#a few too many obvious called have happened for me to ignore the emerging pattern

[avsmfs]

lowkey starting to buy into the conspiracy theory that the refs have told to ignore some calls that could put the avs on the pp......

[katcadecascade]

Road to Home (RWBY fic)

Summery: Rhodes reaches the Glass Unicorn at 11:40pm because someone asked him, “So who’s at home for you?”

Tags: AU - Canon Divergence, Volume 8 Chapter 6

aka my take on Cinder’s backstory AU

-

“So who’s back home for you?”

Rhodes kind of hates his name. It’s almost like cruel irony or a bland destiny to always be traveling, constantly on the move, and never staying too long in one place.

“No one. I don’t really have a place to return too.”

He believed that’s just how his life is as a hunter of Grimm. It feels like he’s always taking one mission after the next, a pattern that takes him across the kingdoms. All alone, it’s easier that way, efficient Rhodes believes.

It’s a cold truth he concluded on after his team parted. Talk about a crossroads.

“Hmm.”

Yet every once in a while there’s a hunt that demands many hunters. An abnormally large nest of Nevermores in Vale. If he had the option, Rhodes wouldn’t have joined. The path he wanted to take is the one that’ll take him back to Atlas, all the way back to Cinder.

She’s a tough kid in a not so good situation. That’s all Rhodes can really say on the matter, what with the loose child labor laws and the old reputation that keeps that hotel running. Look, Rhodes ain’t the man for critiquing ethics and socialism, especially Atlas and Mantle of all places.

Still though, he did what he thought was best for Cinder. Train her in secret, visit monthly if possible, and not take her with him. The life of an active huntsman who’s constantly traveling is not ideal for a kid to tag along. At least in the Glass Unicorn, Cinder is under a roof and away from the Grimm.

Or at least that’s what Rhodes keeps telling himself.

Each day he’s away from the girl, he tries to come up with another reason as to why he should not just up and take Cinder with him. For obvious reasons, it’s kidnapping. Then there’s the whole issue of his entire life is not child friendly.

No home for Cinder to be warm in. No extended family that can keep an eye on her when he’s away. No teammates…

And yet last month's visit, there was hesitation on his tongue, wanting to ask if she wanted to accompany him. It’s an outrageous idea, tactless and unreasonable. Training her for the academy entrance exams is the smarter play, a long one but way smarter than just thrusting Cinder onto the road with him of all people.

Rhodes is not the most upstanding role model to look up to, no less having to travel with. Imagine his surprise when a kid looks at him with starry, wide eyes. He doesn’t deserve any of that, not sure if he ever will, yet he kept training her. He kept returning to Atlas for Cinder.

“What’s that humming supposed to mean?”

There’s not many people for Rhodes to return to, even less if anyone ever wanted him in the first place. Cinder is the exception though, his mind excuses. She doesn’t know the mistakes he made, the suffering or aftermath.

In due time, the academy would give her a better life, not him. Just gotta stay in this waiting game, for Cinder’s sake.

“It means that I think you’re lying.”

That’s a long road he’s forcing Cinder to walk. For the longest time, Rhodes believed that was the only course of action for Cinder when really it’s just the path of least resistance. All because he is a coward stuck in the crossroads.

“...Fine. There’s this kid I look out for, that’s all.”

All the excuses he accumulated began the moment he saw Cinder in that dusty storage room. Of course she’s miserable and of course he pities her. Rhodes wasn’t the strategist of his former team, nor was he the heart. He was just the tank, master of waiting for the perfect moment, and the one who ends up walking a long road all alone.

It’s stupid of him to think Cinder should endure it all alone. It’s collassily ignorant of him to give her attention and leave the next day and think that’s proper teaching. It’s akin to constantly relighting a candle wit. One day there will be nothing left to spark.

“That so? It sounds like you must care a lot about her. She must miss you too.”

It took too long for Rhodes to think that maybe his interference has made Cinder’s life worse. He gave her a direction, a goal to reach the academy, a dream of freedom on the open road. Hope can be a powerful and dangerous thing.

Rhodes knows first hand how devastating it can be when hope ends out. He can outlast a storm, a horde of Grimm, nearly anything but that’s no guarantee for the people around him. This always lingers in his head when he’s out on bigger missions with a group of hunters.

“She’s not mine.”

This particular Nevermore hunt had a few familiar faces for Rhodes, all of whom he’d avoided. Then by luck he was caught by some of the newer graduated hunters, probably with only three or five years of experience. Not the ideal team up but the less he complains the quicker they complete the objective.

If only that white hooded huntress wasn’t so talkative and observant. If only she didn’t dig into his vague words and made him think. If only he had learned all of this months early for Cinder’s sake.

“My boyfriend has a baby girl at home. I might not be her birth mother but I will always see her as my daughter.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

There’s a knowing glint in those silver eyes. “You look like you’re eager to return home.”

Rhodes couldn’t get that line out of his head. Eagerness is a burden on long trips, it’s the annoying sibling to waiting, and it’s the very thing on Cinder’s face whenever Rhodes enters the Glass Unicorn.

Eagerness is in his heart that first night after meeting Cinder. He wanted to return. He wanted to take less missions away. He wanted Cinder to finally leave that place.

Why did he insist on making her wait?

Each and every excuse he came up with nipped and lashed at his ankles on every step he took closer to Atlas. The Grimm hunt was dealt with at a near blinding speed and that huntress said she’ll cover for him on the post-hunt reports that he always hated.

For transportation to Atlas, Rhodes had to suck up his pride and call the only other teammate who’s not dead.

“You wouldn’t ask unless it’s an emergency, Rhodes. An airship will be at the airport in an hour.”

“Thank you Willow, I mean it.”

True to his former teammate’s words, the huntsman was later in a private Schnee jet enroute to Atlas. If he was more reckless he would’ve hand it land right at the Glass Unicorn but attention was the last thing he wanted.

Once on the streets, he was practically retracing his steps all the way back to the hotel. Through the late night streets, up the steps and through the fancy lobby. At the reception desk, perfectly orderly is the woman of the establishment.

Her wrinkle lines move along with her cordially smile, prepared for greeting clients no matter the late hour.

Rhodes never thought of this madame in good graces. Rumor has it that the Glass Unicorn didn’t always have child servants back when the lady’s late husband was in charge. Under new management as the saying goes and the regular clients here didn’t bat an eye when the staff dwindled to one young employee.

It’s hypocrisy that he was a part of the silent crowd and only now does he actually react.

On previous visits, he’d always just booked a room and waited for the lobby to empty to get to Cinder. Right now though, Rhodes doesn’t have the patience to wait any longer.

Once upon a time, he had to brainstorm a myriad of lies to get Cinder out of the hotel. Excuses that range from she’s a missing link in a case or outright threatening to her to hand over Cinder. Well he’s not entirely sure how any of those scenarios would play out but it doesn’t matter in the end.

The mood in the air changes when two blonde girls come running out of the staff door. They’re both frightened out of their perfect composure.  

“Mom, come quick, we found something.”

“It’s Cinder, she has a weapon!”

Their mother glares at her daughters and clicks her tongue once the sisters notice the client present.

“Leave,” she demands lowly, “now.”

The girls scamper off in another direction while the lady smooths down her skirt. One hand lingers inside the pocket.

“Pardon me, Huntsman Rhodes, I have to attend to the matter.”

She takes one step, one loud clack of her heels away from the reception desk and Rhodes knew that this was it. It had to be now or never.

“Wait,” Rhodes didn’t waste his movement, striding past the lady and blocking her path to the door. “It’ll be best if I go.”

Scowling as politely as possible, she argues, “Sir, I assure you that girl is absolutely under my control.”

“You’re awfully confident,” Rhodes snaps. This is taking too much time, who knows what’s Cinder doing right now.

“I am,” she raises her voice, not appreciating his attitude.

It looks like she’s about to lecture him about respect so he cuts her off. “I’m going in there, not you. Got it?”

He’s not sure what kind of expression he’s making. Yes he’s angry and impatient and just wants this whole hotel gone. Something about him must have conveyed his true rage because the madame stands frozen, confusion and fear in her slacken jaw and how she took a step back.

Then he sees how her eyes flicker to something behind him.

On some sort of instinct, she took her hand out of her pocket. Clasped there is a remote with a yellow button, her thumb pressed down.

There’s a scream in his ears, a chilling shock down his spine as he turns around and sees Cinder at the doorway. She dropped the sword he gifted her and has one hand on the frame to support her shaking body as electricity rumbles and bites at her neck.

Rhodes never thought to ask why she had a fancy necklace. He wonder how stupid he is for failing to recognise lightning dust. He’s even more of a failure to be surprised that this is happening.

To add more evidence that Cinder has spent far too long in this hotel, Cinder grits her teeth and lets go of the doorframe. She starts limping over, the shockwaves going up and down her skin. Rhodes watches in horror and perverse awe before he hears a button getting mashed.

He grabs the madame’s wrist, snatching the remote out of her hand in seconds, and crushing it in a steel hand. It’s pathetically small help, clearly everything Rhodes has trained Cinder for was not the help she really needed.

There’s a momentarily delay in the remote’s signal as the shock collar continues. Cinder reaches a shaky hand up and rips the collar off, glaring at the source of all her pain.

“Cinder,” Rhodes interferes with her path but the girl is still glaring at the madame. “Let’s leave right now. You don’t have to stay here any longer.” He knees down to her, desperately wishing that the fire in her eyes won’t burn her up. “I’m sorry it took me this long to get you out.”

She still hasn’t looked at him. Yet at his apology tears start welling up. Cinder marches past him, stalking up to the madame who’s backed up against the frontdesk.

“Without you, I am nothing,” Cinder tells her and her tone sounds odd to the huntsman, like the words are warped around her tongue and teeth.

She thrusts her hand up, still holding the shock collar, and harshly presses it to the madame’s throat. In mere seconds, the metal is superheated in Cinder’s grip and the madame cries out, jerking away and falling sideways on the desk and then falling to the floor.

The madame clasps a hand around her neck but Rhodes saw the burnt skin there, diamond shaped like the collar’s centerpiece.

“But because of you,” Cinder hisses and throws the collar at the madame’s face, “I am everything.”

The girl is a heaving mess, her hands curling up and steaming.

“Cinder,” he calls and the girl’s whole body flinches.

Swirling around, Cinder angrily demands at him, “She deserves so much worse!”

“And you deserve better and you will get it all if we leave right now.” Rhodes begs her, “Please, will you come with me?”

Cinder quietly gasps at his question. Some combination of awe and surprise on her young face as she starts crying more.

He honestly doesn’t know if he can talk her out of murder, revenge realisticly. But if he can just take her away from this place then maybe she’ll choose otherwise. Maybe she’ll always want to kill these people but for right now, he needs to physically get away from these people.

The heat of her semblance dims from her hands as Cinder wipes the tears off her cheeks. She stumbles over to Rhodes and once close he hugs her tight. The girl bawls into his chest and Rhodes wastes no time to securely carry her in one arm.

He remembers to pick up Cinder’s fallen sword as he gets up. The madame on the other hand is still on the floor, trembling and confused but not making any motion to stop them. There’s a frantic wheezing coming from her too.

When she glares at them, Rhodes frowns back. “No one is going to ask about tonight, got it?”

The madame bitterly coughs and manages to croak out, “Leave.”

He lets her have the final word and marches out. Cinder got her breath back and has wide, teary eyes as they approach the doors. She squirms for a bit and he lets her down.

Standing on shaky legs, Cinder pushes open the doors with all her might. The wide swing of the doors shakes the frame but the girl doesn’t care. On her first step out of the hotel, the grandfather clock in the lobby rings twelve.

-

One step outside of the Glass Unicorn and Cinder felt like sobbing, running, and collapsing at the same time. Her hand squeezed tight onto Rhodes’ as she trembled against the midnight air. Its chill is heavenly on her overheated skin, an after effect from the electricity.

It’s all over now. She’s finally free from the madame and her hotel. Cinder just wants to run despite her straining muscles so she leans on Rhodes. He mumbles something about hurrying to the airport, hoping that a plane is still there but Cinder barely comprehends.

She’s actually free and Rhodes had wanted her to leave with him. Each visit, Cinder truly thought that he didn't want her around. The plan was for the academy, where he won’t have to deal with her but instead he actually asked.

Granted Cinder had wished he’d asked like the first night they met. Or maybe years earlier, that would’ve been good too. But here they are. It took her obnoxious step sisters to get too nosey and for Rhodes to finally be there at the right time.

Yet it still feels like Rhodes is late. The madame had one last play with the collar and Cinder wanted to finally end her. She can still feel the buzz in her neck.

Even though they’ve only walked down the street so far, Cinder feels too close and so far away from the Glass Unicorn. She feels like sobbing again.

“Hey, hey,” Rhodes moves his arm to comfortably enwrap her with warmth, “it’s okay now Cinder.”

A sob hitches in her throat and it’s like her semblance is burning her from the inside. Cinder doesn’t think she’s okay right now, she doesn’t believe she’ll ever be okay, but finally walking out of those pristine doors felt so good.

Somewhere in her thoughts, there’s the question on how it would feel like if she actually gave what the madame and her daughters deserved. At the same time, Cinder never wants to enter the Glass Unicorn even if her life depends on it. Which it does not though, she doesn’t ever have to be there again.

She’s finally freed.

That hopeful feeling gets lodged into her throat when suddenly a nice looking car pulls up in front of them. Rhodes holds her close as her heart hammers. Cinder can’t phantom what is going on as the well dressed driver exits and approaches them.

“Mr. Kolossos,” the man nods politely and when he looks at Cinder she flinches but he continues with another nod, “Miss.” He opens the backseat door and waves over, “This way please.”

“I didn’t call for a car,” Rhodes said and walked on, guiding Cinder away from the car.

As they’re passing the open car door, someone from inside scoffs, “Just get in here, Rhodes.”

In the nightlight, it’s hard for Cinder to see inside the car but she sees a feminine figure that matches the voice. Cinder can’t help but shake.

Rhodes on the other hand freezes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Picking you up unless you want to walk all the way to the airbay. The jet’s not there by the way.”

The huntsman huffs quietly but up close Cinder can see his lips barely form a smile. He catches her gaze and he winces. Rhodes pinches the bridge of his nose before whispering to her, “Cinder, I know you’ve been through a lot right now but do you still trust me?”

She doesn’t like the unsureness in his eyes, like she’s the one who will hurt him. Cinder knows there has been nights where she outright hates it when he leaves or his plan to wait seven years in that hotel. But every time he comes back, Cinder can’t help but want to hope that this time, she’ll join him.

And now it’s happening she knows that Rhodes is the only person she can rely on. If she’s on her own, well, she’ll have to be everything she needs. Cinder doesn’t know where that will take her but right now, she wants to stay with Rhodes.

“Yes,” Cinder tells him, squeezing his hand back.

“Thank you,” Rhodes smiles and she doesn’t know how to feel about that. Being thanked and stuff, especially over feelings. He looks back over to the car and huffs, “Fine, we’ll get in.”

Rhodes goes in first, still holding Cinder’s hand and worryingly looks between Cinder and the door closed behind her. Cinder kind of appreciates not being in the middle seat. Feeling trapped in a fancy enclosed position is too soon for her anxiety.

Still though, Cinder peeks behind Rhodes’ bulk to see the lady. The car starts up and when they’re passing under streetlights, Cinder sees white long hair of a woman only seen on TV.

“I never imagined this is what your emergency was about.”

“Well, I didn’t need to tell you Willow,” Rhodes said plainly.

Willow Schnee rolls her eyes and accidentally makes eye contact with Cinder. She presses her lips in a thin line, neither mean or annoyed, simply processing. Eventually she sighs and looks away, “You two need a place for the night. We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay Rhodes and…”

The empty silence has Willow awkwardly glance back to her. Cinder has never seen an elegant lady look awkward before, it’s kind of odd.

“Cinder,” she fills in.

“Cinder,” Willow repeats. “Alright, well,” she sighs again, faces the front, “we’ll be at home soon enough.”

At that word, home , Cinder tenses and relaxes. Any place is better than the hotel. She leans into Rhodes’ side and closes her eyes.

-

Thanks for reading!

[gaycrouton]

First: love your writing, Second: are you planning on writing more of the Newlywed Game? I was dying to read fluffy Mulder and Scully answer more questions. ❤

THANK YOU GUYS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! HERE IS THE FINAL INSTALLMENT (FINALLY) Thank you to @admiralty-xfd for the beta!

Part III

“When did you first know you were in love with your partner?”

Mulder felt his heart start beating rapidly in his chest. The other questions were answered honestly, but could be danced around. This was… telling, to say the least. He supposed it could just be a platonic, partnerly love. He loved her in many ways, after all. But he had a feeling they both knew they had been revealing too much in the undercurrent of truth in this game for a question like this to be dodged so easily.

Scully was sucking on her bottom lip as she stared at her board, clearly having the same struggle that he was. Subconsciously, Mulder already knew they were going to have to have an awkward conversation after this. A quick exchange where they dismissed everything with uncomfortable agreements that this had all been a game before continuing with their pattern of ignoring what was obvious between them.

Why not throw another log onto the fire and stamp it out later?

The night of our first case together.

He’d thought about this question before, laying on his couch at night and thinking of her. An occurrence that happened more than he was proud to admit. But that’s always the moment he was able to pin it down to. The moment she made it clear she trusted and, at least to some degree, believed him, and the moment he began really trusting her.

He fell and never came back.

“You both ready?” he heard the announcer call. He looked up and nodded while watching Scully quickly scribble down a few more words.

“Yep,” she called out.

“Three-two-one.”

When he first confided in me.

Regardless of the fact it was the same evening as what he himself had written down, he couldn’t believe it was that early in their partnership. He glanced up at her and caught her giving a shy smile in response to what he’d written. As happy as he was to see her answer, he felt the anxiety about their post-game conversation grew.

“How long ago was that for both of you?” the young man asked.

“A few years,” Scully answered softly.

“A few years,” he replied in kind.

“Well our next question is a bit in the same vein. What made you fall in love?” he asked.

This one was easy, as she reminded him why everyday she remained by his side. Erasing his last answer, he wrote in its place: She believes in me.

He thought he’d answered fast, but by the time he was done, Scully was already waiting for him expectantly. As soon as she saw he was ready, she flipped the board around.

His compassion

He flipped his and another smile broke out on her face her eyes slowly scanning the words he’d written. “Always,” she murmured.

He looked back down at her answer and felt a surge of pride. Scully’s opinion of him mattered greatly to him, and seeing her say something so complimentary boosted his confidence. “Are you sure it wasn’t when you saw my sexy forearms?” he teased, breaking the tension.

The crowd laughed as Scully threw her head back. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Nope,” he chuckled, enjoying watching her be so carefree and giggly, even if it was just for a night.

“Ooooh, we have another juicy one!” The boy proclaimed with annoying enthusiasm. “Where is a place you haven’t made whoopie that you would like to?”

Mulder had still been looking at Scully when the kid was talking and he watched as her face changed from amusement to chagrin - him being the only one to fully recognize the change. They both sat in silence for a moment as they mentally tried to navigate the question. Anywhere was his real answer, but he couldn’t write that. He didn’t know which type of answers backed them into corners more, the sexually charged questions or the romantically charged ones.

He wrote down his answer and felt his palms grow sweaty and his knees grow weak. There were plenty of places he’d imagined on those same lonely nights he spent on his couch thinking about her. What it would be like storming to her apartment, catching her in her pyjamas and a sleepy smile, and just ravishing her. Or maybe what it would be like to slam the emergency button in the elevator and throw her against the wall. Sometimes he even imagined running his hand far up her skirt during business meetings with Skinner and the rest of the team. One of his favorites was a night hanging out in one of their motel rooms going too far.

But one setting in particular got him hot and bothered more than any. One that he just had to write down without even indulging the thought too much lest he pop a boner in front of people just trying to eat.

He ran his hands along the sides of the whiteboard anxiously, swallowing his anxiety down as he wondered if free pie would be worth the possible awkward tension this answer might cause.

By the look of Scully’s flushed cheeks and averting eyes, he felt like she might be thinking the same thing. “You go first,” he called out, wanting to have her answer as a buffer to his.

He watched her open her mouth, most likely to refute him, but she just let out a sigh instead and ripped off the Band-Aid by flipping around her board.

In our office

Mulder felt his mouth go dry, his head go faint, and all the blood in his body rush south. Holy fucking shit. Without moving a muscle, barely acknowledging the audience’s hoots and hollers, he turned his around.

At work

He watched as one of her eyebrows quirked up as her mouth dropped open slightly, a perfect visage of pleasant surprise. “Well,” she whispered. He heard her perfectly despite the crowd growing even more raucous at the match.

“Wow, Scully. I’d never would have guessed all those expense reports you threw my way were actually come ons,” he joked, trying to ignore the strain he heard in his voice.

“You know what they say,” she shrugged. “Subtlety is an art form lost on man,” she joked back.

He erased his answer while staring at her with amused surprise. “I hope you know I’m never going to be getting any work done ever again.”

“Of course not, looks like there’s something else you guys need to check off your bucket list first,” the kid crassly teased.

Scully widened her eyes in mock disapproval of the kid as she shook her head playfully at Mulder. “Oh my god,” she mouthed, laughing lightly. He smiled back and felt a pleasant warmth radiate through his body.

“We only have a few questions left before we have to call an end, but can we have a quick round of applause for the Mulders for being such good sports!”

A smatter of applause erupted from the audience as Mulder and Scully goodnaturedly gestured to the other. The applause died down after a moment or two as the announcer cleared his throat. “Okay, okay. Here’s a juicy one. Does your partner get jealous easily?”

He tried to think back to a time in the past four years where Scully had been markedly possessive or jealous. He already knew the answer she’d be writing down without a second thought. She called him territorial in the first month of working together and he didn’t even have the energy to deny her claim. And that was just one of the times he was a little more blunt about it, he didn’t even want to know if she picked up on every time he got jealous of a man she was paying attention to.

But Scully? Was she really jealous when it came to him and oth-.

Then, like a bolt of lightning to his brain, he remembered one Disney-named entomologist that he knew for a fact made Scully’s blood boil.

Yes

When he made eye contact with Scully, her brows furrowed in what looked like unsure disbelief. He shrugged playfully at her, which prompted her to boldly turn her board around, revealing a highly emphasized:

ABSOLUTELY

The crowd laughed at her intense response and the moderator asked, “Is that so, Mr. Mulder?”

She raised a challenging eyebrow at him and he just shrugged in concession. “Absolutely.” The crowd laughed again, but he was busy focusing on the endeared smile Scully was trying to hide. For a moment he wondered if she liked the fact he was territorial. He’d always presumed it aggravated her, like he was overstepping a boundary by being overtly possessive. But that smile on her face indicated she didn’t seem to mind.

He realized attention was on him, so he reflexively turned his board around, causing Scully’s face to light up in shock. “I am not!” she exclaimed with a laugh.

“Are too,” he replied confidently.

“Name a time,” she challenged.

“Bambi,” he confidently lilted.

She looked like a deer caught in headlights, absolutely not expecting that to be said. “Oooooh, Bambi, sounds hot,” the kid boasted, causing Scully to roll her eyes. “Did Bambi make you jealous, Mrs. Mulder?”

Scully looked him straight in the eye, and with a smirk, boldly answered, “She did.”

He’d been taking a risk calling her out on it, but he was glad he did. If not just for the simple boost of pride he got in knowing that Scully was, at least in some regard, territorial of him.

“What is the most embarrassing thing you have done around your spouse?” the sound of the announcer’s voice rang out, making him jump in surprise - not quite yet done registering the notion of a jealous Scully.

He looked down at his board and began wiping away his prior answer idly. Maybe this was presumptuous of him, but he didn’t really think they had a relationship where they got embarrassed. He’d seen Scully drop yogurt down the front of her blouse, trip over her own feet more times than he could even count, she’d even walked in on him while he was changing, yet all moments were brushed off with laughter and jokes. He was pretty certain she would probably feel the same.

Except when he looked up to check on her, she already had an answer ready and was waiting patiently. “I always knew you have no shame,” she joked, smiling to let him know she was only teasing.

He chuckled in response and wrote the only thing that came to mind.

Fall on my ass (many times)

He turned his answer around to face her, and the smirk stayed on her face. “I find it endearing,” she replied with a shrug.

“What about you, Mrs. Mulder?”

The smile faltered on her face as she looked down to her board. “Wait, I want to change my answer.”

“No! That’s against the rules!” Mulder declared, pointing his board towards her.

“There are no rules to this game!” she laughed back, trying desperately to find where she’d put her marker, too frantic to realize it was in her hand.

“Let us see, Mrs. Mulder,” the announcer drew out jokingly.

Scully rolled her eyes and flipped her board around, lifting it high enough so that it covered her face.

Fart.

The crowd roared with laughter as Mulder tried to repress his beaming smile. “No you haven’t,” he refuted, genuinely not recalling a time she’d ever farted around him.

She let her board fall back down, revealing a pink blush had spread across her cheeks. “I always blame it on you. I say yours lingered,” she admitted with an embarrassed chuckle.

He put a hand on his chest and smiled at her. “Aww, Scully. I never knew you were comfortable enough to fart around me. I’m touched.”

“Shut up, Mulder,” she laughed, erasing the answer.

“Okay everyone. Time for the final question.” There was a boo-ing sound from the audience and they shot each other a look of surprise, confused that people were interested enough in their answers to want to hang around.

“I know, I know, but all good things must come to an end. Now, Mulders, your final question is: What is your spouse’s favorite, cute pet name for you?”

The obvious answer would be last names, but ‘cute’ made that a little tricky. He couldn’t really imagine calling Scully a nickname without some sort of repercussion, and he couldn’t imagine her using a pet name on him. What would Scully call him? ‘Sweetheart’ was too unlike her. He couldn’t imagine her seeing 'baby’ as fitting. 'Babe,’ maybe? This was hard, he looked up and noticed Scully was biting her lip and staring intently at her board. They didn’t do pet names.

Darling.

He didn’t really see Scully calling him that, but he knew she liked British period pieces and old novels. Plus, the thought of her saying it to him was pretty hot.

Scully seemed to notice he was finished and quickly scribbled something on her board, sending him a look that signified she also had to guess.

Baby.

Of all the names he could imagine calling Scully, he would have been sure 'baby’ would be the name that would cause him the most bodily harm for attempting. He’d chosen one he wanted to hear. Did she do the same?

“Good choice, baby,” he drew out.

A playful smirk tugged on her lips as she motioned for him to show his answer.

“Darling?” the announcer chuckled.

“You know my so well, darling,” she praised jokingly.

“Mr. and Mrs. Mulder, could you please come to the front of the stage so we can all give you a proper round of applause,” the kid asked before taking a few steps away as the lights above them came on.

He looked over and offered his hand out to Scully who surprisingly took it with nothing more than a gentle eye-roll. They walked up to the stage hand-in-hand and stood there awkwardly as the audience applauded them for embarrassing themselves in the name of free pie.

Speaking of which, the announcer held out a piece of paper to Scully who flipped it back over so they could both read it.

FREE PIE FOR ONE YEAR. ENDS APRIL 12TH.

His beaming smile faltered slightly when someone in the audience yelled “Kiss her!”

Mulder looked at Scully for permission, but was shocked to see she was already raising herself on her toes, her gaze focused solely on his lips while avoiding his eyes nervously. Ignoring the way his heart was beating out of his chest, he closed the gap, bringing one hand up to cup the side of her face.

The first thing he noticed was that he could still feel the remnants of her chapstick on her lips, the second was that he could feel the way she sucked in a quick breath through her nose as soon as his lips touched hers, and the third was how warm she felt against his lips. How many times had he imagined what it would feel like to kiss her? Somehow it was all he’d dreamed and more.

Scully, clearly not wanting to give this diner full of strangers any more of a show than they’d already had, lowered herself back down while biting back a grin. This time, however, her eyes flickered up to his and he could see the same sentiment he felt reflected in their depths. Wow.

He heard the announcer going into the technicalities about whatever the confusing score was as the entire diner bustled back to life. Everyone that had been playing now gathering their stuff to leave. Mulder guided her back to their table with a gentle hand on the small of her back. A few people congratulated them along the way and told them how cute they were, but aside from a few brief 'thank yous’, they still hadn’t spoken.

When they finally found their table, Scully turned around to say something to him, only to have her gaze wander beyond his shoulder as her eyes widened.

He heard the source of her expression before he had a chance to turn around. “So when were you going to tell your mother about your nuptials?” the voice of Margaret Scully rang out.

“Uh-Mom!” Scully exclaimed in shock.

“Hello, Mrs. Scully,” he beamed, turning around and accepting the woman’s hug.

“Hello, Fox. Or is son-in-law better?” she teased with a firm squeeze.

“Well, Mulder would be best, but we were just playing the game, Mom,” Scully began, playing with her fingernails like she did whenever she was nervous.

“Yeah, we were just pretending. Scully was helping me get the prize Free Pie coupon,” he explained, holding it up.

“Please don’t be offended by my relief,” Mrs. Scully said with a small huff of laughter as she clutched her chest in exaggeration. “I think you both would make a lovely couple. I would just hate to think you wouldn’t tell me. Especially about something so big.”

“Trust me, if I ever asked for Scully’s hand in marriage, I’d make sure to ask your permission,” he joked. It didn’t land like he’d hoped it would though. Scully shot him a look that, if vocalized, probably equated to 'I’m not property’. While on the other hand, Mrs. Scully looked like he’d just made a promise.

“H-How long have you been here, Mom?” Scully stammered nervously. Her question made his ears burn red as he realized the intimate, embarrassing questions she may have heard.

“Let’s just say I won’t be visiting your office anytime soon,” Mrs. Scully teased.

He heard Scully groan as he quickly squeaked, “We were just kidding!”

Mrs. Scully laughed at their mutual embarrassment and squeezed both their arms lovingly. “I’m joking,” she reassured them. She adjusted her purse and looked like she was about to go when she admitted one last thing. “I must say though, it was very convincing. You two seemed like a perfect couple up there. I mean, you even had me convinced.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Scully deadpanned, clearly wishing that comment had been saved for a different conversation. One that presumably didn’t involve him standing right there.

The both watched as Mrs. Scully left, a heavy tension taking her place. He turned to Scully and noticed her grabbing her coat and purse, avoiding eye contact. “You don’t want to redeem any pie tonight?” he asked, trying to let his disappointment come out too much.

“I’m beat, Mulder. Do you care if you take me back to my apartment?” she asked before awkwardly adding. “And drop me off there?”

Mulder could tell she was nervous. Probably thinking that he wouldn’t let her live this down, or that things would be awkward from here on out because of what they’d said. Despite every inch of him wanting to ask if she felt what he did back there. He wasn’t going to push her. “Of course. Yeah, and-um thank you for doing all that for me.”

“No problem,” she replied with a small smile, walking next to him as they left the diner. “But I hope you know that’s my coupon too. I helped earn that. You better be prepared to see a lot more of me,” she joked.

“Always.”

@peacenik0

[ryanccoleman]

“All goodness is in jeopardy”: Dead Girls at the End of the Decade

“As another year comes to pass, bringing another decade to pass, we find ourselves awash in the bodies of dead girls and women, fictional and very much real.”

This essay was originally set to be published in December 2019 on Much Ado About Cinema, to coincide with the premiere of Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin.

There is a film that premieres today, the last month of the decade, called Knives and Skin. Directed by Jennifer Reeder, the film depicts the surreal transformation a community undergoes when one of its own, a teenage girl named Carolyn Harper, goes missing and later shows up dead. Knives and Skin may in fact be this decade’s last work of art to employ a narrative device come lately to be known as the “dead girl trope.” This term refers to the use in story of this conceit—a beautiful, young, presumably innocent, usually white girl has gone missing or wound up dead (almost always murdered), plunging the incredulous family/community/town surrounding her into chaos and calling a charismatic detective to chase after answers.

Much lately has been made of the dead girl trope—researching its origins, examining its variations, interrogating its largely uncontested whiteness and cisness. Of course stories of dead and missing women have been around as long as women have died and gone missing, but since the early ‘90s the trope has clogged up the culture, and even moreso in the past decade. Every day we are inundated with stories of women battered, disappeared, manipulated, and killed. We cannot afford to be flip or numb, to treat these stories as just that—fiction, as anything separate from the culture they have a mutually parasitic relationship with. The most important question people have begun to ask of the dead girl trope is whether it has any capacity to attack the misogyny it depicts and uproot the racism and transphobia which support it. Or does recycling the trope again and again, even by creators with the most altruistic intentions, do anything other than entrench the idea that violence is the logical conclusion to the question of a woman?

As the final installment in a decade long saga of women on the verge, how does Knives and Skin measure up? To answer this question we have to do two things. We have to understand the real world stakes, and we have to go back to where this bad dream began.

“When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.” -Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

As another year comes to pass, bringing another decade to pass, we find ourselves awash in the bodies of dead girls and women, fictional and very much real.

In the world, women are abducted, disappeared, if returned at all returned in bruised condition, mass graves are discovered, long buried reports of abuse are painfully unearthed, and women are killed. In Nigeria, in 2014, 276 schoolgirls abducted from the town of Chibok by Boko Haram and driven hundreds of miles into ungoverned territory. Five years on, 112 are still missing. Bereft parents have died waiting for their daughters to be returned. “Even in a hundred years,” one mother told a reporter from Al Jazeera this year, “we will keep believing that our daughters will return home.”

In Canada, after years of fierce organizing from within indigenous communities, the government finally launched an inquiry into the murder and disappearance of thousands of indigenous women stretching back decades. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, as it’s called, attribute it to "state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.” Indigenous leaders name it: genocide.

In our own country, thousands of immigrant women are detained, many having fled their homes due to domestic violence, state-sponsored sexual violence and femicide only to wind up in dehumanizing internment, their children confiscated from them like personal effects. A rising number of mass shooters explicitly name the hatred of women as a call to action, their patterns of domestic abuse (86% of the 22 mass shooters analyzed in a recent Mother Jones report had demonstrable records) shored up too late. Trans women and gender non-conforming afab (assigned female at birth) people face an epidemic of transphobic, misogynistic, often racist violence from intimate partners and total strangers alike. Violence in the street is entrenched by the indifference of the state—of the 22 trans women murdered this year to date, 18 cases remain unsolved.

In the culture, the flood of women’s bodies rises from our ankles to our thighs. Scanning best of the decade lists—it’s easy to see if you’re looking, and even if you’re not, it’s hard to ignore—dead and missing girls are everywhere. Though the carnage is not distributed evenly across formats—there is for example a remarkable lack of dead girl stories in film when compared with the superabundance in television and podcasts—the sheer volume is staggering.

Podcasting emerged as the most exciting new storytelling medium this decade, transforming from local radio curio to culture-spanning phenomenon attracting big tech money and A-list celebrity buy-in. The medium, built on the backs of stories of dead and missing women, has proven unable to go on without them. The show that kickstarted the podcast revolution was Serial, a solemn journalistic inquiry into the unsolved murder of a teenage girl. Serial set off a true crime boom as much as it set a template for much of the medium. Though few shows have applied the same rigor to their dead, damaged, or missing subjects, none have needed to in order to become wildly popular. Simply put, there is no dead woman that eludes the reach of the podcaster, and without dead women, there would be no podcasts as we know them.

Finally, my god, television. It’s not that a number of the best shows of the decade centered on the story of a dead or missing girl; there were in fact so many they constituted a thematic center for the entire medium this decade—The Killing, The Fall, Broadchurch, Pretty Little Liars, How to Get Away With Murder, Making A Murderer, Top of the Lake, True Detective, The Night Of, and The Jinx, to name some of the heavy hitters.

One more show waded into the morass this decade, and most notably—it was the reason for all this mess in the first place.

David Lynch came back to television after 25 years with Twin Peaks: The Return, a third season to his legendary 1990 television series. By all accounts, those original eight episodes launched the beautiful dead girl craze we’re still in the vicious throes of. The entire Twin Peaks universe—Lynch and Mark Frost’s surprise smash first season, the meandering second season in which ABC rescinded creative control from Lynch because he refused to identify the dead girl in question’s killer, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lynch’s controversial 1992 feature prequel which features Laura Palmer, dead girl, as an alive protagonist rather than a silent mystery, the new season, and all the apocryphal literary spinoffs—centers on the beautiful, murdered, porcelain-white body of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, washed up on a riverbank in the pilot episode.

Every piece of writing on the dead girl trope addresses Lynch, if not exclusively, then in a fulsome manner. Alice Bolin, who published a comprehensive book of essays on the trope last year called Dead Girls: Surviving an American Obsession, first engaged with the subject in a 2014 essay on Twin Peaks for the Los Angeles Review of Books. And indeed, nearly every review of Knives and Skin I encountered while researching for this essay references Twin Peaks as an obvious ancestor to Reeder’s film.

Why? The aesthetic comparisons are evident—moody score, weird acting, woodsy small town setting, beautiful missing, and then dead, girl. But the comparison is broader than that. It’s almost compulsory, unavoidable. The impact Twin Peaks had on culture is impossible to understate. But the depth to which the twin images of Laura Palmer’s ghostly, smiling, peroxide and permed homecoming photo and her dead, drowned, blue-faced and plastic-wrapped crime scene photo, which the show flashes to in alternation, have seeped into our core imagining of what women fundamentally are in life and in death has absolutely not been reckoned with.

This Knives and Skin grasps. The film’s Laura Palmer, called Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley), behaves much in the same way. In her first and only alive scene, she and a boy drive up to the shore of a lake at night. Without knowing anything about the film the first time I watched it, I tensed, anticipating exactly what ended up happening. Carolyn and the boy, Andy (Ty Olwin), walk from the car to the lakeside, silhouetted in the glare of the headlights. Before kissing, the two bicker about Carolyn’s glasses, whether they should stay on or be taken off. Andy says “keep ‘em on, I don’t care.” Carolyn responds: “I do care. I actually don’t want to see what’s about to happen.” The next time anyone in the film sees Carolyn, she’s dead.

If Knives and Skin does anything perfectly it’s this. The Laura Palmers of fiction and the Laura Palmers in fact, all around the world, have fused, like the twin images in Twin Peaks—alive: radiant, dead: serene, and in both cases speechless, compliant. It recalls Maggie Nelson’s question after seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo: “whether women were somehow always already dead, or, conversely, had somehow not yet begun to exist.”

An avatar of young womanhood as always arcing toward extermination has emerged with a juggernaut’s relentlessness out of the scrum of the past three decades of dead girl TV. The characters in Knives and Skin live in this world. Carolyn Harper knows what happens to Carolyn Harpers. She doesn’t want to see “what’s about to happen” because she’s powerless to prevent it. The tagline of the film, “Have you seen Carolyn Harper?” lands as a joke by the end of the film. Carolyn Harpers are all we ever see.

Knives and Skin doesn’t so much rage with righteous injustice over the unfair and unthinkable death of one young girl as it does turn the palpable, ten-ton heavy despair of unfair and unthinkable death as the condition of young girls back on the viewer. “You guys doing okay,” Carolyn’s mother asks three of her daughters classmates who’ve brought her condolence casseroles. Carolyn’s body has just been discovered. An ice cream cake made for her birthday melts into a pale pool of sludge on the table before her. “Yes,” they say, emotionless. “You lying?” They nod again, “yes.”

Reeder has taken us back to the world of Twin Peaks in a time where dead girls are taken for granted, taken as givens. They still, however, even in this most melancholy meditation, destroy communities and upend lives. I’ve said that Knives and Skin doesn’t rage with injustice over the death of Carolyn Harper. But should it?

The reference point that floated into my head while watching Knives and Skin the first time, that I couldn’t shake the second time was not Twin Peaks, but its much maligned and misunderstood prequel, Fire Walk With Me. Lynch made Fire Walk With Me after Bob Iger and ABC tried to stage manage the surprise success of season 1 by forcing him to reveal Laura’s killer. “‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’ was a question that we did not ever really want to answer,” Lynch later told TV Guide. Season 2, largely without Lynch, was as a result baffling, anticlimactic and sensational in all the wrong places. The show was cancelled less than two years after debuting. Fire Walk With Me was a vengeance quest, Lynch’s intent to bring closure and justice to the story of a Pandora he had never intended to let out of the box.

Fire Walk With Me is brutal. Its examination of trauma is surgical, uncompromising, and to the bone. For the majority of the film the camera is glued to Laura, who walks, talks, dances, laughs, gobbles like a turkey, screams, cries, and eventually dies. As a spectator you are shoved in close proximity to Laura. Unlike the silent, pliant Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks, Sheryl Lee’s Laura in Fire Walk With Me is fully alive, every fantasy concocted about her by the characters in season 1 as well as the fans in the audience is in sharp, contested relief. She feels everything done to her immediately, unbearably, and so do you.

Many critics hated Fire Walk With Me, and it was a commercial flop. The film was booed at Cannes. In the New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote: “Everything about David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a deception. It’s not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be.” In a discussion on the dead girl trope for The New Republic, Sarah Marshall offered a remark that speaks directly to the film’s icy reception: “a dead woman is utterly incapable of offering up even the most cursory contradiction to the narratives that entomb her as readily as any casket.” Fire Walk With Me was one huge, bleeding contradiction.

The original bad dream, the dead girl’s nightmare we still haven’t woken up from was actually unpacked all those years ago, just months after it all began. Laura’s killer was her father, Leland. Her father had been sexually abusing her since she was a child, her mother knew, and within hours of Laura finally perceiving this fact in its full reality, he killed her. All of the weirdness, the quirkiness, and horror of Twin Peaks, along with the enduring, eroticized, and profitable trope it popularized emanates from this very personal, achingly common story of childhood sexual abuse. Is it any wonder people hated it? Or why the Laura Palmer of the original series is the figure we’ve chosen to preserve, pressed flat into the pages of culture forever?

“All goodness is in jeopardy,” the Log Lady warns Laura before entering the roadhouse where her life will begin to tailspin before its eventual crash. This is the essence and the power of the dead girl story. Though we have erected a world that is impossible for women to navigate unscathed, we continue to vest them with the symbolic responsibility of innocence. As if Laura’s singular life was the first domino in a chain that led to the unraveling of the entire world. But wasn’t it? 

Many have pointed out the racial and gender-specific freighting of the dead girl trope. Could Laura Palmer have been Latinx? How would the movie change if Carolyn Harper had been African-American, or trans? The answer on every level, symbolic and real, is drastically. What these depictions unconsciously reflect is the priceless value of white life. Imagine an entire town shutting down operations to mourn and search for a missing black trans woman? We can’t, because when trans women are murdered the only efforts to organize and demonstrations of rage come from within queer communities, often queer communities of color, who have historically adverse relationships with law enforcement. Black women face an escalated threat of violence due to the interlocking forces of white supremacy and misogyny. Yet the disappearance and death of black women and other women of color have historically never been met with the same uproar as with white women who meet the same ends.

It’s not that Knives and Skin is a failure because it seems more interested in the aesthetic allure of a dead girl than in drumming up indignation for the circumstances that configured her death. And it’s not that Twin Peaks was a failure because it prioritized white and cis tragedy over all others. Both Reeder and Lynch have done something profound when it comes to thinking and feeling through trauma, sexual violence, and grief. What remains important is to ask is whether each successive appearance of the dead girl trope is amounting to something, not on the individual but on the collective level. As Bolin has written, “It becomes harder and harder to subvert something that’s been used so many times.”

Have we seemed to make much progress from Fire Walk With Me to Knives and Skin? Honestly, no. But have the horrors real world misogynistic, racist, transphobic violence ceased? Even if rates of violent crime are in fact down in the United States, one disappearance or death like the kinds depicted in Lynch and Reeder’s work would be too many. The most successful iterations of the dead girl trope have grappled with these tough, interceding concerns, like race—consider Top of the Lake and The Night Of. The least successful amount merely to prodding a dead woman’s body with a stick just to see how it feels—consider every episode of My Favorite Murder. The most that I can hope is that future creators considering employing the dead girl trope take the long view of all that came before and ask, is it worth it? Does the dead girl in my story deserve this? What kind of justice, in fact, does she deserve?

copyright © 2019 Ryan Christopher Coleman

[sweetiepie08]

Rebel Z Chapter 3

Invader Zim fanfic

While analyzing Zim’s PAK for weaknesses, Tak discovers strange coding that sends her on a search for answers. The clues lead her to uncover a conspiracy that governs all of Irken society. When the truth sends her on the run, she has no choice but to return to the one place the Tallest would never willingly go: Urth.

Meanwhile, Dib has noticed odd changes in Zim’s behavior. Has the invader simply grown bored of his mission over the last few years, or is there something more interesting going on?

People who asked to be tagged: @incorrect-invader-zim , @messinwitheddie, @reblogstupids, @cate-r-gunn, @agentpinerulesall​

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list feel free to message me. Also, if you’re on the tag list and you changed your name, please just let me know. 

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5.  Chapter 6.  Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. 

[-]

Tak activated her Vortian disguise before she even entered the solar system. When dealing with the Meekrob, an Irken could never be too careful, especially after Tenn’s disappearance. Word around the stars was that her life signal suddenly went out one day. No one knew what happened. Apparently, the Tallest hadn’t received ant worrying reports. Her last transmission was a routine observation update. She wasn’t making any risky plans and she didn’t have a near-discovery. She was there one minute and gone the next. Soon afterward, the Meekrob put out a warning declaring that any Irken caught within their planet’s range would be killed on sight. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was responsible for her disappearance.

It was a shame, really. Tak was a few levels ahead of Tenn in training, but she heard good things. Any invader assigned to Meekrob must be talented. They were, after all, Irk’s most formidable enemies. Safe to assume they had done her in. It was a tragedy that someone so young and bright had been cut down in her prime, but life as an invader was fraught with peril, at least so long as the enemy was intelligent.

Finally, they approached the planet Refirencee and, after going through a check point, she docked her ship in a public hanger. Before exiting her ship, she looked at MiMi. An information retrieval unit would be especially advantageous on this mission, but the engineering was too obviously Irken. “MiMi, cat disguise.” MiMi saluted and her holo-cloaking devise activated. Tak looked her over an nodded her approval. They were lucky an Urth cat looked so similar to a Vortian jelicle.

Satisfied with their cover, they hopped out of their ship and headed for the transport bay. There, they found a digital sign displayed the departure times for bullet trains which took the planet’s patrons to different sections of the massive data base. The trains were broken down by planet and the one for the Irken information section left in only a few minutes.

As they waited for their train, Tak noticed a few patrons looking at her. She tried to keep her eyes on the track before her and ignored their stares as she felt a light pounding in her chest.

One of the patrons approached her. “Um, excuse me,” he said, eyes turning to MiMi.

Tak shot him a glare. “What?”

“I’m not sure they allow pets.”

“She’s an emotional support jelicle,” Tak said. A spark flashed across her eyes and the patron’s face went blank for a second.

“Right,” he answered, almost robotically. “Sorry I bothered you.”

The train arrived and Tak and MiMi boarded. They took a seat and the train took off at break-neck speed. They arrived at the Irken section in a matter of minutes. She stepped off the train to find her self in a large, domed building, surrounded by towers of data cartridges. Sorting droids buzzed about, arranging cartridges to their rightful places. In the center of it all, a librarian sat at a large, circular information desk.

“Excuse me,” Tak said, approaching the desk. “Where can I find information on the cyber age?” It would be a good start. The invention of the PAK kicked off the era.

“That will be section 8792,” the librarian answered. “I’ll call you a browsing cart.”

The librarian pushed a button and a cart zipped up to the desk. It was just a flat, hovering rectangle with a handrail and a control board at the front. Tak and MiMi hopped on and she entered the section number into the control panel.

“By the way,” Tak said, turning to the librarian, “forget I was here.” The spark flashed across her eyes again and the Librarian’s face went blank. Tak hit the start button and her cart zipped off. She arrived at her destination within seconds.

“MiMi, find a data console about PAK invention,” Tak ordered as they stepped off the cart. MiMi saluted and slinked through the aisles. While she waited, Tak sat down at a computer desk. In a few minutes, MiMi returned with a data console marked “Irken Cyber Age Vol. 1”. Tak took and plug it into the computer. She scrolled through the text, skimming over most of it. The information mainly consisted of things any smeet would know. After the control brains were built, they gave the scientists the idea to build the PAKs. These PAKs efficiently distributed Irken knowledge and ushered in a glorious new age of blah, blah, blah…

Yes, every Irken alive knew their basic history. But what about the PAKs themselves? How were they built? How did they work? Tak was beginning to wonder if this was a waste of time. After all, the key to PAK mechanics was Irk’s most guarded secret. She shouldn’t expect to find that information here. In fact, she should be glad that knowledge hadn’t fallen into enemy hands.

She continued to scroll and a picture caught her eye. It showed the five engineers in charge of the PAK project. The face of one particular engineer kept glitching in and out. He was decently tall. Not tall enough to be considered for the upper echelons of tallness, but a good height none the less. His round, purple eyes caught hers and she studied his uneasy grin. The names of each engineer were listed in the caption and one name, Krislotch, glitched in time with the face. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone wanted her to pay attention to this guy.

Was it even Krislotch himself? Very well, you have my attention. Now what do you want. She scrolled down a bit further and noticed individual letters glitching as well. A message perhaps? Hidden in the page? What are you trying to tell me, Krislotch?

“MiMi, my tablet.”

MiMi reached into her head and took out a small, metal canister. Tak unfolded it into tablet mode and took out a stylus. She wrote down each letter in order.

A COMPLETE HISTORY OF IRKEN INDUSTRY VOL 13. CHAP 78.

Now this was interesting. It seemed Krislotch left her a little crumb trail. Where it led, she could only guess, but she simply had to follow. She ordered MiMi to find the volume mentioned. When the SIR unit returned, she plugged it into the computer and jumped straight to the designated chapter. Reading through it, she found it was about a factory disaster which resulted in a great number of deaths. Apparently, some worker named Mia, somehow, caused a back up of materials at her station. The machine couldn’t put out new materials, overheated, and caught fire. For some reason, the sprinkler system was disabled, and the fire only spread. Fifty-seven workers, including Mia, died in the accident.

As Tak read the page, she spotted two full sentences glitching. The first gave the number of those dead and the other showed the date. She wasn’t sure why the number of dead was important, but even a smeet a few minutes old knew the significance of the date. This disaster took place exactly 0.1 cycles before Installation Day, the day all Irkens were given their PAKs.

More letters glitched. Put together, they led to a console called “The Irken Cyber Age: a Complete History vol. 1.” They also directed her to a page which, once she read it, confirmed her suspicions. Krislotch did, in fact, want her to know the disaster occurred 0.1 cycles before Installation day. But apart from that, what was the connection?

Yet again, more letter glitched. She’d picked up the trail. Glitching letters led her to a console of Irken History, itself with more glitching letters leading her to the next clue. As she read on, a clear pattern began to emerge. Since the introduction of the PAKs, every major historical event was preceded by a deadly disaster by exactly 0.1 cycles. The historical events mainly revolved around Irken galactic conquest: military campaigns, invasion launches, and the like. The disasters varied widely, but they all had a few things in common. They were all caused by an Irken who then died in the disaster, and they all left fifty-seven dead. Even the names of the Irkens who caused them were similar: Mia, Mib, Mic, Mid, Mie…

The trail stopped before reaching more recent events. The final set of glitching letters gave her the title “An Observatory Study of the Final Days of Ecore,” as well as the coordinates to the console’s location, which rested in a completely different part of Refirencee. She’d waste no time getting there, but something nagged at her.

There must be some current events which fell into the pattern, she thought. Things I would remember. Operation Impending Doom was the obvious answer. It was the most recent invasion launch, but she couldn’t think of any major disasters that preceded it. Then again, the launch date had to be delayed due to… Wait… Was that it? How many died that day? And how long after did Impending Doom II launch? She had to check to be sure.

“MiMi, find information on the original Operation Impending Doom.”

MiMi swept off and quickly returned with a new data console. A quick look confirmed her suspicions. Fifty-seven dead in a rampage caused by disgraced Invader Zim. Impending Doom II launched exactly 0.1 cycles later. It was a close fit, but it wasn’t’ perfect. Zim was alive, for one thing, while the other disaster causers died. Another was the name. It didn’t fit the pattern, unless…

Tak slapped her palm to her forehead. Was the idiot such a complete incompetent that he got his own assigned name wrong?

Surely more answers would be found in the next console.

She and MiMi rode the cart to the closest train station and took the next train to a section called Dead Planets. Once there, they took another cart to the location designated by the glitching letters. As they approached, they found they weren’t looking for a data console at all. The coordinates Tak punched into the cart took them to a section deep in the library. The shelves surrounding them held actual, physical books. Judging by the layers of dust, they were the first lifeforms to enter these aisles in a long time.

They made it to the correct shelf and Tak ordered MiMi to locate the book. The robot found it in matter of seconds and brought it to her. Tak brushed off the cover and opened the book. A small, plastic square fell out and landed on the floor with a clack. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was a data storage device not used in ages. This was old technology, ancient even, but whatever was on it must be important. She pocketed it and sat down on the floor to read. As the book wasn’t in Irken, she couldn’t read it without assistance. She tapped the implant on the side of her head and a universal translator monocle popped out, covering her eye. She began to read.

A Note to the Reader

When I began this journey, I had no intention of chronicling the final days of Ecore. It began as an anthropological study to discern what made this once-thriving civilization drop out of contact with the greater solar system. I set up a hidden shelter on the outskirts of Ecorien society and observed from the outside. My discoveries explain, not only the degradation of Ecorien culture, but the death of the planet itself.

Tak poured through the book, wondering what this weak, primitive culture possibly had to do with Irk. The anthropologist wrote about the Ecorien’s devotion to, what he called, “the Many-Eyed God.” Apparently, this new theology was a sharp deviation from known Ecorien culture. In the past, the Ecoriens revered their planet’s natural resources and energy. This new god was completely unheard of.

He also went on to describe the people’s changed appearance. They looked thin and sickly, and aged rapidly. They’d go to their god for supposed cures, but they didn’t seem to do any good. The people never got better from what plagued them, no matter how devotedly they followed their god.

The most fascinating part was a barbaric ritual referred to as a “blood toll.” When the Ecoriens asked their god for a large favor, such as a bountiful harvest or a cure for a plague, the god would order a blood toll. They brought fifty-seven young, healthy Ecoriens before their god and slaughtered them.

Fifty-seven… Fifty-seven Irkens… Fifty-seven Ecoriens… Was this what Krislotch wanted me to see? She read on.

Soon, she reached the final days of Ecore. An uprising broke out among the younger generations of Ecoriens. The blood toll sacrificed many of them and the elders asked the Many-Eyed God for more and more favors as the species grew weaker. The youths fought back against the elders, refusing to be sacrificed. However, the history of blood tolls had greatly reduced their numbers. Relatively few were young enough to be prime candidates for sacrifice, but old enough to fight. The elders overpowered them. The Many-Eyed God ordered the mass slaughter of the younger generations, promising to restore youth and health to the elders.

Youths died by the thousands, from young adults, to children, to infants. At the end of the bloodbath, the Many-Eyed God detached itself from the planet’s core. It drifted into space, leaving the Ecoriens with nothing but the blood on their hands. With the younger generations wiped out, they were doomed to extinction.

Tak turned the page in horrified awe. The last days of this planet were truly a massacre. The Ecoriens, tricked by this god, turned on their own. Their own god used them, sucked them dry, and abandoned them when they had nothing left to give. This wasn’t just the death of a planet. This was the murder of one.

What this massacre had to do with Irk and PAKs, she still couldn’t say, but the number fifty-seven stuck out in her mind. Fifty-seven died in the Irken disasters. Fifty-seven slaughtered in the Ecorien blood tolls. The connection was obvious, but what it meant escaped her. The Irkens had no gods, not for a few millennia at least. They thrived on science, technology, and conquest. It was said, even before the cyber age, that the Irkens bowed to no laws, but made their own. Nothing calling itself a god could gain this kind of influence on Irk.

But when she turned the page, her vail of denial evaporated. She dropped the book in shock. MiMi swept up to her and peered over Tak’s shoulder. The book lay open on the floor, displaying a two-page spread of images of the Many-Eyed God. Some were sketches. Some were photos taken at a distance. All displayed the same familiar entity. She’d looked into these eyes. This “god” encoded her as an elite trainee. She begged this “god” for the opportunity to prove her worth. This “god” denied her and banished her to Dirt, a husk of wasted potential.

The Control Brain and the Many-Eyed God were one and the same.

She stared down at the book as the truth stared back at her. This thing, whatever it was, had wormed its way into Irken society. It controlled them, fed off them. They even had their own blood toll of sorts. In the end, the Ecoriens withered away to nothing. They were sucked dry and left to rot. It was only a matter of time before the same happened to Irk. This thing, the Control Brain, has to be stopped.

The number 10:00 appeared in the corner of her vision and began ticking down. 9:59… 9:58… “My life clock!” How? Why? Her PAK was still attached. It shouldn’t… Wait, the Control Brain. Her PAK emitted a constant stream of information to the Control Brain and she just had a rebellious thought. There was no time to waste.

“MiMi,” she commanded. Almost as an afterthought, she realized her holo-disguise had gone out. “Take me to the ship. Top speed.”

MiMi stretched out her arms, wrapping them around Tak, and propulsion jets burst from her feet. She flew them out of the library, across the planet, and to the parking bay at such a speed, the world became a nauseating blur. By the time they arrived back at the ship, she had less than 8:00 minutes to save herself.

She plugged her PAK into the ship. “Computer, life-supports error check, immediately.”

After a few seconds of scanning, her computer answered. “Life support systems completely shut down.”

Her insides dropped. “Search for the cause.”

A few more seconds of scanning passed. “Systems shut down after a command initiated by the Control Brain remote feedback program.”

It was as she suspected. “Suggested solutions?”

“Remove feedback chip and manually restart system.”

She felt her guts twist and her body broke into a sweat. Remove feedback chip? Every Irken alive knew it was treason to disconnect from the Control Brain. She’d be an outlaw, a traitor. Returning to Irken-controlled space would be a death sentence for her. But I’m going to die right now if I don’t.

She had no choice. If even thinking about saving her planet from this… this… parasite made her a traitor, then traitor she was. She pulled the plug from her PAK and removed it from her back. She had only a few minutes before her organic brain turned to mush.

She opened a compartment of tools and then opened a panel on her PAK. With a set of tweezers, she located the feedback chip and, with a tug, marked herself traitor. Using a shocking fork, she restarted the life support systems. She turned around, the PAK reattached, and her life clock disappeared. Already, she could feel her body reinvigorating, but the weight of what she’d just done fell heavy on her.

Right now, the Armada was receiving an automated notification that Tak, the deserter janitor, had gone traitor. Orders would be issued for her capture or killing. Every Irken in the military would know her face. She could never go back.

And she couldn’t linger here. She and MiMi made quite the scene with their exit. People would come after them. Anyone who managed to get a look as they flew past could clearly see she was Irken. They had to get far, far away from Irk and far, far away from here.

She powered up the engines and flew the ship out of the parking bay, still unsure of where to go. Anywhere in Irken-controlled space was out and word that an Irken was spotted on a Meekrobian-protected planet would soon spread. She had to go somewhere remote, a planet uncharted and ignored by most of the known universe, a place the Tallest would never willingly go.

She let out a roaring, agonized groan as her mind landed on the perfect answer. It was both the safest place in the universe to hide and the last place she wanted to be, especially in this state. Still, she had no choice.

“Computer,” she growled, pinching the bridge between her eyes. “Set coordinates to Urth.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

If there’s one enduring theme about tyrants in myth, literature, and history it is that, for a long time, no one takes them seriously. And there are few better examples of this than Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. He’s a preposterous figure in many ways, an unsightly hunchback, far down the line of royal accession, socially outcast, riven with resentment, utterly dismissible — until he serially dismisses and/or murders everyone between him and the throne. What makes the play so riveting and often darkly funny is the sheer unlikelihood of the plot, the previously inconceivable ascent to the Crown of this indelibly absurd figure, as Stephen Greenblatt recently explored in his brilliant monograph, Tyrant.

I’ll never forget watching a performance by Antony Sher of Richard decades ago — playing him as a spider, instinctually scuttling on two legs and two black canes, to trap, murder, and ingest his foes. The role is, of course, a fictional portrait, designed to buttress the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty that followed Richard III and that Shakespeare lived under. But as an analysis of the psychology of tyranny, it’s genius. Like Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare saw this question not merely as political, but as wrapped up in the darker folds of the human soul, individual and collective.

The background of the drama is England’s “War of the Roses”, the civil war between two regional dynasties from which Richard emerged. And that’s often key in tyrant narratives: it’s when societies are already fractured into tribes, and divisions have become insurmountable, that tyrants tend to emerge, exploiting and fomenting chaos, to reign, however briefly, over the aftermath.

The war seems resolved when the victorious Edward, Richard’s older brother, succeeds to the throne: “For here I hope begins our lasting joy!” And no one thinks the deformed, bitter sibling, of all people, would be a threat. It seems preposterous. But it’s true. And at each unimaginable power grab by Richard — murdering one brother, killing the late king Edward’s young heirs, killing his own wife, and then trying to marry his niece to secure the dynasty — Richard’s peers keep telling themselves that it isn’t really happening. Greenblatt notes: “The principal weapon Richard has is the very absurdity of his ambition. No one in his right mind would suspect that he seriously aspires to the throne.”

But he has one key skill, Greenblatt notes, the ability to lie shamelessly: “‘Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile, And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions.’” It’s a skill that serves him well — and there seems no limit to the number of those eager to believe him. His older brother George, Duke of Clarence, told by thugs that Richard wants him dead, exclaims: “Oh no, he loves me, and he holds me dear. Go you to him from me.” At which point the hired goons reply — “Ay, so we will” — and merrily murder him, taking him to Richard as a corpse. (In a good production, that can get a laugh.) One of Clarence’s young sons, told that his own uncle hates him, declares, “I cannot think it.” Others witness obvious depravity but can’t quite call it out. One official receives clearly illegal orders from Richard, and follows them, asking no questions: “I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.”

Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise. And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises — not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things — but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE … WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

If you haven’t, read Gellman’s piece closely. It seems inevitable to me that, unless it’s a Biden landslide, Trump will declare himself the winner on election night, regardless of the actual results. Because most mail-in ballots will take more time to count, and several swing states have not changed their laws to allow for counting before election day, and mail-ins are easily challenged, it is quite likely that much of Biden’s vote will remain uncounted or contested — and could remain so for a long time. And after declaring victory within hours of polls closing, Trump will follow the script he used for Florida in 2018: “The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted, making shit up as usual. “An honest vote count is no longer possible — ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

I’ve no doubt this bullshit will be challenged by the networks, the press, and many of the states, and other sane people, who will urge patience. I’ve also no doubt that many states will do their best not to pervert the process. But I fear the result will be close (I’m underwhelmed by Biden’s near-invisible campaign), which will give Trump a chance. The fanaticism and alternate reality of a base already addicted to conspiracy theories means a hefty chunk of the country will back him. And it’s perfectly possible that Trump’s pre-emptive strike on the election result could prompt a massive revolt across the country from those who want to defend our democracy. (I will be marching in such a scenario myself). Most presidents would balk at anything close to this kind of scenario. Trump can’t wait. Violence? You can almost feel Trump’s hankering for it.

All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

In every Shakespeare play about tyranny — from Richard III to Coriolanus to Macbeth — the tyrant loses in the end, and often quite quickly. They’re not that competent at governing, or even interested in it. The forces they unleash come back to wipe them from the stage, sooner or later. They flame out. Richard III lasted a mere couple of years on the throne.

But in every case, they leave a wrecked and reeling society in their wake. Look around you now and see the damage already done. Now imagine what we face in the next few months. We are tethered to Trump at this point because he is the legitimate president: the man who cannot control himself is in control of all the rest of us. And that’s why I desperately want to appeal to right-of-center readers at this point in the campaign to do everything they can to vote and to vote for Biden. This is not about left or right. This is about the integrity of a system that can give us such a choice. It really is an existential moment for liberal democracy, and its future, not just here but across the world. The next few months are critical.

It fills me with inexpressible rage that we have been brought to this. But there is no way out now other than through. This was always going to be the moment of maximal danger. And we cannot lose our focus now.

[samwrights]

Plastic Flowers [ 2 ]

Chapter 2: Never Underestimate the Poor, Hungry, and Desperate.

Warnings: Language.

A few days had passed since Hitoko and Katsuki met for the first time. Good on her word, Hitoko Ohta’s bar, The Upside Down, had remained closed since that day. And though he would vehemently deny it all if ever asked, Bakugo had casually sauntered by several times a day just to see if the place was open. More often than not, he created excuses for nobody but himself to justify his desire to speak with his soulmate again. A deep rooted part of him wanted to just knock on the door and speak to her in private while she repaired the damages and every time Bakugo had finally gathered the courage to do so, he got a notification from his agency about a crime that he needed to attend to. Maybe it was for the better, he figured, since every time he walked by, Hitoko was drenched with sweat as she did all the heavy lifting by herself. By herself.

Bakugo never had time to dwell on why the mere thought of her being alone in that place made him uncomfortable. As of late, he had been caught up with some strange string of crap bank robberies. It seemed every time Katsuki arrived on the scene, the perpetrator escapes with the money despite multiple eye witness accounts from victims, bystanders, and even police. The criminal always just disappears with spoils in hand. What interested the blonde bomber the most was that, according to eyewitness accounts, each robber was different every time. It wasn’t a simple matter of a wig or a mask; the perpetrator was always female but varied in height, weight, eye color, even facial structure. The only common denominator was gender and, quite frankly, the case was beginning to get on Bakugo’s nerves.

Meanwhile, Hitoko has been working tirelessly for the last few days. The first thing that had to be done was to get the pipe that burst fixed and, with it being a rush order and same day service, it ended up costing a pretty penny to phone a plumber. Without any other assistance, Hitoko was rebuilding the wall that separated her bar from the customer space while she waited for her new espresso machine to be delivered. Initially, she hadn’t included the wall in her cost of damages, but even with the water running for just a few hours before she did an emergency shut off, the water ended up eroding the cheap, weak structure of the half walls that surrounded the espresso bar and mini fridge. Being closed for the last few days and having to order maintenance and replacement equipment, Hitoko was already out nearly twenty grand. Even thinking of her current financial situation grated at her nerves as she stood outside of the Upside Down on a break with a lit cigarette between her fingers.

“Little Kohta Ohta,” A deep voice rumbled nearby, making the woman in question look up towards approaching footsteps. “Heard what happened to your little shop. Fuckin’ heroes, am I right?” Hitoko turned to look to the familiar voice, an easily recognizable hooded figure coming towards her.

“Dabi.” Hitoko greeted quietly with a drawl as she exhaled a thin stream of smoke between her lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m here too!” A shrill voice called out from behind the man, causing Kohta to smile in the slightest. Before even saying her name, the brunette was enveloped in a hug from Toga Himiko, the closest she had to a best friend. Dabi made the cut as well, though the two of them weren’t nearly as affectionate, which was to be expected from the cold man. “We heard what happened to the Upside Down and we wanted to make sure you were okay!”

“Wow that sure is nice of you guys.” Hitoko said suspiciously before flicking her cigarette out into the street and leading the other two back inside, locking the door behind her. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but I have a sneaking suspicion there’s more to your visit than just to keep me company.” A throaty chuckle left Dabi’s lips as he nudged the hood off of his sweatshirt away, bringing his scarred face to the light.

“Exactly as Toga said. Rumor on the block is that Ground Zero destroyed half the place.” The two League villains took a look at the construction zone, a small grimace touching their lips as they noted how much work their dear friend was putting in, knowing she was doing it alone. Hitoko twitched at the name of the hero, piecing together that whomever Ground Zero was, must have been her soulmate. “Wanted to know if you wanted us to dispose of him for you, or if you finally decided to join the big leagues with us and do it yourself.” Dabi coaxed, dragging a long finger under the brunette woman's chin. Hitoko let out a sigh, pulling herself away from his touch and retreating behind the counter to pour each of them a glass as she wordlessly offered her friends a couple of beers. It was obvious to her they would be staying at least long enough for a drink.

“Dabi, you know I’m not into that shit.” Hitoko said when she returned to the other side of the counter, taking a sip of her own beer in her right hand while carrying the other two in her left. A thick lipped pout rested on Toga’s face as her best friend denied their off-handed proposal. The two of them came to visit a minimum of once a month to attempt to get the mannequin master to join the League of Villains. Every single time they offered the idea to her, she always responded with a firm shake of her head. While Hitoko had become friends with them on the account of them being regulars to the bar, they also seemed to have taken a genuine interest in her life; and her with theirs despite her constant rejection to the League. The two had come repeatedly to the Upside Down on account of their unknown mission, their friendship just a bonus, as Dabi would put it. Who knew villains actually formed friendships rather than simple alliances?

“Aw, but Kohta, you’d be such a good villain!” The blonde female whined. Hitoko only gave a shrug before knocking back the rest of her pilsner.

“I know, Toga. You tell me this every time you visit me but honestly I’m fine with what I’m doing.”

“Really? So you’re okay just being a petty criminal that controls fuckin’ dolls for your silly bank robberies?” Dabi asks with rich timbre, his turquoise eyes icy and thick with an idle threat as he held Hitoko’s gaze. Despite his intimidation tactic, the brunette just gave a wry smile that spoke volumes of her confidence.

“Of course I am, Dabi. I gotta pay for all my shit somehow, right?”

Another fucking bank robbery. That had to be at least four in the last two weeks, and Katsuki was slowly going mad. It just didn’t make any sense! And as much as he wanted to dedicate all of his time to his case, it wasn’t that simple for him. His left arm had been throbbing excruciatingly for the last two days, the white raised lettering slowly turning a deep crimson stroke by stroke, down to the last two letters as the bond remained unsettled. Throwing himself into work didn’t serve as a distraction anymore—if anything it was hindering him.

Once again, Bakugo reviewed tapes of the bank robberies in his agency office while he had a map laid out on his desk of all the banks and trusts that had been hit. All of them were in the downtown area, though there was no immediate pattern nor did their locations reveal a central operating point. The security footage only showed him the physical differences between the robbers which reiterated the only conclusion he had come to—these women were working for somebody. Whom though, Katsuki had no clue. But with one major bank left in the downtown area, he hoped his stakeout would crack the case and solve it shut so he could go back to dealing with his own personal issues.

It was broad daylight when Katsuki “Ground Zero” Bakugo once again stood outside the bank as additional security to four other police officers. For days on end, he had waited diligently for the day the serial robber would strike again. Every person that came in and out, he took a mental picture of their face and added them to an imaginary registry. He’d been outside for hours now, but he knew he would be here until the perpetrator revealed themselves. Justice would prevail, Katsuki firmly believed. Or at least, he was going to make damn sure it did.

A block over, Hitoko watched the security guards move about in an attempt to tighten any weak spots. They had been anticipating her arrival. Beneath her hood and glasses, she scanned how many police officers—four and one pro hero it seemed to be. This time around, Hitoko had to play her game very smart. She knew what the public knew; all females were considered suspects until further notice. It was the very reason she saved this bank for last; a bank just outside of a men’s suit shop. While Hitoko didn’t have as much practice controlling male mannequins, she certainly knew it wasn’t radically different; she just needed to nail the mannerisms.

Hitoko brought herself just a bit closer so that she was only half a block away to have better control over the six male mannequins under her quirk. As she felt her marionettes enter, she kept five near the door to occupy security while the last did the dirty work. Once her main man was at the counter, she felt the adrenaline pump in her veins and ignored the burning in her arms. Guns were pulled, orders were given, and screams filled the air—It was go time. The dummy was demanding every amount of accessible cash to stuff the leather suitcase.

The whole thing was a set up, Bakugo learned, as he went head to head with one of the robbers. It caught everyone, meaning the police officers and the pro himself, by surprise that it was not one or even two people, but six well dressed men—not women—this time around. It was drastically different than the last string of attacks, as they seemed to consist of one or potentially two women. Each member of the security team was occupied with an accomplice, while the one with the suitcase made his attempted escape. More shouting could be heard, this time from the commanding officer, to apprehend the one on the run. It was as if someone knew how many officers were there, as well as a pro hero. As if somebody knew they were anticipating female bank robbers. Somebody knew.

One police officer was gunned down from one of the assailants and honed in the the blonde Hero, making it two against Bakugo. They never seemed to be hurt, and it was pissing him off. No matter how many explosions he set off, where he sent a blast to their faces or punched them, there was never any sign of injury—no bleeding, no burning skin, nothing—on any of the criminals; they just kept getting back up and piled on top of him once again. “What the fuck?!” The hero Ground Zero snarled. Out of his peripherals, he noticed the primary criminal nearly through the threshold of the bank. “Shit!” He had to stop them, and fast, before they got away. He managed to knock the two mannequins off of him, but the one on the run was nowhere in sight. “God fucking dammit!” They had gotten away once again and, while his anger pulsed within him, Bakugo felt his arms burn with an incomparable fire. ‘Why now?!’ He griped internally, entirely unaware of their close proximity. Pissed was putting it mildly—Bakugo was livid, and he needed a fucking drink.

Meanwhile, the minute the mannequin on the run made his successful escape, Hitoko sauntered casually outside a nearby mom and pop flower shop as she awaited for her marionette to return to her. By now, it should have already followed the instructions to ditch the suitcase it had on hand. Her puppet was instructed to transfer the spoils into a backpack where she had kept post during the robbery, only just a block down from the bank, and deliver her the backpack. With the other five dolls from her quirk deactivated, Hitoko was able to create more distance between her and the bank as she only needed to focus on the one with her treasure. As she pretended to siphon through the various bouquets of flowers, the well-dressed faux man entered the flower shop with a fashionable black leather backpack with gold accents.

“Honey, you forgot your bag in the car again.” The dummy spoke to her, pretending to be a doting husband, making Hitoko grin. So far, so good—all was going according to plan. She feigned a laugh and went to peck the doll on the cheek.

“Oh, silly me. Thanks so much darling. I’ll see you after your meeting!” The brunette responded, pushing up her glasses that had fallen slightly astray on her nose. Her fake husband exited the flower shop before turning to the nearest alley, and once again became an inanimate object as Kohta deactivated her quirk. A simple department store mannequin for a men’s suit shop abandoned in a downtown alleyway. Hitoko pretended to look around the shop once again before grimacing and turning to leave.

“Oh, couldn’t find anything you like?” The elderly woman behind the counter asked, small wrinkly frown on her lips. Hitoko shook her head, returning the look with a more youthful pout of her lips.

“No, thank you, though. I was actually hoping to find some plastic flowers for my cafe.”

“Plastic? You mean fake flowers?” It was an odd request. What kind of person came into a flower shop just to find fake flowers? Such a strange woman, the elderly owner thought.

“Yeah. You can spray plastic flowers with any type of perfume and they don’t die. Much better for décor, especially for a coffee shop.” Was all Hitoko responded with before making her exit.

Such a strange woman indeed.

It was nice to finally have things go back to normal, Hitoko thought on a Tuesday night. The Upside Down was finally up and running again, and she was able to welcome back her awaiting regulars with hypothetical open arms. “Took ya a couple weeks to get back up! We missed ya, Kohta.” One of her typical Tuesday customers had said to her. With genuine warmth, Hitoko gave him a smile. This unnamed man was one of many that was happy to see the Upside Down up and running once again.

At a table in the far back corner sat Hitoko’s two best friends, Dabi and Toga, with hoods up and the bottom halves of their faces covered by black masks. If it wasn’t a normal thing to see the two of them dressed this way, looming in the corner and not speaking to anyone other than each other, the bar guests might have been alerted. But any time someone inquired about them or told Hitoko they had felt uncomfortable with their presence, she would simply laugh and tell them her friends were harmless. Harmless in the sense that Dabi and Toga would never to attempt to hurt her clientele, but her guests didn’t need to know that once they were out of the Upside Down, the customer was fair game. The Upside Down was a "safe house" in a brutal game of tag—a running inside joke between the three villains.

Well, pseudo-villain in Hitoko’s case.

Another week had passed, and the case of bank robberies had been left open, as Hitoko or any her mannequins had never been caught. Bakugo swore that this was the most frustrated he had ever been, as he usually did when he was angry or upset. What pissed him off even more that day was that when he finally apprehended two of the criminals, they just stopped moving. It would have been alright if it wasn’t literal—if the robbers hadn’t turned into department store mannequins almost instantaneously. It was unlike anything the agency or even the police had seen; there was no government quirk registered that did anything of the sort. What kind of fucking quirk does that?!

Even with time passing since that incident and discovery, Bakugo was still getting chewed out from his agency for not being able to catch the thugs. His stress was what prompted him to reach out to Eijiro, hoping his friend could distract him from the case. “I’ll meet you at the Upside Down then.” Red Riot’s choice in venue had proved to only strain Bakugo even further.

“Didn’t that chick say she never wanted to see us ever again?” The blonde bomber texted back, anxiously awaiting a reply as he drummed his fingers on the wooden desk in his office. That was another more recent development for Katsuki; his adrenaline and his anxiety levels had gone through the roof. And, while he was no stranger to lashing out at people, many of his close friends knew that he had grown from that behavior in the last ten years. To see it return, to see him screech and howl at nearly anything that moved, they all knew something was disturbing him.

“Dude, you’re soulmates. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that.” Katsuki’s crimson eyes rolled even if Kirishima couldn’t see. Of course he fucking hadn’t—the fire in his arm wouldn’t let him forget his nameless soulmate. The fact that the two of them had met also wasn’t helping at all. If anything, it had only made matters worse considering Bakugo wanted to blame his lack of success in the bank robbery case on her. Realistically, he knew it wasn’t but, but in his own narcissistic mind, there was no logical reason he could have been bested by a faceless criminal. It was her fault, Katsuki rationalized, because she didn’t want to establish their soulmate bond. She had nothing to lose from being left unbonded, and she was only doing this to him because she knew Katsuki could lose everything. Of course it was this stupid woman's fault because, for whatever reason, she wanted to see him fail like she was. But even in his own head, it sounded stupid to blame her—he didn’t even know her name.

Despite his stubbornness, Bakugo found himself sitting at a high top table at the Upside Down in dark wash jeans and a white button up while waiting for Kirishima. The table was a recent addition, he noticed, realizing the table was where the massive mahogany pool table once stood. The small counter top space only held his arms and his phone face up. Even though Katsuki desperately needed a drink, he couldn’t bring himself to face the owner who stood behind the bar. He just didn’t want to get kicked out before Kirishima even got there, he thought to himself, attempting to rationalize and reason with himself once again. He sure as hell was never going to admit, even to himself, that he was afraid to just stand in front of his soulmate, let alone speak to her. What if his assumptions were right and she just wanted to see his Pro-Hero status get stripped? Or even worse, what if his assumptions were wrong, and she did want to bond? Either way, Katsuki's thoughts petrified him, though he would never say it out loud. The few that were close to Ground Zero knew he was the king of denial.

From behind the bar top, Hitoko continued talking to her regulars as she ignored the throbbing in her arm that started the moment the blonde bomber walked in. While holding her conversations with her bar top regulars, she noticed he refused to make eye contact with her and immediately bee-lined for a table out of her direct field of vision. The two bodies hidden in the corner that Hitoko had grown very accustomed to over the years made their way closer to the counter. Even with the masks covering the lower halves of their faces, she could easily see the dancing amusement in the eyes of Dabi and Toga. “Remember, Kohta, if you need a hand you let us know.” Dabi chimed with drips of sarcasm, recounting their previous conversation about Ground Zero. With carefully selected words, as he often did, Dabi masked his words with innocence as he tossed a blanket over his underlying threat. Toga let out her whimsical laughter.

“We’re gonna get going Kohta!” The blonde woman sang quite loudly. “Remember to give us a call! Love you!” In response, “Kohta” gave a shake of her head as she bid them farewell. Was that what her name was, Bakugo wondered. It didn’t...seem to fit her, was all he could think of. Kohta sounded strong and almost authoritative, but this woman before him seemed so dainty. Like she could break just from a fierce glare, but he recounted the night they had met. Kohta herself was full of fire and liquid steel when her anger had flared up. Everything about her didn't seem to add up, Katsuki observed as the brunette waved to her friends, maneuvering her way out from behind the bar and calling out towards the door to the back room.

“Jiroda, I’m gonna take a smoke break!” The brunette gave a quick shout before grabbing a crushed pack of cigarettes from beside her tip jar next to the beer taps and walking out with her friends. From the swinging door emerged a tall blonde woman, whom Katsuki presumed was ‘Jiroda’, another employee of the bar. And while his assumption was technically correct, he would never know that Jiroda, or any of the Upside Down’s employees, were simple manipulations of Hitoko’s quirk. Well, at least now he knew her name. Kohta, as the strange masked couple that had just left had called her. A name that he refused to believe held so much significance in his life. A name that had yet to physically leave his lips. A name he wanted to call out. He couldn’t help but wonder if she knew his name.

Outside of the Upside Down, Kohta lit her long menthol cigarette while standing in the alleyway between buildings with Toga and Dabi. The two villains finally pulled down their masks, revealing the smirks and wicked grins on their faces. “So what’s Ground Zero doing here again?” Toga asked with a hidden implication toning her question. Toga, ever the warrior of love and romanticism, wondered if her best friend had finally taken interest in a man, even if said man was a Pro-Hero. Maybe he was trying to court her, she hoped. Kohta’s happiness came second to only her own when it came to relationships. Especially knowing the amount of time the marionette mistress had spent in loneliness and solitude, some dedicated companionship for Kohta would make Toga feel much more at ease. In response, the owner of the bar just raised her eyebrow, exhaling smoke with an unamused look on her face.

“Who?”

“You know, the guy who smashed your pool table? The reason you had to go and rob all the banks downtown?” Dabi sneered lowly, though there was no actual malicious intent. The scarred, two-toned man, despite actually holding a form of endearment for the brunette female, constantly loved to goad her towards the lane of villainy. His main tactic was to remind her of her recurring crimes as well as previous ones, hoping to one day manipulate her into finally joining the League of Villains. Dabi loves Kohta—truly he does. It is the very reason he will not stop trying to shackle the woman into the League with him, so that he knows she will no longer suffer a path of solidarity. He doesn't want Hitoko Ohta, a runaway orphan, to continue her life without back up, to get tossed away into a different type of system when she was so much more than that. Dabi would not stop until she was completely under his protection.

“Dude, don’t just go around blurting that into the air.” Hitoko grit out as she smacked the male villain on the back. The man just laughed, rubbing at the brunette’s head, messing up her hair out of affection. Another roll of her diluted periwinkle orbs was given as the woman took another drag of her cigarette before brushing the cherry along the brick of her cafe. Hitoko tossed the butt onto the sidewalk, giving Toga and Dabi halfhearted hugs as she bid them farewell.

“I wonder if he’s actually come to see her, or if its just happenstance.” Toga asks Dabi as the two of them walk away from the Upside Down, pulling their face masks back over their features.

“Don’t matter if he did. All that matters is that his presence makes our job easier for us.”

Kohta entered the building once again, her presence asserting itself to the forefront of Bakugo’s mind. His arm felt as if it were repeatedly being dipped into lava, one feeling amongst many others he had been avoiding. The script that lonely decorated his left arm was almost completely red, only the last letter remaining white. An internal clock ticked in his mind every second of every day, wondering how much longer he had until his quirk vanished and he would be out of his career. Katsuki Bakugo, ever the optimist.

“Dude, you have to talk to her.” Eijiro verbally prodded the blonde man, pulling him from his internal conflict. A cross between a click of his tongue and a scoff left Katsuki’s lips as he took a swig of his beer.

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“Cut the crap, Bakugo.” Kirishima snapped, his jovial demeanor completely absent. More often than not, it was challenging to be friends with Katsuki. A part of being his friend, his best friend no less, Kirishima felt it was his responsibility to bring the blonde back to Earth when his head was so far up his own ass. Needless to say, Ground Zero needed a reality check and fast. Eijiro knew that his best friend’s days being a Pro-Hero were limited if he didn’t solidify his soulmate bond, that he would lose control or potentially lose his quirk all together. He knew that would kill him inside, and Kirishima couldn’t just idly sit by and let it happen. “Just go talk to her.”

“I don’t even know what her stupid name is.” Bakugo despised whatever emotion Kirishima was making him feel, in addition to the ones that were already muddling his mind. He felt small, even a bit belittled, from Red Riot’s sternness. As if suddenly, Katsuki didn’t know as much about the world as he thought he did. There was no word in his vocabulary that could properly convey what he felt in that moment. His pride, his nervousness, anxiety, fear—it was too much for him to swallow. All he could down at his moment was the alcohol in his hand.

“So ask her.”

“You know her, can’t you just tell me what her fucking name is?!” The minuscule spat between the two professional heroes had gone back and forth until both of their tall beer glasses were empty. Kirishima saw it as the perfect opportunity to get Katsuki to do his bidding, he just had to play it right. Which he hoped wouldn’t be as difficult as it could be, knowing Bakugo.

“Look, I gotta take a leak dude. You mind getting us the next round?” Before there could be a pause to cause another argument, the red haired man stood up abruptly from his bar stool and made his way towards the bathroom on the opposite side of the cafe closest to the door. Dammit, Bakugo thought. Even as academically brilliant as he was, he could still be manipulated and bested by such a dumb person, thanks to his lack of competence from his hazy mind. That's what he believed, anyway. Ground Zero, the king of denial, would never be able to admit that Kirishima was just right on these matters. Grumbling to himself, Katsuki shuffles towards the bar, coming face to face with his soulmate once again.

“Hey.”

Plastic Flowers Masterlist

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Thank you guys for checking out this story! I’ll be updating the chapters every Saturday! Chapter title taken from The Front Bottom’s song “The Plan (Fuck Jobs) off their album “Back On Top”.

Taglist:

@wwwwyamd​

[junionigiri]

and you say, stay Chapter 5 - Fly Me To The Moon

[former title: just another secretary story!]

Summary: Director Todoroki takes Secretary Uraraka out after work.

Rating: T

The Office of the Executive Director begins the next day in abject and utter suffering. Struggling through their hangovers, they each draft out their gravely-worded apology letters while passing out a bottle of aspirin between them.

“Oh my god, I can’t even remember how we got home, Kiri!” Mina whines, slapping a cold compress over her forehead. “I woke up on the bedroom floor feeling like I got punched in the face! Where were you? You should have carried me to bed!”

“I was home too,” Kirishima groans through a hefty chug of his protein shake. “I passed out on the stairs, remember? I felt so bad I couldn’t do a single dragon flag this morning! Not manly!”

“I, too, awakened in a most uncomfortable position! My head was at the foot of my bed, my feet were on my pillows, and my pyjamas were inside-out!” Iida adds in utter humiliation. “How did we arrive home safely? Did the Director teleport us home, somehow?”

“No, he drove all of us home,” Ochako answers, gathering all their letters for them. “So you should all thank him when you can, okay?

“Really? The Director was there last night?” Monoma grumbles irately. “Figures. All I remember is the vague stench of evil and existential dread. I bet I drank so much so I can ignore his demonic aura.”

Camie snorts. “Cuz, you sat right in the bossman’s lap. You got no rights anymore.”

“What?!”

Monoma demands to see evidence, and Camie happily complies to everyone’s horror. Her many blurry selfies of the night before painted an awful, embarrassing picture. Only the owner of the phone finds this amusing. Her promises not to upload anything can only do so much to stave off the shame.

“Utsushimi-kun! I implore you to get rid of this evidence!” Iida begs.

Camie hums. “Change my mind. You can start with an orange frappuccino~”

As another argument goes forth, Ochako leaves them with an amused smile and makes her way to Director Todoroki’s office.

With a gentle knock, she enters the room and finds him seated behind his computer. Unlike her officemates, there is no evidence of a headache or exhaustion in him. It would have been infuriating if she had the same terrible hangover as the rest of them, but luckily she watched her intake last night and her head’s clear.

Not-so-luckily though, she clearly remembers laughing at the Director and everyone else. And she can’t pretend to forget if he asks her about it, because just thinking about everyone cuddling the Director makes her want to burst out laughing again.

Because of that, she places the apology letters over to his desk with her own letter on the top of the pile. “Here is all that you asked us to accomplish, Director,” she says as politely as she can.

Todoroki hums in disinterest, eyes not moving from a set of data on his computer. It’s obvious that he’s going to ask her to shred these documents later without so much as reading them. It’s some small relief for them at least, because then they can pretend none of this happened. “Asui from Marketing requested an emergency meeting with us about the art center project. You have all the proposals for the launch ready, right?”

“Of course, Director. We just need the Chairman’s approval. I’ve already sent an email to their office about it.”

He clicks his tongue and tugs on his tie in thought. “Send another reminder to Takami-san. I need an answer before lunch.”

“Yes, Director,” Ochako says, eyeing his fingers on the tie. While at first she hated that she had to fix his tie for him so often, it’s now a point of pride for her to keep the Director looking neat at all times. So much so that it annoys her to see it so crooked.

It’s pure muscle memory at this point that she’s stepping over to his side and her hands are flying to his tie, pulling at it expertly until it’s tidy. She took all the trouble convincing him that morning that he can wear this diamond-patterned tie instead of the solid dark blue ones that he preferred. She has to make sure that he looks perfect.

“You’re perfect.” Satisfied with the results, she looks up at him and directly meets his eyes.

The demon Director’s stare is famous for a lot of reasons--the color, the intensity, the way they make you feel like you’re both burning alive and freezing at the same time. It’s not a metaphor Ochako likes because being burned must feel terrible (his scar tells a story all on its own), and also she’s used to being the target of that stare when he’s irritated or dissatisfied, so she knows it in a way that cannot be enjoyed.

But now he’s staring at her the way he was last night at her doorstep. The burning feeling behind it is less like fire and more like the warmth of her blood rushing through her veins and the throb of her pulse. It’s intense, unwavering. Ochako’s hypnotized for exactly half a second too long.

“Thanks,” he says absentmindedly. “I could have done that myself.”

She snaps herself out of the trance. “With all due respect Director, you didn’t. But, noted.”

All the strange thoughts fly out of the window of the 65th floor office. It’s good that she’s reminded of how infuriating he is. His vague warning about how he shouldn’t underestimate her might be making her see him in a different (inaccurate) light, but she should know better. She bows and turns with a suppressed huff when he calls to her again, “Secretary Uraraka.”

She turns to him. After a thoughtful pause, he asks, “You speak with your colleagues differently, don’t you?”

She blinks. “Not that I know of, Director. Has anyone sent a complaint about the way I speak? I should apologize and clear up any misunderstandings--”

“No, not them.” He gestures out the door. “Iida and the others. Last night you spoke with them informally. Using ‘ sure thing’ or ‘ yup’ instead of ‘ of course,’ for example.”

“I… see.” Gosh, he sounds so weird just trying to talk in a casual way. “It’s only when we’re drinking. But if it offends you...”

He shakes his head. “It’s… fine. In fact, you may use that sort of language with me. Provided that it’s just the two of us, of course.”

Ochako stares at him incredulously. “Beg yer pardon?” she mutters by accident.

“Yes, like that.” Todoroki gives her a reassuring nod. “That’s what they call the Kansai accent, right?”

She tries not to slip into her accent again when she asks, “May I know what brought this on, Director?”

“Are you offended?”

“No, but… this is a strange request.”

He shrugs. “You seemed more comfortable speaking that way instead of the usual way you converse with me. Since I am giving the same freedom to Utsushimi, I am granting you the same thing.”

Well, Camie hasn’t talked to him directly since the interview and since she got drunk in front of him so she can’t say that it’s exactly the same freedom. Plus Ochako isn’t sure that the Director is just telling her that she can talk more naturally around him, or if he’s commanding her to do so. Frankly it’s making her sweat figuring out what he wants.

“If you say so, Director. Of course I’ll--”

“Not of course, ” Todoroki insists. “ Sure thing .”

Ochako gives him a strained smile. “S-sure thing, sir. I’ll keep it casual in front of you.”

Director Todoroki nods in satisfaction and gets back to work. Ochako walks out of the office and tries to do the same thing, but it’s suddenly hard to concentrate.

*

A few days later Ochako comes home tired as all hell and not in the best mood, as she does when the Demon Director is extra demonic. Honestly, for all his talk about wanting her to be more comfortable around him, he’s making it impossible for her to even breathe normally within his vicinity.

The art center project is now top priority to beat their competitors, so suddenly the office is rushing through all the things they were scheduled to do for the next two months, over the course of three weeks. The stocks of energy drinks and orange juice in the pantry is running dangerously low from their efforts to keep awake. It’s so bad that Monoma was even caught drinking ‘peasant’ instant coffee instead of his usual French press ones.

And Camie… oof. Ochako knows that she’s trying her best and that this is a lot of pressure for someone who’s new to the team, but she missed one of the financial reports completely during the staff meeting. And while both of them apologized for her mistake, Todoroki only directed his ice-cold glare at Ochako.

“Is this how you do transfer of duties, Secretary Uraraka?” She flinches just remembering the cutting edge of his voice. She hates it when he uses that because even though his standards are impossibly high, it tells her that he expected more from her, and she let him down.

Well at least she’s home an hour earlier than usual. Director Todoroki told her not to collect Victoria at his home as previously ordered. There’s just enough time for her to eat the convenience store katsudon she got on the way home, take a bath, and watch her soaps before angrily passing out on her couch.

… if only her phone would stop ringing! It takes all of her strength not to throw her food over her kitchen table when she fishes for her phone. The name on the screen gives her pause, however, and she’s extra careful to mind her tone when she answers, “Chief Midoriya?”

Midoriya Izuku opens up their conversation with another alarming cough. Ochako wonders if this is merely an unfortunate butt-dial until he stammers over the line, “A-ah! Hi, Uraraka-san! This is Midoriya Izuku from Endeavor’s Marketing Division! Oh, wait, you know that already, haha.”

Ochako laughs cautiously. Even over the phone, Midoriya’s usual nervousness is palpable. “Yes sir! How may I help you?”

“Er, yeah! So there’s this urgent thing that I need your help with that’s, um, related to work. It… it’s not weird or anything, it’s totally normal, nothing to be alarmed about. So the Director wants--no, not the Director, I mean-- koff koff koff! ’

Midoriya suffers another coughing fit so violent that it sends Ochako close to panic. “Are you okay sir?! Do you need someone to take you to the hospital?!”

“No, I’m fiiine. Please don’t ask. ” The chief takes a deep breath through the phone which seems to calm him down somewhat. “I’m expecting a package for work, but Secretary Hagakure made a mistake with the shipping address. You’re the one closest, so I was wondering if you could pick it up for me?”

That sounded like a weird mistake to make, but she also knew about the time Tooru-chan accidentally ordered twenty Hawaiian pizzas instead of the single calzone that Chief Midoriya wanted to eat for lunch. “Where do you want me to go?”

Midoriya gives her the exact address and pleads with her to be there in twenty minutes. “I hate to be a bother, but this is important for the company, so you can’t be late, okay? I’m counting on you, Uraraka-san!”

“Okay Chief! I’m heading out,” she says, rushing to her door. Twenty minutes to the address given to her is tight, but she’ll make it if she runs to and from the train station.

It’s good that she changed out of her office heels and into sneakers. She makes it to the address in fifteen minutes. It’s only then that she realizes that she’s in the location without knowing who to look for and what to expect.

Also, she’s in front of MightyLand, the amusement park in the middle of town dedicated to their governor, All Might. It’s closed today for some reason. It’s dark, quiet, and scary as amusement parks which are completely dark tend to be.

Ochako calls Midoriya in pure confusion and tells him, “I don’t think I’m at the right place, Chief.”

Midoriya laughs. “You’re exactly where you should be, Uraraka-san.”

Wondering what he means, she turns around just as the lights click open all around her, and the stagnant water of the fountain at the entrance springs to life.

She almost drops the phone from her hand as the fake castle gates of MightyLand flash and glow in pinks and blues and greens, sparkling prettily under the night sky. Soft string music plays in the background. The lights along the pathway light up one-by-one like fireflies, guiding her eyes to the entrance of the park.

Breathless, she watches Todoroki Shouto emerge from the gates. And while her eyes dart everywhere trying to make sense of what’s happening, his eyes are on nowhere else but her.

“Secretary Uraraka,” he calls as soon as he’s in front of her. He’s in the same three-piece suit and tie she picked for him this morning, but somehow he looked impossibly devilish in it tonight. “Fancy meeting you here on this ordinary night.”

She should pick her jaw off the floor any second now. “G… good evening, Director Todoroki,” she stammers. “Chief Midoriya sent me here on an important errand. I’m afraid I don’t understand what--”

“I allowed you to speak as you normally do around me, Uraraka.”

“Er… yeah, so,” what the fuck, she wanted to say, but instead she squeaks out, “What’s goin’ on?”

Satisfied, he says with an enigmatic smile, “Nothing special. Come.”

He signals her to follow him with a bend of a forefinger, and with very little strength in her to ask any further questions, she silently follows him into the park.

*

She should have known that there wasn’t anything ordinary waiting for her that night.

Even though everything is lit up and functional, the park is entirely empty except for them. While Ochako is busy gawking at all the sights, Director Todoroki is leading the way with brisk, purposeful steps. It takes some effort for her to keep up with his relentless pace until he gets to the destination in mind. Before she realizes it, they’re at the Smashville area of the park, where all the big, scary rides are.

Ochako stares up in horror at Todoroki’s first choice of activity: The Carolina.

“It’s a drop tower, 100 meters tall. We rise to the top at an excruciating pace of 10 km/h and drop at a speed of 100 km/h. Not the tallest or the fastest in the world, but it’s in the top ten,” the unfazed Director explains like he’s talking about the latest performance review. He holds a hand out to the seat at the very center and says, with a smile that looks evil, “After you.”

Ochako doesn’t know how she wills her feet to move, but with nobody to help her escape, she gets strapped in right next to her calm boss.

“D-Director--”

“I know you’re excited,” Todoroki says when they’re fifty meters above ground. “Don’t hold back.”

There’s nothing to hold back, not even her internal organs, when the first drop occurs. And the next one, and the next one. Ochako screams as she’s never screamed before, while Todoroki is so silent that she legitimately worries if he passed out in the middle of the ride.

He didn’t. With a spring in his step, he hops off from the ride and assists her shaking body off the ride. “You must be excited. Don’t worry. There’s more to come.”

Oh, god.

He takes her to the other extreme rides: The Nebraska, The California, The Detroit. Ochako never imagined that there’s more than one way to drop and spin and tumble anyone via a machine, but with each new ride she loses part of her soul and all sensation of her legs. Todoroki’s unnervingly steady after each ride, however, and just brings her to the next one without an ounce of hesitation.

By the time he brings her to the coup de grace of all the rides--The United States of Smash, the biggest roller coaster in Japan--she’s sure of it. The Demon Director brought her here to punish her for all her misdeeds.

“You must be looking forward to this one all night, Secretary Uraraka,” Todoroki says with that same dark smile. “If you’re ready to get on, then…”

He wants to kill her.

Rushing to the nearest wastecan, she hurls up an entire rainbow consisting of all the colors of the energy drinks she ingested that day.

Dammit, how embarrassing! She would have cried but it already takes a lot of effort to stop the earth from spinning in the wrong direction. She hurls for another solid minute when she feels a cold, comforting hand tentatively rubbing circles on her back.

The rush of cool surprisingly makes her feel better in an instant. She stands up and bows to him apologetically. “Director… sorry. This is really icky,” she whimpers helplessly. “I’m super weak when it comes to rides like this. I get dizzy real easy.”

He holds out his expensive silk handkerchief to her. “No, it’s my mistake. I should have anticipated that you had weak labyrinths.”

Were her ears deceiving her, or did that sound like an apology? She takes his handkerchief and wipes her face gratefully. “No… you looked like you wanted to do all those things, so I did my best to keep up.”

Todoroki blinks. “Ah. But I thought you wanted to…” When Ochako stares at him curiously, he pauses and considers his next words carefully. “I assumed that you liked this amusement park like everybody else does. I must have made an error in judgment.”

She laughs weakly. “Nah, I’ve always wanted to go back to MightyLand… just not Smashville.”

He ponders on this briefly. “... okay.” He holds his hand out ahead of them and tilts his head ever so slightly. “Secretary Uraraka, for tonight, you lead and I’ll follow. What do you want to do next?”

She doesn’t hide her surprise at that. And thinks about it. And smiles excitedly.

A long walk to the other side of the park later, Director Todoroki looks up at her ride of choice blankly. “Space World.” he deadpans.

It’s a cutesy, slow ride made for kids that simulates a gentle ride through outer space, complete with planets and aliens and constellations. In front is a statue of Thirteen, the famous space explorer that she idolized when she was in grade school.

“Let’s go in right now!!! Hurry, Director!”

She can hardly believe it. She had promised herself to get on this ride after her resignation, and she’s even willing to line up with all the little kids on a busy weekend just to get here. Yet here she is, no lines, no embarrassing explanations necessary, just her and the Director and the fake stars. Once the little train brakes in front of her she’s climbing on it in an instant.

She doesn’t even notice that she’s dragging Todoroki by the hand until they’re side by side in the car and the lights grow dim around them.

“Oh. Sorry,” she squeaks, thankful that outer space is supposed to be dark and he doesn’t get to see her blush.

Even then, she feels his gaze on her. But he says nothing as the first comet passes them by.

Ochako gasps. It’s a lot prettier than she imagined. The narration drones above them as an emulation of the Big Bang blooms above and around them like a flower. “Oh my gosh, look at that! I can’t believe it, it feels so real! Director, isn’t this pretty?!”

She feels the subtle turn of Director Todoroki’s head toward her. “Yes. Beautiful,” he mumbles somewhere close to her. After a pause, he adds, “I don’t think it feels real, though. If it did, we’d be suffocating by now. There’s no oxygen in the vacuum of space.”

“Geez, Director, just enjoy it.”

“I am,” he assures her, as the little car follows Jupiter into orbit.

But just like that, the ride is over. Ochako is sad when they have to get off--that is, until Todoroki tells her, “We can stay here if you want to go again.”

So she happily pulls him down on the seat next to her, pulls the bar down, and goes through the ride again.

Seven more times.

To his credit, Todoroki sits with her the entire time without complaints. Although she hears him silently fuming in his seat every time she goes “again, again!” She’d feel guilty over it, but dammit he made her go through the Carolina and the Nebraska and the California and the Detroit--twice!--and she needed this after all that he put her through that week.

Anyway, she makes it more tolerable for him by telling him everything she knows about the planets and the stars that the narration doesn’t tell them. “You know, Saturn has 150 moons! Some of them are bigger on Earth, and most of them are frozen solid! Some of them might have oceans under the surface too!”

“I know,” he says quietly. “But keep going.”

Of course he knows everything. But he doesn’t seem to want to ruin her mood, so there’s that. She continues feeding him all the space facts she knew happily.

The moment she says “Okay I’m good,” Director Todoroki gets them off that ride so quickly he almost lifts her up off the seat. “Back to earth with you, Secretary Uraraka.”

She giggles. “Why, Director! Speaking figuratively? I didn’t think you knew how.”

He blinks, as if astonished with himself. “Huh. I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

He drives her out of the park and into a different part of the city. There’s a field decorated with fairy lights, flowers (all hypoallergenic, he says when she braces herself for a sneeze attack) and a table set for two. Below them is the city, and above them are the stars. It’s mind boggling how beautiful the set-up is.

Todoroki leads her to the table. As soon as she sits down, there’s fancy vintage wine being poured in her glass. From a distance, she sees Sato doing finishing touches on a pretty plate. He winks at her when she catches his eye.

They’re served steak, and pasta, and fancy vegetables with violets on them. They’re all delicious as expected, but then Sato comes out with what seems like an unlimited supply of strawberry mochi for them and she’s instantly melting.

“Everything is so good, I can’t believe it,” she gushes. Oh man, the mochi is so good. If she kept up at it, she’s seriously going to explode.

“Good. I’m glad you like it.” There’s a smug look on his face when he says this. Dangerous…

“Director... what’s this about?” she asks suspiciously. This isn’t another ploy to get her to not quit, is it? If he ends up proposing again, she is seriously going to break something expensive (and probably regret it later).

He hums as he cuts up his mochi neatly. “We had a welcome party for Utsushimi. It’s only fair that you had a goodbye party of your own to show my appreciation before you leave. Nothing special, but something ordinary that you liked.”

No proposals then? That’s a relief. She was going to say no (really, she was!) if he had asked, and that would have ruined such a beautiful night. “Director… I’m sorry, but there’s nothing ordinary about what you did for me!”

He blinks. “Taking you to an amusement park and treating you to dinner isn’t ordinary?”

It’s almost amazing that he’s genuinely baffled, but then again she expected nothing less from Todoroki Shouto. “Closing an amusement park so we had it all to ourselves and then treating me to a five star dinner prepared by a famous chef to a picnic under the stars is not what I’d call an ordinary date, Director.”

Wait. Date? Did she say date? Is she out on a date with the Director?

“I see. I’ll take note of that.” Oh no, he didn’t deny it! “For next time.”

Next time?! Oh no. No no no. She can’t date the Director! Reiko and Yui would kill her if they found out! And she didn’t mean it, he suckered her into it, she didn’t want to, not really--

“But you really enjoyed yourself, so I consider this a success,” Todoroki says, satisfied. “You made me ride Space World seven times. I’d give you a salary deduction if you said you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

He is never going to let go of this, is he? Despite that, she laughs again. “I went overboard, didn’t I? It’s just that I’ve wanted to ride that since I was a little girl. You wouldn’t wanna hear it, it isn’t exactly a happy story.”

He stares at her. “Tell me.”

She swallows a bit of mochi reluctantly before starting her story with a sigh. “Well… Director, if you remember from my job interview nine years ago, I told you that I started working for you because I needed to earn money as quickly as possible. It’s obviously because my family wasn’t well-off, and I was the only one who can earn money somehow.”

“... I remember.”

“Well… even when I was little, we were poor. We lived where MightyLand was before the houses there got demolished, so that space is kind of special to us. Sometimes Ma and Pa had extra money to bring me and my cousin Yui there, but the money wasn’t ever enough for passes to get to rides like Space World. Even though I wished for it so hard, I never had the chance.”

Todoroki unexpectedly watches her tell her story in rapt attention. “I see. Why Space World?”

She shrugs. “Why not Space World? Outer space is great, isn’t it?”

She would have studied astrophysics in university if she could, but there’s no point in telling the Director that. He doesn’t seem like the type who feels guilty over anything, but she doesn’t want to test that by admitting that she chose to stay by his side instead of doing what she really wanted.

“So, that’s the sad, sad story of my youth. How about you, Director? You must have been a more interesting kid than I was.”

Todoroki keeps those distinct eyes on her--a black hole and an entirely blue galaxy, she suddenly thinks, moons with oceans hiding under frozen wastelands, the waves beneath straining to reach the surface. He seems to want to reveal them to her, just for a second, but the second passes, and time remains locked.

“No, not really,” he finally decides on saying. “Nothing much happened to me. I grew up as Enji’s heir from the start and worked hard from the moment I learned how to talk. I had no choice, because my older brother failed. Fuyumi and Natsuo were never given the chance to try.”

An older brother? Is he talking about Natsuo? While it’s true that Todoroki Natsuo won’t ever be the heir of Endeavor because he chose to become a physician instead, Ochako could have sworn the Director was talking about someone else.

“It was difficult, but I met most of his expectations, and now I’m here.” His eyes become cold again. Knowing that he gets this way after talking about Todoroki Enji is just the basics of dealing with Todoroki Shouto.

It was her mistake to even suggest bringing up his childhood. Now it’s her job to ease him out of it. “You did great, Director. If we were friends when we were kids, I’d have been the first to cheer you on.”

He freezes for just a second, a look of pure enigma in his eyes. “... is that so? Do you think we would have been friends if we met earlier?”

He seems to be expecting an honest answer out of her. Ochako guesses it has to do with certain parts of his past that he obviously doesn’t want her to see. She can’t blame him, but in all honesty, if they were both young and innocent, being friends with him wouldn’t have been hard. “Yes Director. I don’t doubt it.”

He looks genuinely taken aback by this. A second passes before he allows himself a relieved smile. “Thank you for your vote of confidence. I’d believe you more if you don’t quit.”

“Don’t even try it, sir.”

He clicks his tongue. And then, in true Todoroki fashion, the conversation’s suddenly over.

With the taste of strawberries lingering in her mouth, she follows as he leads them to a grassy knoll some ways away from dinner. Flowers of all colors surround their feet, glowing ethereally under the moonlight. The city below, the stars above. It’s a beautiful night.

And… cold. Ochako is painfully reminded that she’s in a thin silk blouse and the denim shorts she wore at home when a particularly sharp gust of wind blows past them.

Todoroki observes her with a stern look. “You’re not in appropriate clothing.”

“I didn’t know you were going to bring me to such a windy place, Director.”

“You weren’t supposed to know. This is a surprise, after all.”

Still, he looks frustrated that she’s so cold--not a good look. Her secretary instincts tell her to do something about that. Trying to smile meaningfully through her chattering teeth, she suggests, “You know, ordinary guys offer their jackets to their dates when it gets chilly.”

He blinks twice before he makes that eureka! face again. “I have an idea, Uraraka. Since you’re cold, you should wear my coat.”

“Oh--but you’ll get cold.”

“No, I’m always temperature regulated,” he says with a voice that doesn’t leave her much room to (pretend to) argue.

He drapes his coat around her easily. He’s much taller than her and has wider shoulders, so naturally she’s swallowed instantly in fine woollen bliss. She suppresses a sigh when she feels the toasty warmth, and suppresses a shudder when she feels his fingers brush around her shoulders and her neck.

“Is this okay?” he asks earnestly when he notices her shiver. His warm breath tickles her ear.

She nods through the overwhelming feel of his voice vibrating through her body. Oblivious to this, he nods in satisfaction and looks up at the stars. She stares at his profile against the moon, feeling light-headed and mesmerized at everything.

Oh, gods, this is a date . Reiko and Yui are going to kill her in her sleep.

When he notices her staring, he gives her an odd, puzzled look. “Secretary Uraraka. Since you like the stars so much, you should take advantage of this. I suggest keeping your eyes off me and keeping them to the sky.”

A vein pops on her forehead. Okay, so the Director is still the same clueless demon with no sense of romance. No surprise. This isn’t a date, after all.

She follows his orders and looks up at the sky, lined by a myriad of shooting stars.

*

After the star-gazing session, they both decide that it’s late and he brings her home. He drives the car, and thankfully this time the drive goes by smoothly. He parks at the narrow street in front of her home and follows her out of the car, looking strangely self-assured.

“Director, thanks for the great evening,” she says. “I’m honestly speechless. For a surprise, that was…”

A small smile is on his lips when he asks, “Ideal?”

“Yes, exactly, ideal.” Wait. Ideal. Where has she heard that before?

“Hm. I thought you’d say that,” he says smugly. “I doubt that anybody else will give you as much mochi as you had tonight.”

Describe your ideal partner.

A tall, handsome guy with a stable job who will feed me mochi until I explode!

“And I don’t think anyone else will bring you to an amusement park and a picnic under the stars in the span of a single evening.”

Describe an ideal excursion with your ideal partner.

A date in MightyLand, where we can ride all the rides I like as much as I want!

A simple picnic with tasty food where we can go stargazing afterward is pretty neat too!

This guy is a sneaky, sneaky bastard. Ochako crosses her arms in front of her as Director Todoroki ambles confidently to the trunk of his car. “Finally, I doubt that any other ordinary man will give you…”

Describe an ideal product that you would like to receive from your ideal partner.

A giant stuffed toy that I can hug in my sleep!

(I don’t care what it looks like as long as it’s soft and cute!)

“Director,” she cuts him off with a controlled smile. “There’s… a giant stuffed toy in the back of the trunk, isn’t there?”

Todoroki freezes just as he pulls out the offending item--a giant stuffed cat.

“... how did you predict this,” he says stiffly as he presents the gift to her.

She laughs. “Chief Midoriya almost had a heart attack giving me that survey, you know. You should make it up to him.”

“... maybe,” he says, although the sudden dark look in his eyes tells her otherwise. She should apologize to the freckled Chief when things happen. “In any case, this is for you, if you’ll have it. It’s your very own Victoria. You should be grateful to have such a beautiful object.”

The cat is white and about half as big as her, with a squinty smile and a little bell on its collar. She won’t admit it, but she loves it immediately. She takes it from the Director. “Thank you, Director. I am filled with such gratitude.”

“Formal language, again?”

“I’m just teasing.”

He huffs. “You seem to be getting used to that, Secretary Uraraka. I don’t approve.”

She snickers. “Yeah? Well, approve this! ”

She playfully smacks the cat’s face right into his. She doesn’t know why she suddenly had the balls to do something like that, but the small surprised mmph he produces makes it all worth the risk. When he pushes the cat off of him to glare at her, she’s in another fit of giggles.

“I thought you had a good time. Is this how you say goodnight?” he asks in mild annoyance.

“I did! And, yes,” she says with a confident smile.

“Strange. That’s not what I know of ordinary people saying goodnight on ideal dates.”

Without warning, he steps closer to her, and closer, and closer. She should be backing up to keep a safe distance, far enough that he doesn’t hear her blood rushing or her heart beating or her mind racing into oblivion. She should, but she doesn’t--all she does is hold her breath.

Even when he meets her eyes.

Even when he leans in closer.

Even when her eyes are suddenly squeezing tight in anticipation of something she shouldn’t.

Whatever it is she was waiting for doesn’t come, however. Because what she feels in that cold, dark, anxious and excited void is something cold pressing into the very tip of her nose.

When she comes to, she’s staring cross-eyed right at his index finger.

Todoroki Shouto is poking her on the nose.

He gives a little satisfied smile and steps back. “That’s how they do it, right?”

She stammers, face impossibly red. “No? That’s not a thing anyone does in any planet! Where did you even learn that?!”

He chuckles lightly, the sound of it another shock to her senses. “I guess being ordinary is more challenging than I thought. Goodnight, Secretary Uraraka.”

Why is he so weird? Why is she feeling so bamboozled? Before she can make any sensible words out of her mouth, the Director is already behind the wheel and smugly driving off into the night.

God, all she can do is to run into her apartment, dive on the bed and hide her face over Her Very Own Victoria’s face to hide her blush. But then she remembers what she made this doll do (read: smack the Director in the face), and then she remembers that smooshing her face against it is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Great. How is she supposed to sleep now? Stupid Director!

[awildpoliticalnerd]

Book Review: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. By Robert Wright. (1994).

Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal is a look through the field of evolutionary psychology--at least as it stood at the book's writing in 1994. It's a promising work with a lot of insight. However, it can best be analogized to the peacock: If it survives, it does so despite the massive disadvantage of some obvious maladaptions. In the case of the peacock, the adaption is its oversized tail (or "train" as it's often referred to). In the case of The Moral Animal, it's Wright’s own unexamined moral and ideological biases presented as fact that lowered its potential. 

The big sell of the book is actually a rather interesting premise: Take the most famous proponent of the theory of evolution (Charles “the Chuck” Darwin) and use his life to demonstrate the principles of evolutionary psychology. Want to illustrate the theory that men are less biologically inclined towards lifelong monogamy thanks to our disproportionately small part in the baby-making process? Highlight the fact that Darwin literally sketched out a cost/benefit analysis of getting married in his notebook. Want to argue that young siblings should be both predisposed towards rivalry and cooperation thanks to kin selection? Give some (admittedly adorable) examples of Darwin’s many, many children. Because of this, the book was part popular-science exploration of a then-burgeoning topic and accessible biography on one of the most important scientific minds to ever emerge from the primordial ooze. When done well, this was the book at its best. It was discursive, informative, and enjoyable. It kept me engaged over much of the book’s nearly 400-pages.

(Lest someone use the opening example as evidence that I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about later in the review, let it be known that I know that the mystery of the peacock’s train was solved with the insights of sexual selection--that peahens select males with large trains because possessing one shows that the males have got to be pretty dang "fit" to survive with such a glaringly obvious disadvantage. Writing thematically consistent introductions is hard; I claim some artistic liberties here).

There are two core ways that this plays out throughout the book. The first is the odd insistence that every possible point that Wright could conceive of making in this vast subject was exemplified by good ol’ Chuck. And there were times that this was very clearly a stretch. The way he pursued his eventual wife, Emma, is described through a very genetic lens instead of primarily cultural terms (part of a supposed genetic predisposition towards the “Madonna-Whore” dichotomy for those of us with that infernal y chromosome). His differential patterns of grief for the loss of two of his children (he reportedly mourned the death of his ten year old daughter far longer, and far more intensely, then that of his infant son) are couched as being primarily due to their proximity to prime fertility age. His intense anxiety about publishing what would be his scientific legacy (you know, apart from being the 19th century’s foremost barnacle expert)? It’s the genes! It’s genes, genes, genes all the way down. 

I’d like to say that the book was always like this. Or, apparently, my desire to want to say this, my inability to do so, and the considerable amount of sarcasm required to pen these last two sentences are because of my genes. At least that’s the culprit if we were to take Wright literally. At times, he is positively (and ironically) evangelical about the power of our genetics in dictating our behavior. And it is to the rest of the work’s detriment. 

I’m not some biological denialist. I believe whole-heartedly in evolutionary theory. And, of course, the potential for any and all physical actions have to ultimately originate in the code that facilitates every biological process we undertake. But, first off, since natural selection works probabilistically, what do you think the odds are that, of the billions of humans to walk the Earth, the theory’s first popular progenitor is an acceptable exemplar of all of these processes? It’s laughably small. Literally smaller than the first common ancestor of all life on this planet compared to the sun. I don’t think that this means that Wright had to abandon the mission of using Darwin as an illustration--again, that’s part of what made this book so interesting--but it would be far better served if, instead, Wright said something to the effect of “we can see an imperfect analogy to these processes in Darwin’s life.” A small change but, as Wright knows, small changes can have a large impact.

I suspect that Wright’s self-admitted zealousy on the subject was partially spurred on by the fact that this book was written before epigenetics (the process through which different parts of the genome are activated/deactivated in response to environmental changes, changing the genes’ expression) was more rigorously demonstrated. I recall him adamantly insisting, once or twice, that genes “can’t be changed” once we’ve been conceived. At the time, that was the belief commensurate with the best available evidence. Although epigenetics do not disprove this, the truth is that our genes are far more flexible than originally thought. If genetic fixedness is what you’re arguing, it’s pretty tough to say anything other than “everything Darwin did ever is totally explainable through evolutionary psychology.” Even if it's not true. So I’ve decided to chalk this up to scientific progress and its inevitable, unenviable ability to reveal certain pronouncements as utterly wrong. It’ll undoubtedly happen to me; it happens to any practicing scientist. 

The second theme, though, is less able to be chalked up to the inexorable march of progress. That is the distinct, but related, assertion interwoven throughout the text that literally everything can be explained by evolutionary psychology. Moral codes? Evolutionary psychology. Selective memory of our own moral failings? Evolutionary psychology. Western social structures and the necessity of political and economic inequality? Survey says: Evolutionary psychology. 

These assertions are often manifest through what I call “cover your ass” language. We all know it; we all, regrettably, deploy it. It comes when the authors use absolute terms for the vast preponderance of the work and then say “now, do I really think that this explains everything? Of course not! But…” and then proceeds to make the exact same points, just with a couple of words interjected to signal intellectual humility. A few careful words do not erase the other 98% and the frames they collectively construct. Wright is arguing that evolutionary psychology alone can explain just about every social phenomenon, from the simple to profound. But the fact of the matter is that evolutionary psychology would be hard-pressed to understand why people on vacation with their families would bother to leave tips at restaurants despite the fact that they do, more often than not. (Seriously. Reciprocal altruism’s out since you’ll never see that server again. Odds are they weren’t related, so kin selection’s out too. Peacocking wealth contrasts with women’s supposed preference for mates who don’t needlessly divert resources away from her children. Tipping is a tough nut to crack for rational-choice-esque theoried like evolutionary psych). If it can’t explain something so banal as this, I have strong doubts of the deterministic account Wright explicates here. He will, almost begrudgingly, admit that social and environmental forces play a part in genetic expression. But he does not seem prepared to admit that it plays as big of a role as even the available evidence at the time did.

The more I read it, the more I felt that this book was symbolic of a lot of evolutionary science at the time: It contains real, interesting insight on genetic processes and their role (however expansive or limited) in complex interpersonal phenomena. These shouldn’t be undersold or ignored; I learned a great deal reading this book. The problem is that these insights come paired with uninterrogated moralizing, steeped in contemporaneous social events, passed off as timeless, objective Truth. The most obvious example (because of how often Wright returns to it) comes in the aforementioned asymmetry in male parental investment. Or, rather, the seemingly inevitable end-result: Divorce. This was often curiously paired with hand-wavey discussions of the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Apparently, men who manage to have sex with women earlier in the relationship feel less inclined to see her as a viable marriage partner. Should a quickly-pairing couple (referring to the speed in which they decide to do the act and not, hopefully, the duration of the act itself) wind-up married, men are more likely to ditch the women--and ditch them for similar "kinds" of women. This discussion would often lead to Wright lamenting how women are engaging in sex earlier and earlier in romantic relationships. Things were better decades before this promiscuity was socially acceptable. Like back in Victorian England when Charles wed his beloved Emma. And the evidentiary linchpin, at times explicitly mentioned while only obliquely inferred at others, is the sky-high divorce rates that, Wright argues, came as a consequence of social structures being poorly designed considering our inherent genetic predispositions. 

Of course, we now know that the high divorce rates of the 90s were a temporary thing. First-marriages are lasting far longer than they did (on average) in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 00’s but divorces are just as easy (if not easier) than ever before. If it was entirely because of early sex and our baser nature, the pattern should continue. The fact that it doesn’t is both evidence that evolutionary psychology is more limited than Wright suggests and that the urgency imbued in his analysis was shaped by his own moral sensibilities rather than those seen in society as a whole, inculcated by natural selection.

This wasn’t all of the social critique Wright was inclined to wade in. All fields and theories have their critics. Good authors often anticipate common objections and address them in the text. He saw his most likely critics as less scientifically driven as ideologically so. Lofty prose to the contrary, he was on the attack far more than on the defense; Darwin found himself a new bull dog. His target: Those dastardly post-modernists. He often panned “post-modernism” for their critiques of evolutionary psychology, often claiming (without much evidence) that it stemmed from the post-modernists’ universal and fundamental ignorance about biology. Honestly, the way Wright so derisively talked about them, I was surprised that he didn’t bust out a couple of verbose “yo mamma” jokes. 

What makes his vituperative swipes so ironic 25 years later is that the post-structuralists were right. Many evolutionary scientists were predisposed towards advancing biologically deterministic theories of human behavior. Any practicing geneticist worth their salt today would tell you that human behavior is so dependent on genes' interactions with the social and physical environment that even things we take for granted as “hard-wired” (such as one’s sexual preference) has been persuasively shown to not be the consequence of singular genes--or even wholly the consequence of complex genetic interactions. This is a far, far cry from Wright’s portrayal in the book; I honestly think he would be aghast at this suggestion, as if it surrenders precious ground to heretical forces in the battle for all of science’s soul. And the post-modernists are consequently vindicated in questioning what kind of power is made manifest, and towards whom is it ultimately directed, when these assertions are given the pop-science stamp of total veracity. (Actually, despite it being basically their entire deal, I can’t recall a moment when Wright discussed power when issuing his disses of post-modernism. Instead, he discussed them in the same kind of shifting, ephemeral manner that paints them as boogeymen with accusations that were often equally grounded in reality. I think he would find his own intellectual horizons broadened if he allotted the same serious attention to their intellectual contributions as he demands for his subject). 

To shoehorn in a personal complaint that I had, the book was heavy in evolutionary theory but very, very sparse in social-psychological insight. Spare a chapter where Wright tried to rehabilitate Freud’s reputation (as successful attempt as one’s going to have considering how uphill that battle is), most of the psychology was relegated to sexual pairing preferences and over-general suggestions on morality and social bonding. The former was interesting and insightful; the rest woefully underdeveloped. I may be spoiled by books like Behave and How Emotions Are Made (part of these phenomenal works both touched on how evolution may bring around specific cognitive processes), but I think Wright could have comfortably fit interesting, more specific insights if he shed the weird moralism and extensive post-modernist vendetta.

I hate closing reviews with negatives, no matter how well deserved. Presumably that’s in my genes as well. So I’d actually like to conclude by saying that I well and truly learned a lot from this book. Some of it was less novel so much as it was a refresher (I have read a number of prominent books on evolutionary theory, including the oft-referenced Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins), but some insights were well and truly new to me and illuminating. The one that stands out the most at the moment is the game theoretic accounts claiming that monogamy ultimately serves men (while institutional polygyny would be better for women) and the argument that people are more rude in spaces with fewer permanent interpersonal ties. I also thought the point that adherence to cultural values are an expedient for environmentally contingent reproductive success was well argued. I don’t buy these arguments entirely, but I think they and other points are worth mulling over to extract the useful bits. But in order to get to these bits, you have to be attentive and willing to parse through a lot of things that, in the rat-race of ideas, deserve to be thoroughly out-competed. 

[getoutoftheweeds-blog]

DIY Nutrition Plan - A Baseline Study of Yourself.

Since the last article went up, we have had several questions about how exactly I started losing weight.  Below is a basic outline I followed to get me going and keep me going down the path.

In case you didn't know, I used to be pretty fat.  When I stepped on the scale almost 5 years ago, I was about 100 pounds heavier.  Truthfully, I was obese.  I was “active” and mostly did things that were considered “healthy,” but I kept putting on weight.  Part of the reason I was so chubby were circumstances that I thought were out of my control.  Part of the reason was that I was ignorant.  Part of the reason was that I was ignoring the obvious.  However, I was able to get a plan together that helped me to not only lose weight, but get my life on the track I wanted it to be on.  The key for my success was getting my personalized health/nutrition plan dialed in.

Before we go too far, I want you to know that I am a regular guy, writing to regular people.  I’m not giving out advice to athletes or elite performers.  I’ve never won a race or graced a podium.  I’m no gifted athlete, but I’m also not trying to be one.  I’m focused on winning at life, not some event.  Reality is I��m just a dude who used to be fat and got his act together.  I know what it is like to be overweight.  I know what it is like to wish for a better way to live every day.  It is my desire to help regular folks live a healthy life.  Trust me; if I can break away from the chains of my old overweight life, you can, too.  You just need a plan.

There are four things you have to take responsibility for before you begin this process:

1) You are in charge of you. Only you can figure out what is best for you.  You know the dynamics of your situation.  It is your responsibility to figure out how to make this happen in your particular circumstance. 

2) Leave your assumptions behind.  If you assume you have no assumptions, you are wrong.  You will be challenged in this process.  Have the ability to be flexible.

3) Things change.  You are going to discover some things about yourself along the way.  Some are strengths, some are weaknesses.  It is your responsibility to take it in stride, change what needs to be changed and continue forward. 

4) You get to define what success looks like.  What does progress look like to you?  One or two pounds? More energy?  The ability to play with your kids or grand-kids (or great-grand-kids) without tiring out?  You set the standard and work towards it. 

With that out of the way, how do you develop a case study of yourself to figure out how nutrition, health and fitness information applies to you specifically?

 Here is how I did it:

1) Take at least a week and log all the food you eat to determine how many Carbs (keep up with sugar, too), Proteins and Fats you are consuming.  Be honest.  Are you sneaking a snack here and there?  Are you eating extra helpings at supper?  Also note how much caffeine you take in each day.  If you can spare the time, an even better option is to log your current habits for two weeks.  I use the free MyFitnessPal app from Under Armor.  You can use whatever you like.  You will start to see your patterns emerge.  A good analogy is reading a map.  If you know where you want to go, the next most important thing to figure out is where you are at.  Without that information, you will never be able to figure how to get to where you want to go.  That’s what you are doing by logging your food.

2) Log your workouts and how they make you feel immediately after, hours after and the next day.  Workouts provide a good stress to the body.  But you have to keep in mind that the overall level of stress you will face during this endeavor is pretty high.  During this process, I found it was best to keep the workout intensity low.  It is advisable to do things like walking, easy bike rides and other similar low intensity activities.  You can up your volume for these activities, but keep it at an aerobic pace.  If you don’t know what that really means, a good rule of thumb is work out at a slow enough pace that you can have a conversation.  If you have to breathe through your mouth, you are working too hard.  Remember, the point of this study is to figure out what fuels you best in day-to-day life.  The added stress from hard, anaerobic workouts will be self-defeating.  That being said, if you are going to lift weights, shoot for maintaining where you are now, not gaining.  Your body will be going through a lot, don’t set it up for failure by forcing it onto a blood sugar roller coaster.  There is plenty of time after this test to ramp up your workouts.  The whole point of logging workouts is to start to accurately identify the normal feedback your body is giving you.  You’ll discover some cool stuff.

3) Log how much time you are sitting, or otherwise not moving.  I was astonished at how little I was moving throughout the day, especially on days I worked out.  I was an active couch potato.  You don’t want to be an active couch potato.   I realized my one hour of working out is not enough to offset 9-10 hours of sitting around.  It’s better to walk a lot throughout the day than burn yourself out in an hour and have to lounge around the rest of your waking hours.  You need to be aware of your daily movement habits.

4) Log any information your body is giving you.  Do you have a headache? Did you get phlegmy after a certain meal? Are you tired in the afternoons?  How much sleep are you getting?  You feeling anxious?  Why do you think these things are happening?  These are all clues you will use as you figure out how to best fuel your body.

5) Take at least 2 weeks and consume no high glycemic foods (sugar, grain, starch, dairy or processed carbohydrates).  Before you start this part, pull up a glycemic chart.  That is super handy when you go buy your groceries for this part of the test.  There have been books that came out recently that suggest doing this test for 30 days.   That’s good, too.   I went through this process before those books were written.  Two weeks worked for me.  The whole point is to let your body switch from primarily sugar burning to fat burning.  You will feel it when this happens.  If you are unsure you’ve reached this point after 2 weeks, go the whole 30 days.  During my two weeks, I even avoided fruit and most nuts.  I did eat a few berries though.  Throughout this time, eat only real food.  Nothing processed from a box or bag, even if it is organic or all-natural.  Locally sourced, non-GMO, grass-fed, single ingredient, chemical and antibiotic free are ideal.  Some folks call this “eating clean.”  Stay away from sugar and anything with a high glycemic score; let your body switch over to burning fat as the primary fuel. You’ll be eating a lot of salads, but that’s ok.  Also, it is important to note that I never let myself go hungry during those 2 weeks.  When I was hungry, I ate.  I didn’t limit the amount of calories I could eat either.  I just stayed away from sugar, processed food and anything else with a high glycemic score.

6) After the two weeks (or 30 days if you choose), introduce different carbohydrates one at a time to determine how they make you feel.  If they cause a digestive issue, blood pressure issue, or allergic reaction; don’t eat that particular carbohydrate anymore.  Do they make you tired?  Do they make you hungrier?  You will feel a difference.  If they don’t bother you at all, you’re good.  Almost everyone has some kind of carbohydrate intolerance.  This is how you figure out what yours is. 

7) Experiment to figure out what combination of macro-nutrients (fat, protein & carbs) fuels you best.  This means that after you have figured out what foods you have a negative reaction to (and thus avoid), it’s time to figure out your optimal nutrient ratios.  I did this through trial-and-error.  Since you are a food logging pro at this point, and you know what foods make you feel good, it is some simple tweaking.  An extra salad here, a little less meat there, or even adding an extra avocado to your smoothie.  This is where you really dial in how to best fuel your body every day.  Simply sliding the scale on the amount of carbs, protein and fats made a huge difference to me.

 So, I ask you: What is your personal health plan?  Feel free to use this outline as a starting point for your plan.  Go and do your own research.  Experiment with your food and your body.  Learn to read the messages your body is trying to send you.  You may find yourself eating in pretty close alignment to some diet (Paleo, Mediterranean, whatever).  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But ultimately, what you have discovered is a way to determine what best fuels your body.  You created a personalized plan that customized to your life. 

If this process seems intimidating, you want more information, or you would simply like an update, please contact us.  I know I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for the support of friends, family, mentors and coaches.  If you need a little more help, let me know.  I am passionate about helping folks live their lives the way they want. 

If this is your first time with us, welcome!  Here at getoutoftheweeds.com, we dive deeper into the various aspects of health, nutrition, wellness and family life.  Sign up for our newsletter to stay on top of the latest and greatest. 

Also, check in often for more information about our upcoming partnerships and other online endeavors to empower you to be successful.  Lastly, if someone comes to mind who wants to get their life on a healthier track and could benefit from this information, please share it.

We are excited you decided to take steps towards your healthy future.  We look forward to hearing from you.

[glare-gryphon]

Do Not Go Gently – Part 2 ~2300 Words Chapter Tags: Violence, Referenced/Implied Sexual Assault

The energy it takes to haul himself from Anakin's bed feels highly disproportionate to how little the activity actually involves. Having done so, however, Obi-Wan reasons that he might as well answer his incessantly ringing comm link. Ignoring it hadn't worked so far; whoever was attempting to contact him was being quite stubborn about making sure they actually reached him. The only Jedi who are insistent enough to get a hold of him are members of the Council and the small collection of friends he's managed to keep over the years. Either way, they will continue to call him until he's eventually forced to answer, if only to quiet the incessant chirping of the comm device and return to wallowing in his misery in silence.

He snatches the comm from the table, raising it to his lips and answering with a curt, "Kenobi here."

"Obi-Wan?" The voice on the other end of the line whispers, tense and quick. He recognizes the speaker: Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Padawan. She is not Obi-Wan's student--he has not allowed himself to take another since Anakin--but rather the pupil of Plo Koon. Koon is among the few Jedi in the Order that Obi-Wan can still tolerate, with his young, torgruta student falling into the same category. Intelligent, compassionate, fearless. If Obi-Wan ever could bring himself to train another pupil, he would want one rather like Tano. "Are you there?"

"I'm here. What's wrong?"

As far as Obi-Wan is aware, Koon and Tano are in the Temple this week while the latter catches up on her studies. She'd fallen behind when their last mission ran long, the negotiations they were overseeing delayed by the usual humming and hawing of governmental officials, and they'd been consequently grounded upon their return. The Coruscant Temple is meant to be a sanctuary for its people; there is nothing that should be causing the genuine terror he hears in her voice.

She launches into an explanation, but is speaking so fast and in such a hushed tone that Obi-Wan can only understand every fourth word. That's hardly enough to figure out what has set the Padawan on edge.

"Ahsoka," he says, interrupting her rant. The tone he adopts is harsher—commanding. Alpha. "Ahsoka, I need you to slow down and tell me what's happening. I can't understand you when you're speaking so fast."

"There's a Sith in the Temple!" She squawks, louder than she probably intended, because her voice drops back to a hush when she continues. "There's a Sith Lord in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. No one knows how he got in--he was just sitting in there when they found him! The Council didn't want you to know, but they haven't been able to  and Master Plo told me to go hide and call you."

Obi-Wan is already on the move, had been from the moment Ahsoka said 'Sith'. Calling his lightsaber to his palm from a table by the door as he throws it open, he sweeps out into the hall with determination. Sure enough, the emergency lights are flashing, younger Jedi are running for shelter in their respective quarters. He can't help but wonder how he hadn't noticed the chaos sooner. "Where are you, dear?" He asks the frightened Padawan.

"In a classroom a little ways away. There were younglings meditating by the Fountains--we're all hiding in here!"

"Ok. Ahsoka, I want you look outside the door, and if you think it's safe to move, I want you to take the initiates back to the crèche as quickly as possible. Can you do that for me?"

She heaves a breath into the comm, clearly trying to settle her nerves. "Ok," she says. "Ok. I can do that."

Obi-Wan's lips twitch into a grin despite the seriousness of the situation. Ahsoka is a strong girl; she will be a gifted Jedi one day. "Thank you. I'm on my way."

It's odd, Obi-Wan thinks as he hangs up the comm, that the Council didn't reach out to him. As the only member of the Order who's actually engaged and defeated a Sith Lord, he seems like the obvious choice for who to call when another one somehow manages to barge his way into the Temple. And yet, as he passes through the steady flow of Jedi headed away from the scene, their confusion and fear-scents clogging his nose and mouth, Obi-Wan thinks he can understand why they hadn't. These last years, he's been a loose cannon: unpredictable, uncontrollable. Would they really bet the safety of so many Jedi on a wild card?

He passes Ahsoka as he approaches the Fountains, offers her a small wave and sees the relief on her face. She has faith in him; Plo Koon has faith in him, even after all these years. That faith deserves to be rewarded. He will not back down here.

Rounding the final turn into the Room of a Thousand Fountains, Obi-Wan stops just inside the doorway to take in the scene before him. It won't do anyone any good if he charges in blindly, potentially making things worse. Observe first, then move.

It has nothing to do with the way the gurgle of the fountains drags up memories he can’t seem to avoid, waking or in sleep. It has nothing to do with having not stepped foot in this room in years. No. He is observing—that’s all. The Sith stands near the center of the hall, surrounded by the many beautiful water fountains crammed into the appropriately titled room. Young, human male, with short-cropped blond hair and sickly yellow eyes that flicker and burn almost as dangerously as the blood-red weapon in his palm. Obi-Wan can't scent him from here to determine his dynamic, the scents of the Council members blocking out the Sith's. Alien species may not have the same dynamic system as humans, but they still gave off distinct scents to a nose as sensitive as an Alpha's.

The Council stands between the Sith and the doorway, 'sabers raised in challenge as they attempt to herd their opponent back into a corner of the room and prevent him from escaping. Even from here, Obi-Wan can see their exhaustion. He does not know how long they'd been fighting this Sith before Koon asked Tano to call him, but it's a good thing he did. They don't seem capable of lasting much longer.

Obi-Wan finally forces his muscles into action, jogging into the room in time to feel the Force draw up with power—swell like a forming tsunami. He plants his feet, throws up shields, and when all that power comes crashing around him, he feels it washing harmlessly around him. It's a curious sensation, tugging at something in the back of his mind, but he can't quite put his finger on it.

The Council members are not so lucky. Already worn down by physical combat and without whatever key element has allowed Obi-Wan to stay on his feet, they are thrown backwards into walls and shallow pools by the strength of the Sith's Force-Push. Twitching and defenseless on the ground, it falls to Obi-Wan to step between them and the Sith.

Those still conscious seem startled to see him—to hear the hiss of his lightsaber as it activates to meet the Sith's first swing. He's strong, preferring the aggressive Fifth Form in counterpoint to Obi-Wan's Soresu.

This close, he can finally catch his first whiffs of the Sith's scent. The sweet tone of it, more floral than anything, takes him by surprise. He had assumed a Sith would be an Alpha—more domineering and stereotypically powerful. But no, he must be an Omega, because Obi-Wan can smell something else he recognizes: an edge of almost vanilla associated with an Omega's heat-scent. It clings to the Sith, faded enough that the Heat must have already passed but potent enough that it had to have been recent.

What's more surprising is how the Sith reacts when Obi-Wan uses that knowledge to his advantage. It is not the Jedi way to manipulate another through their dynamic, but Obi-Wan is not above it when it comes to facing combat with a Sith Lord. He reaches out, pressing his strength and presence and scent toward the Sith, forcing him to acknowledge Obi-Wan's position as an Alpha. It doesn't always work—Bonded Omega, and Omega simply too strong-willed to be cowed by such a brutish display, are usually immune to the effects—but this one falters in his attack pattern.

He falters, and stumbles, and is suddenly doing a great more evading that he is attacking. The Sith steps back, and back, allowing Obi-Wan to drive him toward the back of the room and away from the fallen Council. Until he's barely keeping up his defenses, focused more on Obi-Wan himself than the lit 'saber in his hand. It is when Obi-Wan nicks his thigh with the blade, drawing a pained whine from the Omega as he loses his footing and tumbles to the floor, that he realizes he might be able to end this without further violence. While he doesn’t have a problem with taking a life when necessary, there is something about this Sith that makes Obi-Wan think he isn’t quite as dangerous as the Dathomirian he faced on Naboo.

Obi-Wan stops his attack, staring down at the Sith as he struggles for the concentration to push himself upright. Eventually, however, he falls still except for his heaving chest and flaring nostrils as he greedily drinks in Obi-Wan's scent. There is something behind his eyes that Obi-Wan can't quite place, that has him from deactivating his saber and hooking it to his belt before crouching down to reach for the Sith’s.

The Omega growls unhappily when Obi-Wan's fingers curl around the hilt of his red 'saber, somehow having managed to keep a hold of it when he fell, but a soft hush from the Alpha has him loosening his grip enough to pry the weapon from it. Obi-Wan hooks the 'saber next to his own, reaching out carefully with his other hand to brush against the Sith's cheek. His eyes have taken on a glazed, distant appearance with the Alpha’s increased proximity, the mind behind them operating more on blind instinct than rational thought.

"There's a good boy," Obi-Wan murmurs, watching the Omega turn into his palm and nuzzle at the inside of his wrist. "Hello there, sweet thing."

When the Sith pushes up and leans into Obi-Wan's space, he doesn't protest. The Omega is unarmed, hasn’t shown any signs of wielding the Force against him, and is clearly worn down by exhaustion and injury. The younger man tucks his head into the hollow of Obi-Wan’s throat, scenting him. He returns the gesture briefly, if only out of common courtesy. Obi-Wan can hear the moans and groans of the Council as they struggle to their feet, and he would rather avoid any further confrontation now that he has the Omega at least mostly settled.

Running a hand down the back of the Sith's neck and shoulder, Obi-Wan is surprised to feel wetness and torn flesh. There is blood on his fingers when he raises them to eye-level, and tugging the back of the tunic down reveals a fresh Bond-mark imprinted in the flesh. Fresh enough that the fight had agitated it into bleeding again—fresh enough that there's a chance that the Bond with whoever bit him won't even take now that the Sith has spent so much time away from them.

Obi-Wan scowls, holding the Sith still with one hand while he prods at the bite with his already bloodied fingers, attempting to gauge its depth and severity. The Sith is quite young for a formal Bonding like this; if Obi-Wan had to guess, this might have even been his first heat. Those facts combined with his presence here at the Temple so soon after plants a suspicion in Obi-Wan's mind that turns his stomach.

Lips move against the skin of his neck; the Sith is speaking. Obi-Wan has to turn adjust his grip on the boy to hear what he has to say. "I knew I'd find you," he murmurs, mostly to himself. Exhaustion following heat and confrontation must finally be setting in. "I knew if I came here, you'd be waiting for me. I knew."

"How did you know?" Obi-Wan asks.

"You promised. You promised that if I waited by the fountain, you'd find me."

Obi-Wan feels as though his world has fallen out from under him anew as the Omega finally succumbs to unconsciousness, his full weight slumping into the Alpha's grip. What he suspects, what the Sith implies, cannot be. Not now. Not after all this time. Not like this.

"Well, look at you, Kenobi," Windu says, suddenly shattering the moment. Obi-Wan had been so focus on the Omega in his arms that he hadn't even heard the Councilor approach. "Sith-Killer, and a Sith-Whisperer."

"Yes, well, this one is in need of a fair bit of medical attention," he replies, schooling his voice the best he possibly can and waving his bloodied hand for Windu to see.

"What he needs is a holding cell, before he hurts anybody else," the Council retorts, reaching down as though intending to immediately drag the Sith there himself.

The ferocity of the snarl that rips loose from Obi-Wan throat is enough to startle the both of them. Windu's hand snaps back, a confused expression on his face, and Obi-Wan has to forcibly unclench his fingers from the back of the Sith's robes. "Medical attention first," he demands, quickly losing control of his tone. Hysteria threatens to overwhelm him; this cannot be happening. "And then—and then a blood test. To confirm his identity."

"You think you known who this is?" Windu asks.

Obi-Wan nods shakily, staring down at the Omega with an amalgamation of hope and dismay. "I—I think... I think this may be my Padawan."

[dustingrayves]

praecantatio

Pairing: elsain WC: 2077 Rating: T AU: harry potter au Category: fluff Notes: snippets of elsword and ain’s lives in hogwarts

1st year

Anxiety is almost palpable between the kids, their shuffling loud and whispers hushed by Professor McGonagall. Elsword’s wide red eyes look over the Great Hall.

The hat is placed onto his head and almost immediately it laughs, whispering ‘You’re just like your sister,’ just to him before exclaiming “Griffindor!” to the whole hall.

There’s cheers from the middle of the hall, Elesis standing up from her seat to usher him towards her, wrapping one strong arms around his shoulders and pulling him into a hug while laughing heartily.

“I knew you’d make it here, kiddo!” she says, and Elsword can’t his own grin, stretching his face.

The next student announced is a Slytherin, and Elsword is still distracted by his sister and all the other people by the table trying to talk to him and introduce themselves that he only catches a glimpse of silver hair, a tall boy making his way towards the cheering Slytherin table.

Elsword blinks curiously, but it’s like the boy disappears when sitting down.

2nd year

"Hey, who's that?" Elsword asks, and all the heads around him at the Griffindor table turn towards his pointing finger, aiming somewhere at the mess hall entrance.

"Who?"

Els' brows crease. "That pretty boy, with the silver hair. He always sits in the back of the class. He's just coming in."

"I can't see him..."

"He's right there, by the door! He's greeting the Bloody Baron!"

"Els, no one talks to the Bloody Baron."

"I still can't see him. You sure you don't need glasses?"

"Fuck you guys, I'm gonna go talk to him if you're not gotta tell me anything," Elsword grumbles, standing up and leaving his half-eaten pudding and stumped friends sitting there.

He makes his way through the crowd to where the Bloody Baron still hovers by the door. It's very rare to see anyone talking to him, and students even take a few steps away from him as they enter and leave the mess hall. There he is, the pretty boy.

Just as Elsword steps towards him, the Bloody Baron decides to take his leave and floats away, leaving the boy alone in the middle of the doorway.

"Hey!" he calls out, trying to get the boy's attention. He, however, either doesn't hear him or ignores him and starts making his way through the hall towards the Slytherin table.

Well, considering that and the green patterned scarf wrapped around his neck, he's probably Slytherin. That's more than Els knew three minutes ago.

"Hey!" he calls out again, shoes squeaking on the floor as he dashes up to his, tapping his arm to get his attention.

The boy stops in his tracks, turning to look at him no less than completely shocked. "You're calling me?" he asks incredulously, as if that idea is something laughable.

"Yes! Sorry, you're probably hungry... Uh..." Els falters, his courage dying out. He didn't really think through what he was going to say once he actually talked to the boy. "U-uh, what's your name?"

The boy blinks down at him - and he's so much taller than Elsword, towers over him even with his lanky limbs. "I'm Ainchase Ishmael," he says, muttering the next few words, "Usually no one notices me, haha."

Elsword's mouth opens in a gasp. He doesn't think at all before he is blurting out, "I don't believe that! You're so pretty, how come!?"

Ainchase, or Ain, as Els dubs him in his mind (see, he dislikes long names), tenses up, shoulders rising and eyes going wide.

Elsword realizes the meaning of his words and holds up his hands, waving them frantically. "Handsome! I meant handsome!"

Ain hugs the tall stack of books he's holding close to his chest, and though it's pretty hard from this angle, Els can see red creeping up his cheeks and ears. "T-thank you... You are very pretty yourself. Ah, I'll... have to go now. Fancy meeting you, um..."

"Elsword. S-Sieghart. Elsword Sieghart," Els finally stammers out with difficulty.

"Elsword," Ain repeats softly, "Fancy meeting you, Elsword!"

And then the Slytherin boy is scurrying off, hunched over his stack of books slightly and leaving Elsword behind with flaming cheeks and a burning stomach.

It doesn't take much persuasion to get Ain to sit with him somewhere closer to the front of the classroom. In fact, it's pretty easy. The tall boy just nods and follows him where he sets down his stuff.

Over the span of one day, Els learns that Ain excels at all the subjects, but doesn't gloat or even try answering when the teachers ask the class. No, instead he has to listen to that girl, Granger, as she blurts out all the answers before her hand is even fully outstretched.

Honestly, he'd much rather hear Ain answering.

But he does get to hear the boy whispering the correct answers to him whenever he writes down the wrong thing. The knowledge that Ain is watching him make all these stupid mistakes (and really, he could avoid most of these by paying more attention) and isn't even a little malicious while correcting him makes him feel irrationally happy. Not even Chung would do that.

And as much as he notices Ain pays attention to him, he pays just as much of it to him. His hand flicks lightly as he holds the quill, and when he holds his wands, it's never with all fingers, just three. His pinkie and index are always off the wood, and the grace of his movements is impeccable.

After nightfall, laying in his bed and staring at the red curtains, Els realizes he wants to know more about him. He wants to be friends.

3r year

Elsword helps Ain join the Quidditch team. Ain had probably said it on accident, but when the last game ended, he looked quite dreamy, and confessed that he'd 'like to try playing it. It looks so fun from the distance, you know? And flying is the best, so that's just a bonus!'

So Elsword didn't wait even a minute and yanked Ain all the way to the potion classroom, where Severus Snape was, clearing out the aftermath of a class with the first years with perfected flicks of his wand.

He eyes Elsword with obvious doubt in his eyes. "Mr. Sieghart. Mr. Ishmael. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Ain is visibly uncomfortable with the use of his last name, just like usual, so Els takes it upon himself to tell the professor all the details.

Half an hour and a flying demonstration later, the Slytherin team has a new Chaser. Snape pulls Ain away to talk to the team captain, and Ain's face is stretched into such a bright and vibrant smile that it creates butterflies in Els' stomach all by itself.

Ain on a broom is like looking at magic itself. The way he maneuvers it, and the way he uses the air itself to help himself... It's like looking at a Pegasus. Ain was born to be in the air, or at least it looks like it.

He almost can't see what's going on, but the crowd around him is going wild; cheering and yelling fills the air. Someone hands him a pair of binoculars — he thinks it's Hagrid, but he doesn't look and check.

With them, it is much easier to watch the silver haired boy.

Ain catches his stare a few times, and even mouths something, but it's too far for Els to be able to decipher.

Elsword had never liked Quidditch, not even a bit, never understood the hype, but everyone on the Griffindor platforms would not hesitate to bet that the loudest cheers whenever Ain scored a point were from him.

Elsword's first kiss happens when he's fourteen.

Waiting by the changing room, still holding a rattler, just like the majority of the students, he's taken by surprise when the door opens and the tall boy he'd been waiting for runs out and almost tackles him, arms wrapping around Elsword's shoulders and lips crashing against the redhead's.

It doesn't feel real. Ain's lips are soft like feathers, hold grateful like Els had personally put up the stars in the night sky. Els has to glance down to make sure he's still standing on the firm ground, because it feels like he's floating.

If he weren't a human, or if he were enchanted with a spell, he probably would've melted right then and there.

4th year

Hogwarts provides many hidden nooks and crannies for those who need it. If one were to pay close attention, they might catch a pair of students hiding in tiny, unused corridors, fingers twined with each other so tightly they were almost the same, with eyes full of adoration, wonder, young love.

Green and red press close, clothes shuffling as they hold onto each other, stealing kisses before emerging back to the more populated corridors, fluidly merging back into the crowd like nothing had happened at all.

Only tiny, knowing smiles that matched each other would betray them, if someone were to pay attention, but they aren’t. The Triwizard tournament seems to occupy everyone’s minds more than two boys hiding away to kiss.

5th year

The library is much more lively than usual, filled to the brim with students huddling in couples or groups to work with the same books. The OWLs had always managed to stir up the quiet place, and the students' chattering provides a nice white noise.

Well, of course, if they're not chatting right next to you.

Placing a red bookmark between the yellowed, fading pages of his book, Ain closes it and sets it onto the table, next to a stack of them.

He looks at Elsword, who, predictably enough, is doodling onto a piece of parchment instead of reading any books.

Seeing as he knows Els won't just start working out of nowhere, and he himself is sick of the books more than enough for now, Ain takes inspiration from the group next to them.

"What would you like to be when you graduate, Els?" he asks, fixing a strand of his hair that had managed to fall out of his braid.

Elsword looks up from his surprisingly accurate caricature of Snape at Ain. Setting down his quill, he hums while thinking.

Ain waits patiently until the redhead finally brightens up, opening his mouth. "I don't know yet. Not anything in the office, though, that'd be terrible. What about you?"

Ain doesn't need that much time to think; in fact he doesn't need any time to think. With the utmost confidence he says, "I don't care. Anything is fine if I could do it with you."

At the soft smile gracing his face and the heartfelt tone, Elsword's face fills with rushing blood, coloring his cheeks pink. He reaches over and bumps a fist into Ain's cloaked shoulder.

Ain laughs while Els picks up his quill with a touch of anger and embarrassment.

Els’ hand slips into Ain’s, fingers twining underneath both their robes’ large sleeves, hidden from sight even in the middle of the hallway.

Ain’s face colors a shade of pink and he gasps, tugging at his hand, but Els doesn’t let him go, instead squeezing reassuringly.

“Umbridge is gonna blow a fuse,” Ain mutters, but Els’ smile doesn’t wane even a little.

“Only boys and girls aren’t allowed near each other,” he says slyly, amusement and mischief twinkling in his eyes. “We’re just fine.”

Ain grips his book closer to his chest, looking around anxiously, but no one seems to even notice. He squeezes the fingers back softly.

7th year

Ain hadn’t been treated as a Slytherin for years. Being with Elsword practically every waking moment they could, and having Elesis’ blessing of ‘he makes my brother happy, so don’t fucking touch him’ made him part of their pseudo-group, so no one even bat an eyelash when he’d been the first from the Slytherin table to dash his way to the Griffindor one, taking his usual spot by Elsword’s side, wand gripped tightly in one hand.

McGonagall gave an order to escort the Slytherin students, but by then, Ain had been long gone with Elsword, following Elesis as she helped guide the masses of students with the prefects.

Els’ hand slides into his, a familiar warmth, and Ain squeezes on instinct, smiling down reassuringly.

Everything is chaos, everything is falling apart right around them, but they have each other, and right now, that’s what they need.

[zesusowzen]

A.M Baggs

I APPLAUD you.

For what you do for Autistic People.

Your Blog is amazing .

I resonated deeply in lot what Amanda had to say, had written from lived Experience on Autistic.

wowzers.

Last updated 13 May 2005

"Help! I Seem to be Getting More Autistic!"

What's this about?

Every so often, someone says, with perplexity, "I seem to be getting more autistic. I don't know why, and I know that doesn't sound possible, but it seems to be happening."

Those of us who experience this are often surprised, because of the general perceptions that are out there about autism. It is viewed either as something stable, or, as in the writings of Liane Holliday Willey, Temple Grandin, and other authors, as something that fades away with age.

The fact that some autistic people lose abilities with age is well-documented, but it is not always discussed in clear ways. It is clouded by terms like regression (which implies that loss of skills is growing backwards), functioning level (which implies that all functioning is affected at the same level and that this can be measured in a linear fashion), and more autistic (which implies similar things to functioning level). When autistic people ask organizations about it, we often get confusing answers — for example, when I asked one representative of a major autism organization about being an autistic person who lost some movement skills in adolescence, she said, "Yes, there is such a thing as late-onset autism," as if I had not been autistic before this happened.

This has been writing itself in my head for a long time. It started writing itself on paper about a year ago or more. I wish I'd had a list of things like this a few years ago, and it's based on what I'd like to have known. I hope it will be useful to other autistic people. It is intended to give people a list of starting points to understand what is happening to them. It is, though a starting point — more heavily focused on what is going on than what to do about it. This is because there are still more questions than answers, and because answers vary from person to person. I am providing answers that come with more questions. It is also intended to be practical first, medically perfect second — some of the research or opinions linked to from here may be largely wrong, but may be a starting point to looking at other things.

I hope it will be useful to other autistic people, who are the primary audience. Personal information is only disclosed because I hope someone in a similar situation would find it useful. This page could also be useful for non-autistic people who have an autistic person in their lives who is acting more stereotypically autistic than they had been, but they are not the people I'm directly aiming this at. It is not, and probably cannot be, exhaustive, and there will be things I cannot cover in here. However, I do try to cover everything I can think of, including things that are relatively uncommon. If something doesn't seem to fit, or seems obvious, feel free to ignore it. I will try to improve and add to this as time goes on.

I would like to cite my sources for this information, but unfortunately I don't remember most of the sources. I have included a list of further references at the bottom, but a lot of this is consolidated from years of information-gathering in which I did not frequently take note of where I found the information. New sections of this document contain the date they were added.

Note: If you are fairly new to knowing you are autistic or thinking about being autistic, you might want to read the section about learning that you are autistic before anything else.

What could be going on?

Note that in some of the cases below, neither the situation nor the result is necessarily negative.

Aging

When non-autistic people age, they often lose some of their former cognitive abilities in a subtle way. When autistic people age, what would be subtle in a non-autistic person can cause extreme-looking differences in an autistic person, because our hold on certain kinds of cognition is so shaky in the first place.

There has been very little study done on what happens to autistic people as they get older, but personal reports suggest that many common ways of dealing with the world as an autistic person can become less feasible with time. Thus, a person who has been working very hard to keep up with the non-autistic world may suddenly find herself slowing down and needing to do less of it. This can look like becoming more autistic, even when it's simply being less able to adjust.

Basic physical needs

This may sound obvious, but to a lot of us, it isn't. If a person lacks food, water, sleep, and in some cases hygiene, they are not going to function as well. Autistic or non-autistic. If you are malnourished (which can happen even if you eat the right amount of food, if you're not eating the right kinds of food or if your metabolism is fast), dehydrated (which some fluids you drink can contribute to rather than solve), or sleep-deprived (which can happen even if you sleep a lot, if you have something like sleep apnea interfering with sleep), you are not going to function as well. It is a good idea to look into these basics before anything else — wherever possible, if you improve food, water, and sleep, you might see improvement.

Being around other autistic people

For those of us who are echolalic or echopraxic, being around other autistic people can cause us to pick up mannerisms, phrasings, and sounds from others. When I lived around mostly non-autistic people, while I had autistic patterns of doing things, I was more likely to pick up non-autistic mannerisms to add to them. When I was in special ed, I picked up (without always realizing it at the time) mannerisms not only from other autistic people, but from at least one student with cerebral palsy.

There is something about other autistic people, though, that makes their mannerisms easier and more natural-feeling for me to echo than anyone else's — even when they are things I had not done before, they feel more right on my body. Some other autistic people have reported that being around other autistic people has a similar influence on them, and this has also been reported by Touretters.

Note: Some people see this kind of thing and say that it is exactly why autistic people should be kept away from other autistic people. I do not believe this. I do not believe that it is worse to have autistic mannerisms than non-autistic mannerisms, and I do not believe that autistic people make bad role models. I definitely don't believe that any of this is a reason to separate autistic people from each other or to encourage an autistic person to dislike being around other autistic people.

Brain damage

Non-autistic people with brain damage often develop traits that bear some resemblance to autism. Since autism is developmental, our brains have already developed the way they are, damaged or not, so there are some differences. But if an autistic person develops significant enough brain damage, it could show up as looking more autistic.

Many autistic people self-injure by banging our heads. This can cause brain damage, especially if we do it frequently, very hard, or to the point of knocking ourselves out or causing minor concussions. Having a head injury for some other reason, stroke, or brain tumor can cause brain damage. So can the drugs and shock treatments (ECT) that some autistic people are given.

The Traumatic Brain Injury Survival Guide gives some information about how brain damage can change a person. Many of the same traits can be autistic traits, so having them does not necessarily indicate recent brain damage.

Burnout

Burnout, long-term shutdown, or whatever you want to call it, happens generally when you have been doing much more than you should be doing. Most people have a level to which they are capable of functioning without burnout, a level to which they are capable of functioning for emergency purposes only, and a level to which they simply cannot function. In autistic people in current societies, that first level is much narrower. Simply functioning at a minimally acceptable level to non-autistic people or for survival, can push us into the zone that in a non-autistic person would be reserved for emergencies. Prolonged functioning in emergency mode can result in loss of skills and burnout.

With some diseases with long-term effects (and I am not suggesting that autism is a disease), it is the people who tried to ignore the long-term effects and "act normal" who often burn out, probably because they are drawing on emergency reserves to do so. There is a high chance that autistic people who attempt to ignore the fact that they are autistic and act like non-autistic people are subject to the same kind of burnout, or even autistic people who push themselves too hard in general without trying to look normal.

The danger here may be obvious: It may be the people most capable of passing for normal, the most obvious "success stories" in the eyes of non-autistic people (some of whom became so adept at passing that they were never considered autistic in the first place), who are the most likely to burn out the hardest and suddenly need to either act in very conspicuously autistic ways or die.

To the outside world, this can look as if a forty-year-old perfectly normal person suddenly starts acting like a very stereotypically autistic person, and they can believe that this is a sudden change rather than a cumulative burnout eventually resulting in a complete inability to function in any way that looks remotely normal. The outside world is not used to things like this, and the autistic person might not be either. They might look for the sudden onset of a neurological disorder, or for psychological causes, and receive inappropriate "treatments" for both of these, when really all that has happened is massive and total burnout.

This can also look much less spectacular, or be much more gradual, and it can happen in any autistic person. Sometimes, with more supports or a change in pace or environment, the skills lost come back partially or totally. Sometimes the loss in skills appears to be permanent — but even that can be somewhat deceptive, because sometimes it is simply that the person can no longer push themselves far beyond what their original capacity was in the first place.

Sometimes this kind of burnout is what leads adults to seek diagnosis and services. Unfortunately, many service systems that would otherwise support people in their own homes, cater only to people who were diagnosed in childhood, and will look at someone with a very good neurotypical-looking track record of jobs, marriages, and children with suspicion. They need to be made more aware of this possibility, because there's a high chance that an adult in this situation could end up jobless, homeless, institutionalized, misdiagnosed, given inappropriate medical treatment, or dead.

People training autistic children to look more normal or refusing to tell their children they are autistic also need to be aware of this possibility, because this is the potential end result ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years down the road. This is one of the biggest reasons for teaching us to learn and grow as ourselves, accounting for our strengths and weaknesses rather than as counterfeit neurotypicals.

Catatonia

While this is more of a sign than a cause, it is worth mentioning here. There seems to be a subgroup of autistic people who develop an increase in manifestations of catatonia during adolescence or early adulthood. This can happen to different degrees, and it can come and go. The cause is unknown at this time, and most researchers have focused on movement, although some autistic people have found that sensory issues are affected as well.

Catatonia is a much broader term than the stereotype of sitting in one place in an odd posture doing nothing, and it is not synonymous with hallucinations or something. It is a word used to describe any of a number of unusual movement patterns, including but not limited to freezing in a position from anywhere from seconds to days (and either being immovable or bendable into any position a person wants to bend you into), echolalia (imitating others' speech), echopraxia (imitating others' movements). Many of these traits are already present in autism to begin with, so it is thought that in some people, these traits may amplify over time for some reason.

Lorna Wing and Amitta Shah have written a paper on the subject of exacerbation of catatonia: Catatonia in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. While they have written about people in which this is extreme, they note that there are other people who have similar movement issues but who did not have enough of them to qualify for the study.

Note: It should be noted that catatonia can be easily exacerbated by neuroleptic drugs, which interfere with the process of directly connecting thought to movement, and that lethality of such drugs among people with catatonia is much higher than in the general population. If you develop signs of catatonia while on a neuroleptic drug (prescribed as "antipsychotic" and sometimes antiemetic), seek medical care immediately, because this can sometimes be a sign of a potentially-fatal reaction.

Change in Environment or Routine

Here are some of the more major examples of this category:

Getting married or divorced.

Getting fired, getting a job, or changing jobs.

Promotion or demotion at work.

Changing schools, dropping out of school, going up or down a grade in school, or entering school.

Moving to a new house or apartment.

Moving out of or into an institution.

Death in the family (human or non-human).

Making a new friend or losing a friend.

Change can be a lot more subtle, though. It can be someone moving your stuff around the room, or hanging a new picture on the wall. It can be changes in weather, climate, or society over time. Since having a regular routine is one way autistic people deal with the environment, when that routine is disrupted, then autistic people often rely on other autistic ways of dealing with things. We can also have less energy to deal with things and thus look more outwardly autistic. Depending on the person and the nature of the changes, this appearance of being "more autistic-looking" can be temporary or long-term.

Compartmentalized learning style, or trouble generalizing

[Added 15 May, 2004]

Some autistic people learn things, but have trouble accessing what we learn out of context. For example, if you (as I did) learn right and left facing a certain wall in a certain room, you might be unable to tell left from right outside of that room. Then, as you learn to generalize it a little bit, you might learn to tell left from right, but only when you are facing east.

If you learn a skill in one environment, you might think you have mastered it. And you might be right — in that environment. But then when you leave that environment, or when a small aspect of that environment changes, you might end up disoriented and unable to do something that you seemed very good at before.

Many autistic people know a lot of things, or know how to do a lot of things, but have a lot of trouble bringing that knowledge out on command. We might rely on triggers in our environments to help us do those things, but in the absence of triggers, our minds might go blank and be unable to come up with the right answer or skill to fill the needs of the moment. We might have one set of skills and knowledge that we can use with ease in one situation, and a completely different set of skills and knowledge that we can use with ease in another situation. In some situations, we may be unable to get at much of this knowledge at all.

This can make for some interesting experiences with apparent loss of knowledge and skills, or even having to relearn the same thing over and over when we forget we've learned it, or need to learn it for a new context. I don't know how many times I've told someone I didn't know something, and then later had the knowledge they wanted triggered in a different context. If this happens to you in drastic enough ways, it can be essentially the same as losing a skill, perhaps forgetting you ever had it, and having to relearn it from scratch if you can relearn it at all.

As an example, I was, as nearly all children were where I was a kid, drilled over and over again in what kinds of strangers to avoid. Like the kind who would lure you into a car with a toy. Yet as a twenty-something adult I was almost lured into a car by a toy. What stopped me was not that I remembered this was dangerous, but that I didn't like the people who were doing it or the fact that they kept touching me and talking about sex. I did not perceive what they might do to me, only that they were unpleasant. I had this skill, somewhere in my brain, but it did not come out at the appropriate moment, and it was days before I put things together enough to relearn this. I still do not know if it is in place enough that this could not happen again.

While what I describe is different from what happens in what gets called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it can definitely be amplified by PTSD. PTSD can involve mentally shoving certain terrible experiences into compartments where they hopefully won't be found easily, and it can increase a tendency to compartmentalize knowledge in general.

Deliberately adopting new strategies

The ways that autistic people behave do not materialize out of nowhere in order to make us look strange. They have purpose to us, and may help us to deal more efficiently with the world than the way a non-autistic person would go about the same task. Often, many autistic people will independently come up with the same way of approaching a situation (some of these ways are so common that they make it into the diagnostic criteria). However, not all autistic people will come up with these things, or some will have come up with them and eradicated them so long ago they don't remember having come up with them.

This leads to the situation in which an autistic person who has trouble dealing with a situation may deliberately choose to approach that situation in the same way as someone she have met who is also autistic. This has the advantage of being more likely to suit an autistic person's brain and senses.

For instance, a commonly-described activity among autistic people is to carry a single object everywhere. Not all autistic people come up with this on their own, but it can be a very effective way of dealing with the increased load of sensory input and processing demands in new places. An autistic adult may see someone doing that and think, "Okay, if they do that and it works, I'm going to try it." They may then look "more autistic" because they are using an strategy that is more efficient for the needs of an autistic brain rather than a non-autistic one.

This can happen with nearly anything labeled an "autistic behavior," because autistic people behave the ways we do for a reason. A person may stop making eye contact because he wants to listen to what is being said. He may start moving his hands in front of his face to regulate visual input. He might start regulating the amount he interacts with people in order to avoid overload and burnout. He may not have thought of doing these things before, but after seeing them work for another autistic person, he may have adopted them and found them more useful than anything a non-autistic person could come up with. This is not a bad thing.

Disuse

[Added 15 May, 2004]

Most people find that if they don't continually practise a skill, their ability to perform it fades. This can be the same for autistics, although it is not always the case. (It is not always the case for neurotypicals, either, hence the saying "It's like riding a bicycle" to describe a skill you haven't used but that is not lost with time.)

Autistic people can find that if we don't do things for long enough, we forget how to do them. Even if they are not the sort of things non-autistic people forget. (I nearly needed training wheels after not using a bicycle for a few years.) This effect can be amplified if the skills in question are not only not used, but not desirable in a certain situation (such as assertiveness in an institution).

If you have not done something for a long time, there is a chance that you will have forgotten much of how to do it. (There is also a chance that you have gained ability to do it, which I do not understand but which has happened to me a lot with skills I leave dormant for awhile.) This can mean you have to relearn it wholly or partly, and it may not come back to your previous level of ability.

Dropping a facade or rebellion against a taught behavior pattern

In those of autistics who either appear normal or try to appear normal, the facade of normalcy may be maintained by a set of precarious strategies. Anything that interferes with one of those strategies can cause large parts of the act to disintegrate.

A person may even be spending so much energy on these strategies that he does not have any energy left over to notice that he is acting. When the facade drops, he is left wondering what happened.

Other autistic people consciously say "Enough is enough," and stop expending a whole lot of energy trying to look like someone they are not, or doing things that they have been taught to do but which are useless to them. If you do this, be aware that what to you feels like you are the same way you always were but with less acting, to other people it can look like you've suddenly become a new person. This does not make it bad — in fact, it's important for people to be able to live life as themselves and not as an act — but the unpredictable behavior that others might have in response to this is worth preparation for where possible.

Drugs

Any drug that acts on the brain can have an unusual effect on an autistic person, and amplify traits. It should be noted that I am not a doctor. The following descriptions are culled from both medical literature and the personal experiences of many autistic people I have known, read, observed, and been. There has not been a great deal of research into the exact effects of drugs on autistic people, but we can definitely have unusual reactions — underreactions, overreactions, and "paradoxical" (reverse) reactions being the most common. None of the things I am about to relate are true of everyone, although some are more likely than others. And I am only putting the things in here that could relate to an apparent increase in autistic traits.

Neuroleptic ("antipsychotic") drugs, including the newer ("atypical") neuroleptics, can increase problems with cognition and voluntary movement, can lower the seizure threshold (see epilepsy) and induce a motor restlessness (akathisia) that can result in increased stimming, self-injury, and aggression. They can also induce a condition called tardive dyskinesia, which results in involuntary stim-like movements and cognitive losses and is close to irreversible. These drugs can also cause permanent changes to the shape of the brain, which are probably implicated in the long-term changes in cognition and movement. My father says that I have never moved the same — and that I look much more stereotypically autistic — since the first day I took Thorazine (chlorpromazine), and it has been eight years since that day, and four years since I stopped taking any related drug.

[Note: If you are on a neuroleptic and develop catatonia, seek assistance immediately and consider discontinuing the drug in the safest way possible. That can be an early warning sign of a potentially fatal syndrome called Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS). Even if you have an autism-related form of catatonia, this can be serious — in fact people with catatonia to begin with are more susceptible to NMS and to other adverse reactions to neuroleptics. Yes, I'm repeating myself, but this is life and death.]

Antidepressants can potentially disinhibit us, making us more likely to act impulsively and immediately on thoughts. Some people may find that they are more hyper and stimmy. Some people, such as Dave Spicer on bit.listserv.autism, report that their sense of being behind a facade increases. Some people have found that their sensory issues get worse and find the environment more overstimulating, and others have found themselves more anxious or active.

Stimulants can increase anxiety, which can lead to an increase in the sort of things we do to alleviate anxiety. They can also increase movement in general, making us more stimmy or ticcy.

Sedatives can impair thinking, with all the possible things that go with that.

Anticonvulsants can impair thinking and perception. If this is happening to you with one anticonvulsant, it might be a good idea to ask your doctor or neurologist about other ones. I had to try several (including one that induced outright delirium) before I found one that was acceptable.

The strong anti-fungals prescribed by some doctors in the (nearly always mistaken) belief that an autistic person has a "systemic candida infection" can cause a person to become extremely sick, which can in turn cause all the things that can go along with being sick.

Some street drugs, such as marijuana or LSD, can increase sensory fragmentation, sensory distortion, distorted sense of time, speech problems, anxiety, and so forth. Autistic people have reported extremely varying and unusual reactions to these drugs.

Emotional state

If you're in a bad mood, it can affect your ability to do things as much as being sick can. If you're in a long-term bad mood of some kind, that can have the same effect on your ability to do certain things as a physical illness. Even a very good mood, like being in love, can be stressful and reduce your capacity to do various things. Non-autistic people have a term — "lovesick" — that exemplifies the degree to which even a positive emotion can incapacitate people.

This means that if you are experiencing rage, depression, terror, love, hate, infatuation, or any other extreme emotional state, you could very well end up appearing to be more autistic than usual. Some people, though, find that they look less stereotypically autistic in these states, and that calmness and being at ease makes them look more stereotypical. For instance, if a person has been conditioned by fear into avoiding unusual movements, they may stop rocking when terrified and start rocking when calm again.

Trauma is an extreme emotional reaction to a usually-extreme negative situation, and it can cause significant loss of skills even in non-autistic people. If you have ever been in a situation where your life was in danger and that has changed you significantly, that is one example. If you have ever been abused (emotionally, physically, or sexually), whether by your family members, classmates in school, teachers, strangers, or staff, that can be another example. It is also possible that autistic people with some kinds of sensory sensitivities are more likely to perceive certain stimuli, such as being held down, as unbearably traumatic.

Epilepsy

There are many forms of epilepsy, not just the tonic-clonic ("grand mal") seizures people are used to hearing about. Some forms of seizures can even take place while conscious, and alter perception in some way rather than causing a blackout of some kind. Not all seizures are in the right part of the brain to be easily detectable on an EEG, and not everyone can manage to have seizures in the laboratory when the EEG is taking place.

There is an estimate that 25% of autistic people develop seizures of some kind at some point during our lives, and this often happens at adolescence.

Some researchers have hypothesized that there are autistic people who develop seizures or subclinical seizure-like activity in adolescence and lose a lot of skills. A popular article by Stephen Edelson is Autism, Puberty, and the Possibility of Seizures, although I make no claims for the accuracy of the part about vitamins and supplements and would not advocate experimenting on other people with them.

Erecting a new facade

There is a subgroup of autistic people who get along in life by imitating non-autistic people. Imitation can become a habit. When they learn that they are autistic, or when they start becoming more identified with being autistic, they can almost reflexively throw up another facade: That of imitating themselves to the point of self-caricature, or imitating other autistic people in a fairly superficial way the same way as they always had with non-autistic people.

As noted elsewhere, it is also possible for autistic people to deliberately or accidentally adopt each other's mannerisms or strategies for dealing with life without it being a facade.

Excuses or laziness

This is the section I am reluctant to write, because most of the people accused of doing this are not actually doing it, and too many of us have had to face these accusations to a degree that can even endanger our lives. But since it is a real possibility, it needs to be described. I just hope this doesn't cause too many autistic people to sit around questioning themselves to death, or too many non-autistic people to push autistic people beyond our capacity. Be aware that in the scheme of things, this is rare.

Some people and groups of people — autistic or not — have the sort of personality that is prone to making excuses not to do things they should do, to do things they shouldn't do, and to self-pity or public appeals for pity. This is not to be confused with sensibly rationing one's activities in order to avoid cumulative overload, or with stating the facts about one's life or abilities. But it does happen. And people who are prone to doing this, who are autistic, will naturally drag autism into things. As they would anything else.

Unfortunately, most of us who are accused of doing these things really are not. If you are agonizing over this, please stop if possible — agonizing won't do any good whether this applies to you or not, and most likely it does not. If you are a non-autistic person ready to accuse an autistic person of doing this, be aware you could be very wrong, and cause a person a lot of damage in pushing them too far.

Gaining or using new skills

It can be a normal part of even non-autistic people's development, that when a certain difficult skill is being gained, others are temporarily lost. In autistic people, this loss or disruption of skills can be longer-term or permanent, and more prominent than it would be in a non-autistic person. An autistic person who learns to talk may lose some social skills, an autistic person who gains some social skills may lose the ability to talk, and all kinds of other combinations of things. This may be a natural part of learning for some people, and in others it may be a sign that they're being pushed too far.

Many autistic people can only devote energy to one thing at a time. If you want to improve your ability to listen to people, you might have to give less eye contact. If you want to understand your surroundings without too much overload, you might have to rock and flap your hands more. When you're actually using more skill in one area, you might look more autistic to others because you don't have the energy to do things to look normal. See the section "Deliberately Adopting New Strategies".

Habit

Autistic people can be very much creatures of habit, literally needing objects to stay in the same locations and routines to happen the same way every time in order to function. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this; it is similar to how blind people frequently need things to stay in the same spot in a room so they can find them.

When you get into a routine, and have been doing the exact same routine for thirty years, it becomes much harder to deviate from the routine than it was when you had only been doing it for a year. Smaller changes seem like bigger changes. Travelling away from the place you are used to can feel like chaos, and your ways of dealing with that chaos can seem more outwardly autistic to you or an outside observer.

If you are concerned about this, it might be a good idea to force tiny changes in routine every now and then, and gradually make them bigger. This may be impossible for some people, but for others it can help them maintain a certain degree of flexibility, even if it is much less flexibility than a non-autistic person normally has. In any case, it's a personal decision.

Hormones

Hormonal changes can take place in a person's life for several reasons: Puberty, female menstrual cycles, menopause, and other generally normal hormonal changes in people's lives. Some people will also end up taking hormone pills for a variety of reasons. Just as hormones can change a lot of things about non-autistic people, they can change things in autistic people. Some autistic people react to these times in our lives in fairly extreme ways, for some reason.

Increased developmental demands

People — in general — are expected to follow a certain pattern of development. Autistic people rarely follow the usual pattern, and even when we seem to, there can be important differences. We are expected, however, to develop in a certain way, and the societies we live in are structured to the developmental standards of the non-autistic majority.

Because of this, our behavior may stay the same while expectations change around us. When I was six years old, curling up in a ball and hiding under things was something my parents called "curling up small". They thought it was cute. By the time I was a teenager it was considered pathological, written up as "regressing to the fetal position" in my medical records, and viewed by institution staff as attention-seeking. This wasn't a case of me becoming any more odd-looking, but a case of the expectations changing.

There are a lot of skills that people are expected to gain at different stages in life, that many autistic people only gain in a limited way, if at all. Sometimes we lack some very fundamental precursors to those skills, but this lack shows up in different ways in childhood than adulthood.

For instance, when I was a child, I could not clean my desk or locker. I was often kept after class to do so. I had poor sequencing skills and my perception of the world was so fragmented that even with the best of intentions and coaching there was no way I could get things into a semblance of order, and the only way I could get things even vaguely close was to take hours longer than any other child my age would have.

In the scheme of things as a child, this rates as "annoying".

Fast forward to adolescence and adulthood. The same sequencing and perceptual skills that were required in order to clean a desk, were also required in order to do what is expected of older people. Suddenly, without even having to lose any skills, I started to look a whole lot odder: A teenager who never bathed, never combed her hair, and wore the same clothes for weeks. An adult who could not grocery shop, take the bus, cook, eat, bathe, maintain a minimally sanitary environment, or remember that the front yard was not a toilet. This was not for lack of exposure to the means of learning these skills — my siblings learned them to a greater extent than I did — but for lack of having ever had the abilities that precede these skills. What was annoying as a child was life-threatening as an adult, not because the skill changed, but because the expectations of the environment changed.

There is another side to this as well. With increased demands usually comes an increased attempt to meet the demands of the environment. This can overtax an autistic person, with the usual kinds of results: Overload, burnout, or loss of other skills.

Institutionalization

Institutions can affect non-autistic people in certain ways that are very characteristic. They can create an inability to function without specific routines and rituals. They can create passivity and the inability to do anything that a person is not directly told to do. They can create disorientation when outside of a small familiar area. They can create an inability to approach people directly. They can cause a person to lose previously acquired skills for coping with the outside world, in favor of skills that are more adapted for the current environment and that can be harder to lose. Trauma, isolation, or sensory deprivation can cause a person to rock and stim. Prolonged isolation or specific social situations unique to institutions can cause detachment from other people.

These things can happen to autistic people too, and we've already got some of those traits.

There are many kinds of institutions. When I first got out of institutions, I didn't believe I had ever been institutionalized, because none of the places I was kept called themselves institutions and I was very literal. Institutional situations can occur in hospitals, group homes, state schools, residential schools, nursing homes, and similar places. Similar things can happen if you are in a highly structured environment such as the military or a monastery or convent.

Aside from these things, some supported living arrangements can be institutional despite their claims otherwise, some parents can run their homes like institutions, and some behavior modification programs can cause similar effects. Special education schools, day programs, and sheltered workshops can have this kind of effect too. And with just about any place that has an isolation room (often known as a "quiet room", "seclusion room", etc.), or any place where you have been deliberately locked in a closet or cupboard (or any other small room; some people lock people in bathrooms) by someone else for any reason, there is a fair bet that the atmosphere is the same one I'm describing. Jails and prisons, prisoner-of-war situations, and abusive relationships can also have this kind of effect to varying degrees.

At any rate, living in this kind of situation can increase certain autistic tendencies, whether to adapt to the environment or because of sheer terror resulting from bad experiences.

If you want to read more in terms of theory about the way these places can affect a person, I would recommend Asylums, by Erving Goffman, which explores the effects of not only traditionally-defined institutions but also boarding schools, the military, and monasteries. Some of the more level-headed literature out there on destructive cults (which need not be religious in nature) is not bad either, because it describes both the ways in which people can be confused into self-doubt, and also the loss of everyday living skills that comes from living in a place in which everything has been defined and controlled for you. There is plenty of such information on the Internet, and one book I have read on the subject (that had some pretty good ideas) was Combatting Cult Mind-Control by Steven Hassan. It should be warned, however, that some of this kind of literature has a psychiatric or religious slant (or both) that may not appeal to some readers.

Learning you are autistic or perseverating on autism

It is very common for people to appear more overtly autistic when first learning about autism. This can be for any number of reasons, most of which relate to other categories here. This period can last anywhere from days to years. I heard one person describe it as "the post-diagnostic regression".

Upon learning you are autistic, you might feel relieved of some degree of pressure that stems from having to push yourself hard and not knowing why. Without even meaning to, that relief can cause you to drop your guard a bit, or even be unable to continue pushing yourself as hard now that you know why you were doing it. You might spend more time around autistic people, learning autistic ways of dealing with things and possibly picking up some of their mannerisms. Behavior you have suppressed for a long time might re-emerge now that you know it's not caused by being stupid or something.

You might also be so scared that you won't be accepted as a real autistic that you start, as one person who had done so once said to me, become a "super-autistic", claiming every autistic trait you come across whether it applies to you or not. You might imitate yourself to the point of self-caricature. You might stop doing things you like doing because they don't seem autistic enough or don't conform to the stereotypes you've heard of autism. You might try so hard to regain your "lost self" that you end up creating a new facade. You might act like the autistic people you've known, figuring it's safe to act like them but not safe to do anything they don't do.

[siliconwebx]

Why Being Resilient is Essential to Success

The day my boyfriend moved his furniture out, a week after I’d ended our six-year relationship, my Mom called as I was curled up on my temporary makeshift couch of two oversized pillows pushed together. “I’m okay,” I said. “Oh, I know you’re okay,” she replied. “You’re strong as steel.”

Steel. I love that word. It’s a noun, of course, but it’s also a verb: to steel oneself, to mentally prepare for a difficulty that’s coming. Life is hard. Steel is harder.

There’s a storm before every calm. We’ve all faced one and will face more. You will not escape it. Some of us are probably in the middle of one right now.

Flailing and complaining, worrying and unraveling – these reactions don’t help us. They’re natural and honest, and they deserve acknowledgment, but the next steps are release, acceptance and bracing for impact.

Success isn’t found in the breakdown. It’s in the buildup.

We Need Resilience in Small Doses, Too

Resilience isn’t required for just the big things. Anyone who freelances, runs a business or is striving to level up in their career – or who has a newborn, is healing from an injury or is going through a divorce – knows that it takes bite-sized resilience multiple times a day. I’d argue that it’s more difficult to stay strong in little moments than in big ones. When life-or-death isn’t the conundrum, it’s much easier to buckle under lesser pressures, especially as they build up.

Rock Bottom Doesn’t Have to Be the Springboard

When the worst has happened, either by fate or your own fault, the way up is obvious because it’s the only way. You can be resilient before you stretch that rubber band that is your life as far as it’ll go, though. In so many situations, you have the ability to stop, shift and change the outcome; to improve your day now instead of waiting for tomorrow; to foresee bigger problems ahead and start making repairs now to avoid them.

Mister Rogers has a song called, “What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel?” and even though it’s to help children make better decisions when they’re angry, it’s applicable to adults, too – because let’s be honest, we can all turn into toddlers when we don’t get our way. Here’s the best line: “It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong, and be able to do something else instead.” Whether the difficulty you’re facing is within your control or outside of it, you can choose how you’ll recover.

(Have you see the Mister Rogers documentary? Watch it. Be prepared to cry.)

Maybe It’s a Good Time to Bail

When I was in high school, there were these two cousins who wanted to beat me up, tough, mean girls who wouldn’t have hesitated to punch me right in the face. They told me to meet them down in the parking lot after school. All day long, people came up to me to ask what I was going to do. I just shrugged, unflustered – “I’m not going to go down to the parking lot.” I left at 3 p.m., walked to my after-school job and nobody ever clucked another word about it.

We’re always bouncing back from something. Sometimes you have the luxury to choose what you want to cope with. I didn’t have to learn how to be resilient after getting a black eye. Instead, I bounced back from a scary threat and school-wide speculation, which taught me an entirely different – and more worthwhile – lesson.

Get real with yourself. What’s required here? What do you want to deal with? What are you even capable of dealing with? Is there a better, smarter choice with positive, long-lasting impact?

Life doesn’t reward you for taking the harder, tougher route for toughness’ sake alone. Your choices should make you a stronger person.

5 Ways to Be More Resilient

Assuming you can’t bail right now, here’s how to become more resilient, both in the moment and in daily life – think of it as your resiliency training.

1. Ignore the finish line. Believe in your abilities.

Few things turn out the way we envision them. A lot of the time, they end up way better than we could have pictured. Or way worse.

Goals are necessary so there’s something to strive for, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll know exactly how a situation is going to turn out. (I dive into this some more in my article about the illusion of control.)

Personally, the best things in my life have come from two ideas working simultaneously: (1) utter acceptance that I have no idea what the future will look like and (2) complete and total faith in my abilities. Sometimes my ability is as abstract as making good decisions and leading myself in the right direction, and sometimes it’s a lot more tangible, like being able to write well and provide good customer service to my clients.

The point here is that if you’re more confident in your capability than hung up on the outcome, you’ll have an easier time bouncing back because you’ll be relying on the most trustworthy person in your life: yourself.

2. Gamify it.

Right now, you can’t do the last thing – you can’t solve the entire problem – but you can do the next best thing. Sometimes that’s super hard, like the time I hiked Giant Mountain, fell three times, hurt my knee and realized I didn’t bring my headlamp as the sun was setting (or the right boots or enough water). Or like when climber Joe Simpson shattered the Hell out of his leg at 19,000 feet – spoiler alert, he survived and then wrote Touching the Void about the experience, which I recommend you read.

Joe and I both gamified the experience. He created a pattern of movements to use for each step; I got up and down that mountain in 100-step groups. I’m sure we both cried, but we also both lived to tell the tale.

The point isn’t necessarily to make the situation fun but to make it bearable, to keep the mind distracted and focus on one crisis at a time. If you’re not in something as threatening and unforgiving as the wilderness, you can even give yourself small treats as you reach mini-goals.

3. Manage your impulses.

If you’re generally an impulsive person in life, you’re going to be an impulsive person under stress – possibly more impulsive and with worse consequences. Staying calm and making rational decisions can help you be more resilient because you won’t make a situation worse before it can get better.

Since most days you’re going to deal with minor problems and not major ones, get used to acting less impulsively. Don’t make decisions out of pure frustration or even pure excitement – think them through first. Write a pros and cons list if you need to. Or see what happens if you make no decision right now and give yourself plenty of time to sit on it.

4. Move through the stages of grief quickly.

There are seven stages of grief:

Shock: Paralysis when facing the situation.

Denial: Avoiding the inevitable.

Anger: Bottled-up emotion and frustration pour out.

Bargaining: Trying to find a way out of the situation (but not in a healthy or productive way).

Depression: Realizing the inevitable is…inevitable, and being upset about that.

Testing: Looking for realistic solutions to the problem.

Acceptance: Finding a way to move forward.

People who are resilient move from the shock stage to the testing and acceptance stages quickly. They may even skip some of the stages in between, especially if they’ve faced the same difficulty in the past. Laurence Gonzales writes about this in Deep Survival (great book, BTW): “The best survivors spend almost no time, especially in emergencies, getting upset about what has been lost, or feeling distressed about things going badly.”

Forcing your way through the stages of grief takes a lot of willpower, especially because the middle stages are so tempting to sink into. Getting it all out can help, whether that’s out loud to someone you know or down on paper. If you need to, write out the different stages and how you’ve experienced them. Then start listing those solutions.

You can definitely practice this in everyday life. When something small-but-totally-annoying happens, force yourself to skip over the “I’m so upset about this” stages. Go right to solving the problem. The next time you spill an entire carton of orange juice on your kitchen floor, start cleaning it up without hesitating. If you forgot to buy something at the store, put your sneakers on and head back out before you can beat yourself up over it. If you get a splinter, gather the rubbing alcohol and the tweezers and get that sucker out. Just get it done.

5. Learn from others.

“Others have been through it too” isn’t comforting for everyone, but it’s always been comforting for me, especially when I can tie my experience to that of a specific person, not just the general public. We’re all unique butterflies, but honestly, one person’s heartbreak or firing from work or fight with a family member is a billion other people’s, too. Knowing that others came before, labored through and walked out the other end healed, employed or on speaking terms is supremely hopeful. Pardon my penchant for sappy stories, but this quote from P.S. I Love You pinballs in my head whenever I feel alone in disappointment or sadness: “Thing to remember is if we’re all alone, then we’re all together in that too.”

In practice, this can mean telling people about what you’re going through – you’ll hear similar stories in return. I’m not a “spill your heart out” person usually, so my solution has always been to pick up a book or read a magazine article about how Joe Famous Person faced something horrible and got through it. And if you really need a jolt of “everyone’s been here,” listen to Nate Berkus’ interview called “Surviving the Storm” on the SuperSoul Conversations podcast.

On the same note, this is a perfect time to give back. Helping others can give you a fix of “my life isn’t so bad,” or just shake you out of whatever slump you’re in. If you get a confidence boost from being selfless, I give you permission to enjoy that – it’s not selfish to feel good about yourself.

Wrapping Up

If you’re not a person who can handle daily life and all its teeny struggles, you’re going to have a difficult time moving through those stages of grief in order to help yourself when the you-know-what really hits the fan. Your habits and the way you handle your emotions on a normal day are the training and preparation you need to be truly resilient when you need it most. Get used to helping yourself in small ways so that it’ll be second nature when serious drama or trauma blows through.

Excited about being less impulsive and more cool, calm and collected? Check out this article about how responding instead of reacting can improve your business relationships.

The post Why Being Resilient is Essential to Success appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐ElegantThemes

[andrewdburton]

Saving regret — and how to avoid it

In November 2018, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper called “Saving Regret” [here's the full PDF version]. Once you wade through the study's academic language, there's some interesting stuff here about why people do and don't save for retirement.

Saving regret, the authors say, is “the wish in hindsight to have saved more earlier in life”.

Obviously, you can suffer from saving regret at any age. When I met 31-year-old Debbie for dinner last week, her issues boiled down to saving regret. She wishes she'd saved more when she was younger. But for the purposes of this paper, the authors turned their attention to folks aged 60 to 79, people of traditional retirement age.

The researchers found that two-thirds of those surveyed said they should have saved more when they were working: “66.6 percent said they would save more if they could re-do their earlier life.”

As you might expect, the authors found that high-wealth and high-income people experience less saving regret. (I'm pleased that the researchers recognize that there's a difference between income and wealth.)

But what causes saving regret in the first place? Why don't people save more? Let's take a look at what the study found.

Sources of Saving Regret

In their survey of 1590 people, the authors asked about education, personality, and what they term “positive and negative shocks”. (The latter is basically trying to to determine how unexpected events affect saving.)

After compiling the results, they reached these conclusions:

“We found only modest evidence for a relationship between our measures of procrastination and the desire to re-optimize saving.” Yes, procrastination is a factor in saving regret. But it's not as big as you might expect.

Failure to anticipate negative shocks — underestimating their probability and effects — has a greater effect on saving regret.

Overall, “a substantial percentage of respondents view their economic preparation to be adequate, yet they nonetheless express saving regret.” In other words, as many GRS have experienced, even when you think you have enough saved, you often wish you had more.

“Saving regret is high at the time of or shortly before retirement but is much lower at older ages,” the authors write. They believe there are two reasons for this.

First, when people stop working, they're faced with a lot of uncertainty. This uncertainty makes them long for a larger safety net, makes them wish that they'd saved more. In a sense, this is why I have been experiencing saving regret. When my life was settled, I was fine with my nest egg. But over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of unexpected, unplanned spending. Things seem uncertain. Because of this, I wish I had more saved.

Whether or not there's any actual increased risk to a person's savings, if she feels like there's increased risk, this leads to saving regret.

There's another reason saving regret declines with age: Consumption patterns change. The older people get, the less they spend. This decreased spending leads to greater relief. It lessens the stress.

A Shock to the Savings

Saving regret was greatest among people who always settle for mediocre results (85.8% of these folks experienced regret) and people who always put off difficult things (88.2%), but this is a very small sample of the whole. Plus, these are personality traits that, with effort, can be changed.

Another huge factor — one that could affect anyone — is what the authors term “economic shocks”. A positive economic shock might be receiving an inheritance. A negative economic shock might be losing your job.

From the paper itself, here's a table demonstrating the relationship between saving regret and economic shocks. (The number you want here is the “mean”. Convert this to a percentage to find out the relationship. For example, the 0.794 listed under mean for “Health limited work” indicates that 79.4% of those whose health affected their ability to work wish they had saved more.)

“Among those with saving regret,” the authors write, “66 percent reported experiencing a shock earlier in life leading to adverse economic consequences, compared with just 43 percent among those without saving regret.”

I found this tidbit interesting too: “Among those with regret, 38 percent reported that Social Security benefits were less than expected compared with just 26 percent among those without regret.” Perhaps it used to be difficult to anticipate Social Security benefits, but nowadays they should never come as a surprise. That info is easy to find.

In a lot of cases, it's not the shock itself that causes the problem. It's the failure to anticipate a possible shock. It's poor preparation.

The authors believe that people tend to be over-optimistic. They “[expect] future outcomes that are better than reasonably likely”. They think they're better than average and will achieve better than average results. Plus, they suffer from the “illusion of control”, an exaggerated belief in their ability to direct their destiny.

This last point is important for me (and many GRS readers).

I am a vocal advocate of becoming proactive. I believe strongly that, to the extent possible, we should all work to manage those parts of our life that fall within our “locus of control”. Some things — the weather, the economy, the actions of other people — are outside of our control, and it's foolish to spend our attention on them. But others — our attitudes, our relationships, our saving rates — are absolutely under our control, and it's foolish to ignore them.

When reading this article, I fretted at first that the authors were arguing that people like me believe we can control more our life than we actually do. I realized, however, that they're actually saying something different: Those who experience saving regret mistakenly believe that people and events in their Circle of Concern actually fall in their Circle of Control.

Money bosses like you and me may not have perfect perceptions of what we can and cannot control, but I believe we have a better understanding than those who express saving regret. We recognize that many things are beyond our control, so we prepare for possibilities. We expect the unexpected.

Avoid Saving Regret

The authors of “Saving Regret” don't delve deep into solutions. Their paper is informational, not prescriptive.

That said, I think the info provided in the paper suggests a handful of solutions to saving regret. If you want to save enough for retirement, do the following:

Forecast the future. I know it's tough to tell where you'll be in five or ten years. Sometimes, it's impossible. All the same, it's important to try. Having a plan reduces saving regret. The researchers found that “saving regret was highest among respondents who stated that they do not have a financial plan”. The longer a person's planning horizon, the lower their levels of regret.

Plan for problems. You cannot predict when bad things are going to happen. You don't know if (or when) you're going to get cancer, a drunk is going to crash into your car, or a typhoon will wash away your beach home. You can, however, be relatively certain that something bad will happen sometime. Your best bet is to be prepared — just like a Boy Scout. Maintain an adequate emergency fund.

Be proactive! There is never ever a reason that your Social Security benefits should come as a shock. The Social Security Administration issues periodic statements about estimated benefits. Plus, it's easy to look up projected benefits online. This is but one example of how you can take steps to prevent future surprises.

Master your money. “The relationship between saving regret and financial literacy is also strong,” the authors write. People with high levels of financial literacy experienced half as much regret as those at the lowest levels. To avoid disappointment later in life, learn everything you can about personal finance.

Save more. Yes, this is an obvious solution to saving regret. I get it. But let's make this explicit: Your saving rate — the difference between what you earn and what you spend — is the most important number in your financial life. Saving rate isn't just vital for money nerds who want to retire early. It's a key factor for achieving any financial goal.

Nothing can guarantee your financial future. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune can wreak havoc on even the best-prepared people. But you can maximize the odds of positive results by taking smart steps now. You can decrease the likelihood that you will experience saving regret by taking action today.

Final Thoughts

If we knew when we were going to die, financial decisions would be much easier.

If I knew, for instance, that I would be mauled by a bear on, say, 04 July 2029, then it would be a simple matter to make sure my retirement nest egg lasted another ten years.

On the other hand, if I knew that the fateful bear attack wouldn't come until I was 120, then I could take appropriate steps so that I had enough money to last me seventy years.

But I don't know when and how I'll die. Neither do you. As a result, the best we can do is guess how long we'll live and how much money we'll need.

Very few people regret saving money. In fact, these researchers found that only 1.7% of respondents would have saved less if they could re-do their earlier life.

While 66.6% of respondents wished they had saved more when they were younger, about 10% of these folks say they could not have done so. There wasn't any way they could have spent less. But that means 60.9% of those surveyed could have and should have increased their saving rate.

What do people wish they'd spent less on? Men wish they had spent less on cars. Women wish they had spent less on clothing. And as much as it pains me, everyone wishes they had spent less on vacation. I sure hope my own travel spending doesn't come back to haunt me later in life.

Poorer people have greater saving regret. The authors write: “Among those in the highest wealth quartile, 38.9 percent expressed saving regret; among those in the lowest wealth quartile, 71.9 percent did so.”

It's tough to trace cause and effect here, of course, but I don't think it matters. The message is clear. The poorer your personal economic situation, the more important it is for you to save!

Wading through the jargon, there's a lot of interesting stuff about aging and aging in this paper. I've touched only on the main points. Some of the background info and asides are equally fascinating. (How do researchers predict how people will make future decisions? How do they model saving habits? What do they think of self-determination?)

But the bottom line is obvious: To avoid regrets when you're older, save more now.

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[fashiontrendin-blog]

The Bald Truth About Losing Your Hair

http://fashion-trendin.com/the-bald-truth-about-losing-your-hair/

The Bald Truth About Losing Your Hair

For the average hirsute, image-conscious man, there are no three words in the English language more likely to prompt a gulp of foreboding than … ‘male pattern baldness’. A lexical trio so follicularly frightening that some men (Jude Law, we’re looking at you) feel the best course of action is to ignore it entirely.

But why should we? What’s so terrible about having a baldy bonce anyway? Well, nothing. In fact, studies have consistently found smooth-headed blokes to outperform their hairy cohorts when ranked in terms of perceived alpha male traits like manliness, dominance and power. In fact, many men attach a stigma to baldness that actually only exists in their own unconvincingly comb-overed heads.

Yes, being completely bald may mean you’re never able to wear your faux fur-trimmed parka zipped right up to your chin again without looking like a hard-boiled egg emerging from the rear end of a German shepherd (the dog breed, we hasten to add). But if that’s the only drawback then what’s all the fuss about?

In order to answer that question and all the rest of them, we’ve delved bald-headlong into the subject of male pattern baldness to equip you with everything you need to know before embarking on your own fuzz-free journey into the great hairless yonder.

Why Is This Happening To Me?

For young men in particular, the realisation that you’re losing your beloved locks can feel like God is singling you out and punishing you for a crime you may or may not have committed. In reality, there is something far less holy, yet every bit as uncontrollable, at play.

Male hair loss, premature or otherwise, is not caused by the judging hand of an omnipotent deity but by genetics and a chemical imbalance of a hormone called DHT (or dihydrotestosterone for syllable fans).

DHT is a chemical derivative of testosterone, created when the androgen gets mixed with an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, causing some complicated science stuff to happen involving lots of numbers and letters… but let’s not get bogged down in that. The thing we’re really interested in is what DHT actually does.

DHT: The Baldness Hormone

“DHT’s main function in the body is to maintain and develop sexual characteristics in men, as well as promoting a better sense of wellbeing due to the fact that it inhibits aromatase [an enzyme linked to estrogen levels],” explains renowned Harley Street hair specialist Dr Ranghu Reddy of The Private Clinic. “It also plays a key role in the development of male characteristics such as facial hair during puberty.”

Put simply, DHT is the chemical responsible for granting you a nice, bushy flavour saver. However, while it may be good news for your chin, DHT can spell disaster north of the eyebrows.

“While DHT helps with facial hair, it is also one of the contributory factors for male pattern baldness,” Dr Reddy adds. “This is because, in genetically susceptible men, the activity of DHT hinders the proper growth of hair follicles through a process called ‘miniaturisation’.”

When this happens, the DHT hormone attaches itself to the root of the hair follicle, causing the growing stage to become shorter and shorter with each new cycle. “Eventually the hairs will stop growing altogether,” adds Dr Reddy. “At which point hair loss will become more visible. This could be in the form of a receding hairline, a thinner head of hair or the all-too familiar bald patch.”

Dispelling The Myths

For each male pattern baldness fact served to us by science, the internet spews up several complete and utter fallacies. Allow us to debunk five of the most prevalent for you right here, right now.

Baldness Is Inherited From Your Mother’s Father

Taking a look at your maternal grandfather’s head is often sold as a surefire tonsorial barometer, but as any bald grandson with a hairy grandad will tell you, it’s not always pinpoint accurate.

In fact, while there is a key gene for baldness carried in the X chromosome, a chrome dome anywhere on either side of the family could be an indicator of your own hairless future.

Thanks a bunch, Uncle Bill.

You’re Only Receding Because You’re Brimming With Testosterone

Sorry to break it to you, but having a shiny melon doesn’t actually mean your body is bursting at the seams with testosterone (or ‘man juice’ as we almost wrote before quickly realising our mistake).

Male pattern baldness is dependent on testosterone but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have more of it than normal (with the obvious exception of Dwayne Johnson, that is). Unfortunately for your bragging rights, the process is mostly down to genetics.

Your Hair Loss Could Be Down To Stress

Contrary to what cartoons may lead you to believe, there is no correlation between high levels of stress and an increase in the likelihood of male pattern baldness.

So don’t worry next time you get a week’s worth of work dumped on your desk at 3pm on a Friday – at least your hair won’t fall out. Unless you tear it out right there and then, that is.

You’ve Been Wearing A Hat Too Much

So, you saw the video for Limp Bizkit’s ‘Rollin’ in 2000 and refused to remove your red baseball cap for the two consecutive years that followed. Since then you’ve gone balder than Fred Durst, the bassist and the drummer combined. And you’re probably kicking yourself because you heard that hat wearing can play a part in your follicular fate. But don’t worry, it doesn’t really.

Baldness caused by wearing a hat is simply an old wives’ tale. So you can stop beating yourself up over your adolescent headwear habits. As for the regrettable rap-metal phase…Yeah, feel free to continue berating yourself about that.

Shaving Hair Makes It Grow In Thicker

Many a bumfluff-moustachioed teenager has eagerly shaved away at his sideburns with his dad’s Mach 3, in the hope that maybe – just maybe – he’ll be greeted by Wolverine staring back at him from the bathroom mirror the following day. Many have tried; all have failed.

This is because shaving hair doesn’t actually cause it to grow back thicker. When the hair grows in again it may feel slightly more coarse at first but this is only due to it having a blunt tip.

The Psychological Toll

For all the jokes it has cracked about it, there’s no escaping the fact that even for the most laid-back of individuals, hair loss is no picnic. And it’s not purely an image thing, either. Even for men who are completely unconcerned with their looks, going bald is a sign of ageing and a grim reminder that the clock is ticking away.

“While hair loss may have few physical health consequences it can have a big impact on people’s mood,” explains Kerry Montgomery, a research associate at Sheffield Hallam University who has co-authored papers on the psychological effects of hair loss. “Hair is such a big part of how we look, and our identity. It represents our individual image and style.”

Because hair loss is so much more common in men than in women, it’s all too often assumed that the psychological effects are much less prevalent for those of us with a Y chromosome. However, in a world where male grooming is a thriving, multi-billion pound industry and social media has us more obsessed with image than ever before, that could not be further from the truth.

“We know that men experience difficulties,” adds Montgomery. “Their daily care routine may change, the way they view their appearance, and thoughts about how others view their appearance are all significant changes. We also know that men are less likely to get help if they are experiencing problems with their mood.”

However, support is available if your journey through male pattern baldness is proving to be a particularly rough ride. In addition to healthcare services, charities such as Alopecia UK can provide assistance for people living with hair loss, including practical advice, as well as the opportunity to speak with others going through the same thing. There’s even an international radio show called The Bald Truth, described as an on-air support group for people losing their hair.

So, if hair loss is really bothering you that much, what can you do to combat it?

Toupée, Or Not Toupée?

Male pattern baldness is no longer the guaranteed path to a shiny scalp it once was. We may not have a miracle cure just yet, but scientists keep assuring us that they’re right on the cusp of a major breakthrough.

In the meantime, there are a few other things you can try in order to reclaim some of your hair.

Medication

While it’s true that an easy fix remains just out of science’s reach, there are drugs that can fight the onset of male pattern baldness – namely Minoxidil (marketed as Rogaine) and Finasteride (sold as Propecia). If you’ve noticed yourself thinning on top, chances are you’ve already come across one or both of them during a frantic Googling session. But do they actually work?

“Both Finasteride and Minoxidil have been proven to preserve existing hair,” says Dr Reddy. Effectiveness and results vary from person to person, but the claims that the drugs can halt hair loss are actually completely true.

However, there are a couple of caveats. “None of the medication can actually regrow hair,” Dr Reddy adds. “But finasteride does have a propensity to reverse thinning hair.”

In addition, if you want to continue to enjoy the benefits of the medication, you will have to keep taking it until something better comes along. This is a commitment, financial and otherwise, that a lot of men either choose, or are forced, not to make.

Non-Surgical Hair Replacement System

Not only do old-fashioned wigs carry a bit of pantomime stigma, they also force wearers to live in constant fear of strong gusts of wind, thieving pigeons and the grasping hands of inquisitive children sitting behind them on the bus. However, if the advent of driverless cars, canned sandwiches and actual robots hadn’t already given the game away, this is the future we’re living in, and now we have the hairpieces to prove it.

Non-surgical hair replacements offer a semi-permanent fix for male pattern baldness by attaching real hair to the head with a strong adhesive, thus ensuring it stays firmly in place, no matter how determined that child may be to remove it.

A hair replacement system allows the wearer to wash, colour and style the hair just as he would if it were his own. The only downside is it will need to be changed every 2-5 years at a cost of £500+ each time.

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Hair Transplantation

Semi-permanent options are all well and good for some, but if you’re looking for the full Monty (or the full Rooney) the surgical route could be the best way to go.

“A hair transplant can significantly restore lost hair from the head, and even the beard,” explains Dr Reddy. “It’s a permanent solution that can be completed in as little as one or two sessions.”

The procedure works by taking functioning hair follicles from the back of the head (the donor site) and implanting them in the top of the head. Once complete, the follicles harvested from the donor site continue to behave in the same way as they did before they were removed, resulting in new hair growth on what was previously a barren scalp.

However, what many people thinking of undergoing the treatment don’t realise is that its success is dependent on the interlinked use of Minoxidil or Finasteride in order to prevent any of the other non-transplanted hair from thinning further. If that’s a commitment you’re prepared to make, then a hair transplant is probably your best course of action.

Embracing The Bald Life

Pills, potions, surgery and wigs may be the answer for some men, and if that’s you, fine. However, for the rest of us, there is a much simpler, faster and cheaper option available. Let’s put it like this: if you like the idea of being able to spend 10 minutes longer in bed every morning and have men in pubs assume you’re twice as hard as you actually are, the solution is merely a haircut away.

The practice of head shaving has been turning balding men into badasses for as long as there have been razors. That wispy combover can give off a vibe that you’ve lost control, but by picking up a pair of hair clippers, removing the guard and going to work you’ll put yourself back in the tonsorial driving seat and allow yourself to face hair loss on your own terms.

Talk to any shaven maven and he’ll likely tell you how much better he felt after he stopped desperately clinging onto the last of his hair and plucked up courage to take it off once and for all. It can be a liberating experience. Plus, get it out of the way while you still have youth on your side and you’ll grant yourself a nice head start on your peers, most of whom will have to contend with the onset of male pattern baldness and a mid-life crisis all at the same time.

But those aren’t the only plus points when it comes to taking the nuclear option. Once you’ve invested in a set of clippers and taught yourself how to use them, you’ll find that you’re practically rolling in money that you’d have otherwise given a barber to try in vain to disguise your ever-receding hairline. And as far as how you’ll be perceived by any potential partners, just look at Jason Statham, Samuel L Jackson. Even Larry David, who refuses to shave the back and sides has made the look his own.

How To Shave Your Head

Getting rid of the fluff is a big step but you probably know deep down it’s the right thing to do. However, before you take the plunge you’ll need to make sure you know what you’re doing. With that in mind, we hit up Joe Mills, one of London’s finest barbers, for his advice on the matter.

“If you think the time has come to shave your head then I would suggest you clipper it down first,” suggests Mills. “Initially, you want to start around a grade 3 and then work shorter. If you have a round face I would suggest you have a 3 or 2 on top and the top of the sides and go for a 1 and a fade around the edges. This will help change the shape of your face a little. “The trick is to keep it trimmed as it won’t look great if it gets fluffy.”

So, pretty simple. However, if you’ve had a taste of the bald life and are craving that next hit, you may decide you want to get the razor involved.

“If you want to shave your head bald, then this is best done the same way as your face,” explains Mills. “You need to trim the hair down super short with clippers first, then wet your scalp down with warm water and apply a shaving cream or gel. The hair on your head is different to your face and tends to be less coarse. Also, your scalp isn’t used to a razor so go easy. Rinse the blade regularly during the shave to keep it clean and clear of stubble.”

The Best Haircuts For Thinning Hair

If you’ve not quite reached Prince William levels of thinning yet then you may want to consider taking a trim to your barber before you start going ham with the Bic and the shaving foam. Admittedly, no matter how good your barber is he won’t be able to restore any of your lost locks, but what he can do is give you a cut that flatters your receding hairline.

But what should you be asking for? Well, here are a selection of the best options.

The Buzz Cut

Taking your hair down with the clippers to a uniform length all over is a great way to cater for a diminishing hairline while not going all out bald. If you were thinking about shaving your head but want to test the waters first this could be the trim you’ve been looking for.

The High & Tight

If the illusion of thicker hair is what you’re aiming for then this sibling to the military crew cut can grant you the added volume you desire. The cut takes the length very short on top and even shorter on the back and sides. This will help to create some balance between the thinning hair around the crown and the denser hair elsewhere.

The Slicked-Back Undercut

While it may not be much good for disguising a receding hairline, this undercut look is a great option if the offending area is at the crown of your head. The combed-back length on top will cover any embarrassing bald spots once its styled. Just try to avoid swimming pools.

The Short Crop

If your thinning is still relatively minor a short crop might be a good way to go. This style is cut short all over with scissors and has the power to make your locks appear fuller than they actually are.

Final Thoughts

So, far from being the terrible fate many men make it out to be, going bald is just a natural part of the ageing process and there are a number of things that can be done to fight it if you decide that’s the way to go.

However, before you spend your life savings on an expensive cosmetic procedure, do us a favour and try shaving your head first. You never know, once you start saving money, enjoying more time in the mornings and getting compliments, you might just realise that a bit of hair isn’t so important after all.