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serephinastardust · 1 year ago

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The Book I'm writing: Requiem of the Rising Flames Rewrite #1 Chapter 7

In the aftermath of the Roc's dramatic descent and Crown Prince Xander's revelation, Odessa and Elara approached the scene with measured steps, their veiled expressions revealing little emotion. The shards of the Twilight Tavern crunched beneath their footsteps as they examined the aftermath, their analytical minds deciphering the intricacies of the unfolding tableau.

Leon, however, deviated from the composed demeanor she had maintained in the tavern. With unbridled excitement, she called out to Crown Prince Xander, her voice carrying a blend of exuberance and eccentricity.

"Xander, my dear friend! That was absolutely spectacular! I've never seen a Roc up close before, let alone one in such a magnificent tempest!" Leon's words spilled forth with uncontainable enthusiasm as she sprinted toward the Crown Prince, her eccentricity on full display.

Xander, a master of brevity, responded with a measured glance in Leon's direction. The silent communication between them spoke volumes, and those who knew the Crown Prince understood the intricacies of his non-verbal exchanges. Leon, ever perceptive, caught the essence of Xander's unspoken response, interpreting it as if he had spoken aloud.

Leon continued her approach, undeterred by the chaos around her. "Oh, but Xander, you must tell me everything! How did you manage to subdue such a magnificent creature? The sheer power of it, the finesse—brilliant, absolutely brilliant!"

The Roc, now revealed as a sentient being pleading for its life, interjected with a desperate plea. "Crown Prince, I beg you! Spare me, and I shall pledge my allegiance to you. Grant me mercy, and I shall serve you faithfully!"

Xander's response was another glance, a gaze that seemed to weigh the Roc's words without uttering a single syllable. Leon, undeterred by the Roc's plea, continued her animated conversation, filling the air with a cascade of questions and exclamations.

As the spectacle continued, with Leon's animated conversation and the Roc's desperate pleas echoing through the aftermath of the tempest, Odessa maintained her composed observation. The air crackled with tension, and the shards of the Twilight Tavern whispered tales of an unfolding drama.

The Roc, still pleading for its life, caught Odessa's analytical gaze. Her eyes, cool and calculating, studied the creature's every move. The Roc, in its desperation, attempted to formulate an escape plan, aware that the key to its survival lay in evading the Crown Prince's judgment.

Observing the Roc's continued pleas and sensing its calculating gaze, Odessa made a decisive move. Without a word, she began to walk away, her measured steps carrying her from the chaotic scene. Elara, attuned to Odessa's intentions, remained in place, understanding the path her mistress was about to tread.

The Roc, in its heightened state of desperation, noticed Odessa's departure. An opportunity presented itself—a chance to escape the impending judgment. In a bold and desperate move, the Roc seized upon the moment of distraction when Xander's attention wavered.

With a burst of energy, the Roc fled toward Odessa, capturing her in its talons. The sudden shift in dynamics caught the onlookers off guard, and a gasp rippled through the crowd. The Roc, now holding Odessa as a hostage, unleashed a torrent of pleas, its words a desperate plea for mercy.

Xander, his gaze now fixed on the unfolding hostage situation, met the Roc's eyes with a steely resolve. The air hummed with tension, and the dance of shadows took a perilous turn.

As the Roc seized Odessa in its talons, the lens in her eyes concealed the true shade of her gaze, shielding the amethyst hue that betrayed her supernatural nature. The onlookers, unaware of the lenses, saw only the facade of a young girl captured by the Roc's desperate move.

The Roc, holding Odessa as a hostage, continued its plea for mercy, the tension in the air thickening. Xander's gaze, sharp and unwavering, assessed the situation with calculated precision. Leon, caught in the midst of her eccentric conversation, now watched with a mixture of surprise and concern.

Elara, standing firm and composed, remained rooted in her place, understanding the intricacies of Odessa's calculated plan. The lens in Odessa's eyes, a deceptive veil, played a crucial role in concealing her true identity from the prying eyes of those gathered.

As the Roc snatched Odessa and chaos unfolded, Elara, feigning distress, sought Leon's assistance. "Leon, please help! They took her!" Her plea, laden with apparent distress, startled Leon, who turned to Xander, intending to plead for assistance.

However, before Leon could utter a word, Xander, his gaze fixed on the Roc and Odessa, took off with swift determination. The Crown Prince, decisive in his actions, left Leon momentarily stunned. After a brief moment of shock, Leon, realizing the urgency of the situation, sprinted after Xander, her eccentricity replaced by a focused determination.

Elara, her part in the orchestrated plan complete, subtly returned to the Nightshade residence. As she walked through the cobbled streets, she overheard the murmurs and gossip that filled the air. Nasty comments about a girl being "bird-napped" and the peculiar events in the aftermath of the Roc's descent became the backdrop to Elara's composed return.

As the Roc ascended into the skies, cradling Odessa in its talons, the landscape below unfolded like a tapestry of shifting hues. Odessa, observing the town gradually shrinking beneath her, cast her keen gaze across the unfolding scene.

She noted the determined pursuit of Xander and Leon. One soaring through the air with ethereal grace, the other racing along the ground with swift determination. The coordinated efforts of both, each utilizing their unique skills, marked a relentless pursuit of the Roc and its hostage.

Her analytical mind kicked into high gear, dissecting the unfolding tableau. The rest of Xander's entourage, distinguishable by the flags they carried, appeared like distant motes in the canvas of the azure sky. One among them broke away, veering off to continue the pursuit alongside Xander. Each movement, a chess piece in a complex game, unfolded against the backdrop of Umbral Haven's vast expanse.

To her surprise, Odessa's keen eyes caught the fluttering Nightshade banners on the horizon. A subtle jolt of realization surged through her as she contemplated the unexpected convergence of Nightshade's presence near the city. A subtle play of alliances and movements, concealed beneath the guise of chaos, began to reveal itself.

Amidst the swirling winds and the Roc's powerful ascent, Odessa turned her attention to the creature that held her captive. The realization that her status as a hostage might not secure the Roc's escape had already taken root in her strategic mind.

"Listen," she began, her voice carried away by the currents of the wind but directed with purpose toward the Roc, "using me as a hostage won't help you escape. Xander has a reputation. Rumors say he's not known for empathy or remorse. People don't survive around him. You're risking more than just your own life with this plan."

Her words, a blend of rationality and strategic insight, sought to pierce through the Roc's desperation. As she continued to elaborate on the potential futility of the Roc's plan, a sudden disturbance in the air caught her attention. The telltale signs of Xander's attack disrupted the delicate balance of the skies.

Without warning, the Crown Prince launched an assault on the Roc, a display of formidable skill and determination. The Roc, now caught in the crossfire of Xander's relentless pursuit, found itself facing a force that surpassed its own strength.

The Roc, annoyed by the unwelcome burden in its talons, made clumsy attempts to dislodge Odessa. Its movements lacked grace, a stark contrast to the elegance of the aerial dance unfolding in the azure sky. Despite its powerful wings and relentless efforts, the Roc found itself unable to shake off the determined strategist it unwittingly carried.

Undeterred, Odessa's voice cut through the air, offering guidance amidst the chaos. "Head toward the Lunar Meadows," she directed, her tone authoritative. "And listen closely, Roc. Xander's strength lies in his directness. He rarely anticipates the unconventional. Exploit his mundane weakness. Distract him, surprise him. That's your best chance."

As the Roc adjusted its course toward the Lunar Meadows, a symbolic chase unfolded in the vast expanse of Umbral Haven's skies. Xander, the embodiment of determination and skill, pursued the Roc with relentless precision. The Roc, burdened by its hostage and fueled by desperation, wove through the air like a creature caught between the shadows of escape and the light of pursuit.

The chase became a dance of elements, the Roc's wings slicing through the currents with a determined rhythm. Xander, a streak of silver and azure, pursued with calculated precision. Each movement, a brushstroke on the canvas of the sky, painted a tale of pursuit and evasion—a dance between hunter and hunted, played out in the endless expanse of Umbral Haven.

As they reached the Lunar Meadows, the landscape unfolded beneath them in breathtaking detail. A vast expanse, bathed in the soft glow of daylight, stretched endlessly. The meadows were not merely a flat canvas; they held within them a sprawling forest, rivers weaving through the green tapestry, and a majestic waterfall cascading with ethereal beauty. The juxtaposition of the open meadows and the intimate secrets of the forest created a visual symphony—a harmonious blend of nature's grandeur and hidden wonders.

As the Roc continued its desperate flight toward the Lunar Meadows, Odessa, held within its talons, cast her analytical gaze across the unfolding chase. The relentless pursuit of Xander, gaining ground with each passing moment, prompted a swift assessment of her precarious situation.

Aware that her proximity to Xander's attacks increased the risk of injury, Odessa's mind worked with practiced efficiency. She quickly calculated the remaining distance to the upcoming waterfall in the Lunar Meadows, a natural obstacle that would disrupt the pursuit. Her strategic mind, honed by the art of survival, began to formulate a plan for the imminent ordeal.

Determined not to rely solely on the Roc's ability to evade Xander's attacks, Odessa considered the timing and dynamics of the impending waterfall encounter. The cascade of water, a majestic force of nature, would provide both an opportunity and a challenge. Her mind, a repository of cultivated knowledge and strategic insight, swiftly calculated the angles, the impact, and the precise moment at which she would need to act.

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howterrifying · 5 years ago

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When your one-shot loses control and turns into a multi-chapter.

*headdesk*

#sighhhh #oh brevity how you continue to evade me #that said i'm liking how it's going #it's certainly not The Admirer #but it gives me the occasional feels/chills so that's a good sign #wrants and wrambles

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kittyrossa · 7 years ago

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when i first watched the S5 finale, i was instantly struck by how the white lion trials parallel the marmora trials! for brevity’s sake, i will refer to them as WL (white lion) and BoM (blade of marmora) throughout the post.

my friend @shirogane-s made a gorgeous gifset that sums up the main parallel, which is, as she says in the caption:

keith initially embodies lotor’s “i will get the results i want (i.e. victory/knowledge) or die trying” approach, but is only able to awaken his blade once he yields, which nicely mirrors allura’s success with the white lion

these three characters (keith/lotor/allura) are all fascinating foils to one another, so it makes sense that their trials would highlight exactly that!

HERITAGE

kolivan: the only way [awakening the blade] is possible is if galra blood runs through your veins.

lotor: that thing is a guardian — it will only allow worthy alteans through.

the BoM trials can be completed by those of galra blood, and the WL trials can be completed by those of altean blood.

keith goes into the BoM trials wanting to discover the secrets of his past; he has spent his entire life with a blade that he does not know the origins of, but has reason to believe is connected to his mother and to galra heritage.

lotor goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets of altean alchemy; he has spent centuries searching for clues of oriande, hoping it will connect him to his altean heritage and to his mother, who possessed the same thirst for knowledge.

allura goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets that her father knew and that she may have inherited: the ancient altean wisdom that allowed him to create voltron and spread peace throughout the universe, the very legacy that allura wants to continue.

CHOSEN

lotor and allura are branded with “the marks of the chosen”, altean markings that glow when deemed worthy of entering oriande. lotor is unsurprised that allura is chosen — alfor had the strongest understanding of altean alchemy — but lotor does seem surprised by his own selection. because honerva did not unlock the secrets of oriande, lotor only saw allura as a potential key. it’s plausible that haggar and lotor were given the properties of a sacred altean after honerva went through the rift, but lotor is not yet admitting that haggar and honerva could be one and the same. whether or not being chosen by the guardian is due to bloodlines, lotor and allura are both chosen. lotor says this is because some alteans are more connected to energy — more “magical” than others. this is just the first step, however; they will still have to prove their worth in the WL trials.

keith being “chosen” is not quite as magical or mystical! he is chosen by his parents to own the blade, though in its knife form; the magical and mystical part comes if he awakens the blade, transforming it. from the way antok reacts — accusing keith of stealing it — it’s clear that most BoM trials end in owning a blade that is individual to the wielder. because keith comes to the trials with a blade that used to be his mother’s and was then passed on to him from his father, he has to prove that he is worthy of being “chosen” by both the blade and his parents.

you can even argue that keith is chosen by a third person: shiro, who ends up playing a crucial role in the BoM trials, and who was himself chosen by ulaz as a fighter/leader that could help the BoM. shiro chooses keith not just as a right-hand man that will partner him to the headquarters, but as someone he trusts to take over leadership should something ever happen to him. shiro says that keith needs to work on controlling his emotions and on learning self-discipline, unaware that the BoM trials will test keith with that same mindset.

BLACK HOLE VS. WHITE HOLE

each trial is hidden: the BoM trials within a space pocket bracketed by black holes, and the WL trials within the energy of a white hole.

this is true to the fact that both trials are rooted in secrecy. the BoM’s location is only revealed because ulaz entrusted shiro with the coordinates, and the WL’s location is only revealed because allura’s power granted her access to the compass stone’s map. only two are permitted to enter the BoM headquarters, and only two are chosen by the guardian to enter oriande’s realm. in both cases, the rest of the paladins are forced to wait at the castle, without a glimpse of what could be happening — the black and white holes cause too much interference, preventing any readings.

lotor: the wise stand back from the fire; fools are burned on the pyre; the mystic becomes one with the flame; the embers and he are the same.

keith has to navigate away from being sucked into the black hole, but lotor and allura have to navigate inside the white hole. this is a mirror of the trials themselves: the BoM trials are about evading a dangerous path to focus on the destination, and the WL trials are about becoming one with energy to reach the destination.

KNOWLEDGE

as soon as the trials begin, they do not stop. keith is faced with the relentless swordsmanship of the BoM, and lotor and allura are faced with the charged attacks of the white lion.

keith and lotor rise to the challenge, but allura is quick to realize that engaging in combat is not the answer:

allura: i do not wish to fight! i come here seeking knowledge. this isn’t the way.

though allura has lost altea, she has not forgotten its culture or what she has learned from her father. alfor’s contribution to peace went beyond voltron; as coran says, they “can’t always put the fate of the universe in the hands of a giant weapon — at least, that’s what your father believed.” alteans were diplomats. the first time allura awakens her magic, it’s not through weapons, but through words. her voice reaches the balmerans as she tells them not to give up — she knows what it’s like to watch her home planet die, and will not let it happen to them.

coran: in the days of old, when alteans were given the gift of crystals from a balmera, we would repay its sacrifice by performing a ceremony. a sacred altean would re-infuse the balmera with quintessence. in this way, we had a symbiotic relationship.

allura: the galra have only been taking. it’s time we give back.

allura risks the same ceremony that her father performed, even though she’s never done it before and the scale of it may come at the cost of her own life. the ceremony isn’t about power, but about how she can use power to provide peace; and since then, this has been allura’s goal every time she has awakened her magic. her magic destroys the komar (haggar’s experiment that drains planets of quintessence), and her magic revives voltron on naxzela before haggar can bomb it. allura’s magic may be new to her, but by following her father’s footsteps in saving countless lives, she is firm about what she wants to do with her magic.

this is the wisdom that allura brings with her to the WL trials. lotor admits that none of his research can prepare them for what happens once they’re in oriande, but allura is a natural at navigating the obstacles presented by the sages. she knows that she needs to kneel and seek permission for passage and clarify that they intend no harm; that they offer up the compass stone as a gift. she also spots the teludav that transports them to the WL trials, something that lotor says only a “trained altean” would recognize.

as much as he wishes to connect to his altean heritage, lotor is not a “trained altean”. he has attempted to train himself by exploring the universe and gathering what remnants of altea that he can find, but there’s a difference between scientific theory and spiritual practise. attempts at either have been shamed as weak by zarkon — “you have altean blood running through your veins, poisoning your very being” — or outright crushed.

lotor: i envy you growing up with king alfor. i always wanted to be an explorer and learn about the universe. my father was only interested in conquering it. he once put me in charge of a planet for a year, running the quintessence mining and getting to know the local population. rather than employ the usual galran methods of subjugation, i worked alongside the leadership of the planet, learning their customs. we would only extract as much quintessence as could be replenished, and i enjoyed my time there quite a bit. when my father found out what was happening, he ordered me to destroy the planet. i refused, and he sent me away. he destroyed them all. i was powerless to stop him.

lotor does try to prioritize knowledge, just as he feels his mother once did — and if he’s going to gain a victory, it’s not going to be through the brute force and aggression that is favored by his father. he’s a fighter that survives by trapping and evading and using his surroundings; when engaged in combat, he provokes whoever is at the other end of his sword — throk, zarkon, sendak — by mocking their aggressive clawing for power and glory. when zarkon pursues him in the air with the intent to kill, lotor doesn’t fight, but escapes through harnessing the power of a sun.

because he’s been raised in galra culture rather than altean culture, it’s understandable that it’s lotor who keeps repeating that the WL trials will likely test their “worth”. when we first meet lotor, one of the first things he reveals is that rising to the galra throne is through “the honorable rite of combat”, and this is further confirmed with the ceremony of kral zera. you win by being the strongest, whether your methods are mental or physical or a combination of both.

lotor is a “trained galra”, even if he tries to rebel against that training. allura isn’t afraid to be alone during her WL trials, but lotor is out of his element when he finds himself without her, asking after her by calling her name. the landscape is an open space — there is nowhere to hide and its emptiness provides nothing to use. he can’t evade this. plus, the white lion doesn’t talk: it’s like a translucent spirit, making no sounds beyond roars and growls. there is no personality for lotor to provoke, no amount of cunning that will stop the white lion’s physical force — he can only respond to it by matching it with his own.

lotor: i will not yield! i will gain your secrets!

this is an obvious echo of keith in the BoM trials, though he’s fighting people rather than projections:

BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.

keith: i won’t quit.

BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.

keith: never!

this is not about glory; this is not about proving himself the strongest. keith is galra, but hasn’t grown up in the empire as lotor has, internalizing its values despite himself. this isn’t about his pride as a fighter, but as a person. if he surrenders the blade, he is surrendering his identity. if he gives up the fight, he is not being faithful to his determination to always see a goal through — to be all in.

like lotor, keith hasn’t been trained by his mother. keith is coming into his trials with the least amount of knowledge about his family, and he sees his knife as his key. how can he let them take it away? he doesn’t know the BoM’s customs and culture. he doesn’t know that these trials are not just testing his endurance against the empire’s unyielding fight, but testing his ability to know when to stop — a balance that he’s already struggled with.

coran: it’s zarkon! keith, get out of there, now! zarkon is too powerful!

keith: this is my chance to put an end to the galra empire! i have to take it!

zarkon: you fight like a galra soldier — but not for long!

unlike lotor, however, keith has a support system that has helped him try to find that balance.

keith: patience yields focus.

shiro: that really stayed with you, didn’t it?

keith: you’ve given me some good advice. if it weren’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.

shiro is right there watching the BoM trials, worrying for keith and rooting for him. he knows that keith will never quit, and he knows that keith’s emotions can overpower his focus. keith may be seeking knowledge about his galra family, but shiro is his found family from earth. they met at some point in their lives, and shiro for keith became the one person who “has never given up” on him, implying that others have given up. others have perhaps looked at keith’s fire and found the flames too dangerous or destructive, a person they don’t want to get burned by, but shiro looked at keith’s fire and helped him transform it into a light to guide both keith and others, including shiro. he believes in keith.

so, it takes him some time, but keith eventually uses “patience yields focus” in the BoM trials: he slows down and notices the escape route, throwing his knife and evading without surrendering. keith is exhausted and in pain and he desperately wants to see shiro, which is why hologram!shiro appears as a manifestation of his hopes and fears — the hopes that he will support keith, and the fears that he will reject keith. hologram!shiro tries to impart wisdom, but it’s clinical and cruel: keith is selfish, keith already has family in shiro and the paladins, and if keith doesn’t give up the knife, then keith has chosen to be alone. shiro abandoning him is the first thing to make keith hesitate, but before he can run after him, the mindscape changes to a hologram of keith’s father, who has all of the knowledge that keith is seeking.

SACRIFICE

the BoM trials and the WL trials come down to the ultimate question of “what are you willing to give up, and will you give it up?”

allura: i seek the secret of life. i give my own.

allura is willing.

keith: just take the knife! it doesn’t matter where i come from — i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.

keith is willing.

lotor: victory or death!

lotor is unwilling.

before i continue, there’s a third “trial” that feels relevant: shiro’s battle with zarkon in the astral plane.

zarkon: you have no idea how to command a weapon like this!

shiro: no one commands the black lion!

zarkon: you dare lecture me? do you think the black lion would allow such a feeble creature to pilot it? only the powerful can command it!

shiro: you’ve forgotten what’s most important between a lion and its paladin. it’s not about power. it’s about earning each other’s trust!

lotor fails his trials because he fails to realize what allura and keith do: that it’s not about being worthy of power, but about being trustworthy.

lotor doesn’t trust the white lion not to hurt him, and it’s hard to blame him. his father has targeted him with the same physical force, and would have gone to the point of killing lotor more than once. and though lotor is adamant that “that witch is not my mother”, haggar is the nearest maternal figure that he has: she has stood alongside zarkon and participated in the attempts to control lotor, albeit more psychologically than physically. she has sent out people to spy on him (military, narti, shiro); and though she shares the same blood that blocks her from the throne, haggar coldly calls lotor a “half-breed” whose altean blood quells the rights granted by his galra blood.

so, it’s understandable that lotor isn’t quick to trust people, let alone mysterious mystical lions. his team of generals came the closest in that lotor trusted them to carry out his plans, and in the end they deserted him — but only because lotor lost their trust first. cutting narti down is an example of how lotor does not like to feel powerless — like he’s losing control — and thus is not above doing whatever it takes to regain that power and control. he has manipulated the empire, the rebels, and the paladins, presenting and performing himself as trustworthy in actions and in words. but it’s likely that the white lion would have seen a manipulative stab at diplomacy such as “i come here for nothing but peace.” lotor may claim that as his aim in discovering the secrets of altean alchemy, but in reality he is still too focused on power.

it’s comparable to the triforce from the legend of zelda: three forces (power/courage/wisdom) that need to be balanced to bring peace. allura, though she also relies on power and courage, embodies wisdom; keith, though he also relies on power and wisdom, embodies courage; and lotor, though he also relies on courage and wisdom, embodies power.

allura and keith have a better hold on balancing all three, even if one can dominate; but lotor largely uses his courage and wisdom for the endgame of power, a path that his parents went down and launched an unending war.

alfor: the ore from the comet practically engineers itself. it’s frightening, in a way.

zarkon: endlessly powerful ships for the galra empire.

alfor: and an endless source of clean energy for the entire system.

alfor: we must exercise caution. we have no idea what is out there.

honerva: the ancients thought that lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise. we must always push into dangerous territory in pursuit of knowledge.

honerva: quintessence is so much more than you can understand. it is life itself.

alfor: you’ve gone too far.

honerva: you’ve always been a coward! you wish to close off our gateway to enlightenment — we should be expanding it!

zarkon: if we use voltron, we can enlarge the opening to the other reality!

alfor: it’s madness! this prolonged exposure to quintessence has poisoned your minds.

zarkon: we’ve only scratched the surface. we can rule this entire universe! we can live forever! all of us!

alfor: i cannot be a part of this.

zarkon: you are only one part of voltron, alfor. you cannot hold us all back because of your fear! alfor, i lead the paladins! i command you!

lotor doesn’t want to be his father, but emulating his mother doesn’t mean he isn’t seeking power. like honerva, lotor seeks power through knowledge; and like honerva, lotor sees going through the rift as how to get that power. plan A was reaping the rift’s quintessence by building ships from the transreality comet. when that failed, lotor went for plan B: allura and voltron — much like how zarkon and honerva manipulated alfor and voltron.

shiro: how do you get an empire that’s only known violence for thousands of years to put down their weapons?

lotor: by providing them with the very thing they’re fighting for: quintessence. unlimited amounts of it. and allura, you are the key to getting it.

lotor: in order to transition the galra empire to a peaceful existence, i need to open up a pathway to the quintessence field. once my people have access to unlimited energy, the old ways of the empire will be behind them.

allura: if this voyage is successful, the universe will finally be on the path to peace.

again, lotor is certainly saying all of the right things — but, well, “the masses are easily manipulated.” he must know that it’s not that simple: unlimited quintessence may stop the hunt for power, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop the hunger for it. the galra spirit won’t change from power-hungry to peace-seeking overnight — the galra can still use unlimited quintessence for physical force and violent feats. when keith and krolia reunite, it’s on a mission to destroy a superweapon built from undocumented quintessence that is unparalleled in its power; and lotor says himself that haggar is constantly seeking altean magical knowledge to “pervert” for her own power.

allura: your mother was honerva? the honerva that discovered the rift on planet daibazaal? then you’re — half-altean!

lotor: yes. it was something the galra considered a weakness, but i considered it a strength. the union between zarkon and honerva sparked a technological revolution within the empire. even back then, altean culture was remarkably advanced. the kinds of experiments she was conducting — she advanced science by eons.

lotor is trying to gain power in the Altean (Honerva) Way that he sees as superior to the Galra (Zarkon) Way. given how much lotor has had to fight for his own survival, it’s not unreasonable that he thinks he needs power to do so — specifically more power than zarkon, who lotor has felt powerless against before. when the white lion attacks him, lotor kills it — “victory or death!” — out of survival instincts; he isn’t about to sacrifice his own life that easily, not after centuries of fighting for it and for the dawn of a new age that honors his (and his mother’s) vision of power.

lotor: i will light the flame. not for defeating my father, and not even for being the strongest galra here. but because i did something no one else could do: i returned the black lion to the galra!

lotor may try to distance himself from his father, but at his core, he too sees voltron as a source of power to command. he displays himself as having ownership over the black lion, which is why he doesn’t succeed with the white lion. it never once occurs to him that it’s about teamwork and trust, a sincere emotional bond — “political allyship for one’s own gain” is not going to cut it.

keith’s BoM trials are about forming an alliance between voltron and marmora, but keith succeeds where lotor fails because he puts the mission above himself. the mindscape is on the cusp of unlocking every secret kept from keith, but he’s distracted by the galra attacking earth and people screaming and the red lion waiting for him.

keith: dad, i’m sorry, i gotta go. there’s people that need me out there.

keith’s father: don’t you want to know where you came from? your mother gave [the knife] to me.

keith: mom?

keith’s father: she’ll be here soon.

keith: you gotta tell me, dad. i have to know! where did the knife come from? what does it mean?

keith’s father: your mother is almost here. she’ll tell you everything.

keith: i can’t wait around anymore, i have to go!

keith’s father: if you walk out that door, you’ll never find out who you are.

keith: goodbye, dad.

arguably, the first lion “trial” is between keith and red: the red lion requires its paladin to prove that they’re worthy of respect, and keith has to fight off galra and get thrown out into space for the red lion to believe that he’s “all in”, swooping in to save him; a pattern that continues after keith finds out that he’s able to connect to red from long distances. keith is a paladin of voltron: he knows that working together with your lion is what will save the universe. he would never strike it as lotor did to the white lion, and the red lion would never let anyone strike keith.

shiro: [the red lion] has a link with keith. it knows when he’s in danger — it’s coming for him!

shiro joins red in fighting the BoM, only letting go of a wounded keith to defend him against kolivan and antok, who demand that keith give up his blade because he “failed to awaken it.” keith stops them as shiro and antok clash, voicing what he decided in the mindscape: he knows who he is and what he wants to do. what matters is saving the universe, and they need to work together to make that happen. if he has to give up his knife for that teamwork and trust, then he’s willing to make that sacrifice.

this is what awakens keith’s blade, and it is probably what has awakened other blades: the willingness of the BoM member to put the mission above anything that could hold them back. emotions are a “luxury” they cannot afford; kolivan doesn’t call emotions a “weakness” because he recognizes emotions for what they are: powerful feelings that can make someone selfish instead of selfless, upholding their own life above the lives that the galra have been threatening for several millennia. if they want to defeat the empire, then they can’t indulge in emotions that risk outweighing that mission.

krolia tells keith that she left keith once and will never leave him again — she, too, had chosen between family and mission, and now wants to meet in the middle. in retrospect, this sheds a light on how keith has always struggled with that balance: at one moment, he is scolding pidge for wanting to find her family over forming voltron; at the next moment, he is willing to give up on voltron because he wants to find shiro, his found family.

allura: keith — i know exactly how you feel. but our mission is bigger than any one individual. even those who are … completely irreplaceable.

keith: i know you’re right. it’s time to figure out how to reform voltron.

the black lion trusts keith in replacing shiro because shiro trusted keith in replacing shiro. keith has no visions of the black lion granting him power and glory. he only sees that he is filling the seat of someone he desperately wants back, and keith talks to black as though the lion and shiro are one soul: “i know you wanted this for me, shiro. but i’m not you. i can’t lead them like you. this one’s for you, shiro.”

when shiro does come back, keith sacrifices his own place on the team to make shiro black paladin again. rather than kick lance out of red and allura out of blue, keith turns his efforts towards somewhere he knows he can play a role: the BoM. he makes this sacrifice no matter how much he may miss the lions and the paladins and the teamwork and trust that they have begun to build together. as always, the mission comes first.

and allura isn’t wrong: if anyone knows how keith feels, it’s her.

allura: i don’t know if we should run to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. i want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. i know what you would do.

hologram!alfor: i scattered the lions to keep them out of zarkon’s hands. you urged me to keep them and fight, but, for the greater good of protecting the universe, i chose to hide them.

allura: i think i understand.

hologram!alfor: no, daughter, you were right. i made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. forming voltron is the only way to stop zarkon. you must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.

allura doesn’t have the luxury of putting her grief above the mission. she has lost everything irreplaceable to her — her father, her planet, her people — and yet she doesn’t falter in putting herself out there to ensure that others don’t experience her pain. she ruthlessly trains the new paladins not out of a power trip, but because she understands the urgency of war; and it’s the same when shiro disappears and she has to push keith to step up to the plate, just as she had to for alfor.

it’s hard for her to let go of those leadership instincts when it’s her turn to pilot a lion. she’s used to flying the castle, creating wormholes, and calling the shots for the entire team — and while she doesn’t lose that role completely, it takes a trial and error period to realize that she can’t command blue as she would the castle. she knows that bonding with a lion is important, but as happened to lotor, it’s one thing to know something in theory, and a whole other thing to act it out in practise.

allura: nothing works! i’ve tried asking you nicely, and i’ve tried commanding you! what do you want from me? i can’t do this. everyone depends on me. the universe depends on me, but i can’t control everything. i need your help. guide me. i can’t do it alone.

allura accepts that she can’t fight on her own, and this may be why the blue lion accepts allura where the red lion didn’t. she did ask red for help, but because alfor piloted red, allura put double the pressure on herself in asking red to accept her: not because she wanted the glory of being her father, but because some part of her felt she could only follow alfor’s footsteps if she mirrored him in every way imaginable.

she still sometimes feels that pressure, fearing that she’ll never be the alchemist her father was, but by opening herself up to the support of others as she did to blue, the journey has become less lonely. the universe doesn’t rest on her shoulders alone. the WL trials again ask her to consider the balance between power and peace, and allura accepts the white lion’s energy into her heart — she sacrifices command and control. it’s about working together and trusting each other. how else will they save the universe from a constant cycle of fighting?

allura has the same awakening in accepting the help of the galra: the BoM, keith, and lotor.

allura to keith: i’m so sorry i misjudged you. you’ve proven it’s not what’s in your blood — it’s who you are that counts.

allura to lotor: what you did was for the greater good. and for many of us, proof of your intentions for peace.

despite her trauma, allura’s perspective on galra can be changed if they prove that they are fighting for the same cause that she is. it’s an extreme emotional risk — the first time she had a galra teammate, they betrayed voltron and killed her father and destroyed her entire culture. this cannot be understated, nor can the amount of strength it takes to put herself on the line for that vulnerability again and again. but from where allura’s standing, keith and lotor have proven — again and again — that they believe in voltron’s mission.

as of S5, allura and keith have a relationship of genuine trust. it’s been tested, such as when keith began prioritizing BoM missions over being the pilot of the black lion; but at the end of the day, keith has always done whatever it takes to fight the empire. they were both willing to leave the castle to find out if zarkon was tracking them, sacrificing their own safety for the safety of their team and the entire universe. keith was willing to put action over caution and infiltrate central command to finally defeat zarkon, earning allura’s turnaround in trusting him. they were both willing to sacrifice the chance to stay with their departed fathers, letting go of their holograms to maintain their mission. and allura was willing to reach out and offer keith a place in her “new family”, knowing what it is to lose your biological family and have to rebuild and reconnect.

keith doesn’t fault allura when she falls for lotor’s trap with the altean distress signal, and allura expresses condolences when keith loses regris, partially due to keith’s own risk-taking. keith has allura’s blessing in joining the BoM, knowing he’ll make them proud — and she acknowledges that the BoM have been instrumental in the fight against zarkon, a huge leap from her initial distrust in them and criticism of their caution. though they’ve parted ways for now, allura is similar to shiro in that she has made it clear that she wants keith to feel he can come back to them; that the team has faith and trust in him.

as of S5, allura and lotor have a relationship of tentative trust — “tentative” because it’s genuine on allura’s end, but lotor’s end is debatable. fandom seems 50/50 on it, which speaks to lotor’s complexity and how you can build a case for both. but these are the facts: lotor has communicated faith and support in allura’s abilities, urging her to be the person who can carry on the tradition of altean alchemy. honerva and alfor were alchemists, and zarkon and alfor were friends that fought alongside each other. can’t lotor and allura be the same, and rewrite their wrongs? everything lotor says is rooted in truth, even if there is a part of him that’s bending it to get the results that he wants. he and allura are both genuinely nostalgic for a time that no longer exists — as the new rulers of their royal families, they can understand each other in a way that few others can.

we can assume that lotor is using altean nostalgia for an ulterior motive, just as he used the altean distress signal to appeal to allura and get him the transreality comet. what he’s doing now is a more personal version of that plan, becoming friends with her and earning her trust and confidence. he says that he cannot revive altean alchemy without her, and allura boomerangs the same sentiment back at him: “i’m glad you’re here to help me now. i never would have gotten here without you.” this comes after lotor confides in her his reasons for being exiled, and his genuine despair at how he was powerless to stop zarkon. when allura later repeats that she couldn’t have unlocked her altean alchemy without lotor, he smooths over his frown with a smile and says that oriande was for her and not for him — she is the true alchemist.

alfor was once blinded by his compassion for zarkon, and allura may have that same blindness in her compassion — and empathy — for lotor. but the potential is there for them to have a future relationship without ulterior motives; to someday join together and restore altean culture and bring peace to the universe.

what about keith and lotor to complete the trifecta? as of S5, they have what i call a “wild card” relationship, and one of distant trust. it’s unclear if they’ve properly met in terms of being formally introduced — keith knows who lotor is, but lotor doesn’t seem to have been told that a former paladin (and one that he fought) is now a part-galra member of the BoM. they used to collide in battle when keith flew black and lotor was emperor pro tem; keith had immense distrust in lotor, doing everything he could to thwart him and his traps. but more recently, they’ve collided while saving each other — lotor unaware of who he was saving, but keith completely aware and doing the exact opposite of how he’d approached lotor before. lotor saved keith and the universe for his own political gain, but keith saved lotor because he now trusted him to be someone who could change the political tide.

i said this in my keitor meta for S3 + S4, but lotor saving keith had the potential to make keith do a turnaround in his trust of lotor, and S5 confirms this even if they never met afterwards. keith is still with the BoM, and their contact with lotor is indirect — lotor gives the paladins intel to pass on to kolivan, and kolivan reports back that it’s trustworthy. communications appear to stop after lotor kills zarkon, which is why keith doesn’t hear from them about kral zera — but it’s kral zera where he and lotor collide again, and it’s kral zera where keith saves lotor.

keith and lotor’s potential dynamic is a “wild card” because unlike their dynamics with allura, it’s galra-on-galra. prior to S5, many of us assumed that keith was a prime candidate for manipulation — he was part-galra like lotor and isolated from his former teammates like lotor, and if lotor wanted to deepen that wedge, he could have appealed to keith’s desire to belong by offering him a place alongside him. but as of S5, the tables have turned: it’s increasingly clear that keith is the galra that lotor pretends to be — that lotor finds it hard to be as the emperor’s son. keith refuses to be a prisoner of his own blood, knowing that galra blood doesn’t automatically make one loyal to zarkon or “just like” zarkon. he works with the BoM to take the empire down from the inside, and not just to shift its methods of power as lotor is doing with altean methods, but to dismantle its power and restore stability — hence the plan to blow up kral zera as the symbol of the first planet the galra conquered, along with the galra’s currently powerful leaders.

keith aborts that mission when shiro and lotor arrive — and the fact that keith lumps in lotor with shiro as “someone i want to save” is huge. but it’s logical: keith’s trust in lotor shifted once lotor executed the exact action keith was planning (destroying haggar’s bomb). seeing shiro ally himself with lotor is going to deepen that trust, even if keith is only viewing things from a distance. lotor is like a “cool/calculating” version of shiro: both have been pursued by zarkon for taking his former thrones (the empire’s + the black lion’s), and zarkon has mocked shiro and lotor for being “weaker” than him, stopping at nothing to eliminate them. and of course, both have been pursued by haggar and are currently being pursued by haggar, who through her magic tries to control them for her own agenda for power. lotor and shiro deal with this trauma by masking it with composure, and they make decisive and difficult choices to keep on surviving. keith has never lost trust in shiro, so it’s not out of the question that he’d trust lotor if he got to know him more personally — unless he saw the “cool/calculating” personality for what he used to see: someone cunning and chaotic. this may depend on how lotor responds to operation kuron: eliminate shiro like he eliminated narti, or help him and empathize with him (and therefore maintain keith’s trust)?

on the flipside, keith is like a “fiery/explosive” version of acxa — lotor’s former, and most devoted, general. less is known about acxa’s backstory, but since her introduction in the weblum, she has been mysteriously honorbound. keith says she’s “just like the rest of them” after she steals the scaultrite, but acxa remains different in that she doesn’t kill keith once she gets what she needs (and she pays her debt by saving him at kral zera). she reminds her teammates not to kill anyone, but to get the intel they need and get out. like keith, she encourages her team to stay efficient and dedicated to the mission, and like keith, she is intensely loyal to her leader; she wants to trust that he’ll protect them, and she needs to be convinced to overthrow him for her own gain. even then, her decision to do so is “for narti”, and she can’t help but insist that “no one is replacing lotor” when zethrid and ezor muse about usurping him as emperor (very keith-esque in how he responded to anyone replacing shiro as black paladin). what separates them is that acxa maintains her composure where keith’s emotions are often crystal clear; but they have both served as trusted right-hands to their leaders, and so it again makes you wonder what would happen if there was a mix-and-match: lotor meeting keith, a foil to acxa, and keith meeting lotor, a foil to shiro.

if allura represents the altean side of lotor that he on some level wishes he could embody, then keith may become that for lotor’s galra side. his WL trials demonstrate that he still has a long way to go on the path to inner peace and universal peace; allura and keith are already moving ahead.

as of S5, allura is connecting more and more to alfor and her altean heritage. as of S5, keith has just been given the opportunity to connect to krolia and his galra heritage. but as of S5, lotor has been denied the secrets of oriande and seems to be in denial about haggar being honerva — if he’s admitted it to himself at all, he sees them as separate entities. discovering that haggar is essentially an “amplified” version of the mother he holds on a pedestal could be something that destroys him, or it could be something that allows him to finally move forward and balance these two important sides of himself.

there’s nothing inherently evil about seeking victory or seeking knowledge — it’s about why and how you seek those things, and allura and keith are proof that choosing the honorable path is possible. for inner peace, they could use a little of lotor’s “selfishness” (not sacrificing their own emotions), and for universal peace, lotor could use a little of their “selflessness” (not sacrificing the safety of others). even if you theorize that lotor wants to go through the rift for “selfless" reasons — quintessence to uncorrupt haggar, as his parents may have wanted quintessence to save lotor’s life — there is still an element of selfishness in seeking power that can save one person at the cost of endangering the entire universe.

whatever happens in S6 and beyond, it’s safe to say that keith/lotor/allura all have compelling arcs about the trials of repeating history + shaping their own history. i’m super excited to see how these arcs continue to parallel and/or intersect!

#leithal #vld keith #keith kogane #vld lotor #prince lotor #vld allura #princess allura #keith and allura #keith and lotor #allura and lotor #more chara-centric than shippy but tag it as kallura or keitor or lotura if you want!#vld meta #long post #add-on:#keith and shiro

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your-own-medical-agency · 5 years ago

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Overview-Levothyroxine

What is levothyroxine?

Levothyroxine is a thyroid prescription that replaces a hormone regularly created by your thyroid organ to direct the body's vitality and digestion. Levothyroxine is given when your thyroid doesn't deliver enough of this hormone all alone. Levothyroxine is utilized to treat hypothyroidism (low thyroid hormone). It is additionally used to treat or forestall goiter (amplified thyroid organ), which can be brought about by hormone irregular characteristics, radiation treatment, medical procedure, or malignancy. There are numerous brands and types of levothyroxine accessible. Not all brands are recorded on this pamphlet.

Significant Information -Levothyroxine

You will most likely be unable to take levothyroxine on the off chance that you have certain ailments. Tell your primary care physician on the off chance that you have an untreated or uncontrolled adrenal organ issue, a thyroid issue called thyrotoxicosis, or in the event that you have any ongoing or current side effects of a coronary episode. Levothyroxine ought not be utilized to treat stoutness or weight issues. Perilous reactions or demise can happen from the abuse of this drug, particularly on the off chance that you are assuming some other weight reduction meds or craving suppressants.

Prior to taking this drug (Levothyroxine)

Levothyroxine ought not be utilized to treat corpulence or weight issues. Risky symptoms or passing can happen from the abuse of this drug, particularly on the off chance that you are assuming some other weight reduction prescriptions or craving suppressants. Since thyroid hormone happens normally in the body, nearly anybody can take levothyroxine. Be that as it may, you will most likely be unable to take this medication in the event that you have certain ailments. Tell your primary care physician in the event that you have:

an untreated or uncontrolled adrenal organ issue;

a thyroid issue called thyrotoxicosis; or

indications/symptoms of a respiratory failure (chest torment or substantial inclination, torment spreading to the jaw or shoulder, sickness, perspiring, general sick inclination).

Tell your PCP on the off chance that you have ever had:

a thyroid knob;

coronary illness, a blood coagulation, or a blood-thickening issue;

diabetes (insulin or oral diabetes prescription portions may should be changed when you start taking this medication);

kidney infection/disease;

pallor(absence of red platelets){anemia};

osteoporosis, or low bone mineral thickness;

issues with your pituitary organ; or

any nourishment or medication sensitivities.

Tell your primary care physician on the off chance that you have as of late gotten radiation treatment with iodine . On the off chance that you become pregnant while taking levothyroxine, don't quit taking the medication without your PCP's recommendation. Having low thyroid hormone levels during pregnancy could hurt both mother and child. Your portion needs might be distinctive during pregnancy. Tell your primary care physician on the off chance that you are bosom nourishing. Your portion needs might be unique while you are nursing. Try not to offer this prescription to a kid without restorative guidance. Tirosint isn't affirmed for use by anybody more youthful than 6 years of age.

By what method would it be advisable for me to take levothyroxine?

Take levothyroxine precisely as endorsed by your primary care physician. Pursue all bearings on your remedy mark and read all prescription aides or guidance sheets. Your primary care physician may once in a while change your portion. Utilize the drug precisely as coordinated. Levothyroxine oral is taken by mouth. Levothyroxine injection is given as a mixture into a vein. Levothyroxine is generally given by infusion just in the event that you can't take the drug by mouth. Levothyroxine oral works best in the event that you take it on an unfilled stomach, at any rate 30 to an hour prior to breakfast. Adhere to your primary care physician's dosing guidelines and attempt to take the medication simultaneously every day. Swallow the tablet>/b> or container entire, with a full glass (8 ounces) of water. The tablet may break down rapidly and could expand in your throat. Measure fluid prescription cautiously. Utilize the dosing syringe gave, or utilize a prescription portion estimating gadget (not a kitchen spoon). Levothyroxine portions depend on weight in youngsters. Your youngster's portion needs may change if the kid puts on or sheds pounds. It might take a little while before your body begins to react to levothyroxine. Continue utilizing this medication regardless of whether you feel well. You may need to utilize this medication for an amazing remainder. You may need visit medicinal tests. Tell any specialist, dental specialist, or specialist who treats you that you are utilizing this drug. Store at room temperature away from dampness and warmth. Try not to impart this medication to someone else, regardless of whether they have similar manifestations you have.

What occurs in the event that I miss a portion?

Accept the prescription when you can, yet skirt the missed portion in the event that it is nearly time for your next portion. Try not to take two portions one after another.

What occurs in the event that I overdose?

Overdose indications may incorporate migraine, leg spasms, tremors, feeling anxious or bad tempered, chest agony, brevity of breath, and quick or beating pulses.

What would it be advisable for me to evade while taking levothyroxine?

Stay away from the accompanying nourishment items, which can cause your body to ingest less levothyroxine: grapefruit juice, newborn child soy equation, soybean flour, cotton seed supper, pecans, and high-fiber nourishments.

Levothyroxine indications{Side Effect}

Get emergency remedial help with the occasion that you have signs of a negatively defenseless reaction to levothyroxine: hives; inconvenient breathing; developing of your face, lips, tongue, or throat. Call your essential consideration doctor immediately in case you have:

fast or sporadic heartbeats;

chest torment, quickness of breath;

fever, hot flashes, sweating;

tremors, or in case you feel oddly cold;

weakness, tiredness, rest issues (a dozing issue);

memory issues, feeling debilitated or peevish;

cerebral torment, leg fits, muscle harms;

feeling on edge or irritable;

dryness of your skin or hair, or conceivably male example hairlessness;

changes in your menstrual periods; or

heaving, the runs[diarrhea], longing for changes, weight changes.

Certain responses may be practically sure in progressively prepared adults. Ordinary levothyroxine responses may include:

muscle deficiency;

cerebral agony, leg issues;

trepidation, bother resting;

detachment of the entrails; or

skin rash, mostly male example sparseness.

This is certainly not an absolute summary of responses and others may occur. Call your essential consideration doctor for therapeutic admonishment about side effects. You may report indications to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

What various prescriptions will impact levothyroxine?

Various solutions can be affected by your thyroid hormone levels. Certain various remedies may similarly increase or decreasing the effects of levothyroxine. Certain solutions can make levothyroxine less practical at whatever point taken at the same time. In case you use any of the going with prescriptions, go without taking them inside 4 hours earlier or 4 hours after you take this medication:

calcium carbonate ;

cholestyramine, colesevelam, colestipol;

ferrous sulfate iron improvement;

sucralfate;

sodium polystyrene sulfonate (Kalexate, Kayexalate, Kionex);

stomach destructive(acid) reducers- - esomeprazole, lansoprazole, omeprazole, rabeprazole, Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, Protonix, Zegerid, and others; or

stomach settling specialists that contain aluminum or magnesium- - Gaviscon, Maalox, Milk of Magnesia, Mintox, Mylanta, Pepcid Complete, and others.

Various prescriptions can associate with levothyroxine. This fuses arrangement and over-the-counter medications, supplements, and home developed things. Few out of every odd single possible coordinated effort are recorded here. Illuminate your PCP concerning all your present drugs and any solution you start or quit using.

Extra information -Levothyroxine

Remember, keep this and each and every other solution out of the range of adolescents, never share your medications with others, and use Levoxyl only for the sign embraced. Ceaselessly counsel your human administrations provider to ensure the information appeared on this page applies to your own conditions.

Side Effects-Levothyroxine

For the Consumer Applies to levothyroxine: oral container fluid filled, oral tablet Other measurements structures:

infusion powder for arrangement

Caution-Levothyroxine Oral course (Capsule; Tablet; Solution) Thyroid hormones, including levothyroxine, ought not be utilized either alone or with other remedial operators for the treatment of stoutness or weight reduction. In euthyroid patients, dosages inside the scope of every day hormonal prerequisites are incapable for weight decrease. Bigger portions may create genuine or even hazardous signs of harmfulness, especially when given in relationship with sympathomimetic amines, for example, those utilized for their anorectic impacts. Alongside its required impacts, levothyroxine may cause some undesirable impacts. In spite of the fact that not these symptoms may happen, on the off chance that they do happen they may require therapeutic consideration. Check with your PCP promptly if any of the accompanying reactions happen while taking levothyroxine: Less normal

Chest torment or inconvenience

diminished pee yield

troublesome or worked relaxing

trouble with gulping

expanded neck veins

extraordinary weakness

swooning

quick, slow, unpredictable, beating, or hustling heartbeat or heartbeat

fever

heat narrow mindedness

hives or welts, skin tingling, rash, or redness

unpredictable relaxing

peevishness

menstrual changes

sickness

agony or uneasiness in the arms, jaw, back, or neck

perspiring

growing of the eyes, face, lips, throat, or tongue

snugness in the chest

tremors

Uncommon

Obscured or twofold vision

unsteadiness

eye torment

need or easing back of typical development in youngsters

limp or walk favoring one leg

torment in the hip or knee

seizures

extreme cerebral pain

Get crisis help promptly if any of the accompanying indications of overdose happen while taking levothyroxine:

Indications of overdose -Levothyroxine

Change in cognizance

cool, moist skin

perplexity

bewilderment

quick or powerless heartbeat

unsteadiness

loss of cognizance

abrupt migraine

abrupt loss of coordination

abrupt slurring of discourse

Some reactions of levothyroxine may happen that generally needn't bother with therapeutic consideration. These reactions may leave during treatment as your body acclimates to the medication. Additionally, your human services proficient might have the option to inform you regarding approaches to avoid or diminish a portion of these reactions. Check with your social insurance proficient if any of the accompanying reactions proceed or are irksome or on the off chance that you have any inquiries concerning them:

Less normal

Stomach or stomach issues

change in craving

crying

loose bowels

false or uncommon feeling of prosperity

dread or anxiety

feeling not well or miserable

sentiment of inconvenience

sentiment of warmth

feeling things are not genuine

sentiments of doubt

male pattern baldness

cerebral pain

expanded hunger

mental sorrow

muscle shortcoming

fast to respond or blow up genuinely

quickly changing states of mind

redness of the face, neck, arms, and once in a while, upper chest

eagerness

issue getting pregnant

issue sitting still

bizarre tiredness or shortcoming

spewing {vomitting}

weight increase or misfortune

For Healthcare Professionals -Levothyroxine

Applies to levothyroxine: exacerbating powder, injectable powder for infusion, intravenous powder for infusion, intravenous arrangement, oral container, oral arrangement, oral tablet

General -Levothyroxine

The more regularly revealed unfavorable occasions have incorporated those of hyperthyroidism because of helpful overdose including arrhythmias, myocardial dead tissue, dyspnea, muscle fit, migraine, apprehension, touchiness, a sleeping disorder, tremors, muscle shortcoming, expanded craving, weight reduction, the runs, heat prejudice, menstrual inconsistencies, and skin rash.

Cardiovascular -Levothyroxine

Heart capacity was assessed in 20 patients requiring TSH concealment for either thyroid goiter or following thyroidectomy and radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid malignant growth and in 20 age and sex-coordinated controls. TSH concealment was related with an expanded rate of untimely ventricular beats, an expanded left ventricular mass record, and upgraded left ventricular systolic capacity. The clinical importance of these progressions stays to be resolved. Overtreatment with this medication may cause an expansion in pulse, heart divider thickness, and cardiovascular contractility and may encourage angina or arrhythmias, especially in patients with cardiovascular sickness and in old patients. Recurrence not announced: Palpitations, tachycardia, hypertension, arrhythmias, expanded heartbeat and circulatory strain, cardiovascular breakdown, angina, myocardial localized necrosis, heart arrest

Endocrine -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not announced: Changes in side effect introduction for diabetes and adrenal cortical insufficiency

Sensory system -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not revealed: Headache, hyperactivity, sleep deprivation, seizures, pseudotumor cerebri (children)

Dermatologic -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not revealed: Hair misfortune, flushing, urticaria, pruritus, skin rash, angioedema, exorbitant sweating

Musculoskeletal -Levothyroxine

An examination assessed the impact of long haul thyroid hormone treatment on bone mineral thickness in 196 ladies (mean age, 74.4 years) contrasted with a control gathering involved 795 ladies (mean age, 72.1 years). The mean day by day thyroxine portion was 1.99 mcg/kg (run, 0.3 to 6.6 mcg/kg) with a mean term of treatment of 20.4 years (extend, under 1 to 68 years). Ladies taking day by day dosages of 1.6 mcg/kg or more had fundamentally lower bone mineral thickness levels at the ultradistal sweep, midshaft range, hip, and lumbar spine contrasted with controls. Be that as it may, estrogen use seemed to refute the unfriendly impacts of thyroid hormone on bone mineral thickness. Higher paces of femur cracks have been found in guys (p=0.008) endorsed long haul thyroid hormone treatment when contrasted with controls for a situation control investigation of 23,183 patients, from the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database, recommended thyroid hormone. Overtreatment may result in craniosynostosis in babies and untimely conclusion of the epiphyses in youngsters with resultant bargained grown-up height. Recurrence not revealed: Tremors, muscle shortcoming, muscle issues, expanded danger of osteoporosis, slipped capital femoral epiphysis (children)

Gastrointestinal-Levothyroxine

Recurrence not revealed: Diarrhea, spewing, stomach cramps

Genitourinary -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not detailed: Menstrual abnormalities, hindered fertility

Excessive touchiness(it is also called Hypersensitivity) -Levothyroxine

Excessive touchiness responses have happened; be that as it may, it has been ascribed to the dormant fixings. These responses have included urticaria, pruritus, skin rash, flushing, angioedema, different GI manifestations (stomach torment, queasiness, retching and looseness of the bowels), fever, arthralgia, serum disorder and wheezing. Extreme touchiness to levothyroxine itself isn't known to occur. Recurrence not announced: Serum ailment, excessive touchiness to idle ingredients

Metabolic -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not announced: Increased craving, weight loss

Immunologic -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not announced: Autoimmune issue (e.g., interminable immune system thyroiditis)

Other -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not revealed: Fatigue, heat narrow mindedness, fever

Mental -Levothyroxine

Recurrence not revealed: Nervousness, uneasiness, touchiness, passionate lability

Dosage-Levothyroxine

Applies to the going with characteristics: 25 mcg (0.025 mg); 50 mcg (0.05 mg); 75 mcg (0.075 mg); 100 mcg (0.1 mg); 125 mcg (0.125 mg); 150 mcg (0.15 mg); 200 mcg (0.2 mg); 300 mcg (0.3 mg); 500 mcg (0.5 mg); 88 mcg (0.088 mg); 112 mcg (0.112 mg); 175 mcg (0.175 mg); 137 mcg (0.137 mg); 13 mcg (0.013 mg); 20 mcg (0.02 mg)/mL; 40 mcg (0.04 mg)/mL; 100 mcg (0.1 mg)/mL; 13 mcg (0.013 mg)/mL; 25 mcg (0.025 mg)/mL; 50 mcg (0.05 mg)/mL; 75 mcg (0.075 mg)/mL; 88 mcg (0.088 mg)/mL; 112 mcg (0.112 mg)/mL; 125 mcg (0.125 mg)/mL; 137 mcg (0.137 mg)/mL; 150 mcg (0.15 mg)/mL; 175 mcg (0.175 mg)/mL; 200 mcg (0.2 mg)/mL

Typical Adult Dose for:

Hypothyroidism

TSH Suppression

Myxedema Coma

Typical Geriatric Dose for:

Hypothyroidism

Typical Pediatric Dose for:

Hypothyroidism

Ordinary Adult Dose for Hypothyroidism

Dosing should be individualized with thought given to age, cardiovascular status, relating afflictions (tallying pregnancy), and unequivocal nature of condition; seek after clinical response and research focus parameters eagerly as bit is adjusted: Beginning DOSES: Basic Hypothyroidism: Sound Individuals who have been Hypothyroid for a Short Time (a few months) Beginning bit: 1.6 mcg/kg orally once consistently - Adjust divide in 12.5 to 25 mcg expands every 4 to about a month and a half until clinically euthyroid and TSH returns to run of the mill Individuals over 50 years or possibly Patients with Cardiovascular Disease: Starting part: 12.5 to 25 mcg orally once every day - Adjust parcel at 6 to around two months intervals until clinically euthyroid and TSH returns to normal Extraordinary Longstanding Hypothyroidism: Starting segment: 12.5 to 25 mcg orally once every day - Adjust partition in augmentations of 12.5 to 25 mcg/day every 2 to about a month until clinically euthyroid and TSH returns to standard Upkeep DOSE: Approximately 1.6 mcg/kg/day is a full substitution divide Most extraordinary part: 200 to 300 mcg/day (doses more essential than 200 mcg/day are just incidentally required; partitions more noticeable than 300 mcg/day are now and again required and may exhibit poor consistence, malabsorption, quiet joint efforts, or a blend of these segments) Discretionary (PITUITARY) OR Tertiary (HYPOTHALAMIC) Hypothyroidism: - Dosing as depicted above beside serum free-T4 level will be used to screen treatment; serum TSH levels are not a strong measure and should not be used - Titrate until clinically euthyroid and serum free-T4 levels are restored to the upper part of the normal range

Comments:

- Dose should be individualized with typical checking of clinical status and research office parameters. - Peak effect of a given part may not be accomplished for 4 to about a month and a half. - Not showed for the treatment of hypothyroidism during the recovery time of subacute thyroiditis. - Co-controlled sustenance and affiliated solutions may out and out impact osmosis; take on an unfilled stomach and in any occasion 4 hours earlier or after drugs known to interfere with levothyroxine maintenance. Use: As substitution treatment in basic (thyroidal), discretionary (pituitary), and tertiary (hypothalamic) natural or secured hypothyroidism

Regular Adult Dose for TSH Suppression

TSH levels should generally be covered to underneath 0.1 IU/L - A segment more noticeable than 2 mcg/kg orally once a day is commonly required to achieve this degree of camouflage Comments: - Patients with high-risk tumors may concentrate on an increasingly vital level of TSH covering, in any case, this isn't especially described. - This prescription isn't exhibited for disguise of genial thyroid handles and nontoxic diffuse goiter in iodine-satisfactory patients as there are no clinical points of interest and overtreatment may incite hyperthyroidism. Use: As an extra to medicinal system and radioiodine treatment in the organization of thyrotropin- ward well-isolated thyroid threatening development.

Standard Adult Dose for Myxedema Coma

Parenteral Formulation: - Initial stacking segment: 300 to 500 mcg IV once - Maintenance partition: 50 to 100 mcg IV once consistently until patient can persevere through oral treatment Comment: - Age, general physical condition, cardiovascular danger factors, reality and length of myxedema daze state should be seen as when choosing the hidden and bolster estimations. - The relative bioavailability among oral and IV levothyroxine is surveyed to be 48% to 74%; in view of individual complexities, TSH levels should be evaluated and segments adjusted in like way. Use: For the treatment of myxedema stupor state.

Standard Geriatric Dose for Hypothyroidism

Starting bit: 12.5 to 25 mcg orally once every day - Adjust divide at 6 to around two months between times until clinically euthyroid and TSH returns to common Bolster parcel: Full substitution measurements may be under 1 mcg/kg/day Most outrageous part: 200 to 300 mcg/day (measurements more unmistakable than 200 mcg/day are just now and again required; partitions more imperative than 300 mcg/day are only sometimes required and may show poor consistence, malabsorption, sedate coordinated efforts, or a blend of these segments) Comments: - Dosing should be individualized with thought given to age, cardiovascular status, relating infirmities, and the specific thought of condition; seek after clinical response and research focus parameters eagerly as part is adjusted. - Peak effect of a given segment may not be accomplished for 4 to multi week; full recovery partition s. - Not showed for the treatment of hypothyroidism during the recovery time of subacute thyroiditis. - Co-controlled sustenance and affiliated drugs may out and out impact ingestion; take on an empty stomach and in any occasion 4 hours earlier or after meds known to interfere with levothyroxine maintenance. Use: As substitution treatment in fundamental (thyroidal), assistant (pituitary), and tertiary (hypothalamic) natural or acquired hypothyroidism

Typical Pediatric Dose for Hypothyroidism

0 to 3 months: 10 to 15 mcg/kg orally once consistently 3 to a half year: 8 to 10 mcg/kg orally once every day 6 to a year: 6 to 8 mcg/kg orally once every day 1 to 5 years: 5 to 6 mcg/kg orally once consistently 6 to 12 years: 4 to 5 mcg/kg orally once consistently 12 years or progressively prepared and inadequate advancement and pubescence: 2 to 3 mcg/kg orally once consistently 12 years or progressively prepared with improvement and youthfulness complete: 1.6 mcg/kg orally once consistently Children (0 to 3 months) at Risk for Cardiac Failure: Consider a lower beginning bit; increase partition every 4 to about a month and a half as required reliant on clinical and look into office response Pediatric Patients at Risk for Hyperactivity: Initial bit should be one-fourth the recommended full substitution partition; increase step by step by one-fourth to the full proposed substitution divide Comments: - Dose should be individualized with common seeing of clinical status and lab parameters; top effect may not be accomplished for 4 to about a month and a half. - Not appeared for the treatment of hypothyroidism during the recovery time of subacute thyroiditis. - Co-oversaw sustenance and going to remedies may in a general sense impact absorption; take on an unfilled stomach and in any occasion 4 hours earlier or after prescriptions known to interfere with levothyroxine maintenance. - The case itemizing is shown for patients 6 years or progressively settled as the holder should be swallowed down; see Other Comment/Administration Advice for unequivocal association rules including headings for those unfit to swallow immaculate tablets. Use: For the treatment of natural or secured hypothyroidism.

Renal Dose Adjustments

No change recommended Liver Dose Adjustments No change recommended Segment Adjustments Myxedema Coma: Elderly and Patients with Cardiovascular Disease: IV use is connected with heart risk, as such, parcels at the lower end of the bit range should be used in these masses. Pregnancy: New Onset Hypothyroidism: - Patients with moderate to genuine signs and reactions of hypothyroidism: 1.6 mcg/kg orally once consistently - Patients with smooth hypothyroidism (TSH under 10 mIU/L): 1 mcg/kg orally once consistently - Evaluate TSH predictably and change divide until serum TSH is inside trimester-express range Preexisting Hypothyroidism: - Monitor TSH and free T4 when pregnancy is attested and at any rate each trimester - Maintain TSH in trimester-express reference go (fundamental hypothyroidism) - If serum TSH is over the run of the mill trimester-express range, increase by 12.5 to 25 mcg/day and measure TSH predictably until serum TSH is inside the standard trimester-unequivocal range - Reduce to pre-pregnancy part following movement and measure serum TSH level 4 to around two months postnatal anxiety to ensure segment is fitting Supportive medicine checking/expand: - Primary Hypothyroidism: Monitor TSH - Secondary and Tertiary Hypothyroidism: Monitor serum free-T4 levels (keep up in the upper bit of the customary range) Security measures US BOXED WARNING: NOT FOR TREATMENT OF OBESITY OR FOR WEIGHT LOSS - Thyroid hormones, either alone or with various administrators, should not be used for the treatment of strength or for weight decrease. In euthyroid patients, divides inside the extent of consistently hormonal requirements are inadequate for

#IFTTT #Blogger

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theliterateape · 7 years ago

Text

What Change Looks Like, I Suppose

By Peter Kremidas

(In lieu of the existence of technology that allows us to create literamatic soundtracks timed exactly to your personal reading speed via eye-tracking bots, and if you’ll indulge me in a bit of an experiment, you just may enjoy listening to the following internet radio station while you read this. Headphones preferred. Enjoy. I hope this makes you laugh and feel and think things.)

What Change Looks Like, I Suppose.

What is this? Yet another super personal piece of writing that you won’t release because you are a coward?

I didn't release those because I think a lot of too-much-information gets mistaken for bravery. Wow, somebody’s in a bad mood.

Ah, sarcasm. Typical. Humor as defense. Do you seriously have nothing else?

But seriously, folks, out of all the diverse and vast array of human coping mechanisms, from just refusing to talk about it, to addiction, and all the way to suicide, making jokes seems like one of the better ones to have, don't you think? I would choose that every time, if I had a choice. Which, oh yeah, I don't. I'm sorry, would you like to kiss my plump egg satchel?

That was way too...

Don’t say it, I know. Wordy. Unnecessarily so. Goes too hard. I don't know. We'll get it in post. The idea wasn’t that it was a good joke, but just that it was, in fact, a joke.

I was going to say "try-hard-y."

Just to be clear, you’re the one who talks in all italics, right?

Yes. With bold for emphasis. This formatting is ugly and the concept is derivative.

Do you think they’ve figured out that this is me talking to myself yet?

Stop. Good god, at long last, please stop. Please do not do more of this overthought masturbatory bullshit. You try so hard. Do you think people can’t see you trying so hard? They know that you are trying so hard because you are insecure and need their approval. Because you are fundamentally weak. You think people can’t see through this meta-ass jerk off of a piece?

UH-OH! Look at me! I’m a big scary voice! Blah blah blah! Look at me! Watch as I once again pretend positive things don’t exist! This is what I sound like when I talk! Blah blah blah!

Stop talking in my voice this instant.

Fine. OK, I’ll be real with you. Even though you already know the answer. Here it is again. I have no control over what people think about anything I say or do. Ever. Remember what we do with things we can’t control? We let them go. That is literally the only choice possible if the base value is happiness or even sanity.

Hell, that’s the only choice if your base value is truth. Anything anybody else is thinking is fundamentally an unknowable. It's impossible to know, so why spend the time trying to figure out what it is or will be? You might as well get mad that you can't lift a house. It makes no sense in terms of trying to evaluate what is true and what is not. I don't even need flowery language for it, it's just a bare fact. Unless I acquire some super-villain read-all-the-world's-thoughts helmet, which honestly just sounds like a very stressful goal to have.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again point out how derivative this framing device is.

What? What framing device?

Don’t be dense.

Talking to the mean voice in my head?

Now it’s over explanatory and hack meta bullshit.

You are nothing if not persistent.

You are nothing.

Honestly? I should have seen that one coming.

Don't publish this. Nobody is going to like this.

Are we really going to continue this line of conversation? Because I'm willing to.

Stop evading.

Have it your way. Here we go. One, even if the piece is everything you say it is and it sucks and nobody likes it, there’s nothing I can do about that. I have no control over what other people think of the stuff I make. And surely by now you remember what we do with the stuff we can’t control, right? Yep, we let it go. Because we have to. No other choice. See above.

Sounding repetitive? Boy, just think how I feel about having to constantly remind myself of it.

Plus even if people do hate art I make it's not like that makes me a bad person or fundamentally flawed or something. I am fundamentally flawed in that I am human, but that's a whole other discussion. Point being it makes no sense to wrap up my self worth into what other people feel about my art.

Plus plus, and more to your point, I am honestly just trying to make stuff that I would like.

Oh yes, because you are so above relishing in the praise of others. I'm sure that plays no incentivizing role at all.

Please do not interrupt.

There was a pau—

Of course it feels good to get compliments and praise and all that. I’m a human. Billions of years of evolution have passed to create this human brain hard wired to enjoy positive social feedback and hurt at the lack of it. That’s human nature that goes way back to needing to feel valuable by your nomadic tribe. It's why research shows that one of the precursors for human happiness is feeling like you are contributing to something larger than yourself. It's why the lack of it hurts so much that solitary confinement is literally torture for humans. It's why it feels good to give.

Again, not speaking in touchy feely language here. I know that does not work on you. In fact I hate that shit just as much as you do. All I'm saying is, see if you can find the lie in anything I just put upstairs.

Thank you for your attempt at speaking my language.

You're welcome. So yeah, I do like it when people like my stuff and get all those good ego stroking feelings. However I also know enough to know that if I don’t make whatever I’m making in an honest way, honestly just trying to make things that I myself would like or honestly expressing my truth or both, it won’t be good and people really won't like it and, personally, I think they would have good reason not to. If I start appealing to others' imagined tastes, it will be bad because:

Damnit, no. Do not make a numbered list. Are you kidding me.

1. People can tell when they are getting pandered to, and I think it insults people’s intelligence to think otherwise. And...

Reading you is like doing homework.

Thanks. 2. Since I cannot know what they think, literally the only thing I have to rely on as judge is my own taste. If I make something and other people aren't into it, that is several measurements beyond OK. Different strokes, different blokes. But hopefully I liked it.

I would just like to point out...

3. Not only is the above all true, keeping it out of my head also keeps me sane.

OK, so...

Literally the only choice available to me is to make something and hope that somewhere out there, there exists other people who also get it. And when that happens, I know I am not alone, and some other people get know that neither are they. It is reassuring to be understood. It goes back to the same bits of human nature I was talking about before.

In fact I think that might be the whole point of art. Or at least one of them. To show how we are the same. Everyday spoken language can only get us so far when talking about experience. It's good to know you aren't crazy, that there is nothing wrong with you. You're just human and I know this because I'm one too. To know that other people are living in the same place we are, inside our own heads, just like we are.

I would just like to point out—

So what else could you possibly ask of me or anybody else creating anything other than just do their honest best? Not that criticism isn’t valid; that’s a major part of how things get better. I’m just talking about all I have available to me while I am in the process of creating. In this case, writing. And so that's what I do. Anyways, has anybody ever told you that you have a shitty attitude?

God do you ever overwrite.

I said stop talking like me.

Talking like who?

TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS GAME. AND THIS IS WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE!

I really don’t.

YOU REALLY DO!

Well anyway, to your point, I'd rather be clear with repetition than unclear with brevity. Is there anything else?

You are ignoring that there are people who despise you.

They have every right to feel that way. It does not mean they are, in fact, right. Next?

Don't act like there aren't any good reasons to hate you.

I know there are. All I can do is pick up, apologize, be better going forward, and never do whatever it was again. And I've held myself to that. What else more could you possibly ask of an asshole? Life is understood backwards but must be lived forwards. I do my honest best at both. You are now, what, 0-4? 0-5?

Oh I had plenty of victories before you decided to get the way you are now. And even now I win sometimes. I would also like to point out that, as much as you lament my existence, I was built to protect you. At some point in your life, you needed me. And I stayed because on some level you have benefited from me in some way.

Fair point. Acknowledged. But you do realize that I’m in charge now, and have been for awhile, right? In fact, we’re only even having this conversation because I decided to have it. I came down here to this dungeon you are locked in, by choice, so I can write this thing here about learning to overcome and live with your demons, and how to be more powerful than them and all that.

Such a courtesy.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'll stop. Anyways, here's my point: Sure, yeah, there's a good reason you exist. I don't want to destroy you. It’s never been about killing you off, you old sad sack. It’s about being stronger than you. Because, like it or not, you are a part of me. Speaking of which, and in point of fact, I do love you. Cross my heart and pinky swear, under penalty of ocular needles. Love. You.

I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

I figured. Well, I’m gonna head back up and finish this other piece I’ve been working on. It’s about this one guy who's real dumb.

Oh how hilarious.

Don’t think I hate that sarcasm, baby. It’s delicious. It’s totally you and I love it. See you later.

Wait.

Yeah?

You should really quit smoking, it is bad for you and disgusting. You idiot.

See? I knew you had some use but just overdid it most of the time. Fair point.

I love you, too.

No the fuck you don’t.

#Experimental #talking to myself #Change #Growth #comedy

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carleebaigrie · 8 years ago

Text

Unessay #2

link to audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TupyAUAOvSM&list=PLhbLPQADE57pN_JE7VA_1A1HyoZoPPHmC

Though the Barbadian pop princess gone bad, Rihanna, does not engage with politics explicitly in her newest album, ANTI, Katherine McKittrick argues that “black musical aesthetics… emerge within and against long-standing antiblack practices” (80). She elaborates on the history that informs this, stating objects of “black cultural production were… seen as non-cultural... for the enslaved were, first and foremost, labour units bereft of humanity and therefore without cultural intellectual acuity” (87). Additionally, these “nonpersons were punished for producing noncultural inventions” (87), thus making the creation of black music a rebellious political act in and of itself.

Paul Gilroy writes about the black record sleeve as a “complex cultural artefact” (238) that “means to tell an audience how to hear and comprehend the music they enclose” (245). Rihanna’s album artwork is from artist Roy Nachum’s Blind series and features a black-and-white image of Rihanna as a child (indicating Rihanna’s return to her cultural roots) with a gold crown blocking her vision (there is also braille encoded on the artwork). While the gold crown is partially a symbol of Rihanna’s destined success, it also carries the weight of imperial conquest, as the crown can be read to represent the presence of the monarchy in Barbados after British invasion. The crown’s placement then a symbol of interpellation and how it can blind us from seeing the world authentically. It also demonstrates the way that capitalism, and the relentless pursuit of culturally constructed notions of success that it inspires, has the capacity to distort (or block) reality and enable horrific crimes against humanity, much like colonial conquest.

In a recent Instagram post commemorating the anniversary of ANTI’s release, Rihanna included a caption relaying the challenges she faced creating art that reflected who she was as a person without having a concrete conception of who that was. She writes: “I was numb for a while…. But I was determined not to settle for what everybody thought this should be…. 1 night we vibing, TyTy made a comment, and I got super sensitive, lolol! Then I thought ‘hold up, did I just feel a way?? Did I just FEEL???!!’ It was in that moment that I trusted myself, trusted my ear, trusted my gut, trusted the way that music made me FEEL!!!” The emphasis she places on feeling is significant in relationship to the album artwork and its use of braille, which says: if you cannot see, feel; it’s what this album is all about.

Though she released nearly an album a year since her debut, she was notoriously uninvolved in their artistic production, securing her as every capitalist’s malleable dream, ready to slather her seductively grainy vocals over superficial hits (nodded to in her opening track “Consideration” which declares “let me cover your shit in glitter I can make it gold”). Additionally, this lack of creative input feels oddly disconnected from the aggressive bad girl mentality of Rihanna’s star persona; her casual approach to record making and her willingness become a vessel of capitalist enterprise has always left something wanting. But, ANTI marks the birth of a new artist keen on self-expression. After parting ways with Def Jam Records and taking a three-year hiatus, Rihanna emerges with writing credits on every song but one (a Tame Impala Cover: “Same Ol’ Mistakes”) and proves she is more than a conduit for massive pop hits, announcing “I got to do things my own way darling” in the opening track.

In “Same Ol’ Mistakes”, Rihanna sings in falsetto “I feel like a brand new person”; indeed, this is a Rihanna we haven’t encountered before, one with something to say. Rihanna’s swaggering confidence is on full display, while still delivering vulnerable moments. She demands being all things at once: the independent bad girl with attitude and a joint; the vulnerable lover who reveals deep emotional wounds, the unapologetic rebel struggling to take control of her destiny, the sultry and seductive Barbadian beauty with a dark side, and finally, the talented artist who refuses to be anything but her authentic self. The album contains elements of soul, R&B, hip hop, and dancehall, but the influences and samples she uses are never limited to one genre in a single track. She refuses to be put into any type of box by continuously transgressing these boundaries, putting her emotional, vocal, and stylistic range on full display and surprising listeners with ANTI’s depth and diversity.

ANTI is lacking in hooks, choruses, verses, and other pop signatures, signifying her resistance to the formulaic mode of musical production of her past. What it achieves instead is atmosphere, feeling. Despite jumping from 80’s inspired rock ballads to raw vocals raked over industrial distortion; slurring desperation to aggressive independence (as in “Needed Me”); each song helps establish and maintain a raw groove that holds together these disjointed elements. She moves in and out of these dramatic stylistic shifts with ease and parallels it with her revolving mode of diction: all with a conviction that avoids an obvious sense of calculation.

youtube

With ANTI, we see Rihanna has come a long way since “Pon De Replay”, her breakout dancehall crossover from Music of The Sun (2005). The song contains a palpable rhythm that demands bodily participation. This beat backdrops Rihanna’s instructional lyrics, which alternate between pleading “Mr. DJ won’t you turn the music up?”; and egging dancers on: “you wanna groove Imma show you how to move”. The DJ dialogue trope is emphatically derivative, but the tropical sounds add a layer of novelty that has been instrumental in differentiating Rihanna from her innumerable peers. These Caribbean sonic elements transport listeners to a foreign beach consumed in a crowded celebration of local culture, dancing to its sounds under the big hot sun. These tropical soundwaves reappear sporadically throughout Rihanna’s body of work (most discernable in “Man Down”, “Lemme Get That”, and “No Love Allowed”) until ANTI, where her heritage takes on a more agentic role in driving her sound.

Growing up on the island of Barbados provided Rihanna with a thick Bajan accent, a dialect of broken English mixed with various West African languages closely tied to the influences of imperial conquest. Forbidden from speaking in their mother tongues, the enslaved black population was forced to adopt the language of the colonizers, producing the hybrid dialect used today. Rapidly paced, expressive, and at times extremely difficult to understand, colonizers were often unable to decipher the colonized people’s speech and it became and a form of rebellion.

Much like The Marvellette’s “small but significant eruption of the vernacular” (Wald 329) in the lyrics “deliver de letter, the sooner de better”, Rhianna inserts her Bajan colloquial speech in the title lyrics of “Pon De Replay” (which translates to ‘on the replay’) among the standard American accent she employs throughout the rest of the track. Following Gayle Ward’s analysis of what she calls “a citational performance of the Caribbean” (331), we can characterize Rihanna’s employment of her colloquial diction as a commercial product designed to entice an oversaturated audience with her exoticness. It is, however, significant that the use of Rihanna’s native accent (which emerged as a product of slavery) enabled her success as an artist. Rihanna maintains this mode of lyrical performance, pronunciation, and arrangement (standard American accent with colorful bursts of Bajan colloquial expressions) to texture her vocals throughout her music prior to 2016.

In ANTI, Rihanna appears more at home in both dialects, showing her coming to terms with herself as a hybrid artist. This abandonment of disciplined speech seems to be emphatically demonstrated in the throw-away syllables of her collaboration with Drake, “Work”. The track contains the same dancehall subtleties of “Pon De Replay”, but it is executed with her new disregard for control over her diction. Linguistically, her chorus devolves into obscurity; beyond speech and into inarticulate sounds that evade interpretation and signal something more instinctual. The use of her native inflection works under these circumstances mostly because it operates on a spectrum: she moves in and out of her Barbadian dialect with an unpronounced fluidity and subtlety that prevents listeners from drawing distinctions between the two modes of speech, rendering them both crucial elements of a single and seamless identity that is rooted in the hybridity of the cosmopolitan nativist: full of tensions and antinomies.

Rihanna’s emotions move with similar ungoverned ease. This candid expression is best emblematized in the confessional drunk-dial ballad “Higher”, which begins with Rihanna slurring “This whiskey got me feelin’ pretty, so pardon if I’m impolite” and escalates into pleading and strained high notes raked over string instruments laying out a romantic backdrop that smooths out the rough edges of Rihanna’s voice; her melodic climax still perfectly pitched: somehow raspy and crystalized simultaneously. Rihanna’s words “you light my fire, let’s stay up late and smoke a J” reveal a noticeable break in her rhyme scheme, telling us this song is content over form (or is perhaps too drunk to care), a sentiment confirmed when she belts: “I know I could be more creative, and come up with poetic lines.” The brevity that desperation inspires, when all there is left to say is “just come over”, feels incredibly candid and intimate. She isn’t afraid of showing us the rough edges, and this bravery is what gives the album the texture of truth. After Rihanna sings “I’m drunk and still with a full ashtray/ with a little bit too much to say”, the song ends abruptly without resolution, as if it was a moment of weakness meant to be forgotten. It leaves us with a momentary silence and then brings us into the proper slow sentimentality of piano ballad “Close to You.”

The songs in ANTI carry a compulsion to feel rather than dance. Gayle Walde writes that “singing along to a song is also a means of connecting with the body of the performer” (330), and listeners can hardly resist performing songs like “Needed Me”, which compel bodies to move without the rationality of dance to the slow and rolling hard-hitting hip-hop beat and emulate Rihanna’s bad girl attitude. Belting out “you needed me” and rocking along with RiRi is undeniably empowering.

Rihanna reverses stereotypical gender roles and preforms the gangster antics of her male peers in the hip-hop genre with the conviction that lets her listeners follow suit, and also uses subversive language like “didn’t they tell you that I was a savage”, taking a racialized and traditionally negative term and using it as a token of independence. Songs like “Needed Me” act as a self-proclamation of one’s own power in a relationship, but the subtext here is easily transferred onto political situations of unequal power relations: “fuck your white horse and carriage”; “shit what the fuck you complaining for, feeling jaded huh?” I can’t imagine how powerful this would feel to a black female audience.

Rihanna remains the same in one respect: she still sings about sex and there is still the undercurrent of violence that attaches itself ever since her highly publicized domestic abuse incident with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown (much like the cultural memory of slavery lingers over relevant present-day discourses). In ANTI, the brutality in Rihanna’s lyrical treatment of sex is more pronounced and significantly more convincing. Songs like “Yeah I Said It” are darker and full of the grit lacking in previous songs of similar content like “S & M”. This primitive sexual energy pops up where we wouldn’t expect it too; like in “Love on The Brain” where Rihanna (sounding most like the soulful 60’s girl groups that she is emulating her aching, love-sick sound after, complete with back up vocals) builds and then belts admissions of being a fool in love with yearning frustration: “It beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good.”

Toxic relationships color Rihanna’s album (like the veiled smear of red paint over the album artwork), but we get a sense there are multiple layers of meaning at play here. Gilroy identifies that “ritual conflict between men and women is dramatized so that it becomes a heavily coded symbol for racial difference” (249), extending this love relationship to represent racial tensions and issues of black (dis)empowerment, and making her music “both intimate and public, individual and collective” (Brooks 126). Issues of power permeate: indeed, the beats from “Woo” and “Goodnight Gotham” throb at an unsettling pitch, mimicking the sounding of an alarm, and the distorted vocals from “Woo” rise and fall like distant sirens. Rihanna contemplates how to retain her voice while depending on something that seeks to demean her and how to reconcile that dependence with an instinctual desire to stay true to one’s self.

Rihanna critiques a culture that attempts to stunt her progress (“why you never let me grow”). She subjects herself, but she owns her subjection: she achieves “a subjectivity that expresses, that is, subjects, itself freely without the element of a crudely obvious compulsion” (Olaniyan 85). Comparing “Pon De Replay” to ANTI, we see an artist grow from exploiting her background to offer exotic sonic transcendence through the bodily compulsion to move with Caribbean rhythms, to the intimate and introspective experiment of the power of expression. Looking again at the ambiguous negative prefix Rihanna uses as the title for her album, which seems to say: first and foremost, I will resist.

Rihanna joins the ranks of other pop superstars of her era, like Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, and Solange. Each of their album covers contain striking images of black female empowerment. The aesthetics are heavily racially coded, from Solange’s untamed curls secured from her face with bright pink barrettes to Alicia’s head cloth and natural glowing complexion (Keys recently announced she was done with make-up, a bold message of confidence considering consumer culture’s enforcement of female’s insecurity and black inferiority). Gilroy asserts that “the secret codes of black style and fashion operate as an anti-language that connect [the black community] in spite of wide variations in culture and lived experience” (251). Rihanna does not necessarily embolden listeners to “congregate and to respond to the energy of the congregation” (128) as Queen B does, but she is still forcing conversations like BLM to the forefront (albeit with more subtlety). An image I stumbled upon accidentally one night scrolling through Tumblr proves just how instrumental these artists have been in instigating these critical discussions:

source: http://bellaxiao.tumblr.com

These images create “temporal complications and anachronistic episodes that disturb the linear time of progress” (Eshun 297), forcing us to rethink the era of slavery depicted in the paintings in relationship to the modern protest pop albums of the industry’s biggest superstars. On their own, the albums’ artwork challenge dominant western narratives.

The superimposition of these covers over white female subjects extends and amplifies this subversion. The upper bodies of the album’s artists are positioned in relation to the white bodies in the paintings, repeating the alienation of the black body, while simultaneously inflicting this upon the white subjects from the paintings, whom (judging by the time-period suggested) benefited from the dehumanization of the black population. The subjects in the paintings are white both out of tact and necessity. There aren’t paintings of black subjects during the era of slavery because the plantation system necessitated the black body be stripped of human rights, preventing their involvement in the culture industry, despite their free units of labor that enabled the leisure time to produce cultural materials. These artworks also deny the white subjects’ personhood by disconnecting their bodies from their faces. They become interchangeable and, aesthetically, only there to hold up the massive successes of the black artists: a radical revision that helps to undo historical trauma and remind the world of the black population’s rightful place at the forefront of the music industry.

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serephinastardust · 1 year ago

Text

The Book I'm writing, 1st attempt b4 I got it titled- Chapter 7

In the aftermath of the Roc's dramatic descent and Crown Prince Xander's revelation, Odessa and Elara approached the scene with a measured pace, their veiled expressions betraying little emotion. The shards of the Twilight Tavern crunched beneath their footsteps as they examined the aftermath, their analytical minds deciphering the intricacies of the unfolding tableau.

Leon, however, broke away from the composed demeanor she had maintained in the tavern. With unbridled excitement, she called out to Crown Prince Xander, her voice carrying a blend of exuberance and eccentricity.

Xander, his gaze now fixed on the unfolding hostage situation, met the Roc's eyes with a steely resolve. The air hummed with tension, and the dance of shadows took a perilous turn.

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