#and it's much safer to answer them in fiction than inflict it on anything in the real world

[kedreeva]

What would happen if a chick had nothing to imprint on, not even hatchmates, or if it couldn't see anything? What would that chick act like?

I don't know, as that would be very cruel to do to a baby, so no one would or should do it.

[alo-piss-trancy]

Ok hi, I didn't wanna say anything, but please don't write knifeplay/bloodplay for Yuri. I def don't wanna spoil anything, but it's learned on a certain route that Yuri has a s*lf h*rm problem (I'll leave it at that).

You honestly seem like you're not trying to be a jerk with this ask, so I'm going to do my best to answer this as politely as possible without compromising my personal beliefs on the matter. This is going to be long and a little serious, but please note I'm not attacking you or trying to start a debate. I'm just laying all my thoughts on this down at once so I make myself clear, because a short answer would leave a lot of nuance out.

I understand what you're trying to do here. For the record though, I also considered that a pretty massive spoiler and I did not appreciate that at all. Even if you all think you're 'helping', don't do that again. Y/uri was pretty much the only character I'd managed to avoid most spoilers on and you killed the surprise for me. This game is already so full of fluffy 'filler' in the beginning that I don't have a ton of big plot points to look forward to in each route.

Now, I realise this is a very delicate topic and incredibly triggering to some people, especially with those two things combined. I am 100% willing to tag it with just about any variation needed to ensure you or others affected can blacklist/block it and never have to see a word of it in the future. I'd also be happy to go back and tag that original text post I made if needed. I mean that. You all are welcome to ask me to tag things anytime, and so long as you're polite about it I'm perfectly willing to oblige to the best of my ability in future posts! If I occasionally forget, just toss me a light reminder and I'll jump into editing and add it in.

That said, I want to make it clear that I am very firmly against censorship. I'm willing to take all necessary precautions to ensure people can curate their experiences on this blog and AO3, but at the end of the day I can still post whatever fictional stuff I choose to. As can anyone else. Same goes for more formally published media.

Now, it's entirely possible I would have gotten to that part of the game and decided 'oh dang, I'm not so enthused about that fic idea anymore...'. My whims and ideas change frequently, and what you mentioned is a heavy topic with a lot to unpack and process. It's also entirely possible that future plot would only provide more fuel.

Fyi, when I originally mentioned the knifeplay I was actually thinking a lot more along the lines of her doing it to the protagonist, not the reverse. But for the record, if I did choose to write it with focus on Y/uri, I would still be well within my rights to.

This next part of my answer is going to address some heavy topics, this is your warning!!!

Sometimes people's kinks are a way to take a thing that is personally scary or upsetting to them and find a way to reverse it. To find pleasure or power or get used to the idea of the awful thing in a safe, controlled fashion. I'm not going to go into the full details on this because there's plenty of explanation and research elsewhere already written up, as well as an excellent book on the subject, and I'm not turning this blog into a discourse debate. But I needed to mention it for my point.

There are plenty of stories that could be explored with Y/uri in this context. Did she have this kink before the self harm events started and it was completely unrelated, or did she develop it afterwards? How did she discover it beforehand? If developed afterwards, did it start out as another way of harming mixed with pleasure in a self-destructive way, often done sloppily and without proper technique? Or was it strictly used as almost exposure therapy to deal with those urges and thoughts in a safer, more contained scenario, maybe even allowing the partner she trusted to wield the knife to prove their bond/reinforce that she can be loved without being hurt deeply, that she is worthy of affection and trust and loyalty. Maybe this finally helps give Y/uri a tool to embrace her 'weirdness' without harming herself and others. Or, what if she thinks it can be a useful tool and is sure she's ready, but partway through the scene she gets triggered or has flashbacks... how does she deal with it? How does her partner? Can it be overcome with effort, research, and taking things slowly, or does she realize this kink is actually completely off the table for her?

What if she has this kink and is excited to try it, but her partner isn't? How does she take that rejection? Or do her poor social skills mean she skipped negotiation to begin with and attempted it in the middle of a vanilla session? Would her partner freak out or even get mad, or try to swallow their fear and let her do it so they don't hurt/offend her, even at the cost of their own comfort?

This topic also opens a ton of potential plots for darkfic, but I'll refrain from discussing that out of respect for you and others.

So as you can see, there's much more to explore than 'Knife=Hot'. I believe those discussions and ideas are necessary and provide important fuel for thought when explored fictionally, especially since mainstream media doesn't cover a lot of them.

~~~

I feel I should take a second to clarify knifeplay for those who may be unaware. It doesn't always equate to actual cutting/drawing blood. That can be an aspect, but usually only by those far more experienced and, you know, actually into that. A lot of participants don't actually go that far. Mostly, it's either about the physical sensation of the knife touching you at all, or the adrenaline/controlled fear and intimate trust of a partner bringing an object like that so close/teasing you with it.

In fact, it's frequently advised in those circles (especially to newcomers) to use a dull butterknife instead, because it simulates the same feelings of metal on skin/can dig in a little without any real risk of cutting/drawing blood. Even if one chooses to use a different knife, it's still pretty common to dull the blade, or some people even substitute with a closed pair of scissors (combined with the partner blindfolded, you can't really tell it apart from the real thing).

These versions of knifeplay are well controlled and ultimately pretty harmless, so long as both parties know what they're doing and stay alert. And more experienced players with sharper knives are even more cautious/have studied extensively to know where/how deep to go without risking scarring/serious injury.

Remember the golden rules of kink: Safe. Sane. Consensual.

With those in place, it is not nearly the same as self harm. Just as controlled, consensual, well-negotiated BDSM with safewords, respected boundaries and a trusted partner is never in the same league as abuse.

~~~

Now that that's out of the way, back to my point:

There's no perfect representation or narrative for everyone, in any group (be that gender/sexuality/triggered by certain things, etc). Every human being is different, everyone interprets media differently, and everyone takes away different elements from stories.

What one person in a particular group may find cathartic, relateable, or painful but necessary food for thought, another may find completely repulsive, personally hurtful, offensive, something they can't stand to hear. And guess what? Both of those can be true at the same time. One side is not immediately right over the other.

There are queer characters or interpretations of them in fics that I vehemently despise, might even find hurtful or sickening and think 'how can anyone create this, it's insufferable! People in 'my group' aren't like that, it's a horrible representation. I can't relate to it at all!' But you know what? Other people can and do, may find comfort in those exact narratives and experiences, may heal their pain instead of inflicting more. And that's great. It's what they needed or wanted and if I don't like it, I click away and do my best to avoid it.

There are specific tropes and narrative themes I personally cannot get through without being triggered into anxiety attacks or dragged back to bad times and places in my life. Sometimes I see them tackled in ways that are hurtful or seem insensitive to me. But I recognise that for someone else, it's exactly what they needed to see to get through that or come to terms with it, or see a way they wish that thing could play out. I would never dream of telling those people they aren't allowed to enjoy it, OR telling the creator of that piece of media or a tv show 'Hey ummm please don't use this plot because it turns me into a human wreck for a week'. Because it's not remotely my place to do so. They can create whatever they want, they have no responsibility towards me or my well being. A few might be kind enough to include a warning at the beginning of that episode or in the description, but they are in no way required to. It's up to me to curate my experience and try to keep my guard up/research what might have those tropes, and in the rare occasions I get blindsided, yeah, it hurts like hell. I struggle, I might even backslide a bit. But I just have to try my best to deal with it and make a note to be more careful next time. Because you can't control the world around you, not even the online world, and you have absolutely no right to. The only right you have is to protect yourself without infringing on other people's boundaries/rights.

And there's also another important point. There doesn't have to be a big important point or explanation for why a creator creates something, or why consumers can enjoy that creation! If someone wants to create a plotline with all of my triggers used in the most 'insensitive', 'wrong', pointless ways possible, strictly for Entertainment or pure kink material instead of some deep dissection of the issues involved? They can go hog wild!!! They are 100% allowed to do so on this earth, and I can't (and wouldn't want to) do a thing to stop them.

One person can read a kink fic and it hits a very emotional theme for them/they think it explores a deep topic well. Another person can read that same fic and get nothing out of it except their rocks off. Both of those readers are completely equal and 'allowed' to enjoy that fic. Both reasons are completely valid reasons for why the creator was 'allowed' to post/create that fic in the first place. Nobody needs permission, nobody has to answer to anybody except themselves. Period. This extends to any topic, any type of fic.

Yes, even for things I find absolutely abhorrent and insensitive and don't understand/want to read ever. I may resent everything about its existence, but I will defend to death the creator's right to make it exist in the first place.

It only affects me if I let it affect me. If someone's making content I despise or am upset by and can't handle, I can choose to ignore or avoid them, blacklist those tags, I can block them and move on with my day. I can do anything within my own bubble, but the second I consider going into their bubble and saying they can't make that thing, I am in the wrong. Because I'm not respecting their space and rights.

If someone makes cookies with ingredients I'm highly allergic to, pastes the ingredient warnings all over the box where I read them, and I still eat one, would anyone cheer me on for blaming them when I have a reaction? Would anyone think it was remotely okay of me to start calling up every bakery in town and saying they weren't allowed to bake those cookies EVER, because some people somewhere might be allergic?

No. They'd tell me I was crossing the line, because I'm infringing on other people's boundaries and lives. I'm expecting everybody else to take responsibility for something that, while horrible and painful, was my fault for touching.

Now, if someone sets out unlabelled cookies not realizing I'm allergic to something in them, and I eat it and have a reaction, that sucks. It's an awful experience. But is it the baker's fault? As long as they didn't do it maliciously, not really. They can be advised politely to label it in the future, and I can do my best to remember to ask/be more cautious next time I come across something I'm unsure of, but they're still allowed to bake those cookies for themselves and others.

Now, if I deliberately baked cookies with an ingredient that people are very frequently allergic to (ex. peanuts) and set it out in a crowded buffet without a warning label, that's a jerk move. That's intentionally trying to cause harm to others. But simply baking that flavour of cookies still isn't a crime or harmful by itself.

~~~

I'll be honest, I'm running out of steam and I think I've said most of what I have to say, so I'll wrap it up. I want to reiterate that I'm not ripping into you with this long answer, anon! I understand why you sent me what you did and I'm trying not to come off as harsh. I'm happy to go back and tag things and will tag anything else similar in the future!!! But at the end of the day, regardless of whether I personally end up writing that fic or not, or even want to after I get to that plot, I don't agree with telling anyone they can't/shouldn't write it at all. I wanted to try and explain my viewpoint thoroughly, and I hope you can respect that, just as I'll respect and try to accommodate you and other followers. This is the only time I'll really get up on a soapbox like this, and I have no interest in debating these things on my blog further, but it is a topic I've been passionate about all my life so I'm afraid I'm not budging on it.

[irispublishersmedicaljournals]

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

Can Emergency Medicine Become Redundant?

Authored by Andrew Hague

Injury and illness

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

Doctors are role models

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

Causes of injury

There are four classes of causes of injury:

4. Misfortune

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

Consequences

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

Carelessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recklessness

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

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

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

Aggression

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

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

Misfortune

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

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

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

Psychology

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

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

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

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

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

Trauma Infection

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

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

Conclusion

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

Indexing List of Iris Publishers: https://medium.com/@irispublishers/what-is-the-indexing-list-of-iris-publishers-4ace353e4eee

Iris publishers google scholar citations: https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=irispublishers&btnG=

[howtohero]

#248 Countdowns

00:19:59

Well, it finally happened, somebody is trying to kill us. I suppose it was only a matter of time really. After all, we teach superheroes how to be superheroes. You could probably trace every foiled evil plot and captured supervillain from the past two and half years back to us. In fact, I recommend you do that right away. Any time evil has been defeated and the world has been saved is on us. We just haven’t been able to say that because we didn’t want villains coming after us, but like we said, somebody is trying to kill us.  (If you are a crime-fighter and take offense at the notion that all of your successes should actually be laid at our feet, please, stuff it, we’re the ones who are about to be killed. The least you could do is let us have this.)

00:19:34

About 26 seconds ago, we received a bomb at our offices. Well, technically we don’t know when the bomb was sent here. We are not good about checking our mail. We’ve all got our excuses. Parenthesis Guy is not allowed within 300 feet of any mailman in our city. (I got turned into a dog once and I was pretty jazzed because finally I could express my utter ire and hatred for mailmen in a socially acceptable fashion. Unfortunately, my colleagues here managed to break the curse just as I was about to pounce on our mailman.) Curly adamantly believes that if the Devil ever comes to collect on the debt Curly owes him, that he will do it through the United States Postal Service. {And I’ve yet to be proven wrong!} Lawyer Guy is a very lazy, good for nothing freeloader who can’t be bothered to pick up a few envelopes off the floor. [I… I don’t work out of your office. Are you guys ok over there?] No, we’re less than 19 minutes away from dying. Dr. Brainwave hasn’t been allowed to touch the mail ever since he built that army of origami robots out of envelopes with our address on them. <Honestly, even I was surprised that no superheroes came to take me away from here after that one.> And me? Well, I refuse to open the mail because I have a crippling fear of inadvertently starting a countdown on an explosive device. Validation has never tasted so sweet. (You were the one who opened it!) It was just my birthday and I thought somebody had sent me a present! {That seems fair actually, it did “Happy Birthday” on the package.} (Ok, but the “birth” part had clearly been crossed out and the word “death” had clearly been written above it.) I thought It was a hilarious gag! But honestly, this is fine. We can make this work for us. Today, for what may very well be our final post, we’re going to talk about countdowns.

00:17:03

I’ve often seen people wonder why supervillains would even include countdowns on so many of their evil schemes. Wouldn’t it be better not to give the heroes a clear timeframe for when their evil plot will be perpetrated? Would it not be better to simply show up, blow something up without warning, and call it a very evil and very successful day? Well, yes and no. While blowing something up with no countdown might result in a very successful and agonizing explosion, it causes the villains to miss out on being able to inflict an additional level of psychological torture on their victims as well. Think about all of us here, huddled around this bomb, watching it countdown. Why, we’re going positively mad. (We’re using this time to talk about the relative value of countdown clocks instead of doing anything productive to actually stop it so, yeah, that’s pretty batty.) Exactly! The mindset of villains is that their victims will suffer from fear, anxiety and desperation as the clock ticks down, and then they’ll get blown up! <Plus, countdown clocks are not really as useful of an early warning system as you seem to think. Most of the time, the numbers displayed on them are inaccurate and the explosive will go off much sooner than you think it will.> (Wait what?) [Seriously, do you need me to call someone?] Maximum torture. Maximum evil. {It’s maximum evil that our office is about to be blown up and you still won’t let us go home early for the day.} You should’ve thought of that before you used up all of your vacation days back in May! {For the thousandth time. I was mugged and in a coma.}

00:15:19

Curly makes a valuable point though. Few things are worth your life, and if you can get out of where you are, you definitely should without wasting any time trying to diffuse the bomb in the time you have left. One of the fun things about having foreknowledge of an impending explosion is that your adrenaline is going to be pumping through the roof. This means that many of your pain receptors will be dampened and you can get away with doing things you would not normally be able to. So you can hurl yourself out a nearby window. Kick down a door. Punch a wall down! Shrink yourself down and flush yourself down the toilet! When there’s a ticking time-bomb in your midst, any way of getting out is going to be safer than sticking around. (It should be noted, dear reader, that ever since our Escapology post all of our doors now lock from the outside and we have to come up with increasingly absurd ways to escape our own offices every evening. So we’ve very much backed ourselves into a corner here.)

00:14:01

If you can’t leave the room you’re in, perhaps the bomb can. Bombs are often much smaller than humans. (Shrinkers notwithstanding. Honestly, if you have access to shrinking technology, you should probably shrink the bomb before you shrink yourself and flush yourself down the toilet.) If you’re able to move the bomb, and you’re fairly confident that nobody around you will be injured, try throwing it out the window, or chucking it down a trash chute, or flushing it down the toilet! <Fortunately, our office is nestled in between two preschools, so no matter which direction we throw the bomb, we win.> That is obviously incorrect and we’re not going to do that, but there isn’t a preschool floating above us. (Wow, good thing we moved last year.) So what we’re going to do now is just pick up the bomb and throw it as high as we can. Worse comes to worst we accidentally blow up a bird or something, but honestly, they’ve had it too good for too long anyway.

00:05:59

Well that was a terrible idea, we should not have touched the bomb and we certainly should not have thrown it through our skylight because it fell right back down and we are 6 minutes closer to death and destruction. <Again, it’s going to be less time than displayed actually.> [Why do you guys even have a skylight that opens?] (When we first started How To Hero, we operated out of a car that had a dope sunroof and we’ve been chasing that high ever since.) If throwing the bomb doesn’t work, or it causes the timer to speed up, you might want to look into alternative methods of stopping the bomb from going off. Thankfully, we live in a world of superheroes and a world of superheroes is a world of fantastical science! We could use a time-dilation bubble to slow down the timer forever! We could open up a portal to a dead universe and drop the bomb through it! We could send it back in time! We could send it forward in time and make it tomorrow’s problem! We could use a technology neutralizer to neutralize the technology in the bomb! We could call upon our bomb-diffusing robot, Todd! The possibilities are endless! Well, not for us. Unfortunately, we keep our time-dilator, portal generator, time machine, and technology neutralizer in an offsite storage unit that is at least an 8-minute walk away. (Plus we’ve locked ourselves in.) And unfortunately, Todd the bomb-disposal robot is a disco convention in Tallahassee (he is a robot of many interests!) and it will definitely take him more than 4 minutes and 33 seconds to get here (and he has definitely been screening our calls).

00:04:29

If you can’t get rid of the bomb using the power of science fiction, you might have better luck simply disconnecting the timer from the bomb. If the timer isn’t connected to the bomb the bomb won’t know what time to explode and it probably just won’t! Maybe! I don’t know, we’ve only got 4 minutes to save ourselves. (Readers are encouraged to start playing “4 Minutes” by Madonna……….. Now!) If the timer is attached to the bomb with screws unscrew them. If it’s scotch taped just cut through the tape. If it’s a series of different colored wires… ah, hm. Which wire are you supposed to cut? Does anybody know? (Blue.) {Green.} <Chartreuse.>  So, no. Guys, come on, you’re looking at the bomb, you know none of the wires are those colors. Ok so we can’t remove the timer, we can’t move the bomb, and we’re stuck in here. (And Todd the robot who diffuses bombs won’t answer our calls.) Right, and Todd the bomb-bot won’t pick up the phone.  (Can’t really blame him though. You know how much he loves disco. He probably didn’t even bring his phone.) He is a robot his phone is in his head. {So, where does that leave us?}

00:03:30

If you can’t remove yourself, the bomb, or the timer from the situation, another thing you can do is to contain the bomb, and thus, the ensuing explosion. Look around you, see if there is anything that you think is powerful enough to lessen the effects of the explosion. You’re going to want something durable, so no glass display cases or wooden music boxes.  (Wait a minute... Something durable... Like something that can contain, among other things, unholy sky liquids, eternally damned souls, and all powerful cosmic artifacts?) Oddly specific but I guess. (Does anybody have one of Jerry’s Homegrown Condiment Jars????) Are you kidding me! (Do you have a better idea?) Well I guess not! Does anybody have a Jerry Jarman jar? {I’m pretty sure he blacklisted me after I yelled at him.} <Personally, I believe he’s the one who sent us this bomb!> Ah gosh.

00:00:50

(You know what? It’s really weird that “4 Minutes” by Madonna is only 3 minutes and 10 seconds long. Now what are we supposed to do? Just sit in silence like a bunch of idiots?) {Maybe one of us can eat the bomb?} Nobody’s eating the bomb! That’s stup- Wait, Dr. Brainwave’s Greatest Shame! (What?) {What?} <NO!> What, this can work! <You dare invoke that name!> Look, we’ve got a giant monster in our backyard that I’m reliably informed will eat anything. In my experience if something will eat me there’s little it won’t eat. She’s 38 feet tall, and a mile wide and an adorable abomination of science who I’m pretty sure will be fine if she eats this bomb! (I don’t know...) What other choice do we have! {Did you forget about the fact that all of her internal organs are sentient beings and musical theater professionals? We can’t risk them getting hurt in the explosion!} Oh, you’re right. I did forget about that. <That’s all right, I’ve figure out what needs to be done.>

00:00:10

<By my estimate we’ve got about five seconds left before this thing explodes and takes all of us with it. I don’t know about the rest of you but I find that completely unacceptable.> Yeah, the rest of us aren’t exactly pleased Brainwave. Though, if I’m honest. If I’m going to get blown up, I couldn’t imagine a better group to spend my last few minutes with. (Awwwwwwww. You love us.) {I think I’m gonna cry.} <All of you idiots shut up now. Listen, none of you are going to die. None of you can be allowed to die. You were right, this guide has saved the world, seemingly by accident, more times than I can count. And I’m a doctor, I can count pretty high. If you die here today, if this guide dies today, well that very well could be it. So I can’t allow that to happen.> What are you doing Brainwave? (I cannot believe it hasn’t been five seconds yet.) <Well, I guess you can say I’m saving the world.> Hey! Put that bomb down, every time we touch it it speeds up! <Well, t-minus three seconds then.> What are those? Rocket boots? Have you been wearing rocket boots this whole time? <I read what you said about air superiority being crucial, and it’s a good thing I did!> {Wait, you actually read this guide?} Put that bomb down right now. <Of course I read the guide, do the rest of you not read it?> (Only the parts I’m in.) {That doesn’t even make sense, your parts are all commenting on the other parts!} Brainwave, I don’t know what you think you’re doing but if you’ve really read through the whole guide then you know how stupid I think heroic sacrifices are! <Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a hero then.> You are missing the point! <Thanks for letting me live in your basement. The mutant alligators will need to be fed. Tell DBGS that I love her, and tell Professor Brain-Scrambler that he’s a hack and that he can suck it.> Frederick wait! (Whelp there he goes. Right through the skylight. The skylight that we just said is retractable. He just went right on through it. Pretty baller actually.) How likely is it that this whole thing was just some big prank? {Pretty likely I’d say.}

00:00:08

00:00:07

00:00:06

KABOOM

[Guys? Guys what happened?] Oh god. He’s dead. [Who is? What’s going on?] Brainwave- Dr. Brainwave... He... He sacrificed himself for us. That idiot. (Oh god oh god there’s- There’s blood and glass everywhere.) (Who better to clean up all that blood and glass than Jer-) NOT NOW! [Is it true?] Yes. Dr. Brainwave is dead.

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

↬ a few empty glasses, a few dozen messages.

date: august 2020 / september 2020 / october 2020.

word count: 1,936 words.

summary: part one of ash only finishes writing his album in time because he fights with youngjoo which is… you know… great for that ‘self-inflicted suffering for the sake of #art’ habit of his. the #LetAshSayFuck squad wins tho.

triggers: alcohol, marijuana.

notes: creative claims verification. mentions of youngjoo near the end.

august 2020. 

he starts the song as a concept instead of a story, and that would only make sense to ash looking back on it, when everything is clearer and not muddied by the mess of fiction and truth it eventually becomes.

it isn’t the type of song that would normally come to his mind on its own in a mostly stable state, and that’s the beauty of his slow journey of teaching himself to bring to life stories that aren’t so personally his own. it’s initial creation lies almost purely in lyrical and musical context for the album and the overall storyline that was being adhered to, but, to ash, there’s still an element of authenticity in it even from the beginning that keeps it from completely sticking out like a sore thumb in the final track list.

not every word and note of the song is a direct reflection of what he’s been through in his own life, written in a moment of intense emotion, raw and real and based entirely on feelings he writes about as he experiences them like so many of his songs have been, but that’s part of the pride he feels when it’s finally completed. the song is still influenced by ash’s own life in the grungy, dirty, regretful ways his music so often is, while being a song primarily created for the album instead of pure emotional self-indulgence in every single note and lyric. he’d long been able to identify his inability to depersonalize from his music as one of his downfalls as a songwriter, but working to get better at that could only help him write more diverse music in the future. there’s no better way to improve at something than to practice it, he figures at the start of the journey the song takes him on.

the instrumental itself isn’t so unusual. most of it is crafted in the dim light of the studio one night. it’s mainly built upon a few bars of piano that had come to him in the midst of brainstorming. it’s haunting in a certain way, the way the melody repeats so much throughout and the clinks of the keys contrasts with the more typical trap elements he layers on top of it.

ash isn’t so sure he likes the differing sounds at first. it gets even more questionable over time, but once he’s come around to a more final arrangement of layers, it has settled into itself in a kind of not-quite-dissonant harmony, slowly building up to a switch in tone from mellow drag to something heady and almost other-worldly with a released emotion behind it.

it isn’t entirely intuitive in its composition like ash usually goes with, and as he begins to piece together the structure, ash has his doubts about that, too. there’s a voice in the back of his head insisting he scale it back to something safer, but ash argues back with the cowardly voice that he isn’t married to the song yet, so if his attempt ends in a tragic, flaming trash pile of a song, ash doesn’t have to release it. songs don’t become unsalvage once taking a few turns down the wrong paths, and little good would come from insisting on sticking with his more typical ballads or classic melancholic r&b tracks every time he sits down to write out of a stubborn desire to stick to his comfort zone. 

in the end, the song isn’t that out there anyway and the busy-ness becomes a representation of all of the clashing emotions at the beginning, or the end, of the story he’s telling.

september 2020.

in the process of putting the song together, he comes to a better understanding of what the song will be and where it will fit. the path he wants his album to follow has become more clear to him, and at some point in the middle of the process on a late night he can’t even remember now, ash had made his start on the lyrics by making a list of ways a relationship can end on his phone.

anger

relapse

unable to move on / regret

acceptance (/ regret?)

happiness

the song he’s written feels like an ending. not one he wants to be the final note of his whole album, but he’ll worry about that later. this song is meant to be on the more toxic side of the end of a relationship, and he has too many songs in his catalogue already about relapsing back into the past. blame it on his current situation, but that’s been a theme he can’t seem to escape from when he sits down and writes purely based on what’s on the forefront of his mind.

by process of elimination, this one has to be about anger.

it doesn’t take long after making the decision for ash to begin his attempts to get lyrics out onto paper. anger after a break-up is the emotion from the list ash is least familiar with, even less so than acceptance, and no matter how he tries, his turn of phrase keeps lapsing back into something different than what it’s supposed to be. there are elements of anger in relapse and regret and regret hangs heavy in anger, but anger must be the most toxic mix of everything. it’s the refusal to take even a step toward acceptance of the end, refusal to admit shared blame, refusal to even fall back into old routines out of resistance to moving on.

if all of the movies he’d seen and books he’d read are to be believed, anger comes the most often in the aftermath of relationships that had had something poisonous in the cracks from the start. it seeps out until it floods, or that’s how he imagines it. perhaps it could stem from a relationship based heavily on unfettered passion and sheer physical attraction, leading to the neglect of the more emotionally important aspects of a relationship. ash hasn’t been in a lot of relationships himself exactly like what he’s aiming to write, and despite the temptation to take blame off of himself to make the end of any relationship easier, he’s also never been the type able to place fault on his exes when it’s so easy to see the mistakes he himself has made. after all, he’s cursedly prone to his own constant brand of fatal mistakes in love.

iin a way, mistakes are more sure in his relationships than love itself.

trapped in an inability to get out of his own head and his own more frequent cycles of relapse and regret, regret and relapse, ash turns to film and music first, but when that isn’t enough, he tries for something more candid.

the next time he goes into their brand new shared workspace, he asks kyung and erin and kiha about their histories with break-ups in hopes they’ll be able to spark something for him. kyung dances around the question and tells ash he should try dating someone hot who pisses him off if he wants inspiration so badly. ash doesn’t know why he’d expected anything different, but pushing will be pointless, so he leaves kyung alone. erin isn’t much help either. she and ash are too similar, and their conversation ends in the pair commiserating over their shared tendency to wallow in regret once a relationship comes to an end, although he can tell her experience with toxicity is even less than his.

kiha is ash’s best bet, and ash knows that, so he isn’t sure why he goes to him last. ash takes notes in his head as they speak in a low-lit studio. if it hadn’t felt rude, ash would have pulled out paper or his phone to take real notes, but kiha’s occasional lack of human decency isn’t going to bring down ash to the level of treating the man’s past relationship troubles like a spectacle.

he leaves the night he spends with kiha with more lyric ideas than he’d had yet. he pins the feelings of post-break up anger down that kiha had described to him to underlying shades of jealousy and resentment.

how about that bastard? are you satisfied?

he can’t let it be all resentment, though. he’s more and more convinced he wants it to be the first song of the album in an almost oxymoronical sense, and hitting the listener immediately with rage would turn them away before they could get the whole message of the album. in some ways, the song had to foreshadow the stages the rest of the album passed through, from pain to bitter, toxic longing to emptiness to a more gentle regret. 

to soften the first blow and crank up effect the mid-song punch, ash crafts a narrative.

a man in a room alone. pounding at his door. he can’t tell whether he’s committed a crime against an ex-lover or himself, but he’s slowly fading out into a shell.

the samples come before most of the lyrics do and he’s inspired to take a throughline into the album’s other songs, but he only has a intro, a bridge, and an ending by the time the track becomes yet another abandoned file in his folders.

october 2020.

he’s eight or ten shots of whiskey down paired with a few edibles, back aching in the corner of a dark room when he opens the file again and every second of it stabs into him like poison needles.

he now knows anger is a form of acceptance of reality.

a few empty glasses a few dozen messages my vision is too blurred

or maybe it’s not even close to acceptance if the way his chest tightens with that dirty, dirty thing called hope when he sees his phone light up on the couch too far away for him to reach or read the screen means anything

it’s not youngjoo. he knows that, and yet he mentally restrains himself to keep from crossing the room to check his phone so he doesn't have to have the truth confirmed.

for a short moment, he convinces himself that it’s her and he’s proving something to himself by not answering it.

yet someone keeps on callin' oh it's my fuckin' (shit) my fuckin 'ex

he drifts to a vision of what would happen if he picked up the phone and she was on the other end.

the line blurs between his imagination and his memories of the past. they cross each other and mix into one, violent shades of red with soul-sucking shades of bruising blue and purple.

“everything is a little give and take, isn’t it? and this is mine, to you. say that we no longer mean anything right to my face and i’ll leave.”

her words curve and morph and transcend the folds of his mind where they’d been implanted. is that what she’d still want, if she called him right now? could he give her those words now? would it make the break cleaner if he could?

would he have it in him to lie?

but actually, i don't care i can't really remember you

would she be happy to hear it? would he care if she was? would she say anything at all or would that be enough to finalize their parting forever?

but beyond the handset, on the phone, why is your voice sounding so unaffected?

it’s not her. he’s playing games with himself now that he can’t blame her.

he could never say those words to her anyway, out of fear of getting indifference in response.

the mix of ups and downs keeps him from stacking emotional weights on his chest for too long, but he listens to the end of the song on loop, treating as a mantra to to convince himself.

cause i'm motherfucking good and i get that money i can tell this feeling motherfucking good i'm motherfucking good right now hella good right now i can tell this feeling motherfucking good right now...

and that’s when it truly hits him for the first time.

he laughs, but it’s not really funny at all.