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justanotherwriter-fangirl · 4 years ago

Text

I Can't Lose Her! (C. R.)

Words: 4,653 words

Warnings: Nope

Request: Can you do a Connor Rhodes x reader where the reader is on squad and no one knows they're dating cause they wanted to keep it on the down low and she comes into the ED hurt and Connor looses it?

A/N: Hi!!! I’m sorry it took me so long but it’s finally here! I gotta say, when this request appeared I was so excited and now I can say that I’m so happy with the final result, almost 12 pages!! Can you imagine? I have never wrote something so long but the ideas kept flowing and at the end I finished with this monster made out of more than 4K words 🤯🤩 Hope you like it as much as I do!!!

Gif obtained from Google. All credits to its owner.

Thanks for reading

_______________________

You woke up to the feeling of light traces on your back and a ray of light peeking through your curtains.

“How long you been awake?” you mumbled still with your eyes closed, savoring every second of this stolen moment.

“Maybe around twenty minutes, we should have closed your curtains a little better last night” he said in a low and husky voice, internally making you melt.

You loved moments like this, you and Connor, alone and tangled up in your bed just savoring each other’s company.

When you started dating, around six months ago, you decided it was best to keep it low key, a secret until you felt ready and stable enough to let the world know about the two of you, but, with the pass of time, you both found yourself very fond of keeping it all in private. You didn’t have to worry about noisy people or gossips everywhere you’d go.

Dating someone as important as Connor always brought along several consequences like living up to the Rhodes last name, being approved by his high – class father and being the object of jealousy of a bunch of other doctors and nurses who were constantly harboring a crush on the hottest cardiothoracic surgeon of the very prestigious Gaffney Chicago Medical Center and even when you were ready to deal with them all, truth to be told, along with avoiding all kind of uncomfortable situations, you wanted to keep as many memories and moments with him just for you.

Maybe it sounded a bit selfish but you already had to share him with the rest of the world when he was saving lives at the hospital so was it really too much to ask to just have a few moments with him now and then that only belonged to you two? You didn’t think so, especially not when you were finally getting ready to tell him you loved him.

You weren’t sure if 6 months were too soon or kinda late but neither of you had said it before because you both wanted to make sure it was truly how you felt when the time was right.

Just as you were about to ask him for 5 more minutes in such a blissful state, both your alarms started beeping, effectively breaking the quietness of the room and making you both groan, you weren’t ready.

“Time to go back to reality” he said stretching a little bit to get up.

“Do we really need to?” you pouted “I love having you here, just the two of us cuddling and watching a movie or cooking dinner or just talking”

“I love it too but we wouldn’t be able to afford half of that if we just stayed here” he said laughing a little bit and leaving a small kiss on your forehead before standing up. “Also, I know how much you love your job, being the only woman on squad 3”

“I hate it when you are right” you said now with a big smile, he was right, you were so proud of your job and how much you had accomplished, you were the only female on Rescue Squad 3 and one of the youngest to make it to the team, Kelly did it when he was 23, you were just a little bit behind with 25, it was really impressive.

30 minutes later you were both at your kitchen having some scrambled eggs, toasts and orange juice for breakfast, something “quick and light before going to save some lifes” as Connor liked to put it.

“So, will I see you tomorrow after your shift?” you asked

“Sorry, I can’t, my father wants to go have dinner, I don’t know what he wants but he says it’s important and I been trying to avoid it for a week now, I’ll just go so he stops calling me when I’m at the hospital”

“It’s okay, I’ll still have you all for myself this weekend” you said flashing him a big smile, you had waited for this weekend for almost a month when you made a reservation for a nice B&B outside Chicago just to celebrate your 7th month together far away from the chaotic life you both had.

“Just you and I” he finished before leaning to kiss you, sweet and slow but full of passion, it was amazing and it made you feel better about your decision, this weekend you were going to tell him you loved him.

You separated after a couple moments to take a breath before leaning your forehead against his, looking right into his eyes, taking in the silence of the morning and the man in front of you, your heart swelling with nothing but pure love and raw happiness, you never had felt like this before.

“Now I think I’m ready to go” you said smiling at him and pulling apart to take the dirty dishes to the sink.

“Well, that’s not fair because I’m the one who’s not ready now” he mentions while he stands up to go to you and hug you from behind, his arms sneaking around your waist.

“That’s a shame sir, because if we don’t go now we both will be late” you said playfully as you turned around in his arms to wrap yours around his neck. “So go grab your coat and let’s head out” you firmly stated leaving a peck on his jawline.

“Yes ma’am” he added before laughing a little and head to your door, you close behind him.

All the way to the parking lot of your building you joked around and enjoyed your last minutes together, his hand never leaving yours until you are in front of your car.

Before you could reach for the door, he grabbed your arm and turned you around to leave one final kiss in you lips, one hand on your waist, the other going directly to you cheek to deepen the kiss.

And just as sudden and fast it all happened, it ended leaving you breathless and a complete mess in front of him. He knew the effect he had on you and he loved to take advantage of that, so without any other word he opened your car door for you, gave you a final cocky smile and left to his car.

Frustrated you got into your car and closed your door, maybe a little bit harder than you should but making sure Connor heard before leaving the parking lot.

15 minutes later you were outside the firehouse getting ready to walk in to start your shift.

“Hey (Y/L/N), ready for another day on the job?” Kelly said from out your window.

“Hell, yeah!” You said as you stepped out your car and you locked it before heading inside with Kelly by your side telling you all about his latest date, him being one of your best friends.

The morning went by slowly, only a call around noon about a multiple car accident that needed the whole team to get the victims out of the wrecked cars but that had been all the action you have had all day, it wasn’t common to have days that quiet and it had everyone nervous about it, it was a bad sign.

You had spent most of the day playing around with the guys, chatting with the girls and beating the squad’s ass playing Monopoly, you had a bad feeling about this day in the pit of your stomach but you pushed it away and tried to enjoyed the free time with your friends.

The day was almost over, the night slowly coming down and you barely had started to relax when you heard the alarm went off letting you all know an apartment building had caught on fire and you were needed.

You all quickly suited up and drove to the fire as fast as you could, ready to face whatever was coming your way.

5 minutes later when you arrived, you knew you had been right all day long, this was bad. There was actually two buildings, 10 stories each and both on fire and for what you could see there was many people still inside.

Immediately Kelly and Matt started shouting orders and organizing everyone to go inside on a primary search, still unaware of how many people was actually inside and under what conditions, the fire growing with every second.

As soon as the squad got into the first building, Capp and Tony stayed on the first floor and you followed Severide to the second floor.

“Fire Department! Call out!” you yelled going into the first apartment, quickly making your way through all the rooms, all empty.

You went outside and met with Kelly on the hallway, him going into the third apartment and you entering the fourth were you were received with some coughing coming from the back.

“Fire Department! Call out!” you yelled again trying to figure out the origin of the sounds while making your way to the back.

“Help! I’m in the bathroom”

Running to the bathroom in the master bedroom you noticed that the ceiling was collapsing and the debris was blocking the door so you started to remove some of the bigger pieces and throwing them to the other side of the room, just enough to make room to open the door.

“Come with me” you yelled to the woman once you managed to open the door “keep your head down and do not take the wet cloth from your face, well done”

Once on the hallway you noticed Kelly guiding a family towards the stairs to exit the place when Capp called him, he needed some help on the third floor since Tony had taken a couple outside.

“Go, I got them” you yelled taking the hand of one of the members to guide them through the smoke.

Once you were all out you took a moment to change your oxygen tank while everyone was being treated by the multiple ambos waiting for the victims, all of a sudden you felt a tug on your arm and you turned around to see a crying woman in front of you, a teenager close behind her.

“Please, you gotta help, my baby is inside, I live in the 9B”

“Ma’am, you need to calm down, we are going to get him but you need to stay here”

“Please, help me!” she yelled.

“Brett!” you called Silvie “please, help me. Take care of her while I go inside for her baby”

Once the woman let you go and you made sure Silvie got her you ran inside straight to the third floor.

“Kelly, there’s a baby on the 9B, I’m going up”

“Wait for me! I’m coming with you” he said taking his hooligan with him “Capp, Tony, I’m going with (Y/L/N) to the ninth floor, we’ll make the search from top to bottom and we’ll meet at the middle”

“Okay, Lieutenant” they both replied before going into another apartment.

7 floors above you and Kelly splitted to each cover two apartments on the tenth floor, all being empty so you both descended to the ninth were you knew at least someone was in.

As Kelly took care of the 9A you knocked down the door to the 9B and went inside directly to the back were you could hear the baby crying. It was a relief knowing the baby was still alive.

You could see the fire was getting worse and you all really needed to hurry to take everyone out so the bomb could take charge of the building, there was just to many to do and just for a moment you let yourself get worry, maybe you weren’t enough.

You almost got lost in your train of thought when you suddenly heard Kelly calling for you.

“Back here, the baby seems okay but we need to take him out immediately”

“Go, I’ll finish the floor”

“No, you are faster, take the baby out and I’ll finish here, I’ll see you on the 8th” you said taking the baby and handing him to Kelly, his arms instantly taking the baby and putting him close to his body. You could see the hesitation on his face but you had no time for that “Go!! Now!! Take him out, I’ll be fine”

He knew he couldn’t argue with you so he handed you his hooligan and ran outside as fast as he could to leave the baby and get back to you, the same bad feeling everyone had the entire day settling on his stomach again.

Once you made sure the whole floor was empty you went down to the 8th, trying to move as fast as you could but making sure no one was left behind.

The flames were growing and you feared Boden was going to call you all out, that was one of the worst possible scenarios you could picture because it left you without any chance to save everyone.

Luckily, the 8th floor was empty, most of the doors already opened from when all the residents left and you could quickly moved to the 7th, only two more to go to be able to leave the building.

You met Kelly on the stairs, letting him know it was all clear from 10th to 8th so he could report back to Boden.

Once again you both separated, both knowing the routine you had to follow.

You were inside the 7B when you heard a loud noise above you, barely having enough time to look up before the ceiling collapsed over you, knocking you down and letting you unconscious.

Kelly had just left 7A when he heard the loud thump of the ceiling falling down, stopping in his tracks trying to figure out where the noise was coming from when he heard something ten times worse, your pass alarm signaling you hadn’t move in the last 20 seconds.

Running to the sound of the alarm beeping, he found you under a big pile of wrecked ceiling.

“Capp, Tony!” He yelled through his radio “I need backup on 7th, (Y/L/N) is down”

From where he was he could see it was bad, your leg trapped and your whole torso covered by a lot of wreckage. Starting to work to get you out as fast as possible he started to took the ceiling that was at the top to eventually get to you, two pairs of hands suddenly helping him.

They all moved around you, taking everything out as fast as they could in the limited time they had, a minute later only your leg left to be freed.

“Alright, lift that final piece over her leg so I can slide her out” Kelly instructed to the guys positioning himself above your head and grabbing your arms to pull you out.

It was heavy and Capp and Tony had to pushed a little harder to lift it enough for your leg to pass but a few seconds later it was over, each of them grabbing one of your legs to help Severide take you down were Silvie and Gabby were waiting for you to arrive.

Everyone was already outside, the truck had finished with the other building and the last two floors you had missed and the bomb was taking charge of the fire, all in silence wanting to know more about you but unable to enter to your rescue in case the weight was to much for the structure on fire.

It was a general relief when the squad came out through the door with you in their arms, setting you on the gurney and giving the girls space to work, they going in professionally to make sure you were properly treated, opening your suit and checking your vital signs.

They put a collar around your neck and immobilized your leg to transport you to the Med, getting help from Kelly to put you in the ambulance and hopping in to go with you, never leaving your hand.

After losing Shay, he swore he would do everything in his power to never lose anyone again, specially you, you had came when he most needed it and offered him a sincere friend, someone who never judged him and was with him through thick and thin.

“She’s going to be okay, Severide, we got her just in time” Gabby tried to assure him, knowing what was going through his mind.

She was about to say something else when your heart rate started to go wild on the monitor, catching her by surprise and making her jump to her feet immediately.

“Start CPR now!” She yelled to Kelly “I need to intube her, Brett hurry!” she said while taking the equipment she needed to make the procedure, completely focused on her task to put the ambu bag as fast as she could.

“I got in! How much longer, Brett?!” she asked worried.

“We’re two minutes away, they are waiting for us”

Once you arrived it was crazy, Gabby letting the doctors know of your situation, starting with possible ribs and right leg fractured as well as a dislocated shoulder, while April and Ethan started to wheel you into Trauma 1 on the ED, leaving Gabby, Silvie and Kelly outside.

Connor was just leaving the OR ready to take on another patient when he saw you, all bloody and unconscious being moved to a trauma room, his worst nightmare becoming a reality just in front of him.

“What happened?” he yelled going behind you ready to take action.

“The ceiling collapsed, Dawson and Brett just got her in” Ethan informed unaware of the real state Connor was in, trying to hide his emotions as best as he could. “We need some x - rays and maybe a CT scan to make sure there is no internal bleeding” he was going over the routinary examination when a single sound send shivers down Connor’s spine, a flat line on the monitor.

“She’s crashing, charge the defibrillator to 150 and send one epi in” he said as the nurses laid her completely down and started with chest compressions again.

“Charged to 150” April handed Ethan the defibrillator and applied some gel to it before he used it.

“Clear” he said before shocking you once and waiting for a second “No change, charge to 200”

Connor was watching the whole scene going unfold right before his eyes, the rage going through his veins faster than the team who was trying to bring you back to life. He turned for a moment to take a breath when he saw Kelly standing at the doors of the ED.

He wasn’t sure what controlled him but he went straight to Kelly and pushed him to the wall grabbing him by his collar, face to face and ready to fight him.

“You were supposed to take care of her! Where the hell were you when this happened?”

“What the hell?! Back off!” Kelly said pushing him back, as angry as him because he had no idea what he was going through “What the hell do you care?!”

By now, everyone’s eyes were on them, their voices the only sound of the room.

“What do I care?! She is my girlfriend, you idiot, and she trusted you with her life!” Connor replied, not caring anymore of your secret. Everyone stayed silent for a minute, the revelation causing a big shock among the presents, that’s when Connor realized something and all the anger faded away, leaving him all weak and desperate. “She is my girlfriend and I love her” he finally whispered “I can’t lose her… I can’t lose her, damn it!” his mood swings were insane, he didn’t really know how he felt, it was all mixed up, he was angry, sad, desperate, hopeless, stressed, it was all too much.

Just when Kelly was about to say something, the gurney from Trauma 1 was being wheeled out, a bunch of nurses, medical equipment and Dr. Choi behind it going straight to the OR yelling instructions to the whole team.

“What happened?” Connor ran behind them “What’s going on?”

“We need to take her to the OR, we got her back but she has some internal bleeding going on. We’ll take charge of the rest after we control it” Ethan said before the elevators doors closed.

He felt lost, he couldn’t do anything and it was killing him, stumbling he entered the break room and broke down on the couch, his hands to his face hiding the tears that wanted to spill from his eyes.

“She is going to be okay, she’s a fighter after all” Will said sitting next to him and patting his back.

“She better be because I don’t know who I am anymore without her” he said in a low voice, afraid it would break if he spoke louder.

“Why you never told us anything?”

“At first was we wanted to make sure it was the real thing, you know? But then she just loved the privacy of it all, having little dates on new places where it was only her and I and no one knew about us, the Med’s surgeon and the newest squad member, you know? She just wanted to keep it all away from our crazy lives and dangerous jobs” he finished letting out a sigh.

“It really sounds like her” Will added laughing a little “I don’t know her that well but we have talk a few times at Molly’s, she is so sweet and funny and so open all the time but it’s annoying because at the end of the night you still don’t know much about her. You’ll only know what she wants you to know” he said remembering the few nights you had spent with the whole ED team, having a beer and getting to know everyone.

Now it all made sense, you were getting to know the people who Connor worked with.

The sound of Connor’s laugh broke the silence for a moment, taking Will by surprise, it was just odd considering the state of the man just a few seconds ago.

“Yes, she is like that. You don’t know how much effort it took me to get her to say yes to a date, it was all worth it though” he laugh again, Will joining him this time “Will, she’s the most amazing woman ever and we’ve been together for the last 6 months and I’ve been the happiest man ever since we made it official. This weekend we were going somewhere special, you know? She had it all planned so we could go away for a couple days and just be away from the chaos of the city, she was so excited and now we won’t be able to go”

“Don’t worry, you’ll go, maybe not this weekend but I bet that in a month she will be good to go”

“You can’t promise me that”

“I can, I’m sure of it because right now she have the best team of doctors taking care of her, and she doesn’t let anything stop her from what she wants, isn’t it right? That’s how she got into squad 3 in the first place and how she managed to keep your relationship a secret for over 6 months. She is unstoppable, Connor, I know she will be fine”

"Thanks, man. It's really nice to hear it" he finally said after a moment, taking Will's words in.

"I have to go but I'll come back later to check on you"

Will left and there was nothing more to do than wait, it was awful. Standing up again and breathing a few more times he exited the room and went to the wait room, there was one more thing to do.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry" he said standing in front of Kelly "I just… I lose it when I saw her lying there. I know it wasn't your fault"

"I didn't know you were dating, she never said anything"

"I know" Connor said taking a seat next to him "She wanted to keep it all a secret. Could you… could you tell me what happened?"

"We were on a big fire, two building, 10 stories each. A woman told (Y/N) her baby was in the ninth floor so we went up to get him, I asked her to take him out but she send me instead, said I was faster and I didn’t want to argue with her so I went. We met back at the 7th doing our primary search and we splitted to cover each 2 apartments, the fire was getting worse and when I was about to catch up to her I heard the sound of the ceiling collapsing, it fell on top of her so the rest of the squad and I rushed to take her out. She was just on the wrong place at the wrong time”

“Thanks, for taking care of her and bring her as fast as you could”

Hours passed and you were still in the OR, the tension on the air was palpable and everyone was on edge, the whole firehouse already there waiting to hear news about your state.

Mrs. Goodwin quickly heard about the delicate situation so left Connor without duties for the rest of the day, he wasn’t in the right state to keep attending patients so he was as nervous as the rest, so when Ethan walked through the door of the wait room it was like a blessing. Everyone immediately stood up to approach him, Connor and Kelly right at the front more eager than anyone.

“She is still sedated” he said knowing they were her family “we put her shoulder back in place and she’ll have a cast for the next 6 weeks on her right leg, we were able to fix all damage and stop the internal bleeding but she’s still dealing with a couple broken ribs which will make a it a little harder to breath but she’s fine. We’ll have her under medical observation for the next couple 48 hours but you can go see her now”

“Go” Kelly told Connor “We’ll go after you” he added with everyone behind him nodding their heads.

“Thanks”

Once in your room it was a hard vision to watch, tubes and machine all connected to you but it all went away when he saw your eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, babe, I’m here, you are okay” he said grabbing your hand.

“Connor? What’s going on?”

“You had an accident but you are all fine now, the guys took good care of you. (Y/N), I… I’m just glad you are okay, for a moment I thought I would lose you and I wouldn't be able to tell you how much I love you” he whispered looking you in the eyes, tears once again forming in his eyes but this time it was all relief.

“Connor, babe, you are not going to lose me, not ever” you reassured him giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “Not when I love you so much too” you added blushing a little and a smile coming to your face “I wanted to tell you this for a while now and I was waiting till our trip to make the perfect moment, guess that’s out of question now”

“We just made our perfect moment, you and I and all the beeping of the hospital machines” he said making you laugh but quickly regretting it, your ribs making it difficult.

“That’s so not fair, it hurts” you said giving him a light punch to his arm.

“I love you though” he winked at you and send that cocky smile from earlier this morning, the memory feeling so far from where you were now.

_______________________

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alixofagnia · 5 years ago

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OpheThorn II: A Slightly Less Rambling Analysis

The Missing of Clairdelune is a superb second installment in The Mirror Visitor quartet. We get more of what we loved about the first book, more pieces to the larger existential puzzle, yet it smartly stops short of resolving too much so that we stay invested for the third episode. Christelle Dabos allows herself slightly more exposition. But the novel really succeeds by continuing to follow the less-is-more mantra and the showing vs. telling style.

As you may or may not recall, after I finished A Winter’s Promise, I spent an embarrassing amount of time copy/pasting excerpts from this book into Google Translate with the result that I really did spoil a lot of the OpheThorn parts for myself—which I don’t exactly regret. But, essentially, it left me with a bit less to say. I had a good response to my first OpheThorn analysis (it’s here and thank you for all the kind words), so I did think that I’d like to put something out about Clairdelune as well, I just wasn’t sure what. After some consideration (and a re-read), I do have some more thoughts about OpheThorn.

So, here we go.

[Spoilers included this time]

[All fanart images credited to @patricialyfoung]

Intro

Since Clairdelune begins right where Promise concluded, Ophelia is still pissed at Thorn, while Thorn is still pining for Ophelia albeit in his uniquely aloof way. The only real thing that’s made me scratch my head with them is the severity of Ophelia’s anger/resentment over Thorn having withheld his true ambitions from her and her finding out about them from someone else. I just think it’s a little bit of a weak conflict for them given how pragmatic they are. I get that it’s the culmination of a frustrating situation. But I still think it’s weak.

So, once again the two begin on shaky ground, a space they occupy for the bulk of the novel. They are, at least, together a bit more than before and there’s all sorts of lovely tension, mostly caused by Thorn’s inelegant method of wooing compounded by Ophelia’s stubborn refusal to give him an inch. Thorn’s growing feelings for Ophelia were subtly hinted at in Promise and they become more apparent here, particularly when juxtaposed against Ophelia’s stubborn denial of hers for him.

And I just adore the cover art! Don’t you?

Thorn and Autism Spectrum Disorder

This is what I want to discuss. I may be alone in this, but it seems like Thorn could be coded as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It occurred to me while I was reading Promise and this time around, I feel comfortable in taking that perspective on Thorn. I like the notion of applying an ASD reading to his character because it explains a few descriptive quirks and makes him more than a “weirdo” or “freak”, which is reductive labeling. When considering his interactions with other characters and their reactions to him, this reading lends an added layer to his actions and overall development.

But let me make something clear.

This book isn’t about ASD, so I’m not suggesting that Dabos intended to write Thorn as having ASD or is trying to make a statement in any way on the disorder, and I’m cautious about how I use this idea to understand the character. This is purely my own speculation/take on the character.

I also want to be clear that I don’t have any personal experience with the disorder. I’ve met people with autism and ASD and they were all very different from each other and had very different needs. So, I’m largely making connections with textbook examples of ASD and they’re maybe a little bit broad because as I said it isn’t explicitly made clear that Thorn has ASD. I may very likely err in my understanding of this disorder. If that’s the case, I apologize in advance and please do correct me or give me your own opinion on this idea.

Here’s an overview from the webpage of the national institute of mental health:

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior. Although autism can be diagnosed at any age, it is said to be a “developmental disorder” because symptoms generally appear in the first two years of life. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a guide created by the American Psychiatric Association used to diagnose mental disorders, people with ASD have:

Difficulty with communication and interaction with other people

Restricted interests and repetitive behaviors

Symptoms that hurt the person’s ability to function properly in school, work, and other areas of life

Autism is known as a “spectrum” disorder because there is wide variation in the type and severity of symptoms people experience. Although ASD can be a lifelong disorder, treatments and services can improve a person’s symptoms and ability to function.

It’s been shown repeatedly that it’s very difficult for Thorn to be an inviting and easy-going person, even with people he cares about. Thorn struggles with communication, is emotionally suppressed, is both uncaring and at times completely unaware of how he presents himself socially, and obsessively consults his pocket watch, particularly when he’s at a loss for words or bored, or otherwise ready to get the hell out of any situation that causes him anxiety. He’s highly intelligent, fixated on order and organization, and has a history (as we know from Promise and learn more about in Clairdelune) of meeting intense emotion with impulsive violence.

Here’s a list (also from the NIMH website) of common symptoms:

Making little or inconsistent eye contact

Tending not to look at or listen to people

Rarely sharing enjoyment of objects or activities by pointing or showing things to others

Failing to, or being slow to, respond to someone calling their name or to other verbal attempts to gain attention

Having difficulties with the back and forth of conversation

Often talking at length about a favorite subject without noticing that others are not interested or without giving others a chance to respond

Having facial expressions, movements, and gestures that do not match what is being said

Having an unusual tone of voice that may sound sing-song or flat and robot-like

Having trouble understanding another person’s point of view or being unable to predict or understand other people’s actions

Repeating certain behaviors or having unusual behaviors. For example, repeating words or phrases, a behavior called echolalia

Having a lasting intense interest in certain topics, such as numbers, details, or facts

Having overly focused interests, such as with moving objects or parts of objects

Getting upset by slight changes in a routine

Being more or less sensitive than other people to sensory input, such as light, noise, clothing, or temperature

People with ASD may also experience sleep problems and irritability. Although people with ASD experience many challenges, they may also have many strengths including:

Being able to learn things in detail and remember information for long periods of time

Being strong visual and auditory learners

Excelling in math, science, music, or art

One can’t help but notice that we can check several of these points off for Thorn. Not all, certainly, but I’m sure you can call to mind some of your own examples of him exhibiting many of these behaviors repeatedly.

Where Does Ophelia Fit In?

Thorn has always treated his relationship with Ophelia in a very business-like manner, almost like a negotiation, which makes sense within the context of an arranged marriage. At the novel’s start, Thorn wishes to make amends, but Ophelia makes it very clear that she will not forgive him for his lies and neglect. His response to her is rather clinical.

“We simply can’t allow ourselves to be enemies,” cut in Thorn. “You’re making my life difficult with your resentment; it’s imperative that we become reconciled. […] Meet me at the Treasury, insult me, slap me, smash a plate over my head if you feel like it, and then let’s never speak of it again. Name your day. This Thursday would suit me.” [65]

I suppose this is a rather annoying response, especially if one is really just looking for a simple and genuine apology. But if we read Thorn as having ASD, then this feels a little different. He’s simplifying a conflict that he maybe doesn’t quite understand; he’s been given a different perspective on his actions and it’s perhaps beyond his capability to comprehend. To compensate, he turns this into a matter of business, which is something he can understand quite well, even going so far as to try and pencil Ophelia into his calendar. But he’s woefully unaware of the frustrating effect his language and tone have on her. Of course, what’s key here is what he isn’t saying: that she’s making his life difficult because he loves her; he wants to be on good terms, but doesn’t know how to fix this. Note that he again suggests violence as a means to deal with her emotion.

When they do meet up, Thorn says,

“I have many enemies. I no longer want to count you among them, so tell me what I must do. That is why you came here, isn’t it? You have a deal to offer me, I’m listening to you.” [152]

He’s desperate. It’s also worth noting that he’s fairly vulnerable in this chapter; he exhibits jealousy and some hurt—Ophelia missed their original appointment because she was with Archibald and forgot about him.

Modest as always, Ophelia asks only for a job, money to pay Fox, her new assistant, and to see the real outdoors again. She lastly requests that he always be honest with her, especially in matters that directly concern her. In exchange, she will teach him how to Read objects after the ceremony of the Gift and he will teach her how to use the claws that he’ll pass to her. She also reiterates, for good measure, that this will be their only conjugal duty. He grants the first three readily enough, but the fourth one trips him up. He does agree to it, but it’s obvious that it will cost him in more ways than one.

While I imagine that he’s receptive on some level to sexual intimacy with Ophelia, I think he’s more afraid of intimacy in general. Sharing things and being honest with a partner means opening oneself up to vulnerability, to weakness. The undertaking he’s set for himself—a mission he’s already devoted 15 years of his life to—doesn’t allow for that kind of intimacy; rather, it requires utmost resiliency, secrecy, and focus. Furthermore, if he were to be seen forming loving attachments (with Berenilde, Ophelia, or anyone else), then that could be turned against him over the course of fulfilling his risky endeavor. It’s that very fear, in fact, which has made him exclude his aunt (and attempt to exclude Ophelia) entirely from his investigation. His pursuit of a noble title and legitimacy is a front, an easy excuse he thought up to satisfy Berenilde’s and the court’s curiosity about why he suddenly wanted to get married and Read Farouk’s Book.

Like Thorn, it scares Ophelia to feel herself falling in love. Perhaps the womanly pride she carries with her makes it difficult for her to open up. After all, love and marriage were never apparently high on her list of things to accomplish either. Ophelia and Thorn are separately dealing with the same conundrum, which is that to love means to fear, and that’s messy. It could get in the way of a life that is humble (Ophelia) and a life that is ambitious (Thorn). Simply put, neither one had accounted for even the possibility of love in their marriage.

Perhaps because Ophelia is a Reader, I think that deep down she likes the enigma and challenge that is Thorn. Yes, he’s frustrating, but she never truly loses interest in him. Indeed, if anything, she becomes increasingly intrigued and is entirely won over when she at last learns all about what he’s doing. Ophelia is very likely the first person to make Thorn both confront and attempt to correct his inadequacy in areas of intimacy. As I touched on in my previous analysis, Ophelia calling Thorn out on his behavior and habits is surely a novelty for him.

“I believe neither in luck nor in destiny,” he declared. “I trust only the science of probabilities. I have studied mathematical statistics, combinatorial analysis, mass function, and random variables, and they have never held any surprises for me. You don’t seem fully to grasp the destabilizing effect that someone like you can have on someone like me.” [377]

Ohhhhkay.

It turns out, she’s a bit of an enigma and definitely a challenge to him in kind. This is Thorn’s way of trying to tell Ophelia that he loves her.

Thorn and Ophelia seek control and wield it differently. Thorn can be arrogant and overconfident with it, and he wants to be its sole retainer. Ophelia also wants to retain it but as it pertains to her decisions for herself, and she rebels against it when she feels like that’s being taken away from her. It’s important to them that they are in control of their own actions and destinies. But what neither one of them understands is that those we end up loving is often (or maybe always) outside of our control. Love has no explanation, and doesn’t require one. You can’t predict it. You can’t dictate it. You can’t calculate it or quantify it.

Ophelia seriously turns Thorn’s life, and everything he thought he could predict or control about it, upside down. Initially unwittingly, then actively, she encourages him to develop.

ASD Made Sexy

As inelegant as he is, Thorn does have his own way of being shocking:

“You wanted me to be honest with you. You will thus learn that you are not just a pair of hands for me. And I don’t give a damn whether people find me suspect, as long as I am not so in your eyes. You will return this to me when I have kept all my promises,” he grumbled, holding his watch out to Ophelia without noticing her stunned expression. “And if you still doubt me in the future, just read it.” [156].

You guys, this is kind of romantic, right? He’s so direct and it really flusters Ophelia, who is steadfastly resisting the decidedly non-business-like turn their relationship has taken. Skip to novel’s end, however, and she has totally changed her tune about Thorn. Right before they believe they will be parted forever, Thorn finally gives a straightforward confirmation of his feelings.

“Don’t go falling down any more stairs, avoid sharp objects, and above all, above all, keep away from disreputable people, alright? […] Oh, and by the way, I love you.” [486]

Swoon.

The fact of the matter is this: despite his unconventional looks and mannerisms, Thorn hits a certain level of sexy. Which begs the question: Can ASD be sexy? Sure, one could say that his sex appeal comes naturally with his role as the male lead, which is directly connected to his chemistry with the female lead. But I think there’s actually an important distinction to be made; it’s not whether ASD itself is sexy, it’s whether a character with ASD is sexy and I think that’s important because you don’t want ASD to be treated as a gimmick in fiction. It matters how that kind of character is presented.

Thorn’s ASD traits make him eccentric at best and a “freak” at worst, by Ophelia’s own description. Some of Thorn’s less offensive eccentricities are portrayed in an endearing light: his brusqueness with silly persons (i.e. Archibald, Baron Melchior) and their silly behavior; wearing his heavy uniform in a tropical illusion when there’s no evident dress policy for officials; preoccupied with tending to the order of his office over the tending of his wounds; launching a dangerous existential investigation all because of an illegal and unjust disruption in odds and probabilities, an utter crime in Thorn’s eyes.

But it’s also important to look at how other characters view him. Those at the Pole may look down on him, but there is no doubt that he commands a considerable level of their respect. He’s at the center of Citaceleste’s political and economical arenas, and has some judicial power as well. In short, he’s the one that everyone seemingly runs to in a crisis. Ophelia begrudgingly admires his self-control, coolness under pressure, and appreciates that he is not corrupt, like the other officials and aristocrats. Naturally, Berenilde regards him the highest. She, more than any other, gives us a glimpse of the true Thorn, putting forward the image of a protector, provider, and all-around genius.

So, the answer is yes. Thorn is sexy.

Ophelia and Asexuality

OK, I realize I’m going off on a tangent here, but since asexuality is a common reading of Ophelia that I see in reviews, I wanted to address that as well.

There are many instances of Ophelia fulfilling, for lack of a better way to put it, the butterfly trope:

Perhaps it was due to the nervousness Thorn brought out in her, or the lace veil obscuring her vision, or the scarf coiled around her foot, or her pathological clumsiness, but the fact is, Ophelia tripped on the final step of the stairs. [28]

Hearing Thorn reawakened such nervousness in Ophelia that she seriously considered hanging up on him. [63]

She did, however, have to admit that Berenilde had got it right: it was indeed out of cowardice, more even than anger, that she’d spent recent weeks avoiding him. [100]

Somewhat embarrassed, Ophelia wondered whether he felt as nervous in her company as she felt in his. [160]

Ophelia felt her blood throbbing against her eardrums, but couldn’t have said whether it was due to sudden relief or, on the contrary, heightened tension. [323]

Ophelia gets butterflies whenever her love interest is near. It’s important to note that she’s not afraid for her safety when she’s with him, although there is one incident, where she thinks he’s going to strike her, which is quickly dispelled by his sincere assurance that he’d never harm her. He gives her butterflies often by doing totally mundane things such as standing in front of her or looking at her, and that bothers her. But why?

Like Thorn, she’s convinced herself that intimacy and love aren’t for her. Some reviewers have praised Ophelia for being a representation of asexuality and, while I think there’s a strong case for her being somewhere on the asexual spectrum, I stop short at positing that she’s totally uninterested in sex or doesn’t experience sexual attraction. She’s noted, on several occasions, both in Clairdelune and Promise, Archibald’s handsomeness. In this novel, she also notes Fox’s.

With his gold braiding and red mane, he was as dazzling as Thorn was dark. Ophelia sensed herself coloring just looking at him. [165]

So, she does experience sexual attraction and, furthermore, she physically reacts to Fox’s appearance (though never to Archibald’s), which suggests that she’s not wholly disinterested in sex. In Promise, she commented that “no man had ever quickened her pulse” and lamented about whether she’d ever feel that way about someone, and I think this is probably the point at which most readers took away that she might be asexual.

But, like...

Thorn is the only man who produces intense and consistent physical reactions in her.

Also, if you look at the [323] quote above, he did in fact get her pulse up. Just saying.

Rather than label her as purely asexual or even being on the spectrum, we could instead speculate that, as a Reader, she’s experienced to some degree love in all its forms through countless objects and perhaps she can’t help having this reaction to love and intimacy. I’m not trying to be cynical or pessimistic, but love can be treacherous and people are driven to do all kinds of terrible things for it or because of it. As wonderful as love is despite that, it seems likely that Ophelia has simply decided it’s not something she wants to navigate. Or she just hadn’t met someone yet who was worth all that trouble.

I’ll Close With This:

“You’re free,” whispered Ophelia. “Free to go, free to stay. I won’t make you leave one cage for another one, although, as you’ve seen, I really don’t live in great security. I decided your fate without taking time to think, or to speak to you. I was selfish…and I still am. […] I still am because, deep down, I would like you to choose to remain by my side. I know that apologizing can no longer change anything, but anyway: forgive me.” [135]

Ophelia says this to Fox after rescuing him from the dungeons of Clairdelune and taking him on as an assistant. Now, when I read this, I couldn’t help but think that it’s precisely the apology Ophelia wants to hear from Thorn. Yet, here she is, guilty of doing to someone the very thing she holds against him. Isn’t it funny how hypocrisy and love are such good friends? As we know, articulation and eloquence are not Thorn’s strengths and some of Ophelia’s aversion to him is based around her inability to accept this part of him.

Eventually, Thorn does make, more or less, the same apology.

“I should never have involved you in my affairs. I knew it would be dangerous. I convinced myself that I had the situation under control, and that mistake almost cost you your life. […] There is one thing that I have tried to tell you several times. I’m no good at these formalities, so let’s get on with it and speak no more of it. […] Please forgive me.” [444-45]

Strangely, she barely acknowledges this; she’s too busy having an epiphany.

At that second, she finally knew with absolute certainty where her place was. It wasn’t in the Pole, it wasn’t on Anima. It was precisely where she was now. At Thorn’s side. [445]

Well, perhaps this isn’t so strange since the novel starts off posing the question to this answer.

Deep down, Ophelia wondered where exactly her first home might be. Since she’d arrived at the Pole, she’d already visited Berenilde’s manor, the Clairdelune embassy, and her fiancés Treasury, and she hadn’t felt at home in any of them. [24]

The theme of home and belonging permeates this novel in a more central way than its predecessor. Ophelia is repeatedly confronted by it, but it’s also echoed in Farouk’s obsession with the Reading of his Book and finding out where he comes from and what happened in his past. When her family arrives from Anima, she sees the Pole and Thorn through their eyes. She ends up defending both from their disapproving remarks and in doing so, she realizes that she has ceased thinking of Anima as her home.

Life in the Pole was like that: wherever one went, whatever one did, danger was part of daily life. And yet, Ophelia reflected, she didn’t hate it that much, that life. [280]

Thorn’s apology seals the deal: she understands now that she was mistaken. Home is not a place. People, those who love you and who you love in return, give a home meaning. Belonging, likewise, is only made possible by the people who accept you and give you a place among them. It’s been hard-won, but she’s found both in the Pole, in Thorn and Berenilde. Her lack of a direct response to Thorn’s words suggests that she’s already forgiven him, that it matters less to her that he struggles with communication, that she’s finally accepted him for who he is and, better still, found him lovable despite that.

If we read Thorn as having ASD, then this intense dynamic between them is a positive treatment of mental/social disorders in fiction, which is really the only point I had to make with this entire thing.

Where Does Ophelia End?

I asked this question in my last analysis. Based off of the fact that, when we left her in Promise, she was experiencing some serious discomfort in body and soul directly connected to Thorn, I predicted/semi-already-knew that she would evolve toward him.

At one point, Ophelia loses the ability to pass through mirrors. We understand that it’s because she’s been lying to herself; after all, her great-uncle made it very clear that mirror-traveling is impossible under such a circumstance. It’s ironic because, by her own admission, she’s a “bad actress” [161] and, according to her mother, “was never any good at lying” [157].

She’s just so stubborn, isn’t she? It’s gratifying then to read when Ophelia overcomes it. Thorn makes a public announcement, cancelling his marriage, refusing to Read Farouk’s Book, and handing in his resignation as Treasurer. He does this to protect Ophelia and her family from imminent danger but at risk to his own welfare and position. He’s basically committing suicide, which very nearly turns literal at novel’s end. Ophelia can only think to go to him by the quickest means possible.

She looked straight at her determined face, beyond its scratches and bruises, finally ready to face that truth that she hadn’t wanted to see. It wasn’t Thorn who needed her. It was she who needed Thorn. Ophelia plunged, body and soul, into the mirror. [416]

I don’t think I need to spell that out.

Thorn and His Watch

To go on a little bit of a tangent, I also wanted to touch on the watch.

I believe it was mentioned in Promise that the watch had been a gift from Berenilde, which is so precious. Berenilde is the only true parental figure Thorn has known. She used her status and wealth to protect and care for him, and seems to understand him as only a mother--one with a child the rest of the world refuses to accept--can. I thought her reaction to Thorn’s suicidal announcement was especially devastating.

She had begun to shake so hard that Agatha rushed to take the baby from her arms. Bent double in her chair, as though punched in the stomach, Berenilde looked imploringly at Ophelia. “I beg you. Don’t abandon my boy.” [412]

Keep in mind that Berenilde has outlived her three biological children, none of whom survived past childhood. Thorn is such a lonely figure that it’s easy to forget he comes from somewhere. But Berenilde’s reminder to us is clear: he’s not the child of his Dragon father nor of his Chronicler mother. Thorn is her child, and she’s terrified of losing him like the others.

While there can be no doubt of her sentiment toward Thorn, it’s entirely likely that Berenilde foisted much of her maternal grief, trauma, and longing onto him without his express permission; he never seems to regard her with any particular filial warmth. Then again, he once attacked Archibald in defense of Berenilde’s honor, after he seduced her away from Farouk, and Ophelia later notes that he “suspended an investigation and jumped into an airship” to be near to Berenilde when she went into labor with her daughter [373]. Thorn is clearly defined rather more by his actions than his words. But the point is Berenilde is the one who gave Thorn his sense of belonging, and I just adore that.

Metaphorically speaking, the watch represents Thorn’s heart, which was given to him by his mother figure and which he gives to Ophelia as a token of his love and trustworthiness. Indeed, it’s even called a “mechanical heart” [156]. Ophelia has Read one of Thorn’s possessions before (dice) and was overwhelmed by the fury and breadth of his emotions. If she were to Read his watch, she’d probably die. Every time he digs it out of his pocket to look at it, to hold it, to fiddle with it, he’s engraving some emotional signature or trace onto it. Ophelia ultimately decides not to Read it.

“Before you go, I would like to return this to you. You need it more than me, and, in any case, I won’t read it. I’ve chosen to trust you—you, not your watch.” [285]

Her words have a profound effect on Thorn, rendering him totally speechless and maybe more confused than ever. At any rate, he misreads the situation and catches Ophelia off guard with an awkward kiss. It’s kind of a heartbreaking scene, because Ophelia simply reacts (by slapping him) and is genuinely baffled that he took her words for encouragement. I don’t necessarily take this to be evidence of her asexuality. I don’t discredit it by any means, but it just feels more like she was taken by surprise.

The thing is, for perhaps the first time ever in his life, he actively desired for someone to know his true heart and to trust in his sincerity, which is why he gave the watch to her in the first place. In his defense, this was quite a pretty and irresistible thing for Ophelia to tell him and I don’t think she’s as put off as she wants to be.

With ears burning and glasses crimson, Ophelia stared at the faded letters on the old wooden panel—“STAFF ONLY”—as if Thorn might, at any moment, retrace his steps, take back his kiss, and leave his fob watch with her, as she’d suggested in the first place. [286]

It’s funny. She wants to erase the uncomfortable physical side of the incident, but she also wants to retain his metaphorical heart. I mean, yes, it’s broken because of some careless action on her part and she asked for it back so her great-uncle could try to fix it. But still. It’s hard to ignore the metaphor there as well: if the heart watch has changed from beating to broken and she wants to hold onto the broken heart watch to try to mend it…

Well, good Lord, it’s just so obvious, isn’t it?

End

Well, that’s about it. As I said, I really only had the one main thought and then a bunch of smaller ones.

I just learned—and am seriously devastated—that The Memory of Babel won’t be released in the U.S. until May 2020. I’m hoping this is a tentative date and that it will be available sooner.

In the meantime, if someone could upload a PDF that I could then spend days plugging in to Google Translate (again), that’d be super greeeeaaaat…

For part III, head here.

#ophethorn #La Passe-Miroir #les disparus de clairdelune #the mirror visitor #the missing of clairdelune #christelle dabos #long book report

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raisingsupergirl · 6 years ago

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You Don't Know What You Don't Know

In today's information age, everyone's an expert. Broken dishwasher? Just YouTube it. Wondering who that actor is? IMDB it. Want a DIY chicken coop? Google it. Trying to find an unending stream of #fakenews and fear mongering? Log into Facebook. The problem is, well… we don't always know what the actual problem is. We see the symptoms. We know what we want—the end result—but we're not always sure how to get there. And a quick Google search is all we have the patience for before we jump to conclusions and then blame someone or something else for our failure. Take my recent plunge into fishkeeping, for example.

I've always been an animal lover. I think it's innate in all of us, but not everyone has the right disposition or upbringing to appreciate animal/plant husbandry. As for me, I grew up in the Missouri wilderness surrounded by ponds, cliffs, streams, fields, and forests. Sure, I spent my fair share of time on the Super Nintendo System, but being in the great outdoors was engrained in me from a young age. And more than that, I learned to appreciate the other things out there. I kept just about every animal you could imagine at one time or another (dogs, cats, birds, fish, lizards, frogs, newts, rodents of all varieties, snakes, chickens, geese, goats, a squirrel, a ferret, a raccoon, and even a short-tailed opossum, off the top of my head), and though I was pretty irresponsible with most of them (ignoring for a second that I should have just left them where I found them in nature), I loved nurturing them, and I kept most of them alive. So when my city-girl daughter said she wanted a fish for her fourth birthday, a little piece of my past reignited, and I… may have gone a little overboard.

First, my mom still had the 35-gallon aquarium she bought me for my birthday a couple of decades ago. Back then I just winged it. I didn't have Google. I didn't come from a long line of aquarists. I just filled the thing up with well water, a cheap bag of gravel, a log I found floating in my pond, and the cheapest fish I could find at my local Walmart (yes, Walmart sold fish back then). Of course the tank was full of algae and dead fish in no time, but I kept at it, and eventually I had a few fish that didn't eat each other, but ultimately it wasn't what I knew it could be, so I set the fish "free" in my pond and put a snake in the tank instead.

I used the tank again in college with similar results, only this time I had a filter, did occasional water changes, and had just a few friendly fish, so it was much more successful, though still very "low tech," as they say in the hobby. Since then, I've matured (please hold all sarcasm until the end), and I've learned the value of researching something before attempting it. The change started in physical therapy school when I spent countless hours dissecting and writing scientific papers. It was the literal worst, but it taught me so much about the world. Rather, it taught me how to learn about any particular aspect of the world. You see, in these classes, we weren't allowed to just read the abstract and regurgitate the experimenters' assumptions. We had to read every line, go back and read every line of the sources they cited, and then, once we understood every word, we could start forming our own opinions on the subject. And believe it or not, I rarely found a paper that wasn't skewed toward the writer's desired result in some small way.

So now we get to the heart of things—you don't know what you don't know until you know it. And you won't know it unless you put in the time. We're living in an age of instant gratification. Because there's so much information out there, we only have time to skim. Otherwise we wouldn't have any time to actually live. I recently ran across an inspiration quote by science fiction author Robert Heinlein's character, Lazarus Long:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Sure. Easy for Lazarus to say. As his name suggests, he was over 200 years old and counting at the time of his above quotation (and that's to say nothing of Heinlein's, uh, colorful political and philosophical views). But even still, his words are a nice sentiment, and they resonate with our current zeitgeist. We all want to be experts at everything, but we just don't have the time to do it. So we become Jacks-of-all-trades, and masters of none. And thus, with the dehumanizing help of social media, we get into a lot of stupid fights.

But I digress. Back to my aquarium example. Giving in to my excitement and desire for my daughter to experience thy "joys" of fishkeeping, I reverted to the impulsiveness of my youth. And of the twelve fish I bought those first few months, I killed half of them. Why? Because I didn't take the time to learn about taking a new tank through the nitrogen cycle. I knew nothing of ammonium, nitrite, or nitrate. I didn't know how to promote bacterial colonies in the filter media. And when I decided to add a few live plants to the mix, I didn't know the difference between submersed and submerged, or that PetCo didn't care about selling you "aquatic" plants that would die 100% of the time if completely under water. And that's saying nothing about water pH, alkalinity, fertilizers (NPK, micronutrients, root tabs versus liquid fertilizers, etc), carbon (CO2) availability, substrate differences, etc., etc. I just thought, "these are pretty" with dozens of plants and fish from completely different, delicately balanced ecosystems around the world, and then expected them to flourish when crammed together in the petri dish that was my, er, my daughter's aquarium.

I'll be the first to say that I suck at chemistry. It was the only "C" I received in college. Too many dry facts and things I couldn't visualize. Too much like math. But over the past few months, I've forced myself to dig into the periodic table and the chemical processes of dozens of elements and compounds in order to BEGIN understanding the aquatic world. I'm still so far away from having a solid grasp on the process, but at least I now know what I don't know. And that's a start. And it's a valuable reminder of the ignorance of mankind.

As a physical therapist, it often baffles me when my highly intelligent friends and family don't understand their own bodies. These people are experts in their fields. They're fluent in areas that I'll never even begin to understand. And yet, they can't figure out the simplest causes of their own various aches and pains. And thus, they become easy prey for fad diets, snake oils, and cure-alls. In health and fitness, especially, our connected, opinion-fueled society is playing the willing victim. Like politics and philosophy, we all know there are problems, and we see "experts" offering their solutions constantly, and social media algorithms are feeding into this problem by inundating our news feeds with like-minded (no matter how wrong) individuals. We think, "Hey, everything I see reinforces my ideas, so the must be right!" But really, we're still living in the same high-walled isolation we've always lived in. We just have weapons that can shoot farther now.

So remember, if you haven't spent hundreds of hours researching and forming your opinion, you're probably not right. Maybe you have an idea. It may even be a good idea. But life is complex. It spans millennia of philosophers, scientists, and soldiers. Even if WebMD says you have terminal cancer, you should still probably see an actual MD before you throw in the towel. Because, contrary to Lazarus Long's inspiring sentiment, humanity can still find value in specialization. Life is rich and deep, so take the time to dig.

#fish tank #fish keeping #aquarium #aquarist #plantedtank #planted aquarium #chemistry #diversity #education #informed opinion #research #social media #ignorance #momblr #dadblr #mumblr #physical therapy #specialization #robert heinlein

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emilyplaysotome · 6 years ago

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Chapter 7 - Bad Blood

Catch up on Chapter 1 - 6 here! (or just Chapter 6)

With Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” blasting on loop in the background, I found myself getting to work thanks to the king lighting a fire under my ass. In a way, I owed him one as I’d been split - one part of me wallowing and the other determined.

Before he’d kidnapped my friend, I had questioned how possible winning the game was but now I was ready to beat it in under 3 months just to spite him.

It had only taken a moment for me to go from having my best friend and ally, to being alone and feeling incredibly guilty for whatever was happening to Meg right now. I figured that she must be in the otome world and if she was going to return I’d have to find these dudes quick.

I knew that her original plan was to spend this week in CT and the next in NYC grieving the loss of her relationship before she resumed her life as best she could. With that said, I effectively had only a week and two days before people would realize that she’d gone missing. There was no way that I could explain that a man from a video game had kidnapped her and I didn’t want her parents or our friends to worry when there was nothing they could do.

I fretted about where exactly in the game universe Meg had been placed, considering that she was so unfamiliar with the world of these otome games. I thought about the problematic faves of the fandom, and worried about her getting involved with the cast of Kissed by the Baddest Bidder or the less popular Dangerous Seduction.

I wondered if she ended up in Soichiro’s hospital, or if she was currently living out a rebound relationship considering that time went by faster in that world than it did in my own. Regardless of what she was doing, I needed to get her back and if that meant stepping my search up - so be it.

Without skipping a beat I called the switchboard and learned that Jin Namba had been an NYPD officer, but had recently left the force. I asked if anyone knew of his whereabouts and the dispatch told me that information was not public. I quickly apologized and noted that he’d helped me with a case that I was hoping to follow up on, and was put in touch with a friend of his at the precinct in TriBeCa where I used to see him and Hiroshi during my lunch hour.

I planned swing by and see if I could get any information as far as Jin’s whereabouts and after several unfruitful google searches, prayed that something would pan out stemming from that precinct as it was proving to be my only lead.

As far as Hijikata went, I had to assume that he was still doing something that involved fitness. I googled his name and looked for results from the past week.

The first thing I found were several yelp comments from women that frequented the gym he and Soryu used to work at (CrossFit East). There was a specific thread about the sudden disappearance of their two favorite instructors, and as I read the comments I was suddenly thankful for how many fans the two men had amassed during their time working there. One woman had gone so far as to actually visit every CrossFit gym in the city searching for Hijikata as she claimed that no other instructor had been as effective at correcting her form and encouraging her. As a result of her palpable thirstiness, she had discovered that he was now exclusively working at a lifting gym on the Upper East side and was preparing for a weightlifting competition himself.

The response to her comment was a mix of gratitude and slight judgement of her stalker-like behavior, and after a few more google searches I finally found not only the lifting gym but the application form for becoming a member. With real estate in New York being so expensive and gym space often being crowded, Edge Fitness made a niche for itself in being a high end, exclusive, expensive, and serious.

They did not accept just anyone to join and even getting through the doors seemed to be a bit of a hurdle considering that I was not a professional athlete, celebrity, or body builder which was the bulk of their clientele.

At the very least I had myself another lead and it was up to me to confirm that this information was accurate. If I was able to do so in the next two days, I’d have located 4/6 and was hoping by the weekend to have eyes on Jin (5/6) in order to get as close as possible to getting Meg back.

It was the least I could do for my friend in addition to swiping myself to sleep with the hopes that the mystery sixth man in this world would reveal himself to me.

The next morning, I called out of work sick and packed my belongings, having made the decision to move back home.

If things had gone the way they were supposed to, I would have gone to work and moved out of Meg’s apartment in the evening after reconvening with her, but after her disappearance I felt too guilty to do anything other than prioritize finding these men.

As I was unpacking I could hear notifications in the other room blowing up my phone and soon learned that Anita had sent me several stressed out slack messages. Apparently she’d been counting on me to be present at work as she felt that I was an integral part in winning this new pitch she’d mentioned. She asked if I would be able to come in Monday, having rested all weekend, and I assured her that I would.

It was odd to me that on a Friday she was holding a meeting with new clients and I questioned what it was about this pitch that she felt I personally needed to be present for, however I didn’t have time to dwell. I shrugged it off wanting to make the most of the here and now and by 9 AM, I was back home in my studio apartment and found myself feeling several unpleasant feelings about revisiting that space sans Zyglavis.

Even though we’d lived together for almost a year before this point, there was not a trace of my ex-fiancee in any way, shape, or form.

We used to joked about who shed more - our bathroom floor was often covered in my long light brown hair or his jet black pin-straight hair. However, the apartment was spotless, and I surprised myself with the fact that I missed seeing those rogue strands of hair.

It was as if our life together never existed. There were no chocolates in our house, the fridge was empty as if it had been cleaned out, and my things filled the closet as if I’d never made space for his belongings.

The wounds were all far too fresh for me to emotionally handle but thankfully I was a master at compartmentalizing my feelings. It was a skill honed through years of emotional frustrations with the understanding that my career would not progress if I indulged my emotional life on a regular basis and so I learned to push through and keep my chin up.

I didn’t bother unpacking my own bag and instead threw on the cutest workout clothes I had and headed over to Edge fitness.

I’d rehearsed the scene in my head a thousand times and felt as ready as I could for my reunion with Hijikata.

Truthfully, out of all the men he was the one I thought about the most insofar as “what if”. It was him and Shun and the possibility I’d had with both of them that made me wonder if I would have been happier with them. With Hijikata, I’d been ripped away from him in the past and never even had the chance to audition him during my time as the bachelorette. I’d seen him flourish in this world, and found myself far more attracted to this man who could have so easily crumbled under the pressure of finding a new life and identity in a time drastically different than his own.

Out of respect to Zyglavis and our relationship, I’d kept my distance from Toshi even when I visited with him at the gym. That said, there had been a few moments between us - gentle looks or calm silences shared in passing - that made my heart flutter.

Of all the kisses to get, this one was my most anticipated.

I had planned out a reunion that made me appear to be the best version of myself but naturally I failed to foresee that Edge was on the fourth floor of a warehouse-like building and by the time I ascended the steep staircase, I was covered in a light sheen of sweat. There was no door to pass through or hallway where I could catch my breath or compose myself and instead I found myself huffing and puffing in front of a muscled military man who whose biceps at a glance seemed to be as large as my leg.

“What can I help you with hon?”

“I want to sign up…to…get in shape.”

He shot me a good natured grin and said, “Darling this is a serious gym - we only take people already in shape and turn them into Gods.”

“I know…I saw…on the…website…”

“Right. So go sign up at the equinox at 83rd and come back to us once you’re ready and we’ll…”

“No…I want to go from…0 to 100.”

He let out a loud guffaw that reverberated throughout the gym and said, “I like your spirit but we can’t just…”

“Please…I need this…please.”

He raised an eyebrow at me as my eyes pleaded with him. He muttered something under his breath and handed me a clipboard with paperwork noting that it wouldn’t kill him to give me a tour.

I took the clipboard and found a seat off to the side of the front desk and started filling the paperwork out. Most of it was straightforward - name, address, credit card information, health history, fitness goals, but when it got the emergency contact I could feel myself tense up. For the first time in my life I’d had a fiancee - a go to for something like that and here was another reminder that I no longer had that person to come running for me.

I compartmentalized, put my parents’ names down, and returned the clipboard.

“Alright Naomi, I’m Frank. Good to meet you.”

“You too.”

“First off Edge isn’t about weight loss, so if your goals revolve around the superficial this is not the gym for you. Our goals revolve around achieving the impossible. Take a look at that - what do you see?” Frank asked, leading me to a large mirrored room filled with free weights.

“I see potential.”

“Wow. I didn’t expect you to say that but I like that answer,” he noted with an approving smile. “You’re right - I always say that this is the space that differentiates people. There are the people that see the weight they think they can lift and there are the people who see what they can’t and make it their mission to be able to prove that nothing is impossible.”

I was surprised to learn that Edge was not just one floor, but instead several. The fourth floor was mainly free weights. The fifth floor was exclusively for cardio with stationary bikes, treadmills, stair master type machines, elliptical, etc. On the sixth floor, there were large squat racks and benches for chest press and it was there that I saw him.

Hijikata wore a ratty t-shirt which clung to his sweaty, muscled physique. Next to him, a spotter carefully watched and cheered him on as he attempted to squat what seemed to be an insane amount of weight. Frank continued to speak but didn’t hear any of what was said, and instead found myself watching Hijikata’s muscles strain and flex as he successfully moved the weight down and back up.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” His spotter yelled, and the men high fived each other with gusto.

“That felt great,” Hijikata said with a smirk.

I eavesdropped on their banter and when Frank had finished saying whatever it was that he had been saying I found myself blurting, “I want that man to train me.”

Frank chuckled, “Believe me, you’re not ready for the demon trainer.”

“Demon trainer?”

“He’s our harshest, most focused, results oriented trainer that has no use for a scrawny, out of shape, might give up any minute newbie like yourself.”

I thought for a minute about the Hijikata I’d first met in the otome world and how he had mercilessly trained his men. I thought about what it would mean to have to endure that kind of physical torture and while I was petrified, I knew that it was now or never.

Without saying anything to Frank, I approached Hijikata as he set up his bench and pressed my hands together in a prayer position and blurted, “Please train me!”

His eyes widened as he acknowledged my existence for the first time in what he thought was his life, and with a devilish grin he said, “I don’t think so.”

Frank apologetically came up behind me and said, “I already told her Toshi but she -“

“My entire life, other people have told me what was possible for myself and I’m at a point where I don’t believe any of that anymore. I want you to help me see that limitations only exist in my head,” I pleaded.

The statement caught Hijikata off guard, and I silently cheered as I watched him consider working with me. This iteration of Hijikata was that of a meathead bro on the surface, with a surprising amount of depth underneath. I knew that the version of Hijikata that trained in martial arts did so for loftier ideals. That Hijikata valued honor, mastery, and pushing ones sense of self.

I hoped that my words appealed to that part of him - a part that I was certain was still intact after seeing the intensity in which he trained himself.

“What’s your name?” He finally asked.

“Naomi.”

“Ok Naomi, how’s this. If you can get through a workout with me today I’ll make sure Frank here lets you train with me.”

He reached out his hand and I pushed down the terror that bubbled up in my gut and instead shook it.

It would seem in every iteration of Toshizo Hijikata a demon lurked beneath the surface and this Toshi had no problem dragging me down into the depths of hell. Having already been slightly out of shape, I found his workout not only incredibly difficult but borderline negligent as I pushed myself to my limits.

I collapsed at several points throughout the workout and after an hour straight of Hijikata barking orders at me and my body giving out numerous times I found myself looking like a drowned rat as my new trainer gently held my leg in a stretch.

“I’m so out of shape,” I wheezed. “That’s why I need this.”

“Yeah but there’s no shame in how you handled yourself today.”

“Does that mean?”

Hijikata then smiled at me for the first time since our reunion.

“I’ll tell Frank that I expect to see you back here tomorrow at 8 am.”

I swallowed my feelings as far as what it meant to have to wake up that early on a Saturday and instead nodded obediently.

Hijikata gently massaged my calf before taking my other foot and propping up my left leg in a stretch.

“So, were you one of my clients from before?” He asked gruffly.

“You don’t remember?”

He shook his head sadly and noted, “Amnesia they tell me. I know it sounds like a bad plot device in a hokey book or something, but I genuinely don’t remember much from before this week.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That must be scary.”

“It’s ok. I know the core of who I am and as long as I have that I won’t ever be lost.”

Hijikata’s way with words never failed to make my heart flutter, and though we had just “met” I hoped to appeal to do the same to his.

“From time to time

The clouds give rest

To the moon-beholders.”

My utterance caused him to go white as a sheet and I watched as a brawny, muscled, sweaty gym rat shed a single tear. The poem triggered something within him - be it a shred of his old self tucked away that the king had forgotten to erase.

I watched as Hijikata quickly regained his composure gruffly adding, “What’s that now?”

“A haiku. Something about you…it made me think of that poem.”

Hijikata paused for a moment, gently releasing my leg and with a small nod simply said, “Good job today,” before walking off.

I dragged myself back to my apartment, despite the fact that every muscle in my body was screaming and soaked in the tub for a good thirty minutes before I attempted to continue making progress. While I’d been in the bath, the king had texted and informed me that the use of a haiku was underhanded, yet clever, and that I should have no trouble winning Hijikata’s heart from what he saw.

“Don’t get cocky though goldfish,” he added, sending a picture of Meg.

I immediately opened the image attached and saw her on the street, with an annoyed look on her face as a man held her hand and dragged her with him. There weren’t many clues as to who she was with, but as I zoomed in I saw a familiar, tacky looking maroon jacket that I would be able to recognize anywhere.

Mitsunari Baba was holding her hand, dragging her somewhere and all I could do was hope that Meg was streetwise enough not to fall for him or any of the bidders.

Chapter 8 - http://emilyplaysotome.tumblr.com/post/174964422337/chapter-8-hiding-in-plain-sight

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ihadagutfeeling-blog · 6 years ago

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I had a Gut feeling

They said have a baby, it’ll be fun! I was pregnant for thirty nine weeks and two days. I was nothing nice while pregnant. I prayed to God all the time, “Lord, please just get me through this”. I swear, being pregnant was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I was sick everyday of my pregnancy except for one, April 7, 2018, my wedding day. I gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby girl on July 21, 2018. My husband and I named her, Jaidyn Lilly!!! Labor was easy-breezy. I only stayed two days at the hospital before I was discharged. Yay! We were so excited to get home and start life with our baby girl. As soon as we got her home, she started to cry, instantly. Of course, I was a bit concerned but we got into the swing of things as a family. I had always seen people with newborns. They ate, slept, pooped and cried a little. My baby began to cry All. The. Time. I joked with my Mom that I’m gonna take her back to the hospital because she’s broken. Yes, I was kidding but she did cry a bit too much. My motherly instincts kicked in. I noticed that she was spitting up and throwing up often. Then, on September 7, 2018, our precious newborn threw up and choked on it. I couldn’t clear her airway on my own. So, I did what any sane person would do. I called 911 and they sent an ambulance to help. During this event, my husband was at work, providing for the family. It was just me and our newborn baby at home. I literally thought the paramedics would clear her airway and send us back into our house. Nope, we were loaded into the back of the ambulance, the lights and sirens were turned on and they swiftly escorted us to Children’s Hospital. I was terrified. I distinctly remember one of the EMT’s saying, “She’s not really responding to anything we’re doing”! Huh? What?! I was justifiably in tears as she started to throw up again during our ride. The EMT had her strapped to the gurney but she was struggling to free her so she wouldn’t choke again. After what felt like hours, we finally, arrived at the hospital. There was a team of at least eight medical personnel waiting for us. Inside the emergency room, the staff frantically started moving our baby from side to side, poking her, drawing blood and of course, running a multitude of tests. I was frantic. A mess. But my sweet daughter needed me. I put on a brave face as she was admitted to the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). Throughout the first night, they ran test after test and couldn’t decipher what was causing her to throw up and choke. None of us had a single clue. Four days later, we were finally back at home. She was diagnosed with Infant Apnea. Now, stay with me because this is where our testimony begins. On September 20th, 2018, our baby threw up all over our bed. We changed the sheets and her clothes. She looked peaceful and totally fine. So we decided to wind down for the night. Suddenly, I thought to myself, “She’s sleeping so well that I can put her in her bassinet tonight”. I assumed that she had simply ate good and was “milk drunk”. BUT THE HOLY SPIRIT SPOKE! Thank God I listened! I kept her in my arms and we all went to sleep. A few hours later, we woke to her throw up all over the bed and my arm, again. Now, I’m wondering why this keeps happening. Every time I laid her down she would start throwing up and gagging. A few more hours later, at around four in the morning, I sat straight up in the bed and put her on my chest. It seemed to be the only position that stopped her from throwing but only temporarily. I immediately googled our clinic’s telephone number to see what time they opened and gave them a call. They advised me to bring her in. I quickly made an appointment. Fortunately, their response to bring my child in to them never sat well with me. A mother knows her child. My husband decided not to go to work. Instead, we all got dressed and headed out. While we were on our way to the doctors office, I randomly asked my husband if we should just take her to the hospital instead. His answer was “Yes”! We made a beeline for The Children’s Hospital Emergency Room in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. It was deja’vu all over again. Team of eight to ten people working on our baby. I was less emotional as I watched them working on her, this time. The same tests that all came back negative ten days ago, were all being ran again. Honestly, I was a bit angry because we had already gone through these tests during our previous visit without getting a definite resolution to our daughters condition. I demanded that different test be run. They all looked very puzzled at my request because that was their standard way of doing things. A mother knows her child! Plus, those previous tests hadn’t helped our baby ten days ago. They certainly weren’t helping her now. Then they ordered an ultrasound. That was the answer that we so desperately needed. The ultrasound tech came back in the room and began to look at our daughters belly. I instantly knew something was wrong from the look on her face. They asked us to leave the room while they ran one final test. During this time, my mom arrived at the hospital. While my mom, my husband and I were waiting in a conference room, the ultrasound results came back. That was quick. They asked me to come back in the emergency and told me that Jaidyn, our daughter, had a blockage in her intestines. They needed to do emergency surgery immediately! My heart hit the floor. I asked that they bring my husband, her dad, in the emergency room and explain it to him as well. I couldn’t. They obliged. Sadness filled the room. Our two month old baby had to go under the knife. We pulled ourselves together and signed the consent form to allow them to operate on our baby. One of her surgeons explained that the surgery would be very simple. They would make a very small incision and untwist the bowel. Then close her back up. A different surgeon said flatly, “You know she needs her bowel to live”. I looked at her in complete shock. Did she really just say that to me? I needed some positivity and a little empathy. I left my baby in their hands and headed to the waiting room where my family was. I was praying and shaking as I waited to be told the next step. After a few hours, we got a call telling us to head to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), where we anxiously waited to see our daughter. The first thing I saw was her intestines in a bag, sitting on top of, not in her stomach. This is not what they told me they were going to do. Tears started racing down my face. Seeing the frustration and concern on my face, the surgeon explained what they had done. He said the bag was called a silo bag. They wanted to see if the small intestine would come alive after they untwisted them. I literally couldn’t focus on his words. All I could see was that bag. A silo bag. The intestines looked dead from what I could see. They were purple and gray. She had a total of four surgeries during her first five days of being admitted into the hospital. She lost three fourths of her small intestine. Yes, that’s where humans get all our nutrition from. Also, she was on a breathing machine. Our baby had tubes and wires running into her from every direction you could think of. It was a scary sight to see. I remember doctors asking me to sign consent forms to do a multitude of things to our baby. It was truly overwhelming. Once, I was standing in the hospital room, nurses and doctors were running in and out of her room. Her blood pressure had bottomed out. There was at least ten people in that room working on her. I could see the fright on each one of their faces. I almost felt like I was reading their minds. Their minds were screaming this baby might not make it out of here. In that moment, I gathered myself and left the hospital. I had to find help! I mean real help. Have you ever needed help that was bigger than you, your family, the doctors and anything that the hospital or their social workers could give you? I did. So, I got in my car and I drove east on I-630. I got off the freeway on the 15th street exit. There were tears in my eyes as I parked my car at 14th and college. I began to cry out to the Lord, like never before. I asked him to heal my baby! I cried, I screamed, I moaned, I hummed, I sung. I said “Heal my baby, Lord” over and over and over and over until the Lord spoke to me. He spoke in the clearest voice. He told me “It was done”! I drove back to that hospital, went back in that room where my daughter was and just knew it was well. Everything that they told me was wrong, I said “Not so”. I felt very confident in saying that after my conversation with God. Eventually, a kidney doctor came in and told me my daughter needed dialysis. “Absolutely not”, I said! She came back from her surgery and guess what? Her kidneys were working like a champ! No dialysis needed. I had my nurse page the doctor and had him come look at what MY God can do. He said “I guess you won’t be needing my services”. No, sir, we won’t. Every day our baby got stronger and stronger. Twenty two days later, we were moved to the step down unit. As soon as we got to our next unit, we were fighting for the best for our daughter, AGAIN. Her GI team really wanted her to be on a feeding tube to slowly introduce food back into her GI track. She hadn’t eaten by mouth in twenty two days. She had IV nutrition running twenty four hours straight. She was getting about 32ml an hour since she got there. She fed by the tube for a couple of days but Jaidyn is a breastfeeding baby. So, she wanted the boob. She wanted her milk to touch her mouth first and not just her stomach. I insisted that they let me breastfeed her. They allowed me but it was very difficult at first. I couldn’t tell how much she was actually eating. We began to bottle feed her breastmilk because she just wasn’t eating enough. In the hospital room, My mom and I would debate back and forth about the reason why she wasn’t eating. Oh, Did I mention that my mom stayed with me at the hospital all day and all night and that my husband worked tirelessly to make sure our family stayed afloat? Because They did. And I’m grateful. Back to the story. We decided that the IV nutrition was making her feel full. We had our social worker call a meeting with the entire team to discuss our concerns. During the meeting, I was able to convince them to turn the IV nutrition down. I needed to be sure that was the problem. The hospital said the IV nutrition wasn’t making her full but after turning it down, I was able to get Jaidyn to double her breastmilk intake from 7oz to 14oz, almost instantly. However, her team of doctors decided they wanted to give her a feeding tube to get her intake up, regardless. So, they ordered what they needed over night to get this started the next morning. Can you guess what happened? They came in Jaidyn’s hospital room to put the tube in and I swiftly turned them around. I believed that she could eat enough by mouth. They were not happy about my decision but I didn’t care. A MOTHER KNOWS HER CHILD. I knew my baby could do more than what they thought she could because she is mine. God has given me authority and power over every situation that deals with my daughter. The next day, she was able to eat 24oz by mouth. Won’t he do it?! My mom and I stayed up the entire day and during the night making sure she ate. They didn’t believe me. They even called speech therapy in to watch her eat. The Devil was busy! Long story short, she never got or needed that feeding tube. On another occasion, I had to convince them that she didn’t need to be on IV nutrition all day and night. I wanted to see if we could get her down to a few hours a day. This time, they said okay and turned her down to ten hours a night. Soon our team discovered that she needed more calories. They wanted to fortify my breast milk. By the way, did I mention I ran out of breast milk? I totally did! It was a scary feeling to run out of milk when it was the only thing my daughter could stomach. The lord always has a ram in the bush. My cousin, Amber White, coached me on how to get my supply back up. We had babies at roughly the same time, so she was able to supply me with some much needed breastmilk, too. Also, a friend of mine, Officer Patterson, donated over one hundred ounces of breastmilk to keep Jaidyn’s milk supply stocked up! I will forever be grateful for these two women. We found a formula that we could mix with the breastmilk to give it more calories. Now, Jaidyn was doing extremely well! Growing and glowing, y’all. I asked our GI nurse to see if Jaidyn could go without the IV nutrition, in a controlled environment. The following Monday, she asked the doctor for me. Jaidyn’s GI doctor came in and said, “SHE IS DETERMINED TO PROVE ME WRONG”. We were. The team eventually agreed to a one week time frame to see how well she’d do without the IV nutrition. Jaidyn got a tad bit weak during the week but she was her normal self, again! She had only lost a few ounces. The next Saturday, Jaidyn scared us. After running her blood, they found out that she was dehydrated. What a bummer. A week later, during a meeting with her team of doctors, they said she needed the IV nutrition, again. Her electrolytes were down. I still had a little fight left in me during this period but I asked if she needed all of it. I asked if we could get rid of the bag with the fat(lipids) in it, too. That’s not what was wrong, anyway. Again, they agreed. When I tell you I put up a fight for this child... I did. We went a week like that, it was fine. Woohoo! We had been at the hospital for over two months. So, we were definitely ready to get our daughter home. Our team told me that if all the blood work comes back fine y’all can leave out Wednesday. On Tuesday, they drew her blood and guess what? Her blood levels weren’t were they needed to be to check out but I continued to pack up our room. Speaking of her room, Did I mention that my dad (Jaidyn’s grandfather) brought her a new stuffed animal and a card for every single day that she was in the hospital? Yes, that equals up to over 70 plus plush animals and cards. We displayed them all over our private hospital suite. Love constantly surrounded us. Also, he bought and brought us enough snacks to fill a store aisle. It was appreciated. When I say I was packing, I was! I pretty much needed a whole moving company to get out of that darn hospital. Anyway, back to the story. One of her doctors said the bloodwork results could be a lab error. So, they drew her blood, again. I continued to pack because I was certain that our last day would still be on Wednesday. The blood work came back great, this time. Just as we had planned, we went home on Wednesday. She’s only on a very small amount of IV nutrition. It only has to be run over night. My mom told me early on during this journey, “Don’t believe what you see, See what you believe”! Jaidyn has SHORT BOWEL SYNDROME. You read what I said. Jaidyn has Short Bowel Syndrome but IT DOESN’T have her. We believe she will be medically cleared in Gods time. God has truly carried my entire family through this situation that could have ended horribly. But with faith the size of a mustard seed, he will do the rest! Now, I have a stronger faith and a stronger fight in me. There is truly nothing too hard for my God. I’m writing about my journey to encourage the next family, the next mom or the next dad to always trust your gut feeling. God gave you that little voice that tells you when something isn’t right. In every situation. Advocate for those who can’t advocate for themselves. Don’t give up on God! Always keep a listening ear for him and what you believe because he will guide you. I am truly grateful for my husband! It wasn’t a pretty journey for us. Especially as newly weds with a new born going through this ordeal. He held down the fort like a true champion and didn’t miss a beat. We both went through this the best way we knew how and we are alive to tell the story. I’m forever indebted to my parents. I knew they always loved me but baby, they truly love this grandchild of theirs too. I appreciate them for simply standing by our side through the tough time and filling in all the gaps. Ms. Carolyn Rucker, you did your thing! Showing up day after day to pray, bring meals and loving on Jaidyn. I’m grateful. Our family, near and far, prayed endlessly for our sweet girl. We are so grateful for your prayers and the visits and the love you showed. To my few and I mean few friends, y’all did your thing! Y’all kept my mind on things other than my current situation. And I love you! Pastor, First Lady and our entire church family at Macedonia Baptist church, we love y’all! The gifts and the prayers were right on time! To our siblings, we love y’all, near and far. We had gifts and food coming all the way from L.A., Memphis and right here at home. Love y’all!!! To my husbands job, Jericho’s Way, Mandy and her staff/volunteers blessed us! Mr. Bob, you blessed us! We can’t thank you enough. And to my hospital friends, nurses and doctors... We love y’all so much! Lauren, Amber, Ashley, Brittany, Cheyenne, all the Hannah’s, Justin, Morgan , Nicole, Krislyn and my MVP (that’s what she like to be called) Dr. Cassie!! I love you all! You made the journey so easy by being knowledgeable in your field. Thank you everyone who prayed and posted about our baby. You didn’t even know what was going on but you sent your prayers anyway. Thank You!! Now, go watch and follow baby Jaidyn’s journey on our YouTube channel. It’s called “I had a gut feeling”. We will post more videos on her journey and milestones soon!!! Her first video is up and ready to view!!! Believe = LIFE

#shortbowelsyndrome #sbs #shortgut

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noiseartists · 7 years ago

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UMBRELLA BURNING FESTIVAL: Italogaze from Rome

I was introduced to Umbrella Film Festival by Sara, their bass player. A pretty good one too!

We first connected around Japanese Shoegaze. I was looking for a Japanese translator to help collaboration with Japanese bands that had little English. After a few short and unfruitful contacts with various people, Sara kindly offered to help.

That was a year ago. We have since worked together on Shojoskip, Plant Cell, and have a few more things in store. We get along well and love Shoegaze. With Nicolas Piere Wardell, we are a team, contributors I love working with.

I did not know she also was a bass player in a band. One day, shyly, I was told so and was very impressed by what I heard. You should be too.

One thing is certain, her bass playing is very similar to mine, a mix of support and melodic lines, trying to find solutions, patterns and varying them. She plays better than I ever did, but the intention is still the same.

And the rest is at the same level, with various influences from great indie bands, mixed with their own approach.

I invite you to discover Umbrella Film Festival, one of Italogaze best, through this collaboration where they present their music and themselves.

THE BAND

Some history

"Our band’s birth dates back to 2012. However, our lineup has changed a lot so far.

Sara met Luca Barboni, our former guitarist who left the band shortly after Poems in Braille recording and started to play with the aim of forming a garage band (!). As former drummer Francesco Gangeri joined the band the shoegaze idea came in. Gradually we realized how bad we needed a voice and Edoardo joined too. In 2013 Francesco left the band and was substituted by Marco. Since then, we have been writing and playing a bunch of songs and finally put 5 of them in our first EP.

Our only regret is that we could not tour as much as we would have liked, for Luca left UBF. We have been doing literally anything so far to cope with this lack of shoegaze guitarists here in Rome (as a matter of fact we have been trying out like 20 guitarists so far!), at the moment we’re still trying so hard to find another guy to make guitar sound loud, fuzzy and not so guitar-ishly.

We have never given in to this loss, recently Edoardo has decided to put his hands on a guitar and start singing and playing until our man appears. We are still confident he will!"

Band composition

The line up is:

Edoardo Lelli – vocals, guitar

Sara Massiah – bass

Marco Scarcelli – drums

"As said above, our songwriting process is deeply rooted in the rigging. Most of our songs, including Poems in Braille tracks, were created starting from an improvisation we had recorded (yes, we have a bad habit of recording basically any rehearsal we do).

We would listen to the recorded material later at home, isolate some interesting sections and study our single parts. Then the effective process is kick-started: it could take weeks, months or just a couple of rehearsals until each part is composed, lyrics are written and everything is fine-tuned and arranged as a whole.

However, this is not the only way we compose. Sometimes one of us steps into our cozy studio with some kind of draft, a good riff or vocal line in mind, so everyone starts playing along and if we still like it when we listen back home the song is launched.

Either way, it’s a meticulous process, each of us is quite hard to please and we definitely cannot stop until everyone is satisfied."

Personal anecdotes…

"If you google UBF you can read of somebody who claims that our name has something to do with the murder of a prostitute, but please don’t trust him. We can say "it’s wrong!"

Music that is important to them

"We have quite different music tastes. Obviously, we share the love for the 90s Shoegaze scene (Slowdive, MBV, Ride, Swervedriver, Pale Saints, Drop Nineteens etc.) and broadly for the 90s sound we grew up with (Smashing Pumpkins, The Verve, Nirvana, Placebo, Deftones, Foo fighters and so on).

However, Edoardo is more into the 80s alternative scene (The Cure, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode, The Smiths), experimental music (Brian Eno, William Basinksi, Harold Budd), Berlin years Bowie and songwriters (among which Nick Cave and David Sylvian), while Marco doesn’t mind Britpop bands as well as heavy stuff like Tool, SunnO))) and Einstürzende Neubauten.

As for Sara, recent dream-pop artists (The Bilinda butchers, Wild Nothing, Beach House, Radio Dept.) and various groovy-yet-not-that-pop bands are essential (i.e. The Smiths, Interpol, Warpaint, A Perfect Circle, Phoenix, The xx, Japandroids, just to name a few)."

Why the name of the band?

"Marco: I guess Sara knows better where does the UBF name historically come from. I personally like to consider it a joyful refusal of protection from any kind of weather condition. If it's rainy, then let's get totally soaked. And when the sun hits... she'll be waiting.

Sara: If you really ask me, it came up randomly while I was making research for my Bachelor’s degree thesis. I’ve been studying as a Japanese linguist, so one day I came into this photography book and while flipping through I read about some kind of traditional local festival they hold in Kanagawa prefecture, which is called Soga no Kasayaki Matsuri (namely, the Soga’s Umbrella Burning Festival).

They commemorate a historical event, the attempted murder of a feudal landlord by two young warriors belonging to the powerful Soga family whose father had been deposed. It was a matter of honor, so the two brothers were busted and taken to death but at the same time, their act was seen as a supreme gesture of filial piety. That night, on their way to the landlord’s shelter in the woods, they had burnt their paper umbrellas as to light up their way, therefore it seems that every year since then the local community celebrates by making a huge pile of colorful paper umbrellas which they burn at nightfall in the fourth Saturday of July.

Actually, this medieval revenge story has quite nothing to do with shoegaze music, but I found the photo of those burning umbrellas pretty evocative and fascinating. I showed it to my band fellows and we agreed upon this curious name. "

WHAT is your music about?

"Marco: I guess the sound part, detached from lyrics, is about contexts, and space/time. I really like when guitars don't actually sound like guitars. We rig up a lot when we meet and play, so we are just stuck and focused on what's going on in that particular moment, and we crave to do what seems to be magic instead of just what has to be done. We are looking for a giant, howling, and yet invisible ghost. We know it knows that we are there, the only way to catch it is to record its voice.

Sara: Well, about that ghost… I guess some of us just call it creativity. Rather than specific messages or stories, our aim is to suggest some kind of emotional landscape. While playing, we are constantly trying to reach a particular climax, which doesn’t necessarily mean the wall of sound (well, it does mean that more than often though). It’s some kind of emotional peak, the release of something we probably could not express any other way.

We like to think that our audience, especially those longtime Shoegaze fans, are able to grasp it and relate, but personally, I consider this aspect a nice side effect better than a specific aim of the songwriting process. Our music is a pure expression, secondarily the more can relate to the product, the better.

Edoardo: Sara has already said it perfectly: our aim is to set up emotional landscapes. Apart from that, a peculiar aspect of our work is that there's often something hidden or intentionally left unclear so that the listener can give its own meaning to the music or to the lyrics. I guess this is some kind of natural approach to us, as we tend to use ourselves as the test subjects to the evocative power of our songs.

Talking about lyrics writing process, what I'm always looking for is to go beyond the limits and create some reaction in a hypothetical listener. More than telling stories, images depicting. The verses I prefer are the ones where sensitivity and fury collide giving birth to something different, could it be bittersweet or fascinatingly disgusting. I think As Everything Falls Apart is a good example of this approach."

THE MUSIC

Why we like them

The influences: Pale Saint, Ride, My Bloody Valentine! All drips into UBF' music.

The basslines: The line on Losing myself again is a killer, and the rest is as good

The voice: It is rare in Shoegaze and Dream Pop to hear powerful yet melodic voices. Edoardo pulls this out beautifully.

Poems in Braille, EP, May 2016

1. Intro 02:14

"We were looking for a short track to work as an introduction to both the mood and the sonic landscape of the EP. We just wanted it to tell the listener something like “This is where we’re going to be for the next 20 minutes. So get ready and let yourself go.” We’re very satisfied with the result, as we think we’ve reached that aim pretty well."

This intro brings a vast palette of sounds. Some part reminds me of Ride's Grasshopper, some of some Japanese bands. A great introduction for the listener.

2. Track 5 02:52

"Track 5 is Umbrella Burning Festival’s take on the classic Shoegaze song: it’s straightforward, melodic, blurry and psychedelic. It’s a bad trip, both musically and lyrically."

This song reminds me of the first Pale Saints album, Comfort of Madness. Edoardo vocals are on par with Ian Masters. The title, track 5, for the second song is quite nice as it misleads the listener.

3. Stargazer 05:24

"When thinking of Stargazer an image always comes to mind: floating in space. Sonically speaking, this song places somewhere in between the space rock of The Verve's first album and the dream pop of Cocteau Twins."

The start of the song is also in the sonic universe of the same Pale Saints album. It is a calm song. It invites you to contemplate de sky full of stars, building tension slowly, without exploding. Subtle.

I love the title. In the 90's, I played often with a band called The SIgh. One of the best I heard. They had a song called Skygazer.

4. Losing Myself Again 05:12

"Losing Myself Again is a bipolar song. In the first part, with its in-your-face attitude, it's still lucid; in the second part, where it's pure chaos, it goes completely crazy."

This song has one of the best basslines I know: round, powerful. It is like getting into a warm whirlpool of sound.

This song has psychedelic sire to it, in the way it pulls the listener into it, both physically and mentally, and keeps you there, happy in the sonic chaos you are surrounded by.

Edoardo's voice adds a great intensity to a song already intense in all the right ways. I love this song.

5. As Everything Falls Apart 07:30

"This is the most intense track in Poems in Braille. Its slow, sinuous pace is meant to be trance inductive as if it was conceived as the soundtrack of a collapse."

In 2017, my favorite album was Camille Claudel 's eponymous album. This song could belong in this album in so many ways: the sound, Edoardo's voice and voice melody that so much like Frederico's, the intensity and trance-inducing. To understand, just listen to the following song. It is difficult not to find similarities. Did I say they were my favorite album of 2017? Maybe a hint as to why I love UBF too.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Tell us about the artists you have worked with

"We have had the pleasure to mix and master our EP at WAX Recording Studio in Rome, which is run by Alessio Pindinelli who happens to be the talented guitarist of La Casa al Mare. I guess many of you Shoegazers around the world know his band and we are really thankful to them."

The band's presence on the web

Social media:

Facebook

YouTube

Listening / buying their music:

Bandcamp

Soundcloud

Other bands

"Marco: I saw Human Colonies live set last year, and it was really good. Out of the ItaloGaze scene, I MUST recommend you all Musica Per Bambini, BRUUNO, and Lantern.

Sara: I absolutely agree upon Human Colonies. Then if you’re into alternative genres and don’t mind some Italian vocals I would say Verdena is a good band to discover. I grew up as a teenager and a musician with their music. Their second album (Solo un grande sasso, 2001) has some Shoegaze influences too. And if you’re looking for something closer to the shoegaze classics, with lyrics in English and sharp riffs, my suggestion is In Her Eye. Even though I’ve discovered them not long ago I love their works (especially Borderline, 2015). I’m looking forward to their upcoming release (Change, off on June 1st) since I’ve listened to the launching single Closer to me.

Edoardo: Speaking of Italian music, I would suggest Verdena (especially Solo un grande sasso), our friends La Casa al Mare (This Astro is such a great album – listen to M and tell me I'm wrong!) and Port-Royal from Genova (I've listened to their 2009 album Dying in Time at least a thousand times!)."

Thanks to

Our friends and families. Mervyn Peake. Modulated reverb. 2290.

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soccerdrawings · 5 years ago

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You Will Never Believe These Bizarre Truth Of Positions On A Soccer Field | Positions On A Soccer Field

It was unexpected.

9-9-9 Formation Soccer Tactics - positions on a soccer field | positions on a soccer field Two years ago, afterwards one of the starting assiduously on the Alisal Trojans girls' soccer aggregation went out with an abrasion mid-season, drillmaster Carissa Purnell had to drag players around.That meant affective then-sophomore apostle Yesenia Tijerina up to striker.The result?"She put abroad three goals (in one game) and we accomplished we'd been arena her in the amiss position the accomplished time," Purnell recalled with a smile.She hasn't slowed bottomward for the blow of her varsity career, scoring 35 goals accumulated as a green and junior. In her final year as a Trojan, she's arch the aggregation to its best alpha in years and, in accomplishing so, ascent to the top in California in scoring this winter.Tijerina started arena on the fields at the Constitution Soccer Complex at age five, band it up with anybody on the grass beyond from Natividad Medical Center.She played with a boys' club aggregation to alpha and kept up able-bodied with kids earlier than her as well. Later on, she played for a girls' biking team, the Salinas Wildcats, that included abounding players that continued on to attempt for Alisal.For the approaching star, soccer complex added than aloof alone efforts on the field."My dad (Javier Tijerina) was a big allotment of it as well," she said. "All of the abutment I had from him and my mom (Silvia Lopez) agency a lot... taking me to every convenance and game and accepting me up in the mornings to advise me commodity new aback they could."She bent on and the biking aggregation competed in the Northern California club soccer circuit. But by the time she got to aerial school, arena with the Trojans became her primary focus.

Soccer Positions for different players on the field | positions on a soccer field "I didn't appetite to get afflicted or commodity (playing club soccer) so I committed myself to aerial academy soccer," Tijerina said. "And I never stopped."Fitting in with the advance became appealing accessible and, with it, came abounding scoring."I absolutely admired the alteration to forward," Tijerina said. "The activity of scoring not aloof for yourself but for the team, that activity that you're really helping the team, I absolutely like that.""Yesenia's consistently been a brilliant player," chief and adolescent four-year varsity amateur Stephanie Rivera said. "I can say that with abounding aplomb whether it's on the soccer acreage or added sports."During the abatement season, Tijerina swaps the soccer acreage for the volleyball court, area she's a backstab all-league amateur for the Trojans."It absolutely helps with conditioning," Tijerina described. "Off the cloister it helps with time administration because I'll already apperceive to accomplishment things on the bus rides or about aback I'll be practicing or playing."That mentality translated to the new position starting that green season."We'd consistently had her at apostle because she's the fastest amateur on the team," Purnell said. "Once she got up there, she hasn't gone anywhere else. She's had a gift."As Tijerina's risen to brilliant status, the Trojans' girls aggregation has become a ability as well.Tijerina's green analysis coincided with Purnell's aboriginal at the captain of the Alisal girls' soccer program. That year had a abrupt turnaround in wins — bristles to 12 — and the Trojans' aboriginal analysis appellation in bristles years.

Positions of Players on a Soccer Field Illustrated - positions on a soccer field | positions on a soccer field That aboriginal analysis set the foundation for a tight-knit accumulation Purnell approved to actualize aural the team."For me, soccer was my family," Purnell said. "Growing up as a teenager, my soccer aggregation was my sisters... alike if the aggregation was losing, the aggregation absent together. I was animated these girls were accommodating to assignment to get aback to area they charge to be."That analysis appellation analysis led to a bang up to the toughest accumulation in the Pacific Coast Athletic League (PCAL) — the Gabilan Division — and the Trojans kept pace. Ten wins and a third-place accomplishment showed the one-year improvement was no fluke.For players like Tijerina and adolescent fourth-year varsity amateur Stephanie Rivera, a afterpiece aggregation apparent a adverse to their aboriginal analysis on the team."My aboriginal year it acquainted like we had the aptitude but we couldn't affix as much," Tijerina described. "With Drillmaster Carissa (Purnell) she came in and told us to win we had to win as a team.""There's absolutely a lot added affiliation amid the drillmaster and players," Rivera said. "Ever back (Purnell) came, we've had a actual abutting team.""She absolutely makes this feel like home," Tijerina continued. "Not aloof as a aggregation but alone as well. She'll argument us whenever there's a affected or commodity to go to and action to advice us go or get there."For a academy accepted for its arete in boys' soccer, the girls' aggregation has become a force in its own right, culminating in this season.As the Trojans accept raced out to a 7-0-1 alpha to the analysis with one bold afore PCAL — Gabilan comedy starts abutting week, Tijerina's become one of the top scorers in the state.Per MaxPreps statistics as of Friday morning, her 22 goals through eight amateur puts her angry for seventh in the state. All but one of the players advanced of her have played at atomic 10 games.

Positions in Soccer and Their Roles | HowTheyPlay - positions on a soccer field | positions on a soccer field Those blatant stats from abounding multiple-goal performances, including bristles amateur with three or more, have made for a memorable chief year so far.A two-year captain, she's additionally fabricated an accomplishment to accept an appulse off the acreage for her teammates whenever possible."It's (about) absolution the girls apperceive they accept addition to await on if they charge anything," she said. "They consistently accept addition to allocution to and I'm actuality for anything... I affliction for them and I'm actuality for them any time.""She's smart, she's coachable, she doesn't absence practice, she consistently wants to be here," Purnell said. "There's assertive things you can't advise about actuality a acceptable animal actuality which makes her the dream amateur to coach."After that third-place accomplishment aftermost year, the Trojans are positioned able-bodied for and accept their architect on a analysis appellation and anchorage in the Central Coast Section (CCS) playoffs.Beyond that, Tijerina hasn't accomplished affairs for her soccer future, admitting Purnell believes this doesn't accept to be her final aggressive season."She's maybe hasn't accomplished and catholic as abundant as girls who are activity to go on and comedy in college," Purnell said. "But she has a aptitude that I haven't apparent ever. She's got a gift... her abeyant is amaranthine at this point."The Trojans bang off Gabilan comedy with a alley antagonism adjoin Salinas Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. at The Pit. Over the afterward bristles weeks, Tijerina, Rivera and the Trojans will assignment to alpha the decade off with connected success.Ayrton Ostly peruses Twitter, fields, courts and advance throughout Salinas attractive for belief from the community. Accept a tip? Drop an email to [email protected] and subscribe for abounding admission to all of The Californian's local account coverage.This commodity originally appeared on Salinas Californian: Meet the Alisal chief arch the Trojans to new heights on the soccer field

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unplacedpodcast · 7 years ago

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Chapter One: Occult (Script)

Apologies for the delay in getting the scripts up! This is my first time writing a script & it probably shows, so I wanted to do more editing of them to fit Real Formatting Standards, but then I kept not having enough time to do that (because NaNoWriMo prep, freelance writer, second podcast in the works, etc.) so I decided not to make the perfect the enemy of the accessible and just put the scripts up as they are.

Anyways, the script for episode one is behind the cut, obviously spoilers!

NARRATOR: I don't know if I'm dead, or losing it, or what the hell, but I am definitely not okay with it.

(Narrator draws a deep breath)

I guess I should start at the beginning.

I woke up this morning, and it was like every other day. Hit snooze a few times, wolfed down some oatmeal, rushed out the door. Gave a shy little head-nod to that cute neighbor on the way out - the usual. Of course, she couldn't be more oblivious to my existence, but I probably have bigger things to worry about right now, anyways.

I got on the subway, made it just in time. It was packed - the usual morning rush. And I swear, I have never had my toes stepped on more in my life. That probably should have been my first clue that something was up. Everyone hates public transportation and nobody wants to talk during our shared misery, so it’s not like awkward silence is a new thing. But when you get stepped on six times in five minutes and no one - not just the stepper, but no one - around you acknowledges your "excuse me"s or your "ow"s or your general existence, something is a little off. Of course, I didn't think anything of it at the time, just that there were more assholes per capita than usual today.

I suffered through the obnoxious subway ride and heaved a sigh of relief when I was finally out of that tin-can and back on the street. By this point, I was running a little late, which meant I was speedwalking down the sidewalk like an overcaffeinated soccer mom. Caught the door closing behind someone else into my office building, got past the badge-checker, dealt with more awkward silence and lack of personal space during the endless elevator ride, and finally, I was there - only three minutes late.

(Narrator’s voice starts to shake)

But something wasn't right. By this point, the frazzled shit-I'm-gonna-be-late feeling was wearing off, which meant I was a little bit more aware of my surroundings. And even in my relatively small office, nobody was making eye contact or saying hi or...anything. Granted, I’m not about to win any popularity awards there, but you know, people say hi!

My first thought was that word of layoffs had come down from the head honchos - but everyone else was talking to each other. There wasn't an eerie silence over the entire office or anything - people were just ignoring me. My next thought was that my recent work had been found wanting, then that news had made it around, and this was the standard passive-aggressive office politics results.

Either way, whatever. As far as I could tell, there was nothing I can do about it now except for get my nose back to the godforsaken grindstone. I went to my desk and that douchebag from marketing is standing directly in front of it. Josh? James? Something like that. Very aware that I might be skating on thin ice right, I tried to be polite to him, even though he's one of those guys that thinks he's always entitled to everyone's time and energy.

"Excuse me," I said. And he keeps talking. "Uh, I need to get to my desk, so if you could just..."

And this motherfucker just kept talking! He was acting like he hadn't heard a word I said, rambling on about the KPI reports or whatever to Carol, like he thought it would get him laid. Even though everyone in the office could tell him the chances of that are so far gone that “lost cause” doesn't even begin to describe it.

By this point, I was fed up with everything and trying my best not to completely lose it. I opened my mouth to say something more strongly worded than "excuse me,” while he’s still prattling on without pause. Then, he said, "Your buddy isn't here yet, huh?" and gestured to my chair.

Carol, completely uninterested in this entire ordeal, glances at my desk for a split second before she replied, "Nope. Guess she's out sick or something,” and continued typing away.

At this point, I finally lost it and shouted, "YOU IDIOTS, I AM STANDING RIGHT HERE." My voice echoed off the crappy ceiling tiles and around the cubicles...but nobody did a damn thing. I sighed, pinched my nose, and said, slightly calmer this time, "Okay. If this is an April Fool's joke, it's the best one ever, but it's also actually way late, and I have work to do, so can we give up the ghost on this stupid prank?"

(Narrator sighs, sniffles)

And nobody does anything. This is the point when it starts to sink in that something is actually wrong. Nobody has that good of a poker face, especially not Carol - the woman can't tell a knock-knock joke without giggling at her own punchline. I reached out and grabbed her shoulder and gave it a shake, and she does nothing. She moved - I could grab her and move her, this wasn't a Moaning Myrtle situation where I passed through her - but it was like she had no realization that her body was moving. She kept typing away, not missing a beat. The douchebag from marketing was still rambling on.

(Narrator's voice starts to crack, she's holding back tears)

I backed away from them, trying not to trip over my own feet in my panic, and ran towards the office door. I stopped at the front desk to wave my hands in front of our receptionist and shout in his face. It didn’t make a difference - the phone conversation he was engrossed in continued without interruption or acknowledgement.

I barely made it out of the building before I went into full-fledged panic attack mode right there on the sidewalk. We're talking hyperventilating, sobbing, talking to myself, on my hands and knees, on the cold sidewalk. The whole time, strangers parted around me like a rock in a river. Nobody walked on me, everyone gave me a solid foot of space, but nobody saw or heard or acknowledged me either. After a while, I cried myself out and the black tunnel-vision started to fade, as my breathing evened out.

(Narrator takes a moment, shaky breath, sniffle)

And I just...somehow made my way back here. The trip home was kind of a blur, I'm not entirely sure how I did it. You know that space after you have an epic meltdown, where you're kind of numb and feel like you're watching everything happening from a spot just above your shoulders? The same thing happened when my grandpa died. It was completely unexpected. I answered the phone with no idea what I was about to hear, and my mom asked me if I was okay three times before she let me hang up, because I wasn't crying. I just went blank.

Of course, once I hung up the phone, I sobbed for the next hour. But after that, the rest of the day, I was in that weird space in-between the panic attack and daily life, where you have a buffer that you didn't want or ask for, and you might as well be walking around encased in styrofoam for all you can see or hear or feel or think.

Anyways. I guess that's not really relevant. The point being, I made it back home okay. And I still don't know what's going on. I don't even know where to start. I'm still here. I can still touch and smell and move things. It's just that nobody else can see that, and I don't know why.

What do you Google for this, "why am I invisible?" (Okay, you got me. I did try that. It's all metaphorical essays about social anxiety and bad poetry and fedora-wearing dudes whining about not getting laid. No dude, I mean I am actually invisible. Not just to the girl I wish would notice me, to everyone.) There's no WebMD symptom entry for "I'm not incorporeal, but I might as well be as far as everyone else is concerned.”

I tried calling my mom. That was before the fruitless googling. The phone went to voicemail right away. When I left a barely-not-sobbing message, the machine kept telling me there was an error. That robotic voice with the same inflection every time, repeating over and over again,

(mimics phone message voice) "I'm sorry, your message could not be delivered. Please hang up or press pound to try again." I got through three tries before I threw my phone at the couch and collapsed on top of it.

(Narrator sighs, calmer this time, completely wore out both by this experience and by retelling it)

What do you do after that? The internet has no answers and neither does my mom, apparently. That's a situation I'm completely unprepared for.

And - I don’t know. My first thought - well, fourth or sixth or tenth thought, after everything else - was that somebody needs to hear this story. I have to document this somehow. If I stay semi-scientific about it, maybe that will keep the panic at bay. Like that old anxiety drill - name the five things you can see and four things you can hear and three things you can smell, and so on. Keep myself grounded, so I have a better chance of survival, yeah?

And I'm not a writer, not by a long shot, so I picked up my phone (which was fine despite the temper tantrum, thankfully) and started recording and here we are. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this recording when it's done. Based on my experiences so far, I'm not even sure anyone else will be able to hear it. But the recording still seems to be going and there's that little heartbeat-style line going up and down and up and down, so at least my phone can hear me.

(Narrator laughs, kind of hysterical)

If only Siri could give me some answers. "Hey Siri, tell me why I'm literally fucking invisible, can you do that for me?"

(Siri ding in background, narrator laughs again, slightly more genuine this time, still giggling when she starts speaking again)

Oh my god, not really, Siri. Stop.

(Siri "off" ding)

Anyways. That leaves us. It's just you and me, potentially nonexistent listeners. I'll try and record another update soon to...let you know I'm still alive and holding it together, to whatever extent both of those things are true. Stay tuned, I guess.

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jacearthereal · 7 years ago

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Supernatural season 13 - HYPOTHESES/SPOILERS/STUFF

Can we talk about Supernatural? In fact, the titles of the episodes that have been released so far, because I have some things that I noticed and I need to tell...

Episode 1 is Lost and Found

Lost and Found is a common term. The title can be a reference to something or not and I’ll pretend they chose it because of the fact that we have many characters that are missing/dead right now and everyone is kind of lost.

But guys… I found a book called “Lost and Found”

It’s a children’s book and talks about a penguin and boy and the penguin appeared of nowhere in front of the boy’s house and he tries to help the penguin to find his home because he thought the penguin was lost.

But his home, in the end, was not where it was supposed to be.

The South Pole? Heaven?

The home was with the boy because the penguin wasn’t lost. The penguin was… Lonely.

I’m dead. I literally cried like a baby. Sorry. Here’s the link to the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNgh3Q58QoI

Let’s move on…

Observations:

The episode is going to return exactly from where it stopped and we’re going to see Dean, Sam, Castiel, Jack, and Lucifer.

Also, there’s a guy. Rob Raco as Clark - new character - I thought at first he was going to be the guy that Misha said (beautiful and great) and he was (is?) playing a gay character in Riverdale. I was so nfjrefnerkfjnrfj that day.

Carlena Britch as Miriam - I hope she’s not evil.

Episode 2 is The Rising Sun.

The first thing that came to my mind is The Animals. Supernatural loves rock songs so it can be a reference and The House of the Rising Sun is like an anthem.

AND

There is a myth. Nobody really knows what happened inside that house. Some people think it was a brothel and others think it was a gambling house. Who knows? Maybe it's a new monster?

Look:

There is a house in New Orleans

They call it The Rising Sun

And it's been the ruin of many other poor boys

And god, I know, I'm one.

I hope this episode doesn't try to kill me with feelings because I have a Destiel fanfic with The Animals as the soundtrack, but anyway...

Now that I think more about it. Maybe it’s a house where you see your future. Tarot cards, magic and stuff like that.

Observations:

Castiel? No.

Mary? Yes. So we will probably see the AU. And I'm guessing this dude here - Ryan S. Williams as Commander - will be there.

Mark Sweatman as Tattooist - I think he knows Missouri and will talk about it to the boys. Also... Tattoos? New tattoos? AAAAAA.... I need it.

Jack and Lucifer? Yes.

Episode 3 is Patience.

Another song but now it’s Guns N’ Roses. It’s funny because...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErvgV4P6Fzc

One, two, one, two, three, four Shed a tear 'cause I'm missing you I'm still alright to smile Girl, I think about you every day now Was a time when I wasn't sure But you set my mind at ease There is no doubt you're in my heart now Said, woman, take it slow And it'll work itself out fine All we need is just a little patience Said, sugar, make it slow And we'll come together fine All we need is just a little patience (Patience)

This episode is screaming Dean pining. (My assumption of the episode actually) They already said Dean will cry because of Castiel so I’m just waiting here. My body is ready.

Almost...

Oh, I need you (Just a little patience) Oh, I need you (Is all you need) Oh, this time

Shit. I hope I’m wrong.

I was wrong. HAHA.

Patience is the name of a person but the music is still beautiful so why not?

Observations:

Castiel? YES. - Not with Dean and Sam.

Missouri? Hell yes. And she has a son and a granddaughter who is Patience Turner. A psychic girl. Jody “adopted” her.

The tattooist is in this ep again so my hypothesis about he knowing Missouri is possible (?) I really need Sam and Dean with a new tattoo. Supernatural, please...

Missouri and the cards’ theory: https://twitter.com/Jacestiel/status/895452398428213250

Episode 4 is The Big empty.

I know what you’re thinking. My Chuck, Castiel is there. It’s not impossible. I’m just curious about why they chose “The Big” and not just “The Empty”.

I guess this episode will be about where angels go after they die because supernatural already talked about it and the actors also said something about a place that wasn’t explored before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7UOOAUXWvA Here at 2:00 ~ 2:29.

And who knows about a place like this?

“The next time you or your brother bite it, well, you’re not going to Heaven or Hell. One of us, and lord I hope it’s me, we’re gonna make a mistake and toss you out into the Empty. And nothing comes back from that.”

Billie. Season 11, Episode 1

Observations:

Misha Collins said something about a great actor and beautiful too so... I’m guessing Niall Matter is the one? I think he can be a good “Buddy” to Cas. His name is written as Buddy. You see what I did there?

So I guess Castiel is really in The Empty. *sighs*

Episode 5 is Advanced Thanatology.

But hey what is thanatology?

Thanatology is the scientific study of death. It investigates the mechanisms and forensic aspects of death, such as bodily changes that accompany death and the post-mortem period, as well as wider psychological and social aspects related to death. It is primarily an interdisciplinary study offered as a course of study at numerous colleges and universities.

I’m such a nerd.

So, for some reason I remembered this:

Dean dies when Dr Robert injects him with something that kills him, in order to give him time to talk to Death. He is revived 7 minutes later. (6x11)

I’ll just leave this here because of reasons. I also think it will talk about mourning and sadness. I don’t know if Sam and Dean will be already traveling through AUs. But maybe it’s the beginning of the traveling.... My intuition also says something about someone visiting a grave?

AND maybe they will do that thing IN THE END where Dean looks at some place and he’s like:

And he’s just looking at Cas and BANG CLIFFHANGER.

whatever... I’m already crying here.

I don’t know why the song “All by myself” started to play on my mind.

Observations:

Castiel? Not yet guys. Not yet.

Episode 6 is Tombstone

Well... I’m just...

No words can describe my feelings. If they just talk about death, all this season will be so gothic that my years of Linkin Park and Evanescence will just come back.

Observations:

Team Free Will has been reunited once again since All Along the Watchtower.

oh... MY CHUCK. CASTIEL IS NOW DEFINITELY BACK SO PROBABLY HUGS.

I want hugs. Many hugs and kisses and people crying. Especially ME.

This is the first episode where Castiel physically interacts with Jack.

FATHER AND SON REUNITED. OK. I’ll STOP.

THIS EP IS GOING TO BE GOOD. Davy Perez, please... jUST PLEASE.

Episode 7 is War of the Worlds

HAHAHAHAHA I HOPE THEY DO IT.

Dean: You wrote your own ending, with spaceships. Marie: And robots, and some ninjas, and then Dean becomes a woman... It's just for a few scenes.

10x05 - Fan Fiction

Despite the second act with robots and tentacles, the show has everything: life, death, resurrection, redemption, but above all family, all set to music you can really tap your toe to.

Aliens

Tentacles

“Robots”

Supernatural is really trying to fill all the blanks before the ending.

This is the fourth episode of the series that Richard Speight Jr. has directed with Just My Imagination, Stuck in the Middle (With You) and Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes being the first three.

I’m good. I’m good. I’m-

Episode 8 is The Scorpion and the Frog

What is very interesting about this episode is the fable around the title.

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The Frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the Frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so.

I guess this episode is going to be about Jack or Lucifer and their evil (?) nature. You born evil or someone is just evil after growing up around the evil? What’s correct? You can be good if you want or your nature speaks louder?

"It is certain that no animal in the creation seems endued with such an irascible nature...I have seen them attempt to sting a stick when put near them; and attack a mouse or a frog, when those animals were far from offering any injury.”

It’s about trusting the enemy? About monsters again and if they can be good or bad?

Episode 9 is The Bad Place

Just google it. It talks about psychic kids and powers but also about incest and hermaphroditism. HOLY SHIT.

The title of the episode is a reference to the 1990 horror/suspense/mystery novel of the same name written by Dean Koontz.

Well... here.

Frank Pollard wakes up in an alley at night, filled with confusion and fear. He knows nothing but his name, and that he must escape fast, or else he will be killed. Pursued by a mysterious assailant, Frank barely escapes with his life.

Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up to find evidence of bizarre nighttime travels which he cannot remember. Afraid of his own actions, Frank enlists the help of husband-wife security team, Bobby and Julie Dakota. At first, the case merely seems absurd, but as they track deeper into the life and past of the mysterious Frank Pollard, the Dakotas uncover an increasingly bizarre and dangerous world threatened by a madman who thirsts for blood.

It is ultimately revealed that Frank Pollard is the brother to the mysterious madman as well as twin sisters. They were born from a mother who was the product of an incestuous relationship. Her father was a hallucinogenic drug-abuser and her mother was his sister. She is a hermaphrodite and impregnated herself with her own seed. ?????? As a result of this compounded inbreeding, Frank and his siblings developed unusual psychic abilities. Frank, wanting a normal life, tries to escape from his family while being pursued by his brother who seeks to either bring him back or kill him, and nothing will stand in his way. After a message from Julie's younger brother, who has Down Syndrome and possesses minor psychic ability himself, Bobby, Julie, Frank and his family begin speeding into a final confrontation.

I’m afraid of this episode. No more comments.

All you need to know about Episode 10 - Wayward Sisters is that Patience is back and also Claire, Alex, Donna, and Jody.

Episode 11 is The Midnight train

The title of the episode could be a reference to some of the lyrics of Journey's 1981 hit, Don't Stop Believin'.

Just a small town girl

Livin' in a lonely world

She took the midnight train going anywhere

Just a city boy

Born and raised in South Detroit

He took the midnight train going anywhere

A singer in a smoky room

The smell of wine and cheap perfume

For a smile they can share the night

It goes on and on and on and on

(Chorus)

Strangers waiting

Up and down the boulevard

Their shadows searching in the night

Streetlights people

Living just to find emotion

Hiding somewhere in the night

Working hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Payin' anything to roll the dice

Just one more time

So it’s going to be about vampires... Interesting. I thought it will be about ghosts or even ghost trains haha.

Episode 12 is Various & Sundry Villains

There’s not so much out there about this episode but I think we are going to see villains that we have already seen. Redundant.

More redundant than the “I love you. I love all of you”

Episode 16 is Scoobynatural

Team Free Will? Yes.

I hope what people said about Dean trying to make out with Daphne is not correct but if it is I hope Fred wins. Because Fred and Daphne are the ultimate ship.

Dean, please just don’t haha.

#supernatural season 13 #spn #destiel #episodes #spoilers 13 spn #dean #sam #cas #castiel #winchester #deancas #love #theory spn

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nevinitambay-blog · 8 years ago

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Close Reading *The Silenced* (2015), or: What doesn’t kill you might still kill you later.

Hey, everyone! I hope you all had a good week investigating the virtues of suspenseful storytelling, or, at least, a good week of writing some tasty red herrings! This week, I’m in the mood for doing a close reading of a dystopia, so I searched Netflix and came up with the film The Silenced. From the beginning credits, I think this is a Korean film, but I’m not sure, and I don’t want to go spoiling the movie for myself by looking it up. Be that as it is, if I make any cultural misinterpretations, feel free to correct me in the comments. Also, keep in mind that, as writers, we are responsible artisans who can create stories while being cognizant of their potential interpretations from various audiences. More plainly: we can write stories that anticipate varying interpretations from different audiences. (I’d actually like to see a text that is addressed equally to two or more different cultures with the expectation of two different interpretations. That’d be some potentially prize-winning writing, in my opinion.) Let’s begin!

Alright, I’ve gotten about ten minutes into the film and it is apparent that I’m missing a lot of meaningful signals, so I’m just going to embrace it and do an American reading of the film. Again, if I make a mistake or miss something important, please let me know.

Right out of the gate, we are getting some classic horror and dystopia signals in the film. The first signal is the distance from civilization: the car is traveling through a heavily wooded area to a gated building that is completely surrounded by nature (as opposed to other houses or a city). This signal is important in horror, because it usually indicates that outside help will not be an option for our protagonist. This also hints that our protagonist will need to escape something over the course of the film. The gated entrance reinforces the isolation signals with the implication that escaping will be difficult (i.e. actively impeded/prevented). Finally, on the horror side, we see that the building is a “sanitorium” which evokes both a hospital and an insane asylum. Hospitals are scary, because they are places of death, and places where a certain group (doctors and nurses) holds power over most others (patients). Asylums are scary, because being diagnosed as crazy often renders a person subhuman in regular society, people have been falsely imprisoned in asylums throughout history, and it is a magnified hospital problem where the patients have fewer means of fighting back against mistreatment.

The dehumanization associated with actual or alleged mental illness is also a prevalent signal in dystopian fiction, but it isn’t usually used on the protagonist so early. In a dystopia, mental illness is usually used to discredit people who notice that their society is a dystopia or people who drop from government service with knowledge of the same. However, in this film, it is used on the apparent main character, thus obfuscating whether or not she is a reliable narrator (since this movie is in close third person point of view) in the first place. Instead of the narrator being discredited in the story (which is common in dystopia narratives), she is discredited outside of it (which is common in horror narratives).

We get a more solidly dystopic signal when one girl tells another that she doesn’t like that there will be a new owner for the vacant bed at the end of the row. This implies that there was a previous owner of the bed who is now being replaced. This sort of exchangeability between people is common in dystopias where bodies are more important than individuals and worth no more than a payment from a wealthy family or the government. This reduction of the value of a person to dollar signs, productive output, etc. dehumanizes the person, which is a very dystopic thing to do.

While on the topic of dehumanization, there are a few more things that happen to the protagonist that fall squarely under “dystopian”:

1. All of her belongings are taken away due to “regulation”. (In a society that allowed for personal belongings, having them taken away is dehumanizing. This is a classic transition-to-dystopia move.)

2. She is struck on the face and ordered to behave. (She is being punished for not complying with a rule that makes little sense due to the first point.)

3. She is made to wear a uniform and her hair a certain way. (This erases the individual wearing the uniform.)

4. She is expected to write in a journal and hand it in each day (presumably to be read by the headmistress or the nurses). (Bad governments tend to surveil their citizens to ensure compliance.)

5. She is expected to contribute to an embroidery project that will be sent to Japan in exchange for increased chances of traveling to Tokyo (for an undisclosed reason). (The incentivization of pleasing overlords is used here to control the interaction between the rulers and the ruled; people don’t think about rebelling when they are directly focused on working towards a specific reward.)

6. She was assigned a new name.

As the movie continues along to the disturbing scene with the bloody apparition, I’m beginning to think that this film isn’t really a dystopian fiction. The notes are still there, but they seem to be more about the relation between the school in Korea and Japan than the relation between the girls and the school. Since the dystopic elements aren’t directly driving the story at this point, I’m going to treat the remainder of the film as a horror narrative.

Just as I say that, Shizuko shows some superhuman strength and abilities, and is taken to a secluded room by the doctor where she is strapped to a chair. Going back to dystopia, then, we have the arrival of a person in a military uniform, which indicates that this is some sort of military experiment. Soon after Kazue remembers what happened to the previous Shizuko, it is revealed that the military person was at the school because the doctor was not following her instructions about administering an experimental drug.

Now that we know for sure that this film is a dystopian horror story, it is time to take what we know in order to figure out what criticism or warning it is trying to convey. First, we have a school of sick girls who are taken under the pretext of being cared for until they are well again. Second, the sick girls are being experimented on with a drug intended to turn them into super-soldiers. Third, the experiment is being carried out for the Japanese military in the 1930s (so it might have something to do with World War II). Fourth, the head doctor was replaced by her lieutenant at the first sign of her resistance to the military man’s brutality towards the girls. Concentrating all this down to the simplest parts we have:

· the devaluation of the sick to the point of using them in human experiments without their knowledge and against their will

· the devaluation of the young ‘’

· the devaluation of girls ‘’

· the devaluation of Koreans ‘’

· the ruthlessness of imperialism

· the ruthlessness of the military

· the betrayal of allies

Without knowing much more, this story seems to be a warning about the continued military relationship between South Korea and the United States. Unfortunately, without more cultural context, I can’t really tell how accurate this guess is. Due to the treatment of sick young Korean girls, it seems the film is criticizing racist treatment of Koreans by the American military. Due to the doctor sacrificing young girls for her career, and the doctor being replaced by her assistant, it seems the film is criticizing the self-serving betrayal of vulnerable groups of Koreans by not-as-vulnerable groups. I’ll have to ask around /r/South_Korea to see what they think.

I’d like to take a moment to point out how this is a great example of a dystopia, as opposed to the shadow governments popular in American youth fiction at the moment. The government isn’t bothering with a sorting ceremony that tells you what your career is going to be; it is ruthlessly and aggressively trying to create super-soldiers. There is no individual choice or freedom. There is no privacy. There are no forced professions. There are no patrols. This series of events was not the result of misguided choices for the greater good, or a situation with good intentions that just got out of hand, or an attempt to preserve humanity as a species. This was the ruthless pursuit of military power. Remember that dystopia fiction is always a commentary on some existing practice, policy, or culture that is detrimental or wrong, not some wishy-washy thing that results from trying to do good things, but sucking at it.

Now that that is out of my system, one thing that I found particularly interesting about this film in terms of storytelling is that it is set in the past, not the future (like most other dystopian fiction). It makes sense for dystopias to be a near future problem, but to have already been a problem is fascinating in that it recognizes that the fate depicted in the film was a distinct possibility, thereby showing that the behaviors being warned about are reoccurring. It indicates something that American fiction tends to lack: that people from the past also made dystopia-causing mistakes. It is interesting to think of history in terms of narrow misses instead of successful avoidance.

This movie really was good, but I could have lived without the jump scares. Now I’m dead. It’s true! This whole article was written by me, a spoooooooky ghost! Happy writing!

What did you think of this week’s movie? Did you find a new technique for storytelling in it? Do you have questions for me? Is there a movie you would like me to write about? Let me know in the comments, tweet me (https://twitter.com/NeviniTambay), message me through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/nevini.tambay), message me through Google+ (https://plus.google.com/u/1/104262718026029613816), or shoot me an email ([email protected])! I look forward to hearing from you! I post new articles on Wednesdays. Please remember to upvote, like, subscribe, and/or follow me on other social media if you find these articles useful and want to see more!

#The Silenced #writing tips #writing advice #reading advice #close reading

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