#so much self indulgence planned its unreal

[pink-petal-lover]

My new Reality

Chapter 1: It's not a dream, is it?

Summary: This is an extremely self indulgent isekai fan fic, that I've been working on in my free time. This is the first chapter, at least. I've got plenty more planned, and I'm very excited to share more soon! If you're not a fan of self inserting, or isekai stories, then it's best to sit this one out. If you do have issues with such stories and read this, then your negative feelings are your own fault. I'm giving you plenty of warnings.

Banner: mememse on deviant art

Word Count: 4,974

Warnings: self insert, isekai, AFAB-enby, strong language, mentions of blood, and killing. Named MC, MC has a decided look, and background.

It happened again.

I messed everything up, set down my usual path of self destruction. I hang my head low, fixated on the concrete beneath my feet. The summer sun, and the sting of failure made my skin burn. I honestly hoped I'd just combust, I'm such a waste of space. Maybe going up in ash would be fitting, at least my family could just let me dissolve in the Ohio river. Then I won't be taking up more space in the dirt, the spot will be saved for someone who's actually worth the worm's effort of eating.

I sigh deeply, I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself. But this was the fourth job this year, and I felt like I was spiraling. I had no direction in life, and I was probably never going to live the way I wanted to.I groan and lay back on the porch, looking up at the clouds through the crisscrossed telephone wires.

My mind wanders to and fro, as I ponder what more I could possibly do. What else could I be missing, or what could I do better? 'I could move somewhere else’ was my first thought. But I already have 'moved somewhere else'. I'm in a much bigger city than the one I grew up in. More places to learn, and more opportunities to grow. At a certain point, I had to accept that I was the problem in all of this. Too many resources have been spent, and too many chances have been given. The world failed me first, but I kept on failing myself every time after.

I needed to change, but I have no idea how. I didn’t even know what was so fundamentally wrong with me in the first place. Why it seemed like I was struggling far more than those around me. No matter how hard I worked, no matter the effort I put in. I was always several steps behind everyone else, I kept running in circles. Doomed to never be what the world expects me to be, to never be what I want myself to be.

I was startled from my thoughts by the sound of a loud crack in the distance, followed by a horrendous wail. The dogs inside my aunt's house were going ballistic, as a dark mass blocked out the sun. I was paralyzed, unable to believe what I was seeing.It looked like a giant nautilus, tentacles spread out as it hunted for something.

The sounds of chaos bloomed in the distance. I could hear the cars around the corner, on the main road screeching to a halt. Wouldn’t doubt if there were more than a few wrecks, from distracted drivers smashing into one another. The mass grew closer, and as it did I noticed it looked alot like a ship you’d see in a movie. I was so mesmerized by the unreality of it all, I hadn’t even realized the thing was right over my head. What comes next feels as though it’s happening in slow motion. I can hear the front door open, and feel the strong grasp of my uncle trying desperately to yank me back inside. While a giant tentacle makes its way towards me, writhing and eager to grab its next victim. All it took was a small touch, and in an instant everything went black.

I didn't wake up until I heard the sound of the pod opening. To my horror there was a tall, skinny, squid-like being floating in my direction. Then I noticed another pod to my right, with a woman who looked equally alien to me inside.

The squid thing paused at a large pool at the center of the room, and carefully plucked something from the brine. It looked like a fat worm, it writhed and squirmed in the squid's long needle like talons. The creature then hovered to the other pod, I could see its occupant struggle to pull away. I missed what came next, as the alien-squid obstructed my view. But whatever happened, the other captive seemed very dazed afterwards and the worm was gone.

A bolt of fear surged through me, and the alien paused near the brine pool again. It plucks another worm, I can only assume it's to be my worm. My heart pounds, and I try to close my eyes and turn my head away. With a single flick of the squid's hand, my face was pulled forward and my eyes forced open.

'It didn't even touch me' I thought, as the creature inched closer. Its gangly arm stretches out, bringing the worm closer to my face. Seeing it this close, it looked like something you'd see in a horror sci-fi movie. A slug with tentacles and teeth, it hissed as it latched onto the rim of my glasses. It tapped its toothy maw against the lens, before sliding under. It then proceeds to burrow its way under my eyelid, I clench my eyes shut but it only seems to help it dig in deeper. It felt like my eye was going to pop right out of its socket. Before the odd relief of it slithering behind my eye’s socket.

My head lolls to the side, and I quickly fall back into unconsciousness. It felt like I was out for years when I woke back up, or at least it seemed that way. The vessel was in shambles, and the fires around me threatened to consume my pod. Thankfully the door slid open, but I was so dazed I fell flat on my face. It was a miracle my nose didn't immediately start bleeding. Both from the impact of me falling, and the horrendously dry air. After gaining my balance, I look around the room I'm in, the thing that catches my eye first was that brine pool. The worm behind my eye came from here, there seemed to be a few others that were swimming around which are now dead. I dared not to reach my hand into it, no matter how badly I wanted to. It looked unstable enough as it is, and I didn't want to get any of that phlegmy colored liquid on my clothes. Who knows what it would do to my skin for that matter.

The next place my attention is drawn to, is the giant hole in the room. Hot air bellows in, dryer than the desert and rank as the sulfur plants back home.

"Where the fuck am I?" I asked myself, it looked like actual hell out there.

I felt the ship trimble around me, and heard an awful groan as things started falling apart a little bit more. I didn't waste a second more, I'll figure out if hell is actually real or not later. What's more important is getting off this sci-fi fish tank, before it goes further up in flames.I glance around for an exit, and lay eyes on the place the squid thing came in from. Upon approach, it looked like a massive asshole had been crafted on to the wall. If I wasn't about to die, I might've taken a few moments to be juvenile and snicker about it. Like a middle schooler in a biology lesson. I keep the inner twelve year old down, and trek forward. The asshole seems to open up on its own as I get close, saves me from having to touch it and think about it being an asshole.

The next room had yet another massive hole in the wall, across from the entry way I just passed through. I started walking towards the gaping maw of what used to be a wall, when a curious little voice called out to me.

"Help us" it said, in an almost child-like voice. "Please."

"Hello" I called out, looking around the seemingly empty room. The place was empty, aside from the other pods. I wonder if it could be from inside one of them.

I tiptoe forward, and look closer. But a corpse on the table catches my eye, some sort of stubby little creature lay dead. Given the amount of media I have consumed in my days, it looked a lot like a goblin.

"Gonna assume that's a goblin" I say to myself, confidently.

The voice calls to me again, "Over here" it says. I felt almost compelled to turn around this time.

Looking up, I see a platform where I can only assume the cries for help are coming from. I look around for a way to go up, I see what looks to be an alien elevator of sorts. Then closer to the exit, a broken piece of the platform. Flames were lapping away at it, making that a rather risky climb.

Of course I took the lift instead, despite how weird it looked. The 'button' to control it looked like a deep sea sponge. I poke at it with a finger, and the lift begins to rise.

At the top, I see what looks to be a man reclined in an examination chair. But something was off, his body twitched and contorted. I step closer, and the nearer I drew the more wrong this felt. Until I finally saw it.

The top of this poor soul's head was gone, exposing the brain beneath.

"Oh god!" I exclaimed, stumbling backwards whilst gagging.

Suddenly the voice returns once more, "It's you" it says.

"Have you come to free us?"

My brow furrows, and I timidly approach the body. My stomach turns as I'm beginning to realize, I might not be talking to the man at all.

"Who, or what are you?" I ask.

The brain quivers, before 'speaking' to me again.

"We are newborn, born new from this husk"

I squinted, wondering why it was talking like that. Who was 'we' in this situation? Is it because brains have two sides?

Curiosity is getting the better of me, and I approach the brain again. "What do you want me to do, exactly?"

"Free us from this body." It replies, in its sickeningly cute voice.

I look around for anything of use, but find nothing. I panic a little realizing what has to be done.

"Oh." A small groan heaves from my chest. "Oh no." I begin to wonder if this is even worth it.

"Let me uh.... Let me see what I can do" I say, trying to prepare myself for what is going to be the most vile experience of my life so far. I can feel the disgusted look twisting my face as I slide my fingers between brain and skull. I bite my lip to keep from vomiting, and try to imagine I'm scooping out the sloppy seeds and stringy bits from a pumpkin.

With a swift yank, I pry the brain from the skull. I was surprised I didn't just eviscerate the damn thing in the process.

"There you go little erm... Brain creature??"

I thought I was going to heave as it twitched, and sprung itself from my hands.

It doubled in size, and sprung legs the moment it hit the ground.

"You have freed us! Freedom is ours, friend!" I could actually feel it's glee, and gratitude radiating from it. "We need to get to the helm friend" It continues.

"The helm?" I asked "What's at the helm?"

"Escape" it replies "We need to leave this place"

"And where exactly is 'this place'?" I replied, but the brain did not reply. It simply crouched there trembling. "Well... Anyways little thing. Do you have a name, or should I give you one. I'm thinking Pumpkin, because that's what I had to imagine while scooping you out."

"We already have a name. We are Us"

I blink, unsure what I expected a brain's name to be. But Us makes as much sense, or so I assume.

"Okay, Us. Let's go to the helm"

With that said, it seems I made my first friend. Or maybe it could be a pet? Didn't matter, I needed to focus on getting out of here first. Us followed me onto the lift, and out of the giant hole in the wall. We didn't get very far, before a dragon flying past nearly sent us flying over the edge.

That's when she appeared, the woman from the pod close to mine. She swings a sword around, ready to gut me like a fish.

"Abomination," She growls, "this is your end!”

We were both suddenly hit with a wave of pain. I could see myself through her eyes, and in an instant the vision was gone. As though I was being flung back into my own mind.

"The hell just happened?" I asked, still reeling from the trip.

The woman either didn't hear me, or didn't care. She more so just seemed momentarily relieved to find another living being.

"You're not a thrall. Chk You don't look like much of a fighter though, tell me why I shouldn't just discard you right now?"

Well that was hurtful, even if it was true.

"B-because we need to stick together? We both had those weird little slug things put in our eyes, plus I have this little thing." I step aside to reveal Us, who was crouching there trembling. "And you haven't seen me fight, I could be a better fighter than you might think. Never judge a book by its cover!"

She scowls at me, seemingly considering my words.

"Fine, I'll take you with me. But get in my way, and I'll cut you down." She then turns her attention to Us "That thing should be useful, so long as it still thinks we're thralls."

I was relieved I was actually able to talk my way out of getting split open. But now I was slowly filling with dread, because I hadn't been in an actual fight since elementary school.

I steady my nerves as best I can when I hear the woman speaking once more.

"First things first, we need to get to the helm. But we'll have to get through those things first." She motions to some blood red winged creatures, who were feasting off a corpse. One little creature saw us coming, and quickly alerted the others. In a blink they were swarming us, all seemed to have some type of weapon on them.

Great, I think to myself. I'm probably gonna end up dying before I can even get off this ship. And to whatever the hell these little pipsqueaks were, no less.

The stranger was the first to attack, and made short work of the one holding a hatchet. She made it look so effortless, cutting it through like it was butter. I was so screwed if I muck this up.

I spotted one not too far holding a cross bow, I take a deep breath and run forward. Clenching my fist, and getting as much momentum as possible. I take a hard swing at it, I make contact with its head and the little bastard drops. It's down, but still very much alive. So I stomped it until it stopped moving.

The sickening crunches and hisses as I crushed its skull made me want to hurl, but it's me or them. Once it's fully dead though, I pry the crossbow away, and snatch a few bolts from the floor around it.

I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't even pull back the one my dad got me for Christmas a few years ago. Yet alone shoot it, I was good with a gun in video games. How different could this be?

Very different as it turns out, I could hardly aim and when I did make a shot it wasn't an instant kill. So I had to rush over and bash the little bastard down, before switching out my crossbow for its hatchet. I gave it a couple of test swings, before clobbering the drooling beast that flew over to me. I had cleaved its neck wide open, it lay there wheezing before finally bleeding to death.

"Seems you at least know how to use a hatchet" the stranger comments as she walks past. "A welcomed surprise, we just might get out of here yet. Now come, we need to get to the helm before it's too late."

"Yeah... Yeah let's go." I stammer, I think I might have been more surprised at what I had just done than she was. Normally I wouldn't be able to live with myself harming little critters like this. But this is life or death, and I could hardly feel bad for something that just tried to make a meal out of me.

She, for some reason, follows me up a slimy mesh ladder to yet another room filled with those pods. There are a few people laid out in examination chairs, similar to the one from before. But these people are still intact, just unconscious. We approached, and I tried to give one of them a good shake to see if he was all there. Nothing.

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I heard a loud banging from behind me, and cries for help.

"PLEASE" she cries "Let me out!"

I rushed to sound quickly, hoping to god it wasn't another brain thing. To my relief it wasn't a horrid nightmare, but a woman who actually looks human. Which was a surprisingly welcomed sight.

"Please, you've got to get me out of here" the begs.

I look around the pod, and see no means of opening it up from there. Which was odd, because I don't think mine had one to open up either. But then I spy some sort of device beside it.

"I'm not sure how to open this thing," I tell her "But I'll see if this control panel here can help"

"Please just hurry!" She was sounding frantic, and I can only imagine how hard her heart must be pounding.

"We don't have time for stragglers!" Hisses the other woman I've been trying to escape with.

My brow furrows, how could she be so cold? "We can't just leave her here, she's totally helpless in there. Besides, she could be able to help us. We need every pair of hands we can get."

The strange looking woman rolls her eyes, and makes a soft *chk* sound before stalking away. To go pout, I assume.

I turned my attention to contraption beside the pod, and was at a total loss. It looked like a big hunk of squishy flesh to me, but I do spy what looks to be a socket.

"I can't figure this thing out." I call to the woman in the pod, "but I'm gonna look around. See what I can find."

"Please just hurry!" She cries again, beating harder on the pod’s window.

The first thing I do is check the pockets of the unconscious people, and find nothing. I suppose it was wishful thinking, but you never know. I catch a glance of a table across the room, and hurry to it. There's a small chest, and some brains in jars. I try the lock on the chest, but it doesn't budge.

"Dammit!" I growl, and then try to force the thing open. But once more, it refuses to move.

"They really don't make locks like this any more do they?" I say to Us, who doesn't really seem to acknowledge it.

I was an ace of throwing the damn chest on the ground when I heard another door open, and another one of those creatures like Us scuttled out of it.

If Us was friendly towards me, I figured maybe this one would be too.

"Hey little guy," I said gently "can you help me find-"

"You are beautiful" It cuts me off before I can even get the words out, before waddling away.

I scrunch up my face, a little confused. "Uh thanks?"

"Are you trying to get us caught?" the alien looking woman asks, in a cold voice. "These things need to believe we're thralls, they'll alert the whole ship if they suspect anything."

Shame prickles at my skin, as if I wasn't already hot and sweaty enough.

"Sorry" I mutter, as I wonder into the room the creature came from. Even more pods were in here, with a bigger one in the center.

There seems looks to be a dazed woman inside, she doesn't respond to my knocking on the window. I resume my search, when I spot a device similar to the one outside.

"Will this one actually work?" I wonder.

I press a slimy button, and something activates the pod. My companion flenches at the horrible sounds that come next. I can hear the sounds of crunching, and snapping from the pod. Followed by the hissing, and clicking.

"Sk'va" the woman beside me hisses "Changed at the pull of a lever, how? If we do not make it out of here, this could be our fate."

"This could also be the fate of that other person" I reply in a matter-of-fact way. "Now come on, let's find that missing piece"

I try to press ahead of this, suppressing the growing realization that I took part in turning someone into a monster.

After some quick searching I found the piece that seems like it could fix the strangers pod. I rush back and click the device into place, the machine hums to life.

"Now how do I?" I touch the console, and am hit with a wave of energy. It was exhilarating, and terrifying. But I suddenly feel more confident over this situation, like I will be heard when I speak. I lean towards it, unsure what to do next. I feel in control, so I just treat it like the technology back home.

"Open the pod" I say in a stern voice. The console listens, I could feel it. Something happened to me at that moment, I wasn't too sure what. But I felt changed.

The pod doors slide open, and the woman inside falls out. She manages to catch herself before falling flat, then rises to her feet. As our eyes meet, I am met once more with a wave of energy. Of minds mixing together for a moment. I could feel gratitude, but a slight hint of distrust.

"You keep dangerous company." she commented.

I glanced at the impatient woman behind me, before returning my attention to the one I just freed.

"In a place like this, it's kind of what you need."

Her lips purse for a moment, before she finally says "Fair enough. My name's Shadowheart by the way, and you?"

I perked up a little, this was my dream. I could take this moment to reinvent myself a little. Make a new character so to speak, as someone other than who I am in the waking world.

"You can call me Fin." I reply with a warm smile.

Shadowheart inclines her head slightly, "Pleased to meet you Fin."

The other woman scoffs, "Enough pleasantries, we need to get to the helm."

"She's right" Shadowheart says, "Give me just a moment, and we can be off."

She turns on her heels to grab something out of her pod. For a brief moment I catch sight of something that looks almost like a toy. I try not to comment on it, lest my more aggressive companion bites my head off.

"Let's go" I say, taking the lead once more. With the stranger, Shadowheart, and Us trailing behind me. I lead the little troop to the one door that hasn't been opened. There was a small threshold, that was mostly on fire. Here we paused for a moment, the odd looking woman spoke up.

"We are nearing the helm, once inside do as I say."

Shadowheart's brow furrows "Who put you in charge?" She snaps.

The question made me think 'Who the hell put me in charge?' I heard the other woman call Shadowheart something in a language I didn't recognize, and both seemed to just prickle.

I grimaced, and prayed these two wouldn't end up ripping each other apart before we could even get out of here. I brace myself, and enter the door. I can feel Us tense up, it's both anxious and relieved. But the two women, and myself had our focus set on the actual demons fighting the squid things.

The strange woman's gaze cuts straight to me.

"You run to the device, I'll take care of the rest."

"I'll do the same," Shadowheart adds.

They both looked so cool and determined, my heart fluttered a little and my cheeks burned. I needed to be just as sure and brave, tackle this literal hell face first. Suddenly one of the squids caught us, and started barking demands into our minds.

"Thralls!" it's deep voice felt so powerful. "Connect the nerves, we must escape at once."

I ready my hatchet, and steadied my hands. "Time to see this dream through to the end" I tell myself.

I charge forward, only to immediately get nailed in the side by this hellish pig looking thing. I fall to the ground clutching my side and wheezing, the damn thing knocked the air right out of me.

Shadowheart rushes over to help me up off the ground, whilst the other woman slices through the pig like butter.

"Try not to die so quickly, hm?" Shadowheart hisses in my ear. She helps get me moving, breathing was hard but I let my adrenaline take over to get me through this. I readied my hatchet again, and hacked away at one of the same impish creatures from before.

I was a bit too preoccupied with the little shits, to notice a larger devilish being narrowly missing me with a swing of his massive great sword.

I had to roll out of the way to avoid being beheaded, I almost retaliated when the squid intervened.

"Leave him to me," it demands "you focus on connecting the nerves."

I didn't reply, simply nodded. So long as neither of them were taking swings at me, I could have cared less. I powered forward, clumsily hacking away at the little flying imps. I think one of them left me with a nasty slice in my right shoulder, but I hardly noticed thanks to being in fight mode.

Shadowheart, Us, and the alien-like woman were doing a fantastic job clearing a path.

I was eventually able to make it to the nerves, I had no idea what to make of it. A mass of tentacles, I hardly wanted to touch it but I knew I had to. I took one slimy tendril in one hand from the bottom, and another one from the top. They connected in a very satisfying way.

I didn't even have time to figure out what to do next, before a dark shadow was cast over me. I looked up and was greeted to the massive head of a fiery red dragon. This really was a nightmare, it certainly was starting to play out as similar ones I've had before. It opens its maw, and I can see the fire rising in its throat.

I dived out of the way before I was hit with the blaze, my heart was pounding in my ears as I tried to reach for the tentacles again. But as the dragon took off, the whole ship began to fall apart. I was thrown from front to back, slamming against the wall with enough force to knock the wind out of me again. I couldn't even catch a breath before I'm slung back towards the controls.

'I can do this. I can do this!' I chant it in my mind like a mantra. If I slipped I'd fall out the front, killing us all. No matter how much my lungs hurt, no matter how scared I was. I had to do this.

I hold my breath, and extend my arms. Bracing to clutch onto that damn thing like my life depends on it. I held my breath as it got closer, and closer. Until I finally felt it's slime on the tips of my fingers and gripped. I somehow caught myself, it felt like my arms were going to pop out of their sockets. But I caught it! I had to fight with gravity to grab the tentacles. But to my own surprise, I managed. My fingers gripped the slimy nerve, and I prayed for it to just take us anywhere but here.

The ship jolted, and rumbled smokey colors swirled all around me as the whole scene started to shift. Suddenly it all stopped, and I could feel the weight of gravity tugging the ship down.

My hands were forced from the controls, as I was flung backwards once more. I braced against a small pile of rubble, as I watched the ground creep closer from the hole that once was the front of the ship.

My tired eyes locked with a squid thing, and for a brief moment I thought I knew what true beauty was. Which disgusted me, but I was simply too enthralled by its radiant eyes to care. I was so preoccupied with admiring the alien, that I didn't even see the rock coming to nearly take my head off until it was far too late.

There was enough force in that strike to send me flying, and for a moment it was freeing. Feeling weightless, at least until I saw the ship getting farther and farther away.

"At least I'll wake up soon" I thought, as I got closer and closer to the ground. Though it seemed per-dream fashion I was somehow stopped before I was able to splatter all over the ground. Then darkness.

[writer-of-various]

Snippet...[Warnings: N*zis, Strong Language, and the Crew are just a warning to anything]

"I'm done, man, honestly, I'm done." Dempsey shut his eyes, his breathing growing shallow as he struggled to gain control of the anger that is brewing inside him. Richtofen frowned, looking at his teammate and shaking his head.

"No–"

Dempsey made a noise, like a strangled animal, and jumped up from the old chair he was sitting on, his arms outstretched as he lets out another noise. "I'm done, Eddie! This time travel BS is fucking with us! I mean, come on, the Nazis won? The Soviets won? The US turned into its worst possible nightmare?! Fuck this man, I'm done!"

Nikolai shrugs, "I mean...at least we haven't gone back in time and gotten the Black Plague or went into another universe that was dictated by women." He avoids Lilja's hard stare, her eyes narrowed. Takeo sighs.

"You're making it worse." He mumbles, and Nikolai gives him a look.

"Worse? No, I'm trying to say that what we've seen so far is nothing compared to what could possibly await us. We've chased after some stupid piece of uranium, we're looking for some artifact, we encountered a crazy group of people from the future of another world that plans to use zombies to gain control of their world– I mean, how can anything possibly get worse, actually?"

"Alright, you better shut up before I knock all your teeth out. I'm sorry this isn't going according to plan, but if we decide to avoid this, then everything we've known is completely fucked. Our old lives were the same, fighting the undead constantly while we followed him," Lilja points at Richtofen, who gives a small, sheepish smile. "We died so many times, we sacrificed so much. But Samantha needs us. The universes are merging, and if we don't stop it, we can face a death more horrific and real than we have ever gone through."

Dempsey sighs, nodding his head while walking closer to the group. "I know...I'm sorry. It's just...these different versions of us...Vietnam? Post World War Two? Fuck, being royalty? How do we know that this...is actually who we are?"

"Because we remembered each other. The dreams, the memories...I've told you all this before and you better start believing it. Fate brought us together. In a horrible way, but we found each other again. And I think now, that's all that matters." Lilja offers him a smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes. Dempsey doesn't notice this and smiles back, nodding his head once more and rubbing his hands together, the light returning to his eyes.

"Alright, where to next then?"

As Lilja explains their next objective, she can't help but think back to her sadistic self. She knew everything her previous selves have went through, the troubles they endured in both World Wars by the Russians and then Germans. To see her Ultimis self joining the Germans, to becoming a sick person who loved to get her next thrill by torturing POWs and traitors of Germany?

To see Richtofen growing more insane by the second, his desire to rule the world so unreal, so different, even from his Ultimis self. And the brainwashings, how they changed Dempsey and Takeo. Dempsey, someone who loves to help others and has a big heart, to be changed to a supersoldier with no empathy or that childlike light in his eyes. Takeo, someone who knows the pressure of being honorable and someone who takes his actions into full responsibility, to be so reckless and bloodthirsty.

And Nikolai, to betray his home, his people, to indulge in severe drinking and drug use and to be...she can't describe it. It makes her stomach churn, to have seen them in their worst versions, to force the boys to see themselves like that?

The outcome of World War Two was always a big topic among everyone, the 'what ifs' like a scary story. What if Germany won? What if the Soviets caused a nuclear fallout? What if the USA finally pursued Manifest Destiny? What if all the countries that have abused by bigger powers teamed up and caused another war? Her country being the cause of another war.

"Lilja, you okay?" Richtofen looks at her with a questioning gaze, and it makes her feel so...vulnerable. She wants to cry. She wants to just say "Fuck it", and give up. She doesn't want to see what else awaits them. She doesn't want these memories, she never wanted them, she never asked for them. They weren't a gift, they were a curse. Like being chosen by the supposedly dead Kronorium.

Instead, she forces another smile and nods. "Yes, I am. Let's get to work, the fate of all humanity depends on us."

There's no hope for wherever they go next. Because it's another death Lilja is going to be pained with.

So I planned, like a year or something ago, to try continuing the Zombies storyline since these recent CODs have been disappointing in continuing Cold War's story. I haven't published much story content, rather Headcanons and short snippets here and there. I'm not even sure if I have actually discussed this topic with y'all. But, basically, in these storyline, I chose my OC, Lilja, to be the new leader of the crew. She is chosen to attain all memories from her Ultimis and Primis selves, and she has to reunite the crew after Samantha Maxis manages to contact her with many warnings, the main one being that all universes could merge and humanity could end once that happens. If this wasn't OC led, Dempsey would have been the "Chosen One" and have been the new leader.

Anyways, basically they are guided by Samantha (and sometimes the evil forces from the Dark Aether who disguise themselves as Samantha) to time travel and jump universes to find objects that can help them in the final battle against the Dark Aether to save Samantha and basically the whole fucking universe.

The Crew has to jump universes to not only find significant artifacts, but they have to kill the different versions of themselves, and killing another version of themselves is painful in pretty much all the senses (for example, Nikolai shooting another version of himself in the head gives him a horrible headache.)

This snippet takes place after the crew finds themselves in an alternate universe where Germany won WW2 and took control of pretty much the whole world (with some territories given to its Axis Powers allies.) The versions of the crew are, as you can imagine, terrible and troubled and it affected the crew a lot to see themselves represent themselves as followers of the Nazi party. It's hard enough for me to write shit like that, but the What Ifs of World War Two are always a big topic among pretty much everyone and I couldn't ignore the opportunity of putting this theory to the test with our crew, who are World War Two oriented.

So this is basically what I've planned to write, and I might not even the get the chance to actually write a full on story about this potential work of continuing the zombies storyline (this is all my own opinions) since I won't get the chance to actually see how Gulf War's zombie storyline works out. Anyways, I hope you somewhat enjoyed this and I understand if you just left midway through my rant.

Have a wonderful day!

[cartoon-of-milk]

I have so many drawing ideas I might make into reality sometime soon

[voidcat]

characters: Nakahara Chuuya, you

a/n: another self indulgent thing I forgot for like,, months. I also forgot half the dialogue I had planned but what’s new eh. Enjoy<3

For all things considered, Nakahara Chuuya thinks he is better off than most in the emotional department.

More than the others in the mafia, that is.

With sand crushed under his shoes, the sound drowning in the melody of the sea washing over the shore, he thinks, as much as that might be the truth, you really like to push him to his limits.

Maybe, yeah, he is not your typical mentally stable guy but who is in this city, anyways? A little existential crisis once in a while won’t make a difference– not when, even the regular people have it come and go like the waves to his right in this moment.

And truth be told, now that he has started, your influence on him is worse than just driving him to his wit’s end in the emotional department.

The chuckles, the looks, the teasing words and subtle dirty puns one thing, but dragging him to the beach, of all places, especially when his clothing is not suited for it is just another buzzing fly in the long list of complaints.

Chuuya looks to his right as he thinks of these, and then the blabbering of his mind comes to a stop.

With the way the setting sun seems to caress your face so gently, the sea behind blending in, making you look ethereal, untouchable and unreal in this setting; he decides that, yea, this is why, despite the never ending complaints, he follows you everywhere you go, anywhere your impulsive greedy heart wishes to see.

He cannot see your face clearly right now, just the lines, but with years and endless nights’ of experience, he doesn’t need to see your face, he can imagine it just fine, picture the exact expression you’re making, how your gaze softens on the sand, how the sun melts into your eyes, a serene smile on your face…

Perhaps, it’s now or never, that he should do it now, finally, once and for all, get it all out–

What’s the worst that can happen? Cutting him out of his life? Please, as if you could ever, he knows no matter how awkward things might get, the mutual affection, even if just platonic, will remain for ever.

But what if it doesn’t? What if you request to be moved elsewhere? What if you request that of a different executive, leaving no say for him in the matter and–

Now or never Nakahara, don’t let the fear and unknown take you hostage now.

His hand goes up, finger ready to tap on your shoulder; he didn’t notice during his little crisis you got a step or two ahead of him.

And before he can let out the breath he has been holding for years, he hears a crunching sound cutting into the sacred atmosphere there was.

The sound a little too familiar.

So, here is the thing:

Nakahara Chuuya is many things.

On top of that mixed cocktail of emotions and never ending questions, suspicions on his identity and validity of himself; he is caring, loyal, a force to be reckoned, a beast on the battlefield and yet a priceless friend, one you cannot find on this earth even for a hundred years.

And right now, Nakahara Chuuya is a bomb that is about to explode, a fuse ready to explode.

(And so he does.)

“J-Just- What it with you and eating all the fucking time? Whenever we are at the beach, no matter the fucking hour!”

He doesn’t notice his outburst at first, or the hands going up, palms facing the darkening sky.

Whatever snack it was that you stuffed your mouth with this time, chocolate filled biscuits he guesses, you just stare at Chuuya, blinking slowly, as if he were an extraterrestrial creature.

Be a fearsome mafioso as much as you want, Nakahara Chuuya has accepted a long time ago that his biggest enemy he is yet to beat even today is you, or your appetite that seems to have a mind of its own.

Because no matter how many walks, dates and plans he has made so far, no matter how many times he had to convince himself over and over again to open up, that his emotions were real, not fabricated or made up; you somehow always manage to rain on his parade.

Hey, at least this means that he is not as inept at romance, feelings and all that as he feared, because surely he must have a real heart inside that rib cage to notice how you always kill the romance every single time.

“Beaches make me hungry.” He doesn’t hear you speak for a second, at least your mouth no longer looks like a squirrel’s.

Chuuya has no clue as to what kind of face he makes, but from the hints of a smile under your eyes and at the corners of your mouth, it must be quite the entertaining one, for you.

(How could he know, after all, that the cause of the smile tugging at your insides is because of how adorable he is when he gets flustered?)

“But can’t you just-“ he starts stammering, split over what to say and which word to pick “what even is it with beaches that make you hungry! You don’t even eat like this when we are reserved tables at the very best restaurants of Yokohama!”

Annoyance clear from his voice, Chuuya finds himself grateful once again for always picking the least crowded spots for these little outings.

The look you give him however, is unimpressed, that’s the first he can say. “I don’t know.” You just mutter, “guess you’ll have to travel back in time and meet little kiddie me to figure out what triggered this.” and pop the already bitten half of the biscuit into your mouth.

All he can do is to let out a growl of frustration, hands holding his head, while you just take another bite and laugh.

A minute passes, then five, the waves keep washing over the beach and the two of you continue your silent pacing.

“Guess I’ll have to buy one of those strawberry ring pops, huh.” he finds himself smiling at his own joke.

If asked, Chuuya would describe your voice as angelic, a celestial blessing that reaches him no matter how far he is gone.

Yet there remains few instances where it only serves to bring down the world crushing on top of him, an embarrassment even to remember of those for him.

That is how your voice breaks through the silence suddenly.

“Well, don’t you think it’s a little early for marriage? As far as I know, we haven’t even dated yet.”

The noise of the crumbled package follows and– shit, did he say that one out loud?

Calm down Nakahara, no time to worry over your slip-ups now, “Then what were those dinner dates!” he hears himself exclaim; if he could pat his brain on the back right now, he would.

With a hum, you start counting with a finger, “Business meetings, some celebration dinners, official discussions in the evening as far as I recall”

All Chuuya can do is to stare at you and your words, ‘those were candlelit dinners!’ he would scream and still be unable to convince you, he realizes.

“My, my… Look at you know, aren’t you so eager already?” The playful tilt that does a number on him returns,

“Why don’t you ask me out for starters? And we will see how the night will carry.”

[nevertheless-moving]

Pop Star Wars AU: Waking

Drabble set in this au which I wrote way back a few weeks ago.

Back then, I had only recently decided to look up my tumblr password for a third attempt at being an appreciative fandom community member instead of just trying to think really hard at internet strangers, and maybe shout into the void a little. (But there’s like, several people here now??? How did you even find me on the internet? )

Anyway I have since learned how to spell Anakin’s name and insert links. Also that if you resize your window while typing directly into tumblr everything disappears.

Self Indulgent Crack Pop Star Wars Time Travel Fixit (star wars au no 3):

After several years of exile in the Jundland Wastes, Ben Kenobi had not quite finished mentally unpacking the decades of mistakes, grief, and failure that had led him to the desert. It was the work of a lifetime, and some days were harder than others. But after several forays in and out of alcoholism, spice addiction, and every other form of geographically-accessible self-destruction, he could at least say that some days were easier. 

The process was no doubt made more difficult by the abject solitude. Unlike the chaotic years that constituted the fall of the Republic, he had all too much time to think, and no one around to share his thoughts with. He closed his eyes in the dark of his hut, thoughts drifting between past and future. 

The past was as ugly and lovely as ever. The larger future didn’t look much better, but he could find some joy in the thought of tomorrow and fresh bantha milk when the herd roamed near. Owen was always much less begrudging of his presence when he came with an offering, and Beru would likely invite him to stay for noon meal where he would share in fresh cheese as Luke rambled about his plans to fix-up a junked speeder bike.

The thought of Luke’s happiness at the treat allowed him enough peace of mind to meditate more deeply.

He carefully broke off a piece of unfair-bitterness from his larger loving-grief. The bitterness he released into the force. The grief he turned over and soothed until its edges dissolved. He accepted it, now smoother if not smaller, laying it to rest alongside his hard-earned wisdom and unfinished poetry.

Tired, but fractionally lighter, Ben Kenobi drifted to sleep.

He opened his eyes to the first rays of daylight peeking in his temple chambers.

The room was intimately familiar. For a few years they were Ashoka’s, on the rare occasion she found herself temple-side and in want of privacy but not complete solitude. For a solid decade before her, the chambers were Anakin’s, though he was quick enough to accept the common room couch when Ashoka entered their life. And before that...they were his. That was his model rocket on the shelf, and his astronomical mobile hanging from the ceiling, and his robes scattered on the floor, though they hadn’t been arranged as such in this room since his apprenticeship with Qui-Gon. He sat up. 

Glad he had put energy into meditation last night, he used the lingering clarity of mind to try and work through possible explanations. 

Vivid Dream? No a quick pinch to his inner elbow debunked that, as well as the fact that the morning taste in his mouth was more the minty tang of denti-cleaner, rather than the saltiness of dried meat which he had grown accustomed to.

Hallucinogenic mushroom flashback? Possible, though it still wouldn’t explain the detail of physical sensations he felt, running his hand from the temple-spun linens on his bed to the warm-carved wood of his bedside table. He stood and did a perfect forward flip in place. Shockingly his knees didn’t ache at impact, but a drug induced hallucination of this intensity would have some sort of impact on his equilibrium, and he felt perfectly balanced, at least physically.

Force vision seemed most likely. Sinking into cross-legged meditation, he gradually lowered his mental shields. There was no whisper of Vader or Palpatine anywhere near Hutt space at this time, so the risk of reaching out was both manageable and necessary. Rather than the pure energy he personally associated with intense visions, he felt gradients of light, echoing ripples of emotions, and the unique solidity of force-imbued stone walls.

Heart beginning to race as reality set in, Ben concluded that he was, indeed, in the Jedi temple on Courascant. Even if he had suffered a complete psychotic break, his force sense couldn’t lie with such crystal clear detail. Confused unreality mixed with images of the past and future, sure. But this was the temple. It just was. 

He couldn’t make sense of it. Even if he had somehow been found, drugged, and transported to the heart of the empire, the rooms as he sensed them didn’t exist anymore. The contents were lost or burnt, the stone walls destroyed and rebuilt into a wing of the Imperial Palace.

Obi-Wan sank deeper into the force and reached out further, searching for he answers. In general, the force felt light, the shroud of the darkside was a hazy irritation in the distance, not a smothering blanket. The manifold wounds in the force formed by senseless war and destruction were absent. Also gone were the tang of grief and loss that he had begun to associate with the temple’s signature even before- even before the purge.

The temple was also full to the brim with tens of thousands of lights in the living force. He reached out to them incredulously, nudging many just to feel a living, sentient response. The last time he remembered feeling so many Jedi all in the temple at the same time was...well, when he still lived in this room. The nearest living force sensitive presence was achingly familiar, though notably and unquestioningly living. He could feel the presence moving nearer and retreated, pulling himself fully back into his body.

The only explanation that fit was that he had suddenly, miraculously, inexplicably traveled back in time. 

He half ran to his closet, opening the door with a yank to reveal a full length mirror. A once-familiar, 25-year old padawan stared back with visible shock. Of course his knees didn’t hurt, this body hadn’t yet been broken and abused by knighthood, war, and Tatooine. His hands examined the smooth chin, the unwrinkled forehead, and even the terrible, terrible haircut.

Obi-wan startled at a knock at his door, freezing in place. 

“Padawan?” Came Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice softly, “I don’t intend to pull you out of meditation prematurely, but is there a particular reason you were sprawling over the temple this morning? You startled me somewhat. To be perfectly honest, I think you might have alarmed a few people around the temple, I’ve already received messages from council telling me to reign in my padawan before he hurts himself.” 

Qui-Gon sounded more amused than reprimanding, and he paused, clearly waiting for an answer. 

Obi-Wan’s jaw locked up. What could he say? How could he even to begin to explain what had happened? He sank to floor, head pressed to the ground and tears silent streaming down his face. All he could do was offer to the force were words, the feelings could come later Thank you. Thank youThankyouthankyouTHANKYOU. 

For whatever reason, the force had granted him a second chance. Regardless if it was intended as punishment, gift, or inexplicable chance, he would build a better future than the one he left behind. 

“Padawan?” Qui-Gon knocked again, sounding concerned, “Are you alright? If you don’t answer I’m going to have to come in there.”

And all at once he had flipped back to not enough time to think and too many people needing his attention.

Obi-Wan managed to open his mouth to call out some meaningless assurance, intent on gaining more time to process the fantastical situation. Much to his surprise, what came out was a strangled, keening sob. Qui-Gon burst through the door. 

Obi-Wan realized, with a little embarrassment, that he was curled up practically into a ball on the floor, tears streaming in a shocking waste of water. It was probably not the most dignified, nor the most reassuring position for Qui-Gon to walk in on. 

Qui-Gon rushed to his side, pulling him up by the shoulders to frantically look him over. “What happened?” he demanded, “Are you hurt? Did something go wrong while you were meditating and you were trying to reach out for help?”

Obi-Wan smiled at the barrage of questions. He had almost forgotten that on the rare occasions when Qui-Gon’s perfect Jedi serenity broke, he became somewhat counterproductively intense. 

“I’m alright, Master,” he tried to say, but what came out was more of a croaking, “MNNrlerR.” 

This predictably, only increased Qui-Gon’s concern.

To Obi-Wan’s deep consternation, he was dragged by Qui-Gon to the healer’s wing. He remained quiet during the examination, not wanting to risk whatever was compromising his ability to speak. It could be readjusting to his younger body, or a manifestation of the admittedly great emotional shock he was still experiancing. Or simple lack of practice- it had been several weeks since he had last heard the sound of his own voice, from a certain point of view.

After finding no physical cause for concern, Master Vyr asked Qui-Gon to wait outside.

“Padawan Kenobi?” The Tortugan healer asked gently. “Your Master seems quite insistent that something is wrong. Would you like to discuss what the problem seems to be?”

Obi-Wan cleared his throat and was relieved when his voice came out smooth and under his control, “I’m alight, Master. I apologize for disruption. I experienced a... particularly strong vision when I woke up this morning, and temporarily lost control over myself. I’m already feeling more stable. I believe I simply need to meditate on what I’ve seen. My master unfortunately came in while I was dealing with some of the emotional aftermath.

“I see,” Vyr responded. “Did you experience this vision before or after your expansive foray into the force? I understand a surprising swath of the temple felt your presence press against them this morning.”

“I reached out after,” Obi-Wan admitted. “My vision was...particularly dark. I felt the need to ground myself with the presence of other Jedi. I’ll make certain to apologize to anyone I may have startled.”

Eventually he was cleared with the strict instruction to stick with shallow meditation for the next few days as well as a strong recommendation to seek out Master Yoda, Sifo-Dryfas, or one of the other Master known to experience visions. 

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan walked back to their quarters together in a peaceful quiet. It wasn’t until the door clicked behind them that Qui-Gon rounded on his padawan.

“What vision could possibly have left you in such distress?”

Obi-Wan walked to the kitchenette to make tea, stalling before answering. “You have always told me to stay focused on the present, Master”

Qui-Gon frowned. “Yes, however this...vision seems to have altered you somehow. You are grieved by it.”

“Yes. But what I grieve may never come to pass.” 

It won’t come to pass. I might not know his every tool, but I do know Sideous’s biggest secret, and I WILL stop him.

“Will you not tell me what you saw?” Qui-Gon asked, sounding somewhat hurt.

Obi-Wan poured the hot water carefully, feeling torn. If he told Qui-Gon everything... would he believe him? Perhaps, eventually but...what would become of Anakin, still just a boy? And the moment he knew of Palpatine’s evil...he knew Qui-Gon. He would favor the direct approach, underestimating the sheer breadth of the trap the sith had laid (Obi-Wan himself lived through it and only began to understand long after it had closed).

“I saw...a great shadow fall over the republic.”

He sat at the table, relishing in the simple pleasure of pouring a cup for Qui-Gon and himself from a shared pot.

Qui-Gon cradled his mug in his hands. “I see. Nothing specific?”

“Your death. At the hands of a tool of darkness. You ran ahead...” Obi-Wan took a scorching sip to stop himself. “It was foolish. Unnecessary. And I was forced to fight alone without you.

Qui-Gon set the tea down to stroke his beard in thought. “Well. I have no great desire to die. While I make no promises, I will endeavor to avoid leaving you behind ‘unnecessarily.’”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan replied, over sincere. 

They drank in peaceful silence. It was interrupted by a shrill noise from Qui-Gon’s comm.

“I’ve just received a personal request from the Chancellor to immediately assist in negotiations with a Trade Federation blockade around Naboo. Are you feeling up to it?”

“You know, I think I am”

[acommonloon]

TL;DR

about last night's mperfect ending. After stops at three Louisville venues, each more fun than the last, we decided to get a nightcap in New Albany. We didn't manage to get a drink at any of four stops in that sleepy town but we did witness a police officer chasing a black man down the side of State Street. Still watching for a news report.

Alternately a night for Morgans

_____________________________________________________________

D's niece's husband, J, is a sweet guy. He has almost no family of his own living in the area and his own family unit consists of an unruly teen (not his) a precocious 6 year old and 3 year old twins. It's a lot.

With that in mind, I always wait for him to contact me and he always earns his kitchen passes so when he texted me he had a free night out I was glad to hang with him. I only asked if he had a curfew. No sir. He's nearing 40 and regularly admits he wishes he could more often frequent the places D and I do, meaning bars and restaurants. I remember those days when self came last.

Our 1st stop was World of Beer. With 50+ taps and hundreds of bottles and cans sitting in glass front coolers directly across from the bar, it's one of my go to spots. J immediately set about building a flight of five small pours while I took my time picking one or two low gravity beers to sip since I was driving. They had two bartenders on this Wednesday night, Morgan was ours and our service was prompt and friendly. By the time we finished a plate of tots, loaded with melted cheese and fresh jalapeno slices I had our plan.

I hadn't been to Commonwealth Tap since before 2020. This small wine bar is in a movie set sort of town called Norton Commons. Think "The Truman Show." The houses were all built over a small number of years and though they are comprised of many different styles, with no two near each other being the same, they are on the same size lots and there is no variety in terms of weathering or decoration. Everything to plan. Unreal. Creepy.

I glanced at the wine list on a chalkboard noticing a Turley Zin at $18 and a Cotes de Rhone at $8. When the bartender asked what I wanted, I said, "Talk me out of the Turley and into the Cotes. He hesitated for a second and I said, "I want something minerally, earthy, not fruity." Like a Beaujolais Morgon or an Italian grown on the side of a volcano. Before he could reply, a guy sitting at the bar said we don't have that on tap. The Cotes is your best option and the bartender handed me a generous taste saying, try that.

I took the glass all the while evaluating the man who'd spoken up. He'd said "we" don't have that. He was alone at the bar except for us. I doubted he was just a bold regular, maybe drunk, who felt everyone benefited from his opinion, he wasn't drunk. Then he stood up and walked over the the wine racks. His search was one of familiarity and he pulled a bottle and sat it down on the bar next to me. Was he an employee or maybe a distributor on good terms with the staff? Then he began talking about the wine, about his many trips to France, and I suddenly I knew. "You're an owner here aren't you?"

He laughed and admitted he was. He introduced himself, Neal Morgan and for the next 40 mins or so he told us about himself and the bar. He told us about his wife, a pediatrician who worked for 20 years in Indiana and he went so far as to describe his Scottish heritage along with his general thinking about wines. When he said he was going a friend's house for a pizza party, I thought he was about to leave. Then he said he was going to take a kick ass wine but first he wanted me to taste it. It was a California pinot noir priced at $30 more than the first bottle he'd put down on the bar. It was fantastic! He gave us tasting notes and I admitted I couldn't perceive half of what he reeled off. I said he spoke like a sommelier and he laughed again and said he claimed he had a better palate than Kenny, the sommelier who worked for him. He thanked us for coming in and seemed sincere. When he left, J looked at me and said, "That was amazing." I laughed and said it was a Wednesday at a bar.

Before we left, I asked Rainha to make me a Penicillin and we talked about Scotch. She related how she introduced her brother to Scotch and now that's all he drank. We talked about how things were during the shutdown and I told her about a new place I'd been the previous Saturday. Outside, J exclaimed this was just the best time! He said he'd never be able to talk staff like that, let alone the owner. I said talking to industry people was one of my favorite things. They are so interesting and I think they find it refreshing when someone at the bar wants to hear about them instead of wanting to talk about themselves. Then I said, I know where we'll go next. Maybe Stephen is working.

Our next stop was at Cuvee Wine Table and Stephen greeted me at the door with a huge "Shane!" and a hug. If J was impressed with Commonwealth, I thought he should fasten his seatbelt. Stephen is a trip. Except, Stephen exclaimed I'm on this side of the bar now! To my quizzical look, he said he was the manager now. Amidst introductions, our bartender, Andie came over and introduced herself. She was tall, regally thin, and wore a colorful scarf on her head. She offered an engaging personality I perceived as professional banter but sensed alos she seemed to enjoy her job.

When I described what kind of wine I preferred, she said, "OOh how about a white?" Ooookay??? I thought to myself, this is going to be fun. Stephen came back as Andy set my glass down in front of me and asked, "What are we having?" Andie said, it's the Santorini. Stephen, a newly minted sommelier, immediately launched into an enthusiastic description about this remarkable wine from a Greek Island. He said it was so constantly windy, they braided the vine boughs into bowls to protect the fruit on the inside. I smelled it and it reminded me of a Sav Blanc but when I tasted it, I knew I'd found a new favorite. It had a salty savory aspect with more minerality than any white I'd had previously.

Andie was from Lexington and our other bartender, Heather, was newly arrived from the Nashville area. Heather was training behind the bar but seemed tres calm. At one point she asked us to wish her luck and I realized she was going to take an order. When she came back, I was a little surprised but delighted when J asked her where she was from specifically. It turned out they were from the same area and knew the same high schools and such. Great fun. When Stephen came and asked if we were eating, I said, "What am I having?" The cassoulet he responded immediately and then he tried to add in sweet breads but I insisted I was out on that. J selected a flatbread and when my giant bowl of white beans with pork and a small chicken leg came, I felt I'd got the better order. He admitted sheepishly he just didn't like beans and that was that.

I suggested we finish with a French brandy served in proper snifters and asked for a bottle of the Santorini to go home. It was full dark but comfortably warm walking to the car and J asked if I were up for one more on him. I suggested we go see Emily at Brooklyn and the Butcher. She made me a perfect drink in January and I'd been craving another ever since.

All the way to New Albany, J kept bringing up how much he enjoyed the two wine bars and how he hoped he and his wife could indulge in similar experiences when their children were older. He worried his wife didn't really like anything but sweet wine and was picky about that. I laughed and said D was exactly the same but she was game to hang out and recently started to appreciate ciders and frutied beers, and even some semi-sweet wines.

There were still plenty of cars parked on the street when we arrived at Brooklyn and the Butcher. I noticed there was no one at the hostess stand when we walked in but I breezed past into the bar. There were two women sitting at the bar and I was a bit disappointed when I realized the bartender wasn't Emily. I was even more so when she came over and apologized but said they'd closed already. I laughed and made a joke about the owner being an old man for closing so early then I realized who it was sitting at the bar. I asked, "Is that Emily sitting at the bar?" she said it was and I got up and walked over. We talked for ten minutes about my last visit and I asked her about her trip to Savannah. She kept apologizing for the bar being closed but I assured her I would be back. It was fine, we'd walk down to The Earl.

I got a bad vibe the minute we walked in. The bar was mostly full and there was only one bartender. He was wearing short shorts and took forever to get us a drink menu then never looked our way for the next five minutes. I suggested we go to Recbar nearby. There it was the same. The lone bartender, woman this time, was overwhelmed and though the bar was half empty she never looked our way before I lost patience.

Okay then. We were driving to my final option (so I thought) when I stopped at a light. J said, "Look at that! A cop is chasing that guy!" Sure enough through the sparse traffic I could see a black guy sprinting along the side of the normally busy road. His arms were pistoning up and down, his hands flattened into chopping motions like a track sprinter. Coming behind but steadily losing ground was a hefty police officer. He looked ridiculous and I can only imagine he might be thinking everyone watching thought he looked ridiculous. I wondered if he might pull his gun.

The light turned green then and I moved forward. That's when we spotted a car with the front passenger side crushed in where it had impacted the guardrail, on the opposite side of the road. There was a cop car with its lights flashing parked behind it. I couldn't see any activity around the cars as we drove past. About a half mile up the road we pulled into the parking lot of our 4th attempt to get a last drink. It was closed.

We laughed and decided we'd had enough fun. As we headed back towards the scene of the incident, sirens and flashing lights were suddenly all around us. I guess there was a manhunt. I weaved through parked cruisers while J counted eight more with lights flashing on side streets . Fifteen minutes later I dropped him off. He thanked me profusely but it nothing but what I like to do anyway.

20 mins later I pulled into the garage and for a second my heart did the little flutter it always does when I see D's car parked in its spot. Then I sighed remembering she wasn't home and wouldn't be for another week.

Just a Wednesday.

[albatris]

Hi hello I hope you're doing well and getting read to sn00ze soon, STS! Saturday! Yes! Cause you're an artist and a writer, I was wondering how much the two mediums bleed into each other? Does drawing something out help you visualise it better, or do they not really interact much at all?

hello hi hey there and happy storyteller saturday :D thank you for the question!! I hope ur having a cool day B)

and even though you sent this yesterday you telling me to sn00ze is equally applicable today as it is almost every day of the week so................ yep, I’ll be sure to get onto that at some point. you’re probably going to make a >:c face at me for answering this at 3:06am

anyway! this is an interesting question! and a good one! unfortunately it may not have a very interesting answer?

my initial response was gonna be that they don’t really bleed into each other at all, but then........ nah, they kinda do

(and then about halfway through typing this draft I was like But What About Undertow, and my response became “oh yeah they definitely do”, but I’ll get to that in a bit)

but yeah! I think my writing definitely influences my art! both in the sense that I tend to draw mostly story stuff, ‘cause I like my stories and drawing is fun, but also in terms of like....... inspiration! usually I have a pretty good image of stuff in my head already while I’m writing, n sometimes this image will make me go “hell yeah I vibe with this I wanna draw it”, but the art itself generally turns out nothing like what I envision and usually takes a life of its own ‘cause I’ll just end up drawing whatever looks cool hahahaha

so I get some neat experiments and doodles and weirdness in various art pieces that definitely stemmed from story daydreams, but probably aren’t super related to the story itself in the end :P y’all don’t see much of this stuff ‘cause I mostly just post character drawings lmao

(this is bc I’m most confident with character drawings, and I will fistfight Drawing Backgrounds And Scenes in a wendy’s parking lot any day of the week)

but kinda hopping back up for a sec, one example that IS related to the story is like

drawings I’ve done that are centred in ATDAO’s unreality aren’t actually a super good representation of what the unreality is actually like? or I mean. they could be. they can be! but the drawings are centred around very literal concrete representations of glitchy weirdness

whereas in the story itself (at least to start with) there’s much more a focus on the general looming Hey Something Is Horribly Wrong vibes and, like, the unravelling and bleeding together of senses, the way the narration changes (ie the way your own thought processes slowly start becoming completely foreign to you), n just........ glitchy weirdness, but not glitchy weirdness that you can visually represent, glitchy weirdness that is canonically in the category “you can experience this and have no way to process it because a human mind is not equipped to translate it and your senses have no way of taking it in”

n then I bring the body horror in full force but that’s neither here nor there

existential terror and uncanny valley vibes r hard to draw, y’know? so the drawings mostly just wind up as me having fun with the aesthetic hahaha

but yeah, art stuff stems from story daydreams, it’s very rare that story stuff will stem from art daydreams

character drawings were something I started doing just ‘cause I liked my characters and I was vibin, but they ended up being the one exception in that they DO tend to actively inspire the decisions I make in the story itself, unlike my other art

written descriptions of people are a weak point for me, generally I’ll kinda know at least the key aspects of what folks look like, but the descriptions I come up with on page are always frustratingly vague............. n drawing them out helps me fill in the blanks and give my descriptions a bit more life and personality IMO, ‘cause I mean

there’s little things about people’s appearances that are pretty personal, little quirks or habits they have, etc, that I wouldn’t think of in writing, whereas in art they just crop up naturally

and also sometimes I’ll write a description of a character or have an image of them in my head and I’ll be like Yeah This Is Them but then when I draw them my hands will just make their own decisions

and whatever the hands create is Law and Official Canon as far as I’m concerned, I will always trust the hands over my initial plans when it comes to characters, and they have not failed me so far

and now that I’ve gone on a whole spiel about how (outside of helping me pin down character details) creating art isn’t generally something that inspires a lot of story development or daydreams, it’s time for me to completely contradict that because, like I said earlier: Undertow

this is a WIP that came into existence purely from art inspiration! basically I came up with Aster’s design on the fly because someone was like “it’s genderqueer pride day” and I was like Oh Sick Time To Make A New Genderqueer OC

most of the characters in Undertow were drawn and designed long before I had any clue who they were or what their deal was. the entire premise of Aster as a character was born within like two hours from one silly doodle. then I was like “BUT WHAT IF SHE HAD FRIENDS” so I drew some friends, who ended up being Kit and Meg. n their relationships with each other and the kind of story in which they find themselves all just kind of spiralled out from a series of silly doodles and took on a life of their own :P

I think it’s a different scenario since Undertow exists purely as a vessel for shenanigans and self-indulgent nonsense, so I was feeling a lot less pressure to be grounded and serious, I could just throw things around like “amnesiac clairvoyant delivery driver with an illegal magic crime truck” and “necromancer who doesn’t believe in magic who wants to reanimate a t-rex to honour his dead wife” to see what stuck and I had no need to be like “hm, but is that Realistic, though?”

unrestrained summer fun!

it’s easier for me to let myself daydream in relation to art when there’s none of this pressure, which I think is what separates Undertow from my other projects c:

plus Undertow is the one WIP of mine that I’ve always pictured in a kind of episodic comic format, though I lack the skill set or the patience to pull this off hahaha

as such, most of my development for it comes in the form of messing around with the artistic side of things!! as it should be, I think

anyway that’s enough from me I think, thanks for reading, have a fantastic day, hope you see some cool birds (if you do please tell me about them)

[northisnotup]

7 and 19 for the fic writing meme pls. And then if there’s one that you wish someone would ask but they haven’t yet, that one too! Ty ty

7. Which part of writing do you struggle with most? 

Transitional scenes/sentences/sequences - 100% its the getting to a place from a place, type shit that I struggle with most. And making time skips seem natural. And telling a story in a non-straightforward way. 

There are all these interested writing devices that I think are so cool, but I am so hesitant to every use them because as a reader, I hate feeling confused by a narrative. Like, I just finished Ancillary Justice, and the beginning, the first book, the narration jumps back and forth between time periods and narrative styles and it’s very confusing! It was frustrating to continue with this very detailed world that doesn’t hold your hand with the introduction to it and that is the last thing that I want my readers to feel - like they have to hold on until the story gets good or less confusing. 

19. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why? 

From the writing I’ve done in the last few years, I would say that so far, the hardest character I’ve chosen to write from the POV of are Hanzo and Rita. 

Something I discovered over the last year is that I like telling a story from a specific point of view. And I like that point of view to influence how the story feels. When I write for Penumbra, I really, desperately want the reader to be able to hear the narration in the narrators voice. Like, my stories where Juno is the POV character should FEEL like Juno is telling the story, even through 2nd person instead of first.

Hanzo Shimada is a very self-contained character. He is a complete and utter mess but all that mess is hidden under a strict and disciplined image. He’s proud and arrogant and hides behind polite social mores. At least, this is my version of the character, because we have very little to go off of in canon. I struggle with Hanzo because I don’t know how far to push him, or where or when to let his pride get the best of him, to push his arrogance into cruelty or to let condescending indulgence run rampant. I want to write him as kind, and he isn’t. He’s polite, but that’s not the same thing, and even then, only when it suits him. 

Rita is. God, Rita is hard. She’s smart and she’s kind and she’s self-doubting, and she’s loving and she would tell you all of that but only as she relates to her favourite shows because it’s easier for her to view and interpret the world through a lens of unreality. And that! Is a heck of a thing to have in common with a character from a podcast, especially when you are aware it’s a fault of that character.  

So far, I think Juno has been the easiest character to write for, because I have such a good handle on his voice and because I feel I understand him, but like with all of my characters I struggle with having him made bad choices. 

10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, plot or exposition most? 

Okay, cards on the table here: I LOVE writing dialogue. Often, the inspiration for my fics comes from a single line of dialogue or an exchange I want to write and the whole fic comes out of that. When I plan fics in the shower, it’s dialogue exchanges that I plan. But when I get to writing, I often worry that I am writing TOO MUCH dialogue and then have to write oodles of internal monologue, description and exposition to make up for the dialogue. 

That being said, I feel I am BEST at writing exposition. But I love dialogue. 

[thevividgreenmoss]

Intellectus sacrificium intellectus . 1 – The assumption that thought profits from the decay of the emotions, or even that it remains unaffected, is itself an expression of the process of stupefaction. The social division of labour recoils on man, however much it may expedite the task exacted from him. The faculties, having developed through interaction, atrophy once they are severed from each other. Nietzsche’s aphorism, that ‘the degree and kind of a man’s sexuality extends to the highest pinnacle of his spirit’, has a more than merely psychological application. Because even its remotest objectifications are nourished by impulses, thought destroys in the latter the condition of its own existence. Is not memory inseparable from love, which seeks to preserve what yet must pass away? Is not each stirring of fantasy engendered by desire which, in displacing the elements of what exists, transcends it without betrayal? Is not indeed the simplest perception shaped by fear of the thing perceived, or desire for it? It is true that the objective meaning of knowledge has, with the objectification of the world, become progressively detached from the underlying impulses; it is equally true that knowledge breaks down where its effort of objectification remains under the sway of desire. But if the impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed in the thought which has escaped their sway, then there will be no knowledge at all, and the thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity. Memory is tabooed as unpredictable, unreliable, irrational. The resulting intellectual asthma, which culminates in the dissolution of the historical dimension of consciousness, leads directly to a depreciation of the synthetic apperception which, according to Kant, cannot be divorced from ‘reproduction in imagination’, from recollection. Fantasy alone, today consigned to the realm of the unconscious and proscribed from knowledge as a childish, injudicious rudiment, can establish that relation between objects which is the irrevocable source of all judgement: should fantasy be driven out, judgement too, the real act of knowledge, is exorcised. But the castration of perception by a court of control that denies it any anticipatory desire, forces it thereby into a pattern of helplessly reiterating what is already known. When nothing more may actually be seen, the intellect is sacrificed. Just as, under the primacy of the autonomous production process, the purpose of reason dwindles away until it sinks into the fetishism of itself and of external power, so reason itself is reduced to an instrument and assimilated to its functionaries, whose power of thought serves only the purpose of preventing thought. Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology. The utterly pure reason of those who have divested themselves entirely of the ability ‘to conceive of an object even in its absence’, converges with pure unconsciousness, with feeble-mindedness in the most literal sense, for measured against the extravagantly realistic ideal of a datum freed of any categories, all knowledge is false, and true only where the question of truth or falsity cannot be applied. That such tendencies are far advanced can be seen at every turn in the activities of science, which is on the point of bringing the last remnants of the world, defenceless ruins, under its yoke.

...Great and small . – One of the disastrous transferences from the field of economic planning to that of theory, which is no longer really distinguished from the ground-plan of the whole, is the belief that intellectual work can be administered according to the criterion whether an occupation is necessary and reasonable. Priorities of urgency are established. But to deprive thought of the moment of spontaneity is to annul precisely its necessity. It is reduced to replaceable, exchangeable dispositions. As in war economies orders of precedence are decided for the distribution of raw materials, for the production of this or that type of weapon, a hierarchy of importance is creeping into theory-formation which gives preference to either particularly topical or particularly relevant themes, and discriminates against, or indulgently tolerates, anything non-essential, letting it pass as ornamentation of the basic facts, finesse. The concept of relevance is determined by organizational considerations, that of topicality measured by the most powerful objective tendency of the moment. This schematization into important and subsidiary categories follows the scale of values of prevalent practice with regard to form, even if contradicting it in content. In the origins of progressive philosophy, in Bacon and Descartes, the cult of the important is already contained. Yet in the end this cult shows an unfree, regressive quality. Importance is represented by the dog out on a walk: at some unexplained spot he stands and sniffs, tense, unyielding, earnestly displeased – and then relieves himself, scrapes the ground with his feet and trots on his way in unconcern. In primitive times life and death may have depended on such things; after thousands of years of domestication they have become an unreal ritual. Who can help being reminded of them when observing a serious committee weighing the urgency of problems before turning over the carefully defined and timetabled tasks to the attentions of their colleagues? There is something of this anachronistic doggedness in all importance, and to use it as a criterion of thought is to impose on thought a spellbound fixity, and a loss of self-reflection. The great themes are nothing other than primeval rumblings which cause the animal to pause and try to bring them forth once again. This does not mean that the hierarchy of importance should be ignored. Just as its narrow-mindedness reflects that of the system, so it is saturated with all the latter’s force and stringency. Thought ought not, however, to repeat this hierarchy, but by completing, end it. The division of the world into important and unimportant matters, which has always served to neutralize the key phenomena of social injustice as mere exceptions, should be followed up to the point where it is convicted of its own untruth. The division which makes everything objects must itself become an object of thought, instead of guiding it. The large themes will then also make their appearance, though hardly in the traditional ‘thematic’ sense, but refractedly and eccentrically.’ Philosophy retained the barbarism of immediate quantity as a legacy from its earlier alliance with administrators and mathematicians: whatever does not bear the stamp of the inflated, world-historical bustle is handed over to the procedures of the positive sciences. In this, philosophy behaves like bad painting, which imagines that the dignity of a work and the fame it earns depends on the gravity of the subject matter; a picture of the Battle of Leipzig is worth more than a chair in oblique perspective. The distinction between the conceptual and the artistic media makes no difference to this bad naivety. If the process of abstraction marks all its thinking with the illusion of greatness, it also harbours, in its distance from the object of action, in its reflection and transparency, the antidote: the self-criticism of reason is its truest morality. The opposite, in the most recent phase of self-governing thought, is nothing other than the abolition of the subject. The gesture of theoretical work, passing judgement on themes according to their importance, neglects the theoretical worker. The development of an ever-diminishing number of technical faculties is supposed to equip him adequately to deal with every specified task. Thinking subjectivity, however, is precisely what cannot be fitted into a set of tasks imposed heteronomously from above: it is adequate to them only in the sense that it is no part of them, so that its existence is a pre-condition of any objectively binding truth. The overbearing matter-of-factness which sacrifices the subject to the ascertainment of the truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

[letterboxd]

Lucca.

Doug Dillaman runs into gremlins and replicants at the Lucca Film Festival.

When I arrived in a small Tuscan village last month, our movie plans didn’t stretch far beyond the 4:3 television at our apartment, and a possible road trip to Florence to see Avengers: Endgame in its version originale. (Subtitled versions of films are few and far between in Italy generally, and in Tuscany particularly.)

Imagine my delight, then, to discover that just over half an hour from our bucolic doorstep, the walled town of Lucca was hosting a film festival, with guests including actor Rutger Hauer, Gremlins director Joe Dante, filmmakers Mick Garris, Philip Gröning, Paolo Taviani, and French animation director Michel Ocelot.

The Lucca Film Festival brings high-profile filmmakers to its city gates every April, along with a competition featuring up-to-the-minute titles and other special screenings, all for a low cost of 20 euros for the week. Before booking your tickets, do bear in mind that the festival is optimized for locals, which means that without a European language or two up your sleeve it can be a challenge. Hence, we gave a pass to the stacked Rutger Hauer retrospective (including Nighthawks, Eureka, Ladyhawke and Spetters), but we weren’t going to miss the opportunity to see the legend in person, and showed up for a Hauer “masterclass”.

Rutger Hauer and Joe Dante steal a private moment together. / Photo via Lucca Film Festival.

The term was a loose one, as the event that ensued was a barely moderated Q&A, with Hauer tending towards a rambling conversation style, avoiding specificities in most of his answers. When asked what he looks for in a film that he’s considering acting in, for instance: “Something that pulls me in … but I don’t know what it’s called.” On the directors he has worked with, he did manage to reveal: “Paul Verhoeven, who I did my first five features with, made me walk. I was a baby. He taught me how not to act. Ridley [Scott] taught me to dance. And I danced like a motherfucker.”

Still from Mark Jenkin’s ‘Bait’ (2019).

More rewarding was the competition lineup, particularly Bait. Englishman Mark Jenkin, who shoots on black and white 16mm film, has produced his first feature following several shorts. Set in an unspecified Cornish fishing village, Bait chronicles the tensions between the “old way of life” and the modern, where locals are edged out by out-of-towners buying investment properties to run as Airbnbs, and fishing boats give up their trade to host stag parties.

It takes time to adjust to Jenkin’s stylistic flourishes, but he’s relentlessly attuned to the emotional truth of his characters, even as the celluloid flares and ripples; call it kitchen-sink unrealism. Shot on a Bolex with the 13,000 feet of film negative hand-processed, Bait has a solid 3.5 on Letterboxd at the time of writing—a good indication that the Lucca Film Festival has its eyes open beyond the usual suspects. (Other competition titles include Eternal Winter, Those Who Work, A Family Submerged, and Nicole Brending’s winning film Dollhouse.)

Joe Dante and Mick Garris in Lucca for the city’s 2019 film festival. / Photo via Lucca Film Festival.

My film festival jaunt ended with a highlight: Mick Garris and Joe Dante, in town for the Italian debut of Nightmare Cinema, an anthology horror film which Garris produced and which both of them directed segments for. They proved an excellent double act in their masterclass. Dante is a walking encyclopaedia of film history, needing only the slightest prompt regarding the history of Italian cinema to reel off a string of names that influenced him (including Mario Bava, Antonio Margheriti, and the “three Sergios—Leone, Corbucci, and Sollima”), as well as a trenchant analysis of what killed the Italian film industry in the mid 70s.

Dante is also unafraid to call it as he sees it, labelling the current Italian cinema a shadow of its former self, slamming the original Blair Witch Project an “exercise in emptiness”, and expressing concern about the future of film, noting that “Netflix has ended the Hollywood movie industry” and “the dream of making movies people will see on the big screen the world over is pretty much dead”. He was shocked that an audience member had seen his last full feature film to date, Burying the Ex, a film that he noted was flawed. Someone give this man some money for his Roger Corman biopic The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes now!

Mick Garris, meanwhile, is the quintessential “glass half-full” character. Noting that filmmakers have to “evolve or die”, he pointed out that TV has gotten really good, and a lot of feature films have gotten really shitty. In spite of Nightmare Cinema’s 12-year gestation period—a film that finally came to exist due to the support of streaming services, incidentally—and having taken his share of knocks, including having his anthology Showtime series Masters of Horror cut short when it was sold to NBC after its second season (becoming Fear Itself), Garris seems fully aware of what a lucky man he is.

This was illustrated best with his story of being hired by Amblin Entertainment to write the first episode of Amazing Stories when he was surviving on food stamps. Both Dante and Garris recognize their Amblin experience as a special time, in part because Steven Spielberg’s supportive presence offered a buffer between them and the studio.

Joe Dante poses with visitors from out of town. / Photo via Lucca Film Festival.

A Joe Dante masterclass without a few Gremlins stories would be a sad thing indeed. He indulged us: the film’s original puppetry was insanely complicated and required 100 people; moreover, after principal photography had wrapped, Dante had to spend an additional month and a half on insert shots of gremlins. He was offered a sequel the weekend it opened, but couldn’t stand looking at those creatures again so soon, and only came back to the project after several failed attempts to develop the sequel by others.

Offered a chance to direct “anything you want” if he made a sequel, Dante drew inspiration from Hellzapoppin’, a fourth-wall-breaking, genre-defying, wildly under-seen comedy. While the puppetry was easier the second time around (25 puppeteers this time), a last-minute release date shift by the studio from May to August—to combat Dick Tracy—wound up hamstringing the film’s success.

If you’re desperate for more, both Dante and Garris have deep Internet presences: Dante runs Trailers from Hell, with commentaries from dozens of filmmakers on various trailers as well as interview podcast The Movies That Made Me, and Garris hosts the Post Mortem Podcast. A few of these stories, in fact, are taken from a special episode of the podcast recorded at the film festival after the Masterclass.

And if you’re looking for some anthology inspiration, Joe Dante gave us four of his favorites; check out his list. Next stop, Cannes!

Reporting by Doug Dillaman.

[sftswigan]

Manchester garage punks, Tinfoils, George from the band tells us about their latest single, their money raising effort for BLMUK and how a game of pool completed the band...

Alright hope you’re doing well through this shit time.

Can you tell us who Tinfoils are and where did the name come from?

TINFOILS are a mardy northern bastard garage punk band based in Manchester. There's three of us, and we've all moved here from Yorkshire.

The name came from when I was on an X Files hype. Thought it was a good name for a band, so I just got the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages before we'd even done a rehearsal! I think it was before we even met Will. I just thought it was a good name, the other two agreed and we ran with it.

Sounds like you had confidence in this band early on then. How did you find Will and what has he brought to the band?

I don't know if I had loads of confidence in the band before we started really, I just thought the name was cool! We didn't really take it very seriously for a long time, took us about 6 months to bother looking for a gig. Was just an excuse to meet and get pissed up at first.

Me and Alex had known each other for a while, and went to a pub in Fallowfield. We were having a game of pool, when two blokes came up and asked if they could play doubles because no other tables were free. We agreed, and one of them turned out to be Will. After that they invited us to some flat party, and at about 6 in the morning on some unknown persons kitchen worktop he mentioned he played bass. We met up a couple of days later and the rest is history.

He's an amazing bassist, and his love for funk has a massive impact on every song I write. Tunes always come out sounding better once I show them to Will and Alex.

Love the bass lines in your songs, The Abyss, especially. Could’ve been a different story if you and Alex decided that was your last game of pool and just handed it to Will and his mate!

Like The Blinders, you also (and I think one or two others have followed suit) made the journey from Doncaster to Manchester. How much of a difference has that made to you and the band?

Definitely! All credit for that goes to our mate Breezy to be fair, he was the one who suggested doubles. He drops it in to conversation every time he's trying to convince us to come out.

Yeah I moved from Doncaster about 5 years ago, I do love it to bits but I wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff I wanted to if I'd stayed. Wouldn't have met Alex and Will, and probably wouldn't have ended up starting a band. There are some decent bands in Doncaster but a lot of it was indie stuff at the time, which I do like but not something I was interested in doing. The music scene in Manchester is amazing at the moment, there's so much music and it's all really different and interesting. Best place for music in the country at the moment I reckon.

Manchester is definitely a great place for music but I think the UK in general has a really good music scene at the moment with loads of good bands about! Though places like Manchester have some unreal venues and bands love playing there.

I wanna talk about your latest single ‘Spitting’ which was released during lockdown. Absolutely love that track! You went to Magic Garden to record it. What did recording it there bring to the song?

Cheers mate, we're really happy with it. I think it added a lot going to Magic Garden, Gavin's brilliant. First of all, it's just way higher quality than anything else we've put out, and I think it manages to sound a lot like we do live. Gavin also suggested we add some vocals in to middle 8 bit, which was originally just instrumental. I quickly wrote something down on a bit of scrap paper in a few minutes, and recorded it in one take, and that's the take in the final song. It's the whole "lap me up I'm stagnant water" bit. We'll hopefully get some more tunes recorded soon, would love another trip to the garden. The music video for the song is just clips of our time at the studio mixed in with some live clips, had a really good time there.

I hear quite a few bands speak highly of him and his influence on their time in his studio. He does seem to get great results.

You recently released some songs on bandcamp that were live demos if I remember correctly. Are they going onto Spotify at any point and also will you be recording any of these? Peeping Tom is probably one of my favourites of yours.

Yeah they're a load of demos we did at Dead Basic Studios last year, we thought it was a shame to have them just lying about. We decided to put them out and donate all the money from Bandcamp Day to BLMUK, every little helps doesn't it. They won't be going on Spotify, but I reckon we'll probably record a couple of them properly one day. Peeping Tom's a bit of a favourite, would love to get that recorded in a studio but there's a million tempo changes so I think it'd probably be tricky to nail down. Its one of my favourites to play live, especially when we're headlining and get the chance for a self-indulgent 10 minute jam with a big sing-a-long. The demos will stay on Bandcamp for the foreseeable, but I think we'll probably take them off at some point.

A great cause, did you manage to raise much? Some really good tracks on there would love to here them recorded like you say.

So what are the bands plans once lockdown is relaxed to a point bands and musicians to get out there and do proper stuff without fear again?

Yeah we raised about £60-70 I think? It was only for the day, when Bandcamp waived their fees. Props to Lewis from Dead Basic for recording and mixing them all.

First things first we need to get in for a rehearsal! I've written a load of new songs which I'm looking forward to working out, I think it'll be a lot of new tunes in the set list when we're back gigging. Hopefully reschedule our tour that had to be postponed, play some tunes, get some recording done, and go out and see some bands! Just got to hope it's not too far off.

That’s awesome! Excited about the new tunes and future recordings...and gigs again obviously.

Hopefully you can squeeze a rearranged gig for us on the tour!

You mentioned how highly you rate the Manchester scene. Which bands should people go and see once bands get to gig again?

There's a tonne of bands to go and see, to name a few: Loose Articles, Blanketman, The Early Mornings, Swine, Springfield Elementary, Giant Boys, The Red Stains, Cold Water Swimmers, and loads of others. There's a lot of different styles about but I do feel like there's a sort of coherent feeling between all the bands around here at the minute. It got to the point just before pandemic where no matter which venue or what day, if you turned up you'd probably see something amazing. Fingers crossed it all survives the lockdown!

There’s some good bands there, really like Springfield Elementary and Swine what I’ve heard of them and also Red Stains. I need to check the others out but we’re very lucky to have so many good bands about and more people these days that are very much into new music!

We’re gonna end the interview with some quick fun questions...

Favourite album/EP of this year?

I'm gonna go with either Zero Dollar Bill by Do Nothing, or The Non-Stop EP by Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. Can't pick between them!

Also really looking forward to Fontaines DCs new album, and Idles, and The Blinders.

If Tinfoils could tour with any band alive or dead who would it be?

Would love to go on tour with Fontaines DC, Idles or Sleaford Mods. If I had to pick between them, at the moment probably Fontaines. Loving their last few singles, and Dogrel was banging.

Ah wait, Thee Oh Sees! Maybe Oh Sees actually. Any of the above would allow me to die happy.

Is there a song that at least one member isn’t keen on in the set but are outnumbered?

I don't really like The Royal Baby Machine that much, but the other two do.

Chinese food or Indian?

Indian

Lager or Real ale?

Ale, but more of a standard bitter to be honest. Not West Coast passionfruit and jasmine infused with lemongrass IPA stuff, it's rank and I don't get it. Give me a pint of John Smiths over that wank any day.

Festival you’d love to play?

Wouldn't turn down Glasto!

Last one...

Best live band you’ve seen?

Best live band I've seen is probably Idles.

Alex, our drummer says Cabbage at Night & Day was probably the best gig he’s been to recently

Thanks to George from Tinfoils for chatting to us! You can listen to their music on all the streaming services and go and visit their social media pages. Here is their latest effor, Spitting.

[ii-thiscat-ii]

Oooh, how about The Wizard of Lanata?

Sure. The Wizard of Lanata.

(DVD-style commentary is the single most self-indulgent thing the author has ever done and should be taken with a grain of salt and probably whiskey.)

Again, this is a story of Dipper pretending to be human. Unlike most of the others, the setting is an unimaginable amound of time in the future, probably on a different planet, in a society that has regressed to a medival type technology level.

I have repeatedly stated that I could probably write an entire novel about this story, but I won’t. What I have written was written over the course of two days during December last year, and is rushed, summarized, and probably full of typoes, but I still love it and so do many others.

It just happens to be the perfect blend of TAU and the more Pratchettian medival bizarre village stories, where strange things happen and people learn to live with them. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and would gladly revisit it if I got a new idea.

Chapter 1

I wanted “Tyrone” to come across as somewhat fey. He was supposed to appear as something that attempted to be human, but didn’t really know what that meant, just like how his sheep seem like they kind of know what a sheep is, but not entirely.

The way it takes him a while to figure out how people are supposed to dress, the way his house materializes overnight, and the way he entirely forgets to age are all important things to have in the introduction, to establish the mood I wanted the fic to have. If there is anything I would change if I rewrote this, though, it’s his name. The whole “old man Tyrone” thing sounds nice, but doesn’t really make sense if he doesn’t look old.

Then there’s the Flock.

It was not unusual for shepherds to bring an animal or two into their houses during harsh, cold winter nights. It was stuffy and it smelled, but it was by far preferable to freezing to death.

Tyrone brought his flock into his home on a very different basis. Unrelated to the seasons, every single sheep in his corral walked into the house once a day, regularly as clockwork. No one could understand how they all fit in there, and no one could understand why, either.

When anyone dared ask, Tyrone only smiled and said, “Well, it can’t do for them to miss their reality shows, now can it?” which made no sense at all.

I always have the Flock watch reality shows if I can. It’s one of those details that are just funny in themselves. Of course, the fact that they can get reality shows in a place where TVs generally don’t exist adds another layer of unreality to the whole place.

Either they’re watching through weird time-shenanigans, or they’re actually getting shows from another planet, which honestly makes more sense.

The conclusion they ended up falling back on was the Tyrone simply did not know the proper method by which to shear a sheep. And that he should probably not be invited to any more shearing events. 

Lanata’s reaction to Tyrone is probably my favourite part of the whole story. Whether he’s doing things that are blatantly impossible, having actual fair folk buy his wares at the farmers market, or having his sheep spy on people and predict the future, he’s not hurting anyone, so Lanata accepts it and moves on.

Of course, there’s also the detail that the sheep never predict the future while he’s around to see, implying that they’re taking the whole “pretending to be mortal” thing slightly less seriously than he does, and that they’re not afraid to have a little fun on his behalf.

The incident with the sheep thieves has been written out and is hilarious. Here.

It’s one of many scenes I had ideas for for this fic, not all of which I could include. I liked the idea of one sheep herder borriwing one of the Flock for studding purposes just because it was ridiculous and we all know it wouldn’t work, but unfortunately I forgot to write in the one where someone somehow burns a truckload of yggdrasil, fogging down the entire valley and accidentally swarming the village with demon sheep high off their asses. Ah, next time.

As any other special thing that happens to such a community and stays around, and that they can do nothing about, they developed a kind of pride around him. Sure, he was creepy and unsociable, and his sheep randomly announced people’s small but dirty secrets to the world, maybe he infuriated people at times, maybe he scared the living daylights out of most of the youngsters who were dared by friends to approach his house at night, maybe eerie music could be heard from his home, and maybe he was a wizard, and wizards were rumoured to be fickle and dangerous, but he was their wizard, dammit, and they were proud if him. 

Incredible what you can decide to be proud of if you can’t remove it.

Tyrone isn’t a wizard, of course, but that’s what people think. At this point in time he’s been around for long enough that going a decade without a proper deal isn’t the biggest problem, which of course leaves him with more time to fuck around, but he does still make deals if they’re offered, and that does probably help the way the village sees him.

He’s not someone whose help you want to need, but if you do, you can get it, and that’s important. It helps cement in people’s minds that he’s not just weird and magical, he’s also powerful, and on average he does good.

The tax collector was funny though. I had a lot of people saying they felt sorry for him, which tells me I wasn’t clear enough about the fact that his demand for one of Tyrone’s sheep was not, in fact, his job, but an abuse of power. It’s a bit of a staple for stories of this genre that the tax collector is someone no one likes and who does no good, and considering how remote Lanata is, you have to wonder if it ever actually gets anything back for its taxes.

Either way, it was a fun joke.

Chapter 2

I wasn’t actually planning for this fic to become as long as it did, but my things have gotten this tendency lately to grow entirely out of proportion. I wasn’t happy about having to chop it up, but in the end, it was probably for the best.

The first chapter was mostly Tyrone and Lanata, and how they feel about each other. In this one, we get more outside views.

Liam is just a random travelling wizard, mostly there to show what Tyrone looks like to one of this planet’s actual wizards. He gets scared quickly and leaves without having any large effect on anything.

The next outsider to try to meddle is a king, because if I didn’t include a king, what kind of genre conventionalist would I be?

The part I like about this passage is that Tyrone himself doesn’t do much to dissuade anyone. All he does is tell two separate people no and then warn the tavern owner that someone is trying to set her house on fire, and letting Lanata sort out its own business.

Only when the king bothers to come himself does Tyrone decide to give him his time of day. This of course ends with the king gaining a lifelong fear of demons and eventually to the Circle of the Dreamers’ Star becoming a national religion, but that’s more or less irrelevant. The point is that Tyrone doesn’t need anything that he doesn’t already have here. He is, in fact, entirely content. I like writing fic like that.

The wizard and his sheep had lived in the house on the hill for so long the oldest woman in the village remembered her grandmother speaking of him as if he had always lived there. For all this time, there had been very little change in how he acted out his days.

Then, Iirah happened.

Iirah is one of my own favourite Mizars. She’s “the old wizard’s beautiful daughter”. She is so much fun, and she changes the game.

At this point, Dipper has been Tyrone the sheepherder, and then the Wizard for several centuries, and it was about time for something to change. Iirah gives him a reason to interact with the townfolk on a more personal level. She humanizes him, in a way, because she is undoubtedly human where he is undoubtedly not, and it creates an entirely new dynamic.

Not to mention all the random theories that arise about where she comes from. We know that he probably just kidnapped her from neglecting parents off another planet, but they still have to wonder if he made her out of straw.

Iirah is also what makes him give the second king a chance, because he is soft as hell for his children’s puppy eyes no matter how old he gets, and Iirah wants to see a castle and wear a princess dress, and honestly she has a great time.

She’s such a spoiled child.

He was numbered among their curiosities, a seemingly normal man with antlers like a stag growing from his head, antlers made of wood and bone with cranberry leaves growing from them. They called him Bet, and he visited the tavern one night that Iirah worked the till. He caught her eye immediately.

Kaleb’s story is one I really wish I could have taken more care with. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear he’s a Henry reincarnation, what with the antlers and all.

They’re physical because of an incident in his youth, and they’re also the reason he’s more or less a slave at the point invtime where he enters the story.

I wish I could have had his and Iirah’s meeting flow better, and I wish I could have had a bunch of village boys corner him and tell him that she had never learned to protect herself so if he hurt him they would stab him dead for his own good. I wanted him to be taken in by the village absolutely and completely, only because Iirah liked him and Iirah is the wizard’s daughter. I wanted him to hear rumours about the wizard but never really meet him before he walked out of Iirah’s room that one morning after, to find Tyrone sitting in a chair and looking at him.

I wish I’d found a more elegant way to deal with his name, and what that meant.

“For as long as you are within the boundaries of this village, you will have no name. No designation attached to you will stick, no memories of your previous names will remain, written records will smudge, and spoken words will be caught by the wind.”

I still like this part, though. Any beast can kill someone. Any monster can torture someone, but if something steals your name, you can be pretty damn sure you shouldn’t mess with it. It’s one of those scenes that formed the basis I built the rest of the story around.

And then it ends. Iirah dies, and Dipper can’t stand to live in the village anymore, though he gifts it with enough magic to keep the village special for centuries after, in the form of neon coloured sheep herds.

Maybe some day I’ll sit down and actually write that novel, but for now, this is it for Lanata.

[oliveraaliyah1994]

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[kristinsimmons]

Can we move on?

By CHADI NABHAN MD, MBA, FACP

Every so often, my cynical self emerges from the dead. Maybe it’s a byproduct of social media, or from following Saurabh Jha, who pontificates about everything from Indian elections to the Brexit fiasco. Regardless, there are times when my attempts at refraining from being opinionated are successful, but there are rare occasions when they are not. Have I earned the right to opine freely about moving on from financial toxicity, anti-vaxers, who has ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to the health care system, the patient & their data, and if we should call patients “consumers”? You’ll have to decide.

I endorse academic publications; they can be stimulating and may delve into more research and are essential if you crave academic recognition. I also enjoy listening to live debates and podcasts, as well as reading, social media rants, but some of the debates and publications are annoying me. I have tried to address some of them in my own podcast series “Outspoken Oncology” as a remedy, but my remedy was no cure. Instead, I find myself typing away these words as a last therapeutic intervention.

Here are my random thoughts on the topics that have been rehashed & restated all over social media outlets (think: Twitter feeds, LinkedIn posts, Pubmed articles, the list goes on), that you will simply find no way out. Disclaimer, these are NOT organized by level of importance but simply based on what struck me over the past week as grossly overstated issues in health care.  Forgive my blunt honesty.

●      Can we have fewer posts and papers that describe how immoral financialtoxicity is? We all know it’s a problem and our patients suffer the most from it. But continuing to mention the gravity of financial toxicity? Well, that’s just so 1999. At this point, I want more posts and papers discussing strategies on how we move forward. For example: How can we overcome financial toxicity? Even if our patients appreciate us continuing to discuss the same problems repeatedly, they deserve better answers from us.? Let me illustrate. Say I am your patient and I complain to you about persistent nausea. You, as the doctor are empathic and actively listen to my concern, yet my nausea persists. I appreciate the attention and the listening you offer, but at some point I need something to control my nausea. If you don’t have the remedy, I am more annoyed because you keep restating my problem, agonizing me further and still not offering me a solution or showing any attempts to try to find a solution for my issue.

●      I am growing tired of the debate on “vaccines”. Isn’t it clear that by now, if there are people who do not believe in vaccines, there is not much we can do to sway them differently? There comes a time when one must decide where to concentrate his/her energy. I am all for having an open dialogue. But, a dialogue with the intent of changing one’s opinion requires both parties to be open to each other’s views and that one of them might potentially change course. Based on what I have seen over the past few months, those opposed to vaccines will not be persuaded by strong evidence or the amount of data they are given. So, maybe we should direct our attention to something that brings better results? Say, describing financial toxicity one more time? OK, that was not nice.

●      There are many stakeholders in the health care industry, but the ultimate stakeholder is the patient. Aren’t we all previous patients, current patients, or future patients? I am growing tired of folks pointing fingers at each other as the solely responsible party for the current state of affairs. Academics blame pharma,  pharma blames research costs, insurers blame both, patients blame insurers, physicians blame the system, and the list goes on & on. We need to be fair and practical if we are to approach our health care system in a methodical way that lends towards some solutions. The reality is, EVERY entity is important in assuring proper delivery of life-saving drugs to patients who stand to benefit. We all can name hundreds of therapies that were developed outside the walls of academic and university labs, and similarly name many medication that required collaborations between academia and pharma to achieve success. Pharma defends itself from being the culprit, challenging us to envision how our current drug development and research ability is without the manufacturer’s taking risks? Would we have the “Gleevecs” of the world? Likely not. Could these drugs be much cheaper and could we have a more rational approach to drug pricing? Absolutely. But, hospital prices also need a better rationale for the costs of blood draws to x-rays, and the absurd costs of a Tylenol pill in an inpatient ward. Why do academicians rarely critique hospitals? Because they are employed by such hospitals. In general, it isn’t advisable to critique the employer that issues your paycheck. I plea that the critique must be fair, balanced, and equally distributed among all stakeholders.

●      Since we all know that a few patients are treated on clinical trials, we need to figure out a way to incorporate data generated from non-trial patients into decision-making. That’s what I call the “real world” Yes, it’s not perfect, but such is life. Less critique to the idea of studying the real-world and more thoughts of how we should analyze such imperfect data would be welcome. If I bet a dollar for every time I see a post contending “we all live in the real world; my world is real; there is no such unreal world”, I would be as rich as Jeff Bezos, before his divorce debacle. Bottom line, we live in the real world, so let’s embrace its imperfections and figure out how we proceed. We can’t answer every question with a randomized controlled trial; that’s just not doable. We can, however, learn from ‘patient Bob’ that encountered a toxicity not mentioned in a clinical trial; knowing that such toxicity can be seen in the real-world might help manage subsequent patients like ‘Bob’. For example, if we were to apply the aforementioned case to the real-world, when the initial study on Ibrutinib in CLL was published in NEJM, it did not report atrial fibrillation as a potential toxicity. However, now no CLL treater or a hematologist would dispute atrial fibrillation as a potential adverse event. I credit real-world data with this piece of information.  Let’s utilize ALL of our resources symphonically to optimize patient care. That should be our guiding principle.

●      I see many complain when patients are labeled as “consumers”  and when doctors are called “providers”. The sense is that these definitions demean both. I can understand this  viewpoint, but is this really a problem that is worth spending time on debating? Have we really resolved all health care issues such that we are now simply arguing whether we call ourselves providers or physicians? Wouldn’t that be luxurious? If labeling patients as “customers” or “consumers” of the health care system will force the system to accommodate patient’s needs, I am all for it. Why not? Whatever it takes to decrease wait times, improve satisfaction, and allow patients to enjoy the experience despite having an illness. If we view patients as “consumers” of what we have to offer, and recognize that consumers in any market have choices, maybe we would be incentivized to improve the subtle comforts in our health care delivery model. If the end goal is to maximize the patient experience, then let’s not get hooked on how we label this and that. As doctors, we “provide” healthcare service, expertise, help, listening ear, etc etc. Like it or not, we are “providers of health care”. Let’s refocus the debate on what best serves our patients and take a critical look at more pressing topics than nomenclature.

I am sure that every reader has his/her own laundry list like mine and the list changes based on whether the Patriots won, or if your coffee was made with cream or diluted almond milk. I shared some of my nuanced thoughts with you because I believe we have bigger problems to solve. We need action plans to help serve patients better, move the needle from talking about financial toxicity to solving it for the sick and vulnerable, and (yes, I mean everyone here) needs to collaborate and try to align our interest in recognizing that patients are the ultimate end user of the health care system. Thanks for indulging me as it was quite cathartic, and I might lobby to have a new laundry list of complaints every month (until I get blocked by the editor)!

Chadi Nabhan is an oncologist in Chicago. His interests include strategy and business of healthcare. He’s a prolific speaker and occasional tweeter. He can be reached @chadinabhan

Can we move on? published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[lauramalchowblog]

Can we move on?

By CHADI NABHAN MD, MBA, FACP

Every so often, my cynical self emerges from the dead. Maybe it’s a byproduct of social media, or from following Saurabh Jha, who pontificates about everything from Indian elections to the Brexit fiasco. Regardless, there are times when my attempts at refraining from being opinionated are successful, but there are rare occasions when they are not. Have I earned the right to opine freely about moving on from financial toxicity, anti-vaxers, who has ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to the health care system, the patient & their data, and if we should call patients “consumers”? You’ll have to decide.

I endorse academic publications; they can be stimulating and may delve into more research and are essential if you crave academic recognition. I also enjoy listening to live debates and podcasts, as well as reading, social media rants, but some of the debates and publications are annoying me. I have tried to address some of them in my own podcast series “Outspoken Oncology” as a remedy, but my remedy was no cure. Instead, I find myself typing away these words as a last therapeutic intervention.

Here are my random thoughts on the topics that have been rehashed & restated all over social media outlets (think: Twitter feeds, LinkedIn posts, Pubmed articles, the list goes on), that you will simply find no way out. Disclaimer, these are NOT organized by level of importance but simply based on what struck me over the past week as grossly overstated issues in health care.  Forgive my blunt honesty.

●      Can we have fewer posts and papers that describe how immoral financialtoxicity is? We all know it’s a problem and our patients suffer the most from it. But continuing to mention the gravity of financial toxicity? Well, that’s just so 1999. At this point, I want more posts and papers discussing strategies on how we move forward. For example: How can we overcome financial toxicity? Even if our patients appreciate us continuing to discuss the same problems repeatedly, they deserve better answers from us.? Let me illustrate. Say I am your patient and I complain to you about persistent nausea. You, as the doctor are empathic and actively listen to my concern, yet my nausea persists. I appreciate the attention and the listening you offer, but at some point I need something to control my nausea. If you don’t have the remedy, I am more annoyed because you keep restating my problem, agonizing me further and still not offering me a solution or showing any attempts to try to find a solution for my issue.

●      I am growing tired of the debate on “vaccines”. Isn’t it clear that by now, if there are people who do not believe in vaccines, there is not much we can do to sway them differently? There comes a time when one must decide where to concentrate his/her energy. I am all for having an open dialogue. But, a dialogue with the intent of changing one’s opinion requires both parties to be open to each other’s views and that one of them might potentially change course. Based on what I have seen over the past few months, those opposed to vaccines will not be persuaded by strong evidence or the amount of data they are given. So, maybe we should direct our attention to something that brings better results? Say, describing financial toxicity one more time? OK, that was not nice.

●      There are many stakeholders in the health care industry, but the ultimate stakeholder is the patient. Aren’t we all previous patients, current patients, or future patients? I am growing tired of folks pointing fingers at each other as the solely responsible party for the current state of affairs. Academics blame pharma,  pharma blames research costs, insurers blame both, patients blame insurers, physicians blame the system, and the list goes on & on. We need to be fair and practical if we are to approach our health care system in a methodical way that lends towards some solutions. The reality is, EVERY entity is important in assuring proper delivery of life-saving drugs to patients who stand to benefit. We all can name hundreds of therapies that were developed outside the walls of academic and university labs, and similarly name many medication that required collaborations between academia and pharma to achieve success. Pharma defends itself from being the culprit, challenging us to envision how our current drug development and research ability is without the manufacturer’s taking risks? Would we have the “Gleevecs” of the world? Likely not. Could these drugs be much cheaper and could we have a more rational approach to drug pricing? Absolutely. But, hospital prices also need a better rationale for the costs of blood draws to x-rays, and the absurd costs of a Tylenol pill in an inpatient ward. Why do academicians rarely critique hospitals? Because they are employed by such hospitals. In general, it isn’t advisable to critique the employer that issues your paycheck. I plea that the critique must be fair, balanced, and equally distributed among all stakeholders.

●      Since we all know that a few patients are treated on clinical trials, we need to figure out a way to incorporate data generated from non-trial patients into decision-making. That’s what I call the “real world” Yes, it’s not perfect, but such is life. Less critique to the idea of studying the real-world and more thoughts of how we should analyze such imperfect data would be welcome. If I bet a dollar for every time I see a post contending “we all live in the real world; my world is real; there is no such unreal world”, I would be as rich as Jeff Bezos, before his divorce debacle. Bottom line, we live in the real world, so let’s embrace its imperfections and figure out how we proceed. We can’t answer every question with a randomized controlled trial; that’s just not doable. We can, however, learn from ‘patient Bob’ that encountered a toxicity not mentioned in a clinical trial; knowing that such toxicity can be seen in the real-world might help manage subsequent patients like ‘Bob’. For example, if we were to apply the aforementioned case to the real-world, when the initial study on Ibrutinib in CLL was published in NEJM, it did not report atrial fibrillation as a potential toxicity. However, now no CLL treater or a hematologist would dispute atrial fibrillation as a potential adverse event. I credit real-world data with this piece of information.  Let’s utilize ALL of our resources symphonically to optimize patient care. That should be our guiding principle.

●      I see many complain when patients are labeled as “consumers”  and when doctors are called “providers”. The sense is that these definitions demean both. I can understand this  viewpoint, but is this really a problem that is worth spending time on debating? Have we really resolved all health care issues such that we are now simply arguing whether we call ourselves providers or physicians? Wouldn’t that be luxurious? If labeling patients as “customers” or “consumers” of the health care system will force the system to accommodate patient’s needs, I am all for it. Why not? Whatever it takes to decrease wait times, improve satisfaction, and allow patients to enjoy the experience despite having an illness. If we view patients as “consumers” of what we have to offer, and recognize that consumers in any market have choices, maybe we would be incentivized to improve the subtle comforts in our health care delivery model. If the end goal is to maximize the patient experience, then let’s not get hooked on how we label this and that. As doctors, we “provide” healthcare service, expertise, help, listening ear, etc etc. Like it or not, we are “providers of health care”. Let’s refocus the debate on what best serves our patients and take a critical look at more pressing topics than nomenclature.

I am sure that every reader has his/her own laundry list like mine and the list changes based on whether the Patriots won, or if your coffee was made with cream or diluted almond milk. I shared some of my nuanced thoughts with you because I believe we have bigger problems to solve. We need action plans to help serve patients better, move the needle from talking about financial toxicity to solving it for the sick and vulnerable, and (yes, I mean everyone here) needs to collaborate and try to align our interest in recognizing that patients are the ultimate end user of the health care system. Thanks for indulging me as it was quite cathartic, and I might lobby to have a new laundry list of complaints every month (until I get blocked by the editor)!

Chadi Nabhan is an oncologist in Chicago. His interests include strategy and business of healthcare. He’s a prolific speaker and occasional tweeter. He can be reached @chadinabhan

Can we move on? published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

Can we move on?

By CHADI NABHAN MD, MBA, FACP

Every so often, my cynical self emerges from the dead. Maybe it’s a byproduct of social media, or from following Saurabh Jha, who pontificates about everything from Indian elections to the Brexit fiasco. Regardless, there are times when my attempts at refraining from being opinionated are successful, but there are rare occasions when they are not. Have I earned the right to opine freely about moving on from financial toxicity, anti-vaxers, who has ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to the health care system, the patient & their data, and if we should call patients “consumers”? You’ll have to decide.

I endorse academic publications; they can be stimulating and may delve into more research and are essential if you crave academic recognition. I also enjoy listening to live debates and podcasts, as well as reading, social media rants, but some of the debates and publications are annoying me. I have tried to address some of them in my own podcast series “Outspoken Oncology” as a remedy, but my remedy was no cure. Instead, I find myself typing away these words as a last therapeutic intervention.

Here are my random thoughts on the topics that have been rehashed & restated all over social media outlets (think: Twitter feeds, LinkedIn posts, Pubmed articles, the list goes on), that you will simply find no way out. Disclaimer, these are NOT organized by level of importance but simply based on what struck me over the past week as grossly overstated issues in health care.  Forgive my blunt honesty.

●      Can we have fewer posts and papers that describe how immoral financialtoxicity is? We all know it’s a problem and our patients suffer the most from it. But continuing to mention the gravity of financial toxicity? Well, that’s just so 1999. At this point, I want more posts and papers discussing strategies on how we move forward. For example: How can we overcome financial toxicity? Even if our patients appreciate us continuing to discuss the same problems repeatedly, they deserve better answers from us.? Let me illustrate. Say I am your patient and I complain to you about persistent nausea. You, as the doctor are empathic and actively listen to my concern, yet my nausea persists. I appreciate the attention and the listening you offer, but at some point I need something to control my nausea. If you don’t have the remedy, I am more annoyed because you keep restating my problem, agonizing me further and still not offering me a solution or showing any attempts to try to find a solution for my issue.

●      I am growing tired of the debate on “vaccines”. Isn’t it clear that by now, if there are people who do not believe in vaccines, there is not much we can do to sway them differently? There comes a time when one must decide where to concentrate his/her energy. I am all for having an open dialogue. But, a dialogue with the intent of changing one’s opinion requires both parties to be open to each other’s views and that one of them might potentially change course. Based on what I have seen over the past few months, those opposed to vaccines will not be persuaded by strong evidence or the amount of data they are given. So, maybe we should direct our attention to something that brings better results? Say, describing financial toxicity one more time? OK, that was not nice.

●      There are many stakeholders in the health care industry, but the ultimate stakeholder is the patient. Aren’t we all previous patients, current patients, or future patients? I am growing tired of folks pointing fingers at each other as the solely responsible party for the current state of affairs. Academics blame pharma,  pharma blames research costs, insurers blame both, patients blame insurers, physicians blame the system, and the list goes on & on. We need to be fair and practical if we are to approach our health care system in a methodical way that lends towards some solutions. The reality is, EVERY entity is important in assuring proper delivery of life-saving drugs to patients who stand to benefit. We all can name hundreds of therapies that were developed outside the walls of academic and university labs, and similarly name many medication that required collaborations between academia and pharma to achieve success. Pharma defends itself from being the culprit, challenging us to envision how our current drug development and research ability is without the manufacturer’s taking risks? Would we have the “Gleevecs” of the world? Likely not. Could these drugs be much cheaper and could we have a more rational approach to drug pricing? Absolutely. But, hospital prices also need a better rationale for the costs of blood draws to x-rays, and the absurd costs of a Tylenol pill in an inpatient ward. Why do academicians rarely critique hospitals? Because they are employed by such hospitals. In general, it isn’t advisable to critique the employer that issues your paycheck. I plea that the critique must be fair, balanced, and equally distributed among all stakeholders.

●      Since we all know that a few patients are treated on clinical trials, we need to figure out a way to incorporate data generated from non-trial patients into decision-making. That’s what I call the “real world” Yes, it’s not perfect, but such is life. Less critique to the idea of studying the real-world and more thoughts of how we should analyze such imperfect data would be welcome. If I bet a dollar for every time I see a post contending “we all live in the real world; my world is real; there is no such unreal world”, I would be as rich as Jeff Bezos, before his divorce debacle. Bottom line, we live in the real world, so let’s embrace its imperfections and figure out how we proceed. We can’t answer every question with a randomized controlled trial; that’s just not doable. We can, however, learn from ‘patient Bob’ that encountered a toxicity not mentioned in a clinical trial; knowing that such toxicity can be seen in the real-world might help manage subsequent patients like ‘Bob’. For example, if we were to apply the aforementioned case to the real-world, when the initial study on Ibrutinib in CLL was published in NEJM, it did not report atrial fibrillation as a potential toxicity. However, now no CLL treater or a hematologist would dispute atrial fibrillation as a potential adverse event. I credit real-world data with this piece of information.  Let’s utilize ALL of our resources symphonically to optimize patient care. That should be our guiding principle.

●      I see many complain when patients are labeled as “consumers”  and when doctors are called “providers”. The sense is that these definitions demean both. I can understand this  viewpoint, but is this really a problem that is worth spending time on debating? Have we really resolved all health care issues such that we are now simply arguing whether we call ourselves providers or physicians? Wouldn’t that be luxurious? If labeling patients as “customers” or “consumers” of the health care system will force the system to accommodate patient’s needs, I am all for it. Why not? Whatever it takes to decrease wait times, improve satisfaction, and allow patients to enjoy the experience despite having an illness. If we view patients as “consumers” of what we have to offer, and recognize that consumers in any market have choices, maybe we would be incentivized to improve the subtle comforts in our health care delivery model. If the end goal is to maximize the patient experience, then let’s not get hooked on how we label this and that. As doctors, we “provide” healthcare service, expertise, help, listening ear, etc etc. Like it or not, we are “providers of health care”. Let’s refocus the debate on what best serves our patients and take a critical look at more pressing topics than nomenclature.

I am sure that every reader has his/her own laundry list like mine and the list changes based on whether the Patriots won, or if your coffee was made with cream or diluted almond milk. I shared some of my nuanced thoughts with you because I believe we have bigger problems to solve. We need action plans to help serve patients better, move the needle from talking about financial toxicity to solving it for the sick and vulnerable, and (yes, I mean everyone here) needs to collaborate and try to align our interest in recognizing that patients are the ultimate end user of the health care system. Thanks for indulging me as it was quite cathartic, and I might lobby to have a new laundry list of complaints every month (until I get blocked by the editor)!

Chadi Nabhan is an oncologist in Chicago. His interests include strategy and business of healthcare. He’s a prolific speaker and occasional tweeter. He can be reached @chadinabhan

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