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arhvste · 4 years

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❝bokuto, atsumu, suna and aran introducing their s/o in an interview❞

bokuto koutarō

→ E X C I T E D

→ why wouldn’t he be though?

→ he gets to finally introduce his wonderful s/o to the world

→ when his pr team gave him the green light, he didn’t hesitate

→ “ah bokuto! great playing today, might we ask who this is beside you?”

→ “this is y/n! aren’t they good-looking?! i’ve found myself a keeper huh?”

→ rambles on and on about you

→ no off switch

→ “so uh bokuto, do you mind talking to us about your opinion on your game performance today?”

→ “yeah lemme just finish telling you about this time y/n and i went on extreme fishing abroad! 🤩”

→ reporters are kinda like 😀 while he talks about you

→ fans are o b s e s s e d

→ #bokuy/n #stany/n #couplegoals are trending

→ twitter LOVE y’all

→ they love that bokuto doesn’t give af about what the reporters are saying 💀

→ he only seems to want to talk about you right now

→ it’s not like he’s purposely doing it though

→ he’s been wanting to talk about you for so long he’s just excited he’s finally allowed to

→ when you guys meet fans after the interview bokuto stops to chat to every single one

→ they love yourself and bokuto’s dynamic and laugh and joke with the two of you

→ a TON of group fan photos

→ bokuto fans are now y/n fans too

→ they literally decide you and bokuto will be married some day so they might aswell stan now

→ they’re gonna be looking out for you in future appearances with him

→ and you can bet yer ass that bokuto is gonna bring you along and show you off every chance he gets

→ fans are well fed by bokuto and it’s a fact

miya atsumu

→ literally almost fought with his pr team when they told him to wait a bit before introducing you to the public

→ “miya, your fangirls will most likely react badly if you introduce them right now.”

→ “yeah and? let em 🙄”

→ atsumu IGNORES his pr team and does it anyway cause he thinks it’s stupid about worrying what his fans will think

→ it’s not their decision who he dates 😡

→ anyways, he brings you on a talk show interview

→ “good evening miya-san, and whos this youve brought along with you?”

→ “this is y/n, aint they gorgeous?”

→ he is SHAMELESS about flirting with you on air

→ “yer so stunning tonight ya know? just wait till we get home 😏”

→ “m-miya-san! i think we should edit that out...”

→ fans have mixed reactions tbh

→ ya can’t please everyone ig

→ atsumu couldn’t give two shits though 😹

→ this man LIKES AND RETWEETS fans that are bashing other ones for not stanning them as a couple 💀

→ his pr team won’t stop ringing his phone to stop

→ doesn’t care at all, he’s always been transparent with how he likes his fans to behave why would this be any different?

→ in the end, more people start to stan after they see how seriously he’s taking this

→ since he genuinely seems to care and love you, they suppose they can stan y’all as a couple 😐

→ i’m sorry you guys aren’t trending the same way bokuto and his s/o were though 😹

→ give it a month though and a few magazine covers together and you have everyone wrapped round your finger and his fans start to like you more 🤪

→ more than atsumu in fact

→ because you’re so nice to his fans they just kinda convert 💀

→ atsumu doesn’t really mind tbh he’s just glad that you’ve been accepted and he doesn’t have to worry about people stepping too much out of line

suna rintarō

→ another one who doesn’t really care

→ he doesn’t exactly go out of his way to hide you but you guys aren’t big on pda either

→ suna leaves his fans GUESSING and doesn’t even know it

→ his fans literally s c a v e n g e for any little detail or anything about you because you and suna rarely go out and make a big scene

→ y’all are probably just grabbing lunch and his fans have several conspiracies over who you are what what the two of you are doing

→ it’s a whole big thing on his side of the twitter stans

→ suna doesn’t know about this because he’s not even on his own side of twitter 💀

→ suna’s timeline is a ton of stuff to do with gaming because i know this man streams with kenma sometimes

→ y’all can’t tell me that these two wouldn’t stream together and have an elite friendship after the timeskip 😡

→ and somehow suna made it onto barb stan twitter

→ no clue how he got there but he’s not mad about it because he thinks they’re funny af and is now a secret barb himself

→ anyways, eventually the two of you are caught on the street by an interviewer

→ and suna’s just there answering their questions like this 😐

→ he just wants to go grab some milk from the store with you can the reporters just gO away 😡

→ attention is then turned to you after the irrelevant small talk the interviewer had with suna

→ “oh ahahah just wondering... who’s this with you we’ve all been dying for an answer!”

→ “huh? you have? why? it’s just y/n my s/o it’s not that deep bro 🥱”

→ he doesn’t make a fuss about it and neither do you because like suna said it’s not that deep

→ the interviewer is just like 👁👁 and then thanks you and leaves

→ well that was easy wasn’t it?

→ that answers their months worth of questioning ig

→ you and suna later discover about the ongoing theories as to who you are and what you are to suna

→ from then on, the two of you MESS with his fans and constantly leave them guessing as to whether you’re together fr or not because y’all think it’s funny how much they care💀

aran ojiro

→ his pr team don’t even tell him to keep you from the public

→ this man is going to introduce you respectfully and properly and they know this

→ one of the few pro athletes who don’t need to have their social life kept on a leash because he goes the right way about it 😎

→ he brings you along to a magazine interviewing when you tell him that you’re comfortable with going public

→ oh btw, absolutely NO pressure from him to go public everything’s done in your own time

→ mf KING 😡🤚

→ straight away he’s making sure that this interview is based on your relationship rather than just him

→ “hey everyone, this is y/n my partner! they’re going to be joining me today!”

→ the interviewers LOVE you both

→ absolute dream to work with you guys

→ your dynamic is 🧑🏽‍🍳😙👌

→ every so often there’s a question about a recent games he includes you 😼

→ “so regarding your recent game, how well do you think you performed?”

→ “i think i was okay but definitely not at my best, it comes across differently watching from the sidelines though doesnt it! y/n, how did ya think i played from watching from yer perspective?”

→ see !! this man is including you every chance he gets 😩

→ fans adore you

→ literally deem you their parents 😎

→ just like bokuto, aran is wonderful to his fans

→ talks to every single one of them because he was raised to acknowledge anyone who politely acknowledges him

→ has full on conversations with as many fans as he can with you

→ tells them mf STORIES about the two of you and how you met etc

→ his meet and greet is literally story time with aran and y/n

→ fans are quiet and all stand around the two of you as you both tell little stories and stuff about your relationship

→ again, so many group photos

→ you guys literally become the parents of his fanbase

→ some fans are already planning your wedding for you on twitter 💀

→ aran doesnt mind though

→ cause he might just take a few of their ideas when he marries you for real 😏

general taglist → @atsumuwoah @bloody-bella @bbymilkbread @miracleboy420 @doggonudez @atsunakaashi @peteunderoos @saturnfarie @toffees-main @zumisace @boosyboo9206 @totorosleaff @27kei @babyybokutoakaashi

please send an ask to be added / removed from my taglist

ALL CONTENT BELONGS TO @KUROOSKULT ON TUMBLR 2020 PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, CHANGE OR PLAGIARISE

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startledstars · 2 years

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speculation on conspiracy, prophecy, and spirituality

(tbh im so confused abt why people are still bothering with astrology lol)

remember how the epstien scandal broke in 2020 shortly before the pandemic was declared

like right when all these politicians and actors were about to be exposed, the guy who could expose them “committed suicide” and before anyone could press the matter, it was time for “two weeks to slow the spread”

fast-forward to 2022: the ghislaine maxwell trial is ongoing. She’s in almost the same position as epstein; the darkest secrets of the rich and powerful are at risk once more.

obviously, obviously we are not going to see any sort of real justice. Satan is the god of this world and his time is not up yet.

so I wonder what’s gonna happen to maxwell. Is she gonna “commit suicide” or “overdose on drugs” or ”go missing” or be “murdered by a vigilante”?

and I wonder which crisis will suddenly demand the world’s full attention this time

theory 2: maxwell gets off scot free and doesn’t take anyone down. people are so outraged, there are widespread riots, which create the perfect excuse for totalitarian military control. this outcome seems unlikely, but worth considering.

my other theory is that some guy posing as a hero could use the maxwell trial to bring this whole system crumbling down, and the masses would be so grateful, they might willingly bend a knee to him.

the prophecy about the anti-Christ is super interesting to speculate about. there will be a man who unites the world under his rule. people will love and even want to worship him.

the world is starving for justice. subconsciously or otherwise, people are looking for this man; the wrong savior. I feel like they’ll get what they’re asking for soon, but it’s impossible to know exactly who he is or how he’ll be revealed. When you see the world collectively embrace this guy (after the unexplained disappearance of millions of people takes place) it’s going to be tempting to follow suit. Don’t do it.

but yeah, of the three theories, I’m strongly leaning towards the first. maxwell will somehow be incapacitated or removed from the public eye before she can incriminate those who govern us. Her trial, like Epstein’s, serves to desensitize the public to child abuse/sex trafficking, especially where the rich and powerful are concerned. It is not about punishing criminals.

this is because, once again, Satan is the god of this world. He is always manufacturing reasons to accuse people. Anyone who continues to trust the government/media after learning about Epstein and Maxwell, along with those who mocked others for being “conspiracy theorists” and refuse to face the truth even after being confronted with these facts, are spiritually consenting to Satan’s rule over their lives. If someone stubbornly resists the truth and continues to submit to heinous liars, God might remove His protections and give them up to strong delusion. The devil is then free to use this person how he pleases and discard them when he’s finished.

On a spiritual level, every time you believe a lie, the devil gains some leverage to use against you because he is the father of lies. Fortunately, if you pursue the truth, God will open your eyes to deception and grant you discernment. No matter what belief system you currently subscribe to, if you live in constant pursuit of the truth, you will find God, and God will accompany you on your journey.

I think most people follow this blog for astrology. There are some super old posts still circulating. Maybe you stumbled across one of those and clicked the “follow” button. tbh I quit astrology for many reasons, but here’s the newest one: while you’re scrutinizing a chart hoping to understand the secrets of the universe or control the future or see how compatible you might be with someone or just find out what type of pringle you are based on ur moon sign, you’re missing out. This world is an incredibly interesting place. It is also relatively simple to understand; you don’t need esoteric knowledge to decode any of it. There is a clear battle between good and evil involving spiritual powers and principalities and God and the devil and massive apocalyptic signs and wonders and so much more. This is all happening in plain sight of, like, everyone for the first time in human history. And guess what? Whether you realize it yet or not, you have a role to play in this epic war. All you need to do is wake up.

#spiritual awakening #new age #spirituality #astrology?#idk what to tag this #weird stream of consciousness thing #srsly tho there are literal child murder/sacrificers (?) revealed in plain sight #and they apparently have their tentacles in everything #and idk there were 8000 earthquakes last year and who knows how many volcanic explosions #entire countries are still under lockdown with Australia being the worlds largest prison #what I’m trying to say is why tf are people still making those silly astrology posts instead of finding and exposing the truth #I get that it’s a hobby but it’s also a dead end #put it down and just take a look around the real world

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frosteee · 4 years

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Undertaker and the Dispatch Conspiracy Theory

@frederickabberline

So I loved your discussion about UT and a possible conspiracy within the grim reaper dispatch that I went through the manga and found some bits and pieces which, I feel, support the theory.

[Long ass post under cut]

Background

For those who are unfamiliar, the theory is that UT had discovered something damning about the grim reaper organisation that caused him to defect.

This discovery, we post, is that the forgiveness all reapers are promised is a lie, perhaps even extending to the idea of salvation in general, disillusioning UT and morphing him into the individual we know today. Full details can be found in the awesome ongoing discussion by @frederickabberline, @midnight-in-town et al.

Because of this, UT is experimenting with creating a definite ‘after’ to the end that is death, because the ones he previously believed in, like the P4 did tradition, like the Watchdogs did duty, was fake and only fit to create a cycle of misery. He currently believes himself incapable of salvation, and so creating immortal Phantomhives is the only way he can possibly be with them.

I believe that several aspects of UT’s personality as we know it support this.

UT’s interest in breaking free of fixed, unchangeable fate.

We are shown as far back as Chapter 13 that UT has particular interest in the concept of destiny, commenting that the tie between O!Ciel (and the entire house of Phantomhive by extension) and Queen Victoria is like a ‘chain of fate’, and gets quite angry when O!Ciel declares that he put himself in that position willingly.

Grabbing Ciel by the tie and holding him there is the most directly aggressive we’ve seen UT towards O!Ciel, besides the time on the Campania when UT used him to bait Sebastian, so it seems that comment irked him.

From this it appears he holds a bit of resentment towards O!Ciel for so willingly following the path towards death and damnation.

He also seems to hold similar frustration towards the rest of the Phantomhives for ignoring his warnings and following the cursed path of the Watchdog to the grave.

He is highly amused by twists, and takes great satisfaction in the unexpected, especially when it goes against the grain. Like, for example, when Undertaker is surrounded by enemies on the Campania and he wonders which of them is truly the hunted party.

This before rapidly changing things around and making it no longer a one-sided hunt of an outnumbered rabbit but a struggle to take down a powerful hunter. In this arc, everyone is second-guessing and while UT is the one with the most control over proceedings (with his element of surprise), even in that scenario there were events he could not see coming (e.g.: the iceberg) that he had to work with/around.

Essentially, he enjoyed the unpredictability of the situation, where multiple powerful forces were clashing to decide the end. Fate was in all their hands.

What UT finds amusing also seems to revolve around this idea.

He is amused by two things:

Those who do terrible things to keep the status quo, like the P4 in their murders, which causes UT to burst out laughing after the full story is revealed. The P4 probably remind UT of who he used to be as a model grim reaper - the rigidness of their thinking, repeating the mantra that tradition and rules ‘are everything’ most definitely reminded him of his former life and the ‘grim reaper code’ he lived by. Hell, William is currently the ‘rule-abiding/spouting’ grim reaper of the bunch.

Those who go against the grain in unexpected but positive/game-changing ways. In the same arc, for example, UT comments on O!Ciel’s decision to save Harcourt from the attacking zombies, as such as a selfless act would never have occurred to his more selfish, pragmatic ancestors.

In short, UT is pleased to see actions taken by people, most notably the Phantomhives, that break from the acts/mindset that killed those who came before, and scorns those who try to keep things the same no matter the cost and meet terrible fates.

This also extends to R!Ciel, who I talk about in this post in relation to the Evil Twin theory, where R!Ciel is a direct participant/accomplice to his parents’ murder. I theorised that to create a perfect record, while having only ‘future desires’ and a soulless body to work with, UT had to improvise by splicing what he knew of R!Ciel’s past onto the boy’s record, thus creating memories/knowledge of his past and the ability to function off that.

However, this combined with R!Ciel’s ‘yearning for the future’ records also created a boy who was all too willing to replace O!Ciel as Watchdog and basically resume the terrible march towards danger and death that UT had worked so hard to avoid. His and Tanaka’s reaction to R!Ciel’s announcement that he will resume Watchdog/Earl duties reflects this, I think.

As far as UT is concerned, R!Ciel is making the same mistake as O!Ciel by following the path set out for him from birth, like all Phantomhives.

Then, finally, there’s UT’s interest/obsession with the ‘predetermined end’ that death entails, screwing with which is the driving force of his actions so far, he claims.

It feels strange for a grim reaper to be so curious about that. After all, he has died himself, and entered a sort of limbo existence which, while a punishment, is basically an afterlife.

Grim reapers are promised forgiveness, which can be paired with salvation and entry into Heaven. Demons also exist, which live in an alternate realm not (as far as I know) stated as Hell, but considering souls can be eaten by the demons who live there, so perhaps that is also a destination for souls when they die?

In any case, it would seem strange for a grim reaper to not have knowledge of some sort of afterlife, other than their own, to which souls can go to.

Unless the reapers are simply told it exists, and that they can go there if they ‘serve their time’ - and that the reality is very different.

With this idea in mind, it makes a lot of sense for UT to be a staunch advocate for breaking the chain of fate the Phantomhives are under, to the extent that death itself is overturned, because he never wants to lose another Phantomhive again, as he now believes that reuniting with them in the afterlife is impossible.

UT is so dead set against the idea of following the status quo and one’s ‘fate’ that he is ready and willing to rock the very world ‘The Superior’ governs.

UT’s focus on lies/deception.

UT also appears to be quite focused on lies and deception, either to oneself or others. We first glimpse this in the Circus Arc, where he tells Ciel to take care of his soul, for he only has the one. When Ciel responds that he already knows that, UT questions that (’Boy I know you be talkin shiiiiit~!’).

Then later in the arc, he confirms his own belief - that Ciel cannot/does not know the true weight of what he is losing by continuing down his cursed path, that Ciel is lying to himself in order to continue down it. This is clearly part of his frustration with the Phantomhives as a whole, that they keep lying to themselves in order to keep going towards a fate that only continues its destructive cycle.

Really, all of the people UT has laughed at are lying to others or themselves, or both, in order to justify destructive, morally bankrupt and questionable beliefs and actions. Ciel, the P4, Rian Stoker, etc., etc.

UT is also very concerned with the idea of people lying to others for their own benefit, as all reapers, according to the theory, are lied to.

The people who most reflect UT’s past situation are the Noah’s Arc circus troupe, who were deceived by their trusted elder, Kelvin, that in order to maintain/achieve happiness they had to dirty their hands and continue doing terrible things with no knowledge of when it will end.

Similarly, UT also continued to perform a (literally) punishing and emotionally traumatic task to the best of his ability on the orders of an overseer for the sake of eventual happiness that he discovered to be a false promise. While some of them may have believed Kelvin to be evil and perhaps lying to them, like Joker, they continued anyway because lying was the only way they could handle the weight of what they had done.

It might not be so much of a coincidence that UT begins and ends his role in that arc by pointing out the cost of self-deception/being deceived. He would know - he and all reapers are lied to and effectively kept as eternal slaves and then possibly either killed or damned in some way, but never actually ‘retired’ to Heaven.

Speaking of which, UT specifically notes that one of the most beautiful things about his bizarre dolls is the fact that they no longer have the capacity to tell lies.

Of course, this is all said with the knowledge that UT himself has/had told plenty of lies himself, and is probably deceiving himself that his goal, which is probably impossible, is possible. It’s the only thing keeping him going, after all, and UT is not without hypocrisy.

Hey, he never denied that he had a few screws loose!

UT and Sebastian’s differing views on death being ‘the end’.

Finally, the big one, UT and Seb’s very different views on death as an end. We don’t know Sebastian’s views on the afterlife, or if souls can be cast into his realm like Hell, or if there is a Heaven, but regardless Sebastian believes that a ‘definitive, hopeless end’ has beauty in it.

In response, UT only smiles, but says nothing in response, perhaps not wanting to give away too much personal information at this time. He does not agree, and his actions and words have proven just how much he disagrees.

UT, according to the theory, has entirely lost faith in forgiveness and salvation after death - at least for himself as a grim reaper. Why else would he go through so much trouble to extend life indefinitely? Why would he create a form of immortality for the living Phantomhives he could hope to see again...

Unless he believes he cannot.

Unless he believes he has lost the ones who have died forever, and that the only thing he can do for the ones he has lost is keep mementos of them (like the prayer lockets, which he treasures).

All reapers are promised forgiveness and, it’s implied, salvation in Heaven or something similar. If this was the case, if UT did not have reason to suspect otherwise, why would he bother defecting, when he could just be a model grim reaper for x amount of time and then join his loved ones once he has served his time?

Clearly, UT once believed that death was beautiful, but not because it was the end. Because there was an ‘after’ that he could aspire to and meet those he lost. He cannot agree with Sebastian’s ‘beauty in an end’ idea because to him, a hopeless end is just that - hopeless, miserable, lonely.

The death Sebastian speaks of means only eternal slavery, loneliness, hoping for salvation that never comes. Maybe once he believed death being the end to one’s life was beautiful in its way, as Will discovered in the grim reaper OVA, but not anymore.

Hope this makes sense and gives some food for thought!

#/ phew this was a monster hope I made sense through it all - not feeling well atm so not sure ^^;;;#Dispatch Conspiracy Theory #undertaker black butler #undertaker kuroshitsuji #Sebastian Michaelis #Sebastian Michaelis Kuroshiitsuji #Sebastian Michaelis Black Butler #black butler spoilers #kuroshitsuji spoilers #black butler #kuroshitsuji #theory #discussion #thoughts #meta

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dointoomuchsworld · 3 years

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URT amidst the Pharma war

WUpon selecting a communication theory for this blog entry, I decided, why not- let’s just Google search: “what communication theory can be related to the anti-vax crowd”? The top six search results and their links that pop up spew these headlines and additional phrases:

1. “The anti-vaccination infodemic on social media: A behavioral…: However, the anti-vaccination movement is currently on the rise, spreading online misinformation about vaccine safety and causing a worrying…” (www.journals.plos.org)

2. “How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public- WHO: a vocal vaccine denier is defined in this document as a person who is not only denying scientific consensus but also actively advocating against vaccination…” (World Health Organization 2017 Regional Office for Europe).

3. “Vaccine hesitancy is a problem attracting growing attention and concern.” (www.sciencedirect.com)

4. “The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination… Distrust in scientific expertise is dangerous… Results show that even if anti-vaccine narratives have a small persuasiveness, a large part of the population will be rapidly exposed to them. ” (www.nature.com)

5. “Conspiracy Beliefs, Rejection of Vaccination, and…: Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the Covid-19 pandemic. Since it is documented that conspiracy theories negatively affect…” (www.frontiersin.org)

6. “Combating Vaccine Hesitancy: Teaching the Next Generation… In 1999, the anti-vaxxer movement, an organized body of people who refuse to vaccinate and blaming vaccines for health problems” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Well, this didn’t answer my question. It was surely a lot to read as we dive into my entry here, and it slapped someone with my way of thinking with some shut-down labels: dangerous, misinformed, science-denier, nonconsensual, behaviorally problematic, conspiracist, rejecter.

Do you know what these Google search results say to me? Censorship.

I am selecting the communication theory of Uncertainty Reduction Theory to apply towards my discussion of the pro-vaccine/anti-vaccine war.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) asserts that “people have a need to reduce uncertainty about others by gaining information about them” (Berger, C.R., & Bradac, J.J.) The information gained can be used to predict the others’ behavior. Reducing uncertainty can be particularly beneficial in relationship development, so it is more typical amongst people when they expect or want to develop a relationship than among people who expect or know they will not develop a relationship.

We have a few basic ways people seek information about another person:

1. Passive strategies: we observe the person, either in situations where the individual is likely to be self-monitoring (in a classroom; in the stands of a public event)

2. Active strategies: we ask others about the person we’re interested in, or set up a way to observe that person (sign up for the same class; sitting at a different table in the same restaurant)

3. Interactive strategies: we communicate directly with the person.

I believe this theory can be used to my topic of discussion because if we are in one of the hottest moments of the ongoing anti- and pro- vaccine movement and pharmaceutical war with COVID-19 at the forefront of it all, no matter which side we put our beliefs, followings, trust, or knowledge in, we seek out others with the same data, statistics, views, and agreeability. We strive to reduce uncertainty with others by gaining their information to benefit one another, and either develop ongoing relationships, or not. If we observe or interact with others to discover where their loyalties lay, we either discuss, debate--or worst of all, we fight like cats and dogs to what seems like the death--or come to an understanding and continue or discontinue the developed relationship.

Let’s begin how I feel within the war on vaccines. I, if you will, an introvert who isn’t so fond of putting my opinions out there, am publicly posting this in hopes of finding others and reducing my uncertainty about how others may feel, or find if they may feel similarly so that I may stand with them or offer them strength in opinions and studies. Or maybe, just to prompt an open discussion.

1. Pro-vaccine

2. Anti-vaccine

Unnecessary and divisive labels meant to categorize people into black and white thinking.

Where is the label for: I think it’s perfectly logical to want the ability to make decisions about each vaccine available on an individual basis for each of my children and myself?

Pfizer is going for full FDA approval and might have it by the end of this month, emergency approval has already been granted for 12-15 year-olds, and in September emergency approval will be requested for 2-11 year-olds.

How can you get granted EAU for an experimental drug in an age group that isn’t having an emergency? To protect vaccinated adults? Sacrificing your healthy child for an illness that doesn’t affect them so that vaccinated adults may think you’re a good person and may give you permission to move freely about your lives?

Nothing says I don’t believe in science more than vaccinating a 2-year-old for COVID.

Imagine being excited to experiment on your own child.

Children don’t stand a chance in this pharmaceutical industry that for decades have put profit ahead of doing what is right. Additionally but important to note, the pharmaceutical industry has not prioritized the research and development of cancer drugs for children. They rely on treating children with adult cancer drugs, which are far more dangerous, toxic, and aggressive on a child’s developing body, because adult cancer drugs are some of the best-selling pharmaceuticals for companies such as Merck & Co., Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and J&J.

Here is an incomplete current list of places making the COVID vaccine mandatory, either for employment or for on site services: Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Officer; WPAFB (when it is FDA approved); Atria Senior Living; Rocky River Senior Center; Continuing Healthcare Solutions; Newburgh Heights city employees; Supers Landscape; Cleveland State University; Kenyon College; Cleveland Clinic fertility center: spouses required to have two doses of vaccine before being able to be present for embryo transfers. Kroger grocery stores now mandate proof of vaccination of its employees in order for employees to de-mask. This is marking the unclean versus clean. Here we are, segregating healthy people and in many circumstances being told to show our private healthcare papers.

There is no place for this behavior in a free society. This is discrimination based on vaccine status.

A business in Preble County is allowing employees who have taken the coronavirus vaccine to use the fitness room while those who have not, or are naturally immune, are not allowed access. They can work there but they cannot work out there... is this about health?

What changes have you made for yourself as an individual this pandemic to benefit your health and wellness?

The NFL continues to separate their unvaccinated athletes from their fellow vaccinated athletes. Separate practice areas, separate eating areas, and de-masking only those who have been vaccinated. Discontinuing COVID testing twice a week only for the vaccinated. Not allowing the unvaccinated to leave the hotel while traveling with the teams. As if either party is not safe to be around.

As a writer considering her reader, I’m wondering if you’re celebrating right now in regards to these advances, or raising some eyebrows. As for me, it fills me with a primitive rage that I feel only when someone endangers my children.

But let’s keep going.

Vaccines are necessarily risky, as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court and by Congress.

The risk: benefit ratio varies with the frequency and severity of disease, vaccine safety, and individual patient factors. These must be evaluated by patient and physician, not imposed government, corporations, or other bureaucrats.

The smallpox vaccine is so dangerous that you can’t get it now, despite the weaponization of smallpox. Rabies vaccine is given only after a suspected exposure or to high-risk persons such as veterinarians. The whole-cell pertussis vaccine was withdrawn from the U.S. market, a decade later than from the Japanese market, because of reports of severe permanent brain damage. The acellular vaccine that replaced it is evidently safer, though somewhat less effective.

After being fully informed of the risks and benefits of a medical procedure, patients have the right to reject or accept that procedure. Preemption of patients’ or parents’ decisions about accepting drugs or other medical interventions is a serious intrusion into individual liberty, autonomy, and parental decisions about child-rearing.

Forcing Ohioans or anyone into receiving an experimental medical intervention in exchange for freedom to go to work or participate in society is contrary to fundamental human rights.

How does one feel about the persuasion to vote YES on Ohio HB 248? How’s this for propaganda: Vote YES, join the movement, on the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act.

This Ohio House Bill was introduced on April 6, 2021, and is in 25% progression (LegiScan). Per this Republican Partisan Bill, OH HB248 is to enact section 3792.02 of the Revised Code to authorize an individual to decline a vaccination and to name this act the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act.

Why should we do this? This is a stand for health freedom, for medical freedom; a vital legislation to protect vaccine choice for Ohioans now and into the future. If this legislation isn't passed, you can expect that vaccine mandates and vaccine passports will become a reality of our future. And even if you're fine with the traditional vaccines, even if you have always gotten the flu vaccine, and even if you decided to get the COVID vaccine... Ohioans will be faced with the reality that any future vaccine can be mandated by the state, retailers, employers, schools etc., and we'll have zero to say about it. This legislation will protect all Ohioans from the dystopia that we're currently facing.

Do I sound like one who denies the expertise of science now? I stand with science. I stand with informed consent. I stand with freedom. I stand with healthcare professionals. I stand with Ohio workers. I stand with parents. I stand with students. I stand with this bill for the people, by the people.

In the year 1983, the total doses of vaccines for children from birth to age 18 consisted of 24 doses and 7 injections. As of 2020, we now administer 69 doses with 50 injections. The CDC child vaccination schedule is bloated, and I will say it from the mountaintops, no matter the reaches for justification.

Advanced Pediatric, a Cleveland area pediatric practice, is embracing the idea that unvaccinated children are not safe, and must stay masked and distanced, including from others on the playground (advancedped.com). How badly will we damage our children’s social and emotional health with this kind of discriminatory action propagated by adults that are supposed to be protecting them?

Prior to COVID, measles was the much-publicized threat used to push for mandates, and is probably the worst threat among the vaccine-preventable illnesses because it is so highly contagious. There are occasional outbreaks, generally starting with an infected individual coming from somewhere outside the U.S. The majority, but by no means all the people who catch the measles have not been vaccinated. Almost all make a full recovery, with robust, life-long immunity.

The last measles death in the U.S. occurred in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Is it justified to revoke the rights of all Americans because of the hypothetical risk that a person who cannot be vaccinated due to immune deficiency might catch measles from an unvaccinated American, rather than from a visitor or a person whose artificial vaccine-based immunity has waned? Such mandates establish a precedent for ever-greater restrictions on our right to give—or withhold—consent to medical interventions?

So as I continue, and back to the focus on the COVID fiasco that I am pondering… Per the CDC website in the association with the COVID vaccine, VAERS reports that in the last four months we have recorded more deaths from the COVID vaccine than from all vaccines combined from mid 1997 through the end of 2013. As of April 30, there are 3,837 cases where the COVID-vaccinated patient has died within days to weeks after their intervention. 384 pages of patients age, sex, location, date of vax, date of onset, who administered it, who the manufacturer is, whether they were taken to the ER, and the symptoms or prior health conditions if any.

Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (Lazarus, Klompas). Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs or vaccines that endanger public health. Barriers to reporting include a lack of clinician awareness, uncertainty about when and what to report, as well as the burdens of reporting. Reporting is not usually part of a clinicians’ workflow, takes time, and is duplicative (Lazarus, Klompas).

VAERS is a passive reporting system. Healthcare workers are not required to submit reports of deaths or injuries. VAERS only reports 1% of actual injuries according to a report prepared under contract with The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Lazarus, Klompas).

To recap those last several paragraphs, we are constantly told those who decline vaccines for illnesses they themselves are at very little risk for developing complications from, are putting the immunocompromised at risk. What we don’t often hear is that the procedure itself comes with risk and what that risk level is exactly is unknown.

What we do know is that only somewhere between 1-10% of adverse events are ever reported largely due to medical professionals' lack of awareness on the subject matter. We cannot force healthy people to undergo a medical procedure for which the administrator of and manufacturer have no liability when we know there is innate risk. We can’t trade one group's theoretical risk for another group's known risk.

We never hear any other side of this argument, it’s censored from us and never presented to us.

Many of these VAERS reports were from assisted living facilities, and we can determine this by scrolling through the log of reports. Do you trust many assisted living facilities, or do you think many of them had a choice?

As of June 18, VAERS reports for myocarditis or pericarditis in people age 6 to 29 for all non-COVID shots in the entire history as VAERS as: 394. The total number of VAERS reports for myocarditis or pericarditis in people ages 6 to 29 in the last six months for COVID shots: 590.

Without voluntary informed consent, medicine becomes violence.

How many billions of dollars do you think has been handed out to mainstream media outlets, such as your favorite radio stations, to propagate the COVID vaccine and to have your favorite channel’s or station’s host, or celebrity, holler into your car or household: to go out and get it now, because all the cool people are doing it; to save our communities. Because you’re a selfish expanse of existence if you don’t. Although they who preach to go get the intervention likely have little to no experience in any of the information I have provided thus far.

The Dayton RTA public transit system has banners plastered onto the sides of their buses in all caps that say, “I’m not afraid of the vaccine!” or “Help Save Lives. Get Vaccinated.”

When their passengers board the bus, they may show their hand gesture of the peace sign, to indicate they’ve been vaccinated. And at that, you’ll get a thirty-dollar credit in adult passenger fare upon proof of being fully vaccinated. A whole month of free rides and a promotional “Vaccinated” button to wear.

Promotions for vaccinated people are a flawed tactic for both brand-building and public health. Brands across industries are skipping beyond vaccine education and awareness to take a more active role in coronavirus vaccine acceleration.

One size does not fit all. All humans are not the same and have different risk factors for both the disease and the intervention. There is no greater danger to all of us than the dehumanization of others. Not trusting a vaccine, or any given doctor for that matter, does not make me a science denier.

Where there is risk there must be choice. Not ostracism. Vaccine choice and anti-discrimination.

People who are labeled as vaccine hesitant should really be called people who are hesitant to be coerced in the largest drug trial in history. Because it’s the right thing to do... It’s patriotic... to protect our community and, again, “although I am young and healthy, it’s the right thing to do” (Ohio Dept. of Health).

Mandate advocates often assert a need for a 95% immunization rate to achieve herd immunity. However, Mary Holland and Chase Zachary of NYU School of Law argue, in the Oregon Law Review, that because complete herd immunity and measles eradication are unachievable, the better goal is for herd effect and disease control. The best outcome would result, they argue, from informed consent, more open communication, and market-based approaches.

The safest place for an immunocompromised person who is unable to be vaccinated (there are very few unable to be vaccinated for COVID) is around someone who has had COVID naturally and is actually immune. Vaccinated people still contract and likely transmit COVID unlike the naturally immune. Similar to the pertussis portion of the DTAP vaccine, most often it’s a vaccinated sibling or parent who unknowingly spreads it to an infant too young to be vaccinated.

Let’s think about our Governor DeWine’s Vax-a-Million. His raffle is a disturbing act of child coercion and misuse of money that we could be putting back into our communities. A predatory bribe to bait those who easily succumb to a gambling incentive. I wish we had this kind of monetary dedication to our homeless, to our schools, to our mental health hospitals, to our trash clean-up organizations for our cities, to students already accepted into colleges. To the small businesses who have had to close their doors for good. What are my incentives for not getting the shot? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Public health should not seek to manipulate. To manipulate in the name of public health is to undermine public health.

This is a marketing scheme. You are not required to take a liability free experimental medical intervention in order to be considered a good person. Those who say you are, are either indoctrinated into a cult-like way of thinking and lack the ability to see anything beyond that, uninformed, or evil.

It's one of many elite U.S. institutions to be completely decimated and humiliated by Pharma. It was gradual, then inexorable, and now it's their identity.

An article printed on May 31 states that a Miami Valley Hospital doctor says strokes are occurring in younger people, ages 18-45 years old. Dr. Bryan Ludwig, the chair of the Clinical Neuroscience Institute of Premier Health, is seeing this increase, including the 36-year-old stroke patient he treated upon being air-lifted to the main hospital campus (WHIO). This article does not yet state what leading causes we can look toward for the increase in strokes and clots in the youth, and does not even state a possibility of what it might be, though I’m sure we can make quite a valid assumption. It would seem that the press is trying to normalize things that are not in the least bit normal, as more articles arise in similarity.

Was it responsible for our Governor Mike DeWine to send out the tweet: “FACT: The COVID vaccine is safe and effective” upon immediate availability of the vaccine?

It is incredible that vaccine reactions used to only exist in the minds of conspirators, and now we pray for the recipients that they may make it through and only have to miss a few days of work. We don’t know anything about long-term effects but that doesn’t matter, because what about long-term effects from the actual disease? Everyone needs to do it anyway, even those at very little risk, because someone said so. Even those who have had COVID, and likely hold a great deal of immunity.

Those who came out in droves in opposition of HB248 stated things such as, “up to 30% of our college students are immunocompromised, and this justifies mandating those who aren’t to be vaccinated.”

What are we doing that is causing up to 30% of young college students to be immunocompromised?

Nonetheless, I find that statistic entirely skeptical. The industry recommends for all who they call immunocompromised, such as cancer patients to get these vaccines, and patients on immune suppressive drugs to get them. They want transplant patients to get them. They don’t actually acknowledge any contradictions outside of anaphylaxis. The “we must protect the herd” sentiment seems entirely feigned and disingenuous. It seems manipulative, dismissive.

Surely, there are immunocompromised people out there who are unable to receive the vaccine or others, but I do think it is rare.

A doctor who believe that everyone should be vaccinated, when questioned, acknowledged vaccine injury and death. She was asked what she would say to those people. Her response, in paraphrase, was, “Thank you for your contribution.” She views the injured as expendable.

The amount of doctors who opposed the house bill of vaccine choice was frightening. And who will politicians follow? Those who have personal attestations who are most oftentimes unheard or underrepresented, or clinicians pushing a pharmaceutical curriculum that acquires compensation based on how many patients are vaccinated?

In a statement made by ACIP member, Grace M. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., associate chief medical officer for practice innovation at Stanford Children’s Health, she goes on to say: “I think the childhood experience our kids have gone through will have long-lasting consequences that may extend across generations. We don’t really fully yet understand the total... physical health, mental health, and educational impact of the pandemic on our kids.”

Kids are durable. They can endure the worst of things, and they persevere. However, now, to grow up in a world that is censoring and erasing valuable information is chillingly monumental.

Considering that 23 million Americans suffer from some type of autoimmune disease, with the rates increasing 4-7% each year, and that environmental toxins are well known to trigger autoimmunity, it would seem prudent to implicate the distended childhood vaccination schedule as a possible culprit to this rise.

We are not smarter or more virtuous than someone because we draw a different conclusion after looking at the same information. Only one side of this charade wants to enforce their will on the other.

In summary, patients and parents currently have the right to refuse vaccination, although potentially contagious persons can be restricted in their movements (e.g. as with Ebola), as needed to protect others against a clear and present danger. Unvaccinated persons with no exposure to a disease and no evidence of a disease are not a clear or present danger. Making the COVID, and other vaccines, optional is the only way to protect the medical and individual rights of our citizens, consistent with good medical ethics.

Unvaccinated people are variant factories, says expert Dr. William Schaffner, from the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on June 2.

My use of Uncertainty Reduction Theory in Communication Studies applied to my stance I’ve taken on medical freedom enables me to seek and find reassurance with others, to find camaraderie with those who will continue to fight.

The way that I have questioned the pharmaceutical intervention so many times in so many ways throughout this discussion and at the very least find the timeline of events that have transpired to be odd, and furthermore advocate for the freedom of guilt-free choice instead of a blind acceptance to take whatever is fed to me via our government oversight, it may very well blacklist me from an exceeding amount of peoples’ interest.

BUT, no matter what one may think, or if one should ask me why I don’t find something better to do with my time -

What is more important than protecting my children’s freedom and health through social and ethical communication processes?

Works Cited:

Berger, C.R., & Bradac, J.J. (1982). Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations. London: Arnold.

Clanton, Nancy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 16 April 2021. www.ajc.com

Holland, Mary and Zachary, Chase. Oregon Law Review. Children’s Health Defense Team. 23 January 2019. www.childrenshealthdefense.org

Lavin, Dr. Arthur A. “The End of the Pandemic Begins, for the Vaccinated.” 14 May 2021. www.advancedped.com

Lazarus, R, Klompas M, Hou X, Campion FX, Dunn J, Platt R. Automated Electronic Detection & Reporting of Adverse Events Following Vaccination: ESP:VAERS. The CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA; April, 2008. www.digital.ahrq.gov

Shimabukuro, Tom T. MD., Cole, Matthew MPH, Su, John R. MD, PhD. JAMA. 12 February 2021. www.jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776557

LegiScan Bringing People to the Process. www.legiscan.com 2021.

National Vaccine Information Center. 2021. 21525 Ridgetop Circle, Suite 100, Sterling, VA 20166.

www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GROUP1=AGE&EVENTS=ON&VAX=COVID19

WHIO Staff. “Miami Valley doctor says strokes are increasing in younger people, shares warning signs.” 31 May 2021. www.whio.com/news/local

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amethystunarmed · 3 years

Text

Is Heavy, So Few Men Can Carry It

Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Dabi/Hawks

Warnings: Manga Spoilers, Implied Child Abuse

Word Count: 2278

Part of the Truth Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

AO3 Link (Links will be added in a reblog)

~~~~~

Koharu Mukai more or less enjoyed being an EMT. Her quirk was certainly suited for it. The ability to see heartbeats through even dense piles of rubble certainly came in handy during earthquakes and large scale building destruction. It helped in grimmer situations too, like letting her know when there’s no need to rush at the scene of a car crash. Those days were the worst. Sometimes, she had nightmares about silent cityscapes where she can’t see a heartbeat at all.

Where she’s utterly alone.

Maybe that’s part of what influenced her career decisions. When Koharu’s quirk first manifested, her parents had nudged her to the life of a hero. It was never anything overt, never openly stated, but Koharu knew. They weren’t exactly subtle. They entered her into judo lessons the moment she could walk, gushed when rescue heroes like Thirteen and Uwabami were on the news. During her last year of middle school, a brochure for UA appeared on her desk. Again, not subtle.

But... Koharu didn’t want to be a hero. Didn’t want to fight and train for combat with villains. Didn’t want to risk seeing those heartbeats stutter out as a result of her actions.

But she did want to save people.

So, she trained to be an EMT, and she was a damn good one too. And she loved it, she really did.

Except for when it came to dealing with heroes.

Koharu couldn’t say she didn’t get it. Ranking was everything for heroes, and more than half of it relied on reputation and public opinion. She had witnessed a hero from her hometown drop thirty spots in rank after a reporter broadcast him being taken away in an ambulance.

She got it.

But it didn’t mean they needed to be such assholes about it. Attempting to treat a hero after a fight could get you scolded like a child at best, and reported on as incompetent by the media at worst. One of her friends had tried to bandage a seven-inch gash on Endeavor’s arm, and ended up with second degree burns on her hands. So when she pulled the short straw and was sent to look over Hawks, she only really felt a pang of resigned dread.

Honestly, she’d heard good things about Hawks. Every EMT who spoke of him recounted him as polite, cheerful, and actually willing to comply with basic check-ups. Koharu finds all of this to be true. He obeys her every request, even as he repeatedly checked the time on his phone. He starts anxiously tapping his foot, and she takes pity on him.

“You seem alright, Hawks,” Koharu says, as she finishes checking for a concussion. “Not even a scrape.” She’d be surprised at the lack of injuries if she hadn’t seen the current state of the villains. All nine completely immobilized and unharmed. After treating some of the perps Endeavor has brought in, she’s honestly surprised Hawks isn’t Number One. His care and efficiency are unmatched. “Anything else happen that I should know about?”

“I mean, I think one of the villains hit me with her quirk,” he says with no regard to how worrying that statement is. He blinks and startles, almost as though coming back to himself. He looks at her with a large smile, but she can see his heartbeat kickstart with adrenaline. “But it didn’t do anything, I feel perfectly fine.”

Bullshit.

Still maybe she can coax him into actually taking care of himself.

“Even so, it would be best for you to go to the hospital. We can monitor you for any changes.” His smile widens but she sees his eye twitch with annoyance. She holds back a groan and waits for the meaningless platitudes to begin.

“I’m not allowed to go to the hospital.”

Koharu has to admit, her jaw drops. All the training classes, all the years experience, everything she’s ever learned just flies out of her head.

She stares at him, silently, like an idiot.

“I r-really need to go,” Hawks stammers. He looks scared. He looks like he’s about to cry. And suddenly, Koharu remembers that Hawks is a couple years younger than her baby sister. “I just broke like, 8 NDAs by telling you that.”

He’s trying to get away from her, she can see his wings flapping. He is biting his lip, hard, like he is trying to keep himself quiet.

Koharu remembers the words of one of the officers first on the scene. He’d told her to stay away from one of the villains, because of her quirk...

Her eyes widen. She reaches forward to Hawks, unsure if touch will calm him, or just make him more upset. Given the way he flinches, she guesses the latter. She keeps her words calm and level, trying to ease his rapidly increasing heartbeat.

“Hawks, one of the villains is registered as having a truth quirk. I think you’ve been affected–”

“I have to go,” Hawks yells, so loudly it startles her, “I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed.”

Koharu gasps, body nearly going limp in shock.

Why would something like this put her in danger?

Could this endanger her family?

What is happening?

By the time she thinks to ask, Hawks is soaring far above her. She watches until the skyline swallows him.

~~~~~

That night, when she gets home, Aimi is waiting for her. Her eyes light up when Koharu enters, but freeze over when she registers Koharu’s expression. Koharu longs to give in and tell her everything, let go of the terrible knowledge bubbling inside her. She opens her mouth to speak and chokes. I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed. She clamps her jaw shut and launches herself forward into Aimi’s arms, and muffles her sobs in her chest. To Aimi’s credit, she never tries to ask what happened. She only strokes Koharu’s hair and hums.

~~~~~

That night, long after her wife had fallen asleep on her chest, Koharu lay awake, staring at nonsense pictures in the ceiling spackle. She thinks of that strange admission—I’m not allowed to go to the hospital—and ponders endlessly of what he could have possibly meant in fractal conspiracy theories. Over and over again, she hears his panicked stammers, those words—I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed—echoed around her. He had looked at her with the same terror held by those in the midst of a disaster; the horrific certainty of life crashing down around you.

I should have done something.

I should have said something.

But she hadn’t. And even now, she cannot fathom what would have been the right words to say. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

The after-image of his frantic heart beats against her eyelids.

~~~~~

Two days later, in the hospital lobby, she spots a TV news report about the disappearance of the Number Two Hero, Hawks. She drops a stack of forms and they coat the hallway floor like snowfall.

~~~~~

Later that week, Koharu is called into the office of the Hero Public Safety Commission. They didn’t tell her what for, but she knew. Considering the timeline the news had constructed, Koharu would have been one of the last people to see Hawks before his disappearance, if not the last. Though Koharu can’t help but wonder what they could possibly expect her to know. Furthermore, she has no idea what to do with what she does know.

Aimi is nervous. She continually fidgets with the hem of the suit jacket Koharu hasn’t worn since her last job interview. She claims she is just straightening it, but each touch of the fabric evolves into a hand around her waist, a brush against her wrist. Aimi is touching her like she is saying goodbye. Koharu kisses her gently, attempting to comfort her, but can’t help but wonder if she will disappear too.

~~~~~

The office of the Hero Commission Director is blank, white, and boring. The photos on the wall are close ups of calla lilies Koharu expects were in the frames in the store. The desk is black, with stainless steel dressings, and is wide enough that Koharu feels the urge to shout so the Director can hear her. The room makes her feel small, like an outsider, and Koharu can’t help but wonder if that was the goal when the Director smiles at her.

“Welcome, Mukai-san, thank you for coming in,” she says, and Koharu robotically complies.

“H-Hello,” she stutters, and curses herself. The Director chuckles, though not unkindly.

“No need to be so nervous,” she assures. “I just want to know if Hawks said anything to you before he left the scene that day, or if you can recall anything out of the ordinary. You’re not in any trouble.”

“Sorry,” she says, “I just... didn’t expect to meet with you. I thought an assistant would take my statement, or something.”

The Director purses her lips, and looks at her with mournful eyes. “We took Hawks in when he was no more than a toddler,” she tells her, voice heavy with nostalgic grief. “I helped raise him. So of course, I am doing everything in my power to find him.” She reaches forward, takes Koharu's hand in his own, like a man begging for a pardon. “So please, tell me, do you remember anything from that day that could help us find him?”

She remembers I’m not allowed to go to the hospital.

She remembers the way Hawks cowered from her raised hand.

She remembers his heartbeat.

“No,” she tells him, “Nothing.”

~~~~~

Weeks pass. The Commission doesn’t reach out to her again. She breathes a sigh of relief and puts the whole business out of her mind. (Every night she lies awake and hopes that Hawks isn’t found.)

The next time she sees Hawks, he’s on the news.

It was after her shift. For the first time in weeks, she’d agreed to join the rest of her squad at a local bar for some beers. The night had been going better than she expected, at least, until the bulletin happened.

“Breaking News,” The anchor said, nervous voice a poor attempt at remaining neutral, “Former Number Two Hero Hawks has teamed up with the League of Villains in an ongoing heist.” Gasps filled the bar, including Koharu’s own. Someone turned off the music, with the report acting as their only soundtrack. They cut to video of the attack. It was blurry, taken on a phone by someone who absolutely should have been running away, but that is not why Koharu nearly doesn’t recognize him.

Hawks is different. Feathers sprout from his hair and trail down to the nape of his neck. His hands are uncovered, and spout deadly claws. He’s bare-foot, so she can see just how inhuman his legs are, clearly meant to perch and kill. She’s certain the talons on them are at least the size of her hand.

Despite all this, the strangest sight is his expression. Koharu had seen Hawks smile. Honestly, between the TV interviews and billboard ads, it was hard not to. Hawks was known for lighting up the room, making girls literally scream with his dashing looks. Hawks’s smile is like the sunset, constant yet endlessly alluring.

But Koharu realizes, as she watches him grin as he carries the scarred villain from a burning roof, she has never seen Hawks happy until just this moment.

The people in the bar are screaming with anger and betrayal. Someone throws a beer bottle and it shatters against the TV.

On screen, Hawks croons, and nuzzles his cheek with the man he’s carrying, and something in Koharu’s chest shatters.

Tears drip down her cheeks, and though she is not the only one crying, she is alone in her sobs of joy.

“Fly,” she whispers, words trampled by the jeers and wails of the crowd. “Go far from this place.”

And though he cannot hear her, Hawks sails away, far out of reach.

She does not need to see his heart to know it beats free.

#dabihawks #bnha #my hero academia #bnha hawks #mha #bnha dabi #bnha fanfic #boku no hero academia #hotwings #my bnha fanfic #My writing #the truth series #my fanfic

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 4 years

Note

Hey Lightning, I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. One take that seems to keep returning every once in a while is the "Allura fell for Lotor only after he revealed his Altean heritage," but I know u and others have disproven this many times, which does reassure me. While I love Allura, I definitely think one of her weaknesses was her devotion to Altea and singing Alfor's praises, which sometimes became too much. At the same time, it bothers me when I see some ppl (1/?)

Continuing anon message: “ say that she thought Alteans were superior to all other races, and that when the colony plot twist happened, she became repulsed by Lotor's Galra side, which is why she rejected him. For them, that's why she forced violent memories onto an uncorrupted Zarkon, but somehow "saw the good/redeemed" Honerva, the Altean. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but for me, it just didn't make sense that Allura suddenly had a change of heart considering for most of s8, she was angry and dead set on going after Honerva. Even with that, I think to a lot of her fans, s8 made Allura so ooc that she became unrecognizable, which hurt to watch. I guess for me it's hard seeing antis and people who don't like her claim that that's just how she is and has always been. Haha sorry for rambling, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, since your arguments ease my mind on a lot of things when it comes to Allura :)”

Hi, anon. Wow, thanks for your extended note! I don’t know anywhere in canon that Allura champions Alteans as a superior race. The definition of racial supremacy is a belief that inherent genetic differences between races determine cultural or individual achievement, with social/governmental policies championing intolerance of other races. To get Allura to fit into such a label:

1. A viewer has to ignore or undermine all the evidence available about who the main-universe Alteans really were before main-universe Zarkon’s massacre of them.

2. A viewer has to ignore or undermine how Allura actually responds to a variety of different races in the show, including her own.

So let’s start with issue one. To support an “Allura was a racial supremacist” opinion, a lot of antis (and even non-militant, average viewers) are favorable to the opinion that Alteans as a group, including Alfor, were actually evil and violent colonizer elitists before Galrans killed them off. In other words, they question Altean victimhood, and this allows the militant antis to poison and undermine scenes of a woman mourning her home and her beloved family. And it just gets to be a really unsettling conversation, to listen to someone actually try to justify genocide. They’ll also have suspicions that all of our foundational backstory in the s3 finale was just “cleansed” propaganda from Coran. So if antis can undermine Allura’s entire race and family as corrupt, then they can intentionally undermine any of her canonical statements about or efforts toward peace. Which is hilarious, because this racist tactic applied to Allura is actually what a lot of antis accuse Allura of doing with Lotor.

For the record, I don’t think the show production team actually intended the subliminal messaging/cognitive dissonance that I’m about to discuss. The people who designed and developed this show are fans of robot kitties and aren’t PhDs in social issues. But I think there is a very serious issue about the portrayal of genocide victims that feeds into some very real problems in our world, especially regarding the concept of racial supremacy and conspiracy theories about genocide victims.

VLD tried to play with both genocide politics for edge™ points while ALSO playing with shatterglass theory (shatterglass meaning an AU where the heroes are villains and villains are heroes). Combining these two concepts into the same universe creates some incredibly disturbing subliminal messaging about Alteans that very closely mimics ongoing neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews. Nazis and other anti-Semitists justify their hatred of Jews by equating them as terrible villains out for world domination via some underhanded shadow control of the mass populace. It’s an incredibly malicious form of propaganda, because it works so terribly well. And what do you know, VLD plays right into this kind of propaganda. In the season 3 episode, Hole in the Sky, we’re faced with team Voltron confronting an Altean Empire that was actually evil and out for multiverse domination. And oh by the way, they’re using malicious shadow tech to control a mass populace.

It’s like someone on the production team read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then just copied/pasted that incredibly damaging and widely accepted conspiracy theory right onto Alteans for s3 funsies because edge content.

This is incredibly punishing, for the narrative to wave the carrot stick in front of genocide survivors that maybe some others survived—and then to suggest that Alteans were the evil ones all along. A shatterglass twist worked very well in Captain Marvel (2019) for a lot of reasons, for example, but it just doesn’t work well in the VLD universe given that the show explicitly portrays the genocide victims as evil and validates this concept. And this episode unfortunately feeds ongoing cognitive dissonance in antis that if AU Alteans could be so evil…how certain are you that they aren’t in the main universe too? On the reverse side, the main-universe goes out of its way to portray that not all Galrans are evil, and even that Galrans were the primary resistance (BOM). But in this singular episode, we see a united Altean empire. And the only Altean who moves to stand against it once the shine wears off…is Allura. There is no AU Altean actually shown in the Guns of Gamara. So Allura stands alone as an Altean against her own people.

For this reason, this episode doesn’t function very well as a shatterglass AU either, because the moral “flip” isn’t a mirror balance to main universe. The Alteans of the AU world appear as fully united in their evil plans. And then, no doubt, anti-alluras point out other quirky things about main-universe Alteans throughout the show—the violent language-learning system that scares Pidge, and the ancient Altean terraforming technology that Haggar activates, and the fact that Oriande is a hidden place that keeps out the less magical with a violent guardian. These details, when removed from main-universe world building, create a cognitive dissonance about whether main-universe Allura and Alteans were actually genuine in how they depicted respectful “peace and diplomacy.” So anti alluras who believe Allura was a racial supremacist really rely on this s3 episode and these details to uphold their conspiracy theory.

So let’s focus on Allura in this episode, because it says a lot about who she ultimately is as a person, and people have forgotten how she actually responded in this episode. Allura is unquestionably hopeful at the thought that her and Coran might not be the last Alteans alive. Pretty understandable. If I were the last human, I’d be darn excited to find out there’s more of me left, lol. So her experience as a genocide victim initially blinds her to the evilness of these Alteans. You can even see the ache on her face, of how badly she wants to believe their narrative of peace.

So Allura is initially star-struck that she and Coran are not the last Alteans, yes, and that somehow they’ve achieved a “peace.” She is also not afraid to admit that they would be valuable allies in the war:

And she’s not wrong there, considering that they have what appears to be extensive military resources and a robot force of their own. But she makes a critical mistake in assuming that “these are my people” means that they share main-universe cultural sentiments. The instant Allura hears Slav (so not someone of her own race) call these Alteans out as actually evil colonizers turning people into slaves, she begins to question the narrative she’s received.

In this instance, she actually affords the Alteans the same courtesy she afforded Lotor—the opportunity to deny the accusations.

But in the AU Altean’s case, they try to turn blame back on other parties. Allura listens to Keith when he grows increasingly fearful of what the Alteans might do to the others, and she tries to plead for actual peace:

And actually, this is a pretty interesting moment for Allura. She tries to salvage an alliance…until she realizes that their differences are irreconcilable, and that their definition of peace is inherently different from her own. This probably sets the stage for why Allura was so triggered by Lotor talking about peace while also killing people—because she’s seen people misappropriate that term before. And also probably informs why she trusts the information of both Keith and Krolia (both of whom have Galran blood, btw).

Ultimately, Allura turns against her own people. Violently:

When they get angry about her wanting actual peace, Allura draws a weapon against them and rejects them from her people. This mimics how she spends several seasons fighting an Altean Haggar/Honerva for her crimes, and how she turns against Lotor too.

So case in point here, Allura loves her people, obviously—but she also is holding them to moral standards regarding their behavior, which is something that a genuine racist doesn’t do. As a matter of fact, Lotor is the only person of Altean blood that Allura genuinely bonds with ever again in the series. She’s distant with Romelle, she’s distant with the s8 Alteans… In s8, Allura even says this about Luca, which refers back to her own mistakes she made with initially being star-struck by the s3 AU Alteans who came in “peace”:

Allura herself had been manipulated in s3, wanting so desperately to not be the last Altean alive that it initially blinded her to how Commander Hira was manipulating her. The plight of the s8 Alteans who are deceived by Honerva is inherently frustrating to her, because she can see herself in them.

Absolutely none of this correlates with Allura seeing or perpetuating Alteans as a superior race. At every turn, her own people continue to disappoint her, and she increasingly and progressively separates herself from them in hopelessness, because they’re so brainwashed that they can’t see they’re just cannon fodder for someone else’s military agendas. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a superior race, lol.

So let’s think about anti accusations here. Allura is a racial supremacist…but she’s arguing against her people who believe unquestionably in Honerva, another full Altean like herself? Nothing about that accusation makes sense with her actions.

The fact is, consistently from season 3 and onward, Allura is faced with her own people morally disappointing her.

The good news for the s8 Alteans like Tavo is that Allura is able to remove the dark entity Honerva is using to control him. Which allows other Alteans to “wake up” from being manipulated and try to make amends.

Regardless, Allura makes a very clear line that simply being Altean doesn’t make someone “right.” She sees herself fully at odds with her own people who are drawn in by Honerva’s lies. And she experienced well back in s2 (revealing Haggar as Honerva) and s3 (evil AU Alteans) that any given race, including her own, can house people who do bad things.

The fact is, she’s consistently and willingly drawn weapons against even her own people when they didn’t meet her moral expectations. So her response to Lotor isn’t particularly out of line there. She’s repulsed by a moral flaw.

And actually, Lotor himself wouldn’t have known this, but he very oddly echoed the AU Alteans by getting angry that Allura was angry over the means through which he was trying to get peace:

So Lotor actually reverts to the same logic of the AU Alteans—peace at any cost, just look at the results—

And keep in mind that the AU Alteans also manipulated Allura’s excitement about them, to get her to make the transreality comet usable so they could go into other realities. So Allura has felt betrayed and used before, by her own people.

So when she says this:

Yes, it’s a reference back to how Zarkon manipulated his friends in order to get access to the quintessence field, at the explicit cost of potentially killing his own people. But it’s not without understanding that yes, Alteans can be just as manipulative and betraying as Zarkon. Because she’s experienced it, again and again.

As a matter of fact, six out of the eight seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender feature villainous Alteans/Alteans on the wrong side of the war, and we continuously see Allura punished again and again for wishing that Alteans still lived.

No wonder she wanted to die.

This is something that I find uncomfortable about the narrative of the show. Previous iterations of Voltron did in fact have a “blood on everyone’s hands” perspective, such as within the ages 16+ Dynamic Comics. However, Arusians/Alteans in those old Voltron narratives were not victims of genocide. VLD turns Alteans into victims of the worst racial crime possible and then also consistently portrays them as inherently antagonistic to genuine peace efforts in some way, instead of focusing on the evil of the oppressors.

And this is such a double whammy for Lotor’s characters as well, given that he was abused by his parents and threatened with slavery via his Galran culture, and that he was half-Altean too trying to connect to his lost culture.

As a matter of fact, the larger show’s narrative interest in “victims as antagonists” makes it such that when we see victims try to enact actual justice, it feels almost jarring. Let’s look at that s8 Zarkon moment you brought up as an example, where Allura destroys his innocent perspective by showing him his evil deeds.

The s8 Zarkon is a weird topic because 1) This Zarkon actually doesn’t exist outside of Honerva’s mind, so how he has any kind of actual free-will is beyond me, unless someone wants to argue that Honerva actually cursed his true soul just as she cursed the other paladins. It’s hilarious too, because Honerva-mind-Zarkon also calls Honerva a psychopath, so I guess now Honerva is psychoanalyzing herself using her dead husband as the vehicle, while also discreetly helping the paladins to stop herself—

ANYWAY, using this Zarkon as a “proof” of Allura’s “racism” is also cherry picking in the weirdest of ways. Is she angry about his horrific and incalculable crimes, including even how he betrayed the OG paladins and ruined his own planet? Absolutely. Does she want him to be aware of his crimes instead of having to pretend like nothing’s wrong? Yes.

But notice here, this Zarkon actually shows remorse. He is actually crying over those memories and recognizing that he had done something wrong. And Allura can work with that. In fact, out of everyone standing around and doing nothing, it’s Allura who gives him a second chance and offers an alliance with Zarkon in order to stop a crazy Altean:

Keep in mind too, Honerva didn’t have memory loss at the end of s8. She knew exactly what she’d done and had given up and had to actually be convinced to do anything halfway constructive. That’s a very different circumstance than mind-Zarkon had, who jumped at the chance to do something to fix what all had happened, and gets even morally righteous about it, calling his own wife a psychopath, lol.

So generally, antis who believe Allura was a racial supremacist haven’t watched the show holistically. We see her hold the same standards to her own people as she expects out of others. This show would look incredibly different if Allura were a true racial supremacist.

Ah, you ask. Okay, so we’ve refuted the big pieces of “evidence” used to incriminate Allura. But what about all of those weird details about ancient Altean history? The violent language-learning program that scared Pidge? The violent terraforming tech that almost kills Voltron? The concept that Alfor tried to play “police” over the Galra and actually blew up their planet? The Alteans’ ongoing discussions of “peace and diplomacy” and spreading it throughout the universe while they happen to sit on a massive load of ancient power?

The s3 finale and other facts throughout the series very heavily smash the claim that our canon, in-universe Alteans were evil colonizers like the AU Alteans. The biggest piece of evidence to the contrary is that the Altea we know was one (1) planet. You counted right. One planet. Not an empire, but a singular planet. The s3 finale corroborates this, showing Altea as being largely isolationist from a military perspective while Daibazaal and Nalquod warred "for generations," right in front of their salad.

So some viewers would have you believe that Alteans were these big bad, intergalactic police state colonizers. But for all of its great power and knowledge, the singular planet of Altea didn't even canonically interfere in the wars of its own galaxy for actual millennia? And looking at the screenshots upon the stabilization of the alliance, Alfor is revealed to not have had experience with a neighboring culture. His face while exploring Gyrgan’s homeworld is an indication that it’s all rather new for him too. So again, we have evidence showing that Alteans were not colonizing or even functioning as a police state.

Note here that in the s3 flashbacks, the show confirms that it actually wasn’t just Alfor who suggested an alliance. All five leaders had common interests in protecting their galaxy from even worse threats, so all five came together at the same time. This is actually the first piece of evidence we have of Altea entering into some kind of intergalactic military agreement to stave off said worse threats.

And all of this is on top of a history where in s6, the Galran Archivist confirms that the Galran Empire had existed before Zarkon for 3,000 years, with times of “expansion.” It’s very easy to see that Blaytz’s people were actively fighting off Galran occupation of their homeworld within this past.

And that’s actually what I think makes Alfor and the OG paladins some pretty interesting characters. Here, we had colonizing Galran empire setting down its sword and accepting the value and space of its neighbors. Here, we had master alchemist Alfor giving up military power within their group by acknowledging Zarkon as the superior strategist. Here, we had Blaytz who had previously been battling Galran occupation…fully accepting the Galra?

So the OG Paladin backstory represents a pretty incredible alliance that removed a lot of intergalactic toxicity and helped heal broken bonds. But it required all five leaders to agree to that. Alfor did not throw his weight or power around within this. There were several checks and balances here.

But this backstory also helps to explain some of the quirky details about Alteans. Their planet existed within an active war zone, and it’s very likely that they’d had to fight off Galran occupation just as Blaytz’s people did. So the violent robot trainers and fear-based language learning systems start to make sense. Alteans weren’t just simpering people playing harps all day and eating grapes. They were actively prepared to defend their planet and their culture.

So when Allura says in season 1 that Alteans were “spreading diplomacy” across the universe, the only pieces of evidence we have of that is the OG paladins themselves, in which Alfor was a big part in creating that alliance—and then possibly the Alteans with the Balmerans, given their deep collective rituals with that planet while the Galra literally just came in and ripped the planet nearly to death. Allura tries to mimic what it means to accept and interact with a culture without changing it well in season 1, when she stumbles through trying to respect Arusian culture and its demands on its people. Also, there is a big fact that antis like to overlook:

The fact is, despite the untold numbers of civilizations we interact with across 76 episodes, no outside race remembers Alteans as evil colonizers. If they were really so big and bad, we would have heard it, like, “Man, yeah the Galrans are bad. Just as bad as those Alteans, back in the day.” Or something. But nope, nothing.

So I heavily question the history of Altea as an ancient colonizing race. If they were, then Altea wouldn't have just been a single planet with limited resources to fight wars in even its own galaxy. All of this supports the idea of Altean children being raised to fight--because they were preparing to defend themselves when/if diplomacy fails.... But the fact that the Balmerans see Alteans fondly and that literally every other race we run into is explicitly suspicious of Galrans and not at all of Alteans says something.

I think the only piece of evidence there might be for a genuinely colonizing ancient Altea is the use of terraforming technology, as mentioned in s4. Haggar discovers it and activates it to try and kill Voltron--and she nearly succeeds, because said tech destroys the entire crust of the planet to reform it. But you have to step back for a second and wonder--if ancient Alteans were so powerful, why was Alfor struggling so hard to even hold his own planet together in the midst of all these other cultures warring and larger threats? If they had this technology--and they did know about it because Allura recognized it right away as ancient technology--why the heck wouldn't they use it? Or were they using it, and it was to reform uninhabited planets to help sustain displaced peoples? Why is it, if Alteans were so terribly bad, we have no record across ANY of the many alien races being cautious of them? Even Galran Lieutenant Lahn snapped at Allura only because he was jealous of the general security she had back on, you guessed it, explicitly Altea. There's a lot of potential explanations for a positive use of terraforming technology, and the evidence against colonization and Altea committing omnicide against other races is incredibly more aligned with the other details in the canon.

And even Alfor’s creation of Voltron and the blowing up of Daibazaal—that’s something that antis like to position as evidence of his police-state ways to underhandedly control other cultures.

So let’s tackle those too while we’re at it.

Honestly, I know people like to hate on Alfor, and I do think his character picks up some misogynism just from the writers....But I don't think he was as much of a controller as people think he was. He was already in an alliance with four other leaders to try and stop bad things from happening in their galaxy. That meant they were expending incredible amounts of time and resources to accomplish that end—resources that were not renewable and may have been straining various planets. We know that he started building Voltron with Zarkon and everyone else's blessing because he called them "clean ships," but it's only after the rift creatures attack that suddenly Alfor's perception of Voltron moves from "clean energy" to "omg we need a more powerful weapon against this unknown enemy.”

So these are his intentions BEFORE he discovers rift creatures are a threat to the universe. While Zarkon states that these new ships are to be endlessly powerful for the Galra Empire, Alfor shames him by offering what his desire is for them:

After the rift creatures nearly destroy Daibazaal, intentions change.

So here, we see the game change in a BIG way. Voltron is not just about offering a more renewable way of sustaining peace-keeping efforts. Alfor is now adjusting and finishing these ships with the explicit knowledge that if they are not powerful enough, then Daibazaal and the Galran people will die. Alfor’s got a LOT of pressure on him now to deliver a mighty and powerful weapon to stop this new threat. So even his creation of Voltron as a superweapon involved using it to protect people from imminent death—not to police them.

And about Alfor blowing up Daibazaal—once again, it’s Alfor trying to clean up Honerva and Zarkon’s mess. Honerva had convinced Zarkon that the rift needed to be wider, and so Zarkon deceived the paladins into widening it.

So keep in mind here, at this point in time—the rift was destabilizing and eating an entire planet. The entire universe was now at stake. Alfor had to choose between a bad fix and an even worse option of allowing everyone to die, but he very clearly evacuated people before destroying Daibazaal, as part of his promise to keep Galrans safe. So that no one would have to die.

And as a matter of fact—about that terraforming technology. How sure are you that Alfor didn’t intend to use it to build Galrans a new home? It’s entirely within the realm of acceptable conjecture that he allowed for the existence of that technology because it could restore what had been lost.

And here’s where the story gets really screwy and feeds into some anti hate. Because when Zarkon wakes up as a zombie, he desires more quintessence as zombies do.

So he’s pissed that Alfor just cut off his gateway, and he manipulates his people:

And it’s here where we get the idea that Alfor was an evil controller. The idea came from Zarkon, who—we can look around pretty easily and see that he was not a man of honor, ultimately. Even if you chose to not believe the s3 finale flashbacks as being objective, there’s something wrong with Zarkon. (It’s clear that the show thought using Coran was a smart way to shell off massive amounts of info, because clearly if this were truly in Coran’s perspective, we would NOT have had intimate looks into Zarkon and Honerva’s bedroom as Zarkon is tending to her, like omg.) Numerous sources, histories, and cultures outside of Coran confirm that Zarkon hit a point of no return on the evil scale, and that he projected his own blame for Daibazaal’s destabilization onto Alfor in order to raise up his new regime in the name of Quintessence™.

So at the end of the day, even Alfor was a victim. But yet somehow, various antis choose to believe Zarkon’s victim-punishing narrative because said antis can’t or else refuse to connect one scene to another since it undermines their justifications for why they can hate on Allura. And that’s not so much an issue with the story itself as it is just poor critical analysis or malicious weaponization of content against other fans.

Now, at this point, we’ve talked about Allura and we’ve talked about Altean history. I have numerous other posts about Allura’s interactions with other races and Galrans and overcoming trauma to give the entire universe a second chance. So if there is anything in this show that suggests Alteans were in any way a superior race, then it’s probably within the show’s own worldbuilding. The show contradicts its own definitions of what quintessence even is by suggesting Alteans have “bluer/purer quintessence” in order to justify why Lotor would even be trying to sacrifice them for anything. The show-championed concept that Alteans have a bluer, purer life force above all other people, and that only Altean energy could interface with the fabric of space-time. Now, this is a problem in the later seasons’ world building itself. And you know who wrote that in? The production team. So once again, we do have racial issues in this show, in ways that shows like Star Wars desperately try avoid by showing racial diversity in who has Midi-chlorians.

That said, I’m not a perfectly woke storyteller either. I think every story and show is going to have something problematic™, but with VLD it’s very clear that its disrespectful handling of genocide politics and shatterglass conspiracy theories, on top of its weird master race angle created the perfect storm. These mishandled and quirky details have created a cognitive dissonance with the provided narrative, resulting in some people in the anti fandoms to champion what aligns very closely to actual neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews, who according to them are not victims but instead the true perpetrators of all bad things. For the sake of the antis, I’m pretty sure they’re not intentionally looking at VLD this way and are probably just looking for any easily graspable reason to hate on Allura for interfering with their ship or something.

But this kind of subliminal propaganda that undermines victims, and the effect it has had on fandom morality politics, is deeply concerning to me. I really wish that we’d had an opportunity to respectfully and critically discuss this with the production team of the show, because a Y7-FV show about “strength in unity” should NOT result in us needing to have a conversation about people walking away with neo-Nazi-ish propaganda sentiments against genocide survivors. Like. Clearly, VLD is fictional, but it’s feeding into a real-life beast that it does NOT need to feed. And it’s keeping alive ongoing conspiracy narratives against some of our most vulnerable populations on the planet.

So, we need better stories. We need a production team that, if they’re going to get paid to do something involving portrayals of genocide and politics, that they need to do their research on those topics. Nobody is going to be perfect with a creation, but VLD validated some very damaging things—and it ALL is something that could have been fixable. I think it would have been incredibly validating to hear the production talk about and accept that these were issues that cropped up unintentionally, and to hear them confirm that these issues are not the sorts of things that VLD was supposed to champion.

The greatest tragedy of all of this is the potential that this show had to really champion some great and validating messages, and the potential that we as a fandom had to come together and do something that fandom was meant to do—which was celebrate the things we love. Because that’s why we’re all here. That’s why this crazy tumblr of mine even exists. It was supposed to celebrate things.

For that reason, I’m going to end this here. I’ve written several responses now as to my thoughts on the inappropriate narrative lens of the show, its contradictory and damaging worldbuilding about the purest race, and how it champions demonizing or punishing genocide survivors again and again. Within all of that, I’ve talked at length about Allura’s character and behavior over 8 seasons and how she built even empathetic connections with militant Galrans like Commander Lahn. In fact even her own homesickness is how she emotionally connects with Lahn, because she understands that desire to call something one’s own. To have a home. A family.

I now really would like to get back to writing stories that I find meaningful to me using these characters and these worlds—and trying to find the hope in all of this darkness, haha. And maybe with any luck, I can hope to do VLD some justice, knowing that I am still on a learning journey as well.

But I appreciate your note, and I hope this very extensive response helps to settle your questions and concerns once and for all regarding VLD Allura. If you should have any remaining questions, please feel free to reach out via a private message to discuss. Thank you!

#Volron #VLD #Allura #VLD Critical #Alfor #Zarkon #Honerva #Lotor #I hope this helps explain my perspective #I think this might have to be my last refutation to the Allura as racist/racist supremacist conspiracy theory #at a certain point #people either watch the show holistically or they don't #you can't convince an anti #so this meta will probably not help an anti #but if you're sitting on the fence and felt drawn in by anti propaganda #then I hope that maybe this post provides an alternate perspective #and one that tries to be more holistically fair to all 8 seasons of the show #and to the intentions and general oversights that can occur during production #Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone likes or dislikes Allura as a fictional character #we need better entertainment that can handle these hard topics and handle them well #And we also need a fandom who's willing to look at all of the information and not weaponize it to specifically demonize and silence others #Maybe a family TV show shouldn't be appropriating conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #real-world fans are incredibly vulnerable to such conspiracy theories #and it creates a lot of real-world strife as a result

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mulderspice · 5 years

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have you ever watched an episode of the Emmy award winning sci-fi drama, The X Files? Maybe you’ve read my original post and yet you’re still wondering where the hell Fox Mulder got all those strands of hair on his jumbo gigantic head. I am back and here to help you find the answers to some of your burning questions; as we celebrate the hard work and triumphs of the hair and makeup department on the Fox Lot and team up with my big huge brain and my New York State Cosmetology license to give the people what they want once again: another top ten guide to Mulder’s fucking hair..

upon making this post a second time (rip 😔), I realized that just about every episode (yes, every. single. one. even the ones without Mulder and the latest season where he has to share headspace with [redacted]) has its own important and iconic hair looks... You may recognize that some of these are slightly repeated from the last post but that’s ok! What I'm here to do is enforce! So lets get started..

#10 s6:e21 Field Trip: Here again we begin our journey into cosmetic superstardom with a personal favorite of mine. Mulder rolling with the times by getting a haircut fresh off the FTF wave left our nation in fucking shambles. Can’t imagine going to see a major motion picture in theatres jam packed with Mulder’s most supreme hair looks only to come back to my tv screen to see it all gone away. For students reading this post for educational purposes, this caused a worldwide walkout on popular salon franchise Supercuts in the year 1998. However, a haircut didn’t necessarily mean Mulder forgot how to take care of his hair. The precision and placement as each strand of hair perfectly outlines his jumbo head is revolutionary and inspiring. Mushroom induced drug high? K. Lemme still grab my teasing comb and my hairspray and make sure I look presentable for when my partner walks into my apartment screaming abt “where's Mulder” and wanting “answers”. The answer is this: this look is about giving people like myself with big heads rights and looking fuckable while doing so. 10/10 for inspiring hope.

#9 s1:e9 Space: Imagine you’re a few episodes into a show, the core plot is developing right before your eyes and you’re beginning to get to know The X Files three main characters; Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Mulder Hair Strands #1-3. All is well except, you still have no clue how crucial, and critical Mulder Hair Strands 1-3 will become to the show and to your life and I am here to tell you that you are in for a very rude and bold awakening. This message goes out to all the haters and all the people who didn’t believe Mulder’s hair was valid prior to season 4. He is here to tell you he DID know how to use dry shampoo and even the occasional blow dry oil and you can suck a dick abt it. Bold of you to assume he wouldn’t pull the round brush and the biosilk out the drawer to impress a visit to fucking NASA. 10/10 for involving science.

#8 s4:e6 Sanguinarium: I sit here writing to you today as the song ‘Handmade Heaven’ comes on shuffle; strikingly fitting for this raw and ethereal image of straight up beauty and wonder and magic and heaven in hair. This special, freshly washed and air dried smells like strawberries and sandalwood and fuckability. The look reaches through your TV and wraps its hands around your neck and sucks the life right out of you. Are you gonna let it happen? You sure are. Lucky for you, I just so happened to be there when the angels hand sewed each strand of hair onto his head and here’s what they had to say about it: this is everything and more and the way Mulder has just washed his hair with fresh mountain water droplets hand collected like nothing else mattered. Put his clothes back on and went on his merry way. Can’t imagine being in Scully’s shoes ready to walk on in her partners room unannounced to go over serious case related matters and theories. Woulda went bonkers. This truly is a handmade heaven. Hand crafted by Mulder for Scully and for the good viewers of the globe. 10/10 for embracing me in its arms.

#7 s4:e3 Home: A look from one of primetime TV’s most notorious banned episodes. Viewer discretion IS advised not only for the horrifying and cringeworthy content displayed in this episode, but for also making it painfully blunt to the viewer that Mulder’s hair follicles are happier and healthier than anybody else's will ever be in their lifetime. In fact, I can feel my own hair falling out and being respawned onto HIS head as I type this and I’m sure you can too. The way the sun glistens off his golden brown strands makes me want to walk into oncoming traffic. You might also notice how effortless this look was, as it probably only took a quick run thru with his fingers, and Mulder’s passion and need to look sexy at any time of the day at all times. It’s obvious that this kind of thing comes naturally to him, which just comes off as insulting to men everywhere. 11/10 for striking fear into men’s hearts.

#6 s4:e20 Small Potatoes: Genuinely took every bone and nerve ending in my body to not put this look in the top 5 even though it so clearly deserves it. Here at mulderspice we believe in diversity, meaning it wouldn’t be right to make my top five greatest hairstyles ever produced on The X Files just of Mulder’s iconic and revolutionizing middle part (though really who is stopping me..). This screenshot in general has me up in arms at how perfectly the blue background matches his eyes, and how it accentuates his hydrated skin and lips. But you’re not here for that. It’s the hair particularly that really pulls the shot together, as Mulder took the time that morning to spray it with some tinted dry shampoo that most defiantly and absolutely smells like chocolate. This look feels like a warm hug on a frigid winter day. I feel EMBRACED and I feel CARED FOR thanks to the wonderful staff and team @ Mulder’s head and hair follicles. What the fuck could be better than this. 16/10 for making me feel some type of way.

#5 s4:e8 Tunguska: Currently you may not think anything of Krycek to the left of this image though ill have you know he plays an extremely vital part of this look and all the words I’m about to speak to you directly. So listen up: Krycek may have heroically slayed Mulder’s father in cold blooded and justifiable murder, but we thank him for this, as it caused Mulder to lash out in the best way possible: through looks. “Un-shun: Krycek do you think I’m good to bring my Redkin Rewind 6 styling paste with me or will the Russian TSA think of that as contraband? :Re-shun”. A sweaty, manly and highly illegal treck through a Russian testing facility and a stint in a violent foreign PRISON surely was not going to stop Mulder from keeping his hair properly hydrated, styled and parted. That’ll really ruffle Krycek’s feathers and make him feel sorry for what he did…. The sexiest way to avenge the death of your deadbeat father. 24/10 for you know why.

#4 s1:e6 Shadows: In the year 1993, Mulder steps onto the scene, young, fresh faced, bright eyed and ready to give men around the globe what they (so desperately) needed: the encouragement to care about their hair. Any backstreet boy you may know have this scene to thank directly, as this is what encouraged them to reproduce Mulder’s hair onto their own heads time and time again. What I would give to see with my own eyes Mulder length times width times height his head to equal this perfectly proportionate look of volume and sexy. And who can I write a warrant out to for allowing this shot to take place. Oh to be the various and expensive hair care products in Mulder’s bathroom …… 899/10 for starting a movement (-1 for making us do equations).

#3: s1:e10 Fallen Angel: The biggest regret I’ve ever had in my short little life was not adding this moment to the last post. And tumblr deleted it in order to give me this opportunity to present this to you today. By the way, that absolutely is in fact a choir of angels singing as you view this image. Go ahead and try to think of something on this earth that could be better than this tossled bed headed im-stressed-becos-my-partner-of-2-weeks-isn’t-seeing-the-big-picture-about-how-we’re-all-key-pawns-in-an-ongoing-government-conspiracy hairstyle hand crafted by Mulder all while holding his head in his hands hard at work trying to break through to the truth. Scully [insert photo of Scully with her eyes popping out of her head here] and I both wanna rip our own hair out and throw it in the garbage. 2000/10 for making our hearts ache..

#2: s4:e10 Paper Hearts: Behold- the image I’m slamming down on the desk at full force when I finally get myself a therapist. I need a licensed professional doctor to help me understand the various angles that this purposeful shot affects my life health and well being. In a paranoia induced out of body experience Mulder took his pinky finger and parted his hair down the middle, took a protractor to perfectly round the tendrils falling ever so gracefully on his forehead and ran out of his apartment and through the woods of DC. Doesn’t matter if he’s crazy? Doesn’t matter if its fuck all 4am? Who knows if the discoveries of this night is finally going to answer the heartbreaking questions regarding Mulder’s baby sister? Fuck it we’re just gonna make sure Scully has something to look forward to after being awoken yet again in the middle of the night and asked to come wrangle and control this stupid idiot. This just makes me unhinged. 50000/10 for waking up in the middle of the night and doing the most for us all.

#1 s4:e3 Teliko: This one will remain number one for as long as I shall live. I’ve dedicated my life to this cause and I’m ready to make you painfully aware of it. Grab a pen and paper and get ready to do some heavy math with me because this look right in front of your eyes is the equation to happiness and sexiness. Can barely find the words to describe to you how this picture makes me feel. Each strand of hair is personally reaching down and wrapping his head in one big giant hug of protection and solitude. Unbelievable that Scully didn’t head back to her hotel room and scream at the top of her lungs right after this. There’s no way she went about her day as normal without wanting to kick the shit out of him and then put him back together with soft feathery kisses. What you are witnessing here is the very turning point of the show where Scully looked into into the very center point of that part and said “guess I have no choice but to fall in love with him 🚶🏽‍♂️”. Chris Carter’s idealistic version of Mulder and the one we actually ended ups seeing as viewers were so drastically different that it’s blatantly clear that he had absolutely no idea the cultural implications that were about to rock the world to its core and tip it on its axis when David Duchovny showed up on set looking like this. I could write a thesis about this. I could conduct research and studies about this. I got kicked out of college because I cared more about this than I did actual schoolwork. I feel like I’m in a very sexy chokehold. Wish I could live forever in one little square pixel of this image. Nothing means more to me than this. 1000000/10 no further comments.

and the honorable mentions go to....

s8:e16 Three Words: Dead? Did you die? Did you die and miraculously defy god by rising from the dead and coming back to life? Just got home from the morgue? Think nothing is the same? Left guessing if you’re a soon to be 5 minute father? Did you just fucking die? He’s lost his family and his job and the world just went on without him like it was nobody’s business. Walked out of the morgue right to his apartment and what did he have left? His expensive array of hair styling and finishing products that’s what the fuck he had left. Being an all around reject from society didn’t at all stop him from taking his fingers and dipping it into that Big Sexy styling pomade and fluffing his head to high heavens. As a personal fuck you to god and to John Doggett too. He’ll never let you know the emotional hellstorm going on in his life in that moment but he WILL make it known to you that despite being 8 feet under ground for 6 months he’ll never give up on his hair. For the PEOPLE. Try and go through the nightmare of death and then rejected fatherhood and see if you come out of it with any hair at ALL. An itty bitty glimpse into what would have been Untitled Mulder Abduction Story (2001)....

I Want To Believe (2008): Here you will see the sluttiest moment in major motion picture history. Shh im not using this opportunity to show you this screenshot for the 800th time I’m trying to keep you educated. BREAKING NEWS; Man hiding in home office for 6 years fully off the grid has FULL head of hair and is getting regular sex *not clickbait*. So what if Mulder has gone fully unhinged and off the walls bonkers he’s also gone FULL slut and it shows in that sexy thick voluminous head of slut hair. If you ever for a second thought prior to seeing this movie for the first time that Mulder would show up a full on son-less wreck and a half think the fuck again babes. He’s managed to hold on to every single little strand ever grown on his head even well into his middle aged madness and its about time we give him the credit he deserves. (PS. Please know I wrote this entire spiel without even viewing the shot shown here. Its just permanently etched on the inside of my forehead so its there when my eyes roll back into my head.) For this we say…..; Whore rights.

s11:e3 Plus One: Incase you were unaware, I have been going through a very slow and painful process of erasing Season 11 from my brain completely. Its been a long road but its achievable and the end result will save me from a lot of future heartache and trauma. This however, is a moment I will cherish forever and though you may think its for the hot sex (which is like maybe 30% the case) its actually because it puts together everything I’ve ever loved and believed about the show in only a few thousand pixels. How old is Mulder here? 30? 31? Still has hair and still has an unbelievable amount of love to shower Scully in for as long as they both shall live (which lets face it, she deserves one million times over.) What this has taught me was to hang up my “Mulder deserved…” hat for good and just be thankful for what I’ve got. I ended up with no son or happy dreamy ending where Mulder gets to die with a family he’s never had in his life, but here we are left with the little things.. Like Mulder and Scully’s unconditional love and most importantly .. The hair on Mulder’s head. Its called growth and acceptance and I am learning it. Also I just wanted to show you what it would look like if you were like 57 and sexy and still had all ur hair. That’s it :-)

#and this one i SAVED!!!!! enjoy #here at mulderspice

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lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers · 4 years

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The Guardian earlier today released an article about why #DominicCummings has at no point trended on Twitter during this ongoing saga. They smugly said that it was just down to porn filters (which is also, apparently, why you have to type his full name in the search bar and it’s not suggested to you).

I am not convinced this is the full story.

For example, it has been a while since I have seen “Boris Johnson” on trending, but during that time, I have seen #Johnston #SackBoris #SackDomAndBoris and #BorisHasFailedTheNation.

Equally, the search used to suggest various misspellings, which now are mostly gone- the current one seems to be #DominicCumins, which is new.

For a while, #CumGate was allowed to trend, but that quickly disappeared being briefly replaced by #CumGates, and again, you have to type them both in in full to see them now.

I wonder if there is some sort of abuse of the reporting system going on, and that’s how they are getting some of these hashtags suppressed?

The Guardian article would consider me a conspiracy theorist, and it’s also true I am not an expert on twitter, but I would genuinely love to hear opinions and theories on this!

#uk politics #dominic cummings #twitter #twitter trends #twitter hashtags #twitter trending #twitter manipulation #manipulating twitter

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greyias · 4 years

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FIC: Smoke and Mirrors - Chapter 12

Title: Smoke and Mirrors Fandom: SWTOR Pairing: Theron Shan/f!Jedi Knight Rating: T Genre: Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn Synopsis: Something’s rotten on Carrick Station, and Theron won’t rest until he finds out what. But picking at the frayed threads of suspicion quickly unravels a conspiracy much larger than even the Republic’s top spy can handle on his own. (A mostly canon-compliant retelling of the Forged Alliances storyline, as seen through the eyes of Theron Shan.) Author’s Notes and Spoilers: See Chapter 1.

Chapter Index: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | Crossposted to AO3

Theron glared at the bright sign over the bar as another minute on the display’s minuscule chronometer ticked by without any sign of his asset. He checked the urge to let out an annoyed breath, and instead swirled around the contents of his glass to occupy his waiting time. The off brand whiskey from Soccoro was considerably cheaper than Whyren’s Reserve, but it still had the woody notes he enjoyed in the beverage.

The bartenders here on Carrick Station tended to water down drinks more than usual, although whether that was a request from Republic Command, or just a way to extend profits he didn’t know. However, it was still alcoholic, and right now that’s what mattered. Besides, a watered down drink suited him just fine at the moment. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be here, and he needed to keep up appearances on the off chance anyone was watching.

The likelihood of that was low considering he’d been careful to keep his suspicions of Darok to himself — unlike some people he could maintain a low profile. Not that Theron wouldn’t have relished the chance to openly glare at the bastard, but sometimes it was better to be subtle. Especially when it came to tailing and observing targets. He wasn’t sure what role Darok had played in the invasion of Tython, but he’d find that out soon enough.

Thoughts of the Jedi Temple in ruins inevitably led his mind astray, and he tried to flick the mental query about the status of the Grand Master to the back of his mind for what had to be the fifth time. He was pretty sure there would have been mention from his Knight Errant if she had seen any sign of Satele during the battle to retake the temple. If her reaction to the family resemblance was anything to judge by (not to mention the amount of times their names cropped up together in the dossier), they had to be at least familiar with each other. Or at least more so than the average Jedi was to the Grand Master. After all, her first reaction on seeing him was to latch onto the family resemblance.

Satele could take care of herself, Theron knew that. If she wasn’t on Tython at the time, then she was likely engaged in some important business elsewhere. It was inevitable that she would be briefed on what had happened at the temple and likely already be on her way back home. It didn’t make much sense to call in a professional sense, and he definitely wasn’t going to just ring her up to say hello.

He took another, very shallow sip of his whiskey and glanced at the chronometer again. Perhaps he’d been too subtle in his invitation to Highwind, and she hadn’t realized his comment about the drink was an excuse to talk to her away from Darok. She seemed fairly sharp, even for a Jedi. Hopefully she hadn’t decided to keep trying to press Darok on her painfully obvious suspicions. Theron frowned into his glass, wondering how he kept getting pulled into jobs with Jedi.

It certainly wasn’t the will of the Force. If the damn thing had ever given him any sort of favor he would have been on Korriban and Tython right alongside the little blonde with a lightsaber of his own, rather than stuck being the voice in her ear. His efforts may have been crucial to the overall success of the mission, but being cooped up in a room while someone else did the heavy lifting wasn’t his style.

While he preferred sneaking into the back door to kicking down the front, either of those options would at least have him in the middle of the action. It would have given him first-hand information on what had gone down at both locations, rather than him having to interpret the conversations Highwind’s earpiece had picked up.

Information was key. And honestly, it was of utmost importance to the ongoing war efforts to know the status and whereabouts of the members of the Jedi Council, especially the Grand Master. And damn it, if something had happened to her, someone was going to have to tell Jace. Not that the two were an item anymore, but still. That wasn’t the sort of thing you just heard in a report.

Not that Theron was volunteering for that thankless task.

And since he had no idea whether the Hero of Tython was going to grace him with her presence, he could at least kill some time and answer that stupid question nagging at him. Without another thought about it, he pulled out his holo and keyed in Satele’s private frequency. She had given it to him after the Duros mission, for whatever reason he still couldn’t figure out. He’d committed it to memory immediately and destroyed the physical copy, as a direct line to the head of the Jedi Order was information that needed to be carefully controlled.

Almost immediately the other end picked up, and the fuzzy blue image of the Grand Master sprang up from the small device. He felt some of the tension in his shoulders ease a little at seeing her face frowning in confusion, even if the quality of the call obscured the finer details of her expression. Judging from the flickering image, she was quite a distance away.

“Theron,” she said in greeting, her tone measured and careful, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting a call.”

Maybe he should have led with something else, but apparently the small amount of whiskey had removed at least one brain-to-mouth filter. “I’m guessing you weren’t at the temple.”

“No,” she said, “I’m acting as an emissary to the Drayvos League.”

“Have you heard?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes briefly. Even over the call it was obviously she was trying to gather a measure of calm. “I felt Master Traless’s passing through the Force, and the rest… I felt them too.”

He probably should have passed along something along the lines of condolences, but those words stuck in his throat. He washed that away with another sip of whiskey, trying to control his expression as the woman on the other end of the holocall seemed to collect herself.

“We got it back,” he managed to get out tersely. “I’m sorry it wasn’t soon enough.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I’m sure you all did the best you could.”

Maybe it was just that small glimpse of vulnerability that she let slip through, but his ironclad desire to maintain professional distance slipped away, and suddenly he wasn’t just another SIS agent confirming the security of high ranking Republic personnel. For a moment, they were almost something resembling mother and son. Maybe not like a normal family, but still close enough that he wanted… he didn’t know. To offer reassurance? Let her know he was going to find the truth? To ask for her help? No. That was crazy. Not only had the Council not been informed of the Korriban op beforehand (that would be a fun call for Jace to have), but this wasn’t a secure line. There would be too much for him to explain. And honestly, would she even believe his crazed conspiracy theories?

No. Of course she wouldn’t.

And even if she did, there were too many potential ears listening in around them. Before talking about anything classified he’d have to determine who around him was actually drunk and who was listening. What she needed from him was the actual truth on what had happened today. What she deserved was the real reason that her home had been ransacked, and why her people had been killed.

“I just thought you should know,” he finally said.

It was almost too hard to tell over the weak connection of the call, but he thought he saw the normally composed expression soften just a faction. It was probably his imagination. “I’m glad you called.”

“Right,” he said awkwardly. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “My mind is a little more at ease now.”

Her attention was pulled away as two officers walked into view of the call. He saw her eyes flick over her shoulder, possibly sensing their approach. Without saying anything to him she turned to address them. Something about the way the two held themselves, glancing at the private communication their commander was viewing struck Theron as odd, and he tried to suppress a frown.

Satele glanced back at him, already reaching for the disconnect button. “I’m sorry, Agent, but something has come up. Besides, it appears that you have company.”

He didn’t break from his position, but flicked his eyes over towards the bar to see one blonde Jedi Master approaching him, obvious curiosity on her face. He gave Satele a curt nod of acknowledgement, and she ended the call before anything else could be said.

“That was Grand Master Satele, wasn’t it?” Highwind asked as she approached.

He gave her a small measure of his usual annoyance for someone so casually broadcasting that sort of thing, which apparently was a little too subtle for the Jedi to catch as she just kept staring at the space where the Grand Master’s image had been a few moments before. Like spies, a lot of Jedi were fairly guarded when it came to their inner-thoughts. This one apparently was a bit of an exception, because Highwind was fairly obviously broadcasting concern.

“Yeah, that was her,” he said. “She wasn’t anywhere near Tython.”

“Theron, I’m sorry,” her voice dropped, the note of contrition contained within entirely baffling, “I should have let you know that I didn’t find any evidence of her while I was there.”

“You had other things on your mind,” he said, trying to impart a note of finality into his voice. “Like not dying on the other end of a lightsaber.”

“Still, she’s your—“

“We’re not that close,” he interrupted, and straightened up in his chair so he could catch her eye. “Your Order’s pretty particular about that point.”

“I didn’t mean to offend,” she said quietly. “If I have, I apologize.”

“Forget it,” he muttered, “it doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t have your particular talent as it turns out.”

She gazed at him curiously, cocking her heading to the side as if trying to slot in a new piece she had just found to a puzzle she had been working on. It made him feel itchy and uncomfortable, and he immediately looked into the depths of his glass of whiskey. He swirled the liquid around, watching as the sugars of the alcohol clung to the sides and slowly worked their way down the side of the glass.

“I’m going to guess she gave—“

“I’ve got a tab open at the bar,” he interrupted the query before she could even finish, “go order something.”

“I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”

“Get a drink,” he said insistently. “Before you start getting any looks standing there looking like a Jedi.”

“I am a Jedi,” she reminded him.

He motioned to the bar. “So go get a refreshment. I assume your lot is still allowed to do that aren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said tersely.

“Then help yourself. I’m not going anywhere.”

She frowned ever so slightly at the dismissal, before turning on her heel and approaching the bar. He watched her surreptitiously, pretending he was more interested in the glass in his hand. Whatever she was saying seemed to confuse the server for a few moments, before he apparently took in her attire completely. The dramatic eye roll was obvious even from this far away, and he had to go into the back before he returned with a tall mug of a steaming beverage, and handed it over

She walked back, shoulders back, and mug tightly gripped between both of her hands to keep any of the liquid from spilling. He expected to see the strings of some sort of tea bag over the side of the mug, but as she took the chair opposite to him, he could just make out the telltale aroma and dark brown color of caf.

Interesting choice.

“I have a drink,” she said with finality.

“That’s caffa,” he said blandly. “That’s not a drink. There’s no alcohol in it.”

“It’s liquid and you drink it,” she corrected primly, “therefore, it’s a drink.”

“Well, if you want to be literal, sure.”

“Besides, I try not to drink alcohol.”

He almost, almost asked what she meant by “try”, but stopped himself at the last moment. They were already getting sidetracked to his reason for coming here.

“I apologize if I was prying,” she said carefully. “I did not mean to speak out of turn on what might be a difficult subject.”

“It’s not difficult,” he said flatly. “It’s just a closed one. People in my line of work don’t really discuss that sort of thing.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, and took a sip from her mug as if to busy herself. It wasn’t usually the Jedi way to act so… casual around others. If that was the right word.

The normalcy of the whole act caught him a little off guard, and he found himself adding without really thinking, “Everything worked out for the best, even if it’s different than what I first thought. I’m good at what I do.”

“If you ask me, I think you turned out pretty well,” she said, glancing up from her mug of caf, a small smile playing across her face.

His brain frizted out for a moment as he tried to interpret that statement. From anyone else he would have assumed they were trying to flirt with him. Considering her background, he couldn’t completely dismiss the fact that she was likely oblivious to that sort of thing. He decided to chalk it up to that so he could tackle the subject at hand. “Well, if that’s so, hopefully you’ll keep listening. At least, as long as you have a drink in hand.”

“Well, you were quite insistent that I grab one.”

He probably should have apologized for his brusqueness earlier, but he just shrugged. “I like to keep up appearances.”

“For the bartender?” She took a casual sip from the mug, but the look she shot him over the rim was contemplative, not confused. “Or are you concerned about other eyes?”

“You catch on quick.”

“You are not the first SIS agent I’ve had a meeting with under false pretenses.”

“Is it really a false pretense if we already made the arrangements before there was a need for one?” he shot back. “Besides, I bought you that drink, as promised.”

“So you did, and I still have a way left to go in this mug.” She leaned back in the seat, cupping the beverage between both of her hands. “Was there more you wanted to speak about, other than just the merits of what constitutes a ‘drink’?”

Touché. Apparently she knew how to duel with something other than just lightsabers. His first instinct was to return fire with a sarcastic remark, but he caught himself. While not normally one to back down from a challenge, there was a bigger issue here. Something was rotten on Carrick Station, and he needed to get to the bottom of it.

He ran a finger along the rim of his glass, looking at the Jedi’s guarded expression. Any lingering doubts on her being part of Darok’s scheme had been pretty thoroughly put to rest by her practically trying to interrogate him on the spot. The amount of planning and forethought to somehow arrange that for Theron’s benefit was, quite frankly, paranoid. More paranoid than the spy’s current line of thinking. Also, Highwind’s record spoke for itself. Not to mention her performance on both of the missions. There was no telling what was going on, but if anyone could handle the unknown it was the woman in front of him. It would be stupid for him not to recruit her into this.

“This conversation is off the books,” he finally said. “Does that bother you?”

“I had a feeling it might be,” she returned. “Is this in regards to what I’m thinking?”

“It might be.” Theron sat his drink down and folded his hands together. “I don’t need the Force to do simple math. Things add up here. Something’s off.”

She nodded. “The timing of both attacks was too convenient.”

“That’s not all.” He frowned, doing quick calculations on how much of his hand he should play, and decided it would be beneficial to put most of his cards on the table. “Darok and these ops… there’s something being buried here.”

She pursed her lips. “Do you remember the Sith I spoke of? The one on the holo?”

“Oh, you mean the one our buddy Darok didn’t want you talking about?”

“You noticed that too?” She tapped the side of her mug, but he couldn’t tell if the comment was genuine or sarcastic.

“I’m surprised you did with the way you kept going on.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I was trying to properly debrief after a mission. No one wanted to listen to me.”

“I was listening,” Theron said, catching her eye. “I’ve been listening to you all day.”

She fixed him with a look. “Why did you not say anything?”

“Because there’s this thing called subtlety,” he said, “you ever heard of it?”

Her nostrils flared as she snorted out a breath. “Of course I know what subtlety is. What am I supposed to do? Use some sort of secret spy signal to let you know I want to talk?”

He stared at her for several beats, hopefully letting the ridiculousness of that statement sink in. “Yeah, of course you are. It looks like this.”

He used his thumb to trace the shell of his ear in an exaggerated gesture, like some sort of cliché spy from a holodrama. She narrowed her eyes, before quickly mimicking the motion. “Like that?”

Stars. She was just so… so… so… Whatever. It didn’t matter what she was. “Yeah. That’s the secret SIS signal for needing to pass along sensitive intel while someone else is listening in.”

“Really?” She tilted her head at him.

Okay, he was going to have to work on broadcasting his sarcasm more clearly. Also, they didn’t have time for this. So he returned to the more important subject at hand. “What did the Sith say?”

“Not much.” Highwind stared into the depths of her mug. “He spoke of a package that had been secured. To a ‘Lord Goh’, I presume that was the Sith I fought in the library. I could not determine what the contents of said package were.”

“I guess they wouldn’t just let that slip,” Theron muttered annoyed, mostly to himself. “Might defeat the purpose of doing their raid.”

“I suppose so,” she allowed. “When the Sith realized I was not his compatriot, he said something odd.”

“Odd how?”

“That I was ‘running a little bit ahead of schedule’.”

“That’s… yes. That’s very odd,” Theron agreed. “Although maybe not so much if the timing wasn’t so much of a coincidence as we’re supposed to believe. Did he say anything else?”

She was quiet for a moment, still staring into the contents of her mug. “When I pressed him on the reason for the attack, he said it was for ‘the vindication of history’. I don’t know what he meant by that… but I really don’t like the sound of it.”

Theron nodded, trying to fit the new snatches of information into the odd picture that was starting to form in his head. There were still too many gaps in the larger picture. He’d have to file them away for now.

“What are we going to do?”

“We?” Theron quirked a brow. “So I take it that means that you don’t want to just hang up that shiny new medal of yours and head on home?”

Her head snapped up at the challenge, for a moment the perfect Jedi calm broken. The brightly colored lights of the cantina threw a strange wash on everything, but the defiant blue of her eyes still shone through clearly. It made for a very striking image. “A Jedi does not have need for bloodstained trinkets.“

He raised his brows. “I’ve seen some that do. Wasn’t sure if you were one of them.”

“I have enough medals,” she leaned forward, meeting his stare. “If you say something is being buried, I would like to know what that is.”

"It’s going to require some digging.”

“The truth usually does,” she said. “I’m out of shovels, but I’ve got a Seeker Droid on my ship that’s really good at digging up things.“

“That might be a bit overkill right now.” Not to mention way too literal. “I think we need to go for a more subtle approach.”

“If that’s what you think.” She leaned back against the cushion of the chair, eyeing him curiously. “What exactly is your line of thought?”

“Well, hypothetically speaking of course, I’d start by making a new friend,” he said casually, “someone I might be able to count on.”

“Friends are a good thing to have.”

“I’m thinking of a really good friend, one who’d be willing to face down the Emperor himself if it came to it,” he said, watching her carefully. “You know of anyone like that?”

At the mention of the Emperor, something flashed across her expression, so quick he almost missed it. Brows drawn together in a deep frown, and something darker in the eyes, but it was gone too fast to tell exactly what had been there.

“I might know of someone,” she said.

“Yes, well, then hypothetically after we exchanged friendship bracelets, I’d go off on my own.”

“That’s not very nice after making a friend.”

“My friend’s a busy lady. I wouldn’t want to bother her until I found out everything I could about Darok and the Sith Lord she talked to.”

“I thought you said you needed help.”

“Hypothetical help, but only after I checked and double-checked all my information and found all the connections.”

“This is a lot of hypotheticals,” she grumbled into her mug.

He couldn’t check the grin at her repressed annoyance. “I like my hypothetical proof.”

“Your new friend must be a very understanding and patient person.”

“I wouldn’t know, I just met her.”

“I do. She has the patience of a Jedi.”

“Fancy that,” he tossed back. “But I might give her a call—”

“Good, she was starting to get lonely drowning in this sea of hypothesis.”

“I’ll toss her a hypothetical lifeline.”

“My hypothetical hero.”

“And then after she stopped being hypothetically sarcastic, I’d see if she’d be ready to get to the bottom of all of this.”

“She’s ready now.” Highwind twisted the mug in her hands.

“That’s not being very patient,” he admonished lightly. Despite the gravity of the situation he had to hold back a laugh at the petulant look on her face. “And I’m good, Master Highwind, but I’m not good enough to be able to do all that without leaving this seat.”

“I thought you said we were friends,” she shot back.

“Hypoth—”

“Don’t even think about finishing that word,” she muttered dangerously.

“Fine, we’re ‘friends’.”

“Then drop the formalities, unless you want me to call you ‘Agent Shan’ from here on out.”

She made sure to say the last part a few decibels louder than the rest of the sentence. Luckily the cantina was pretty much deserted at this time of day, but he fixed her with a look all the same for attempting to attract attention.

“Now, Grey,” he lowered his voice in an attempt to get the conversation back under control, “if you’re annoyed you don’t need to shout.”

“I’m not annoyed,” she said, “but I don’t enjoy speaking in vague riddles either.”

“I thought you Jedi loved that.”

Highwind—no, Grey—shot him a look, and he was pretty sure that whatever curiosity she had held for him at the beginning of the conversation had been beaten out by irritation at this point. “It’s been a long, very unexpected day, Theron.”

“Okay, that’s probably fair.” The image of that unguarded moment he’d caught a glimpse of flashed in his mind. He could still see that glimmer on her cheeks, and the way she’d tried to dash them away before anyone else could see. The tiniest hints of something that could have been a thread of guilt wound through his chest and he busied himself with his glass of whiskey. “You did do all the heavy lifting.”

“I had help,” she corrected, and the curious quality of steel and compassion drew his gaze up to see her staring at him resolutely, “and I appreciate that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

A tiny flare of warmth lit up in his gut, warring with that thread of guilt. He had no idea how to reconcile either of those conflicting feelings, which made it difficult to form a proper response. “I was just doing my job.”

“And it was a good one, judging by the fact that I’m here.” That really shouldn’t have made the little flare heat up into a small fire, but for some stupid reason it did. At least it burned away some of the guilt. “Even without the friendship bracelet, that goes both ways.”

“I don’t follow.”

“If this is off the books,” she leaned forward, voice dropping further, “then you’re going to need backup.”

“I work best alone.”

“That’s not how being ‘friends’ works.”

“I’ll call you once I know something,” he clarified, “but I can sneak around better without you waving your lightsaber for everyone to see.”

“I can always not pull it out.”

“The whole armor and cape getup is kind of a dead giveaway too.” He waved his hand at her attire vaguely. “Besides, I’m just going to do some low-key surveillance and scour the HoloNet. You’d get bored very quick.”

“I can do more than just wave around a lightsaber,” she pointed out.

“I’m sure you’re very talented,” he took a sip of his whiskey, “but not as much as me when it comes to my job.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not overconfident. Nothing bad has ever come from that.”

“Is that sarcasm I detect, Master Jedi? Very unbecoming.”

She pursed her lips together, cheeks turning the slightest shade of red, but didn’t drop that intense gaze. “If you run into trouble, what happens?”

“I’m not,” he said finitely, setting his glass down on the table and rising to his feet. “But I promise to write, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s not what I said—“

“Look, it’s been fun chatting, but I’ve got a shuttle to catch.”

“Aren’t you going to finish your drink?” She pointed to the half-consumed glass of whiskey. A bead of sweat trickled down the side, pooling on the table below it. “Such a waste. The bartender will talk.”

Theron slid a glance to the bartender, who was busy wiping down the bar, then back at the Jedi staring at him placidly. He met her gaze evenly, and grabbed the glass and tossed back the entire contents in one smooth motion. To his credit, he didn’t choke even as the alcohol burned a trail all the way down his throat.

She shrugged at him lightly, and lifted her mug up as if in cheers. “Have a good flight, Theron.”

“See you around,” he tossed back, before slipping away.

If his ears weren’t deceiving him, he thought he might have heard a quiet huff of laughter as he walked away, the whiskey still burning in his throat, and the odd warmth still bubbling in his gut.

#swtor fanfiction #theron shan x jedi knight #Theron Shan #Female Jedi Knight/Hero of Tython #oc: greyias highwind #otp: adorkable #smoke and mirrors #SoR Fic O Doom #swtor #fanfic #greyfic

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years

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Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful

Here’s how to pull yourself out of despair and live your life

Tara Haelle

Aug 16·13 min read

https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c

Itwas the end of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. That’s almost exactly what I told my psychiatrist at my March 16 appointment, a few days after our children’s school district extended spring break because of the coronavirus. I said the same at my April 27 appointment, several weeks after our state’s stay-at-home order.

Yes, it was exhausting having a kindergartener and fourth grader doing impromptu distance learning while I was barely keeping up with work. And it was frustrating to be stuck home nonstop, scrambling to get in grocery delivery orders before slots filled up, and tracking down toilet paper. But I was still doing well because I thrive in high-stress emergency situations. It’s exhilarating for my ADHD brain. As just one example, when my husband and I were stranded in Peru during an 8.0-magnitude earthquake that killed thousands, we walked around with a first aid kit helping who we could and tracking down water and food. Then I went out with my camera to document the devastation as a photojournalist and interview Peruvians in my broken Spanish for my hometown paper.

Now we were in a pandemic, and I’m a science journalist who has written about infectious disease and medical research for nearly a decade. I was on fire, cranking out stories, explaining epidemiological concepts in my social networks, trying to help everyone around me make sense of the frightening circumstances of a pandemic and the anxiety surrounding the virus.

I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does. But even knowing I would eventually crash, I didn’t appreciate how hard the crash would be, or how long it would last, or how hard it would be to try to get back up over and over again, or what getting up even looked like.

Psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer explains how anxiety masquerades as helpfulelemental.medium.com

How to Live When Your Mind Is Governed by Fear

In those early months, I, along with most of the rest of the country, was using “surge capacity” to operate, as Ann Masten, PhD, a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, calls it. Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.

“The pandemic has demonstrated both what we can do with surge capacity and the limits of surge capacity,” says Masten. When it’s depleted, it has to be renewed. But what happens when you struggle to renew it because the emergency phase has now become chronic?

By my May 26 psychiatrist appointment, I wasn’t doing so hot. I couldn’t get any work done. I’d grown sick of Zoom meetups. It was exhausting and impossible to think with the kids around all day. I felt trapped in a home that felt as much a prison as a haven. I tried to conjure the motivation to check email, outline a story, or review interview notes, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t make myself do anything — work, housework, exercise, play with the kids — for that whole week.

Or the next.

I know depression, but this wasn’t quite that. It was, as I’d soon describe in an emotional post in a social media group of professional colleagues, an “anxiety-tainted depression mixed with ennui that I can’t kick,” along with a complete inability to concentrate. I spoke with my therapist, tweaked medication dosages, went outside daily for fresh air and sunlight, tried to force myself to do some physical activity, and even gave myself permission to mope for a few weeks. We were in a pandemic, after all, and I had already accepted in March that life would not be “normal” for at least a year or two. But I still couldn’t work, couldn’t focus, hadn’t adjusted. Shouldn’t I be used to this by now?

“Why do you think you should be used to this by now? We’re all beginners at this,” Masten told me. “This is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s expecting a lot to think we’d be managing this really well.”

It wasn’t until my social media post elicited similar responses from dozens of high-achieving, competent, impressive women I professionally admire that I realized I wasn’t in the minority. My experience was a universal and deeply human one.

An unprecedented disaster

While the phrase “adjusting to the new normal” has been repeated endlessly since March, it’s easier said than done. How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the “new normal” is indefinite uncertainty?

“This is an unprecedented disaster for most of us that is profound in its impact on our daily lives,” says Masten. But it’s different from a hurricane or tornado where you can look outside and see the damage. The destruction is, for most people, invisible and ongoing. So many systems aren’t working as they normally do right now, which means radical shifts in work, school, and home life that almost none of us have experience with. Even those who have worked in disaster recovery or served in the military are facing a different kind of uncertainty right now.

Americans are faced with more risk than ever. Understanding how the brain navigates this new reality can build…elemental.medium.com

Life Is Now a Game of Risk. Here’s How Your Brain Is Processing It.

“I think we maybe underestimate how severe the adversity is and that people may be experiencing a normal reaction to a pretty severe and ongoing, unfolding, cascading disaster,” Masten says. “It’s important to recognize that it’s normal in a situation of great uncertainty and chronic stress to get exhausted and to feel ups and downs, to feel like you’re depleted or experience periods of burnout.”

Research on disaster and trauma focuses primarily on what’s helpful for people during the recovery period, but we’re not close to recovery yet. People can use their surge capacity for acute periods, but when dire circumstances drag on, Masten says, “you have to adopt a different style of coping.”

“How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the ‘new normal’ is indefinite uncertainty?”

Understanding ambiguous loss

It’s not surprising that, as a lifelong overachiever, I’ve felt particularly despondent and adrift as the months have dragged on, says Pauline Boss, PhD, a family therapist and professor emeritus of social sciences at the University of Minnesota who specializes in “ambiguous loss.”

“It’s harder for high achievers,” she says. “The more accustomed you are to solving problems, to getting things done, to having a routine, the harder it will be on you because none of that is possible right now. You get feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and those aren’t good.”

That’s similar to how Michael Maddaus, MD, a professor of thoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota, felt when he became addicted to prescription narcotics after undergoing several surgeries. Now recovered and a motivational speaker who promotes the idea of a “resilience bank account,” Maddaus had always been a fast-moving high achiever — until he couldn’t be.

“I realized that my personal operating system, though it had led to tremendous success, had failed me on a more personal level,” he says. “I had to figure out a different way of contending with life.”

That mindset is an especially American one, Boss says.

“Our culture is very solution-oriented, which is a good way of thinking for many things,” she says. “It’s partly responsible for getting a man on the moon and a rover on Mars and all the things we’ve done in this country that are wonderful. But it’s a very destructive way of thinking when you’re faced with a problem that has no solution, at least for a while.”

That means reckoning with what’s called ambiguous loss: any loss that’s unclear and lacks a resolution. It can be physical, such as a missing person or the loss of a limb or organ, or psychological, such as a family member with dementia or a serious addiction.

“In this case, it is a loss of a way of life, of the ability to meet up with your friends and extended family,” Boss says. “It is perhaps a loss of trust in our government. It’s the loss of our freedom to move about in our daily life as we used to.” It’s also the loss of high-quality education, or the overall educational experience we’re used to, given school closures, modified openings and virtual schooling. It’s the loss of rituals, such weddings, graduations, and funerals, and even lesser “rituals,” such as going to gym. One of the toughest losses for me to adapt to is no longer doing my research and writing in coffee shops as I’ve done for most of my life, dating back to junior high.

“These were all things we were attached to and fond of, and they’re gone right now, so the loss is ambiguous. It’s not a death, but it’s a major, major loss,” says Boss. “What we used to have has been taken away from us.”

Just as painful are losses that may result from the intersection of the pandemic and the already tense political division in the country. For many people, issues related to Covid-19 have become the last straw in ending relationships, whether it’s a family member refusing to wear a mask, a friend promoting the latest conspiracy theory, or a co-worker insisting Covid-19 deaths are exaggerated.

Ambiguous loss elicits the same experiences of grief as a more tangible loss — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — but managing it often requires a bit of creativity.

A winding, uncharted path to coping in a pandemic

While there isn’t a handbook for functioning during a pandemic, Masten, Boss, and Maddaus offered some wisdom for meandering our way through this.

Accept that life is different right now

Maddaus’ approach involves radical acceptance. “It’s a shitty time, it’s hard,” he says. “You have to accept that in your bones and be okay with this as a tough day, with ‘that’s the way it is,’ and accept that as a baseline.”

But that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up, he says. It means not resisting or fighting reality so that you can apply your energy elsewhere. “It allows you to step into a more spacious mental space that allows you to do things that are constructive instead of being mired in a state of psychological self torment.”

Expect less from yourself

Most of us have heard for most of our lives to expect more from ourselves in some way or another. Now we must give ourselves permission to do the opposite. “We have to expect less of ourselves, and we have to replenish more,” Masten says. “I think we’re in a period of a lot of self discovery: Where do I get my energy? What kind of down time do I need? That’s all shifted right now, and it may take some reflection and self discovery to find out what rhythms of life do I need right now?”

She says people are having to live their lives without the support of so many systems that have partly or fully broken down, whether it’s schools, hospitals, churches, family support, or other systems that we relied on. We need to recognize that we’re grieving multiple losses while managing the ongoing impact of trauma and uncertainty. The malaise so many of us feel, a sort of disinterested boredom, is common in research on burnout, Masten says. But other emotions accompany it: disappointment, anger, grief, sadness, exhaustion, stress, fear, anxiety — and no one can function at full capacity with all that going on.

Recognize the different aspects of grief

The familiar “stages” of grief don’t actually occur in linear stages, Boss says, but denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are all major concepts in facing loss. Plenty of people are in denial: denying the virus is real, or that the numbers of cases or deaths are as high as reported, or that masks really help reduce disease transmission.

Anger is evident everywhere: anger at those in denial, anger in the race demonstrations, anger at those not physically distancing or wearing masks, and even anger at those who wear masks or require them. The bargaining, Boss says, is mostly with scientists we hope will develop a vaccine quickly. The depression is obvious, but acceptance… “I haven’t accepted any of this,” Boss says. “I don’t know about you.”

Sometimes acceptance means “saying we’re going to have a good time in spite of this,” Boss says, such as when my family drove an hour outside the city to get far enough from light pollution to look for the comet NEOWISE. But it can also mean accepting that we cannot change the situation right now.

“We can kick and scream and be angry, or we can feel the other side of it, with no motivation, difficulty focusing, lethargy,” Boss says, “or we can take the middle way and just have a couple days where you feel like doing nothing and you embrace the losses and sadness you’re feeling right now, and then the next day, do something that has an element of achievement to it.”

“Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass.”

Experiment with “both-and” thinking

This approach may not work for everyone, but Boss says there’s an alternative to binary thinking that many people find helpful in dealing with ambiguous loss. She calls it “both-and” thinking, and sometimes it means embracing a bit of the irrational.

For the families of soldiers missing in action in Vietnam that Boss studied early in her career, or the family members of victims of plane crashes where the bodies aren’t recovered, this type of thinking means thinking: “He is both living and maybe not. She is probably dead but maybe not.”

“If you stay in the rational when nothing else is rational, like right now, then you’ll just stress yourself more,” she says. “What I say with ambiguous loss is the situation is crazy, not the person. The situation is pathological, not the person.”

An analogous approach during the pandemic might be, “This is terrible and many people are dying, and this is also a time for our families to come closer together,” Boss says. On a more personal level, “I’m highly competent, and right now I’m flowing with the tide day-to-day.”

It’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s existence, but when you can’t change the situation, “the only thing you can change is your perception of it,” she says.

Of course, that doesn’t mean denying the existence of the pandemic or the coronavirus. As Maddaus says, “You have to face reality.” But how we frame that reality mentally can help us cope with it.

Look for activities, new and old, that continue to fulfill you

Lots of coping advice has focused on “self-care,” but one of the frustrating ironies of the pandemic is that so many of our self-care activities have also been taken away: pedicures, massages, coffee with friends, a visit to the amusement park, a kickboxing class, swimming in the local pool — these activities remain unsafe in much of the country. So we have to get creative with self-care when we’re least motivated to get creative.

“When we’re forced to rethink our options and broaden out what we think of as self-care, sometimes that constraint opens new ways of living and thinking,” Masten says. “We don’t have a lot of control over the global pandemic but we do over our daily lives. You can focus on plans for the future and what’s meaningful in life.”

For me, since I missed eating in restaurants and was tired of our same old dinners, I began subscribing to a meal-kit service. I hate cooking, but the meal kits were easy, and I was motivated by the chance to eat something that tasted more like what I’d order in a restaurant without having to invest energy in looking through recipes or ordering the right ingredients.

Okay, I’ve also been playing a lot of Animal Crossing, but Maddaus explains why it makes sense that creative activities like cooking, gardening, painting, house projects — or even building your own imaginary island out of pixels — can be fulfilling right now. He references the book The Molecule of More, which explores how dopamine influences our experiences and happiness, in describing the types of activities most likely to bring us joy.

“There are two ways the brain deals with the world: the future and things we need to go after, and the here and now, seeing things and touching things,” Maddaus says. “Rather than being at the mercy of what’s going on, we can use the elements of our natural reward system and construct things to do that are good no matter what.”

Those kinds of activities have a planning element and a here-and-now experience element. For Maddaus, for example, it was simply replacing all the showerheads and lightbulbs in the house. “It’s a silly thing, but it made me feel good,” he says.

Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships

The biggest protective factors for facing adversity and building resilience are social support and remaining connected to people, Masten says. That includes helping others, even when we’re feeling depleted ourselves.

“Helping others is one of those win-win strategies of taking action because we’re all feeling a sense of helplessness and loss of control about what’s going on with this pandemic, but when you take action with other people, you can control what you’re doing,” she says. Helping others could include checking in on family friends or buying groceries for an elderly neighbor.

Begin slowly building your resilience bank account

Maddaus’ idea of a resilience bank account is gradually building into your life regular practices that promote resilience and provide a fallback when life gets tough. Though it would obviously be nice to have a fat account already, he says it’s never too late to start. The areas he specifically advocates focusing on are sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, self-compassion, gratitude, connection, and saying no.

“Start really small and work your way up,” he says. “If you do a little bit every day, it starts to add up and you get momentum, and even if you miss a day, then start again. We have to be gentle with ourselves and keep on, begin again.”

After spending an hour on the phone with each of these experts, I felt refreshed and inspired. I can do this! I was excited about writing this article and sharing what I’d learned.

And then it took me two weeks to start the article and another week to finish it — even though I wanted to write it. But now, I could cut myself a little more slack for taking so much longer than I might have a few months ago. I might have intellectually accepted back in March that the next two years (or more?) are going to be nothing like normal, and not even predictable in how they won’t be normal. But cognitively recognizing and accepting that fact and emotionally incorporating that reality into everyday life aren’t the same. Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass. But humans can get better at anything with practice, so at least I now have some ideas for working on my sea legs.

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worryinglyinnocent · 4 years

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Fic: Dead Man Walking (10/10)

Summary: Prime Ministers don’t normally wake up in morgues after they’ve been murdered, but that’s exactly what Robert Sutherland has just done. Right in front of Lacey’s nose. With limited resources and not knowing who to trust, Sutherland and Lacey must work together to get to the bottom of the attempted assassination.

Based loosely on this dream I had.

Rated: E overall, this chapter is T.

Note: This is meant to be ‘darkly humorous and amusing mystery’ rather than ‘gripping political thriller’…

[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] [Seven] [Eight] [Nine] [AO3]

Dead Man Walking

Ten

Sutherland had really not anticipated how much paperwork came with nearly being assassinated and having the Head of the Civil Service arrested for said near-assassination. What he had hoped would be a fairly peaceful summer break had, overnight, turned into a complete frenzy, not helped at all by the fact they were trying to do their utmost to keep everything out of the papers.

Naturally, despite Carrie’s most valiant efforts, this was completely impossible, and the red tops were going above and beyond when it came to conspiracy theories. Sutherland was extremely glad that it was the summer and he didn’t have to deal with quite as many public appearances, or anyone in the Commons wondering aloud to the Speaker if the Prime Minister was in a fit state to be running the country given that he was probably suffering some kind of psychological trauma as a result of nearly dying. On top of that, the delicate political situation that had led to him hosting the meetings at Chequers in the first place had still not gone away, and it would only become more acute as time went on.

Sutherland leaned back in his chair and sighed. It felt very strange to be back in Chequers given what had happened the last time that he was here, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, Sir Albert had been arrested and wasn’t around to make a second attempt on his life since the first one failed, but on the other hand, it was clear that he had not been working alone, and Sutherland still didn’t really know who he could trust. In a way, he felt safer down here at Chequers than he did back in Downing Street, because it was far more likely, given the phone conversation that Carrie had overheard, that Sir Albert’s co-conspirator was London-based.

He glanced down at his phone, looking at his ongoing conversation with Lacey. They had been messaging each other fairly frequently over the last few weeks and had spoken a few times as well, talking about the day to day life of Downing Street and Carrie’s latest shenanigans, and how Lacey’s studies were going. She was on track to complete her doctorate on time and graduate in January, and Sutherland wondered how much of a stir it would cause if he were to go to the ceremony. Probably too much, but he would definitely send his congratulations.

Chatting with Lacey was always a breath of fresh air whenever things were getting out of hand. She would pull him out of the politics and into the wider world, reminding him that there was indeed a wider world out there that was affected by all the decisions that she was making. Sometimes, thinking about the bigger picture and trying to do the best for the entire country, he could lose sight of individuals.

And of course, there was the simple fact that she was Lacey, and he really liked her, and he enjoyed spending this time with her just because she made him happy. And, he liked to think, he made her happy. How they had managed to be so compatible despite being so vastly different was beyond him, but he was incredibly grateful for it. When he’d first gone into politics, he had let his personal life take a back seat, and when he had become Prime Minister, all thoughts of beginning a relationship had been parked firmly on one side - he had missed his chance and that was that. Now a great chance had been presented to him - in extraordinary circumstances, that was true - and he didn’t want to mess it up.

There was a soft knock on the door, and it startled Sutherland out of his reflections. He was still getting used to the layout of the new room, having decided that he really didn’t want to continue using the room that he had died in as his main office, and the door was in the wrong place according to his auditory memory.

“Come in.”

Carrie poked her head around the door. “How are you doing? Set the world to rights yet?”

Sutherland shook his head. “Of course not. The day I do that, I’ll instantly announce my retirement as I know I’ll never have it so good again. What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve still got plenty of things to be getting on with, not least of all getting to know all of your hugely increased security personnel. I definitely appreciate how seriously they’re taking all this, but it has played havoc with one of my cunning plans.”

Sutherland raised an eyebrow. Carrie’s cunning plans ranged from rearranging all the potted plants in Downing Street to tricking obstinate MPs into voting for bills that needed votes. He glanced down at the paper in front of him and wondered how many they’d have to sweet talk to get this one to pass. He’d been working on the proposal as a pet project all summer, intending to present it when parliament reconvened, a new draft bill for changes to student loan interest rate caps. Lacey’s words during their time together had had an impact on him, and even if he never saw her again, he felt that trying to make her voice heard in the House would be a fitting way to thank her for everything she had done for him.

“Anyway,” Carrie continued. “I was just checking that you’ll be all right if I clock off for the night. You know you can always call me if you need anything.”

Sutherland nodded. “I know. It’s just strange being back here. It’s as if nothing’s changed and everything has changed at the same time. I’ll only be partaking of hot beverages that I have prepared and that have not left my sight.”

“That’s my man.” Carrie crossed the room and patted his shoulder. “Anyway, I have a hot date with a local taxi driver to look forward to, so I’ll leave you to your brooding. Lighten up, it might never happen. And if you think about what’s already happened this summer, I’m pretty sure that you can survive anything that the opposition might throw at you.”

“Too soon, Carrie.”

“My apologies. Well, you enjoy your evening. I’m certainly going to enjoy mine, even if I’m slightly concerned that my mother might end up stalking me. Oh, by the way, I brought you a present.”

“I don’t know whether to be pleased or scared. Some of your presents are dubiously thought out at best, and I don’t think any of them could be opened in front of my mother.”

“Oh, this one definitely can’t be opened in front of your mother. I’m certain you’ll enjoy it though.” Carried winked and left him alone but a moment later, there was another tap on the door.

“All right, what did you forget…” Sutherland trailed off as he looked up and saw that the person coming into the room was not Carrie, but Lacey.

“Surprise,” she said. “Carrie snuck me in.”

Sutherland looked down at his phone, at the last messages that had been exchanged between them only about fifteen minutes prior. She would already have been in the building at that point.

Lacey’s smile faltered a little. “Are you… happy to see me? I mean, I can go away again…”

“No! I mean yes. Yes, I am very happy to see you, no, please don’t go away.” He stood up quickly, coming across the room and closing the door. “It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all. It’s very good to see you.” He took her hand, making to lead her across to the sofa, but something made him stop, a ball of nerves. Despite their ongoing communication, this was the first time that he had seen Lacey in person since those fateful couple of days when the world was turned upside down.

“I’ve missed you,” he admitted. “Is now the right time to tell you that I was seriously thinking about looking you up whilst I was down here again and asking if you wanted to go out somewhere?”

Lacey’s smile returned, although it did not quite meet her eyes. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was scared. Also, dating isn’t exactly the same kind of experience when you’re being shadowed by several security guards all the time. Even more security guards than usual thanks to recent adventures.”

Lacey laughed, and this time the humour did reach her eyes, lighting up her whole face.

“Yes, I can see that would cause some problems. Would they sit at a different table or would it be a family affair?”

“You know, I don’t actually know what the etiquette is. I’ve never done it before.”

“Well, I’m happy to leave it as a mystery for now. I mean, we don’t need to go out to date, necessarily.” Lacey paused. “I was never really the dating type anyway; I don’t really know how I would go about it.”

“Yes. I haven’t done it for so long that I don’t really know how to go about it either.”

“Maybe we’re best off staying in and ordering takeaway. I happen to know a very friendly taxi driver who’d probably be happy to go and get it for us.”

Sutherland chuckled, finally chancing to take Lacey’s hand and lead her over to the sofa. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Carrie has plans with Ursula tonight and I don’t think that they involve food delivery.” Although, that said, Carrie had been all for encouraging his relationship with Lacey and had indeed been the one to get her into Chequers in the first place, so maybe she would be happy to help them on their way to becoming a proper couple. A rather odd couple, and one that the tabloids would no doubt get a great deal of mileage out of when they found out, but a couple, nonetheless.

Lacey glanced over her shoulder at his desk as they crossed the room. “What did I interrupt?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you have a clear desk policy as the PM?”

“Ah, yes.” Sutherland rushed across to gather up the papers and shove them in his desk drawer, but not before Lacey had caught sight of his draft proposal. He plucked the sheet from her hand.

“You took me seriously,” she said softly.

“Yes. Your ideas were well thought out and whilst it was obvious that you were very impassioned about the topic, your arguments were coming from a place of reasonable thought and good logic rather than anger. You did most of the legwork, really, I just took everything that you said and put it into political terms.” He paused. “I can’t promise that it will get anywhere. The shadow chancellor’s probably already trying to shoot it down and he doesn’t even know that it exists yet, but at least it will bring the issue to the table and get people thinking about it.”

“I… I’m amazed. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sutherland shrugged. He hadn’t wanted to make it seem like he was doing it just to gain favour with her, or to make her feel like she owed him something in return.

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

Lacey laughed. “You know, for a politician, you really do keep surprising me with how human you are.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

He finished tidying the desk and they finally made it to the sofa, sitting down close together. It was an easy closeness, falling back into the strange familiarity that they’d shared at Mrs de Ville’s house, and it felt so right, despite their long separation.

“So, I might be a bit presumptuous, but…” Lacey reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “I thought we might toast to our reunion. Since we’re not going out to a bar or anything. Also, it’s not actually champagne, it’s the only sparkling wine they had at the supermarket.”

“I’m sure that supermarket sparkling wine and champagne taste much the same when drunk out of coffee mugs, which are all I have in here at the moment.”

“Yeah, I don’t want you running off to find champagne flutes or I won’t see you again for about an hour, this place is a complete rabbit warren. I got lost about five times getting to this room and I had Carrie as a guide. You can’t get rid of me now. I’ll be here forever.”

Sutherland just slipped an arm around her as she put the bottle down on the floor, pulling her in for a long-awaited kiss.

“You know, I think I could live with that.”

#rumbelle fic #anyem #sutheracey #Lacey French #Robert Sutherland #Fic: Dead Man Walking #One WIP now complete!

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