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xofaddiction · 4 years ago

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𝖜𝖍𝖔𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖘 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖑𝖆𝖜 𝖆𝖌𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖘𝖙 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖋𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜 𝖒𝖆𝖓 𝖎𝖘 𝖊𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆 𝖋𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖔𝖗 𝖆 𝖈𝖔𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖉. 𝖜𝖍𝖔𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖙𝖆𝖐𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝖍𝖎𝖒𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖑𝖆𝖜 𝖎𝖘 𝖇𝖔𝖙𝖍. 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖆 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖉 𝖒𝖆𝖓 𝖘𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖘𝖆𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖆𝖘𝖘𝖆𝖎𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖙: "𝖎𝖋 𝖎 𝖑𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝖎 𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖐𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖞𝖔𝖚, 𝖎𝖋 𝖎 𝖉𝖎𝖊 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖌𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖓." 𝖘𝖚𝖈𝖍 𝖎𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖗𝖚𝖑𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝖍𝖔𝖓𝖔𝖗.

full name: cyrus rousseau nicknames: cy, lieutenant, ruoss, etc. age: 36 date of birth: jun. 11 zodiac: gemini gender: male pronouns: he/him sexuality: bisexual

physical

hair color: dark brown eye color: hazel height: 6′1″ weight: 180 lbs

personality

morality: lawful evil positive traits: charming, inquisitive, intelligent, attentive, strong-willed negative traits: restless, easily bored, moody, fickle, short-tempered, job: manager of rousseau’s skills: adaptable, strong, combat trained, artillery trained.

family

parents: valentina and louis rousseau. siblings: blake and audrey rousseau. niece: aria rousseau.

backstory and details - ＴＲＩＧＧＥＲＷＡＲＮＩＮＧ : war, murder, violence

✴ ✴ ✴ ✴ ✴ ✴ ✴ ✴ ✴

first born to louis rousseau and his young, model wife valentina, cyrus was another strapping heir to a line indebted to the o’sheas, albeit far behind others. a strong boy with a sturdy will and an even stronger mind, cyrus was a beloved child, doted on by his mother for his looks and encouraged by his father to be the best he could be in every aspect of his life as the second man in the rousseau family.

an o’shea general, their father wasn’t shy about bringing his children along when it was time to set the wrong things right. cyrus could recall on many occasions where his father returned to their car, knuckles bloody, stoic and firm with a word of advice and warning on what to look for in weaker men as he grew older.

always taught that nothing could hurt him unless he gave it license to, cyrus was rambunctious and foolhardy, always flooded with a charm and wit. paired with his keen instinct for sparring and ways of outsmarting those his senior, he had a knack for mischief from the start.

fear is a fickle thing in the eyes of a walsh general’s son; ever changing, always political and fluctuating in immediacy and relevancy. still, there was one fear that remained constant; losing those he loved.

more often than not it was a distant, almost irrelevant fear; one that had no place among conscious thought. at least until he gained two younger siblings, well into his life. after they came, he felt a need to step up and be there for them in a different way than parents ever could. he wanted to be the trusted confidant, the one they came to for help before they went to their parents; the reliable brother that loved them fiercely and with everything he had in him. cyrus cared for them beyond all others; no one matters to him half as much as they do.

moving through years in elementary and middle school, cyrus was popular, charming, well known and well liked, but could tip attitude at the drop of the hat. the moment he was provoked, his wrath came out and found the object of his rage. that indignation, the anger within him, and the willingness to hit first and worry later landed him in and out of detention and even one instance of juvenile arrest.

his mother, more often than not, let the discipline thereafter be dealt with by his father. she loved him, he knew, she just wasn’t the most tolerant woman of the inner workings of a child’s mind, especially one as privileged as her son was.

it seemed worthwhile to louis to enroll young cyrus into boxing classes; he needed discipline and anger management, maybe even to get his ass knocked to the ground every now and again to keep him humble. not only did his fortunes improve, but so did his ability to work past his issues with rage.

a stand out feature of his youth was taking note of his mother’s descent from being a mother with him, to a friend with his brother, and all but an acquaintance with his younger sister. he hated how passive she became, how lacking she was in her attitudes toward her children.

once in training, his studies soared, both academically and in boxing. high school couldn’t have been easier. he was popular as ever, a shining example of what one should be; respectful, protective, intelligent, and above all; engaging. everyone seemed to want him as a friend or a fuck, and cyrus saw nothing wrong with it.

on occasion, there were times he’d take it too far in the boxing ring, move too fiercely and endanger others training around him. cyrus found it far too easy to fight dirty. He liked the snap of bone beneath his knuckles, or the squelch of sweat as a body hit the octagon beneath him. chastised for his behavior and willingness to act out of line, cyrus knew the behavior had to cease. collecting outlets for his anger, he took the advice of his coach and started to write.

he wasn’t good at it, or particularly knowledgeable in the rules of prose, but writing was his therapy. it was the only sympathy he afforded himself to have, and soon the bookshelves in his bedrooms were heavily lined with journals filled cover to cover with simple-minded musings, thoughts, and reports of the days where he could barely tell sunrise from bedtime.

after high school graduation, cyrus decided he’d go the way of the navy. he wanted to make his parents and siblings proud; a noble son that learned the noble art of war. leaving them all behind would hurt, but it would be worth it in the long run. who better to protect his family than a man with all the skills of a trained, combat killing machine?

cyrus signed up when he was 18 and shipped off to basic not long after. nothing shaped his fears for the future quite like the fall of the world trade center in 2001. watching live from a tv in the cafeteria in his senior year of high school; he could recall the tension in the air; everyone in that room knew the wars they spent so much time learning about were now outside their very windows.

he was too tired, he had lived through and seen so much, and despite it all he looked forward to seeing his sister. when he was on his first tour overseas, he took a spare moment to reflect on his family and how much he really missed them. finally, he had time to call home and was soon after met with the news that their mother left. he hadn’t felt a true rage like that in all the months he’d been at war; his efforts were usually better spent.

after the start of the iraq war, cyrus was sent into active combat and shipped overseas to afghanistan. he was a part of two tours, the latter of which was cut short by the detonation of an ied. his left leg was shattered and though they were able to salvage the limb, it wasn’t without extensive surgery and the implantation of a steel rod. cyrus received a purple heart for his action in the service and was honorably discharged and left to return home as a decorated veteran.

by the time he returned to chicago, he had seen too much on his tours, fought and killed and his rage was tripled tenfold. the brothers and sisters he cherished in the service had been lost, killed, or moved on. cyrus felt as if part of him was left out there, far from where he was in chicago.

when he had gone off to war, he worried for his siblings. upon his return, they worried for him; many years his juniors, they couldn’t have been more than twelve and ten respectively. the first fourth of july home was a noted one in the rousseau family. at the first thundering echo of a firework detonating in the sky, cyrus ran and tackled his siblings to the ground and covered their heads. It was a snap instinct, one that came with the echo of bombs overhead.

soon after, he was encouraged to see a therapist through the local va. diagnosed with ptsd as many veterans are, the therapist had an almost sickeningly positive outlook on cyrus’s prognosis. it seemed he was one of the few she believed in to pull himself out of the binds of a mental illness.

after a few sessions, his therapist encouraged him to get a service animal. after signing up and getting his certifications for a service animal taken care of, he adopted a rottweiler puppy. he named him LOOMIS.

however, there is no one can fake a fantasy like the son of a model. outwardly, cyrus was still charming, still personable, and most of all: still lethal. writing did precious little to staunch his emotions, but fighting did. though his training was limited compared to what it had been when he was a kid, he rejoined the local boxing gym and threw himself into the ring. the adrenaline pumping through his veins, the echoes that stirred his memories of war, the numbing catharsis that came after the bell rang all felt like coming home. it seemed the more violent the outburst, the more he felt at home.

there was nothing out of the realm of possibility for cyrus and his tastes; sleeping around, drinking, partying, fighting, living the reckless life of a daredevil whenever given the chance. joining the o’sheas after his father was a move that made sense. every risky behavior was lidocaine on a burn, a cool soothing menthol that eased the scald of emotions he’d rather not feel. binge after binge, everything started to blur together- no obligation, no feeling, nothing but the bed of a woman who would have him.

when he carried out what was asked of him as an initiation, he did so quickly, cleanly, and concisely. after all he’d seen on the plane of war, the carnage came as second nature. it made sense to do it for the sake of the family he claimed.

like all fears, his soon became realized. their father disappeared. though cyrus searched, he quickly lost hope they would ever find their father alive. he had seen enough in the service to know that if someone was gone for long enough, the’d never come back. with this effectuation of his father’s fate in mind, it became all too apparent to cyrus that everything changed.

cyrus couldn’t afford to be a mess in front of his siblings or in front of the walsh’s. he was the theoretical head of the rousseau’s. he would be their protector, and do everything in his power to ensure their safety and happiness. it felt as though everything fell to him; he could not be anything less than the man his father.

#crimson.intro #war tw #murder tw #violence tw #welcome to cyrus #this boy is a shit heap #but love him pls

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larriefails · 6 years ago

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First off, I’m not a rad nor a larrie, I’m a louie who hates both. I was just commenting on that because I’ve been in the fandom since 2013 and the de facto leader comment not only came from the boys but also during a billboard interview. In the billboard interview, they highlighted how Louis was the one taking the business calls and talking to their team about certain things. Also it’s not completely impossible to believe that once the 1d train ran out the big producers/names didn’t care to +

Work with him, because he was no “harry styles” liam is the same he even said that Simon didn’t want him on his label as a solo artist despite him having a great rapport with him. But there were other times louis’ business contacts were brought to light such as when he went to the Brits in 2016 and a reporter commented on how he was constantly on his feet to greet big name record executives and businessmen. He has the connects in the business that’s all I was trying to state.

Look, 99% of the time when I reply to an anon “you sound like a conspiracy theorist” it’s not because I think they believe in Larrie or because they’re rads, it’s because they fucking reason like conspiracy theorists

And your reasoning here is just… conspiracy theory mess. I don’t care which parts of it you believe or not, I don’t care what your personal feelings on these specific sets of conspiracy theories are. It doesn’t matter, the point is that you’re reasoning like a conspiracy theorist

I was gonna put this in a separate post, but I think it fits here very well (I might still make a separate post about it who knows)

A few days ago, I saw this video on twitter of a woman talking about her own death like it was nothing in a very matter of factly way, wearing a wig and using a very funny tone. Someone in the replies linked to her IG page so I went to look at it, and when I saw comments telling her “thank you for accepting my follow request” I realized she was usually on private and I’d just been very lucky to find her profile to be open, so I followed her just in case with the intention of watching her funny videos later

Since she was a new follow she continuously appeared on my recent IG feed and I soon realized how relevant what she was saying was to my interests

This is the woman

One day she posted this, and my alarms went off

Let me clarify that I don’t care if she’s a professor or a therapist or not, I followed her because I thought she was funny and that she’d go on private soon, this was all a complete surprise to me. The DM rang close to home to me, seeing as I’ve read Larries for a while now, it was all too familiar, her reply was too

Then she posted this

Once again, I said it before and you can read it here X it doesn’t matter if she’s a professor or not, if their suspicions are real or not, if she’s lying or not, because going through UCLA’s professor roll call is a step too far, and confronting her about it, even more so. And the way she presents it.. she’s right. She just linked the website, she never claimed to work there. If you go to her page, she’s very careful with the information she provides, so the people that want to prove she’s lying have very limited resources. They go with the preconception that she’s lying so they try to find ways to prove their preconception

You have the preconception that Louis was the de facto leader of 1D, so you’re working your way backwards to prove it. You’re looking at bits and pieces of interviews that will prove your theory right, but that’s just not what reality is

“The de facto leader comment not only came from the boys” .. no it didn’t, though? They didn’t say this. Do you know where the “the boys say Louis is the leader” comments come from? Stuff like this

Context for that interview? The Hot Desk, August 2011 X

One Direction had exactly ZERO songs out, this interview was recorded before they even released WMYB. All 5 of them had written on 3 songs of their first album that would come out in November. Savan Kotecha was still running the show. Louis was still 19 and he hadn’t been in show business for a year. How much of a leader that conducted business meetings do you think he was? I’m not gonna watch the entire interview to see the context, but this is not Zayn saying Louis was the de facto leader, this is Zayn kidding

What to even say about this, which is from the video diaries in X Factor?

Or this?

What? No, no they’re not, like, they’re just not, they’re standing in a circle and looking forward

This is just ridiculous

Does the person that created this gif set not realize that this is the performance where Louis doesn’t sing at all? It’s Torn at judges’ houses. It’s infamous for the fact that only Liam Harry and Zayn sang. This is all for dramatic effect because X Factor was a reality show

Louis liking motivation chants means he’s the leader? That he goes to business meetings? I’m so confused

That’s not because “he’s the leader” that’s because he’s the class clown

If accepting an award means he’s the leader then I guess this meme fits 1D very well

They all accepted awards, Christ

Anyway….

And that’s an entire gif set that was solely engineered to show that Louis was the leader and that “the boys said so”…. but they actually didn’t? The only two times it comes up they answer jokingly and it’s before Louis could do anything remotely leader like. But that gif set is so popular, created by a Larrie but that spilled out to the general fandom enough that I saw it on my dash reblogged by non CT blogs X

And it created this notion among some people, especially those who have Louis as their fave, that the other members of 1D had in fact said that Louis was the de facto leader, when they didn’t. It’s conspiracy talk, scouring through hundreds of MILLIONS of milliseconds of footage to pick 9 of them and put them in a gif set to prove a point they’d already decided on

There are also three news articles linked (copying and pasting directly from the source, sorry for the weird formatting idk how to take it off)

1: That’s the number of hotel rooms in Mexico City used for dance rehearsals. The guys locked down a room for three hours. Louis took control of the rehearsals and even helped conceptualize some of the routine.

That’sabout 1D learning the choreography for Best Song Ever

How exactly does it prove that Louis is the de facto leader for him to take over 1 dance rehearsal when everyone in 1D had confessed they couldn’t dance a million times at that point? Louis had some musical theater experience, so that’s that..

Harry: Louis is still loud and mischievous - he likes to test the boundaries. He’s quite outspoken. You need someone like that, because he’s great at standing up for us as a band.

That’s perhaps the most “leader like” comment any of them have ever made about Louis, and it’s not really about him being a leader once you put it by itself instead of surrounding it by “look at all the times they said he was the leader,” right? It’s just more of a testament about the fact that Louis was louder than the rest, which we already knew. If someone had asked me six months into my journey in the fandom who I thought was the loudest in band meetings I would’ve said Louis. That doesn’t mean he’s the leader. A leader has SO many more characteristics than being loud and outspoken. In fact, a lot of leaders aren’t loud or outspoken at all

The last link they put is once again, what How I Met Your Mother explained as the cheerleader effect X which taken away from the time period sounds quite misogynistic but let’s not dwell on that. Basically, it’s when a group of women appear hot when they’re all together but not individually. When you have the gif set all together, it looks like “wow, these are hot arguments as to why EVERYONE thought Louis was the leader,” but look at them individually, see their context and they’re not as hot now, are they? Especially when you realize, once again, that these are very very small morsels of time taken from very very large portions. That’s how Larries operate

Several people in your management and inner circle have described you to me as the unofficial businessman or leader of the group. Is that a fair assessment? I’ve sometimes felt like that, but to be honest most of the time I’m the immature one who needs to be told to get focused. I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I have to be kind of be on board with every minor detail and [I’m] quite opinionated.

And that last link is also the Billboard interview you mention in your ask. Do you know when it’s from? December 2012. One Direction had just released Take Me Home, their second album, which according to the interview that Larries love the most to base their sabotage conspiracies, didn’t very much involve 1D’s input at all

Savan Kotecha: I think by album 3 (Midnight Memories), yeah, not all of them, there was definitely one or two-one especially-that was like, kind of bitter about the fact, that, you know

Ross Golan: They were a boyband?

Savan Kotcha: And he was not the talented one. He wasn’t the singer, and he wasn’t the star. And you know which one I’m talking about…

Ross Golan: Of course.

Savan Kotecha: And he then started having something against me and against that process, I think. And, you know, maybe we could have been more inviting in the creative process during album 2 (Take Me Home) and not been so…authoritative.

At that point, Louis STILL wasn’t in a position where he could really be the leader. None of them were because the creative process wasn’t inviting still. It wouldn’t be until the third album

The conclusion here isn’t that Louis isn’t outspoken, or that he didn’t care about business or that he didn’t defend the band, or that he didn’t want to write more, or that he didn’t want to make connections. No one here is arguing that he didn’t care at all or not giving him credit for anything. The point I‘ve been making for days now and that people don’t seem to get (one way or another, because I’ve gotten very unpleasant messages about how he’s not equipped to be a businessman and shit like that that I’ve just decided not to publish at all), is that things don’t have to be black and white

I don’t think ANYONE was the leader of 1D. I think that Louis’ personality made him stand out more in certain aspects (such as meetings with their team), and because people need to label everything all the time, instead of describing it as it was, it took the position of “de facto leader”

The problem here isn’t even that people believe he’s the de facto leader, that wouldn’t concern me at all in and of itself because who cares? It’s not hurting anyone… The problem is that it puts an excessive amount of weight on Louis’ shoulders, I also explained this. It’s this dichotomy of a person who basically carried the whole band during its five years but that also is completely defenseless and at the mercy of binding contracts to even choose the socks he wears

These sort of preconceptions aren’t harmful by themselves, they wouldn’t be harmful in a normal band. I wouldn’t have a problem with this preconception if Louis was Calum Hood and this was 5SOS, my problem is that this is One Direction and preconceptions and conspiracies have tormented these guys for YEARS. No conspiracy and no preconception is innocent, they all have to be dismantled, we have to examine EVERYTHING that leads to absolutes if we want a chance at healing the fandom, and I don’t mean the 1D fandom because that’s gone now, it’s never gonna heal, I mean Louis’ specifically

If we want a chance at him being left alone from Larries these things have to go. Stop seeing him as this commodity that you can just paint over and start seeing him as a person, not a caricature

That interview also doesn’t say anything about him taking any calls business or otherwise. I don’t think anyone has ever said it and I have no idea where it came from because I’ve found zero sources. The interview doesn’t mention him “talking about certain things“ either, it’s just what I pasted here. That’s all of it. Everything else comes from years and years of stretching this one question out of this one interview done when Louis was still 20 and 1D had less than 2 years in the music industry. It’s no exactly the smoking gun y’all think it is, guys. Same with the Savan Kotecha podcast

Then the rest of what you say is just noise, man. IDK what to tell you. It’s just noise. If Louis had ran the show BTS for five years, then he’d have access to the best producers and writers on speed dial, why would he not being Harry Styles hinder how he’s perceived by the people that work backstage? They’d recognize the person that was “the backbone of 1D” for who he is because those things spread in the business. If LOUIS said that wasn’t happening, then it’s because your preconception was wrong and you took a bunch of things out of context to create a “narrative” that simply wasn’t real. Louis was dedicated to the band and wanted to write for it and involve himself in the creative side and he GENUINELY WAS IMPORTANT for the band, but he wasn’t its backbone or its de facto leader

Simon didn’t wantt Liam on his label probably because he couldn’t afford him, btw. He decided to stick with Louis because they’ve been thick as thieves since 2014 and those contracts cost money and Syco is a very small label with very limited resources, so they couldn’t offer anything to more than one member. I’m aware that I’m making assumptions here, but they very much align with reality, especially now that Syco lost so many other acts and now that Fifth Harmony disbanded and Syco landed only Lauren (Camila being like Zayn) and having to leave Ally, Dinah, and Normani go to other labels. That doesn’t mean they saw no value in them (in fact, I think Lauren is the one faring the worst), it’s just that they can only afford so much

And how much can you grin on one report written by the HUFFINGTON POST in 2016?X I’m talking about the “Louis hugged industry people that one time” comment you made. Once again, I’m not saying he doesn’t know anyone. I’m saying I BELIEVE WHAT HE SAYS. If he says he can’t easily get the producers and writers he wants, then I’m going to believe him. And that one report doesn’t really change anything for me. It’s, once again, very conspiracy theorist behavior to put more weight on an isolated report from an untrustworthy source three years ago than on Louis’ own words. If he really had enough reach to be friendly with everyone in the industry, then he’d be able to get any producer he wants

You can’t have this dichotomy that you present in this very ask of “they’re not picking up the phone because he’s Harry Styles” but he was the de facto leader of the biggest band on the planet for five years and everyone in the music industry knows him. It just doesn’t mesh together. You’re placing him in the same impossible position Larries are placing him and that’s harmful. He needs fans that see him as a person and you, I’m sorry to tell you, do not. You see him as a caricaturesque figure that can both be incredibly important and incredibly subjugated

“He has the connects in the business is all I was trying o state” 1. no that’s not all you were trying to state. 2. According to himself, he doesn’t have all the connects. He’s clearly close enough to be friendly with Rob Stringer, but that doesn’t mean that Rob Stringer will lift a finger for him and according to Louis, he’s not.. But that doesn’t mean that Louis can’t get ANYONE or that he’s being sabotaged. As always, truth lies somewhere in the middle. The only reason it’s harder to spot in this case is that people stretch it on every possible side so much

I know this is long as fuck and I probably lost any person that was willing to read my drivel in the first place, but I just really think it’s important that you start taking what LOUIS SAYS ABOUT LOUIS as fact, instead of twisting it around to present alternative facts that would present a reality that will please you more. It starts at “Louis was the de facto leader�� and it ends as “he’s been faking fatherhood for three years and lied about his mother’s last few days” Sick..

#debunked #leader Louis

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dorcasrempel · 5 years ago

Text

3Q: Collaborating with users to develop accessible designs

Academic researchers and others have long struggled with making data visualizations accessible to people who are blind. One technological approach has been 3D printing tactile representations of data, in the form of raised bar graphs and line charts. But, often, the intended users have little say in the actual design process, and the end result isn’t as effective as planned.

A team of MIT researchers hopes to fix that. They used a collaborative project with staff and students at the Perkins School for the Blind as a case study of the accessible design process, and generated a list of “sociotechnical” considerations to guide researchers in similar work. A paper detailing the work appears in the journal IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. Co-authors Alan Lundgard, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Crystal Lee, a graduate student in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society; and EECS and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory professor Arvind Satyanarayan spoke with MIT News about the case study and their findings.

Q: How did you land on this idea to record “sociotechnical considerations,” and what are some notable examples?

Lundgard: Crystal and I met during an intersession workshop in participatory design, where researchers collaboratively designed products with and for particular communities. We worked with the Perkins School to co-design a 3D-printed visualization of a time-series chart for people who are blind. Coming from MIT, there was this idea that we’d come up with a high-tech, flashy solution — but, it turns out, that wasn’t really the best approach. In that regard, I think a first-order sociotechnical consideration is, what degree of technological intervention is necessary, if any? Could the intervention take a more social approach without the need for a fancy technological design? Would a low-tech solution meet the needs of the community better than a high-tech solution?

Another big consideration is planning and communicating the extent of the collaboration, which is especially important when collaborating with marginalized communities. That means researchers clearly communicating their intentions and goals. As researchers, are we aiming to produce academic research, or a design solution that is immediately adoptable within the community? What is the duration of the project and what are the available resources? Failing to communicate clearly can leave community collaborators out of the loop in ways that are actively harmful.

Lee: We realized there were tons of intermediate steps before you start to even design a product. What does collaboration actually mean and what does participatory design look like? We got frustrated at certain junctures thinking about what product to make. While we talked to teachers, occupational therapists, and the Perkins School staff, we’d come up with a prototype and realize it was an idea that didn’t actually meet the needs of the community. Thinking through these tensions helped us come up with a list of sociotechnical considerations for other researchers and collaborators who may feel these same frustrations when working on co-design projects.

One notable consideration from our case study: As researchers, don’t assume that your resources are the same as the community’s resources. For example, don’t make something for a small school if it requires a $300,000 3D printer that only MIT can afford. In our 3D-printed visualization, we at first tried to use a cheap and accessible 3D printer that’s often available in libraries. But, this affordability imposed other constraints. For example, using the inexpensive printer, it was hard to actually make something legible in braille, because the resolution is too low to be useful. It can’t capture the detail you need to accurately represent the data. So, using the affordable printer, our graph failed to meet certain accessibility guidelines. On the other hand, MIT’s high-resolution, industrial-grade printer isn’t affordable or available to the Perkins School — or most schools, for that matter — which is hugely constraining if the design is supposed to satisfy the students’ daily needs.

Satyanarayan: It’s also very important to compensate participants fairly, especially with marginalized communities. In participatory design, we don’t treat folks we work with as target users. Rather, they are collaborators throughout the process, and with specific skills. For instance, people who are blind have far more experience reading braille. We consider that a highly specialized skill that should be compensated accordingly. A key tenet of participatory design is recognizing that people in the community have lived experience that is valuable and necessary for a design to be successful.

Q: In your paper, you say you hope to avoid pitfalls of “parachute research.” What is that and why is it important to address?

Lundgard: “Parachute research” is where researchers — particularly from wealthy universities — drop into a community; take advantage of local infrastructure, expertise, and resources; write an academic paper; and then take off. That is, after publishing a research paper, they completely disengage from the community. That’s harmful to community members who engage in the collaboration in good faith and help to facilitate the research, sometimes without reciprocal benefits.

Lee: In accessible design, you often make a prototype based on some abstract knowledge of what a given community may want. Then, the people in that community evaluate the efficacy of the prototype, instead of being directly involved in the design process. But that can diverge from creating solutions that are beneficial for the communities the designers are purporting to help. In our paper, we didn’t just build something, test it, and report on it — we thought it would be more important to contribute guidelines for approaching similar participatory design problems.

Q: What does the future look like for you and for your work?

Lee: I’m starting a collaboration with Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. They have a large group of senior citizens who are experiencing blindness later in life, and have to learn to interact with technology in different ways. Understanding how people interact with technology ethnographically will be necessary for understanding accessibility — in technology, in the built environment, and in digital infrastructure. That’s a big part of my research moving forward.

Lundgard: Really, our paper is not just about data visualization, but also about how to approach accessible design more generally. In that sense, our paper tees up how to do future work, with a concise set of guidelines that researchers — ourselves and others — can apply to different problems. For example, I’ve recently encountered researchers at a loss for how to describe their visualizations in ways that make them more accessible. When visualizations appear in, say, textbooks, scientific publications, or educational materials, they might appear as braille translations of the image, but more often they appear as textual descriptions. But what is the best way to describe a visualization? Does it make more sense to refer to its visual or statistical properties? Maybe we can collaboratively come up with different encodings that are more intelligible to someone who’s not used to interpreting information visually.

Satyanarayan: Along those lines, one thread is captioning online visualizations. There’s a lot of work to do in figuring out what’s important to caption to present some high-level insight of what the visualization is saying, as well as find a way to automatically generate those captions. That’s a deep technological solution. But we still have to make sure our sociotechnical considerations are adhered to.

Looking long-term, we’re interested in alternative ways of encoding data that are usable and accessible to people who are blind. Before braille, text was embossed on paper, but that’s not really how people who are blind process language. Louis Braille, who was blind himself, came up with something vastly different that became the standard way for blind people to read text. We first need to take a step back and understand the audience for and with whom we are designing, and work directly with them.

To do that, we have to address several things. How do people who are blind think about data? I was introduced to data through line graphs and bar charts. What is the equivalent for people who don’t process information visually? Once we answer those questions, we can start thinking about what the best way to encode data, because we’re not sure 3D-printing a line chart is the best solution.

3Q: Collaborating with users to develop accessible designs syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

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ouraidengray4 · 7 years ago

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Do You and Your Partner Sleep in Separate Bedrooms? Maybe You Should!

There's a scene in Gilmore Girls in which Lorelai's new beau, Digger, dumps her off in the guest room on their first night together, explaining that he just can't share a bed. At first, Lorelai feels rejected, but as she stretches out in her own bed in a room decked out with a big screen TV and an extensive video library, she realizes the whole sleeping solo thing isn't so bad after all.

The plot may seem a little far-fetched to some, but the truth is, many people simply prefer sleeping in solitude, and there are any number of reasons a couple might want to sleep apart: snoring, different work schedules, or even your partner's penchant for snuggling up with an iPad after lights out. And while tired old tropes persist of beleaguered husbands pitifully dragging blankets to the couch after some marital tiff, there are many perfectly happy married couples sleeping in separate bedrooms too.

"My husband and I made it one week in the same bed," says Jennifer Adams, author of Sleeping Apart Not Falling Apart. When the two moved in together, they realized their sleep habits were different and that his snoring was keeping Adams from getting the rest she needed. However, since the subject was taboo at the time, Adams was worried she was doing something wrong. "I would have loved to share a bed, and there was definitely a sense of failure. But I just can't function on so little sleep."

EDITOR'S PICK

"Relationship decisions should be mutual," Francis says. If one partner is having difficulty sleeping, partners should work together to find out what would make the most sense for wellness. Maybe it looks like permanent separate sleeping, or maybe it's three nights on and four nights off."

But it's still important to monitor sleep health.

Louis does warn against using sleeping separately as a means of ignoring bigger sleep issues. In the U.S., 40 million people suffer from chronic long-term sleep disorders, and some, like sleep apnea, are pretty serious. So even if sleeping separately works for a couple, they should still monitor their partner for signs of sleep disorders.

"Any time lack of sleep is disrupting your life—making it difficult to work or function in day-to-day life—or even if your partner simply notices that you're more irritable, it's worth figuring out the problem and what can be done," Louis says.

Emily Alford lives in Brooklyn, NY, and writes about beauty, food, and TV. Sometimes all at once. Follow her on Twitter @AlfordAlice.

from Greatist RSS http://ift.tt/2DPSpvU Do You and Your Partner Sleep in Separate Bedrooms? Maybe You Should! Greatist RSS from HEALTH BUZZ http://ift.tt/2pw2oCj

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njawaidofficial · 7 years ago

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'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Ryan Murphy ('Feud: Bette and Joan')

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/14/awards-chatter-podcast-ryan-murphy-feud-bette-and-joan/

'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Ryan Murphy ('Feud: Bette and Joan')

“The only difference between me and the ten guys and women who were in my writing group when I first started out here in Hollywood is that I’m the only one of those people who just didn’t take no for an answer and didn’t become devastated over the rejection,” says Ryan Murphy, the writer, director, producer and showrunner best known for creating or co-creating The WB’s Popular, FX’s Nip/Tuck, Fox’s Glee, NBC’s The New Normal and Fox’s Scream Queens, as well as the ongoing FX anthology series American Horror Story, American Crime Story and Feud. As we sit down at the offices of Ryan Murphy Productions on the Fox lot to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s ‘Awards Chatter’ podcast, Murphy continues, “I think that’s because when I was growing up, I would get pushed down. And what are you gonna do? You gonna stay on the ground? No, you’re gonna get up and you’re gonna keep going. I’ve always had that philosophy: ‘Okay, well, that didn’t work out — and it hurt — so what’s the next thing that might?'”

(Click above to listen to this episode or here to access all of our 165 episodes via iTunes. Past guests include Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Eddie Murphy, Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Amy Schumer, Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez, Louis C.K., Emma Stone, Harvey Weinstein, Natalie Portman, Jerry Seinfeld, Jane Fonda, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nicole Kidman, Aziz Ansari, Taraji P. Henson, J.J. Abrams, Helen Mirren, Justin Timberlake, Brie Larson, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Vikander, Warren Beatty, Jessica Chastain, Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Winslet, Sting, Isabelle Huppert, Tyler Perry, Sally Field, Michael Moore, Lily Collins, Denzel Washington, Mandy Moore, Ricky Gervais, Kristen Stewart, James Corden, Sarah Silverman, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Maher, Lily Tomlin, Rami Malek, Allison Janney, Eddie Redmayne, Olivia Wilde, Trevor Noah and Elisabeth Moss.)

Murphy, 51, was born and raised in Indianapolis — partially by his grandmother, who helped to introduce him to film and TV — as part of “a very rigorous, conservative,” religious, middle-class family. He knew early on that he was gay, but remained in the closet until the age of 15, when his mother discovered love letters that he had exchanged with an older boy and sent him to a therapist. The therapist met with him several times and then told his parents that they could either love him or lose him, and they got on board — but even so, by the time he graduated from high school and college, he knew that he needed to get away. “I always wanted to come to Hollywood, even as a young kid, and I always knew I would end up here,” he says, “I just didn’t know how.”

After college, Murphy headed west “with nothing” but, nevertheless, “instantly loved it.” A journalism major in college, he started out as a freelance writer and eventually graduated to churning out celebrity profiles for Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, while doing his own writing on the side. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the way in was to write,” he recalls, and indeed his first screenplay, Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn?, was read by an agent and bought by Steven Spielberg. “From that, everyone wanted to meet me,” he recalls. Murphy spent the next two years selling movie pitches and writing scripts, but, he says, “I realized, at that point, that I didn’t really want to be a writer; what I really wanted to be was a director/producer.”

At the urging of Murphy’s agent at the time, he turned one of his film scripts into a TV pitch, and all four networks bid on it. It wound up at The WB in 1999 as Popular, and it helped to put him on the map. He loved much about working in television — “I loved the pace of it and the energy and I liked creating something and writing something and then you were shooting it a week later,” he explains — but his overall experience with that show was “really terrible”: “I had homophobic executives; I was constantly being told to change who I was and what I was writing; and I always felt like I was 15 years old, you know, back pre-shrink.” The show was canceled after two seasons.

At that point, Murphy says, “I just decided, ‘Okay, well, what do you want to do and what do you want to be? You’ve got a foot in the door and your next move has to be pretty good.” In 2003, inspired by Mike Nichols and his 1971 film Carnal Knowledge, as well as an article that he came across about plastic surgery, he created the series Nip/Tuck for FX, marking his first of many collaborations with that network; his first time doing a show that didn’t really fit into any pre-existing mold; and, with the exception of one episode of Popular, his first time directing. “That was sort of the birth of a different part of my life and career,” he says, and he was recognized for it with a best drama series Golden Globe Award in 2005.

With his stock soaring, Murphy poured his heart and soul into Pretty Handsome, a pilot about a small-town gynecologist who realizes he is a woman, but, to his devastation, FX passed on it. However, this proved to be the first of several times when a low moment paved the way for high ones soon after — in this case, Glee and American Horror Story. “Every great success that I’ve had in my life has come from a disappointment that I was devastated by,” he marvels. “From that Pretty Handsome melancholy came these two big hits in my career, and it only happened, I think, because I was forced to get quiet and say to myself, ‘Well what do you really want to talk about?'” (He notes that a similar thing happened years later when FX declined to pick up his pilot Open, soon after which he arrived at the idea for The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.)

Glee was “an optimistic family musical” in which “the underdogs would always win,” Murphy says, noting, “There was a lot of my childhood in there.” Beyond being a musical series, the show — which ran on Fox from 2009 through 2015, arriving, like Modern Family, shortly after the election of America’s first black president — prominently featured LGBTQ and disabled characters, and became a full-fledged hit. “That was one of the biggest shocks of my life, that that show became what it became,” he confesses. Two years into its run, he launched a totally different sort of program — an anthology series in the mold of The Twilight Zone and others from TV’s Golden Age, only with a horror tint — and American Horror Story became an award-winning hit in its own right.

What’s with all the genre hopping, which most TV content creators never get to do because they either have more limited interests or get pigeon-holed into one sort of work? Murphy gets the chance, he says, because “Not everything [I do] does work, but I’ve had enough things that have that shouldn’t have” that he is given the benefit of the doubt. The desire, though, exists for deeper reasons. “I love all different genres and I just sort of bounce around between them because it keeps things fresh for me,” he explains. “And, I guess, maybe subconsciously, in the early days it was a way for me to not be stereotyped, when I have felt, as a minority, that I’m so stereotyped. He adds, “Now, I would say, it really is by design. I really love it.”

Another thing he loves: actors. He has built a veritable stock company over the years, led by his two queens from different generations, Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson, and also including Kathy Bates, Frances Conroy, Angela Bassett, Lily Rabe, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Matt Bomer and Denis O’Hare, plus many behind-the-scenes collaborators. “I think it comes from me having a sense of, ‘I wish that I had more of a close-knit family growing up and maybe felt a part of a community growing up,’ and I didn’t,” he reflects. As for the disproportionate number of women, and particularly older women, with whom he works, he says, “I like writing roles for women over 40 because it just resurfaces them, and they’re great.” This year, he started the Half Foundation, an initiative within his production company, to make 50 percent of his on-set hires women.

Murphy also has used his pedestal to highlight stories about gay people, not only on Glee, but in his short-lived semi-autobiographical NBC sitcom The New Normal (2012-2013) and his HBO TV movie The Normal Heart (2014), on which he partnered with Larry Kramer to bring Kramer’s landmark play to the screen after years of roadblocks. Productions like these would not have been possible less than two decades ago, when Murphy was starting out in the business. “I feel like I haven’t changed,” he says. “I feel what changed is the executives. The executives are now great — like, they want those characters. They know that launching a conversation about anything in visibility means a more diversified audience, which leads to success.”

Recently, Murphy has devoted a lot of his time to launching new FX anthology series in the mold of American Horror Story. He started last year with American Crime Story and its first installment, The People v. O.J. Simpson, which proved a towering success. And this year he did so again with Feud and its first installment, Bette and Joan, an eight-part study of the complicated relationship between the legendary movie stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two best actress Oscar winners, starring two other best actress Oscar winners, the aforementioned Lange, as Crawford, as well as Susan Sarandon, as Davis. For it, Murphy personally received three Emmy nominations in July — best limited series, best directing for a limited series, movie or dramatic special and best writing for a limited series, movie or dramatic special — bringing his career tally to 23, four of which have turned into wins: best directing for a comedy series for Glee in 2010; best TV movie for The Normal Heart in 2014; best limited series for The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story in 2016; and best short form nonfiction or reality series for Inside Look: The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story in 2016.

Murphy, who grew up obsessed with Hollywood’s Golden Age and the Oscars, interviewed Davis when he first moved out to L.A., and created Feud using information from that conversation, tons of other research and a film script that he and Plan B bought years ago. He insists that the bickering of the two actresses featured on the show was not at all replicated by the two actresses who brought them back to life on his set. “It was a love-fest,” he says of Lange and Sarandon’s interactions. “They actually worked well together and supported each other and had great ideas for scenes for each other, so none of that happened. And hilariously, and thankfully, they were both nominated for best actress, as opposed to poor Joan Crawford, who wasn’t invited to the party [in 1963 for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, when the Academy nominated Davis but not Crawford for best actress]. Jessica and Susan are staunch feminists and believe in equality, and they’re not gonna do that bullshit. They’re just not those people. They’re not interested in petty gossiping. I’ve never met two women less interested in that.”

The one bit of drama that has been associated with Feud has come from the most unexpected of places: Olivia de Havilland, the sole legendary actress portrayed in the film who still is alive today. In June, on the eve of her 101st birthday, de Havilland sued Murphy for, allegedly, defaming her on the show (which she had not yet seen when I asked her about it in April). “I was saddened by it because I felt that I really had written and produced and directed a love letter to these women, and I was like, ‘Oh, no, really? I love her so much,'” Murphy says. “I’m sorry that she feels badly about it, but I don’t know why she feels badly.” In reference to Feud‘s depiction of de Havilland, he insists, “There is absolutely nothing but love — there is no malice, there is nothing said that’s not treating her like a lady.”

Murphy emphasizes, “The other thing that I think people should know about the docudramas that I do — be it Feud or American Crime Story with O.J. or [the subjects of an upcoming installment] Charles and Diana and on and on — you know, we don’t just write those and film them; we write them and lawyers read them and they say, ‘Where did you get this piece of information from? Where is this quote of Olivia de Havilland coming from?’ Obviously, the construct of doing a documentary wrap-around is a device of docudrama that’s been done since God was a boy. But everything that we have Olivia or Joan or Bette saying is, I would say, based completely on existing information, either research or interviews. And in the case of Olivia de Havilland, we have a very long document, as we did with Joan and Bette, where we say, ‘This is where we got this line from. She said this in an interview.’ Is it directly the exact line? No, some of it’s tweaked, but it’s all based on fact, it’s all based on research. And this had been vetted for months before we even shot any episode.”

He notes, “I feel like Olivia de Havilland is a historical figure, and I’m just sad she didn’t love it as much as everybody else seemed to. But I also have the support of Fox, and we have 15 lawyers who have reviewed every claim and think there absolutely is no claim.” But, he emphasizes, “I have nothing but love and admiration for her, and I do think it will all end up okay. Maybe I’ll get to meet her in court, but I hope it doesn’t go that far. The first thing I would do is say, ‘Can I have an autograph? I really love you! I really do!'”

Throughout our conversation, while discussing past traumas, personal and professional, and even lawsuits, Murphy exudes calm, but he says that doesn’t mean he isn’t upset about some of what’s going on around him. “I feel very angry about the state of the country,” he vents, “and I feel like the best thing that I can do is sit up straight and shut up and just write characters that are going through difficulties, so that people can see that and, as human beings, hopefully recognize that pain is pain is pain. That’s what I’m interested in doing as my sort of political activism.”

Glee Primetime Emmy Awards Feud

#Awards #Bette #Chatter #Feud #Joan #Murphy #Podcast #Ryan

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liambitious · 8 years ago

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Chapter 12

Time passed in a haze filled with dreams and shadows. Louis knew that Harry hadn’t left too long ago, but it felt like forever. It felt like weeks, months, years passing before the door opened again, loud and furious, and he was met with bright sunlight and loud noises. Harry walked through the door but he left it open, and Louis had a hard time making out his features with the bright light backlighting him In fact, it was difficult to tell if it was Harry at all. Louis couldn’t imagine it was anyone else, though, didn’t know how it could be. Harry was the only one who ever came by. Harry was the only one that he needed. It was Harry, even if he couldn’t quite see the curls. He stopped just inside the door and Louis wondered why. Harry was acting very strangely today. Had he heard Louis crying? Something inside his chest grew cold at the thought. Harry knew he was lonely. Harry had heard him crying. He was going to lash out now. He wasn’t going to take care of him, was going to leave him without water or food or washing just as he had that first week. He thought that Louis hated him; that was why he’d been gone so long. “H-Harry?” Louis chanced, sitting up and squinting in an effort to see past the glare of the bright sun. “Louis Tomlinson?” That wasn’t Harry’s voice. Louis felt that cold thing inside of him growing to encompass all of him, weighing him down and making it hard to breathe. What had happened to Harry? Where was he? Who was this? Louis fell away, pushing himself into the wall and away from the form that continued to make its way forward. A man he’d never seen before, dressed like a cop, leaning in and looking at his ankle. “Don’t be afraid, Louis. I’m here to help,” the man said, looking up at him and trying to seem kind. Before Louis responded to that at all, before he could even think through exactly what this man’s presence implied, there were more people in the room. All of them wore the same police uniform as the man beside him did. One had a large pair of wire cutters and used them to break the chain of the handcuffs holding Louis’ ankle to the bed. “What are you doing here?” he finally managed to ask, watching as the first man shoved a simple-looking key into the lock of his cuff. It didn’t work; the man placed it back on the chain and pulled off another. Again, it didn’t match. The third one did, though, and with a soft click Louis was released entirely from the offending piece of metal. “Where’s Harry?” “You won’t have to worry about him anymore,” the policeman – Louis had accepted the fact now that these men were police, although he couldn’t decide whether or not the wire cutters or the myriad of stereotypical handcuff keys had ensured such a fact in his mind – smiled and patted Louis’ leg. “He turned himself in. We do have some questions for you, though, if you wouldn’t mind speaking to one of our specialists about what happened.” Louis nodded, but it didn’t go much further than that. The man stood up and walked away and a woman took his place, one dressed in a suit and shoes far too nice for her to actually be part of a squad. She asked him a number of questions and tried to get some kind of response from him as someone else poked and prodded at him, probably checking to make sure he hadn’t been injured. Louis had a feeling that this was a little bit what shock felt like, hearing everything as though he were standing in a fog and feeling like his tongue was three sizes too large for his mouth. Harry wouldn’t turn himself in. He couldn’t. Everything he’d ever done had been confident and self-assured in a way that Louis might have even envied, if he really thought about it. There had never been any doubt in his mind as to whether or not he was doing a right thing. Of course, he had said that he wasn’t good enough. He’d said he wasn’t even capable of killing Louis. That meant he would try harder, wouldn’t it? That meant he would just have to go around killing more often to prove that he could. It wouldn’t have him going and admitting to doing everything that he’d already done. Harry wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t have left Louis behind. Eventually, he supposed they realized that Louis wasn’t going to tell them anything they didn’t know. He was escorted outside and to the station, where his mother was waiting with tears in her eyes. She pulled him in for a hug and he went along with it, gently patting her on the back and trying to get rid of the part of him that was screaming about how wrong everything was. He allowed himself to be led home, still as silent as he had been the entire time. Jay tried to make him feel better, tucked him into his bed and brought him mug after mug of Yorkshire tea. (“Two sugars and some milk. Just how you like it, love.”) None of it helped. None of it made him feel any better. He’d been away for far too long, had adjusted to the feeling of a different bed and a different pillow and a different room. When he couldn’t sleep that night, the light-up stars on his ceiling didn’t provide him any sort of solace. He stared at them and counted all forty-seven of them three times over before giving up. In the end, the only way he fell asleep at all was with the duvet pushed to the foot of his bed and his eyes shut tightly, counting his breaths exactly as he had for the past… three weeks. They’d said it had been three weeks. Twenty-one days of his life. It seemed simultaneously much too short and much too long a time for everything he’d been through. It didn’t seem right. Someone had to be lying about it. One, in. Two, out. Three, in. Four, out. When he woke up, he was screaming. Jay had her arms wrapped around him tightly, rubbing circles over his back and whispering, over and over, “He’s not here, Boo Bear. It’s just me. You’re safe. He’s not here.” He struggled to get away from her, struggled to escape and maybe even run away, but she was stronger than he remembered - or maybe he was weaker – and he eventually had to give up, slumping in her arms and breaking out into harsh sobs. Harry wasn’t there, true, but he should have been. No one seemed to understand that. For the next few days, Louis would come downstairs to find his mother or Lottie quickly shutting off the telly or changing the channel, even when he’d known exactly what they were watching and had heard the news reporters speaking about Harry Styles and his claims, all of the statements he’d made and the revenge that families wanted. Louis would have to sit next to them and quietly request that they change the channel. Lottie always said no, deciding that she would rather watch cartoons she was too old for or music videos for songs she’d never heard before. His mum refused until he would ask again, and she would concede if only for a little while. (“Just five minutes, alright? No longer. Only so you know for sure he’s gone.”) She would stick unwaveringly to her time limits, shutting the television off and making sure that Louis never got anywhere near it. He would run upstairs and lock himself away in his room, chucking things at the wall and crying because it was hardly fair. Why had Harry left him for that? Why had Harry left him behind to sort out his life and his family and his own fucking mind? Why couldn’t he have just taken Louis with him? They could have left. They could have run off somewhere together and lived in secret. No one would have known. Louis had a therapist now. It was the same woman who had tried talking to him at the crime scene. She had black hair so straight it could have given him a paper cut and eyes so sharp a blue that it seemed like she could see right through him. Her name was Emily, and he saw her twice a week. She’d tried very hard to get him to open up and tell her exactly what was going on in his head, although he hadn’t broken down yet and he didn’t plan to. One day, she seemed to get that he wasn’t going to talk. So she talked for him, told him what she thought he would like to hear. “Louis, I want you to know something.” He’d looked up from his hands to stare at the bookshelves behind her head, reading the spines of books he didn’t understand. “Harry has chosen to plead insanity.” Louis finally looked her straight in those terrifying eyes, more than a little surprised. “Why would he do that?” he demanded, voice cracking on the last word. Emily sat up a little bit straighter, sensing that maybe she was onto something and she might get some information out of this. Her pen was in her hand and her notebook was open to a blank page. Louis hardly even noticed. “What do you mean, Louis?” “He can’t do that!” Louis snapped, gripping his own hands so tightly that the knuckles were turning white. “He can’t just leave me behind like that and then live. I thought he wanted to die! I thought that if I was still alive, he didn’t want to be! Why would he act like this? Why would he want to live if I’m not there?” Louis didn’t know what he was saying anymore, couldn’t tell that his voice was fluctuating between shouts and barely whispering. He didn’t know what Emily was writing or what she thought was going on in his head, but he also didn’t care. Harry wasn’t just leaving him; he was leaving him for a different life. He was going to live in a padded cell somewhere because it was better than having Louis there with him, and that was possibly the worst news that Louis had heard in all the time since he’d come home. Harry didn’t want to die. He just didn’t want to be around Louis anymore. It was like a blow to the stomach and it left Louis a little breathless, feeling betrayed and alone. “Louis?” Emily asked, once he seemed to have run out of steam and sat back into the seat, pressing his hands to the corners of his eyes and biting his bottom lip to stop its quivering. “Louis, can you do me a favor?” she prompted, voice soft and gentle. He shook his head roughly. She didn’t seem to care. “Louis, it’s nothing important. I just think that if you don’t want to… if you don’t want to talk to anyone about what you went through or how you’re feeling,” she pulled out the page she’d been writing on, pushing the pad of paper and the pen to the edge of her desk, “then maybe you might like to write it down?” Louis studiously ignored the paper, staring resolutely at the floor. She sighed. “If you don’t want me to read it, maybe you could ask your mum to buy you a notebook. Please, Louis? It might help you feel better.” Louis did end up getting a notebook eventually, but it was a result of Emily bringing it up to Jay. He walked into his room to find it sitting on his bed, a red moleskine and a black pen. He didn’t say anything to his mother about it that night at dinner and he didn’t mention it to Emily, but he couldn’t keep himself from trying his hand at writing in it. Maybe it wasn’t what he was supposed to write, maybe it hadn’t been what they intended for him to do, but he tried it anyway and that was all anyone should have expected from him anyway. Harry, I hate you for doing this to me. I just want my life back. I want you to be on death row or I want to be back in your flat again. Knowing you’re out there and you don’t want to deal with me is too much and I’m not sure I can do it. No one seems to understand that. I’m not going to tell them, either; it’s too complicated. I’m twisted now, aren’t I? You’ve made it impossible for me to go back to how it was before you came along. Was that what you wanted? That’s all he managed on the first day before closing it quickly and shoving it under his mattress, hoping with every fiber of his being that no one ever tried to read it. What he was doing was wrong, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t be doing it. He shouldn’t be writing to the one that wanted him dead for so long. Still, though, he wrote. He wrote until the notebook was filled with letters to his would-be killer, and even then he tried to keep going, filling in the margins and rereading everything he had until he couldn’t help it anymore and asked for another notebook from his mother. Jay bought it for him, this one a plain black binding and just a little bit thicker. Louis thanked her with a kiss on the cheek and it made her smile like she hadn’t since he came home. Writing to Harry was like having him there. He might have wanted to live without Louis, but Louis didn’t ever want to live completely without Harry.

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mindmmxvii · 8 years ago

Text

Midnight

Hey Blogzilla. You should stay awhile and listen to my story. Well it’s really more of a list...

Camaro inspection PASS

House Inspector

Camaro plates!

Clean clean house house

Well today started quite early, as I said in my blog yesterday. My friend James, same one who is interested in my house, met me at the repair shop around 6:30 this morning. It should have been 6 but I must have slept through my alarm, or it didn't go off. Me and mornings have a ways to go still. We spoke briefly in the car about work, life, and Transformers. It was a really nice start to the day.

I finished some expense reports I had pushed off yesterday evening then made some Earl Gray while enjoying a Penn Station cookie for breakfast. Yeah, we are starting on that calorie count first thing haha. Eventually I had to leave for a client visit which ended up being a little weird. It was for a school district and they needed remote access to monitor some HVAC equipment. *prepare for technomumbojumbo* I gave the device a static IP address, VLAN’ed it off from the rest of the network, and forwarded the required UDP port through the firewall. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get remote access from his laptop connected on a hotspot. I even ran a port scan which said it was open! Only thing I could think of was that the equipment required more ports and they just didn’t state it in the online manual Anyway, we set up client VPN access to allow connection but it seems like a rather bloated solution that could have been way more elegant. Right after that, I went to another client who requested to have a fax line setup. After toning the line down to the basement, 2 floors away from the punchdown, I decided online E-Fax would be a better solution. No wayyyy were they going to shell out the money to run that line. Both of these weird visits were tickets I took over from others but hey they are done now.

After the crazy work times, I had Lunch with my sister and caught another episode of Westworld. The show is starting to get interesting and I think I see several places for it to really expand and wow me. I’ve heard amazing things but I’m trying to keep my expectations realistic. I then drove my CRZ to the repair shop so it can get state and emissions, while also picking up my Camaro. As I stated above, it passed! On my way back to the office I briefly met with a house appraiser who took pictures and measured everything. He said he will get back to me Saturday with an estimate. I made another client visit and bee lined straight to the downtown DMV. After a little waiting... plates for my Camaro! I slapped those suckers on right away. Shiney. I think that checked off one of my major short term goals, so that’s a really good feeling. I mean driving while looking over my shoulder for a cop had become so second nature for me. I guess it’s an ok habit to get into, no surprises if you decide to risk that red light, but it will be nice to just relax with the top down. Well maybe once it warms up a bit. Unless I sell the Camaro before then. Now I’m having second thoughts on selling. :-/

We’ll deal with that later. For now I need my Camaro. Next was checking with Bek to make sure that she was sticking to her goals and timelines, followed by cleaning and organizing. I’m not worrying about packing too much at this stage, really I just wanted to get rid of all the excess stuff I had accumulated. With all my hobbies, from nerf, to drones, to airsoft, to plastic working, to 3D printing, to fixing cars + motorcycles, to sugar gliders, to Artemis and other cosplay, to podcasts, to minecraft, to Dungeons and Dragons, to computers, to guitar, to songwriting, to gah well whatever strikes my fancy. Anyway, things are getting pretty close to being done. I don't think I am going to hit my deadline of the 13th, so I am going to push it back to Sunday the 15th. Should be able to go through the last couple places by then. Also going to move my healthier diet goal to Saturday. I can plan to hunker down all day with that.

The rest of the day was filled with all the activities I started since the beginning of the year. Exercise, going over my calories, 3D max white strips (which I think are working!), and of course talking to you Blog. Also can I just say as a side note how hard it is to keep the humidity in my basement at acceptable levels? I have to switch between the humidifier and the dehumidifier almost on a daily basis. It’s all due to the crazy St. Louis weather we always have. It was 60 yesterday and we are looking at a ice storm late tonight.. Also I have my blood test set for tomorrow at 8:15AM so I hope the storm doesn’t throw anything off.

Goah, my life is so different now as opposed to just a month ago. I mean I don’t think I have changed that much, at least the core of who I am, I just find it curious how my days have changed also how my perspective has changed. I used to think I never had time for things, or wondered how I’d squeeze things in. Really, I had plenty of time that was just squandered on video games. Whole evenings would be lost while I do basically nothing. Those days were really satisfying actually. Even now, I think about lapsing and just playing for a few hours, or just saying screw it. I haven’t though. I’ve kept to what felt most productive. Well most the time. There are moments where I just zone out on youtube. I mean In theory I should cut that out but I need some zone time, ya know? I went from all zone all the time to almost none, so I don’t want to push any limits and cause an even bigger relapse from completely depriving myself of all leisure activity. I know at least that’s not healthy.

I still feel the sinking feeling all time. I haven’t given it a name because I don’t want to think about it. I want to move on to the next activity or next thought to push it away... for now at least. It’s like a weight, a literal weight on me. It’s entropy, pulling me back and deny me my future. Funny I mention my future because I really haven’t been thinking about that either. I suppose I also don’t really want to think about that now either. So much is up in the air, in regards to my health, mental or other wise. I have been thinking about maybe seeing a therapist. Part of me screams no, that I am perfectly able to handle my own demons in due time. It seems like a thought 2016 me would have. 2016 me, the worst version of me. Darkest timeline.

I’ve got so much real shit to deal with but I just can’t right now. Blog, as I have said before, you are amazing to sit here and listen to me. Letting this out, even in this context, is... I can’t even think of a word. I think I am slowly realizing I need... someone. Right after I just pushed most people further away. I’m not even sure how to open dialog with some of my friends. It’s a weird. Life is weird. Going to sleep now, let’s hope I have a spirit vision or a dream quest or something.

Cheers -mind

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