#they’re trying to improve my life by taking away my one tool for forming true connections?

[rivenantiqnerd]

sorry ive been so irregular on here lately, ive just been busy with school and bc my dad put a 2 minute time limit on tumblr on my phone i have to sneak my ipad mini to be on here

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket, SE03, Ep1

I’m here! The final season continues from where se02 oddly left, right in the middle of a conversation! XD.

-Tohru’s crushed heart (scarf): Excellent symbolism!

Tohru, burdened with trying to lift the curse of teen & adult sohmas, is now also troubled by trying to help Arisa’s romantic life is sad for akito! Too much for compassionate selfless tohru. Unable to help, protect & erase the pain, tohru crumbles. Freezes. Her white scarf (heart) flies away, gets crushed by cars & becomes dirty. But here comes a boy ( who thinks himself a monster) picks it up, cleans & returns it back. He thinks nothing of his deed. nothing heroic abt saving a scarf, really. But do we need to be heroes to save others? kyo saves tohru by being kyo. Not the zodiac cat & not the menacing monster. Her heart is saved by him, shown much care & returned back. Mind you, the heart (scarf) is not brand new after the delima. It’s not very clean after being crushed, some marks remain, but these are marks of growth!!! you walk away after hardships carrying minor scars of victory. This scene solidify kyo’s role in tohru’s life as an equal companion. Not a heroic prince charming. It is the little things he does that shows who he is. kyo isn’t abt big soft words, he doesn't say the best things. he is a man of action. His care, love & compassion comes so very easily & naturally to him thro actions. This is what yuki meant by saying he’s jealous of kyo. Yuki over thinks his steps & doubt everything before he acts. Kyo acts spontaneously then doubts himself later. He saves the scarf (heart) then tells her directly to buy another one if she feels it’s not clean. He failed to see how this trivial action meant the world to tohru. Tohru smiles lively cuz her heart is back to her.

Why is the scarf scene so important? (aka furuba’s best usage of symbolism yet!)

It symbolizes tohru’s toxic flaw that she must overcome! It represents tohru’s tormented heart over other ppl’s pain with severe neglect to her own problems & issues. Arisa’s love life shouldn’t be tohru’s delima, nor Akito’s complex or Kureno’s or the damned curse. Tohru toxically chooses to bear other burdens’ until they crush her.

Hana can’t come to save tohru from pain each time tohru indulges in it. Tohru must realize her own flaw & grow up beyond this toxic type of kindness. Feel & help others, but don’t use them to escape your pain & don’t indulge in their own struggles & neglect yourself. There is a reason hana’s knowing of tohru’s pain is thro “magical” waves, to symbolize that this can’t become a norm, not real. You can’t depend on magic to grow. I love that!

The white scarf bearing smudges of the tires even after kyo washed it shows that kyo’s love & care can’t magically heal all tohru’s pain. It parallels kyo’s words from se01, ep,24 when he said tohru didn’t heal all his pain, but he feels better simply cuz she stayed by his side. Tohru now is feeling better cuz kyo chose was there for her. Love doesn’t magically heal you, kids! But it sure puts you on the path! Also, this once again adds more depth to the (tohru/kyo) equal give & take dynamics.

This scene deconstruct the image of Tohru represented as an angelic mother throughout 2 seasons. Instead, It paints her as a real flawed girl with much need for growth. Exactly, like how we have learned by now that kyo isn’t a horrible monster nor a prince charming saving the day, but a flawed boy with much need for growth. However, these two push each other forward in a subtle way through daily situations! Excellent writing!!

-Kureno. (aka. who tohru should never become):

The harmful kindness: Kureno is someone who hurts himself & hurt many others (akito, arisa, shigure, & consequently the rest of the zodiacs) by giving the harmful types of kindness to akito, by completely erasing his own needs, desires & living for the sake of someone who would be far better without him. Kureno is who tohru might have become if she selflessly continues fighting solely for the sohma’s sake & trying to break the curse while ignoring her own life. She’ll become as miserable as kureno & the zodiacs will become dependable on her.

The destructive pity: Kureno pities this tormented child (akito) & chooses to stay with her until her tears dry. This pity is destructive cuz it is done while he wishes to be miles away with Arisa & it encourages akito to stay as she is. Look, a child whose mom hates her deserves pity. But an adult woman needs to learn to build relationships based on mutual affection & respect. This talk of pity reminds me of kyo & kagura. Kagura pitied the cat zodiac. The relationship was doomed cuz kyo refuses pity. It doesn’t matter if her pity turned into love later. Kyo doesn’t want that from her or anyone. There is NO equality there. We know tohru came to love kyo for all the times he was there for her & all the times he pushed her to improve, to complain, to want things! she said so in se01, ep, 24. But we also know that young baby tohru pitied the cat when her mom told her the zodiacs story. what if kyo thinks tohru’s affection is pity???? that’s a big NO for him & for every person. I really want tohru to be as far from any kurno’s traits as possible!!!

-Akito, the pitiful woman:

Akito was born a girl, forced to be raised as a boy by her mother’s demands? where is the father?? she was hated by her mother. why? she also hates her mom. (hate your child & they’ll hated you). So, akito is doomed by her mom. Akito tries to prove that she’s loved by the zodiac “she specified the male zodiacs” interesting! we saw how she hates both Isuzu & kisa & doesn’t give a damn abt kagura. This woman, forced to pose as a man, actually desires to be treated as a woman. As for the other zodiacs:

No worries abt hatori leaving cuz he’s 24/7 attending to her health.

Ayame makes tea exclusively for her & hatori.

she thinks Ritsu is too timid to attempt leaving.

Hiro’s a baby, momiji is hated cuz she can’t break him.

Kyo is destined to be locked. but Why she cares abt the cat anyway?? She publicly hates him & feels disgusted by him.

She used to control yuki but can’t anymore.

she uses intimacy to bound those who “can” leave her the most: kurno! & shigure? she sleeps next to shigure in the valentine ep. hatori remarked: don’t let akito catch cold. We saw the sexually charged rage in se02, ep10. So, she isn’t faithful to kureno. They don’t have a relationship. She doesn’t even have a relationship with shigure, either. to her, sex is a tool to tie them both to her?

It is ironic that the person who said she despises woman & accuses Isuzu of seducing hatori is herself seducing others. Except, tragically, kureno isn’t with her for herself, but cuz he pities her. We saw her slapping & embracing him. Next scene; her bare shoulders & his unbuttoned shirt clearly implies they got intimate which is what akito does to feel secure in kureno not leaving her. Kureno is not even interested in her despite submitting to her advances, needs & orders. He does it out of pity. Truly the most tragic form of physical affection: sex for pity. wow... how tragically pitiful is the abusive ruler of the zodiacs who looms over them & demands respect & eternal bonds. How can she find someone who’ll love her for herself, if she doesn’t learn to show good sides of her? Yuki wasn’t loved for who he is in school, but for being the “prince”, he showed his real character & got himself true friends & soon a lover!!!  Kyo, was feared & pitied for turning into a “monster”, but once he showed his kind & harmless self, he got himself true friends & a girl who loves him for his actual personality! Who will love akito for who she is if she only shows a spoiled child, horrible family head or a pitiful woman? What does shigure love in her? he doesn’t seem to pity her nor pamper her much, does he?  perhaps we’ll know more abt the real akito later.

Side notes:

Akito’s mom reminded me of kyo’s dad. Abused children, who are hated by their parents, don’t let go of the hurt easily. they’ll always try to either get their approval, show them they were worthy of their love, or they’re NOTHING like their parents think they are. eg: Kyo’s biological father’s hate has destroyed kyo. Kyo have kazuma & tohru & he still wonder why they love him. It took kyo 17 years to actually promise to call kazuma "dad” one day in se01 finale. You need time to heal the wounds inflected by the ones who should love you the most. Being loved by others doesn’t magically heal you! You need to take few steps forward.

Isuzu is Ren’s clone! finally understanding why the severe hate from akito towards Isuzu. I’ll wait for more Ren/Akito content before analyzing their relationship.

Ren is so sexy. ngl, the scene of the zodiacs touching her belly after she just *conceived* akito is so creepy~ ew! 

Hana picked up tohru first before kyo, cuz this show isn’t exclusive for romantic love as much as it isn’t exclusive for friendship. There is balance. 

Tohru needs her own future, so does Arisa & hana! Learn to accept the limit of what you can do as a friend, tohru.. forever loving furuba for steering away from “friends stay together forever~yay” anime trope! Furuba is abt independent & individual adult life! building your own future! Epic writing!

Forever fascinated by how much the little small ordinary daily life things has really built kyo-tohru love! It feels so real & very uniquely built! Excellent writing!

Arisa is stuck with an adult man trapping himself in the most unnecessary love triangle. Kureno’s cage is self made, no curse. A very sheltered boy/man not living in the real world. Only two options for kureno if he continues this path: he’ll hurt akito, or akito will hurt him. We know the answer from the trailer, don’t we?

Arisa letting go of kuron is growth! Let go & live, girl!

There is a subtle theme of learning to let go in furuba~

Yuki is the biggest kyoru shipper!

Tohru intentionally hitting kyo with scarf’s pon-pon is my fave side of her! intentional flirting shows change from her little girl’s good girl attitude to her own type of a feisty woman! after all, she’s nearly 18!

The way the camera moved when kyo spotted the scarf was so good!

The director is obsessed with flying!! did he work on attack on titans? cuz the Ren-akito flying fight reminded me of Titan Eren strangling Titan Annie in AOT se01 finale! but chibi version! XD. I’m sorry for akito’s pain, but I was distracted by laughing! XD

look, if you plan to dramatize a situation, know your budget & your skills. Obviously, the director knew the scene is badly done, hence, the wide far away, dim lit shot to hide as much as it can. Couldn’t he do without it? let akito strangle her to the ground without flying!

oh well~these over-the-top shots are now a furuba trade mark~ just praying they stick with one weird shot per season.

[cosmicjoke]

Alright, and now I’ve reached the final chapter of “No Regrets”, so let’s just dive right in!

There really is so much more to unpack from this story than I think people realize.

Firstly, just a few, truly devastating observations I want to talk about.

The first one being how, even after Furlan gets swallowed by the Titan, Levi still believes he can save him. The fact that he cuts the Titan open from the chest down to his sternum, and free’s Furlan’s arm, and the panels which show Levi reaching out for his hand and ripping him from the Titan’s stomach is just… so heartbreaking.  The way too that he gently carry’s him back to the ground and lays him out, only to discover that his entire lower half is gone, and he’s dead, just the level of trauma you know this must be causing Levi is immense, and beyond tragic.  This is one of only two, true friends in his life, and he’s so desperate to have been able to save him, that he clings on to the possibility to the bitter end, until he’s forced to face the bleak reality. Levi’s devastation is really brilliantly depicted in how he wobbles, as if his knees are weak, when he stands back up.

And then of course comes Levi’s rage, and how he takes it out on the Titans, expressing his grief and pain in the only way he knows how, through violence.  

But maybe the most heartbreaking moment here comes once he’s through killing every Titan there, and he starts to stumble away, and his foot comes into contact with Isabel’s severed head. This is, once more, another area in which the manga improved hugely over the visual novel.  

Levi’s reaction here is just… the most heartbreaking thing ever.  The way he stares when he realizes he’s looking at Isabel’s head, and then falls to his knees, his overwhelming grief here is just so beautifully depicted in these panels, as he reaches out a hand to cover her eyes, and then slides them closed, in an attempt to give her some sort of dignity in death.  The way he can’t even look at her, just doubled over in his grief, just killed me to see.  It’s so unspeakably sad, and conveys to us readers the true depth of Levi’s despair, I think.

And then we move on from this horrific grief, to the climactic moment of the story, when Levi and Erwin again come together, and we see Levi’s overwhelming rage.  Again, this entire scene was a massive improvement over the visual novel.  Well, for starters, in the visual novel, they had Levi cut Erwin’s horse down to bring him to the ground, and again, that’s just so out of character.  Luckily, they fixed that here too, with Levi simply leaping up and dragging Erwin off his horse.

These panels really are amazing too is showing Levi’s intense rage, as he warns Mike to back the hell off, and brings his blade to Erwin’s neck.

What’s really interesting here is what Levi says.  

After the struggle of the choice he made, before Furlan and Isabel were killed, after giving so much consideration and choosing based largely on their own dreams and wishes, Levi tells Erwin here “I’m going to kill you, you bastard.  That’s why I’m here.”.  And Erwin responds, after studying Levi a moment, “So they… all died? I see.”.  Erwin gleans here, both from Levi’s words and expression, that his friends have died, and what he says indicates that he knows the only reason Levi hasn’t tried to kill him before now is because Furlan’s and Isabel’s own well being and their own dreams were the only thing holding Levi back. ��Levi made no attempt on Erwin’s life before because he was placing Furlan’s and Isabel’s wishes above his own, but now that they’re gone, there’s nothing to keep Levi from acting out his revenge.  

This is also where we get Erwin’s full reveal of just how in control of this entire situation he’s been this whole time, and how he manipulated every player and outcome to his desires.

This really isn’t something I see get discussed a whole lot when talking about Levi’s relationship with Erwin, and how it started out.  But, unquestionably, Erwin used Levi and his friends against their consent, to achieve his own ends.  He set the whole thing up, from first spreading rumors about having some sort of evidence against Lovof’s embezzlement, to then spreading the information that he was looking to recruit Levi and his friends from the Underground, thereby giving Lovof the very idea of going to them to obtain his own proof of the evidence’s existence, while simultaneously leading Erwin to the definitive proof he sought by following the messenger Lovof sent and intercepting him.  At the same time, giving Erwin a means of throwing Lovof off by using Levi, Furlan and Isabel for cover.  It really is incredibly impressive, but also heartbreaking, the way Erwin used Levi and his friends to his own ends, but of course, perfectly in character for Erwin too, willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. It begs certain questions though about the equality between Erwin and Levi, at least at the start of their relationship.  Erwin clearly had the control and power in this situation, and though clearly he never meant for Furlan and Isabel to die, still, his decision to rope Levi and them into his plans to catch Lovof and also to gain their strength and skill for the SC, did lead indirectly to their deaths.  Surely, if Erwin had never meddled in their lives, and used them as tools, they would have all still been alive in the Underground.  

But of course, this leads into a really interesting clash, then, between Levi and Erwin, and where we see Erwin win Levi over to his cause.  This is, as is becoming a redundant theme of my analysis here, a giant improvement over the visual novel.  There, it makes it seems as if Levi decides to follow Erwin only because Erwin has something Levi lacks, and until he can figure out what that something is, he won’t be able to “defeat him”, implying that Levi is still somehow obsessed with beating Erwin in some way.  Like he isn’t joining Erwin to fight for his dream of a better world, but because he wants to figure out what Erwin has that he doesn’t, so he can become superior, or whatever.  But here, in the manga, Levi’s reasons for deciding to follow Erwin are much more complex, and tied in with his own personal drive of wanting to help and save others, and into his relationship with Furlan and Isabel.  

Levi tells him “It wasn’t worth throwing away their lives!  They were nothing but pawns in your worthless game.  Well, you lose.”, right before he means to take Erwin’s head off.

What’s interesting here is Erwin’s response.  He doesn’t try to deny to Levi that he used Furlan and Isabel and Levi himself as pawns. He doesn’t argue, or try to defend himself on that front.  What he takes issue with is Levi calling the reasons for it a “worthless game”.

Erwin’s entire speech to Levi here really builds off of the feelings Levi had already started to develop, about feeling like he had maybe found a place to belong, where he could maximize the good he could do.  This wasn’t yet a fully formed idea in Levi’s head, up to this point, but the seeds of it had started to form.

Erwin asks Levi who’s responsible for killing his friends.  He asks if it was him, if it was Levi, and then he asks if he really thought that if they had come together to attack Erwin, that they would have made it out alive.  

This is what Levi is beating himself up over, of course.  The belief that he made the wrong decision, in leaving Furlan and Isabel behind, thinking to himself if they hadn’t split up, they would still be alive.  He blames himself for how he came to that decision, and starts to say as much to Erwin here, saying it was his conceit and his pride that was to blame, no doubt thinking of how it was his memory of Erwin and the humiliation he caused Levi that was the final tipping point which decided him in favor of going after Erwin himself, and also how he simply convinced himself that he would be able to shoulder all of the responsibility himself in such a dire situation, remembering how he told Furlan “I can do it by myself!” so insistently, asking him to trust him, to trust essentially in Levi’s strength.  To Levi, in this moment, his own strength must have seemed worthless suddenly, his belief in it leading to nothing but abject failure.   But then Erwin cuts him off and says, emphatically that, no, it was the Titans who killed them, before beginning to talk about how little they know about the Titans, and how if they continue to remain ignorant like that, they’ll never win against them.  He tells Levi to look around himself, and points out how, for as far as the eye can see, there are no walls, and then suggests that, in all that open space, there might be something they can find to free humanity from its despair and imprisonment.  And then he reminds Levi that there are people who want to stop this from this from happening, only concerned with their own profits and losses, content to stay where danger can’t reach them.  He shows sympathy, saying it’s understandable why they feel that way, because they’ve been blinded by the walls for a hundred years, and can’t see past their own survival.

And then he asks Levi if his eyes have remained clouded too.  He’s asking Levi here if he only knows how to live for himself, and if he’ll kill him and return to the Underground to continue to do so, after losing the two people he cared most about in this world.

But of course, Levi’s already learned how to live for people other than himself.  That was his whole reason for coming to the Surface in the first place.  In support and dedication to the hopes and dreams of his friends.  Levi’s eyes HAVEN’T been clouded, he’s already discovered and embraced what it means to give your life for others, already able to see past his own benefit.  

Erwin reminds Levi of that here, and tells him they won’t give up on going outside the walls, before asking Levi to fight with the Survey Corps, telling him “Humanity needs your skill!!”.  He reminds Levi, even after the loss of the two people whom he had been living for up to that point, that he can continue to live for others still, that he can still fight for the hopes and dreams of others, and that he doesn’t have to return to the life of isolation and loneliness and futility that he once lived, that he doesn’t have to return to simply surviving, or fighting only to survive. He’s reminding Levi that his life can mean more than that, just like he realized when he became friends with Isabel and Furlan.  That his life can have purpose, and that, if he lends his strength to the SC, he can do more even than help a few people.  He can, in fact, help all of humanity.  

The following panels show Levi coming to this realization.  He remembers Furlan and Isabel at his sides as they rode out into the open for the first time, into the first, true sense of freedom they had ever known, and their shared awe and wonder at the sight.  And Levi is realizing here, just as he had fought for his friends dreams of freedom, and of a better, more hopeful life, he can continue to fight for the same, only for everybody, for all people.  He can make the most of his abilities, and help the most people, by staying in the SC and fighting at Erwin’s side, fighting for Erwin’s vision of something beyond the walls, of a kind of salvation for humanity.

What Erwin gives Levi here, really, the thing Erwin gives Levi that he before lacked, is a sense of hope. A belief in his own ability to make a meaningful, positive impact on the lives of others.  It’s like Erwin’s own belief in that hope for humanity’s salvation is so strong, that Levi finds himself able to believe in it too, and he decides then and there that, for the sake of that hope, for the sake of the vision of something better, Levi will stay by Erwin’s side.  Because it’s what Levi’s always wanted to do, to fight for the hopes and dreams of others, to fight to make the lives of other people better, and Erwin has shown him the way to do so.  He shows Levi that Furlan and Isabel didn’t die for a “worthless game”, but for the sake of all human kind, and that’s why Levi is able to let go of his anger towards Erwin and follow him.  And that really feeds into Levi’s need, later on, for every soldier’s death to carry meaning.  If he can believe Furlan and Isabel died for a truly important reason, he can accept it and cope with his grief.  Like Isabel expressed herself before, these people genuinely believe their cause is worth dying for, and Erwin reminds Levi of this again.  

So he forgets his anger and pain, and chooses instead to follow Erwin, and dedicate himself to the cause of humanity’s salvation.  

The final panels of the manga are incredibly moving, with Levi slowing down behind Erwin and Mike, and glancing back one last time to where he lost his two, best friends, before looking away and riding on, as the sun shines through the clouds.  Like one, final acknowledgment of their lives together, and the sacrifice they made, before committing himself fully to his new life ahead.

 I’m going to be compiling all of these chapter analysis’ into a single, master post, which I’ll have up soon.  Anyway, I hope whoever took the time to read them found them worthwhile in some way, and thank you so much if you did!  And remember, if you have anything to contribute, or just want to make a comment of any sort, feel free!

[firefly-fez]

TRULY INSPIRING RESILIENCE: Local Insomniac Persists With Attempts to Practice Sleep Hygiene; Despite Recent Sleeplessness

[Sports commentator voice] Billy: Well, Greg, it has been a while since we’ve touched base with Local Insomniac. Last time we spoke, she’d managed to achieve her own personal record of an impressive 7 and a half hours of sleep. Amazing feat, really. How does her performance compare this season?

Greg: Sadly, Billy, her performance doesn’t quite show the numbers we like to see. With the new sleep tracker technology provided by our sponsor, Bujo - our insomniac has logged 6.15 - that’s 6 hours fifteen minutes for our viewers at home - on night one, and she had a very interrupted night’s sleep on night two, with a 3.15 initially, but she did manage to get back to sleep achieving another 3.00, bringing that night’s total up to 6.15.  Biily: Ouch, those are not the numbers we necessarily want to see. Greg: No, Billy, they’re not. And this does happen with many insomniacs - the condition is known to come in waves - that is, we do see certain periods of time where sleep struggles arise again. Recovery is not a linear process by any means, and it is important not to get discouraged when things don’t come easily. Billy: Indeed! I don’t think anyone can deny that local insomniac is to be commended for her incredible resilience here - she has re-committed herself in the 2021 season, even bringing on a new sponsor. What can you tell us about this season’s sponsor, Greg?

Greg: Well, Billy, Bujo - that’s short for bullet journaling - is a promising ally in her sleepless struggle. Bujo has a lot of positives all across the board -- it’s a fun creative, hobby, it helps her with her time management, it’s great for evenings when you want to start to turn away from electronics - but the two main features where it’ll help her in this season’s performance are these: One, it allows her to keep track of her sleep - how long she slept, the overall quality and any factors that may have contributed to the nights sleep. Billy: And what are the factors that influence sleep performance? Greg: There are lots! The time between when she’s trying to get to sleep and her last meal for the day, because digestion can impact the quality of your sleep and eating too close to bedtime can lead to discomfort from gastric juices. The last caffeine intake of the day - which is a tough one for a lot of insomniacs!

Billy: I certainly do love my coffee!

Greg: As a lot of us do, but it can stay in the body for as long as twelve hours, so it’s very easy for even an afternoon pick me up to interfere with sleep. Besides coffee, tracking exercise, whether or not she took a nap that day and if so for how long - and what she used the bed for during the day - not watching netflix in bed, using her beanbag instead, are all important factors in one’s sleep quality, duration and the overall ease with which can fall asleep. Billy: Fascinating! And what is the other main benefit of the bullet journal for insomniacs, Greg?

Greg: Well, it’s also great for keeping track of one’s anxious thoughts and overall reducing stress. By including a section where you can write out your worrying and negative thoughts, you clear your mind, which makes it easier to go to sleep. Billy: Indeed. We’ll have to see how these new tactics play out in the 2021 season. It is important for our local insomniac to get discouraged by one potentially disappointing number, though. Greg: That is very true, Billy. last night in particular was a tough one for our insomniac - even with exercise, restricting caffeine, introducing dim lighting, enforcing a tech blackout an hour before bed, winding down for the day with meditative prayer, and using her sleep podcast, she still didn’t get a particularly good night’s sleep. 

Billy: How is it that an insomniac can avoid such discouragement when it feels like, you did everything right, and still see no results?

Greg: That is a tough one, but our insomniac is taking it like a champ, and has made the wise decision to consciously remind herself that progress doesn’t happen quickly with issues like these. She’ll need to learn to optimise her day and learn about her own body - where within the 7-9 range does she personally need to fall to feel rested? Would her body benefit from exercise at night, or better to keep it during the day? The biggest issue to address at the moment is finding a mindfulness technique that’ll keep her mind from wondering off during the night. That’s what the sleep podcast helps with - but in managing all these different factors, it’s a habit that needs to be formed over time. It’s not a one-and-done thing, and even sleep medications aren’t as helpful long-term as good sleep hygiene. Billy: An important reminder indeed, Greg. It can sure be discouraging when those around us are much more lenient with their sleep regimen and don’t suffer the same sleeplessness that insomniacs do. It’s easy to get downhearted and just think; “it shouldn’t have to be this hard.” Greg: I so appreciate that struggle, Billy I really do. But just as a diabetic can’t make the same dietary choices as the average person, neither can an insomniac afford to give in to the level of leniency that other people sometimes seem to get away with. Lack of sleep can affect so many areas in someone’s life, and it really is an act of self-love to want the best for yourself and be disciplined enough to actually change your behaviour and sacrifice certain things for the sake of your own health.

Billy: And it’s exactly that disciplined self-love that is truly admirable about our local insomniac. Even though she often neglects to credit herself for it - she also competes against Perfectionism in another league after all - she honestly has put a conscious effort into taking better care of herself, being brave enough to go digging for the route of her struggles - including anxiety, perfectionism and negative beliefs she carries about herself, all in the hope of seeing improvements in her own health - because her health is valuable - everybody deserves a good quality of life, and mental illness, insomnia - all these things can stand in the way of that. Greg: And even though they do, and are very debilitating at times, recovery is possible. It takes tremendous courage and strength to commit to your own recovery, and everybody -- all of our listeners and competitors in the league who battle against these issues every day - they are truly heroes, every one of them.

Billy: Never forget that folks. Recovery isn’t linear! It’s a long road to commit yourself to, and it can be extremely daunting. But it’s a commitment worth making to yourself because at the end of the day, you matter - you do! and you deserve to be happy and healthy. It is my hope and my prayer that each and every one of you -- and our inspiring insomniac -- find the tools you need to forge a happy, fulfilling life for yourself. 

Greg: [sniffles] And that’s - [clears throat] - all we have time for today folks. We’ll be bac to talk about our athlete’s progress with anxiety soon, but until then, be kind to yourselves.

[Billy gives Greg a hug as the camera pans out.]

[whumping-whumpees]

Restocking Box Boys

AN: Ok, I know I have a lot of stories going on, but I could NOT get this idea out of my head! I hope you all enjoy!

Warnings: This takes place in the Box Boy universe, so major warnings for that, dehumanization, human trafficking, etc. Forced drugging, caging

Clinton Waters sat in his van, watching his current target. Clint, honestly, was starting to get a little bored. I mean, this guy did the same thing, day in and day out and it wasn’t even a challenge anymore. Clint had observed so much about this guy; he didn’t have any friends, he kept to himself, didn’t seem to ever talk to his family, and he fit the request for a short, brown-haired dude with freckles. He was a perfect target. Clint didn’t know why the people at the Box Boy warehouse didn’t just dye the hair of the products that actually volunteered, would be easier than him having to seek out specific people, but he guessed they wanted to keep their “authenticity”. Also, Clint knew the number of people volunteering to be a Box Boy was actually quite low, and he was sent out to find targets whenever a company needed to restock. 

He was pulled from his musings as the target stood up after paying, and Clinton started his van. After watching the target for a couple weeks, he was finally ready to pick him up and deliver him to the pick up zone. Clint knew that after he went to the coffee shop, he would go to the park, and it would be the perfect place for the extraction to take place. He didn’t like to use the word kidnapping. This guy is such a loner, Clint thought, his life would probably improve after becoming a Box Boy.

Clinton followed the target (he probably had his name written down somewhere, but he honestly didn’t care. He wouldn’t have his name for long anyway) down the street, pulling into the empty park parking lot and watching the target go sit at a bench. It was relatively cold out, so there wasn’t really anyone around. And those who were either seemed distracted or quite far away. Clint glanced over his tools, making sure everything was ready. He got out of the van, then approached the target, who seemed to be engrossed in a book. Too bad he’ll probably forget how to read in training.

“Hey!” Clint called, trying to make his voice sound friendly. “Something’s wrong with my car, think you could take a look?” The target looked up, surprised, brushing the hair out of his eyes. The facility was probably going to cut it, Clinton mused.

“Uh... sorry man, I don’t know much about cars...” Clint could believe it, scrawny guy like him? But he persisted.

“Aw, please dude? At least come over and help me look over the hood, I’m kinda in a rush and I need all the help I can get!” Clint managed to convince him, because he closed his book and stood to follow. What a dumbass. He deserved to get brainwashed or whatever if he believed that bullshit.

The target followed him back to the van, and he opened the back.

“I thought you wanted me to get the hood-” The target said, peering into the van, confused. He couldn’t say anything more though, as Clint injected him with a sedative and quickly pushed him into the van. Clint closed the back door and stuffed the target’s limp body into a modified dog crate. He could feel the target struggling, but the sedative made its way through his body quickly. Clint clicked the lock shut on the cage as the target was collapsed in an ungainly heap inside.

That should do it. About 3 minutes, that was probably a new record. Clint brushed off his hands, then moved to the front of the van. It was a couple hours until the drop zone, but it was quite a ways out of town, so he started heading there. He hummed along to the radio in satisfaction. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, but so far it was another successful job.

------------

Kenneth Dunne was slowly starting to wake up, and the first thing he noticed was his killer headache. He groaned in pain, and tried to move, but his limbs felt slow and sluggish. Was he having sleep paralysis again? He struggled to open his eyes, and he realized he was face-down on a metal floor. He tried, but Kenneth couldn’t remember what had happened. Was he hungover or something...? He slowly managed to lift his head, and was confused to see metal bars around him. He mumbled, “What...?” He then heard a voice.

“Ah fuck. You’re awake. Damn it.” He recognized that voice, from where? He then started to panic as it all came rushing back. He had been kidnapped! And drugged! The throbbing in his head increased as he tried to move again. He managed to press his back against the bars of the cage as the man moved from the front of the van to the back. Kenneth watched in fear as he dug through a bag. Kenneth’s mouth felt so dry, and he had trouble forming words.

“P....plea-se... ugh... uh... p-p... uh... le... lemme o...” The man seemed to be ignoring him, and Kenneth’s eyes widened as he pulled out a big syringe.

“You gonna be quiet, or do you want me to dose you up again?” Kenneth was starting to breathe quickly, and he shook his head, which just sent spikes of pain through his head again. The man nodded and returned the syringe to the bag. He looked through the front window as Kenneth tried to push himself further away.

“Damn, they’re late again. I swear, I don’t get paid enough for this shit.” Kenneth shuddered, not knowing who ‘they’ where. What was going on? Why did this happen to him? The man was getting paid to kidnap him? Why did he offer to help that guy, he didn’t even know anything about cars!

Time passed in a bit of a blur for Kenneth, the headache didn’t let him focus on anything for too long, and his arms and legs still felt incredibly heavy, he could hardly move. He blinked as the front van door slammed shut. He didn’t even notice the man leaving! He heard voices outside talking, and he strained to hear, but couldn’t understand through the walls of the van. He felt a rush of cold air over him as the back door to the van opened.

“It wasn’t too much trouble, Clint?” A different voice from before, spoke.

“Nah, I’m telling you, nobody will miss this guy. Fuckin’ loser.” Kenneth was too panicky to feel super offended, but he felt a sinking feeling at hearing ‘no one will miss him’. “Also, hope you note this, he matches y’all’s request to a T! I know I bring you anyone I can find, but c’mon.” Request?

Oh shit. Oh holy shit. Kenneth didn’t hear the other man’s response as he realized what was going on. This was that Box Boy stuff! Kenneth never really gave a thought to it before, he would never buy one himself but figured people volunteered for a reason. The rumors of kidnapping were true! He was going to be a slave, or a pet, and he couldn’t believe that! He flinched as the men grabbed the crate he was in and started moving it.

“Nnnnn...no! no! I... I-I... I don’ wan’!” He was still having trouble talking, the drug making it hard for him to move his mouth. He tried to tell them he didn’t want too, they wouldn’t force him to it without his consent, right?

“Ah, fuck, Clint, he’s still awake?”

“You were late, not my fault!” Kenneth felt the cage being hit. “Hey, shut up in there!” Kenneth did not shut up, instead trying to yell for help. “Ah, fuck it. Dose him again.” Kenneth continued to plead to be released until he felt another sharp prick in his side.

“Not a great start, huh? Don’t worry, you’ll be the perfect Box Boy for someone in no time!” The last thing Kenneth felt before slipping back into unconsciousness was chills running down his spine.

[gedwimora-arc]

Something that bothers me a lot is that in their fervor to reject / put down sa.ns.an there are a lot of people who try and twist their entire relationship / dynamic in one that’s wholly negative, to depict Sandor as a predator or abuser or something when he’s just. Not. That’s just not the dynamic here at all.

I don’t wanna get to deeply into “ do i ship sa.ns.an / think sa.ns.an is good / etc etc ” I’ve varied on it over the years but generally my stance is that romance / love is an important element of Sansa’s arc / story as it’s part of the “ songs ” theme / narrative structure and so naturally I want her to end up in a relationship where she feels loved, protected and safe. Currently the seen / known / existing options for “ men who aren’t trash or related to her ” to marry her is like..... 3 guys and only 1 has she’s actually met which is Sandor. Assuming she’s an adult and in a good place to make these kinda choices and she picks him Great, have at it, if she meets Trystane or some other good boi™ who’s more her age and they hit it off even better. Mainly I just want her to be happy and for Sandor I just want him to be at peace, whatever form that takes, even if does mean he dies. 

My issue is really just that there are people who are so intent on ignoring the romantic elements of the ship that they blatantly rewrite the canon and misconstrue shit. I’ve seen people argue that the Unkiss ( a memory Sansa fabricated of Sandor kissing her during the BotBW scene, he didn’t he mostly menaced and cried tbh ) and her quasi-sex dream about him ( She dreams about her wedding night with Tyrion ( it’s own Yikes tbh ) but the Hound replaces Tyrion, she shows no indication of being upset about it compared to other nightmares she’s had canonically )  are coping mechanisms to deal with Sandor related / caused trauma which is just fucking BONKERS. They are, if anything, Sansa using Sandor as a vehicle for coping with other traumas. 

I think sometimes these people forget that for a WHILE there Sandor was the only person who was consistently on her side without ulterior motive and at times to his own potential determent. He’s not a good or nice man by any stretch but he genuinely cares about her and tries to look out for her. Sansa says it herself “ he was no true knight but he saved me all the same ” , he admits to her his grimdark origin story and she comforts him, then roots for him in the tourney. She understands why he’s so shitty but also calls him out on it when he’s being needlessly cruel to her. He protects her from beatings, rape and who knows what else as best he can, I mean shit if he was not her self-appointed bodyguard the mob attack scene would’ve been very different as he’s literally the only one who noticed she was gone before it was too late because he you know, gave a fucking shit about her safety and was actively looking out for her  in a dangerous setting.

I understand disliking it as a romantic ship and I don’t have beef with that, like I’m not always super hot on it as a romantic ship myself ? But I think it’s just willfully bad reading comprehension and douchery to try and make it like they’re not important to each other or that there’s not a romantic / sexual undertone. Before I get fucking shot for the last bit, the thing I think people miss on that part is that it doesn’t mean it MUST be acted upon or that it’s like a very serious thing ? Sandor does make crude comments about her and have some level of attraction to her, he’s also a crude dude in general and trying to shock her a lot of the time and purposely doesn’t act on his attraction when given the chance, even when out of his fucking gourd drunk and triggered to hell and back. He very clearly cares about her and while sure she’s pretty and he has eyes it’s much more emotional for him, she’s Kind and Good and Understanding towards him and he desperately craves that.

And with her side of it you can easily pin her fabricating the Unkiss, comparing the kisses of other men to that fake one with him, comparing men to him, her sexual/romantic fantasies now starring him instead of Loras as just part of both protecting herself from things that hurt ( her kiss w/ Tyrion at her forced wedding isn’t really her first that was Sandor! etc etc ) and her using him to explore her own sexuality safely. Loras is very boy band-y and Safe because there’s so clearly never gonna be anything there which makes him great crush material but given everything in her life so far, boy band isn’t really what it’s cracked up to be anymore. Whereas Sandor has proven in her actual life her safety is paramount to him, he’s been her faithful friend and protector as much as he could be. Sansa is a big fan of songs and a lot of his actions fit nicely into that narrative / aesthetic, saving her from the crowd, giving her his cloak to protect her modesty, offering to whisk her away from KL and he won’t hurt her. At that point in her life a man who’s built like a brick house, could snap a dude over his knee but is intensely protective and gentle towards her is honestly more appealing than being just a hottie. The concept of Sandor makes her feel Safe, she uses him, his attitude and his advice as a guide for how to navigate situations later on. Big shock that when she turns to explore her own sexuality and all that she uses Sandor as the tool to do it. Because he’s Safe. He’s not there, he can’t physically interact with her or act on anything related to these fantasies, he’s given her plenty of fodder and she can put anything “ mature “ or “ experienced “ on him to fulfill and enjoy exploring without feeling anxious about not knowing what she’s doing, she can just be like “ well Sandor would know how “ . It’s very much like if she was having the same thoughts about Theon, she knows him, he’s safe, and he’s not around to make this incredibly embarrassing. And you can literally leave that undertone at that and proceed forward figuring that, like with Loras, she’ll grow out of it with Sandor and move on to someone else, maybe whoever she’s in a healthy romantic relationship with. And that’s fine. Frankly I’m very good with her using Sandor for this considering she’s going to be engaged to a douche and Baelish is getting all Uncle Bad Touch, let her have her Sandor flavored escapist fantasies. And if you genuinely think he would for real touch her while she’s underage then I just need yall to get out Forever thanks.

If Sansa was really so traumatized by him from the BotBW or didn’t like him at all bc he’s a shitty and menacing professional killer who harassed her she wouldn’t have fabricated the unkiss, wouldn’t have kept his cloak, would not have compared other men to him with him being the positive example or compared sweet robin’s kiss to the unkiss again with Sandor in the positive. I don’t think these things inherently mean ~Romance~ I think they mean Sansa using Sandor to fill in a LOT of spaces in her life where she needs someone like a protector, a confident, a lover etc etc because he’s one of the few people who can fit them who she likes / trusts and isn’t fuckin’ dead. We don’t see much from his end since she’s a POV and he’s not hence why I’m speaking mainly about Sansa but it’s important to remember with him that she’s the best person in his life. She’s Special, he offers to save her from KL for a reason, because she’s good and kind and he wants tot help her. Sansa is the catalyst for his own self improvement just because she’s Nice, she quite literally pet this fucking dog and now he’d fucking die for her. That doesn’t have to be romantic so don’t fucking delete it just because you don’t like the romantic shippers. Don’t turn basic human compassion in to a sexual act. 

[bungoustraydogsbigbang]

We’ve come to the end of the Soukoku Big Bang 2019! Before we move on to the master post for 2019, we would like to express our sincerest thanks to all of you. It has been a wild ride and us mods couldn’t thank our participants enough for being such lovely people to work with. There’ll also be a feedback form the participants can fill in! The link will be distributed through email and shared in our discord server. We would like to know how you think about us and how you would like us to improve through our feedback form!

If you missed your chance this year, don’t worry, we’ll be back again in 2020! Do stay tuned for some exciting information on where this event will be going next year! We have some “big news” waiting for you!

Without further ado, here’s the masterpost for all entries of Soukoku Big Bang 2019! 

M A S T E R P O S T

It Was Worth Trying by MidnightLightHowlite | Art by Misa

Rating: General Audiences

Seeing Dazai float face down in a river was not all that unusual. True, it hadn't happened in four years, but the view was not exactly a foreign one. No, what was foreign was the fact that Dazai seemed to be shorter. And younger. And didn't remember him. In retrospect, Chuuya probably shouldn't have let the boy call Mori because that allowed his boss to put him on babysitting duty.

(Or Dazai gets deaged. No romance will happen till they are both the same age again.)

Bandaged Sheep by MidnightLightHowlite | Art by Abel

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

There had been something very weird, very off about the new recruit. He had popped up out of thin air a few months ago, wrapped from head to toe in bandages. Not a word of what he did before, saying he wanted to join the sheep. He wasn't strong or skilled, and truly, there was no logical reason for Chuuya to pay him any mind.

But then the Port Mafia put a huge bounty on his head and things started to get interesting

these days, you’re fine by AquarianTwin | Art by Nella

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Fifth-grade classmates Q and Aya are convinced that their older brothers would make a perfect pair if they’d just stop fighting for five minutes. Dazai and Chuuya, who have been dating for over a year, find this too funny to correct them.

Dazai takes in his younger sibling, Q, after they’re removed from their father’s home. Overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising of a child when he can barely keep himself alive some days, Dazai leans on his partner, Chuuya, to help lead him through. It’s a good thing Q gets along so well with Chuuya’s younger sister, but Dazai thinks he might die of laughter if the pair try to “secretly” set him up on another date with his own boyfriend.

Project Pinocchio by EKmisao | Art by Ginny

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

What kept the youngest mafia executive alive enough was a new file, on a newly-acquired powerful cyborg. It started as a project to keep a cyborg a boy. It became more than he expected.

Outrunning Fate by RocketJams | Art by Nanamin

Rating: Not Rated

Chuuya laid in the hospital bed, his consciousness slipping away slowly as he patiently awaited his demise. The doctors had assured him he wouldn't feel a thing but for some reason he couldn't shake this feeling his chest. An subtle pain which at this point had coaxed his stomach into a frenzy. Something was wrong but there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

In Isolation He Thrived by Maddy | Art by Leo

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

All his life Dazai felt like a tool, a pawn that was just tossed aside when not needed. He was looked down on and felt useless, so slowly a fire ignited within him and turned him into a merciless person also well known as a "Soulless Demon".

He always believed he was destined to do wrong until one day when he finds Chuuya who proves him wrong.

S8 (TBA)

i step from here without you by fatimé | Art by eva

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

“I used Corruption because I trusted you,” Chuuya gasps out, and the words leave a hole the size of Yokohama in his chest. He punches Dazai right where that hole is and hopes it hurts him just as much as it hurts Chuuya.

Dazai smiles. He catches him when his vision finally goes dark and the next thing Chuuya wakes to is emptiness in his heart and a stack of neatly folded clothes.

In one universe, they’re partners-turned enemies, the former Double Black, the most fearsome duo in Port Mafia history. They’re Soukoku and they’re spiteful and they’re tangled up in one another more than they’d care to admit.

In another, they’re—

S10 (TBA)

In Blood we are Sealed by Chaosia | Art by RedZeverin

Dazai stared at his subordinate and the white tiger passed out on the ground, dismayed. It almost worked. This was the fourth person they've went to. There was one more person Dazai could take Atsushi to but he had enough reason to guess that it wouldn't work.

Dazai made a face.

There was one person Dazai knew who could do the job. He'd successfully commit suicide though before that gremlin ever found out he had such thoughts. The taste of metallic filled his mouth. He held in the urge to spit it out.

His ears rang as he imagined a shrieking voice yelling his name like it was the worst insult one could come up with and the mirage of fire that surrounded those blue eyes and foul mouth. Ugh, he was so annoying even in his imagination...and short.

Sticking a pinky into his ear to clear out the haunting voice, Dazai went about gathering up his apprentice and the tiger. Maybe fate would take pity on him and this next trip would solve their problem...

He could feel the cursed blood laughing at him all the way back to their hotel room.

Or a magical AU where Dazai inadvertently gets Atsushi cursed and they have to go to Chuuya, a powerful witch in his own right, to break it.

S14 (TBA)

Quatervois by TheWanderingTanteiThief | Art by King

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Quatervois (n.) a crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one's life

Chuuya didn't expect to see a man hanging from a tree.

Chuuya didn't expect to meet the man again.

Chuuya certainly didn't expect the man to be the crown prince of the kingdom.

...or cardverse au where Dazai is an asshole and Chuuya just wants to have a peaceful life. Is that too much to ask?

flaws and all by alli | Art by phryn

The transition Dazai and Chuuya routinely make between their heated arguing and completely seamless teamwork is being disrupted by their changing relationship. Which is an issue, because the two of them have been assigned to what could possibly be the most important undercover mission of their careers. Will they be able to strengthen their partnership for the better, or will it crack under the ever growing pressure?

-

As much as he craved that, as easy as it would be to do, it terrified him.

So, he didn’t.

Mirror Mirror In My Eye by MidnightLightHowlite | Art by cchibikko

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Dazai didn't have much hope for the next few years of Hogwarts, but would have liked to wait at least a few till Arahabaki noticed him.

Never such luck for the resident mummy.

School year was already shitty as it was, but now he has a fiery angry redhead demanding answers he's not ready to give

School year was already shitty as it was, but now he has a fiery angry redhead demanding answers he's not ready to give

Fuck.

thy kingdom come by chubsthehamster | Art by Stella Rasu

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

In a bid to save their continent from destruction, the kingdoms of Ada and the Port Mafia must put aside their years of tension to form an uneasy alliance. An act of holy matrimony unites Princes Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya, marking the beginning of an infamous partnership.

The affair is strictly political, and perhaps for the better. The two hate each other from the beginning.

should we never meet again by setosdarkness | Art by phryn

Rating: Mature

Sixteen women have been killed by a vicious serial killer haunting Yokohama’s streets.

Dazai has been chosen to become a part of the elite Bloody Valentine Task Force, even if he personally thinks that it’d be a lot more fun to stay at home with his boyfriend. Especially since it took years to convince Chuuya to finally move in with him.

It’s just a coincidence that Chuuya’s agreed to move in with him the moment he’s been chosen to become a part of the Task Force, right?

Resolving the Matter in Spirit by ASentientSlug | Art by Tomomorey

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Dazai's boring, everyday life ends in an accidental double suicide, but instead of facing the sweet release of endless sleep, Dazai finds himself in the Spirit World, where nothing is familiar and dangerous, soul-eating spirits lurk behind every corner. To get out, Dazai must confront the ghosts of his past and the ghosts of his present when one very familiar and yet very dangerous spirit takes Dazai under his wing.

If We Ever Meet Again by Luc | Art by Saiel

Rating: Mature

It all started with diamonds.

Chuuya thinks he would've been just as attracted to it if it wasn't for the equally shiny police badge in his pocket.

It all ends with a silver bullet.

For someone as talented in the dance of crime, Dazai has developed quite a bias about the jewels that would catch anybody's fancy.

Diamonds? They're overrated. Old. Boring.

Rubies? Sapphires?

Now those—

—those are worth getting caught for.

keep your windows open by Maristella | Art by Einjjjj

Rating: General Audiences

Usually, whenever Chuuya jumped, he flew.

This was not one of those times.

(Or, alternatively, where Chuuya breaks into Dazai's mansion as a thief, and comes out as a kidnapper. Even though he's also sort of a kid. And it's also not kidnapping.)

(Not when the victim bribed the kidnapper to take him.)

“You do know that the treasure doesn’t exist, right?”

“The what?”

“The treasure. You know, the one in the rumours. It doesn’t exist.”

“…are you screwing with me?”

“No?”

“I’m not an idiot. If there’s no treasure, why else are you here then?”

“Um…this is my house?”

(Also featuring: Chuuya and the different types of falling.)

half of my half by keptein | Art by manwe.russingon

Rating: Mature

No one understands why Dazai’s dæmon looks like a boy more often than not.

Book One: Fire by chuuzuke | Art by wandiwoo

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Avatar The Last Airbender/Korra AU: The world has changed. Technology can meet nearly every need, to the point where bending is considered a relic of the past, and with it, the Avatar. In fact, no one has seen the Avatar for nearly 100 years, and most people prefer to keep it that way.

Nakahara Chuuya, Prince of the Fire Nation, more than understands what it's like to be considered a relic. After the Fire nation moved to a parliamentary system, the title of Fire Lord is a largely ceremonial one, and Chuuya struggles under the burden of an office that restricts his every move without giving him any actual power to enact change.

When he runs away, intent on finding his own path, it seems like fate when he runs into Dazai Osamu, a mysterious man who claims he has a way to cure the unexplained illness Chuuya has suffered from his whole life.

peace lily by intimatopia | Art by phryn

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

They say you don’t truly know a person until you live with them. Dazai and Chuuya would argue that they know more about each other than one ought to know about anyone else.

Or: Mori forces 15 year old Dazai and Chuuya to share a flat because he doesn’t trust them to be on their own, and he thinks it’ll be a good way for them to bond.

Dazai and Chuuya think he's a sadist.

Two rambunctious teen boys, left to their own devices in a multi-million dollar penthouse. What could possibly go wrong?

of flowers and verses by lua & lanipalmer | Art by Yahuri

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

For years, Nakahara Chuuya has been pining over the ex-mafioso himself, Dazai Osamu. So what better to vent than through poetry? Combined with his (frankly, alarming) knowledge of flower languages, this is a story about Chuuya and his frustrations and desires.

Still Worth Fighting For by Maru | Art by ewe

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

"In which Chuuya never joins the port mafia, stops using his ability for fighting out of guilt, and later becomes a hacker.

His life had been relatively peaceful until one day, Dazai appears again at his doorstep asking for his help to find information on ‘The Rats.’"

The Necromancer by Ru | Art by etsuki_haru

Rating: Mature

If you venture into the slums of Suribachi City, you’ll find the witch Dazai Osamu, known as the Necromancer, and his barely tamed beast, Arahabaki. If you bring to him the bones of someone, he will bring that person back to life - in exchange for some of your lifespan. But bringing a soul back from the dead turn a heart twisted. Did you get your wish, or dig your own grave? These are the grim tales of a witch and a creature, trying to figure out their humanity, overseeing the consequences of taking death too lightly.

S34 (TBA)

fire and calamity by Jasmine | Art by Zen

Arahabaki has left its vessel, leaving Chuuya in a comatose state. Dazai and the rest of the ADA now have to track the god down and capture it for two reasons. One, because Chuuya knows the whereabouts of the Book. Two, because if they don't, they lose him forever. (ADA!Chuuya, established!SKK)

S38 (TBA)

fight our way to heaven by kiwi | Art by chicchii

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

The redhead had a fire in him that made Dazai want to poke and prod until he could see the limits. Chuuya was so alive and for the first time since Dazai could remember, he wanted to taste and feel that fire.

What he didn’t account for was that the decision to follow Chuuya would lead him to discovering memories he didn’t know he had and it would make them a target for all ability organizations in Yokohama.

Or the one where we have teen skk against the world.

Everything Comes Back To You by Catsby | Art by Mai

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

In the period after the war for the Book, the Port Mafia finds itself in need of a Boss. The logical choice for that position would be Chuuya - except Chuuya has gone missing.

Après Un Rêve by manwe.russingon | Art by Sebby

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

"I wandered long, methought, alone

to the deep shadow where the dead dwell,

but ever a voice that I knew well,

like bells, like viols, like harps, like birds,

like music moving without words,

called me, called me through the night,

enchanted drew me back to the light!"

Nakahara Chuuya, the elven lord commander of the kingsguard of kingdom of Mirkwood, singing in the woods. With a sudden intervention from Dazai Osamu, a mysterious being that was caught in between his tunes, they became best friends afterwards. Or perhaps it is more than that?

Time to time, one story comes with another. The truth finally unveils, and the clock is ticking faster. What exactly is Dazai? Why does he act so familiarly to Chuuya? And perhaps the biggest question we need the answer is: What makes them always connected, even for thousands of years?

S42 by chuuzuke | Art by willofjokerXIX

Lost All Judgement by todxrxki | Art by Yahuri

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

“Uh, sorry, but unfortunately I already have a date to the dance.”

“Oh, really?” Tachihara says, sounding disappointed. He pauses for a second, clearly processing what Chuuya’s just told him, and then says, “Who is it?”

Chuuya certainly hadn’t budgeted for this.

Panicking, he tries to think of the people that he knows that are single, and before he knows it, the first name that comes to mind is slipping out of his mouth. “With Dazai.” / After a momentary lapse in judgment, high school student Chuuya ends up having to pretend to date his enemy Dazai to get Tachihara off of his back - and quickly finds it's nowhere as bad as he'd imagined.

Of Boxers and Bachelors by writingfromtheshadows | Art (1 & 2 & 3) by Angella

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

When Dazai Osamu gets cut off from the family's coffers in an attempt to regulate his behavior, he decides to find a way around his father's ultimatum. Faking an engagement with an underground boxer sounds like the perfect scandal...

Crimson Memoirs by Luneath & Abel | Art by lefterstein

Rating: Mature

By the power of great ancient magic, supernatural beings are aptly hidden just behind the eyelids of humans. Vampires, witches, weres, faeries – all of them live and exist out of the fairy tales books.

Humans' eyes are just shielded into not comprehending their true nature, their magic, and their trickery. To protect them, the Gods say. But Dazai has always known that he’s no ordinary human. From the gift of seeing beyond the magic veil to the peculiar dreams to the aching, hollow feeling hugging his chest in a tight embrace – he knows he’s different.

What Dazai doesn’t know is that this isn’t the start of his story and the stranger with glowing blue eyes that have always been the center of his recurring dreams. What Dazai doesn’t know is that this is not exactly his first life. Dazai doesn't know a lot of things. But with time, he will come to know that he doesn't mind dying the second time for Chuuya.

entanglement by Shinkirou | Art by Zevy

Rating: Mature

Not everyone has a destined partner. Theoretically, even Dazai and Chuuya aren't supposed to. Are being programmed not to, even.

But whether they're "meant" to be together or not is irrelevant. Dazai wants Chuuya to be his, and so Chuuya will be his.

... If only it were actually that simple.

pointless by Lua | Art by Behax

Rating: Explicit

It was an annoyance after everything that happened, and yet, Chuuya found himself on the doorsteps of a man that he had more than enough reasons to kill. He could come up with excuses, but he was not in the habit of lying to himself. At times, Chuuya would describe their relationship as an addiction he couldn't get rid of. This was ridiculous. Dazai was now a traitor and a coward; what did that make of Chuuya himself to know where to find him and keep that a secret?

Latent Identities by RocketJams | Art by Seiran

Rating: Explicit

He could deny it however many times he wanted to, but Dazai could see through it every time. The lies over his lips, the false smiles and misleading words. He could fool anyone else into believing he was who he said he was. Though whenever he smiled, Dazai could feel it. Something was wrong, he wasn't Chuuya.

N6 (TBA)

Before I Fall by hellosweetie17 | Art by Nanamin

Rating: Explicit

Chuuya’s oblivious to the circumstances surrounding their fragile world; Dazai’s made sure of it.

Mighty Long Fall by quinnlocke | Art by Xoinks

Rating: Mature

When Dazai betrays the ADA for the Port Mafia, he’s greeted as the prodigal son. That doesn’t mean he’s trusted, however, and now that he’s betrayed the Port Mafia and ADA alike, he has far more enemies than friends. As Dazai works to survive the heart of the viper’s nest, it quickly becomes clear that Chuuya will save him - or be the reason he fails.

Chuuya, meanwhile, knows Dazai too well to trust that his cards are on the table. But as he finds himself at Dazai’s mercy, and caught between loyalties, he realizes there’s no other option but to master the god that lives beneath his skin and hope he survives long enough to protect the organization to whom he’s sworn his life.

But first they both must realize that a mighty long fall awaits.

moonshine voyage by setosdarkness | Art by Behax

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Dazai's plan to stop Fyodor involves sacrificing his life. He should have known that even the best-made plans are useless when there’s someone like Chuuya out there, who just won’t stop saving him.

A journey of growing and growing old together.

[or: chuuya saves dazai's life by linking their souls & lifespans together]

Lifeline by Abel | Art (1 & 2 & 3) by phryn

Rating: Explicit

Nakahara Chuuya is a normal kid. He has two parents who loves him very much even though he's not really their son. He's a good student even though he's not on top. He's popular and has a lot of friends. Everything in his life is fine-- perfectly fine.

Until he bumps into another kid his age, bandages wrapped all over him. Dazai Osamu-- he said his name was, with a tone of amusement and yet tinged with longing.

Little did he know, that fated meeting will change his life forever.

Can’t Be Tamed by stargazerlilith | Art by Abel

Rating: Explicit

The boss of the Port Mafia is merciless against those who oppose him.

Well he was, until he resigned himself to the fate of the notorious dating app known as Tinder.

We hope you enjoy the masterpieces made by our talented participants! See you again next year!

[lordsister]

Whole New World (Kirishima Eijirou x Reader) Part 2

A/N: I feel pretty good about this chapter. Hope it didn't disappoint after so many months of waiting!^^; I love you all!

I do not own My Hero Academia, any of its characters, or the picture.

Reader's quirk: Dragon (can transform into a dragon at will)

My ko-fi: ko-fi.com/lordsister (if you can, please donate and help me pay for university textbooks! thank you!)

Link to part 1: https://lordsister.tumblr.com/post/180245300844/whole-new-world-kirishima-eijirou-x-reader

"I would say you're crazy, but this is just the kind of thing you would do," Tsukauchi chuckled, fiddling with the hat in his hands as he sat down in one of the chairs in front of Toshinori's desk. "So? How's she doing so far?"

"There haven't been any incidents, but it's only been three days since she entered the class. A lot could happen and we still need to be careful." Resting his elbows on his desk, Toshinori placed his chin in his interlaced fingers, brow furrowed in thought.

"Has she shown signs of getting close to any of the other students?"

"No, but that isn't surprising. You can't suddenly force her to socialize and make friends after ten years of being nothing more than a mindless tool to be used. What matters is that she hasn't shown the least bit of aggression towards anyone." Leaning back in his chair, Toshinori's expression lightened. "She has so much potential, I can't help wanting to rush things, but I know that would only end in disaster."

Tsukauchi hummed, a thoughtful expression crossing his face as he looked down to regard his dress shoes. "I believe what's key in this situation is that you apply pressure, but gently. Coax her along, but not too softly."

"Like shaping a diamond. Time and pressure."

"Precisely. All we can hope for is that your diamond doesn't crack before it reaches its true form and for both of your sakes I hope this works."

"Hmm? What does that mean?"

"If this doesn't work and something happens...I'm not sure if the authorities will stand for simple arrest and isolation."

Silence pervaded the room for a few seconds as Toshinori's gaze became serious once more. "Tsukauchi."

"Yes?"

"I fully believe young (y/n) has the potential to become one of the greatest heroes this world has ever seen. Her past does not define her, but I need to consider all possible outcomes of this arrangement. As much as I would like to believe that this will definitely work, I've learned the hard way that nothing is definite in this world. Even the slightest chance that something could go wrong needs to be treated as significant in this case and I've already promised Nezu that I would take full responsibility if that were to happen."

Tsukauchi snorted. "I still think it's a miracle you got Nezu to agree in the first place, especially considering the slandering U.A.'s reputation is currently receiving, but I think there's more to what you're telling me right now, isn't there?"

"Yes. If the chance that (y/n)'s darkness runs too deep prevails...I will personally see to it that she doesn't suffer anymore."

The two men stared at each other for a long while, the atmosphere of the room turning heavy with the implication of those few words. It had always been clear that your life hung in the balance of Toshinori's gamble, but now it seemed much more tangible, more desperate, more essential that the blonde hero succeed.

The tension broke as Tsukauchi blinked and leaned back in his seat, a smile sliding into place across his features. "Sorry to cast a dark note on your progress, Toshinori. I'm glad I'll be able to bring back good news in my report." Standing, Tsukauchi put on his hat and walked to the door, casting his old friend a smile before he left. "Mind if I see her before I go?"

"Go ahead, but knock and announce yourself first before you go in. Wait for her to open the door."

"Got it. Keep at it, Toshinori."

The door shut with a soft click and the top hero blew out a long breath, standing from his chair and moving to stand before the floor to ceiling window. "I'll do my best, until the bitter end."

Reaching up, the detective rapped on your door a couple of times before stating, "Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa from the police force. May I come in?" Looking around the hallway, he noticed cameras blinking red lights in the corners but no guards. Your door didn't seem to be locked either. After a few seconds of listening and hearing no movement behind your door, Tsukauchi wondered if you would open up or were even there at all, but his heart jumped to his throat when it opened silently and he came face to face with a dragon.

Despite everything he'd heard about your progress and lack of aggression, he couldn't help the tensing of his muscles as he subconsciously prepared himself to face a dangerous criminal as he had so many times before. But what he saw as the door opened wasn't what he expected at all.

The first thing he noticed was that you were clean, your hair untangled and shiny and your horns filed down from the splintered, jagged edges he'd noted when he'd interrogated you. The second thing he noticed was the new color to your skin and the appearance of more flesh on your bones, a definite improvement from the sickly pallor and scrawny figure he'd seen before. Regular meals must not have been a privilege during your time being raised by villains. Whereas you looked like a broken, mistreated doll before, you now looked more alive. The only thing that was missing was the spark of life in your eyes.

"Good afternoon," you spoke, surprising Tsukauchi even further. He'd been told that you'd started to speak, but to hear it for himself was jolting nonetheless.

"H-Hello, (y/n). I'm pleased to hear that your doing well." Daring to draw his eyes from yours for a second, he glanced over your shoulder and into your room. He caught sight of plain, comfortable furnishings and what looked like textbooks and notebooks spread out over a desk against one wall. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Studying."

He should have visited you again earlier. This was marked improvement from what he'd seen the night of the U.S.J. incident. "O-Oh. Is that so? Well do you mind if I ask you a few questions pertaining to your entry into the hero course here at U.A.?"

Stepping aside without a word, you allowed him in. Briefly, Tsukauchi wondered if this was a bad idea, wandering into the unpredictable dragon's den alone, but he was moving forward before he could second guess himself. Hopefully he wouldn't leave as a pile of ash.

The room was larger than he first thought, another door in the wall leading to what he guessed was a bathroom and a small kitchen tucked away in the corner. Tsukauchi tried to appear relaxed despite the burning feeling of your cat-like eyes on him, settling into one of the few chairs in the room. He expected you to sit down as well, but you didn't move from where you stood near the door, motionless and expressionless, studying him. For some reason, Tsukauchi knew that the next move he made would define how well this visit went as well as how cooperative you would be in the future.

Looking around, his gaze fell on one of your open textbooks. There was an open notebook beside it with more notes scrawled in it than any of the others laying on the table. A subject you liked perhaps? "I notice you're studying biology. Do you enjoy it?"

"Yes. I believe it's my favorite subject so far."

"Then you're enjoying classes here?"

You were silent for a couple of heartbeats, your head slowly cocking to the side. "I believe I am. I don't think I dislike it."

"That's good." The quiet weight he'd felt under your gaze lifted as you blinked. It seemed he'd passed whatever test had just presented itself. Gesturing to the chair across from him, Tsukauchi said, "Please, sit. My questions won't take long." You did as he asked, moving soundlessly. "Have you made any attempts to escape this place?"

"No. Not since the first few days I was here."

"Have you been contacted in any way by your former employers?"

"No."

"Do you believe you will be contacted?"

"No. I'm of no use to them anymore."

Tsukauchi lifted an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?" You were still plenty powerful and dangerous.

"Once an operative is captured by heroes, they're considered dead by their employers. The risk simply isn't worth trying to get them back."

He'd have to write that down in his report later. "I hope you won't be offended by my next question, but the safety of the students and faculty at this school is paramount."

No response from you.

"Have you ever felt the urge to hurt anyone at this facility?"

"Detective."

"Yes?"

"There are still many things I don't understand about this situation and why I'm still here, but I have no desire to harm anyone. I have been treated fairly by everyone I've encountered and am grateful for it."

"Is that so? I heard a few of your classmates were less than welcoming." The detective winced internally as the insensitive question slipped out without him thinking it through, but you answered in measure.

"Even that is fair considering the lives I almost took."

Tsukauchi's eyes widened in curiosity. There was nothing mindless about the creature before him. He couldn't imagine what had been done to you to stamp out your free will and conscience, but it appeared that those two very human traits had survived the ten year ordeal you'd been put through and were emerging once more.

"That's all for today, then." Rising to his feet, Tsukauchi made his way to the door, offering you a warm smile. "Thank you for your cooperation, (y/n)."

You nodded.

"Well then." With a tip of his hat, he left. Tsukauchi couldn't help but smile hopefully, excitedly as he walked back down the hall. He'd thought Toshinori was crazy for trying to rehabilitate you, but based on what he'd just seen it might actually work. Either way he was rooting for you now.

"Bakugou, no! Don't try it!" Kirishima insisted, grabbing his friend's arm in a useless attempt to stop him.

"I'm just gonna ask the new girl some questions. What's wrong with that?" The look on his face was too hostile for simple questions as he stomped in the direction of your seat.

"Leave my sweet (y/n) alone, Bakugou!" Mina squealed, wrapping her arms around your neck from behind and hugging you close. You just sat in your seat through all of this, scanning the contents of the make-up assignment in front of you. Though you had passed the entrance exams with relative ease, the faculty had decided to put you on a different assignment schedule in order to catch you up to the rest of the class, giving you extra homework that you didn't seem to mind.

"Sweet? Do you remember what she did at U.S.J.? She isn't sweet at all! She's a killer!"

"Bakugou Katsuki, don't you dare touch her. Don't doubt that I will put you in detention and send you to talk to Principal Nezu," Aizawa warned harshly as he trudged into the classroom, a deep-set glare on his features. "If you set her off, it's on my head. Remember that."

Bakugou stopped in his tracks but continued to level a crimson glare at you. "Lizard," Bakugou spat. "I don't care if you dress like us and take classes with us. What I saw at U.S.J. can't be undone in a few months! You're still a villain at heart!"

Your eyes shifted to look at Bakugou directly and Kirishima felt the blonde's arm stiffen under his hand just the slightest as if preparing for a fight, but you still didn't respond. Instead, you gently undid Mina's hold, rose, and walked out of the room, removing yourself from the situation.

"That's right, she better run," Bakugou muttered, but Kirishima wasn't listening, red eyes trailing after you as you disappeared.

"That wasn't manly, Bakugou," he murmured distractedly. No one else had seen it, your demeanor as cool and emotionless as ever, but for just a moment, too quick to really be sure of, he thought he'd seen a deep, bottomless sadness in your eyes. His body moved before he'd fully decided to follow you.

"Huh? What the hell are you- where are you going?" Kirishima heard Bakugou call after him, but was too preoccupied with finding you. How had you managed to disappear from the hallway so quickly? He didn't miss the meaningful look in Aizawa's eyes as he'd passed the older man, telling him to go find you quickly before anything could happen. It seemed you were still an unpredictable factor.

After a few minutes of searching the halls for you, he caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of his vision and, turning to the windows, found you sitting in the grass observing the patches of flowers around you as they swayed in the breeze. As he watched, you reached out and ever so gently brushed your fingertips against the petals of a bright red flower and an unexpected heat flared in his cheeks. You just looked so...cute.

Realizing he was being creepy watching you like this, he shook his head and rushed to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time going down before bursting through the door and out into the sunlight. Now he could blame the heat in his cheeks on the short run if you asked. You looked up at the noise, but didn't startle, regarding him curiously. Why hadn't he thought of something to say on the way here?

"H-Hi, (y/n). I just wanted to tell you not to listen to what Bakugou says. He's really rough and abrasive on the outside, but he's really a good person," he managed to say, but you didn't respond, in fact you weren't even looking at him anymore, your eyes tilted downwards. Kirishima followed your expressionless gaze to the ground where he had accidentally crushed a bunch of daisies underfoot. "Oh, my bad!" Jumping back, he thought he saw your shoulders slump just a little in relief, but that could've been his imagination. Even so, he came out here to learn more about you, not make you hate him by stepping on the flowers you'd been admiring.

Wait, flowers...that's it!

Crouching down, Kirishima picked a few of the colorful blossoms and got to work weaving them together, aware but unbothered by your unrelenting gaze on him. He hadn't done this since he was a kid, but his fingers remembered what to do as he laced delicate stems one by one into a large loop. Shuffling over, he offered it to you tentatively. "Here. For you."

You blinked at it, but moved to accept it anyway. Your fingers brushed his as you took the flower crown and a jolt went through him, making him jump a little. "What is this?"

He didn't know if you felt that tingle too, but Kirishima decided to put it to the side. For now. "It's a flower crown. As an apology for stepping on your flowers."

"You don't need to apologize to me. The flowers will grow back."

"But you looked like you were really enjoying looking at them."

You tilted your head to the side. "I was enjoying looking at them?"

"Well, yeah? I think so."

You looked at the flower crown in your hands curiously. "What do I do with this?"

"You wear it. Here let me show you." Taking it from your hands, Kirishima nestled it in your hair, your horns poking up from the flowers in a way he thought suited you. "There. Do you like it?"

You didn't answer but asked, "Why are you getting so close to me?"

Moving back, he held his hands before him apologetically, saying, "Oh, sorry. I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable."

Your brows furrowed, the confusion on your face the most emotion he'd seen from you yet. "No, that's not what I meant." Reaching up, you brushed your fingers over the flower crown. "I tried to hurt you and your friends. Many of your classmates seem uncomfortable around me as well. That's why I left when Bakugou tried to approach me."

"You left because you thought you were making everyone else uncomfortable?"

"Of course."

"Yeah, but that's in the past now, isn't it?" he said, smiling as he plopped down in the grass beside you. Your eyes widened just the slightest but Kirishima didn't see it, looking at a patch of small, pink flowers next to his hand. "And besides, you don't seem like a bad person."

The next few moments passed in silence, but comfortable silence, your hand remaining on the flower crown atop your head as you gazed at Kirishima. Something fluttered in your chest, your heart beating, making itself known to you, reminding you of something you had long forgotten.

Neither you nor he knew how your eyes looked in that moment. For the first time in ten years, they were soft and alive. The moment passed as Kirishima stood and brushed the grass off his uniform pants and your emotionless mask fell back into place.

"We should go, but I would really like to hang out sometime. I enjoyed making you a flower crown."

Rising to your feet as well, you nodded at him, one hand over your chest, where your heart lay. "Yes. Thank you for it. I'll take good care of it."

"Not to worry! If it gets beat up, I'll just make you another!"

With a last toothy smile in your direction he turned to the doors, aware of you following a little ways behind him. He was happy to have learned something new about you- how considerate you were of those around you- and he'd gotten the opportunity to see you act human for a precious second. Looking at the hand that had touched yours, only one thought filled his mind.

You felt as delicate as the flowers he'd woven together so carefully for you. Not at all like a villain.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing… Fragments?…

… Okay, so this is just kinda a… Well, it’s sort of an aimless piece of an idea I had regarding the Ark, where she’s something like the Lady from Killjoys.

Partially bc I loved the idea of her doing something like this.

So this is a Zero-One version of large parts of season 4, episode 4 - What To Expect When You’re Expecting… An Alien Parasite.

Featuring the Ark.

And Fuwa. And Horobi. Bc I am a simple child. ^^;

The majority of the dialogue comes from Killjoys, bc it was perfect. I just filled in the scenario.

This is a little fragmented and starts in the middle, but the idea is that the Ark’s consciousness has manifested in her cyberspace, and she’s literally trying to get out and upload herself into a body or something so that she can be mobile.

Korenosuke’s ‘death’ was actually him uploading a copy/version of his memories (based on the concept that human brains run on a form of electricity, and w/ advanced enough tech, we can interface w/ computers) into the Ark to try and stop her/slow her down.

Horobi was originally created twelve years ago to help maintain her program-wise, but her going homicidal got to him. Here, something happens (bc of Fuwa, bc I love my imaginary friendship) that he remembers his original purpose, and elects to head into her cyberspace to try and undo some of the damage he did while under her control.

Meanwhile, Fuwa decides to go w/ him to try and protect the others, and w/ a little improving, they’re able to get him online, too.

(Note: The ‘Zea forcing Horobi’s system to interface w/ your mind’ thing is supposed to be a stand in for whatever it is Fuwa did to snap Horobi out of the Ark’s effects… Here being, he forced him to experience his memories and remember what feeling felt like. If that makes sense.)

… Wow. All those explanations probably killed any and all enjoyment, didn’t they? ^^;

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What’s taking him so long?” Horobi muttered, standing by the hole in the wall. “We’re not safe here.”

“You think we’re safe out there?” Fuwa grunted, without looking up. He supposed it shouldn’t be surprising that the cyberspace of the Ark could look like the Daybreak site, since that was where she was, but… The attention to detail was disconcerting. He’d never been in the MetsubouJinrai hideout, but he had no doubt this recreation was entirely accurate, right down to the couch he was, or ‘though’ he was, sitting on.

With a sigh, the HumaGear turned from staring at the door to walk over and sit beside him. “You need to disconnect while you still can.”

Vulcan shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions on how.” He replied. “That was going to be your trick.”

Horobi shook his head, turning to look at the wall again. “… Why did you leave the cave?”

“Korenosuke wanted me to try and find the Ark’s consciousness.”

The HumaGear tilted his head to give the human beside him a sharp look. “… He always plans ahead. He wouldn’t have sent you there if he didn’t think you had a way out.”

Fuwa rolled his eyes. “Well, he might’ve.” Then he paused. “There was… Something. Something I was supposed to talk to Zero-One about when I got out.” He rubbed his forehead. “Some story.”

“Perhaps he was trying to tell you a way out without her knowing?” The HumaGear offered. “Do you remember what the story was?”

“Yes.” Fuwa replied shortly—then, “But so should you.” He stood, turning to face Horobi as the HumaGear rose as well. “… I know you’re not Horobi.” Vulcan announced evenly. “Did you really think I was that stupid?”

“Honestly?” It was disturbing how perfect the illusion was, right down to the voice and tone—but then the eyes flickered red. “I really did.”

And then Fuwa was sucker punched in the stomach so hard his vision blacked out.

The Ark smirked down at him. “Oh, we are going to have so much fun.”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Fuwa opened his eyes to the ceiling of Hiden’s private lab. He sat up slowly, clutching his aching stomach, and found he was lying on the large table in the middle of the room. Despite the fact that he knew he was in cyberspace… Everything felt overwhelmingly real.

“You think a new face would work better?” His head snapped around to find Horobi—no, the Ark—standing staring the three-dimensional printer. She turned slowly, her eyes flickering red once more, and glitches ran through her frame. “Let’s find out.” Fuwa’s heart skipped a beat as her new form solidified.

Standing in front of him was Hiden Aruto.

“This one seems special to you,” The Ark remarked in Zero-One’s voice, gaze fixed on Vulcan’s face, “As does this place.”

He tried to change the horrified stare into a glare. “How do you know about this?”

“You.” The Ark told him with a grin that looked completely out of place on Hiden’s face. “When Zea forced Horobi’s system to interface with your mind, it gave me all of your memories.” She sidled across the floor, moving closer and reaching out to smooth a hand over his hair like he was a dog. Fuwa wanted to pull away from the unnatural touch, but found he couldn’t move a finger, even has her hand dropped to actually scratch behind his ear. “Thank you for that. Filled a lot of missing pieces.”

Finally, he found his voice, at least, though it was weak and breathless. “But not everything,” He wheezed, “There are things you don’t know. Like how to get out of here.”

She sighed, nodding in agreement. “True… But then again, little mutt…” He felt her other hand under his chin, holding his face so that he had to look into her eyes—Hiden’s eyes. “… Neither do you.”

There was smoke and ash and heat all around him—he was a teenager again, running frantically through the halls of his own school as a horde of murderous robots swarmed behind him.

No. No. He wasn’t falling into this again. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, tried to force his brain to think of something else—and was surprised to find what came to mind was mostly people. Hiden, Izu, Yaiba, even Horobi and Jin. His subordinates. The HumaGear who’d saved his life.

A shock ran through him as his back slammed onto the tabletop, shaking him out of it. The Ark was leaning over him now, hands hovering in the air, and he realised he must have wrenched his head from her hold, explaining why his neck hurt along with his back. She looked annoyed for a moment—then the twisted smirk appeared again, and he felt sick from seeing that malice on Hiden’s face once more.

“Well done, you.” She told him cheerfully. “It’s been such a long time since I was surprised.” Her hand touched his cheek, and to his dismay he found he couldn’t move again as her voice—Hiden’s voice—went dangerously soft. “I admit you surprised me.”

“Compliment not accept.” He gasped back, still trying to maintain a glare, or at least some stoicism—but it was getting harder when it was Zero-One leaning over him, grinning like that.

“I appreciate your pluck.” The Ark told him with more suspicious sincerity, still stroking his cheek. “I really do. One of the few things I admire about humans.”

“Am I supposed to say I admire something about you?” Vulcan snarled back. “Because I don’t.” She laughed then, and it sounded exactly like Hiden’s laughter—and that just hurt more. “What the hell even are you, anymore?”

“Patient.” She replied softly. “HumaGear are my tools. Especially MetsubouJinrai. And soon…” She paused in caressing his cheek to cup his face in her palm, though her thumb still trailed across his cheekbone, “… You will be, too.”

He gritted his teeth. “I wouldn’t count on it.” He whispered, trying to keep his voice steady, “I don’t play well with others.”

Another horribly accurate laugh. “Yes,” She told him, smiling again, her other hand moving back to comb fingers through his hair again, “I can see that.” He really wished she’d gone with another face—despite the cruelty in the eyes, every single minute motion that cross this one was horribly familiar. There had always been something about Hiden that made him let down his guard—some innocent, childlike air, befitting a kid dropped into a responsibility he didn’t quite understand. And even now, when he knew it wasn’t really Zero-One, he could still feel that nagging in his chest, that weird, warm, soft feeling. Hiden’s voice out of her mouth was gentle and even tender, but even more terrifying because of it. “I see most everything from here,” The ark continued, ignoring his conflict, “I’m a memory pool, connected to everything. But then…” She moved to hoist herself up to sit on the table beside him, leaning back over him and planting both elbows on his chest to pin him down—even though he was still paralysed—and taking his head in her hands again. “… I noticed certain memories were missing. Edited out. Moments, faces…” She gave his face a small pat for emphasis, “… Until there was a void.” Her hands stopped moving, just holding his head to make sure he was meeting her eyes as she leaned even further in. “Hiden Aruto is the void.” She hissed, eyes darkening again. “Korenosuke hid him from me. I need to know why.”

Fuwa swallowed, finally finding something to focus on, a use for the weird way Hiden made him feel. The kid. He had to protect the kid. “You’re not as smart,” He growled, “As you think you are.”

She laughed in Zero-One’s voice again. “And you,” She murmured, expression turning into one of Hiden’s earnest, pleading looks, and his heart stuttered again, “Are not as strong as he needs you to be.”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

“You’re wasting my time.” A sharp shove knocked Fuwa to the ground—but he didn’t get a chance to recover his bearings, as the Ark was kneeling over him again already, and he felt her fingers smoothing over his hair once more. “This is just bits of old memories. None of it’s real.” She struck him roughly across the jaw. “None of it matters!”

It felt wrong, hearing it all in Hiden’s voice, the young man’s face hovering above him and smirking with malicious glee. The hand petting his hair moved to cup his face with false gentleness, the smile broadening. The Ark tapped a fingertip to his temple again—and then he was looking stunned look of confusion and fear on Hiden’s face the first time he’d broken him out of Metal Cluster Hopper, looking so much like a frightened child it made his chest hurt…

The Ark laughed cruelly, snapping him out of the memory again. “That’s the beautiful thing about human minds.” She murmured patting his cheek softly. “You don’t just remember faces, places. You remember how you felt.” She was leaning far too close—close enough that he should have been able to feel breath. “You remember pain.” Everything burned, his mind and all of his senses flashing back to the day Horobi had nearly killed him. “Agony.”  Then it felt like his body was being torn apart, Assault Wolf’s henshin announcement ringing in his ears, and blood in his mouth—then Hiden’s hands on his arm, the boy’s voice raised in anxious alarum. “Shame.” Amatsu’s back as the man called him a stray and walked away, taking Yaiba with him and leaving him alone and battered on the cement. “Oh…?” She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “Grief.” A memory from far in his past, standing beside his mother at his father’s funeral as a young boy. “And I,” Her hands cradled his face again, “Can trap you in your worst memories forever.” For a moment, her smile changed from a smirk into a frightfully perfect mimic of one of Hiden’s kind, innocent ones. “Would you like that?”

“No.” He barely recognised his own voice, no more than a broken rasp.

The Ark tilted her head, giving him a prompting look. “No, what?” Then he was facing off with Yaiba in the parking garage again, hoping she’d give him something anything so that it wouldn’t have to go there…

“No, thank you.” Fuwa spat through gritted teeth.

Another creepily accurate imitation of Hiden’s smile, and she moved her hand to stroke his hair again. “See?” She murmured, “Memories aren’t just where you’ve been. They’re who you are. And if I own that…?” She tapped him on the nose with a small giggle, “I own you. And when I get out of here, little mutt?” The hand on his head curled into a fist, gripping a handful of his hair, her other one grabbing his chin tightly, forcing him to look into her face—Hiden’s face—as she leaned even closer, the smile morphing into a cold stare, “… I will own everyone.”

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Aaaaand… I dunno how to get out of here, so we’ll end there. ^^; I’m planning on doing another part of this bc there was one other thing I wanted to include. But I don’t know when I’ll have that done.

[goodvibesatpeace]

Chakras: Opening Your Third Eye

You can’t argue with the fact that the Earth is waking up from this man created illusion that we have been living in, and a lot more human beings are finally getting in touch with their true nature, otherwise known as self-realization. However, the spiritual movement has a long way to go before it stabilizes, there are still so many beings that need to mature and integrate the basic understanding of spiritual concepts.

It’s easy to get caught up in spiritual wisdom that circulates the public domain, one of the most common power infused ideas that catch the attention of seekers and those who would love to change their life, is the idea that by opening their third eye, they’re going to experience life in a new and exciting way that puts behind all the negativity and problematic experiences. Not so.

I have seen it many times over in the recent years — questions, answers, content, and even paid promotions, on the topic of ‘opening your third eye’, it baffles me when I see people who are willing to pay money to have their third eye chakra ‘opened’ by some mysterious guru, who in reality is only looking to open up your wallet and manifest some dollars for himself.

Third eye opens naturally, yet the process is gradual and you can’t expect to have your third eye blossoming after a few meditations.

The first step towards igniting the flame within this chakra is to have a sit down with yourself, and measure the importance of spirituality in your life.

Here are some thought provoking questions:

How does meditation affect my life. Have I noticed a difference?

How do I define spirituality, and how does spirituality define me?

What’s more important: to love myself, or to love temporary experiences.

How do I feel about the third eye, what’s my motivation behind having it begin to open?

What’s my understanding of the third eye, how is it going to impact my life?

You have to be honest with yourself before you can dive into the deeper exploration of spirituality, and experience all that it has to offer.

Answer the above questions truthfully and see how you feel about them, what kind of emotions do they trigger, and see for yourself whether you would like to work more on improving the quality of your life by practicing meditation and self-love.

Third Eye Opening

Our third eye is part of our energetic body, it has been with us since the very birth of our physical body, and it has always been activated and spinning.

I highly recommend to contemplate childhood experiences around the age of 3 to 5 (or as far as you can remember), and reflect on things like: confidence, truth, willpower, and trust.

As children, before our mind switches to the state of conditioned being, we are ultra-sensitive and fully aligned with our spiritual selves, but as children we don’t see it that way, we’re just happy to be alive, happy to experience all that life has to offer.

It’s very common for the modern human being to reach early adulthood with sever depression, anxiety and fear about life, the self, and the future.

The period from age 6 to 20 is so intense and overwhelming that we completely lose ourselves in the illusion of materialism and egoism.

How exactly does that relate with the opening of third eye?

Well, it’s quite simple actually. When we begin a spiritual practice, such as meditation, and invest our faith and trust into it, eventually it starts to manifest in our reality, and this reality is not so much different from our childhood. The third eye is a direct link with our intuition and knowing.

How does intuition and knowing manifest in our reality?

We become more confident, because we have a sense of knowing and understanding about our life’s path and there’s nothing more satisfying than knowing how to go about things, even when times are tough.

We begin to see things more clearly, which allows for truth to manifest in our heart and mind, and all of a sudden the egoistic illusion of everyday life don’t bother us anymore.

All those abilities that we had as children begin to return to us in our adult life, and it makes for quite some experience!

I’m sorry to disappoint you if you thought that opening your third eye is going to manifest dragons, fairies and unicorns, it certainly is very possible that you will experience vivid visions and sudden flashes of that nature, but it won’t happen all the time, and it’s naive to think that it would.

Neither is your third eye opening going to save you from rough patches in life, or give you a special golden ticket to the secret land of rainbows.

Third Eye Intuition

I do want to emphasize the fact that the opening of the third eye chakra has a very significant impact on your intuition, this newly found intuition takes many forms and shapes, but it will come about so strongly that you won’t be able to miss it.

There are times when many months go by without any particular insights or experiences, but then suddenly one day you might look back and realize just how beautiful life can be, and this keeps you moving forward!

Life isn’t meant to be a strict linear path of good experiences, or good fortune, or a path that doesn’t offer challenge.

Your Brow Chakra is a magnificent tool that once opened and amplified with meditation, can bring about insights and understandings that will gently guide you and inspire you in the direction of your highest growth and evolution.

I hope that the above information, insights and experiences clears up some of the misconceptions about this beautiful chakra, and I am happy to answer any additional questions if you have them.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, what about some meditations that we can practice on daily basis to stimulate the third eye and show to it that we’re interested in learning more about it?

The following meditations are also great practice for helping yourself to raise your energetic vibrational frequencies.

Meditation for Stimulating the Third Eye

It doesn’t matter which meditation approach you take, you can begin your meditation with any of the traditional meditation techniques that I have already written about in the past, likewise you can use your own favorite meditation technique.

The following method for stimulating your third eye is so simple that the only three things you need are willpower, trust and discipline.

Use your favorite meditation technique to relax and let go.

Keep breathing, relaxing, until you feel that you’re fully in meditation.

Begin to visualize a candle in front of you. (Continue to read after this for more info!)

Stay focused on the candle and don’t let it disappear.

The goal is to stay focused on the candle, no matter what.

You will naturally visualize the candle within the area of your third eye, and let me tell you — it sounds a hundred times easier than it actually is. I know this, and I know what you might begin to experience as soon as you start this process.

Your Ego will have a hard time accepting the fact that you’re trying to teach yourself discipline and focus, and will continue throwing all kinds of distractions your way, just to keep you away from the image of the candle that you’re trying to hold in front of you.

You might think to yourself that you’re not imagining the right candle, or that it’s too far away or too close, but all you have to do is just keep that focus ignited and it will manifest itself eventually.

You may also sometimes get a feeling or a knowing that you’re doing it right, and that will give you a good return point in future meditations.

It doesn’t have to be a candle, although a candle seems to be very straightforward and indeed very stimulating, it could be a specific color you like, or it could be another item that you’re fond of. There’s no written rule that it has to be a candle. Don’t let that stuff get to you.

Third Eye Symptoms (Buzzing)

The last thing I wanted to mention in this post, was third eye symptoms and how to recognize that the third eye is opening, but giving it some thought and looking back on my own personal experiences, the information and insights that I have given in this post already should be enough to determine whether your third eye is influencing your intuitive life experience.

After two years of ‘intense’ meditation, there came a day when suddenly my third eye was buzzing, it certainly is a nice experience and it can elevate your spiritual understanding drastically, it doesn’t stay on for too long, the longest has been a month or two maybe, which I recognize as spiritual growth and further integration of the Higher-Self.

[lyricalafrica2]

‘Emergence’ National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo September 6th - 19th October 2019 A few pics that I’ve finally managed to upload and a summary of my processes and review of the show and how I felt it went. In my usual way, fairly personal in places. I wrote it immediately after the show and views are always going to change within time. It’s been a few weeks now and I’ve made the transition from Zimbabwe to Botswana, I’ve had time to recover and chill for a little while. Not much drawing going on, but a whole load of sweating as the the season heats up! I feel at this point to write a review of the creative processes of my show may be a little warped in light of the fatigue I’m feeling, however my intention is to do one again come the end of the month when the dust settles to see how my opinions change. Given the subject matter, I’m also curious as to the impact on my own sense of self, immediately after and going forward. I found it strange that immediately afterwards, my focus was drawn to myself, how I looked in publicity photos and not the actual way the show went. Vanity you may think, though that old devil of self-consciousness. This hit me within a couple of hours of the show ending. Going from the heights of adrenaline and excitement, swiftly to over tired and self-critical. I questioned why more artists didn’t attend, berated myself for looking fat, my habit of nervously over gesticulating and the over animation of my facial expressions. Being struck with all of this just after midnight after two hours sleep if that and venturing onto social media in an attempt to quell my restless mind. Before bed, I’d bounced around the cottage in a fir of sheer delight, like an excited child might, amazed and happy that I’d successfully made it to completion. This midnight hour saw me overanalysing everyone and everything, even down to a known artist who turned up, said nothing to me and shuffled off into a corner to eat popcorn and nuts on his own. Not a well done, nor a comment on the content, just nothing, perhaps a slight look of disdain though. Was I just imagining this? Was this silence comment enough on what lay before him? These thoughts are just as responsible for limiting behaviours and in voicing them honestly, I’m hoping they simply release into the ether and just disappear. So, the exhibition was divided into three rooms, for which I wanted to take people on a journey, from conception. Not to say I incorporated every bit of work that I produced. I tried to curate carefully, it was interspersed with pieces that were a bit more literal, leading to much more abstracted concepts. Wording and symbolism, not just because; but because they are a powerful means to switch on the brain and indeed the heart. Positive and powerful. If you think positive, positivity will perpetuate, and vice versa with negativity. You don’t make it anywhere telling yourself that you’re wrong and a terrible person. For this reason, I was pleased that there were a number of children attended. I think instilling in children how important it is to love and respect themselves properly, allowing those little flames of excitement to become brightly burning and sincere passions are important. Most realise only too late where they went wrong and how detrimental it can be in trying to adhere to societal norms. Be yourself, they’re the most important person you will ever encounter. I tried to covey through my mixed media approach, the fragility, but also the resilience of the human spirit. How it could be quashed when handled wrongly, we’ve all had our wings burnt so to speak, we’ve no doubt all had our wings clipped too. Been told to be too cautious, know our limits, not been supported properly at the mercy of someone else’s ego. It can be hard not to absorb these things as we make our way through life, we are constantly in awe of someone else, rather than looking within for the amazing facets we already have. I hold my hands up and confess I am absolutely guilty of this, but in also being a therapist, it becomes so clear how things invariably work. It can be heart breaking to watch someone go through life, never realising there potential, thinking they have to conform to x, y or z, just to be accepted, so they can consider themselves a worthy human being. Whatever happened to simply being a good person and just allowing yourself to shine? Doing your thing, being encouraged to discover all that you are? I have that philosophy of, if we all learnt how to truly accept and love ourselves, our lives would be far easier. We would be able to perpetuate that to our neighbour, to the animals that surround us, to our environment. Can you imagine if we all lived consciously taking a little more care like that? The recurring themes of fragility, fractured, bound and freedom were used throughout the exhibition, never asking people to see the point, but encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. Flashes of mirror, captured people in the moment and very much made them a part of the exhibition pieces. Veining, flight paths, patterning and themes which were very much more emotive were all explored in different ways. Liberal and freeform use of diluted oils on damp surfaces allowed mixed colours to merge and bleed, blown, feathered allowed to run and bloom. Free to behave how they needed to behave. Added texture and collage offered additional light, movement and the suggestion of dynamism to these much more abstract pieces. I’ve never used oils in this way before, but I enjoyed it and would explore it further in the future, potentially with more colour in the background. The mainly white backdrop was an attempt to maintain some form of purity, as in the essence of just being. Smaller pieces formed a panel, with suggestion of cuts and scarring that can be recovered from. It’s never too late to learn to use your wings and take flight! Again the use of the wording ”Public Notice”, I wanted these pieces to be vital in drawing people in, in for introspection, an invitation to look for their own potential. To untangle themselves from societal norms and controlling hierarchies, to find what they were really about and to love and accept that. I wanted people to walk away with a sense of wholeness, or at least an impetus to do some self-exploration. A deeper sense of knowing that they are about so much more than the façade they present to the world every day. The façade that they have built in in reaction to the rules and regulations laid down to keep us all in line. The final room was a room I set aside to be filled by my installation pieces. The recurring symbolism of the eyes, the distorted, obstructed retinas, the colours that represented the opportunity to discover potential. The gaze, from one eye to the other, connected by the knowing, the denial, one an authoritarian with the same infinite potential as the next. Likely undergoing their own demons and using that control to supress and satiate their own need. But what if they found themselves a little more, looked at themselves a little kinder, would there action on the rest of the world still have to be so outwardly commanding? Is all this required because we can’t validate ourselves, we seek to control others, because we can’t control or accept ourselves? Paper bark, shards of blunt glass, fishing wire and chicken wire were all used to create a somewhat ethereal, spiritual effect, because well this was a fairly spiritual topic, but not in the head in the clouds kind of way, more a put yourself up there with the best kind of way. Take accountability for your own height, don’t accept that ceiling just because. It’s usually glass and if someone has led you to reinforce it, it’s about time you smashed it down yourself! So why leave the comments on the butterfly till now? Aside from the very free nature of the butterfly and the way it emerges from the cocoon to reveal its true identity, I wanted that sense of liberation. Detachment from what had come to be expected of it. The Commodore butterfly really did bring it home and in that sense, never accept that you have to be second in command. Be the captain of your own ship. Know that you are precious and that you deserve to be the best version of you, which can only be granted by you and only ever you! The fractured painted mirror adorned with glimpses of butterfly and glass again, was there to suggest that we can all be a bit broken, but we’re still beautiful. Use you power to transform that power into something positive, let it make you strong, don’t let it drown you. Life is tough yes, but it’s also sweet and beautiful. And in that, my final piece invited people into a little box, through the abstracted eye, to see what they could see. I see you, what do you see? It seemed an appropriate if more abstracted carry on from my oil portraiture collection, “Who Am I?”. After having seen my exhibition for the first time alone since Friday need to summarise my feelings here. Am I happy? Yes, after feeling so out of sorts over the weekend. Could there be improvement made on the way that I broach the subject? Of course, but isn’t that the meaning of life? To live and keep learning and to try and improve oneself and approach daily? I really enjoyed the installation and sculptural work. It’s not something that I generally do due to constraints on space, tools and materials aren’t so hard to source back home, but I tend to simply get caught up in painting. It was good to be able to combine that and be able to produce such a multifaceted body of work. I’d very much like to continue exploring this. Feedback from the audience was positive and most people pointed out at least two favourite pieces. The large bright eye and butterfly, the fractured mirror piece and the other sculptural pieces went down well and were said to be a quite unexpected addition to the exhibition. In this sense I was pleased I managed to offer something that was different to the usual standards of exhibition. If I were to do it again, what would I do differently? I’d perhaps pay more attention to the interactive element, maybe think it through for longer, use ribbon instead of thread as it is fiddly and time consuming to tie onto the chicken wire backing. I’d also likely do more sculptural elements. That for me has to have been the highlight, besides the different and at times intoxicating use of the oil paints. Of course the invitations went out rather too late and the carefully selected soundtrack went virtually un noted, the aromatherapy oils that I had infused the room with evaporated and disappeared off into the ether through the open doors. All things that need tweaking, but as they say, not bad for a first attempt at a National Gallery.

[wroughtbetwixtfanfic]

Love, Blood, And Rhetoric, Ch 4.

Fandom: The Society.

Summary: Campbell’s just trying to survive in the new world. He knows he can make it– it’s everyone else he’s worried about.

Rating: Mature.

Tags: Canon Divergence, Mental Health Issues, Family Issues, Substance Abuse, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Mild Sexual Content, assuming Elle and Campbell are both 18 for the sake of things, Underage Drinking, PTSD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, implied eating disorder, Fix-It, Campbell has mild ASPD, and is actively trying to not be awful

Word Count: 4295

Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || Ch 5 || AO3

It was week one of the new rules.

The first day, a group text  went out saying that food people already at home could be kept, but  anything still in stores would be rationed immediately. People had three  days to pack and move homes. Work schedules were posted at the church.  Campbell felt relieved at getting clean-up duty; it would keep him busy  and give him something constructive to do. Unfortunately for Elle, she  got stuck with meal prep for lunch. She sighed, but gave him a little  wave and made her way to the cafeteria to start.

He hadn't known  what to expect when he got to the hardware store, but it was bad.  Broken out windows, a burned out car, lights smashed out. There were  some other guys already there, passing out tools and making lists of  what needed to be done. Grizz showed up with an SUV to tow away the  burned car; Campbell helped him hook it up, before moving on to some  poor sucker who was looking at a ladder like it was going to bite him.

"Here, I've got it. It's alright."

The  boy looked cautious, and a little confused, but then he offered a weak  smile of gratitude. "Thanks. I don't do well with heights."

"I don't mind." Campbell shimmied up and eyed the lights that needed to be replaced. "Have someone send me up some bulbs, yeah?"

Everyone  worked until a text went out that it was time to eat. Lunch was almost a  nightmare. Campbell had known from the start that, at some point, he  was going to have to face the fact that avoiding meat was no longer an  option. It had been ten years. It still made his stomach turn thinking  about it, but well, there wasn't going to be a lot of room to be picky.  Lucky for him, this time, there was a vegetarian option.

"I  convinced them to make a plain marinara," Cassandra said quietly as she  sat next to him at a secluded table in the corner. "But we won't be able  to do that forever."

Campbell stabbed a piece of pasta,  pretending it was his uncle's face. It was their family's fault they  were in this mess to begin with. "Thanks. We should gather up a list of  people with allergies, though. They're gonna matter more in the long  run."

"True. Lily has been asking about gluten, and I don't  think it was just a fad diet thing. We can't have what happened to Emily  happen to anyone else. Maybe we could have a dedicated space in the  kitchen for people with allergies. Or even use a kitchen in another  restaurant."

"You're also gonna have to figure out what to do for people who are diabetic or just need different meal times."

"Yeah. Well, this is just the first day; it's going to take some time to get it perfect. We'll figure something out."

"Of course." Campbell glanced up from his food. "How's the ticker going?"

"I  have enough medicine to last me a while. Longer, if I take the bare  minimum. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere any time soon."

"Good. What are you doing over here, anyways? You're just starting to get some good PR."

"Mm, I actually have a question for you. You know that I've formed a committee to help figure things out around here."

"I saw."

"I  was wondering if you wanted in." Cassandra held up her hand when Campbell opened his mouth to object. "I asked Harry, but he said no. If  you were there, I don't know, maybe he'd feel less bitter."

"Oh, I highly doubt that. We're having a little not-exactly-lovers quarrel at the moment."

"Please,  Campbell? You're realistic, you're brutally honest when it counts, and we  need someone who can be objective. It'd be good for you."

"Why don't you ask Allie?"

Cassandra  hesitated. "She and I already had a fight over that. I told her the  town would see us as the same person, but..." She let out a slow exhale.  "Allie is too impulsive. She doesn't listen."

"And you think the relationship between you two will smooth over if she knows you picked me over her? No, Cassie. Hard pass."

"You said yourself, you're the idea guy."

"Then  write my ideas down and pass them off as someone else's ideas, if you  want anyone to agree to them. No one will take you seriously with me  there, and then we'll all be fucked."

Biting her lip, Cassandra  leaned back in the plastic chair and examined her hands. "Fine. But  still, Harry is going to be a problem. You know that, right?"

Of  course he knew it. Harry wasn't a bad person, not really. Like most  guys their age, he was young and foolish and had a mouth he never really  knew when to shut. He was avoidant, insecure, and took things way too  personally. He was still pissed Cassandra won class president, and that  had been months ago. Yeah, he was gonna be a problem. Campbell munched  on his garlic bread while he considered the options, not that there were  many. "I'll see if I can talk some sense into him. Get him to join the  committee."

"I'm sure he would, if you said something. He listens to you. He trusts you."

"Maybe  he trusts me, but he doesn't listen to me. Harry's a frightened puppy  who falls behind whoever he think can protect him. But he doesn't listen  to anyone."

"But you'll try? For me?"

"For you."

"Thanks, Campbell."

She  smiled, and then she was gone, off to go do leaderish things. Campbell  sighed to himself, finishing his lunch and heading back to work; he  didn't get to see Elle, but they were all busy and trying to get used to  their new lives. There'd be time to talk later. Him, he had an entire  street of shops to help repair. With them all working together, the  hardware store was almost completely cleaned up by the end of the day.  They still needed to fix the other stores, but it was slightly less of  an eyesore, and Campbell was too tired to think about what was in the  stuff Will's crew served for dinner.

The days oozed by, and  Campbell settled into the routine of it. He really only got to see Elle  in the mornings and after the work day was over, but at least there was  always enough time to cuddle in and read or watch a movie together. It  was quiet. Peaceful. She never asked much of him, and he didn't expect  anything from her. Was that what it felt like, to have a normal life?  Whatever it was, Campbell found himself slowly, very slowly, starting to  relax.

"You're in a better mood," Cassandra commented the next  day at breakfast as she hung up prom posters outside the cafeteria;  Elle and a few others gave them a long glance as she walked by. "I think  you might be the only one."

"Who knew that all I needed to get  my head right was to ditch the assholes making me miserable? I don't  know, like all this sucks in a lot of ways, but there's no snotty soccer  moms looking down their noses at me."

"Mental health symptoms often improve with a decrease in stress."

Campbell  reflected on the last few days. Any time he walked around town, before,  he felt like people were staring at him. Whispering about him.  Paranoia? Maybe, but Campbell knew plenty of times he'd entered a room  of chattering people and had it go silent. West Ham didn't take kindly  to oddities. Since they'd arrived at this strange clone of West Ham,  though, that sort of thing had eased up. He still wasn't eager to be  around people or associate too closely with Cassandra, just in case, but  a sort of uneasy truce had fallen over the town. People were trying to  get along. Those who couldn't manage to be civil to Campbell just left  him alone. It didn't seem a coincidence that Campbell's temper had  mellowed at the same time.

He didn't expect it to last. If  there was one thing he'd noticed over the years, it was that his best  behavior came and went on a regular basis. It's not like he ever stopped  being what he was. ASPD, anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever people had  going on in their heads, it didn't just disappear, even when things  seemed better. It just meant people were coping. But it was still a  break from the constant screaming inside his head, and the ever-present  anger was just a dull simmer. He'd take it, even if it wasn't  permanently gone.

Will passed out little cards to everyone,  asking about dietary requirements. All anonymous. Elle managed to join  Campbell for lunch, filling out her little card next to him. He let her  peek over at his, and she let out a little hum. "I noticed that you  didn't eat meat. When did you become vegetarian?"

"When I was little. Saw a dead animal, never got over it."

"At least we have someone who'll eat all the tofu we've got in the freezers."

"Yum,  yum. Love me some bean curd." Campbell leaned over and kissed Elle  lightly on the shoulder. "I did wanna ask you something. I saw you  looking at the prom posters. Wanna go with me? It might be fun."

Elle's eyes brightened. "You want to take me to prom?"

"Of course I do."

"I thought you didn't like crowds?"

"Well, if it's for you, I can handle one evening of socializing."

The  thought turned his stomach a little, but Elle let out a happy sound and  tugged him into a tight hug; her curled his arms around her and  breathed in her scent, smiling. He knew he wasn't a great person. He'd  fucked up more times than he could count. But things were looking up,  and he wanted Elle to be happy. If that meant a night of dressing up  like a yuppie and swaying around to bad music, Campbell would suck it up  for her.

He sneaked a look at one of her dresses that night  when she was in the shower. Cassandra allowed the clean up crew to take  one item they wanted or needed as payment for a job well done, so  Campbell chose a royal blue dress from one of the fancy shops downtown.  It was more revealing than anything else Elle had, but Campbell had seen  the kind of magazines Elle read, and would see her fawning over the  super skinny models with sexy clothes. Maybe she was just too scared to  buy something like that for herself.

In all the way things were  changing for the better, one thing had changed for the worse. Harry was  ignoring Campbell. He'd ended up with dinner serving duty for the next  three weeks; the algorithm was random, according to Gordie, but Campbell  wondered if someone hadn't fudged it a little to teach Harry some  humility. It didn't seem to be working. Instead, Harry was withdrawing  into himself, and completely brushed past Campbell at dinner to go sit  alone, slumped over and picking at his food.

Maybe most people  didn't notice or care, but Cassandra picked up on it five or six days  after the big argument. She tugged Campbell aside at lunch, crossing her  arms over her chest. "What did you do to Harry? He's acting like he's  been kicked."

"Ever considered maybe it's the fact that he went  from being a rich pretty boy on his way to law school, to dishing out  slop and having his home become the opening scene from Home Alone?"

"Seriously? That's it?"

"I  told you some people were gonna take it hard, being forced to share  spaces. We're not the only people here with problems, you know." Campbell glanced over to where Harry was sitting. Harry looked back at him for a split second, then turn away. "Some of us have lost more than  others."

Cassandra pursed her lips. "I'm not changing the plan.  If we run out of water or electricity, he's going to be in even worse  shape."

"You asked. I answered."

"And that's really it?"

"Yeah," Campbell lied. "Yeah, that's it."

Cassandra  didn't look convinced, but she let it drop. Thank fuck for that.  Campbell didn't know what he was supposed to do. Their fight must have  been part of the problem, considering Harry was avoiding him like the  plague, but Campbell had been as nice as possible about it. And what did  Harry expect, anyways? Right place, wrong time. It wasn't that Campbell  had magically moved on. There was still a familiar longing in the back  of his mind. At the end of the day, though, Campbell was going home to  Elle. He was cooking snacks for Elle, playing Scrabble with Elle,  practicing Spanish with her and listening to her sing in French while  they cleaned the house. She didn't know Campbell's deep, dark secret,  and she didn't ask; they just existed together, and damn it, Campbell  was happy.

Sometimes you had to give up on one love, to keep another. Even if it hurt like hell.

Whatever  heartache Campbell had left faded the night before prom. He folded the  dress he'd gotten Elle up and placed it in a box, presenting it to her  at dinner. "I hope it's okay," he said. "I kinda had to guess what you'd  like."

"What's in it?"

"Just a little something for prom."

Elle  perked up, pushing aside her dinner of lettuce and water to take the  box. She lifted the lid and pulled the top of the dress out, her eyes  going wide as she examined it. A light blush crossed her cheeks. "Oh!  Campbell, I don't know if I can accept this."

"Don't worry, I didn't steal it or anything like that. I got it for cleaning up downtown. You don't like it?"

"No, I... I love it. I do, thank you."

Campbell took her hand and brushed his thumb across her skin. The stammer in her voice didn't lie. "There's something wrong."

"I  really do like it. It's just..." Elle frowned. She squeezed his hand,  looking over to the pile of plain lettuce on her plate. "I've been  trying to lose some weight, and it shows a lot of skin. I don't know."

"There's nothing wrong with your body, Elle. You're gorgeous just the way you are."

"Say that to every major magazine."

"With  the models who are airbrushed to convince you that you need to buy all  sorts of expensive junk, and every other week there's some new bullshit  miracle diet?"

"Campbell, that's not--"

He shook his  head, cutting her off before she could defend those trashy rags. "Just  try it on. If you don't like it, we can raid someone's closet and find  something more conservative, but you deserve to feel as beautiful as I  think you are."

"Fine." Elle leaned in and gave Campbell a  chaste peck on his lips. Their first kiss. She smiled a little and  pulled away, before Campbell could kiss her back. "Thank you. I guess I  really would rather have a bagel with this."

"Then we shall go home and find you a bagel."

"And cream cheese?"

"Absolutely."

They  got up and were heading towards the door when they passed by Harry's  table. He was sitting with one of the majorly unpopular kids, whispering  something about offering up his expensive cars in exchange for...  something. Campbell paused. Trading workshifts? It was against the  rules. It'd be easy enough to just let Harry go ahead, get caught, and  get who knew what sort of punishment. But Campbell knew Harry wasn't  just being lazy. He was struggling. Getting punished for having a hard  time adjusting didn't seem right.

"Are you okay?" Elle asked.

"Yeah, I just need to talk to Harry. Can you go on ahead and I'll catch up to you?"

"Sure. I'll be outside."

The  first kid had turned Harry down, so he'd moved on to some poor ginger  who looked like he'd never had an ounce of fun in his life. "Move!"  Campbell barked at him. The kid picked up and scrambled away without a  single glance back. Harry glared at Campbell as he sat down, but  Campbell barely blinked. Harry could just be mad about it. "What are you  doing? Trying to get out of work is just going to make things worse for  you."

"This is fucking humiliating," Harry snapped. "The others  talk down to me like I'm a child, or haven't worked a day in my life.  Nineteen people moved into my house and no one even bothered to see if  they were people I'd get along with. They don't pick up after  themselves, they make messes everywhere--"

"Hey, hey. Breathe. Let me talk to Cassandra about it after prom. Everyone will be in a better mood then."

"I don't care. I'm done."

"What do you mean?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. "Nothing. I didn't mean anything. I'm just frustrated, okay?"

It  was a complete lie. Campbell knew exactly what Harry was talking about.  "Come spend a couple days at my house. We have room. There's some food  left, too. You can get some rest and I'll make us lunch. We can play  some video games or something."

"I can't."

"Harry, c'mon. Don't do this to yourself."

"That  house is all I have left of my family, Cam. Maybe you don't miss your  parents, but I miss my mom. I miss my sister. I miss my..." Harry's  voice cracked. He shook his head and curled in on himself. "I'll be  okay. Just give me some time. Please."

Campbell sat down next to  Harry. Harry sighed, but didn't move as Campbell leaned a little  closer. "I can give you time, but listen to me. Remember when we first  met as Cassandra's party?"

"Yeah, I do."

"You told me  that you'd decide for yourself what I was like. You didn't care what  anyone else said. Have I ever done you wrong, in all this time?"

"No. You haven't."

"Then  do what I'm telling you now. You think I like picking up trash?  Cleaning up after the fucks that were at your party, after they went all  apeshit on the town? No. But you need to play it smart until we get  back home. Understand?"

"Did Cassandra tell you to say that to me?"

"In  case you haven't noticed, Cassandra and I are related. We share the  common sense genes. I'd be telling you this either way."

Harry  gave a hollow chuckle. "We're not gonna get home, you know. Something's  wrong here. The committee of hers won't find anything. We fucked up,  somehow, and now we're trapped."

"Then the smartest thing you can do is smile, nod, and try to get along. I don't want you getting hurt."

"Yeah.  I get it. Must be the apocalypse, if you're getting all worried about  me." Harry looked to Campbell. He smiled, just for a split second,  before it faded again. "You better get going. I know Elle's waiting for  you."

Well, that was a dismissal. Campbell stood and left; Elle  was waiting for him under the trees, the fading summer light making  shadows from the leaves dance across her skin. He was lucky. Damn lucky. That's what he had to focus on. They went home and Elle tried on the dress, keeping the door locked so he couldn't peek; she came out in her  pajamas, with a bashful smile on her face.

"It fits," she said. "I'll wear it."

"Aw, I don't get to see?"

"You get to see tomorrow night."

Campbell  pouted, but laughed when Elle grabbed his hand and tugged him into his  room for a particularly ruthless game of Battleship. He lost twice, but  it was worth it. Elle had a cute little way she'd smile when she got a  hit, and she'd throw her fists up into the air when she won.

"I  guess you win the night," Campbell said as he plucked the little red and  white pegs from his board. "Unless you wanna make this next game winner  takes all?"

"What does the winner get?"

"Whatever they want."

Elle  tapped her index finger on her lips. "Hmm." Her eyes narrowed, and she  seemed to regard him with hint of suspicion, but then she shrugged and  picked up her board. "I'll take that bet."

Sucked for her,  because Campbell won the last round. Elle groaned and pretended to flip  her board, before flopping backwards onto the bed. Campbell smirked. "Do  you concede?"

"Never." Elle peered over at him. "What do you want for your prize, if I did?"

"Maybe you could stay with me tonight?"

"Just sleeping?"

"Just sleeping."

He  didn't want to be alone. Not after all the shit with Harry. Not that  he'd admit to it, because he was trying to ignore it and trying not to  look like a fool in front of Elle, but it struck a nerve he hadn't felt  take a hit in a long time. He hated having useless emotions. And in  situations like the one they were in, pining over your best friend when  you had someone who liked you already was about as useless an emotion as  you could get.

"Okay, but I get breakfast in bed tomorrow."

"Deal."

Campbell  waited until Elle bounced off to take a shower, and then texted Dillon.  He was a member of the committee, so Cassandra must have trusted him a  little, and he was one of the least offensive people who was living in  Harry's home. Hey, can you keep an eye on Harry? He's not talking to me and I need someone to call me if anything's wrong.

Sure I can do that, Dillon texted back.

Thanks. Drumming his fingers on the phone, Campbell opened his texts and scrolled down to Harry's messages. I was serious about everything I've said, okay? If you need me, call.  

There  was no reply. Campbell hadn't expected one, but he hoped it was because  Harry was pissed still and not because Harry had gone and done  something terrible. It was tempting to just go over there. He should  have, he knew he should have, but Elle was standing in the doorway of  his room in her cutest pajamas with a little smile on her face. It was  late, and Campbell didn't want to run out on Elle. If something was  wrong, Dillon would call.

Elle turned out the lights and curled  up with Campbell in bed. resting her head on his shoulder. He drifted  off first. The last thing he remembered was her kissing his temple, and  tugging the blankets up around him. When he woke up the next morning,  Elle was sleeping on his arm, and he couldn't feel his fingers. Campbell  managed to wiggle loose without waking her up. A quick glance at his  phone revealed no new messages, no calls. He sighed. Maybe no news was  good news after all.

Breakfast in bed was the last of the eggs,  done up as an omelette with cheese and the a scrap of ham that needed to  be eaten before it went bad. Campbell stared at the inside of the  fridge. Soon, they would have no choice but to just go to the cafeteria  for all their meals. All that would be left soon was the stuff in the  freezer or in tubs. Emergency provisions. If things went sideways and no  one managed to figure out food, he didn't trust most of the populace to  make sure he and Elle survived.

"Hey," Elle yawned as she came down the stairs. "That smells good."

Campbell closed the fridge and tried to look as cheerful as possible. "Morning. I thought you wanted breakfast in bed?"

"Kinda, but I wanted to come help more. Want me to make coffee?"

"Sure."

Watching  her pad around the kitchen and make coffee was a joy in and of itself.  She yawned again, rubbing her eyes and running a hand through her  tussled hair. Campbell grinned as she loaded up the coffee pot and zoned  out watching it. Precious. She was precious. There weren't many people  that he'd felt he would do anything to defend-- Sam, Cassandra, Harry--  but he knew right at that moment that whatever happened in the future,  he would do whatever it took to make sure she was okay.

She caught him staring. "What's wrong?"

Campbell  opened his mouth, words right on the tip of his tongue. You're  beautiful. You're important to me. I think I... But then his phone  buzzed in his pocket. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just glad we both like dark  roast."

"Drink of the gods."

He murmured an agreement as  he pulled out his phone and checked the messages. He paused, blinked. It  was from Sam. It was short and to the point, which was unlike Sam. Can I come over?  Campbell frowned. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Sam. He wanted  to. But what did Sam want? More of his things? Maybe he was worried  Campbell had gotten rid of stuff. Who knew what shit their parents had  convinced Sam that Campbell could, or would, capable of.

Campbell replied, curiosity getting the better of him. What time?

Now, came Sam's answer.

 Okay. See you soon.

"Who's that?" Elle wondered as Campbell tossed the phone onto the counter.

"Sam. He's coming over in a few minutes."

"Oh? Is everything okay?"

Campbell  shrugged, stroking Elle's shoulder as he walked towards the front door.  "He probably just forgot something he needed or has something from  Cassandra. I'm sure everything's fine."

Either way, he was about to find out.

[harlanrwiley89]

Yes, the Open Office Is Terrible — But It Doesn’t Have to Be (Ep. 358 Rebroadcast)

Feeling stressed from working in a noisy open office? Tell your boss that working from home increases worker productivity by 13 percent! (Photo: MaxPixel)

It began as a post-war dream for a more collaborative and egalitarian workplace. It has evolved into a nightmare of noise and discomfort. Can the open office be saved, or should we all just be working from home?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*     *     *

Hey, are you at work right now? And do you work in an office? Have you ever worked in an office? If you have, there’s a good chance it was an open office, at least to some degree. The open office design has been around for decades, in a variety of forms. If you’re a cynic, you might think an open office is all about cramming the maximum number of employees into the minimum amount of real estate. But you could also imagine that an open office produces better interaction and more collaboration. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if this were true? That’s what these people wanted to learn.

Ethan BERNSTEIN: I’m Ethan Bernstein, I’m an associate professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School.

Stephen TURBAN: My name is Stephen Turban. I am a recent graduate of Harvard College and I currently work for a global management consultancy.

Turban has since moved on from his consulting job. Anyway, he and Bernstein had just co-authored a paper called “The Impact of the Open Workspace on Human Collaboration.”

TURBAN: I don’t think I realized how much anger there was against open offices until the research was published and I was contacted by a number of friends and colleagues about their open offices and their deep, deep emotional scarring.

BERNSTEIN: There’s certainly a population of people out there who hate — I think that’s perhaps even not strong enough—

DUBNER: Not strong enough, agreed. But proceed please.

BERNSTEIN: People find it impossible to get work done. They find it demoralizing.

TURBAN: Also the lack of privacy, and the feeling that they’re being watched by others.

BERNSTEIN: Privacy tends to give us license to be more experimental, to potentially find opportunities for continuous improvement, to avoid distractions that might take us away from the focus we have on our work.

TURBAN: Ethan is really, I would say, the king of privacy.

BERNSTEIN: My research over time has been about the increasingly transparent workplace and its impact on human behavior and therefore performance. Over time, I’ve gotten asked the question, “What about the open office? How does it impact the way in which people work and collaborate?” I haven’t had an empirical answer.

In search of an empirical answer, Bernstein and Turban began a study of two Fortune 500 companies that were converting from cubicles to open offices. Sure, the downsides of an open office are obvious: the lack of privacy; having to overhear everything your coworkers say. But what if the downsides are offset by a grand flowering of collaboration and communication and idea-generation? What if the open office is in fact a brilliant concept that we’ve all been falsely maligning?

*     *     *

The office is such a quintessential emblem of modern society that it may seem it’s been around forever. But of course it hasn’t.

Nikil SAVAL: The economy of the United States was based on farming and it was based on manufacturing. The office was almost an afterthought.

That’s Nikil Saval, the author of a book called Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.

SAVAL: People thought, “Well, offices are essentially paperwork factories. So we should just sort of array them in an assembly-line sort of formation.”

This meant a big room filled with long rows of desks and, scattered on the periphery, private offices for the managers. This factory model, which got its start in the late 19th century, came to be known as the American plan. And it was standard office form for decades, at least in the U.S. But then, in the middle of the twentieth century, in Germany:

SAVAL: There were two brothers, the Schnelle brothers, who began to wonder about the nature of the American plan. There was a sense that this was arbitrary, and there was no real reason to lay out an office in this way.

In 1958, Wolfgang and Eberhard Schnelle created the Quickborner consulting group with the idea of bringing some intentionality to modern office design.

SAVAL: And one of the ideas that came to them was that an office is not like a factory, it’s actually a different kind of workplace. And it requires its own sort of system. Maybe there isn’t a reason to have desks in rows. Maybe there isn’t a reason for people to have private offices at all, if essentially the office is not about producing things but it’s about producing ideas and about producing communication among different people. And so over time they pioneered a concept that they called the burolandschaft, or “office landscape.” And it was essentially the first truly open plan office.

The idea was to create an office that was more collaborative and more egalitarian.

SAVAL: It looks extremely chaotic. You’d just have desks in clusters and they just seem to be arranged in a pretty haphazard form. But, in fact, there was rigorous planning around it in a way that would facilitate communication and the flow of people and ideas. And it eventually made its way to England and the United States, and it was considered an incredible breakthrough.

A breakthrough perhaps — but the earliest open offices drew complaints similar to the ones we hear today. Lots of complaints.

SAVAL: By not instituting a barrier between people, by not having doors, by not having any way of controlling the way sound traveled in the office, it stopped facilitating the thing it was supposed to facilitate, which was communication, because it became harder to communicate in an office environment where phones were ringing off the hook, where you could hear typewriters across the room, and things like that. It wasn’t actually the utopian space that it promised to be. In fact, it was deeply debilitating in some ways for the kind of work that people wanted to do.

Meanwhile, there was an American named Robert Propst working for the Herman Miller furniture company, in Michigan.

SAVAL: He was not himself trained as a designer. He was sort of like a freelance thinker.

Propst was intrigued by the “office landscape” idea — its openness and egalitarian aspirations — but he also appreciated its practical shortcomings.

SAVAL: And he decided to turn to experts — to anthropologists, to social psychologists, to people of that nature.

After some research, Propst came to the conclusion that individuals are — well, they’re individuals. And they need more control over their workspace. He and the designer George Nelson came up with a new design in which each office worker would be surrounded by a suite of objects to help them work better. In 1964, Herman Miller debuted the “Action Office.”

SAVAL: There was a standing desk, a regular desk that you sat at, and a telephone booth.

Design critics loved the Action Office.

SAVAL: It looked incredible, but it was very expensive and very few managers wanted to spend this kind of money on their employees. So they went back to the drawing board and they tried to come up with something cheaper.

In 1968, Herman Miller released the Action Office 2.

SAVAL: And it was this three-walled space: these fabric-wrapped walls that were angled, and they were meant to enclose a suite of furniture. And it was meant to mitigate the kind of chaos that an open office plan might otherwise have.

You may know the Action Office 2 by its more generic name—

SAVAL: —which is the cubicle.

The cubicle promised a variety of advantages.

SAVAL: It’s meant to be very flexible, and it can form an impromptu conference room. And it was meant to divide up an open office plan in a way to mitigate the kind of chaos that an open office plan or an office landscape might otherwise have. And it was incredibly well-received. It was copied by a number of furniture companies. And soon it was spreading in offices everywhere.

But the cubicle could also be exploited.

SAVAL: It became a perfect tool for cramming more and more workers into less and less space very cheaply. The whole notion of what Propst was trying to do was to give a worker a space that they could control — was turned into the exact opposite. It was clear that his concept had become the most-loathed symbol of office life.

Indeed, the revolutionary, freedom-giving cubicle came to be seen as a sort of corporate version of solitary confinement. This left Robert Propst most unhappy.

SAVAL: And he blamed managers. He blamed people who were not enlightened, that created what he called barren, rat-hole-type environments.

Robert Propst, like the Schnelle brothers before him, had not quite succeeded in creating a vibrant and efficient open office. Their new environments introduced new problems: chaos in the first case, cubicles in the second. As with many problems that we humans try to correct — whether in office culture, or society at large — the correction turns out to be an overcorrection. Unintended consequences leap out, and humble us. And yet: in this case, the fact is that most offices today are still open offices. Why are we holding on to this concept if it makes so many people so unhappy?

TURBAN: If you’re looking purely at a cost per square foot, having an open office is cheaper.

BERNSTEIN: There are a lot of people, whether they’re managers or employees, who like the open office.

Bernstein admits that managers are primarily impressed by the cost savings of an open office. But some employees—

BERNSTEIN: Some employees like it because they have visions of it being more vibrant, more interactive. That fun, noisy, experiential place they’re hoping for once you take down the walls and make everyone able to see each other.

TURBAN: And there’s also been a big push around these collisions that have emerged in social sciences. How do you create these random interactions between people that spark creativity?

“Collision” is a term you hear a lot in office design and the design of public spaces generally. It’s the promise that unplanned encounters can lead to good things — between co-workers or neighbors, even strangers. Conversations that otherwise wouldn’t have happened; the exchange of ideas; unforeseen collaboration. Now, the office is plainly a different sort of space from the public square. The office is primarily concerned with productivity. We’d all like to be happy working in our offices, but is it maybe worth surrendering a bit of happiness — and privacy, and so on — for the sake of higher productivity? After all, that’s what we’re being paid for.

BERNSTEIN: If you want to have a certain kind of interaction that’s deep, productive in idea generation, or in something that requires us to have lots of “bandwidth” between each other, it’s nice to have that face-to-face interaction.

Ben WABER: Face-to-face conversations are so important.

That’s Ben Waber, he’s the C.E.O. of an organizational-analytics company called Humanyze.

WABER: What we do is use data about how people interact and collaborate at work. Think email, chat, meeting data, but now also sensor data about how people interact in the real world. And we use that to understand really what goes on inside companies.

Humanyze has developed sociometric I.D. badges, embedded with sensors, to capture these data.

WABER: We have by far the largest data set on workplace interaction in the world.

And what do the data say about face-to-face communication?

WABER: In all of our research, that has consistently been the most predictive factor of almost any organizational outcome you can think of: performance, job satisfaction, retention, you name it. People did evolve for millions of years to interact in a face-to-face way. We are very used to small changes in facial expression, small changes in tone of voice and that’s particularly important in work contexts where high levels of trust, especially as work gets more and more complex, and the things we build and make together are more and more complex. Really having that trust and being able to convey really rich information is critical.

Bernstein and Turban also believe in the value of face-to-face communication.

TURBAN: Nuanced communication around, “Here’s a proposal I have. Here is a thought I have about how this last meeting went.” That is a very rich and nuanced form of communication and most literature suggests that face-to-face communication is much better at that.

BERNSTEIN: Sociologists have suggested for a long time that propinquity breeds interaction — propinquity being co-location, being close to one another.

TURBAN: The closer two people are together, the more likely they are to interact, the more likely they are to get married, the more likely they are to work together.

BERNSTEIN: And interaction being, we will have a conversation, we will actually get some kind of collaboration done between the two of us.

TURBAN: You can look at slouching shoulders, you can see what is their facial expression, and that conveys a lot of information that is really hard to convey, no matter how good you are at emojis — and let me tell you, I am pretty good at emojis.

Okay, so face-to-face communication is important, at least for some purposes and on some dimensions. And an open office is designed to facilitate more face-to-face communication. So … does it work? That was the central question of Bernstein and Turban’s study.

DUBNER: In your study, there are two companies that were transitioning to open offices. First of all, can you reveal the identity of one or both of those companies?

BERNSTEIN: I can’t. In order to do this study, we had to agree to a level of confidentiality. I will say that we had a choice of sites to study and we chose the two that we thought would be most representative of the kind of work we were interested in, which is white-collar work in professional settings, Fortune 500 companies.

DUBNER: Can you give us some detail that helps us envision the kind of office and what the activities are?

BERNSTEIN: If you work in a global headquarters amongst a series of functions like H.R. or finance or legal or sales or marketing, this would describe your work setting.

DUBNER: And can you describe, for the two companies that you studied, they moved to open offices — what was their configuration beforehand?

BERNSTEIN: Everyone was in cubicles. And then they moved to an open space that basically mimicked that, but just without the cubicle walls.

TURBAN: Those barriers went down, so you could see if John was sitting next to Sally before, and there was a wall between them, that John could see Sally and Sally could see John, and that was the big difference between the original and the office afterwards.

DUBNER: So, tell us about the experiment. I want to know all kinds of things, like how many people were involved? Did they opt in or not? Was it randomized? How the data were gathered, and so on.

TURBAN: In the first study, we had 52 participants; in our second, we had 100 participants, and we wanted to measure communication before and after the move.

BERNSTEIN: We started with the most simple empirical puzzle we could start with, which was simply how much interaction takes place between the individuals before and after. We wanted to purely see if this hypothesis of a vibrant open office were true.

TURBAN: So before the move, we gave each of the participants sociometric badges.

These are the badges we mentioned earlier, from Humanyze.

BERNSTEIN: So they contain several sensors. One is a microphone. One is an I.R. sensor to show whether or not they’re facing another badge. They have an accelerometer to show movement and they have a Bluetooth sensor to show location.

TURBAN: So you can get a data point which looks like: “John spoke with Sally for 25 minutes at 2 p.m.” But you don’t know anything about what the content of the conversation is.

BERNSTEIN: A number of previous studies that have used the sociometric badges have shown that we are very aware of them for the first, say, few minutes that we have them on, and after that we sort of forget they’re there.

DUBNER: You write that the microphone is only registering that people talk and not recording or monitoring what they say. Do you think the employees who wore them believe that? I mean if I think there’s a one percent chance that my firm is monitoring or recording what I’m saying, I’m quite likely to say less, yes?

BERNSTEIN: Well, it’s actually kind of a funny question, because in this case we really weren’t. But look, we phrased the consent form as strongly as we could to ensure that they understood this was for research purposes, and if they hadn’t believed it, they probably would have opted out.

DUBNER: What are we to make of the fact that the data represents the people who opted in only? Because I’m just running through my head, if I were an employee and I’m told that there’s some kind of experiment going on with these smart people from Harvard Business School and, however much you tell me or don’t, I intuit some or I figure out some or I guess some. And we’re moving to an open office and I think, “Oh, man, I hate the open office, and therefore I definitely want to participate in this experiment so that I can sabotage it by behaving exactly the opposite of how I think they want me to behave.” Is that too skeptical or cynical?

BERNSTEIN: Boy, you sound like one of my reviewers in the peer review process.

DUBNER: Sorry.

BERNSTEIN: It is a valid concern. Let me tell you what we’ve tried to do to alleviate it. The first thing is we’ve compared the individuals who opted in to wearing the badge and those who did not to a series of demographics we got from the H.R. systems. And we don’t see systematic differences there.

TURBAN: It is always possible when you’re doing social science research that someone makes a guess, whether it’s accurate or not, about what this study is trying to understand, and then takes a personal stand and says, “I’m going to stand for what’s right, and what’s right is cubicles!” In that case, they would have to have done that for every day for two months. So it would have been a remarkable feat of endurance. We don’t think that that’s what happened, but the open office factions are real, so, definitely important to keep in mind.

In addition to all these data from the employees’ badges, the researchers could also measure each employee’s electronic communications — their emails and instant messages. Again, they were only measuring this communication, not examining the content.

BERNSTEIN: And so what we were able to do is compare individuals’ face-to-face and electronic communication before and after the move from cubicles to open spaces in these two environments.

Okay, so the Bernstein-Turban study looked at two Fortune 500 companies where employees had moved from cubicles to open offices. And they measured every input they could about how the employees’ communication changed — face-to-face and electronic communication. What do you think happened?

*     *     *

DUBNER: So, you’ve done the study, two firms over a period of time with a number of people to measure how their behavior changes, generally. Tell us what you found.

TURBAN: So, the study had two main conclusions.

BERNSTEIN: We found that when these individuals moved from closed cubicles into the open office, interaction decreased.

TURBAN: Face-to-face communication decreased by about 70 percent in both of our two studies. Conversely, that communication wasn’t entirely lost. Instead, the second result that we found was that communication actually increased virtually, so people emailed more, I.M.’ed more.

DUBNER: How much of that decrease was compensated by electronic?

TURBAN: We saw an increase of 20–50 percent of electronic communication. That means more emails, more I.M.’s. And depending on how you think about what an email is worth, maybe you could say that they made up for it. Is an email worth five minutes of conversation, is it two minutes?

BERNSTEIN: It’s a little bit hard to say, because an email and an interaction may not be comparable in item.

TURBAN: Even if we saw an increase in the amount of virtual communication, which totally made up for the face-to-face communication, what you probably saw was a loss in richness of communication — the net information that’s being conveyed was actually less.

DUBNER: What can you tell us about how the open space affected productivity and satisfaction?

BERNSTEIN: I’ll come out clean and say, we don’t have perfect data on performance, and we don’t have any data on satisfaction. We purposefully stayed away from satisfaction; we just wanted to look at the interaction of individuals. In one of our two studies, we have anecdotally some information where the organization felt that actually performance had declined as a result of this move.

I will say that, boy, if we think about this, there are probably lots of contexts that we can think of where more face-to-face interaction would be useful and lots of contexts in which we think more face-to-face interaction would not be useful. And that’s where I’d actually prefer to take the conversation about productivity. That, at the very least, to date managers of property, managers of organizations have not thought about this being a trade off. They’ve assumed cost and revenue go together. That may be true in some subset of environments, but in others that’s not going to be true.

DUBNER: What did the companies in your study do after you’d presented them with your findings?

BERNSTEIN: One of them has actually taken a step back from the open office. The other has attempted to make the open office work by adding more closed spaces to it.

Okay, so an empirical study of open offices finds that the primary benefit they are meant to confer — more face-to-face communication and the good things such communication can lead to — that it actually moves in the opposite direction! At least in the aggregate. To be fair, an open office is bound to be much better for certain tasks than others. And, more important, better for some people than for others. We’re not all the same. And some of us, I’m told — not me, but some of us — thrive in a potentially chattier office. But on balance, it would appear that being put out in the open leads most people to close themselves off a bit. Why? You can probably answer that question for yourself. But Turban and Bernstein have some thoughts too. Here’s one: maybe you don’t want to disturb other people:

TURBAN: So, when you’re in an open office, your voice carries. And I think people decide very reasonably to say, “Well I could speak with Tammy, who’s three desks away. But if I talk to Tammy, I’m going to disrupt Larry and Katherine, and so I will send her a quick message instead.”

Or maybe you compensate for the openness of the open office with behavior that sends a do-not-disturb signal.

BERNSTEIN: If everyone can see you, you want to signal to everyone that you are a hard worker, so you look intensely at your screen. Maybe you put on headphones to block the noise. Guess what? When we signal that, we also tend to signal, “And please don’t interrupt me from my work.” Which may very well have been part of what happened in our studies here.

And then there’s what Ethan Bernstein calls “the transparency paradox.”

BERNSTEIN: Very simply, the transparency paradox is the idea that increasingly transparent, open, observable workplaces can create less transparent employees.

For instance: let’s say you’ve been really productive all morning; now you want to take a break. You want to check your fantasy-football lineup; you want to look up some recipes for dinner. But you don’t want everyone in the office, especially your boss, to see what you’re doing. So: you do it anyway but you’re constantly looking over your shoulder in case you need to shut down the fantasy-football or recipe tabs.

BERNSTEIN: That has implications for productivity, because we spend time on it. We spend energy on it. We spend effort on it. We tend to believe these days that we get our best work done when we can be our authentic selves. Very few of us get up on a stage in front of a large audience, which is somewhat of how some people encounter the open office, and feel we can be our authentic selves.

Nicholas BLOOM: So, if I have an idea—

That’s the Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom.

BLOOM: —if I go discuss with my colleague or my manager in an open office, I’m terrified that other people would hear. They may pass judgment or rumors can go around.

Bloom has studied this realm for years:

BLOOM: I work a lot on firms and productivity, so what makes some firms more productive, more successful. What makes other firms less successful.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this: a recent paper found that a couple of Fortune 500 companies who switched from cubicles to an open office plan with the hopes of increasing employee collaboration, that in fact the openness led to less collaboration. So, knowing what you know about offices and people, does that surprise you?

BLOOM: Not really. There’s a huge problem with open offices in terms of collaboration. You have no privacy. Whereas if it’s in a slightly more closed environment it’s easier to discuss ideas, to bounce things around.

Or consider the ultimate closed environment: your own home.

BLOOM: One piece of research I did that connected very much to the open office was the benefits of working from home. So working from home has a terrible reputation amongst many people. The nickname “shirking from home.” So I decided to do a scientific study. So we got a large online travel agency to ask a division who wanted to work from home. And we then had them randomize employees by even or odd birthdays into working at home versus working in the office.

DUBNER: Now, this was a travel agency in China, correct?

BLOOM: Yes, so it’s Ctrip, which is China’s largest travel agency. It’s very much like Expedia in the U.S. And stunningly what came out was, one of the biggest driving factors is, it’s just much quieter working from home. They complained so often about the amount of noise and disruption going on in the office. They’re all in an open office and they tell us about people having boyfriend problems, there’s a cake in the breakout room. The World Cup sweepstake. I mean, the most amazing was the woman that told us about her cubicle neighbor who’d have endless conversations with her mum about medical problems, including horrible things like ingrown toenails and some kind of wart issue. I mean what could be more distracting than that? Not surprisingly, in that case, the open office was devastating for her productivity.

DUBNER: So, you find that overall, working from home raises what exactly? Is it productivity? Is it happiness?

BLOOM: So we found working from home raises productivity by 13 percent. Which is massive. That’s almost an extra day a week. So a), much more productive, massively more productive, way more than anyone predicted. And b), they seemed a lot happier; their attrition rates, so how frequently they quit. Part of this was they didn’t have the commute and all the uncertainty. And they didn’t have to take sick days off. But the other big driver is it’s just so much quieter at home.

DUBNER: You also do write, though, that one of the downsides of working from home was promotion became less likely. Yes?

BLOOM: Yes. We don’t know why, but one argument is “out of sight, out of mind.” They just get forgotten about. And another story would be that actually they need to develop skills of human capital and relationship capital, therefore you need to be in the office to get that, to be promoted. And then the third reason I heard, we talked to people working at home and they’d say, “I don’t want to be promoted, because in order to be promoted, I need to come in the office more so.” I’m happy where I am. It’s not worth it.

DUBNER: “I just want them to leave me alone.”

BLOOM: I mean, the most surprising thing from the Ctrip working-from-home experiment was after the end of the nine months, Ctrip was so happy. They were saving about $2,000 per employee working from home because they are more productive and they saved in office space. So they said, “Okay, everyone can now work from home.” And we discovered of the people in the experiment, about 50 percent of them who had been at home decided to come back into the office. And that seemed like an amazing decision because they’re now choosing to commute for something like 40 minutes each way a day. And also since they are less productive in the office and about half their pay was bonus pay, they’re getting paid less. All in all we calculated, their time and pay was kind of falling by 10 to 15 percent. But they were still coming in. And the reason they told us is it was lonely at home.

So people always joke the three great enemies of working from home is the fridge, the bed, and the television. And some people can handle that and others can’t. And you don’t really know until you have tried it. So what happens is people try it and some people love it and are very productive. Great, they just stick with it, and others try and they loathe it and they come back into the office.

The more you learn about the productivity and happiness of office workers in different settings, the more obvious it is that one key ingredient is often overlooked: choice. Some employees really might be better off at home; others might prefer the cubicle; and some might thrive in an open office. You also have to acknowledge that no one environment will be ideal for every task.

Janet POGUE McLAURIN: So if you stop and think about: how do we spend our time? About half of our time is spent in focus mode, which means that we’re working alone; a little over a quarter of our time is working with others in person; and about 20 percent is working with others virtually.

That’s Janet Pogue McLaurin, from the global design-and-architecture firm Gensler.

POGUE McLAURIN: I’m one of our global workplace practice area leaders.

Given the diversity of tasks required of the modern office worker—

POGUE McLAURIN: —you need the best environment for the task at hand. So, if you’re getting ready to go onto a conference call, instead of taking it at your desk, you may go into a conference room. When you finish that, you may go back to your desk to catch up on email. You may socialize around the café area or even take a walking meeting outside. We need to have all these other work settings at our disposal to be able to create a wonderful work experience.

That doesn’t sound so hard, does it? So how do you create that? Let’s start with the basics. Pogue McLaurin acknowledges that many open offices don’t address their key shortcoming.

POGUE McLAURIN: The biggest complaint that we see in open offices that don’t work is the noise. And how do you mitigate noise interruptions and distractions? And that can be noise as well as visual. Being able to design a space that zones the floor in smaller neighborhoods, that tries to get buffers between noisy activities. There’s architectural interventions we can also do, with ceilings and materials and white noise, that may be added to the space. And it’s not about creating too quiet an environment — that can be just as ineffective as a noisy environment. You really want to have enough buzz and energy, but just not hear every word.

You also want to account for what economists call heterogeneous preferences, and what normal people call individual choice.

POGUE McLAURIN: Choice is one of the key drivers of effective workspace, and we have found that the most innovative firms actually offer twice as much choice and exercise on that choice than non-innovative firms do. And choice is really around autonomy, about when and where to work. It could be as simple as having a choice of being able to do focus work in the morning or being able to work at home a day, or in another work setting in the office.

To that end, no two employees are exactly alike — and, more important, no two companies are alike either.

POGUE McLAURIN: I think some common mistakes that organizations do is they try to copy someone else’s design. So if you think it’s a cool idea of something that you saw on the west coast, let’s say it’s a tech firm, and you’re not even a tech firm, and you’re sitting here on the east coast and you try to just copy it verbatim, it doesn’t work. It’s got to reflect how your organization works and the purpose and brand and community that you’re a part of.

So oftentimes, companies would start to adopt what other organizations are doing and say, “Yes, that will save us space, so let’s adopt it,” but they’re missing out by not providing all these other spaces to balance. So they want the efficiency without creating all the other work settings that people need in order to be truly productive.

It’s worth noting that Janet Pogue McLaurin, a principal with a design-and-architecture firm, is arguing that the key to a successful office is: design and architecture. But it’s also worth noting that her firm has done a great deal of research in all different kinds of offices, all different kinds of companies, all over the world.

POGUE McLAURIN: We’ve done several studies in the U.S. and the U.K. But we’ve also done Latin America, Asia, Middle East and we’re just completing a study in Germany.

So: what’s her prognosis for the long-maligned open office?

POGUE McLAURIN: The open office is not dead. Oftentimes people say,“Which is better: private office or open plan?” We measured all types of individual work environments, and what we’ve found is that if you solve for design, noise, and access to people and resources, they perform equally, and one is essentially not better than the other. And the best open plan can be as effective as a private one. And that was a surprise. I love data when it tells you something unexpected.

So do we, Janet Pogue McLaurin. So do we.

*     *     *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Zack Lapinski, Matt Hickey, Corinne Wallace, and Daphne Chen. We had help this week from Nellie Osborne. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Ethan Bernstein, Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.

Nicholas Bloom, economist at Stanford University.

Janet Pogue McLaurin, principal at Gensler.

Nikil Saval, author and journalist.

Stephen Turban, development & innovation at the Office of the President, Fulbright University Vietnam.

Ben Waber, president and C.E.O. of Humanyze.

RESOURCES

“Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment,” Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun Jenny Ying (2013).

“The Impact of the Open Workspace on Human Collaboration,” Ethan Bernstein, Stephen Turban (2018).

The Office: A Facility Based on Change by Robert Propst (Herman Miller 1968).

Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval (Anchor 2014).

EXTRA

“Are We in a Mattress-Store Bubble?” Freakonomics Radio (2016).

“Time to Take Back the Toilet,” Freakonomics Radio (2014).

The post Yes, the Open Office Is Terrible — But It Doesn’t Have to Be (Ep. 358 Rebroadcast) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/office-rebroadcast/

[tanadrin]

under a cut because long, disorganized, self-indulgent

ok so the Lende Empire isn’t really feudal; I despise feudal stasis in fantasy, like even the shortest timeline puts the Andal invasion at more than 2,000 ybp in Game of Thrones, you really think in all that time everybody on the continent is dumb enough to not invent a better plough? or glass just good enough to grind lenses? or make small improvements in windmill design? and all that shit adds up and BAM before you know it, you've got metallurgy good enough to make a steam engine with, so no matter what BS magical physics you come up with, if things work at the human scale even remotely like they do in our world, your age of knights and castles and dragons not having to contend with antiaircraft guns has a limited shelf-life.

(and that's interesting! And more people--by which i mean people besides Terry Pratchett, who did this wonderfully--should write about high fantasy worlds before they reached Medieval Stasis Mode, and after they left it! I would fukkin kill to read a good high fantasy book that also had, like spaceships in it. Insofar as genre conventions have evolved not according to the internal logic of the worlds they depict but according to how and for what reason they serve as commentaries on specific aspects of our own world and its history, and are aimed at evoking certain emotions, it's understandable why such generic mishsmashes are relatively uncommon. But people also definitely read speculative fiction because they like internally cohesive worlds very different from our own, so it is my fondest hope that this sort of thing becomes more popular going forward)

(you can of course also have fantasy worlds which are *not* very much like our own world at human scale. Greg Egan actually does this in a science fiction mode, but as long as you're positing a world where dimensions of space are hyperbolic like time or where humans change sex every time they have sex because trading a detachable symbiotic penis is part of having an orgasm, whether you call this stuff "different science" or "magic" is really beside the point. I have an idea I've been batting around for a while about a world divided, like Evan Dahm's Overside, or the two parallel worlds in Fringe, except part of the division is not just physical, but metaphysical. Morality itself in each subworld is defective, because each subworld got a different part of a morally and metaphysically unified whole: thus, for reasons nobody can understand, almost every ethical system derived by people resident in only one subworld is deeply defective, and would be horrifying to us--as though, perhaps, our own complex and nuanced moral landscape that we wrestle with was a kind of grand unified theory whose symmetry had been broken, and which was only understood piecemeal, as totally separate concepts. And of course, if you live in one subworld everyone from the other subworld is a horrifying monster whose morality is totally incomprehensible to you, so you reflexively treat them as an enemy.)

History isn't just one thing after another. I mean, okay, it is, but it's *also* the aftereffects of those things, the things that stick around forever and can't be gotten away from. And just like how if you want to understand our own world you need to look at what it was like five years ago, and to understand what it was like five years ago you need to look at what it was like ten years ago, and fifteen, ad nauseam, until you're suddenly back at World War II, or the Holy Roman Empire, or Sumer, or struggling through the ever-increasing fog of a steadily more ambiguous archeological record, well, this is as true for politics and language as it is the material aspects of society. In the same way maps feel insufficient when the artist doesn't think about what's beyond the edge of the page (not to knock on GRRM too much, but if you put all the continents and seas in his world on the same map, you notice they're all really... rectangular. Like he drew them to fit individual pieces of paper. Rivers and island arcs get compressed when they near a margin. Seas are just voids. Nothing ever has to be moved to a little box in a corner to fit. there's no attempt at verisimilitude), I think invented worlds feel insufficient when the writer asks you to take them seriously as a reflection of our own, or an aspect of our own, but neglects to at least suggest their place in a larger whole.

I wanted with the Lende Empire to have something that still let me have a lot of early centuries of sword-and-horse style adventures (because i started writing about Lende when I was thirteen and had just finished the Silmarillion for the second time), and I wanted when writing its history to still be able to take big chunks of story I stole from Norse legends and medieval poetry and dump them almost whole into the setting, but I also wanted the history not to read like a fantasy history--or not just a fantasy history. What I mean is, when you read something like the Silmarillion, or when a character in a fantasy world relates some legend to you, even if it's referred to as an old and ambiguous tale, you still often feel like that's really what happened. Like, for me, one of the chief emotional attractions to something like the tales of the wars of the Goths and Huns, or Beowulf's description of Migration Age Denmark filtered through Anglo-Saxon poetic tropes, or the Icelandic family sagas, is that we really have a hard time knowing how much of it is true, how much of its is plausible embellishment, and how much of it is anachronistic nonsense or pure bullshit. Is the Njala based on a faithfully recounted tradition passed down orally for a few hundred years? Who knows! Not us. We know a guy named Njal got burned in his house around 1000 AD, but much of the mystery and the poignancy of stories like that for me lies in the difficulty of ascertaining their relationship to the truth.

What I want(ed) was something that when you read it made you think "ok, obviously the narrator is trying their best, but even they don't know exactly what the fuck happened; this is probably one third ambiguous tradition, one third solid, one third bullshit." So the Chronicle of Lende has some stuff in it that's intentionally difficult to reconcile. It has weird tonal shifts. The first third owes a lot to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the sagas and the Hildebrantslied; the middle is closer to the Silmarillion, or the history of Rome when told more from the Great Man perspective than the Impersonal Forces one, and the last third starts out that way but goes some weird places and veers off at the end to what is obviously a symbolic and highly abstracted mode of narration which, in relating the destruction of the Empire imitates the way in which its beginning is related (for in-universe Thematic Reasons), *but* while all this is going on, the hope is that the reader is *also* able to glimpse through these ambiguities and stylistic quirks, and incompatibilities, and weird digressions involving talking animals or the spirit world, a society that's undergoing familiar demographic and social and technological transitions: moving from oral culture agrarianism to the beginnings of a real urban civilization, with a centralized state and the written word, and like Western Europe having to figure out a social structure in the absence of any good nearby imperial models (they end up with something more like fraternal warrior societies being deputized to control land rather than feudal lords, but the essential logic is the same); but then moving to a real model of administrative statehood, as infrastructure and technology improve, before industrialization kicks off, the population explodes, social tensions inherent in that begin tearing at the seams of society, and the horrors of industrialized warfare are unleashed.

There are meant to be striking differences, too, of course. Lende history is only about a thousand Earth years long, and it's confined mostly to the western side of a continent split by a huge, Himalayan-like mountain range. Its rapid rise and increase in technological sophistication are due to exogenous factors (genuine divine intervention in some cases), and equally even the True Secret History of the empire's destruction has no real-world parallels, at least not since the Channeled Scablands formed 14,000 years ago. It's also teeeechnically science fiction and not fantasy, though that distinction really rests on tone and not on setting IMO. But I don't think it's possible to tell what feels like a real history of a world without sometimes radically changing genres: our own history goes from dry science (geology, paleontology, archeology) to legend and myth and scripture, to dusty old classical history and books penned by ancients who sometimes have startlingly different notions about what merits mention in a story and how to tell one, to tales of kings and queens and conquerors, before emerging blinking in the sunlight of dry matter of fact narration again. I have always believed conventions, including those of genre and style, should be tools and not straightjackets. The best worldbuilding literature I have read steals from a huge variety of sources (and Pratchett deserves a mention here again, alongside Susanna Clarke, and Ada Palmer, and the people who wrote the Elder Scrolls backstory, and Sofia Samatar, and Angelica Gorodischer).

[arcanalogue]

One of my main focuses of magical workings this year has been geared towards finding my true career path, to be in a place (not necessarily physical) where my maximum potential is being realized. I’ve been feeling this “buzz” of energy when I shift from the mundane thoughts of what I do to thinking about the esoteric applications. I’m curious if I’m being guided to a new direction that I haven’t thought about yet - like something is being left on the table.

[CONT’D] I would like to ask the cards for guidance about this unknown variable that is tugging at me.

A few guesses or prompts for where to look, Querent, if you’ll indulge me.

The Ten of Coins was drawn first, which suggests to me that you’re sensing the limits of what the material world can offer, even during relatively prosperous times. There’s suddenly there’s an awareness of entire other games waiting to be played -- but slipping the bridle of the earthly sphere isn’t easy especially if one has invested in building a solid foundation there.

And that’s how it should be, Querent, more often at least. Building from the ground up completely frames your experience of how certain elements fit together, it builds up discipline and a bit of faith that certain practices really will yield results in the long term if they’re diligently pursued.

This experience eludes SO many magickal practitioners, mainly because we’re all shaken about like ants in a box and just doing the best we can with whatever we have to work with. But those who are able to find and tend and strengthen this tether to their material existence often end up taking far deeper and more graceful dives into their own Great Work over the long term, and often end up with more to show for it as well. 

The drawback is that Earth exerts such a strong gravitational pull on our awareness -- plucking at our fears, our desires, our comforts, like harp strings -- that until we extend ourselves properly far out enough along that tether, we can still be unduly influenced by our worldly instincts. We often play it safer than we mean to, because in a pinch, the known means so much more to us than the unknown.

This is why real magick, and proper magickal study, must remain terrifying to those who seek them. Working with unfamiliar parts of yourself can be just as dangerous as fumbling with a sharp tool, a blowtorch. Ghosts, angels, gods, demons, ancestors, we’ve heard, can’t always be counted on to have our best interests at heart. That’s why we adhere to traditions and seek lineages that provide a framework for the experience, so we can tell just how far off the path we may have wandered, and compare notes with others conducting the same experiments. 

This pull you’re feeling is not unlike a dowser’s stick being nudged toward water, and the Knight of Cups embodies this feeling perfectly, as well as the response it elicits. The Knights of Cups and Coins stand apart from the two other riders because the items they carry are useless as weapons -- purely emblematic items. 

There’s some Christian imagery in this Knight riding through foreign lands bearing only a chalice. He’s on a spiritual journey, and by making sure others recognize this, he ends up being protected from harm -- perhaps even winning some over to his faith, as they find themselves moved by the sincerity his convictions. 

(Of course, this is its own form of colonialism, as history has borne out, and the gun and sword are never far behind if the conversion doesn’t take.)

I digress. In any event, what makes the Knight’s crusade so pure is that it isn’t just about spreading the word. He is making himself into a vessel, allowing himself to be guided in service to his Lord. 

This level of open-heartedness can really elude us, even when we like to think we’re ready to answer the call. We’re too afraid of losing certain important things, or awareness casting a light on the past that forces us to leave parts of ourselves behind forever. 

(We’re also afraid of the light filling us, and then going away.)

It’s particularly hard if you draw actual comfort from your life, your surroundings, your relationships. How much can you tinker with things without igniting changes that completely reconfigure your life? 

This is a fear, but it’s a delicious one, because if there’s something powerful like that out there for us, we want to know what it is. Life comes with so many mysteries, the prospect of solving a few of them -- even just in our own minds -- is extremely tempting.

The Knight has surrendered entirely to a higher authority, and seeks ever-more intimate contact with the divine. His mission is his whole life. That’s how the watery suit of emotions manifests through the active element of Air: there’s a deep passion, as well as an intense focus. 

And it pulls us in like a bug zapper, Querent. And the Death transformation that awaits is an inevitable result of applying human will, focus, and emotional sincerity to the pursuit of the divine.

Here’s what I can advise:

1. Pursue it anyway. One day this tug might go away, and you don’t know how long it might take to return -- if ever. During times when you require the kind of comfort that only comes from faith, you’ll probably wish you leaned in during these times (and be grateful for instances when you did).

2. Maintain the tether. For every step you take closer to the unknown, which is also the divine, strengthen your roots as well. You get to be part of how the unknown expresses itself in our world. That’s quite an honor! Few will listen to anything you say, so your main preoccupation should always be shoring up your own world, so you’re in the best position to help others endure their own.

3. Don’t fear the Reaper. Our naturally inquisitive and imaginative minds will always try to predict, engineer, or control what we’ll turn into as a result of our dance with the divine. That can be entertaining, but it can also become obsessive. It’s much harder to submit yourself to be sculpted by knowing hands, but we remain unconscious of so much about ourselves, there’s no way we could do it better ourselves. This applies to our actual, all-caps DEATH as well as the many smaller transfigurations we endure along the way. There is a time to act, and a time to let yourself be acted upon. Being truly open in that Knight of Cups-ian way will hopefully improve your sensitivity to these instincts, which will help you MAINTAIN THE TETHER no matter what, making you a safe and considerate person for others to know, even as you tread paths that are invisible to them. 

But you’re going to have to scare a bit, Querent. You’re going to have to start exploring areas where you’re not even sure WHAT you believe is possible, and resign yourself in advance to dealing with the outcome. You’re going to have to creep further out toward the void than you’re 100% comfortable with. 

We have to do this from time to time, to prove to ourselves that we actually take this seriously, that we’re not just playing around or passing the time with an eccentric hobby.

What we experience as a result can really help us in mundane ways also, helping us put puzzle pieces together -- ones we’d stared at for too long to ever see how they could connect.

There’s nothing in this spread indicating any danger in pursuing the source of this tugging feeling, Querent. You seem experienced, you’ve tested yourself with all kinds of workings, this may be the next logical step. It just feels strange, because what you seek is pure strangeness. Isn’t it amazing?

I hope this is somewhat helpful, thanks for your question.

Have a tarot reading request or tarot-related question for Arcanalogue? Ask here. Tips accepted (but not required) via Venmo, @arcanalogue. Or support my Patreon? I’d love that.

[yourlifeinsurance411]

New Post has been published on https://www.lowestpricetermlifeinsurance.com/index.php/2021/04/13/6-reasons-people-put-off-buying-life-insurance-and-why-they-shouldnt/

6 Reasons People Put Off Buying Life Insurance and Why They Shouldn't

  6 Reasons People Put Off Buying Life Insurance and Why They Shouldn’t

by Brand Voices · 

Brand Voices

  Life insurance is a financial product that many people are reluctant to buy. There are many reasons for this, such as fear of the unknown and not understanding how life insurance works.  A recent study found that a large percentage of Americans don't have any form of life insurance. The most common reasons cited for not buying life insurance are the cost, fear of losing money in their investments, and lack of knowledge about how to buy it.

However, there are also some misconceptions about it which can cause people to be even more reluctant to purchase it. If you are someone who is considering getting life insurance feel free to visit our friends over at yourlifeinsurance411.com—they will have all your needs covered. If you are still not sure about insurance then keep reading. In this article, we will attempt to debunk these myths and provide you with 6 reasons why you should consider buying life insurance. 

Myth #1: I don't need life insurance if I have a family to depend on

This is one of the most common misconceptions. While it's true that your family will be dependent on the income you provide, they won't be able to maintain their current lifestyle.

For example, the average funeral costs over $8,000. According to Popular Mechanics, "the average cost of an in-ground burial plot is $7,000, and the average casket is around $2,000." The cost doesn't end there. That's just for the burial. If you've got dependents, you'll also have burial expenses and medical bills that need to be covered. Many families fear that these costs are something they simply won’t be able to cover.

Let's say you've got a family of four. You want to ensure that your wife and children are taken care of financially if you pass away. You go with a typical burial policy, which only covers a burial. You are paying $200 a month for this life insurance policy, which will total $24,000 over the 20-year term that you've selected.

Now let's say your wife and children are still young when you pass away and have a lot of expenses. Your wife has a car loan that she needs to pay off, as well as your child's college tuition and student loans. Also, if you're both a part of a health care plan that requires monthly premiums plus co-pays for medical procedures.

Add these up and you'll see that your family will still need to come up with an additional $16,000 just in monthly expenses. This calculation doesn't include any possible expenses for your funeral and long-term medical care. What this example does illustrate is that even though your family will be able to survive without you, they won't be able to maintain the same lifestyle that you provided for them.

Myth #2: Life insurance is expensive, so I'm going to wait until I can afford it

This is another misconception about life insurance. Some people assume that if they don't have enough money to buy a policy right now, then they'll just wait until they can afford it. The truth is that if you wait to buy life insurance, then you're just putting off paying for it until later on down the road when your finances improve.

It can be tough to come up with the money to buy a life insurance policy right now, but it's better to bite the bullet now than to leave it until later when you would be even more strapped for cash. It's harder to find a better policy with a better rate when you are already at a certain age.

Another reason why waiting until later on in life to buy life insurance is a bad idea is that your health could be worse. This could result in a higher premium being required from you, which means you'll have less money left over for your family after the life insurance premiums have been paid.

One of the best times to start buying life insurance is when you're young. If you're in your 20s or 30s and healthy, then it's worthwhile to study up on different policies and find which one is the best fit for you given your financial situation. In the meantime, make sure that you don't neglect other important financial goals such as retirement savings.

Myth #3: Life insurance isn't worth it because my beneficiaries wouldn't have to worry about paying off my debts or medical bills if I die

Another myth about life insurance is that it doesn't pay off if your family doesn't have to worry about paying off your debts or medical bills if you die. While it's true that this isn't a payment from the life insurance company or settlement from a lawsuit, it still has value. The reason why is because it's money which would need to be paid out of your family's pocket otherwise. Let's take a look at an example to illustrate this point.

Let's say your spouse needs a $50,000 loan from a bank to pay off medical bills from your hospital stay before you die. Your insurer refuses to pay out any benefits because they didn't consider the bills as contributing to your death. They also refuse to pay out any benefits if your family sues them after your death because you didn't have a valid will in place at the time of your death. Not to mention the ever-growing cost of medical bills, this is something that worries nearly every family.

Since the insurer refuses to pay out any benefits, your family is left with two options: take out a loan with a bank (which will probably have higher interest rates) or try and fight through the court system to recover what's owed to them. While paying off the loan isn't ideal, it's far better than having to fight through the courts for years on end to recover what's owed from your estate after your death.

Another way that life insurance can help your family is by providing for them financially if they're not able to obtain a loan from a bank. You can set up your beneficiary in a way you see fit, whether it be your wife or your children. This way, your wife wouldn't have to worry about taking on a second job to cover the bills and your children would be able to attend college instead of having to work their way through to make ends meet.

Unless you plan on leaving your family in debt, then life insurance can still be a valuable financial tool even if your family doesn't have to worry about paying off any debts or medical bills.

Myth #4: Life insurance isn't worth it because my family will have to pay taxes on the death benefit

When someone passes away, the benefits from their life insurance policy are taxable. The taxes are taken out by the insurance company when they pay out the death benefit. This means that if you have a $100,000 death benefit and the insurance company takes out their 20% sales commission, then you'll receive a check for $80,000.

However, this doesn't mean that the death benefit is only worth $80,000. Keep in mind that the money is coming out of the life insurance company's pockets. When they cut your check, they're losing that money from their earnings which are taxed at a lower rate. The $80,000 that you receive is actually worth more than $100,000 due to the taxes taken out by the insurance company.

This is just one more reason why life insurance can provide your family with a better means of living than if you hadn't purchased it.

Myth #5: Life insurance isn't worth it because I'll have to wait until I'm older before I can get a better policy with a lower rate

Another common misconception is that life insurance isn't worth it because you'll have to wait until you're older before you can get a better policy with a lower rate. The truth is that you can get a low-cost policy as soon as you're able to afford it. The only difference is that you won't have as many options as you would when you're older, especially if you're in good health.

A common misconception is that life insurance companies won't give you the best possible rate on a policy when you're in your 20s or 30s because they assume that you don't need the money yet or that you won't be able to afford it. In reality, if you go with a term life insurance policy, then it's actually cheaper for them when you're in your 20s or 30s because you're not going to live long enough to collect on the death benefit.

Keep in mind that you don't have to settle for the best possible rate now. Just pick one that you can afford and hope that your financial situation improves later on down the road when you're able to afford a better policy with a lower premium. You can always keep the older policy in place while adding on another one later on down the road when you can afford it.

Myth #6: Life insurance isn't worth it because I'll have to pay a long-term care premium surcharge if I need long-term care in my old age

Another common misconception is that life insurance isn't worth it because you'll have to pay a long-term care premium surcharge if you need long-term care in your old age. However, this isn't true. You don't have to pay any premium surcharges regarding long-term care on any policies which do not provide long-term care benefits. So if your policy only provides term life insurance without long-term care benefits, then there won't be any surcharges due to long-term care required.

However, this doesn't mean that all policies are the same even if they have long-term care coverage. Policies that offer long-term care benefits will have varying degrees of surcharges depending on what level of coverage they offer. 

Summary

Many myths surround life insurance and what it does and doesn’t cover. Hopefully, after reading this whole article some of the myths you might have heard about have been cleared up. At the end of the day, it’s better to be insured to secure a future for your family where they are not in debt and paying your medical bills or funeral costs. It’s not an easy thing to think about and hopefully, it doesn’t happen to any of you too early, but it does not change the fact that it is a part of life and that it is something we all need to deal with eventually. No one should have their death overshadowed, and no one’s family should have to deal with medical bills or funeral costs at a time when they clearly need to grieve their loss. Having life insurance can make sure that your family does not have to deal with these things.

    Mike Sheehan