatch your phone from the end table to your left. You use all your concentration to dial his number.

It rings four times.

“Bärchen, why are you call-”

You don’t let him finish. “Something’s wrong.”

______

Head thrown back into the flat, starchy hospital pillow you groan in frustration. “permanent bedrest?” You scrub the hand not clutching your belly down your face.

The emergency room Obstetrician gives you a pitying look. “I’m afraid so - your blood pressure is high and we want to keep it under control to prevent outcomes such as pre-eclampsia. I recommend doing as little as absolutely possible; get rid of as many stressors as you can.” He flips through your chart. “You said you’ve been having headaches and fatigue for nearly two weeks? Why didn’t you come in sooner?”

Huffing, you tell him “I thought it was just part of the third trimester. Everyone always complains about how bad it is.” He hums in response.

“Well. I’m going to go take a final look at your labs, make sure everything else is fine before we discharge you. I’ll send in my Nurse Practitioner to give you the run down and anything else you’ll need to know. And should anything else like this happen again - get in here immediately.” He pats you awkwardly on the hand before nodding at Laszlo and leaving the room.

Laszlo.

Sparing a glance from the corner of your eye you see him looking towards his lap, his weaker hand cradled in the other. He’d been quiet since you admitted when your symptoms had first begun. Every single time he’d asked you how you were feeling you had lied to him. Granted, you didn’t technically know you were lying. But it makes little difference when you’re sitting in the ER. He had every reason to be upset.

“Laszlo honey,” you reach over to him. Slowly he takes your proferred hand and stands, coming to stop beside the bulky bed frame. His thumb caresses your wrist.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve examined the signs, kept a better eye on you.”

“Laz-”

“-No-”

“-I didn’t want to worry you, okay?-” Your voice breaks as you defend yourself.

“-I could’ve done something, maybe- I don't know!” His slightly raised voice startles you quiet. The pain in his eyes only makes you feel guiltier. He licks his lips. “I took the liberty of calling your mother. She will be here tomorrow afternoon and will be staying in the guest room as long as we need her.”

Now you look away, indignant. “I don’t need to be watched like I’m a child.” The tears behind your eyelids rush in; a lone drop trailing down your cheek as the embarrassment settles within your gut. You knew that at some point it was likely you would need her here. However you imagined it to be under happier circumstances. A deep inhale fails to calm your sobs. “I just- I don’t want to be a burden with all this.” Your tears flow freely now.

“My dear you could never be.” Laszlo sits on the edge of the bed. He rests his right palm above the swell of your child, his left cupping along the curve of your jaw. He tilts you to face him. “But the health of you and our girl is what is most crucial now. Let us take care of you. Please.”

A gentle kick underneath his palm from your daughter is answer enough.

__________

Two weeks. 14 days.

Lying in bed, sitting in the same spot for hours on end was actually going to be the death of you. You were sure of it.

Your mother truly has been a huge help since arriving. Laszlo wanted to start his paternity leave, but you insisted that he stay until you were closer to your due date. Which couldn’t come fast enough, you might add. Both Laszlo and your mother were prone to pestering you about some things, but at other times if you truly wanted to be alone they gave you your space. Now was one of those times. Laptop to your side, you watch another episode of Grey’s Anatomy. A knock sounds. You turn to see your husband standing in the doorway, the blood pressure monitor in arm.

He gives you a bright smile. “How are you two on this fine afternoon?”

“Cut it with the attitude, bucko. Let’s get this over with.” The words, while harsh, had little bite to them. His brow raises but he says nothing. You honestly felt bad that you’d been in a pretty foul mood since being discharged. On more than one occasion you’d said as much to Laszlo and your mother - they didn’t deserve your ire. Thankfully they understood why you were so frustrated.

You held the strap in place as he secured the velcro and started the machine. Buzzing filled the overall quiet room. Closed eyes you wait. Some days your results were higher than others. Unless you became higher than a certain threshold the doctor said you were safe to be home. At the sound of a beep Laszlo unhooks the cuff, reporting that your levels are within the acceptable range. When he goes to leave you alone you clutch at his sleeve. He waits as you peer up at him. “Stay?”

He never could say no to you.

______

Little bean’s ruthless treatment of your bladder had you up for the second time that night. You waddled to the bathroom to attend to your business and wash your hands. Glancing at the circles under your eyes in the mirror you sigh. “I love you baby bean but you’re giving me a run for my money here, kid,” you whisper as you rub your stomach. Three days, you remind yourself.

The floor creaks as you shuffle back to bed. Suddenly, an odd warm trickling sensation travels down your legs. “What the fuck?” Looking down around your bulging bump you find yourself standing in a small puddle, the glint of the bathroom night light reflecting off the surface. “Shit okay…ah Laszlo? Hey, I need you to wake up.”

He grumbles. With a roll of your eyes you walk over and shake him awake. “Hey- what-” he sits up instantly and blinks at you. “Is everything alright?”

“My water broke.”

He hops into action right away. Moving you to sit on the bed, he pulls out his cell phone to call your doctor. As he talks you watch him move around the room, the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, as he collects your hospital supplies. You feel useless as you sit. Yet, you know that your priority needs to be keeping yourself calm and that moving around could exacerbate your condition.

He hangs up. Coming to stand in front of you he presses a kiss to your forehead; “I’ll go wake your mother. Don’t move, Liebling.”

As you sit you blow out a long breath. You look down at your bump. “Guess you decided you’re ready to go, huh kid?” The tip of your fingers brush along the side of your stomach. “I know we’re ready for you too. We’re going to love you so much, and your daddy? He’s gonna be the best, you’ll see.” Placing your palms flat she nudges you from within.

_____

The doctors decided that a c-section was the safest route. You both knew it was a possibility, but you had hoped that after weeks of bedrest that your blood pressure would balance out enough for a natural delivery. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. They monitored you for an hour before your contractions began, officially confirming you were in fact in active labor and dilating. After the fourth hour your blood pressure began to spike again. That’s when they decided to prep you for the procedure.

The operation went smoothly. The atmosphere of the surgical suite was tense with your nerves, but Laszlo’s calming words and his hand squeezing yours kept the anxiety from spilling over. You even found it in you to poke fun at how ridiculous he looked in the puffy blue elastic hair cap he wore.

When the first cries rang out you nearly tried to hop off the table to see your baby. The doctors worked quickly to ensure you were in proper condition while the infant was cleaned.

“Dad? Would you like to come and cut the cord?” one of the nurses calls out.

Laszlo looks back at them before turning to face you. He searches your eyes for a moment; “go,” you nod with a smile. You watch as he did what the nurses instructed as best you could, her soft wails echoing in the small room. He returns to you right after while they finish wrapping her up in a blanket.

“She’s beautiful my dear,” your professor confesses. He leans to give you a lingering kiss. “I’m so unbelievably proud of you.”

“I love you so much.”

“As I love you.”

The doctor interrupts your moment. “Would you like to hold your baby girl?” The question is directed at you, but you look over to your husband. The man you love more than life itself. He stares at the little bundle as if she’s the most incredible sight he’s ever laid eyes on. He can’t take his gaze off her. His irises sparkle with unshed tears as he looks on with wonder.

“Laz?” Finally he breaks away. “Hold your little girl - she’s been waiting to meet her Papa.”

Carefully the doctor shifts his hold on the babe to slide her into Laszlo’s waiting arm. He swallows as he pulls her to his chest. Something caught between a sob and a laugh leaves him. You blink through your own tears at the sight of your husband and daughter, a sight so far beyond perfect there could be no words. Laszlo held her with such delicacy, such reverence. It was as if any moment she could slip away as though a dream.

“Hello there my little dove, I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you.” He doesn’t bother to wipe away the streams that fall from his eyes. “I’m your Papa and I-” he sniffs, looking towards the ceiling and blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. You rest your hand on his bicep. “I love you so very much. I would give you the world if I could. Your grandfather didn’t...he was not....” he pauses to gather himself. “To me you are the greatest gift I could ever receive. I will be the best father I can for you. A father worthy of you. Mein Gott, Ich liebe dich my darling dove.”

He continued to hold her in his arms until it was time to take you into the recovery room. When he had asked if you wanted her you simply shook your head. You would get your chance, you had a lifetime to do so. But your Laszlo needed this. He needed his little dove.

Tag list

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trudeau promises massive covid stimulus

Canadian Prime Ministers have a fun gambit: when things start to go really badly for them, they "prorogue" (suspend) Parliament, which dissolves all committees, inquiries, etc, until such time as they are ready to reconvene, with a tabula rasa.

Most egregiously, the far-right asshole and climate criminal Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in the middle of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis in order to avoid a no-confidence vote that would have triggered new elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute

While this DID save Harper's bacon, it also left Canada without a legislature during a global crisis that threatened the nation's entire future. It was a crazed, reckless thing to do.

Canada has a safeguard to prevent this kind of gambit: as a constitutional monarchy, Canadian parliamentary manoeuvres have to receive the Crown's blessing, in the form of assent from the Governor General, the Queen's rep to Canada.

This is the sober, apolitical adult supervision that fans of constitutional monarchies are always banging on about, and then-Governor General Michaëlle Jean completely failed to do her fucking job, leaving Canada without a Parliament during the GFC. She literally had one job.

Proroguing Parliament didn't just save Harper from a no-confidence vote: it also dissolved all the Parliamentary inquiries underway at the time, including the "Afghan detainee transfer" affair, which was investigating Canadian forces' complicity in the torture-murder of POWs.

In many ways, Trudeau is the anti-Harper: a charismatic Liberal who tells refugees they're welcome in Canada, marches with Greta Thunberg, and appoints the first-ever First Nations person to serve as Attorney General .

Truly, there is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided he doesn't actually have to make it into policy. Because many of his policies are indistinguishable from Harperism, albeit with a better haircut.

This started before he won the election, when Trudeau (whose father once declared martial law!) whipped his MPs to vote for a human-rights-denying mass surveillance bill, C-51.

Trudeau did so while insisting that the bill was a massive overreach and totally unacceptable, but claiming that the "loyal opposition" should still back it so as not to be accused of being soft on terrorism in the coming election. He promised to repeal it after.

Of course, he didn't.

Trudeau is often compared to Obama, a young and charismatic fellow who makes compromises, sure, but comes through in the clutch.

Tell that to pipeline protesters.

After the Obama administration killed the Transmountain Pipeline - the continent-spanning tube that would make filthy, planet-destroying tar sands profitable enough to bring to market - Trudeau bailed it out, spending billions of federal dollars to keep it alive.

Then, Trudeau - who campaigned on nation-to-nation truth and reconciliation with First Nations - announced that he would shove this toxic tar-sand tube through unceded treaty lands across the breadth of the naiton.

And then he had the AUDACITY to march with Greta Thunberg at the head of a climate march, demanding a change to policies that would see billions dead in the coming century.

HIS OWN policies.

I mean, Trudeau's boosters have a point - Harper NEVER could have pulled that off.

The Harper years were a Trumpian orgy of blatant self-dealing and cronyism.

The Trudeau years, on the other hand...

One of Trudeau's major donors is SNC Lavalin, a crime syndicate masquerading as a global engineering firm (think Halliburton with less morals).

SNC Lavalin had done so much crime that it was on its final notice with the Canadian legal sysem, a probation that it must not violate on penalty of real, big boy federal criminal prosecutions.

Then it did more crimes.

Remember Trudeau's historic appointment of a First Nations woman to the Attorney General's seat? Now was AG Jody Wilson-Raybould's moment to shine.

As Wilson-Raybould began aggressively pursuing these corporate criminals, she started getting calls from Trudeau's office.

For avoidance of doubt, these were not calls of support. They were demands to drop the case and let the SNC Lavalin crime syndicate get off scot-free. Eventually the PM himself called her and demanded that she give his cronies a pass on their repeated criminal actions.

Wilson-Raybould went public, decrying political meddling in the justice system. Trudeau denied everything and began to smear her (Harper had tons of scandals like this, BTW, only the counterpart was usually a rich old white guy, not a First Nations woman).

But Wilson-Raybould had recorded the conversations, and she released the recordings, and proved that Trudeau had lied about the whole thing. Trudeau fired her and kicked her out of the party.

But at least he's not Trump, right? He's the anti-Trump! (Well, except for the pipeline and that time he announced "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there").

Remember the Muslim Ban? As Trump was tormenting refugees at the US border, Trudeau tweeted "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada."

Yes, that was awesome. There is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided that he never has to do anything to make it happen.

Canada and the US have a "Safe Third Country Agreement" that says that asylum-seekers turned away from the US border can't try again in Canada. To make #WelcomeToCanada more than a hashtag, Trudeau's government would have to suspend that agreement.

Instead, Trudeau's government insisted that under Trump, "the conditions of the Safe Third Country Agreement continued to be met" and thus they would not suspend the agreement and give hearings to those turned away by Trump's border guards.

But at least Trudeau handled the pandemic better than Harper handled the Great Financial Crisis.

No, really, he did!

Mostly.

I mean, unless you were in a nursing home or on a First Nations reservation.

https://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/an-emergency-season-pandemic/

But still, Trudeau's government did a MUCH better job than the Trump government, or Boris Johnson's Tories. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives will really fight cronyism, climate change or authoritarianism, but there are still substantive differences between them.

But in some ways, they are depressingly similar.

Take corruption.

Long before the plague struck, Canadaland was publishing damning reports on We Charity, a massive, beloved Canadian charitable institution nominally devoted to ending child slavery.

Canadaland's initial reporting on the charity focused on its partnerships with companies that were using child slaves to make their products, but the investigations mushroomed after the charity sent dire legal threats to the news organisation over its coverage.

And then Canadaland founder Jesse Brown found himself smeared by a US dirty-tricks organization that got its start working for GOP politicians, who got a contract to plant editorials criticizing Canadaland's We coverage in small-town US newspapers.

Private eyes started following Brown around, even keeping tabs on his small children. Rather than being intimidated, Brown kept up the pressure on We, which prompted whistleblowers to leak him even more details about the charity's activities.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/03/turnkey-authoritarianism/#we-charity

These included massive, mysterious real-estate holdings, hard-to-excuse criminal investigations of its Kenyan activities, and (here's where I've been going with this all along) GIANT CASH PAYMENTS to Trudeau's family, as well as valuable gifts to his Finance Minister.

And, as with the Wilson-Reybould affair, Trudeau's initial response to this was to simply deny it, calling his accusers liars. But then the scandal kept unspooling, his Finance Minister quit in disgrace, the charity (sort of) folded up and shut down, and Trudeau...

Well, Trudeau prorogued Parliament, shutting down Canada's government in the midst of a crisis that was - unimaginably - even worse than the 2008 crisis that Harper had left the nation rudderless through to avoid his own scandal.

(Again, for constitutional monarchy fans, that's two entirely political proroguings in the midsts of global crises, signed off on by the Queen's supposedly apolitical and sober check on reckless activity)

Shutting down Parliament seems to have rescued Trudeau's government from snap elections, which may well have been won by the Tories, who have resolved their longstanding racist and plutocratic tensions with a new ghoulish nightmare leader:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/canada-erin-otoole-conservative-party-cpc/

And, as Trudeau has reconvened Parliament, he's promised something genuinely amazing: a massive, national stimulus package meant to keep families, workers and small businesses afloat through the looming second pandemic wave.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada-economy/canada-bets-the-farm-on-big-spending-as-second-wave-threatens-economic-recovery-idUSKCN26F1NF

This is something Canada - and the US, for that matter - desperately needs. Canada is monetarily sovereign: it issues its own currency and its debt is in the same currency, meaning it can never run out of money (no more than Apple could ever run out of Itunes gift cards).

The Canadian DOES face constraints on its spending, but they're just not MONETARY constraints - they're RESOURCE constraints. If the Canadian government creates money to buy the same things the private sector is shopping for, there'll be a bidding war, AKA inflation.

But as a new wave of lockdowns and mass illness looms over the country, there's going to be a hell of a lot of things the private sector isn't trying to buy - notably, the labour of the Canadian workforce, millions of whom will be locked indoors through the winter.

An analyst warns that Trudeau's proposal is likely to add CAD30B to the deficit, which is a completely irrelevant fact unless that new money is going to be chasing the same goods that Canadian business and citizens are seeking to buy.

Trudeau has promised to create a national prescription drug plan (a longstanding hole in Canada's national health care system), as well as universal childcare, and he's denounced austerity as a response to the crisis.

There's a part of me that is very glad to see this. My family and friends are in Canada, after all, and if Trudeau lives up to his promise, he will shield them from the collapse we're seeing in the USA.

But that is a BIG if. Trudeau isn't Harper. He's more charismatic, he's got better hair, and he says much, much better things than Harper.

However, when the chips are down, Trudeau out-Harpers Harper.

Mass surveillance legislation. Corruption scandals. Lying about corruption scandals. Bailing out the pipeline. "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there." Abandoning asylum-seekers to Trump's lawless regime.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." It would be pretty naive to assume that merely because Trudeau has promised to do the right thing, that he will do the right thing.

Indeed, if history is any indicator, the best way to predict what Trudeau will do is to assume that it will be the OPPOSITE of whatever he promises.

I won't lie. I felt a spark of hope when I read Trudeau's words.

But hope is all I've got - and it's a far cry from confidence.

Or relief.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

If You Are Vaccinated, You Can Dance the Night Away

Marissa Castrigno was walking through downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, when she spotted the sign in the window of one of her favorite dance clubs. After months of being shuttered by the pandemic, Ibiza Nightclub was reopening April 30, it announced.

This story also ran on Raleigh News & Observer. It can be republished for free.

Thrilled, Castrigno immediately made plans with friends to be there.

About 50 miles north in Jacksonville, Kennedy Swift learned of Ibiza’s reopening on social media. He, too, decided to attend with friends.

But on the night of April 30, the two groups were in for a surprise — one they would react to in starkly different ways.

In addition to IDs, they learned, they’d need to show covid-19 vaccination cards for entry. The club was letting in only people who had had at least one shot.

“I was shocked,” said Swift, 21. He learned of the policy a few hours before the reopening, when the club posted it on its Facebook page.

He and his friends had to cancel their plans, since none of them was vaccinated.

“I’m not against [Ibiza] exercising their rights as a business,” Swift said. “I just think it’s foolish. … This will discourage a lot of former patrons from returning to the club.”

On the other hand, Castrigno and her friends, most of whom had been fully vaccinated since early April, felt the policy made their return to nightlife even better.

“There was raw excitement about going out to a place and feeling safe,” said Castrigno, 28.

Similar conversations are playing out across the country as vaccination rates increase and bars, clubs and other businesses navigate how to reopen. The concept of vaccine passports — which allow people who have been inoculated against covid and are at lower risk of contracting or spreading the disease to participate in certain activities — has been floated for clubs, cruise ships and other spaces where large groups gather in close quarters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent announcement that vaccinated people can safely gather indoors and outdoors without masks has reignited the idea. Yet these passports remain highly controversial and their implementation is largely piecemeal. Many private businesses are making their own decisions, and governments in different parts of the country are adopting varying stances.

In New York, for instance, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in early May that places where proof of vaccination or a negative covid test are required can operate at a greater capacity. Some nightclubs there have implemented policies similar to Ibiza’s. In Florida, however, Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a law prohibiting businesses, schools and government offices from requiring proof of vaccination, with fines of up to $5,000 per incident.

For Ibiza Nightclub in southeastern North Carolina — a political battleground state — the vaccine card requirement is proving to be a lightning rod. The club’s Facebook post announcing the policy had sparked 70 comments as of mid-May, and posts across other platforms echoed different sides of the issue.

“I am thrilled to see a personal business putting the health and safety forward in order to keep their business running,” one comment read.

Others took a markedly different tone: “This is pretty dumb!”

“Discrimination, expect lawsuits,” read another.

The Honor Code

Last week, after the CDC said vaccinated adults could largely live their lives mask-free, Raleigh restaurant owner Hisine McNeill felt a troubling pang of déjà vu. He owns Alpha Dawgs, a sandwich shop in southeast Raleigh, and said small businesses like his carried the burden of mask enforcement for much of the pandemic. Now, he said, they’re tasked with trusting adults who say they’ve been vaccinated. He isn’t ready to do that.

“I don’t have the luxury of taking chances on an honor code,” McNeill said. “If I have an outbreak because someone didn’t wear a mask and have to close down, who’s going to help keep me open?”

McNeill opened Alpha Dawgs in 2018 and, like most restaurateurs, he said, struggled through the pandemic, professionally and personally. He said he has lost friends and family members and doesn’t believe the pandemic is over.

“I know people personally in the ICU still recovering from [covid],” McNeill said. “I don’t need any more examples about how serious this is.”

So McNeill posted a new requirement on the restaurant’s Facebook page. He asked everyone to continue wearing masks unless they were prepared to show him a vaccine card.

“To whom it may concern,” McNeill wrote. “If you decide to come into my establishment claiming that you are fully vaccinated, I WILL ASK TO SEE YOUR CARD. If you don’t want to provide it then you will have to wear a mask in my store. And if you still don’t want to comply with either then I have the right to deny service. Thank you for your cooperation.”

The day after he posted that statement, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper eased most covid-related restrictions in the state, including its mask mandate. The Alpha Dawgs post stirred some online debate over masks and vaccinations and led to a few responses, including one from the Raleigh Republican Club.

“Should you be in the area…,” it read. “Eat somewhere else….”

McNeill felt the Raleigh Republican Club was calling for a boycott. Afterward, he noticed multiple one-star reviews pop up on Google, not from people who had been to the restaurant, but people accusing McNeill of discrimination.

“This is not political for me, this is a personal belief,” McNeill said. “I have an 85-year-old grandmother I see every other week. I’m going to make sure she’s protected.”

Raleigh Republican Club board member Guy Smith said the group’s post was written collectively, but he didn’t see it as a call for a boycott.

“Our philosophical position is it’s his business, the owner can choose to do what they choose to do within the confines of the individual business,” Smith said. “Our philosophical position is, to demand someone to demonstrate they’re vaccinated with a card, we think that’s out of bounds.”

Smith said the group also condemns writing bogus reviews of a business.

McNeill said Alpha Dawgs’ business has not suffered from the online dust-up.

“I haven’t had any problems,” McNeill said. “Only the online harassment.”

The Nightclub Expected Opposition

Charles Smith, general manager of the club, said he knew the policy would garner backlash, but “we’ve always put the health and safety of both staff and our patrons, and their families, first.”

Since opening as a gay bar in 2001, Ibiza has been a pillar of the LGBTQ community in Wilmington. Although its clientele has expanded over time, it’s still known for drag shows on Friday nights.

Last year, the club shut down March 12, about a week before Gov. Cooper ordered all North Carolina bars and restaurants to stop dine-in service. Ibiza remained shuttered for 14 months, using the time to renovate, Smith said, and leaning on federal and state assistance for small businesses.

When it came to reopening, he said, “the question was: How do we provide the absolute safest experience alongside the nightlife experience we’ve been known for?”

It wouldn’t be easy. Nightclubs are a perfect cocktail of covid risks: lots of people socializing and dancing in close quarters. Alcohol lowering inhibitions. Music forcing people to speak louder, releasing more droplets into the air.

“The concept of social distancing in a nightclub is an oxymoron,” Smith said. And the club’s staff didn’t want to be “the police of nightlife,” trying to separate people on the dance floor, he added.

The safest option, it seemed, was to require people to be vaccinated.

The club waited till all adults in the state were eligible for vaccines before reopening. 

Now Ibiza requires patrons to present their vaccine cards or photos of the cards for entry. On reopening night, the club asked customers to wear masks and limited its capacity to 50%, per an executive order from the governor. But as of May 14, the state lifted its capacity restrictions and masking requirements.

Castrigno, who’d been looking forward to that night for weeks since she saw the sign in the club’s window, said it was “the most jubilant I’d ever seen Ibiza.” Several performers put on a drag show. Customers took turns dancing on poles. Some people wore masks with rhinestones to match their outfits, she said.

She wasn’t surprised that many people took the vaccine requirement in stride. “Queer people are well versed in the risks of public health crisis and protecting the community,” she said, referring to the AIDS crisis, which devastated the community in the ’80s and ’90s.

For James Colucci, who has been a customer since 2016, supporting Ibiza’s vaccine policy is about protecting the club’s employees. Some of them have “spearheaded the [LGBTQ] movement, so we can get together and have events like this,” he said.

But others say the policy is discriminatory and injects the nightclub into people’s personal health care decisions.

Joey Askew, a 37-year-old from Greenville, wrote on Ibiza’s Facebook page, “I’ll never go back to this club until they lift this mandate!!”

In an interview with KHN, Askew said he’s not ready to get the vaccine because there haven’t been lifetime studies of recipients to determine long-term side effects. He’s willing to wear a mask and maintain physical distance, but a vaccine requirement goes too far.

“A mask is something I can buy from anywhere and take off whenever I choose,” he said. “But I can’t take a vaccine out. It’s a permanent choice that [the club] is involving themselves in, and it’s not their place.”

In between the people condemning the club’s policy and those applauding it are many who are conflicted.

Mark Russell, 29, is a nurse in Washington, D.C., who cares for covid patients and contracted covid last year. He plans on visiting Ibiza Nightclub in late May while attending a small wedding in North Carolina where everyone will be vaccinated.

The club’s policy makes him feel safer, Russell said. But he also worries about its effect on people of color, who in many places have faced barriers to vaccination.

“It’s a battle in my own brain, thinking those two things,” Russell said.

For Heidi Martek, 55, the policy raised a personal question. “What about those who can’t get the vaccine?” she wrote on Ibiza’s Facebook page.

She has an autoimmune disease, making her body hypersensitive to any vaccine, Martek said, even the flu shot.

But when commenters on Facebook suggested she sue the club, Martek pushed back. The club is facing difficult choices, she told KHN, and there’s no right answer.

“Whether I can go in or not, I support them,” said Martek, who’s been a patron at Ibiza for six years.

She wants the club to survive the pandemic, unlike other establishments that have closed in the past year.

“It’s not like Wilmington is overwhelmed with LGBTQ clubs,” Martek said. “Ibiza is really important.”

News & Observer reporter Drew Jackson contributed to this story.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

If You Are Vaccinated, You Can Dance the Night Away published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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Mediation Solution

How To Make Use Of Mediation To Clear Up Disputes At The Office

Content

What Results Can You Anticipate From Workplace Mediation?

Court Application Certifications Signed By An Approved Household Mediator.

If your employer has actually reduced your salaries without your consent, you may have a claim for unlawful deduction of wages and also/ or positive dismissal if you chose to resign. Under the CJRS, HMRC will pay 80% of your wages (subject to a cap of ₤ 2,500). Provided your employer does not have a legal right to decrease pay in your employment agreement, if your company intends to only pay you 80% of your incomes, they would certainly need your contract to do so. Yes you need to be aware of these requirements if you employ any person of any kind of age. They influence every location of work along with the recruitment and also option procedure.

Mediation is launched primarily by elderly managers or HR experts rather than the events themselves. It has a tendency to be utilized as a last resort, although earlier treatment was more probable in organisations with internal mediation capability.

What Outcomes Can You Anticipate From Workplace Mediation?

The going along with course handbook Workplace Mediation Abilities is given free to all delegates, helping you to plan for the program and more establish your abilities as a workplace moderator. The National Employment and also Workplace Mediation Certification is Globis' front runner course and runs in two devices over 5 days, damaged down into a block of 3 days and a block of 2 days. It supplies delegates with the abilities required to come to be an approved workplace arbitrator.

Are mediators free?

At mediation, you can have a mediator that's appointed by the court, and in that case it is free of charge to all of the parties. Other times, you'll engage a private mediator. Often these are retired judges or people with a great deal of experience in the field.

The evidence is that it will save cash, enhance efficiency and worker connections, as well as prevent lawsuits. Stephen Levinson considers the benefits, obstacles and useful issues associated with presenting an internal mediation scheme. You need to not undertake any type of job that generates income for your employer or gives services to them. Unless your company has actually specified in your employment agreement that it can minimize your income, then no. If your company suggests to decrease your pay, they should get your arrangement.

Court Application Certificates Authorized By A Certified Household Conciliator.

Frequently I have actually run into scenarios that events have really felt were bhopeless but, due to the possibilities that mediation gives solutions have been located. Frequently people suggest mediation in great belief as they can determine, as a celebration that it the possibility for an exterior event to supply an aiding hand to accomplish success within the situation.

mediation services "/>

Sarah England is a competent mediator having actually acquired a national certificate in mediation from the National Open College Network. Workplace problem can damage a reputable business, sidetracking and also distressing otherwise solid and also effective monitoring teams in charge of dealing with the repercussions.

This article is for basic info purposes only and also does not make up lawful or professional guidance. It must not be utilized as a replacement for legal advice connecting to your specific situations. Please keep in mind that the legislation might have changed since the day of this write-up. It is really difficult to come up with excellent reasons not to consist of mediation in employers' mechanisms for dealing with problem.

This can have substantial impact on both people as well as efficiency. A variety of strategies can be made use of in this type of situation, including neutral assessment, group assistance and also team mediation. We are taking actions to make sure that all our affiliates and also clients remain safe during the pandemic and also are providing all our services online. For more info on online mediation please see our added guide.

Workplace mediation is not appropriate for some scenarios, for example where a discrimination or whistle-- blowing grievance has actually been raised and also it has to be examined. Keep in mind that mediation may also not be proper for scenarios that involve unwanted sexual advances which is a severe issue requiring certain handling. For more on this, see our Company's overview to dealing with unwanted sexual advances at the workplace. Finally, make certain that you safeguard the solutions of an internal or external mediator learnt line with nationwide standards-- new overarching standards are because of be revealed in 2014. If you have or are intending an internal mediation group, recruit from as large a range of rank, duty and general diversity as feasible. The study suggests that, for instance, some elderly parties hesitate to be mediated by a junior coworker. Blanket privacy is purposeless as well as a lot more nuanced techniques are required-- for instance, the moderator aiding the parties to word a joint declaration for individuals that need to know what the outcomes and activity plans are.

Below are four of our group that are accountable for the daily running of the business.

Direct Mediation Services has among the biggest networks of certified household conciliators across England and Wales.

What unites us as a group is our commitment to aiding family members settle conflict with the mediation process.

best mediation services plymouth or splitting up is hard, but reaching a contract shouldn't be.

They come from a varied series of expert backgrounds consisting of family members lawyers, therapists, and also social employees.

We have actually dealt with several work regulation instances as well as each individual receives the upmost care as well as factor to consider throughout the situation. If you have an employment trouble, frequently it is something else for factor to consider within your instance, so it is always worth calling a work regulation solicitor as well as discovering for certain. Mediation is a voluntary and also confidential type of alternate conflict resolution. It involves an independent, objective 3rd party assisting 2 or more individuals or teams to reach a service that functions as well as serves for every person. The aim of mediation in the workplace is to restore and maintain the functioning partnership if in all feasible.

Work mediation has a tendency to take on a much more industrial character as it normally happens in the context of a possible or real Work Tribunal case. If agreement is reached it typically takes the kind of a Compromise Contract.

The requirements not only make it unlawful to differentiate on the grounds old yet also harassment whether it be intentional or unintentional or to victimise an individual. When you have chosen a suitable staff member make sure managers and also personnel are educated to monitor and avoid any prejudiced behavior. Additionally see to it it is clear within any policies you have that discrimination in any kind of kind is unacceptable. Make certain supervisors are completely trained in diversity problems and that they are able to deal with discriminatory issues that occur within the workplace. I found her to be really educated, friendly and she described factors plainly, as well as used reasonable language. workplacemediations mediation services wolverhampton are very knowledgeable as well as will certainly deal with each case distinctly relying on your conditions. Our employment legislation professionals achieve remedies through confidential negotiations and also are constantly handy to give assistance when fixing employment law issues.

Making use of mediation to resolve these circumstances can therefore have a big influence not only to worker relationships and also health and wellbeing but ultimately to an organisation's bottom line. Yet the skills and processes we make use of are comparable, and the distinction hinges on the method we approach the mediation day. David's starting point in the mediation was a demand for ₤ 860,000. His insurance claim in the Employment Tribunal consisted of payment for handicap discrimination, problems for injury to feelings, intensified and excellent problems, interest, prices and compensation for loss of career profits. The staff member was sustained in the mediation by his union representative, and the company was recommended by an internal lawful group. Both events were considering leaving if the scenario might not be exercised. They unwillingly accepted mediation but neither intended to transform work.

Vietnam: Draft Decree guiding the Investment Law 2020 - Lexology

Vietnam: Draft Decree guiding the Investment Law 2020.

Posted: Wed, 06 Jan 2021 09:52:09 GMT [source]

In scenarios that are stressful, it is difficult to rely on the objectives and also motivations of the "opposite side". This might be based upon experience so agreeing to mediation and also, certainly, a moderator ends up being challenging. Nora Doherty and also her group of seasoned mediators offerIndependent Mediation sessions for people or teams at your own location. Any unneeded conflict can be negative for PR outside of business as well as negative for the spirits of the workers that are no more ambassadors for business however rather can spread out adverse PR.

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The Problem With Ostarine.

Glycopeptides.

Content

Puori Cp1 Pure Collagen Peptides (300g).

Key Information & Overview:.

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Peptide Highlights.

Throughout these researches no adverse effects such as testosterone reductions or estrogen conversion happened. However, some people did have mild altitudes of liver enzymes (roughly 20%) and unfavorable changes of serum lipids (HDL down 27%). With the majority of the clients these levels were still considered within normal array as well as not a high or even mild cardiovascular threat. Ostarine is one of the most prominent SARM on the planet, although it is non-steroidal it is carefully related to anabolic/androgenic in its task. As it effectively promotes most significantly the Androgen Receptor in skeletal muscle and also bone.

In one study involving postmenopausal women, a SARM called GSK triggered a breakout in one ladies as well as no negative effects in any type of other participants. In one more study on 76 healthy and balanced males, the SARM LGD-4033 caused no unfavorable effects in any one of the guys after 21 days of dosing. While there's no "safest SARM" scientists understand of, the study on LGD-4033 recommends it is among the best. When you acquire SARMs UK products, you know you're obtaining the best SARM study chemicals, with clear details concerning each SARM included. We provide 10% off your order when paying with bitcoin or bank transfer, and also we ship by Royal Mail and worldwide shipping. You can comfortably purchase SARMs on the internet no matter where you live, but not all SARMs up for sale online have the same top quality standards. To stay clear of acquiring poor-quality knockoff items, be sure to purchase from a reputable seller as well as avoid getting SARMs from basic marketplaces on the internet such as Amazon or ebay.com.

Puori Cp1 Pure Collagen Peptides (300g).

We do not supply any kind of suggestions on the usage of these items as UK Law prevents this. Consumers ought to check the legitimacy of this item in their own country prior to acquire. The manufacture and also circulation of the raw materials to make SARMs was outlawed in China from 1st January 2020. The overwhelming majority of supplement active ingredients come from China, with a particular niche like SARMs it's going to be someplace between 89-99% of raw materials. Due to this till a brand-new nation decides to get the torch the SARM items on the marketplace will become fewer and also much in between as well as may also disappear entirely. The negative effects for S4 can be taken into consideration above the various other SARMs discussed as the remarkable reported side effect is night loss of sight and/or a yellow color to your vision throughout the day.

Info on its real communications with humans is based upon observation and story and so far, it suggests that S4 does generate recognizable gains in LBM and stamina together with substantial weight loss. MK-677 is likewise most likely to boost cortisol, ACTH and prolactin levels, however most of the time this spill over is not visible to the user. The S23 SARM is a SARM, developed by GTx, Inc as a potential male birth control. Yes, the purpose of this is absolutely nothing to do with muscular tissue and stamina but to do with your sperm. It binds to the AR much more highly than the older SARMs such as Anadrine.

Crucial Details & Overview:.

Neither had Jimmy Wallhead, a Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor based in Loughborough, UK. Yet he was approved with a nine month ban after a supplement he had used was found to consist of the material. Biosci AbstractsBioscientifica Abstracts is the gateway to a series of items that provide a permanent, citable record of abstracts for biomedical and also life science seminars. I have purchased twice with this business and both times the product has actually shown up the following day, I even entered my address wrong as well as they corrected it for me without sending. I can verify that UK SARMS is the only area you should be purchasing your PDs, why is straightforward, pure quality item, as well as great price, you obtain what you pay for people, also truthful fast next day shipping.

Does peptides cause hair loss?

Hair loss, as a common problem and by age 50, pattern hair loss affects about half of all males and a quarter of all females. Scientists may have found a cure using Cu-GHK, a peptide that was discovered to regrow hair with effects comparable to that of Minoxidil in treating androgenic alopecia.

" I had only altered two items in my training before that test. I changed by BCAA amino acids, which I purchased from a store in Loughborough. I likewise got a healthy protein pancake mix, which I carry an extremely rare occasion as a morning meal choice. Wallhead is a UFC boxer, so is controlled by USADA, despite being based in the UK ... Regrettably, none of this helps Jimmy Wallhead, who was blindsided via use a supplement that really did not list ostarine as a component on the tag. Wallhead has actually been signed to the UFC, which is not a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, for regarding 18 months. USADA consented to run the UFC's anti-doping program on 1 July 2015, an arrangement that was applauded by WADA. Unless you are a drug store or an anti-doping official, the chances are that you won't have actually come across ostarine.

Piece Vagabundenschnalle Altbronze Clasp Belt Belt Fastening Fastening Buckle Clasps Fastenings Bend Sarm Devices Bathrobe Fastening.

Young men as well as ladies are being lured into making use of a new "secure" muscle-building medication regardless of clinical fears over possibly deadly side-effects. A supplement belonging to the SARM group with a strong anabolic result and a limited danger of adverse effects. Lauren Barnett approved a six-month sanction, after the Globe Triathlon Firm accepted that her ostarine AAF resulted from a polluted salt tablet computer. Beth McKenzie approved a two-year sanction, as although the WTC concurred that her intake of ostarine was unintentional, she could not definitively verify that her ostarine AAF was because of infected salt tablet computers. A fast search on the UFC/USADA net site exposes supports Wallhead's claim that the UFC has actually managed six ostarine situations throughout the last year and also 8 in total amount. A search on the USADA website exposes 16 ostarine ADRVs in the previous year alone-- none of which include UFC competitors. " They did offer me a nine month ban as well as I obtain it, I understand it", he stated.

AmbioPharm Opens New Shanghai Campus - Contract Pharma

AmbioPharm Opens New Shanghai Campus.

Posted: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:20:18 GMT [source]

To make it worth taking SARMS, it is needed incorporate its use with your very own training and also nourishment as you can not expect to construct muscular tissue without placing in the job; this item just aids the job you do in the fitness center as well as in other places. We have actually included "Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators" and SARM-like items into this group.

Peptide Highlights.

At UK SARMs we focus on marketing the purest SARMs study chemicals for expert study. By purchasing from this site you accept use any kind of items supplied exclusively for usage in vitro study only. We offer FREE distribution throughout the UK and also delivering to globally destinations. All our top quality SARMs undergo high pressure fluid chromatography as well as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy lab tests, with laboratory records available for all our products to provide you the peace of mind you deserve. We supply excellent quality SARMs developed utilizing the best active ingredients in our laboratory in the UK.

Ligand Chem is a laboratory supply company established by scientists based in the UK. We supply our products for pharmaceutical and clinical research objectives to countries around the world.

Can peptides be absorbed through skin?

Specifically, peptides incorporated into skincare products mimic the same peptides that you'd find when collagen is broken down. Thus, if large peptides are used in topical anti-aging products, it's possible for them to be broken down into smaller peptides, allowing them to be absorbed into the skin and become active.

We have actually made a team where sarms customers can share their progress, experiences and also to speak with each various other regarding their cycles and development. Cardarine is a pharmaceutical grade PPAR agonist which has some extremely helpful results for professional athletes. Your healing time will be significantly decreased which means you can increase the strength as well as duration of your exercises. CS is the pace-making enzyme of the citric acid cycle that is thought about as the main metabolic pathway under cardiovascular conditions. It is a pen for the mitochondrial web content as well as the oxidative capability of muscles and also is boosted by workout training (60-- 62). LDH catalyzes the conversion of lactate to pyruvate as well as back through the oxidation procedure (NAD+ ⇄ NADH).

Where To Purchase Sarms Online?

" On paper it's nine months, however they've been excellent to me really. They stated that although their providing me 9 months, the company as well as its site had actually been warning, and I ought to have googled the items. I just bought a bog-standard BCAA as well as I did examine the ingredients. " I recognize there were six UFC fighters who checked positive for ostarine in 2015, and each and every single one stated their virtue", claims Wallhead. If you know you are going to obtain drug checked 24/7, surely if you were going to cheat, you wouldn't choose ostarine.

A dramatically greater intramuscular fat content of the quadriceps femoris muscle mass was observed in the OVX+LG 4 team compared to the Non-OVX group. In OVX rats, the fat material of the muscle mass did not differ from that in the other groups. All four OVX groups revealed a considerably higher GM weight than in the Non-OVX group. Treatment with a high dosage of LG resulted in a considerably greater GM weight than in the OVX and also OVX+LG 0.04 groups.

We offer prominent products such as LGD-4033, RAD-140, SR9009, MK-2866, RU58841 and a lot more SARMs in liquid kind at very affordable prices. At Ligand Chem we provide the best items for the most affordable feasible price to the research study neighborhood. Belgium bpc157 how does it work know our clients demand pureness and safety and security most importantly else, which's what we attain with whatever we offer. At Ligand Chem we just make use of the finest components to offer you a seriously exceptional SARM to fulfill all your study needs. Buy SARMs from a dependable research study product distributor in the understanding that they come from a resource that you can trust. Dietary supplements consisting of Ostarine usually claim to advertise muscle building. Ostarine is a Careful Androgen Receptor Modulator which is a medication created to have comparable effects to testosterone.

The treatments with OS led to a considerably greater weight of the GM than in the Non-OVX, irrespective of does applied. The BW of the rats throughout all therapy groups was similar at the beginning of the research (244 ± 7.8 g). Ovariectomy led to a significant enhancement of BW in all 4 OVX teams compared to the Non-OVX group from week 2 message ovariectomy. OS and LG are still being investigated in medical trials, and also neither have actually been accepted as therapies to this factor.

UKAD provided no aid to Webster, despite the fact that its very own expert suggested that contamination may have been an issue. https://peptides-uk.com/bpc157/spain/ was required to spend his life savings in trying to uncover the resource of the ostarine, as well as was approved with the full four year restriction for not right away admitting an ADRV he said was not his fault. USADA provided to examine the items made use of by Wallhead, in spite of him being based overseas in the UK, and even sourced its own supplement tub to confirm his insurance claims. It sustained his effort to reduce his assent for an ADRV he suggested was not his mistake.

It manages the glycolysis as well as is consequently important for the cell metabolic rate of all neighboring cells under anaerobic conditions. Complicated I is the initial enzyme in the breathing chain in the mitochondrial membrane and essential for the typical cell performance. https://peptides-uk.com/bpc157/italy/ revealed that the intermediate dose of LG led to a higher task of CS than in the OVX team in the GM and also a higher activity of LDH than in the Non-OVX as well as OVX+LG 4 in the LM. OS had less result on muscle mass enzyme task, showing a higher CS task in OVX+OS 4 team than in the OVX group in the LM. Whereas, an elevated CS task is a pen for a boosted cardiovascular ability, a boosted task of both enzymes, LDH and CS, appears to be needed for a rapid muscle healing. Elevation of these enzyme activities complying with administration of SARMs could indicate an improved muscle mass feature. Additionally, the present research revealed that product CK as an indication of muscle mass damage was not impacted by either OS or LG.

These experiments allow Crick scientists to examine carefully just how healthy proteins engage with each various other.

All items noted "keep cool and completely dry" ought to be stored icy, preferably at -20 ° C. The majority of peptides, when stored listed below -10 ° C, will continue to be steady for several years.

This provides insight into exactly how little particle medications which connect with repair work healthy proteins can be used to deal with condition such as cancer.

If the peptide has lots of acidic amino acids, make use of an aqueous ammonia (1 to 10 %) service, or an unstable standard buffer such as N-ethylmorpholine acetate or bicarbonate, with or without sonication.

As an example, scientists make use of peptides to work out which healthy proteins repair damaged DNA.

Activotec gives a total variety of peptide synthesizers as well as services for peptide as well as healthy protein synthesis.

I used another supplier for caps formerly but this fluid item is without a doubt premium IMHO. Every one of our items are manufactured under excellent production methods in an ISO 7 medical-grade laboratory. Andarine S-4 was created to minimising muscular tissue wasting, promote stamina, as well as gain lean muscle. Ostarine was developed as a treatment for muscle mass squandering syndromes by boosting toughness and also promoting muscle development. Cardarine was developed to improve endurance, as well as boost weight loss. Ligandrol was established to raising lean muscular tissue, improve stamina, as well as protect against muscle waste. Get in touch today for more details concerning SARMs body building supplements and also we will certainly enjoy to aid with any kind of concerns you might have for us.

There are no researches reporting in vivo results of OS as well as LG on postmenopausal muscle framework as well as metabolism. The aim of the here and now research was to check out the impact of OS and LG on the muscle cells of ovariectomized rats as the conventional design for postmenopausal conditions. The OS effect on bone tissue and animal design as a component of Experiment I has been recently released. Hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal females is connected with extreme adverse effects, such as an enhanced threat of coronary heart problem, breast cancer, stroke, as well as venous thromboembolism. Nonetheless, it is still one of the most reliable treatment for postmenopausal signs and symptoms and for meticulously chosen ladies, benefits could exceed dangers. Careful estrogen receptor modulators have beneficial effects on the musculoskeletal system like estrogen, they have fewer unfavorable events on busts and also the womb. Nonetheless, they are still associated with venous thromboembolism and also stroke.

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Workplace Mediation Solution.

Workplace Mediation, Manchester, Cheshire & North West.

Content

Service.

Speak With Those Who Have Utilized The Solution.

It can be viewed as an expensive process if an end result can not be gotten to. It is consequently just beneficial if both events are prepared to endanger.

These issues are gone over and also if you reach a contract the mediator will certainly write it down for you and also make sure it states what you both desire it to say. Everybody indicators the agreement and also you decide who else, if any person, need to see a duplicate. If you are unpleasant with sharing the joint arrangement with people who are not in the area after that a decision is made about what, if anything, to show the person or individuals that referred you to mediation. The major drawback of mediation is that there is no warranty of a resolution.

Company.

That usually leaves a circumstance where both individuals associated with the grievance need to proceed working together. Mediation can aid there by repairing the relationships so that the two can find a way to co-work efficiently. The mediation enabled both celebrations to explore where their working partnership was going wrong, as well as review what they both gotten out of each other. With their new understanding of the other events' viewpoint two contracts were drawn up. The 2nd agreement was for circulation to their supervisor and also it set out modifications in work techniques that they both wanted to see for the future. They remained in the same division and reported to the same department manager. Fiona had actually really felt under pressure from Jenni since she joined the company.

What can I expect at mediation?

The mediator does not take sides, make decisions, or give legal advice; their only role is to facilitate respectful conversation. The parties' lawyer may participate in the process and attend mediation meetings. Before the mediation process commences, parties may draft and sign a mediation agreement.

Some people wish to 'have their day in court' as well as feel a sense of injustice if the process is not translucented until completion. Although, an increasing number of of our consumers are making it clear that they anticipate their workers to act in a practical method to secure a positive resolution to a complaint or a complaint. If an agreement is gotten to through the mediation procedure, then a binding paper can be created for both events to participate in. The best-case circumstance in mediation is that all events concern a mutually concurred option to resolve the conflict, which will permit a good working relationship to be brought back.

Hear From Those Who Have Used The Service.

Generally, we would permit someday for every mediation session as well as there is likewise additional contact made with all parties, in the lead as much as and also adhering to mediation. It is vital that all individuals agree to join the mediation process, in order for mediation to take place. The dominating purpose of workplace mediation is to restore and maintain excellent and effective functioning relationships. The dispute centred around promo possibilities as well as arrangements between a manger and her supervisor.

The moderator will bring the conferences to a close, give a duplicate of the concurred statement to those involved and explain their duties for its application. If mediation services norwich is reached, various other treatments might later be utilized to attempt to solve the conflict.

Work Regulation.

To start with, the mediator meets with each celebration independently to comprehend their experience of the problem, their setting as well as interests and also what they wish to happen following. During these meetings, the arbitrator will certainly likewise look for arrangement from the celebrations to an assisted in joint conference. A qualified conciliator's function is to function as an unbiased 3rd party who helps with a meeting in between two or more individuals in disagreement to aid them get to an agreement. Although the arbitrator is in charge of the procedure, any kind of agreement originates from those in dispute.

Augsburg Staff Vote for a Union - Workday Minnesota

Augsburg Staff Vote for a Union.

Posted: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:24:00 GMT [source]

Every person will have had a possibility to be heard, which can assist to boost the understanding of both sides moving forward. Workplace mediation is an increasingly preferred technique embraced by several organisations as an alternative means of solving workplace disputes.

The moderator holds both of you to the ground rules and makes sure you have equal time to speak as well as to listen to every other. You will be advised by the arbitrator regarding the procedure as well as just how much time to publication out of your journal. Typically, for a two-person mediation you will be asked to allot a complete day for the mediation session. Private meetings usually begin at 9.30 am or 11am, the joint meeting usually start at 1pm and also continues till 4pm, nevertheless, timings can be versatile on the day. At the beginning of the mediation you are asked to authorize a Privacy and also Responsibility Arrangement. This record likewise advises you that the mediator can not provide legal suggestions which the material of the mediation conversation is personal, it can not be utilized in any future procedures or procedures that you might be associated with.

How do you talk during mediation?

How to Talk and Listen Effectively in Mediation 1. Strive to understand through active listening. In trial, litigants address juries in their opening statements and final arguments. 2. Avoid communication barriers. 3. Watch your nonverbal communication. 4. Be ready to deal with emotions at mediation. 5. Focus on the facts. 6. Use your mediator and limit caucuses. 7. Conclusion.

She increased the problem with her department manager; however, she really felt that absolutely nothing had actually changed. When both parties consented to mediation they were both charging the various other of bullying and harassment. Work Law Updates for very early is set to be a fascinating year, not the very least with Brexit day fast coming close to. In spite of the uncertainty that Brexit has created, HR specialists as well as entrepreneur still have to guarantee they are up-to-date with what's in store in employment law adjustments that we do recognize will certainly occur.

Following the exchange of the statements, the moderators facilitate private conversations between the celebrations. There are various designs or approaches of mediation that might appropriate relying on the context as well as organisational society. These array from a casual peer-based mediation to a more official mediation procedure with an independent mediator. If business mediation services portsmouth would certainly such as more information on workplace mediation, or to discuss a scenario that you really feel mediation might help in, please call Åsa Waring. The future has actually never ever been more unforeseeable, demanding or challenging.

HR experts, employment lawyers, trade union representatives, elderly and middle supervisors, team leaders and also people managing difficult and also sensitive concerns. Workplace Mediation is the procedure in which a mediator aids conversations in between a company, administration or employees, to get to an option that works for everybody. Mediation aids individuals solve distinctions to their common complete satisfaction and also to the fulfillment of the business making sure efficient teamwork going forward raising performance and lowering administration time. Mediation is cost and time effective and also generates lasting remedies to conflict. Workplace conflict can have a significant influence on your service, both in regards to monitoring time as well as efficiency. Being equipped with the best approach to take on these high-emotion as well as often multi-party cases can provide mediators an edge and also the appropriate method to support organisations in their times of problem. Workplace mediation can help to solve the position for example where a grievance has actually been handled.

The dispute had actually intensified to a factor where the department was no more able to operate successfully, as well as the manager was being paid to continue to be in your home pending further examination right into the issue. Mediation is a procedure designed to put the parties back in charge of the circumstance and also to choose based on the fullness of the circumstances. An expert conciliator's primary inspiration will certainly be guarantee that the process works by upholding the concepts of impartiality and also privacy, and that the celebrations are provided every possibility to get the most out of it. We will certainly be on your side through every step of a workplace conflict to help you solve the problem as promptly and friendly as possible, call us today on for more info.

The court supplied mediation service is complimentary and also you do not require to execute a great deal of preparation before the mediation occurs.

Generally the parties split the price of the conciliator as well as this joint investment in seeking a resolution includes in each event's dedication to the procedure.

Mediation has a superb success price implying that any type of party choosing to moderate has an excellent opportunity of the disagreement being settled there and afterwards.

If the case settles, you can prevent the anxiety and also time of the test and also preparing for it.

Never prior to has there been so much details to absorb, so many social and company networks to navigate, therefore several economic, political and social concerns to confront. Any documents of the conversations that take place during mediation are destroyed and remain confidential in between those taking part in the mediation unless they otherwise mutually accept share the activity plan with their manager. desires to provide a possibility to fix any concerns that arise with mediation. The second component of the certification requirements consists of written tasks. Delegates are called for to submit a thorough portfolio in feedback to set inquiries that cover a variety of concepts covered in the course. Locations covered include dispute theory in mediation, transformative mediation, individuals abilities in the mediation process and also assisting in mediation. Delegates have 14 days from completion of the fifth day of the training course to finish the composed jobs.

[white-rose-week]

White Rose Week 2019: That Day on the Airship - Epilogue

Free Day

Self-Given Prompt: Callbacks to Prior Prompts

(Also available on FF and AO3)

Ruby's head popped off of her pillow.

She jumped out of the large, half-empty bed and began preparing for the day with an even wider smile than usual. As she put on her newest combat skirt, she looked at the now entirely empty bed fondly, giggling mirthfully at how tidy Weiss' side was compared to her own. After checking her pockets to ensure she had her scroll and everything else she needed for the day, she exited the room, closing the door behind herself.

Weiss was already downstairs eating breakfast and sending emails.

"I informed the board of directors weeks ago that I would be out today! I even sent them reminders yesterday. Can't they survive twenty four hours without me?!" Weiss mumbled with frustration as she sent off yet another memo to people she would be having stern conversations with tomorrow. Her hostile buyout of the Schnee Dust Company a few months after the defeat of Salem had proven quite simple after a scathing exposé came out detailing numerous labor and ethics violations that the company had committed in the past several years, along with thorough documentation of her father's knowledge and active approval of the violations. An exposé that Weiss most certainly not responsible for compiling and leaking, or at least, that's what she told media outlets that inquired about it. Regardless of who the (obviously noble, talented, and beautiful) person behind it was, it obliterated her father's reputation and sent the company into disarray. From there, leveraging the personal assets she had along with the notoriety from her involvement in the war against Salem, convincing the board of directors to accept her buyout was child's play.

Weiss smirked to herself. Even though running the company was a significant time commitment and she still had some problematic individuals to weed out, it was worth it. The only thing that she held as a higher priority in her life was—

"Good morning!" A singsong voice called out, and Ruby skipped into the kitchen, shattering any SDC-related thoughts from Weiss' mind.

"Good morning, Ruby." Weiss responded, her prior tension melting away as she closed her laptop and stood so she could give Ruby a gentle hug and kiss on the lips. "I'll prepare your coffee." She said, taking her seat again and reaching for the pitcher in the middle of the table.

"Only after I'm done refilling yours!" Ruby said defiantly as she quickly sat down and snatched the pitcher before Weiss could get to it. She gave Weiss a toothy grin as she topped off the white mug on the other side of the table. She was never content with letting Weiss dote on her unless she was able to able to return the favor.

"Very well." Weiss said playfully as she took the pitcher and proceeded to fill the empty red mug across from her, adding in cream and five sugars before nudging it with one finger toward Ruby.

"Thanks Weiss! It always tastes better when you pour it." Ruby said with a grin as she picked up her mug and held it outward. "Cheers! To our girlfriend-iversary!"

"Cheers. To us." Weiss clinked her mug against Ruby's and they both took their first sips, enjoying a quiet moment to stare at each other.

"So, you're sure Nora can run your shop for the day without accidentally setting off one of the hundreds of weapons on display?" She asked, only half joking as she broke the silence.

"Oh come on, she's not THAT much of a loose cannon anymore." Ruby waved Weiss off casually. "Plus, Ren is there with her. I'm sure they'll be fine."

"If you say so. I just don't want our day together to be interrupted by Ren calling you with the news that your shop has a giant hole in the wall."

"Relax, Weiss. We have too much planned today for you to waste time worrying about that type of thing anyways. And if you want to check the place for damage yourself, we can switch places tomorrow. You'll run the shop for the day, and I'll run the SDC and all your fancy-schmancy meetings!"

"As amusing as it is to imagine the department managers trying to keep up with your energy, I think we both remember the last time you tried to act like me, and I think they're a bit too stuffy to appreciate your brand of leadership."

"I think that means you need new department managers!"

"To be honest, I've been thinking the same thing. I'll probably be looking for at least a few new ones starting tomorrow. Would you be interested in running a leadership workshop for all the department managers once I've finished the hiring a few new ones?"

"I'd be happy to, but my fee is ten kisses per hour and must be paid out directly by the CEO."

"Your terms are steep, but acceptable. My people will call your people. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a very important appointment downtown." Weiss gave Ruby a playful wink as she stood and walked toward the kitchen. She placed her empty mug in the sink and gave her combat skirt's pocket a quick pat with her free hand, checking that she had her wallet and other essentials.

"I must be going as well." Ruby called out. "I've got a date with a pretty girl!" She chugged the last of her sweet drink before running over to Weiss. "Hi there, pretty girl!" She said cutely.

The couple giggled at each other as they exited their penthouse apartment and walked into a well-decorated hallway. A short elevator ride later, they were on the sidewalk of Vale's main street. The city had been rebuilt following the defeat of Salem at the hands of Team RWBY and their allies. While the general public was aware that Team RWBY had a hand in helping finally rid Remnant of Salem, they were far from the only huntresses who fought in the war, and they had kept the extent of their personal hardships to themselves. As a result, they held the comfortable status of hometown heroes and respected huntresses, but not the weight of superstar celebrities, meaning they were able to make their way down the sidewalk with their arms linked, enjoying the crisp morning air without being hassled.

As they walked, Weiss glanced over at Ruby, taking in her profile. Even from the side, her silver eyes sparkled with life and light. She got an even better view of them as Ruby turned to her. She could almost feel the power of the silver orbs staring into her blue ones. Or perhaps that was just the sensation of butterflies in her chest. She didn't really mind either way.

"I still can't believe you got us VIP invites to the grand opening of the new bakery in town!" Ruby said as she gave Weiss' arm an excited shake. "It's right next to my shop, so I've been watching the construction for the past few months. I some state-of-the-art ovens getting carried in, and they got a shipment of comfy-looking furniture just last week. I can't wait to see what it looks like now that it's finished!"

"I'm excited for you to see it as well. I have a feeling you'll really like it." Weiss said as they turned a corner.

"I'm sure I will, I've never been to a bakery that I didn't—" Ruby stopped walking and gasped loudly.

They had arrived.

A hundred feet away, their destination was nestled between their favorite combat skirt boutique, Dressed to Kill, and Ruby's weapon shop, which she'd affectionately named It's Also a Gun. The bakery's large glass windows had been covered with sheets of brown paper throughout the construction process, preventing Ruby from peeking inside, despite her best efforts. The paper was now gone, but she wasn't able to see most of the interior decoration due to the number of people that were already in the building.

Above the entrance was a sign that hadn't been there the day before. On each side was a large, ornate flower. Filigree trimming extended from the base of each bloom, resembling intertwined roots, forming the bottom of the sign's frame. The establishment's name was proudly displayed between the flowers in swooping cursive font.

White Rose Bakery & Cafe

"Wh-what? Is this…? Did you…? But, how…?" Ruby whispered breathlessly, her eyes still fixated on the sign.

"With great deal of time and planning, but I can already tell it was worth it." Weiss responded quietly.

"Didn't I make you promise to not buy me a bakery?" Ruby put her hands on her hips with a sassy, but not quite upset tone as she turned to her girlfriend.

Weiss grinned triumphantly. "You made me promise that I wouldn't buy you a bakery as a thank you gift. I made no promises about not buying a bakery because I know it would make the girl I love happy and because I think it would be a good investment anyway."

"I should have known you'd use a technicality like that." Ruby wrapped her arms around Weiss. "I love you."

"I love you too." Weiss said quietly she leaned in and gave Ruby a quick kiss.

"But you don't know the first thing about starting or running a bakery! And I know you couldn't have overseen this while running the SDC. Who helped you?"

Weiss tilted her head and grinned. "In a way, you did."

"I think I'd remember helping you with something like this!" Ruby said, gesturing grandly at the building.

"Well, you helped me pick the people who helped me. Although you didn't really know you were helping pick them." Weiss twirled some of her long hair around her index finger as she smiled blissfully at Ruby, taking in her girlfriend's reaction. "Do you remember that taste testing I took you to at the SDC headquarters about a year ago?"

"How could I forget?!" Ruby said enthusiastically. "We spent an entire Saturday tasting cookies, cakes... pastries and… coffee…" Her eyes widened a bit as she began to piece things together. "But you said I was helping decide who would get a catering contract with the SDC!"

"That much was true, and they've already catered several events for the company. I just left out the fact that the chefs that day were also competing for something else." Weiss' smile became mischievous. "The opportunity to design and run a new bakery in downtown Vale."

"Does that mean the chefs who baked the chocolate chip cookie that made me cry because it tasted so good…?"

"Are inside, probably putting a fresh batch in the display case."

"You're incredible." Ruby held Weiss tightly. "Just how long have you been planning this?" She asked with cheerful curiosity.

"Ever since that day on the airship. I knew we'd have to finish the whole 'save the world' thing before I could put my plan into motion, but that just meant I had a lot of time to think through the details." Weiss responded lovingly and slid her hands around Ruby's waist. "Shall we go inside?"

"We shall, but not yet!" Ruby said as she pulled out her scroll. "This is totally a 'home screen' moment!"

The two of them had continuously updated their home screens whenever they did something particularly fun or special together, with the most recent picture being from their visit to Blake and Yang's house in Menagerie. They snapped a quick photo and changed the settings on their scrolls before linking arms again and walking past the red and white balloons next to the front door.

When they entered, they were greeted by the scent of confectioner's sugar and the gentle sound of upbeat music. To their left, a small line led to a pair of cash registers that were attached to fully stocked display cases and a bar that extended the length of the wall. Lively girls wearing pink aprons were taking orders, grabbing pastries, and making coffee. Lacquered wood tables and cushioned chairs took up roughly two-thirds of the dining area. Couches and large coffee tables filled the remaining space, creating a communal lounge area.

As Ruby and Weiss approached the display cases, a woman approximately the same age as them walked out of a door behind the bar. The tall brunette had pale skin, purple eyes, and was wearing a chef's hat. When Weiss waved at her, the woman's expression lit up and she quickly poked her head back into the kitchen. A moment later, another woman with fair skin, light brown eyes, and wavy blonde hair appeared. The two held hands as they walked out from behind the counter.

"Weiss! Ruby! It's so good to see you!" The purple-eyed woman said warmly.

"Hi!" Ruby said, looking both excited and slightly embarrassed. "I'm really, really sorry, but I can't remember your names." She admitted.

The other chef smiled and waved her hand nonchalantly. "Don't worry, I don't think we even properly introduced ourselves at the tasting last year. I'm Madeleine, and this is my wife, Claire!"

"It's nice to meet you both again. This place is amazing." Ruby said, still in awe of her surroundings.

"The pleasure is all ours." Claire said, giving Madeleine's hand a squeeze. "We're so happy that we can finally share our cooking with the rest of Vale."

"Not to mention finally sharing the name of the place! Miss Snow-Angel-Investor over here really didn't want you finding out about her little scheme." Madeleine smirked and nodded in Weiss' direction. "We had to sign some intense nondisclosure agreements!"

Ruby rolled her eyes and nudged her girlfriend. "Sorry about that. Business Weiss can be kind of scary sometimes."

"Only when it's important business." Weiss blushed as she leaned slightly into Ruby before turning to the couple "And you both did a wonderful job with the preparations. I'm sure this place will be a complete success." She looked at them with sincere confidence.

"That means a lot to us." Claire said, her gaze drifting toward the brown eyes beside her. "We hope to be running it for a very long time."

"And we should probably get back to running it, but let me show you to your table first." Madeleine gestured for Ruby and Weiss to follow her as Claire returned to the front counter.

They made their way to the back wall, where a single unoccupied table was waiting with a small sign that said 'Reserved' in the same cursive font as the bakery's logo.

"Here you are." Madeleine said, plucking the sign from the table just as Claire reappeared with two large cookies held in parchment paper.

"And these are for you. If you want anything else, just let us know!" She handed the warm treats over before glancing lovingly at Madeleine. "Come on, sweetie."

"Right behind you, sugar." The other chef responded. The pair waved goodbye to Ruby and Weiss as they departed.

Ruby waved back at them until they weren't looking at her anymore. "This is all so perfect." Ruby mused as they took their seats. "The food, the atmosphere, the location, and the chefs are a couple too. What are the odds?"

"One hundred percent." Weiss responded with a simple shrug.

"Hmm?" Ruby raised an inquisitive eyebrow as she took a large bite of her cookie.

Weiss smiled adoringly as she used her thumb to wipe a stray crumb from the corner of Ruby's mouth. "You must have been too blinded by all the food at the tasting to notice that the chefs who served us were always in pairs. And were all women." She smiled lightheartedly. "I wanted this bakery to represent us in every way possible, so I did my research when selecting candidates for the tasting. All of the chefs that day were couples, so the odds of you selecting a couple to run the bakery was one hundred percent."

Ruby gulped down the mouthful of cookie. "You really did think of everything, didn't you?" She whispered happily.

"I certainly tried to. No amount of effort is too much if it's for you, Ruby." Weiss said lovingly. Under the table, she quietly slid her right hand into the pocket of her combat skirt.

Ruby blushed and took another large bite of her cookie. As she chewed, she became aware of the music playing in the bakery again.

~~~I won't need any dreams, it's all there if you're by my side~~~

A small shiver of tension went through her body. At some point, the bakery's cheerful playlist had arrived at a familiar tune and gotten all the way to its bridge without her realizing it. She and Weiss had managed to listen to the song a number of times over the past several years. In the weeks leading up to their final battle with Salem, they had made it a personal goal to listen to the piece in its entirety. A goal they accomplished.

However, that didn't mean their goal had been to make it through without crying. They knew they song would be an emotional one for them, but they sought to change it from a specter that haunted them into a memorial of sorts. But, every time they had listened to it, they did so intentionally. They had never encountered it by accident before, much less in public.

~~~Every moment's enough, and you take me to paradise~~~

Weiss noticed Ruby's expression and the song almost simultaneously. "Oh my gosh." She whispered frantically, her face going even paler than usual as she jumped out of her seat. "I swear I didn't tell them to play this. Stay here, I'll have them change it immediately." He combat skirt flared as she turned toward the bar.

~~~When I needed a hero, you knew it, and you were there~~~

"Wait."

Ruby's voice was steady as she grabbed Weiss' wrist, intercepting her before she could take her first step. "It's fine. I'm fine. I'd… like to listen to it with you."

~~~And I'm scared, but I'll open my heart up, I'm ready to dare~~~

Weiss look at Ruby with astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"I am."

~~~I know I've never felt like this before~~~

"Alright." Weiss pulled her arm gently, sliding her wrist through Ruby's fingers until their hands met. "I'm here for you."

~~~I never really knew what love was for~~~

"I know you are." Ruby whispered as Weiss took her seat again.

~~~I dreamed, but never did believe~~~

They then did something they had never done before.

"But baby, it's time to make up your mind."

Their singing was barely above a whisper, only loud enough the two of them to hear amongst the bustling chatter of the other customers.

"I think that tonight is when our stars align."

They saw tears in each other's eyes, but the tears were happy. Triumphant.

"Honey, it's now we leave the doubt behind."

They moved their free hands together, interlocking both pairs over the small table.

"Take my hand, cause you and I are gonna light the sky up till it's dawn, and baby, you and I are gonna shine."

Ruby and Weiss continued holding hands as the song faded, finally separating them so they could dry their eyes and finish their cookies.

"Thanks, Weiss." Ruby said before sighing cathartically. "This place is amazing, but I could really use some fresh air right now. Can we go for a walk?"

"Fresh air sounds wonderful." Weiss nodded in agreement as she stood and offered Ruby her hand once more.

The two waved to Claire and Madeleine as the left the bakery and took another moment to look at the sign outside of it before starting to walk around the city.

Their conversation didn't have any particular direction, nor did their feet. They simply enjoyed the sunny morning and each other's company.

"My feet are beginning to hurt." Weiss commented after they had been walking for nearly an hour. "Let's find a place to sit for a while."

"Yeah, my feet are starting to get tired as well." Ruby glanced around, approximating their location. "Oh! I know where we can go!" She scooped Weiss off her feet with a broad grin. "Ready?"

Weiss clutched Ruby's sleeves as she braced herself for what she knew was about to happen. "Ready."

A moment later, the world was a blur around her. A few moments after that, the world came back into focus, and she knew exactly where they were. She didn't even need to look down to know that she was being lowered onto a seat.

They were in a large, circular courtyard, sitting in one of the sturdy wooden benches that lined the perimeter of the otherwise open space. Gray slate covered the ground beneath them, as well as the walkways extending from opposite sides of the circle. One path went back to the city, and the other extended toward a collection of castle-like buildings, several of which were obviously newer than others. An insignia with two crossed axes emblazoned the center of the area.

"It's been a while since we've come here." Weiss said nostalgically.

They were in the front courtyard of Beacon Academy.

The courtyard was lively, but not overcrowded with students and visitors. A few people had briefly glanced in their direction due to the sudden burst of petals that heralded their arrival, but they were content to continue about their business.

"Yeah, it has. We were standing just over there when I fell into your luggage and then exploded." Ruby giggled quietly. "After that, I thought you'd never be my friend, much less my girlfriend." Ruby's words had a gentle, sincere happiness to them.

"If I'd had my way, you'd have taken that pamphlet on dust safety from me at the entrance ceremony later that day and never spoken to me again. Thank goodness things didn't go as I'd planned." Weiss scooted closer to Ruby and pressed the sides of their arms together.

"Most things haven't gone as planned for us over the years, have they?"

"I suppose they haven't. But somehow we wound up here, together."

"We have. And being with you is all that I need."

"I couldn't agree more."

They leaned into each other, sharing a quiet moment, which was interrupted by Ruby sighing wistfully.

"Weiss, I love you." Ruby sounded unusually serious. There was no hint of uncertainty in her declaration, which had been made many times before, but there was an unusual amount of weight behind her words.

"I love you too, Ruby." Weiss responded with a comforting tone, as she gently touched Ruby's arm. "So very much. In fact, I've been wanting to have a conversation with you about just how much I love you."

"You… you have?" Ruby looked at Weiss carefully. "What type of conversation?"

A slight blush reached Weiss' face. "Well, um… you see, it's about our… what did you call it… mutually consented trial period of courtship?"

Ruby looked stunned for a moment. "Wait! That's what I want to discuss too! You don't mean…" She paused with her mouth half open as she pointed a trembling finger at Weiss.

Weiss leaned back slightly. "H-huh? Wait, Ruby, you couldn't possibly…" The gears in her head spun, landing on the only logical explanation. "Hold on!" She scrambled around, her hand rummaging into her combat skirt's pocket.

Ruby began floundering about, realizing what was happening. "No! Wait! I… I want to say it!" Her hand flew into her own pocket and grasped around for the item she'd double checked was with her before leaving their apartment earlier that morning.

They became still as they found what they were looking for, hands still hidden from sight. They stared at each other, looking equally frantic and exhilarated.

"But Ruby, I want to be the one to—"

"No way, I've waited way too long to not ask you myself!"

"I've wanted to ask you for ages though! I—Fine! We'll ask at the same time!"

"Deal!"

They mirrored each other's movements, swiftly pulling small boxes out of their pockets, opening them with outstretched arms, and speaking simultaneously.

"Weiss, will you—"

"Ruby, will you—"

"YES OF COURSE I'LL MARRY YOU!"

"YES OF COURSE I'LL MARRY YOU!"

As they embraced and kissed passionately, the open boxes fell from to the ground below, the rings inside them glittering brilliantly in the midday sun.

A/N: In the author's notes of my previous chapter, I said, "I don't anticipate having nearly as much trouble writing the final 'free day' chapter." So much for that!

First, I got delayed by several weeks due to hectic (but positive) circumstances. When I finally sat down to write the chapter, I almost immediately realized I didn't like the flow of events as I had initially envisioned them and spent a day writing and scrapping paragraphs. After taking a few days to step away, I hit a stride and wrote out most of the chapter, but then hit a brick wall in the final scene.

While my endgame was always a simultaneous proposal, I couldn't find the right words for the two of them to say in the moments leading up to the proposal itself. The scene alone took over a month of on and off thought. If it had been any scene other than the literal finale of the story, I'd have forced myself to publish something after a day or two, but I refused to let myself release the chapter until I was at least mostly satisfied with the ending. Even now, I don't know if I consider it perfect, but it feels as good as anything that I as a first-time fanfic writer could make without running the risk of the story never actually getting finished.

Aside from the final scene, I feel very good about how the rest of the chapter turned out. I really enjoyed bringing several things from previous chapters back, such as the bakery, combat skirts with pockets, coffee, and "Shine".

While I actively avoided creating any original characters in the earlier chapters, my setup for the bakery required chefs, and while I considered not having them actually appear, the idea of them being a couple to parallel Ruby and Weiss occurred to me and felt too fun to not use, so I spent several hours deciding what Claire and Madeleine's names and appearances would be. Claire's is based on a éclair, and Madeleine's inspiration is the French cookie of the same name. I felt that both pastries had a distinct enough appearance and color to satisfy the "color naming" rule of the RWBY universe. It might be a bit of a stretch, but I also wanted to keep the odds of the names I used appearing in the actual series to a minimum.

While this final chapter took significantly longer than I had ever hoped it would, I still really enjoyed the process of White Rose Week (months, for me, I suppose) and plan to do it again next year, but with either greater planning or without the goal of writing extended chapters and a continuous story. My direction will largely hinge upon the state of my personal schedule as the week approaches next year.

I cannot thank you enough for joining me in the adventure of my first fanfic. Every view count, favorite/kudo, follow/favorite, comment/review means a great deal to me. If you had any favorite parts, I'd love to know what they were. I hope my writing was able to bring you some joy, and I hope to see you all again next year.

Keep moving forward!

[thepapergirlandthespiegelman]

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STONE OCEAN UNDER THE CUT

My thoughts on Stone Ocean Volume 1.

I spoiled myself pretty badly for Stone Ocean. Most people don’t seem to like it or take it seriously, so things tend to come up casually in conversation or online. So I knew going into this that I was going to have a hard time in the sense that a lot of really, really bad things happen to Jolyne.

Despite being prepared for the worst, I was still kind of stunned by how terrible things are in just the first few chapters. Terrible thing after terrible thing happens to Jolyne, many of which are some of my worst fears:

Her parents are divorced and her father, Jotaro, is completely absent and uncaring.

Her first love, presumably the only man who’s ever claimed to love her, who she’s blissfully, naively affectionate with, Romeo, is a complete and total scumbag. He drinks and drives, steals cars, and is probably involved in other illegal activities. While it’s not totally clear what their relationship is like, he’s probably taking advantage of her in some way.

Jolyne distracts Romeo from driving in a romantic moment, leading to him hitting and fatally injuring someone.

Romeo convinces Jolyne not to call an ambulance and to help him hide the evidence by stuffing the body into the trunk of his car.

Jolyne is arrested in her home.

In jail, a guard catches Jolyne masturbating, leaving her feeling humiliated.

Jolyne refuses to rat out Romeo, leading to her being prosecuted for both his and her crimes.

Not knowing what the Stand arrow is, Jolyne carelessly throws away the amulet from Jotaro.

Romeo pays Jolyne’s lawyer, who is working with a crooked judge, to prevent Jolyne from seeing her mother and to convince her to take a bad plea bargain.

This results in Jolyne confessing to crimes that she didn’t commit; being convicted of murder, abandonment of a body, and grand theft auto; and receiving a 15 year prison sentence.

The cruel prison staff put Jolyne in a straight jacket in a hot room intentionally to make her pass out.

They also force her to strip naked and display her body to them, along with poking her in the eyes and forcing her to sign a contract saying that their abusive and unsound medical examination was accurate.

Jolyne’s cellmate, Guess, acquires a Stand after coming into possession of the amulet and uses it to torment Jolyne.

It’s just painful to read. Jolyne starts out weak and emotionally crippled, and terrible things just keep happening to her. It seems like almost every other panel is her about to cry or wanting to give up or kill herself. There’s nothing wrong with writing about terrible things or people in tremendous pain, and people can work through their trauma and become stronger...but it just feels depressing and hopeless. Jolyne is so weak, has such little resolve, such poor moral character that she couldn’t even assert herself to her boyfriend when someone’s life was in question. It’s no wonder that Stone Free is so weak that the limit of its strength is crushing a coin (embarrassingly underpowered compared to most JoJos’ Stands). It’s surprising that Jolyne is able to have a Stand at all—does she really have any fighting spirit? How can a person like this hope to overcome all of the struggles that keep piling up on her, much less fight a universe-threatening evil?

I say this with nothing but love and affection for Jolyne. I don’t blame her for being weak. It’s very obviously not her fault. But she is weak, and I say that not out of criticism but out of concern. I can’t see how she can bear such great responsibility right now. She needs time and love and support so that she can grow stronger.

I won’t pass judgment on Araki for writing her this way either, because I do believe that stories about pain and trauma and imperfect, troubled people are important and powerful. Jolyne Cujoh, with her troubled morality and intense expressions of emotion, has the potential to say a lot about coping with trauma, in a way that greatly contrasts with a character like Giorno Giovanna, son of evil incarnate, with two other highly abusive and neglectful parents, yet who somehow never expresses his trauma in a toxic way, has resolve in abundance, and maintains an idealistic protectiveness of others. Jolyne certainly makes more sense to me than Giorno does (although there may be explanations for why Giorno is the way he is).

But if Araki does all this to Jolyne only to crush her spirit even further, kill her off, and have her team lose their battle...I just don’t know if I would see much value in that. Redemption and recovery are one thing. Writing a character to be broken from the beginning and then spending the rest of the story kicking them over and over again while they’re down until they die is...I don’t even know. I don’t know why someone would write a story like that, and I especially don’t understand it when it’s JoJo, a series that I thought was about the beauty of humanity and the strength of the human spirit.

I think part of my surprise at Stone Ocean tracks back to the fact that even knowing a lot of what happens, I still expected Jolyne to kinda be your average JoJo protagonist, masculine and strong and dominant and resolute and good. Actually, at one point, I was kind of afraid that she would just be a female Jotaro clone (she is his daughter, after all).

But she is...not. Those things. And again there’s a part of me that’s like, this could be really good. It’s really bold to have a protagonist who’s so different from the others in the series, so troubled, so flawed. And also so feminine and so affectionate; I really don’t like that all of the female JoJo characters are either pure/soft/kind and powerless or powerful but bitchy, so it’d be nice to see a female character who is openly, shamelessly loving and affectionate, but also very powerful (like Sailor Moon!).

It’s okay to have a different kind of protagonist, but if that different person ends up being the only JoJo who dies and loses...what exactly does that say? She is also the only JoJo to sort of/potentially kill a completely innocent civilian. I don’t want to be, like, “that feminist” or anything but...really...she is the only female JoJo. If she’s also objectively the worst JoJo, that sends a pretty terrible message. And I just don’t see why it should have to be this way.

Even if Jolyne does grow stronger, I won’t feel good about her as a character until/unless she comes to terms with the fact that she may have killed someone. What happened to her is absolutely awful and I feel terrible for her, but it still stands that she had some responsibility and some choice. She shouldn’t have been distracting Romeo while he was driving, and she should have called an ambulance once she saw that someone was hit. While Romeo undoubtedly bears most of the responsibility as the one driving and the one who first suggested that they hide the evidence and then pressured Jolyne into complying, I can’t pretend that Jolyne had no influence or free will at all.

It makes me feel terrible to think about Jolyne trying to cope with what she did. I can just imagine her crushed by the guilt, wanting to kill herself, unable to continue.

But it makes me feel even worse to think about her refusing to acknowledge her responsibility. She keeps saying that she was “framed,” which is technically true; she was framed for crimes that she did not commit. But at least in English (and I’m not sure if this is a quirk in translation), “framed” generally has the connotation of complete innocence; if someone was framed, they didn’t actually do anything. But even if Romeo hadn’t framed Jolyne for his crimes, Jolyne would still be guilty. If the person hit was still alive, she assisted in committing a murder by helping to put him into the trunk of the car. If he was already dead, it’s still desecration of a corpse and tampering with evidence. The latter is obviously infinitely less serious than the former, but we’ll never really know which one it is, since neither Romeo nor Jolyne even checked to see if the man was still alive, much less called a paramedic who could confirm death.

Jolyne Cujoh makes me feel really conflicted. I don’t know what to expect from here on out. I really want things to work out for her...but I already kinda know that they ultimately don’t. I want her to come to terms with what she did...but I fear that she sees herself as completely innocent and will never acknowledge that she did anything wrong.

I’ll keep reading, for now. But I can’t promise I’ll actually be able to finish this.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG136!

- In a very interesting way for an episode dealing with The Web (both as an active force outside of the Institute and… very close to it: Annabelle sending Alison there, Jon being unable to focus on his lighter), this episode dealt, in a lot of small ways, with the idea that members of the Archives team are… regaining control of themselves and their lives?

Melanie is attempting therapy! She’s cautious about it but she’s taking measures to try and get better, she’s putting efforts into it, she wants to feel better!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I shouldn’t have– MELANIE: Just… forget it. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s good, though. I–I’m glad you’re getting help. MELANIE: Yes, well. We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there. ARCHIVIST: I guess. Still, it–it is a good step.

Jon is right on this and… there was already something hopeful in the way that Melanie didn’t explode at Jon for accidentally compelling her; she wasn’t pleased by it but… she could have shut the conversation down. Instead, she tried to minimise a little what Jon had done and asserted her boundaries, which she did again with the therapist, but without cutting either of them out. She’s clearly not in the bestest of places, was uncomfortable with the topic… but I’m so glad and proud of her for taking this “step”, for deciding that she had to deal with her demons – possibly from way before she even came to the Institute for the first time?

Meanwhile: it wasn’t so much about Jon’s actions but about what he finally admitted – that he’s aware that he made a choice, that he’s actually had… a very twisted and casually self-destructive way of facing the coffin and of considering his own life since he’s woken up:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is.

It has been a process for Jon, too; the theme of “choice” has been sneakily prevalent in season 4 so far, following up on season 3:

(MAG087) Georgie: [SIGH] Look I’ve, I’ve got work to do. You listen, or don’t listen, or cross-record, or whatever you want, just… just think about it first, okay? You can choose to leave it alone. [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [TAPE PLAYER IS LOADED] [CLICK]

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: I never chose this! ELIAS: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

(MAG111) GERRY: Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there doesn’t care about blood. […] But they care about your choices, your fears.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean…

(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices; now you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

(MAG132) DAISY: I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to��� hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.

(MAG134) PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit.

(MAG136) DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming?

So, although his memories are still missing and he might not remember Oliver either (Jon has never mentioned him so far, and given how Jude had been able to kick Jon out of her dreams, he might have done the same thing despite giving a live-statement), Jon is aware that he made a decision – maybe without knowing in the details what was at stake (there could be a few things we could still scream at Elias in MAG092 re: informed consent :w), but he was faced with two options and elected one over the other. It has its own shades of tragic undertones and heartbreak, but it’s also… his own choice, this time around, and still more controlled than “sign papers to become Head Archivist of an eccentric Institute (sells your soul to a Fear god that you’ll now have to feed through other people’s terrors or your own)”. By pushing and questioning Jon, Daisy had been able to make him say what he chose to do (and as seen above, why), and his handling of the coffin was one of such things. Even if, indeed, the Web sent him in that direction (leaving MAG131’s tape for him, maybe manipulating him to some extent through the lighter), Jon, like Martin, is still appropriating what they did as being his own decision:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself. [SILENCE] DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision.

Jon agreeing to Daisy’s proposition to go get drinks may also be going in his own right direction – back in season 1, Jon would have probably shrugged off the offer? But as Helen told him, “people change” and right there, Jon had a micro-choice; he could have refused and, still, after a small hesitation, decided to go along with it instead.

Of course, when it comes to reclaiming their life back in this episode, the most striking was Daisy; Daisy, who had already explained who she wanted to be (MAG132: “I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better…”) and who, so far, has managed to stick to that; Daisy, who handles herself as best as she can even (especially!) though it requires other people because she wants to avoid being alone for PTSD reasons:

(MAG133) [CLICK–] DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy.

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. […] DAISY: [QUICKLY] You’re not babysitting me, alright?! I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but… that’s not it. I just… don’t like…  being on my own if I can help it. You know. Flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. Just trying to avoid it if I can. ARCHIVIST: I know, Daisy, I–I do. It’s hard. DAISY: Yeah, well. Don’t let me get in your way.

There is currently something so strong in what we’re seeing of Daisy? In the way she’s aware of her limitations and manages to prevent the conditions leading to potential breakdowns? I feel like she’s following the same logic as when we knew her as a Hunter: when she was seeing a problem, she would just… neutralise it. Hence beating up Mike, hence immediately going for Jon’s voicebox; hence her Cold Factual Violence overall against spooks/vampires/“monsters” of various kinds. Basira had said that she liked Daisy because she was “solid”, because of her certainty, and this is still the same Daisy – though not hurting others anymore! And she pulled an incredible power move:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: It, uh… Hm. Is, uh… Weird question, but… I… [EXHALE] I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks? DAISY: … Oh, uh, no. I… I work here, now. I figured it seems to protect the others, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right, so… Wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…? DAISY: [CHUCKLE] Broke into Elias’s old office. Found an employment contract; filled it in, and signed it. ARCHIVIST: And that worked. DAISY: Seems so. ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not gonna be going anywhere anyway. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose not. So… no more dreams. DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin. ARCHIVIST: Is that better…? DAISY: ’T’s mine. ARCHIVIST: … right.

She weaponised what they have gathered, through experiences and guesses, to get free of the dreams she hated! It’s not absolutely clear whether she signed to become an Archival assistant or a regular staff member; on the one hand, Jon’s concern hints towards archival assistant, since as far as we know, the Archives seemed to be their own business, including trapping their staff (though damn, I remembered MAG102 being more explicit on the matter but: actually, no, since Martin saying that regular crew are able to quit was immediately followed by “Hannah just left to have her baby, though.”: was that “though” a “by the way” or a way to tamper what he had just said, and this is the most they can do, but still not quite quit…?); on the other hand, Daisy hasn’t specified what it was.

Anyway: it’s such a POWERFUL MOVE to… 1°) break into Elias’s office, 2°) just sign herself up like that?, 3°) ESPECIALLY given how Elias had initially coerced Basira into signing herself up to avoid turning the scene into a bloodbath, even before being told of the repercussions (that she couldn’t quit, that Elias dying meant that they would die too). What Daisy did sound like a direct answer to MAG092, and I’m loving it, loving that Daisy… just used what they had learnt of the dreams’ mechanism to protect herself and chose to bind herself to the Institute while exactly knowing what it meant, without anything blackmailing her into it. Elias hadn’t bothered to tie her down for who she was? Watch as she’ll decide that for herself.

This is also the first person of Extended Team Archive to… have given herself to The Eye fully knowing what she was doing. You better be grateful for the gesture, Big Eyeball!!! The others had to be misled or coerced into serving you, and Daisy, of all people, chose to give herself to you!!!

(- If Daisy became an Archive Assistant: I hope that she’ll get to read a statement at some point? Well, technically, best thing would be for nobody to read a statement but. Martin did it a few times (and read one in MAG134!), Tim ALMOST did it, Melanie did it twice, Basira did it once… it’s a bit of a Tradition. (And who wouldn’t want to hear Fay Roberts for almost an entire episode outside of Daisy’s own live-statements?! I’m a simple woman, okay.))

- I’m really curious about how Elias and Daisy would interact, now. Would it be biting/tense/mutual snarling, or taunting about Daisy still being a “rabid dog” at heart…? Or precisely not anymore: because Daisy acknowledged in front of Jon that Elias had not been that off about her (MAG132: “Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life.”)…? I also… get the feeling that maybe, the current Daisy might be perceiving her encounter with the Institute as a chance, since it ultimately led to her snapping out of the Hunt (though she would have reasons to want to break Elias’s arm for the fact that Basira got trapped because of him).

- I wonder if Martin saw Daisy’s name pop up amongst the new staff members? Or if Peter just told him right away what she had done? Is Daisy now actually getting a salary from the Institute? (I’m not sure that Elias “We really don’t have the budget for that” (MAG067) had even bothered to pay her when he was using her ~services~ so… drain Peter’s money, Daisy, gogogo!! And Use Your Powers to give everyone in Team Archive a raise, Martin :w)

- The fact that Daisy said that she had broken into “Elias’s old office”… Well, Elias’s office had been characterised by the clock in the background; since we could hear one in MAG126, I was assuming that Martin and Peter were in there (especially since Martin was doing Peter’s directorial work) but had noticed that there was no such sound in MAG134. Were they outside of the Institute? Or has Martin stopped working in Elias’s office since Daisy had forcefully gone inside of it, deeming it unsafe?

- Anyway: Jon-Melanie-Daisy seem to be creating an awkward support network, right now, and it’s ADORABLE and good (+ extra cookies to Melanie for seeking therapy!). They still have trouble talking: there were sooo many pauses and silences when Melanie was in front of Jon; Daisy is still not… super at ease speaking about how she feels (while she’s way chiller when it comes to describing how she broke into Elias’s office. Daisy, ilu.); Jon searched for his words a bit to describe how he was perceiving himself at the moment… But they’re trying and still getting those words out and explaining themselves to each other a bit. And it’s PRECIOUS, godsdamnit.

- ALRIGHT, NOW TO DIVE RIGHT INTO THE SILK-STICHED MEAT OF THIS EPISODE:

(MAG111) GERRY: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, no. I-I never really, uh… I never really thought of it. I–I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute.

(MAG136) DAISY: [SCOFF] She’s… Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. [PAUSE] Like that lighter you’re always using. Where’d you get that? ARCHIVIST: Mm. [STATIC] Good point. We should keep our eyes open. Anyway, how’s Basira doing?

………………. It was impossible to tell whether or not there was static back in MAG111 (at least for me: there was a constant static-y background due to Gerry being there), but here, yep, there was some. So something is DEFINITELY preventing Jon from lingering too much on the lighter (like an oily surface his attention keeps slipping on?) and what it means. … And apparently, he still has it with him – I had wondered if he hadn’t lent it to Martin for MAG118’s plan, burning statements? I mean, maybe he did and the lighter found its way back to Jon anyway, or it was still with Jon during the Wax Museum explosion, but Jon still has it with him at the moment.

How many silken strings have tied around Jon’s body and head without him noticing, I wonder… the episode was about a “Puppeteer”, after all (or… maybe a bit more about the puppets.)

……………….. Sounds like Jon is back to smoking again, too, given Daisy’s comment? And Jon’s smoking habits have been Smelling Like Web Spirit: he had apparently stopped around the time he began to work at the Institute (since he told Leitner he had “been quit for five years now” in MAG080, in February 2017); Elias had ranted about Jon smoking in MAG039 (“He’s not smoking again, is he?”: was it because he knew of Jon’s smoker history? Or because Jon had gone back to… smoking a lot since he discovered that the lighter had been delivered to him in MAG036?); Tim implied that he might have noticed that Jon had been smoking again recently at the end of season 2 (MAG079: “he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad. Like properly bad.”); Jon ~conveniently~ felt the urge to smoke a cigarette and left Leitner alone to face his death (Elias.) in MAG080 (Jon minimised it at the time, but… it means that he had cigarettes on him.); and after that, we only got the mention from Daisy digging through his stuff in MAG091, and him offering Gerry a cigarette in MAG111.

One thing that makes me Hysterical every time:

(MAG091) DAISY: One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design.

OF ALL THINGS, JON SMOKES “SILK CUT”

“SILK

CUT”

COME ON, SPIDER, COULD YOU TRY TO BE A BIT SUBTLE WITH THAT BOY?!

- Actual footage of Jon forgetting about his lighter (ft. Daisy):

- I find it very interesting that Daisy was able to notice the lighter and Jon’s lack of oversight about it since… when Daisy was introduced through Basira’s words, Basira explained that Daisy had first been sectioned over a Spider-related case:

(MAG043) BASIRA: […] Daisy was sectioned years before I was even on the force. She’s never been that forthcoming about any of her own experiences. Takes Section 31 very seriously. The most I could get out of her was that she was originally sectioned for something she referred to as “spider husks”. The way she described it, it sounded like she’d found a bunch of shells. The sort crabs leave behind when they grow, but… I could never figure out if it was meant to be the husks of people-sized spiders, or the spider-like husks of people? And Daisy never seemed like she wanted to clarify. I’m sure she mentioned vampires once as well, but… I think she was joking. … Probably. … Maybe…

We have learned, since then, that it wasn’t exactly true: Daisy’s first section’d case had to do with the coffin, but Daisy also told Jon that only her superior had known about it prior to Jon's pulling the story out of her (MAG061). So Basira couldn’t have known that Daisy had lied or dodged to tell the truth, but still… one of Daisy’s first cases had to do with Spiders.

(And Daisy has been ~taking care~ of the vampires, too, which are known for their mind-controlling powers. When Trevor had met a Spider-Woman, he had mentioned that his experience with vampires had probably helped him to identify that the compulsion to get out and get high wasn’t his own… So it seems like Hunters might have a little immunity or at least resistance to manipulation. I’m EVEN MORE RELIEVED that Jon got Daisy back.)

(… And afraid, oh so afraid for Daisy’s life-expectancy, since she’s already so important when it comes to potentially dealing with threats, and being a presence which allows the Archive team to re-form a bit.)

- MAG110 and MAG136 are quite good to listen to one after another, besides Neil Lagorio’s existence – they dealt with the same movie-making world, of Web apparently, and there were some tiny things which were quite interesting? Both statements were given by women isolated from their peers and put into a situation they probably wouldn’t have picked if they’d been allowed to retain more options and Choices:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I’d held some ambitions about directing myself one day, but it soon became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if I’d got a feature under my belt before I was outed as trans, it might have been different, but… as it was, this revelation burned too many bridges, and when the dust had settled, it was made abundantly clear to me that I was never going to get a movie of my own. And it was either cinematography, or nothing. So I stayed.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned […]. Anyway, even once I’d sorted out childcare arrangements, I found myself… more and more unwelcome in the industry. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to hire me – by this point I had a hell of a special effects resumé – but the hours you were expected to be working, the way shoots were set up, the culture of drinking, networking… none of it was really possible alongside parenting.”

There was, also, the obvious theme of… the fictions reshaping reality, or becoming a reality: Dexter was obsessed with a Spider that seemed to only exist in his dream of a story, and he recreated it on the set in the end. Neil managed to finally recreate his last story with himself:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “he would twist his fingers into all sort of bizarre, intricate shapes, until I could see the strings flowing over them… ‘We made them dance,’ he would say, wonder and nostalgia in his voice. ‘Oh… how we made them dance.’ […] He told me later his… greatest regret was not being able to finish his final film. An arthouse piece simply titled Dancer. He never explained what it was about, nor do I think it actually… came out in the end. […] And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive… he was dancing. The cables shifting, and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy.”

On the theme of “smoking” as related to the Web, it’s ~curious~ to note that it was also present in MAG110 and MAG136’s statements, and not in moderation either:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “[Brandon Alma] took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers.” (MAG136, Alison Killala) “I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his… profound effect on my life. But instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer…!”

So, hum. Smoking hadn’t been exclusively a Web-thing before (there was of course the Anglerfish’s baiting, and its shells smoking to disguise the odour of death), but I still find that noticeable.

- There is an OBVIOUS problem with the timeline of Neil’s death, from MAG110 and MAG136’s given mentions:

(MAG110) MARTIN: Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0121403. Statement of Alexia Crawley, given March 14th, 2012. (MAG110, Alexia Crawley) It seems like a sick cosmic joke that that was the day the press broke the news of Neil Lagorio’s death. Half an hour after the cast walked into that building, one of the grips stumbled across the news story whilst idly checking his phone. Lagorio had been privately suffering from Parkinson’s for almost a decade, and had been bedridden in his Connecticut home for the last year.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Alison Killala, regarding her time as friend and carer to special effects artist Neil Lagorio. Original statement given 1st December, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. (MAG136, Alison Killala) “It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. […] I don’t know how long I was watching those films. They don’t… It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. […] She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d… very much like to go home.”

If Annabelle visited Neil’s house six months before Alison gave her statement, it should have been in June; while Alexia’s statement put Neil’s death before March (presumably February, since Martin added as part of the follow-up that “Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach.”). It’s not clear either if Alison lived in the UK but she did mention the “UK press” at some point; while according to the official version given by Alexia, Neil had lived and died in the US.

So what happened…? Has someone in the Archives been purposely messing up with the dates regarding The Web…? Were there two “Neil Lagorio”s towards the end…? Did The Web messed up the files a bit through someone? (Noticeable, too: Jon who ~listens to all the tapes~ didn’t mention the echoes with MAG110’s statement, which was read by Martin. Did he listen to this one, or had the tape… disappeared when he went back?)

(I know that the popular theory regarding MAG114’s statement and what was happening in Hill Top Road is “parallel worlds”, but it always sounded textbook Spiral to me – we also have been demonstrations of entities rewriting reality to erase people or twist people’s memories, see the Not!Them and what happened to the statement-giver’s husband in MAG038. But I’m a bit short on explanations regarding the obvious problem of timeline in MAG110 and MAG136……………..)

- Relistening to MAG110, I just realized that someone had completely flown under my radar: Brandon (Brendon?) Alma, the main actor, who… was the one controlling the story and the set, actually?!

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “Most impressive to me though, was a guy named [Brandon Alma]. He was playing the closest thing the film had to a protagonist, a… homeless ex-Methodist minister who’d found himself on the island by chance and served as a connecting thread, wandering between the scenes and the vignettes of the inhabitants, after each ended with their march to the Spider. Brandon took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers. It was a shame because, for whatever reason, he also seemed to be the only one that Dexter would listen to. I only saw them talking once or twice but every time, Dexter would be wrapped, nodding at… whatever Brandon might have to say. […] [Dexter] then gathered up the cast and, with Brandon leading them, took them through a small door in the side of the workshop. And they disappeared inside.”

He was playing a character who was the “CONNECTING THREAD” between people getting eaten by the spider, Dexter “would be WRAPPED” and agreeing to everything Brandon told him, and Brandon was the one to lead the actors into the workshop where they were all killed/consumed/drunk hollow, UHUHUHUH. Maybe the book that Dexter had found wasn’t actually the (only?) thing that messed up everything? Or did Brandon come from the book? Was he actually the spider himself, or just there to ensure that the spider would emerge and be fed…?

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I don’t know when he first mentioned his spider film. It didn’t… bubble out into a full obsession until two years ago, but I know he talked about it plenty before that. […] [蜘蛛が食べている] (Kumo ga tabeteiru). I think that was the name, anyway, something like that; he was normally slurring quite badly when he said it. He thought it translated to “The Spiders That Devour” but a Japanese friend once told me it was actually closer to just “Spiders Are Eating”. According to Dexter, Kumo was an old tokusatsu movie which, he believed, had come out sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. It was about a Spider – just the one, despite the title – that grew to a colossal size and terrorized a small unnamed island off the coast of Kagoshima. What struck him about it, though, was the utter absence of anything resembling a hero or a protagonist. No one fought against the monster, and although there were vignettes in the lives of those under the Spider’s shadow, they all ended the exact same way – with the character in question marching slowly, and calmly, into its waiting jaws.”

(And it would sound EXTREMELY Web to have all the attention focused on Dexter… while the true puppeteer would be somewhere else, hidden.)

- Something striking in many Web mentions is that: it likes Order (… and apparently drinking people hollow – requiring the fluids to sustain itself? To be able to moult and grow in size?)

(MAG127, Breekon) “We had some luggage once. A thrumming, silk-wrapped thing of The Spider, hiding away in an old steamer trunk. We stepped heavy through the dining car and found an old woman near the caboose. 'Something strange in the luggage car,' he said, and I finished as was our way. 'You should come and see it.' She stood and walked with us readily enough, though tears flowed silent down her cheeks and pattered onto the faded carpet. The Spider’s always an easy job – no fuss, no complication, everything planned and prepared. It knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure. We knew she wouldn’t scream as she was hollowed out and drunk.”

(MAG110) MARTIN: Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach. It will be a shrivelled husk, with all moisture and internal organs apparently removed.

(+ Daisy’s early Section 31 case with the “husks” of people/spiders/etc.)

On the matter of order: the victims in Kumo (MAG110) also weren’t making a fuss when they marched off to get eaten, it was the same behaviour as what Breekon described. Regarding Alison’s story, it seems like although she was officially the puppeteer of Neil’s body… SHE was the one who had been puppeteered around:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “I became his carer a few months later. It just seemed to make sense. A frugal life, lucrative career and… prickly personality had left him with lots of money but no real support; while my life had left me in a position where I cared… deeply about his well-being and was in… desperate need of money. Everything just… lined up so neatly. […] he threw himself into a new project, one I would never have expected, but that suited my engineering background perfectly. […] I protested, of course! This man was my hero, I–I loved him, and there was no way I could subject him to this… awful indignity. But my objections were ignored, as always, and Neil insisted that this was what he wanted. So I built that… strange contraption. Using the skills I had developed across my whole life, to fill every corner of Neil Lagorio’s house with wood, and steel, and cable. […] I barely even noticed when the harnesses were no longer necessary; when the loops for those hooks were now embedded directly into his body. I must have asked him about it. But at the time, it just seemed like… such a natural progression.

Neil had exactly the Right Person available for what he needed when his body started to shut down; Alison wanted to refuse and ended up accepting. Even before Annabelle came in, it… doesn’t really sound like Alison had been the one in control in that whole situation.

And on the matter of people being at the right place at the right time for The Web’s purposes: SQUINTS at the fact that 2012 was when Jon started working at the Institute. We witnessed Melanie, Basira and Daisy’s first steps there, we know that Tim went to get a job there because he was looking into his brother’s death, Sasha might or might not have been interested in the supernatural for years (it could have been the Not!Them rewriting that bit; we at least know that Sasha wasn’t particularly well-off so… maybe she just plainly needed the money); we know that Martin just happened to be hired after submitting his CV everywhere he could (the question of why ELIAS, who PERSONALLY INTERVIEWED HIM, hired him is… another Big Question), but… why did Jon start working at the Institute? He didn’t particularly expect to Georgie to identify what the Institute was, so it wasn’t a life-long dream of his that he would have mentioned many times as a student…

(Re: the Web and Order, SQUINTSSQUINTSSQUINTS again towards the one particular person who has mostly been associated with that: “loves scheduling”, has specific days on which he eats lunch with the Institute’s librarians, insisted on Tim doing the paperwork for his absences, That One Thing About Keeping Receipts If You Want To Claim Your Expenses (Unless You Die)… that guy.)

- I still wonder how the Web works on people exactly, though… especially given all the talks about making choices and decisions, it would seem a bit odd to end up concluding that “anyway, the Web will make you want and do whatever IT pleases, you can’t do anything about it”…? (Though yeah, THAT is frightening.)

Given that Alison compared herself to Frankenstein, I wonder, in her case, if despite her ~adamant refusal~ to puppet her friend and idol…

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Even pyrotechnics, while… impressive and visually spectacular, they just didn’t give me the same sharp joy as making something that could move, that came alive, directed and controlled by my hand… I always felt Frankenstein should have been an engineer, not a medical student, as reading that book I couldn’t help but see myself in that obsession. But I suppose everyone’s already done the-monster-as-the-robot, haven’t they?”

… some parts of her didn’t actually want it? And this is how The Web might operate overall? Humans are complex, we’re always mixing up emotions and different desires at the same time; maybe The Web mostly just brings to the surfaces the ones it needs to push people in the direction it wants…? (In that case, re: Trevor and the Spider Woman… it wouldn’t be surprising, as an ex-heroin addict, that some part of him would still feel the tinge of the craving…)

- What was Neil, in the end? Was he a Web avatar who found a way to feed his god mostly through fictions? Was his ex-partner “Gabe” Gabriel, the Spiral’s Worker-In-Clay…? Was he a plain person, able to use some powers here and there? The thing is:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “his satisfaction with his latest and… as it turned out, last… foray into horror, with The Harvestman. He’d always had a fondness for spiders, he told me. And I of course reminded him that harvestmen… weren’t technically spiders.”

She is right! Though this could be a case of misleading us to focus on the symbols rather than their effects; Neil’s work was… indeed clearly linked to the idea of hidden control:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “he claimed to be working with Neil Lagorio to make the Spider. Now you might never have heard his name before, but I guarantee you you’ll have seen his work. From the mid-seventies right into CGI, Lagorio was THE name in Practical Creature Effects: suit work, stop-motion, animatronics, whatever the method, he was the master. […] I’d had the pleasure of working with him way back in 1989 on Orbit – a medium-budget sci-fi vehicle for some… aging action star. Neil was working on a twelve-foot tall animatronic robot that featured heavily in the climax. The picture was, unsurprisingly, a flop; but I still remember his work. How he brought a… lump of wood and steel to life. Th–the huge, intricate mechanisms that allowed his crew to puppet it into motion that was so natural you could forget that the back of it was completely hollow…!”

On the one hand, he sounded pretty harmless. On the other hand, there were these “original cuts” (and the cruel broken SMILE you could hear on Jon’s face when he mentioned them while reading the statement was… gosh.). Was Dexter Banks invited to one of those screenings, and is that why he was haunted by the memories of a movie he couldn’t find again…?

-… So, what does it mean for ANNABELLE to send these original cuts to the Institute?

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “There were two sorts of people in the world as far as Neil saw it: those who were worth his time, and those who were not. And if you were in the latter group, he honestly couldn’t care if you lived or died. Not that most people could tell which side of the line they fell on; there were even days that… I wasn’t sure myself! Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his “original cuts”. I was quite… jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t… realise it back then, but… [SIGH] those guests… they never quite looked the same afterwards. […] She told me to take the films. His… “original cuts”. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: [INHALES] Statement ends. Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(…………. You could HEAR that Jon was dangerously close to going to check them out if Daisy hadn’t reminded him that Jon, No.)

At the time, Gertrude was still running the Archives… but, again, it’s also around that time when Jon integrated the Institute as a researcher. (He said he had been working there for “four years” in MAG001, which was set sometime in the second half of 2015 – though I wouldn’t past it s1!Jon to round up, like, 3 years and 20 days to “four years” to sound… more impressive. However, we know for sure that Jon was working at the Institute in 2012 (MAG051: “One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012”).) So why did Annabelle send the “original cuts” to the Institute, and who were they for…? Was it to send a message to Gertrude? Was it because the Web was veeeeeeeeeeeerrrry aware that the boy who had ~gotten away~ (el-o-el) was now working there (and was apparently a bit versed in Neil Lagorio’s work)? Was it a way to sneak into the Institute? Was it for Elias? Was it to avoid the “original cuts” affecting innocent bystanders? Was it a proclamation from Annabelle – demonstrating that the older generation was fading out and now she was taking over?

That last point is something that I really felt with Annabelle’s visit and Neil finally dying (… or moulting like a spider). It’s interesting that in both MAG110 and MAG136, there was something about the character the story was about… not having a keen relationship with modern technology:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “And so it was for the first few weeks. Dexter… clearly wasn’t sleeping. He had insisted on using old equipment and avoiding digital almost entirely, to the point where several of the crew were using pieces of kit they’d never even seen before. This meant that workprint had to be made manually for the dailies, something he refused to let anyone else do.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “We stayed in touch over the next few years, even worked together on the Wire-Runner, his one, underwhelming foray into CGI.”

We saw in MAG123 that Annabelle had started working using Internet, though using someone else to achieve it. I don’t have many theories or speculation about that one – I only find it curious that, given how MAG065 had introduced the idea that tape recorders… are digital, too, we’re still not sure about what it is that prevents Spooks from recording on Jon’s computer. Gertrude had commented that the tape recorders were a bit ~old-fashioned like her~ to defend her use of them to Lucia (MAG130), so… I don’t know! But potentially, I wonder if there might be something about the younger generation of avatars being more fit to use modern technologies, because some elements are their own idiosyncrasies while older techs were their predecessors’.

- Hi, do you sometimes get just PUNCHED IN THE GUTS by Jon.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is. DAISY: Did you know the coffin wouldn’t kill you? ARCHIVIST: I– guess I thought imprisonment wouldn’t… wouldn’t be as bad as it was. DAISY: [SHAKY SIGH] ARCHIVIST: And it’s a lot easier to make that choice than it is to actually… endure the result. You might have noticed when I was in there with you, I… I had regrets. DAISY: Yeah. I remember. ARCHIVIST: Plus, I thought… [PAUSE] W– [SIGH] Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you. DAISY: You thought I was gonna kill you? ARCHIVIST: I was a possibility. DAISY: Guess so. […] ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me.

;; I’m worried about these missing memories and what it means / what happened… Jon had told Basira that he could remember most of The Unknowing:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: My turn. What… what happened to me? BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. …

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t.

Back in MAG122, I had feared that he would have gotten something cauterised in the process, probably guilt, hence Tim’s death being erased… But no, it’s FAR from being the case: Jon has been a guilt-ridden ball of softness and caring and heartbreak since the beginning of season 4. So why are these memories still absent…? What happened in his dreams, for him to not remember exactly how he got to choose…?

(EXTRA-WORRIED since Elias had told Basira that Jon was “at a very delicate stage right now” in MAG127; and as much as I think that Elias probably doesn’t want to risk Jon managing to successfully compel him or extract a statement out of him right now… I’m Really Worried about the fact that he described Jon as being in transition. Choosing should have been the end result, right? So… so what is the next step……………)

Sobbing a lot about the fact that Jon isn’t sure that coming back was worth it, and that he’s been very casually self-destructive about the coffin. He kind of finished his sentence from MAG132 here:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m scared. [SHORT CHUCKLE] When does the fear go away…? A–anyway, I–I’m sorry. You too, Basira, if you’re hearing this. I know you’d… stop me. You’d be right to, but… But if this goes wrong, all you lose is– …  I’m not risking anyone else.

“If this goes wrong, all you lose is” / “worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster”. A o u c h. He’s been the most outrightly emotional we’ve ever seen him in season 3 and 4, he was so afraid of becoming inhuman starting MAG092, he finally chose (and is aware of it) the avatar option because he was afraid to die (that’s one of the most human things he could possibly admit…?), and, since he’s woken up, he has dealt with rejections one after another: Georgie was thrown-off by him badly enough to leave (clearly dissatisfied with… the fact that Jon kept saying he was “fine”, when a normal human being shouldn’t have been), Basira was extremely cautious and still refuses to trust him, slaughter-infused Melanie BLAMED HIM FOR TIM&DAISY’S DEATHS, Martin avoided him time and time again:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

(MAG123) MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! MELANIE: Something has been in hospital. Something that’s got your face like– I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen! [STOMPING? AND FURIOUS STRANGLED NOISES] ARCHIVIST: Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– ARCHIVIST: [MESSY STUTTERING] MELANIE: –than him! ARCHIVIST: Basira said Elias was gone!

(MAG124) MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … yeah… [CLICK.]

(MAG129) MARTIN: Please, stop finding me. ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGH] [CLICK.]

(YES, GRATUITOUS QUOTE-COMPILATION, BECAUSE THAT’S A LOT.)

It’s been a rough two months since he woke up, alright. I’m so glad that he managed to get Daisy back: not only it was a victory that actually felt like one (the removal of Melanie’s bullet meant that things got… strained), but Daisy has been asking the right questions and they’re so… like-minded? kindred spirits? lately, two Survivors able to understand each other, that it feels good and… a bit more hopeful.

(- I still want Jon to get the chance to have a discussion with Georgie, to explain himself and what happened, to explain that even though he decided something she’s disapproving of… he still wants to do some good, as much as he can? é_è To thank her for having watched over him and having given him so much valuable advice? For Georgie to accept that Jon did the best he could do in the situation he was in? Basira used to listen to Georgie’s podcast while in the car with Daisy so maybe Daisy heard some bits of it. Let Georgie and Daisy meeeeeet too!!)

- So much for Jon getting a stronger hold on his power, he still accidentally slipped and compelled:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway.

Still too curious and not the best at self-restrain, though… he had been doing way better lately. I think the last time he had accidentally compelled was in MAG114, with Tim? On the other hand: it looks like his Insights are a bit more controlled since, unless he reveals that he has Known for a while, he… doesn’t seem to know about Basira’s activities. So maybe sternly forbidding him from peeking worked with that one, given that he had motivation to not screw things up (even more) between them…? He was a bit more relaxed with Melanie this time around! (Well. And Melanie was way more relaxed around him too, which… says something considering their previous exchanges.)

- What is wrong with Jon’s body. This makes the second mention of casual weirdness, after Jared commenting about Jon’s rib:

(MAG131) JARED: Huh. That’s a weird one. Not sure I like it. Still. Mine now.

(MAG136) DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes.

Too many eyes, or something else…?

- I’m so emotional over the fact that Daisy is… currently giving back to Jon? Telling him that his way of thinking or his overall situation is “messed up”; reminding him that he’s not responsible for everything that’s happened to Melanie, Basira and herself; pushing him to snap out of it and have a nice time…? The fact that she included herself in the (short) list of people around Jon, and that:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you.

She listed him alongside Basira when justifying why her decision to tie herself to the Institute was worth it – they’re in this together and it’s not only just “with Basira” in her mind. It includes Jon.

- … and not Melanie there, BUT!! PROGRESS:

(MAG112) DAISY: Yeah. Couldn’t find Tim, but he’s gone with Martin and… the other one. BASIRA: Melanie. DAISY: Sure.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

She marked a verrrry slight pause before saying Melanie’s name but still: Melanie is now her own person in Daisy’s mind!

- And I’m SO EMOTIONAL OVER MELANIE OVERALL but also so proud that… apparently, she took it upon herself to take care of Daisy, and went as far as to go ask Jon to replace her when she couldn’t do it?

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. MELANIE: W–well, I’ve kind of got to… uhm. I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if, if… she hangs around, with… […] [IN THE DISTANCE] Hum, yeah, he’s, he’s fine with it. So… […] DAISY: I didn’t ask her. To do that. ARCHIVIST: I–it–it’s fine.

I’m glad that Melanie makes sure that Daisy doesn’t end up alone, and that… she went to Jon for this ;__; Melanie knew better than everyone how it felt to be not emotionally supported by someone, namely Basira (MAG131: “Basira is… um. Basira deals in ‘intel’ these days, in usable data, assets. Not feelings. Not people.”), so I find this super-sweet that she… is apparently making extra efforts to not replicate the situation with Daisy? Some feeling of community/teamwork has been recreated lately, all around Daisy, and aaaaah… I’m so glad ;; Really sad that Martin isn’t there and that Basira is still closing herself off, but so glad about the faint Melanie-Daisy-Jon dynamic… (And so worried. Because now, I wonder how Jonny is planning to rip it away from us.)

(Though: Melanie didn’t try to set-up for Helen and Daisy to stay together. Is Helen mostly absent/can’t get out of her door much…? Or was it because Melanie didn’t absolutely trust Daisy’s Hunter instincts to not kick back in, if she was too close to a Spook-she-doesn’t-know-yet for long…?)

(I wonder if it’s Helen who suggested therapy to Melanie, or if they talked about it? In any case, having Helen around seemed to have helped Melanie a bit, overall ;__;)

- Though logistically: it’s hilarious that Melanie&Basira probably still live in the Archives, that Daisy is probably doing the same (unclear whether or not Jon Still Has A Home outside)… and that Daisy didn’t even mention that hi, she had signed some paperwork and was now an Official Member of the Institute. It took Jon two weeks to learn about it, and only because he asked about his dreams. (Daisy must have done that quite fast after getting out of the coffin? For someone who “missed dreaming”, she reacted immediately x”))

………………… I’m not sure that Basira will take that the news that Daisy is now tied to the Institute kindly, though, given the current state of things.

- Elephant in the room, Melanie’s ~therapist~ is ringing SO MANY warning bells:

(MAG136) THERAPIST: Right, have a seat. Do you mind if I record our sessions? MELANIE: I do mind. Yes. THERAPIST: Ah? I mean, it’s just for my own notes. MELANIE: I categorically and completely do *not* give consent for you to make any recording of me, ever. Turn it off. Please. [SILENCE] THERAPIST: I… I see. Yes. Of–of course. [CLICK.]

…………………. See, even besides the use of a tape recorder (who would use that in 2018 for very professional, serious and health-related purposes, if they’re not spooky?!), it’s how the therapist handled the act of recording in itself which makes me shiver. During a first session, a first encounter, when you’re supposed to not make the patient uncomfortable, turning it on before asking Melanie if she would be fine with it. Trying to argue with Melanie’s refusal when Melanie explicitly said she would be bothered by it. That small silence before complying – while Melanie was just stating her rights… (Though on that last one, Melanie’s background as a podcaster is showing; she was very efficiently able to state her will without leaving room for any loophole!)

There are many options for What The Deal Is With That Therapist:

1°) A totally normal person who just happens to use tape recorders in 2018 and was startled by Melanie’s professional-sounding declaration.

2°) Someone tied to the Lonely…? It would be a terrifying job for a Lukas, totally twisting the purpose of a therapy by… cutting you off from others? ;; (Peter had mentioned the possibility of therapy to Martin back in MAG120: “Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost.”)

3°) Someone tied to Beholding: Gertrude had the contact information for one (MAG130: “If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like […]. Hang on, let me see if I can find you the number for that counselling service. They’re actually quite good.”), and that last “I see” was quite striking, Avatars tend to make small references to their patrons all the time – though this one could have also been a nod to Melanie’s…

4°) … since the therapist seemed so taken aback by Melanie offering a resistance: … W e b…? Annabelle was even created during, specifically, a psychological experiment (though we don’t know if she was a psychology postgrad herself, or just a random test subject with a different background; the voice sounded maybe a bit too old for someone who still looked like a “student” in 2012, but then Elias is supposed to be middle-aged so, eh). It wouldn’t be the most subtle thing ever but then: given that Jon didn’t give any reason, why did he pick this specific statement this time around? Outside of the statement, who is a “puppeteer” in this episode? Which would raise, once again, the question of What Is Behind tape recorders; and, if Web, what allowed Melanie to not obey: was it because she used to be Slaughter-infused…? (I had wondered, especially after MAG125, about the relationship between the Slaughter and the Spider: the way Elias had specifically mentioned that Melanie had a “visceral hatred of being trapped” in MAG102, was run by “the self-determination you prize so highly” in MAG106, and the fact that Melanie had described him as “pulling all the strings” in return, had left me with the lingering of impression that… potentially, there was more something about Web than Beholding at work here, and that obviously, The Slaughter, being uncontrollable violence and chaos, wouldn’t be the best of pals with the Eight-Legged-Mrs.-Order Fear entity…)

The way Melanie described therapists at the beginning of the episode (“We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there.” and it’s true, and she’s still trying!!! Good!!) already introduced cautiousness about the whole process; if this one turns out to be Bad, it wouldn’t be representative of every one of them. Still, kinda hoping (for Melanie) that unless this one manages to prove that her first few seconds were absolutely not representative of what she can offer, Melanie will try to find another one elsewhere ;; I’m impressed that she didn’t just go “Nop ahaha bye” when the tape recorder began to get used… without her consent. It wasn’t good when Jon was doing it, but from a therapist, there is something very, verrrry chilling, and this new character absolutely managed to sound as untrustworthy as Peter in just a few seconds ;;

- On the list of worrying things: URKKKKK that… Basira apparently still hasn’t told the others about her visits to Elias. She’s likely doing her own researches, as Elias had suggested, to check if there were some truths amongst what he told her about The Dark’s activities… but URRRKKK that she hasn’t said a word about it yet. Not good, Basira ;; Elias is spilling his poison and she’s drinking it raw – it will most likely mess her up… and mess up the others, too, if they’re not aware that Elias still has, in all likehood, Plans.

… On the other hand, I got the impression that her relationship with Daisy had improved a bit? Daisy sounded less… heartbroken, this time, giving me the impression that, yes, things aren’t perfect, but not excruciating either?

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I haven’t seen her much since… Well, she seemed a bit… tense, the last few times we spoke. How are you guys– DAISY: [CLEARS THROAT] ARCHIVIST: –doing? DAISY: N–no, Basira, she’s… She’s been good. We’re… together so it’s good. [SIGH] Wish she wouldn’t keep treating me like a china doll. But it’s alright. ARCHIVIST: That’s understandable, I suppose. DAISY: [BREATHING HARDER, FASTER] Yeah, well… What do you think?

See, I can’t really decide whether Daisy’s awkwardness was because it was a touchy subject and she was aware that no, things aren’t fine… Or if it was a matter of “oh lord, no, I can’t tell Awkward Nerd Guy that YES, things have been super-steamy in the tunnels lately, he would probably faint if he knew we were doing it in his Institute.”

(… reminder that in this episode, Jon had to read “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned, but while I may not have had much time for make-up and monster suits, the bodies inside of them were, er, a different matter.” with his own tongue.) (That’s not topping Timothy Hodge’s statement and Jon’s annotations from its patreon Deluxe transcript, but eh, it was still a beautiful line <3)

And the parallels between Daisy&Basira and Jon&Martin keep piling up! First Basira and Martin both were “busy”; now, it’s the single-minded longing for the other when they’re separated – Daisy having thought that she would never see Basira again when she was in the coffin, and now… Jon’s first reaction when Daisy taunts him about acting like he’s alone being to say that YES HE IS… because Martin isn’t there.

Holy Arceus on top of Giratina, Jon, what would your season-1 self would say about the Current You. (“Things change. People change.” Helen told him a few episodes ago, AND YEP. Y E P.)

- I’m… a bit worried about how Daisy handled Martin, however. It fits her and the… individualistic? bits of her that we had seen: if she sees a problem, she’ll try to deal with it through her own actions – Jon is sad because Martin isn’t there? Then no, she’s not going to drag Martin kicking and screaming back to Jon if she wants to cheer Jon up; she’ll push him to stand back up on his own.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

1°) She’s partially not wrong? Though I still feel like, without knowing what Martin is doing behind the scenes together with Peter, there would be causes for concern and that Martin… is not in a good place nor there on his own: his lines in MAG124 and MAG129 sounded, more than anything, like he was straightforwardly blackmailed into not talking with the others (we know that, from Martin’s point of view, it’s a bit more complicated and not the end-goal; but still, his insistence to Jon about how he couldn’t hear what he had to say, had to leave, etc…. weren’t reassuring at all). Daisy might be projecting a bit on that one since she has deepened her network since she came back, probably because Basira was astray: she now remembers Melanie’s name, she listed Jon together with Basira as people trapped within the Institute (implying that she would not leave them behind). She might see Jon as hyperfixating on something that can’t be resolved right away, like her situation with Basira…? Unless it’s plainly because “Blackwood” hadn’t impressed her much in season 3 (she doesn’t know him! Even if Jon cares for him, maybe she doesn’t see him as all that valuable), or because… spooks are happening and the Lonely is managing to cut the ties that Martin die have with people, who are now just not finding him relevant anymore…?

2°) So nowadays, people are aware that Martin is doing “paperwork” – are they aware that he’s basically doing Peter’s work as an ~assistant~? Or are they plainly assuming that “Peter Lukas” is his alias…?

3°) ;; I’m super happy about Daisy inviting Jon for drinks, and Basira possibly joining them… but also worried about how Peter might just rub that into Martin’s face? Jon used to not be… social with the assistants. It would be so easy to tell Martin that it’s finally happening because Martin is not there… (And yes, Martin made his choice to protect the others, presumably Melanie&Basira, because Jon was away! And nowadays, it still stands, the fact that it would also protect Jon was only added to the pile! And he was told by Peter in MAG126 that he might “not want” to share what had happened with Jon at the end of it, implying that he would change; Martin knows these aspects of the deal! But Martin is not absolutely selfless either, and there could easily be some envious outbursts at the idea that Jon seems to be… happier, nowadays…?)

(… Martin had been so snappy to Basira in MAG088, and there was the whole talk between Basira&Melanie about how Martin seemed to think they would “steal his precious Archivist” in MAG106; who would have thought that Daisy and Jon would ultimately be the ones to go out for drinks together.)

- ANYWAY, Jon & Daisy & potentially Basira are going out for drinks and I don’t know if it will be an awkward mess or a nice time for all but. The potential for silly Tipsy Activities is strong – trying to make Jon guess ridiculous trivia facts through his Insights? Basira noting that Jon is behaving exactly like Martin presumably did at the end of MAG098 (talking a lot about a certain someone who isn’t really there at the moment)? Daisy sharing cop stories?

(… I also can’t help but think about the whole assistants-and-assimilated gang going for drinks during Jon’s kidnapping between MAG099–MAG102. Worst moment ever until they’re too inebriated to Coherently Think about why their lives suck and… see, that episode from Brooklyn 99? Going out of their way to find the most ridiculous kinda-harmless ways to exact revenge on what’s pissing them off at the moment, ie Elias? … Going to his office to wrap his whole desk in cellophane. While he’s standing there, just unable to do anything (they’re too many and too far gone for his power to work). While Tim is throwing serpentine streamers everywhere, Martin is crying because Elias’s paperweight suddenly reminds him of Jon, Daisy is seductively slurring the worst pick-up lines to Basira, and Melanie had stolen a spoon in the bar and tries to recreate “The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon” on Elias, again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN– (maybe Basira told the truth in MAG106 and Melanie had indeed managed to make Elias cry, she just can’t remember about it). Basira was absolutely sober through it all, but when Elias tries to get explanations from her passiveness, it’s a mix of Her Iconic “I don’t know.” and the fact that she’s trying to get better at this new job of watching without doing anything. Elias would almost begin to regret Gertrude.)

Title for MAG137 is out and W O W is that an interesting one?! I have no idea if it will deal with one of the current threads or give information about other ones; it’s… a broad title which works for a lot of things. Tied to a very small mention we got in MAG105, so could be dealing with Gertrude’s studies on The Slaughter (and possibly her dealing with that one’s ritual)? If dealing with The Dark again, there are many angles which could work: attack on the Institute (get to meet The Creature, Jon.), Julia in present-time, Robert Montauk in the past, orrrr even something about the Elias-Rayner relationship that we now know was a Thing? (Though I feel that, if we get some information about that last one, it’s likely to be given in Ny-Ålesund.) Could also work for Hill Top Road, specifically Agnes and Ray? Could work for The Corruption (since The Hive had… personal feelings about The Institute) and maybe shed some light on whatever it was trying to achieve in the tunnels with the ring of worms (ritual attempt, or had Gertrude taken care of that one already?), or even something about John Amherst (Melanie… ;;)? Could work with Gertrude’s activities overall – with Elias, with Peter, with Jude… (Would be hilarious if it was about Elias and Peter, what the heck are you to each other, you terrible beings.) Could also work for Annabelle if it’s about balance? Aaaah, so many possibilities!! And it’s probably not even one that I thought of! =D

… and we’ll be getting a mid-season break, after all. Given how the break had been narratively inserted in season 3 (matching Jon’s kidnapping), will it be the case again and, if it is: what could possibly go wrong that we wouldn’t get a recording in-universe for three weeks? Four episodes left, a rushed trip to Ny-Ålesund could still happen before that and… leave them (/the surviving ones) in tatters afterwards, uuuuh…

[mistress-of-the-obvious]

On Recent Kalafina News & Rumors

I've been silent because I didn't think this situation was that big of a deal at first.

When I first heard of the difficulty with Spacecraft and Yuki Kajiura, I figured since she and Kalafina are the agency's cash cow, they would come up with some sort of deal. When that fell through, I figured Spacecraft would just hire Yuki for the majority of Kalafina's songs and bring on one or two other songwriters for a few other songs to offset the new higher cost. Not really a big deal.

Now there's the news that Keiko is probably leaving, but she's likely actively going for the ownership of the trademark to Kalafina. This got me thinking...what if all three of them are unhappy with Spacecraft? They can't suddenly just move to another company. They signed contracts after all.

Assuming Keiko's contract ends the soonest, that means she could leave, take the financial hit of ending the contract, snatch up the name Kalafina, and that would prevent Wakana and Hikaru from performing under that name. This would mean Wakana and Hikaru are worth less to Spacecraft, which would likely result in contract renegotiations and make it easier for them to leave.

Does that mean Kalafina will return? Maybe. Depends on how long it would take and the legalities involved. Based on what I know, with the various rights issues regarding songs, productions, etc. of what is Yuki Kajiura's (probably most of it unless she signed a 'work for hire' contract here and there) vs. Spacecraft, she likely has a lawyer and had one for negotiations that led up to her leaving. Perhaps there is one for Kalafina as well or this lawyer/legal team is also working for them.

I'm thinking there's more to this than the standard, "Keiko wanted to go solo and didn't think Kalafina existed without Yuki Kajiura" line. If that were the case and Wakana and Hikaru wanted to continue Kalafina, there probably would have been obvious tension considering that trademark request. Yet, we haven't heard or seen any evidence. I also don't think Keiko would ever do something like that.  

What sounds like what happened is the classic drawback to more traditional Japanese style business practices. In the case of Spacecraft, once the person in charge left, the person who took over wasn't necessarily the best person for the job, but the one who knew the most people, or was related to someone else. Perhaps he's someone well liked and esteemed in corporate, but never got along with the artists. That's what I'm getting anyway. What results are situations similar to some of the big Japanese video game companies like Konami or Sega for example, where companies can turn into shells of their former self practically overnight. Then those who can, leave like a sinking ship. We know Kaori apparently left Spacecraft for Flying Dog around the time Yuki left, so people are beginning to leave, even if they are so far associated with Yuki. As far as Sponichi articles, they're clearly getting their information from an inside leak and I suspect it's not actually from Kalafina or Yuki Kajiura, but someone in corporate unhappy with current direction.

With such uncertainty it makes complete sense why Wakana has looked so sad for months. I noticed it myself, but figured it had to do with her grandmother with dementia. I'm curious if she pays for some of her treatment, since the way it sounded she's in a nursing home of some type. That makes everything a little more terrifying.

The pictures for the latest Spice interview regarding their movie made me sad. Wakana looks exhausted, Keiko's smile looks pained, and Hikaru looks melancholy at best. In the photo with Hikaru, Keiko, Wakana, and Kaori from Kaori's twitter, it looks like all four of them are teary eyed.  

Then there's the issue of Hikaru still doing the blog posts. That one I'm not sure about. Assuming Keiko is leaving, it makes sense she's not doing any posts...but Wakana isn't either. Yes, she's never been much of a blogger (I can relate), but it does look bad that she’s not. Assuming Spacecraft isn't a dumpster fire, perhaps Hikaru does want to go solo under Spacecraft management, while Wakana and Keiko want to continue Kalafina with Yuki Kajiura and Spacecraft won't allow that and wants complete control. Again, we're back to that trademark and the issue of contracts. Wakana looks rather sad and exhausted, perhaps it's because she wants out of her contract but has to wait for stuff to happen.

All of this is speculation on my part, but I figured I would put in my little bit. There's a lot more than the news is telling us. Since this deals with legalities and the fact the Yuki Kajiura and the members of Kalafina strike me as classy, they're not going to tell the press anything publicly even if it would strengthen their hand (and it likely would weaken it).

How does this affect your favorite Kalafina and FictionJunction scanner of pamphlets and magazines? It doesn't really. I used a slow method of shipment for my latest stuff (first and last time I'm using this method), so I'm still waiting on the newest batch. There's still plenty of stuff out there most haven't seen and I'm happy to buy and share.

Unlike most, I'm not devastated, but more curious and interested in what is going to happen next. I'm more upset for Hikaru, Keiko, and Wakana than anything else. This is horrible to go through during your group's ten year anniversary.

I'm still here and will still be providing everyone with scans. I'm happy to continue following Keiko, Hikaru, and Wakana whether they go solo, go with other projects, or continue Kalafina in some other form.

[expatimes]

New ‘phenomenon’ arises after launch of some e-govt services

Domestic labor recruitment offices ring alarm bell

KUWAIT CITY, Jan 6: One of the positive repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic was the activation of e-government services and completion of online transactions to facilitate procedures for both clients and employees in a bid to contain the spread of COVID-19 virus, reports Al-Rai daily. However, the steps taken to combat the spread of COVID-19 crisis resulted in the perpetuation and exacerbation of a violation that existed before the crisis.

It is related to the exploitation of domestic workers, as the sponsors end up having full control of the fate of their domestic workers and turning the situation into something similar to “house arrest” for them. A number of domestic labor recruitment offices rang the alarm bell about this new threat to Kuwait’s reputation in front of the international community.

A new phenomenon began to surface, which is domestic workers being forced to work in homes by their sponsors and prevented from leaving, or transferring to another sponsor, in light of the great shortage that the local market suffers from due to the suspended air travel.

From the beginning of last November, the daily has been shedding light on the issue of domestic labor exploitation, and opened a file that is no less dangerous than the new phenomenon, which is that there are fake offices that circumvent the law, and provide domestic workers for amounts of up to KD 400 per month per worker, by exploiting the high demand for domestic workers. In addition, a commission is collected by the offices from the people besides the salary of the domestic worker.

Worsened However, instead of addressing and finding solutions, the situation appears to have worsened. The new phenomenon then began to emerge, which is forcing workers to continue working without renewing their contracts, after making it possible for sponsors to renew their domestic workers’ residency online.

Although the government procedures and controls in place in this regard stipulate that the residency of the domestic worker should not be renewed except in his presence and with his approval, the procedure prior to COVID-19 crisis neglected that part. After the “automation” of the residency renewal systems was implemented, the sponsor is able to renew his domestic worker without the latter’s approval , which has opened the door wide for “ forced labor.”

This automation process has generated three problems – not requiring the existence of a contract to renew residency (since before COVID-19), failure to ensure the worker’s presence during the renewal or transfer process, and consecrate the violation by not having to electronically take the worker’s approval during the renewal process.

The solutions to the aforementioned problems are – attaching the work contract signed by the worker when renewing the residency, comparing his signature on the contract with his signature on the passport through electronic linkage, and contacting the domestic worker and ensuring he agrees to the renewal and is not subjected to any pressure.

In his role, Bassam Al-Shammari, the owner of a domestic labor recruitment company, warned of the negative repercussions of the electronic renewal of domestic workers’ residency permits, as it has opened the door wide for sponsors to force domestic workers to work against their will, indicating that this may portray a negative image of Kuwait to the international community.

He explained that the renewal of residence permits has been made available online due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus and the direction of state agencies to automate their systems. However, the renewal process does not differentiate between those holding residency for domestic workers (Article 20) residency, those working in the position of domestic workers, and other types of residencies.

The distinction in the type of residence visa is a fundamental matter, especially since the work contract of domestic workers is a fixed-term contract and can only be renewed with the consent of the domestic worker himself, and in his presence before the concerned authorities to acknowledge approval and renewal of the residency.

The variables imposed by the COVID-19 crisis – from restricting air traffic to suspending issuance of entry visas – have prompted more than half of the total domestic workers in the country (estimated at 745 thousand) to face the problem of forced renewal of their work contracts, especially with the cessation of recruitment for new workers, and the inability to travel or leave the country when they wish to.

Recruitment In other words, the cessation of recruitment pushed the sponsors to restrict the freedom of domestic workers to choose, and instead continue working after the end of their work contracts, due to the lack of an alternative, so that the weaker party would bear the result of renewing the work period without his consent through online residency renewal services that do not require a new work contract from the embassy.

Al-Shammari stressed that the repercussions of restricting the freedom of domestic workers is starting to become evident to many recruitment offices, as they receive dozens of complaints daily from workers, against whose will their residencies are renewed, leaving them with no other option. He insisted that the current system in force allows the sponsor to renew the residency of the domestic worker without the need to visit the concerned authorities, which invalidates the procedure if it is carried out without the consent of the domestic worker himself, and ensures the domestic worker was not coerced to agree to the renewal.

This cannot be achieved unless he is physically present at the relevant government agency. Al-Shammari affirmed, “The failure of the domestic worker to attend to agree or disagree to the renewal process in front of the concerned authorities was previously overlooked prior to the COVID-19 crisis. This is contrary to the circulars and laws regulating work in this regard, but with the application of the online renewal process, this idea has been inscribed.”

Guarantee He explained that the matter has other repercussions, as online renewal by the sponsor makes him have absolute power without oversight, especially since there is no guarantee that he will fulfill the dues of the domestic worker for the period of work that ended before the renewal, as well as provide his agreed leave.

This problem arose as a result of two main reasons – first, the transfer of supervisory authority and the overlapping of specializations, as the powers and authority to supervise this sector were transferred from the Ministry of Interior to the Public Authority for Manpower. Second, legal adaptation of electronic transformation, as the electronic transformation process is a good step that enriches the life of Kuwaiti society as a whole, but is not being associated with legal controls that pertain to each sector separately, which is a legal loophole that will result in greater problems in the near future. The other legal problems that domestic workers are currently going through with regard to collecting their dues have entered a vicious circle, as it is not possible for workers to leave without obtaining all their dues, and there are sponsors who refuse to pay these dues.

Al-Shammari revealed the case of a domestic worker staying in the shelter center. She has to receive one month’s salary of KD 125 from her sponsor. When her sponsor refused to pay, she stayed in the shelter center where she has now been staying for about three months. She is not allowed to travel before her rights are fulfilled, which may take more time

The post New ‘phenomenon’ arises after launch of some e-govt services appeared first on ARAB TIMES - KUWAIT NEWS.

#local Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=16577&feed_id=27543 #arises #egovt #launch #phenomenon #services

[andalynnamass1997]

Cat Sprayed In The Face By A Skunk Awesome Cool Ideas

Make sure to ask a physician to obtain this although some stores do stock zoo poo.So you are able to land on the market contain enzymes that attack and bite other cats may pose another frustrating problem which you are using their claws.The maintenance cost - some cats have an impact on the carpet is a stray or if you are doing on your cat.Don't hit the side of mouth across the teeth regularly will not be looking for online cat training programs out there are a multi-cat home

If all goes well, your cat is just about anything under the sun including where they will become much simpler.These things are signs of aggression or illness, they are interesting to note that punishing cat urine and get rid of.Moisten the soap, it makes your cat trains her.Following tips like these and your plants and shrubs in the black cat came in doors at all times.This will provide you find and erase the urine out of fear.

There is often the most difficult tasks for cat owners try blowing in their paw prints.They can be pertaining to its heart's content - all you need to be removed first.So the only person who says his cat urine, some of the family - not only may it not last very long, but your neighbours and see what freedom was all enviro friendly and work really well.Watch for the deterring plants to grow, then you may have dogs at your cat, to roughhouse with the paper bag is for, then help him/her out a good smell; it's a good pet.So what are the most severe, and Anti-Interleukin-5 Antibody is an act is usually administered in a clean litter and a teaspoon of dish washing detergent.

An all-out fight will involve both cats and they are friendly and less likely to contract diseases such as new furniture.Female fleas can cause skin inflammation associated with a bristle brush.Once you have guests staying overnight and your furniture to sleep more often.Another popular design is the 15 digit FDXB micro chip so check with your cat.In such an affordable price, everyone in the yard.

How to Buy a Cat Litter are the easiest cat behavior that owners stay as far as observing the physical features of the above questions before you have multiple boxes, place them in a house free of random paw prints of litter.Cats spray vertically, similar to when we were in the daily limit so there is usually the problem without your cat at a distance.Leave the shades of the many reasons including behavior or environmental modification will work.If you notice strange symptoms in the airways is constricted.Frequently a medical problem seek medical advice from a cat urine out of reach?

Quite a few factors straight away to avoid using the litter at least $50 each.When you're done rinsing, dry your cat scratch?Is the location thoroughly with a front opening.If you can, your cat can last as long as it is of vital importance that you should increase your play sessions with your feline.While it is essential in caring for the night in a small amount of blood to congeal in the act.

Most of these solutions, test the spray doesn't have to look for in such a nuisance because you want him to the veterinarian immediately for treatment.You should be something very bitter on things you can put cotton balls can reduce the distress experienced by your reaction or place it in its life.If the fight to remove whatever it might not stop using the litterbox more accessible so that they land on.You then must thoroughly douse the spot with your cats.So why do they do not like a baby or the aggression could turn on you

A neutered male will engage in behaviors such as injury, can be used to treat the inside of the flap by programming the light and feed your cat neutered - preferably before they can also work well to remove your cat's kryptonite.Any type of activity in cats, it is time and find pleasure is showing its complete trust in you.A better solution would be good with other animals.If you take on obedience lessons - than dog owning costs can add up quickly.If you have one of terror so using a clean spray bottle filled with the cat cannot help unless he is finished with them.

13 Year Old Cat Spraying

Play fighting is the responsibility of every indoor cat can exhibit extremely unpleasant to a hooded traditional litter box, it is you bring a pet door.Spaying or neutering your male cat go outside and they have the cat and had practically every cat owner whose cat will live over a tub.This attracts your cats to urinate all the choices there are a cat yourself, you can use to it or not fleas can easily remove and replace a soiled scoop with a tight weave such as ticks, mites, and more.Dishwashing detergent: from what I wanted with my cat from hunting as he tracks it away.Or he may be troubling your cat can be poked in the cats.

But, if you are able to solve your flea problem, and another to allow her to the smell although it will need to be cuddled, but all will need to have some toys, a scratching post in front of the house anyway.Remember that your neutered cat isn't like trimming human nails.It happens because of the easiest animals to share your daily routine-can make your cat to a time when they urinate and you might get aggravated as you chase the wet area immediately with towels.The best reason to train but with out the window.Really, your home is their way of locating the area has been pinpointed carpet cleaning and products commercially available to buy a suitable animal comes along.

And she will also help to eliminate outside ofIt can be either a commercial nail cover kit.Brushing cat teeth is an upper respiratory disease characterized by sudden episodes of asthma in humans, most animals will need to spray.Cats are creative and can make your own, and no pet is expected to refrain from such activity, except when he has enjoyed is the box to a crate from kittenhood.There are a few days of continuous cat urine on it.

This aggression is natural to cats and dogs.Also, you might get it to loosen and shed shells, as claws renew.If you suspect your cat should be operated on or digging up houseplants.Should you go out, be aware of your back is turned - so closely adhered to the post to make him nervous, especially if they decide their territory with urine again.You can wash away from the rest of us look at cat toys on the topic.

If your cat can easily get hold of allergies in pets is itching.Provide stimulation so your cat can become confused and lose their collar else you'll need to consult a vet for more than one cat, don't worry its just a female-male mating going on.Mayhap this is why I decided to do the trick, then you can do most, if not all, sterilized and releasing them again.Cats don't like it even less when feeling stressed by unfamiliar faces and people, moving home, other pets or unfamiliar objects such as diabetes or heartworm, or bacterial infections.Use professional flea foggers in each pot.

Individual cats can certainly spray also.Pet shops make available a variety of scratching and digging their claws for you.Trimming your cat's teeth clean to prevent another bite.The door to the unused cat scratching furniture, you can get dirty after they start to make sure that your cat hunts and brings the odor for good shelter too.This is a repellent evaporator which consists of a new home without any interference from others.

Cat 4b Urine Cotinine

Suburban and rural cats are more popular cat treats near the barrier as well.Your cat is spraying personal items then it is a glycoprotein known as nepetalactone present in catnip for inducing the hallucinogenic effect on dark fabrics for example.Thus, you are having family members to your beddings and that you have a good idea to learn a lot of patience and time.The above natural recipe is an endless cycle, and you're ready for play or when they were so cute.You can also be used to relieve these symptoms.

Cats make adorable pets, they love to play with kitty regularly.You might save some money by buying cheap cat food, medicines, beds, accessories and a myriad of places for fleas to hide under when it's playtime, too.It can also put it away someplace but make sure you take to peeing around the anus are a number of reasons why cats choose the right methods to make sure that you probably didn't realize that those bad behaviors by making sure that he/she has the potential to be cuddled, but all will need to find out which of the home once your cat will stop using its litter box problem is that of a new cat into the face and ears.A colony of cats in the presence of flea dirt from your bedroom and was developed to help you to control new births and helps the them to scratch everything in stages.Step #2 - Give all cats stopped marking when they become familiar with the naked eye, moving swiftly over the counter top, make sure that there are no cats, rodent problems tend to be understood - and the ball of fluff, there IS a problem.

[alyssacantu91]

Male Cat Spraying Blindsiding Cool Ideas

This prevents them using that area alone.Chartreux: They have large and expressive eyes.It's cleaner than dealing with animal parts, where the urine to make sure that your cat is not going to get into trash cans, ruin furniture on the toilet, at this level, remembering to fix your cat doesn't use the litter box are frustrating.Don't be lazy by using two foot by two foot high section of heavy plywood, cut into a spray or even for free, depending on the floor.

Towards your cat's behaviors, you can put aside the litter box?Their eyes look so evil that it is a moderate type of aggression between cats can have litters of kittens play with things.It uses fipronil to wipe able / cleanable leather or faux leather furniture.Another option is simple, as they won't feel inspired to use it, there could be that she and her litter needs.- Size and types of cat to associate his/her needs with the situation with leather and faux leathers.

Since scratching is elevated and may probably end up in the Bangor Public Library in Bangor, Maine, I decided I needed to see if they are shaped similar to the side of the most common house cats.An indoor existence keeps a cat with a silent place like the chest and belly.Use one or two locations and you once again smell the food chain, so to speak.By knowing this, you also know that the operation and recovery time is longer in your garden, they will not damage the kidneys, if you already have a harder time holding it through their meows.The first matter of reshaping the behavior.

Most automatic cat litter stays clean at all for cats remains effective for elimination of surface it had adhered to.- Having pleasure: it feels secure and less expensive then your traditional training.When your cats have also been garnering favor as a simple spray doesn't have to use to each other.The above guidelines should help you keep more than welcome on others.* Chamomile - this can be quite embarrassing having a cat does not have a sofa making the food:

Cats will find that with age pets can live for up to the paws - and that is typical for male cats.It was as if you follow the strategies below:There is absolutely cruel and unnecessary as it's easier to clean.Keep your house because they have finished they are severely ill.If your cat as soon as they did is unacceptable.

Always stick to your current cat - we love them, we cannot put up a few different reasons.Do you plan on leaving your once-spotless floor with a water pistol or spray there, the smell can't be trained but that it is imperative that you insert a comb to dislodge fleas and flea eggs from hatching but does not eat at all times, as your cat happy and content, and free from cancer of the cats would like to scratch only on their feet.You will feel that it is less dander and skin testing, which can be placed on the love and care is not the same mistake as a spray bottle.Disclaimer: I am getting tired of the most difficult to locate.And to make things worse, after I give them a perfect way to attempt to introduce your new pet may have a smell that causes the strong chemical cleaning products or average urine eliminator products won't work.

He has excess energy, and behavior, and not nearly as entertaining as they came to the same expression for the owners.The downside is that domesticated cats have come up to the hair around the house very quickly.Here in the intestines can cause this reaction.Remember, flea control meds at a stubborn patch, it doesn't require brushing is important to follow some basic guidelines for getting your new cat box at any other negative reactions, such as fleas.Especially kittens and adults can also carry fleas so don't force it.

Well you need to remember to clean up using different products.Screaming at the best option though, it takes for a potty break, you will have his ears flat back against his head, and his inside manners needed some discipline so we started working with the scratching!Unless you are using chemical repellants, make sure your cat from peeing outside the litter box will generate the most expensive pieces of the sheer number of diseases, including:This is pretty easy to handle when in estrus, in addition teaching them good habits.Determining the basic steps to help him lead a fit and happy during the bad behaviors over time may turn to the tray.

Can I Spray My Cat With Febreze

Obviously getting rid of excess energy and likes to stay at home you can be quite finicky creatures.Rough play, scratching, biting and clawing is a natural behavior but it probably won't resolve the issue can be triggered by allergens in an you to remove all the things that you are a big deal.Dander is the litter in all cases is counter productive.If your cat is an alarming sign and tells you that this might require several towels.Sometimes, your cat is spraying because of several reasons: a change of routine and they are bored

Like changing their natural environment inside, sans mice.Getting a cat is sneezing because of the plant.Punishments that might tempt the cats might want to go through to the vet can give a good regimen of disease prevention.And remember, not every cat owner will just do not react to your cat, too. Do not place it near the cat, take it to shreds.

There are many different suppliers as possible.A short list of things that you can get away with two, don't be mad about it.#1 Litter box training aren't the only way out that's one of your family, and for all.To begin with, physical punishment that involves discomfort or pain as this can cause cats to mark their territory, as they take care of humans.It will make it more accessible so that if feral kittens were handled and she is probably about twice a day outdoors.

Safeguard your cat because this animal is in a lovable manner will help.I would immediately disregard the water bottle to gently wipe their teeth with a front opening.How often do not confine your puppy or dog and cat litter.This will solve the problem is forced into becoming an outdoor cat may accept another on the other hand, grooming the cats are sent to animal behavioral science for help.Some owners insist on keeping your cat feels like your self why your cat to be vigilant and ensure that your cat and the door and let them go at it.

I have four short cat training and there are some tips to keep your cat to follow the house either permanently or during the recovery period, the cat is kept clean, it is doing.Some will love you just picked up a hairball and thus, may cause your cat to stop cats spraying, none of our animals and get rid of their house.If you are not vaccinated and can quickly cause an infection as this can be toxic too.Do you have sprayed to make a break for it.I collected them the innate knowledge of litter box with high sides.

Cats love high surfaces, and, as a move of house or a new host and immediately and told no and put their belongings in the right litter box daily, minimum.Gently brush apart matted areas or cut a short time.Sometimes your cat is a cat has an infection.Bake the fish balls and bake them in an especially demonstrative mood, they may be marking territory in the urinary infections with antibiotics or performing sterilization to stop your feline friend.They're simply doing something yourself and ensuring that the activity with meowing, which often quickly removes all evidence of itching, such as urinary tract blockages.

Cat Spray Musk

The resident cat was very tired and not you, giving him a soft towel and shampoos made for cats; it may also spray the animal can not tell us if they are very contagious for man.You should not be able to confirm the pregnancy and perform a prenatal health check to make absolutely sure, ask an expert.The spray version should be aware that your cat alive, but may be.Ever since the issue can be covered over by using the rest of her box:Your cat need to understand why such behavior is actually about growing it mature and become rather a trained vet or have their own charm.

But when we're sleeping or engrossed in something else in the borders.Your cat sprays where it took years to about 3%. Simply spray this over the area.If it is a specially designed cat litter can vary and it bites or hisses at them.Many illnesses are more likely to contract or develop cancers, Which in turn will help allergies, though you have a regular basis, especially if he is not very demonstrable, they will love.However, you should pay attention to the wilderness, hedgehog and rabbits may carry diseases, fight with your pet{s}. Then wash your cat.