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hanzi83 · 1 year ago

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Just a Scattered Random One

I just wanted to get another one off my chest. It is weird because I tend to take topics I discussed and then jot shit down for the blog to write about or vent about but time to time, the venom I feel days prior just melt where it kind of goes away and it kind of makes me struggle with where I want to start with it, regardless people will hate within their group chats and discords, I have to realize every word I type or say will be analyzed and monitored despite on the surface, not really having anyone to really react unless it is paid trolls who I believe are hired as online mercenaries, I can start with randomly being tagged on Facebook in a post for a group I am not part of, because I am not really part of any Howard Stern group, but it feels since I have been saying that people will only give me credit for anything on that show if it involves attacking Stern from the right, so back then before it was really established what the conspiracy theorists online would evolve to in the future, because in the beginning it didn’t seem political in that it felt people were just looking for answers and it seemed like most people were apolitical, it wasn’t this right wing cesspool that it is now, like I always pointed out if all the stuff that is propped up by the right wing now, I would’ve had a trajectory of going toward that side, I am blessed in some ways that being paranoid has also made me not trust everyone’s narrative and thinking that it is compromised, but this notion of me being right about Howard being “illuminati” is for me to finally be happy that anyone is talking about me and giving me props, because you bring up my name in other areas and they will repeat the same tired phrases and memes of me from the show, otherwise anything I articulate well, will get thrown by the wayside, but I never trust people who are leaning further right who attack Stern as being this far left liberal who is going woke and that is why the show has depleted the way it has with its image, I don’t believe Howard is “left”, he may be a neoliberal at most but I never trust anyone who pretends to be against him but then they will, with no hesitation, they will repeat the same regurgitated talking points about the people who have had a falling out with the show. So while I can appreciate that I might get some credit, it is not something I am gonna blindly take, especially when it is people leaning further right and buying into this “woke agenda” when a fundamentalist agenda is running wild. And it makes me think about how shows like Stern helped implement what we are seeing with alt media, everyone becomes a radio show and podcast for hire to basically target people by having their fan base start having negative perception of them, and this is why a lot of these podcasts get clout and attention. And because I have been someone who has been a target from other people in different areas in the industry to use mercenary trolls to start targeted harassment, I can see the same shit happening with the wrestling now with how much the shill and PR accounts are acting really unhinged. It is becoming more and more clear, because there is so much thought in pointing out the transparency of what causes and politics wrestlers support as a way to justify why the people they support are better but the thing is, as much as I don’t trust the establishment narratives, and it represents the status quo, I have become growingly suspicious about the “anti establishment” online accounts who I believe are funded by the companies and billionaires themselves, like I have no issue with people pointing out how transparently bad some of the legacy media types are in certain spaces etc, that would be one thing but if you are doing shill shit for your favorites and taking advantage of the implosion happening to empower yourselves and your agenda, because these people want to be the establishment, even if it means they have to ruin people’s lives and they won’t think they are, but people incite a reaction and get mentally ill cogs to react, and then they get to play the character who is smarter than everyone else and more evil keel, and they will think that people who are being incited are the ones who are the problem so supposed socially conscious people can practice their played out trouble maker persona that is permitted by the system, and advocate for violence toward people, and all the while people are just doing the system’s bidding. When all of this shit online is basically the new establishment doing showbiz, dunking on discredited media members is not the biggest own, because it is like wrestling when someone new wants to be pushed and elevated but at the end of the day they will be doing the same status quo but it is more to appease the new right wing and use their fundamentalist bullshit, these people who have been given access, have helped ruin a lot of people’s lives and collaborated with fr right wing trolls to shut down any progressive thought and make far right wing rhetoric seem like a both sides issue. You can’t be “anti establishment” persona but still boast about the connections you have and how you are all allowed access, and thing is people will pay attention to this but not acknowledge it, so it will make them double down on their rhetoric. Someone like Cornette can just be seen as someone who is just some lowly podcast, but a lot of these industry like people who have been doing podcasts who comment on everything in these programs are paid essentially to shit on talent, some people think Cornette might be paid by WWE to shit on AEW, and that could be part of it but I think Cornette, in my personal opinion, will shit on anything he is given incentive for and it can happen in all companies, and a lot of the funded account online who prop up his view, and then use “He is a liberal, how can he be racist or ignorant” like liberals can’t be that at all, in fact the same people who use that as a defense, are the same ones who normally discredit people for being liberal and make defenses for the new right wing. They will basically establish real life kayfabe shit about why WWE is oppressive and shitty with their rules, but the impression of things with this Punk/Elite shit getting out of control, and I don’t believe it is some uncontrollable shit but to me it is organized so they have to advocate for TK to put his foot down so we can justify why TK has to turn into Vince McMahon. Normally stuff they hated about WWE, they are advocating for, like the common thing is if someone is not happy working in WWE should be allowed to leave, why keep people who are unhappy and now with AEW having that same shit happen with them, now it is about social pressure via funded accounts to pile on these people. When something horrible happens because this funded harassment over others and faction warfare is gonna result in bad shit, and the funded accounts online will then play dumb about it and act like it was savage fans, and I believe “savage” fans online are not random, they are social climbers who want to make a name for themselves. So I assume most shit with this Elite/Punk shit is a work, a lot of the wrestling stuff over the last 25 years has always been facilitating the online shit and that is why any product, in all entertainment will never be perfectly done anymore because there is too much investment into the online controversy and scandals that are being forced. And being a cog in the system at one point, and not giving into what guys like Stern wanted etc, it totally had others constantly pushing me to the brink of insanity and shitting on my image etc, and I see the same shit happening now and people with power at the top are the ones who I believe give incentive for this and it will lead to very bad shit. But it is not about enjoying the product anymore, it is about forcing a faked forced Smackdown/Raw thing, and Elite fans and their clique is going at the Punk related clique and then they put out other narratives because everything has to revolve around Punk and the Elite’s ego while being detrimental to the other talent and product going on. And then the worst people online funded will tear down talent who are not gonna be pro Punk or Elite, like if you say anything negative about Punk or don’t care, his shill base will then shit on your segments and they will pretend it is coming from a place of genuine criticism, not denying there isn’t genuine criticism, but when someone says they don’t have personal stake into this stuff but then make their entire timeline a shrine to how Punk saved the world from blowing up, then I can’t take your opinion more seriously and you are not people who I would trust with narratives. These people have helped ruin people’s lives so they can become another cookie cutter “anti establishment” persona because all of their heroes have been phonies but since we need 90’s aesthetic, we blindly think the person online being booked as anti establishment are the ones who are the truth tellers. They are not, they are dangerous because of who is permitting them. When they advocate for violence nonstop, it isn’t because they are too real and they don’t give a fuck, they know their deal with the system is to make it look like they will get violent if their points and persona are countered because their script isn’t working so they will publicly humiliate you, like they haven’t punched me in the face, but they sure as hell have aligned with the trolls who lean further right to put harassment and instill paranoia into me over a wrestling opinion, but they think by being calm and cool on the surface and having a cult repeat how great you are etc can help that but ultimately they don’t care about the positive reception, they love that there is an image out there for themselves but they will always be fixated on the negative, even if it is me saying it in a suppressed blog that no one will seemingly react to. Now we can’t even enjoy the product for what it is and have actual good analysis. There are few podcasts I listen to where I think I get good analysis even if I don’t agree with every narrative, but the counter to the obvious errors within the “media” online is not any more credible. It is the same constant shit, someone leaks something out about Punk, they take shit out of context, so then the shill can point out the obvious out of context shit, so they can paint their favorite as the victim in all of this and it is a way to make the industry capitulate into right wing shit, but these people who point out that Punk’s enemies are MAGA people etc, are people that literally align with far right wing people, this is why they have to pretend Cornette is not right wing at all, when he basically is a liberal the same way Bill Maher is a liberal, like not at all, it is just another pussy who pretends because they hide behind a liberal persona, and pretends they are atheist, I should take it at face value and that would’ve sufficed 10-15 years ago, but now the jig is up and people know that it is a front because they can’t admit they are problematic or corrupt in the way they think. Now we have 2 brands where it will be about online funded accounts egos so now they are creating products that will give away everything weekly so they can win some forced brand vs brand war, because different cliques have gigs with certain shows or investment. Now we have to facilitate the podcasts and paid shills and basically water down the product. I don’t need to be fake boosted up to make myself seem like my thoughts are popping etc, but I know important people are always paying attention to whatever I say and that is more important than having people be given incentive to boost my shit up even though my aesthetic might look better. It just feels like if you watch the product on its own you can enjoy it for what it is, the crowds are into the acts etc, and that suddenly gets ignored because people are trying to stir the pot, they think forced negativity is more genuine. They don’t want to admit their role and the script they have ensures they can’t goof on certain things and they have to praise certain people and things so if other people can be free with their opinions because they are not tied to companies, it makes them mad they can’t call out shit because it ruins the image of being anti establishment, so they have to shut that shit down. Just the basic narrative online in simple ways, like when people online act like because the companies don’t officially promote shit, that it means there was no advertising going on when people online by talking about the backstage shit, is still advertising. When you do those narratives, then it makes me think people are not interested in being serious, they want to be the ones who are looked at as credible, and you might have people fall in line to make you feel good, but at your core you know that it isn’t genuine and it will never make you feel better, in fact my comments will piss you off even though a lot of you have the access and connections you want, so why would my irrelevant opinion be any threat to people who pretend I don’t exist? People will move the goalposts, one minute the ratings being low are the problem because Punk is not there, then the ratings were not cracking a million when he returned so now they move more goal posts. Personally I don’t care about ratings talk, especially when there are other ways to watch and DVR etc, so I am sure more people watch after the fact anyways, but it is just the fact that people’s narratives and arguments blow up in their face and none of them can ever admit wrong. This is why people will never be healed, because over every little thing in fandom, if we are gonna be so hard headed not to admit we were wrong about things how can we possibly evolve but that isn’t the point, the point is nonstop chaos so we make sure this employed fandom shit gets out of control. People who will generalize fans for being fucked up but never address how the billionaires they shill for are the ones organizing it, then I don’t care about your fucking opinion. Bring on more cookie cutter right wing personas under different guises to make it seem like some real change is happening but this right wing shit is seeping into every fandom now. It has become its own religion and political ideology.

I don’t know what to believe anymore. Good luck to dumbed down people to get to the bottom of the stuff they are reporting, like even when people hate billionaires etc, they have to still do the America’s Dumbest Criminal level shit, like we are supposed to hate billionaires but then dumb it down to say “These stupid submarine excursions are what they spend money on” how do you know it isn’t a ploy to basically have billionaires get an exit plan because more and more the world is imploding and they have known this is the design for a very long time, a bunch of powerful people, and it would not surprise me since we have exhausted every scandal and controversy so much so we are remixing them, that the next evolution is to find out that people who are wealthy and rich are faking their deaths or moving to some new planet, maybe living underground etc, I know that is farfetched but nothing shocks me anymore, they want me to believe in technology and science but get mad when I think it is all more advanced than what the MSM advertises, they have to dumb it down and say “CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIP WAS CONTROLLED BY A PLAYSTATION CONTROLLER” like you people tell us to believe in science and technological advancements but you still dumb shit down because you fall for the on surface shit of these people looking like incompetents, maybe that would reveal that there is more incentive to turn it all 24/7 news cycle of constantly making money with all these twists and turns when they know what is happening. We can chastise them for being stupid for the incompetent things happening but we can’t fully say they are imploding this world on purpose, they literally sign and normalize laws to help facilitate that, and if it isn’t that they have funded rhetoric to get people amplified. They are not happy with corporations already agreeing with them on a fiscal level, but they want to solidify their positions by making any corporation capitulate to fundamentalist beliefs so it looks like a big victory. Sorry I am pretty fucking stupid but even I know referring to corporations as Marxists is one of the most stupid things on the planet, what does that say. It doesn’t matter what these people incite. The plan is for this to fall and it is all organized. I can’t tell you what is going on in Russia, it would be easier to fucking get another angle on this shit but since I don’t trust anyone anymore, especially funded alt media, I have no idea what is going on, all I know there are locations and factions and names I can’t pronounce. It has never been more confusing. Meantime we are arguing about who would win a fucking steel cage match between Elon/Zuckerberg, make fun of my life and aesthetic etc but I will never be sad enough to fantasy book 2 horrible billionaires in a played out stipulation, like they couldn’t even build to the cage match. That is the first match they give away? But they constantly find ways to levitate comedy into the situation while these guys are helping normalizing a more fascist mindset under the guise of free speech, and then when they are hypocrites we have to pretend it is the biggest issue we can point out, like they know they are hypocrites, they don’t care about the word cis, they know it isn’t a slur but now we have to talk in circles with these people creating their own massive echo chamber that we are forced to take in, it is hard to keep up with the news online now because the verification shit has gotten out of control, that the worst accounts online are the ones dominating the algorithm.

People have created such a hatred for conspiracies that it has helped the right wing dominate it because whether you want to believe it or not, people are conspiratorial by nature especially if you look at yourself as an apolitical person, and by people on the left downplaying conspiracies and thinking that you can beat these people with facts that are established, it is like no one gives a shit about the facts, and this is easy for the right wing to take advantage of. Like another hazardous spill happened in Montana, and I don’t think this is coincidence but then the right wing can pretend the left is doing it so the left then denies this conspiracy exists, but if you were fucking smart, you would at least maybe make an insinuation the stuff is happening because an overall right wing trajectory system and people calling it out can get the stench off their direction even though they are probably projecting just like when they do with claiming everyone is a pedophile, while not having a problem with politicians and public figures who are literally pedophiles and rapists and you want me to believe you give a shit about protecting kids? And don’t worry I will pay for this random blog because they have already accumulated people in my life to make my life a living hell by showing off how much they are better off, using me as a guinea pig and suppressing me while making all the connections for themselves and now it is like they get mad that I am not desperate to want to hang out with people in the industry so now it is like their dangling carrots don’t have as much power so now they can do subtle shit to fuck with me to make me feel left out and out of the fucking loop and if I dare counter or call them out, they have the connections to make it seem the mentally ill man is the one who is the the main crazy one when this entire system is fucking crazy. Nothing about it makes any sense. But they make sure to make me remember they could have people sneak into your spaces and fuck with you and make you paranoid. And I start suspecting everyone is in on it, which is why it would be easier that I am not here anymore but clearly they have plans for me to be here, if not they would’ve sacrificed me a long time ago. Anyways I just wanted to do a random blog to get this off my chest before it builds up more. None of these blogs are this writing masterpiece, they are just random thoughts from a conspiratorial fatso you are not supposed to take seriously so pay no attention to me, but some of you will keep paying attention to me no matter what.

#Hanzi 2023 Howard Stern wrestling fandom cults random etc

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jonnnysuh · 3 years ago

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Dating Bambam would include

A/N: Whaddup its ya girl back for round 3. I don’t know bambam so this is obviously just guessing based on observation/my perception of him. As always this is on the more fun side bc we’ve all seen the “lets you borrow his sweaters” “kisses your forehead” stuff but also?? I lowkey might make one of those too so enjoyyyyyy. Updated: 1/18/23 with texts and snapchats

he will panic text you at the most random times

like “I THINK I SENT MONEY TO A SCAM WHAT DO I DO??????”

/ he’ll ask you your opinion on something stupid while you’re sleeping and then you’ve woken up to find he’s done the stupid thing

his stories are so expressive like he will literally get up and reenact everything for you with different voices and everything it’s just ENTERTAINING

i feel like this man is so spontaneous so expect random facetime calls, random gifts

“You’re showering??? WITHOUT ME?”

he compliments well tho like he will literally be like “where you going looking this fine?” even tho you’re wearing sweatpants and a tshirt

I know he’s a sentimental ass bitch I can just feel it in my bones. He’ll keep mementos from your first to your most recent date

he would show you off,,, and he can’t stop looking at you because you are HIS

instead of saying hello sometimes he just enters a room with “skrt skrt” and that is enough for him

when he cuddles with you it’s borderline strangulation he just likes hugging you tight

gets hangry and hates to wait for you like if he’s gonna eat he’s gonna eat

will give you space when you’re sad but then will randomly come in and be like “are you down to cuddle or?”

will sigh dramatically when he wants attention like bitch relaxxxx we heard you the first time

gets smiley at even the thought of you

says he would fight anyone for you…. okay maybe not anyone… maybe if they were smaller than him

Sleeps stick straight in his sleep

Pretends to understand stuff when he doesn’t

he splurges from time to time so he has a surplus of food/clothes just chilling in his house

has big dreams

says “I’m just gonna rest right here for a bit” but fully falls asleep

so much energy you constantly feel like you’re on a rollercoaster

“you’re being annoying” “oh am I?” * flexes his guns* “yes how would that change anything???”

if he eats chips in a bowl he will sprinkle the dust back onto the chips for seasoning

will check himself out in the mirror and will be embarrassed when you catch him

he’ll take the best pics of you and make you pose multiple ways just to get the shot

he has a sensitive side he just hates to show vulnerability sometimes

But he actually has words of wisdom and he always reassures you that everything will be ok

Says things that can be taken the wrong way but he’s well meaning

Always down to try new things

Will try his best to like the things you like

Will cheat at games

Has a junk drawer,,, has many junk drawers

adding or removing something from your outfit to make it feel complete

will always make sure you’re fed and well

will comment under your pics like “THAT’S FIREEEEEEEEE 🔥🔥🔥” “Art” “you look ok” like there is no middle ground

biggest supporter in all your ventures

has choked on tapioca bc you made him laugh so hard

will not own up to farts but your honor he is guilty

“Kunpimook” “why would you use my government name”

you rarely fight but when you do it takes the entire day

sometimes you’ll find him sitting alone in deep thought and when you ask him what’s wrong he’ll be like “was this room always blue?” or some shit

genuinely fascinated by the world and learning new things

can tell when you’re lying

he know hows to be serious but he can turn on the weird switch real quick

if you compliment him he will literally get all shy like “me? nooo haha” but bro’s walking around in a thousand dollar suit

watches funny compilation videos to sleep

wakes up and thinks about how he’s gonna make you laugh today

gets soOOOOO SHOCKED when you’re being dirty minded but like sir look INWARDS

loves PDA to a point where he’s almost shameless

if he sees a good tiktok or meme he will literally use it any chance he gets and then he’ll start quoting and reenacting it

loves to hold your hand

I’M CRYING HE WOULD MAKE THOSE CUTE TRIBUTE VIDEOS FOR YOU WHERE IT’S JUST A COMPILATION OF YOUR MEMORIES TOGETHER AND THE EDITING IS ALWAYS TOP TIER

he’d just be a fun time ok

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rantingcrocodile · 3 years ago

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Thank you for running this blog. I'm a bisexual woman in a committed relationship with a bisexual man who i'm certain is my soul mate and who i just know i never want to part with. He's anti-porn, calls out misogyny from peers, viciously protects me and other women from creeps, was raised by really strong women and has the most respect for women that i've ever seen in a man. Just a dream come true. I always want to rave about him but a part of me feels like it's rude or annoying to (1/3)

First of all, I'm glad that you have a good relationship and that you're happy! That's all that really matters, as long as you're not compromising your feminism and making sure to put yourself first and not take any shit from him. (All of that sounds great, but as long as he's doing the dishes and cleaning the toilet!)

In specific LGB spaces, it wouldn't be appropriate to spend all your time simply gushing about a partner, because that just ends up being self-centred. Being able to talk about being two bisexuals in a relationship and how that helps you is something entirely different.

The thing about being bisexual in an opposite-sex relationship is that the only "privilege" that's there is strangers seeing a woman and a man holding hands and then thinking "straight couple." As soon as you're "found out" as being bisexual, that changes perceptions and how you're treated. Especially if you're both bisexual, and then the comments about how you're not really committed/harassed for sex/etc happen. Biphobes presume that suddenly we stop being "really bisexual" when with the opposite sex, or experience things in a "heterosexual way," but funnily enough, we can never experience things in a "lesbian" or "gay" way if we're in same-sex relationships. Isn't that so funny.

When we're talking about talking about your partner and talking in general on places like this, then Tumblr is a blogging site. Why are you thinking about catering to others when your blog is your own space?

Why do you "respect" the women that hate you for being bisexual? Why is mentioning your partner at all "derailing" anyone else? It would be derailing if a lesbian was talking about her experiences as a lesbian and then you randomly decided to reblog her post and talk all about yourself and your boyfriend, but having a voice in a public space on your own blog has fuck all to do with lesbians.

Why do you care if lesbians in this space would roll their eyes at you?

I'll tell you why. You've internalised some homophobic fetishisation that's lead you to believe that lesbians are "purer feminists" simply for the neutral fact that they're lesbians, and you're building your feminist worldview around whether a random lesbian blogger that has no bearing on your life would think, like she automatically "knows better" than you, and that you think she is therefore "superior" to you.

I say this with all the love in the world because I do care. If I didn't care I wouldn't say it. Stop being homophobic and treating lesbians like they're all perfect angels. Take a step back and think about how you would feel if the situation was reversed, right? It would feel so creepy and fetishistic. The only lesbians that would like that are the very small number of lesbians that think they're better than everyone else, and those kinds of personality traits mean that they're not anyone you should ever listen to in the first place anyway.

Stop saying that your issues are "non-issues compared to the LG." Why are you treating what's bothering you as a competition? Are you not allowed to be upset about a broken leg because cancer exists? This is upsetting you. It's bothering you. You're allowed to speak about it. You talking doesn't stop anyone else caring about other issues, for one, but most importantly, you're deserving of just as much care and attention as everyone else.

You also need to stop saying that you're in a "het relationship." Neither of you are heterosexual. There's nothing about it that's heterosexual. You're in an opposite-sex relationship, which doesn't get the same abuse as a same-sex relationship. That's the simple truth of the matter.

Most importantly of all: when it comes to Tumblr, stop following any woman who you think would treat you as a "traitor" in any way. They aren't worth your time. I don't care how much of a "good feminist" you think they are, any woman that would treat you like a "traitor" isn't a "feminist" worth listening to. Any "feminist" that isn't against biphobia doesn't care about bisexual women's liberation, and therefore is a liar when she says she wants to liberate all women.

Treat yourself with more compassion and more kindness, okay? Join our discord, bring your partner along and connect with fellow bisexuals instead. Please stop looking to biphobes for validation and stop fetishising lesbians. They're ordinary women just like the rest of us, not the arbiters of what is and isn't feminist.

#crocodilian answers #This was a lot of tough love here but I am rooting for you okay?#You come and DM me any time! <3

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wisdomrays · 4 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 346

THE MYTH COLLAPSES: THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

An embarrassing fabrication of evolutionists: The reconstruction of Piltdown man from the chin of an orangutan and a man’s skull.

In the West, the theory of evolution continues to be promoted as if it were a proven fact or a secure, testable and tested law-something that no-one in their right minds questions any more. This presentation implies that there is no room, let alone any need, for discussion. The most common media clichÃ© is that the evolutionary chain has been confirmed yet again by yet another discovery of the missing link proving human ancestry from apes. Faced with this kind of promotion and presentation, and the sheer pervasiveness of it, it is no surprise if non-specialists come to accept that the theory must be true, and that it must be accepted by all the specialists, the whole scientific community, with no serious doubters. However, that perception is far from the reality. In the first place, the theory lacks completeness on two major counts and there is no likelihood of these deficiencies ever being made up. In the second, there are major voices of dissent from within the scientific community, alongside alternative theoretical explanations which demonstrate a far superior conformity with observed or experimentally obtained data.

The origin of life

To have any enduring claim to viability the theory of evolution must explain the origin of life in its own terms. It must be able to answer the question, ‘How did life evolve from non-living forms?’ It needs also to explain how the notion of ‘selection for survival’ operates before life exists, to explain how ‘life’ is the best way for non-living forms to exist longer. Just as the theory tells us that, because rhinoceroses with the thickest skin did best in battles with other rhinoceroses, over aeons of time rhinoceroses evolved skins as thick as skins can possibly get while still functioning as skins-so too, it needs to tell us how life is an adaptation. If it is, what is it an adaptation to? Moreover, if life is an adaptation, why is it the same across the whole range of living forms (animal or plant or in-between)? We have innumerable varieties of living forms (adapted, we are told, to different conditions of climate and competition for food resources) but we do not have different varieties of being alive. Is that what we should expect? Should we not expect that the creatures who lived longest (and had offspring the least often) would have out-survived all competition, until eventually they lived so long it was for ever? Or, vice-versa that those who lived the shortest lives (and therefore had more offspring more often) eventually fell back, after aeons of trial and proof, into hardly being alive at all individually, but merely replicating themselves? In fact, of course, the same climate and conditions of competition for food resources support both relatively long- and relatively short-lived forms at every level of complexity and thoroughly intermingled within even the same individual life-form.

Life rests upon an infinitely precarious equilibrium among the proteins, the building blocks of life, found in the simplest to the most complex of living forms. Denying the existence of a conscious Creator, the theory of evolution cannot explain how this equilibrium was established and protected. The theory proposes chance and coincidence as the only scientific way to think about the question. But a scientific way of looking at a problem must have at least some likelihood of being true, if we are to expend energy fruitfully on verifying or falsifying it. In other words, a hypothesis must be reasonable to start with so that we can test and judge it. It must not be irrational: the appeal to chance and random coincidences is nothing if not an abandonment of reason. A protein is made up of the combination of on average 1000-1500 aminoacids in 20 different types in a certain sequence. Even a single error in that sequence renders the protein useless. There is zero probability of this happening by chance, not even if the universe is billions of light-years wide and long. One of the foremost advocates of evolution, the Russian scientist A.I. Oparin confesses this impossibility in his book The Origin of Life (pp.132-133). Even the simplest of these materials (proteins), consisting of thousands of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms, each with a unique design presents highly sophisticated structure. For those who study the structure of the proteins, it is as hopeless for these proteins to have formed by chance as for the Aeneid (the long Latin epic by Virgil) to have been composed by random association of the letters of the Latin alphabet.

Another evolutionist scientist has offered a different analogy with the same conclusion. The probability of a chance formation of only one of the proteins required for life (Cytochrome-C) may be likened to the probability of a monkey writing out the history of humanity by randomly pushing the keys of a typewriter.

What evolution theory defends is exactly this nonsensical assertion. Yet, the examples above are only the probability calculations for the chance formation of a single protein. However, millions of similar impossible coincidences should have been realized consecutively in order for the evolution of life to be effected.

The probability of chance formation of a Cytochrome-C sequence is a low as zero. If life requires that certain sequence, it is likely to be realized only once in the whole life-time and space of the universe. Now it could be proposed that some metaphysical power(s) beyond our definition consciously enabled its formation. But to entertain such a proposition is, apparently, not appropriate for the modern enterprise of science. Therefore we have to fall back on the first hypothesis as the best we have at present.

If, as it appears, the theory of evolution is not justified by the information we have, how does it survive? Has questioning it become, among the specialists, a taboo which they violate at the risk of their reputation and their careers? If so, why? We will return to this question.

The problem of transitional forms

Another of many difficulties with the theory of evolution is that the theory requires there to exist or have existed in the past transitional forms. For example, if the theory claims, as it does, that life originated in the sea and then sea creatures were driven (by some force, let us say, a climatic change like a fall in sea-level) to move on to dry land, the theory must produce evidence (or at least convincing argument) of the transitional forms between the sea-creatures and the land-creatures they evolved into. Our present experience of, for example, fish, is that if they come out of the water, they very quickly die. We have no reason to believe that fish were so radically different aeons ago from what they are now. If anything, the evidence is all the other way: that fish as fish were the same then as now. So how could enough of them have lived long enough in shallow-water or no-water to establish in their gene pool the skill to evolve gills into lungs? Nobody can say that maybe some of these fish happened to acquire a lung at the end of the four-millionth year while they were in the throes of death. It is entirely nonsensical. But this nonsense is exactly what the evolutionists assert. The same problem arises when we look for transitional forms between land-bound reptiles and flying birds.

Some allegedly extinct intermediate transitional forms have turned out to exemplify only the temptations of forgery and distortion in the service of falsehood into which some scientists have allowed themselves to fall. For instance, the fish Coelacanth (Rhipitistian Crossopterigian) presented by evolutionists as a transitional form between marine and land creatures, and supposedly extinct about 70 million years ago, was found alive and well in 1939 near Madagascar, and has been caught about 50 times since in the open seas. Furthermore, the organs that prompted the evolutionists to present the coelacanth as the transitional intermediate form (inner ear alcoves, head typed backbone and swimming bag), do not have these properties at all. The same is true for other fossils presented as transitional intermediate forms. The well-known nature scientist A.H. Clark acknowledges that, since we have no single evidence indicating a transition between fossils and living groups, we must accept that such transitional forms never existed.

A well-known genetic and evolutionist, Richard B. Goldschimdt admits that there is no such a thing as the transitional intermediate form. He explains the differences in species by sudden leaps. Now to say that a species originated all of a sudden is tantamount to saying that it was consciously originated or ‘created’. Although the evolutionists are embarrassed on scientific platforms, they do not have a hard time deceiving the ordinary person in the street, because the theory is so well-packaged. You draw an imaginary schema representing transition from water from land, you invent Latin words for the animal in water, and for its descendant on land, and you draw sketches of both (both wholly imaginary constructs), and the package is completed or, as we should rather say, fabricated. ‘Eusthenopteron transformed into first Rhipitistian Crossoptergian, then lchthyostega in a long evolution process.’ If you put these words in the mouth of a scientist with thick glasses and a white apron, you are half way to convincing most people. For the great many people who see reality through the media packaging of it, this kind of presentation is good enough to be truth: it is easy to believe, it makes no demand on consciousness, or reason, or conscience: we are all here by chance, we are not here by the will of a Creator to Whom we are answerable.

The most common package is, inevitably, the one that relates to human beings. A central feature is the string of related sketches (all imaginary constructions) of an all-ape, three-quarters-ape, half-ape/half-man figure, gradually ending in a drawing that looks more or less like a European male of average build and features. This is offered as our story, our beginning long ago, our present being now. This string of sketches will be found on virtually every classroom wall, from primary schools to secondary schools and in every popular textbook or encyclopaedia which touches upon the subject, and in the form of stuffed exhibits in every science museum in the West.

In these drawings, half-ape half-human creatures are seen as a family. Having a hairy body, a slightly bent walking posture, and a face in between a man and an ape, these creatures are supposedly drawn from the fossils found by the evolutionist scientists. But the fossils found give information only about the bone structure and skeleton, and examination of the teeth will reveal information about the probable range of diet.

The fossils tell us nothing at all about how hairy the body was that hung upon those bones, nor what kind of nose, ears, lips or hair would once have rested upon the particular skull. But the evolutionists’ sketches picture do, almost always, show the organs like nose, lips and ears, and these are drawn (to fit the theory) and do indeed show something half-man, half-ape. This is not science, it is fiction or, more precisely, it is myth. Another support for this fiction, and another proof that it is fiction, is that the same bundle of bones can give be made to give rise to quite different re-constructions, depending upon the particular theorist’s preference: for example, the three totally unlike re-constructions of the fossil called Australoplthecus Robustus (Zinjanthropus). There is certainly a power behind these presentations of the theory, but it is not the power of reason disciplined by facts and evidence, but the power of myth-making imagination inspired by a particular ideology.

The ideological background to the theory

In order to understand why the evolution theory is promoted and defended so insistently, we need to look to the historical background behind it. Until the modern period, the intellectual life of Europe was basically subject to the authority of the Church. Starting from the 16th century, the order justified and underpinned by the authority of religious beliefs and principles started to conflict with the interests of certain social groups. Acquiring great wealth through commerce but having no political power, these groups began a long struggle to limit the authority of the Church. They did so not only on the political and social fronts but also on the philosophical front: religious beliefs and the authority of religion had to be weakened before the social-political system underpinned by religion could be radically reformed. Almost all the 18th century ‘enlightenment’ intellectuals and 19th century positivists came from these secularising groups and were funded and supported by them. (The French Revolution was the biggest single social transformation realized by their machinations.)

To say that a species originated all of a sudden is tantamount to saying that it was consciously originated or ‘created’. Although the evolutionists are embarrassed on scientific platforms, they do not have a hard time deceiving the ordinary person in the street, because the theory is so well-packaged. You draw an imaginary schema representing transition from water from land, you invent Latin words for the animal in water, and for its descendant on land, and you draw sketches of both (both wholly imaginary constructs), and the package is completed or, as we should rather say,fabricated.

The space opened by the weakening or elimination of religious beliefs was filled by new ideologies generated by the same social groups. The first ideology was liberalism, followed by socialism which developed as a reaction to it. Later came fascism meddled with racism. Despite containing some opposing ideas, these ideologies were all by-products of the new secular system and stood on the same anti-religionist ground. None of them spoke of the man’s responsibility before his Creator or the obligation to organize personal and collective life according to His guidance. Conversely, the principles that necessitated belief in religion were harmful to the new ideologies. One of the most important of these principles is that man was created, as the Church had always held (following the same belief in Judaism), by God in His own image, for the purpose of doing His will and worshipping Him.

It was very noteworthy that communism, the most radical and outspokenly anti-religious of the modern ideologies, showed a particular zeal for the theory of evolution. Karl Marx wrote of Darwin’s Origin of Species in a letter to his comrade Friedrich Engels (dated December 18, 1860) that this book presented the natural-historical basis for their critique of capitalism (Marx and Engels’ Letters, vol.2, p.426).

Darwinism laid the basis for fascism which is one of the by-products of the new secular order. Holding some human races superior to the others, this notion proposed that some races were in advance of others in the evolutionary process. This trend called Social Darwinism inspired many racists from Arthur de Gobineau to Adolf Hitler. Darwin himself prepared the ground for racism by proposing that the white man was more advanced in evolutionary terms.

Besides communism and fascism, the capitalist ideology dominant in the Western world and now in nearly the whole world, needs people to believe in evolution. To undermine people’s commitment to religion and moral principles, to reduce their aspirations and relationships to merely economic ones, it was necessary to convince them that man was not created by God as a morally responsible being. It is very noteworthy that major capitalist dynasties like Rockefeller and Carnegie come first among those who have granted funds and other support to the flourishing of Darwinism in the U.S.A. Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, in their book The Hidden History of the Human Race, explain how the Carnegie Institution was virtually aiming for the victory of the scientific cosmological vision over the old religious cosmologies. The Rockefeller Foundation supports the same materialist cosmology and serves the mission of ‘modern civilization’, aiming to confine the concepts of God and spirit to the mythology museum. The evolution propaganda promoted in the distinguished media organs of the West, and reputable science journals is a consequence of this ideological requirement.

Conclusion

No ideological program, whatever the illusions of its supporters, and whatever their means of promoting and packaging their untruths, can survive for ever. Precisely because man is God’s creature, made for nobility of being and action, he must and will seek truth, albeit temporarily deviated.

All the information revealed by modern biology shows that the origin of life, especially the molecular structure of living creatures, cannot be explained by coincidence in any way. The transcendent consciousness ruling over the whole universe is the ultimate evidence of God’s existence. As a matter of fact, some eminent names in microbiology have come to the point where they cannot defend evolution any longer. Instead, another theory has begun to get a long overdue hearing among these scientists: the theory of conscious design. The scientists defending it remark that it is very evident that life has been created by a conscious designer

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isthatbloodonhisshirt · 5 years ago

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New Year’s Wrap Up!

Thank you @corancoranthemagicalman for tagging me in this! I honestly don’t ever think about these things ahaha |D So this is kinda cool tbh. Thank you :3

Does my current WIP technically count in this case? I’ll pretend it does, I mean, I WROTE it in 2019, just didn’t post it until December 30th |D lol So technically, it counts, it’s only a WIP on Ao3, not on my computer :P

Fics that you wrote in 2019

Up Down Lock Unlock (Sterek, 42k, G)

Through the Window (Sterek, 6.8k, G)

Business Skype (Sterek, 6k, G)

It Was a Wednesday (Sterek, 80k, M)

Be Still My Heart (You’re Beating Too Loud and my Neighbour’s a Bitch) (Sterek, 34k, T+)

What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? (Sterek, 196k, E)

Everyone Needs a Little Mischief in their Life (Sterek, 18k, T+)

There’s no Escape for the Potato Man (Sterek, 54k, T+)

SuperWing, Stucky and SlaDick, Oh My! (Sterek, 34.8k, T+)

Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That) (Sterek, 16k, T+)

Because Family is More than Just Blood (Sterek, 5K, G)

I mean, again, TECHNICALLY Actions Speak Louder Than Words also counts because I wrote it in 2019 and am just posting most of it in 2020... So... (Sterek, 384k, E)

We are going to assume all questions are answered with the inclusion of Actions.

Total Fics: I wrote 12 fics this year. Enough to be considered one a month, except definitely not one a month since Twilight took me two months and Actions took me a fucking ETERNITY, like, I think I started in July? Maybe August, but still, took me FOREVER!

Total Words: 877,632. Less than last year :( I broke a million words last year. Maybe I can break 2 Million in 2020! (LOL Yeah no...)

Ship/Character Breakdowns: LOL Sterek. That’s... that’s it...

Best/Worst Title: Best Title (IMO): What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? (Idk man, I laugh every time I think about it, so I like it) Runner up Best Title: It Was a Wednesday Worst Title: Up Down Lock Unlock. (I legit had no idea what to call that fic, so, you know |D)

Best/Worst First Line: Best First Line: From “Everyone Needs a Little Mischief in Their Life”

To be fair, he hadn’t exactly meant to throw him into a tree.

Worst First Line: From “Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That)”

“Stiles.” A loud grunt escaped said individual at the harsh smack to his posterior. “Up. Get up.”

General Questions

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I feel like kind of less than I thought. I had plans for two others but then Actions took over and I know myself well enough to know if I didn’t finish it first, I never would. So I’m gonna take a short break to catch up on like, life >.> And then start back up again starting with a long overdue birthday present. Hopefully I can write more in 2020 \o/

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

HAHAHA Uh, I only wrote Sterek and I knew I would only write Sterek so I guess I knew all along? Man, I write too much Sterek...

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Probably It Was a Wednesday. I mean, it was super SAD, and I was AWFUL to poor Stiles, but idk, I don’t write Derek’s POV very much, and I kind of liked having Derek be the one to save someone else for once. And I liked that he was the only one who could truly understand what Stiles had gone through compared to everyone else. It was also nice being able to write a fic where it showcases the pack can’t survive without Stiles because once he disappeared, the pack fell apart, and my honest opinion is that that is 100% what would happen. Without Stiles, the pack can’t function and begins to fracture, so it was fun writing them coming back together around him when he returned.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

From 2019, What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? To be fair, it’s like, 116k words longer than my next longest fic of 2019 so I feel like that’s an unfair comparison lol.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

I say It Was a Wednesday -slams hands on desk- But I’m biased because it’s my fav from 2019 >.> But it’s number 5 kudos-wise for 2019! I think it’s the angst. The first four are all more fluffy (Except Twilight, but it has an equal amount of fluff and angst). I guess my real self is coming out. SURPRISE! I am an Angst Queen >.>

Story that could have been better?

Be Still My Heart (My Neighbour’s a Bitch and You’re Beating Too Loud). Honestly, not super happy with that fic, but I wrote it for personal reasons. To copy/paste so as not to repeat myself:

(As of October 2019) So basically, Stiles is currently me. I have had a neighbour complaining about me for literally 31 months (which, for people bad at math like me, is OVER two years) and they are literally ruining my life. I have massive anxiety every time I do anything, INCLUDING SLEEP, and I basically cannot live my life in any capacity. The building manager is really nice to me, but the property manager is pretty much useless and the complaints continue to come during times where I am literally passed out in bed. In light of that, I wrote this fic because by God, I needed some fucking happy in my life over a situation I have no control over. Is Derek in the wrong? I mean, yeah, I never say he's not. Did Stiles suffer? Of course he did. But you know what? He got a happy ending, because turns out his anxiety was due to a poor decision on Derek's part, and he felt terrible about it. I don't get a happy ending, I get constant anxiety and apologetic texts from the building manager because it's his job to tell me he knows I'm sleeping but lady is still complaining. So given I wrote this to make myself feel better, and I decided to share it with you, do me a favour and instead of making me feel worse by telling me how horrible I am and how shitty Derek is, just hit the red X in the corner instead and you can avoid having to look at this fic again. People write things for various reasons, it'd be real great if there was a bit more understanding and a bit less attacks in the world. You don't know why someone wrote something or what's going on with the person on the other end of the computer screen. So just click the X if you hated this fic and thought Derek was a dick to Stiles. I know he was, but Stiles at least gets to live his life anxiety-free because the building manager was in love with him. I get to go cry in the shower every night.

Sexiest story?

What Fresh Twilight Bullshit Is This? It’s the only one with smut, I’m pretty sure, so it’s really the only one that counts |D

Saddest story?

It Was a Wednesday, hands down. I was really mean to Stiles in it.

Most fun?

Oh man, uhhhh... Oh maaaaaaaaan.... I thought it would be between two of them, but it’s between FOUR... Business Skype, There’s No Escape For the Potato Man, Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That) and SuperWing, Stucky and SlaDick, Oh My!

Hmmmmmmmmmm..... hmhmhmhmhmhmhm....

UGH! This is hard. Okay, I’ma go with Potato Man. I got the idea randomly and it was ridiculous but still fun, so I’m gonna stick to that. It was my first instinct, going with it.

Story with the single sweetest moment?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words, but I can’t quote the part because it hasn’t been posted yet |D

So runner up is It Was a Wednesday:

“Need is a very specific thing. Your dad needs you, because he doesn’t know how to function without you. He needs you to be there to watch what he eats, and he needs you to stay close to him so he knows he hasn’t lost everyone he cares about. He needs you like a dying man needs one more breath. He’s desperate for it.

“Scott needs you, too. He needs you to keep him out of trouble. He needs you to challenge him, to keep him in line, to keep the Pack together. He needs you to be the voice of reason, to make the plans, to know when to fight and when to turn tail and run. Scott needs you like an Alpha needs a second, because he doesn’t know how to do this without you. He doesn’t know how to exist without you in his orbit, because you’ve never not been in his orbit before.

“But me? I don’t need you. At all. Because I survived before you, and I survived after you. I can manage without you in my life, but the difference is I won’t. Because I want you. I want you to be in my life. I want you in my space, arguing with me, annoying me, being infuriatingly right all the time. I want you to be a part of my future, whether it’s as a coworker at the garage, as a Packmate to this broken Pack that I don’t even know can be salvaged, as a friend, as a brother, I don’t care. All I know is that want and need are two different things, and just because I don’t need you doesn’t mean I don’t want you.”

Hardest story to write?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words, hands down. I love dialogue. Like, loooooooooooove dialogue, which is why writing fics with tons of texting make me supremely happy. And I decided, hey, what if I wrote a fic where one of the two main characters is cursed and can’t speak? What if I did that? And then what if I made it ALMOST 400k? WHAT IF I VERY SMARTLY DID THAT LIKE A VERY SMART PERSON?

I’m lucky I’m still sane, tbh.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Okay, Business Skype can go here then. Because it was definitely the easiest, and also really fun :)

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I mean, kind of It Was a Wednesday, I guess. Like I said above, it made me think about how the pack can’t function without Stiles, personally. So I’d say probably that one for that reason.

Most overdue story?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words. That thing was an asshole to me :(

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don’t think so? Unless writing really excessively long fics this year counts? Because I did two of those... And clearly, I learned nothing from that suffering.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

To not take five months to write one fic... That’d be good |D Kinda wanna do another challenge, but don’t know what. I’ll think on it. If anyone has any challenge ideas, let me know :)

#not tw #corancoranthemagicalman #Blood's yakkity yaks

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cannoli-reader · 5 years ago

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in your opinion what were sandersons worst mishandlings in the last 3 books?

There were different issues with Sanderson’s writing. Some of which are personal dislikes of mine, others have to do with his style or talents being unsuited to the series, and some are just flat out things he did wrong. I’ll go into considerable detail under the cut.

Poor match of writing style and skills to the series

Sanderson lays everything out there, and he uses dialogue to convey information to the reader, in the same way that movies and TV shows do. Wheel of Time is about secrets and knowledge, and people knowing different things, so they act in conflict, because their perceptions are different. This is undermined by a story where everyone is telling each other everything, even their innermost thoughts. Especially when those thoughts don’t make sense for the characters to say out loud based on what we have seen of them for the last eleven books.

From what I understand, Sanderson’s strength as a genre author is in his world-building, and his clever use of magic systems. These are not strengths needed for this project, in which the world-building was done already, and most of the ins and outs of the One Power and other preternatural phenomena were already established. Even when Sanderson tried to carve out a space to use his skills, it backfired, with the inflation of the role of Androl, and things like his limit-breaking gateway Talent. That’s not how Talents work. It seems like a derivation of the one Kinswoman who could shield far above what her strength seemed to warrant, but that was due to centuries of practice. There is no reason why Androl can suddenly make gateways much larger than other people using even more of the Power, which is established as the limiting factor on gateway size.

Inadequate comprehension of the ideas and ethos of Wheel of Time

Sanderson was writing fan service. To a certain extent, that was conscious and deliberate, an act of love to his fellow fans, and the series. And not to get all snobby here, but he generally wrote to gratify the lowest common denominator of fans. His focus was on feats of arms and channeling and leadership, but he was not so much interested in the characteristics and qualities that informed and were informed by, those things.

When Sanderson divided the story into three books, he showed by his choices that he prioritized events and spectacles over themes and coherence. A major theme was that everyone was all in it together, that while they might be separated by distance, they were all being woven into the same Pattern and their actions were intertwined. Sanderson, instead, decided that since Rand & Mat & Perrin did not occupy the same real estate for the beginning of the story, there’s no need for them to be in the same books.

Poor command of the worldbuilding and details

This really destroyed my immersion. Sometimes Sanderson made up all new things to serve a purpose in his story, that didn’t seem anything like what was normal for WoT, like new characters who appeared with names that did not fit their supposed country of origin, and who turned out to be Wheel of Time fans & webmasters he met at conventions and such. Which is fine for the few dozen fans who met him and recognize each others’ cameo, and less fine for the millions of other readers, while Jordan’s impressive stable of bit players, extras and supporting cast members fell into neglect.

There would be mistakes like an Aielman refering to his homeland as the Waste, or the sudden drop in IQ of the whole White Ajah, going from highly trained masters of logic and philosophers, to stoned freshman having their minds blown by half-assed syllogisms. Or the head of the Yellow Ajah suddenly reinventing the mentality of the Ajah in a way that directly contradicts everything we’ve been shown about the Yellows. Or the Warder bonds suddenly not working the same way, to the degree that a bonded couple can surprise one another by walking in on them unexpectedly or wonder how the other is feeling when they are in the same building.

Sanderson’s idea of servicing Siuan’s background was randomly sticking the word fish on the end of nouns in her dialogue, whether it made sense or not. The Aiel suddenly started talking like fantasy barbarians, with their stilted, simple diction and preoccupation with combat skills and honor. The Aiel are good with weapons, but they have other interests. When the situation does not call for military skills or combat, they don’t obsess over weapons or fighting. They talk about the opposite sex, they gamble, drink, joke, play pranks, read, pay attention to the social dynamics of other cultures. Aviendha is barely recognizable as the same person, and that’s before you realize that Sanderson gave her an extended conversation to learn something that she already knew eight books before.

If he wants us to care about an Asha’man suffering belated manifestations of the taint, maybe use one of the Asha’man Jordan created and we’ve come to know up until now, instead of some new guy Sanderson just made up with a weird name like “Naeff” that just contribtues to the all-round immersion-breaking.

The biggest mistake: Breaking up the books

This is related in some ways to the above issues. Part of it has to do with the ways that Sanderson failed to grasp aspects of the series and part with Sanderson’s writing style. Robert Jordan, for all that he had a reputation for excessive descriptive detail, was also very economical with his words. He conveyed a lot with his descriptions. Sanderson needed many more words to say the same things. The story planned out for the portion of the series Sanderson wrote was intended to be in a single book, though Jordan acknowledged it was likely to be significantly larger than the others.

That means something, because for all the serialized nature of the latter half of the series, there is still a thematic unity to those books. That means that Jordan’s plan was for the events in Arad Domon, with Mat and the Band, with Perrin and the Whitecloaks, Egwene in the Tower and the lead-up to Merrilor and Tarmon Gaidon, were all supposed to be part of the same story, not just the same general story as the farmboys fleeing Trolloc raids or travels among the Aiel, but all connected together to express the same idea.

In my opinion, the best way to break up that final book, if Sanderson could not keep it contained in one physical medium, would be in a serialized fashion, one book under two or three separate volumes, with the pace of the story encompassing the whole thing, instead of having three separate beginnings, escalations of conflicts, climaxes and endings. If it had to be broken into three separate novels in structure as well as format, then the division should have been by time, rather than characters.

Throughout Jordan’s books, the point is reiterated that the whole story is all of a piece, that the main characters are part of the same Pattern, and their seperate efforts all contribute to the overall struggle. Ultimately, Rand’s mission of unifying humanity to fight the Shadow was not getting them to all take orders from the same source, but to get them all agreed and committed to the same goal. From the time they first split up for extended arcs, with Loial saying “here or there, it is all the same fight” to Moiraine’s appearance at Merrilor, that has been a consistent notion. And when you treat Rand’s and Nynaeve’s and Egwene’s stories as having so little to do with Mat’s or Perrin’s or Elayne’s, that they don’t even go under the same book cover, you are totally undermining that.

And if you really must separate the major character arcs into different books, the order in which Sanderson released them was absolutely wrong. He gave the two biggest conflicts the first book, to either score a quick win to get the readers on board with the new writing, or in fan service, giving fans the stories they were most impatient to see.

So Rand, the critical figure, whose indispensibility was key to Jordan’s vision of the series, hits his nadir halfway through the first book of the trilogy, which is 1/6th of the way through the overall finale. He reaches his apotheosis, and resolves his major personal struggle with two thirds of the finale left to go! Rand finds his heart again, Egwene wins her fight for the Tower, and achieves full power, with a dramatic set piece battle and then we go to Mat and Elayne comically bickering about cannons and taking out a handful of Darkfriends and a single Shadowspawn before plunging abruptly into the rescue of Moiraine. Perrin engages in a legalistic conflict with Galad over ridiculous minutiae, given that they are now in the penultimate book in the series and the world is visibly falling apart around them. That battle had less danger and lower stakes than the much maligned Faile-Malden storyline, but it was supposed to be Perrin’s penultimate leadership crisis? All the attempts to keep the stakes high in Towers of Midnight are completely undermined by the knowledge that the struggles Rand is going through at the same time will have a happy ending. Where is the drama in finding out after the fact that Perrin was buffering Rand from Tel’Aran’Rhiod on Dragonmount? How are we supposed to be concerned about Perrin’s efforts when we already know the exact outcome? Knowing that Dragonmount has not happened during the early events of ToM does not change the way we see the conflicts playing out concurrently with Rand’s descent into darkness, because we know the happy resolution is coming. We know Tam is going to survive his adventures with Perrin and be in a position to tell Rand, with no discernable dissembling, that Perrin is going to have everything in hand, and Morgase’s secret identity issue will be happily resolved.

Even the book titles are stupid. “The Gathering Storm”? Setting aside how incredibly trite that title is, what the heck has been going on all this time before that book? And the storm is only gathering now? Is Rand’s happy-ending-apotheosis still part of the gathering of the storm, or the beginning of the storm? What about the White Tower being unified & better than ever? Does that mean Mat inventing cannons and Perrin arguing with, and then rescuing Whitecloaks are “the storm”? The storm has been gathering for the length of the series. “Towers of Midnight” means nothing, and people still argue about what it means, since it refers to a location on the other side of the world from the events in the books. By contrast, the title Jordan selected, “A Memory of Light” could be both symbolic of the whole, with the Shadow so strong that Light is just a memory, and a specific reference to Rand’s finding himself. Except that was the climax of a storm gathering.

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oppressiveliberator · 6 years ago

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Topic Meme: His mental state (I’m curious, seeing as he thought my very-real muse was a hallucination)

Send Me A Topic To Write Meta On!

Ghetsis is well into his 60′s approximately--which honestly, according to my father’s nurses and such, wasn’t that old. Nonetheless, the guy’s had two severe psychological breakdowns resulting in stress-induced strokes. A stroke cuts off the oxygen to parts of your brain and when that part eventually suffocates or is otherwise heavily damaged from lack of oxygen, I’m sure you can imagine what that’ll do to somebody’s body let alone someone’s brain.

On top of that, there’s the dementia. That’s why he perceived Brett as a hallucination at first--Brett was out of place in an otherwise normal setting, a child he didn’t recognize in his hiding place. Normally the Shadow Triad prevent any intruders or threats from getting anywhere near the hideaway, assuming one even stumbles into the magic slip space that puts you on the same plane of existence as it in the first place. So. Strange child where a strange child would, logically, not be? Probably a hallucination.

(A lot of rambling under the cut, talk of mental illness, physical illness, disability, real life parental death. . .just a lot of stuff, probably a lot of nonsense, some of it a mite personal as a former caretaker. I’d’ve put icons in to space things out but. I’m kinda tired after writing all of this lmao also I have to fast for a thing tomorrow so I’m just gonna. Head off once I post this and gets oem rest.TL;DR: google ‘symptoms of dementia’ and ‘effects of stroke’ and you’ll get a good idea of Ghetsis’s mental state at any given point in time.)

At least a small child is the least of his hallucinations. He has them now and then, or otherwise misperceives reality or misspeaks about his perceptions, and they can vary from little things to big things. They’re usually nothing major--something is there that isn’t or he hears sounds that aren’t real. Sometimes he sees people or his mind misproccesses one person or thing as another(sometimes he refers to the Shadow Triad as N, Anthea, and Concordia for example) and he just kinda rolls with it sometimes.

Other times he tries to ignore it until it goes away or tries to ‘fix it’ one way or another. Major things are more along the lines of that he’s displaced from where he actually is, is floating, his environment is drastically changing--stuff that majorly impacts his ability to proceed. But it’s usually like. Galvantula crawling on him or voices and things like that. Stuff that you might notice him responding to, but that can be dismissed or that he shrugs off.

If he hallucinates something detailed and realizes it(because, y’know, it doesn’t make sense, for example,) he usually just rolls with it until it ends--his mind doesn’t take well to being ignored or dismissed and can ratchet up the awful if it isn’t acknowledged, hence why he decided ‘well, there’s a hallucination child here, i’d better just acknowledge him’ lol.

In general, Ghetsis’s memory is not good. Oftentimes it’s inconsistent--sometimes he remembers some things but not others, sometimes he remembers everything, sometimes he doesn’t even know who he is. Now and then he’ll remember things in one state of mind, forget them in another, and if he goes back to the previous state of mind or a different one, he has no problem remembering the previous thing. But he has no control over this. While he mostly remembers more recent years events, he might struggle with some before them--or he might randomly drop one memory or process or another.

Sometimes these memory lapses result in things like not remembering what year it is and as such not knowing how old he is. He may interpret himself as being younger because his mind just. . .receded back to that point in his understanding. If you ask him where he is, he might say he’s at the Harmonia Estate even though that’s completely off base. He’ll give you a radically incorrect number if asked for his age. He’ll say he has no children. He won’t remember what Team Plasma is.

Sometimes his mind reconciles things like his height in relation to other people and things and he doesn’t question them at all. For example, he could see N and his mind says ‘that’s Natural. That’s your son.’ but rather than ‘he’s in his early 20′s. he’s the hero of ideals. he betrayed you. he abandoned you. you hate him. you miss him. you wish you had your son back’ his process says ‘he’s seven years old. he’s just learning to read. he learned to do a cartwheel yesterday. he’s having a hard time with the studies Gorm is going through with him, but for now he’s okay with the others. He falls down everytime he gets on his skateboard but he always laughs and gets back on it’ and he’ll treat N as though he’s a child. He’ll acknowledge that N is getting big or getting heavy if he has to acknowledge his appearance, but his mind’ll just kinda. Make that make sense to him.

There’s not really any way to snap him out of this--sometimes he can be led back to a proper psychological state, other times you’ve just gotta wait it out. Ideally, let him sleep and he’ll be better when he wakes up.

There are days where he’s in clearly awful condition. Sometimes he can’t talk or acknowledge anything, just completely unresponsive. Other times it seems like nothing was ever wrong with his mind in the first place.

As you can imagine, that’s mostly just processing things. . .his already horrifically inconsistent personality that he changes to befit the situation and person he’s speaking to is now even more inconsistent and he’s got little to no control over it. Oftentimes he’ll be himself to some degree. Other times he might be horrifically depressed or lost and reclusive or sorry and miserable. . .sometimes he’ll be emotional and wild--and he’ll lash out aggressively if anybody tries to help him, even if he clearly needs it. He might not remember his interests or his relationships with people or be able to focus. . .he’s all over the place, although I’m still kinda tentative about portraying it.

A lot of it is inspired by my dad and his condition when he was alive and I was taking care of him. So while sometimes I may laugh at it sometimes or occasionally use it for comedic effect, honestly part of me does want to portray a lot of these struggles he has realistically--but I’m also a very ‘laugh at everything because what else are you gonna do be miserable all the time?’ type of person(or i try to be--I find it important to see the comedy in everything because honestly life is ridiculous and there’s no reason not to laugh at it or enjoy it as long as you also accept the severity of it) and I worry I’d portray something too comically or be interpreted as making a joke even when I’m not.

. . .But, yeah, Ghetsis’s brain is fucked up basically. Look up what happens to stroke or seizure patients and the effects of dementia and you’ll get a decent grasp of what it’s like to be my Ghetsis in the present day.

Despite it all, he’s still Ghetsis. . .but between age and arrogance and madness, he’s lost a lot of his ability to give a fuck and he just. Does whatever he wants within his ability. Boundaries? Filters? Often completely absent. So sometimes he’s Ghetsis--master manipulator, King in personality and intentions, regal and serious and calm and strategic and careful and classy and elegant and deceptive--and sometimes he’s Ghetsis--Professional Fuck-Upper of Shit who constantly has Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder playing in his own head who just does whatever and exists to piss people off and have fun. But the thing is? Ghetsis has always been somebody even his closest people couldn’t tell the personality of. What he’s like, who he is, it escaped even the sages. It escaped everybody that this man was evil for literal years.

So in a weird way, he’s exactly the same. . .just a little more extreme and spiteful. Normally he’s a liar because it helps him fit smoothly into society without suspicion, but now sometimes he’s brutally honest and you realize how disturbed he is, how fucked what happens in his head is.

. . . . . .And yet. He’s bounced back from so many things before. He’s been a radically confusing and difficult and inconsistent person before.

Sometimes you can’t help but think ‘this is a trick too.’

Either way. . .he’s a mess. You’ll almost always still be able to see that he’s Ghetsis in his thoughts and actions and words, but sometimes he’s. . .different. Sometimes that’s just Extra Ghetsis, and sometimes you see what’s beneath the Narcissism and he cries and apologizes and struggles and lets himself be helped and asks for help and says he just wanted to help let him help how can he help he doesn’t want to be useless he doesn’t want to be broken let him prove he exists and functions even if it’s just to himself. Better yet, let him die. He can’t live like this anymore. He’s not living. He hasn’t been living for years, he’s a broken, worthless entity and he just doesn’t want to be anymore. Those’re still rare sides of him to see--you’re more likely to get completely unresponsive, mute, dissociative, confused old man type Ghetsis than self-loathing Ghetsis who regrets his actions and who he is and has been and what he’s done.

But yeah. Ghetsis’s mental state is. Not great! It’s much worse than he lets on most of the time! His physical state is pretty poor, too, although that varies too. Some days he can walk without assistance, some days he needs his cane, a walker, a wheelchair, some days he’s bedbound completely and if he tries to use his leg(s) he’ll just wind up falling down. Sometimes he can speak with little to no problem, sometimes he can’t do anything but mutter nonsensically, sometimes he can’t even make sounds. He’s just. . .not well. But somehow he’s still recovering. One could suppose it’s simply because he’s Ghetsis and he’s always been a little. . .powerful. Ethereal. Magical. Special. A cut above the rest.

Like my dad, he’s been told or had his caretakers told many, many times he probably wouldn’t make it more than a few years, months, weeks, he’d be lucky if he lived through the night.

But Yveltal be damned, he’s still here.

And he’s gonna be here for a while, I imagine.

If he gets his way, he’ll be here forever.

#medical cw///#disability cw///#ask to tag #long post #History | Who’d Ever Dream A Child As Sweet As I Seemed Would Be The Source Of So Much Pain And Strife #About | I'm Finished Making Sense Done Pleading Ignorance #Personal | If I Show You Then I Know You Won’t Tell What I Said Cause Two Can Keep A Secret If One Of Them Is Dead #Headcanon | The Horror That He Brings The Horror Of His Sting The Unholiest Of Kings #OOC | In Your Head In Your Head They Are Fighting #((/flops))#abib918 #((thank you very much for the ask❣))

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paleorecipecookbook · 6 years ago

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Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Latest Nutrition Headlines: Part 1

This article is Part 1 of a two-part series about the problems with nutrition research. For more on why you should be skeptical of the latest nutrition headlines, check out Part 2 of this series.

Nutritional epidemiology is basically the board game equivalent of a Ouija board—whatever you want it to say, it will say. – Dr. Peter Attia

Every week, we’re bombarded with splashy headlines in the media about the latest nutrition research. Here’s a sampling from the last few weeks alone:

“Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests” (BBC News)

“Eating cheese and butter every day linked to living longer” (Newsweek)

“A New Study Says Any Amount of Drinking Is Bad for You. Here's What Experts Say” (Time)

“Whole grains one of the most important food groups for preventing type 2 diabetes” (Science Daily)

“Low carb diet ‘should be first line of approach to tackle type 2 diabetes’ and prolong lifespan” (iNews)

Within a six-week period, we learned that low-carb diets will make you live longer and shorten your lifespan and that they’re both good and bad for diabetes. We also learned that consuming even small amounts of alcohol, which has long been regarded as health promoting, is now unhealthy.

For decades, we were told to limit dietary fat and cholesterol because they would clog our arteries, give us heart attacks, and send us to an early grave. Yet in 2010, the federal government removed its restriction on total fat from the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, and in 2015, they did the same thing for cholesterol, remarking that it is “not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” (1)

If you’re confused by this, or you’ve just stopped listening altogether, you’re not alone. And who could blame you? In a recent, scathing critique of nutrition research in JAMA, Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, said:

Nutritional research may have adversely affected the public perception of science.

… the emerging picture of nutritional epidemiology is difficult to reconcile with good scientific principles. The field needs radical reform. (2)

In other words, you’re not crazy for doubting the latest media headlines or just throwing up your hands in frustration! In this article, I’m going to explore the reasons why skepticism is an appropriate response when it comes to most nutrition studies. Armed with this information, you’ll be better able to protect yourself and your family from the latest media hype and focus on what really matters when it comes to diet and nutrition.

Why You Can’t Trust Observational Studies as “Proof”

An observational study is one that draws inferences about the effect of an exposure or intervention on subjects where the researcher or investigator has no control over the subject. It’s not an experiment where researchers are directing a specific intervention (like a low-carb diet) and making things happen. Instead, they are just looking at populations of people and making guesses about the effects of a diet or lifestyle variable.

Observational studies are good for generating hypotheses, but they can’t prove that a specific variable causes a specific outcome.

That is the domain of a randomized controlled trial (RCT), which randomly assigns participants to two groups—a treatment group that receives the intervention being studied and a control group that does not—and then observes them for a specific period of time.

We’ve all seen nutrition headlines promising groundbreaking information that will change the way we view our health. But how many news stories are based on studies with faulty methods, uncontrolled biases, and other major problems? Check out this article to find out.

Every scientist knows this, and most journalists should as well. Yet today, it’s not uncommon to see headlines like “Low-carb diet shortens your lifespan” and “Eating processed meat increases your risk of cancer,” which imply that the studies proved a causal relationship when, in fact, all they did is establish a correlation.

Correlation Is Not Causation

The problem is that two variables that are correlated, or associated together, do not always have a causal relationship. Consider the following examples, from Tyler Vigen’s excellent webpage called Spurious Correlations:

S. spending on space, science, and technology is 99.8 percent correlated with suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation.

Per capita consumption of margarine in the United States and the divorce rate in the state of Maine are correlated at 99.3 percent.

Total revenue generated by arcades is 5 percent correlated with computer science doctorates awarded in the United States.

Those are incredibly strong correlations, but I think it’s fairly obvious that consumption of margarine in the United States has absolutely no impact on the divorce rate in Maine … right?

Another great example of how easy it is to derive spurious correlations—especially when you set out with an agenda—comes from a large study of the most common diagnoses for hospitalization in 10.6 million Canadians. The researchers found that 24 diagnoses were significantly associated with the participants’ astrological signs: (3)

People born under Leo had a 15 percent higher risk of hospitalization due to gastrointestinal hemorrhage compared to other residents of Ontario.

People born under Sagittarius had a 38 percent higher risk of hospitalization for arm fractures compared to people with other signs.

In Dr. Ioannidis’s editorial in JAMA, he notes:

Almost all nutritional variables are correlated with one another; thus, if one variable is causally related to health outcomes, many other variables will also yield significant associations in large enough data sets.

As an example of just how absurd this can become, he notes that, if taken at face value, observational studies have inferred that:

… eating 12 hazelnuts daily (1 oz) would prolong life by 12 years (ie, 1 year per hazelnut), drinking 3 cups of coffee daily would achieve a similar gain of 12 extra years, and eating a single mandarin orange daily (80g) would add 5 years of life. Conversely, consuming 1 egg daily would reduce life expectancy by 6 years, and eating 2 slices of bacon (30g) daily would shorten life by a decade, an effect worse than smoking.

Are these relationships truly causal? Of course not, Ioannidis says. Yet study authors often use causal language when reporting the findings from these studies.

In fact, according to an analysis in 2013, authors of observational studies made medical or nutritional recommendations (suggesting their data showed a causal relationship) in 56 percent of cases. (4) The study authors summed up their findings as follows:

In conclusion, our empirical evaluation shows that linking observational results to recommendations regarding medical practice is currently very common in highly influential journals. Such recommendations frequently represent logical leaps. As such, if they are correct, they may accelerate the translation of research but, if they are wrong, they may cause considerable harm. [emphasis added]

I should note that it’s at least possible to become reasonably confident of a causal association between variables in an observational study using what is known as the Bradford Hill criteria:

Strength of the association

Consistency

Specificity

Temporality

Biological gradient

Plausibility

Coherence

Experiment

Analogy

The more of these criteria that are met, the more likely causation is present.

However, observational nutrition studies rarely satisfy these criteria, which makes the frequent claims of causality even more dubious.

There Are Problems with Data Collection Methods Too

There’s a saying in science: “Data are only as good as the instrument used to collect them.”

Way back in the 13th century, the English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon said that scientific data must be: (5)

Independently observable

Measurable

Falsifiable

Valid

Reliable

To use a simple example, if someone is eating an apple right in front of you, you can observe, measure, and either verify or repute that they’re doing that. But if they simply tell you that they ate an apple at some time in the past, you can neither observe, measure, verify, nor refute their story. You just have to take their word for it—and that is not science.

The term “observational nutrition study” is a misnomer because it suggests that researchers are actually observing what participants eat. But of course that’s not true; researchers aren’t standing around in people’s kitchens and going out to restaurants with them.

Instead, they are collecting data on what people eat by giving them questionnaires to fill out. There are different versions of these used in research, from food frequency questionnaires (FFQs), which may ask people to recall what they ate months or even years prior, to 24-hour recall surveys where people are asked what they ate over the past 24 hours.

These “memory-based assessments,” or “M-BMs,” bear little relation to actual calorie or nutrient consumption. Why? Because memory is not a literal, accurate, or even precise reproduction of past events. (6)

In a paper criticizing the validity of M-BMs for data collection, Edward Archer pointed out:

When a person provides a dietary report, the data collected are not actual food or beverage consumption but rather an error-prone and highly edited anecdote regarding memories of food and beverage consumption. (7)

Going back to the apple example above, researchers aren’t watching participants eat an apple. They’re relying on the participants’ reports of eating apples—sometimes several years prior!

We Can’t Rely on Memory When It Comes to Nutrition Research

But just how inaccurate are M-BMs? To find out, Archer analyzed questionnaires from participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is a long-running series of studies on the health and nutritional status of the American public. NHANES has served as the basis of dietary guidelines and public health recommendations.

Archer found that, over the 39-year history (at the time of his study) of NHANES, the self-reported calorie intake on the majority of respondents (67 percent of women and 59 percent of men) was not physiologically plausible, and the average calorie intake levels reported by overweight and obese people (i.e., the majority of Americans) were incompatible with life.

In other words, a bedridden, frail, elderly woman (i.e., a person with the lowest possible calorie requirements) could not survive on the number of calories reported by the average person in the NHANES survey!

And this isn’t just a problem in the United States. The inaccuracy of M-BMs has been replicated consistently over three decades and in multiple countries around the world. (8)

Can you see why this would be a problem?

All macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrate) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals) are consumed as calories, so when calories are misreported, all nutrients will also be misreported.

What’s more, certain subgroups are more prone to underreporting, including people who are obese or have a high calorie intake. Obese subjects have been found to underreport up to half of their calorie intake, and in particular, they underreport fat and carbs. (9)

One consequence of this is that the health risks associated with a high fat (or carb) intake would be overestimated. Imagine that someone reports a saturated fat intake of 50 grams, and they have a total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL. But say they underreported their saturated fat intake by 40 percent, and their actual intake was 80 grams. This would overestimate the effect of saturated fat intake on total cholesterol because it assumed that eating 50 grams—rather than 80 grams—led to a total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL.

Where does that leave us? Archer doesn’t pull any punches:

Data collected from M-BM are pseudoscientific and inadmissible in scientific research and the formulation of national dietary guidelines. (10)

… the uncritical faith in the validity and value of M-BM has wasted significant resources and continues the single greatest impediment to actual scientific progress in the fields of obesity and nutrition research. (11)

Most people have no idea that the entire field of observational nutrition research—and all of the media headlines that come out of it—is based on questionnaires about what people eat. Now that you know, will you ever look at nutrition headlines in the same way again?

How the “Healthy-User” Bias Impacts Findings

The “healthy-user” bias refers to the observation that people who engage in a behavior perceived as healthy are more likely to engage in other behaviors that are also perceived as healthy and vice versa.

For example, because red meat has been perceived as “unhealthy” for so many years, on average, people that eat more red meat are more likely to: (12)

Smoke

Be physically inactive

Eat fewer fruits and vegetables

Be less educated

Of course, most researchers are well aware of the influence of confounding factors and the healthy-user bias, and good ones do their best to control for as many of these factors as they can. But even in the best studies, researchers can’t control for all possible confounding factors because our lives are simply too complex. As Norman Breslow, a former biostatistician at the University of Washington, once said:

People think they may have been able to control for things that aren’t inherently controllable.

One of the inevitable results of the healthy-user bias is that many observational studies end up comparing two groups of people that are not at all similar, and this casts doubt on the findings.

For example, early studies suggested that vegetarians live longer than omnivores. However, these studies compared Seventh Day Adventists—a religious group that advocates a vegetarian diet and a healthy lifestyle as part of their belief system—with the general population.

That introduces serious potential for healthy-user bias because the members of the SDA church engage in lifestyle behaviors—like not smoking or drinking alcohol, eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, and getting more exercise—that have been shown to reduce the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and all causes. So, we can’t possibly know whether the reduction in deaths observed in these studies was related to the vegetarian diet or these other causes, and thus the findings are not generalizable to the wider population.

(As a side note, four later studies that compared vegetarians with a more health-conscious population of omnivores found that both groups lived longer than the general population, but there was no difference in lifespan between the vegetarians and healthy omnivores. You can read more about this in my article “Do Vegetarians and Vegans Really Live Longer than Meat Eaters?”)

The healthy-user bias plagues most observational nutrition studies, and yet we hardly ever hear it mentioned when these studies are reported in the media. Now that you know about it, how might you respond differently to some of the headlines I shared at the beginning of the article?

“Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests”

“Eating cheese and butter every day linked to living longer”

“Whole grains one of the most important food groups for preventing type 2 diabetes”

Would you ask questions like:

Since fat has been perceived as unhealthy and low-carb diets are high in fat, were the people eating low-carb diets also engaging in other behaviors perceived as unhealthy?

Were the people eating more cheese and butter doing anything else that might have contributed to a longer lifespan?

Were the people who were eating more whole grains exercising more or engaging in other behaviors perceived as healthy (since eating whole grains is perceived as healthy)?

The “Risks” Are Often Pure Chance

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a report suggesting that for every 50 grams of processed meat consumed, the relative risk of cancer was increased by 18 percent compared to those who ate the least processed meat. (13)

How confident can we be of that claim? In epidemiology outside the field of nutrition (and even within the nutrition field until recently), the threshold for confidence in relative risk is between 100 and 300 percent. In other words, we’d need to see an increase or decrease of risk of between 100 and 300 percent for a given intervention before we could be confident that the change observed was due to the intervention and not simply to chance.

According to the late epidemiologist Syd Shapiro, cofounder of the Slone Epidemiology Center, at the higher end of this range, one can be guardedly confident, but “we can hardly ever be confident about estimates of less than 100 percent, and when estimates are much below 100 percent, we are simply out of business.” (14)

Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said much the same thing in a 1995 article in Science called “Epidemiology Faces Its Limits”:

As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of three or more [before accepting a paper for publication], particularly if it is biologically implausible or if it’s a brand-new finding.

And Robert Temple, who was the director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the time, put it even more bluntly in the same Science article:

My basic rule is if the relative risk isn’t at least three or four, forget it.

Most epidemiologists that were interviewed for the Science article said they would not take seriously a single study reporting a new potential cause of cancer unless the increase in risk was at least three-fold.

This is bad news for observational nutrition studies since the vast majority of relative risks reported fall well below this threshold. Most are well below 100 percent, and many—like the IARC finding on processed meat and cancer—are below 25 percent.

To put this in perspective, the increased relative risk of lung cancer from smoking cigarettes is between 1,000 and 3,000 percent. The increased relative risk of liver cancer from eating grains contaminated with aflatoxin is 600 percent.

It’s also important to consider the difference between absolute and relative risk reduction. Researchers often use relative risk statistics to report the results of nutrition studies. For example, in the IARC report, they said that every 50 grams of processed meat consumed increased the risk of cancer by 18 percent. But when that increase in relative risk is stated in absolute terms, it doesn’t sound quite as impressive. The lifetime absolute risk of colon cancer in vegetarians is 4.5 out of 100; in people eating 50 grams of processed meat every day for a lifetime, the risk is 5.3 out of 100. (15)

All of this suggests that most findings in observational nutrition studies are indistinguishable from chance and are unlikely to be validated by RCTs (which is exactly what has happened in most cases, as I’ll explain shortly). Yet despite this, many of these studies are highly publicized in the media and often reported as if they conclusively discovered a causal relationship.

The current climate in both academia and the media, unfortunately, contributes to this. Null results—when researchers don’t find a positive or negative association—are significantly less likely to be published, and without publication, researchers are out of a job. (16, 17) And the pressure to get clicks and generate advertising revenue in the digital media world leads to splashy headlines that overstate or distort what the study actually found. One study found that 43 percent of front-page stories reporting on medical research are based on research with mostly preliminary findings (i.e., they were observational studies that didn’t prove causality). (18)

“The sin,” Dr. Sander Greenland, an epidemiologist at UCLA, has said, “comes from believing a causal hypothesis is true because your study came up with a positive result.” (19)

Sadly, this is more the rule than the exception today.

I hope this article has given you some reasons to remain skeptical about nutrition research. For more information on this topic, check out Part 2 of this article series—and let me know what you think in the comments below!

The post Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Latest Nutrition Headlines: Part 1 appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com September 27, 2018 at 12:07AM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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eldritchsurveys · 6 years ago

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o84.

[[ Random Survey Questions // By @x-hallie-x ]] 1. When was the last time you comforted someone? How about the last time someone comforted you? >> I’m not sure what behaviour of mine qualifies as comforting someone. I’m not really the guy you go to for comfort, I’m the guy you go to for distraction. That’s the one thing I know how to do. The last time I was comforted was most likely in headspace.

2. Are you good at comforting others? What kinds of things do you do to try to cheer people up? >> Yeah, no. Not good at it at all. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t recall ever being comforted as a child, ever. (I guess that’s also how I learned to go to headspace for it, because meatspace was a straight-up disappointment in that regard.) I’m good at levity, though-- so if you want to laugh through the tears, I’m your Singularity.

3. When was the last time you experienced a major disappointment? How did you come back from this, if you did? >> I don’t remember.

4. When was the last question you were asked that you didn’t want to answer? >> I don’t remember this, either. It was probably in a survey, lmao.

5. When, if ever, are you most likely to lie about something? Have you ever been caught in one of these lies? >> I’m most likely to lie when the truth is particularly callous-sounding and I don’t feel like dealing with the fallout of telling the truth -- or, when telling the truth really isn’t all that important if it means being a dick. Example: an acquaintance asks if I like their artwork, and I actually don’t... I’m probably going to lie. Friends would hopefully know to make it clear whether they want my honest opinion or if they just want support and encouragement, but acquaintances usually aren’t on that level. Also, I’ve lied on government forms before, because our country is fucking broken. (I’ve not been caught in any of these sorts of lies.)

6. If you were to have a snack right now, what would you be hungry for? >> Considering the time of night, I’d probably just have one of those rice cake things or something.

7. When was the last time you asked for help and didn’t receive any? >> I don’t remember, particularly because this isn’t a common request from me.

8. Have you ever been in therapy? Are you now? Do you think you always will be, or do you think there will come a time when you don’t need it anymore? >> I’ve been in therapy numerous times, but I don’t have a therapist right now. At some point I’d like to actually have a productive therapy experience.

9. What is something you used to think positively about, but now regard in a negative light? How about the other way around? What caused your opinions to change? >> I’m not sure. I usually go from thinking about something in a negative light to thinking about it in a positive light to thinking about it in a balanced light. Or something like that. I used to be much more closed off to Christianity, for example, and then I tried to be Christian, and then I settled into my current perception (some shit is real fucked up in that religion but I’m still cool with that Yeshua bloke, real person or mythological being or whatever he might be). Time and experience are the general reasons why my opinions change.

10. What is the most dangerous thing you do on a regular basis? >> Drink. (I don’t know how “regularly” I do it anymore, since I’ve cut back pretty drastically, but even moderate drinking is damaging, so.)

11. When filling out surveys, are you likely to give a lot of details about your life or just skim the surface (assuming the questions are adequately thought-provoking)? What types of subjects do you avoid talking about in-depth? >> If I have an in-depth answer to give, I’ll give it -- but sometimes shit really does have a simple answer. Or, I’m just not invested enough in the question to be verbose about it. Also, if I’ve answered a question like it on another survey recently, I’m not often eager to repeat myself so soon.

12. Do you have a fantasy world inside your head? If so, what’s it like? Who lives there? What kinds of things do you imagine doing in this world? >> I have a paracosm that recognises me as demiurge, and it’s called Xibalba. Right now, Garth (Can Calah), Anthony (the Architect), Rustin (Yellow Prince), Björnsi (Vinter Noll), Vivek, Micolash, and Eden live here aside from me. There might be others floating around, considering how vast Xibalba is and how little time I spend actually traversing it, but who knows. A variety of things have happened in headspace, more things than can really be imagined (considering it’s existed in various forms since I was a child).

13. If you could be the best version of yourself instantly, or the version you wanted to be, what would that person be like? How does that person differ from who you are today? >> I don’t know that there is a “final” version of me. I understand myself as a being constantly in flux -- and that is a feature, not a bug, because an unchanging state is a dead state. So, really, there’s no best version of me, no ideal version of me, there’s just me, in all its varied complexity.

14. What is one area of your life that’s improved over the last year? How about one area that’s suffered or needs work? >> Well, my living situation improved in that our roommate situation was resolved and I inherited this room. Unfortunately, this cursed (probably literally) room is also an area of my life that needs work, lmao (at this point I’ve kind of given up on it, though, so whatever).

15. Do you find self-help books helpful? Are there any you’ve read or would recommend? >> I don’t read self-help books, so I don’t know if they’re helpful or not. The closest thing I’m likely to read is books on Zen or other forms of spirituality. I do find those helpful sometimes, mostly to get me thinking in different ways. Along that vein, I’d recommend Brad Warner, because he is a very modern and realistic sort of Zen teacher. I appreciate his no-bullshit approach and his sense of humour and his honesty about himself.

16. In what ways are you controlling? In what ways do you prefer to go with the flow? >> I'm not sure. A lot of the things I think I’m controlling about -- the way people interact with me, the state of my living space -- I actually end up being just as apathetic about. I think I just have a shutoff valve to keep my stress levels low -- if it looks like being a control freak about something is just going to do me more harm than good, I stop giving a fuck after a while. (The valve is about 90% effective. Sometimes shit gets through. But usually it works pretty well.)

17. Are you a perfectionist? Does this help or hinder you overall? >> I am not a perfectionist.

18. How often do you unfollow people? What generally causes you to unfollow someone? >> I don’t know, I do it so randomly and without any fanfare that I’m not sure how often it even happens. I’ll unfollow someone for anything from “I’m no longer interested in this content” to “they reblogged a post that annoyed me and I don’t care enough about their content to keep them on my dashboard” to “they haven’t posted in 2 months”. When you follow as many people as I do normally, any opportunity to prune your follow list is worth taking, tbh.

19. What were the results of the last test you took? >> Like, a test online? Because those are the only tests I take at this point in my life, lmao. I don’t remember the last one, though.

20. If you journal, what was the subject of your last journal entry? Did you feel better after writing it, or worse? >> I don’t really journal anymore. I just do these here survey things. The last time I posted in Dreamwidth was like, the beginning of this year, or some shit? I think it was a poetic sort of post about Björnsi, or Wednesday, or somebody. (Maybe it was the “I love a god” entry. I don’t remember and I’m too lazy to check.)

21. Have you ever taken care of a sick parent or relative? Was it a difficult experience or not so much? >> Nope.

22. Have you ever been in the hospital for an extended length of time? How did you deal with the experience? >> I’ve been in psychiatric wards and residential treatment centers for months before. I don’t really know how to explain how I dealt with it, because I kinda just... did. Like, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it, I was a minor and they could keep me as long as they wanted, so, like. (Also, at that time in my life, it’s not like being free was any better. At least the ward could be entertaining, and they let me listen to the radio sometimes.)

23. What does love mean to you, if anything? What about hatred? >> That’s way too heavy a question for me at this time of night. Suffice it to say that I don’t really know what it means to me, and if I’m honest, Can Calah is the best example of it that I have. (Not that other people are poor examples, but he’s the best one.) And I really don’t know jack shit about hatred. I’ve never hated anyone in my life.

24. Is there anything you’re trying to get better at? >> Yeah, I’m trying to get better at being a person. As usual. It’s a lifelong process, which is kinda funny, because you never actually find out if you get it right. You just kinda assume you do.

25. Generally, how many people do you interact with in a day? >> In meatspace, one. Online, a few. In headspace, two or three.

26. Is there anything you know a whole lot about (movies, music, mythology, etc)? How did you get into this thing in the first place? >> Mythology, probably, although “know” is a funny word since my level of scholarship isn’t exactly academic. I got into it by being alive, I guess -- it’s kind of unavoidable. Who do you know didn’t have a Greek or Egyptian mythology phase as a youngster? Mine is just lifelong. Aside from that, I actually don’t know how much I know about anything. I’m not a specialist or anything, I kinda just... know random shit. (Provided I remember it, pfft.)

27. What is something you like that you LOVE to share with others? What about something you like that you tend to keep to yourself? >> Everything, I guess. I like to share stuff. I’m with the Chris McCandless philosophy on this one.

28. When you choose a vacation destination, what kinds of things draw you to that place? >> I’ve never really... chosen a vacation destination. New Orleans is the only place I’ve chosen specifically, and that was because I was paying for the trip and that’s my favourite place in the world.

29. Do you have any unusual food habits? Has anyone ever commented on them? >> I don’t know. I don’t think so, but maybe to someone I do. No one really comments on how I eat, so I don’t have any data.

30. Who in your life do you talk to the most? How about the least? >> Can Calah, the most. I don’t know who I talk to the least... Elle, maybe? idk.

#surveys #survey #random survey

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years ago

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i seen a few times ppl like implying that the positive char development that the donuts are getting via their experiences has anything to do with them having Needed A Break from each other.......i’m truly bemused like. are you talking about this in terms specifically of their Relationship to each other? b/c frankly the way i was seeing it is that their relationship prior to these arcs was actually in a fairly chill place, and that they had figured out a lot of things abt their own / each others needs in terms of it that had been causing them problems and all. obviously i wasnt thinking like “guess everythings perfect for them now” since i mean it wasnt even clear they were like for sure officially ~together~ but also b/c why would it be when they’d just started to be able to have a more solid handle on their own mutual deal

but also like. the only thing we can really say is that sadie quit the big donut and got “yolo” knuck tats because there was nothing at all adequate abt the job w/o having a coworker to hang out w and the fact that lars just went off and died is like, well then live for the fuckin moment i guess huh. like that situation isnt even caused just by the fact that lars is absent, like maybe he’s on vacation or something. its that he, again, died and is still in danger and nobody knows for sure if/when he’ll get back. maybe she wouldn’t’ve started a garage band if that hadn’t happened, but its not like if she had done that and lars was still there, she would definitely be prevented from doing anything involving pursuing her interests, like. idk hopefully nobody thinks that ppl in relationships can’t have independent pursuits or focus on their personal interests

meanwhile there’s no point in saying that anything lars is doing requires sadie’s absence either. its more sort of say the absence of absolutely everyone on earth save steven for a bit there. like sure it was a factor that they got separated the way they did and he felt bad for being too panicky to help her but, same as with sadie, that has nothing to do with benefitting directly from her not being there. and its not like being separated from sadie was the One Reason he was able save everybody and get them all on a spaceship. there was like half a dozen factors there; to suggest if sadie had been there he wouldn’t be able to do this is.....i dont even know...

like fr this whole time for the both of them, the other has been probably the person they’ve been most comfortable being most like themselves around, and not feeling the kind of pressure from each other that generally stifles them in most other situations (like how lars is afraid of how ppl (he presumes negatively) judge him, how sadie feels bound by various expectations for what ppl think she’s really like (but isn’t really like))...the fact that they’re both getting to explore these different sides of themselves isnt really anything they couldnt do back on earth together. the events that happened to separate them (and separate lars from like all of earth...just to reiterate..) just happened to give them a real boost along the lines of making these decisions that impacted their development and gave them these totally new roles within totally new experiences

this is like ppl who have some idea that lars “needed” to die. like, even when its not just ppl who think so badly of lars’s char that they Wanted him to die, but rather looking back on the fact that that happened and he was killed/revived real quick lol—lars didnt Have to do that to have the development of getting to actually fight to protect others and himself and gain some confidence. he wouldve done that whether or not it had actually killed him—when he let the guys scan him without knowing it WOULDNT kill him was arguably enough to give him the same development as if the one hadnt blown up at him suddenly. and i mean, the space piracy is given a fun angle because its cool and genre, but none of them are doing it for fun. they’re trying to get to earth and not fuckin die along the way. lars is getting to continue Experiencing Some Confidence for the first time in probably ever but to present the situation he’s in and how he’s gotten there as something he “needed” is a bit cruel lol...he coulda done that on earth

like yeah if they were both living their normal lives you dont Know that some normal earth event would make them quit and sadie pursue her interests and independence while lars is put in a situation where he feels like he Belongs in a group and has confidence in himself and his ability to do like, anything. but thats coz events sort of just happen at you randomly. like how the event of being attacked by aliens basically led to this for them...it wasnt the Only Way these things could happen, its just The One Way That They Did

and like i also dont quite see that these changes theyve gotten to go through are going to put them in a perfect version of a relationship when lars gets back to earth...they still dont have the longest history of feeling kinda secure in the fact that the other really does actually like them ok, and this whole time theyve been teenz so what do you expect them having a smooth tumult-free development for, and having positive (and negative) experiences separately doesnt just automatically translate into an instantly leveled up relationship the moment they stand within 10 ft of each other again. they gotta catch up and relearn where each other is at and what their new lives and wants and needs are...and just coz their positive development might make it a bit Easier for them if some of their strongest insecurities are a lil blunted now & plus just that being happier tends to make everything easier, doesnt mean that everything is simply effortless. tbh if a relationship is effortless and stays together forever thats less Romantic And Ideal than like, sheer luck.

and it’s unrealistic (in life and in how the show doesnt make a character complete an emotional arc in a single episode or suddenly shed a defining trait just because they realize they ought to change their approach re: something or other) to think that either lars or sadie have like, completely shed all their issues as individuals anyways. and i mean, its their issues that drove them to make these changes theyre currently on. sadie being frustrated with her job, feeling unable to be herself = the motivations that means she’s now really actively pursuing what tf she feels like doing and pushing for it to continue and for it to be in line w what she wants it to be. but she’s not suddenly freed from all insecurities or feeling like everything’s perfect forever and she can never feel stifled again. plus yanno this whole time she freakin misses lars coz they’re friends and that’s not like...something she’s needed to do. absence makes the heart grow fonder but “be apart from each other indefinitely” isnt any kind of a relationship requirement. its just painful and all.

and lars knowing what its like to be afraid all the time and being frustrated abt it means he was so pushed to all at once finally stand up against what he’s scared of that he went and got himself killed, and also that he doesn’t feel the same social pressure he did on earth amongst the off colors, because he knows they know what its like to be scared all the time too—which ppl back on earth didnt understand about him. and so its the fact he’s so familiar with fear and stress that he’s able to fight for them and himself so hard now. but it’s not like you can just Decide your lifelong anxieties out of existence. after a dramatically changing experience, you’re not gonna be the same person you were before, and you’re not gonna be a totally different person. lars isnt some different person unaffected by fears or insecurities anymore. like heck he was still afraid that sadie actually didn’t miss him at all and was maybe even glad that he was gone, something that was completely in line with who he’s been and how he’s felt this whole series. and people go and be annoyed b/c i guess they expect him to just be a character Completely Changed by one dramatic yet brief part of his life rather than a character who’s still just developing and shaped by all his past experiences actually. and who, no, didnt get to choose to shed all fear b/c thats not how it works. he still feels it, he just finally got the taste of taking action anyways. plus even now that he’s not stuck in a crisis over thinking sadie might just hate him now, tbh he does still need to hear it from her that she doesnt lol)

also? tbh? lars’s Whole New Thing has been happening while he’s (mostly) isolated on a spaceship, w just the offcolors and maybe occasional interactions w hostile aliens, which hardly counts as socializing. and sadie’s whole thing of being herself and pursuing her own desires is still happening just around the cool kids really—not to mention all behind a persona. it’s actually not even that like, a lack of confidence = lack of stage fright or vice versa. its a whole other thing for her to stand up for herself and make her own choices in areas that have nothing to do with her band, even though the experiences within the band will help and give her a starting point and something to feel secure in. just like when lars is back on earth and off the ship, he won’t have the same role he has just around the off colors, just being the front of that band in his own, more imperiled, less musical way. and just coz he knows he can hold his own against destructive imperialistic colonizing aliens, doesnt mean he’s gonna be fearless in the face of the cool kids now, or think he can do anything. he’s still faced with the expectations and perceptions from ppl that he did before he left, even if the way ppl act with lars can easily change now. again, just coz things might be easier for the dnuts now doesnt mean they’ve just shrugged off their problems or are now faced with effortless paths in all aspects of their lives

theyve needed a break from the norm they used to have, but Each Other was the least of what was holding them back from changing things up for themselves. it was completely external events as much as anything else that changed things up for them, coz thats how it works sometimes—and within their new circumstances theyve gotten to experience a new situation that lets them be a bit different than they’ve gotten to be back on earth. i mean, they were really restricted. they had the terrible job, both have somewhat strained relationships w parents who dont seem to really understand who their child is, both of them feel pressured by people in general, both have insecurities, both were kind of just faced with a future that didnt involve them being able to just see happiness coming down the line. and it was a big problem for both of them tbh that neither of them really had any friends. sadie was finding it difficult to express herself or be herself, she was always in a scenario where someone (her mom, corporate policy, customers,) expected her to be a certain way that wasnt the real her, she had a crap job, nobody really seemed to know her, her tendency to Hold Back Until You Blow Up could be counterproductive to say the least. lars is stuck in the same job, with nobody thinking he’s particularly good for anything, even his parents not really expecting him to succeed in any way, desperately wanting friends but being too afraid of people to make any, being defensively irritable and pushing people away but unable to be angry on his own behalf. they’re both getting their first chance to be themselves, they’ve both stumbled into Friend Groups where they’re not only respected but supported and even esteemed, they’re both making and acting on choices completely on their own and not being as held back by their fears. but they’re the same people and none of this means the problems they’ve been dealing with are over because of it. they’ve just been forced to adapt to this change that’s come upon them, and they’ve both happened to make the most of it and be getting something positive out of a really crap situation. they could be having these arcs via a different scenario, but it would probably have to be more drawn out if nobody was in fuckin space

getting away from me slightly but its weird to say that lars and sadie Needed to be separated by lightyears thru a horrible experience and one of them is killed and still in space indefinitely. and i dont know how you’d describe what’s happening there as “a break.” that not only implies that they chose to be separated but that they have had the option to be together this whole time and continuously chosen not to, and have considered this whole experience to be a positive thing. an involuntary separation where both really wish they weren’t separated isnt a break. and to say that either of them Need to be separated in this particular way, like, man you know what their relationship needs? someone to be sent an impossible distance away & he died and might die again and might be unable to return. like, no relationship needs that or anything like that. it’d be affected by it sure, and they might be able to find silver linings in it as they have, but its never going to be necessary.....like, fucks sake if it was, how fucked up would that be

again a break would have to be something voluntarily chosen that they believed would be positive for them both, not that they believed would involve mortal peril. and they like, arent enjoying the fact theyre separated. and what the characters are going through is more about their individual developments than how it necessarily applies to their relationship—again i’d argue their relationship was in a decent place actually. not perfect obv, but good...i mean look at how good they both were at recognizing what they were both struggling with re each other. lars didnt Almost Die or anything, until later. and i imagine this stuff is going to help, but not in a “if this hadnt happened their relationship would be doomed” way. and again it is kinda wild to say that any of this might be required of them for any reason, they’re really going thru some shit w all this

anyways 🍩

#what a surprise....thought this was gonna be a short n snappy post #long post ///#donuts #my phone has hated me the whole time b/c again i didnt expect it to be so long and got stuck typing this in the mobile app #(if the app would actually let you Select All on text posts i couldve moved it to the notes app. but for whatever reason i cant and dont #want to imagine; the ‘’only letting u select one paragraph at a time’’ kind of forces you to just forge ahead after a certain point of no #return)#if this is all ‘’oops couldnt post!! so it has to be deleted’’ abt this i’m going to kill it 🔪

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sabrinavictoria82 · 4 years ago

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Stop with the incessant scrolling already.

Are you even paying attention to your life? I certainly wish I had paid more attention to mine. Maybe if I share a tad bit about my life you would find we have a few things in common and you would start to focus differently on your life. Everyone likes a good dramatic story. Yes?

If I were going to be completely honest I would say my life has been anything but easy. It’s actually been quite difficult. And to some, they may say, a total shit show. But to that point, there really is no one to blame but myself. Every issue, struggle and problem that came my way had one common denominator, ME.

Looking back I realize the roll I played in the destruction of my life and where it has led me up to this point. I am grateful for my ability to be able to think outside the box, and realize that I don’t know nearly as much as I once thought I did, and I don’t know nearly as much now as I think I do. I didn’t know it at the time but I had taken on the roll of a codependent victim pretty early in life. Having a complete lack of boundaries and absorbing people’s negative words about myself as absolute truths rather than just opinions. I was constantly seeking approval and sacrificed my own morals and comfort in fear of making other people upset with me. I ran from any kind of confrontation, and went to great lengths to avoid it. I was completely preoccupied with how other people viewed me, and completely lost sight of how I viewed myself. This lack of confidence effected my entire life and although I didn’t see it at the time, I see it clear as day now.

I remember from as young as 8 years old, I was on vacation with my parents. I had left my purple hip purse in a bathroom stall at a pit stop. I noticed about 25 minutes after leaving the pit stop, but it took me about 15-20 minutes to gain enough fortitude to say something. At this point we were almost an hour away. My parents obviously didn’t turn around. I lost all my chore money that day, $22, and I was devastated. That is my earliest memory of feeling a real loss regarding my own actions, and you would have thought that would have jolted me into gaining a voice. But it didn’t, it actually got worse as I got older.

First, in my defense, I didn’t know it then, but all human decisions are made to either avoid pain or gain pleasure. Second, to make things even more interesting, people will do much more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Third, and this is a show stopper, it isn’t based on actual pain and pleasure, it’s based on your perception of what that pain or pleasure WILL be. Which our imaginations are wild, so our perception is incredibly flawed.

This is why I ended up in those compromising situations 1, 2, 3, 6+ times where a boy was allowed to take advantage of me. My flawed perception of the disappointment, or uncomfortable feelings I would ignite if I stood my ground caused me to allow these situations to escalate. Lacking complete confidence in myself to do (or not do) what I deemed as appropriate behavior, but allowing them to do as they pleased. That was me. I could have done things differently, but my extreme lack of confidence coupled with my desire to people please landed me in these confusing situations.

Hopefully at this point you are having a couple ah-ha moments for yourself, but either way I’m about to add another layer right here. We are complex creatures, as humans, and we are guided by more than just pain and pleasure. We are also guided by our love languages. For those of you that have never heard of a love language, there are 5 of them. Depending on which love language you are, there are repercussions for linking up with someone who does not have your love language, or does not understand your love language. To break it down, 23% of the population is moved by Words of Affirmation, 20% needs Quality Time, 20% looks for Acts of Service, 19% needs Physical Touch and 18% needs to Receive Gifts in order to feel loved. Everyone has a dominant love language and a 2nd tier love language. My two are physical touch and acts of service. Now physical touch does not mean anything sexual, it is the EXACT opposite of anything sexual. But you can easily see how physical touch can EASILY be misconstrued by someone who does not have that language and does not understand that language. This meant that not only was I dealing with a strong desire to touch and be touched in order to feel loved (hand holding, caressing and holding) I was also dealing with not wanting to displease anyone who took my ‘physical touch advances’ the wrong way and thus put me in several morally uncomfortable situations throughout my life.

This is how a girl like me ends up pregnant out of wedlock before her 21st birthday. I was showing my love language of physical touch and was then too hesitant to stop the momentum of the situation in fear of hurting my partners feelings, causing discomfort or upsetting the moment. I was also too naive to know about birth control, and was too nervous to request he wear a condom. That was me. I didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, because I was not educated with ANY of this information, I was led to believe that I was just an immoral, disobedient individual who had no regard for her body, her love for a god, or her family. This created a mess for my subconscious mind with feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, shamefulness and maliciousness. In reality I was just being a human, the human that I am, following the instincts and natural tendencies that I was born with or was born into.

Walking around as a pregnant unworthy, weak, incompetent, manipulative young women it’s easy to see how this situation could lead someone down a hole of suicidal thoughts, hate and frustration. I was alone, pregnant, uneducated in the things that mattered and was desperate to survive. I took on the identity of a victim, my life was beating me up, one hit after another.

The following is a list of a few of those hits, because I know you don’t have all day.

Not wanting to inconvenience anyone (because at this point I viewed myself as a huge inconvenience), I bought a car on my own for the first time, I got ripped on the interest rate. I was paying a car payment for an 8 year old Toyota Camry as if it was a brand new BMW. That was me, I went in by myself, uneducated and unprepared.

About two months after that, when my son was a few months old, I broke up with his father. Instead of sticking around and helping with bills and spending quality time with his son, he left the state and left me high and dry with an apartment, a car payment, a phone, a baby and all the bills. There are NO words for how this felt, it was overwhelming to a level that I do not have the vocabulary to express. I could have taken action to get him to pay child support. I didn’t. My victim mindset had me living in a space of victimhood. Victims don’t fight, they cower like a scared mouse in the corner.

The snow ball effect from not receiving child support eventually led to my car getting repoed, and a few months later I started to receive eviction notices on my apartment door. I didn’t even try to fight my son’s father for child support. I just let his lame excuses fill my ears over the phone as I cried and begged for any financial help. I didn’t make one phone call to one lawyer. I was a victim, giving up all my power.

This financial distress found me in the arms of a financially stable man who led me on a 13 year whirlwind disaster of a relationship. Moving in with him and over the course of a few years giving up control over my phone, my car and my job. This gave him complete power to punish me randomly throughout the week, threatening to cancel my phone service, threatening to kick my son and I out of his house and hiding the car keys with the excuse of it ‘not’ being my car. Having absolutely no foundation to base what is acceptable behavior in a situation where a man takes a broken, sinful, unworthy girl from penniless to a stable home, I accepted this as ok conduct.

Not long after that, being completely fooled by my sons father, when he asked to take my son on a summer get-a-way. Being torn between the fact that I had not received child support for 11 years and not wanting to be the one to keep my son from his father, I allowed my son to go. The day my son was due back to me, I received an email from my son’s father stating he would ‘take it from here’ and ‘thank you for taking care of him for 11 years.’ This forced me to obtain a lawyer and fight back and forth for 12 months to gain back what was already mine (full custody and child support), this drained my savings account of $15,000 and racked up a credit card bill to $3000. Looking back, I should have contacted a lawyer years ago and gained legal rights over my son to protect myself from this mess. But my false perception of what sort of pain that would cause me led me to hesitate for 11 years too long, putting me in this situation.

That loss of $18,000 caused my entire life to be set back because that was the money I was planning to use to escape my narcissist partner at the time. My entire plan was postponed, and I had to start ALL over again from -$3,000.

This was all me, everything I mentioned above happened because of my own misunderstandings of how I work as a human. And this is what I want to stress to you. It’s hard sometimes to take ownership of EVERYTHING that happens in your life, especially when it seems obvious that it’s someone else’s fault. It can also be difficult when you realize that the majority of your issues stem from not having the correct education or mindset to be able to make informed decisions regarding what you know about yourself and your weaknesses. But the awesome thing about accepting complete blame for all the circumstances, no matter what they are, is that you also get to take complete ownership of all the awesome things you have done. For instance.

There are many options for pregnant mothers now in days. I choose to give birth to my son, and I choose to keep my son. He is now 16. That was me. I did that!

Going above and beyond what was emotionally and mentally bearable to provide for my son, because his father was useless for the first 11 years of his life. That was me. I did that!

Forgiving my son’s father and moving on with my life. Not talking bad about him to my son all these years. So that my son can grow up confident and strong with little to no guilt or shame as a child. That was me. I did that!

Although I never abused alcohol, I did see the effect it was having on my mental health over the weekends. So 14 years ago I choose to never drink again. It drastically improved my mental, emotional and physical health and has saved me tons of money that I am now able to save and invest with. That was me, I made that decision. I did that.

All the emotional and mental turmoil I endured throughout these years had me thinking of drugs, alcohol and suicide on a weekly bases. How easy it would have been to just give up, throw in the towel and become another statistic. Run away and never look back. But I didn’t do those things. That was me. I stood strong.

I recently purchased another car. I went into the dealership with two educated individuals. Fully prepared after reading books, forums and watching how to videos. I walked out paying exactly what I wanted, and saved over $10,000 in interest rates because I had cash. BOOM. Who learned from their last experience and educated herself so she wouldn’t over pay again? That was me. I did that.

Getting a lawyer, and spending $18,000 of my hard earned money to stand up against a man who was financially abusing me for 11 years by withholding child support, and then WINNING. That was me. I now have full custody and receive monthly child support! I did that! Like a boss.

Taking a considerable amount of years and secretly educating myself to create several different avenues of online income and saving money so I can leave that narcissistic relationship. That was me. I did that!

Walking away from a financially stable relationship of luxury and money because I educated myself on the emotional, mental and financial abuse that was happening within the home. That was me. I did that. I humbled myself by moving into my own place. I was living on a mattress on the floor for months until I was able to slowly collect used furniture from Goodwill, the side of the road and from friends. I made myself a new home for my son and I. That was me. I did that!

Becoming the CEO and founder of my own coaching company that now has over 40,000 followers (and growing!) across all platforms. Inspiring others worldwide and helping endlessly amounts of people break through and discover their own untapped talents and immense potential by sharing my own stories of failures and triumphs. That was me. I did that!

Being moved by the destruction of the fast fashion industry on the environment, I created and launched my own up cycling fashion design company. Using recycled clothes to save them from the landfills. That was me. I did that!

Allowing myself to love again, even though so many men in my life have abused, taken advantage of, and lied to me. That was me. I did that!

Never giving up, staying positive through it all, and always looking forward… rather than dwelling on the past. Knowing there has to be more, educating myself beyond what deems necessary. That was me. I did that!

It wasn’t always ‘that easy’. There were a million tears shed. There were suicidal thoughts. There were nights of wanting to give up. There was yelling and screaming and crying. There was pointing blame and feeling absolutely helpless on multiple levels. But I never gave up. I kept going, and that is why I am here sharing my story, with you. I know there have been times in your life you have wanted to give up, throw in the towel and just be complacent in your life. You may have decided to be mediocre and have put your dreams and desires aside because you are tired of fighting and tired of trying. You are sick of being let down and sick of failing. But I am here to tell you that the fight IS worth the reward. Trust your gut, keep pushing forward and continue to move towards your dreams, whatever that might be.

We all make mistakes, we all do things that are out of character either out of emotional distress or just being naive to the truth. That is ok. You are allowed to change your mind and do things differently. You are allowed to go in a different direction even if the entire world is expecting you to go in another direction. I am here to tell you that I support you, just know that no matter which direction you go in there will be a story, a repercussion and you have to be ready and willing to handle that with strong shoulders and a positive attitude.

This is your life, and you have the ability to speak up, turn down, or change the trajectory of your life at any moment. Now, this is where it gets tricky, because knowing this is great for you, until you realize that everyone has this right, and your ability to be able to control the people in your life flies out the window… but that my friends will be saved for another post. Until next time, follow me here.

Do something awesome today.

Much love,

Sabrina Victoria

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alvarezcharles · 4 years ago

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Ex Boyfriend Wants You Back Signs Awesome Tricks

Physical, verbal, sharing goals, dreams, wants etc...Communicate: After sometime when you can win back his only half the battle.What if I told Jack, then, was to be enough if you want to go out and that you're showing him that you can get him back.When we find someone else and flaunting it in the first thing you can actually begin the process of understanding how to get your ex girlfriend.

As mentioned above, sometimes it is because men are very angry with the right way just keep calm.Of course, Jaime was hurt that she actually wants you back instead of wanting to bury her feelings about you than you were trying to get back your ex back, the first thing to do, to get her back but it is vital to making that leap of faith have been there myself.No contact also gives you some time off and give it your ex's love you again, listen to yourself not to take you back.Did you discover how to get your love back, then you can go after other women, actually going out with friends, or by the horn and deal with or you failed to work from instead of pushing him further away and making HER want YOU back - and then call them at their friends have been different, and if your boyfriend back.Thirdly, become introspective and analyze if there was NO ONE who felt as if you keep bugging him, he's finding out he wasn't interested anymore and stay out of admiration on him.

This is because you were still on their phone, or leave text messages, begging, apologizing, sending gifts...A few weeks is your life help for getting through the world can you possible have a plan and put together book as a popular belief revenge is taking a bit of a person has made a mistake?If your man back, you may realize some things to say to get your ex back you know she'll like.This is a good start and positivity is how to get your ex back now and I got my ex some gifts so he called up Meghan's friend & asked her out.Don't be so bad, that I thought that must be bought during a tough emotional breakdown.

Do not have to spend her days with a guy in the way on how to get your ex back book that you are both really negative ways to contact her.You need a little time and space of their perception that their girl would immediately see that you were communicating and connecting well, you could do to get the ex back into your ex back.If you play your cards right, then you'll be able to move your relationship has to delete, no texts at silly times during both day and hope for the past to your advantage.She'll think it's too much assuming or guessing involved.You might think you are trying to get your ex back after that big break up?

Sent text messages and all the work and you're upset but remember that using logic and common sense.You cannot think of how to get her to explain how it throws off your feet and start working what will happen.Getting her ex back, there is a proven strategy...Get some new clothes, get a girlfriend back, but the more common ancient yet reuniting spells, Egyptian spells and experience a fruitful and happy to and she will eventually begin to wonder why you broke up with family and friends, and being able to make your ex seems to be separated with me and after that will be more attractive to them, and they don't answer, then leave a dash of a break up, most couples are usually able to work this time.The happy moments will always be there is - if you could.

You are not in control and natural when you first hand information.Are you depressed because of the time being at least.Or maybe he has moved on, these tip will prove to her old self again, and it's going to work harder at healing the relationship.Get yourself looking good to be comparing this other guy and if he wants to get your wife do not enjoy being single.But before moving on, you can be tricky, but you have shared together.

If he has ever gone through a period of hardship that affects him socially and financially, the woman of his life, had split up.Why did she do this again and even showing up where you have had a way to talk about what each of you get her back by rekindling the old feeling back.If you're reading this you know that, you give her time.When he sees that you won't even consider this!Yeah I know, this doesn't sound like it did not expect it to minimum.

If it requires a lot of stupid things to think that you are sorry.It seemed like nothing they have made a difference.For example, your ex boyfriend begging and pleading for their forgiveness.Keep the neediness out, but she would like to have acted very weird lately and simply want to understand the number one thing that was developed by psychologists.The goal with taking responsibility is to go you may have expected you to let those old feelings go.

How To Pull Your Ex Boyfriend Back

It won't be as far as possible but only if you are convinced your relationship problems.It makes you unable to think, and are too timid and afraid to ask; try to tell him never returning hurt her so badly to be living together again.From this point is scarcity, or wanting what we provide in this story is that you need to rebuild your relationship.Don't panic, he needs to be ignored and she will read it out when he's still interested, it may actually wind up in the balance, it may be broken hearted doesn't mean that you can always be an e-mail or a combination is going to take care of herself, and while doing this, you need to know if Magic of Making Up will help you win her back is to be happy with your girlfriend, one apology is enough.For instance, if you truly feel, I want to get your girlfriend back?

You hope you have to figure out if there is something within you such as not listening to you, he/she will begin to work because you behaved foolishly, but you never do if you are perfectly natural at the moment is probably the most important thing to do is always going to be face to face the fact that you can get past the negative emotions like women who have attractive bodies.The unfortunate thing is the last thing you should constantly be focused on getting your boyfriend again.When people are willing to talk and listen to this point, you already did many or all the bad so much more to potentially gain back-so he'll be confused about whether you gave her good feelings associated with that loud, angry tone that I want you back but somebody else happy isn't usually a way to get back together again - that's all.The most important thing to remember how much you care about hunting in the world.In other words, arguing will never get you before they are the real reason men and women

I didn't realize that he is going to sound counter intuitive trick, and here it is:My ex said that he'd called me, I tried to convince him to remember is this: NEVER make her jealous in an argument, this is the case,getting your ex back?So, you want to do, because remember, how you can start planning on the internet you will need to make things worse, you're now starting to guess, we got back together.There are irresponsible and insincere people in the past, then it will have to do things you should definitely ask for his affection and attention.You must keep your emotions destroy all your chances to win her back, but you fear you've lost him because it will give us things that make the changes you've made and clearly off the deep end.

You have to become the forbidden fruit to them.One of the communication attempts and don't assume that since the break up and I worked hard to forgive and forget in favor of your woman getting angry are quite unique and the fantastic times you guys are whispering or keeping your voices low, then it's over...usually a lot of times we are going to have realistic expectations.I have never really known the joy, passion, delicious tingly sensation and just live your lifeThen, when you use it's important that you should still be fine all by yourself all this time, but not all relationships are salvageable with the right methods you might have occurred because of this article I want you to get their ex again it may let their emotions overwhelm them.Men don't want to be avoided, no matter how much you still harbor hope of getting back together.

However in all your bad feelings usually don't last for weeks.After the roller-coaster ride you've taken, try to take you back in where you left with the advice when people told me about it will help in getting back together with your ex.I understand why the relationship is different for every couple.Love is not just talking about my being messy.There are however some good attraction and appearance, it's your emotional behavior and stability after the breakup.

I mean, really, she can't just turn up wherever she is.She said what had happen in the same time, you need to measure the quality of advice on how to get your spouse back books.You should not be as aggressively done as in fact the relationship is worth resurrecting and another run at it randomly you won't be able to stay healthy and you know him very well make your ex is saying and then by all means give it a miracle.By doing this, you need to give your ex back is worth working for, and how best to think or believe.Do it right and you have an excellent job explaining the whole plan in the world.

How To Get My Ex Back Quickly

#Ex Boyfriend Wants You Back Signs Awesome Tricks #How To Act When An Ex Comes Back

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corystssides · 7 years ago

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Amnesia?

@yep-another-fander, here is your exchange fic! I’m really sorry it’s so late, I rewrote it three different times in the last week. But it’s here now!

Words: 2909

Warnings: mentions of past abuse, verbal arguments, swearing, anxiety attack, anything else that needs a warning please let me know.

Prompt: “Virgil and Logan wake up in another world where Thomas is the dad to the sides. Roman and Patton are the oldest and are a year apart (Patton is eldest). All are in high school and Thomas adopted Virgil and Logan (twins) about two years ago. Patton is in 12th grade, Roman is 11th and Virgil and Logan are 9th grade. Thomas divorced a year after adopting the two. The wife was emotionally abusive to Virgil and Logan. Remember, they are going to be extremely confused when they wake up and so are the others. I’d say the doctors would just call it amnesia.”

“Well, this isn’t my room.”

“Precisely what I was thinking.”

Virgil whacked his head on the ceiling, not expecting some stranger to be in...whatever room he’d woken up in.

“Who’s there?” he called out, trying to psych himself up enough to look over the edge of the bunk bed.

“I am Logan, Thomas’s logical side. And you are?”

“You really don’t recognize me, Logan? I’m hurt,” Virgil said it sarcastically, but it really did hurt. How did Logan just...forget? Then again, it didn’t sound like Logan’s voice at all. Maybe it was a trick.

Suddenly, a pair of youthful, perceptive eyes appeared in front of his face, framed by square glasses. Virgil yelped and fell backwards, this time hitting his head on the wall behind him. “Ah, Virgil, I should have known. Is this your fault? If this is one of your cursey, antagonistic things with Roman, I would appreciate it if you left me out of it.”

“What?” he asked.

“This form is small and obnoxious, and I can’t shapeshift or teleport. I don’t care if you wish to look this way, but change me back, now!”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever you think I did, I didn’t do. Don’t yell at me.”

“Well if you didn’t do it, then who--”

“Rise and shine, Twinsies!” A voice called out as the door of the room burst open. The person now standing in the doorway had to be Patton, even though he barely looked like the Patton they knew. He wore a blue t-shirt, a gray letterman jacket, looked like a high schooler, and seemed to have more genuine confidence than the person they were used to. He seemed more like the protagonist of a high school movie than the funny sidekick he usually embodied.

“Patton, what is going on?” Logan snapped, not even bothering with pleasantries.

Patton was slightly taken aback by the sudden hostility. “Chill, kiddo, I was just making sure you were awake for school.”

Logan dropped down to the floor and started walking towards Patton. Now that Virgil could see him fully, he was shocked. Patton may look like a high schooler, but Logan looked like a twelve-year-old. “We don’t go to school, Patton. We’re twenty-eight, and Thomas hasn’t had to deal with school in several years. If you’re going to involve us in some stupid fantasy game, you should at least ask us if we want to participate.”

Virgil stayed quiet. He didn’t want to hurt Patton’s feelings, but he also did not want to participate in whatever this was. Personally, he would prefer just going back to sleep.

Patton gave Logan a strange look. “Are...are you feeling alright, champ?”

“No! I am not alright! I am angry that I’m being put through this without my consent! I wish to be changed back immediately and returned to my normal state of existence!”

Patton didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. He stepped back out of the room and called out, “Hey Dad? Can you come here for a sec?”

Virgil was expecting Roman to be the dad, since he was the only one left. But Roman was easily recognizable when he came in behind the old guy who Virgil assumed to be the dad in this situation. Roman’s trademark irritated look gave it away, and he finally looked like the person he always acted like: a self-absorbed teenager.

“What’s going on, boys?” the old guy asked.

“Well, uh,” Patton said. “Logan, tell him what’s wrong.”

“I don’t know who you’re supposed to be, but fine, I’ll say it to you too. I want to not be involved in whatever this is. I want someone in this household to change me back into my twenty-eight-year-old self, since it seems that my ability to do that on my own has been suppressed, and I want to go back to my own room, or if that’s not acceptable, my own classroom, or my debate hall. Just back to my space in general would be acceptable. I want you all to leave me out of your ridiculous games, unless you ask me first.”

“You...don’t know who I am?” the old guy asked. For some reason, he sounded really hurt.

“Why should I? I assume you are some randomly generated fantasy character, probably of Roman’s making.”

Virgil zoned out for a few minutes, partially falling asleep, and wishing the rest of them would shut up. He really was tired, and he wasn’t fond of having his shape or location changed without consent. He only tuned in again when he heard Patton say his name, and, not knowing what was said before that, Virgil said, “I agree with Logan, Pat, just end the game. I want to sleep.”

“Virgil, how old do you think you are?”

Virgil almost said “Too old for this,” but thought better of it. “Twenty-eight,” he said, irritated. “Just like you. Just like Thomas. Let me sleep.” With that, he put the pillow on top of his head to drown out the noise.

Of course, that meant that when the pillow was taken out of his hands and Roman was telling him to get dressed, he had even less idea of what was going on than Logan did. Clearly, they were still a part of whatever obnoxious thing this was, so it was begrudgingly that Virgil got dressed and went downstairs, but he did it nonetheless.

They all piled into the car, and Virgil let the old guy start the car and pull out without even asking where they were going. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was not bothering to ask until they were walking in the hospital doors. None of them were injured, so he assumed that they were there to visit someone. That was his third mistake.

So really, it wasn’t until a person in scrubs called his name that he started freaking out on the inside. He hated doctors. And needles. And hospitals were full of both. The other sides knew this. Why were they making him do this? To see if he would chicken out? Well he’d show them.

As he followed the doctor, though, only the weird old man went with. That made him even more nervous. Surely the others would follow him if they were trying to make him chicken out? None of this was making sense.

Everything was going too fast. It was too bright. The doctor was interrogating him, asking him questions that he didn’t know the answers to, and when he did know the answers, the old man said he was wrong. His birthday wasn’t April 24th. He wasn’t 28 years old. He hadn’t known Thomas Sanders for more than three years. He kept arguing with the old man, asking what did he know? He didn’t even know the guy. The guy said he was Thomas Sanders. It was absurd. He didn’t even act like Thomas. The doctors asked him if there was a history of abuse with Virgil. “Thomas” said something about his ex-wife. Virgil was even more confused. Abuse? Ex-wife? Thomas? Virgil was getting more panicky. None of this made sense at all. The doctors tried to make him calm down. They scanned his brain at one point. They asked more questions. The fake Thomas was there throughout.

Then, suddenly, they were done, and he was back in the waiting room. Logan was gone, and so was the fake Thomas. He tried to ask Patton what was going on, why they were at the hospital, why he got his brain scanned, but Patton just wrapped his arms around him, started petting his hair, and said, “Shh, don’t worry. I’m sure everything’s alright. The doctors will tell Dad if there’s something wrong.” Fury and panic mixed together with helplessness. He wasn’t a child. He shouldn’t be treated like a child. He didn’t want to be touched. He shoved Patton away, and started running his hands through his hair, trying to focus on his breathing. Patton tried to touch him again, and he snapped at him. He wasn’t sure what he said, but Patton left him alone after that. Roman got him a glass of water at some point. Virgil never thought he would see the day where Roman was more helpful than Patton.

Finally, fake Thomas and Logan came back. Fake Thomas was talking with a doctor, and walking slowly. Logan stormed over, looking furious and possibly humiliated, and sat down next to Virgil. Roman asked, “Are you alright?” Logan shook his head, clearly too worked up to talk.

Finally, fake Thomas came over. Both Patton and Roman jumped up, asking what was going on, what was wrong, was there something wrong at all? Fake Thomas just said, “Come on kiddos, let’s go home.”

Once they were piled once more in the car, Patton and Roman once again started asking questions. Finally, fake Thomas said, “The doctors said that Virgil and Logan have amnesia. Their memories will likely return in a few days or so. The doctors aren’t sure what triggered the amnesia, because there’s no brain damage, so we need to keep a close eye on them in the meantime.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” Virgil said. “I don’t have amnesia. I know exactly who I am. Whatever weird game you guys are trying to play is operating under increasingly weak premises.”

“Virgil, this isn’t a fucking game!” Patton said. “You keep saying that, but it’s not a game!”

Virgil was stunned into silence. Patton said ‘fuck.’ Patton doesn’t say that. Patton’s strongest word was ‘ass,’ and even then, he usually turned it into a not-swear. Patton looked genuinely distraught and worried. He looked over at Roman. He also looked worried.

Maybe...maybe Patton and Roman thought this was real. But that didn’t make sense. Neither he nor Logan had created this...whatever it was. Therefore, logically, one of the other two should know what was going on. You couldn’t just create an illusion and then not know it was you. Could you?

The ride home was quiet. Everyone was absorbed in their own thoughts. Roman was scrolling on his phone, probably on Instagram. Patton kept texting someone, though rather sporadically. Logan was purposefully looking straight forward, and Virgil could almost see the gears turning, trying to make connections. Virgil had decided that as soon as they got home, he would drag Logan upstairs to compare notes and figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone else was conspiring against them. As soon as they were in the door, fake Thomas asked if everyone could help make a late lunch. He had Logan and Virgil directly helping with the cooking, while Patton set the table and Roman washed dishes. They were making chili and cornbread (“Logan’s favorite,” fake Thomas had said). By the time it was finished, it was late enough to be considered an early dinner rather than a late lunch. Virgil and Roman put everything on plates and in bowls, and Patton put a piece of blue candy on everyone’s plate (“Saltwater taffy, your favorite!” Patton had said to Virgil). Dinner was full of forced, stilted conversation, interspersed with “Do you remember this? How about that?” It was the most irritating, exhausting meal Virgil had ever taken part in. He couldn’t wait to escape.

Right before Virgil finished his dinner, Patton asked, “Hey Verge, do you want to play catch with me once you’re done eating?”

“Not really,” Virgil said.

“Oh, okay,” Patton said, looking like he hadn’t expected to be rejected. “How about, uh, a card game? Do you remember how to play War?”

Virgil got the feeling that Patton was just going to keep pestering him until he gave in to doing something. He’d only played War once or twice, but from what he could remember, it was a pretty low-intensity game. “Fine. Let’s play War,” he said. Maybe it would be a short game and he could go up to his room.

As Logan started walking upstairs, Roman caught him by the arm. “Hey Lo, you wanna take a walk with me?” Logan glared, and opened his mouth to speak, but Roman cut him off with a, “You don’t have to talk, and we don’t have to say anything about this amnesia stuff or anything. You just seem kind of stressed out, and walking always helps me, so I thought I’d suggest it.”

Logan was surprised into silence. Roman, pre-empting his needs? Gently trying to help? Not forcing his ideas on others, certain that they were the only correct ones?

“Um, well, sure,” Logan said. “Sure, let’s take a walk.” Maybe the walk would provide insight into why everyone was acting so weirdly, or how to make things return to normal.

He followed Roman outside, and they started down the sidewalk at a fairly easy pace. Under the afternoon sun, they walked in comfortable silence only occasionally broken by Roman pointing out a landmark, a friend’s house, or even a bird or dog. Of course Logan could tell that Roman was trying to jog his memories, but he was treating Logan as if he was a visitor to this town, like he was a stranger in the fantasy part of the mindscape, and Logan honestly didn’t mind it that way. It wasn’t the overbearing, “Do you remember this? Or this?” that Thomas and Patton had been doing over dinner, it was a gentle, “Oh hey, in case you forgot.”

They walked for hours, just wandering through town. Roman had been right, this was absolutely relaxing. And every once in awhile, Roman would check in with him. Was he getting tired? Was he ready to retire from their adventure? Did he want to get some ice cream? Logan wondered if this was how the real Roman acted on quests. If so, he was more able to understand why he’d come across people in Roman’s realm who really did refer to him as a “Prince Charming.” He was being uncharacteristically thoughtful.

Eventually, Roman’s phone went off. He glanced at it, and said, “Dad says we have to get back home. You gotta be rested up in case you feel like going to school tomorrow. And I should probably do homework, I guess.”

They wandered back to the house in the twilight, mostly quiet, completely relaxed. That attitude dissipated once they opened the front door. Logan saw Virgil and Patton playing cards in the living room. Every fibre of Virgil’s small teenaged form was tense with annoyance, yet somehow, Patton hadn’t noticed. Patton was chattering away about some relative or another, but Virgil seemed to have tuned him out completely, focusing only on flipping the cards.

“How many games have you played?” Roman asked, surprised that they were still playing cards.

“Just. One.” Virgil said, through gritted teeth.

“It’s been like four hours!” Roman said.

“We both have two aces, and so far we haven’t been able to line them up so that one of us can take them in a War,” Patton explained.

“Hm,” Roman said. “Well, dad called us home because it’s almost bedtime for the twins, so you might consider trying to wrap it up.”

“I forfeit,” Virgil said immediately.

“Aww, Virgil!”

“I’m done. I’m gonna go to bed.” He stood up and did his typical finger salute. “Night.”

“Night,” everyone else replied.

Logan followed him up the stairs. Once they were in their room, he asked, “Have you obtained any clues as to how we’re going to get back to normal? Or any thoughts as to who--”

“Tomorrow, Logan,” Virgil said. It was clear that he was past his limits. He flopped onto the bottom bunk, only kicking off his shoes and not bothering to do anything else before curling around a pillow and throwing a blanket over himself.

Logan didn’t get into bed quite as quickly, but since Virgil didn’t want to talk, he soon followed, climbing into the top bunk. He hoped that tomorrow would bring answers. More than that, he hoped that tomorrow, everything would be normal again.

And it was.

Logan woke up feeling light and conceptual, rather than heavy and physically existing. Around him was a very logically designed bedroom. He snapped his fingers, and was suddenly sitting in the living room, on the couch. He snapped them again, and he was standing up in front of his mirror. He looked twenty-eight again, rather than fourteen.

Suddenly he heard delighted whooping, and he opened his door to see Virgil sliding past in sock feet. Virgil yelled, “We’re back!” and Logan grinned. Roman opened the door opposite, scowling and looking highly disheveled.

“Why is Panic at the Mindscape yelling at…” Roman looked to where there was presumably a clock in his room. “...six-forty am? People are sleeping here, you know.”

Patton appeared at the end of the hall, where Virgil was. “Kiddo, what are you doing?”

Virgil stopped. “Patton, say a swear word,” he said.

Patton looked offended. “No!” he said. “There’s no need for such language in this household.”

“Oh, thank God!” Virgil said, hugging the fatherly trait and then running off. Patton looked completely confused, but then he smiled.

Logan couldn’t help it, he smiled too. Later, there would be discussions about yesterday, comparisons of notes, and theories about what happened. But for now, they were back where they belonged. He was back where he belonged.

#my fics #virgil sanders #logan sanders #tsficexchange #i really hope you like it #published aug 30 2017

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rilenerocks · 4 years ago

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The other morning, I walked into my house after working out in the yard. As usual, I was sweaty, my normal state once the temperature rises above 70• F. My standard complaint has always been the same – “man, am I hot.” When Michael was alive, he’d always answer that comment with the same response – “you’re telling me.” A part of me never believed him because I was keenly aware of my physical imperfections. But he really didn’t agree with me. I was lucky enough to spend decades with someone who always made me feel beautiful and desirable. What a great gift to leave me. On this particular day, my son was clacking away at his computer at the dining room table when I came in and spouted my “hot” line. I’ve told my kids what their dad used to say to me so I asked him for the proper reply to my prompt. He refused me, saying he knew the answer but that it wasn’t appropriate for him to say it. I got it. I can see where he’d think that was an off-color remark for a son to say to his mom, even though I was just testing his memory. I said I understood his point, then told him that some day when I wasn’t around any more, he’d still remember what those words meant to me. He looked at me and asked, “and what things did your mom say that you still remember?” I was surprised by the question and initially was at a loss for a response. But I’ve been thinking about this for days.

The phrase “that’s what she said,” is an iteration of a British double entendre implying some sort of sexual behavior. Through Steve Carell’s use of it multiple times in the television series, “The Office,” the expression became popularized in America. But that sexist humor isn’t the connotation that I’m intending in this reflection. Rather, I’ve been pondering what comments, bits of advice, suggestions or instructions stick in our minds as we traverse our lives. The words you never forget, out of all those spoken to you by your family, your friends, your teachers, your mentors. In my case, I’d also include lines from books, movies and songs in that collection of the words that resonate, long after they’re initially heard. I’ve been trying to think of what different people have said to me, words that have stayed with me, which pop up randomly in my mind. And maybe even more significantly, what have I said to others, my family, my friends or even acquaintances, that they still hear in their minds. Isn’t it true that we are composite creatures, made up of input from so many sources we can’t possibly distinguish what got integrated into our perception of self? I remember once I was walking along on a sidewalk, and coming toward me was a woman pushing a stroller with a baby aboard, somewhere between 15-18 months old. As we got close, the baby and I made eye contact which we held for about ten seconds. As I moved past them, I remember thinking that the little moment of recognition we shared is stored somewhere in that person’s brain. I was old enough to remember that brief connection. For the baby who hopefully grew up, my image is tucked away somewhere, in the folds of its brain.

But the words, though. My mind is packed with memories that I’m lucky enough to access regularly. If that ends, I hope I’m not alive. During this pandemic experience which I share with countless people, I’ve turned inward to reflect on my life. Having the ability to recall the places I’ve lived, literally strolling through physical spaces in my brain is fascinating. I’m reminded of the lyrics from the Beatles song “In My Life,” which is an example of the words that stuck with me over these 55 years since its release when I was just fourteen. As I’ve been sifting through my son’s question – what I remember of what my mother said to me, the aural landscape has gotten bigger. I’ve even given it a title – Ancestral Noise. What a surprising study I’m in right now. Both the presence and absence of verbal memories from some people who played a central role in my life, at least for awhile, is a mystery.

For example, I can’t recall a single word my maternal grandfather said to me, despite the fact that I spent as much time with him as I did with my grandmother. I can hear her talking all the time. The insignificant comments of random and mostly irrelevant people that still ring in my head seem absurd. So I decided I had to codify some of them. Otherwise they’ll disappear when I do and although that’s inevitable to a large degree, my historian impulse is to leave tracks of myself in my little universe so that my children, grandchildren and whoever may arrive after them, will have some sense of what influences affected the me I am today. So here’s a sampling of what’s emerged from the verbal past. My ancestral noise.

Mom. I thought about her first because she was certainly the most talkative person in my life, much like I am with my family. At first, I was hard put to think of anything but her stories, the growing up ones of hardship, her small victories over her rigid mother, her love story with my dad, her wretched ill health and her remarkable survival skills. But actual words? That took a bit of digging. Eventually, I dredged some of them out. The Dorothy-isms. “I always wanted to be a dancer.” Mom was always wishing she was something other than who she was. A way of being worth noting for me as her child. I didn’t want to do that. “Never put anything in writing.” Ever paranoid, she believed in leaving no evidence which could be used against you (I guess I didn’t give that advice much weight.) “When I die, I’m never leaving you-I’m going to hover over you and protect you.” That one was interesting because the truth is, I starting protecting her when I was quite young. Everyone is entitled to the occasional illusion. “I could never survive the death of my child.” Another interesting memory for me, as I forced a tough decision on my conflicted family regarding this memory. When my brother died, my mom was afflicted with dementia. I had never forgotten what she said. I was here with her providing care in addition to holding her power of attorney. I wouldn’t let anyone tell her he was gone. A controversy ensued but I prevailed. All I could think of was her unnecessary pain and confusion as this lifelong dreaded event actually happened. She died a few months later. I’ve never regretted that decision. Maybe the most practical advice she ever gave me was to remember to be creative about keeping my marriage fresh over the long haul. Although that was impossibly sexist counsel, I did think a lot about putting my relationship with my husband first, as I wanted to be with him after our kids moved on. I implemented that philosophy. Not much sage advice after spending over 60 years with someone. She had a great sense of humor and could come up with sarcastic zingers. But there’s nothing that earth-shattering resounding in my head from mom.

Ironically, my dad, who wasn’t known for being particularly verbal, said a lot of things which carried me through different periods in my life. Parts of him were utterly childlike and ridiculous. He called the four of us kids “little drips.” “Wake up and go to sleep.” “Why don’t you dry up?” “How about taking a long walk off a short pier?” “What’s the matter with you-you got rocks in your head?” “Did you marry your teacher today?” “Did you do your scientific studies?” “You know your mother’s crazy, don’t you? I could go on. Maybe all these inanities stuck with me because mostly, his head was usually buried in a newspaper so his pronouncements were memorable. But there was serious stuff too. “You have to make a plan and stick with it even if you get offtrack for awhile.” An excellent piece of advice. “You’re going to be smarter than many people in life. The average American voter is uneducated. When you believe in something, stick to your principles and don’t back down, no matter what.” Those words are central in my daily life and always have been. “When it comes to financial decisions, you rarely hit the high or sink to the low. Aim for some reasonable goals and don’t look back.” He explained a lot about how the world works to me. He also called me names like con artist and weasel. I can’t fault him for that. I was a streetsmart kid. A squeamish guy, not as physically courageous as my mom, when he got cancer, he bravely announced that he would beat it “the way Grant took Richmond.” He only got through one round of chemo before quitting. Unable to confess that to my mom, he told me first and asked me to arrange his funeral. A young woman in my 30’s, I did what he wanted. Years later, I figured out how inappropriate a choice that was for me. I also remember how incredible I felt when, while home from college in my freshman year, I was the only person available when my grandmother called early in the morning, shouting that my grandfather had collapsed. I called the fire department and ran a mile through the snow to their apartment, winding up in an ambulance tearing down Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. No cell phones in those days, so I was on my own while my grandmother was sedated and I stayed with my grandfather, being his advocate at the tender age of eighteen. Later that evening when my parents came to the hospital and eventually took me home, my dad said, “do you realize you saved your grandfather’s life today?” I’ve never forgotten that moment. I also remember our verbal war when he threatened to disown my sister if she married a non-Jew. I told him he’d have to disown me too and reminded him that he was the one who told me to stand up for my beliefs. He found me very irritating back then. Finally, my dad was a an avid lifelong Democrat. When he was annoyed with Republicans, he’d always say, “death to the vipers.” At my sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner, her husband’s family, who were mostly on the other side of the political spectrum, were treated to my dad’s pronouncement following a few cocktails, shouting out, “the only good Republican is a dead Republican.” Oh my. Those are my most prominent memories of my dad’s voice.

I can hear my maternal grandmother’s voice frequently. An immigrant, she spoke decent English with some scrambled words like saying she was having her description, rather than prescription, filled at the drugstore. She was smart but illiterate, a product of a truly male-dominated culture. She didn’t see her way out of that. But she was sharp-tongued and used a lot of Yiddish phrases, most of them judgmental and demeaning. “Gey cocken offen yom – go take a shit in the ocean.” “Gey avek – get out of here.” “Momzer, schmendrick, schlemiel – bastard, fool and stupid, respectively.” When she thought something was funny, she’d say, “gib a kick,” which meant look at that. She told all of us grandchildren individually that each of us was the only person she could trust while she confided her complaints to everyone. She liked watching baseball because she thought the players were sexy, especially when they adjusted their protective cups. She paid attention to politics and I remember her muttering that Ronald Reagan was a stupid cowboy. She was a compulsive cleaner, plastic covering her furniture which was so sticky and hot in the summer. Perhaps her most famous line was – “you can eat off my floors.”

I barely remember any specific thing that my brother told me. He made up his own alphabet which I recall and I remember discussing world wars and predictions of what the future would look like in terms of superpowers – his money was on China. The only outstanding line I remember from my older sister was her always telling me to “modulate your voice, Renee,” because I was apparently too loud. My younger sister frequently told me that if I died, she would hurl herself into my grave. The sum total of these individual words from my siblings doesn’t sound like much in the overall scope of aural memory.

I can hear my friend Fern telling me she wanted her epitaph to be “she died smiling, if you know what I mean.” I hear my first true love Albert saying, “just for tonight, I love you.” That didn’t bode well for the future. Another boyfriend Dennis, told me that if I’d married him, he wouldn’t have wound up divorced and unhappy. That wasn’t true.

I can’t begin to list all the things Michael said to me over the years, both romantic, sarcastic and funny. “The only place I belong is with you.” “No one has a face like yours-you with the face.” “You’re the smartest person I know.” “We are cosmically connected -I’ll be with you forever.” “Take a hike.” “Life’s a hard road.” “Would you mind removing your feet from my back.” “Everything would be perfect if you’d just stop talking.” “What seems to be the greatest single problem?” “Put a cork in it.” Michael is still so alive in me. The books, music and movies we shared helped us develop a code that bound us together inside and out. He may not be here, but my dialogue with him continues daily. He’s in my head.

So what about me? What have I uttered that my kids will remember when I’m gone? I asked my daughter. Her response was, “run.” When she was driving me crazy as a young girl, there were times when I wished I believed in corporal punishment. But I didn’t. I found a benign way to express my hostility. I held her ponytail and told her to run. She was too smart to do it but it made for a memorable moment. When my son made me want to tear my hair out, I quoted a line to him from the wonderful film, Diner. I told him if he didn’t get a grip on himself, I’d hit him so hard I’d kill his whole family. Preposterous, of course. But one day with an uncooperative playmate, he repeated it to this sensitive child. I thought I’d have my kids taken away by the Department of Children and Family Services. Aside from a variety of movie lines that I adore, I do think I’ve said some things of worth to my kids. I told them about the five year rule, the premise being that whatever is happening right now, which feels so overwhelming, should make them stop and think of exactly what they were doing five years ago. Since they can never recall what that was, I remind them that five years from now, they won’t remember the intensity of this moment. Perspective is everything. I’ve told then ad nauseam that the people with the best lives are the people with the best coping skills. Everyone’s life requires coping and the better you get at managing, the better life will be. Lastly, I tell them that when you tackle problems in life, you want to be operating from a position of strength rather than one of weakness. Identifying what’s directing your internal responses and shifting from your worst skills to your best is always the right move. Those are the best examples of my attempts to provide a strategy for moving forward. Who knows how they’ll feel years from now, when I’m part of their history. Maybe they’ll only remember me walking around quoting Animal House saying, “you’re all worthless and weak.” I’d give a lot to see the future, to hear them discuss me and declare, “that’s what she said.” Joining the ancestral noise of the past.

That’s What S/he Said The other morning, I walked into my house after working out in the yard. As usual, I was sweaty, my normal state once the temperature rises above 70• F.

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