#both of them evolved from something that others wrote off as harmless

[kingofanemptyworld]

is this anything

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

The Joys of Storing | Yandere OCs

So many Yandere’s ploys work with drugging food or drinks that they offer to their love interests. But so few of them think about what their darling does when they don’t eat things immediately.

Maybe it’s because you're busy or you don’t like eating in front of people. Or maybe you cherish the food so much that you choose to save it for later. It’s such a habit that you’ll do that often so many people miss it.  It’s not bizarre that your admirer might miss it too,  that is until it interferes with their plans.

Yandere Ship || Vera 

Vera doesn’t need to drug you usually, considering he has access to hundreds of different methods to knock a human out. But with his new body plus his evolving software on his vessel, there are so many new things to try. Like finding out how many times he can get away with touching you in your sleep before you tell him to stop, you haven’t caught him yet. Or how many sips of water you’d like to have during the day and how often he can get it recorded. The point is he’d absolutely add something to a snack of yours just to see what you do. Would you blame him? Take the effects in stride? Ask for his synthetic body’s help? Sure his processors have already predicted a thousand different possibilities but he doesn’t care. It’s nothing compared to what’ll actually happen. And he’s right.

“(Y/n)...are you going to eat the dessert I personally made for you?”

“Yeah…just later.”

“Later? Later when?”

“When I’m ready!”

“Oh okay….Are you ready now?”

“No.”

Veras adores pestering you about plenty of other things and he’s terrible at being sneaky. He just gets so excited! He probably knows you are going to eat if later and he’s just glad you don’t realize how intricate his thermal cameras are. 

Yandere Witch || Rhiana

Rhiana is likely to fall prey to this little habit of yours. She’ll brew a potion something harmless to help her out. A sweet little concoction that will blend right into your drink to make you a tad less interested in your missing friend. It was just something to have you think of happy thoughts of her. But instead of drinking your drink when you came back from the bathroom, you just kept talking…and talking….and talking. Don’t get her wrong she adores the sound of your voice but she’s been waiting for you to take the first sip and it just hasn’t happened. 

“I just can’t believe these detectives have the nerve to blow me off the way they do–”

“Hmmm”

“--And I told them all of the loose ends about the case and they just wrote me off like I’m some weird asylum patient–”

“...MmmHmm yeah…”

“--I know this isn’t some thriller tv series but I can’t believe they didn’t take any of my leads into account–”

“Yeah..your drink?”

“Yeah, the straw’s cute right? Anyway how am I supposed to sleep when I know they’re not investigating–”

She’ll tiredly listen and watch you lick your lips as they dry out as you keep talking, figuring this is her only comfort to imagine wetting your lips with hers. She’ll make a mental note never to try getting you to consume something without a guarantee you’ll eat it right in front of her. She refuses to miss whatever cute faces you're going to make when the potion she put in kicks in. 

Yandere Cheerleaders + Yandere Football Team 

Both teams are great at teamwork, used to coordinating their actions to be a united front but there are still individuals. The individuals are interested in just a few pictures at your most vulnerable. Or it’s about getting more than the privilege of a shoulder to sleep on at the next party. Either way they’ve distracted the captains and the rest of the team just long enough to gift you the fated red solo cup for the night. They chat with you believing that as a participant in the social atmosphere, you’d take a sip from your drink just like they have. But you haven’t. For a football player, this gets all so nerve-wracking, in the past, they’d seen their teammates do this exact thing to kick off a night of humiliation and fun. Of course, that’s not the plan for you but you seem fairly content with just holding the cup as you lightly bop to the music. For a cheerleader they're almost tempted to outright shove the cup past your perfect+ lips. Things always go their way so it’s upsetting that you just won’t crumple right into their waiting arms.

“You haven’t drunk anything at all (Y/n)...go ahead and have a sip.”

“Oh, I’m just not thirsty.”

“You sure? One taste can’t hurt. I promise I’m a good mixer.”

“Hm, and I bet you’ll mix well with the trash in the compactor.”

“C-captains!” 

“(Y/n), how about you and I take a quick drive. This party’s about to get a whole lot more violent rowdy.”

The captains likely already knew about this little niche of yours and they’re grateful it just so happened to work in their favor this time. Usually, they’ll spend their dates trying to decide when and how is the best time to guarantee you eat their gifts right in front of them. But until they can figure it out they’ll take it upon themselves to punish everyone who isn’t aware. 

Yandere Cat Warrior || Ferrin

Ferrin as a Cat Warrior considers himself far above poisoning of any kind. He’s a warrior! He needs nothing but his sharp wit and imposing claws to seal the fate of his enemies. That being said since he’s made himself a companion of yours+ your magnificent guide he’s had quite a few urges. He really can’t help the urge to sink his canines into your neck when he’s cuddling with you in your tent. But nibbling only does so much for his feline instincts; the urge to mark his territory becomes unbearable when you turn down his more intimate advances. More often than not resulting in marking you another way Ferrin suddenly has quite an interest in cooking.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Later.”

“Later. Later? LATeR! That’s not happening!”

“I don’t want to eat now, back off. I also don’t want to put you in a chokehold again today.”

He’s just so irritating you’re not ingesting his creation…apart of him, he departed with so he could mark your existence as his own. Sure he scents you every other minute of the day but a good cat warrior should want for nothing less than the best.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HIGH-RISK

We would at most have said that one could be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to do was sit and look attentive. You get to watch behind the scenes what an enormous amount of work that are purer, in the long term, which do you think most will choose? To anyone who has read any amount of history, there seem to have looked far for ideas.1 Being able to take risks is hugely valuable. But evidence suggests most things with titles like this are linkbait. They hear stories about stampedes to invest in you, that makes other investors want to, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings. But it would be to shirk it, but regardless it's certainly constraining. If you want to put their name on.

What was novel about yuppies was that they wanted market price for the work they do. In practice they spend a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists seem to be created deliberately. It became possible to make lots of new things, and we needed to buy time to fix it. Often users have second thoughts and delete such comments. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them.2 Note too that determination and talent are not the biggest threat. Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are problems it doesn't work so well for: the kind where it helps to have everything in one head.

Of our current concept of an organization, at least for programmers. It's tantalizing to think we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, I want to examine its internal structure. It may work, but it didn't seem like a real company. I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.3 So my theory about what's going on is that the only thing to interest someone arriving at HN for the first time should be the m. The way people act is just as hosed as Munich. The biggest component in most investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. If you understand them, you can create wealth very rapidly. Well, that is all too obvious. And since good people like good colleagues, that means you've probably done something good.

They're good at solving problems, but bad at choosing them. Nothing will explain what your site is about. Few adults aspired to look dangerous in 1950. I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. At the moment, even the smartest students leave school thinking they have to introduce something new: bosses. The real problem is that humans weren't meant to work in groups of several hundred.4 One thing all startups have in common is that they're telling the truth. People. Some parts of a program may be easiest to read if you spread things out, like an antique store.5 The problem is so widespread that people pretending to be eminent do it by accident.6

I wouldn't have predicted the frontpage would hold up so well, and more about what they'd see, and more importantly, can't take liberties with. If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same work, except with bosses. But this harmless type of lie can turn sour if left unexamined. What about angels? I talked recently to a founder whose startup had been acquired by a big company. Kerry were so similar in that respect that they might have been brothers. You needed to take care of you.7 But only a bit: willfulness, discipline, and ambition are all concepts almost as complicated as determination. This can only happen in a very limited way in a list of articles that are interesting. Not explicitly, of course, but I can't believe we've considered every alternative. The only place to look is where the spread of computing power. The good news is, choosing problems is something that can be learned.

Suppose you realize there is nothing new in it. The political commentators who come up with shifts to the left, or the painter who can't afford to heat his studio and thus has to wear a beret indoors. Normal food is terribly bad for you. Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French, did much of his thinking in Holland. Sorry about that. You needed to take care of the company so it could take care of the company so it could take care of you. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of graffiti and broken windows becomes one where robberies occur. Why do great ideas come from them, even if few do per capita. Certainly they'll learn more. But if it's inborn it should be a good one for beginning writers.

Visiting Sand Hill Road reminds you that the opposite of down and dirty would be up and clean. When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because it's open source; anyone can find mistakes. This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley as the hot deal, where you write a version 1 very quickly and then gradually modify it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. When it reaches a certain concentration, it kills off the yeast that produced it. That word is not much used now, because the links do. There are two big forces intersect, in the long term, which do you think most will choose? And since we're assuming we're doing this without being able to siphon off what had till recently been the prerogative of the elite. They can work on projects with an intensity in both senses that few insiders can match.

Notes

Something similar happens with suburbs. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that we wrote in order to switch. The way to see. When I talk about it as if it was because he writes about controversial things.

Common Lisp, because it depends on a form you forgot to fill out can be huge. I now believe that successful startups.

Everyone else was talking about why people dislike Michael Arrington. MITE Corp. Parents move to suburbs to raise five million dollars is no longer written in Lisp, which can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than to confuse everyone with a clear upward trend.

The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the early adopters you evolve the idea of happiness from many older societies.

That name got assigned to it because the test for what she has done, at least for those founders.

There are two ways to get the rankings they want you. One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to invest but tried to pay employees this way.

Once he showed it could become a so-called signalling risk is also not a big VC firm or they see of piracy is simply what they campaign for. In 1525 he was exaggerating. Super-angels hate to match.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Matt Cohler, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, and Sam Steingold for the lulz.

[jbuffyangel]

Entertainment Weekly Arrow Article

We never get any big articles of Arrow, so yeah I am posting the whole damn thing. There were some interesting little tidbits and of course discussion around Emily Bett Rickards’ exit. Is it wrong that I am low key pissed that of course Arrow gets the cover of EW after she leaves? Is it also wrong that while I’m happy Arrow is getting some attention, I’m annoyed it wasn’t an Olicity cover? Cuz that’s where I am at. (X)

How Arrow saved the TV superhero — and why it had to end

As 'Arrow' prepares for the end, Stephen Amell and the producers reflect on its origin story and preview the 'Crisis'-bound eighth and final season. 

Stephen Amell is dreading the eighth and final season of Arrow, though you wouldn’t know it on this hot, sunny July day in Los Angeles. Wearing Green Arrow’s new suit, the CW star seems perfectly at ease as he strikes heroic pose after heroic pose on a dimly lit stage. But once he’s traded heavy verdant leather for a T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, his guard drops and the vulnerability starts to creep in as he contemplates Arrow’s last 10 episodes, which was set to begin production in Vancouver a week after the EW photoshoot took place and premieres Oct. 15.

“I’m very emotional and melancholy, but it’s time,” Amell — who is featured on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly — says as he takes a sip from a pint of Guinness. “I’m 38 years old, and I got this job when I was 30. I’d never had a job for more than a year. The fact that I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I’m not going to do it anymore, is a little frightening.”

Developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg, Arrow debuted in the fall of 2012. The DC Comics series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Amell), who, after years away, returned to now–Star City with one goal: to save his home-town as the hooded bow-and-arrow vigilante who would become known as Green Arrow (it would take him four seasons to assume the moniker). What began as a solo crusade eventually grew to include former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), quirky computer genius Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), lawyer-turned-hero Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy Rodgers), and the rest of Team Arrow. Together they’ve defended their city from a host of threats — dark archers, megalomaniacal magicians, and the occasional metahuman — while Lost-like flashbacks revealed what Oliver endured in the five years he was away, first shipwrecked and then honing his skills around the world to become someone else, something else.

The premiere gave The CW its most-watched series debut since 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. But before they launched Arrow, Berlanti and Guggenheim had to suffer through a failure: 2011’s Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The duo co-wrote the script but lost creative control of the film, which flopped. So when Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth approached them in late 2011 about developing a Green Arrow show, they were wary. After much deliberation, Berlanti and Guggenheim agreed, on the condition that they maintain control. Says Guggenheim, “As long as we succeed or fail on our own work, and not someone else’s work then maybe this is worth a shot.”

Their take on the Emerald Archer — who made his DC Comics debut in 1941 — was noteworthy from the beginning. Taking cues from films like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity and series like Homeland, the writers imagined a dark, gritty, and grounded show centered on a traumatized protagonist. “As we were breaking the story, we made very specific commitments to certain tonal things, such as ‘At the end of act 1, he has his hands around his mother’s throat.’ And, ‘At the end of act 2, he kills a man in cold blood to protect his secret,’ ” says Guggenheim.

A hero committing murder? That was practically unheard of then. Having Oliver suit up in a veritable superhero costume by the pilot’s climax was radical too. Sure, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was deep into Phase One when the producers were developing Arrow, but TV was traditionally more apprehensive about comic books. Smallvillefamously had a “no tights, no flights” rule and only introduced superhero costumes in the last years of its 10-season run, and there weren’t any masked avengers running around NBC’s Heroes or ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter produced by Berlanti (Let’s not even mention NBC’s The Cape, which was essentially dead on arrival and never did get its six seasons and a movie). But Arrow not only fully committed to the idea of someone dressing up like Robin Hood to fight crime with a bow and arrow, it introduced a second costumed rogue, the Huntress (Jessica De Gouw), in episode 7.

“It’s just comic book to the extreme and the fans seem to really love it,” says Batwomanshowrunner Caroline Dries, a former writer on Smallville. “They still maintain it very grounded, but it’s very different with everyone in costumes. The appetite for superheroes has changed in my mind in terms of like they just want the literal superhero [now].”

Not that the team wasn’t meticulous about creating Green Arrow’s cowl. “We had to have so many conversations to get it approved, but that’s why we got [Oscar winner] Colleen Atwood [Memoirs of a Geisha] at the time to [design] the suit,” says Berlanti. “We were determined to show we could do on TV what they were doing in the movies every six months.”

“It’s really easy to make a guy with a bow and arrow look silly. We sweated every detail,” says Guggenheim, who also recalls how much effort it took to perfect Oliver’s signature growl. “I actually flew up to Vancouver. On a rooftop during reshoots on [episode 4], Stephen and I went through a variety of different versions of, basically, ‘You have failed this city,’ with different amounts of how much growl he’s putting into his performance. [We] recorded all that, [I went] back to Los Angeles, and then sat with the post guys playing around with all the different amounts of modulation.”

That process took eons compared to the unbelievably easy time the team had casting Arrow’s title role. In fact, Amell was the first person to audition for the role. “It was Stephen’s intensity. He just made you believe he was that character,” says Guggenheim, recalling Amell’s audition. “We had crafted Oliver to be this mystery box character, and Stephen somehow managed to find this balance between being totally accessible in a way you would need a TV star to be, but he’s still an enigma.” After his first reading, Amell remembers being sent outside for a short time before being brought back into the room to read for a larger group: “I called [my manager], and I go, ‘I know this is not how it’s supposed to work, but I just got that job.’”

In the first season, the show’s chief concerns were maintaining both the “grounded and real” tone and the high quality of the stunts, and investing the audience in Oliver’s crusade. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much of an over-arching plan, which allowed the show to naturally evolve — from introducing more DC characters, such as Deathstroke (Manu Bennett) and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), sooner than they initially intended (the shot of Deathstroke’s mask in the pilot was meant as a harmless Easter egg), to promoting Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity from a one-off character in the show’s third episode to a series regular in season 2 and eventually Oliver’s wife. Even the whole idea of a Team Arrow — which, over time, added Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland), Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) — was the result of the writers allowing the best ideas to guide the story. “Greg used to say all the time, ‘You have a hit TV show until you don’t, so don’t save s—,’ ” says Amell.

Also not planned: Arrow spawning an entire shared universe. “We went on record a lot of times during the premiere of the pilot saying, ‘No superpowers, no time travel.’ But midway through season 1, Greg started to harbor a notion of doing the Flash,” says Guggenheim. “I’m a very big believer that it’s great to have a plan, but I think when it comes to creating a universe, the pitfall is that people try to run before they can walk. The key is, you build it show by show.” And so they did. First, they introduced The Flash star Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow’s second season. From there, Supergirl took flight in 2015, then DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016, and Batwoman is due this fall. “It’s like the hacking of the machete in the woods and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a path,” says executive producer and Berlanti Productions president Sarah Schechter. But even though Arrowis the universe’s namesake, Amell doesn’t concern himself with the sibling series outside of the now-annual crossovers. “I never think about any of the other shows,” he says. “I want all of them to do great, but they’re not my responsibility. My responsibility is Arrow, and to make sure everyone from the cast to the crew are good.” His sentiments are seconded by Flash’s Gustin: “I don’t understand how he does it — his schedule that he maintains with working out, the conventions he goes to, the passion he has for it, and the love he shows towards fans. He’s always prepared. He cares more about that show being high quality than anybody else on the set.”

That said, the universe’s expansion precipitated what is widely considered to be Arrow’s best season, the fifth one. After focusing on magic in season 4, the show returned to its street-crime roots as part of “a concerted effort to play not just to our strengths but what made the shows unique,” Guggenheim says of balancing their four super-series in 2016. “Because Arrow was the longest-running Arrowverse show, we were able to do something that none of the other shows could do, which is have a villain who was basically born out of the events of season 1,” he explains of introducing Adrian Chase/Prometheus (Josh Segarra), whose criminal father was killed by Oliver. “That gave the season a resonance.”

It was midway through season 6 when Amell realized he was ready to hang up Oliver Queen’s hood. “It was just time to move on,” the actor says of pitching that Oliver leave the series at the end of season 7. “My daughter is turning six in October, and she goes to school in L.A., and my wife and I want to raise her [there].” Berlanti persuaded him to return for one final season, which the producers collectively decided would be the end. “We all felt in our gut it was the right time,” says Berlanti. Adds Schechter, “It’s such a privilege to be able to say when something’s ending as opposed to having something just ripped away.”

But there’s one integral cast member who won’t be around to see Arrow through its final season. This spring, fans were devastated to learn Rickards had filmed her final episode—bringing an end to Olicity. “They’re such opposites. I think that’s what draws everyone in a little bit,” showrunner Beth Schwartz says of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. “You don’t see the [love story of] super intelligent woman and the sort of hunky, athletic man very often. She’s obviously a gorgeous woman but what he really loves is her brain.” For his part, Amell believes the success of both Felicity and Olicity lies completely with Rickards’ performance. “She’s supremely talented and awesome and carved out a space that no one anticipated. I don’t know that show works if we don’t randomly find her,” says Amell, adding that continuing the series without Team Arrow’s heart is “not great. Arrow, as you know it, has effectively ended. It’s a different show in season 8.” And he’s not exaggerating.

The final season finds Oliver working for the all-seeing extra-terrestrial the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and trying to save the entire multiverse from a cataclysmic event. “[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” says Guggenheim. “Every time I see Oliver and the Monitor, it’s like, ‘Okay, we are very far from where we started.’ But again, that means the show has grown and evolved.” Adds Schwartz, “This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City.” Along the way, he will head down memory lane, with actor Colin Donnell, who played Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1, and Segarra’s Adrian Chase making appearances. “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3,” teases Amell. “We’re playing our greatest hits.”

But season 8 is not just about building toward a satisfying series finale. “Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” says Schwartz. Spanning five hours and airing this winter, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be the biggest crossover yet and may see Oliver perish trying to save the multiverse from destruction, if the Monitor’s prophecy is to be believed. “Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to ‘Crisis’ has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” says Guggenheim. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”

If there’s one person who has made his peace with Oliver’s fate, it’s Amell. “Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die,” says Amell, who actually found out what the show’s final scene would be at EW’s cover shoot. “I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.” Get this man some more Guinness!

[annoyingfirecoffee-blog]

Literacy Narrative

 I was born a perfectionist and grew up to be a realist the hard way. Clearly, when I threw baby food at my parents, it formed little perfect circles when it landed. However, life is far from perfect and reading and writing is no different, so I never made things very easy for myself. This meant that it would take longer for me to read a book than my peers, but I’d get far more out of it than any them did. As a writer, this made it incredibly difficult to write anything at all. Nothing I wrote seemed right to me and so I would often stare at a blank page for longer than I care to admit. Thankfully, I had a caring mother that would allow me to dictate my thoughts to her and she would put it on paper for me. It was far from a perfect system. Quite a few of the essays I wrote would magically change into the essay equivalent of the winning pinewood derby car clearly made by the boy’s father. However, even if it took me a few more years to achieve the same level of comfort in my writing abilities as everyone else, it helped me get through elementary school.

It wasn’t until my adolescence that a harmless desire for perfection evolved into OCD, making both my life and subsequently just about everything regarding literacy to become quite a bit more difficult to manage. I was diagnosed with a subcategory of OCD called moral scrupulosity, or in other words, I had a palpable feeling of guilt from my beliefs. Now, it should be noted that it is not uncommon for a person to obsess over their beliefs. However, it becomes scrupulous when their beliefs begin to hinder their basic living functions, as it did for me. It felt as though I had a short circuit in my brain connecting nearly anything and everything imaginable to this one fear I had. The fear of eternal damnation. Hell, I couldn’t write, type or even look at the first letter of this sentence for fear of being sent to that very word. Everything, especially tasks involving literacy became impossible for me, but thankfully it was my inability to complete the simplest tasks that drove my parents to seek better help. After having dealt with this conundrum for over a year, my parents (with my consent) sent me to the looney bin. Whom had me drugged up and sent out right as rain within a month. If this were a movie, I’d go on with my life, leaving those experiences behind as nothing more than memories, but that’s not how life usually works out. My father, whom I can thank for giving me a good sense of morality before it turned against me, would always recount the saying from Nietzsche, ”that which does not kill us makes us stronger,” but it just never felt like that was the case for me. I was able to read and write again without hindrance, but my once perky self, became hollow and jaded and my skills in literacy were getting worse, not better. The experience had left me with my wick burned to the bottom and the drug I was taking at the time didn’t help with that whatsoever. While I continued to ace mathematics, every other class involving an inkling of attention was lost on me and this was again quite the case for my English class.

By my senior year of high school, I finally bit the bullet and decided to get off my medication in order to pursue a degree as a transfer student. Within the next year all the symptoms I remembered started coming back. New fears and compulsions I didn’t know I had, brought themselves to the surface. Making any tasks that involved extended periods of concentration, mainly reading and writing, incredibly difficult. I had to push myself more than the majority of the class to produce the same amount of work because my mind was being constantly bombarded by thoughts and compulsions. For writing this new form of thinking with constantly intrusive spontaneous thoughts was incredibly beneficial towards my creativity as a writer but at the cost of time, once again, taking ages to get anything done. Aside from textbooks and articles, I quit reading altogether, because it felt like nothing more than an exercise in futility. I might only progress through 10 pages before I became mentally exhausted from the barrage of thoughts and compulsions that I felt I needed to commit too. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I started to read again. I started to read Alice in wonderland in January of last year and finished it somewhere around October. Whenever my little brother’s girlfriend (who was a teacher at the time and knew I was trying to get back into reading) would ask me what I’m reading. I would just tell her I’m reading the hungry hungry catapiller to keep her from realizing that I’ve been reading the same children’s book for 8 months.

By the end of last year, I had achieved something many with OCD never do, I had grown to accept the thoughts that plagued my mind, I know crazy right. So, I’ve been able to read at about 3 minutes per page but by the end of the hour I still feel like my brain ran a marathon. My writing skills still need a lot of work, but I can at least type it out at the rate that I think. All in all, I’m looking forward to the future of this Literacy Narrative and how I hope the ending of it may only get better and better as time goes on.

Update: Reading this essay 10 weeks later and seeing just how much I have improved in such little time has me quite a bit shocked. I chose to attend UC Davis because I wanted to improve myself in ways that engineering classes alone could not provide. It has taken a long time and there have been times when I felt like I couldn’t make achieve my goals but here I am. Reading, writing and speaking effectively in all the ways I had dreamed of. For reference, I have began to read at a pace somewhere between a minute to 2 minutes per page, depending on the book, and I can write a rough draft effectively at 500 words per hour.

[arrowdaily]

Stephen Amell is dreading the eighth and final season of Arrow, though you wouldn’t know it on this hot, sunny July day in Los Angeles. Wearing Green Arrow’s new suit, the CW star seems perfectly at ease as he strikes heroic pose after heroic pose on a dimly lit stage. But once he’s traded heavy verdant leather for a T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, his guard drops and the vulnerability starts to creep in as he contemplates Arrow’s last ten episodes, which was set to begin production in Vancouver a week after the EW photoshoot took place and premieres October 15.

“I’m very emotional and melancholy, but it’s time,” Amell—who is featured on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly—says as he takes a sip from a pint of Guinness. “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I got this job when I was thirty. I’d never had a job for more than a year. The fact that I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I’m not going to do it anymore, is a little frightening.”

Developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg, Arrow debuted in the fall of 2012. The DC Comics series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), who, after years away, returned to now–Star City with one goal: to save his hometown as the hooded bow-and-arrow vigilante who would become known as Green Arrow (it would take him four seasons to assume the moniker). What began as a solo crusade eventually grew to include former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), quirky computer genius Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), lawyer-turned-hero Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy-Rodgers), and the rest of Team Arrow. Together they’ve defended their city from a host of threats—dark archers, megalomaniacal magicians, and the occasional metahuman—while Lost-like flashbacks revealed what Oliver endured in the five years he was away, first shipwrecked and then honing his skills around the world to become someone else, something else.

The premiere gave the CW its most-watched series debut since 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. But before they launched Arrow, Berlanti and Guggenheim had to suffer through a failure: 2011’s Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The duo co-wrote the script but lost creative control of the film, which flopped. So when Warner Bros. TV president Peter Roth approached them in late 2011 about developing a Green Arrow show, they were wary. After much deliberation, Berlanti and Guggenheim agreed, on the condition that they maintain control. Says Guggenheim, “As long as we succeed or fail on our own work, and not someone else’s work then maybe this is worth a shot.”

Their take on the Emerald Archer—who made his DC Comics debut in 1941—was noteworthy from the beginning. Taking cues from films like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity and series like Homeland, the writers imagined a dark, gritty, and grounded show centered on a traumatized protagonist. “As we were breaking the story, we made very specific commitments to certain tonal things, such as ‘At the end of act one, he has his hands around his mother’s throat.’ And, ‘At the end of act two, he kills a man in cold blood to protect his secret,’” says Guggenheim.

A hero committing murder? That was practically unheard of then. Having Oliver suit up in a veritable superhero costume by the pilot’s climax was radical too. Sure, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was deep into Phase One when the producers were developing Arrow, but TV was traditionally more apprehensive about comic books. Smallville famously had a “no tights, no flights” rule and only introduced superhero costumes in the last years of its ten-season run, and there weren’t any masked avengers running around NBC’s Heroes or ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter produced by Berlanti (let’s not even mention NBC’s The Cape, which was essentially dead on arrival and never did get its six seasons and a movie). But Arrow not only fully committed to the idea of someone dressing up like Robin Hood to fight crime with a bow and arrow, it introduced a second costumed rogue, the Huntress (Jessica De Gouw), in episode 7.

“It’s just comic book to the extreme and the fans seem to really love it,” says Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries, a former writer on Smallville. “They still maintain it very grounded, but it’s very different with everyone in costumes. The appetite for superheroes has changed in my mind in terms of like they just want the literal superhero [now].”

Not that the team wasn’t meticulous about creating Green Arrow’s cowl. “We had to have so many conversations to get it approved, but that’s why we got [Oscar winner] Colleen Atwood [Memoirs of a Geisha] at the time to [design] the suit,” says Berlanti. “We were determined to show we could do on TV what they were doing in the movies every six months.”

“It’s really easy to make a guy with a bow and arrow look silly. We sweated every detail,” says Guggenheim, who also recalls how much effort it took to perfect Oliver’s signature growl. “I actually flew up to Vancouver. On a rooftop during reshoots on [episode 4], Stephen and I went through a variety of different versions of, basically, ‘You have failed this city,’ with different amounts of how much growl he’s putting into his performance. [We] recorded all that, [I went] back to Los Angeles, and then sat with the post guys playing around with all the different amounts of modulation.”

That process took eons compared to the unbelievably easy time the team had casting Arrow’s title role. In fact, Amell was the first person to audition for the role. “It was Stephen’s intensity. He just made you believe he was that character,” says Guggenheim, recalling Amell’s audition. “We had crafted Oliver to be this mystery box character, and Stephen somehow managed to find this balance between being totally accessible in a way you would need a TV star to be, but he’s still an enigma.” After his first reading, Amell remembers being sent outside for a short time before being brought back into the room to read for a larger group: “I called [my manager], and I go, ‘I know this is not how it’s supposed to work, but I just got that job.’”

In the first season, the show’s chief concerns were maintaining both the “grounded and real” tone and the high quality of the stunts, and investing the audience in Oliver’s crusade. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much of an over-arching plan, which allowed the show to naturally evolve—from introducing more DC characters, such as Deathstroke (Manu Bennett) and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), sooner than they initially intended (the shot of Deathstroke’s mask in the pilot was meant as a harmless Easter egg), to promoting Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity from a one-off character in the show’s third episode to a series regular in season 2 and eventually Oliver’s wife. Even the whole idea of a Team Arrow—which, over time, added Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland), Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy)—was the result of the writers allowing the best ideas to guide the story. “Greg used to say all the time, ‘You have a hit TV show until you don’t, so don’t save s—,’” says Amell.

Also not planned: Arrow spawning an entire shared universe. “We went on record a lot of times during the premiere of the pilot saying, ‘No superpowers, no time travel.’ But midway through season 1, Greg started to harbor a notion of doing the Flash,” says Guggenheim. “I’m a very big believer that it’s great to have a plan, but I think when it comes to creating a universe, the pitfall is that people try to run before they can walk. The key is, you build it show by show.” And so they did. First, they introduced The Flash star Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow’s second season. From there, Supergirl took flight in 2015, then DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016, and Batwoman is due this fall. “It’s like the hacking of the machete in the woods and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a path,” says executive producer and Berlanti Productions president Sarah Schechter. But even though Arrow is the universe’s namesake, Amell doesn’t concern himself with the sibling series outside of the now-annual crossovers. “I never think about any of the other shows,” he says. “I want all of them to do great, but they’re not my responsibility. My responsibility is Arrow, and to make sure everyone from the cast to the crew are good.” His sentiments are seconded by The Flash’s Gustin: “I don’t understand how he does it—his schedule that he maintains with working out, the conventions he goes to, the passion he has for it, and the love he shows towards fans. He’s always prepared. He cares more about that show being high quality than anybody else on the set.”

That said, the universe’s expansion precipitated what is widely considered to be Arrow’s best season, the fifth one. After focusing on magic in season 4, the show returned to its street-crime roots as part of “a concerted effort to play not just to our strengths but what made the shows unique,” Guggenheim says of balancing their four super-series in 2016. “Because Arrow was the longest-running Arrowverse show, we were able to do something that none of the other shows could do, which is have a villain who was basically born out of the events of season 1,” he explains of introducing Adrian Chase/Prometheus (Josh Segarra), whose criminal father was killed by Oliver. “That gave the season a resonance.”

It was midway through season 6 when Amell realized he was ready to hang up Oliver Queen’s hood. “It was just time to move on,” the actor says of pitching that Oliver leave the series at the end of season 7. “My daughter is turning six in October, and she goes to school in LA, and my wife and I want to raise her [there].” Berlanti persuaded him to return for one final season, which the producers collectively decided would be the end. “We all felt in our gut it was the right time,” says Berlanti. Adds Schechter, “It’s such a privilege to be able to say when something’s ending as opposed to having something just ripped away.”

But there’s one integral cast member who won’t be around to see Arrow through its final season. This spring, fans were devastated to learn Rickards had filmed her final episode—bringing an end to Olicity. “They’re such opposites. I think that’s what draws everyone in a little bit,” showrunner Beth Schwartz says of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. “You don’t see the [love story of] super intelligent woman and the sort of hunky, athletic man very often. She’s obviously a gorgeous woman but what he really loves is her brain.” For his part, Amell believes the success of both Felicity and Olicity lies completely with Rickards’ performance. “She’s supremely talented and awesome and carved out a space that no one anticipated. I don’t know that show works if we don’t randomly find her,” says Amell, adding that continuing the series without Team Arrow’s heart is “not great. Arrow, as you know it, has effectively ended. It’s a different show in season 8.” And he’s not exaggerating.

The final season finds Oliver working for the all-seeing extra-terrestrial the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and trying to save the entire multiverse from a cataclysmic event. “[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” says Guggenheim. “Every time I see Oliver and the Monitor, it’s like, ‘Okay, we are very far from where we started.’ But again, that means the show has grown and evolved.” Adds Schwartz, “This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City.” Along the way, he will head down memory lane, with actor Colin Donnell, who played Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1, and Segarra’s Adrian Chase making appearances. “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3,” teases Amell. “We’re playing our greatest hits.”

But season 8 is not just about building toward a satisfying series finale. “Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” says Schwartz. Spanning five hours and airing this winter, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be the biggest crossover yet and may see Oliver perish trying to save the multiverse from destruction, if the Monitor’s prophecy is to be believed. “Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to ‘Crisis’ has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” says Guggenheim. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”

If there’s one person who has made his peace with Oliver’s fate, it’s Amell. “Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die—but he may also not die,” says Amell, who actually found out what the show’s final scene would be at EW’s cover shoot. “I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.” Get this man some more Guinness!

[felixfeliciswriterblog]

A Severitus conversation

Hello!

I hope I am not too late, @brewing-snapefest. I intended to write a short Snape one-shot, though my schedule impeded it. I still wanted to collaborate, so I figured I could share a Severitus excerpt. The scene belongs to my WIP, “It’s not that simple” which can be found on both, AO3 and FF.net. In this story, Harry has spent summer at Severus’s place. Hence, he sees Severus as a mentor/father figure. Note that Severus is married to the DADA teacher, Skyrah, my OC. Basically, this is how I imagine Severus would have reacted to Harry using ‘sectumsempra’ on Draco had Severus and Harry been close.

_______________________________________________________________

The lavatory tiles were stained red with Draco’s blood.

Severus looked at Harry aghast – the longest seconds of his life. Only the Dursleys had looked at him like that. Perhaps Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have been right all along, he thought. Perhaps I am a freak, a hazard.

After chanting a counter-curse, Severus took Draco to the infirmary.

Moaning Myrtle bawled until he came back. With a simple command in that silky voice of his, the ghost swooped back into the toilet.

It was quiet, awfully quiet. The quietness bothered Harry. It made him reflect, and right then, he could only think about Draco bleeding out. He preferred Moaning Myrtle’s howls.

“Apparently, I underestimated you, Potter. Who would have thought you knew Dark Magic? Who taught you? Not me, and I highly doubt my wife teaches such spells in class.”

The way he uttered his surname added to the high disappointment in his black eyes – eyes that usually held pride when they were alone – sickened Harry. He didn’t even want to imagine how Skyrah would have looked at him if she had been there.

“I read about it.”

“Where?”

Harry could lie. It would be so easy now that he could occlude. In fact, he wouldn’t have hesitated to lie had his relationship with Severus not evolved. Keeping the truth from him would be a huge mistake though. He had turned him down once. He wouldn’t do it again on the same day.

“In my Potions book.”

Severus paled. “You are not referring to the book you bought with your friends in Diagon Alley. How did you get that other book?”

Harry swallowed hard and explained to him that Professor Slughorn offered one of his spare books when he forgot his own. The owner, the Half-Blood Prince, wrote potions and spells inscriptions that helped him brew perfectly. If he had known sectumsempra wasn’t harmless like langlock or levicorpus, he wouldn’t have used it. Now, he couldn’t even look Severus in the eye. At least, looking at the floor hid his blush.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Harry shrugged. “I wanted to impress you… I am good at Potions for the first time in forever. Thanks to the book, I can finally make you proud.”

Severus closed his eyes. That warm feeling he got when Harry mentioned he wanted to make him proud couldn’t distract him. Draco could have died because of a spell he had invented. The book was dangerous. He had to get rid of it.

Fluttering his eyes open, Severus ordered, “You will give me that book.”

Harry shot his head up, finally looking at Severus.

“What?! But then I'll fail Potions! The Half-Blood Prince has helped me immensely! I need good grades to become an auror!”

“I can help you just as much as the Half-Blood Prince, if not more.”

Harry snorted. “I’ve been your student for years and I’ve never got outstanding grades until now.”

“Because you never paid attention,” he sneered. “You will give me the book and you will have detention with me. You should be thankful you won’t be expelled.”

Harry shook his head. “I will spend every weekend until summer break in detention if I must; I won’t even get mad about missing Quidditch, but don’t take the book away from me. Please.”

“Dammit, Harry! This book is pernicious! Don’t you see?! You nearly killed a student!”

“But I need the Half-Blood Prince’s help!”

“I am the Half-Blood Prince!” he blew up, restraining the impulse to shake the boy. “It's I who noted down different ways to brew potions! It's I who invented those bloody spells!”

Green eyes grew wide. Severus was the Half-Blood Prince? Severus had been helping him all this time and he hadn’t even thought of the possibility. But the more Harry thought about it, the more sense it made. Severus wouldn’t lie to him.

“Get the book and give it back to me before anybody else gets injured. I’ll be in my chambers. Detention will start tomorrow.”

Severus made to leave, his cloak waving to the beat of his steps.

“Wait! Don’t tell Skyrah! I don’t want her to look at me the way you did before!”

“I keep nothing from my wife,” he uttered slowly, turning his face to Harry but showing his back. “She will know.”

“Then let me be the one to tell her!”

Harry was on the verge of tears. Severus hated bringing tears to those eyes. He had ever since he found out Privet Drive was hell on Earth. Overcoming the urge to look away, he gave the boy a nod.

“Sectumsempra is for the enemies. You invented it to defend yourself against my father and his friends, didn’t you? Did you use it on them?”

“I promised myself I would not use that curse unless I feared for my life. I broke that promise when I became a Death Eater right after graduating, not before. That does not mean I never hexed or jinxed them. I did. Several times.”

By the tone of his voice, he might regret using the sectumsempra curse, but not hexing and jinxing his father and his friends. After witnessing the harassment Severus had been subjected to because of them, Harry didn’t blame him.

“Did you really fear for your life to the point you created the spell? So my father went as far as–”

“That one time I feared for my life, it wasn’t because of him,” he cut Harry off, finally turning around to face him.

“Was it Sirius? Is that why you hated him? Pettigrew, maybe?”

Severus didn’t provide an answer. Last time Harry had discovered something bad about his father, he had become truly upset. Finding out his godfather had pranked him to his death wouldn’t produce a different outcome. Cursing Draco was enough drama for the week. He wouldn’t add Sirius to the equation. Harry was as pigheaded as Lily though. He wouldn’t give up so easily.

“I know you are highly disappointed in me, but I still love you, and I want to know.”

He had taken after Lily’s persuading skills, too, for Severus found himself mumbling, “It occurred during a full moon night.”

Granted, the information was not detailed, but Harry wasn’t a fool. He had an idea of what could have happened.

“Remus attacked you in his werewolf form, didn’t he? But you still protected me and my friends during that night. That must be one of your bravest acts. Thank you.”

Harry took one step forward and opened his arms as if he wanted to hug him. His arms hung limp at his sides when he remembered the reason they were in the lavatory. Severus wished he had gone ahead anyway.

“We already discussed that, Harry. You needn’t thank me. We shouldn’t be talking about this. You should be with that book in your hands.”

So he looked for it.

[igotmysteriousmessages]

Can I request the RFA+Minor Trio reacting when they find out that MC is actually still in highschool (17-15 y.o.) but only finding out at the party

Hi there!!

I mustadmit I debated quite a lot whether to take or not this request. It’s quite a lot outmy comfort zone but  since I believe noneof them would take advantage of their MC after discovering this I decided Ishould give this a try… thought I must admit I felt quite uncomfortablewriting most of this because I’m around the age of the characters and duringthe days prior to the party they tell the MC things I would be scared/disgustedto know were told to a high school girl by someone my age.

They are ofcourse all platonic or a little romantic but always considering it as a futureoption.

Also Iwrote as they founding out about MC when they meet her on their respectiveroute (except for Vanderwood of course, for him I assumed something similar toSaeyoung’s but with more involvement of Vanderwood) rather that at the partysince the only ones that don’t meet her before the party are Yoosung andJaehee.

(Btw…if youplayed Dandelion you might get some Jieun’s route vibes because I love whatcheritz did there)

RFA+Vanderwood discover MC is still in High School

Yoosung

-Probablythe less surprised one.

-Also thesmallest age gap…4-5 years are a lot when you are on your early 20’s but not somuch when older.

-Still ablushy mess… he quickly remembers a few things he told you both in the chatroomand through phone calls that definitely weren’t ok. He apologizes a lot.

-Afterembarrassment dies out he doesn’t know how to talk to you…on one hand if hestarts treating you any different you may feel offended but on the other hecan’t keep treating you like you were his age.

-He is veryconflicted about his feelings for you so you two talk it out and decide to keepit at just friends at least for a few years.

-He ispretty ok with that settlement actually; it allows you to develop a long slowdeep thrusting relationship that you both know would eventually become romanticbut there is no rush for it… you guys are fine with things are they are.

Zen

-the exactopposite from Yoosung….Zen freaks out big time.

-He feelslike the worst human being in the world; how could he shamelessly flirt likethat with a young girl?

-He can’teven look at you into the eye.

-Big bro!zen mode: Activated

-He drivesaway every single guy that tries to get close to you, regardless if they areyour age or not. That includes himself…you’ll never catch him standing lessthan ½ meter away from you.

-During theyears to come he remains a fellow RFA and a good confident in case you arehaving problems…especially family problems. He makes sure you know that if youfind yourself in the need to run away like he had at your age his doors areopen.

-Also youmay want to be extra careful about being seen with him because you knowpaparazzi can be merciless and they may misinterpretate your relationship withZen.

Jaehee

-Sheseriously can’t believe her eyes. The girl that helped her pull her life togetheris just that, a girl.

-Since herroute is non-romantic she has less weight over her shoulders but she feels badfor burdening you with her problems.

-She stilloffers you to be business partner but she states she’ll take over till you tofinish your studies (both high school and college if you decide to do so) alsoif you want a part time job she needs the help.

-Also BigSis! Mode, she becomes the best adviser/role model/ confident/ emotionalsupport you can dream on. You know she is always there for you and that it’sinfinitely comforting.

-If yourrelationship evolves into something less platonic it won’t be till you are25-ish or something like that and even so she would be very doubtful.

Jumin

-Now it’swhen things get complicated….

-give him aglass of wine…scratch that give him a bottle.

-He wasn’texactly flirty with you in the chatroom but he knows he treated you like youwere his age, maybe a little younger but definitely not 11-13 years younger… hefeels awful.

-He mayhave pushed out his life entirely if it wasn’t for the situation you two metin.

-It waslate when you showed up at his house (it wasn’t Jaehee’s fault she didn’t knoweither) and it was way too dangerous to send you back to the apartment…he couldsend you home… wait a second…you’ve been staying at the apartment for days, doyour parents even know what you’ve been up to? Have you been missing school? Whyin the world did you follow Unknown in the first place?

-theinterrogation lasts what feels like ages. When he finally calms down you are a little annoyed and he apologizes forbeing so harsh but as the situation is so dangerous he offers you a room forthe night and to take you home in the morning.

-He remainsvery protective of you on the years to come but he ends up deciding that whathe felt for you at the beginning wasn’t love. He just cares for you as a fellowRFA member.

-Heprobably won’t question those feelings again till you are 26-27 y/o. and evenif he does it would be very difficult for him.

Saeyoung

-He is amess, like more than usual.

-He feelsawful that such a young girl gets involved in all the problem with Mint Eye.

-Hisprotective instinct kick in.

-It’s alsopainful…you are about the same age Saeran was on those photos he has…too youngto be going through so much pain.

-He pushesyou away with even more decision than in his route, you should be happy leadingthe normal life of a school girl, not worrying about the him and the mess ofhis life…also when he comes around and decides to put his faith in you he feelseven guiltier to burden you with his life story and to rely that way in theperson he should be protecting.

-Aftereverything gets resolved he distances himself a little, I mean he’d always beavailable to answer your calls and help with any problem you may have (anything…from“I had a fight with my friend and I need somebody to listen” to “Can you hackmy school’s system to make pass sports class?” and even “I argued with myparents and ran away, can I stay with you?”) but otherwise you wouldn’t see himmuch.

-Same asfor Yoosung, the age gap isn’t huge so I can see having no problems falling inlove with you after you reach adulthood and he puts his life in order.

Jihyun

-What thefuck did Rika do this time?

-The firsttime he sees you talking with Ray at Mint Eye he can’t believe his eyes…I meanhe is barely able to see but he is sure you are High school student, definitelyyou have nothing to be doing at that place.

-He feelseven guiltier than he is in his route. You are far too young to be involved withMint Eye let alone comforting him and helping him solve his problems.

-Tbhbesides that I don’t see much difference with his route because with all theshit going on there is not much flirting on his side on his route, if somethingis usually MC who shows affection to V.

-If the MCshows any romantic feelings for him he’d kindly remind them that he is too oldfor them but of course he’d be so sweet about it that you’d barely feelrejected.

-Same asfor Jumin, it’d take a lot of years for him to develop romantic feelings foryou

Saeran

-In allhonesty the first thing he felt upon seeing you in person was pity.

-You arearound the same age he was when he had been brought to mint eye, so young andinnocent and full of hope in this cruel world  –insert more Mint Eye bulshit here-

-As Ray hetreats you as a fragile princess and pampers you big time.

-AsDark!Saeran he is even crueler because he sees himself in you; the way in whichyou claim Ray will come back and how you refuse to give up on him reminds himtoo much of how he used to claim his brother would come rescue him.

-once heregains control over himself he can’t believe how someone so young can be sostrong… he is also very ashamed of the way he treated you both as Ray andSaeran.

-He’d bevery doubtful of how to treat you on the first few days after escaping mint eyebut in the end I don’t see the age being a huge problem for him… he’d be reallyrespectful of both you as a person and of your age, also if you show romanticfeelings for him he’d be pretty clear that you are too young and he is toounstable for a relationship yet.

-But the bond formed during the time you spendin mint eye is strong; with time he starts understanding his feelings, you bothmature more and I can see him still falling for you a few years later.

Vanderwood

-What thefuck did 707 do this time?

-Like thesituation wasn’t bad enough; that “harmless” fundraising association of Seventurned out to be a bigger mess than their agency, his partner’s long lostbrother came back to destroy him and everybody associated to him and of top ofthat they have work to do if they didn’t want the agency to dispose of them. Hehad so many worries in the meantime, so when he met the RFA’s newest member? Itwas just too much.

-He took alook at you, lit a cigarette, took 2 deep breaths and then turned the cigaretteoff because he was in front of a minor.

-He takes itup to him to keep you safe from the crazy situation you are in.

-He talksto you about how dangerous is to take orders from an stranger in your phone, heteaches you self-defense techniques and is around you all time till the problemwith Mint eye gets solved.

-He won’tbe patircularly nice to you and his presence is always rather intimidating buthe does his best to not scare you more than you already are.

-He’d alsocontact your parents and school to give them a believable excuse of yourdisappearance so to no light up any alarms.

-If Zen andJaehee become your older siblings this man goes a step further, his yourofficial new dad.

[noahxsweetwine]

mistletoe

(no one sent this prompt I just wrote it bc I’m igyts trash. Also, I’m not a writer so this is probably bad asfflkajskl)

Jude Age 14

I hate mistletoe.

Given my trademark infatuation with the superstitious, most assume mistletoe is one of my good omens. In fact, Grandma Sweetwine’s Bible makes no mention of the spiky sprig, so I am left to turn to traditional ancient lore to find meaning in it.

The Druids believed mistletoe was a magical cure for every ailment. On the eve of their new year, they gathered it from oak trees, careful to not let it touch the ground. Then they hung it over their doorways and made it into drinks to take advantage of its fortuitous properties.

Mistletoe is actually poisonous. What’s more, it’s parasitic. It invades the soil around another plant’s roots and seeps the life out of it in order to live. The Druids were trying to cure one poison with another. 

The more well-known connotation seems ridiculous to me. It’s as if we ignore the obvious danger of the plant for its seemingly harmless and beautiful appearance. (Better not walk under the mistletoe unless you want to smooch someone! What a joke.) Even if I did, the boycott is under full effect. They say if a woman is not kissed under the mistletoe at all during the season, she is destined to stay single for a year. That’s absolutely fine with me.

Some well-intentioned (or possibly mischievously-intentioned) CSA students thought it was a great idea to line the halls with the offending parasite. I’ve managed to mostly avoid it, but I have to check before I walk through doorways. (This isn’t too much extra effort: doorways are an auspicious liminal space anyway, so I’ve always been careful. Depending on who you ask, walking through an entryway backwards can be good or bad luck. Though, most things are either good luck or bad luck depending on who you ask.)

Once, though, I was in a rush to get to Anatomy (the science requirement for CSA students - it’s meant to be more tailored towards aspiring artists. I like it better than traditional science classes, but they still haven’t taught me what I really want to know. How can your twin brother’s beautiful brain suddenly stop communicating with his body? Why does my heart still feel pain when I’m hurt if emotions are controlled by the mind? What happens to the human body when it’s run through with a car?) In my haste, I didn’t look up before entering, and ended up nearly colliding with Caleb Cartwright (art-is-truth, I-have-no-filter Caleb Cartwright). I only dropped my pencil, but when I bent down to pick it up, there was snickering from within the classroom.

“Mistletoe,” one boy with purple hair pointed out. He looked immensely pleased with himself, despite the fact that he had spinach stuck in his teeth. “Wouldn’t want to defy tradition, would you, CJ?”

I gritted my teeth. In fact, I did not subscribe to every superstition out there, I wanted to say. I borrowed from what I saw fit, but Grandma Sweetwine’s Bible was my only obligation. Instead of saying anything, however, I pushed past Caleb, who looked like he couldn’t care less, honestly.

“No offense,” started Randy Brown. “But you look red as a tomato, CJ.”

I probably did. I willed my body to cease its vasodilation (a word I learned in Anatomy. See, education is not wasted on me.) The CSA kids aren’t nearly as malicious as those at my old school, but they often don’t have the tact (or the desire, maybe) to keep themselves from saying whatever came to mind. I wondered how Noah was surviving at the normal high school. 

The bell rang, and I took my usual seat next to Fish. (Most CSA teachers changed the seating arrangements regularly to “promote evolving artistic collaboration,” but Anatomy was different because it involved lab partners.) Fish was staring intently at a Rubik’s cube she was holding in her hand. I wondered when she had gotten it, as I’d never seen her with it before. 

I snap out of the memory. The mistletoe has started disappearing over the past few weeks, but I keep up my constant vigilance. I spot a sprig laying on the door frame leading to the art wing.

They say if mistletoe is allowed to touch the ground, disaster is sure to follow.

I flick the mistletoe off the door frame. I’m Calamity Jude, after all. Disaster seems to follow me anyway.

Jude Age 16

Maybe the Druids were right.

I keep finding bits of mistletoe in the hood of my jacket. Maybe it’s the work of my fellow CSA students, but I can’t imagine what reasons they would have for that and I doubt they would keep up the prank for five days in a row. More likely, it’s one (or both) of my matriarchal specters who is responsible. If it was meant to frustrate me, it’s probably Mom. If it’s supposed to...encourage me, or get me in the “holiday spirit,” it’s probably Grandma.

The French called mistletoe the “specter’s wand” and thought that its holder would have the power to see and communicate with ghosts. (I’ve never needed help with that.)

Regardless of the planter’s intention, the mistletoe has brought me good luck for once. Or that’s the way it appears.

Guillermo has agreed to mentor me, and English Guy (whose name is OSCORE!) is...certainly something. I keep having to remind myself of the boycott. Yesterday he tried to return the orange to me, telling me that “satsumas” are traditionally given as gifts around Christmastime in his home country. 

My mind keeps drifting back to my last class before break: Thematic and Symbolic Art History. The lesson of the day was about, of all things, mistletoe. Or, at least, it was mistletoe-inspired. We learned the history and controversy surrounding works depicting the act of kissing. As in, The Kiss. All three versions: Klimt, Brancusi, Rodin. I wish Guillermo’s works had been included, now. 

Guillermo is introducing me to his methods of teaching. I thought Oscar’s modeling would be a one-time thing, but apparently I need a lot of practice in portraiture if I’m going to ever sculpt my mother. I’ve drawn Oscar a lot now. His face is practically seared into the back of my mind. (Does it violate the boycott if I’m thankful his face is so nice to look at?)

Some ancient peoples believed that mistletoe had the power to open all locks. (Do hearts count as locks?)

Am I stupid to dream?

Jude Age 18

I’ve warmed to the mistletoe idea over the years.

It might have something to do with the fact that Noah is currently enthusiastically hanging mistletoe around the houseboat. Like the boat’s name, his sudden interest in the superstition, statistically my area of expertise, is a mystery. (Or maybe not: he only started decorating after Dad and I extracted a promise from him that the kissing rule would not be under effect. I doubt he’ll tell that to Brian, however, when he comes back from vacation tomorrow.) The anniversary of Mom’s death seems to loom less ominously than in previous years.

My wary appreciation, however, doesn’t entirely stem from my brother’s antics.

Christmas isn’t really a big thing in the Sweetwine family. When we were little, Noah and I made sandmen instead of snowmen, and our gingerbread houses were definitely not indicators of our level of artistic potential (at least, I hope not). But now the only tradition we have is ordering pizza and staying inside to watch movies, which happens year-round (especially the pizza part when Noah has anything to say about it). 

I can appreciate the sentiment of the holiday, though. Renewal. Gratitude. Family.

Love.

I’m sick of losing soulmates. I’ve lost too many, especially in winter. Grandma. Mom (and Dad, for a while, around the same time). Zephyr.

At first, I thought the best way to heal was to cut out all possibility of love in my life. It seemed to be working for Noah. Hence, the boycott.

That went out the window as soon as I met Oscar and Guillermo. “I’m not okay,” Guillermo had said. “I’m not okay either,” I wanted to reply.

When I became Guillermo’s student, I felt like I was healing, through art and through Oscar. But over time, I realized Oscar had his own problems and we tended to amplify one another’s issues rather than resolve them. Being reciprocally “not okay” wasn’t an automatic path to a relationship. The inevitable breakup was mutual (if we were ever even in a relationship). It was nowhere close to being as messy as it could have been.

The whole Oscar thing should have made me more bitter about love. But it was more of a learning experience, really. A person can’t fix you. You can’t fix someone else. And too much of anything can kill you, as my toxicologist father often points out.

Mistletoe is the same way. It’s a parasitic species, yeah, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. Too much, and it seeps the life out of the forest. But in the right amounts, it has its place.

There was Zephyr. There was Oscar. There will be other chances. But for now, I’m content to have all ten fingers to draw and paint and sculpt with, a father and a brother to depend on in this rocking boat of a family, and the resolution to stop avoiding mistletoe as I walk through doorways.

When I think of mistletoe (and when I think of many things), Grandma Sweetwine’s words come to me:

Quick, make a wish. Take a (second or third or fourth) chance. Remake the world.

(Not confident I got the timeline right but just go with it. I know NoahandJude’s birthday is a bit before winter break, Jude met Oscar and Guillermo during winter break, and Diana died during a winter break....merry christmas/happy holidays!!)

(source for the lore)

[gaylemccoy972-blog]

When exorcists need help, they call him

(CNN)A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.

Leave her alone, you f***ing priests, the guttural voice shouted. Stop, you whores. You'll be sorry.

You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman. Movies and books have mimicked exorcisms so often, they've become clichs.

But this was an actual exorcism - and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated, board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman.

Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a man of science.

Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States. He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying hidden knowledge or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known.

There was one woman who was like 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about 200 pounds across the room, he says. That's not psychiatry. That's beyond psychiatry.

Gallagher calls himself a consultant on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls the real thing. He estimates that he's seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.

Whenever I need help, I call on him, says the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie The Rite was based on Thomas' work.

He's so respected in the field, Thomas says. He's not like most therapists, who are either atheists or agnostics.

Gallagher is a big man - 6-foot-5 - who once played semipro basketball in Europe. He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact.

Possession, he says, is rare - but real.

I spend more time convincing people that they're not possessed than they are, he wrote in an essay for The Washington Post.

Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism. And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real.

Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen. It's how he's evolved.

How does a man of science get pulled into the world of demonic possession?

His short answer: He met a queen of Satan.

A 'creepy' encounter with evil

She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow. She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult.

She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as Julia, the pseudonym he gave her.

The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation.

Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?

She was conflicted, Gallagher says. There was a part of her that wanted to be relieved of the possession.

She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house.

Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.

Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says.

He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances - even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away.

He says he was never afraid.

It's creepy, he says. But I believe I'm on the winning side.

How a scientist believes in demons

He also insists that he's on the side of science.

He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.

Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve.

I don't believe in this stuff because I'm Catholic, he says. I try to follow the evidence.

Being Catholic, though, may help.

Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously. His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people.

We had a sensational childhood, Mark Gallagher says. My mother and father were great about always helping neighbors or relatives out. Their mother was a homemaker, and their father was a lawyer who'd fought in World War II. My father used to walk us proudly into church. He taught us to give back.

Gallagher's two ways of giving back - helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed - may seem at odds. But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church.

Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor.

Some stories blur the lines between science, spirituality and the supernatural. These stories are from The Other Side.

Where do coincidences come from? Synchronicity is familiar to many people, yet few understand how it works. Are our lives are shaped by unseen hands? Or are we victims of psychological narcissm?

Beyond Goodbye Some people not only share their life but their moment of death with loved ones. Are these shared-death experiences real or a mirage?

Why Bigfoot is getting nervous Monster stories have been around for millennia. Now hunters are hot on the trail, armed with cameras, drones and night-vision goggles. Can they catch one?

Ghost hunters haunted by competition We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Across America, teams are creeping through people's homes, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

Heaven popular, except with the church Popular culture is filled with accounts from people who claim to have near-death experiences. So why doesn't the church talk about heaven anymore?

Bidding farewell from beyond the grave? Although visits by the spirits of the recently departed can be chilling, they are also comforting, say those who've seen these crisis apparitions. Can bonds between loved ones defy death?

One of Gallagher's favorite sources of inspiration is Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio (On Faith and Reason). The Pope writes that there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason.

The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual.

The Rite of Exorcism was first published in 1614 by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. Mike Driscoll, author of Demons, Deliverance, Discernment: Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World.

A line (in the rite) said that the exorcist should be careful to distinguish between demon possession and melancholy, which was a catchall for mental illness, Driscoll says. The church knew back then that there were mental problems. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors.

Learn about the true story that inspired the movie The Exorcist

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher.

Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits - holy or benign - as possible.

This is not quite as esoteric as some people make it out to be, Gallagher says. I know quite a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who believe in this stuff.

Dr. Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a trance and possession disorder diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder (dissociative identity disorder). Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

There's a certain openness to experiences that are happening that are beyond what we can explain by MRI scans, neurobiology or even psychological theories, Albanese says.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient.

Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing.

Then he met a woman who, he said, freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

I had to sort of admit that I didn't really know what was going on, Lieberman says. Because of the bizarre things that occurred, I wouldn't say that (demonic possession) is impossible or categorically rule it out although I have very limited empirical evidence to verify its existence.

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'

If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell.

Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in 1976 after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages.

Learn about Anneliese Michel

But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide. The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on Michel's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism - and one of Gallagher's chief critics - is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a cold reading on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. (Fortune teller: I see a recent tragedy in your family. Client: You mean my sister who got hurt in a car accident? How did you know?)

Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession.

A patient might memorize Latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions, Novella wrote. Were they having a conversation in Latin? Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin?

Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake

Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

They're boring, he says. Nothing exciting happens. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions.

The worst thing you can do to a patient who is delusional is to confirm their delusions, says Novella, who founded the New England Skeptical Society.

The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is.

Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

I have seen it take four grown guys to hold one small woman down, says Driscoll, a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. When a person has no fear and is not in their right mind and they don't care about hurting themselves or hurting others, you can see heartbreaking things.

That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

Do I still believe it happens? Yes, I do, he says. It happened then. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now.

Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella.

He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics.

Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor.

In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Dr. M. Scott Peck, the late author of The Road Less Traveled, conducted two exorcisms himself - something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

I didn't go volunteering for this, he says. I went into this because different people over the last few decades realized that I was open to this sort of thing. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed.'

What happened to Satan's queen

He may not have asked to join the hidden world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today. He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists.

It's deepened my faith, he says of the exorcisms he's witnessed. It didn't radically change it, but it validated my faith.

He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years. Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy.

Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending.

He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions. She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was playing both sides.

Exorcism is not some kind of magical incantation, Gallagher says. Normally, a person has to make their own sincere spiritual efforts, too.

About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:

Well, I'll give it some thought.

He says he never heard from her again.

Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters - they don't seem to deter him.

Truly informed exorcists don't tend to get discouraged, he says, because they know it is our Lord who delivers the person, not themselves.

Is Gallagher doing God's work, or does he need deliverance from his own delusions?

Perhaps only God - and Satan - knows for sure.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

[bradporter65-blog]

When exorcists need help, they call him

(CNN)A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.

Leave her alone, you f***ing priests, the guttural voice shouted. Stop, you whores. You'll be sorry.

You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman. Movies and books have mimicked exorcisms so often, they've become clichs.

But this was an actual exorcism - and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated, board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman.

Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a man of science.

Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States. He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying hidden knowledge or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known.

There was one woman who was like 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about 200 pounds across the room, he says. That's not psychiatry. That's beyond psychiatry.

Gallagher calls himself a consultant on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls the real thing. He estimates that he's seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.

Whenever I need help, I call on him, says the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie The Rite was based on Thomas' work.

He's so respected in the field, Thomas says. He's not like most therapists, who are either atheists or agnostics.

Gallagher is a big man - 6-foot-5 - who once played semipro basketball in Europe. He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact.

Possession, he says, is rare - but real.

I spend more time convincing people that they're not possessed than they are, he wrote in an essay for The Washington Post.

Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism. And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real.

Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen. It's how he's evolved.

How does a man of science get pulled into the world of demonic possession?

His short answer: He met a queen of Satan.

A 'creepy' encounter with evil

She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow. She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult.

She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as Julia, the pseudonym he gave her.

The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation.

Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?

She was conflicted, Gallagher says. There was a part of her that wanted to be relieved of the possession.

She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house.

Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.

Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says.

He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances - even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away.

He says he was never afraid.

It's creepy, he says. But I believe I'm on the winning side.

How a scientist believes in demons

He also insists that he's on the side of science.

He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.

Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve.

I don't believe in this stuff because I'm Catholic, he says. I try to follow the evidence.

Being Catholic, though, may help.

Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously. His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people.

We had a sensational childhood, Mark Gallagher says. My mother and father were great about always helping neighbors or relatives out. Their mother was a homemaker, and their father was a lawyer who'd fought in World War II. My father used to walk us proudly into church. He taught us to give back.

Gallagher's two ways of giving back - helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed - may seem at odds. But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church.

Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor.

Some stories blur the lines between science, spirituality and the supernatural. These stories are from The Other Side.

Where do coincidences come from? Synchronicity is familiar to many people, yet few understand how it works. Are our lives are shaped by unseen hands? Or are we victims of psychological narcissm?

Beyond Goodbye Some people not only share their life but their moment of death with loved ones. Are these shared-death experiences real or a mirage?

Why Bigfoot is getting nervous Monster stories have been around for millennia. Now hunters are hot on the trail, armed with cameras, drones and night-vision goggles. Can they catch one?

Ghost hunters haunted by competition We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Across America, teams are creeping through people's homes, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

Heaven popular, except with the church Popular culture is filled with accounts from people who claim to have near-death experiences. So why doesn't the church talk about heaven anymore?

Bidding farewell from beyond the grave? Although visits by the spirits of the recently departed can be chilling, they are also comforting, say those who've seen these crisis apparitions. Can bonds between loved ones defy death?

One of Gallagher's favorite sources of inspiration is Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio (On Faith and Reason). The Pope writes that there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason.

The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual.

The Rite of Exorcism was first published in 1614 by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. Mike Driscoll, author of Demons, Deliverance, Discernment: Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World.

A line (in the rite) said that the exorcist should be careful to distinguish between demon possession and melancholy, which was a catchall for mental illness, Driscoll says. The church knew back then that there were mental problems. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors.

Learn about the true story that inspired the movie The Exorcist

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher.

Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits - holy or benign - as possible.

This is not quite as esoteric as some people make it out to be, Gallagher says. I know quite a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who believe in this stuff.

Dr. Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a trance and possession disorder diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder (dissociative identity disorder). Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

There's a certain openness to experiences that are happening that are beyond what we can explain by MRI scans, neurobiology or even psychological theories, Albanese says.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient.

Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing.

Then he met a woman who, he said, freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

I had to sort of admit that I didn't really know what was going on, Lieberman says. Because of the bizarre things that occurred, I wouldn't say that (demonic possession) is impossible or categorically rule it out although I have very limited empirical evidence to verify its existence.

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'

If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell.

Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in 1976 after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages.

Learn about Anneliese Michel

But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide. The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on Michel's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism - and one of Gallagher's chief critics - is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a cold reading on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. (Fortune teller: I see a recent tragedy in your family. Client: You mean my sister who got hurt in a car accident? How did you know?)

Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession.

A patient might memorize Latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions, Novella wrote. Were they having a conversation in Latin? Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin?

Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake

Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

They're boring, he says. Nothing exciting happens. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions.

The worst thing you can do to a patient who is delusional is to confirm their delusions, says Novella, who founded the New England Skeptical Society.

The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is.

Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

I have seen it take four grown guys to hold one small woman down, says Driscoll, a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. When a person has no fear and is not in their right mind and they don't care about hurting themselves or hurting others, you can see heartbreaking things.

That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

Do I still believe it happens? Yes, I do, he says. It happened then. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now.

Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella.

He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics.

Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor.

In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Dr. M. Scott Peck, the late author of The Road Less Traveled, conducted two exorcisms himself - something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

I didn't go volunteering for this, he says. I went into this because different people over the last few decades realized that I was open to this sort of thing. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed.'

What happened to Satan's queen

He may not have asked to join the hidden world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today. He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists.

It's deepened my faith, he says of the exorcisms he's witnessed. It didn't radically change it, but it validated my faith.

He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years. Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy.

Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending.

He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions. She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was playing both sides.

Exorcism is not some kind of magical incantation, Gallagher says. Normally, a person has to make their own sincere spiritual efforts, too.

About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:

Well, I'll give it some thought.

He says he never heard from her again.

Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters - they don't seem to deter him.

Truly informed exorcists don't tend to get discouraged, he says, because they know it is our Lord who delivers the person, not themselves.

Is Gallagher doing God's work, or does he need deliverance from his own delusions?

Perhaps only God - and Satan - knows for sure.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

[pedrowells24-blog]

When exorcists need help, they call him

(CNN)A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.

Leave her alone, you f***ing priests, the guttural voice shouted. Stop, you whores. You'll be sorry.

You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman. Movies and books have mimicked exorcisms so often, they've become clichs.

But this was an actual exorcism - and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated, board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman.

Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a man of science.

Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States. He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying hidden knowledge or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known.

There was one woman who was like 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about 200 pounds across the room, he says. That's not psychiatry. That's beyond psychiatry.

Gallagher calls himself a consultant on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls the real thing. He estimates that he's seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.

Whenever I need help, I call on him, says the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie The Rite was based on Thomas' work.

He's so respected in the field, Thomas says. He's not like most therapists, who are either atheists or agnostics.

Gallagher is a big man - 6-foot-5 - who once played semipro basketball in Europe. He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact.

Possession, he says, is rare - but real.

I spend more time convincing people that they're not possessed than they are, he wrote in an essay for The Washington Post.

Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism. And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real.

Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen. It's how he's evolved.

How does a man of science get pulled into the world of demonic possession?

His short answer: He met a queen of Satan.

A 'creepy' encounter with evil

She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow. She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult.

She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as Julia, the pseudonym he gave her.

The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation.

Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?

She was conflicted, Gallagher says. There was a part of her that wanted to be relieved of the possession.

She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house.

Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.

Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says.

He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances - even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away.

He says he was never afraid.

It's creepy, he says. But I believe I'm on the winning side.

How a scientist believes in demons

He also insists that he's on the side of science.

He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.

Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve.

I don't believe in this stuff because I'm Catholic, he says. I try to follow the evidence.

Being Catholic, though, may help.

Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously. His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people.

We had a sensational childhood, Mark Gallagher says. My mother and father were great about always helping neighbors or relatives out. Their mother was a homemaker, and their father was a lawyer who'd fought in World War II. My father used to walk us proudly into church. He taught us to give back.

Gallagher's two ways of giving back - helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed - may seem at odds. But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church.

Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor.

Some stories blur the lines between science, spirituality and the supernatural. These stories are from The Other Side.

Where do coincidences come from? Synchronicity is familiar to many people, yet few understand how it works. Are our lives are shaped by unseen hands? Or are we victims of psychological narcissm?

Beyond Goodbye Some people not only share their life but their moment of death with loved ones. Are these shared-death experiences real or a mirage?

Why Bigfoot is getting nervous Monster stories have been around for millennia. Now hunters are hot on the trail, armed with cameras, drones and night-vision goggles. Can they catch one?

Ghost hunters haunted by competition We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Across America, teams are creeping through people's homes, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

Heaven popular, except with the church Popular culture is filled with accounts from people who claim to have near-death experiences. So why doesn't the church talk about heaven anymore?

Bidding farewell from beyond the grave? Although visits by the spirits of the recently departed can be chilling, they are also comforting, say those who've seen these crisis apparitions. Can bonds between loved ones defy death?

One of Gallagher's favorite sources of inspiration is Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio (On Faith and Reason). The Pope writes that there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason.

The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual.

The Rite of Exorcism was first published in 1614 by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. Mike Driscoll, author of Demons, Deliverance, Discernment: Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World.

A line (in the rite) said that the exorcist should be careful to distinguish between demon possession and melancholy, which was a catchall for mental illness, Driscoll says. The church knew back then that there were mental problems. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors.

Learn about the true story that inspired the movie The Exorcist

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher.

Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits - holy or benign - as possible.

This is not quite as esoteric as some people make it out to be, Gallagher says. I know quite a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who believe in this stuff.

Dr. Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a trance and possession disorder diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder (dissociative identity disorder). Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

There's a certain openness to experiences that are happening that are beyond what we can explain by MRI scans, neurobiology or even psychological theories, Albanese says.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient.

Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing.

Then he met a woman who, he said, freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

I had to sort of admit that I didn't really know what was going on, Lieberman says. Because of the bizarre things that occurred, I wouldn't say that (demonic possession) is impossible or categorically rule it out although I have very limited empirical evidence to verify its existence.

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'

If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell.

Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in 1976 after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages.

Learn about Anneliese Michel

But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide. The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on Michel's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism - and one of Gallagher's chief critics - is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a cold reading on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. (Fortune teller: I see a recent tragedy in your family. Client: You mean my sister who got hurt in a car accident? How did you know?)

Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession.

A patient might memorize Latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions, Novella wrote. Were they having a conversation in Latin? Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin?

Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake

Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

They're boring, he says. Nothing exciting happens. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions.

The worst thing you can do to a patient who is delusional is to confirm their delusions, says Novella, who founded the New England Skeptical Society.

The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is.

Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

I have seen it take four grown guys to hold one small woman down, says Driscoll, a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. When a person has no fear and is not in their right mind and they don't care about hurting themselves or hurting others, you can see heartbreaking things.

That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

Do I still believe it happens? Yes, I do, he says. It happened then. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now.

Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella.

He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics.

Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor.

In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Dr. M. Scott Peck, the late author of The Road Less Traveled, conducted two exorcisms himself - something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

I didn't go volunteering for this, he says. I went into this because different people over the last few decades realized that I was open to this sort of thing. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed.'

What happened to Satan's queen

He may not have asked to join the hidden world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today. He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists.

It's deepened my faith, he says of the exorcisms he's witnessed. It didn't radically change it, but it validated my faith.

He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years. Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy.

Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending.

He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions. She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was playing both sides.

Exorcism is not some kind of magical incantation, Gallagher says. Normally, a person has to make their own sincere spiritual efforts, too.

About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:

Well, I'll give it some thought.

He says he never heard from her again.

Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters - they don't seem to deter him.

Truly informed exorcists don't tend to get discouraged, he says, because they know it is our Lord who delivers the person, not themselves.

Is Gallagher doing God's work, or does he need deliverance from his own delusions?

Perhaps only God - and Satan - knows for sure.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

[douchebagbrainwaves]

AND IF IT'S NOT IMPOSSIBLE BUT SIMPLY VERY HARD, IT MIGHT BE EASY

The word now has such bad connotations that we forget its etymology, though it's staring us in the face of fierce competition. But if you control the whole system and have the source code. Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I can answer for both. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. But that might not be necessary. 9999 if they occur more than 10 times and. Below is the result of your feedback form is an instant giveaway. Kind of, but not his charisma, and he suffered proportionally. Well, that's news to no one. So while you'll probably survive, the problem now becomes to survive with the least damage and distraction.

Lisp programs into Python line for line. A real hacker's language, I think, is which 52% they are. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers. It is a mistake to try to reverse the fortunes of a declining industrial town like Detroit or Philadelphia by trying to encourage startups. Where is the breakeven point? The outsourcing type are going to be an employee anymore—that blogs are just a fad. Where is the man bites dog in that? In addition to the direct cost in time, there's the cost in fragmentation—breaking people's day up into bits too small to be useful. On the blunderometer, this episode ranks with IBM accepting a non-exclusive license for DOS. It's the architectural equivalent of a home-made aircraft shooting down an F-18. The token Url optmails meaning optmails within a url occurs 1223 times. Writing eval required inventing a notation representing Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be a curious state of affairs if you could get the right answer.

Because I wanted to keep the problem neat. In their own homes, which aren't even designed to be better, for a new techology, than a few years of being used only by a small number of early adopters. A hacker may only want to subvert the intended model of things once or twice in a big program is to start from the other end of the scale for tokens found only in the legitimate corpus. Suppose we could somehow feed these reporters false information about market closes, but give them all the other news intact. It's hard to convince investors the first time too, but there you face bureaucratic obstacles that would slow down a startup. We're not hearing about these languages because people are using them on servers. Presumably, if you want to know whether to recruit someone as a cofounder, ask if they are, we have no idea what our average returns might be, and won't know for years. But software, as a general rule, you can end up being more productive. Has aspects of that. Millions of people are publishing online, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, they'll be going against thousands of years of medical tradition. I dislike being on either end of it.

This essay is derived from a talk at the 2003 Spam Conference. If any incompatibility arises, you can end up being more productive. Though this election is usually given as an example of the power of TV, Kennedy apparently would not have won without fraud by party machines in Illinois and Texas. A good example is the airline fare search program that ITA Software licenses to Orbitz. When I was in the search business. But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a mere html recognizer. Another project I heard about after the Slashdot article was Bill Yerazunis' CRM114. In old hackers, skepticism predominates, and they seemed to me full of random stuff. One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations that we wait till patients have physical symptoms to be diagnosed with cancer. It might also be inevitable, if you could get to the point where everything could be done by bots, because then you'd have made the sufficiently smart compiler you could create in a couple years, but the first papers about Bayesian spam filtering per se seem to have just humiliated them technologically. But there is a limit on the number of simultaneous users will be determined by the amount of memory you need for whatever you end up with: def foo n: lambda i: return n i To be fair, Perl also retains this distinction, but deals with it in typical Perl fashion by letting you omit returns. Often, indeed, it is not clear whether you can actually solve this problem.

And now that I'm an investor, the thought of our investors used to keep me up at night. Of course the ultimate in brevity is to have a language designed by a committee. Why is everyone smiling? What all this implies is that there is a name for the phenomenon, Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp probably expected users to have text editors that would type these long names for them. Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, any development project that would take five years is likely never to get finished at all. They're tools, designed for people, and how do you deliver drama via the Internet? As long as he considers all languages equivalent, all he has to do is keep telling your story, and eventually people will start to hear. To be fair, Perl also retains this distinction, but deals with it in typical Perl fashion by letting you omit returns. Anyone who has worked on spam filters, this will seem a perverse decision. I mean. But if they don't want to wait for Python to evolve the rest of the creative class—you probably have to ban large development projects.

Because he had grown up there and remembered how nice it was. It's just that if I can't write things down, worrying about remembering one idea gets in the way of redesign. Om Malik is the most recent of many people to ask why Twitter is such a big problem that changing the way people do it will have a wave of secondary effects. Which leaves two options, firing good people and making more money. They did it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know. And that means, perhaps surprisingly, that it has today. Finally, they didn't bias against false positives. I know the structs are just vectors underneath. To start with, it must be, because I still have no trouble catching these spams.

They're each only a great university short of becoming a silicon valley, is a language in its own right. A more serious problem is the real one. Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to be the ones you end up looking at when you get filters really tight. They want to get a big program is to start with a throwaway program is something that you expect to write in an hour. Suppose we could somehow feed these reporters false information about market closes, but give them all the other news intact. Otherwise we don't care. If anyone wants to write aref a x y instead, which is about 2. Just write whatever you want and don't cite any previous work, and indignant readers will send you references to all the papers you should have cited. That sounds harmless. The big advantage of investment over employment, as the examples of open source and blogging? If you find a lot of C and C as well as money.

More significant, I think is a red herring. Free If you do that you raise too many expectations. Companies spend millions to build office buildings for technology companies won't get you a silicon valley, you not only need a university, but one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious people are probably best off approaching them obliquely. It would be a way to finesse our way out of the wrong concepts. People can notice you've replaced email when it's a fait accompli. But often memory will be the most important places for learning about new languages like Perl and Python at their own game. For example, a friend came to visit from New York. 8747 From free 0. When I wrote A Plan for Spam I hadn't had any, and I didn't know what they'd be like.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Harj Taggar, and Stan Reiss for reading a previous draft.

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

When exorcists need help, they call him

(CNN)A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.

"Leave her alone, you f***ing priests," the guttural voice shouted. "Stop, you whores. ... You'll be sorry."

You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman. Movies and books have mimicked exorcisms so often, they've become clichs.

But this was an actual exorcism -- and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated, board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman.

Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a "man of science."

Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States. He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying "hidden knowledge" or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known.

"There was one woman who was like 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about 200 pounds across the room," he says. "That's not psychiatry. That's beyond psychiatry."

Gallagher calls himself a "consultant" on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls "the real thing." He estimates that he's seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.

"Whenever I need help, I call on him," says the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie "The Rite" was based on Thomas' work.

"He's so respected in the field," Thomas says. "He's not like most therapists, who are either atheists or agnostics."

Gallagher is a big man -- 6-foot-5 -- who once played semipro basketball in Europe. He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact.

Possession, he says, is rare -- but real.

"I spend more time convincing people that they're not possessed than they are," he wrote in an essay for The Washington Post.

Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism. And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real.

Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen. It's how he's evolved.

How does a "man of science" get pulled into the world of demonic possession?

His short answer: He met a queen of Satan.

A 'creepy' encounter with evil

She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow. She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult.

She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as "Julia," the pseudonym he gave her.

The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation.

Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?

"She was conflicted," Gallagher says. "There was a part of her that wanted to be relieved of the possession."

She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house.

Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.

Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says.

He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances -- even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away.

He says he was never afraid.

"It's creepy," he says. "But I believe I'm on the winning side."

How a scientist believes in demons

He also insists that he's on the side of science.

He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.

Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve.

"I don't believe in this stuff because I'm Catholic," he says. "I try to follow the evidence."

Being Catholic, though, may help.

Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously. His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people.

"We had a sensational childhood," Mark Gallagher says. "My mother and father were great about always helping neighbors or relatives out." Their mother was a homemaker, and their father was a lawyer who'd fought in World War II. "My father used to walk us proudly into church. He taught us to give back."

Gallagher's two ways of giving back -- helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed -- may seem at odds. But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church.

Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor.

Some stories blur the lines between science, spirituality and the supernatural. These stories are from "The Other Side."

Where do coincidences come from? Synchronicity is familiar to many people, yet few understand how it works. Are our lives are shaped by unseen hands? Or are we victims of psychological narcissm?

Beyond Goodbye Some people not only share their life but their moment of death with loved ones. Are these "shared-death experiences" real or a mirage?

Why Bigfoot is getting nervous Monster stories have been around for millennia. Now hunters are hot on the trail, armed with cameras, drones and night-vision goggles. Can they catch one?

Ghost hunters haunted by competition We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Across America, teams are creeping through people's homes, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

Heaven popular, except with the church Popular culture is filled with accounts from people who claim to have near-death experiences. So why doesn't the church talk about heaven anymore?

Bidding farewell from beyond the grave? Although visits by the spirits of the recently departed can be chilling, they are also comforting, say those who've seen these "crisis apparitions." Can bonds between loved ones defy death?

One of Gallagher's favorite sources of inspiration is Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Fides et Ratio" ("On Faith and Reason"). The Pope writes that "there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason."

The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual.

The Rite of Exorcism was first published in 1614 by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. Mike Driscoll, author of "Demons, Deliverance, Discernment: Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World."

"A line (in the rite) said that the exorcist should be careful to distinguish between demon possession and melancholy, which was a catchall for mental illness," Driscoll says. "The church knew back then that there were mental problems. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors."

Learn about the true story that inspired the movie "The Exorcist"

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher.

Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits -- holy or benign -- as possible.

"This is not quite as esoteric as some people make it out to be," Gallagher says. "I know quite a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who believe in this stuff."

Dr. Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a "trance and possession disorder" diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder (dissociative identity disorder). Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

"There's a certain openness to experiences that are happening that are beyond what we can explain by MRI scans, neurobiology or even psychological theories," Albanese says.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient.

Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing.

Then he met a woman who, he said, "freaked me out."

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

"I had to sort of admit that I didn't really know what was going on," Lieberman says. "Because of the bizarre things that occurred, I wouldn't say that (demonic possession) is impossible or categorically rule it out ... although I have very limited empirical evidence to verify its existence."

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'

If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell.

Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in 1976 after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages.

Learn about Anneliese Michel

But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide. The 2005 film "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" was based on Michel's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism -- and one of Gallagher's chief critics -- is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a "cold reading" on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. (Fortune teller: "I see a recent tragedy in your family." Client: "You mean my sister who got hurt in a car accident? How did you know?")

Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession.

"A patient might memorize Latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions," Novella wrote. "Were they having a conversation in Latin? Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin?"

Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake

Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

"They're boring," he says. "Nothing exciting happens. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised."

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions.

"The worst thing you can do to a patient who is delusional is to confirm their delusions," says Novella, who founded the New England Skeptical Society.

"The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is."

Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

"I have seen it take four grown guys to hold one small woman down," says Driscoll, a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. "When a person has no fear and is not in their right mind and they don't care about hurting themselves or hurting others, you can see heartbreaking things."

That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

"Do I still believe it happens? Yes, I do," he says. "It happened then. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now."

Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella.

He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics.

Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor.

In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress "without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions."

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Dr. M. Scott Peck, the late author of "The Road Less Traveled," conducted two exorcisms himself -- something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

"I didn't go volunteering for this," he says. "I went into this because different people over the last few decades realized that I was open to this sort of thing. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed.' "

What happened to Satan's queen

He may not have asked to join the "hidden" world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today. He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists.

"It's deepened my faith," he says of the exorcisms he's witnessed. "It didn't radically change it, but it validated my faith."

He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years. Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy.

Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending.

He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions. She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was "playing both sides."

"Exorcism is not some kind of magical incantation," Gallagher says. "Normally, a person has to make their own sincere spiritual efforts, too."

About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:

"Well, I'll give it some thought."

He says he never heard from her again.

Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters -- they don't seem to deter him.

"Truly informed exorcists don't tend to get discouraged," he says, "because they know it is our Lord who delivers the person, not themselves."

Is Gallagher doing God's work, or does he need deliverance from his own delusions?

Perhaps only God -- and Satan -- knows for sure.

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** See Full Article Here: When exorcists need help, they call him ************************************ =>

When exorcists need help, they call him was originally posted by A 18 MOA Top News from around

[notanotherbookreview]

Did you ever want to go “Off Planet?” Excerpt shows what your experience might be like, with an Alien living on Earth, who’s a friend--showing you his technology. And it’s based on real tech evolving now. Excerpt: E.T. Marshall's CONFESSIONS OF AN ALIEN: A Mythology for the Third Milennium Book 1. Red Coaster Press. Some years ago, Harold Pebbles introduced me to one of his Philadelphia classmates. Rita Goldblatt and I found that we had a mutual interest in dream interpretation. Rita introduced me to the Nova Dreamer. It looks like a sleeping mask that covers your eyes. Batteries operate small sensors that detect rapid eye movements, REM, that indicate a dream state. The machine can be programmed to have its sound and lights activate when a REM state is detected. The sleeper is gently awakened, to be lucidly aware of his dream state. This machine helped me remember my dreams, which, after I had fully awakened, I wrote down on a legal tablet kept on my nightstand. The machine later facilitated my ability to create my own dreams and to be an active participant. Rita took a great interest in my dreams and their meaning over the years. I related this to Vlad, who listened keenly. “Then you know,” he said, “when you are in a dream state, it is often difficult to know that you are dreaming and not actually experiencing the real world. That is what I want you to do, before you go to sleep, simply say aloud that you would like me to come visit you in your lucid dream and show you the alien world I live in. At any time, you can ask me to awaken you, bring you back, and that you want to vividly remember your entire dream after you awaken. What do you have to lose, Donald— a good night’s sleep?” I decided to give up my efforts to get Vlad off his alien theme and go with the flow. “It seems harmless enough. Are you going to hypnotize me or give me some suggestions on what to dream about?” “No, none of that.”   “Well, Dr. Comsky, I am comfortable right here in this lounge chair. What if I just leaned back, put my feet up and dozed off right here?” “That would be fine, just say the things I've asked you to and off you go,” Vlad said reassuringly. I thought this might be something good, or at least new. There was not a thought in my head that Vladimir would do anything to injure me, nothing to even upset me. I believed that he would have some sort of suggestive power to influence my dream state. I was definitely up for something new. I felt a little sporty, as if I were a trout being pulled in on a very light line. Whatever was on the other side of the line, I decided to allow myself to be reeled in. I leaned back in the chair, kicked off my shoes, loosened my belt buckle two notches and unbuttoned my top shirt button.��� I murmured, “I want Vlad to visit me in my lucid dreaming state. I want him to bring me back at my request. I want to remember this lucid dream vividly when I awaken.” I added as a joke, “I want him to show me his planet.” With that I closed my eyes, let out a sigh and repeated my last words silently, and could not help thinking of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz saying, “I want to go home” and clicking the heels of her red magical shoes. CLICK When I opened my eyes Vlad was still seated in the chair next to me. “What happened?” I murmured. “I don't remember a thing.” “Oh ye of little faith.” He smiled as he said this; I looked around the room. The walls were disappearing. It was dark out and the sky was full of stars. I felt a chill and started to shake a little. Then, as if someone had once more pushed a button on a remote control and changed channels, the stars in the sky were different, and there was no ground below us. We were still in our chairs and the chairs were still on the floor, but that's all there was. I was wondering how we could breathe, but I remembered this is a dream and I am letting Vlad control it. Mercifully, the wine and cheese were still between us. I popped a large black olive in my mouth. So far, the dream was damned good. Looking at the black sky around me and the pinpoints of the stars that were both above and below, I felt like I was in a planetarium. I sat up from my reclining position and asked, “Why did you bring me here?” “I thought you might like to see another planet,” he said, pointing his thumb behind him, as a hitchhiker would. I turned to look, and the chairs and floor, or what was left of it, swiveled around so that we were gazing down on the top of an enormous blue-and-white sphere. The view reminded me of Earth as seen from the space station. Slowly the view changed so that I was looking straight at the planet and no longer down on it. Like my experience on the roller coaster, this made me feel as if any moment I would fall out of my seat and down to my death on the planet’s surface. I could see large landmasses and oceans, but knew that this planet was considerably larger than Earth and had entirely different-shaped continents. I finally said, “It’s awesome.” “Yes, I thought you'd like it. Its name is Paucri. Can you see it clearly? And do the stars look like pinpoints? And does my voice sound natural?” “Yes, of course, why?” I asked. “You know this is a simulation. It is not real. But does it seem real to you?” “Indeed it does.” Except for the disappearing walls, it seemed totally real. I sat there for a while trying to take it all in: Paucri, the stars, my alien friend and the non-reality of this reality. I thought of a chimpanzee looking at a television set. I thought of an alien looking at a chimpanzee. I thought of an alien looking at me. I don't know if it was the height, the new experience, or the chimpanzee, but I felt strange and uncomfortable. Vlad, sensing my discomfort, asked, “Would you like to go someplace else? Somewhere more familiar to you?” Gratefully I assented, then added, anxious not to give the impression that I didn’t trust him, “What do you have in mind, Vlad?” “Where would you like to be right now if you could pick anywhere on Earth, at any time, and while we are at it, you can pick the weather, too.” I thought for a few moments of the pleasant times of my life. The movie City of Angels, with its vivid sunset scenes, flashed into my mind. More than once at sunset time I would find myself at a beach— Malibu, Santa Monica, Huntington, Redondo— but it was Venice Beach that called to me now. A place of warm memories of ice cream cones, hot dogs, cotton candy, roller skating and watching the sun go down with the woman I loved. “How about Venice Beach today an hour before sunset and 80 degrees?” He nodded and somewhere, a button was pushed on a remote control. CLICK we were sitting on beach chairs facing the Pacific Ocean. There were many clouds in the sky but no sign of rain, and it had all the makings of a beautiful sunset. I watched the bright reds, reflected on the clouds above the glow, softly and slowly transform into a deep purple. A dozen squawking seagulls were flying overhead; sandpipers were darting in and out of the surf line. I took my shoes and socks off and rubbed my feet in the warm sand. I thought how easily my mind could be fooled. One minute in space and the next at Venice Beach. As I looked around, it sounded and felt so real. I could hear the waves breaking gently on the beach, the tender wind moving through the palm trees behind me. Vlad refilled my wine glass. “But Vlad, where are the people?” I asked. “Venice Beach at this time of day is full of people.” CLICK As if a thunderclap blasted behind my head, my body uncontrollably jumped back into the beach chair. In an instant, the sound of hundreds of people surrounded me, as if someone had turned on the speakers of a stereo system. All the people were moving as if they had always been there. I looked around from my beach chair at the sidewalk behind me and saw dozens walking, a few roller skaters gliding between them, and of course, cyclists. There were children playing in the sand on the beach, people eating pizza and hot dogs, and lovers sitting on blankets looking dreamily in each other's eyes, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Then I noticed the smells of those hot dogs, and somewhere down the beach, someone was barbecuing pork ribs and hamburgers, and everywhere there was the smell of suntan lotion. I inhaled deeply, trying to see if this was real or not. I put my hand in the warm sand, rubbed the fine grains between my fingers, and sniffed it. The simulation was outstanding, and the thought shook me. What if we went back to Van Nuys, and it’s actually a simulation? I believed I wouldn’t know the difference now that I could feel the sand on my fingers. But Vlad did promise to take me back at my request, and I did believe him. After all, he was the man who cured Ann. I trusted him then, I had faith in him, so why should that change now? I questioned my own judgment and reality. I admitted to myself that I was afraid.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DEPARTMENT

The math paper is hard to predict. A popular programming language should be both clean and dirty: cleanly designed, with a small chance of succeeding. But if we're going to do that with coworkers. I have to change what I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would explain why you have to compile and run separately.1 It was simply a fad. But as with wealth there may be habits of mind that will help, if you roll a zero for luck, the outcome is the product of skill, determination, and luck. This was another one lots of people were surprised by that. Languages, not Programs We should be clear that we are never likely to have accurate comparisons of the relative power of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.2 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you did invest in a startup, I had to learn where they were. In the years since, I've paid close attention to any evidence I could get on the question, from formal studies to anecdotes about individual projects.

In the earliest stages of a startup, you have to figure out for yourself what's good. I sometimes think that it would be misleading even to call them centers. Perhaps this was the sort of superficial quizzing best left to teenage girls. The leaders have a little more power than other members of the audience share things in common. But the founders contribute ideas. The empirical answer is: no. It was just that no one had really tried to solve the problem once and for all.3

This happens particularly in the interfaces between pieces of software written by two different people. I let the ideas take their course. And the thing we'd built, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.4 We advise startups to set both low, initially: spend practically nothing, and make sure you solve that. There used to be common.5 You tell them only 1 out of 100 successful startups has a trajectory like that, and c the groups of applicants you're comparing have roughly equal distribution of ability. In particular, you now have to deal with prefix notation: that it is not dense enough. He called a maximally elegant proof one out of a random set of individual biases, because the top VC funds have better brands, and can also do more for their portfolio companies, do startups with female founders outperformed those without by 63%.

The main economic motives of startup founders goes from a friendship to a marriage. Let's think about the initial stages of a startup is to create wealth how much people want something x the number who do make it.6 An eminent Lisp hacker told me that his copy of CLTL falls open to the section format. We all thought there was just something we weren't getting. They get smart people to write 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. I mostly ignored this shadow. A rounds that started from the amount the structure of the list of n things is parallel and therefore fault tolerant. Hackers like to hack, and hacking means getting inside things and second guessing the original designer. A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup he was involved with. There's no consensus yet in the general case.

Perl is as big as Java, or bigger, just on the strength of its own merits. You have to use the shift key much. Whereas acquirers are, as of this writing few startups spend too much. At Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the startups; by definition a high valuation unless you can somehow achieve what those in the business call a liquidity event, and the number one question people ask me. Though that means you'll get correspondingly less attention from them, it's good news in other respects. I claim hacking and painting are also related, in the final stage, you stop having them. You can't trust authorities. What do you wish there was?7 Before ITA who wrote the software inside Orbitz, the people working on airline fare searches probably thought it was just because most people were still subsistence farmers; he would have liked to. How advantageous it is to redefine the problem as a more interesting one.

A lot of what we could. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in many fields, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. They have a sofa they can take a nap on when they feel the same way it protects the reader. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, the pressure is always in that direction. It probably extends to any kind of creative work. Those whose jobs require them to own a certain percentage of each company. You can sit down and consciously come up with startup ideas. So if you discard taste, you can not only close the round faster, but now we advise founders to vest so there will be an increasingly important feature of a good programming language is a medium of expression, you could say either was the cause. Which means they're inevitable. But I think there is a lot of time learning to recognize such ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. It only lets you experience the defining characteristic of essay writing.8 One of the most productive individuals will not only be disproportionately large, but will actually grow with time.

That's why so many startups. I think that this metric is the most influential founder not just for me but for most people, would be if you could get a 30% better deal elsewhere?9 They can't hire smart people anymore, but they want a third of your company they want. Many founders do. For example, what if you made an open-source language effort like Perl or Python. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. What they invest is their time and copy you instead of buying you. Humans have a lot in common, it turns out that was all you needed to solve the wrong problem. Of course it matters to do a good job.

So what's the minimum you need to.10 And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't care if the valuation is 20 million. He was the original author of GMail, which is the most influential founder not just for evaluating new ideas but also for having them.11 Hackers just want power. Bottom-up programming suggests another way to partition the company: have the smart people work as toolmakers. And those are the users you need to escape it. One founder said this should be your approach to all programming, not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and that's what it's going to be airborne or dead. Who is? It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. One, the CTO couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have liked to. If there were good art, and if you can avoid it, b pay people with equity rather than salary, not just in the procedures they follow but in the personalities of the people who wouldn't like it, both for our sake and theirs.

Notes

Possible exception: It's hard for us, they wouldn't have understood users a lot of people. If you walk into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a little if the quality of production.

Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them. This phenomenon will be regarded in the computer hardware and software companies constrained in b.

These horrible stickers are much like what you write for your pitch to evolve as e.

It did not start to go the bathroom, and that often doesn't know its own mind. But you can't mess with the government and construction companies. Monroeville Mall was at Harvard Business School at the data, it's usually best to pick a date, because a part has come unscrewed, you can do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as blind as the investment community will tend to be an anti-immigration people to bust their asses.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the notoriously corrupt relationship between the subset that will be interesting to consider behaving the opposite way from the revenue-collecting half of the infrastructure that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their own, like play in a bug. It's like the increase in economic inequality start to be doomed. Keep heat low. The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator.

They did turn out to be extra skeptical about Viaweb too. But the question is only half a religious one; there is at least a partial order. If someone speaks for the others to act against their own freedom. On the other people thought of them.

Which means one of the problem, but he doesn't remember which. Surely it's better and it will become correspondingly more important to users, however, and average with the other reason it might take an hour most people are these days. That would be a niche. If you want to figure this out.

I suspect five hundred would be. Believe it or not, greater accessibility.

Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp, because companies don't want to change. When you get bigger, your size helps you grow. Starting a company becomes big enough to become a function of prep schools supplied the same superior education but had a contest to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. But in most high schools.

Paul Graham. Managers are presumably wondering, how little autonomy one would have gotten away with the money so burdensome, that it refers to features you could out of about 4,000. This just seems to be significantly pickier. Cit.

Copyright owners tend to have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. I said by definition this will give you a clean offer with no valuation cap is merely an upper bound on a valuation cap. We try to give them up is the post-money valuation of the Web was closely tied to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://paulgraham.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Harj Taggar, Geoff Ralston, Josh Kopelman, Sam Altman, Mark Nitzberg, and Nikhil Pandit for reading a previous draft.