#makes me feel so viscerally bad I have to actively avoid it these days

[canisalbus]

My love mine all mine fits your boys so well in my opinion, especially that one line, so soft and tender, one waking up while the other still sleeps and seeing his peaceful face, feeling his warmth so close, watching a smile and a laugh, the sun reflecting off fur, eyes glowing in candlelight, nails (claws?) running through fur, melancholy as tears drip down the other's face, hands clenched too tight, jaw taut

.

[eldritchsurveys]

1145.

Last Best and Final Survey by foxandforest

Is there anything that you continue to do despite always regretting it/paying for it later? Why won’t you give it up? >> there really isn't anything like that for me and I don't think anything that truly felt awful after doing would be something I continued doing. like, I just don't have the impulse to do things that feel that bad, even if the badness is delayed. this sounds great but unfortunately the aversion applies universally -- so it also applies to having to do things that feel bad the whole time but do have a payoff, like, you know, chores

What was the last “unpopular opinion” you saw that gave you a visceral oppositional reaction? >> this happens to me so regularly that I don't even mark the occasion anymore so I have no idea. like even if I agree with the opinion sometimes my mind will be like "well now I'm gonna argue for the opposite opinion" for no reason except pettiness lol

Do you feel the need to do and see a lot of different things in life—as in having as much of a full and varied life as possible? >> hmm. sometimes, but like... as a reaction to feeling activated. like, when my nervous system is out of whack it just reaches for every possible thing to show me how my life is Bad and Sad and Not Enough, and "you need to Do More" is low-hanging fruit in that regard. but I don't actually believe I need to do and see a bunch of stuff in order to feel fulfilled, I just think that at the moment, I'm not getting the things I do need to feel fulfilled I do enjoy interacting with a lot of different art/media, though, I feel like that enriches my life

What was the last thing you lost your fucking mind over—something so awful or stupid you couldn’t believe it? .

What are some books you’re interested in reading soon? >> eh, idk. the most recent book I added to my tbr is Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

What’s an item of clothing you think your wardrobe lacks and would benefit from? >> that's a question I've been asking myself repeatedly especially after having done the wardrobe cleanout (finally). the fact of the matter is I have a hard time actually envisioning what kind of clothes I want (aside from fantastical ass shit that I'd either have to make myself or pay someone oodles of money to make), I just know I definitely do not have enough for my comfort

What is an old person, out-of-touch, things were better in my day, etc. thought you’ve had? >> I had that feeling when Sparrow was telling me about the state of youth literacy these days (good reminder, I meant to do some research about that because what the fuck is going on) (ok I looked it up and this article elaborates more on it while also reassuring me that there's been backlash at least)

What is the worst (i.e., lowest paying, poorly compensated based on intensity of work, etc.) way you’ve ever made money? >> begging the government for pennies so I can avoid starving or freezing to death

Do you have anything going on that could be your signature look, such as always having the same go-to hairstyle or lip color or anything? >> my battle vest is my signature, I think

What is something that you used to put a lot of effort into but not anymore? >> bios/about pages/that sort of thing on social media

If you have children, what are some things you want to make sure they experience or have the chance to experience if they desire? .

On a scale from 1 to 10 how much confidence do you have in your country’s government? When was the last time this number was different? >> I have no confidence in the US government and I don't recall ever feeling otherwise

What is something that a lot of people do that you don’t find the value in? >> a lot of social rituals feel like this for me, like I just don't see the benefit. I don't mean like small talk and shit, I mean like going out to bars and drinking a lot and then feeling like shit the next day but you do it because your friends wanted you to or whatever

Do you ever think about quitting taking surveys? What about just quitting taking them on LJ? >> nah. I mean, I think about it in the abstract, because I've been taking them for literally half my life and that sometimes strikes me as pretty wild, but I know if I haven't gotten bored with the practice by now I probably won't any time soon. I think it would be real neat to be still taking surveys in my 50s, 60s... like, I don't keep diaries well, but I do have these! they serve a similar purpose, I think -- sometimes even better than just open-ended journalling as far as quitting taking them on LJ specifically -- yeah, lol, I was thinkin about that last week in fact. mostly because I am on the fringes community-wise and generally don't get much interaction so there's no real benefit to posting in one place vs another, so I tend to come and go at whim I was gonna just go back to my survey tumblr but I think I'll do the secret third thing and post in both places. I have no actual reasoning for this decision except "fuck it, why not" which is the best reason to do anything

[invisiblerambler]

Okay I want to post about this and be as vague as humanly possible which isn't satisfying but I want to keep my anonymity on here this is a vent about my career (or so far lack there of)

I bristle against when people tell me there's only one way to do accomplish what I want to do. That is just ridiculous and counter-intuitive and probably my sense of justice being ND but that's besides the point.

Sometimes it feels like I am at every turn making the wrong choice. There is demonstrative proof to the contrary, but we are operating outside of logic.

I understand what I want is hard and not likely and there isn't a clear path in some ways, but I just sometimes I don't want to hear that. I am aware, you are far from the first person to remind me how hard and unlikely it is.

I lived the first 20 plus years of my life painfully aware of how likely it even was for me to make it out of my home state much less into the career or the industry I wanted to work in.

I KNOW!

The problem is it's what I want and it's what I am good at.

The other problem is when I feel cornered like this my first and only reaction is to want to bail and move home.

Not that home means much because my parents moved, my sister moved, like it isn't home in the same way anymore, but I have this gnawing feeling that being back there would fix something. It would re-balance something. Would it actually? Probably not, but I'm also not in a position to find out right now.

Coincidentally that's how I got into The Bear. At the beginning of 2024 I was (and still am) missing the Midwest in a visceral way. Don't ask me why I couldn't wait to leave, regardless, I started watching The Bear because I knew it was set in Chicago and I needed something that felt even vaguely like home. I was homesick for a place I hated and that never loved me. I will be discussing that extensively in therapy ASAP.

Anyways, I just I want what I want so bad and then I have days like today where I don't feel like I have IT to actually make it work.

I have been the girl with the five year plan forever. Everyone knows me as someone who always knows exactly what the next step is, or even the next two or three. Since the beginning of this year it felt like there has been no plan. It has worked out, things have worked out, but I still fundamentally destabilized.

Every decision I make is somehow both the right one and the wrong one, and all I feel capable of is giving up on the whole endeavor.

So many people in my life feel so confident that it's all going to come together and I'm going to make my big ridiculous dreams come true, but all I can see right now is how much guilt I feel for not feeling happier or more grateful.

I worked for ten years to get here and all I want to do is cry and move home.

People are actively envious of my life and I feel like I'm drowning in it.

Anyways, sorry this isn't about The Bear, the new season obviously felt a little close to home, which is why I keep posting about it to avoid my feelings, but unfortunately the feelings caught up with me tonight.

Thank you for reading this is you read it all the way to the end, sorry it's not more specific about my circumstances, I just try not to cross the IRL streams too much here.

[wanderinginksplot]

Hiya, I was wondering if I could please request 3 (Echo) with B+O (Injury/sickness recovery + first kiss)? I don’t really mind who’s in recovery or whether it’s 501st echo/bad batch echo, I just thought these prompts would lead nicely into a confession between our two main characters; also I just want to say I love your writing!! ❤️

Aww, thank you so much for the request and for being so kind, Anon! Sorry this took forever, but I’ve been stuck in an idea block for a week or two, and I ended up writing about four different versions of this. You’re very sweet, but you probably shouldn’t be nice to me, because apparently, it makes me write one-shots that are way too long. So here’s a 2700 word one-shot...

Also! It ended up being a tad spicy toward the end. Nothing anywhere close to M-rating, but more than I usually write in one-shots.

Echo + Injury/Sickness Recovery + First Kiss

The first time you met Echo, you didn't like him very much.

You were in the medbay for a sickness that was taking Coruscant by storm, hitting nat-born GAR members especially hard. As a nat-born intelligence officer, you had been ordered to the GAR's main medbay, which had been sub-divided into large bays full of cots. Almost every cot was filled with GAR personnel who needed treatment for the same sickness.

It wouldn't have been bad if you had been able to take the meds right away and start the healing process, but you had been on a dangerous mission and fought the sickness off for longer than you should have. It had worked and you had survived your mission, but you were severely dehydrated. The medics - all clone troopers, by that point - had ordered you to stay until you were fully healed and they could get your fluid levels back where they should have been. Faced with no other options, you had agreed.

And then the 501st had arrived. 

Through your IV, you had gotten through half a bag of a liquid you preferred not to think too hard about. The medics promised that your meds would be kicking in soon, and you would feel much better before the day was over. For the moment, you felt nauseated and every part of your body ached, especially your head.

When the troopers came in, their white armor painted with blue accents in various styles, they were so loud that the rest of the medbay went quiet. 

One of the medics, his hair shaved short to show off a set of intricate tattoos, hurried up to them as he pulled off his gloves. You could hear his hissed question from your bed on the other side of the large room. "What are you idiots doing here?"

One of the men beamed at him. "We're in trouble!"

You scoffed to yourself. You had no difficulty believing they had gotten on someone's bad side. 

The tattooed medic rubbed his temples. "Hardcase… what did you guys do now?"

You had heard stories about the rowdy 501st from other operatives. They were supposed to be a nightmare to work alongside, all explosions and heroics without any grasp of subtlety. 

One of the other men stepped forward and seemed to be offering an explanation, but he did it in a voice pitched low enough that you couldn't hear him. You were grateful for that, and did your best to fall asleep.

It wasn't to be, however, as one of the 501st made his way down the row of beds in your direction. He chatted with some of the other patients, laughing loudly at their responses. By the time he reached you, you could have cheerfully put a blaster to the 5 tattooed on his temple.

"And how are you doing today?" the trooper belted out. 

"In a lot of pain, actually," you snapped at him, a visceral response to the effect his voice had on your roiling stomach. "Can you please talk more quietly?"

There. A please. You were being polite.

"If I'm quiet, does that mean I can stay over here with you, pretty lady?" he asked with a wink, settling onto the foot of your bed.

You eyed him stonily. You felt revolting from the effects of the sickness, and you were wearing a GAR-issued medical gown besides. ‘Pretty’ was an attempt at flattery, and not even a believable one.

"Fives," the medic with the head tattoos admonished, stepping up to your bedside as well. "Stop. She doesn't feel well and she doesn't need you hanging around, making it worse."

"Me?" Fives asked, sounding both shocked and offended. "We both know I only make things better, Kix."

You sighed and wished with your whole soul that they would both go away. You just wanted to sleep.

"Besides," Fives continued, "We were ordered to help in the medbay. You wouldn't want me to disobey orders, would you?"

From the look on Kix's face, he had lined up a scathing retort that you were dying to hear, but you needed to make a brief announcement. "If this conversation continues right here, I am going to vomit."

You had never seen two grown men move so quickly. You would have smiled if you didn't feel so rotten. 

"Echo," Kix called softly with a worried glance in your direction, beckoning yet another trooper over.

This one had no tattoos, but you vaguely recognized him as the only trooper you hadn't been able to overhear earlier.

"Get Fives away from here," Kix ordered. "Keep him productive and occupied, but don't let him talk."

Echo nodded and gave you an apologetic nod. "I'm sorry about him," he said, indicating Fives, who looked deeply offended.

"Please," was the only response you could muster, cradling your head delicately in your hands. From the bit of your peripheral vision that wasn’t blocked by your palms, you watched his shoulders slump slightly as he towed his brother away. When you finally fell asleep, your dreams were full of Echo’s disappointed face along with strong feelings of guilt.

The second time you met him was only a few hours later. You were having fever dreams. The medication had apparently worn off and no one had noticed. In your dreams, you had called a medic over a dozen times, but you always woke to find that you hadn’t said a thing, and fell asleep again before you could.

It was one of these shallow, fitful dreams that Echo interrupted. “Hey. Hey! Shhh, you’re having a nightmare. Wake up.”

Thoroughly confused by the world of the surrounding medbay, you squinted up at him. “Echo?” He nodded and you launched right into the speech you had prepared in your sleep. “I’m sorry I was rude earlier. I just… my head hurt, and you guys are loud, and-”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Echo assured you, crouching by your bedside to put himself on your level. “The 501st - and Fives in particular - is very loud. It’s our best quality.”

You snorted at that and Echo’s kind face broke into a warm smile. “You should get back to sleep. It’s really late. Or early. I’m not sure which, but everyone else is asleep, and you should be, too.”

“I think I need some meds, actually,” you admitted. “I feel like death.”

Echo frowned and reached up to brush his fingers over your forehead, flinching back almost immediately. “Kriff, you’re burning up! Hang on, let me grab a medic for you.”

You nodded, but grabbed his wrist before he could leave, “If you bring me some water, I’ll love you forever.”

It was just a childish hyperbole, something you and your family had said whenever you had asked for a favor, particularly a minor one. Echo didn’t seem to have the same connection with it, based on the way he had frozen in place and was staring at you with wide eyes that flashed between your face and your grip on his wrist.

Clearing your throat, you released him and corrected yourself. “I mean, please? I’m very thirsty.”

Echo turned around a moment later and you sighed, hoping your hot face looked like the flush of a fever.

You were half-drowsing when Echo came back with Kix in tow. You jumped a bit when Kix said your name, and Echo was quick to soothe you. “Easy, easy. It’s just us.”

He handed you the biggest glass of water you had ever seen and retreated halfway across the medbay before you had chugged half of it.

The next day, you were actually feeling better. Granted, ‘better’ was a relative term, but you didn’t actively want to die any more, and that was something. The only thing messing up your day was the lingering awkwardness between you and Echo. Every time his circuit around the room took him past your cot, he would avoid your eyes. 

From your calculations, he looped around the gigantic medbay room every six minutes or so. On his next lap past, you softly asked, “Echo?”

You had meant to be subtle and quiet, but you were still a bit less hydrated than you should have been, and it came out as a horrifying croak. If someone had called your name in that voice, you would have immediately run away, but Echo just turned slightly and looked your direction.

“I’m sorry for last night,” you apologized.

“You already said that,” Echo reminded you gently. “The 501st is loud. I understand why you weren’t happy with us.”

“Not about that,” you forced out, half-wishing you could just let him think you had been delirious with fever and thus not responsible for anything you had said or done. “I mean that I’m sorry for saying the whole love you forever thing. It was a joke, but I feel like it landed poorly.”

“There’s no need, really,” Echo told you. He smiled then, a small sad smile. “We clones don’t get to see much good in the universe. Not with this war going on. Even though you were joking, it was nice to hear something like that.”

You stared at him, trying to keep the poker face the GAR had hired you for.

“Besides,” Echo said with a laugh, “if you want to see how a bad joke really sounds, hang out with Fives for a few minutes. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to see the difference!”

You chuckled at that and the smile he gave lit his whole face as he continued his patrol. You watched Echo leave, thinking hard. It was ironic that this was the conversation where your heart had melted just a touch. It wasn’t love, not yet, but this third exchange left feelings that were inappropriate considering that you had known him for less than a day.

That night, you couldn’t sleep, betrayed by all of the napping you had done during the day. Echo was patrolling the room again and noticed you on his fourth lap.

He crouched by your bedside once again. “Can’t sleep?”

“Nope,” you admitted with a sigh. “Can you?”

Echo frowned. “I can, but I’m on watch right now.”

“On watch,” you repeated skeptically. “For what?”

“Someone has to make sure the patients are doing okay while the medics sleep,” he explained. “It’s a very important job.”

“Your brothers are all playing sabacc in the corner,” you pointed out. “Go join them. Or, better yet, get some sleep. I haven’t seen you take a break yet.”

“You were unconscious for over half of the day,” Echo reminded you. “I could have been on break then.”

“You weren’t,” you told him confidently. “Because you wouldn’t have known that I slept the whole time.”

Echo frowned. “You’re too smart to work for the army.”

“Intelligence officer,” you explained simply. 

Lifting his eyebrows in exaggerated shock, Echo leapt to his feet and gave a dramatic salute. You pretended to aim a kick in his direction and you both dissolved into muffled giggles in an attempt not to wake any of the other patients.

“If you won’t try to sleep, at least sit down?” you requested, indicating the foot of your cot as you struggled to sit up so you could move out of his way. “You’re stressing me out. I can’t be expected to get better if I’m stressed.”

“We can’t have that,” Echo teased. He helped you sit up before he did anything else, but the awkwardness of the position left him hauling you up by your armpits. You were thankful that you had found the strength to walk to the sonic shower that day, at least. “Not like I can get sick from you, anyway.”

Echo sat talking with you for hours, even after his brothers had all drifted off at their sabacc table. Before you fell asleep again, he brought you another giant glass of water. You accepted it with a smile. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.”

He nodded and left so you could get some sleep. By the time you had finished the glass, he was on the other side of the medbay and couldn’t hear you mutter, “Love you forever.”

For the next few days, Echo lived by your bedside. The conversations you had made you laugh so hard that you went into the occasional coughing fit and got the evil eye from Kix. So, you were less pleased than you had expected to be when Kix told you that you could be discharged the following day.

That night, you couldn’t sleep. Getting your sleep pattern back under control was going to be the biggest struggle, you reflected, staring at the massive beams supporting the ceiling.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Echo teased, walking up. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

You waved a hand around dramatically. “I’m trying to commit these beautiful surroundings to memory. If I’m leaving tomorrow, I’ll need to remember the enchanting way the dust clings to that wall over there.”

Suddenly serious, Echo asked, “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

You nodded, and couldn’t tell if it was your imagination, or if he really looked disappointed. Still, he mustered a smile. “I’m glad.”

With a falsely offended gasp, you replied, “You’re glad I’m leaving? That’s rude!”

“No, I mean-!” Echo sputtered, grimacing at you when you started to laugh. “I’m glad you’re getting better. Even if you’re just as mean as the day I met you.”

“Yeah, I’m terrible,” you agreed with a grin. 

“You are not,” he countered immediately. “You’re sweet and funny and- I’ll miss you. Selfish, huh?”

“I’ll miss you, too,” you admitted. “I guess we’re both selfish. But, hey, you’ll finally get some sleep now!”

“I suppose I will,” Echo said with the ghost of his usual smile. “At least we can have one last overnight conversation. Unless you’re too tired?”

You rolled your eyes at him. “Sit down, Echo.”

The two of you talked for hours that night. The medbay steadily got more silent and your eyes began to ache. Try as you might, you were still recovering from your illness and the point came when you couldn’t fight it off any longer. You fell into a light doze as Echo was talking.

You were dimly aware as he finished his sentence and waited for a response, but you couldn’t make yourself say anything. Echo gave an amused sounding hum and stood from your cot. You immediately missed his warmth, but felt like he was still standing by you.

Soft lips pressed against your forehead and left as Echo started to move away. “What was that cop-out bantha dung?” you asked blearily. 

Echo jumped a bit and stared down at you, but you were half-asleep, impulsive, and you knew what you wanted. You sat up to grab his shoulders and brought him back down to you, kissing him with as much fervor as an extremely tired person could muster.

He kissed you back, opening his mouth to release an almost-soundless groan, and you were suddenly wide awake. With both of you actively participating in your embrace, it didn’t take long for the pair of you to get carried away. 

When you finally broke apart, it was only because someone had cleared their throat sharply. 

Echo pulled back, bracing on his forearms to look up at Kix while you peered at the medic from under Echo’s chest. When had he gotten on top of you? His hip brushed against your upper thigh and you abruptly didn’t care anymore.

“I take it you’re well enough to be released from here?” Kix asked, a raised brow accentuating his smirk. 

You glanced around to find that half of the medbay was awake and staring at you and Echo with expressions ranging from bleary bewilderment to amused approval. Some of Echo’s brothers were awake as well, though their faces ran heavily to outright shock.

“Uh, yeah. I’m ready to go home,” you agreed, glancing up at Echo. “Wanna come with me?”

Echo nodded and glanced up at Kix. The medic shrugged and looked at the ceiling. “No, I have no idea where Echo went. He worked several around the chrono shifts and then he disappeared. I assume he went to get some well-deserved rest. Sign here.”

The last part was directed at you and you obligingly scrawled your name on the datapad he was holding out in your direction. 

“Your personal effects are in the front room,” Kix informed you. “Drink some water now and then, would you?”

“Of course, thanks,” you said absently, attention already stolen away by the fascinating blush creeping up Echo’s cheeks. You slipped out from under him and grabbed his hand to tow him behind you. “C’mon. You’re gonna love my apartment.”

---

A/N - ahh, why did this end up being such a novel? Sorry about that! If you want to read similar works, check out my masterlist or make a request based on this post (or make something up and I’ll do my best!). Thanks for reading!

[mugasofer]

It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

[insane-control-room]

migraine

Am I the only one I know waging a war behind their face and above their throat?

Written with @randomwriteronline

warnings: migraine, depression, suicidal feelings

ao3 version here

Thunder in his head. Lightning in his eyes, flashing and pulsing, black seeping and rising and falling, like tidal waves crashing onto his thoughts, shoulders hunching like a beast unable to escape an unseen assailant. It felt as though someone had shot an electrified crossbow bolt straight into the base of his skull, tearing past skin and bone and shocking his very brain. It caused painful shivers across his limbs and tightened around his ribs, constricting his breathing and making his heartbeat viscerally loud in his mind, feeling each and every pulsation roar in his ears and neck like unresting waves shaken by an oceanic earthquake. A bubble seemed to form around the sides of his head, frothing outwards from his very cochlea and stiff jaw. His forehead felt like someone had placed a boa constrictor around the perimeter of his skull and allowed it to squeeze until he would scream.

Joey had a migraine.

The bright glow shining directly into his sore eyes from the light table beneath his work did not help. In fact, one might say it was making it all the worse!

His head hurt, his legs ached, and his arms were stiff and unwilling to follow his requests.

An indiscernible mumble growled around him and slipped into his ears before expanding across his entire brain, emanating outwards through his spinal column, a full body tension unleashing like a rubberband suddenly yanked by two fingers and thus pushed to its absolute limit.

Thank goodness it was Friday, because Joey was going to snap soon if that grew much further.

His hand had let go of his pen, and he was hardly aware of its nails driving in repeatedly between his radius and ulna. Another rumble like a plane taking off right beside him, rattling him to his very atomic being, each quark screaming in protest, making everything even worse, despite how insane that seemed to be. He could hardly breathe. However, with Friday came the dread of Sunday-- the day he would be completely alone. Henry would be away at the clinic. The children would go out to extracurricular activities. No one would be in the building except for himself, his bees buzzing outside his window, and his demons.

He was not ready for that. He had never been ready for that, and would usually hide away on his computer to ignore that short walk up to the roof, not eat for fear of entering the kitchen and finding an object which would be used not by himself, not drink to avoid the easy escape of pills and the winding thoughts that brought him far, far, far away from sanity and drowned him within the liquid. And then, when his family would come home, he would lie about it by not saying anything at all.

Sometimes, when it would be dark outside and the air soothing him with storms and snow, he would think about telling Henry, writing it down and silently handing it to him so that he could read the truth himself, devoid of any more omissions, but he always stuffed those letters away into the vault, sealing them forever.

“Are you even listening to me?!”

Joey once again wished he was not ever there to hear those words, wishing himself to be blotted out of existence another time, if only for a single neverending moment. He found himself gaping wordlessly at the air, a fish desperate for water, suspended before Abby without any excuse for himself, unsure what the matter was that she would be so testy.

“Can I h-help you?” he asked, demure.

“I asked you that,” Abby stated, hands on her hips. “I asked if you were okay, and you didn’t answer. Multiple times. Could you tell me what’s the matter, Mr. Drew? Or is there none? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I just have been preoccupied with my depress…” Joey trailed on, trying to hide the panic in his eyes. His head hurt too much to filter, and his tongue had already slipped. “...ing thoughts.”

“We have a deadline for this episode, Mr. Drew,” she said, shrugging off his comment, “and we haven’t even gotten a storyline for it yet! Do you have writer’s block or something of the sort?”

His head shook almost bonelessly, carefully so as to not rattle his thoughts. Time seemed to be going so slowly, how long had he been sitting there working on that single frame? When was the last time that he had slept? Was he thinking or was he just moving along a sleepwalking path like a beast made of sludge and string? He blinked a few times and saw the drawings double as the rumble in his ears increased deafeningly.

“You don’t look so good.”

“I’m not as fine as I s-seem,” Joey said with a bright smile. He rose suddenly, the motion revolting to his body, and he nodded to her, still smiling, and he began walking out. “Pardon.”

He was outside, trying to use fresh air as a weapon against the pain. The roses were still just sticks, not yet able to blossom with greenery. His head was under his arms, and his ears twitched as they picked up the slightest change in notes that indicated an approach of someone, someone small.

Bendy crawled into his lap.

“See all those rose bushes, baby?” Joey whispered, holding him gently with his horned head pressed to his trapped chest. “That’s kinda how my head is right now.”

‘Ready to grow?’ Bendy asked, tilting his head. Joey smiled slightly, and corrected, “That’s a bit different then what I meant. I mean… don’t they l-look burnt?”

‘A little bit,’ Bendy answered, looking around. ‘But not really. No burns.’

“Mmm.”

The parent and child were quiet.

‘Do not forget this, Bendy,’ Joey silently remarked after a while, the sun moving by degrees across the sky so slightly it appeared to not go at all. ‘When I paint, I do not think, but I know what I do. I think behind my mind. Sometimes I draw things that are… disturbing, you know?’

‘Sometimes, but I think everyone does,’ Bendy replied. Joey wondered just where he could have gotten such a brilliant, compassionate and empathetic child from, what did he do to deserve him? ‘I think that drawings and writing are a peek into the door of a person's mind that shows things they usually would not share.’

‘Right you are.’ Joey sighed in amazement. He loved his little darling devil, even through the burning cloud of pain that stormed and shrieked like a thousand banshees in his head. ‘And some of those minds are like Pandora's box. Or worse. Even if you are curious, you should not open them. Ever.’

‘I do not think your mind is like that,’ Bendy remarked. Johan tried not to tremble.

“There’s flecks of… not good things.”

‘Still not bad.’

‘It’s a wreck, Benderoo.’

‘Not bad.’

“Oh, Bendy.”

Joey hugged him, closing his eyes.

“It’s v-violent in there, my dear.” he murmured. “I might be afraid of the o-ocean, but that surrounds the small spaces that I can stand upon. My thoughts are… are like tidal waves, Bendy. Ebb, flow.”

‘But that is how the world goes. We need the tides.’

“But sometimes the tide might try to swallow you. It might lunge for you, l-like a famished lion I must f-fight.” Johan shivered, not with the thought of a beast devouring him, but the mere idea of the sea. “Blood upon the maw and bones within it.”

Bendy played with his father's hand, the thin palm much larger than his own soft plasmic ink one, releasing it to respond.

‘You are good, Papi.’

“I truly hope so.”

‘You are, Papi.’ the little toon insisted. ‘I know you are. You are my Papi, which must be good, and you always do the right thing.’

Johan smiled wryly: “You are too kind with me, Bendibop. I don't deserve that.”

‘Of course you do, Papi.’

Johan caressed his child's little horns through those tufts of keratin so much like his own.

“You really think I can be deserving of that?” he asked softly. “Even as I am a weapon?”

‘You are doing what you can. Sometimes you need to fight.’ Bendy smiled, hugging him sideways. Thin dark arms wrapped around the little inky body and Johan tucked him a little closer to himself. His smile sweetened a bit. ‘You are not alone. You have us, and the studio. Your family.’

“I guess you’re right, d-darling,” he murmured, laying a kiss on his child's head. “I got used to bein’ alone a long time ago, I suppose it’s h-hard to remember that I’m not anymore.”

‘Maybe we should have a day off,’ Bendy suggested. ‘With everyone. And have a picnic. Take a picture of it to hold it forever.’

‘For what?’

‘To remind you that we have got hope and each other,’ Bendy answered innocuously.

Joey smiled.

“We’ve made it pretty far, kid.”

[scripttorture]

(Villain story PT 1) My story is about two enemies/villains. Character A is tortured by B as punishment for harming a friend of B. A escapes and tortures B for retaliation (other people who have been wronged by character B also help character A do that). A and B are not directly involved in each other's tortures but they know who is responsible for their punishment. Later, A and B come closer to each other's side and start to compromise their politics. They also come closer as people.---

(Villain story PT 2) They also come closer as people. They realize they think alike. They don't have regrets about the torture they did to one another but they don't want to repeat it. Later there is some atonement for their actions. I am doing the trope "enemies to friends" but with both characters having a twisted mentality (aka "it's fine if you come closer to your torturer").  (Villain story PT 3) However, I don't imply that torture is something light or harmless or that it's natural for someone to be kind to their torturer. i also don't try to excuse the actions of the torturers.I am worried if with this story I present torment in the wrong way. Any commentary or advice? Thank you!

-

OK I think I understand what you’re going for here.

 I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t think there’s anything wrong in writing ‘bad’ characters. Or characters who believe in stuff that’s awful, stupid or just plain wrong. If you want to write unhealthy relationships, characters making bad decisions or characters having rare/unusual responses there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

 The issues come when we start teaching people these things are ‘normal’, that survival should look a certain way or that a particular kind of trauma ‘wasn’t that bad’.

 Sometimes that stuff can be very subjective, so this is always a learning process.

 But this isn’t about telling people to stop writing particular plots or characters. It’s about the problems that come when fiction is the only source people see for something real and complex and misunderstood.

 I don’t have a problem with authors breaking from reality; it’s called fiction for a reason. The problem is when we present a potentially damaging fiction as fact and do so in an environment which makes finding the facts almost impossible.

 I talk about what is or isn’t realistic often because I think it’s important that we understand the reality. We get better stories when the writers are aware of how and where they’re deviating from reality. We get more compassionate stories when writers take the time to think about what those breaks from reality imply.

 I don’t think you’ve chosen a plot that’s inherently torture apologia but it could stray close to some of the common misconceptions about torture. And you’ve recognised that, which means you’re thinking about it critically. That’s a really important step.

 First off in this kind of scenario it’s worth distinguishing the torturer from the person who ordered torture.

 You’ve made it clear that neither of these characters actively tortures the other. They order it but it isn’t even clear if they’re in the same room when the abuse takes place. And I think that gives you a lot more leeway.

 I don’t know of a single case where a survivor and their torturer (ie someone who directly, actively tortured them) became friends or had any sort of positive relationship afterwards.

 There are abuse cases where the survivor and abuser have gone on to have a healthy and mostly positive relationship afterwards. It’s rare*, but it does happen.

 The thing is abusers usually have an established prior relationship with their victim. Torturers don’t. The most I’ve found is a couple of cases where they were vague acquaintances before hand; I’ve yet to find a case where torturer and victim were actually close beforehand.

 What I’m saying here is that generally there isn’t a reason for survivors to want anything to do with their torturers in any capacity. And there are a lot of good reasons for them to not want to be near their torturer.

 There aren’t a lot of accounts of survivors encountering their torturers afterwards. The ones that I have found-

 Well Fanon describes one that happened in his hospital. Both torturer and survivor had a panic attack. The survivor ran into a bathroom and tried to commit suicide.

 Hospital staff managed to convince both of them that they were mistaken about who they thought they saw (a decision Fanon justified as being the only way they could continue to access the treatment they needed). They rearranged the schedules to make sure they never encountered each other again.

 I’ve read more recent accounts that were by survivors. Most of them seem to be describing panic attacks or at the very least, extreme distress on the part of the survivor.

 That’s partly in response to the torturer in a way that’s beyond the control of both individuals. But it’s also partly because of the attitude torturers typically seem to have to their own crimes.

 I’ll pre-face this by saying we really need more research on torturers. At the moment there isn’t a lot in the way of good quality long term studies. Based on the information we have now torturers seem to struggle to understand the scale and impact of their crimes. Some of them do express regret. Some of them will admit that what they did was wrong.

 But they might also say (example taken from one of the survivors accounts and paraphrased) ‘Well I served my time in jail so you shouldn’t have a problem with me any more. I have as much right to be here as you do.’

 As you might imagine this sort of attitude and lack of understand tends to make a healthy or positive relationship less likely.

 As I said, I never heard of a case where a survivor and their torturer had a positive relationship afterwards and I think that it’s extremely unlikely.

 But the survivor and the person who ordered torture… that is potentially a different story.

 People who order torture usually aren’t present when torture occurs. They don’t exist in the toxic torturer sub-culture these organisations have. They are not typically at risk from the torturers in their organisation. And since they don’t typically witness torture they’re not going to develop the mental health problems torture typically causes.

 And because they’re not typically present when torture is actually happening there’s less chance that a survivor is going to feel triggered by their presence. They might blame them, they might hate them. But the visceral response they have when seeing their torturer doesn’t seem to be there, as far as I can tell from what I’ve read.

 I think that difference, that distinction, gives you a fair amount of leeway. Because a person can know, logically, that the head of the organisation that tortured them is ultimately responsible for their torture and still not have the same level of emotional response or distress.

 Because they weren’t part of the toxic sub-culture torturers create in organisations, a person who ordered torture is less likely to have the same attitude towards their crimes. I can’t say for certain that they’d have greater insight or perspective into what they did; there’s even less research on them then on torturers.

 But I think they’d be able to denounce, regret or move away from torture with less personal risk. They’re not going to lose their whole social circle for saying torture should stop. And they’re unlikely to be physically attacked by their peers for it.

 I still think that gaining that insight, that understanding of the scale and impact of their crimes, would be difficult and unlikely. But my instinct is that it would be more likely in someone who is at a remove from torture then in someone who was actually a torturer.

 Showing that torture is serious is more about how you portray the effects then how you have the characters’ relationships developing. It’s about showing consistently showing the effects symptoms have on the characters’ lives.

 Having more survivors then just these two characters could serve to highlight that this relationship isn’t usual, as well as underlining that people’s responses are very varied.

 If you make the effort to show, consistently, that both the main characters and any secondary survivor characters are effected by what they went through then you should avoid downplaying the damage torture causes.

 You’ve probably already picked out the 3-5 symptoms you want your main characters to experience. Decide what those problems look like for them and show those problem consistently even when the character is improving.

 The story I’m writing at the moment has a character with a minor brain injury and part of the symptom set I gave him involved having lower inhibitions. Which in this character looks like a complete lack of brain-mouth filter, he says what’s on his mind constantly. And he does get better at managing his disability through the course of the story but he still says the ‘wrong’ thing constantly. Which in turn impacts on his ability to relate to other people.

 That’s the sort of thing you need in order to show the effects are serious: a commitment to showing them all the way through the story.

 For instance if one of the characters has severe anxiety that gets set off by crowded spaces, improving and managing that condition might look like:

Rearranging their schedule to avoid places at the most crowded times

Medication to reduce the effects of panic attacks

Constantly using breathing exercises in crowded spaces (and possibly sounding a little strange when they talk as a result)

Sending other people to potentially crowded spaces in their place

Putting off or cancelling things if a place seems too crowded for them

Taking the rest of the day off to recover after going somewhere crowded

 Any of those might lead to the net result of less panic attacks and overall improvement. But they’re still working around a serious condition. The fact the character has to make these adjustments constantly in their life means the condition is still there and still serious.

 The rest of this is probably less about the overall themes or plot and more about how it comes across when it’s written.

 I can’t give you a roadmap to a perfect story that no one will ever take issue with. That does not exist. Because every individual reader will bring something different when they sit down to read and they will take something different away too.

 Getting beta readers can help with this, and help build your confidence. I’ve found in person (or in these days over skype) writing groups to be really useful.

 You’re trying to do better and that is the main thing. You’ll learn in the process of writing this story and what you learn can feed into the next one.

 This is a complex topic you’re tackling and your fear is natural. Do everything you can to do it justice, but give yourself permission to be imperfect. You’re only human. I assume.

 I think the main thing to consider here is whether you’re portraying what happens with these characters as ‘normal’ or not. Because however you look at it this is an unusual outcome. I think you know that and I get the impression from the ask that you’re not trying to portray this as the ‘usual’ or ‘correct’ response. You’re just trying to tell a story that interests you using an unusual response. Nothing wrong with that.

 Implications and atmosphere can be hard to get right. They take practice. Having someone else read over the story can help confirm that scenes are coming across the way you intend them to.

 Once again I think having other examples of survivors will help you avoid any suggestions that survivors ‘should/naturally are’ kind to the people who ordered them to be tortured. Showing symptoms consistently should also help you avoid excusing the torture. Especially if that effects the relationship that’s building between these two characters.

 Take your time. Take breaks. Read your own writing critically and think about what you might be implying with each scene. Get second opinions to make sure it’s coming across as you’d like it to.

 I hope that helps. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*The fact that it can happen is occasionally used to encourage victims to stay in dangerous situations on the off chance they might be able to ‘fix’ their abuser. This is, of course, dangerous rubbish.

[randomfandomimagine]

Games With Trish: The Last of Us Part II

Granted, I didn’t actually play this myself but watched my brother play it instead. Still, I’m kind of glad he had the controller because the game looks so difficult and scary. Overall, I absolutely adored the game and it has so many good things. For that reason, I’ll say the bad things first since there are very few.

I know this game was very controversial, but this is my personal opinion and thoughts, not facts. Let me know your opinion if you want (as long as you’re kind and polite, please!). 

Long rant and spoilers under the cut!

Bad things

I have two main things to complain about in the game: the violence and its heavy emotional charge. Now, I don’t necessarily hate them because not only does it make sense that it’s a violent game taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where it’s kill or be killed, but it also goes along with the message of hate and revenge the game wants to tell. 

Still, the game gave me a lot of anxiety and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have for this reason. I averted my gaze a few times (when they break Yara’s arm being one of them) because it’s so brutal. I’m also a very sensitive person, so each time we played it was so tense and sad that I ended up exhausted. Every time a character died it was so harrowing... Abby’s Day 3 was so intense that I was a little overwhelmed, and Yara’s death was like the final straw and we had to take a break from the game. Characters also die so quickly, which is realistic, but it didn’t give you enough time to react before you were thrown into another scene or shootout. Between how frantic some scenes are and how brutal or tragic, I had to ask my brother to pause it a few times. The game really doesn’t give you a moment to breathe. That’s it, that’s my only complaint about the game. Now on to the good things.

Characters

First of all, and always my favorite thing about any story: the characters. Ellie is my all time favorite character, and even if I don’t agree with her choices and actions in this game, I can still empathize with her and love how complex and deep she is. She’s just human, and she is traumatized, so she does some questionable things.

Obviously, Troy Baker’s and Ashley Johnson’s performances are flawless, but Druckmann’s dialogues and writing is so... human. The characters interact like real people, they are spontaneous and natural, they have intimate moments of love, anger and a wide range of emotions. These characters fidget, frown, smile and have a myriad of human gestures (also improved with the amazing, mindblowing Naughty Dog graphics) that make them feel real. You can feel the emotion pour out of every gesture, every look, every expression.

I know Abby is also a controversial character but... I adore her. Of course we are meant to hate her at first, but the more time we spend with her, the more I grew fond of her even if I missed playing with Ellie. I couldn’t help but to admire Abby’s brute strength and bravery, even when she faces her fear of heights. When she tells her story, you understand her motivations as much as her actions hurt. Joel (like every character in this game and every person in that world) was not a good person, no matter how much we love him. Besides, at the end of the game it’s hard not to feel for Abby. She loses everyone as a direct result of her own revenge that she very much ends up regretting. When Ellie finds her at the end, it was hard to even tell that was Abby, I literally didn’t recognize her. So it was nice knowing that she found redemption and got her happy ending with Lev, her new family.

The side characters are all amazing. I was especially fond of Lev and Yara (Lev is an adorable little boy that must be protected, I just wanted to hug him) from Abby’s part and Dina and Jesse from Ellie’s part. I also loved Owen, Nora, Manny, Alice... everyone. Even Mel, who seems a bit more bland in comparison, has a defined personality. 

The plot

It is so well written, it makes so much sense, coherently and thematically, that I don’t understand some complaints. It’s also so compelling! People complain that Joel’s death made no sense and was just for shock value? It was a direct consequence of his actions at the end of the first game when he killed lots of people and literally doomed humanity out of selfishness. I still love Joel and I’m glad he saved Ellie, but this can’t be denied. Besides, the game deals a lot with the consequences of the characters’s actions, so it makes perfect sense to me.

Everything that happens in the plot and the story has a point. You kill lots of people as Ellie to avenge Joel, but then you get Abby’s point of view and grief the loss of those same characters. The game tries to make you feel for every person, which is why they all have names and their friends call out to them when they are shot. The main goal of the game was to get you to feel empathy for the ‘bad guys’. The point was that there are no good or bad guys in this story, only people with personal perspectives. Ellie and Abby are just two women who felt they were in the right. And in a way, they both were.

I just think the plot was coherent, with lots of interesting things, twists and surprises. Overall, it was realistic. There were no deus ex machinas, no crazy expectation subversions (because the twists were well established) and to me it felt like everything that happened had a meaning, as heart-crushing as it could be.

The themes

Now, this is one of my favorite things about the game. I read that Druckmann said that Ellie and Abby would have been friends in another life, and I agree. They are two sides of the same coin, or two different moments in the process of recovery from trauma and grief. 

Abby got her revenge and is dealing with the consequences of it, with the guilt and the rejection of those that don’t approve of her hate and resentment. When she got her revenge, she didn’t feel better (in fact she felt worse) so she does something good to change that. She literally returns to Yara and Lev to make amends for killing Joel, and in it she finds a new family. In the end, Abby actively choses not to do bad things anymore (even to the point of refusing to fight Ellie) and let go of that hatred.

Ellie is in the first stages of grief, needing to look for Abby until she kills her for what she did to Joel. There are some hardcore visceral moments that show the dark side of revenge, like when she finds Nora or attacks Mel and Owen. Even when Abby lets her go she still can’t forget about Joel’s death. It was a nice respite in the farm with Dina and JJ, but her guilt and PTSD don’t leave her and she has to go again. She is literally going through what Abby already lived, hence why she tells Ellie ‘I’m not doing this’ when they meet at the end of the game.

Ellie and Abby were on the same path even if they started on different places. Abby had done terrible things for Isaac as a Wolf but finds redemption when protecting Lev. Ellie mostly wanted to live a happy life until her father figure was taken from her. They meet common ground at some point and then go on their own paths again, which is why the game didn’t end on the theatre.

The first Last of Us was about love, but Part II is about hate. It speaks about how hatred and revenge never end, an eye for an eye and everyone will end up blind. The characters have to make conscious choices to avoid it ruining their lives even further and that’s why the ending is so good. More on that later.

Little things

The setting is incredible, it feels lived in and sometimes it’s absolutely gorgeous. Every place has a history and some of them are just so cool. The musem with the flashback of Joel and Ellie was one of my favorite places, as well as the aquarium. Also, the part of the game where you go to Ground Zero? Terrifying! I was freaking out only watching my brother play, and I’m impressed that they managed to make it feel so dark and ominous. It’s brilliant that they thought of putting something like that in the game, as scary as it was.

The game has so much attention to detail, from how you always find alcohol and scissors in places like kitchens or bathrooms to how accurate the animations are. I was blown away when I saw the trailer with how you crawl under cars and cock the guns and everything, and the game has so many details like those.

Even the AI was insane, NPCs have dialogues if you let them speak and they are so smart. They turn around in the middle of their walking, like real people would, and make it extra challenging. I was so impressed with the AI.

The music was phenomenal as usual. The score just pulls the correct emotions out of you, whether it is making you feel the adrenaline with the drums or feel nostalgic or just make you sad with the guitar.

The ending

Finally, the ending. I think many people didn’t like it, but to me it was perfect. I was so convinced that either Ellie or Abby were going to die, or both! I was relieved that they both lived, and in a way that made so much sense. To me it was a satisfying end to everything that had been set up, a coherent end to all the themes and the message that the game sent. Revenge is bad, let go of that hatred or it will consume you.

Ellie can’t kill Abby. She spent so long thinking about Joel in his last moments, about how she was helpless and couldn’t save him, and that fueled her anger and hatred. Her survivor’s guilt from the first game only got worst when it meant seeing her father figure die. Still, when she is about to kill Abby she thinks about him in a different way. She sees him fondly, with his jacket and coffee and playing guitar. She doesn’t see him bloody and dying as he was that dreadful day. That’s why she doesn’t kill Abby. 

Abby and Lev find Santa Catalina after everything they went through. IT’s Abby’s ‘reward’ for not going after Ellie again after what happened with Owen, Mel and everyone. They get their happy ending together as a family: Lev can be himself and feel safe even with everything that he loss, Abby can start forgiving herself for her guilt and honor both her father and Owen by returning to the Fireflies. She was lost in the darkness but found the light. It’s also symbolic that she isn’t as buff or has her long hair because she’s letting go of the reason why she had them.

Ellie lost everything. She couldn’t let go of her hatred and in doing so she was left completely alone, which was her worst fear. She risked everything and the only thing she had left, which was Dina (the representation of a happy life) is gone. It was also heartbreaking that she couldn’t even play guitar (as a guitar player myself and music lover, that hurt me profoundly) because she lost her fingers as a consequence of her attempt at revenge. 

I saw theories that Dina was actually waiting for her somewhere else because Ellie was wearing her bracelet, and I hope so too. It seems strange that Dina would abandon her dream of living in a farm if she was staying with Ellie, but I still want to hold on to that hope. I shipped those two so hard, and I really want Ellie to have a somewhat happy ending.

The last few minutes were beautifully tragic. Bittersweet. Ellie is alive, but leaves everything behind, all of her belongings (including Joel’s guitar) in order to move on. It was the only way she had to let go of her grief from Joel’s death and start a new life instead of repeating the vicious cycle of revenge. Just... powerful and moving.

Amazing lines and scenes

My brother knows me well and he said that my favorite scene would be the one in the museum with Ellie and Joel, and it probably is. It feels like a continuation of the first game and it’s a sweet father-daugther (parent-child and found family tropes are my weakness) moment in which Joel tries to make Ellie happy with the nerdy things he knows she loves. 

I also adore all the moments between Ellie and Dina. They are adorable and they just feel like a real couple, caring about each other and joking and flirting. 

All of the flashbacks were emotional and amazing, but my favorite is probably the last one. When Ellie tells Joel that she wants to forgive him? When he says ‘if I had another chance I would do it all over again?’ I’m getting choked up just thinking about it. I think that’s actually my favorite scene in the game.

Another one of my favorite lines was ‘hey, you’re my people’ from Abby to Lev. It’s so important and such a turning point for Abby, because if it weren’t for Lev she might have killed Ellie and Dina in the theater. She cares so much about him that she keeps going. And that line is the first moment we really see how much that kid meant to her.

Final thoughts

This was probably the longest rant I’ve written here, but The Last of Us was already my favorite game and Part II only topped it for me. The few bad things are greatly overpowered by the countless good things. The game just left a mark on me and I will never forget how it made me smile, laugh, gasp, cry, cringe in fear and overall... just feel in a way nothing had ever made me feel before.

[verus-veritas]

Collan's Caption This Catch Up

I was obsessed with Cullen McCathers. Coming to live in a college dorm after years of a hermit-like high school existence was culture shock. Back home I was the weird, skinny nerd, the token gay social outcast who did his best to avoid the rest of the small-minded, small town denizens who were all too willing torment the obvious outsider given the slightest opportunity, never mind that I had been born there just like the rest of them. So I had made sure the opportunities they got were few and far between, and I had assumed I would continue staying out of the way in college. Keeping my head down was a winning strategy. Why mess with success? What I hadn't counted on was the reality of being forced to live cheek-by-jowl with a seeming unending parade of ideal male bodies. Within the first hour I was overwhelmed by them. On the paths of the campus they walked, in the lounges of the dorm they casually relaxed, in the halls they fist bumped with their bros, and one in particular even invaded my room. I had requested a single room and had thought it had gotten approved, but in typical bureaucratic fashion I showed up on the first day of Freshman orientation to find someone already occupying an obvious double room. I had a roommate. Cullen McCathers. From that very first day, I discovered that even though he spoke to me in a friendly enough fashion and I apparently responded appropriately to the conversation, none of it really registered. He remained a remote and unattainable object despite our sharing a living space, because my thoughts, my gaze, the core of my very being seemed to be pulled into his orbit on a visceral level. He was muscled and toned like a fitness model, and he had a strong face that lit up when he smiled. His voice was sexy, his eyes were sexy, his walk was sexy. His scent, whenever I managed to get a whiff of it, drove me wild with desire, and after watching him unself-consciously change in our room to go take a shower, I knew he was hung so big that I wondered how he dealt with all of that meat in his crotch on a daily basis.

Within a day my universe shifted, and he became its center. He filled my waking fantasies and starred in my nightly dreams.

I was obsessed with Cullen McCathers. ***********

I guess my capability for intense mental concentration and focus, coupled with the depth of my obsession helped trigger the beginning of it. Each night I would think of Cullen as I drifted off to sleep, going over in detail the fragments of him I had collected in my mind that day, cherishing the nape of his neck, the swell of his bicep, the revelation of his tongue darting out to moisten dry lips. I yearned for him and cast myself towards him with wild abandon in my head. And then one night a couple of weeks into the semester, I felt myself drift off to sleep as usual with thoughts of Cullen filling my head, like the proverbial visions of sugarplums, but instead of my consciousness slipping away until morning, it slipped sideways instead and I found myself hovering just off the floor next to Cullen's sleeping body. I looked across the room towards my bed, if what I did can be called looking, seeing as I was a bodiless consciousness, and I saw my own body just where I would have expected to see it, lying and breathing gently in slumber. I was surprisingly unconcerned with what was undoubtedly a highly unusual occurrence. Instead, I was fascinated by what was happening and started to examine my disembodied self. I seemed to perceive some sort of silvery cord leading back to my body, and a scrap of information surfaced from my endless eclectic reading over the years. Astral projection. This is what this was. I had written it off as new age crap, but here was proof to me that not only was it not crap, but I had somehow managed to achieve it. I turned back to look at Cullen and saw the same silvery cord stretching out of his body and out through the wall, anchoring his dream self to his physical self as he journeyed through the night. The instant I realized this, my thoughts became action, and I flew out of the room through the wall, following Cullen's silvery cord.

The world blurred by dissolving into formless colors, before brightening and resolving into a daytime city street. Cullen was there, arguing with a police officer, a clown, and a talking cartoon goldfish in a bowl hovering in mid-air. Cullen was dreaming, and I was in his dream. I sensed some sort of change in myself and looked down to see that I had a body again. I walked towards the arguing quartet, but as I did the police officer flew up into the air, the clown popped like a balloon, and the goldfish in the bowl turned into a demonic cheerleader who began to chase a suddenly terrified Cullen down the sidewalk towards me. I was enraged that anything would dare to try and hurt Cullen, so I grabbed a parking meter out of the sidewalk and stabbed the cheerleader through the chest with it. She dropped to the ground instantly and vanished. "Oh, man! I thought I was dead for sure! You saved my life! Thank you!" said Cullen and hugged me tight. I went rigid in shock. Cullen had spoken to me, and for the first time it had actually registered as words instead of meaningless gibberish. Cullen had touched me. Cullen had hugged me! For the briefest of moments Cullen's dream world had become real to me, and the combination of his speaking to me, touching me, and hugging me threw me into such turmoil that between one instant and the next I was suddenly waking up in my bed in my darkened dorm room, gasping for air and shaking in reaction. I was obsessed with Cullen McCathers. ***********

To say that my obsession with Cullen deepened from that point on would be a gross understatement. Now that I knew I could spend all of my sleeping time with Cullen, I began to do so on a regular basis. He had starred in my dreams and now I began to star in his, sleep-stalking him every night. In his dreams, I found I could actually talk with him in a way that I was completely unable to in the waking world. Admittedly, most of the conversations were variations of his thanking me for one rescue or another since I became his dream protector and hero, saving him from countless monsters, demons, witches, aliens, and bad guys who were gunning for him because someone had framed him for a murder he didn't commit. After that first dream hug, I did everything I could to initiate physical contact between us during our nightly escapades, an arm casually draped over his shoulder, a hand gently tousling his hair, countless little touches, smiles, looks into his eyes. In the waking world, he grew more open and friendly towards me, looking at me more, smiling at me more, continuing to try and engage me in conversation despite the fact that I continued to blank it all out and watch our interactions as an observer, rather than as the active participant I was when we dreamed together.

It also dawned on me that there was a sexual tension between us that hadn't existed before. I was still jacking off to mental images of him every chance I got, but I realized he was spending more and more time wearing less and less when we were alone together in our room. He had never been shy about displaying his body, but as the days went by he went from t-shirts to muscle shirts to tank tops to bare torso, and from sweats to shorts to briefs to nothing at all. I exerted every ounce of my self control to not stare at the obvious things and be as casual and nonchalant about it as he seemed to be. The weeks passed, and the days grew shorter as fall progressed towards winter. I welcomed the turning of the seasons, because longer nights meant more time to sleep and dream with Cullen. Things might have continued on this way, but one evening in early November I went to sleep and slid sideways out of my body to find I wasn't alone in the room. There was another presence like myself, hovering just off the floor next to my bed as I was hovering next to Cullen's. It was another waking dreamer, I knew, and as I looked more closely I realized its silvery cord led straight to Cullen's sleeping body!

"Now it all makes sense," came Cullen's voice in my mind. "This is what you do. This is how you're always in my dreams." "Yes," I replied. "It happened first spontaneously, but it quickly became directed. I'm sorry. I can't seem to help myself where you're concerned." "You love me, don't you?" he asked. "Yes," I admitted sadly, thinking that this was probably going to be some sort of ending. "I've been obsessed with you from the first day. Love followed quickly once I started to get to know you through your dreams. I can't seem to talk to you when I'm awake. I think the reality of you is too much for me to take after a lifetime of isolation, but all I want is to be with you, in all ways, always and forever, to love and protect you, to be one with you. I'm sorry." "Why are you sorry? Can't you tell I feel the same way? Ever since you invaded my dreams and started saving me, I've become obsessed with you too. I go to sleep each night, knowing that you'll be there to keep me safe, even though you can't say so during the day. I could tell the feeling was there somehow, that we were connected on a deeper level. I've been longing to meet you on that deeper level, and now, suddenly, here we are." "You love me too?" I asked incredulously. "Yes," he said simply, and even though he had no body at the moment to express it, I felt the warmth of his smile on me anyway. I moved towards his warmth, and he moved towards me. We met in the center of our dorm room, still hovering just off the floor, and with no transition our bodiless bodies merged into a single being with two silvery tethers anchored at opposite sides of the room. There are no words to describe the unity we experienced in that moment. Pile every description imaginable of physical and emotional intimacy on top of each other, squeeze them all together, multiply all of that by any impossibly large number you can think of, then magnify it all again by an equally impossibly large number and you still won't approach it. Neither of us were prepared for it, and like the first time Cullen had hugged me, I found myself suddenly abruptly awake in my body in my bed. The only difference was that this time, Cullen was awake too. He launched himself, naked and erect, out of his bed and across the room to mine. I had thrown my blanket off, and his beautiful bare body landed on top of me, his mouth seeking mine to devour me. His gigantic cock leaked onto my stomach as he ground his crotch into mine, only my briefs separating us. He moaned his frustration into my mouth as we kissed, then he sat up and back, reached down, grabbed the opening in the front of my briefs, and with a grunt, ripped them open and yanked the remains out from under me, leaving me as naked as he was.

He laid himself fully down on top of me again and our legs intertwined. He kissed me again, and we were touching all along the length of our bodies, from feet to crotch to mouth. His cock ground down into me and my hips pushed myself in turn up into him, trying to somehow physically force our bodies to merge as our essences had in the moment before we awoke. Given our frenzy, we didn't last very long, and we shot together allowing at least part of our physical selves to merge into one as we mixed our cum together between our heaving bodies. As amazing as the orgasm had been, as amazing as it was that I now knew this beautiful body on top of me held a soul that loved me in a way that I had never felt before, my eyes started to fill and tears began to drip down my cheeks with sadness, because I knew that I would never be able to experience in the waking world the unity we had shared as we slept. I looked up at Cullen, and saw tears to mirror my own. I was with Cullen McCathers. ***********

I'm not entirely sure how we got through the next few weeks. We somehow got through classes and kept up some semblance of normalcy during the day, but it all seemed remote and unreal, because at night we left our bodies behind and merged together until dawn. After a while, it became harder to determine where I ended and he began. Our body language, speech patterns, and ways of thinking became similar to the point that at times it felt like we were one person living in two bodies. Thanksgiving approached, and with it the inevitable family obligations. We had become so detached from life outside school and each other that it was almost a surprise when it was time to part and we realized we should have made plans to avoid the separation. There was no help for it, though, so off we both dutifully went, to our individual destinations. Wednesday night was misery. I was back in the place I had grown up, that I hated and that hated me. I went to bed early, eager to experience the all-consuming love that I had discovered with Cullen, only to discover that I was unable to reach him fully. We had a vague sense of each other across the distance, but we couldn't seem to connect. I spent the night lonely and aching in my heart. Thursday was just as bad, spending Thanksgiving Day with my perpetually distant parents. It made no sense to me that they would want me here today after years of not really caring whether I was around or not. I had someone now who wanted me and I wasn't with him. The night was another one of yearning and a futile struggle to connect with Cullen in our dreams. Friday the separation became actual pain. My head hurt, my heart hurt, my body and soul ached to be with Cullen. I begged off the Black Friday shopping trip, knowing I would not be able to bear the long drive to the nearest town that was large enough to have decent places to pointlessly spend money on meaningless gifts. My parents drove off and I went back to my old room and flopped on the bed. After the last two frustrating nights I was feeling defeated and depressed, and I began to resign myself to not being with Cullen again until Sunday. I eventually felt myself drifting off to sleep, only this time, for the first time in months, I actually slept and dreamed. Except it wasn't a dream, it was a horrific nightmare, the details of which I didn't remember upon my panicked awakening except for the sensations of terror and profound loss. I curled up on my side, hugged my pillow, and sobbed uncontrollably at the feeling that if I didn't do something drastic, I would somehow lose the connection Cullen and I had found. I couldn't let it slip away, to become just me again instead of the unity of us. I had slept longer than I had expected to and it was already late afternoon. Knowing my mom, my parents wouldn't be back from the shopping frenzy until late so I had hours left to be undisturbed. Dropping off to sleep had almost become second nature to me, so it was easy for me to roll over and take back control of my unconsciousness. One thought was uppermost in my mind. I had to reach Cullen, no matter what. My eyes closed, my breathing deepened, and unlike earlier in the day, I slipped sideways out of my body as I fell asleep. This time I had a new determination and started to fly across the miles to my obvious starting point in my search for Cullen – the room that we shared. I felt pulled tight across the distance from my body, but I held on to where I was through the familiarity of the location. Uncertain what to do next, I hovered once again in the place that was ours, where I could feel him all around me even without his being there. I knew my sense of time was distorted when I noticed it was dark outside. I had been here simply contemplating Cullen, and hours had drifted by without my realizing. I began to notice, too, that my sense of him was growing stronger rapidly. My excitement and longing for him grew with each passing moment until the door opened, and there he was. I could tell he was as angry and frustrated as I had been. I moved to surround him and comfort him, but he couldn't feel me there. He sat on his bed for a little, but his tension didn't seem to be allowing him to relax. He turned to his travel bag and pulled out a bottle of wine, opened it, and drank some straight from the bottle, then went and sat on *my* bed and put his face into my pillow, breathing in deeply through his nose. He hugged the pillow to his chest and a tear dripped down his cheek. After a bit, he got up, tossed my pillow back on my bed, grabbed the bottle and headed out the door. I followed wondering where he was going. His goal turned out to be the top floor lounge at the back of the dorm, where very few people bothered to go. It was deserted, since it was the Friday evening after Thanksgiving. Cullen drank some more wine and gradually seemed to relax. By the time the bottle was empty, he had propped himself up across a couple of chairs and was staring blankly at the wall. Bit by bit his eyes closed, and then there he was, slipping sideways out of his body to join me. "You're here!" he said with surprise. "I've been waiting for you. I pushed and pushed to get here across the distance. I wasn't sure where I was going to go from here. The distance is difficult, but you came back, and you're here, and now we can be together again." And just like that we were. We were one again and our joy was endless. The unity of ourselves into a single being was a miracle, and all the sweeter for having been denied it the last two days. The only things that marred our joining were the silvery cords heading off to different places, Cullen's to his body in the chairs just next to us, and mine to my far away self. We were one. We needed to be one. All other parts of us were one. The cords needed to be one too. We were tugging on my silvery cord in an attempt to push it into his, when suddenly there was a sensation of severing, and an unattached tendril reeled in from a distance, flailed around as if seeking purchase, then laid itself down over Cullen's cord and into his body. ***********

We awoke with a start, disoriented from being in an unaccustomed place, uncomfortable from having fallen asleep on the chairs, and still drunk from the wine. We felt such an overwhelming feeling of happiness and well-being that we wished we could tell someone, but we knew no one would ever really understand. As I stumbled back to my room, I knew that the other bed would be remaining empty, but that was ok. I was with my love and I was within my love. We were one person forever. I was one person with no further need for two bodies. I undressed for bed and looked down at my body as usual and for the first time, happy with what I saw. I was masculine and strong in my body. I was loved and protected in my soul. I was Cullen McCathers.

Source: “Collan's Caption This Catch Up (10th May)”

[one-abuse-survivor]

do you have any advice on getting your parents out of your life completely? I'm still a teen (14, to be exact) but I plan on getting a job, saving up, and moving out the moment I turn 18 and knowing how to cut them out before hand will make things 10 times easier. Thank you for any advice you do or do not give and please the care of yourself this holiday season.

In terms of never needing to see or contact them ever again, I really recommend that you have all your legal papers with you when you leave, as well as all the belongings that you don’t want to leave behind. My decision to cut my abuser out for good was very sudden, and I had to meet with her quite a lot of times afterwards to get my belongings. To this day, I still don’t have some important documents like my vaccination card (dunno if this is a thing everywhere, but it is where I live) or my family book, which gives me quite a lot of anxiety when I think about it. Same about my drawings and photos from childhood – those aren’t a necessity, but I just personally value memories a lot. So yeah, you know yourself best – when the time is nearing and you’re home alone, just go through everything in that house that belongs to you and try to make a list, mental or physical, of what you want and don’t want to take with you. Investigate on what papers you need where you live and make sure you have them all with you!

And in terms of socially cutting them out of your life, I think a big part of the process for me was (and still is) letting the people around us know that I no longer have any kind of relationship with my mother. Family members, friends in common, old teachers and friends who know her… it’s slow, but little by little you’ll need to let them know. And by this I don’t mean you have to plan it ahead, or anything: just that when they ask questions like “oh, how are your parents doing?” or the like, even if you can’t bring yourself to do it at first, you’ll eventually have to reply that you don’t know because they’re no longer in your life so that people stop asking.

It may sound scarier than it actually is (it did for me XD), but most people won’t ask questions, because most people prefer to avoid conflict and just roll along with situations that aren’t “socially acceptable” (like cutting out any family member) and keep their thoughts to themselves. But for the few who ask the invasive questions and generally just question your decision, my therapist gave me the sentence “that is between my mother and I”. Basically, I memorised this sentence and repeated it over and over when necessary, establishing that boundary so that people would know insisting would get them nowhere because I don’t want to share any details. 

This last bit, of course, is for the people around you who aren’t close to you. Another important part of cutting out your abusive family and recovering from abuse is to have or slowly build a network of people around you who can give you a sense of community and normalcy so you don’t feel isolated and like you don’t fit in the world around you. For me, these people are some of my friends from high school, but also one or two people from uni. Internet friends can help A LOT too in terms of having people to talk to who understand, but my therapist made it very clear that I have to avoid isolating myself irl because growing up in an abusive household made me feel isolated and separated from the world and like I would never get free, so an important part of recovery (for me!) is integrating myself in the world. She also told me this is really important because, in a similar fashion to how some people will miss their abusive ex when they’ve been separated for a while, it’s a common experience to suddenly have moments where you viscerally miss your abusive parents when you’re outside of the abusive situation. This happens, at least to me, because once the bad moments aren’t flooding your mind, the good memories start coming back, but I know other people who miss the parent they wish they’d had. It’s different for everyone! In any case, having people around you that can support you through the bad moments of recovery and give you feedback on your thoughts can make a huge difference.

Other than that, some things I recommend are not telling your parents that you’re planning on moving out until it’s already done, so that they can’t guilt-trip you into staying or withhold resources that you’ll need in order to leave. I’d also recommend not telling them where you live once you get out, and seeking therapy if you can and want to so you have professional guidance with PTSD and with the issues that may arise with your parents when you cut them out (I’ve had to text my therapist regarding my mother trying to contact me more than once 😅). I personally don’t reply to my abuser when she texts me and am looking forward to blocking her phone number as soon as she doesn’t know where I live, although I know I personally have to be careful with this, because it’s healthy to not reply to her texts if it’s an active decision to set a boundary, but it’s not so healthy if it’s an avoidance strategy. 

I think that’s all that comes to mind. If anyone has any other advice, feel free to add to the post! I hope you’re taking care too, nonnie. Sending a hug 💗 

PS. Sorry if this is a lot – I can only speak from personal experience and from where I am now, but I don’t want anyone to feel overwhelmed or like recovering and getting out of their abusive situation is just unattainable. I got out of my abusive home and started my recovery process almost by mistake, having no idea where I was getting or how to get there, and now I’m better than I have ever been. Even if you don’t have everything planned and you’re just rolling along with it and even if you mess up along the way, things can turn out fine 💗

[writcraft]

Racism, Tone-Policing and Speaking Out in Fandom

Unequivocal condemnation of fanfic or art that glorifies or romanticises the Nazi regime and/or promotes a narrative which erases its significant horrors feels like it should be an easy position to take. A no-brainer. This wasn’t an example of art designed to make us uncomfortable or to provoke discussion; it was an unthinking, romanticised depiction of a regime that committed galling atrocities, swiftly followed by the lightwashing of a canonically black fictional character. We inhabit an online space where misinformation travels rapidly, where white supremacism thrives. This should be a something people can publicly condemn without worrying unduly about any potential backlash. 

The fact that even speaking out on this topic has caused people - including queer, Jewish people - to feel silenced, attacked, tone-policed and chastised as they share their reaction to something they consider abhorrent is symptomatic of a much broader issue in fandom spaces broadly and it is that which I want to talk about in this post. I don’t want to conflate racism in fandom with the now two instances of Nazi-themed Harry/Draco art, but I think a lot has been said on the latter and want to take the opportunity to use what has happened over the last two days as a jumping off point to think about the former. When it comes to callout, to speaking out and to our responsibilities as fans, I think there are important connections. 

The unfettered protection of freedom of content creation is something I have passionately defended and will continue to do so throughout my time in fandom. This is demonstrated by the spaces I have either created or moderated for several years, most notably HP Kinkfest and HP Horror Fest. However, protecting that position is often the point at which conversations get closed, the trump card played to end all other discussions that might make us - and by us I mean white fans like myself - uncomfortable with the conversations being instigated. I’m not convinced that ‘unfollow me now’ posts are ever particularly helpful, as they have an air of performative allyship about them, leading to echo-chambers and knee-jerk responses, and one thing we are particularly bad at these days is engaging with any difficult topics with nuance.

As ever, this post is long, and there are some resources at the end should you wish to keep reading.

Difficult conversations in fandom are those which force us to critically interrogate our own modes of fannish engagement, and the extent to which we listen when invited to consider if the things we uphold as progressive are really progressive at all. Perhaps the fallout from this latest debacle is a good time to sit back and consider the things we speak out about, the things we don’t speak out about, the centering of white voices and perspectives, the privilege that comes from being able to leave certain discussions to other people simply because they are difficult and, by extension, the groups we expect to take on the responsibility and emotional labour involved with speaking out. Perhaps this might prompt us to examine the way we react to things without thoughtful critique of broader socio-political structures in place that become part of fandom’s hierarchy of conversation and content creation.

It is not enough to react to a something that creates a visceral response from the majority of people in a fandom but then ignore the less comfortable questions that flow from it. To assert a position on extreme examples of something that is not okay but then refuse to listen to people who express discomfort about things which might harsh your own fannish squee or might force you to consider the less instinctively obvious ways you might be contributing to racism in fandom is an inconsistent, safe way of engaging with the complexities that come from critiquing fandom spaces. The appearance of now two pieces of art that provoke almost universal fandom-wide disgust cannot be the only time we actively demonstrate an interest in expressing vocally that racism and white supremacy has no place in our fandom spaces.

We are ten years on from Race Fail ‘09 yet conversations around race are still being derailed, tones being policed, POC fans being portrayed as particularly angry, impolite or prone to complaint. I have seen this happen on multiple occasions, where the platform for critical discussion of content creation in fandom has been stripped away, or people have been silenced, in pursuit of protecting the fun part of fandom, the right to produce content unfettered, protecting the ability for women to create uncensored. I fundamentally believe the latter is an important, joyous and political act of fandom experience, but it loses some of its politicised resonance when that starting point is used to silence others trying to start critically nuanced discussions. 

Freedom of content cannot be the point at which we disavow ourselves of any responsibility to question the things that inform our own perspectives. We cannot allow our passionate defence of that position to cloud our ability to listen to other perspectives. I’m not here to protect the children, but we must not conflate resistance to conservative-leaning narratives that advocate for sanitised and problem-free content, with the issues fans from marginalised groups try to raise about the way fandom has work to do when it comes to having proper conversations around queerness, race, misogyny and so on. We cannot on the one hand rush to condemn a pretty obvious issue, and on the other fail to think about the other questions it raises because it might stop us from having a good time.

The difficult conversations that spring to mind – the ones that get immediately shut down – include thinking critically about objects of fandom, the tendency to approach questions of social justice through an American (frequently white) lens, the continued dominance of white, cis-male slash ships, inability to critique - or listen to critique of - the things we love when canon or creators make decisions that leave people distressed. The conversations include thinking about how fictional characters are romanced or sanitised to the point at which their fanon portrayal erases any of their past political choices, tokenism, shutting down conversations around racebending and failing to understand why – for some POC fans – that doesn’t feel representative when it is handled unthinkingly in fanfiction produced by white authors. 

To refuse to engage with these questions often involves shouting over or silencing people who are trying to explain why something makes them uncomfortable in pursuit of protecting freedoms afforded to us as we create unfettered content. I’m not suggesting that we should not be free to create content – we are, all of us – aware of the slipperiness of that particular slope, but with that freedom comes a responsibility. If we care about the voices frequently talked over within our fandom, we – and I include myself in this – need to be better at listening when people force us to examine our own modes of engagement. This involves taking the time to conduct our own research, to take that responsibility upon ourselves instead of expecting others to educate us. It involves researching political posts we put on our blogs together with assessing the fandom content we produce and engage with. Are they accurate? Are they correct? It involves labour, time taken to educate ourselves, and balancing speaking out with knowing when that becomes speaking over, knowing when to sit down, shut up and listen. 

I am writing this because I have been culpable. On many occasions I have remained silent on issues or refused to confront difficult situations for fear of losing friendships or to protect my own status within fandom. I have found certain conversations uncomfortable and have therefore avoided them altogether for fear of being seen as a trouble-maker, or someone who is trying to police or gatekeep fandom content whilst simultaneously wanting to so fiercely protect freedom of content creation. I have had several friends call me out on this, and my discomfort with taking on fraught topics when feelings are involved is something I have had to re-examine. Thank you to the friends who have challenged me on this. It is a brave thing to do, something I haven’t always responded well to, and I appreciate you for a much-needed dose of honesty. This post by @dictacontrion (rightfully) made me uncomfortable because it has called me out. In particular, this:

If we are not willing to speak up and take action, if we are not willing to risk our comfort, risk our status, risk our ease in order to defend freedom and equality, than we are not defenders freedom and equality. If we are not willing to speak up and take action in defense of our principles, our principles mean nothing.  

I am working on my own methods of fandom engagement. I apologise for all of those conversations I have taken myself out of because they were hard, and I promise I will strive to do better. As noted above we are a decade on from Race Fail, but these patterns continue to occur. I want to conclude by noting that the perspectives I have outlined above do not come from my own work. They come from the – often free and emotionally exhaustive – labour that has been put into raising these issues and asking those difficult questions within fandom space and within the broader sphere of fan studies. The work of Dr Rukmini Pande, Stich’s Media Mix and the many guests that have featured on @fansplaining episodes have been instrumental starting points for me and I have included some of the links below for that I would encourage people to consider listening to and reading together with exploring the links in the show notes and the Twitter accounts, blogs and tumblrs of the featured guests.

Episode 22A - Race and Fandom Part 1: Fansplaining’s Flourish and Elizabeth follow up on the last episode’s questions about the impact of racism in the Star Wars fandom—and how it’s a microcosm of fandom at large. They interview Rukmini Pande and Clio, and they hear clips from Holly Quinn, Shadowkeeper, and PJ Punla. Topics covered include the historical presence of fans of colour, space nazis, femslash and its discontents, and the Filipino perspective on the whiteness of media. 

Episode 22B - Race and Fandom Part 2:  In the second and final installment of Fansplaining’s “Race and Fandom” episodes, fans of colour continue to speak about their experiences in fandom. Elizabeth and Flourish interview Jeffrey Lyles and Zina, then hear clips from Roz, Traci-Anne, and zvi LikesTV. Topics covered include being Black and Jewish, Star Wars weddings, cosplaying characters of color, and why kink is never divorced from the real world.

Episode 89 - Rukmini Pande:  An episode where Dr. Rukmini Pande, a fan studies scholar whose new book, Squee From the Margins, explores race in both the field as well as fandom at large. Topics discussed include defining the boundaries of “fandom,” how queerness and gender structure fan studies while race typically does not, closed vs open digital platforms, how fandom discussions of racism are often relegated to “crisis points,” and more.

I also recommend the Transformative Works and Cultures Journal special edition on Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color (Vol 29 (2019)) which is freely accessible and edited by Abigail De Kosnik and André Carrington. 

[anonimousengineer-blog]

How to prevent diabetes

1. ALWAYS DRINK WATER

        We should always drink water as part of your lifestyle, because it helps you to flush out all of the excess glucose in your body. Drinking water regularly will help your body not to hydrate and is also good for your well-being and health. It doesn’t have any other content like sugar, carbohydrates or calories, that’s why water is the ideal drink for everyone. And it also should be your primary drink. Water is not only for avoiding diabetes, but, it also prevents kidney damage. When you don’t drink water, it will sometimes cause you to have kidney stones (AKA UTI). Eating too much salty foods and not drinking a lot of water might give us sickness. And when you eat too much sweet food, and your pancreas cannot hold all of the glucose and sugar that you are taking, it might lead to diabetes. Not drinking water can also lead you to bad breath from your mouth will have many bacteria, So in short, when you don’t drink water, it will not only affect your pancreas but also the other two organs. So if you don’t want that to happen, always drink water.

2. Always eat fruits and veggies

        I actually believe in the saying “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away “, and I also believe that most people on earth hate fruits and vegetables, even me I hate them. But we have no choice since it is the healthiest food in the universe. Do you want proof? So, according to research, “fruits and vegetables contain important vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals and also contain fiber. So when you eat fruits and vegetables, it will lower down your probability of getting sick. It is not actually for diabetes only, but for every sickness. Of course you don’t only need to eat it when you are sick instead, make it a habit to try delicious and nutritious fruits like mangoes, strawberries and grapes, I myself really love them. Eat green vegetables that help in our digestion. Let’s be a responsible citizen so we can prevent harmful diseases and fight infections easily. Make sure to eat a balance diet. When you don’t eat these healthy foods, you will have a very high chance of getting sick or worse like Corona Virus. So if I’ll compare it to real life, fruits and vegetables are like safeguard. If guards and protects us from deadly diseases and prevent you from sickness.

3. Portion sizes

        Observe a low-carb diet, it's important to avoid huge portions of food to lessen the chance of diabetes, specifically in case you are overweight. Eating an excessive amount of meals at one time has been shown to cause higher blood sugar and insulin levels  in people with a chance of having diabetes. On the other hand, reducing the portion sizes might also help prevent this sort of response. A two-year observation in prediabetic men determined that those who reduced food portion sizes and practiced other healthful nutritional behaviors had a 46% lower chance of developing diabetes than the men who made no lifestyle changes. Another observation  looking at weight loss methods in human beings with prediabetes reported that the organization practicing portion control lowered their blood sugar and insulin levels remarkably  after 12 weeks.         The summary is that avoiding large portion sizes can help reduce insulin and blood sugar levels and decrease the risk of having diabetes.

4. Lose weight if you’re obese or overweight

         Although not everybody who develops type 2 diabetes is overweight or obese, I mean most are. What's more, those with prediabetes have a tendency to carry excess weight of their midsection and around belly organs just like the liver. This is known as visceral fats (according to google –Pia). Excess visceral fats promote inflammation and insulin resistance, which significantly raises the risk of diabetes. Although losing even a small amount of weight can help lessen this chance, studies display that the more you lose, the more benefits you'll experience. One observation is that more than 1,000 human beings with prediabetes determined that for every kilogram (2.2 lbs) of weight participants lost, their chance of diabetes reduced by way of 16%, up to a maximum depletion of 96%. There are many healthy alternatives for losing weight, inclusive of low-carb, Mediterranean, Paleo and vegetarian diets. However, selecting a way of eating you can stick with long-term is the key to helping you keep the weight loss.

5. Always exercise

         Performing physical pastime on a normal basis may additionally help prevent diabetes. Exercise will increase the insulin sensitivity of your cells. So when you are exercising, less insulin is required to hold your blood sugar levels under control. One observation in humans with prediabetes is that their moderate-intensity exercise increased insulin sensitivity with the aid of 51% and high-intensity exercise increased it by using 85%. However, this effect only happened on workout days. Many varieties of physical interest were proven to lessen insulin resistance and blood sugar in overweight, obese and prediabetic adults. These include aerobic exercising, high-intensity interval education and strength training. Working out greater regularly seems to cause enhancements in insulin reaction and function. One observation in humans with a possibility of having  diabetes is  that burning extra than 2,000 calories weekly via exercising become required to obtain these benefits. 👍 1 Therefore, it's better  to pick a physical activity  that you enjoy, can engage in frequent and feel you can stay with for a long time. Performing physical activity on a regular basis can increase insulin secretion and sensitivity, which may help prevent the progression from prediabetes to diabetes

[shyeehaw]

Van der Linde Gang in College

Choice of degrees HCs

Dutch: Politics degree. He has the charisma and is well spoken. I would vote for Dutch! He’s dynamic and would succeed in the versatile politic setting, also many times he used his voice to motivate others. Although we don’t know if he would follow his Robin Hood days or will weight more to the outlaw side. Let’s just hope this time his plans actually work, for the greater good.

Hosea: he strikes me as a dedicated person to his studies. Calm and precise he would be a good architect. A visceral job like this would give Hosea a sense of fulfillment, his projects would actually impact in the life of many others.

Arthur: He would be one of those students that even when it’s midway through his course would doubt if that’s really what he wanted. I can see Arthur being torn between veterinary medicine or a design degree. At the same time he is excited to learn all about different species, he fears that his connection to animals might not be enough for him. Albert Mason would be his classmate in some classes, and so would Kieran. With a design degree he would feel more fulfilled as he would be able to create not only for him , but to the other’s benefits as well.

John: He lived a tough life and grew up on the streets, John knew exactly how the bad side was and he never wanted to get back at doing those things. When time came, he didn’t wanted to spend years of his life with his nose on a book, he found pointless to just memorize things that other people already knew. He wanted to actually do something meaningful. He got a spot at the police’s academy. Training for years in the hope of someday avoiding young kids fall in that kind of life he had before.

Abigail: She convinced John to live a decent life didn’t she? He woke up early every day to mend fences until his back was about to snap in two. Highly persuasive with her sweet words, she would do just fine with a marketing degree. Abigail has the right proactive attitude that this profession needs.

Bill: People never let him forget how bad he is with words. But he is actually pretty smart with numbers. What a waste would he be locked away in a room doing just that. Bill would prosper with a agriculture degree, with which he would be able both to work in the field using his strength, getting his hands dirty and using his natural aptitude for mathematics.

Javier: Fashion degree! Javier is very versatile and just like Arthur he second guessed his choice. He ended up picking a history degree in mexican culture, a way he founded to keep the love for his homeland always burning. He would be an active member of the political debates groups and be responsible for organizing collective acts to help improve life in Mexico countryside. He is a very engaged student. In his spare time, he will attend to music workshops.

Micah: In which field almost anything is valid? Where the competition is always ferocious? What’s the modern translation of a merciless lifestyle? Micah would have a degree in business and management. A title he got from his father, Micah was a prospect to inherit a big company built on blood and secrets. What could suit him better than being able to be rude to everyone “under” him without any consequences? He never cared for it before, and his not going to start now when his about to be CEO.

Lenny: This sweet boy wants a job that will allow him to help people but without having their lives at his hands. Lenny is hard-working and focused, so he would end up getting an English degree, in hopes to someday become a teacher. He is patient, kind and funny. The type of teacher he wish he had when going through college.

Charles: He is a deep and compassionate person, and I can see him choosing an physiotherapy degree. At first he thought about a psychology one, but being and introvert and sometimes finding being around new people too draining, he choose the next good thing to help others. He’s strength helps him lift his patients and aid them to do their exercises. It’s a long process that he finds so rewarding when it’s done. Being able to notice other’s improvement makes him genuinely happy.

Sean: All right, he will admit that he just needed to enter in a course, any course really. All his energy made a lot of degrees impossible, even game design, one of his options, required a level of attention he didn’t had. For some weeks, he even enrolled in a P.E course but the brodudes had their own little posse, and didn’t liked Sean, making fun of his jokes and skinny body. He found himself in the audiovisual communication course. Initially it was all a part of his plan to take over YouTube with his gaming videos, but slowly he started getting interested in experimental techniques, being able to go as crazy as he liked. People actually looked up to his carefree techniques.

Sadie: Sadie is not want to stay still and do boring stuff. With this in mind she kept seeking careers that would give her a sense of adventure and excitement. Archeology seemed good as any guess, she was lured by all the traveling she would get to do, but the job itself was too still. She then chose a crime scene investigation degree, solving those crimes and bringing closure to the victim’s family was something that kept Sadie going. Never a boring day at work, always something new to uncover.

Karen: A body positive queen, Karen pursued a esthetician’s degree. She is great at making people comfortable on their own skin, always looking forward to make young girls embrace their natural beauty. Her bubbly, talkative personality won over the hearts of celebrities even when she was still an intern in training. That brought her a status of beauty guru on Instagram.

Tilly: Ambitious and diligent with her studies, it was written in the stars that Tilly would have a bright future. Her dedication paid of by earning her a spot in a prestigious medical school. She has many traits suitable for this profession. Empathic and understanding, she is leaning towards the pediatric specialization, but not only that, Tilly is practical and good under pressure, which makes her stand out among her classmates.

Mary-Beth: A life among books was all that Mary-Beth could dream of. But she also knew how difficult the publishing industry is. So not only she now studies creative writing improving her already natural skills, and flirting with new genres, she decided to get a degree in library sciences. A way to secure her financial independence and be surrounded by the things she loves the most. The work as an intern at the library is lovely, she gets to meet new people who shares the same interest at her and contribute so everyone gets access to books.

Mrs. Grimshaw: Let’s go ahead and admit that Susan likes to be in charge. He was not born to hear others telling her what to do. When choosing a degree, she kept that in mind. The one that she showed more interest was in people’s management and Human Resources. Where she could delegate all she wanted. But not only that, Susan likes to analyze who is better suited for each task. Great at reading people, she will do great in her field.

Molly: Oh, elegant and classy, Molly! Her sense of aesthetic is on point and that lead her to a life of famous trendsetter on the internet. But she thinks that’s not a real job, so, looking to put her good taste in things at a use, she ends up getting a degree in Jewelry design. Uniting her passion of expensive, beautiful things with artistic talent. 

Kieran: All he ever wanted to do with his life is to be around horses. They brought such peace and joy to Kieran that he knew his life would have to follow this path. He started pursuing a Large-Animal vet, with a minor in equestrian studies. It was even better than he imagined, he was fascinated by every aspect from animal nutrition to the actual care of horses. Being a responsible, calm person made a lot of his teachers very pleased.

Trelawny: Captivating and a social butterfly, Josiah had no doubts about looking for a career in communication. His charming personality was very suitable for a journalism degree. He knows his way around words and the most terrible news don’t sound as awful coming from the charismatic (future) anchorman. I wouldn’t mind having his face on my TV every night.

Pearson: Truth is didn’t mattered if he loved cooking for people, as people didn’t loved his food. He didn’t knew if was the improvising or just the plain lack of formal knowledge, he was never taught, just jumped on it. Tired of people giving the food piece by piece for the dog, Pearson pursued a degree in Gastronomy. Finally being able to dive deep in the dishes he was trying to master for years. Pearson is a simple, rustic man and most of the students gave him a hard time for him not being sophisticated enough. He doesn’t mind, at least his foods fills more than the gap of teeth, like theirs.

Swanson: He was kicked out of his theology course, never showed up sober. That’s it. Currently studying philosophy instead and actually enjoying himself. Orville has many thoughts that can be deepened by getting this degree. He looks forward to a get a minor in counseling though, to help others there were in the same place he was a few years ago.

[parentingtheoryandpractice]

One week of Maya

Maya has been outside my body for an entire week! I know these early days go so fast, and I really want to remember how it all is, so I’m going to attempt to write weekly summaries with my old categories. I don’t know how consistent I’ll be, but it seems worth trying anyway.

Sleeping

Mats is still very much a sleepy newborn. The first few days, before my milk was in, she wasn’t sleeping very long stretches, presumably because she needed to fill up her tiny stomach with colostrum very frequently.

Now, she is often sleeping for hours at a time! And often she’ll get up to potty, nurse some mostly while sleeping and then settle right back in for another long sleep. It feels pretty special when she’s awake for a while, and I try to either let the kids play with her or FaceTime family members.

Oh, and sometimes she’ll stay asleep for a while even without someone touching her if she’s in the right phase of sleep, but she’s been doing almost all her sleeping snuggled up to me or in the wrap. She’s much more stable that way.

Nights haven’t been bad. I assume she has barely any circadian rhythm at this age, but so far she hasn’t had any long stretches of wakefulness at night that I can remember, which is very convenient!

All of my nighttime impressions are a little vague, since my policy is to mostly avoid looking at the clock much.

She nurses lots at night, which barely feels like an imposition at all, since I don’t have to move much to it, and I can usually sleep while she nurses it I’m tired enough. She still pees a bunch at night, which is a little trickier. If I’m feeling awake or she seems to be grunting insistently, I’ll take her to potty in the sink. That happens maybe twice a night? But she’s been peeing in her diaper at least a few times a night too, and then I just reach over and change it. I do have to move for that, but I don’t have to get out of bed, so it’s not so bad.

Maybe the first night or two I’ve asked Will for help at night—I already forgot—but since then I’ve been fine managing her in my own, which is good for the family system, since Will is the one who has been staying up later with the other kids.

Probably the big thing here is that I’m pretty well-rested :-). I’ve napped with Maya at least a little most days, but I think I’m sleeping a little better with a newborn than I did for a lot of pregnancy. Once things get back to normal and I can’t lie around with Maya all day, it will probably get harder to stay rested, but so far so good.

Oh, and Maya and I are still in the bed in the other room. I do want us to move back in with everyone else before too long, but I’m not sure when we should do that. One issue is that the kids move around and end up taking up all the bed space. Another issue is that I don’t want to wake them up when I get up in the middle of the night. Something to figure out...

Eating

Maya is a great nurser! She even nursed a little before I delivered the placenta. I assume this is notable because I remember a nurse being skeptical about me trying to get her to latch at that point.

Her weight gain has been good, her early poops were more transitional than fully meconium, my milk came in pretty fast, and she kept up with it enough that I basically didn’t get engorged. There was briefly some tenderness around two ducts on the left side for a day or so, but I tried to angle her to drain them and it seems to have resolved.

She nurses a lot, as I would expect, and it wouldn’t make much sense to me to talk about it happening any particular number of times a day because it happens so much—sometimes briefly and sometimes for a very long stretch.

Early on, I found myself pulling her lower lip down a little to adjust her latch, but now she’s mostly getting there on her own.

Oh, and we had side-lying nursing down from the very first night, which has been sooooo good. I remember taking a little while to figure that one out with Lydia.

Oh, and she spits up a little sometimes. But pretty tiny amounts. Typically maybe about a teaspoon or so?

EC

EC is going pretty well! Everything was pretty hit or miss (mostly miss) the first couple of days, and I lost track of my top hat potty somehow, which was one of my plans for the early part, which didn’t help. Also, things are just changing so fast before the milk is in.

But then the past few days we’ve had a ton of success with poops and a little success with pee. With poop, Maya seems to get it! The current situation is that she will grunt a bunch before she has to poop in a way that’s really obvious. And we have some lead time before we get her to the sink. And then once she is there and in position she grunts a bunch in ways that make it obvious that she is purposefully trying to poop. Sometimes it comes out all at once, and sometimes it comes out in stages.

Having a handle on poop is very nice because it means I barely have to do any of the thing where I clean her off when she is truly messy—no one’s favorite activity.

Currently Maya seems more clueless about pee. Part of the issue is that she is still peeing a bunch while she is asleep. She will squirm around first in a way that I can often recognize, but there isn’t a ton of lead time, and she doesn’t usually fully wake up before it happens. Sometimes when I see her signaling in her sleep I’ll take her, and sometimes I just wait until she has peed and change her right away. And sometimes when I take her she doesn’t pee. It hasn’t yet clicked with her to pee on purpose when I potty her. So I have to time it just right. Or sometimes she pees when she is pooping. When she is having a wakeful stretch I’ve had better luck noticing her signals and getting her there in time.

I do sometimes take her after a miss, but not usually if she pees in her sleep and then goes back to sleep. And when I do take her after a miss, there isn’t usually more, so it’s not very motivating.

I tend to assume that if I keep doing exactly the same thing I’m doing, the pee thing will click for her pretty soon. I just reread an early Lydia EC update and I report the same thing, where poop clicked very early and pee followed sometime after in the first month.

Babywearing

This was one of my categories with the other kids, so I’m sticking with it for now, but it feels almost silly to have it as a separate thing. Babywearing is so central to my parenting and has been so very useful!

I got out the Wrapsody hybrid for the newborn days, and that’s been great—Will and I have both used it a lot. Will asked if we had any ring slings around, since he likes then when the babies are stilllight, so I got one of those out too. Neither of has used it yet, but I expect to.

So far I’ve liked my Didymos purple facette wrap because it is thin, and a size 3 Pavo I have for kangaroo carry. I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m better and faster at kangaroo than I had remembered!

I haven’t done any back carries yet. I think it would feel safe, but I haven’t felt like I needed them. Plus, I don’t love it when my babies fall asleep on my back, since then it’s harder for me to sit down while still wearing them, and Maya goes to sleep fairly often at this point.

I expect to do a ton more babywearing as I transition more to taking care of all the kids at once.

Motor Skills

As I said above, Maya is excellent at side-lying nursing, which is her most useful motor skill for now.

I’ve been giving her some tummy time when she’s in a good mood for the past few days, and she seems to like that well enough. She does the thing I think of as “practicing crawling”, and is quite good at it! She gets her bottom up in the air by pushing her feet, but doesn’t lift up her arms much at all. She moves much better without her diaper and on a harder surface (bath mat or towel on the ground instead of on a mattress).

Head control is definitely progressing.

She doesn’t seem super inclined to stand when I put her on her feet, and mostly just bends her knees instead. Sometimes she will push up though.

Personality

Maya seems like a pretty chill baby! She squawks when something is wrong—not a slow ramp up—but so far she doesn’t really work herself up in a way that then requires much effort to soothe.

She furrows her brow a fair amount, though not as much as I remember Lydia doing!

She also doesn’t strike me as super active. Sometimes when I put her on the bath mat to have tummy time she just lies there for a while before trying to move.

Siblings

Maya is pretty tolerant of Lydia and Zeke touching and trying to hold her <3. Lydia definitely wishes there were more hours in the day for her to interact with Maya, and soon there will be! This week I’ve been mostly holed up with just the baby, but now that I’ve substantially physically recovered I’ll be spending more time with the older kids too.

Dogs

The dogs are very interested in Maya, Argos more than Krypto. In addition to sniffing her a lot, he seems to want to lick her and clean her off, as dogs do with their puppies. Argos has also expressed a lot of interest in my (comparatively) empty belly. I assume he’s trying to figure out what happened to it!

Me

The first few days were hard because of afterpains, pain from stitches, overall soreness, and probably some latent exhaustion.

But physically I feel pretty great now! And emotionally I’ve felt pretty great ever since I pushed Maya out. Definitely tender and extra emotional sometimes, but not in a way that I have minded.

I really love having a newborn, I feel like I know how to take good care of her, and it’s much more visceral now that I’m on my third just how short the newborn stage really is. I like older babies too! But I’m currently in no rush to get to any future stages.

It felt quite luxurious to lie around in bed for a week, but I was also definitely starting to get antsy, so it feels right to be doing more now.

[tateelmore95-blog]

9 Scientific Ways To Drop Fat

After 12 weeks, both groups lost about the same amount of fat, but the cardio group also lost 9 pounds of lean body mass, whereas the group that lifted weights didn't lose any.

Healthy Weight LossThere are a lot of fad diets out there that promise to help you drop weight fast—but do they work, and more importantly, are they healthy? The pre-detox is significant in terms of easing the transition to a detox program. If you start your detox without do- ing the pre-detox beforehand, you might feel the detox symptoms” stronger. These symptoms are also called as the healing symptoms” which are general reactions that the body can experience in the first couple of days of the detox such as headaches, dizziness, feeling nauseous, having strange dreams etc. If you arrive to the center without doing the pre-detox, we can apply the green detox programs to help you to do your pre-detox here.

While exercise alone won't seal the deal for weight loss, adding it into your weight-loss plan alongside a healthy, balanced diet can go a long way. Plus, making regular physical activity a part of your routine when you're young can help form the habit into a lifetime intention. You may find it hard to get your 5 A Day of fruit and veg without careful planning. The long story short is the more fat you have to lose, the faster you can safely and healthily lose it. Eugenia Killoran has been the food and fitness journalist for the Pritikin Program since 1992. She has published more than 3,000 articles, lectures, and book chapters on a wide variety of healthy living and weight-loss topics. Ketosis is a state where the body has an extremely high fat-burning rate. Even the brain runs on fat, via ketone bodies. These are energy molecules in the blood (like blood sugar) which become fuel for our brains after being converted from fat by the liver. You can stay on the diet for as long as you want, depending on your weight loss goal. Once reached, you're advised to have 1 meal-replacement shake a day, up to 2 low-fat snacks, and 2 healthy meals. He packs his lunch for work at least four days a week and picks out foods that will keep him satisfied for hours. He stocks up on chicken patties, crunchy vegetables and hummus, as well as guacamole. Theerada.com

If someone does not attend their chosen group or fails to attend the sessions without informing the Healthy Lifestyle Service, they will not be given another voucher and will be discharged from the service.

Self reported physical activity increased between baseline and follow-up in all groups (table 2 ⇑ ). The smallest increase in activity was in those allocated to the general practice arm. When we compared the change in physical activity with that in the comparator group at programme end, only the pharmacy group reported statistically significantly more activity in the unadjusted analysis. At one year follow-up, only participants allocated to Weight Watchers reported more activity than the comparator group, although this was not statistically significant. Those allocated to the general practice arm were doing statistically significantly less physical activity than the comparator group (table 6 ⇓ ). Each treatment can be tailored to the client's weight loss or toning needs; targeting specific areas on their body to help them achieve their goals. The treatments are not only designed for overweight people, but are also well suited to those who are unable to exercise due to medical reasons or busy schedules. Further to this, our program can be used by sportsmen and women to enhance their regular training. Get moving after every meal. After eating, either take a short walk or spend a couple minutes doing air squats and pushups. This activates the GLUT-4 receptors in your skeletal muscles so that more of the food you just ate goes to your muscles, rather than fat stores. I started my career into Modeling & Acting; initially I was slim, but started to put on weight. I was worried that this would impact my career. Kolors helped me with excellent Weight loss solutions. My experience with Kolors has been very good. Thanks to Kolors. By mostly eating these types of foods, you can enjoy more fullness on fewer calories, better stave off hunger and cravings, and avoid nutritional deficiencies that are bad for your health and well-being. Numerous studies show that such a regimen can help you lose 2-3 times as much weight as a standard low-fat diet while also improving your health ( 23 , , ). Over the past few years it has become clear that weight is an important health issue. Some people who need to lose weight for their health don't recognize it, while others who don't need to lose weight want to get thinner for cosmetic reasons. We understand that in some ways your weight is different from, for example, your cholesterol level or your blood pressure, because you can't see what these are by looking at someone. more Many patients have had health care providers who approached their weight in a less-than-sensitive or helpful manner. Some patients may have had health care encounters in which they felt blamed, but not helped. Successful weight management is a long-term challenge. This means that reducing stress is a key component of your weight loss plan. The great news is that by following these 13 keys to weight loss, you will naturally be on the road to reducing stress for good. Changing your diet, staying active and making positive thinking a way of life all mean lower stress levels that last. Keeping weight off is a constant balance, and regular physical activity is a big part of making it last You can't just go really hard one day and think, OK I'm good for a few weeks. Eating healthy and exercising have to become part of life. And they will! Plus, physical activity is about more than just burning off calories. You need to strengthen your muscles, too. (Translation: cardio and strength training.) The cool thing is, muscles use up calories just by existing, so it's only going to help you in the long run to tone up. When you're setting goals, think about both process and outcome goals. "Walk every day for 30 minutes" is an example of a process goal. "Lose 10 pounds" is an example of an outcome goal. It isn't essential that you have an outcome goal, but you should set process goals because changing your habits is a key to weight loss. Check calories on food packaging. It's easier to watch calories and enjoy eating by buying pre-portioned food. 100 calories per bag popcorn, 110 calories per ice cream bar, even snacks in portioned bags allow you to monitor calories and reduce the urge to eat too much. How many calories you burn depends on the frequency, duration and intensity of your activities. One of the best ways to lose body fat is through steady aerobic exercise — such as brisk walking — for at least 30 minutes most days of the week. Some people may require more physical activity than this to lose weight and maintain that weight loss.

Prevention is vital and here at the Medical Weight Loss Center Rochester NY we can help you lose that unwanted weight safely and effectively, even if you are concerned with merely minor weight gain.

Limit added sugars. These are the sugars in cookies, cakes, sugar -sweetened drinks, and other items - not the sugars that are naturally in fruits, for instance. Sugary foods often have a lot of calories but few nutrients. Aim to spend less than 10% of your daily calories on added sugars.

If you tend to turn to food when you're feeling sad, lonely, or stressed, you may be emotionally eating This tendency can very quickly lead to weight gain since your body doesn't need the energy in calories. It's your mind and emotion centers craving a boost. Cooper recommends working to identify your true hunger” and also trying alternatives to eating when you might not be actually craving food. Going outside for a walk, taking a warm, relaxing bath, or reading a book are all excellent solutions to help ease your stress and sadness, without turning to food. Staying fit and active is important for overall health, and can help you to lose excess weight in combination with a balanced diet. Read our top exercise tips for weight loss and learn about the relationship between fitness and fat burning , plus how many calories you'll burn through different activities. While many measure weight loss on the scales, it's also important to measure your waistline. Losing inches off your waist is good for heart health as it reduces the amount of visceral fat (the fat surrounding your liver, pancreas, intestines). But not all shakes and bars are supplemented appropriately (for a low-kilojoule diet) — some are particularly high in sugar, and not suitable when trying to lose weight. Burn more energy as heat. Expose yourself to cold temperatures regularly to make your body burn off more energy as heat. Drink ice water, take cold showers, keep your bedroom cool, or hold an ice pack to your upper back. Eating spicy foods also makes you produce more heat - having a slice of cold cut meat sprinkled with cayenne pepper right before a cold shower can significantly accelerate fat burning. Thus, instead of educating you on how the human metabolism actually works , experts” make up stories about how a single bogeyman—a hormone ( insulin ) or food (carbohydrate), for example—is making you fat, and that all you have to do is eliminate it from your life and the pounds will fall off. We're not talking juice cleanses. Rather, research now shows that a specific type of intermittent fasting, known as fasting-mimicking, can trigger weight loss as well as improve your overall health. People who followed this type of diet plan — where they consumed only 750 to 1,000 calories five days out of each month but otherwise ate normally — lost, on average, six pounds, shed one to two inches of their waistline, and saw both their blood pressure and levels of IGF-1 (a substance linked to increased cancer risk) drop significantly, according to a University of Southern California study published last year. It's also clear from my own and other people's experience treating patients with it that it does not work well for everyone. Some people experience only minimal weight loss. Other people lose a lot more than the additional 12 pounds lost in a recent study - this is only an average. You choose your food from a list of low-fat foods they call "Free Foods" that are generally filling and low in energy, such as fruit, vegetables, pasta, potatoes, rice, lean meat, fish and eggs. These can be eaten in unlimited amounts. To avoid temptation, try to not stock junk food - such as chocolate, biscuits, crisps and sweet fizzy drinks - at home. Instead, opt for healthy snacks, such as fruit, unsalted rice cakes, oat cakes, unsalted or unsweetened popcorn, and fruit juice. Our Nutrition Director, Jen, also recommends skipping the scale altogether, especially in the beginning. Instead, wait until your clothes start fitting more loosely. In the meantime, just focus on getting in touch with your body's hunger and satisfied cues, as well as your energy level. Since you know that eating healthy plant-powered foods, skipping the junk and alcohol, prioritizing sleep and exercising more will get you to your goal, it's helpful to create habits that will support sustainable weight loss and health first. The scale can come later when you know you're moving in the right direction and just need a motivational boost. Adopting a new eating style that promotes weight loss must include lowering your total calorie intake. But decreasing calories need not mean giving up taste, satisfaction or even ease of meal preparation. Food preparation methods that add fat to food, like frying. Sauces made from meat drippings and commercial dressings made with oil and eggs, e.g. mayonnaise (use low-oil dressings).

Macros are important because how your calories break down into protein, carbs, and fat heavily influences your workout performance, body composition , and overall health and well-being.

It sounds like a dream. Helpful sources Keep living like you already do, take a pill a day, and effortlessly lose your excess weight. This is why weight-loss pills is a billion dollar industry. It's important to know how to lose weight the right way from the very start. First tip: You can't just cut calories. Prebiotic foods: These stimulate the growth and activity of some of the good bacteria that aid weight control Prebiotic fiber occurs in many fruits and vegetables, especially chicory root, artichoke, onion , garlic, asparagus, leeks, banana , and avocado. It is also in grains, such as oats and barley. Sometimes an injury ruins your race plans. So you readjust and come back stronger. The same holds true for your diet. A good way to re-examine your strategy is to use a food log (see Rule 5). You might realise you've been hungrier on tough workout days and need an extra snack. Or you might see you've been rushing through lunch and should slow down. Schiller R, Barrager E, Schauss A, Nichols E. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study examining the effects of a rapidly soluble chitosan dietary supplement on weight loss and body composition in overweight and mildly obese individuals. J Am Nutraceutical Assoc 2001;4:42-9. Changing the way you go about eating can make it easier to eat less without feeling deprived. It takes 15 or more minutes for your brain to get the message that you've been fed. Eating slowly will help you feel satisfied. Eating lots of vegetables and fruits can make you feel fuller. Another trick is to use smaller plates so that moderate portions do not appear too small. Changing your eating schedule, or setting one, can be helpful, especially if you tend to skip, or delay, meals and overeat later.

Nobody would argue it's nutritious for the calories it costs your diet and excessive drinking is bad news for your health, but there's no need to lose people from getting healthier by suggesting drinking shouldn't be part of their lives to do so.

[selenelavellan]

Monster Hunter AU

Inspired by @feynites post

TW for PTSD, blood, and vomit

She never meant to start a collection.

Truth be told, she never meant to be a monster hunter either. Had never asked for a destiny or a fate, or whatever else people call it. She had been caught off guard by an overly large owl once in the woods, dripping with black blood and a screech that made her ears ring for hours after. A branch had broken off in her hands while she stumbled backwards and away from it, and when it had lunged for her, it was nothing but bad instincts that had her point at it with the stick and shout an incantation she had read in a stolen book once.

She never meant for it to implode.

The popping sound it made still haunts her. Still makes her wake at night in a cold sweat, convinced she's covered in feathers and blood that burns through her skin, with hollow and jagged bone shards stuck in her clothes and hair, screaming for help. She avoids anything with a similar sound now; balloons, bubblegum, fireworks. The noise makes her jump and tense, her hands reach for weapons and wood and anything that gives her security.

Her mentor tells her to count, when it happens.

It helps.

Numbers are grounding, they're real, they're solid, they're constant. One plus one equals two in her world and the Other world, even if the routes to get there are different.

When she completes her training, her mentor gifts her a wooden abacus. Small enough to fit in her pack, to fiddle with and settle her nerves on long journeys or distant assignments.

“It's perfectly fine,” They assure her. “There's nothing wrong with getting a little help where you can.”

Her first solo assignment is supposed to be simple. An incubus stirring up trouble in a nearby settlement that needs to be taken care of. He's not difficult to find; Selene doesn't find any sign that he'd even tried to cover his tracks. She discovers him in an emptied mansion, long abandoned and worn down by time. He's lounging in between the posts of a rotted bed frame, making promises and vows laced with poisonous words that leave a rash on the backs of her hands as she moves towards him. Threats like arrows as they try to pierce through her armor, her own words turning them to nothing but steam with a quiet hiss.

When she gets him pinned to floor, secured in her trap of ash and salt, he screams. He screams and pleads and while his words no longer have the magic to wound her, they find her soft spots all the same. Her wand is pressed to the skin of his neck while the tips of his horns burn holes into the wooden floor beneath him; his magic fighting, struggling for release. Waiting for death.

A piece of wood in the lit fireplace crackles and pops and Selene thinks of black blood and wet feathers. Nightmares and broken bones and will this one pop or burn or just fall to the ground with a lifeless thud, golden eyes rolling back and into his skull while her wand shakes and glows and fills her with a power that only makes her feel cold inside.

She doesn't think she actually wants to know.

“I don't want to kill you,” She admits aloud. Quietly, and without power. The wand in her hand is thrumming, runes alive and excited for the gain they are expecting to make from his loss.

The incubus stills beneath her.

She thinks of her mentor, and how disappointed they will be in her. Dead on her first mission; the last five years wasted. She wonders if they will think she forgot her training. If perhaps she suddenly forgot that incubi remains have to be gathered and cleansed, that their stolen power has to be extracted before death or they will simply keep regenerating.

She wonders, briefly, if she will make a popping sound.

“...I believe you,” The incubus responds, his horns cooling as her arm flops back to her side. “And I don't believe in doing things you don't want to do.”

“I can't leave you to terrorize people here.”

“Have any of the people I've actually encountered called what I do terrorizing?” He shoots back.

Selene frowns, and considers. The reports hadn't...actually come from the victims. Almost all were from husbands and partners that were upset with the state in which he had left their significant others.

All of whom had only experienced a day or two of lethargy before returning to full health.

She doesn't really remember how they had gotten to her offering him asylum in her home. But when the pair arrives back in her modest cabin, she hears a tinkling of metal behind her as the incubus reveals a large cloth bag filled with gold and jewels.

“Consider us even,” The creature tells her as he hands it towards her.

Selene scrunches her face and turns away from the large bag of coin (at least triple what the town had offered for his extraction, but that is far from the point).

“I can't accept bribes, it's against the code. You can keep them,” She tells him as she opens her magic-resistant safe and pulls out a clean syringe and empty vial. “Now sit down please.”

The incubus winces as she sticks the needle through his bicep, pulling back on the syringe until it is filled with a vial of thick, dark blood.

“What is that for?” The incubus asks, as though perhaps she might be the one duping him in this situation.

“It's for tracking,” Selene informs him plainly as she corks the vial and deposits it back into her safe. “If you're going to stay here, you are my responsibility. If you escape, or try to run off, this will help me track you no matter which realm you try to go to. If I am going to sell the idea of keeping you alive to my mentor, I need to at least show them I am being responsible about it.”

...It's not a smooth transition.

But Selene is lucky; her mentor understands. They do not berate her for her softness, and instead help to properly ward up her cabin and weapons and keep one eye on the monster in their pupils home.

It becomes something of a habit, after that.

Perhaps it is the Incubus's influence, in more than one way, that leads her to it. Even if it is a lie when he says it, the simple knowledge of knowing there is someone out there who thinks she is right for making her choice, helps. And there are still some monsters in the world that cannot be saved; who are too far gone, or who are genuinely evil in harmful ways. Those who do not care for options or kindness, and only want their pound of flesh.

But they are not all like that, as she had been lead to believe.

The large, nine-eyed, three-tailed cat in the mountains that would destroy caravans and harass vendors on the trade route had only been starving and confused. A house cat now, practically. It had not meant to maim or injure, had only smelled the meat and milk being moved and acted accordingly. That is when Selene first buys the cooler, and strikes up the deal with the butcher. She buys the spoiled meats at a cheap price and feeds them to her monsters, who are in no danger from the developing bacteria. As her home becomes more and more filled, she finds herself more at ease in her own skin. Less prone to jumping at every noise, to clawing at her own arms, to daydreaming so deeply that she vacates her own body for hours at a time without meaning to.

She even gives them names.

The incubus becomes Des, the cat, Affection, the carnivorous rosebush in her backyard Sympathy. Even the gelatinous cube that likes to live in the sunspot on her counter and has greatly helped with her composting becomes Garas (And never fails to make Des giggle).

Her mentor is concerned about her kept company.

There is another job only a month after she acquires Garas; an old temple ruin in the local woods has recently become home to some sort of terror that has been sneaking through the village at night. Large enough to blot out the stars, leaving carts overturned and shops broken into and burgled.

Selene looks at the list of stolen items with interest, now more experienced in the ways of her work.

Books, toys, and the occasional piece of food.

Hardly the activity of something vicious, she thinks.

But she is loaded down with poisons and poems and her wand for the journey, all the same.

It is almost a scenic route, really. The sun is high in the sky, and the light it casts through the thick leaves overhead makes a rather beautiful pattern on the ground. She eases herself over an old rotted log, one hand on the trunk of a tree until she finds solid ground again.

And encounters a trail of wet, bloodied feathers on the ground.

The sight shakes her so viscerally she nearly turns back. Her breathing increases but her breaths are shallow and her vision blurs. A twig snaps beneath her boot and she jumps nearly four feet in the air at the noise, mind filling with panic, an echo of an owls screech in her ears, over and over and over again. Her skin burns and her stomach empties as the hand not holding back her hair scrambles through her pack until it settles on the smooth wooden surface of her abacus.

She counts aloud to drown out the false noises, moving the beads at a steady pace and timing her breaths in and out with the solid clicks as they slide along the metal pole to make contact with one another.

She has gone all the way to the hundreds before she finally feels in control enough to continue.

The temple itself is damp from a recent storm, and she has to glide her steps through shallow pools of water to avoid making excessive noise as she moves through it. Her boots are soaked through by the time she finally finds the slumbering creature.

It is, indeed, very large.

There is a pool of dark sludge formed around it, melding with the water already soaked through the temple. She can't seem to locate a face or head on the creature, though its weight shifts several times as she moves around it, trying to get a read on which monster this could be.

It doesn't look like anything she's ever read about or studied before.

When she finally lifts one of her feet from the water, hundreds of eyes open across the expanse of its body. Nearly simultaneous, and all turning to look at her.

Three quarters of them close, as four long limbs stretch out from the mass and turns towards her. A neck forms, long and curving and then, ah, there's the head.

She holds the wand in her fist tight to her thigh as the neck twists around her. Not near enough to touch, but six eyes inspect her warily before they seem to focus on her pack. The head nudges pointedly at the flap of it until it manages to wriggle in there, followed by a long tendril that rapidly retreats.

Her abacus in its grip.

“Hey!” She calls, chasing after her possession as it is lifted above her head, the creature tilting around it curiously as it holds it up to the light.

She reaches out to grab it in an attempt to climb its limbs and get her abacus back, but recoils as her fist fills with feathers, instead. Black and inky and wet from the temple water. She looks at it again; it appears to be covered in scales, shining in the light breaking through the stone overhead, a smooth body stretching and shifting as it comes further and further into consciousness.

An illusion, maybe...?

But as she reaches out for it again, more cautiously this time, she finds feathers once more. Soft and plush in her grip, but churning and uneasy with her empty stomach.

She frowns, resisting the urge to retreat as she stares up at the only item she's really attached to be tentatively bent by this oversized brute.

“That's mine,” She says anyway, pushing away any wariness in her voice. Confidence, that's the key. Be confident. “You need to give it back.”

The creatures head tilts as it seems to consider her words.

“Please,” She says, lacing the word with just enough power to show that she is not here to bend to his whims, or make him some strange offering, or whatever he might think.

The creature glances between the abacus and Selene for a moment, before slowly lowering it back into her outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” She says, tucking it back into her pack. “Now, you need to leave.”

Six large blue eyes narrow as they move closer to her, its head slightly taller than her own body.

“The town you have been visiting is unhappy with your thefts. You need to return to your own realm, or I will have to kill you.”

There is a low, echoing rumble as the creature readjusts again, crossing two of its limbs on the steps of the rise it has been seated on. Resting its head on top, eyes closing as it gives another low, dismissive rumble.

Selene sighs and looks at the room around her. She's not going to be able to drag it out of here with physical force alone, and she hadn't prepared any levitation or movement stanzas for something this large. Villagers have a habit of over-exaggerating, and she had apparently misunderstood the truth in their words this time around.

Not her best moment of judgment, she'll admit.

Behind it, in a corner on a stone pedestal, she can see a small pile of books and toys.

The missing items, she realizes.

She glances at the creature for a moment before moving towards them, instead.

One eye still on the creature, she opens up the top book. Many of the pages have been torn, or ripped haphazardly. Something talon shaped seems to have stabbed through several of the pages in the center as well.

She makes an overly dramatic sigh and licks her thumb as she turns the page as loudly as possible.

“It sure looks like someone,” she drawls. “Was trying to read this, with little luck. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?”

She sees the head shift slightly in its position, another low grumble echoing slightly.

“That's too bad,” She continues, flipping another page. “I could have helped them with this, if they wanted...”

The head turns to face her again this time, eyes still narrowed and wary.

She wiggles her fingers harmlessly in the air where he can see them. “Phalanges are a heck of a thing. Tricky to shift though, if you're not familiar with the anatomy.”

She waits a few more minutes, skimming over the contents of the book. Some old history stories from a land across the sea she hasn't seen before. Outside of her range of work; probably not a land she'll ever be able to see in her lifetime.

As she continues perusing, the shape in her peripheral vision begins to shrink. The large mass becomes more elven in shape, only slightly taller than her own form. With six blue eyes and six black wings sprouting from its back. The ends of its hands and feet are blurry though; as though they're unsure what to do with them. Selene raises her hand again, fingers wriggling in the air as they inspect them more closely, their hands becoming more solid as they manage to copy some of her details.

“Very nice,” She compliments, taking her cloak off to help cover their expanse of exposed skin (and maybe hide their wings a little, too). She hands them back the book, and they take it from her, looking at it with a frown before looking up at her and repeating “Very nice?” in a more quizzical tone as they try to push it back towards her.

She blinks, taking it back from them.

They don't speak the language, she realizes all at once.

That's...concerning. She's never met or heard of a monster that didn't at least understand the trade language before. Normally there is enough bleed through between their realms with the common root pieces of their language that conversations are still possible. It's part of how the monsters manage to cross through in the first place.

This makes things a lot more complicated.

“You,” She tries, pointing at them before making a stabbing motion with her hand to try to get her meaning across. “killer?”

They look at her curiously for a moment before shaking their head slowly.

Ok, well. That's something.

She can't just leave them here though.

…well. Maybe Des could help with translations?

She closes the book and takes a few steps away, making a motion with her hand behind her. “Follow me.”

The creature tries to follow closely behind, but stumbles over its own feet as it tries to make it down the stairs. Selene manages to catch them before they can hurt themselves on the stone, but it's a near thing.

“I've got you,” She mumbles, and hums a tune to meant help with balance for scaling large walls or moving through crowded cities. It helps him to stand, and his next few steps, while tenuous, are steady.

“I've got you,” He repeats with a nod.

Selene can feel her face flush slightly at the assertion before berating herself.

He gave himself extraordinarily handsome features, for someone that didn't even have a face a few minutes ago.

She shakes her head to rid herself of the thought before she starts back towards her home. He links his hand with hers, refusing to release it and just repeating his last sentence like a mantra each time she turns to look at him, with more and more confidence.

...Probably he's just afraid of falling again, she decides.

Hopefully, this will all be much simpler once she figures out how what sort of monster he actually is.