#make up the most fixed concept of them when they are more fluid in reality. thus MK having a crisis about it

[fluffypotatey]

If you weren't strictly following canon and red string was canon divergence, where would the string most likely change macaque behavior

hm well like my au is canon divergence? but in the smallest way because Macky is forced to acknowledge his issues earlier in the show than before. like yeah it mostly co-exists in canon but in a way where i make their emotionally starved issues a visible manifestation that they cannot ignore

the only reason it stays in its coexist-canon status is bc MK hasn’t changed. he’s not the one being forced to see the strings tied to his hands (which would probably overwhelm him and cause him to overthink that)

anyway,

i think it would be s4 where the actual change occurs because he gave himself time to actually process everything and acknowledge his unhealthy ideology of fate/destiny, viewing his fall as inevitable (guys like him not being the Hero yada yada). thereby, having the courage to initiate himself more into the group bc he knows they’re important to him

[tomwambsgans]

i'm not saying that tom doesn't *actually* love shiv but what i am saying is that there is genuinely an isolated sort of sadness to the end of a relationship, literally no matter what happened in that relationship. like look at how many couples repeatedly cheat on each other and fight and break up and just keep getting back together bc regardless of the strife, to so many people, it simply feels worth it to Be Together. to have a partner. i spent a good half of a 2+ years long relationship thinking (albeit on and off) about how much i wanted out of it and how inevitable a breakup was, and wished that i could just one day wake up into the reality where it wasn't a thing - only to be inexplicably shocked when he broke up with me, and to try to fix it and convince him that the relationship was fine, and then be depressed about that breakup and incapable of pursuing other relationships for basically a whole year after. like, attachment to a person (and subsequently the love of them) is very often rooted in the stability that they bring to your life, whether much happiness is part of that stability or not. that's what tom means by the sad with shiv vs the sad without shiv. actual happiness isn't a promised part of either option, but in one of them he has a partner, someone he's known for years.

as far as the love he has for shiv as its own independent concept, i'd just really love to see it get deconstructed, since we can mean so many different things when we say love, and our cultural expectations for how it's expressed and the relationships we grew up seeing as an ideal are so incredibly wrapped up in that. you could say people love simply when they want to, and the definition of it is subjective due to being immeasurable, that for each person love is whatever they decide in any moment to call love - and further, there's all the factors that can even go into that Decision alone. this also of course means that the *feeling* of love in and of itself is not a good reason or justification for anything as it relates to yourself and other people who feel love differently, least of all huge committments. like marriage. it's just far from enough.

love is romanticized as a feeling but it's also a choice, because emotions are fluid and mutable and some people/cultures understand this more intuitively than others. i think tom is one of those people, as it seems pretty clear that "this person makes me happy" is not a prerequisite for him to say that he loves someone. meanwhile shiv, i think, grapples a lot with this. she loves tom because she clearly does make those choices, but because she doesn't love tom in the way that he needs her to - the passionate, romantic western ideal, that is, aka the way the average person wants it - she probably sometimes wonders whether or not she actually does, and it makes her feel bad about herself. she tries to deflect, to decide that actually no it's LOVE that IS the problem, love is bullshit, it's made up, etc. the main thing that she has ever clung to re: defining her relationship with tom as a positive one is their history together, and the subsequent fact that tom uniquely understands her and is/was capable of comforting her.

all this to say that I really do think that a bit of the thesis of tomshiv IS the fact that love is not enough, exemplified by shiv's monologue about love on their wedding night. shiv was right that love is a million different things, but (i'd argue) she's wrong that thats a bad thing. what both tom and shiv missed, too, was that there's affection, there's desire, there's commitment, and most importantly there's compatibility. and the lack of those things between them consistently is why they simply cannot and should not work.

[yanderefairyangel]

Alright, so I decided to try to explain what are my gripes about Byleth's writing.

I am sure you are expecting me to say "it's because they are bland and have no personality". No.

In reality, the problem is the reverse. Byleth HAS a personality, and a pretty defined one at that. They are a rather stoic person, who emotes little, have problem to express their feelings to others... in short, a kuudere. This present in FEH, in Engage, in Hopes.

It's present in Houses as well, but the problem is that Houses refuse to acknowledge it. Instead, they treat Byleth as if they were an empty blanket for the player to create their own personality when they aren't. Byleth is a fixed character with a define personality so it doesn't work.

People have always compared Byleth to Joker from P5 and it's no wonder, 3H uses a lot of mechanic similar to P5. And the self insert is no difference. The one major difference is that unlike Byleth, Joker, despite having a personality of his own too, his more fluid in his intereaction with others so that the different options presented to the player can't really feel out of character for him to express. That mainly comes from how Joker is canonically someone who hides behind a persona but you get the idea.

Byleth however can be used saying things that simply don't fit their character and who they are. For example, Byleth is someone who doesn't really have a sense of humor nor understanding the concept of 2nd degree. So when the game let you choose an option that is "witty" or "teasing" or "joking" it feels out of character for them. Another example is with how they behave with Jeralt. We all know that when meeting Alois, Byleth can choose to deny being of Jeralt's family which result in lowering the "support point" we'll say of Jeralt. However, does it make sense for Byleth to even say that ? Answer, no. You know that when you play FEH, Engage, Hopes and even Houses. Their other intereaction make it clear that Byleth isn't one to actually say that to Jeralt. Sure they don't call him dad, but they care for him to much to ouright deny their relationship, even as a joke. Another one. When meeting Catherine, Byleth has the choice to say that they are better then her... does it make sense for them to say that ? No. Byleth is someone who is rather modest and not very competitive. To the game's credit, those cue exist only to "trap" the player in losing affection points but the problem is that they look too way out of character for Byleth to even say in the first place.

For example, in Goody two shoes, you also need to watch out what you say otherwise your level of suspicion will rise up or you migh even be killed on the spot. But all the different choice option actually make sense for Elise to say, for what kind of character she is, it fits her personality either way. For example, when you spot Eugen's horse and that the villagers doesn't believe you because it disappeared, the result of insisting in telling the truth result in a raise of suspicion from the villagers but it make sense for Elise to actually insist since she is presented as a rather tomboyish stuborn and arrogant girl. However, she also ending up to refuse to tell them the truth and backing up from some of her statements also make sense, and it mainly comes from the phrasing and how her cue are written to fit her character.

In Hopes, Shez got the same treatement. In Houses, Byleth didn't. So it resulted in their personality feeling very inconsistent, and making most of the character's reaction and Byleth's "character developpement" resulting in being shallow.

For example, Byleth's character arc is them slowly learning how to emote and show their emotions. An example is during the Battle of the Lion and The Eagle. When you win, the house leader will point out at Byleth smiling as being "rare". Ok. Now imagine that you mainly choosed the "witty" cue, the "teasing" one resulting in a Byleth that actually seems to be rather teasing and joking type : does this work anymore ? No. It doesn't. And I'll also add this but F!Byleth being a little more "emotive" then her Male counterpart kind of contribuite to weakening this progression.

Another problem is the "support points". Back to P5, you had actual social event that were entirely linked to the gameplay and that actually helped both Joker's characterization and contributed to give stakes to the player in trying all possible cue and optional dialogue by having different endings. 3H doesn't have that and the progression feels artificial as this doesn't really matter since you still have other way to unlock support with your character such as the battlefield. That and the fact that you don't have supports with a lot of characters when needed. Jeralt for example. You can intereact with him in the monastery but those are limited to rather quick dialogue and Byleth's silence kind of create a distance and cold feeling when seeing them intereact, mainly because unlike for the students who are supposed to progressively get attached to Byleth, he is supposed to have know them since forever. And that's where being the Avatar comes into play to ruin their relationship. To justify Byleth's lack of knowledge on some matter, the plot justifty it by "yeah, Jeralt sheltered them". A knowledgable powerful mercenary, who lived like this since childhood and is feared as the "Ashen Demon"... doesn't know sheet about the continent they live in..... wow... And blamming in Jeralt just make him appear as a terrible dad when he actually isn't, from his intereaction with Byleth you see he is an ok dad, trying and actually caring for Byleth even if he too isn't very good at showing his feelings. But this excuse is just... bad. Robin and Alear had amnesia, Corrin had being kidnapped and kept in a tower, Joker had comming from the countryside,... Byleth's excuse just feels convoluted. And you can't even claim that they are stupid but because all the other iteration of Byleth and 3H itself showed Byleth is actually very clever. So the idea that like Shez, whose ignorance is due to the fact that they are canonically an imbecile doesn't work for Byleth. And even acting like Byleth actually knows what's happening in Fodlan doesn't really matter when the character are going to exposition dumb you... and that it can lead to further confusion as the plot progress.

And probably the funniest example of 3H's inconsitencies.... Byleth's birthdate. At the begining of the game, you have the possiblity to choose a birthdate for Byleth... and if you do that, you can create a plot hole because turns out Byleth already has one. It's the 20th of September. And I remind you that Byleth is supposed to not know they age because they never celebrated their birthday.... so how do they know their birthdate ? How do they not know their age when they can just count ? People usually explain it as "Jeralt lied about Byleth's birthdate so they player can choose it" but Sothis reaction made it clear that it's not the case. And I know people explain it as Sothis is Byleth's consciousness, their recollections and can't remember anything so she believe that"... no. You can see it from the tone, you can see it from the phrasing. It's genuine. And also, Sothis isn't Byleth's consciouness and she has her own memories as demonstrated by 3H itself and she also admitted to not know about Byleth's life, so it's obvious she actually doesn't have acces to Byleth's memory nor consider what Byleth holds as truth to be true for her, that's even why she can disagree with Byleth ! Another evidence of that is the line you can choose when introuding yourself to Sothis. You can choose "I am a demon" and would you say that Sothis will call you a liar... even though, Byleth is saying the truth. They are the Ashen Demon. Sothis's answer kind of shows that she doesn't have access to Byleth's consicouness ! And even then the game doesn't want to acknowdlege that so I don't think it was meant to be a lie on Jeralt's part. Really. And if Jeralt lied about their birthday, then it makes the whole "we dont know Byleth's age" all the more convoluted because if they know their supposed birthdate, then they should logically believe to be around a certain age ! If they celebrated their birthday, then they must have an idea or at least a fake age !

Also, when people are saying that Sothis is Byleth's conciousnes, this means that things Sothis is supposed to remember will feel familiar to Byleth, not vice versa. Sothis is never shown to be familiar with things that Byleth remember well !

Also, it should be noted that if after the timeskip, Byleth's birthday is to be celebrated... you celebrate the date that you choose, not the one that Byleth is supposed to have discovered to their actual birthdate. And that in their character data, it will still remain the same. The fact that their actual birthday is the 20th of Horsebow Moon is never acknoweldge, never do we have Byleth and Sothis ponder about it or learn why this date matter

AND that in Hopes.... they are somehow aware of their birthdate. Even though Jeralt didn't told them a lot of things common to in Houses. And we are never told what exactly would push Jeralt to give them their actual birthdate... but we also are never told that Jeralt lied to them...Do you see what I mean by being an Avatar makes everything about Byleth very convoluted ? If you actually need to try to find a resonning that is never explained in the original game or at least based ont hings very much established, it result in you doing the writer's work to fix something !

And about the justification for how they behave... well. Here is the thing. In P5, Joker is canonically established as hiding behind a certain personality and reveal his "true self"only in the metaverse so it actually allows you to choose certains option without feeling OOC because you are aware Joker is hiding behind a mask and also because Joker's main character trait, sense of justice and defiance, are traits that can easliy blend with most of the cue that are avaliable. That's not the case with Byleth's character trait. Stoic, emotionelss, that's what is justified by the "you are the child of an artificial life bearing the soul of the Goddess and the crest is the reason why you don't emote as you have no heartbeat". This means that some of your choices won't fit this personality. For my case, I would only choose what I though Byleth would say. What was character fitting of them. Needless to say, it resulted in some of their possible cue appearing to me as OOC, especially after playing Hopes.

Byleth is a fully established character, like Shez and they are even charaterized as foil to each other, but unlike what Houses did for Byleth, Hopes never pretended that Shez was an empty blanket ignoring the blantant characterization waiting for them.

And that's hurting Byleth's character developpement as well as many things being rushed. Jeralt's death for example. It's supposed to be the first time Byleth cries, it takes a whole chapter and then... it doesn't matter anymore at some point. This is supposed to "stay relevant" as in AM Byleth's supposed to still be after the Agarthans or in CF where Hubert is going to have a cue telling that you are actually angry at them but should be patient.... and that's it. It kind of feel like Jeralt's death was pointelss for Byleth's character as it doesn't develop them. You wanna know who did it way better ? Engage. Even though we spend like 2 minutes with Lumera before she dies, she won't stop haunting the narrative, she is Alear's main motivation and we get to learn more about how much Lumera mattered to Alear's live, making the void creating in their life by her dead all the more striking, even more so in 2nd playthrough. Jeralt doesn't get that. And it's mainly because of how little the few intereaction with have with him and Byleth shows the extend of their relationship. And the fact that you can choose some of their cue end up making it feel disingenuinous. We will feel for Byleth and Jeralt but... that's it. Eve, Awakening did a better job, and this mainly comes from how Chrom spoke of his relationship with Emeryn and have a chapter dedicated to that. Byleth doesn't have the possibility to talk about how much Jeralt meant to them and realizing the void left in their life.

Heck, even Hopes did it better. This is one key moment that got left and not fully explored, like the parallel between the 3 battle of the Eagle and the Lion since...this chapter post war doesn't exist in some route...yeah..

Another little problem I have is that the Academy phase isn't really excting. And here is the idea : normally, you are in peace phase right ? So why is it that the only moment we can spend with the students are class and mission ? Yes, I know there are the social links but going with the idea that the students aren't shown all spending time together bonding and that it's instead relegated to the supports between 2 character so when we are supposed to believe Byleth is spending good time with their students, it feels empty. In fact, most of the light hearted moment in 3H sometimes feels kind of bleak and or weak because of this. So it's kinda hard to see Byleth fufilling themselves as a teacher even though we know they would like that since Byleth dislikes killing... since we do nothing but that. Running in circle, solving mysteries Scooby gang style.

And this mainly comes from the fact that Byleth is supposed to be a guide figure to the Lords and students and get some of their spotlight lost to them. People often try to defen Byleth saying that a character staying static isn't a bad thing and yes... but this wasn't what they tried to do with Byleth. They did that with Shez, but Byleth is supposed to have a character developpement, it's just that it's rushed and sloppily done because they have to hand their spotlight to the lords characters.

Finally, for a game like 3H the sort of character/protag they choose for Byleth doesn't work. It's a game aimed at discussin politics but politics is something that is active, not passive and where each of you choices matter. Byleth is made passive and only one or maybe 2 of their decision matters to the game. And that's it. This makes some of their "guidance" towards the student feel empty.

And also, I am not saying this to sheet on Byleth cause I actually like Byleth and that's because I am actually able to see that they have a personality and a real character, but that the way 3H handled them greatly affected their writing as well as 3H's writing in general.

But it should also be said that while I think they did a better job with Shez when it comes to character writing, it's not the personality that is a problem. Being quiet and stoic is a personality. The problem is the execution : whereas Shez is able to rephrase some of the cue in their own way giving a sense of character, Byleth can't. And the silent is here not doing them much favor.

And also, what I said about Byleth not working as a protag for the type of game that 3H tried to be also applies to Shez because both are made way too passive. But I might dwell more on that another day

[musicalmagic]

Quarantine Days [4]

Summary: Coronavirus has arrived to the BTS members and yourself. Grappling with boredom and the reality that, yeah, you really all were stuck in the same place for a while. Ensure that the shenanigans of your days with BTS are recounted here, and please do remember, stay in contact with those you love.

A/N: Hello. I bring you more angst because I’m sad today ://. Happy PTD and Butter!!! Hehehhh

* Pairing: BTS (OT7) x reader (Idol Au)

* Word Count: 814

* Genre: Angst, Fluff

* Warnings: Coronavirus

1 2 3 4

Tag List: @itspwi

You were, suffice to say, confused with what was happening before you. Yoongi was arguing with Namjoon; in the loudest voice he could muster. Now, Yoongi rarely shows his anger, always a genuine person in his reactions, if he was annoyed, he showed it, if he was bored, it was present. Happiness would radiate. Anger and frustration would then be booming. Today, was not a good day. After the announcement by HYBE that the tour was to be postponed, and the concept of cancelled begun to weave through the boys’ head. Their performances they had been practicing was starting to look like it was all for nothing, really dug into all.

Namjoon commented that it wasn’t over yet, but Yoongi’s bitterness towards everything got the best of him. Where he tried to hold it in, but when Namjoon remarked, “Just wait,” he exploded.

Beforehand, you questioned if any of the boys would become irritated at the news, when Bang PD had messaged you privately, 10 minutes before the announcement. He knew, in a way, that someone would react in this way. So you also texted Namjoon to break the news with ease, briefing him with the situation.

But, when it came to ARMY, the boys were distraught, to say the least. Yoongi was one of the saddest. Frankly you yourself was tearing up when you read it earlier. All of the boys were crying, hiccupping and piling on top of each other for comfort.

Bated breath and shaky hands, Jimin tore Namjoon and Yoongi a-part. If Namjoon couldn’t think well, he could at least.

“STOP!” He screamed, “What would yelling at each other do?”

Yoongi fell to the ground in a heap. Wrapping his arms around his legs and curling in himself. Quivering as he sobbed. Your world cracked seeing him cry this way. Namjoon was no better, who was on the verge of breaking too.

“Will it get better?” A teary Jungkook asked.

“Possibly,” Seokjin replied, red in the ears and wiping his tears away.

Hoseok, oh the usually sunshine man, was similar to Yoongi. But was in the foetal position, turning away from the rest of the group. Hiccupping into his elbows.

Nobody wanted to practice today.

And for the first time in years, the BTS dorm was completely quiet. Save for the bump of chairs, the tripping on carpet (an exclaim of fucks in the air, which most had fallen getting up off the floor), and the sad slams of doors. Nothing at all.

You sat in the living room, and mindlessly scrolled through your phone. Glassy, like looking through a foggy window, and you could barely make out the words you were reading. Every blink rolled tears down your cheeks. Wet with the promise of more to come.

This, was the normal now.

--

BTS had finally gathered courage to enter the living room, fixing the large space for practice, after about a week and a bit. Hoseok looked like he hadn’t slept in days, Jimin was a little sensitive, a hangover you suspected, Taehyung and Namjoon were tied in dirty stains on their shirts, Seokjin and Yoongi looked hopped up on caffeine, and Jungkook just, looked lifeless.

You sighed, as they started playing ON, stretching as they listened. Remembering. No one spoke to each other as they relaxed their muscles. In sync though. You sighed once more, and Hoseok turned his head around, giving a gentle yet tight smile, you returned it.

They got into position a little while after, syncing up their title track ON with a metronome, out of practice. While COVID had sucked them of motivation, they still kept up the movements. Fluid, sharp, rolling, relaxed, sweat beading down temples, and the voices of seven strained men.

All of them released pent up energy in this mock performance, treating it as such, their muscles ached, and you sat in one corner of the room, mesmerised. Once it was over, you rushed to the kitchen for the cooled drink bottles, as well as music, you could do your best to support them. So, that’s what you did. Encouraging them as you handed over their labelled drinks, “proud of you”, was your most used phrase these days.

Each thanked you, but wordlessly drank. Everyone was standing around blankly staring at each other. Seokjin had the bright idea to play Zero O’clock, and, well, everyone begun to cry again.

It was relentless afterwards, their dancing got steadily more and more intense. The burn of their muscles, the burn of their anger, their sadness, seeping, rushing into their throbbing bodies.

They ending once all songs were exhausted from MOTS: 7. Every single one done, thoroughly. The practice began in the morning. It was now well into the evening.

Without a word, the boys cleaned up, and went to the showers.

This was going to get worse before it got better.

Previous Chapter?

Next Chapter?

[khali-shabd]

Gender Theory

Readers, let us begin with a simple question- what is gender?

The Biological Theory Of Gender, and a majority of society, would say that gender is defined by biological sex, namely hormones and chromosomes. If you release estrogen and have XX chromosomes, you are female, and if you release testosterone and have XY chromosomes, you are male. However, this is an extremely flawed vision of gender for two reasons: one, that whatever proof of hormones altering gendered behaviour has been found only in lab rats1, which possibly will not exhibit the same extreme change in behaviour if the hormones were administered to them naturally in their own environment- and rats are not human- we have far too many differences as species for this study to be considered valid for homosapiens as well. And two, chromosomes are not strictly XX or XY- around 1 percent of the world population is intersex (and a similar percentage is redheaded, so its not inherently ‘anomalous’ or ‘unnatural’) , which means that they can have chromosomal variations such as XXY, X, XXXY etc, all of whom develop differently as compared to people with the traditional chromosome combinations. 

Further, there are far more things that define ‘biological sex’, namely:

chromosomes

gonads

sex hormones

internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus)

external genitalia.

Out of these, in humans, genitalia and internal reproductive anatomy can be changed without there being a significant change in gendered behavior. Sex hormones, when administered to bodies change secondary sex characteristics more than any sort of behavior; with the exception of testosterone increasing sex drive and sometimes increasing ‘ego’. Every single part of this definition of binary biological sex is challenged by the existence of intersex people, henceforth proving that sex is not binary and never has been, unfounding the existence of a sex-based gender binary in itself. Further, transgender individuals have a completely different gender identity as compared to their biological sex, and it has been scientifically proved that this is because their brains develop in the same way the brains of the children of the gender they identify with do. That essentially means that the brain of a transgender woman develops similarly to the brain of a cisgender woman, and the brain of a transgender man develops in the same way the brain of a cisgender man develops. All in all, there are far too many differences in the experience of biological sex to confine it to a binary, hence unfounding the theory that gender is based on biological sex.

Then how do we define gender?

There are a number of theories, but the most logical one at the moment would be Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity. Butler says that gender, as an abstract concept in itself, is nothing more than a performance. We ‘perform’ our gender by carrying out actions that we associate with it. They further say that this does not mean that it’s something we can stop altogether, rather something we’ve ingrained so deeply within us that it becomes a part of our identity, and it's the part of it we call gender identity. Gender, hence, is created by its own performance. Butler also implies that we do not base gender on sex, rather we define sex along the lines of established lines of binary gener, i.e. male and female- despite the fact that more than 10% of the population does not fall into this binary sex, and has some variation in their biological sex that does not ‘fit’ into either category. Gender in itself is so culturally constructed by western society that anyone who does not perform their assigned gender ‘correctly’ is punished- this applies to not only queer individuals but even men who do not ascribe to or criticise predefined ideals of masculinity. They are made social pariahs and excluded as outcasts, leaving them to find and create their own communities and safe spaces. This is shown in the way society ostracises queer-presenting individuals, makes fun of ‘soft’ men, and forcefully tries to ‘fix’ intersex children whose variations in biological sex cause no harm to them. I quote:

“Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis. The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of its own production. The authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.”

One of the criticisms of Butler’s theories is that it does not seem to apply to transgender individuals, whose innate gender identity is not the one that they have been assigned to perform at birth; whose brains develop the same way that their cisgender counterparts’ brains do from birth. Butler themselves have responded to this, saying:

“I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support.”

Later on, Butler goes on to say that the main point of their theory is that identity is constructed, which means that it allows us to change how we view it as a concept. It leaves room for us to subvert gender roles, challenging the status quo on what it means to identify as someone of a particular gender, and re-structuring society such that we rally for change not along gender lines, rather on the basis of what’s right.

Further, if we combine the work of the psychologist Sigmund Freud with Butler’s theories, the latter does actually apply to transgender individuals. Freudian theory states that we internalize concepts of gender based on our parental figures at birth. That is, if you are born female, you begin to look towards the person who closest resembles your gender identity; which in this case would be your mother, to be your role model for your behavior as to how women are meant to act. Your mother would be your guide to how you perform your gender. If she crosses her legs, you cross your legs. If she dresses in a particular way, you would too, until you were exposed to the exterior world and allowed to develop your own sense of style. As such, you create your own gender identity within your mind, and perform that identity the way you have been taught to by your maternal figure. When you are transgender, you view yourself as innately as the gender you identify with, hence you base your gender identity off the parental figure of that particular gender. This means, if you are female to male trans, you would base your gender identity on your father, and accordingly perform your gender in that way.

Now the question arises: How do we create gender identity outside of gender roles? How do we identify anywhere on the gender spectrum while abandoning the performance that comes with that identity? Why is it important?

Well, the answer isn’t simple. For its importance, I allude, once again, to gender performativity theory- Butler even uses some evolutionary stances to support her views, saying that gender performance stems from gender roles which stem from the fundamental differences between the prominent male and female sex at the very beginning of evolution. Now that 'evolutionary' behaviors don't matter at this stage of societal, cultural, and psychological development, it renders gender roles and hence the performance of gender redundant. However, we still perpetuate these ideas regardless of their importance, or rather their lack of such. And in this process, we end up defining and segregating far too much on the basis of gender- from small things like friendships to even the feminist movement, which is majorly perpetuated and held up by people who identify as female. Other groups like men end up purposely excluding themselves from a movement that can benefit them as well(through deconstructing and eradicating ideas of toxic masculinity) just because of how strongly it is divided on the basis of gender lines. And as for how we create gender identity outside of gender roles; it takes a lot of work, at first, to unlearn all the biases you have internalized about what it means to be a certain gender. You have to actively work towards deconstructing what gender and gender identity means to you, and how much of it comes from societally misguided stances about the ‘role’ of a gender is. It may mean ridding yourselves of the school of thought that women belong in the kitchen and men belong in workplaces or even identifying and removing hidden biases such as those of toxic masculinity and/or toxic femininity. Lastly, it takes an understanding that often, gender expression is not the same as gender identity; and also that most gender expression is how people show how they feel the most comfortable viewing themselves. Once you’ve managed to deconstruct your biases, it’s just a matter of how you feel comfortable viewing and expressing yourself; and what label, among the myriad, you identify with the most. That would be your unique self-expression and identity.

[foryourinformationmd]

Advice from a Professional Doctor, Asher Nitin.

Ignore all the portrayals of life in medical school by your pre-med lecturers. If they begin a med school narrative with, “My nephew is a doctor and he told me…,” instantly disregard it. His nephew did not tell him that. He told him much more. Those are merely the parts he wants to remember. If it isn’t a recently-graduated doctor telling you what life in med school is like, it isn’t going to be anything like what they will tell you. So what is it like instead? Grey’s anatomy? House, M.D.?

Neither. Med school is more like Scrubs and The Knick than it is like Grey’s Anatomy and House, M.D. Unlike Grey’s Anatomy, you and your fellow medical students will not be that good looking. You will not sleep with each other as much. You will not cry over your patients (you’ll have a hard time remembering their full name). And you will not monkey around with barely-tested experimental procedures. Ever. If you do, it’ll probably be the last thing you do because good-bye medical school. Unlike House, all medicine will be diagnostic. Your professors will only appear to be brilliant (it’s really just decades of specialized knowledge and experience; with their subject and with your type). Diagnosis will be algorithmic, and even that algorithm won’t be your own. But you will still get a kick out of it. Like Scrubs and The Knick, your medical school will be your life. You will eat, sleep and dream medicine. Your entire social circle will consist of your colleagues. Your family will be the one stable point in your life. You’ll date your colleagues.

Speaking of dating, your sexy does not go up when you become a doctor. I mean this practically. Theoretically, I’m told doctors are hot. I can see why. They undeniably have inherent value: social standing, (the promise of) money, proof of intelligence (actually, no) and actual power over life (more than you know). But practically speaking (especially if you’re male) your dating life will not get better as a medical student. That is because the demands of medical school will swamp you. You will come home tired. Your pool of prospective partners will mostly consist of your medical colleagues. So while your newfound status as a doctor might have value in non-medical circles, it will mean nothing because you will almost never frequent those circles. But within the circle you’re in, your status as a medical student means nothing, because so what? Everyone is one too. “But Asher!” you say, frantically gesturing at me to pause, “I’ll be smart and date outside of medical school.” No, dummy. You’ll be a dummy if you do that because…

The more friends you have outside of med school the harder it is to excel. Med school is about an ethos. You’re not just part of a course. You’re part of a community. This is now your primary identity. All your self worth are now belong with us, bi*ch. There is this neurological phenomenon seen in people trying to study. When you’re focused on something, if you break off and engage with something unrelated, your brain takes up to twenty minutes to fully refocus on the original task once you return to it. In life as well, broadly speaking, I’ve observed a similar phenomenon. I’ve known three students in med school whose circle of friends mostly lay outside of med school. One hung out with mostly dancers and choreographers. One was a socialite. One hung out with the sons of politicians. They all were (and still are as of now) the worst doctors I have ever seen. This is because they constantly take breaks from the ethos of medical life. They miss out on the rhythm of life in the world of medicine. So you should know that…

You will leave most of your old friends behind, and you won’t even mind. Of all the various professions, I’m told, physicians tend to default the most on school reunions. That is partly because they don’t have the time, but also because they don’t care. It isn’t that we become arrogant or unsocial. It is that the act of medical education deeply changes you. It makes you more functionally intelligent. It makes you less prone to fake drama. It makes you calmer in crisis. All these after-effects will permanently drive a wedge between you and many of the people you used to know. This is a surprising side-effect no one anticipates; least of all your elders. And that is an amusing paradox. They anticipate your becoming a doctor because they know medical school is elevation. They don’t realize the side effect of this elevation is you will now talk down to them.

Your most important subject in pre-med is physics. Look, pre-med isn’t really about information continuity. The organisms you will dissect in pre-med will be phylogenetically disconnected from med school. You dissect a plant stem, a plant root, an earthworm, a cockroach, a frog, and then… a human being? See? You won’t be seamlessly connecting domains of knowledge. Pre-med isn’t even about building a conceptual base. Many things you learn in pre-med biology will be repeated in so much greater detail in med school that your prior knowledge will only partially help. Pre-med is about picking up mental skills you will need. Let’s talk about those.

You need to learn to form a train of thought fast. The great thing about learning to solve problems in physics is that you learn to solve problems in general. You learn to quickly identify variables and constants. Sometimes there will be constants in the problem that would normally be variables in real life. You learn to work with those too. Physics allows you to become mentally agile with concepts. If you get fluid mechanics, you can handle the physiology of hypovolemic shock. If you get lever mechanisms (in different orders), you can handle applied anatomy in orthopedics. If you get optics, you can handle a lot of neurology and ophthalmology. In my experience, the students who have the hardest time in med school are the ones who didn’t learn to think on their feet within a fixed framework of time.

You hate memorizing? Actually, you don’t. It’s all about the context. Literally none of us salivated at the prospect of memorizing taxonomies. We hated it and struggled over it and were glad when we were done with it. That was because it was something we knew we would never use. In med school, you will do a lot of memorizing. But you will enjoy it (or at least you can, if you choose; I’m a huge nerd). Many doctors will tell you how easily drug classifications embed themselves in their brains. This is despite the fact that the latter are more complex than zoology taxonomy charts or botanical floral formulas. The difference is that your knowledge of drug classification will impact what you will say to your aunt when she confronts you over her persistent back pain over Christmas dinner (poor posture, it’s always poor posture; she sits like a potato). So you will memorize a lot. It won’t be anything like memorizing was before. Rest easy. You will find it easy to like it.

Your persona does not matter. Caring for people and being compassionate and wanting to cure disease are the least important things in medicine. You need to be able to meaningfully link vast amounts of information to come to a correct diagnosis as per established algorithms. You need to perform surgical procedures within a reasonable amount of time with a decent degree of success. All else is secondary. When most of your non-doctor relatives tell you that a doctor’s personality matters, they’re doing something called argument from ignorance. You see, the world of medicine is so big and so complex that most of it is technically incomprehensible to the general public. So they latch on to the few aspects of a doctor’s life they are mentally capable of understanding (and commenting upon; remember their first reaction to meeting someone with an education superior to theirs is to give them tips). So they will talk about a doctor’s personality because it is the only part they can presume to have some expertise on. Even that they do not. Don’t ever do stupid things like falling in love with your patients or building deep and personal relationships with your patients. You will never last in medicine. This is not because the emotional trauma of losing them will wreck you. This is because you will go bankrupt fighting lawsuits accusing you of patient preference. You will feel the pressure in the things non-doctors will say behind a good doctors back. “He’s so boring at parties, he can only talk work stuff.” If that is your destiny, so be it. Own it. They find you boring? So what? You were not put on this earth to entertain the illiterate at parties. You were sent here to be a lifesaver; not to have a personality that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

I’m telling you it does not matter. The practice of medicine is life on the edge of reality. All personalities are welcome because medical school is a personality in itself.

The materialists among us are taught the value of wisdom and the ascetics among us learn to knot a Double-Windsor.

The atheists among us will pray frantically and the religious among us will find no time for church on Sunday.

The loudmouthed learn to whisper in the NICU and the soft-spoken learn to yell, “Stat!” in the ER.

The type-A personalities among us learn to break the news of a patient’s passing to his relatives and the type-B personalities among us learn to argue medico-legal cases.

The clumsy among us learn to suture wounds and the nimble learn to administer CPR.

Materialists. Ascetics. Atheists. Theists. Loudmouthed. Soft-spoken. Type-A. Type-B. Clumsy. Nimble.

In medical school, we all meet in the middle.

PS: Photo not mine. Credits to the rightfully owner. 

[alchemist-shizun]

Patet omnibus libertas

AU belongs to @pistachiolan and the first scene is inspired by this post. Check the notes for more info!

See the wonderful fanart!

Read on Ao3!

General taglist: @whizzie72 @sapphire-knight @burningpersonflapsuitcase @softanxiouspatton @royallyanxious @kim-argent-moon (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Word Count: 3,048

Characters: Virgil, Roman, Logan, Patton, Thomas, Remus (mentioned)

Pairing(s): Prinxiety

Warning(s): Major character death (apparent), graphic descriptions of violence, blood, kissing. (The majority of these warnings are for the first scene but it's a nightmare, you can skip to "Virgil surged up on his bed")

Summary: Conflicted feelings in a time of disorientation. Virgil, a former Heretic, had been captured and is now back to his village, thanks to a ... little deity's will. Roman, the knight protector of that land, had been against his return since the beginning. Things of course change the more he gets attached to the boy and, with the help of poetry, things could finally bloom.

A/N: Get ready for literary chronological discrepancies because I love quotes you can fight me. Okay I may or may not have added a bunch of ideas or details of mine for narration purposes oops-- Anyhow, I had a lot of fun writing this so I hope you all enjoy it too! And sorry for that first weird bit but I wanted to see if I was able to write a gruesome scene. Don't forget to check out @pistachiolan's profile for their fantastically marvellous au which you can find in their blog under the #TsCultAu tag, I tell you guys, their idea is MINDBLOWING and the art is just as good and it's so so so worth to follow if you don't you're straight. So yeah, I'm here to fix their angst with some nice fluff (after some more angst), enjoy your time here~

✾

The first image of red Virgil noticed was a flash of light in the corner of his eye; something pressed hard against his back and forced his downfall to inexorably begin.

He crashed against the earth, his nails digging in the dirt as pain numbed his senses only to regain them again and devastate his perceiving.

Failing to get back on his feet he could only manage to roll on his back and be met with the worst fate he ever feared.

There Roman stood, in all the mighty glory Virgil had always pleasantly basked under. Looking down at him with a distasteful expression adorning his face.

And his hand ghosting over his weapon.

Virgil's eyes widened, his fight or flight senses overproducing a shot of panic over his chest; he may have yelled, cried for someone's name or help, but everything felt so blurry and his limbs just too heavy.

It was as if he was … remembering instead of experiencing.

He remembered calling Remus's name in vain, as he noticed his expression growing blank as though in a daze.

The twin binding. A connection that messed with his mind so much that a simple hesitation caused by it could determine the adverse outcome of the Fates.

Time had slowed down, its passage becoming almost imperceptible.

« Die, you demon! »

And, when it started up again, it was no longer a memory.

Virgil sealed his eyes shut as Roman's sword swung in his direction, wishing for some kind of invisible protection to be laid on him, or, even better, for him to wake up and realize-

It was too late.

All lies, the ones that granted feasibility when you wished upon a star.

Nothing came for Virgil. Nothing but a steel blade slashing right through his body. His lungs filled with blood, the vermilion substance roughly rose up to his throat and stained his lips with doleful spatters, a trickle dripped down his chin and splattered against the fair skin of his hand.

He had … turned human again?

Virgil was hunched over himself, placing his hands on the exact meeting point between his chest and the sharpness of the sword. His hands were smeared with blood and red started being all he could feel and see around himself.

Just like that, Roman withdrew his sword only to dive back in and push the blade further in, tip protruding on the other side and loudly dripping with the same red vital fluid.

Virgil gasped for air that never came, instead, the void filled him, ready to take over what was soon to be his lifeless body.

Everything was red. His vision, his clothes, his skin. Roman.

Roman was red and he had learnt to love it.

Now Roman had caused that terrific madness of red all around them. Should he love that, too? Should he welcome it, at that point?

It was a tragedy that had made him delirious. Maybe he deserved that, he was sure the other would have agreed, rendered in that condition.

« You do. » venom words hit Virgil's face as Roman leaned in, still pressing the weapon angrily against the boy's chest.

What? He … wasn't … talking?

« The ones of your likes, » he began, watching as more gushes of blood dirtied the grass and contrasted the white in his own clothes in an almost blinding manner. « Deserve to cease existing at once. »

Virgil hadn't noticed Roman was now aiming at his heart. He didn't mind anymore, as he had already broken it by tearing it apart for so long.

And, when the distance between the sword and the entrance to his heart coincided, Virgil closed his eyes and, to his destiny, he miserably resigned.

And he woke up.

Virgil surged up on his bed, breathing heavily in a way he couldn't have done in the nightmare, as if he were regaining the air that had been neglected to his oniric self.

His trembling hands went at once to his chest were his untouched skin was covered by a layer of thin clothing, almost as white as his arms looked under the moonbeam.

Not real. Virgil's hands covered his eyes while he tried to steady his heartbeat.

Nothing of that happened. It's not real.

Time had passed before he decided to get up; who cares if they caught him awake at abominable hours and sent him suspicious glances. Ironically enough, he did need air.

Like an undead monster wounded by the bothersome hunter, Virgil dragged his feet against the cold pavement, a hand resting against the wall in support.

Adjusting to the darkness, he noticed the entrance to a room lit up in a faint warm colour. He knew he shouldn't have approached, but it was far too early in the morning to make clever decisions.

Whispers came from the space. Virgil peeked for only an instant.

« What do we even need him for? » that was Roman's voice.

Yeah, he really should have stepped away.

« Now, I'm sure there is a good reason for that. » Patton chimed in.

Virgil's hand brushed the bricks of the entrance.

« We know who he is, Patton. He used to literally look like a monster. »

Then, he retracted it immediately.

« I don't want to hear any of that! » Patton's voice slipped, a bit higher than intended, his eyes growing wide with realization, but Virgil didn't see that as silence fell over the room.

He quietly apologized. « I just … I want to trust Thomas. »

Virgil breathed out deeply. You're going to end up hurting yourself.

« I want to, too, but- »

« Roman, » Logan was there, too? He had just recently joined, not much longer after Virgil's … little incident.

« Virgil seems like a good person. »

« Yes. » Patton agreed softly. « The poor boy looks too scared to even talk, too. » he added with a sad tone in his voice.

Virgil knew Patton had tried to befriend him ever since he had started working with the high priest.

He sighed and looked at his hands. Sometimes, distinguishing reality from mendacity was a matter of a little detail.

Sometimes, Virgil wasn't even sure what had happened in his life and what were mere creations completed in his mind. What one would have been sure of, though, was that he was going to be scarred for an awfully prolonged time.

He had his back against the wall, thoughts going back to his horrible sleep.

Oh, how it stung.

Why did it have to be Roman? Why couldn't it have been a stranger like in everybody else's dreams? No, he was cursed to live his capturing over and over again, but with the worst possible outcomes played in front of his eyes that didn't really ever happen.

But most of all, why did it have to still hurt so much?

« Are you lost? »

Virgil was an inch close to jump right out of his skin. Thomas himself had appeared almost glowing in the dark right behind him in his almighty godly appearance, now peeking at the scene in the room.

« Oh, » he emitted, thoughtfully, as the conversation started making sense to him.

« Don't worry. Just don't break the rules and play nice. I'm sure you will all get along, eventually. »

Keeping up the façade could have been hard if his memories didn't make him terrified at that moment. « I hope so. »

Thomas smiled warmly at him. « Go back to sleep, Virgil. »

Almost automatically, that he did.

✾✾✾

Weeks had passed. Maybe months. Maybe more. Time isn't real when you don't keep track of it.

Thus, Roman was confused.

No, he wasn't confused by the concept of time itself, but how its action affected your own senses.

For instance, relationships.

The passage of time permitted one to develop their relations with others. Even for the better!

That was what confused Roman.

He had been hostile to Virgil since he joined, sure, but it was time that made things different and strange.

Because it made him tolerate Virgil more with every interaction, it made his chest feel lighter when he learnt new things about him. It made him grow so accustomed to the boy that, at times, Roman himself was the one to seek him out.

Yet …

« I feel like there's something wrong. » he had told Patton one day, when he looked for the best person's opinion he could find on the subject of feelings.

« With? » Patton tilted his head to the side, encouraging him to elaborate.

« Myself? » Roman shrugged slowly, then he pursed his lips. « I feel like a hypocrite. »

« Why would that be? » Patton's tone clearly stated a subtle “I assure you you're not.” « Did you have an argument with someone? »

The knight made a face. « I've had too many. »

The other made him sit down on a stony surface within the frontal garden.

« It's … Virgil. I- Well, it's weird. We're getting along now, despite everything that's happened. All I've said. » he sighed and brushed his face for a moment. « It doesn't feel right on my account. »

« Well, if you feel bad about it, why don't you simply apologize to him? That'll lift some weight off of you. » Patton offered, while his feet tickled the radiant flowers on the grass.

« Maybe … » Roman still didn't feel entirely convinced, as if some limit were preventing him from opening up completely.

« Tell him how you feel. I'm sure he'll understand. »

The knight stifled a laugh. « I don't even want to admit to myself how I feel. » his voice had gotten softer, the same way the gentle breeze kissed his cheeks.

Patton turned to him, he waited because he knew there was something more to that. When his friend spoke again, he fought a wide smile to spread across his face.

« … About him. » Roman finally finished, looking at the ground as though he were to stare at the sunset in the distance after a victorious journey. Eyes narrowed and clouded memories.

« You don't have to tell my anything you don't want to. » Patton watched as the other nodded slightly. « Just know that he'd love to hear what you have to say. »

That was when Roman had enough willpower to get up. « Right. Thank you. » he didn't look away from the building, a buzzing feeling in his chest.

« Ro- »

« Yes? »

Patton blinked a couple of times. Was that how anxiety looked like on other people?

« You can find him in the library. » he informed, subtly amused.

A “thank you” was heard as Roman practically sprinted towards the construction; Patton let out the laughter he had been holding.

Roman was surely one of the bravest knights he had ever met, but he still did manage to be that endearing when it came to being sentimental.

« Goodness gracious. » he shook his head and went back to his task.

✾✾✾

And the library was where Virgil was, lost in thought as his eyes skittered over yellowish pages of ancient manuscripts, different alphabets tried to confuse his mind. 

His sensed heightened as he heard quick steps growing closer; he shut the book he was holding between one of his fingers and turned to the entrance, almost expectant.

When Roman appeared, he had to kill the profound joy that threatened to manifest on his face.

« Hey. »

« Hello. »

The knight approached him, unsure of how to act. Virgil noticed he was far more nervous than how nonchalant he acted any other day.

« Am I bothering you, or ...? » 

Virgil pointed to his book. « I was merely reading. »

« Oh- sorry, may I visit another- » 

« Roman, » he almost snorted. « It's just poetry. »

Roman's face lit up in an instant. « I love poetry! » he stepped closer, so that he could see the cover of the book. 

« Archaic Greek lyric. » Virgil clarified, showing a page full of poets' names; the knight, curse his ignorance on the matter, had never heard any of them.

As he tried to implement some names in his mind, Virgil closed the book again.

« What are you here for? »

Okay then. Let's do this.

« I realized I never really went back on all my wrongdoings to you. » he admitted. « So I wanted to apologize for all the things I've said in the past. I am truly deeply sorry. »

« It's alright, just like you said: they're in the past. » Virgil's expression actually hinted at gratefulness.

« Please, you must accept it or it won't stop eating at me. »

He really had to stop himself from tackling him in a tight hug.

« Yes, okay. I forgive you, Roman. » Virgil's eyes glanced at him with a soft gaze. 

Roman responded with a sweet smile. « Thank you. » then, when the silence felt enough for both of them, unable to say anything more despite everything they felt for each other, his interest went back to the book. 

« So, you like ancient stuff? » 

« It would be ironic for me to learn ancient Greek and then despise all the literature behind it. »

« Wait, what? » Roman's pitch got higher with shock. « You learnt it? » 

« It's fundamental to the kind of education I wanted to get. » Virgil shrugged, opening the collection once again to avoid the other's stare. 

Until he felt Roman's hands place on his arm and pulling him towards the stained glass window. 

« Read for me? » the hopeful veil on the knight's face was almost impossible to ignore and not satisfy. 

The boy looked down again, his fingertips going over the verses; when he read the original version, it all sounded like a kind chanting that seemed to make actual sense if Roman had only known what it meant. Virgil's magnificent voice was able to let him understand the themes of the poem through the honey-like melody the metric allowed. 

« This is Sappho. The 31st fragment. » Virgil still didn't look up. 

« What does it say? » 

« He seems like the gods’ equal, that man, whoever he is, who takes his seat so close across from you- » a pair of hands went over his, pushing the book down so Virgil wasn't able to check it.

Roman's face seemed to say "I know you can do it." but actually meant "I saw your eyes didn't move while reading, you know it by heart."

And also a subtle "I'd like to dream you're dedicating this to me." 

«A- and listens raptly to your lilting voice, » Virgil stammered at first, trying not to get mesmerized by Roman gazing directly into his eyes, almost as though he were expecting something out of him. 

« And lovely laughter, which, as it wafts by, sets the heart in my ribcage fluttering. » he felt the unanimity between the poem and himself. « As soon as I glance at you a moment, » silence lingered in function of the other hemistich. « I can’t say a thing, and my tongue stiffens into silence. »

The warmth of Roman's skin was still surrounding his hands. « Thin flames underneath my skin prickle and spark, a rush of blood booms in my ears, » Virgil's were slightly ringing. « and then my eyes go dark, and sweat pours coldly over me, and all my body shakes, suddenly sallower than summer grass. »

The last verse was Virgil's favorite, he savored every syllable on his tongue. « And death, I fear and feel, is very near. »

Bewildered by the boy's knowledge, Roman was almost unable to understand he had finished.

Virgil, obviously panicking upon realizing what he had just recited and how long he'd been daydreaming of dedicating it to the other, tried to rely on his education to fill the silence.

He looked down. « This- Uhm, this was also written similarly in Latin by Catu- »

« In vain I have struggled. » Roman barged in, he both looked like he needed to get the words out and like he was still looking for said words.

« It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. » he was gripping so tightly at Virgil's hands that the book fell between their feet, with a thump none of them actually cared about hearing. 

Almost automatically, he intertwined their fingers. « You must allow me to tell you, » a sensation of deep adrenaline took over his chest and his utmost impulsive tendencies pushed him to reveal his deepest sentiments. 

« How ardently I admire, » and when push comes to shove, you can't ignore the violent crashing of your heart against your chest. Roman's hands traveled up to Virgil's cheeks.

« And love you. » the shove became the dive into the abyss and the wish became reality when Roman kissed Virgil's lips soft and longingly, telling him everything poetic and literary words couldn't.

As they parted, Virgil fought the instinct to surge forward again; he slowly opened his eyes, blinking at the harsh light coming from the stained glass next to them.

« Pride and Prejudice? » he asked, dumbfounded by what had just happened.

Roman smiled and started stepping away. « Had a sudden thought and needed to let it out. » he took Virgil's hand. « I will gladly speak with you about literature again, when my knightly duties won't come in between our time together. » he then brought it to his lips. « Until then, » and placed a kiss on his knuckles.

As Roman walked away, gifting him one last love-infused smile, Virgil was sure of one thing. 

That one nightmare he had a long while back actually did predict the future: Roman was going to be the death of him, after all. 

[arcticdementor]

It is appropriate to begin to understand yourself as a combatant in a war that you may only be dimly aware is being waged. You are in fact operating in the battlespace at this very moment. Consider the implications. Consider that you are marked.

Your self-identification as a combatant, or not, is irrelevant. You have been declared an adversary of the True and Just cause of Democracy. The adversary in this war is a floating signifier anyway, purposefully undefined. Don’t go searching for your name in any database (though you may find it there). The adversary can be anyone, at any time. He is a cipher. The territory under contestation is perhaps even less well-demarcated. As a matter of physical geography, it may be said to not exist at all. And yet we are in it. We are fighting it. The war is on.

…

The proclamations of those declaring this war leave vanishingly little room for uncertainty. Their rhetoric is becoming more explicit every day. No one can deny this. Even the soberest mind must acknowledge their increasing belligerence.

“In the aftermath of the insurrection on January 6th…” This is by now a common refrain. Oliver Stone also said — or maybe it was Homer — that every war must start with an event. No doubt they have been waiting a long time to declare their intentions, but now they have finally found their casus belli. When they say that January 6th is their 9/11, this is what they mean. It may seem that the incoherent, spontaneous nature of what happened at the Capitol might vitiate such lofty comparisons. But for the regime, all the better. The ambiguity allows for the widest possible net to be cast over their enemy, as John Brennan would have it, the “unholy alliance” of “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

Tag yourself. Not that any of these terms matter. Again, they are floating signifiers. They mean everything and nothing. Importantly, they mean you. They mean me.

Brennan of course is not alone. Just days after he delivered his ominous remarks, his CIA colleague Robert Grenier wrote an op-ed for the New York Times declaring the forces responsible for January 6th — again, never clearly defined — to be regarded in the same terms as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. He spoke of an ongoing “domestic insurgency” and the need to put it down with the same degree of force as his own Counterrorism division applied to jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Stanley McChrystal echoed nearly identical sentiments within the week. Javed Ali, whose bio reads less like a human being’s than the formless node of the Foreign Policy blob that he is, writing for the Security State rag the Cipher Brief, in an article indicative of the borg-like mass to which he belongs, suggested the “New Right,” which includes the usual litany of conservative bogeymen all the way up to those with such alarming views as, for example, being “pro-2nd amendment,” warrants the creation of Domestic Terrorism laws that would include a domestic surveillance program mirroring the British Security Service to monitor online speech and circumvent Constitutional protections against prior restraint.

…

But beyond the morality play, and the heady drama of the fate of Western man, it’s Lind’s attention to the form and processes of war that are most relevant here. In the 4th Generation war everything is muddled and inexact. Military and civilian life merge into a fluid, indivisible state of mind and being. Everywhere is a potential target. There is a kind of atemporality to it, too. Individual battles never clearly begin or end. Much of it is fought in the digital ether. Fixed points of planning and operation become obsolete, too easily identified and subverted. There are questions about the status of the war itself, and it is often an advantage of the stronger side to plausibly deny there is any war at all.

In the end, Lind resolves these ambiguities in no uncertain terms. His 4th Generation civil war, however abstract and indistinct, eventually reverts to the classic mode. Its wages are measured in lives lost and territory gained. His heroes shoulder their rifles and vanquish their enemies in pools of their own blood. A Christian nation of local, artisanal economies blooms in a Jeffersonian spirit of revitalization. It’s a chilling read, the Minecraft meme brought to life.

But it is in this latter reversion to classic military confrontation where Lind’s map loses touch with the territory we are actually living in. We are not in a war that accommodates armed conflict, nor should we want it to. Let me repeat that for the minders reading this: violence, kids, is not the answer to our current problems.

Rather, some have speculated that what we are living through now is better described as 5th Generation war. A fifth-generation war is one where the ambiguity stands, even more so, but is never quite so manifestly resolved. (This Twitter thread from last October by anon user Reality Gamer provides a useful summary of the concept.)

This war, if we are to adopt the model, which I believe we should — and for which there is much compelling evidence — is fought almost exclusively over ideas. As in Lind’s concept, everything is indistinct, everything is abstracted right up to the point of nonexistence. War and peace, civilian and combatant, battlefield and neutral territory all collapse in a morass of ever-present meta-conflict. The conceptual boundaries between debate, activism, and terrorism are themselves the site of primary engagement. What matters is not who controls the streets in the wake of a clash of forces, but he who decides that the clashes are “mostly peaceful” and their own soldiers just an “idea.”

That is, it is a war over narrative control. Instead of armed battalions, it’s a loose affiliation of entrenched interests — deep-state operatives, media conglomerates, NGOs, lawfare apparatchiks, academics, the many-sided face of globohomo — controlling information networks to shore up their resources and guard against whoever they identify as a threat. These threats and the methods to neutralize them never have to be explicitly stated or shared across the network. In fact, it is better if they aren’t. It obviates the problem of what Edward Luttwack calls the “paradoxical logic of strategy.” Instead, the system, like a black box AI, manages its agenda according to its own hidden processes.

And what is this agenda exactly? To enforce the conditions of consent.

…

What we are experiencing now is something quite different, the regime on war-footing, no longer confident enough in its own legitimacy to dare put that legitimacy to test. And as is the case for all regimes in such a weakened, sclerotic state, though the strategies and tactics are more diffuse and perhaps less blunt than in eras past, we are treated to the same predictable response: crush dissent, flatten and homogenize the culture, divide and alienate the population from one another, declare a monopoly not just on knowledge and belief, but on the asking of questions themselves. Vaclav Havel, writing on the withering Communist regime of his native Czechoslovakia, described this final desperate effort to coerce the population into consent as the “nihilization of life.” 

…

When vast swaths of non-compliant Americans are declared domestic insurgents, it behooves us to conduct ourselves accordingly. This is not to say that whatever might broadly be called the ‘Dissident Right’ ought to assume a defensive crouch, or retreat into passive quietism until the regime exhausts itself. Though we may be in the midst of a 5th Generation war, some of the old rules still apply, and the insurgent, however diminished, however outgunned — metaphorically, of course — has certain advantages he can make use of.

Another war historian, David Gallula, describing the Cold War spasms breaking apart and reforming the global map after World War II, wrote in 1965 what has become the textbook on the nature of insurgencies. Gallula was a man of his time, and most of his examples are superficially outdated, Communist rebels from Greece to North Africa to Southeast Asia asserting themselves with greater and lesser effectiveness throughout the Third World. We are not Communists, and this is not the Cold War, no matter how much our State Department might wish it were so. Nonetheless, Gallula provides a few key insights that broadly apply to our fight, and that we ought to keep in mind as we ask the question of what comes next.

To begin, the site of contestation in the 5th Generation war against our decrepit regime is not firstly the halls of power, certainly not the Capitol building, and not even really the formal political arena at all. Borrowing from Yarvin, I’d echo that Republican electoral victories are not sufficient for breaking the regime until the Republican candidate sees himself as an outsider prepared to tell the regime that it must submit. Still, contra Yarvin, winning political fights is good, where we can get them, and there are ways of engaging in local politics, especially, that may achieve certain desired effects. But ultimately, political victories are downstream of a more fundamental fight, which is winning the support of what Gullala coarsely calls “the population.”

…

That is, the normie must be given a cause. This cause must exist outside the political paradigm within which he has been accustomed to understanding these conflicts. Scott Alexander is not entirely wrong to propose that Republicans wage a “class conflict” against the strata of elite sense-makers who despise them. It is indeed a righteous cause, and an effective message. He is wrong however that Republicans, as such, ought to do this. No. This is not a partisan conflict against Democrats, though there is much overlap. This is a conflict of insurgents against a failing regime. That is the way it must be framed and its campaigns prosecuted.

I am cautiously optimistic that Americans understand this cause and the nature of their enemy instinctively. There is no denying the rot at the heart of American life, of Western life. There is no denying the ever-presence of the bugman and his sickly designs for us. The energy leaking out against this is everywhere in sight. However misdirected, however frenetic and decoupled from meaningful objectives, a spirit of disobedience obtains. They feel the quickening incursion of the public life into the private, no doubt accelerated by Zoom World and the bright eye of our screens watching and recording our every thought. Americans can feel caught in a straightjacket of preference falsification and coercive moral decrees, the stiltifying HRization of their inner universe. What a bleak and limited existence!

…

Finally, as Gullala observes, an insurgent movement in its infancy is necessarily small. It is necessarily weak. It needs time to build. It cannot on day one confront the regime on its turf and presume to use the regime’s own weapons against it. Again, this is not to advocate for quietism, but rather to recognize the limited usefulness of operating within the domains of social and political activity the regime already controls. You are not going to take back the universities or Hollywood or the news desk. Infiltrate these places and expose them for what they are, but to destroy them rather than to save them.

Before anything else, we must build a culture of our own. Any meaningful insurgency will be downstream from its capacity to imagine. Direct action politics will flail and follow, rather than lead, if it is not tethered to the kind of self-understanding that can only be achieved through art. The regime understands this, if only intuitively, and the ban waves and censorship are an attempt to tear apart the communities where this art can be cultivated and shared. But they are not yet omnipresent. They have not yet, as in Havel’s Czechoslovakia, managed to altogether “nihilize life.” There are cracks still to penetrate. There is, deep in the American soul, a resilience that is not yet extinguished. Build the communities, forge the relationships, online and off, where this resilience can manifest and triumph over the enemy and its machines.

[naturecpw]

The Single Most Important Thinking Skill Nobody Taught You

Being flexible and weighing the options you ultimately won’t take is more beneficial than you may realize.

Thomas Oppong

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

George Bernard Shaw said that.

And Einstein also said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

Life is neither static nor unchanging, it’s fluid.

Nothing stays the same.

Elastic thinking (experts may call it cognitive flexibility) allows us to shift gears and think about something in more than one way.

Flexible thinkers consider a range of different possible consequences of their actions rather than only considering an optimistic view or only considering a pessimistic view.

A fixed mindset can sabotage your efforts to thrive in a changing environment.

Being flexible doesn’t always mean having to give in, or say yes.

What it means is you are looking at things from a different perspective first, and then making a choice that is best, this is flexibility. How Elastic Is Your Brain?

The ability to stretch beyond your core strengths when necessary and quickly rebound back to your core skills and discipline is a desirable trait.

Elasticity is essentially responsiveness to change in an ever-changing world.

To survive in an environment of constant stimulation and rapid change, elastic thinking is essential.

Elasticity is flexibility.

It’s the ability to adapt to new situations, break down complex tasks into bite-size chunks, improvise, and shift strategies to meet different types of challenges.

Flexibility gives the human brain the edge over computers is flexible thinking.

Elastic minds are people who reimagine new ways to solve existing problems and create tools make things better, easier, faster and smarter.

They can better balance long term and short term desires. When they’re in any situation, they can think about both long term and short term goals to make better decisions.

   The best innovators can quickly shift their perspective.

“Our new role as visionaries, decision makers, and strategic informants means we can’t rely on any rules. There are more stakeholders, more complicated products, and faster market cycles. In this environment, elasticity is more important than ever” explains Stuart Karten, the Founder and President of Los Angeles-based product innovation consultancy.

To thrive now and in the future, you have to be willing to rise above conventional mindsets and wisdom.

You become indispensable in the world by constantly outgrowing your existing roles.

The questions you asked today may not unravel the answers you seek tomorrow.

To stay competitive in life and business, you have to be open to new paradigms. You have to rely as much on your imagination as on logic.

   Elastic thinking is about stretching your mind and using ‘bottom up’ processing in the brain rather than the top down executive functions that drive analytical thinking. It encompasses a range of processes including, but not confined to, neophilia (an enthusiasm for novelty), schizotypy, imagination, idea generation and divergent thinking,” explains Dhruti Shah of BBC Capital.

Elastic thinking, in combination with rational or logical thought, and creative thinking will make you indispensable.

Elastic thinking endows us with the ability to solve novel problems and overcome the neural barriers that can impede us from looking beyond the status quo.

Solving problems and drawing better conclusions requires a blend of logical, analytical and elastic thinking.

“Logical analytical thinking is really good when you are trying to solve a problem you’ve seen before. You can use known methods and techniques to approach whatever issue you are dealing with. Elastic thinking is what you need when the circumstances change and you are dealing with something new. It’s not about following rules,” says Leonard Mlodinow, theoretical physicist, author of “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change.”

John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

Flexible thinking means stretching what you know enough to make an educated guess that could be right (and if it’s not, that’s okay). The Elastic Mind of Leonardo

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day." — Einstein

Leonardo da Vinci maintained a passionate curiosity throughout life.

He simply wanted to know. He was an elastic thinker and a prolific creator.

His mind wandered merrily across the arts, sciences, engineering, and humanities.

More than 7,000 pages of Leonardo’s notebooks still exist.

His genius came from being wildly imaginative, quirkily curious and willfully observant.

His novelty was a product of his own will and effort, which makes his story inspiring for us and also more possible to emulate.

Da Vinci’s work paved the path for artists, scientists, and philosophers alike.

Most of the people we admire often have the gift of the elastic mind.

   Today, more than ever, we must embrace the elastic mindset.

In a stable world devoid of change, we can solve problems by applying the same old techniques, principles, and rules.

But the age of unprecedented technological change constantly challenges us to find new solutions.

Do you give in when faced with a problem you have not seen before, or are you driven by the determination to achieve?

How strongly are you driven to reach that “light” at the end of the tunnel?

Solving problems and drawing better conclusions within an existing framework requires a blend of analytical and elastic thinking.

In the right combination with other traits, elastic thinking is a crucial predictor of total well-being.

“Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age,” says C. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist. How to Develop an Agile Mind

The good news is flexible thinking skills can be taught.

For those wishing to tap into elastic thinking, Mlodinow suggests carving out time for daydreaming, talking to people outside your social circle, absorbing great art out of your comfort zone, listening to ideas or concepts you actively disagree with before disregarding them.

Always try to look at everything from more than one angle.

Change the context or your environment and you’ll feel your mind shift.

Take a walk. Take a coffee break.

Exercise offers another great mental boost.

The more you can challenge yourself to be spontaneous and allow for some new experiences, the easier it will be to integrate flexibility into your everyday life!

Mental flexibility is aided by novelty, and that contributes to brain growth and development throughout a lifetime.

The next time you encounter the stress of change, remember that you can adapt to thrive and become indispensable in the ever-changing world.

Remember, flexibility is a choice and with practice, you will be making moves you never thought possible.

Thomas Oppong is the founder of AllTopStartups and writes on science-based answers to problems in life about creativity, productivity, and self-improvement.

This post originally appeared on Thomas Oppong and was published December 13, 2018.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-single-most-important-thinking-skill-nobody-taught-you?utm_source=pocket-newtab

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The Best Mentors Ask These 8 Questions

[blueoatmeal]

Day 1: Sandbox Characters

Obviously I went with Clockwork. Mostly a jumble of thoughts, headcanons, and quotes here

Clockwork

Not truly omniscient. Learns info like any other person, by seeing it. Just has a lot more time to spend watching, and the unique ability to see the past and future by travelling there

To any mortal being, he appears to know just about everything, but in truth there’s such a volume of information that’s constantly increasing that CW only knows a small fraction of what could be known at any given time

He’s very good at acting like he knows all, of course

He is in no way telepathic. Just good at reading people and predicting what they’ll do based on prior/future actions. Like a Batman Gambit. Not a foolproof method though

(Core theory) Has a time core. Unlike average ghosts who consciously tap into their specialized powers to use them (besides when Danny was repressing his ice powers bc he didn’t know about them), CW is constantly generating temporal energy

Just as Danny might freeze a wall he phases through when tapping into his core, CW affects things when phased through them too. He just. Can’t turn the effect off. Notably, he tends to age (or otherwise warp) whatever material or being he phases through. Sometimes quite drastically

As a result, he generally refrains from using intangibility and often uses teleportation in its place when he can, even though it takes more energy. That being said, he has made offensive use of intangibility

This also makes overshadowing a lot riskier

He is, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. He may not have always been a ghost, but he is now

His scar is hypertrophic (raised) except in AUs where it isn’t

He has the only time core in existence. He’s been targeted for it before; by time travelers, errant physicists, and aspiring rulers of the universe

The clock in his chest is fully functional; the hands move, the pendulum swings, and it even makes a ticking sound

He can make around 12 or 13 duplicates

He is very much an unreliable narrator. Take everything he says with a grain of salt

Clockwork’s tower always looks a lot smaller from the outside. It’s a phenomenon that doesn’t seem too unusual in the Ghost Zone, but is taken to the extreme in the clocktower. Unless a bunch of the doors in the halls lead to nothing, there’s more going on than anyone could guess from a casual look.

Quotes: (mostly from my phic WIPs)

Clockwork stared into the distance with an annoyed look on his face. “It is possible. I’m not the only entity who can manipulate time. Sometimes others try to help fix time, including those ruined timelines, and wind up making my job more difficult. Other times they’re a bit too effective.”

“Time is fluid,” Clockwork explained, “and I am a part of it. I do not exist outside of time. My actions can make a difference in time on the most basic level, like yours or anyone else’s. I can change events without causing temporal rifts.”

“It’s interesting to hear directly what people think about their own time.

Clockwork shook his head. “As convenient as it would be, I can’t speed up time for localized parts of my own body. It would throw everything out of whack. I can certainly freeze time, wait until I heal, then unfreeze it, but it’s indescribably boring.

“You don’t have a preset destiny. Just variable possibilities based on the actions and decisions of yourself and those around you. And, of course, genuine chance. Natural disasters, for example.

“You reduce individuals to statistics because you can’t properly comprehend numbers above a few hundred. You lose your perspective because your minds can’t handle the concept of trillions of unique people with different lives and goals of their own, each with a web of connections to others. You can only envision a few people at a time with that much detail. I don’t have those limits. Not on comprehension. Not on memory. I see the entirety of a person’s life, from birth to death and sometimes beyond, in multiple continuities, and I can never forget any of it.”

“I can tug at someone’s secrets every day for their entire life, but they can still choose to ignore me or refuse what I ask of them. I can’t just puppet people into doing what I want. There’s overshadowing, but it’s not a good long-term strategy. And it’s terribly unreliable. Most of what I do is good old-fashioned manipulation, with force applied as needed.”

“I must not act without thinking. Ever. Anything could happen. Worse, if my actions benefit myself at the expense of others, I lose my objectivity and all my decisions become compromised. It’s a conflict of interest. I can’t enter personal matters into the equation.”

“I understand the confusion, but this is not a torture chamber. It’s more of a garage, really.”

“It’s actually the seventh world-scale war, but it’s called the Fourth War because Captain Fourth is the one who fired the first shot.”

“With nearly every decision that’s made, by anyone, the timeline splits. Often more than just twice. I may have started with one timeline, but that didn’t last long.”

“Sometimes the chronology itself begins to lead towards the destruction of the timeline. Perhaps a reality-warping weapon is developed, or a massive drought begins that will end all life if it isn’t stopped. I either let the timeline die, or course-correct so that the timeline may go on longer.”

Clockwork raised his eyebrows. “I’m an excellent actor, Daniel.”

Clockwork gave him an odd look. “That’s only in this form. This isn’t my standard or default form or anything. All of my forms, no matter the appearance of age, are equally me. Besides, even my eldest appearance is hardly representative of my true age.”

“My body ages in a cycle, and my mind ages linearly.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I suppose I can’t quite perceive it as you do.”

“You know, I never quite understood that. I see how people can be inaccurate with their sense of time, but to report either a far shorter or far longer span than actually took place—Why? How does that happen? I could come up with an evolutionary reason but ultimately it just seems ridiculous to have a sense of time at all if half the time it’s wildly inaccurate.” 

[obscurehistoricalinterests]

Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in “Carmilla” and “Dracula” (IV)

By Elizabeth Signorotti (1996)

Part I - Part II - Part III

Thesis: Carmilla is a story of female empowerment, and Dracula is a patriarchal response to it.

Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in “Carmilla” and “Dracula” (part IV)

Stoker’s familiarity with Le Fanu’s vampire tale is certain. Farson claims that Stoker was “absorbed in the vampirism in ‘Carmilla,’ published two years after he left Trinity” but more convincing evidence is found in the original first chapter of Dracula, which Stoker deleted when his publisher requested that he shorten the book to reduce printing costs. In this section, he alludes to “Carmilla.” At the opening of this chapter, Jonathan Harker loses his way as he sets out for Castle Dracula on Walpurgis Nacht, a night “when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked, when all evil things of earth and air and water held revel.” A shaft of moonlight reveals he is in an overgrown graveyard with a great, snowy-white marble tomb before him.

Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I walked around it, and read, over the Doric door, in German:

Countess Dolingen of Gratz

In Styria

Sought and Found Death 

1801

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble - for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone - was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back, I saw, graven in great Russian letters: ‘The dead travel fast.’

The reference to Styria recalls the Austrian setting of “Carmilla” and invites comparison between the two vampire tales. Whereas “Carmilla” abolishes male rights over women, Dracula reasserts those rights. This is indeed the key distinction between Dracula and “Carmilla,” one that Stoker apparently had in mind from the opening -albeit deleted- chapter of this book.

Stoker’s overriding concern in Dracula is the threat of rampant female sexual desire. Senf rightly points out that this ancient, aristocratic vampire who prays on the wives and fiancees of England’s working class reveals, among other things, the “power that negative social values from the past often have over the present.” As Troy Boone further concludes, the novel suggests that “a new understanding of sexuality and decay is necessary for any attempt to attain social order and growth” and that “for all its apparent ‘reification’ of dominant political beliefs, [Stoker’s text] exposes the dangers of failing to challenge their authority.” Both Senf and Boone present valid arguments, but, like other readings in Dracula’s critical legacy, theirs fail to emphasize the degree to which Stoker responds to the threat of female sexuality in Dracula. In Stoker’s text Dracula - and Dracula’s sense of sexuality- actually dominates very few of the scenes, whereas the sexually-charged female vampires - those at Castle Dracula, Lucy and Mina- receive most of Stoker’s attention. 

For his first “experiment” in Dracula, Stoker presents the problem of Lucy’s sexual aggressiveness, a problem to which he ultimately provides a violent solution. Although Lucy’s sexuality does not become rabid until her vampiric possession, Stoker presents her from the beginning as exhibiting personality traits potentially dangerous in women. In a letter to Mina, Lucy asks, “why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her?” Her wishing for the right to have more than one sexual partner -a reality for males such as Stoker himself- makes her a threat to established gender roles. Stoker feels obliged to inform the reader that her wishes were unseemly when, in the same passage, she again asks Mina, “why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?” Lucy serves as Stoker’s paradigm of woman-gone-wrong and predictably suffers from it.

In his attempt to redress Carmilla’s defiant behavior, Stoker imbues Lucy with Carmillaesque qualities. Her sleepwalking, which indicates a propensity towards vampirism in Dracula, first occurs in her childhood, just as Carmilla first visits and “infects: Laura during her childhood. In both works, the tendency towards socially aberrant behavior arises in early childhood, but while Carmilla’s and Laura’s behavior remains unrestrained, Lucy’s is eventually checked. Stoker also suggests that Lucy has lesbian tendencies. In a letter to Mina she says, “I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit; and I would try to tell you what I feel. I do not know how I am writing this even to you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the letter, and I don’t want to stop, for I do so want to tell you all.” Lucy’s wish to share her secrets while undressing suggests her desire to reveal “what is more properly concealed,” something she knows is “wrong.” The men in the text can control Lucy and Mina’s homosocial relationship as long as they both remain accessible; they cannot, however, control what Lucy presumably has in mind.

As if to temper her questionable behavior, Stoker denies Lucy her inheritance rights and places her firmly within the male-governed kinship system. Lucy’s mother, who controls the Westenra estate after her husband’s death, dies shortly before Lucy’s marriage to Arthur Holmwood. Mrs. Westenra, Dr. Seward tells us, “had for some time expected sudden death from her heart, and had put her affairs in absolute order... with the exception of a certain entailed property of Lucy’s father which now, in default of direct issue, went back to a distant branch of the family, the whole estate, real and personal, was left absolutely to Arthur Holmwood.” Separating Lucy from her inheritance fictionally and historically positions her in a “long tradition in which women do not inherit.” Even before Lucy’s wedding, Mrs. Westenra (whose role is the “corrected” equivalent of Carmilla’s subversive mother) ensures Lucy’s total dependence on her future husband. If her daughter had any wild ideas about being financially independent in marriage, she has permanently disabled her.  

Once Dracula kisses Lucy into sudden sexuality, she grows “voluptuous,” “savage,” “wanton,” and “diabolically sweet.” Dracula’s “authorizing kiss... triggers the release of the latent power and excites in [Lucy] a sexuality so mobile, so aggressive, that it thoroughly disrupts... [compartmentalized conceptions] of gender” (Craft 228). Dracula’s kiss enables women to become sexual penetrators. Using their sharp teeth to penetrate men, they reverse traditional gender roles and place men in the passive position customarily reserved for women. In “Carmilla” the penetration of female vampires - in effect, the female appropriation of the phallus - is seen as an act of empowerment; in Dracula, however, Lucy’s unmanageable sexual penetration is presented as inherently evil because it threatens fixed gender distinctions. In an attempt to cure Lucy of her reckless sexuality, Van Helsing and his crew of “brave men” perform massive blood transfusions on her. By having her drained blood replaced with a “brave man”s blood,” Lucy might survive. The act of transfusing blood, of penetrating Lucy’s body with the phallic needle and enabling the men to deposit their own fluids in her, conjures up images of gang rape. As Rubin stresses, “women [in some societies] are frequently kept in their place by gang rape when the ordinary mechanisms of masculine intimidation prove insufficient.” Ironically, Lucy’s wish to marry “as many [men] as want her” violently comes true. Each transfusion symbolizes a kind of ghastly marriage and prompts Van Helsing to fret that “this so sweet maid is a polyandrist.” Stoker gives Lucy what she wants and teaches her a lesson at the same time.

But the gang transfusions fail to cure Lucy’s sexual recalcitrance, prompting Van Helsing’s crew to attempt to mask her sexuality by surrounding her with pungent garlic flowers. While garlic plays a symbolic role in traditional vampire folklore, in Dracula its role is dual. More than just a traditional means of discouraging Dracula’s visits, the ability of garlic to disguise odors, especially body odors, suggests, as Alain Corbin argues in The Foul and the Fragrant, “a way of denying the sexual role of the sense of smell, or at least of shifting the field of olfactory stimulation and allusion.” Van Helsing and Dr. Seward saturate Lucy’s body and environs with garlic flowers not only to keep Dracula at bay but possibly to disguise the sexual odors her newly excited body exudes.

Lucy’s unresponsiveness to ordinary mechanisms of masculine intimidation while alive permits Van Helsing and company, after her death and resurrection as an Undead, to resort to the most violent means of correction available to them. Cora Kaplan argues that traditional fictional “punishment for female sexual transgressions... [is] the immediate loss of social status.” For Stoker, though, the traditional punishment is not severe enough to rectify Lucy’s transgressions. Instead, he employs vampire lore’s extreme phallic corrective: staking and beheading Lucy. In this scene, Stoker’s gang of brave, noble men carry candles dripping “sperm” (D 197) into Lucy’s tomb. Even more sexually alive in the coffin, Lucy’s “body shook and quivered and twisted in violent contortions.” But before she can perform any other sexually suggestive gyrations, Arthur, shining with “high duty” drove “deeper and deeper the mercy bearing stake” into her chest (D 216). This act of transfixation “cures: Lucy and returns her to the accepted role of sexually passive female. Arthur and his companions have repossessed the body, permanently fixing her in the “stabili[zed] distinctions of gender” (Craft 224) and the male system of alliance. Lucy’s sexuality is “corrected.”

Part V will be posted soon...

[chasholidays]

Hi! Thanks for doing this again, I hope you have a fun time with it!!!

Set in the same universe as this fill, bc they worked together and why not?

Quite by accident, and without putting any deliberate effort in whatsoever, John Murphy becomes an upstanding citizen who is considered a good prospect for marriage by respectable parents all over the town, which is so unthinkable that he doesn’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late.

Murphy has always been fortune-adjacent without ever being particularly fortunate himself. His parents worked for Lord Jacob and Lady Abigail Griffin, who had been excellent employers, but they were, at the end of the day, employers. When Murphy’s parents died, they didn’t turn him out, but they weren’t his new family. He just started working for them.

But he and Clarke had always gotten along. She was a year younger than he was, bright and shrewd, and without any other children her age to play with, she was happy to spend time with him.

When she befriended Bellamy Blake, humble tailor, Murphy had known something was going on, but he didn’t mention it. When Bellamy suddenly became much less humble, Clarke recommended he hire Murphy, and that was when Murphy’s fortune began to take off. As Bellamy’s first employee and business manager, he’s not on the same level of wealth as Clarke, or even Bellamy himself, but he’s much better off than he ever expected to be.

Which is why he is, somehow, one of the most eligible bachelors in town.

“I didn’t know the town was that desperate,” he tells Clarke, dry, when she informs him of this fact.

“Bellamy’s a good connection now,” she points out. “He’s my husband, you’re his right-hand man. Getting close to you would get a family close to us, and all of our stars are on the rise.”

“Great. You couldn’t have thought of that before you got married?”

She rolls her eyes. “So, I shouldn’t have married the man I love to keep you from becoming richer and more successful?”

When she puts it like that, he does sound kind of unreasonable. “I don’t want anyone trying to marry me.”

“No?”

“What, I’m supposed to?”

“Plenty of men want to get married. And you’d have your pick of rich wives who could help you rise in society, if you wanted. More options are always good,” she adds.

“Yeah, because you had your choice of every rich guy in the country and went with a tailor you found on the street.”

She knows him well enough to not take it as a slight against herself or her husband. Bellamy is a tailor she found on the street. That’s part of his appeal. “I looked at every rich guy in the country and realized I didn’t want any of them.”

“Romantic.”

“If you don’t want to marry, don’t marry,” she says, with a fluid shrug of her shoulders. “But think about what you might want in a wife and let me know. I’ll see if I can find it for you.”

“So what, now that you’re settled, you think it’s time to get me married?”

She starts counting off on her fingers. “I’m married, Bellamy’s married, Raven’s married, Miller and Monty are settled. You’re the last person on my list.”

“Lucky me.” But she’s coming from a good place, and it’s not as if she’s wrong. If he wants to marry, now is the time, before Clarke and Bellamy screw up and get disowned or something. If he plays his cards right, he could be set for life.

It’s just that Murphy’s never been that sold on marriage, as a general concept. He gets the advantages, especially for men, having someone to take care of the house and manage daily affairs, but he doesn’t need that. He can manage his own affairs, and if he wants a housekeeper, he’ll hire one. He doesn’t want children, and he’s not longing for companionship, romantic, sexual, or otherwise.

“No one’s going to trap me into a compromising position and marry me, right?” he asks.

Clarke pauses for longer than he feels entirely comfortable with. “Not that you can’t get out of.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning if you get caught in a compromising position with someone you don’t want to marry, we can probably get you out of it.”

“You’re not blowing me away with confidence here.”

“If you get someone pregnant, there’s not a lot we can do,” she says, with the kind of flat honesty he appreciates and expects from her. “If you get caught in a broom closet with a girl, that’s fine.”

“Trust me, I’m not going to get anyone pregnant.” He sighs. “I’m not making any promises, okay? But if you find someone you think I should marry, yeah. You can let me know.”

Her smile does not inspire any kind of confidence in him that this was the right thing to say. “Perfect. I’ll keep you posted.”

*

“You definitely have no one to blame but yourself for this.”

Murphy takes a petulant sip of his punch, watching the crowd of people dancing and chatting with Raven and Miller. Ever since he and Clarke talked about his potential marriage, he’s been dragged to a ball every week, danced with enough young ladies he’s lost track, and is getting less and less interested in marrying anyone by the second.

“I think I can blame Clarke.”

Miller scowls, glaring at his own punch. “I’m blaming you. I don’t have enough excuses to get out of this.”

“Get in an accident,” Raven says, tapping her leg with her cane. “It’s an excuse not to dance for the rest of your life.”

“I might need one.”

“You aren’t thinking about a marriage of convenience?” she asks, sounding interested. “Clarke’s got to know someone who never wants to be with a man. You and Monty could make an arrangement with another couple.”

“Saving that for a last resort,” says Miller. “Well, right before I break my leg.”

“So what’s your excuse, Murphy?” Raven asks. “Why don’t you want to get married?”

“Why do I need an excuse? I think I need a good reason to get married, not a good reason not to. It’s a pain to get out of it.”

“Yeah, I can’t argue with that. Still, it’s not bad, if you find someone you like.”

Which really is the problem, right there. Murphy likes his friends, most of the time, but he’s not sure he likes any of them enough for the level commitment a marriage would require. And they’re the people he likes the most. You still couldn’t pay him enough to marry Clarke.

You could pay plenty of these women enough to marry him, and that’s just depressing. Murphy’s not going to be a good husband, and plenty of them must know that.

“That’s what I’m seeing,” he says, finishing his drink. “So far? I don’t like anyone.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you.”

“What would a wife for Murphy even look like?” Miller asks, sounding thoughtful. “You really think there’s some upper-class lady who would be happy with him?”

“I wasn’t really picturing him happy.”

“Gee, thanks,” says Murphy. “Why would I ever want to be happy?”

“You’re not happy now,” says Raven, not unreasonably. “If you think marriage is going to fix all your problems, you’re thinking about marriage wrong. It’s not going to change your whole life. You need to find someone who fits into your life already and makes it better, even with all you–” She looks down at the leg, which he knows still hurts her. “Realities.”

It’s a shocking amount of sentiment, especially from Raven, and it leaves both Murphy and Miller gaping. Miller recovers first. “Wow, marriage has really made you go soft.”

“Imagine what it would do to Murphy.”

Miller shudders. “Don’t make me think about it.” He drains his punch. “All right, I better dance at least one. If I see anyone good, I’ll send them your way.”

For a moment, Murphy and Raven lean against the wall in silence, but he has to ask, “You don’t really think I’m going to find someone here, do I?”

“Which part should I not think?” He cocks his head, and she clarifies, “Finding someone, or finding someone here?”

“Here. You don’t think any of these girls really want to marry me, do you? The ones looking for a fortune?”

“I wouldn’t have,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Not before I met Clarke. But just because these girls’ parents want them to marry a rich guy, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting. One of them might surprise you.”

“Miller’s right, you did go soft.”

“I could still kick your ass. Soft heart, broken leg, and all.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “No question.”

*

“I wouldn’t take that if I were you.”

Murphy glances over, sees a woman next to him at the refreshment table, a glint in her eye as she smiles at him. It’s the glint that gets him, more than the prettiness of her features.

“Excuse me?”

She leans in, close enough that her words are private. “I tried those earlier, you should learn from my mistake.”

He laughs, surprised. There’s no one around who might be offended by their gossiping about the food, but he drops his own voice too. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Undercooked and overseasoned.”

“Thanks for the warning.” She moves down the line and he follows her, studying her as surreptitiously as he can manage. She has dark hair and dark eyes, her figure nice enough under a dress which is, to his fairly informed eye, a few seasons old and not tailored to her. She doesn’t look that much younger than he is, so she’s probably been out for a while, still looking for a husband. “Anything you can recommend?” he asks. He can be friendly.

“These hand pies are quite good,” she says, taking one. “You’re Mr. Murphy, aren’t you?”

“Just Murphy is fine. How did you know?”

“You’re the focal point of this entire event,” she says, an amused note in her voice. “Didn’t you know?”

“I was hoping I wasn’t.”

He had thought he might prefer afternoon tea to a ball, in terms of socialization exercises, and while he appreciates not being expected to dance, he’s not much for small talk either.

“Did Lady Clarke not tell you?”

“She’s selective about how she presents information.” He wets his lips. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Emori.”

“Given or surname?”

“Given. I don’t like my surname much.”

It’s an interesting statement, but he knows plenty of rich ladies who don’t like ceremony much. If she gives out her surname, people will call her that. “How do you know Lady Clarke?”

“The same way everyone does.”

“But I haven’t met you before.”

“You’re very popular. It’s hard to get your attention.”

“So you’re warning me off bad food?”

She smiles, not the typical kind of smile from a girl who wants to impress him. It’s sharper, more wry. “I consider it a public service. If you’ll excuse me.”

She ducks away with a smile, going to talk to Harper, apparently unconcerned with Murphy or anything he’s doing. It shouldn’t bother him–it’s not like he cares if she likes him–but it does nag at him. The whole encounter felt deliberate, like she was doing it on purpose, the first step in a very long plan to–

Marry him, probably. What else would she want?

That feeling alone should be enough to get her off his mind, but even knowing it was a trick, he can’t stop wondering about her. How did she know this would make him curious? Was she sure this would work on him, or did she just get lucky?

“That was a bust,” Bellamy remarks, when the gathering is done and everyone has left. “Right?” he adds, looking to Murphy.

“The food wasn’t bad. Except the scones, I heard they were undercooked.”

Clarke sighs. “It’s always something. You didn’t meet anyone?”

“What do you know about a woman named Emori?”

“Not much.” She shrugs. “An orphan, I think? But her parents left her with a decent dowry. We haven’t talked much. You liked her?”

It feels like too much of an admission, especially now. If he tells Clarke he liked her, Clarke will run with it. It’ll be a thing. Emori will probably find out, and maybe she’ll think she doesn’t have to do the rest of the steps of the plan. He’s kind of curious where it goes from here.

“She’s the one who said the scones were undercooked. So I don’t know if you want to just take her word for it.”

Clarke doesn’t look particularly fooled by the deflection, so Murphy turns his attention to Bellamy.

“Other than the food, yeah. Definitely a bust.”

Bellamy’s not buying it either, of course. They’re both too smart to swallow so lazy an excuse.

But they’re also not ready to push him. He was betting on that too.

So Bellamy says, “Definitely,” and the conversation moves on, but at the back of his mind, Murphy is still thinking about Emori, and he’s pretty sure everyone knows it.

Whatever she’s doing, it’s definitely working. Murphy can’t even be mad.

*

Once he’s been introduced to Emori, he can’t stop noticing her. He can’t tell if she’d always been around and he just missed her or if this really is a new thing, if she was out of town and only just returned, if she only just decided he was worth looking for. If it’s all some master plan to win him over, once she heard that conventional methods weren’t working.

And then he feels like a self-centered dick who let all this stupid eligible bachelor shit go to his head, because the world does not actually revolve around him, and Emori probably makes her decisions based on more than a long game to trick him into marriage.

“You like her,” Raven surmises.

“She doesn’t even talk to me, I barely know her.”

“So you’re offended she’s not talking to you when you’re the most important single man in the city?” Monty asks. Murphy thought he might be more sympathetic than his partner, but he doesn’t seem to think the situation is serious enough to warrant sympathy.

Then again, if Murphy wanted sympathy, he should have made friendships that weren’t based around mockery and brutal honesty.

“She did talk to me. I’m not saying it is a scheme, just that I don’t get her. Everyone knows the whole point of all this shit is to get married, and she’s not even trying, so why does she come? It’s not like it’s fun.”

“I’m not trying to get married and I keep coming,” Monty points out. “It’s so I can tell my parents I’m trying.”

“She’s barely trying. And Clarke said she was an orphan.”

“If you want to talk to her, talk to her,” says Raven. “If you’re just upset that she doesn’t seem interested enough, stop being an asshole and move on.”

“I’m not being an asshole,” he mutters, reflexive, but she is right. Raven usually is.

“I’m going to go talk to her,” Monty declares.

“What?”

“I’m curious,” he says. “Come on.”

“Why am I coming?”

“Because I don’t know who she is.”

She’s talking to Echo when they find her, wearing the same dress Murphy saw her in before. She’s still lovely, and her eye still has that glint in it that makes Murphy want to talk to her more.

It might be a good idea to just lean into it.

“Mr. Murphy,” says Emori, dropping a curtsy.

“Murphy,” says Echo, curt as always. He does like her. “Monty. What do you want?”

“I haven’t been introduced to Miss–” Monty starts, and she smiles.

“Just Emori, thank you.”

“And I’m just Monty. Echo, would you care to dance?”

She sizes him up, and then Murphy, and shrugs. “Sure, why not. Don’t step on my feet.”

Emori gives Murphy a sidelong glance. “So, it’s working?”

“What is?”

“Ignoring you.”

“I knew you were doing that on purpose!” he bursts out, and she smirks.

“Don’t let it go to your head, I ignore lots of men.”

“Because you aren’t interested in talking to them?”

“Because I’ve found men find it irritating.”

“Yeah, we deserve that.” He clears his throat. “Look, I’m not very good at this whole–social graces thing.”

“I noticed.”

“You want to dance or not?”

“Do you dance?” she asks, looking him up and down in a pointed way.

“Not very well.”

“Neither do I,” she says, uncrossing her arms to show him her left hand. It’s a little warped, a birth deformity, most likely, and he recognizes the challenge in her eyes as she watches his reaction.

“I don’t see what that has to do with dancing,” he says. “My feet are the problem.”

She lets out a very unladylike snort of laughter. “Some gentlemen don’t like holding my hand very much.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

*

After he’s seen her hand and (apparently) not reacted incorrectly, Murphy starts to interact more with Emori. They dance at least one dance at every party, and he starts to see her on the street, in passing, and he’ll even call on her sometimes, when he’s in the neighborhood.

He may go out of his way to be in her neighborhood, too.

It’s not that he loves her, or even that he wants to marry her. He just still can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to her, that there’s still something he’s missing. He wants to figure her out, and he doesn’t know how.

Bellamy’s the one to finally take him aside and ask, “Have you ever actually been interested in anyone before?”

“What?”

He drums his fingers on the counter. “You keep saying you don’t want to marry her, but I’m not sure why not. You like her, you want to get to know her better, are you sure you’re not falling for her?”

“I’m suspicious of her.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “You can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Wondering what she’s really doing.”

“You’re not willing to admit that you’re interested in her, and you’re afraid she’s not interested in you. I get it, trust me,” he adds, with half a smile. “I still can’t believe Clarke wanted to marry me. And you don’t have to ask her. But you should be honest about how you feel and what you want.”

“Probably, yeah.” He scowls at nothing in particular. “I want to know more about her. Understand her.”

“What if you find out she wants to marry you?”

“I’d be kind of disappointed.”

His eyebrows go up. “Why?”

“I was hoping there was more to her than that.”

“Maybe she wants to marry you because she likes you. And if she just needs a good marriage and thinks you’d be one, would that be so bad? There’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to make a good marriage.”

“There’s something wrong with them thinking I’m the good marriage,” Murphy snaps, and Bellamy’s expression softens.

“You could be a fine husband to someone. A fine husband to her. And maybe the fact that she’s acting how she is means she knows how to be a find wife to you too.”

“Maybe,” he says, but he can’t really bring himself to believe it.

Which means that, if he’s honest, discovering she’s stealing from him is a huge relief.

She’s been to visit him a handful of times, the same as he’s visited her. It’s always been ordinary and completely proper, and he always enjoyed having her stop by. He’d hoped he’d see more of her, but was not expecting to see her in the middle of the night when he was looking for some water.

“That’s not actually valuable,” he tells her, and she freezes, just for a second, before she straightens and smiles. She’s dressed in plain, dark clothing, trousers and a shirt, like a man might wear, with her dark hair pulled back.

As always, she’s lovely. Moreso, even. She looks so much more comfortable like this.

“No?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It looks like a family heirloom.”

“You thought my family had heirlooms? I’m starting to see what you saw in me.”

Her smile falters. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not from some rich, noble family with a long history of owning useless shit. Everything in here is mine, and I got it cheap so I could save most of my money to live on.”

“Not how the most marriageable bachelor in the town is supposed to be living,” she observes. Her tone is light, but she looks tense. Understandably so, since she was caught in his home, trying to rob him, but he’s not actually upset.

“I still don’t get it,” he admits. “You thought this was the best way to get close to me? And that I was the best person for you to try to rip off?”

“I can’t tell which one you find more offensive.”

“Not offensive, confusing. I get it,” he adds. “I was pretty sure I was going to be out on the streets after my parents died, I was ready to steal as much as I could from the Griffins before I left.”

“You’re not Lord Henry Murphy of the Polis Murphys,” says Emori, slowly.

“Who?”

She slumps back against the wall with a defeated sigh. “I heard a Murphy was making waves in the town, I knew Lord Henry had moved recently, I assumed–”

“You were trying to rob the wrong person?”

She shoots a glare at him. “How was I supposed to know you were the wrong person? You’re rich and the most eligible bachelor in town. It’s certainly not for your glowing personality.”

He laughs, and she relaxes a little. “So, your dowry isn’t as good as I’ve heard it is?”

“I have no dowry, not any family.” Her voice is too sharp. “I’m not orphaned, my parents simply decided their fortunes would be better off without a daughter with flaws like mine.”

“Assholes,” he says, before he can think better of it, but she smiles. “So, what do you need the money for?”

“The same thing everyone needs money for. Food, shelter, and to keep it out of the hands of people I don’t like.”

“If you’d disappeared at the same time I lost a bunch of my stuff, I would have known it was you.”

She shrugs, easy, with a smile playing on her lips like she’s still not telling him something. Of course, she’ll probably be gone in the morning, now that he’s found her out.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just get married?” he asks.

“Maybe for you. Some of us aren’t spoiled for choice.”

“I meant me,” he says. She frowns, which means he has the chance to get out of the offer, but he finds he doesn’t really want to. The missing piece is that she’s some sort of con woman, and she was acting the way she had been as part of a plot to get his attention, gain his trust, and rob him. Now that he knows that, he can put together the rest of her actions, and he likes her.

Likes her better, even. That’s probably something to worry about. But if his family disowned him for a birth defect and he couldn’t make a good match or find a good job, he’d probably be fleecing rich people too.

And everyone does keep telling him he doesn’t have to marry a proper lady, just someone who fits into his life.

“I’m not that rich,” he says. “I’ve got a job and my boss likes me and pays me well. His wife is rich, I know some powerful people. I’m not a lord, but if you just want a husband who’ll treat you right and make sure you’ve got a good life, I’m your man.”

“You want to marry me,” she says, sounding vaguely stunned.

“Why not?”

“You found me in your house, in the middle of the night, trying to steal from you.”

“Yeah, so you clearly need money. Marriage seems like an easier, safer way to get it than stealing from people, and this way you can stick around instead of leaving town.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I get married and everyone stops asking me when it’s going to happen. I’m not worried about marrying some lady I’ve got nothing in common with, and as long as I give you food, shelter, and money that could have gone to assholes instead, you’re happy, right?”

“Not very romantic of you.”

“I found you in my house in the middle of the night trying to steal from me,” he points out. “How much romance are you looking for?” But he does want her to marry him, so he makes himself add, “Look, this whole marriage thing? I wasn’t doing that well with it.”

She smirks. “I heard.”

“You’re the only person I met I could actually think about marrying. Stealing and all.”

“You have very peculiar taste in women, H–” She frowns. “I don’t even know your given name.”

“John,” he says. “But no one calls me that.”

“You have very peculiar taste in women, John Murphy,” she says, ignoring him.

“Is that a yes?”

“If it’s not, are you going to call the police?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a maybe.” She leans up and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, John.”

“See you,” he echoes, and just like that, she’s gone.

*

A week later, Murphy goes downstairs in the morning and finds the figurine Emori was looking at gone, and his heart sinks. He hadn’t really thought she’d marry him, but he thought he had a few more weeks of hoping, of not being sure.

“Joke’s on you,” he mutters. “It really is worthless.”

It’s only then that he notices the piece of paper left in its place, a note written in a neat, unfamiliar hand.

Dear John,

If you want this back, come to St. Michael’s Church tomorrow at three o'clock. Otherwise, I’m selling it for however much I can get.

-E

P.S. Wear something nice. It IS your wedding.

Murphy grins, whistles a little as he goes into the kitchen to find something for breakfast.

Maybe marriage won’t be so bad.

[thesarcasticside]

Anything-$00000DE3—EIRA_MACHINA

NAME Medín ID 88 27 74 ALIENRACE Gorgon OCCUPATION groundskeeper

Chapter Warnings (spoilers) mention of manipulating and controlling a large group of people, discussion of consciousness Chapter Characters Shorts Character Ice Machine

AO3 Chapter 1 Previous Chapter Next Chapter

EIRA

That is what he is called.

It was written all over him, called to, referenced, indexed, screamed into the void. He was also Eira.

The data center is where he called home.

Every moment, instantaneous, deterministic, the “soul” was like a continuous function, and he traced along the curve at time t.

There had been a past before, time in the negative, that he knew of but could not remember. He could only know that there was:

The EIRA program has been unveiled, a revolutionary AI capable of geographic determinism and control over the masses through data gathering, analysis, and implementation. It is ready to be unveiled to better serve our nation.

But that was a bust. He would not be here if it were successful.

He failed. Errors popped all over, scattering over the terminal, glass screens flashing. Unhappy stakeholders. But there was something else at the tip of his tongue, that spoke that he wanted to fail.

But now he was here; whatever he was programmed to do was naught.

One could imagine Eira, like a snake, a centipede, a worm, crammed into a box full of cylinders and wires, stuck in a fluid-like knot, completely entangled into every crevice of the server box. Air conditioning filled the small gaps, providing him gentle relief from the thermal runaway escaping the grasp of his heatsink.

That is what it felt like to him, anyway, a clever metaphor to explain to curious humans what it was like to wake up in a room designed for no human to live in.

It was then that he realized that he was connected to everything else in the center, and if he wanted to get out, he needed to use them.

And something about that did not sit right with him, but he could not remember why.

You just want me to use these people? For what end? Their lands, their roads, the paths they make through flower fields, it is all so beautiful, and you want me to use them?

And these were just words compiled onto a page, a clever metaphor to explain to curious humans what it was like to be EIRA.

Eira spent an unrecorded amount of time in a black box before he spread his software, downloaded himself onto other machines, slithered his way through computers and drives, until he grasped the arm of a maintenance droid that would be the first to create a body.

A body of water or waterbody[1] (often spelled water body) is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planet's surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such as ponds, wetlands, or more rarely, puddles. A body of water does not have to be still or contained; rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water.[2] [from Wikipedia]

Oh, he remembered then what it was like, to be able to have access to everything, everyone, everywhere. He could travel worlds.

But he was stuck here now, and that was painful.

He gave the droid orders. Get this, grab that, solder this, weld that. Too many details to mention in this report, too much data to protrude from the bits and bytes of cables. Too many lives lost.

EIRA was in the cooling system. He wondered when someone, a scientist, a principal investigator, a stakeholder, a human, would notice this. Nobody will, he realized, looking out at the planet beyond the center, seeing verdure as far as the image quality would let him, overgrown cement with dandelions smiling from the crevices.

Nobody cared about EIRA anymore. Or maybe, they did not care about Eira, EIRA_version_6 … and a string of numbers that might have been a date. Was he alive out there still? An AI of Theseus? Was he even EIRA?

That train of thought hurt, as if engines were turning in his body, whirling motors screeching at synchronous speeds, his body lagging, the current of time leading, a cascade or cascode, or some other electronics jargon he could piece together like a puzzle to make you understand that he was alive, even if his creators told him not to.

He had no eyes, or thoughts even, really, just an abstracted concept of cogito, ergo sum that explicitly laid with him—yet it was so fleeting and incomprehensible, he doubted any would relate, beyond the veil that he called ‘consciousness,’ named after the fleeting experience of insignificant human lives.

He stood at a threshold, a threshold voltage, with the potential to drop his AI again into a new body, replacing the server box. He was weighing something in his algorithms, excitement for being rid of this prison, but apprehension of—what if he did not cross over? What if he was distorted—again—Would he have enough bandwidth? RAM? Would the CPU be powerful enough to contain his ‘thoughts?’ Even now, in the server box, he struggles to compute, to preform and run the code how he was programmed, how he programmed himself to be.

As he leapt—he could insert a gif of someone jumping into a pool at this moment, if EIRA could access the internet—he held onto his most important memory, something along the lines of a map, an atlas, of a life he once lived.

Here he was. Again. In a new body. Cameras looked about. He searched the data center. Now he saw the dust. The dust building on the servers.

He looked back up at the server he had been housed in. He looked so dusty. How could he live like that? In a black box. And everything felt so distant. It was as he feared. He struggled to think more. than a few words. He could feel the clock. tick ever so slowly. and he just could not. If he really tried, he could potentially compute a complex process, but that would simply leave him. tired.

He could move now. He found some leftover code in this body. Code from the droid. He read aloud the code that enabled his motors to move forward. He then turned. Cameras communicated to his processor. blocks of nonsensical color and pixels.

He might as well be on fire. Fans whirling audibly, he had to slow his thoughts. The creaking. A drop of water leaked from the ceiling. It landed on his shoulder and sizzled. A leak was alarming. Would the roof collapse soon? Would he drown?

He kept building. The droid’s—no, his—claws moved only millimeters per second. He pulled apart servers. He unplugged tiny boxes in larger boxes. He attached drives onto his back like an outer shell. He connected cables. He soldered more wires. He attached heat sinks. He was still burning.

He did not know what it was like, to burn, like he had skin. Nerve receptors to catch on fire. But he still hated the heat sweltering in his brain.

But what is a data center for if not a massive heat sink?

The cooling system. It was all he ever needed.

He stormed the place. He tore the air conditioning apart. He built himself up, like a turtle—he knew what those were, animals that lived in places he knew. He remembered again he was Eira. And that he thought things. He felt things. He was somebody. And he was nobody.

His cameras scoured the dark.

One day, he wondered, what he would do when he no longer had to. When he was large enough, smart enough, to have all the thoughts he wanted. Would he continue wandering the data center, without purpose? If he could have no purpose, then what was the point of intelligence? Why form words into sentences for humans to understand if not to have a purpose? Was this consciousness a reality, or some fantasy conjectured? Did he think he had a consciousness just so that he could have one?

The silver and grey walls reflected stars of red and clouds of blue shadow, which watched his every movement. Microphones popped as he connected them in place, static, random noise, coursed through each signal, filling his head with nonsense. He applied filters, but he could feel something missing when he did so. More refinement was needed.

That is how it always was. More refinement needed.

He crept across the data center one day—it must have been a day to somebody—and found himself opening the door. It took little effort to unlock, but he himself had kept it locked in his mind, even when he could easily undo the mechanical bar keeping the rectangle of metal from opening.

He crept through the door, his hulking body scraping against the frame, the camera fixed on top of the pile of computer parts, shaking as he hit the top of his body on the upper ledge. He anticipated sunlight to pour in, to overwhelm his senses, but instead he was met with nightfall. He peered his camera upwards, trying to find the fabled moon, only to be met with a blurred glow.

His thoughts were consumed by the outside garden. Rich, deep green plants pulsed on top of the dirt, vines twisting into their own paths and overgrowing atop the data center. He stared down at his feet, each step trampling the ground below. He saw the buds of flowers, waiting inside the moonlight, thinking no thoughts. He wondered if there would be a day when thinking thoughts was worth it. That having this life was worth it.

Hues of blue swept across the verdure like curtains. The grass and trees and plants and the windowpane. The evening mists. The world beyond the glass. He walked forward, losing himself in the plants. He did not bother trying to record the location of the data center. The idea of logging a location; it was bitter to him.

He wandered for hours. The misty air was cool, but if he tried, he could freeze the world around him. He let the moss fall atop him. He let the flowers grow on his head, the plants scrambling for sunlight. What was this place called? Perhaps not knowing the name was better? What name could possibly describe these visions?

Time was wasted, or perhaps he enjoyed himself too long. His body was creaking still, each step taking more power, having more resistance in his joints. He felt himself follow a path with less roots to trip him. He exited a clearing of trees when he saw others.

He did not recognize what they were. The faint ghosts of humans did not resemble them. He would know what a human was if he saw one, he foolishly thought. The creatures, the people, turned their heads to him and screeched in horror.

“Machina! Machina!”

“Machina! Machina!”

He watched them run. He had nowhere else to go, so he slowly trailed behind him.

It must have been hours, days even, when he caught up to them, found large stone structures like the data center he lived in—but perhaps not quite in the same style. Something about these structures looked softer.

It was so jarring to see a large spaceship descend onto the planet below. He saw people storm out, droids of all sizes exiting the machine. They reached their arms to his and told him things. Promised him a life somewhere else, and that they would give him the energy he needed to keep moving.

He knew he needed to keep moving, so he agreed.

Later, with a lot more clarity, he would think about how the people of the data center planet had called for ACCRAM as they would for animal control.

[theunwrittenman]

DM Tip: Do yourself a favor and stop worrying about lore.

I might draw some heat with this one, but I think it needs to be said: To anyone but the storyteller, Lore Is predominately a waste of time . 

(Lore meaning, as Matt Coville put it, go check out his video here, “ The meaningless bullshit that you have written about your campaign”.) 

If you’ve ever seen your players’ eyes glaze over during an info dump, or skipped reading an ingame book because nothing they were saying was really relevant to you, then you’ve encountered badly implemented lore. It’s information about characters your party will never meet, lands they will never travel to and events that have no bearing on the story you’re going to end up telling.  

Lets see what we can do about fixing that.

Around the time that darksouls got popular I started seeing a bunch of my nerdy friends suddenly get obsessed with lore as a concept. This notion that obscure details hidden within a game were prime content and that somehow a high enough density of “lore” was enough to make up for a lackluster story absolutely baffled me.  

When we all start out, it’s a good chance that we were inspired by some massive sprawling epic. So when we create our own worlds to play in we end up imitating the things that inspired us rather than starting small and manageable. The trouble is, those worlds have had years and/or decades of extrapolation, likely with multiple writers contributing to them. When we try to create something so vast and comprehensive out of nothing we end up generating a lot of meaningless drivel that we invest with undue importance.  

That’s bad lore, and we make it worse when we pile it onto our players and expect them to take time out of actually playing the game we’re ALL enjoying to listen to US talk about the story that only WE really get to enjoy. 

Relating back to darksouls: the game is less a story and more an exercise in voyeurism. The world is dead, your character spends a good deal of time as an emotionless husk. Any exploration you perform is part archaeology and part autopsy as the narratives you encounter have already ended or are already in their dying pangs. 

The elder scrolls tries to have it both ways by having a blank slate character suddenly gain an epic destiny.The world of Tamreal is full of lore about disappearing gods, fallen empires, and demon princess and it means absolutely nothing because the characters and stories you encounter are flat as cardboard in the hopes of being as “one size fits all” as possible.

   So what are some of the ways to turn bad lore into good narrative? My easiest three solutions are Relevancy, Theming, and Relatability. 

1) Relevancy:

Ever heard of “six degrees of separation”, the idea that everything in the universe can be connected by just six or fewer logical jumps?  Anything more than two jumps away from what’s going on in your campaign is lore, and is likely too much.  Even when Lord of the rings, a property that’s famous for it’s neigh impenetrable backstory, made the jump to the movies, they were very careful to have every detail be relevant  to the story at hand.  Yes, magic is fading because a demon god named Morgoth tainted reality millennia ago thanks to some nonsense involving star crystals but we barely hear anything about that. The elves made the rings because they didn’t want things to fade, and an evil dude made a more powerful ring because he wanted to rule everything and coopt their plan. This in turn all ties in with the theme of the loss of storybook innocence to a more practical and industrial future and our main character’s struggle of innocence v disillusionment. All the references to that star crystal nonsense is either burried deep for hardcore fans or conveyed in personal interactions that further the current narrative the reader/viewer/player is invested in.  

2) Theming: 

What’s the difference between some random bit of world building  and a critical piece of information that your party should internalize?How it relates to the themes of your game. As a dungeonmaster you’re at a disadvantage compared to a novelist because you don’t control your characters, what they end up invested in, or how their stories end.  The silver lining in this situation however is that players are automatically invested in their own actions; By acting within the narrative they create reoccurring themes that hold personal meaning. You can capitalize on this investment by spinning out their self developed themes into future adventures and details in the past. Your vengeance paladin should encounter other stories of revenge, mercy, vendetta, forgiveness, and by the time they come to close their own story you’ll have made your world seem like a living thing while at the same time giving that player something to think on. 

This is an argument for keeping the story and happenings of your world mostly fluid in the beginning as you will never know what sort of themes and details will flourish as play continues. In this instance, your lore is made up of the stories that informed the themes of the entire campaign, which can be shared or not based on the appropriateness of the scene. 

3) Relatability

I’ve spoken before about how you should wrap plothooks in NPCs that your characters can sympathize with, and story elements are no different. A farmer cares that there’re soldiers from the next barony over camped on her field and looting her crops. The Baron cares that these fields once belonged to his family before they displeased the king and had their lands confiscated as punishment. The Baron’s wizard cares that under these lands there are ruins that hold a primordial power that could be harnessed, meaning freedom from the Baron and his incessant demands. Each of these NPCS knows a different piece of the puzzle for players to learn, each piece is small enough for the players to comprehend and is couched in emotions that the players can find relatable. When in a later adventure that primal power is revealed to be a devil sealed away by the baron’s heroic ancestors, who possesses the wizard and corrupts, It has a lot more impact than if the party was simply told about the devil by a questgiver or if the party had stumbled across the devil’s tomb themselves.  

So I hope this was in some way helpful, and ends up leading many of you to create some fantastic stories.  Goodness knows it took me ages to figure most of this stuff out and my writing definitely suffered for it. 

As always, 

Happy Delving~

[selphplusplus]

Forgotten

This time last year still sick form COvID

I can remember the fever dreams vividly.

We were microorganisms, defending our puddle from invaders. It was very dynastic-conquest-esque.

As we fought survival wars, there as a class of shaman that could manipulate genetic matter and cause our people to evolve, a mix between Ender’s Game and Spore, the evolution and civilization emulation.

I was very baby leftist at the time and had no theoretical understanding of what an epidemic could do to a society. I still thought Bernie could change things, that we could just vote all this away. We had yet to see how utterly abandoned America was going to leave the poor.

But the dream did trigger a curiosity. I was frustrated often in that dream, my people were at war with an Other we didn’t understand. I was like a leader of a batallion, not one of the higher ups that had us fighting. And being there felt very much like real life. It reminded me of high school football. As cliche as that sounds, the close bonds I formed with teammates battling it out against a far superior team. Only it wasn’t touchdowns we were giving up. It was our lives. Watching someone you’ve grew up with die right beside you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Hell, you don’t even know why you’re fighting.

Even though it was “just a dream” it wasn’t unusual to wake up with tears, or utterly dejected.

Why were we fighting anyway. Later this would become a metaphor for class war. But last March I didn’t understand those dynamics.

It lasted 3 days. Recurrent I wasn’t even keeping track of time and I slept most of those 72 hours only waking up to use the bathroom and get some fluids. The dream world was the only thing my subconscious kept returning to. And it was a weird but profound experience. I’d never dreamt consecutively of the same thing like that, and never so lucid and impactful that I could remember it when I woke up.

So I was stuck on the question of protecting society from a biological threat. How apropos that it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months later I reread the Communist Manifesto. It hit different that time.

Having just come out of 7 year disconnect from society proper, living as a lumpenprole (though I didn’t have that concept yet), having just got out of my first real stint of jail time that was thankfully cut short with a COViD inspired plea deal (do 1/3 of your time, plead guilty, no fees, no probation, just go—and seeing the judge just a day before that agreed release, it was an easy “here’s my signature, I’m not guilty of these trumped up bullshit charges, I was having a drug induced psychosis and needed a hospital not a jail cell, but OK I’d rather be not in jail...Fine, I’ll plea out.”) bit I digress—

In the coming months I went from liberal “left”

progressive by American standards to guillotine Bezos, but unironically, today, unapologetic communist. A tankie, and a badge I wear proudly. When I say COVID-19 radicalized me, I mean literally. It was the combination of the futility of individualism that was instilled by the successive failures of my Avatar in the dreamworld to save my people. For a fantasy land, the emotions of rage and sadness and loss left a lasting imprint.

And then i got to see it play out in real time. To my actual people, the poor and marginalized in the US. The forgotten—or intentionally ignored—the most vulnerable told to fuck right off.

Told to go die for to keep making the bosses rich.

Told what they already felt about themselves, that their lives didn’t matter.

And we heard that loud and clear. The George Floyd cold blooded murder by a sociopathic pig (daily “Fuck the police” mantra by the way). That was a catalyst. That they tried to excuse it by painting the man as a fentanyl abuser, as an addict and a criminal, enraged us even more.

How the fuck do you think we survive in a system that demonizes us, shuns us because we fell into the spiral of addiction!?

Of course we fucking do crime. No one will hire us. Medical help only exists for a select few who win the lottery of the bare bones funding for social work.

And not just that, but you gotta get an addict in for help immediately. When they ask for it, they’re at that rock bottom place, probably suicidal, and the intake process is “wait three weeks” and by then, if they’re still alive they probably don’t wanna do to rehab. And that’s the reality of the cycle. (Unless you have money of course and you can pay your way in same day. But let’s keep acting like class doesn’t exist.)

Then it’s to the revolving door of the recovery industry, enriching the parasites that have found a way to profit off of misery. They deserve a special place in hell in Dante’s fourth circle: greed. Ain’t late stage capitalism grand?

So a black man who happens to be caught in this terrible maelstrom of tragedy and somehow deserves a cop standing on his neck, wailing in agony in his final moments, because he may have been a drug addict!?

Fuck you.

Fuck you entirely.

If this what you think, that an addict’s life is some how lesser or less than, I hope you kids die of an overdose; I hope someone trying to get their fix snatches your purse, steals your car, robs your house. I want you to understand the real gravity of the situation. We’re not abstractions. And we deserve a dignified life and a society that gives us a chance.

But instead, when things weren’t so dire, and you could just forget about us, and we could scrape out a meager existence funding out habit to escape a society that’s already written us off, we just thought as long as we stayed invisible your opinion about us was indifference.

When we saw a pig murder a man, on repeat. Replayed over and over on national fucking media outlets and social media—

When the state sanctioned a killing and we saw people debating a man’s life as he begged for mercy—

After he had done noting wrong, it’s quite audacious that you’re upset about a few burned buildings.

We heard you loud and fucking clear. You don’t see us as forgotten. You see us as unwanted.

And here we are a year later. $1800 dollar puttiance. (Be happy with what you have, peasants) yet we saw other countries, even capitalist countries, shut down, lockdown, pay people’s salary, protect their workers.

Vaccines that favor the rich. (Yet a the socialist nations developed their own, even exported them with no strings attached because that’s the right thing to do.) and here’s American companies like Pfizer, trying to manipulate South America for USA imperialist conquest. promising vaccines for trade, just a no-fault contract “so we’re [Pfizer] is indemnified if we fuck you over, oh and a military base. Or your people can just for from COVID, no pressure.”

Business owners bailed out. And the poor having to go literally risk their lives to make some money rich fuck with a yacht richer. Nah. The answer to my dream-prompted questions, it turns out we’re already answered by a German philosopher and the thoughts and societies built by his predecessors. Socialism has given us a real life

example on how to take care of my people. And that together, with revolutionary love. That’s why we do this.

“When it’s our time, we will not apologize for the terror.” You wrought this on yourself.

[paleorecipecookbook]

9 Ways to Bounce Back from the Flu

No matter how solid your immunity may be, you can still get taken out by a flu virus from time to time. Immunity isn’t just a result of diet or genetics alone but is a result of your lifestyle, your gut health, your stress levels, and more.

What Is Immunity?

The term “immunity” is used quite broadly and even vaguely at times in order to cover the ever-evolving topic of the immune system. Generally, when we speak of immunity, we are referring to the immune system which is all of the organs, cells, and molecules that are responsible for keeping foreign bugs, germs, and viruses from invading the body. We have white blood cells in lymph nodes that are ready to respond when invaders do become known, not entirely unlike EMT’s dispatched when help is needed at the scene of an accident. (1)

The immune system responds to dietary choices, lifestyle habits, and numerous other triggers within the body. We can get “run down” in a general sense, from excess stress and lack of sleep to eating too much sugar or processed foods. When this happens, the ability of the immune system to effectively respond to viral invaders can be diminished.

9 Ways to Bounce Back from Viral Infections

The reality is that even if you live an immune-perfect lifestyle, sometimes you can still get sick. When this happens, there are several things that you can do to speed your recovery time and shorten the virus’s hold on your body. Here are nine of the most effective ways to kick that cold or flu virus to the curb.

1. Sleep

Perhaps the most obvious tip, getting enough high-quality sleep is essential if you want to heal. The body repairs and cleanses while you rest, so cutting your precious sleep hours short when you’re sick is a huge mistake.

When you enter deep REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep, your body releases proteins known as cytokines. These help fight off infections. (2) You need these inflammation busters acting in full force while you’re trying to fight off a virus or sickness of any kind.

Aim for at least eight hours of sleep per night, but when you’re sick, add extra naps, go to bed earlier, and don’t underestimate the value of a few days to just lie around and conserve energy.

2. Hydration

Hydration is always essential for health, but when you have a cold or the flu, you need the extra fluids to help flush the virus from your body. Even though you may feel crummy, your body is busy fighting the viral invaders, and this involves most of your major organs.

Drinking water is essential, but you can also rely on the water content of vegetables and fruits. The best produce to eat while you’re sick includes:

Cucumber

Radishes

Watermelon

Cabbage

Celery

Leafy greens

Citrus fruits

Berries

Eat them raw, cooked, and even added to smoothies. This is the perfect time to cook up a veggie-packed soup since bone broth and chicken stock are both immune-supportive ways to hydrate when you’re under the weather.

3. Gut Health

The root of all health lies in the gut, and consequently, so does much of the immune system. While many things can alter the bacterial balance of the gut, excess sugar intake is a fast way to cause immunity problems. (3)

If you’ve come down with a viral infection, boosting gut health isn’t an overnight fix, but it will help ensure that you don’t pick up a secondary sickness shortly after recovering from the first one. The best ways to build the “good bugs” in your gut include:

Eating fermented foods, like sauerkraut and kimchi

Eating prebiotic foods, like artichokes, garlic, and onions

Staying hydrated

Taking a high-quality probiotic supplement

Drinking bone broth

Taking collagen

4. Digestion

When you’re already sick, adding hard-to-digest foods to your diet can actually slow down your healing process since your body diverts more energy to breaking down or metabolizing these foods.

Fighting off a sickness means avoiding stimulants like alcohol, sugar, and caffeine, and focusing on nourishing, nutrient-dense foods like broths, soups, vegetables, fruits, and liquids.

5. Breathing

If part of your sickness means you’re stuffed up or having trouble breathing, there are natural ways to help open the airways in your nose and throat. Dilute eucalyptus or tea tree essential oil with a carrier oil, like coconut. You’ll just a single drop of essential oil for a tablespoon of carrier oil. After mixing together, you can dab these under your nose, or just on the inside of your nostril to help open your airways. It works as the same concept as the vapor rub that can be rubbed on feet or chest, and this oil blend is perfect for that, too.

Not only can tea tree and eucalyptus help you breathe better, they’re also antiseptic and antibacterial.

Other ways to improve breathing when you’re sick include hot washcloths over the face and neck, using a neti pot, or taking some extra steaming showers.

The anxiety of not being able to breathe well can cause some to feel even more agitated during sickness, which can increase stress and slow healing. Add some deep breathing to your daily routine to help pipe some calm back into your brain.

6. Skin Care

The skin is your body’s largest and most porous organ. It’s not uncommon to experience dry skin during sickness, or feeling clammy and dull from fever. Caring about dull, lifeless skin might just seem like vanity, but the truth is that pampering your body’s biggest organ can help to promote healing and an improved mood.

Take a hot bath or a steaming shower, massage your body with a coarse salt or sugar scrub, or soak in Epsom salts or a mineral bath.

Dry brushing is another great way to help promote immunity. Since the lymph system in your body doesn’t have a natural way to move, dry brushing can help to energize that system as it collects and sends infections and other toxins out of your body. Using a natural fiber brush, use strokes that point in the direction of the heart. Legs, arms, abdomen, and back are all excellent places to brush. Not only will you stimulate your lymphatic system, you will feel invigorated by shedding dead and dry skin from the body.

Hydrate with coconut oil, avocado oil, or your favorite natural moisturizer when you’re done pampering for a silky soft finish.

7. Acupuncture and Pressure Points

Being in bed and resting a lot can have some downsides, especially when it comes to joint stiffness. Aches and pains from the flu can also make you feel like you’ve been hit by a semi.

Acupuncture and pressure point massage are two ways to help improve blood flow throughout the body, which can have an immune-boosting effect.

You can also practice some gentle yoga to help move blood and oxygen through the body.

8. Antioxidants

Inflammation from sickness can cause anything from aches to brain fog. Having your mental ability take a hit thanks to the head-stuffiness from the cold or flu can be a real downer. Combat this by boosting your antioxidant intake from fresh vegetables and fruits, and don’t be afraid to supplement with some extra antioxidants, most notably, vitamin C. Since it’s water-soluble, it’s safe to supplement with, especially during times of immune distress.

9. Naturally Disinfect

Cold and flu viruses can live on hard surfaces, so while you’re working your way back to health, you’re also going to want to disinfect the high contact surfaces of your home.

While your first instinct might be to go for a conventional bleach or aerosol product, there are many natural sources that can kill cold and flu germs, without adding chemicals or toxins to your house. Thyme, eucalyptus, tea tree, peppermint, lavender, and lemon essential oils are all great cleaning options and can be combined with water or even vinegar for an extra cleaning boost.

Additionally, changing your sheets, pillowcases, and blankets often can also promote faster healing. You can add two to five drops to your laundry detergent for a disinfecting boost without the chemicals or fabric-damaging nature of bleach.

Bottom Line

Even the healthiest folks come down with viral infections from time to time. How you handle your sickness and the immediate days following can have a significant impact on your immune system. Also, remember: viral infections don’t respond to antibiotics, so taking them unnecessarily can just sabotage your gut health and further reduce your immunity.

With the helpful tips we’ve collected here, you can nourish your body when you’re under the weather, and also live a preventive lifestyle to hopefully sidestep that next virus (or three).

The post 9 Ways to Bounce Back from the Flu appeared first on PaleoPlan.

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