#or like consequences to gary's health

[not-poignant]

Protective Gary is something else. Cannot wait to see him being all protective of Ef!!!

Gosh I LOVE a protective character, and we're definitely going to see the more intense sides of Gary's protectiveness come out in the last quarter of the fic.

And honestly, Efnisien could do with someone super protective in his corner, even if that protectiveness comes with, er.... consequences.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Part of Fionna’s frustrations with Mundanewold were subconscious longings for her old life of magical adventure, but a lot of her problems tied more into deeply-rooted issues of monotony and a feeling like she can't do anything to change her lot in life and like her actions don’t matter.

And it does seem like Fionna and Friends’ lives have been kinda Stuck in a Rut - especially when you compare the way their lives parallel and diverge from their Mainworld counterparts. Most of the differences are... rather than just different choices diverging into different arcs - it’s the same arc, but the Fionnaworld characters are just stuck behind.

Fionna is still reeling from the breakup with DJ Flame and only met Hunter at the very day our story starts. Marshall Lee has more Unresolved Issues with his mom compared to Marceline and her dad. He and Gumball haven’t even met yet. Not to mention the Mundaneworld-specific problems like Fionna being unable to hold a steady job or Gary eternally spinning his wheels about opening his own bakery. 

Fionna thought she wanted a world of magic, but while the added bits of strangeness and whimsy to Fionnaworld by the end of the show are certainly a cool fun bonus (and Cake is surely thankful to have the ability to freely think and speak her mind and stretch) - what Fionna and friends were really missing was a world where their actions matter, where things change, where they are real. 

And especially important for Fionna and Cake to admit it, because handling the fact their actions have consequences has been a huge part of both of their character arcs. For Cake it was all about getting used to the fact that her newfound human-like sapience means being measured against human-like morality. For Fionna it's about not comparing everything in her life to video games and thinking through her actions at least a little bit.

Consequences are the thing Fionna and Cake struggled with the most, but it was what they were missing all along.

Now this seems to be, like, an actual metaphysical thing. I mean, the show hasn’t gone super into detail of how Fionnaworld worked but it does seem like Prismo’s stories had an active role in moving the events of the World forwards, possibly using the same event-manipulating-Magic that make sure his Wishes have that Obligatory Ironic Twists?

And once Ice King turned back to Simon, Prismo lost all ability to observe or create stories for Fionnaworld. And what happens to characters of a story once the writer can’t access their external hard-drive anymore? They just sorta get stuck. Moving their own lives forwards without Prismo’s stories is just a lot harder.

And if there is some sort of force in control behind the scenes of Fionnaworld at the start of the series, it’s only Simon’s subconscious - a fact F&C alludes to numerous times 

And at the start of the show, how was Simon’s feeling about his own life?

In addition to Simon’s longing and memories for the pre-War world shaping the exact form of Fionna’s nonmagical world, perhaps his feelings of ennui and depression and helplessness have also subtly ‘infected’ this world?

It is perhaps not a coincidence that Marshall Lee and Gary Prince’s storyline only starts moving forwards after Simon embarks on the adventure and starts climbing out of his mental rock bottom. When things seem to move forwards for him as well.

As such, ‘Canonizing’ Fionnaworld solves more of Fionna’s problems much more than simply making it as magical as Ooo but keeping it as a tiny hidden bubble in someone's dome. It ensures the World’s inhabitants’ free will and agency and ability to enact change on the status quo with no need for Prismo’s stories or being dependent on the still-kinda-shaky mental health of Simon Petrikov. Thus giving them a world where everything matters and things can always change.

But also there's a psychological element for the Fionnaworld protagonists. You know, the reason why Fionna is stuck in her rut is because she’s too impulsive and careless. Gary is too perfectionist. Marshall never had someone who would stand up to him against his mom.

Fionna’s whole arc in the show is about learning to be more thoughtful and careful and considerate through her Multiverse Adventure. While Gary and Marshall Lee find release from the thing holding them back within Fionnaworld, with each other. 

‘Canonizing’ Fionnaworld is like... half actively altering their world into a ‘real’ one where change is possible, or at least easier - and half about an affirmation that their world was always real because change is about them outgrowing their personal issues (and also, y’know, about protecting their universe from the spiteful Beetle Cop).

And with how Fionna used to feel ‘trapped’ in the City, with nowhere to go and nothing to do - there is another change in Fionnaworld as a result of ‘canonization’ that feels very notable. 

I’m not entirely sure, but from Scarab's dialogue it seems likely that becoming a ‘real’ authorized universe just kinda manifested a whole planet and universe beyond the borders of the small existing Fionnaworld. Although I guess it's also possible that the process of repairing the existing city they found a way to expand it gradually - maybe it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that either way, Fionna’s horizons have been literally expanded. 

So you know, if she ever gets that thirst for adventure again... she actually has a Whole New World to travel and explore, it might not have (a lot of) magic but... she already heard Simon's stories of his adventures in a similar low-Magic world. It's a totally viable outlet for her.

What Fionna really needed to find the joy in her life is to be Real - to know that her actions have consequences for ill and for good. Because sometimes an adventure looks like saving a Prince of candy from an evil Ice Witch, or going on a multiverse journey to uncover a cursed Magic Crown… but it can also look like backpacking through Europe or campaigning against your evil landlady.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Feeding Soul, Freeing Soil

“...all of us will come back again to hoe in the ground... Or hand-adze a beam, or skin a pole, or scrape a hive — we’re never going to get away from that We’ve been living a dream that we’re going to get away from that. Put that out of our minds... That work is always going to be there.” — Gary Snyder, in The Real Work: Interviews and Talks, 1964–1979

In the pre-industrial world, food was the basis of human life. If not deserving of outright ceremonial worship, then certainty food was not something just taken for granted. Sure, this was probably out of pure necessity of survival, and due to technologies in our culture we have more of a margin of error. But I have to wonder when I consider the mindlessness with which so many of us purchase, prepare, consume, and dispose of food, if the “privileges” of convenience and effortlessness are really worth the consequences. On psychological and spiritual levels, the disconnect between our daily lives and the source of our very existence — the raw material that fuels our bodies and minds — has an effect that is both profoundly symbolic, and frighteningly real.

Most of us would agree that food is a catalyst for family and community bonds. Without it, the very fabric of our cultures comes unraveled And we can see that happening today. We have no time to cook, and even less time to eat. Our culture’s fixation on efficiency and timesaving makes it impossible for us to appreciate what goes into producing it. In our ignorance, we demand produce that is not seasonal or bioregional, the transportation of which fills 4 million trucks a year, which use $5.5 billion worth of fuel, and spew 4 million tons of pollutants into the air. The average distance food travels from farm to fork is 1300 miles! (Rodale, 1981) We demand certain tastes at a snap of the fingers, even if it means transporting a spice thousands of miles, or using large amounts of oils pressed from genetically engineered seeds half a world away. We demand to be able to cook rice in ten minutes, which requires industrial processing that removes all the nutrients from the grain. Most meat-eaters in modern society don’t ever see the animal until it ends up packaged and in the grocery store. All these “conveniences” reinforce a dangerous sense of detachment and alienation.

One of the most revealing metaphors relating to modern society’s culinary dysfunction is in our dependence on processed foods. People would be more whole eating whole foods, not fragmented and refined commodities with isolated nutrients added back in. Food in its natural state evolved alongside human beings, and when obtained directly, it provides us with all we need. Food processing is an unnecessary obstacle to nutrition that benefits the long line of manufacturers, packagers and advertizers who take 90% of every food dollar, mediating our physical sustenance.

Lack of vitality is a major component of malnutrition from modern food sources. Grown in depleted soils with chemical fertilizers to mimic fertility, the plants become dependent on the chemicals to survive. Similarly, when we eat a lifetime of nutrient- depleted food our bodies become dependent on pharmaceuticals. Just like in the forest, agricultural soil health can be seen as an indicator of the health of the entire system, of which we are a part. If the soil is depleted of nutrients, so is the food that grows in it, and so are those who eat it.

[theothin]

User Gary Koepnick asked the AI which person spreads the most misinformation on Twitter/X—and the service did not hesitate in pointing a finger at its creator. “Based on various analyses, social media sentiment, and reports, Elon Musk has been identified as one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X since he acquired the platform,” it wrote, later adding “Musk has made numerous posts that have been criticized for promoting or endorsing misinformation, especially related to political events, elections, health issues like COVID-19, and conspiracy theories. His endorsements or interactions with content from controversial figures or accounts with a history of spreading misinformation have also contributed to this perception.” The AI also pointed out that because of Musk’s large number of followers and high visibility, any misinformation he posts is immediately amplified and gains legitimacy among his followers. This, it said, “can have real-world consequences, especially during significant events like elections.”

World's most divorced man becomes first human to be alienated from both biological and digital children.

[nursingwriter]

Infant mortality, though on the decline, is still a serious health concern in the United States and Philadelphia presents the worst-case scenario. Though government sponsored programs have helped mitigate the crisis there is still a lot to be done in terms of enabling easy access of quality maternity care to people from diverse economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Infant mortality is a serious concern worldwide and infant mortality rate is considered an indicator of the health standard of a nation. In the United States, over the last few decades there has been a steady drop in the infant mortality rates indicating a positive change in maternal health care facilities. The infant mortality rate, which was as high as 96.5 per 1000 live births in the early part of 20th century has now dropped considerably to 6.8 per 1,000 live births as projected by the 2001 statistics. However in some regions like Philadelphia the problem is acute. West Philadelphia for example, suffers the distinction of being the city with the highest infant mortality rate, one that is almost double the national average. There are many reasons, which contribute to this negative health picture in the region. Let us analyze the issue of infant mortality in a little detail so that we may gain better insight into the problem and try to find out remedial measures for the same. Infant Mortality (An Overview) Infant mortality by definition refers to the 'death of infants that occur within the first year of their life." The infant mortality rate is the "number of infant deaths within the first year of life per 1,000 live births per year." . Infant deaths fall under the following two categories namely perinatal deaths and neonatal deaths. Perinatal deaths include fetal deaths, those that occur after 20 or more weeks of gestation, and deaths that occur within the first 28 days after delivery of the baby. Neonatal deaths refer to infant deaths that occur after 28 days of birth and within one year. This classification serves to provide us with a better picture of the actual conditions that result in infant deaths. It has to be noted however, that, in general many conditions that originate in the perinatal period are responsible for the large proportion of deaths in the neonatal period. Philadelphia (A Special Case) Nationwide, the infant mortality rate has been steadily decreasing projecting a positive trend in pediatric health care. In Philadelphia, though infant mortality is showing a gradual decline over the last decade, the mortality rate is still very high compared to the national average. One reason for this poor scenario in Philadelphia is the clear contrast that exists in health care access between the rich and poor communities. For example the University City and Mantua, two neighborhood regions in Philadelphia present a good contrast of wealth and poverty side by side. Speaking of this disparity Ms. Whelan, a Senior nurse in Mantua says, "Here we are blocks away from major medical centers, and we had one of the worst infant mortality rates. We had high teen-age pregnancy, all of these health indicators like third-world countries,." . A survey conducted in 1999 showed that more than 17% of families living in Philadelphia were well below the federal poverty level. The problem is that, while the rich people can avail of the excellent services offered by the numerous private health clinics in the city the vast majority of the poor are literally dependent on the public hospitals. Economic disparity and the consequent hurdles in access to quality health care is identified to be the key factor contributing to the high infant death rate in the city. General Causes for Infant Mortality (Literature review) The 1999 study by Lorraine Halinka Malcoe, Gary M. Shaw, et.al, was pivotal in understanding the various causes of infant mortality. This was a comprehensive study, which analyzed the effect of congenital anomalies on the infant mortality on a whole. For the study the researchers took the available data on the California birth defects program and performed a comparative study with the available birth death records of 278646 children between 1983 and 1986. The children chosen for the study were all from black and white communities. From this huge pool of data the researchers compared malformed infants with nonmalformed infants so as to ascertain the effect of congenital abnormalities on infant death rates. The study clearly revealed a positive link between the presence of congenital anomalies and infant deaths. The researchers identified that congenital anomalies increased the risk of infant mortality nine fold in the case of black children while the risk factor was even higher for white children at 17.8 times. On an overall count it was found that congenital anomalies were responsible for the death of 33% of white and 19% black infants. The study also showed that congenital anomalies presented a great risk to infants irrespective of the body weight at the time of the birth. (low or high) However in Philadelphia perinatal conditions were responsible for almost 45% of natural infant deaths projecting a dismal picture of access to perinatal care. Nonviable Infants and Mortality rate study by Gibson and Culhane revealed another important maternal health trend in Philadelphia. The study, which analyzed about 26,863 birth records of children born in Philadelphia in 1992 found that around 1,5% of the (395) infant deliveries occurred before or during the 22 weeks gestation period. 68.1% or 269 of this group were stillborn and 126 live born infants. Another vital fact was that of the 126 premature infants, 88.1% (111) were black and 11.9% (15) were white indicating a clear disparity between the two communities. When these nonviable infants were excluded, the infant mortality rate for Philadelphia declined from 15.5 per 1000 to 9.3 per 1000. This 40% difference in infant mortality rate due to nonviable infants reflects the need for improved prenatal care. Loss of pregnancy before 23 weeks (nonviable) presents a big problem and in particular the disparity in the nonviable birth ratio between the two communities suggest the need for improving access to prenatal health care for the black community. Neonatal Deaths Statistical analysis indicates that in Philadelphia the major cause of neonatal deaths is the complications resulting from medical conditions originating in the perinatal period. Medical records for year 2000 show that a total of 127 deaths directly attributable to perinatal complications. The figures also show that black Infants are more prone to perinatal complications (with as much as 90 infants of the 127). Low birth weight is also a leading cause for infant mortality. The 1998 annual statistics show that LBW is responsible for 20% of neonatal deaths. Tobacco smoking and alcohol have been identified as the leading causes for LBW condition. Teenage Pregnancy Teenage Pregnancy is again an important factor that directly increases the infant mortality rate. In Philadelphia the Bridesberg/Kensington/Richmond and Upper north neighborhoods have a very high rate of teenage pregnancies. Teenage pregnancies cause concern because majority of the teenage mothers give birth to babies with very low body weight and consequently these babies face high mortality risk. Alcoholism is another factor, which increases the infant mortality rate. Fetal mortality rates are found to be 35% higher for women who use tobacco and 77% for those who drink alcohol during the gestation period. On an average at least 3% of the pregnant women were consuming alcohol in most of the regions within Philadelphia. The direct link between alcohol consumption and birth deformities creates more problems and seriously affects the health of the infant. Community Wise Risk Assessment Various studies pertaining to different aspects of infant mortality have shown the black community to be the most affected and having the highest infant mortality rate. In 1999 a total of 253 infants died and the infant mortality rate for Philadelphia was 11.7 deaths per 1,000. With 16.7 deaths per 1000 births, black infants constitute four out of every five infant deaths in the city. . The African-American community again figured up high in the list of fetal morality rate with as much as 12.7 per 1000 pregnancies as indicated by the 1995 statistics. Prenatal screening and proper medical care during the gestation period would be the key in reducing fetal mortality for this high risk group. Furthermore, African-American women constitute more than 75% of the total HIV infected women in Philadelphia. This already proposes a serious risk of infant mortality due to vertical transmission of AIDS from mother to infant. The Maternity Care Coalition along with the Women's Christian Alliance group together manage the 'Healthy Living Project' funded by the center for disease control to manage the acute AIDS affected regions like Strawberry mansion and other areas of west Philadelphia. Economic Implications Smoking, drinking and substance abuse during pregnancy incur a huge treatment cost. LBW, Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and other complications that result from these habits is a huge economic drain on the government health care system. Each year up to $9.7 billion is expended for treating infants suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. Similarly every year the health care department spends more than 500$ million for treating infants suffering from intra-uterine cocaine exposure. Asides these, birth complications that arise due to smoking incurs an additional $2 billion in expenditure. . If enough awareness is created by means of active counseling programs to stop alcohol and substance abuse during pregnancy we would not only be saving the precious lives of infants and preventing many serious problems like cerebral palsy, autism etc. But also be saving a huge chunk of money that could be allotted to improve other areas of maternal care. Government Initiatives The Healthy Start Program Several federal and state government initiative programs are operational in Philadelphia and there have been considerable positive results. The Healthy Start Initiative program started way back in the 1990's has reaped good results but still there is much to be desired. The West and Southwest regions of Philadelphia, one of the project areas covered under the "Healthy Start Initiative" is still falling way behind the healthy care 2010 objectives. Between 1998 and 2000, the three years under study, the west and southwest regions had 181 infant deaths giving a total infant mortality rate of 14.3 deaths per 1000 which is more than double the 2010 objective of 7. 2 deaths per 1000. Healthy Beginnings Plus This is another program managed by the "Division of Early Childhood, Youth and Women's Health" which contracts hospitals in Philadelphia to provide maternal health care for all irrespective of their economic situation. The Maternity Services program (MSP) in particular is specially suited for uninsured and poor people and provides quality prenatal care. By having contracts with good health care clinics the healthy beginnings plus program strives to make sure that quality health care is easily available.. Conclusion Though the nationwide infant mortality rates are declining every year, we are still a long way away from the health 2000 objective of containing infant mortality rate to 4.5 per 1000 live births. With a large population of women who are economically backward West Philadelphia continues to have the highest rate of infant mortality in the whole of the nation. Inspite of the several healthcare initiatives undertaken by the government, quality health care still remains out of reach of a segment of the community and consequently there still remains a clear difference in the infant mortality rates between the different communities in Philadelphia. It is important to address this disparity by targeting intervention programs for the high-risk group. (African-American). The problem of the lack of quality primary care providers for the economically downtrodden people needs to be addressed immediately in order to contain the high infant mortality rate. In conclusion we can say that the problem is not just about increasing the funds to the state but more importantly, is concerned with the proper allocation of the resources to the needy areas within the city. Effective management of resources, increasing the awareness among the less privileged people and providing easy access to Preconceptional, perinatal and neonatal care holds the key for successful containment of the prevailing high infant mortality rate in the city of Philadelphia. Bibliography Eric Gibson et.al, "Effect of Nonviable infant on the Infant Mortality rate of Philadelphia," American Journal of Public Health, August 2000, Vol 90, pg 1303 Center for Disease Control, "Infants Death / Mortality: Data for U.S. In 2001," Retrieved on March 13th 2004 from, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/infmort.htm Lorraine Halinka Malcoe, "The Effect of Congenital Anomalies on Mortality Risk In White and Black Infants," American Journal of Public Health, June 1999, Pg Mary Harkins-Schwarz, "Philadelphia Interdisciplinary Youth Fatality Review team," Retrieved on 17th March 2004, from, http://www.phmc.org/pdf/99ReportPIYFRT.pdf. This Utah Department of Health (UDOH), "Infant Mortality, Retrieved on March 17th 2004, at http://hlunix.hl.state.ut.us/matchiim/main/infntdth/define.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Maternal, infant and Child Health" Retrieved on March 17th 2004, from, http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/html/volume2/16mich.htm Deborah D. Roebuck, "West and Southwest Philadelphia; Healthy Start Initiative," Retrieved on March 16th 2004, from, https://performance.hrsa.gov/mchb/MCHProjects/AbstractIndexes/..CollectionHealthyStart2003OtherHTMLWestPhila.html Division of Early Childhood, Youth and Women's Health', "Healthy Beginnings Plus: Prenatal Services," Retrieved on March 17th 2004, at http://www.phila.gov/health/duplicate1/RG_2002-web.PDF Maternity Care Coalition (MCC), "The Healthy Living Project Sponsors HIV / AIDS Workshop On World AIDS Day," Retrieved on March 18th 2004, from, http://www.aegis.com/news/pr/2000/PR001148.html. John F. Street, "Vital Statistics Report 2000: City of Philadelphia," Retrieved on March 16th 2004, from, http://www.phila.gov/health/units/ahs/vitalstats/2000_Vital_Statistics__Report.pdf. Jerry Janda, "West Philadelphia Youths Hang Out on the Health Corner," Retrieved on March 17th 2004, from, http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/features/1995/101095/Whelan.html. Read the full article

[project1939]

Motion Picture and Television Magazine, June 1952. I love this article! It chastises Hollywood for putting naturally heavier stars on crash diets. The article is about musical star Mario Lanza, but it also uses the earlier example of Judy Garland. "Judy Garland is healthiest when she's chubby, but Hollywood wanted her thin and took the consequences." It warns that like Judy, Mario will "inevitably crack up, his health-destroyed, his nerves gone." "We must accept that Mario is not Gary Cooper, and is that bad? His normal body build is stocky, not lean." Apparently Mario had recently lost 60 pounds in three months, and the author went on at length about how horrible that is for anybody's health. Hats off to you Barbara Berch for writing about this so frankly and respectfully!

[alianoralacanta]

My records suggest that 11 of the F1 drivers reported a serious health issue during the race. By the regulations, at least 3 of the finishers should have stopped (specifically, the ones who reported nearly or actually losing consciousness). Possibly more depending on how certain ambiguities are interpreted. Carlos got told to sit Australia out, but not by his doctors. The problem there was that nobody who told Carlos to sit it out had sufficient authority over Carlos or Fred to prevent his participation. (Not surprising, given that Carlos was told by pretty much everyone not to attend the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix the day after surgery, but turned up regardless!) It's not clear that Oscar bothered to tell anyone at McLaren about his situation. One cannot tell someone it is a bad idea to compete with an injury if one has no idea the injury exists. He may have told his trainer, but his trainer is ethically bound to maintain confidentiality unless it is believed that breaking it is in Oscar's best interests. Let's say that Oscar and his trainer may not always agree what Oscar's "best interests" are… (it's an active area of sports ethics research). The FIA didn't have a category covering the operation and did not at any point have reason to call him in to do operation-specific testing (as a crash or evidence of in-weekend medical effect would have provided), so couldn't stop him. More relevant was the previous race, where Carlos was clearly in a lot of pain in FP1. However, the FIA couldn't tell whether it was food poisoning (which in itself is not grounds to block participation) or appendicitis (which is). This is a common issue - when I got appendicitis, I went to the hospital 3 times and trained doctors missed it the first 2 times (long story). As soon as the differentiation became possible after FP2, the FIA was in a position to block further participation - but by then everyone knew that was a moot point. F1 is probably the one series where if the doctors say no, it's no (at least, if the FIA finds out before the race). One of the holdovers from the Sid Watkins era is that the FIA's medical delegate is authorised to veto absolutely everyone, including the FIA President and everyone at Liberty, on safety matters of imminent effect. (They do have to be imminent - unprecedented conditions like Qatar 2023 aren't covered unless medical consequences can be proven to apply to the F1 drivers). They have stopped practise sessions. In Japan 2007, Gary Hartstein managed to force the Safety Car out for 19 laps because he told Bernie Ecclestone that he would be personally liable if he released the Safety Car in defiance of his orders (it was raining and it was unclear if the road ambulance could reach the hospital in the regulation time - the helicopter was grounded).

the whole thing around how drivers will race even when injured and/or sick for the sake of their teams and the championships rlly gives me the ick honestly, especially bc of the message it's sending to kids in junior series, which is that they should be willing to sacrifice their health and wellbeing if it means they go up in the standings or whatever. f1 historically being a dangerous sport probably hasn't helped this idea, esp taking into account the glorification of things like niki coming back after his accident in '76 to keep on fighting for the wdc and senna's death, but the fact that it's persisted this long honestly can have some really dangerous implications. yes, these injured drivers go onto win races and championships (niki only losing the wdc at the last race in '76, max winning races and eventually the wdc 2021 despite blurry vision following silverstone, lewis winning formula a with a broken wrist (at 15 too which is properly mind boggling honestly), lewis getting pole in german 2019 despite having a 40ºC fever, carlos winning australia after appendicitis, oscar winning hungary with a broken rib) but imo it's setting a borderline dangerous precedent for other drivers and kids coming up through the junior formulas.

What annoys me about it is that the athletes themselves can't say no, in this sport or any other. They can't and won't say no because they've been taught to not listen to their bodies and to push through and sometimes that they are weak if they need a break* and that the chance they have to be where they are is fleeting and they need to be on top all day every single day to not lose it. So they won't say no.

Remember Qatar 23? Some of these drivers reported losing vision in the corners due to the heat and the effort and they didn't stop. Ocon threw up in his helmet twice and he didn't stop. George said he almost passed out before the end of the race. He didn't stop. Only Sargeant stopped.

Noah Lyles ran the 200m with covid and he might or might not have permanent damage from doing so. And he still went.

What all of them and the ones you cited have in common, is that nobody around them said no for them. No one in Lyles entourage said man that's a bad idea. His girlfriend spent the night turning him around in his bed because of how much he coughed and she didn't say maybe you shouldn't go. No one said maybe it's a bad idea even though he had severe asthma in his childhood. Carlos was in horrible pain from appendicitis and no one told him maybe sit this one out. They gave him painkillers and sent him back out. Oscar had a broken rib and they sat him in the car all the same.

And sure these are adults, not puppets, not victims, they are responsible for themselves as adults and they do have some responsibility in these decisions. But truly even if they wanted to, which I'm not convinced they do, these people can't say no. The people around them should say no for them. They won't because they're greedy. The athletes don't see it because they've been primed not to see it and/or they also are greedy (for money or other things). No one is there to say no. I'm betting if people (doctors) are saying no, they are ignored. Someone needs to say no.

*btw remember that Lewis, who did not race in Qatar 23 because of the contact with George, said a whole thing about how that's just how it is and if the drivers suffered they had to train more because they weren't prepared enough. they are all part of this culture and very few seem to even notice it.

[daydreamerdrew]

Comics read this past week:

Marvel Comics:

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2005) #1-5

These issues were published across November 2004 to January 2005. All of them were written by Joe Casey and drawn by Scott Kolins. Issues #1-2 were colored by Morry Hollowell and issues #3-5 were colored by Will Quintana. There are still 3 more issues of this limited series that I haven’t read yet.

I actually really enjoyed this book. I thought it did a great job of fleshing out the Avengers’ early days based on the actual content of the early issues of The Avengers (1963) without resorting to rewriting those events. I think the book would be a bit difficult to follow at times for someone who had not read those early The Avengers issues because many scenes were specifically filled-in unseen moments in between actual scenes from those issues and this book doesn’t take the time to explain all of those plots, which I did think was the right approach that helped it maintain focus on what was actually important for this book’s story. And at the same time, this book was completely accessible to me as someone who has really only read those early issues of The Avengers and is largely unfamiliar with the decades of their publication that followed.

I liked the invented conflict of the Avengers struggling to get their priority clearance status that would allow them to more freely function as a superhero team. I liked the portrayal of the team’s growing pains on an interpersonal level as they tried to work together while all being very different people, though I think the aspect of that that they don’t know each other’s secret identities could have been emphasized more since that was really prominent to me in the early The Avengers issues. I liked the approach taken to Steve’s mental health issues because, while they were present, I found the framing of them to be more complex than how they were portrayed in the early issues. Also, this book did a much better job of convincing me of how important the Avengers were to Tony than the issues that I’ve read of The Avengers did.

I particularly enjoyed that the Avengers’ early attempts to have the Hulk as a member and their public endorsement of him negatively affected them after that didn’t work out, both because it meant he was repeatedly brought up even after he left the team and because it added to realistic consequences to his actions that wouldn’t be apparent within his own stories.

DC Comics:

Superman: Secret Origin (2009) #1-6

These issues were published across September 2009 to August 2010. All of them were written by Geoff Johns, penciled by Gary Frank, inked by Jon Sibal, and colored by Brad Anderson.

This book was ok, though I didn’t think it was as thematically rich as Superman: Birthright (2003). I think the biggest thing emphasized was that people shouldn’t look for someone else to save them. Before Clark reveals himself to the world as Superman it’s established that every day Lex Luthor selects a person, purportedly to reshape their life with his wealth and resources, from a crowd that forms outside his building to beg, though it’s really to use them as test subjects in his experiments. In the big climactic confrontation Superman tells the public, “I want you to stop looking for a great savior. Lex Luthor isn’t it. I’m not it. You are. All of you are. I do what I do because I was given a gift, but all of you were given gifts, too.” After this no one comes to Lex’s building to beg him to save them from their lives anymore. I did not really find really interesting. Along with it was an emphasis on not using other people, but instead being kind and ‘having a heart.’ I found the execution of the conflict around the people of Metropolis not trusting Superman and how much Lois Lane did trust Superman to be really flimsy. I did like that Ma and Pa Kent encouraged Clark to try to explore his heritage; I remember him being really indifferent about Krypton in The Man of Steel (1986) and being dissatisfied by that.

Flashpoint: Batman - Knight of Vengeance (2011) #1-3

These issues were published across June 2011 to August 2011. All of them were written by Brian Azzarello, drawn by Eduardo Risso, and colored by Patricia Mulvihill.

A really solid miniseries that I enjoyed. My prior experience with this character is what I’ve read of Tom King’s run on Batman (2016), which is almost all of it, and then his role in Infinite Frontier (2021) and Justice League Incarnate (2022). From all of that I did not know anything about Thomas’ relationship with Jim Gordon and I found it really interesting. I thought the plotting of this story was well-executed. That the structure initially withheld the information that this version of the Joker was Martha Wayne but I already knew that didn’t detract from the experience at all. I’ve really got no complaints to make about this book. I haven’t decided yet just how much reading/rereading I’ll do for this character but I do want to flesh out my understanding of his publication history. Though I know the next step is Flashpoint (2011), which I actually haven’t read before.

Fiction House:

the Kinks Mason stories in Fight Comics (1940) #2-10

With this batch of stories I went from January 1940 to September 1940, according to the publication dates recorded in the Catalog of Copyright Entries. All of the stories were signed as by Steve Broder, who appears to be a real person as the Grand Comics Database has a page for him although the creator credits in the public domain comics I read are usually pseudonyms. I’m assuming that Broder was just the artist and that the writer(s) of this character’s stories are unknown. The Grand Comics Database says that Broder was working in the Iger Shop and would turned 36 near the end of this batch.

I had a good time with these stories as I was in the mood for a Golden Age underwater adventurer with nice art and that’s what stories delivered. And the scans were all good quality. The writing of the very first Kinks Mason story was very choppy but that wasn’t a problem in any of these stories.

The stories in issues #2, #3, and #5 had Kinks Mason fighting against evil underwater kingdoms, which were all populated by humanoid amphibian creatures. The story in issue #4 had him fighting against what I had assumed was the ghost of the captain of a sunken ship, but Sneely, the pirate terror of the seven seas, explains that, “I’ve lived here a long, long time. I’ll continue to live a long time, for I’ve drunk a magic potion that will keep me alive under water for centuries!” The story in issue #6 had him fighting against other humans at the defense of an underwater kingdom, which was populated by beings that looked like regular humans. The story in issue #7 had him fighting against poachers. The story in issue #8 had him fighting against foreign agents trying to steal a torpedo sight from sunken submarine. The story in issue #9 had him rescuing the trapped crew of a sunken submarine. And the story in issue #10 had him fighting against a large group of killer whales.

Issue #7 marked the first appearance of Battler, Kink Mason’s trained seal partner. This is presented as a usual part of the character as on the first page of the story, when Kinks is given his mission by a government official, he’s told, “Kinks, I called you because you’re the best man for the job and because of your trained seal, ‘Battler’.” The story in issue #8 provided the backstory of Kinks befriending a seal and then naming him Battler. And Battler’s been in all of Kinks Mason’s stories after that. The two are a great team as they can both understand one another and Battler is good at following orders, working on his own without orders, and intuitively knowing when to disobey orders in order to save Kinks.

[bullworthdrabbles]

Women in Bullworth: Zoe Taylor

TW: discussions of sexual abuse, trauma, CSA, Mr. Burton's ped* bullshit, self-harm, and other not-great stuff.

This one is super long and full of hard stuff to talk about don't read if you are not in the right headspace.

Oh boy, this one is going to be one of the hardest to write for me because I love Zoe and I know so many who love her as well. Then, there’s also a lot of triggering content in her story that needs to be discussed but hits me very close to my chest. This will likely be very long and particularly scathing due to just how frustrating Zoe’s story (or lack thereof) is to me. As a victim of CSA, this particular post is going to be very hard for me to discuss and will take me a long time to fully articulate. I’m sorry for how long it has taken me to write this, but I needed many breaks and to rant to several friends in order not to type all of this in all caps and through various curses.

Before I really discuss the tropes and stereotypes like I usually do I need to discuss the fact that as I write this series I’m seeing the unfortunate pattern arise of Rockstar sloppily using sexual violence against women in their stories without doing their research, taking the time to consider the consequence that happening would have in someone’s life, and just what message they are sending with how they tackle these kinds of stories. Sexual abuse and teachers using their power to take advantage of teens and minors is an unfortunate reality that does happen in high schools. I can understand the idea of wanting to discuss this issue when your game is set in high school where these things can happen, but this type of story is horrific and to do it justice requires a sensitivity Rockstar simply didn’t deliver.

The bully wiki and the game itself states that Zoe was expelled from the school for reporting Mr. Burton's sexual harassment and based on the previous missions involving this disgusting man we know Zoe isn’t the only victim. Does he ever get held accountable? Does he face any sort of punishment despite Jimmy quite literally being a witness and having evidence thumbtacked to his wall of Mr. Burton's disgusting behavior that he made Jimmy also take part in? No, not really, he only gets “fired” at the end of the game, and by “fired” I mean you still see him walking around the school like nothing happened, still saying the same shit and having access to underage girls. If it was just the lack of accountability I could interpret this as Rockstar taking a very bleak but realistic look at the situation. I could maybe think they were trying to show the disgusting truth that victims are almost never believed even with a mountain of evidence stacked against the perpetrator. They could be showing that it takes so much traumatizing bullshit just to try to get justice only for nothing to happen.

However, they messed up this story almost comically which makes me think it was just a cheap way to get her out of the school because they clearly didn't think about how abuse and a violation of someone’s bodily autonomy would impact an actual victim. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t simply flip a portapotty onto the person who harassed and violated my bodily autonomy. I'm not a generally violent person, but I do think about harming my abuser in incredibly violent ways because of how much bullshit he has put me through. Rockstar never has her dealing with the side-effects and real mental toll this kind of abuse does to a person unless it’s time to make it a funny mission. Turning real horrific trauma into nothing more than a motive for a prank. Then there’s the dialogue of her talking about liking older guys, which I want desperately to believe is Rockstar trying to insinuate that Zoe is coping with her trauma via hypersexuality. Hypersexuality is a common unhealthy coping mechanism for survivors of sexual trauma, they purposely seek out sexual encounters as a way of reclaiming power and bodily autonomy sexually. It can also be seen as self-harm behavior if the survivor is having lots of purposely unprotected sex. But Rockstar clearly didn’t do enough research into sexual trauma responses, much less the basic realities of surviving sexual trauma, so I highly doubt that they even considered this when writing these lines.

Unfortunately, Rockstar was just trying to make her a “not like other girls” stereotype, I bet you thought I wasn’t going to bring it up but sadly I am. Zoe is one of the better-written female characters, but that isn’t really saying much when all the other girls are just cardboard cheap conflict and plot devices. We actually know a lot more about her background than we do the other girls, does it really change that she doesn’t serve much of a plot-significant role? Nope. Does this change the fact that Rockstar once again used sexual trauma as a cheap mission fodder? Nope? Is she allowed to be more than just a health pack, quest giver, and reward? If you think her being the “girl the protagonist gets with at the end” counts maybe, but to me, nope.

This was hard for me to say as it was a hard pill for me to swallow, but literally, all of her traits that separate her from the other girls are just so they could make her a “Tom-boy” and “not like other girls” stereotype. They don’t make her a fully formed unique person where her past, experiences, and traumas actually impact who she is as a person. No, they needed a final love interest for their protagonist so they just took his character traits and story and made some similar dialogue as the dialogue for Gary ( we can all admit there was something going on before the betrayal between those two) then slapped it onto another ginger, now with boobs. The funny thing is she doesn’t even seem that interested with Jimmy until the very end, their whole relationship seems forced and rushed so Rockstar fucked even that up. They clearly had a lot of ideas they wanted to touch on but because of their own unwillingness to take the time to flesh her out instead, we got...well everything I said before.

I’ve said it a thousand times and I will say it again, a lot of these problems could have been avoided. Rockstar could have taken their female characters seriously, could have written them well if that was one of their focuses, but it wasn’t. I love this game and I love a lot of these characters but I feel that even if this game provided me years' worth of comfort and entertainment, it should still be called out for its issues and how it mishandles very serious and sensitive issues. I hope this series and my thoughts on these characters made you think about your own writing and works you see making similar mistakes. I can tell that none of these errors came from a place of malice, but deep ignorance and works that perpetuate said ignorance can send harmful messages to people. I hope by shedding light on this I may make you re-examine the messages you see surrounding female characters in media and their stereotypes. Thank you for reading my incredibly long rants.

[randomwankystuff]

Confession: Deku Annoys Me

Disclaimer: I’m not entirely caught up on BNHA - I read the manga/wiki pretty much at random. 

I can’t stand how obnoxiously perfect Deku is. He was presented as this underdog protagonist but hasn’t been since episode 1. And I don’t just mean his quirk - OFA is powerful, but All Might doesn’t have the same Gary Stu problems Deku has. My problem with Deku isn’t that he’s too physically powerful, but that he plays too many roles in class 1-A. Right now he’s:

1. A physical powerhouse. Only Todoroki, Bakugo, and nighttime Tokoyami can even compete.

2. Probably the fastest student. Full cowl 8% was already about as fast as Gran Torino, and Iida hasn’t been useful for several arcs...

3. The best strategist. Even though Yaomomo is canonically a genius, and Iida and Bakugou are more booksmart, most of the time it’s Midoriya that comes up with a brilliant yet simple plan to save everyone’s asses. Yaomomo only really seems to be relevant when she’s in school, taking a test. Midoriya had the best actually useful plans during the U.S.J. incident, Kamino, etc. 

4. The most effortlessly selfless. (I mean, this goes without saying, this is pretty much his defining character trait.)

5. The best leader. His classmates voted for him at the beginning of their first year, and pretty much everyone except Bakugou defers to him without hesitation in sticky situations.

6. The hardest worker. He’s always training, always trying to improve. Remember the air chair exercise in Season 1? Casually just squatting throughout the entire class. Everyone was in absolute awe.

7. The most inspirational. Everyone looks up to him, from Aoyama to Kota. Aizawa notes he and Bakugo are the pillars of 1-A.

8. The most social. Yeah he’s presented as an awkward nerd, but he makes friends in two seconds flat with everyone. He’s charmed his way into friendships with Aoyama and Todoroki. Eri absolutely adores him. He’s always sweet, thoughtful, likable. 

9. He’s even good looking. Ochako and Toga have crushes on him, and his art is designed to be pleasant to the eye. 

Although BNHA tries to pretend Deku has flaws, he actually doesn’t, because they’ve never had any real life consequences. 

“He’s insecure.” Well, his insecurity rarely hurts him. He was always committed to pursuing his dreams as a hero. He doesn’t lash out at others when he feels unworthy. When death is hammering at the door, he magically summons the confidence not just to act, but even to command and to inspire others. In real life, insecurity is often much more debilitating. Insecurity in real life often means you don’t even try because you believe you’ll fail, you get uncomfortable or temperamental around people who make you feel less than, and you don’t magically get a confidence boost when it’s convenient. Yaomomo’s arc is much more compelling than Deku’s when it comes to overcoming insecurity because, unlike Deku, her insecurity actually holds her back. 

“He’s an awkward nerd.” That hurt him when he was a child, hanging out with Bakugo, but since he entered UA, he manages to effortlessly charm everyone he knows, so really, he doesn’t have a significant social handicap. His awkwardness is presented as sincere, endearing, and funny more than anything.

“He’s selfless to a fault.” To what fault? He gets lectured, but he’s always right in the end. His charging into danger without any regard for his own safety has been proven to be the right thing to do several times. He inspired All Might to fight against the sludge monster. He saved Bakugo when he was kidnapped. Yeah, he breaks bones doing selfless things, but this is shonen - temporary pain has very little emotional weight because everyone gets hurt all the time, and then they get healed by magic. He breaks his bones, discovers he has legs, and then goes back to fighting at pretty much full strength. A cool looking scar doesn’t count as a real consequence of his selflessness. Honestly, I’m just waiting for Deku to rush in to save one person even though he’s warned against it, and because of that, the villains are alerted of their presence/he isn’t there to help others when they need them, and several other people die as a result. 

To be clear, none of what I’ve mentioned above is a problem on its own. OFA is obviously an absurdly powerful quirk. Midoriya spent years taking notes on heroes and learning from them. He’s naturally a selfless person - that’s the point of his character. He should be likable, clever, hardworking, and inspirational. But he shouldn’t be the strongest AND fastest AND smartest AND most selfless AND the best leader AND the hardest working AND the most charismatic AND the most social, all while having pretty much zero relevant flaws. It’s absurd. Especially in a place like UA - isn’t it supposed to be one of the two best hero schools in the country?

I know plenty of people who have gone to top tier universities, work at Google, are top ranked athletes, etc. None of them have been anywhere near as perfect as Midoriya. Generally, if you’re the most athletic person in the room, it’s not likely you’re also the smartest. If you’re the most likable, you’re probably not the hardest working. If you’re the most selfless, you’re probably not the leader who gains everyone’s undying loyalty and respect. Perfection almost never happens. You can’t be the best at everything, especially at a place like UA, which is supposed to be the Harvard of the BNHA world. Rather, everyone should shine in certain areas only. For example:

Yaomomo is canonically a genius, and she’s also shown to be meticulous and hardworking. She should be the best strategist of 1-A.

Ojiro made it to UA with just a tail - no fancy, overpowered tricks, just a damn tail. Just think about how hard you have to work to stand on the same level as people who can destroy buildings with a punch, shock a dozen people simultaneously with electricity, and shatter rock with their ears. It’s not even some magical tail, it’s just a damn tail. He has to have worked his ass off to get in incredible shape, think of ways to creatively use his quirk, and learn martial arts. Ojiro should be the hardest worker of 1-A.

Kirishima is easygoing, loving, loyal, and charming. He should be the one befriending Aoyama, earning people’s trust, inspiring children. He should be the most social and charismatic of 1-A. 

Highlighting the abilities and positive traits of these three would be a easy way to get more attention on BNHA’s fantastic cast while also helping Deku grow as a character.

Or, just treat Deku the way BNHA treats All Might. All Might is amazing but he’s far from perfect. He’s not the best strategist - he’s very smart, but he still relied on Nighteye to look out for him. He’s caring and charming, but is shown to be a pretty mediocre teacher. His overwhelming selflessness and his heart-over-head mentality actually had consequences in that it cost him his relationship with Nighteye. His trusting nature and his empathy for the powerless led to conflict and complications when he chose Midoriya over Mirio. His heroic drive wrecked his health, forced him into retirement, and prevented him from saving more people.

Even Mirio, who is probably a Gary Stu, gets arguably better treatment than Deku because, although he’s very powerful, he doesn’t shine academically/strategically the way Deku does, and he also literally loses his quirk as a result of his selflessness. Todoroki and Bakugo both also have plenty of flaws/weaknesses, and suffer for their mistakes all the time.

I still root for Deku, but honestly I continue to follow BNHA mostly for characters like Todoroki, Aizawa, Kirishima, and Yaomomo.

[randomnumbers751650]

Sometimes people ask a thing like “how did it get so big?” This is almost like any meme in the internet and sometimes even whatever is in the Top 10 bestselling books of any list. Due to being a historian of economic thought, I’m study the ascension of the idea of the entrepreneur as a hero, how it happened and its consequences, both good and bad. Therefore, I couldn’t avoid Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. It wasn’t a good experience and I’ll talk more about it under the cut.

I think we all know how much of a controversial person Ayn Rand was. But it worked. She’s one of the most influential writers of the 20th century whether we like it or not. Like, a lot of people say she hates the poor and minorities. It’s even a meme, like there’s a joke SCP that makes everything it comes into contact unnecessarily verbose and one of the incidents was a sticky note written “I hate poor people” that becomes a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

After reading her work, I can safely say these are traps she set up in her own work. Not only that, these traps hide the true problems of her work.

In first place, we need to consider her demographic target. That wasn’t me, if I wasn’t researching, I wouldn’t even bother reading it. Like, I remember I saw in the internet a game called “The Jihad to Destroy Barney” and someone commenting: “because 20-years old thinking they’re funny were obviously the demographic target of Barney the Dinosaur”. Rand knew what her demographic target was, after working in Hollywood for so many years.

One might think that her demographic target was people like her, but it’s wider than that. Through all her book, producers (she doesn’t use the word ‘entrepreneur’, but it’s obviously the same) are the protagonists. Dagny shows her dedication to her railway, always looking for ways to improve it, to hire the best people to work with her, to deliver the best product she can, always treating others with respect. All the producers are people full of passion for what they do. They do not just for the money, they do it to express themselves (but still want/should be paid).

Meanwhile their enemies are the government organs that want to curb them, by introducing legislation to make everything equal, like people are forbidden to be fired, prices are controlled and so on. And they are evil, they are hypocrites who don’t really believe in the altruistic values they spouse or they are too dumb to realize they’re being hypocrites. They are always men in position of power, evil bureaucrats, quisling industrialists, hypocrite union leaders (though the union leader, Fred Kinnan, interestingly is the most sympathetic of the villains, and actually gets away scot free, to the point some think he’s a Galt agent undercover).

Rand aimed for the real life entrepreneur identify with the “heroes”. All the companies have names of their founders in their titles, Taggart Terminal, d’Anconia Copper, and so on. Their enemies show their true faces by naming themselves with abstract titles, like National Union and so on. She aimed the person who ever had to deal with the Health Department, with the Labor Department, who has to fills forms and more forms and say “Wouldn’t the world be a terrible place if it wasn’t for you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you didn’t have to do all of this? If you just had the opportunity to truly express yourself? Free from the prying eyes of government inspectors? Rejoice, because I have the answer!”

Rand answers this with the Galt’s Gulch – a utopia of freedom, where the word “give” is taboo, while leaving the outside world of looters and moochers to destroy itself. All the producers are gathered to escape the terrible collectivist world around her. Everyone has money and, since they’re all enlightened by the principles of greed and selfishness, the prices are small, even symbolic. Monopolies are good and rivals are always being taken down, and they rejoice with it, both winner and loser, because they contributed to the expansion of human spirit.

When John Galt says “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”, he’s implying all men who belong to this valley. They are not ashamed of taking low jobs, because they know their true power is what they do with their minds and hands. Francisco is shown to be perfect in everything he does, makes one think he’s a Gary Stu, but it’s because, according to the book’s philosophy, if you’re a true man, anything you do you become the best. For this reason, Galt’s Gulch is quite diverse, because it has not only industrialists, but also factory workers and small businessmen who share their ideals. And not only workers, but also artists, intellectuals and others.

This is why I think the argument “this books hates poor people” might not be accurate. The low worker whom Eddie Willers meets in the beginning is actually John Galt in disguise. This I think it’s the most important part to understand why Atlas Shrugged was so influential with small businessmen when published: John Galt is where the Übermensch and the Everyman meet. “Who is John Galt?” Anyone can be John Galt – the same way anyone can be Bella Swan, anyone can be Ritsuka Fujimaru (at least before the 5th singularity), anyone can be Kirito Kirigaya – the idealized self of the entrepreneur.

Thus, one is not born a “man”, but becomes one. Dagny and Hank’s entire character development is to become “men”, to learn to love themselves more than what they create, no matter how passionate they are. This contrasts with Eddie Willers, Dagny’s right hand man, probably the most tragic character of the tale.

Eddie loved the railway just as Dagny. He’s been her friend for so long, and even developed feelings for her. But the book constantly observes that Eddy doesn’t have the capacity to lead something as important as a railway. But he does it nevertheless, dedicating all his resources and passion for the railway. But, unlike Dagny, he doesn’t learn to look for greater things. Thus, he ends the novel stuck in a railway, defeated and probably left to die.

This is controversial, so much everyone still discusses his fate. In the movie adaptation, they deviate from the novel by having the heroes making a point to rescue him from his fate. In Jennifer Burns’s biography, she mentions a letter Ayn Rand received asking about Eddie and she replies that in a collectivist society, Eddie would’ve perished, while in a free one he’d be living okay. Nevertheless, this reveals a truth about that world: not everyone will become a “man”. Eddie would never become a “man”.

Since pity is against Galt’s doctrine, Eddie cannot be pitied. He has to live under the mercy of his Galtian overlords. He has only two options: either worship the feet that trample him, expecting his breadcrumbs fall from their banquet table, or to question his place in the world, thus denying that A is A, and be trampled harder. It really doesn’t matter his kindness, his dedication, he’s not a “man”, and thus has more in common with the looters and moochers than the heroes. Thus, if Eddie ever becomes an obstacle to the productive forces, even if unintentionally, he has to be trampled.

While one might think that I’m being unfair, it should be reminded that Ayn Rand openly advocated the people who were killing Natives during the American expansion to the West were doing nothing wrong. The Natives were actually privileged for being trampled by the productive forces, thus creating the great nation. The same argument can be made for the colonized people and even to the “essential workers” of this pandemic – since apparently people who take this book seriously are one of the most resistant forces to lockdowns and mask mandates, you can guess why.

And this is why Rand hated the environmental movement, because it puts an obstacle to the productive process. Nature can only react with deaf indifference to Galt’s speech. For Rand, this is unforgivable. Would it be surprising if oil tycoons were fans of Rand’s work?

In the end, the producers execute their revenge against the world that rejected them. Galt’s speech caused a lot of disturbance and the last chapters deal with its consequences, with more villains being evil for no reason and more showing how awesome their heroes are. Galt becomes more and more like Jesus, even with a gnostic Judas in Dagny helping him. In fact, in the funniest part of the book, where it comes THIS close from being self-aware, he says to his tormenters, when they asked to cooperate with him: “It took me three hours on the radio to tell me why”. It gave me angry laughter.

In the end of the day, what matters? This is a work of fiction, where caricatures of men and women fight each other. The entrepreneurial process works nothing like described in the book. It takes a naïve view of selfishness, upon saying that if everyone was selfish the world would be a better place, when in reality, if you expect selfishness, it’s what you’ll get.

It’s never explained how they invented their inventions, only that they did it and it’s awesome. The One-Man Industrial Revolution trope is one that I loathe a lot, because it misrepresents the innovation process. It requires so many factors, including government funding – scratch that, it REQUIRES government funding because technologies like touch-screen used to be so risky that no private company would take seriously and government can fund because it doesn’t go bankrupt the same way. Even if we take it as a metaphor, it doesn’t work when you stop to think.

Rand belongs to the same class of writers as Stephenie Meyer and Christian Weston Chandler. But she wanted to influence the world, she wanted it to be more than entertainement, much more. Thanks to her publishing network and appeal to real problems, she did it. This is why the problems of her work require critique. And I hope anyone reading this try to understand better what “relatability” means, this is what relatability can do. Stop trying to look for relatability everywhere, let it just come naturally and if it doesn’t come enjoy the story!

[ianpricepsychauthor]

Alarmed by the Government’s COVID “Project Fear?” That was just the warm-up act...

Over the last year, those of us in the psychology profession have been increasingly unhappy at SAGE’s “weaponising” of behavoural scientists to drive compliance in the population. I was a co-signatory on an open letter written by Gary Sidley to the British Psychological Society. Since then, others have dissected the techniques used by the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B). In an article on Conservative Woman, Sonia Elijah includes a screenshot from a SAGE meeting listing the ten key options for managing the population’s behaviours. Among these are:

- “Use media to increase sense of personal threat” and

- “Consider use of social disapproval for failure to comply”

For all the impressive talk of “science”, these are two blunt instruments with which the UK has been bludgeoned over the head for the last year. And it’s worked. Compliance has been high; the press has been rife with coverage of “covidiots” and, as I’ve seen from my street WhatsApp group, neighbour has called the police on neighbour. Job done. The unintended consequence - including what one NHS doctor has this week called a “mental health pandemic” will be with us for decades.

Like other psychologists, I read Thaler & Susstein and other “nudge” practitioners. I bought a book by Richard Layard, now SAGE’s nudger-in-chief. At the time, it was all for very benign objectives - rather than threaten people with fines for late taxes, suggest that everyone else has already paid up. That way, the social proof will “nudge” people towards paying also. But these techniques are now being used in a sinister psy-ops war against the population that, after all, are paying these scientists’ salaries and pensions. And the practice appears to be habit forming.

Watch as these techniques are employed to bring the population - already protesting about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods - to heel on the next battle: Net Zero. Those that govern us appear to have become habituated to the use of these techniques.

“If one lesson from the pandemic is that taking serious action in a timely manner is key,” said Parliamentary speaker Sir Lindsey Hoyle,  “then shouldn’t this also be true in terms of climate change?”

Everything the Government is now doing on climate change is following the SPI-B playbook: From declaring a “climate emergency” to setting up a “Climate Assembly” to confect a form of social acceptance (see the Government’s propaganda video).

If you point out that the house is not on fire, you risk being cancelled as described by Bjorn Lomborg whose measured, scientifically-informed push-back against the “existential threat” narrative causes him to face talks being cancelled as described in a recent news article.

It’s just possible that the Government has overreached. I certainly hope that recent protests about the grotesquely freedom-encroaching LTNs is something of a “tipping point” - a phrase used to me by a local activist recently. In Government documents, I come across the word “shift” a lot. The Mayor of London’s Environment Strategy document says:

“Londoners’ dependency on cars must be reduced. Analysis suggests that three quarters of journeys now made by car could be done on foot, by bicycle, or by public transport. Such a shift also encourages Londoners to lead a more active and healthy lifestyle.”

The Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee recognises there is work to do to make us give up our gas boilers for heat pumps that won’t work as well: “It will require an attitudinal shift,” he says.

I’m all in favour of proportionate action on the environement. But this stuff? I’m not planning on shifting any time soon and I expect you’re not either.

[cassandracaiin]

Gary’s Mental Health: An Analysis of His Character.

Spoilers ahead.

If you play Love Island The Game 2019 and make it to Day 26, you stumble upon a concerned Gary, who is sitting by himself. After a brief chat, he proceeds to tell your MC that he’s had some problems with how he felt about his body in the past. He often comes across a simple guy, who is always bantering and fooling around, and most players tend to think that he only talks about his nan and cranes, so the sudden seriousness of this conversation may have seemed odd for some of you. Despite this, the unexpected confession he makes didn’t go unnoticed by the fandom, with many starting to appreciate him more because of it.

Few realize how important and revealing this conversation is. If you connect the right dots across the whole game, it helps to explain lots of his actions, beliefs and behavior. So, in this analysis I’ll be doing that: I’ll be providing you with all the information you’ll need to understand the subject, inserting exact quotes of the game and breaking down some crucial scenes. Because of this, this post will be really long, so get comfy, grab some snacks and prepare for an extensive reading.

Before starting, I must remind you that Gary is, indeed, a fictional character. That’s why I’ll be analyzing quotes and scenes straight out of the game and trying not to speculate furthermore. I think it’s interesting to tie the traits and personality of a fictional character to real life psychology and mental health, so this will be me basically explaining his condition and relating it to his canon personality and actions. Also, in some portions of this post I’ll be applying “real world rules”, because his mental illness is a real thing that happens in the real world.

I’ll go as far as to say that, after reading this entire rant, you’ll probably never see Gary the same way again— but that’s okay, because he’s such a layered character who also used to struggle with a mental illness and, instead of mental illnesses being a taboo topic, they should be met with open arms and discussed overtly and sincerely.

Mental Illness Warning/Trigger.

As I mentioned before, Gary’s condition is a real thing, so this post contains several mentions of mental health related topics and illnesses. If you feel uncomfortable about this type of things, I advise you not to keep reading. I’ll try to keep it as light and understandable as possible, regardless. Those who want to dive deeper should check the links I’ll leave at the end of the post.

This is a heavy topic, but I strongly believe it should be addressed. Even more importantly, I want to spread awareness, because, as you will read further ahead, this is still an under-recognized and frequently left untreated condition, that is becoming more and more common all around the world.

Disclaimer: I’m not a psychiatrist, but I am a med student. I’ve had classes and training about mental health and, specifically, about Gary’s condition. I’ll be leaving some extra sources and additional content down below, for those who are interested in verifying the information that I’ll be breaking down for you. Also, I’m open to receive feedback about it from someone who could know more than me, such as a doctor or a psychiatrist, because, as I said, I’m still just a med student.

So, without further do, let’s get started.

What does Gary have?

After reading the conversation he has with MC in Day 26, Gary’s evident diagnosis is Muscle Dysmorphia. We’ll be using the acronym MD to refer to it from now on.

What is MD?

MD is a subtype of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).

What is a BDD, you may ask? It’s a condition in which people see themselves differently than others see them, and it’s characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with one's appearance, that are really difficult to resist or control. These unwanted thoughts or ideas (called “obsessions”) make them feel that they need to perform certain activities (called “compulsions”). When applied to MD, the obsession becomes the level of muscularity, and the compulsion is to achieve a higher level of muscularity.

MD comes with the exaggerated belief that one's own body is too small, too skinny or scrawny, even though the individual's build is normal or exceptionally large and muscular already. Is often confused with vanity, but this is not the case, as most MD patients don't want to look great, they just want to look acceptable. Typically, people with MD have low self-esteem. It can be experienced by either males or females, but in this post I’ll be addressing the patients as males, because I will be also relating it to unhealthy masculinity.

What causes MD? It doesn’t have a specific cause, but there are factors that could help its development. Most studies sustain that suffering from bullying for smallness or weakness is the most frequent trait in MD patients. Some also attribute this disorder to the effect of the media, as society bombards people at younger ages with images of what an “ideal” body looks like, even more considering how marketing campaigns once targeting only female body image insecurities are now aimed at males as well. Because of this, MD is likely to increase in general population.

Does it have a treatment? Yes, it does. Most are treated with therapy that targets damaging behavior, as for example, cut down on the amount of time they’re checking themselves in the mirror or in the gym, which helps them think less about their appearance. Therapists also help them deal with the fears they might have, like possibly losing muscle mass or size if they exercise less.

Many do not seek treatment; the biggest hurdle is convincing the person with MD that he needs help. The psychological and social consequences often go unrecognized, especially because they usually appear to be in good health, at least in the short term. To properly address MD, society has to change in how we approach our body image in general. Traditionally, males are not supposed to be concerned with looks, let alone talk about them, because if they do, they will be viewed as “feminine”. Encouraging men to talk about their inner feelings is a good first step to bring down stigmas about their body image.

How does MD affect someone’s life?

People with MD engage in behaviors aimed at achieving a muscular physique, as I mentioned earlier. They include excessive exercise, following rigid diets, and also spending countless amounts of money in supplements. Sometimes, they may also use anabolic-androgenic steroids (I’ll be referring to them as “AAS”), which cause serious damage to the body if used excessively.

Low self-esteem is a crucial factor here. People with MD try to enhance their self-esteem by building muscular mass, but they keep feeling that is never enough. “Every muscle could be bigger. I could be leaner” they tell themselves. They look at the mirror and they feel like everything is still small and weak, that they’re ugly, that they have no chest muscles, no arm muscles, no abs— And the reality is that they are often huge and incredibly muscular. Some of them also touch, flex, poke or pinch their muscles a lot, to make sure that they haven’t lost size.

Their relationships with other people often fall apart as time passes. They frequently avoid important social or occupational activities, like going to family reunions or to work, because of the need to maintain their excessive exercise and rigid diet.

How does one draw the line between being fitness or having MD? Believe it or not, Gary explains it in the game. He says, “I was really shocked when the doctor told me that if it’s getting in the way of the rest of your life, then it’s a problem”. Certainly, when working out and obsessing about the body becomes a problem in the person’s life, along with having these bad thoughts about themselves, it’s better to seek help and ask a health professional about it.

So, why is Day 26 so relevant?

Day 26 is important for Gary’s character because it tells us a huge lot of things about him and his past. Across his dialogue there are so many details that few people seem to truly notice, so I’ll be breaking down this day for you.

Let’s start analyzing this day from the beginning, with it being the first conversation MC has with Gary. She finds him sitting alone by the pool, rubbing his upper arm. After greeting her, he flexes his bicep and then pokes at it. If MC asks him if he is worried about his gains, he surprisingly responds “Yeah, I am a bit”. In comparison to the rest of his answers, this is the one that tells us that the reason he is bummed out is because of how he feels about his body, rather than how he actually looks.

Next, he asks “Do you think I look as good as I did when we first met?”. After seeing him acting this way, we can notice that he is looking for reassurance, but even if MC answers that he looks better every day, he responds with things like “Thanks! It’s nice to have that support, even if I don’t think it’s true” and “I never believe anyone when they say I look buff”. As you probably read in this post, this is a common trait amongst individuals with MD. Even when people around them tell them that they are big, muscular, huge and so on, they never truly believe it themselves because they just can’t see themselves in that way—the person that looks back at them in the mirror is still somewhat skinny. And here’s a huge clarification: Gary knows that people think he is buff, but he doesn’t see it himself, and that’s why he doesn’t exactly believe it.

At this point, I think Gary is starting to notice that the chat could turn to a topic that he’s not ready to talk about yet, because he seems to divert the conversation by saying that the reason he doesn’t believe he’s buff is because he simply doesn’t want to get big-headed about it, and that thinking this way keeps him motivated. But even with those modest answers, he’s still letting us know that he’s always aiming at improving his physique.

And after that, he flexes his arm again. If you payed attention, you may have noticed a pattern here, which is another common characteristic of MD patients: the one where they have the compulsion to feel and touch their muscles, as a way of making sure they’re not as skinny as they think they are.

Gary finishes the chat by commenting lightheartedly “Those weights aren’t going to lift themselves” and walking off in the direction of the gym. This bit actually makes me sad, because it leads me to think that he gave in to the compulsion of going to the gym.

After the challenge, MC meets him again and he, indeed, says “I started to do some weights, but then I had to check my head a bit”, indicating that after compulsively going to the gym, he realized that he wasn’t working out for the right reasons and what was actually driving him to exercise were the intrusive thoughts of his MD. Beyond that, this is also a sign that he can actually distinguish between his normal and healthy interest in working out and the compulsions caused by MD.

Later in the conversation, he explains that it all started when he used to see this massive and muscular superheroes in comics and noticed he didn’t look like them, because he was small, even smaller than the rest of the kids at school. He tells MC, “I’d look at those superheroes, and then back at myself. I didn’t look like them”. This is a clear reference to the media influencing the development of BBD’s and specially MD in younger boys.

It’s evident that at this point in his life he began to believe that having a muscular body would be a solution to his problems, and you can confirm that in this phrase: “It can feel like everything is telling you, things will be better if you’re stronger or more muscly”. And after his nan stepped in to take on the role of his dad, the bullying towards him increased, which just made this belief even stronger. “And whenever someone would say something to me, I’d wish I was bigger and stronger than them so they wouldn’t dare” he states, following with “So when I got older, I started working out”.

Gary goes on to say that exercising didn’t help on the long run. “At first, working out made a huge difference. I started to feel more confident. I felt like I could stick up for myself, and I got a lot more positive comments. People started to notice me in a good way, you know?” he declares. He basically tells MC that he started building his self-esteem around his physique, rather than around his inner self.

“The problem is, it never felt enough”. We see here, once again, a classic trait of people suffering from MD.

After this, comes a phrase that got me thinking: “Especially once I left school and had more time and money”. When reading this, I asked myself why having more money was relevant in things going downhill for Gary. By this point, he had already been working out and probably paying for the gym membership anyway, so I figured that this “new” money could have gone elsewhere, maybe in buying supplements to grow muscle mass faster. I can’t rule out completely the possibility that he got to the point of using AAS, but giving his personality and recovery I don’t think he went that far. Or at least I hope he didn’t.

“I kept going to the gym even when I knew I’d been going too much” he continues “It was actually my nan who noticed things were getting out of hand”. For this, us Gary fans should feel grateful. This is one of the billion reasons why he loves his nan so much. The woman rescued him from sinking deeper into his disorder, she was the only one who noticed that he wasn’t in a good place and that working out was actually tearing his life apart. She could see right through the healthy and good looking muscular man she had in front of him, as nobody else was able to see that he was still just a scrawny insecure boy on the inside. This was probably one of the lowest points in his life, if not the lowest, and his nan pulled him up and stuck with him through it all.

Afterwards, Gary states again that he struggled when it came to stop exercising. “I’d hurt my wrist cos I was lifting more than I should, but I didn’t rest or stop lifting so the problem just kept getting worse” he says “Eventually it got so bad that I had to take time off work, but I was still trying to go to the gym because I couldn’t stand missing sessions”. Even if he wanted to stop, the compulsions and unwanted thoughts took over him and he kept going to the gym.

When being asked if he couldn’t see how bad the situation was, Gary answers with “Being so strong and tough was so important to me that it felt like I couldn’t ask for help”, yet again being a reference of the way society influences young men, leading them to believe that being masculine and strong means also not talking about one’s feelings, less opening to others about one’s insecurities.

When talking about his therapy, he explains that once he started speaking about how he felt, he could see everything more clearly. He says “I’d lost sight of why I wanted to be so buff before. I couldn’t see that it wasn’t good for me”. Indeed, at first he wanted to get more muscular to enhance his self-esteem, to make himself feel better and gain confidence, but at that point it had become an actual disorder, getting in the middle of his life, getting him injured and making him stop going to work, amongst other things. Focusing on his body was actually making him feel worse because it came along with the sensation that he wasn’t making progress, even after all the time and effort he’d put into being more muscular. He also comments “By that point, I was like, ‘mate, working out is my life’”, this also being a characteristic of patients with MD, as their obsession takes over their life.

To wrap this section of this post, let’s talk shortly about his recovery. Gary says that his wrist eventually healed and that he kept going to therapy. “It took a while, but now I know when I’m doing something for the right reasons” he tells MC “It’s a constant balance though. You have to keep working on it”. After starting therapy, he understood that he can keep working out and caring about his looks without it taking over his life again or making him feel worse about his image, but that he will always have to maintain a certain equilibrium, so he doesn’t get out of control again.

“It’s okay for me to work out and be active, but I have to check in with myself. If those thoughts start coming back I know to call up my GP and get talking again”. This phrases are a total relief, as they let us know that he has learned when to seek help and, more importantly, to read the signs of his own mind telling him about his MD thoughts coming back. It’s even more relieving when he finishes with “I can still have tough moments, but I’m so much better at working through them now”.

Overall, Day 26 makes us realize that he hasn’t always been as confident as he seems, less felt good about his body image. It gives his character more depth; he’s not just a lighthearted lad that talks about cranes, makes dad jokes and loves his nan anymore. And reading between lines helps us get an even fuller picture of what he went through and the state he is in now.

How do MD and his past affect Gary’s general behavior?

After all that information, let’s start this with something simpler. I’m going to name a few stressful events for Gary during his time at the Villa: the morning after the first recoupling, Lucas and Henrik’s arrival and all the girls-pick recouplings.

Where is he after all those events? You guessed it, he’s at the gym.

I have been asked if this is him working out to relieve anxiety, but I’m not sure if it’s always the case. Of course, he mentions that for him there’s nothing like burning off some tension in the gym, so most times he could be working out to clear his mind and to feel less stressed out.

Despite this, in other situations and considering his condition, it could be also him starting to feel insecure about himself. It’s likely that when he begins feeling that way, those bad thoughts about his body image and compulsions, caused by MD, start to come back, so he can’t avoid going to the gym to make sure he doesn’t lose body mass and muscle. Because of his MD, he could have the sensation that, if he loses size, bad things will happen to him—girls won’t pick him at the recouplings, people will start to make fun of him again for being small, he’ll look less attractive in comparison to the rest of the male Islanders and so on. Having all of this in consideration, in some cases I actually think it’s him still struggling with insecurity and his MD, rather than just anxiety and stress.

There is a moment in the game that got me confused at first, but after thinking about it I was able to figure out what was really going on. It happens when MC goes to spot the boys at the gym and, during the conversation, Rahim points out “See! I told you your form was off, Gary”, which makes the corners of Gary’s lips turn upside down. “All right, settle down. I don’t usually use a gym, okay” he responds and strikes a pose, flexing “This is all natural…”. I’m sure that in this moment he was lying. From what he confessed in Day 26, we know he’s been working out since his teens (remember that he’s 23, so he has at least been doing it for five or six years), so it’s obvious that his body built is not exactly natural, more so if we consider that he used to get bullied for being too small. In this situation and with a recoupling coming soon, he probably didn’t want to get embarrassed by Rahim’s comment in front of MC, so he blurted out some excuse, basically saying that his bad form is technically product of him being unexperienced. Again, we see him being insecure.

Now, I’m not saying that him being at the gym and working out is always a bad thing. In fact, he it looks like he has fun and socializes with the rest of the boys when they’re all exercising together. He seems to have a good balance of how much time he spends there and, most importantly, knows when to stop. We notice this when he tells MC things like “There’s nothing like burning off some tension in the gym. But I need to have some other ways to deal with how I’m feeling too” and “I don’t want to end up just going to the gym whenever I’m bored or stressed out about something else”. The thing is, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we find him at the gym after stressful events, even more when you have in mind that he doesn’t want to go there with the sole purpose of relieving stress.

So, we see Gary often flexing his muscles, right? I actually think this behavior of his has two sides. As you may have read earlier in this post, people with MD have this tendency to touch their muscles a lot. I think that in situations of stress like Day 26 this could be the case for him. But the other side of it, and the most important one in my opinion, is that this adds a cheeky, playful and confident aspect to his character. It lets us know that he enjoys the attention and that he likes to show off.

Now, it’s certain that him showing off means that his recovering has been really successful so far, knowing that people with MD tend to avoid showing their body to others because they are ashamed of the way they look. The fact that he’s in a swimming suit during the entire show, being recorded for national TV and knowing millions of people are watching, is a huge signal that he feels significantly better about his body and image. He has learned to love and appreciate his body in some way, hence the question he so often asks, so cheekily “Like what you see?” and he feels proud enough to show it off. The fact that he knows he’s attractive to others makes all the difference for his self-image, even if he doesn’t necessarily believe it himself. And, trust me, that with him being a MD patient it took him a lot to get where he is now in terms of confidence and feeling comfortable in his own skin.

Moving to another topic, something that always caught my attention is that Gary is constantly worrying about others. We see this in cases like when he comforts Lottie after Hannah gets dumped from the Island or when he pulls her for a chat when he notices that she’s stressed out about the Rocco situation, when he offers Chelsea a tissue after he sees her crying over the gossip-sneezer drama, all of the moments he demonstrates being protective of MC’s feelings when they’re coupled up and even during his Mr. Love Island speech. His type also includes a girl who cares about others and doesn’t get involved in drama, to match his personality. After analyzing his past, we understand why he is always trying to reach out when another Islander feels sad and why he is one of the first ones to offer a helping hand. It’s mainly because there was a time in his life when he struggled with getting help for feeling bad about himself and wished someone had reached out to him in a similar way. He knows that people could be struggling internally without anyone noticing, just like it happened to him.

I’m sure that during his stay in the Villa, Gary tries his best not to hurt anyone. An example of this is his chat with MC after he lies about kissing Marisol. He feels bad about it and promises to apologize to her, and the players don’t get frowns for calling him out as a signal that he owns his mistake. Another example is if MC chooses to couple with him in Day 9, right after the recoupling Gary tells her that he feels bad for Lottie, because he knows that she fancies him. He says, with a sad expression “I feel bad that I’m here treading on someone’s toes, but I guess that’s what it’s about, right? I just hope everyone here finds someone that wants to be with them, long term”.

If you’ve gone this far in this post, I’m sure that by now you may have a few questions about his overall personality, so to finish this segment I’ll answer the most relevant ones:

Is Gary’s confident personality a facade? I’m one hundred percent sure it is not, especially considering that he has a cheeky sense of humor and that he likes to show off. In my opinion, he acts this way because he has learned that confidence is good. That his body is good enough to show, and that his personality, stories and awful jokes are worth sharing with others. It’s incredibly healthy for him to feel this way about himself.

Is Gary fragile? My answer to this is yes and no. Why yes? It’s mainly because we still see him acting insecure across the game and because he will always have traces of low self-esteem, giving his condition. He will be always more likely to overthink about his physical appearance and more prone to feel poorly about himself when he compares himself to more muscular men. Why no, then? Because after the end of the chat with him at Day 26, he states that now he knows when to seek help, how to maintain a balance on his exercising habits and that, overall, he has accepted his illness. He doesn’t get hijacked by bad thoughts about himself anymore and he seems to know the boundary that distinguishes a benign interest in physical appearance from the bad thoughts that come along with MD, which makes him less prone to come back to that low point he reached in the past.

Relationships.

Now I’m going to make a few comments about his main relationships while in the Villa, with them being his relationship with Lottie and his relationship with MC.

We never know for sure if he eventually tells Lottie about his past, but I have the feeling that he doesn’t, especially because in Day 26 he tells MC “I don’t always tell people why she’s (his nan) so important in my life. And now you know”, suggesting that maybe she is the only one in the Villa that has this information as of now.

Either way, the thing that bothers me about the way the Lottie-Gary ship is written is that most of the time we see them arguing and not agreeing in lots of things. In some cases, this could be considered “cute” or “entertaining”, but it isn’t when you notice Gary confesses a few times that it worries him and has him on edge, saying that he can never know how Lottie is going to react to things or wondering in what mood she’s going to be in. As a clarification, I’m not debating in whether Lottie is unstable or not, because it really doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What matters in this case is that Gary perceives her being that way.

The constant uncertainty of his partner’s behavior could harm Gary in the long run, as we know that he is still attending to therapy sessions and going through bad days from time to time, and without someone who he can know for sure will support him and reassuring him whenever he needs, things could start to get more difficult for him to handle.

Moving to his relationship with MC, if you have done a Gary playthrough, you know that he constantly tells her that he doesn’t feel like a weirdo when he is around her and, basically, that he feels that he can be himself. If we take in consideration his history and personality, this makes a huge difference for him, as we’ve seen him get to the point of lying so he doesn’t get embarrassed in front of the girls. When being in a relationship with MC, he is finally able to let go of some of his insecurities and stops worrying about how other girls perceive him.

So, moving past that, I just wanted to quickly point out something about their relationship that seems interesting to me. In one of the gem scenes, Gary tells MC “My nan would like you. You keep me in check. She’d say I need someone like that around”. I couldn’t help but notice that he uses the same verb in the past when referring to him getting his thoughts straight by differentiating between the intrusive beliefs caused by his MD and what is actually real. This could be his way of telling MC that she keeps him grounded, that he could never feel insecure when being with her and that she, somehow, helps him to keep away the bad thoughts about himself. And of course his nan would like that—she’d love seeing his grandson with someone who he feels safe with. Because of this, I think that his relationship with MC is by far the healthiest one he could have in the Villa, and even in the playthroughs when they’re not a couple, the reason being that he opens to her about his past either way.

In conclusion.

I think it’s really interesting the way Fusebox tried to insert real life troubles and conditions into their characters. For me, this made a big difference when playing the game, because the majority of the characters feel real, specially in comparison to Season 1; whether you like a character or not, we all have to agree that every single one of them has a very defined personality and behavior, and that is a compelling aspect of the gameplay.

I also like the way they made the Love Island boys break stereotypes and dismiss toxic masculinity. In Gary’s case, we see this reflected in him being always open and sincere with his feelings, having him making subtle comments like “Sometimes we all need a little cry. Nothing wrong with that”.

Because of everything I’ve written in this post, I could say that the fandom is not wrong when they classify Gary as being soft. He is, indeed, a softie—the softest boy in the Villa, in my opinion. But he is not just that. He is also incredibly emotionally intelligent, as he learned how to overcome his mental disorder, how to communicate and accept his feelings and how to reach out to others and offer them help, amongst a billion of other things. We see him also being very mature for his age, with many pointing out that he seems older than he actually is. I can’t deny that most of his maturity probably comes from being raised by his nan and because he has gone through a lot in terms of accepting himself and growing as a person in general.

On a quick side note, I’ve noticed people with clearly poor understanding on mental health that have tried to write him as a villain and end up usually turning him into an insecure, self-centered, egotistical character, labeling it as layering, when the reality is far from that. Vilifying insecurity, low self-esteem and fear of rejection/failure is not layering. Those are common flaws and issues that cause distraught in many people on a daily basis and, in my opinion, they should be approached with proper understanding, respect and reassurance.

Anyhow, it makes me so happy seeing much more Love Island fans recognizing the true good and soft nature of Gary’s personality as time passes, and even happier that a lot more started appreciating him because of his issues. His story represents, in my opinion, a story of recovery. There are few things better than seeing someone that used to struggle with how they felt about themselves, keeping their head up, accepting their flaws as their own and doing their best to keep getting better, and that’s what he represents at the end of Day 26.

I’ll be leaving down below some of the papers I used for my additional research, as well as some simple articles and videos about MD, if some of you would like to know more about it and spread awareness.

Let’s take this character’s story as an example to follow, as it indirectly encourages people to accept themselves and to share their mental illness stories once they feel ready to do so. I think that by supporting this type of characters we’re letting the writers know that we do like to read characters like this, with true layers, defects and with backgrounds that feel just real.

Finally, as some friend of mine said, let’s jump on the Gary tour bus and spread some love, positivity and appreciation for this amazing character*:･ﾟ✧

Links, articles and videos.

[Nature article], [The Guardian Article], [TED Talk], [TED Talk Q&A], [BDD 2015 Conference], [ABC Science Video], [ABC News Video], [Paper n°1], [Paper n°2], [Paper n°3], [Paper n°4], [Paper n°5], [Paper n°6].

[alianoralacanta]

Warning! Long entry alert! For that matter, quite a few marathon runners have told me it was too hot and sunny to race. Many of them were on TV, speaking ahead of the Athens 2004 marathon. Like the F1 drivers, they all felt compelled to compete in the race because of its high level and only a couple of them DNFed (due to the weather). The official medical teams treated everyone in need, but nobody went out beforehand and checked if conditions were safe because it did not suit anyone to set a threshold. (That difficulty crosses sports in general).

At the level I ran at before my current medical situation, people dealt with an anticipated "weather too hot and sunny" by simply staying in bed that day or, if the race was often too hot and sunny at that time of the year, electing to race somewhere else and not even bothering to sign up for that one. If you see athletes complaining about conditions and then competing in them anyway, there are 2 reasons (both of which may apply): 1) excessive pressure to compete 2) a rule restricting criticism of the governing body (like all of motorsport has, with varying levels of enforcement. F1 has least enforcement, WEC arguably the most of the major international motorsports) Some sports care about their athletes. Official bodies do stop injured competitors going forward in disability swimming (even in international level - and yes anon, I competed at that level*), if the injury is obvious enough. But the threshold for that is "looks likely to pollute the pool (with blood or other body fluids) or result in the drowning protocol being activated mid-race", not "this competitor will harm their health if they continue." Even children are assumed to be capable, in conjunction with their coaches, support team and any contactable parents/guardians, of making medical decisions about their own body. In this way, the attitude is not so different from the TV- and PR-conscious attitude shown in Olympic-level marathon running. * - I've also karted at national corporate level (not to be confused with national FIA level, although both ultimately answer to the same body for safety infractions), though I'm less sure whether anon would count that. I also didn't get to see it make any difficult medical calls, because people tended to be either obviously fit to continue, or need carting off to hospital (which tended to prevent further participation due to the fast pace of race weekends). Boxing, I believe, stops combats if competitors are visibly bleeding/physically unable to enter the ring even with assistance before the match starts, or if someone is knocked out for 10 seconds during the bout (both cases leading to the opponent winning), but not otherwise. I'm not sure if judo has any throughgoing injury exclusions at all. Both are martial arts, so it makes sense that they are less strict about injuries than, for example, swimming. F1 in the Sid Watkins/Gary Hartstein days reliably stopped any F1 driver their tests indicated were concussed. However, even they readily admitted those tests were partially reliant on drivers being honest. Drivers' limited motive towards honesty is part of the reason why F1 and Indycars pushed so hard to get concussion science moving in the 1990s and early 2000s. As for broken bones, Sid Watkins had a protocol for broken legs - make the driver hop on one foot and if there was a pain reaction despite drivers' high pain tolerance, stop the test and tell the driver to skip the race (in the early days, he applied that consequence multiple times). Not sure it's possible to hop on a rib, but I am sure he and Gary would have thought of something. F1 used to be proud of the safety approach Sid and Gary built. It is no longer so proud, or even interested, in it. For multiple reasons, I am less confident today's F1 medics would bother. Also, none of them were able to test drivers who never reported their injury at the time it was healing (which was a thing back then as well - F1 has a "macho" environment that expresses itself a little differently to MotoGP's "macho" environment). I consider MotoGP's concussion governance to be particularly bad. If MotoGP riders are constantly concussed, it's largely because the medical team repeatedly clears riders if they don't have physical injuries bad enough to go to hospital (sometimes even if the rider asks, unless their team supports the request), which naturally leads to chronic low-level brain injury. That should be a source of self-reproach to MotoGP, not a credit.

Well then maybe motorsports athletes aren’t really athletes…. Imagine a marathon runner saying they can’t run because it’s too hot and sunny…. Are you a competitive athlete? Have you ever done training camp? Ever competed in high stakes competition?

It’s really easy for regular people who’ve never actually been at the top level to cry out for athletes to be wrapped in bubble wrap. Yes we need things to be safe but at the same time every athlete recognizes the risks of their sport.

Oh okay you're just advocating for people hurting their health for the sake of your pleasure or the vague concept of "sports". Good to know I can move on from your asks.

[safflowerseason]

I think that, for the show that veep became, the finale was pretty good. I didn’t really love it because it wasn’t like veep season 1-4, but for the show it had become it actually worked pretty well, IMO.

I largely agree, Anon. If we’re grading on a curve, the Veep finale was one of the stronger episodes of the season for me, in terms of how it held together as a 30-minute episode of television. It’s still plagued by the defining problems of S7, but it’s more tightly constructed, at least for the first twenty minutes. And the episode had a somewhat decent balance of genuine pathos and humor, and the way the action unfurled was logical…even if the action itself was actually grotesque and upside down (like, as much as I loved Veep’s foray into international law in 7x06…none of the action in that episode makes a lick of sense). It worked as a culmination of the “nauseous-exhilarated house burning down” sensibility that characterized S7 for me.

In terms of plotting and narrative momentum, Mandel episodes tend to work better when he’s forced to adhere to a strict timeline, which framing the finale around the convention required him to do (for the first twenty-five minutes, anyway). When he doesn’t have to mark time, the episodes feel weirdly suspended—they could either span two days, two weeks, or two months, and there’s no way for the audience to tell, which doesn’t exactly work for a show about politics. Of course, a tighter episode doesn’t necessarily make for a good episode of television. 7x02 is an example of a relatively well plotted episode where the writing is so bad it undercuts everything else. But in terms of how the political action unfolds…at least it’s more logical than an episode like 7x04. 

The last five or so minutes of the finale are where things dissolved a bit, for me. I think I’ve come around the opinion where they should have stuck with the original plan and had Selina lose—not because I didn’t like what happened to the rest of the ensemble, but because having Selina win at the cost of her “humanity” or whatever, and watching her briefly reckon with the permanent consequence of her actions, simply doesn’t land. Truly, I’ve never seen a show where the showrunner self-sabotaged his own narrative so dramatically. 

Plus, having Selina win the election just made the plot even more overstuffed. I can obviously see the appeal of ending with a flash forward, but the more I think about it, the place to have a time-jump would have been at the beginning of the season. Considering they basically rebooted the whole show, a time-jump would have enabled Mandel to get rid of the storylines he didn't want to deal with anymore (Amy’s pregnancy, mostly). It wouldn’t have been graceful, but he would have escaped having to try and rewrite the entire show in three episodes, which obviously backfired.

S7’s issues with time really make it clear that they had planned for eight seasons, originally,—a season for the primaries, and a season for the general election. (I’m not saying they shouldn’t have shortened it…it’s clear that the paramount concern for everyone was Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s health, as it should have been!) But one final, shortened season, on top of changing the ending to have Selina win, meant that they had to cram so much into a shorter season. Even a more masterful showrunner with a better understanding of American politics would have had a hard time making sure all the elements fit together correctly. 

For one thing, primary season is long, much longer than the general election. Why not jump ahead to the actual beginning of the primaries in January 2020, and skip all the silly pre-campaigning, where it’s hard for any plot development to really have a payoff? There’s still plenty of time—basically a whole year—for Selina to chase Amy away (either with no kid or as the mother of a baby Dan’s having a low-grade mental crisis about), plenty of time to explore why Dan and Amy won’t end up together, plenty of time for Richard to ascend, plenty of time for Jonah to be on his warpath of destruction. It would have provided a much clearer, but still flexible timeline along which to organize the plot. And we wouldn’t have had to endure the teeth-grinding timeline of 7.03 and 7.04, which is so mind-bogglingly stupid I actually find it insulting. And none of the political action in 7.01-7.03 couldn’t have happened at a later period—there’s still plenty of state fairs and rich donors to court even the election is a few weeks away, not a year. 

I’m getting distracted from the actual finale itself. 

Oh yeah, for the final flash-forward, I guess I get why they did it, but it certainly didn’t tell us anything new about Selina. Great—everyone still has ambivalent-to-bitter feelings about her! Because she’s dead, we don't actually see her wrestle with that. In general, I don’t understand why Mandel was so obsessed with ending the series on Selina’s death. I feel like seeing her obscurity and irrelevance at the end of her life would have made the flash-forward much more powerful—it might have been a better way to explore what he was trying to get at in the final West Wing scene. Plus, does anyone really believe Gary was released from jail and unpopular ex-president Selina didn’t try to hire him again? Please. She’d want to pretend like it never happened. 

Plus…24 years is a long-ass time. You’re telling me that Dan hasn’t spoken to Amy since 2019 and yet he’s calling her by his pet nickname and gossiping with her like old times? And Amy’s her usual arch self around him, instead of being all “Dan who?” after what he did to her? NO. NOT A THING. 

Whew. The fact that I’m able to rant like this about one episode of S7 Veep that I actually vaguely enjoyed just goes to show how deeply messed up the final season was. 

[not-poignant]

That new FFS chapter killed me. I have never disliked Gwyn before but WOW I disliked Gwyn so much. I get it but still, it was jarring to see Gwyn's idea of Ef against the real Ef. It does make me curious about some things, like how Arden would react to Gwyn's idea of their relationship. As for Dr. Gary, how does he feel about Gwyn? Neutral in a professional way? Bitter? He recognizes Gwyn isn't healthy for Ef in a practical way, but I wonder if it ever gets a little personal for him

Dr Gary doesn’t like Gwyn being in Efnisien’s life at all. He strongly believes that Gwyn is a negative and detrimental influence on Efnisien’s life, and you can actually see Dr Gary trying to point this out in their first session together after Efnisien sees Arden for the first time. Efnisien misses Dr Gary’s point, but Dr Gary makes an effort to point out that the only reason Efnisien felt well enough to leave his house and buy a book (and meet someone) was because Gwyn cancelled.

While Dr Gary follows Efnisien’s lead re: whether Gwyn is in Efnisien’s life or not, he is really hanging out for the day when Efnisien realises that Gwyn is toxic and abusive towards him (which Gwyn is). Dr Gary is also waiting for Efnisien to realise that though he held the power as a predator in that household, Gwyn holds the power now, and uses it to lash out. Think of it this way: Efnisien is an extremely safe target for all of Gwyn’s rage towards his family and his experiences, and Gwyn exercises that rage on a regular basis towards Efnisien, with gaslighting, lack of empathy and compassion, now acephobia, active threats of violence (from someone who tried to beat Efnisien to death) and more.

I was kind of surprised at how many people thought Gwyn was ‘better’ in the last chapter because he literally showed the tiniest shred of care - but that care came at the cost of Efnisien being actively gaslighted, receiving acephobia, and having his privacy violated unapologetically. Gwyn behaves terribly to Efnisien, and none of it is justified now that we’re three years into the future. After all, if Gwyn genuinely believes he can’t trust Efnisien at all - then why is he visiting? He doesn’t get to have it both ways: He can’t believe his visits help Efnisien stay focused on his recovery, and then get to viciously undermine Efnisien’s attempts at recovery.

Gwyn does both freely, with zero consequence, and Dr Gary cannot wait for him to be gone. Dr Gary is aware that Gwyn is very much a victim, but he’s also aware that Gwyn was raised in that household, and has absorbed some abusive traits (which you can actually see throughout SOTS, it’s just they’re much easier to both forgive/tolerate when he’s a main character who you’re rooting for).

I’m not sure how personal it gets for Dr Gary. He tends to see a lot of situations as opportunities. For example, if Efnisien isn’t ready to push Gwyn away - he sees that as an opportunity to do more groundwork with Efnisien around subjects relating to self-respect or self-worth or boundary-setting. If Efnisien tries to push Gwyn away and it doesn’t work, Dr Gary will see that as an opportunity to talk about boundary-setting, or how it feels to not have your boundaries respected (which is important to talk to Efnisien about on a lot of levels).

He definitely doesn’t share Efnisien’s view that Gwyn is only a victim and can do no wrong ever and is basically like a saint for visiting every month for so long (though Efnisien is feeling this less as well). After all, Dr Gary met Gwyn very early on, in SOTS, and knows full well what Gwyn’s personality is like.

But yeah, no, Dr Gary has his like, feelings about what he’d prefer re: the health of his client, but I don’t think he’s sitting there feeling bitter about it or anything.

As to Arden... I think he’d very much be along the lines of ‘I can fight my own battles, man, leave us alone.’ But Efnisien has this habit of not sharing the names of people when he’s talking about them, especially if they’re very close to him. So Arden doesn’t know Gwyn as Gwyn, only ‘Efnisien’s cousin.’ And Gwyn doesn’t know Arden as Arden, only ‘my boyfriend.’

Which is a shame in a way, because Gwyn and Arden have known each other for years.