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scripttorture · 3 years

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One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:

- destroy her sense of self / agency

- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)

- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors

- immediate obedience to any command

I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.

I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.

The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.

Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.

Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.

Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.

If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.

The important thing is what you choose to do now.

I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.

Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.

Torture survivors are not broken.

They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.

The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).

The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.

Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.

Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.

And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.

Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.

I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.

A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.

Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.

Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.

I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.

Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.

Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.

The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.

Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.

Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.

A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.

I probably sound quite angry here.

I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.

If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.

Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy’? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?

Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?

I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.

You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.

I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.

Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.

Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.

Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.

It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.

Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.

You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.

Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.

Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.

Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.

That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.

With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.

It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’

And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.

If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.

So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.

Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?

Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.

Fela’s music started causing riots.

You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.

Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.

I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.

Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.

Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.

Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.

The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.

So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.

Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?

Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.

And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.

Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.

Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.

I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.

Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.

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the-busy-ghost · 4 years

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Hi! I hope you're well - I was just wondering if you had any recommendations for interesting & engaging "introductory" texts about Scottish history (particularly between 500 and 1500 AD, although I know that's really broad!) No worries if you don't have any ideas or don't feel like answering such a vague question though! Have a lovely day :)

Hi!

Apologies for the delayed response on this, I have no real excuse except being anxious that I wouldn’t be able to answer it perfectly. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and answer somewhat imperfectly. This answer also depends on just exactly how much knowledge you already have of Scottish history, so if I’m being patronising and assuming too much ignorance, or alternatively if I’m not being clear enough, please let me know.

The first thing I would always recommend before diving into serious literature is having a basic framework in the back of your mind. It may be an inaccurate framework but given that mediaeval Scottish history really isn’t taught or known to the same extent as say mediaeval English history, it is essential that you know where you are on a basic level, so you can both enjoy and learn from the texts that go into more detail. This basic background can come from almost anything- Braveheart and blatantly inaccurate novels aside.

This is quite freeing because basically reading almost ANYTHING can be useful at first, and also first and foremost if you’re going to devote a considerable amount of time to something, you should work out how to make it fun and understandable.

I always had some idea of Scottish history since I was a kid but I got more into it in my late teens and I’ll be honest, though I probably don’t agree with anything in it pages now, one of the first books I picked up at the age of about sixteen was Neil Oliver’s ‘History of Scotland’ (released alongside the documentary series). Any basic ‘History of Scotland’ of that type (if it looks reasonably reputable) should give you a basic framework that you can build on- in the same way some people learn the kings and queens of England. Wikipedia could also work this way, though it may be more patchy. Other, slightly more reputable and in-depth but not really textbook, works of this kind include Stewart Ross’ “The Stewart Dynasty”; Alistair Moffat’s ‘The Borders’; popular (if coloured) biographies of people like Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Mary Queen of Scots (she’s post-medieval but still a relevant example); and even some of the older Victorian histories of people like Tytler (watch out though, they get weirdly ‘ethnic’ in their interpretations of some historical events and processes- some were convinced that there was a centuries-long feud between the “Celt” and the “Teuton”/”Saxon”). Even novels and songs- though sometimes highly inaccurate- can help with this, even if they’re Walter Scott.

So I’m not going to be a purist and get snobby about Neil Oliver or Walter Scott even if I would never set store by any of the above works in an academic context (or even just a drunken argument). The first step in my view is literally to get a basic feel for what we *think* our history is (and enjoy learning about the different regions and cultures a bit!), and then you can set about dismantling all these stereotypes and misconceptions with better books.

If you DO want a reasonably trustworthy general overview though, I believe that Fiona Watson has written one called “Scotland: From Prehistory to Present” and there must be a few others written by academics, it’s just been so long since I’ve read completely general histories I can’t really comment on this accurately.

Assuming you’re already aware of the above though and have a pretty good idea of what you’re dealing with then there are two next steps I would recommend.

The first are the series of texbooks/overviews that are often published by universities. Obviously since these are textbooks they are more introductory and general, but they do often cite academic articles and books that are more detailed. I have found a couple of series particularly useful and outlined the main titles below:

- The “New History of Scotland” series. This is a good series as most of the books were initially A5 sized or slightly bigger (so quick to read and easy to carry). Sadly this means that they do not employ footnotes/citations to any great extent, usually only providing a ‘Further Reading’ section at the end of the book. You can usually find old copies of these online for a reasonable price. This series includes, among others:

- “Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland, 80-1000”, by Alfred P Smyth

- “Kingship and Unity: Scotland, 1000-1306″, by G.W.S. Barrow

- “Independence and Nationhood: Scotland, 1306-1469″, by Alexander Grant. (This one has a particularly good basic overview of diet, trade, e.t.c.)

- “Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625″, by Jenny Wormald

- “Power and Propaganda: Scotland, 1306-1488″, by Katie Stevenson (note- the previous titles listed were written in the 1980s and 90s, but this one was added to the series in 2014, so it’s more up to date in some ways though it’s up to you whether you think it’s more persuasive).

- The “New Edinburgh History of Scotland” series. These are bigger books than the previous series and are complete with on page citations and bibliography. They tend to all come in matching blue jackets, and I thought that secondhand copies of these would be slightly more expensive than the above but a quick search on amazon has surprised me, since a copy of Oram’s “Domination and Lordship” is several pounds cheaper than Grant’s “Independence and Nationhood”. Anyway these are slightly more in-depth than the above series, but work very well in tandem with those shorter books. The series includes:

- “From Pictland to Alba: 789-1070″, by Alex Woolf (it is a very long time since I read this, so I have to admit I have very little memory of its contents but I put it here for balance)

- “Domination and Lordship: Scotland, 1070-1230″, by Richard Oram (good used along with Kingship and Unity)

- “The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371″, by Michael Brown

- “The First Stewart Dynasty In Scotland, 1371-1488″, by Stephen Boardman (full disclosure I have not read this one yet, but I have read some of Boardman’s other books).

- “Scotland Reformed, 1488-1587″, by Jane E.A. Dawson

- The “History of Everyday Life” series. These books are collections of essays on some selected aspects of day to day life in medieval Scotland and can provide some interesting reading and insights. Only one of the books in this series is relevant to our time period, but it may be worth checking out the other three since some customs and behavioural patterns from more recent times are worth comparing with the past. The volume covering the medieval period is “A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600″, edited by Edward Cowan and Lizanne Henderson.

- The “Northern World” series. This is not a series I’m particularly familiar with outside of some light reading while at university (mostly because these books can be really expensive compared to the previous ones mentioned). HOWEVER not only do they range across northern Europe (not just Scotland) but a couple of them help to balance out the Lowland focus which sometimes predominates in the above general overviews. There are quite a few interesting books in this series (identifiable usually by their purple jackets) but some that I know of include:

- “Kinship and Clientage: Highland Clanship, 1451-1609″ by Alison Cathcart.

- “The Lordship of the Isles”, edited by Richard Oram (this is a collection of essays)

There was also an older “Edinburgh History of Scotland” series published in the 1970s- some of the authors were better than others and they’re a bit dated now but they’re still a useful starting point. The series includes:

- “Scotland, the Making of the Kingdom”, by A.A.M. Duncan

- “Scotland: The Later Middle Ages”, by Ranald Nicholson

There are lots of other book series out there- the St Andrews Studies in Scottish History or the publications of old literature by the Scottish Text Society for example but I think I’ve listed enough to be getting on with. There are also a few books that I think make good general overviews (or are collections of interesting essays) that aren’t in a particular series:

- “Women in Scotland, 1100-1750”, edited by Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M Meikle (this is a collection of essays rather than an overview of women’s history but it’s a good starter, and great if you only have fifteen minutes to spare)

- “Glory and Honour: The Renaissance in Scotland”, by Andrea Thomas (a beautiful coffee table book with lots of pictures of art and architecture). It starts in 1424.

- “The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, c.1100-c.1336″, by R. Andrew MacDonald

- “The Black Douglases”, Michael Brown

- “Robert the Bruce’s Rivals: The Comyns, 1212-1314″, by Alan Young

- “The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness, 870-1470″, by Barbara E. Crawford

- “Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain: From the Picts to Alexander III”, by Dauvit Broun

- “Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in Scotland From 1080 to 1980″, by Rosalind K Marshall (Marshall has also written some good introductory overviews on Scottish queens, on Mary of Guise, and on the women around Mary, Queen of Scots, though these last two are sixteenth century).

- Any of Alexander Fenton’s books on agricultural history- they don’t deal exclusively (or even mainly) with the medieval period, and they’re not the most up to date but they are still useful handbooks.

There are also lots of shorter academic articles on JSTOR and elsewhere, as well as online networks for things like Scottish Women’s History and Environmental History.

The second step I would recommend is using biographies- biography is not always the most useful form of historical writing, but they do have their own benefits. For this time period most of the full book-length biographies of individuals are royal figures (though lots of other people are covered in academic articles).

For some figures it’s wise to have several biographies on hand since they’re well-known or controversial- for example, for Robert Bruce, you could start with an older bio like G.W.S. Barrows “Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland” and then supplement it with a more modern biography like that written by Michael Penman or by Colm McNamee. In other cases, a historical figure may not be quite so well known so jumping straight into an academic biography of them, which hops around and analyses expenditure and parliaments, may be a bit confusing- for example, for King James IV, it may be useful to start with R.L. Mackie’s (admittedly dated and a bit romantic) biography to get an idea of the structure of the king’s reign before diving into Norman MacDougall’s more scholarly biography.

Other biographies/overview of royal reigns include Richard Oram’s works on David I and Alexander II; D.D.R. Owen’s bio of William the Lion (this is an interesting one, since it’s written by a French professor rather than a straightforward historian so there’s a big focus on the importance of literature); Andrew Fisher’s bio of William Wallace; Stephen Boardman’s survey of the reigns of Robert II and Robert III; the two biographies of James I written by E.W.M. Balfour-Melville and Michael Brown; Christine McGladdery’s ‘James II’ and Norman McDougall’s ‘James III’; and Annie Dunlop’s biography of Bishop Kennedy.

Lastly once you feel you’ve got a bit of a grip on some secondary source material (or really, as soon as you like) I do recommend checking out some of the primary source material as soon as possible. A LOT of primary sources of medieval Scottish history were printed during the Victorian and Edwardian periods and now thanks to digitisation projects many of them are available online- from chronicles like those of Melrose, John of Fordun and Andrew Wyntoun (and useful English chronicles like Lanercost and Scalachronica); to acts of parliament and accounts of royal expenditure (Treasurer’s Accounts; Exchequer Rolls); to letters of the nobility and poetry. Personally, I find that you learn as much from working directly with the words of historical figures themselves, even if you’re untrained in source handling, as you would from a whole host of textbooks (also it lets you get used to the languages- Scots is straightforward enough to pick up even if you don’t have Latin or Gaelic). If you ever have trouble finding these let me know and I might be able to point you in the right direction.

It is also worth bearing in mind that sixteenth century sources may shed a lot of light on earlier periods.

Anyway hopefully this helped but if you have any other questions please let me know and I will endeavour to reply quicker this time!

*One last disclaimer, the above list of texts is based purely on my own experiences and what my brain could remember quickly- it is not to reflect a bias or to promote these texts above the works of other historians. It is also not an exhaustive or comprehensive list (and some dearly beloved books are not included- but I tried to stick to simple overviews/textbooks and a few other interesting surveys).

And people are very welcome to add to this since there’s lots I’ve missed!

Lastly try to have a bit of fun with it. Some of these books are very informative but can drag at times- on those occasions I highly recommend taking a break and trying to get outside to a hill or a castle, or if you can’t do that try putting an old ballad on on youtube, and physically look at or listen to the thing you’re studying.

#Scottish history #British history #sources #books #reading #Yes now everyone can come and laugh at 16 year old me who got her childhood love of history back from flipping Neil Oliver #And the Corries though they're more respectable if less accurate

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xaoh-f-goon · 5 years

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Denouements: A Spotter’s Guide

In this essay I shall be attempting to identify the distinguishing features of the Denouement siblings, and then theorising on what this means for their character and scene-to-scene motivation. Being just one person I will have biases and projections, so please do say if something doesn’t feel right. Also, a lot of what I will try to describe won’t be visible in screenshots, only in motion, so I encourage watching clips to help understand my angle.

I am taking as a starting point, which will be revised if it doesn’t bear out, the theory that the brothers embody their name: Frank is frank, and Ernest is earnest. Both words mean truthful, but in different ways. Frankness comes via bluntness, factual, to the point, brusque. It implies serious and businesslike, efficient, rooted in reality. Earnestness comes via (positive) emotional intensity, sincerity, enthusiasm and being willing to please. It implies personal conviction, being trustworthy, friendliness and passion for the subject at hand.

Both men are keeping up a controlled facade in order to catalogue and manipulate the hotel occupants, and I believe the word definitions characterise their respective approach to this. Remember, Frank is the fireFighter, ErneSt is the fireStarter. Let’s trust Kit Snicket’s words (and netflix’s intentions) and do some close observation. Here is a screenshot from when we know who is who.

So, the characterisation I am driving at here is that Frank is being impenetrable, relying on saying exactly the right thing, analysing the response and passing judgement to keep safe. Ernest is being quickly ingratiating, performing as a warm presence that you are more likely to trust, especially in the face of his brother’s apparent rudeness. Plus, Kit calls him out as an active liar (’Do not trust him, no matter what he says’) rather than Frank’s passive status as a person the Baudelaires need to behave right to gain access to.

This Denouement is secretly observing before making himself known. He is blunt with his sentences and his impassive face gives no indication of what he wants to hear in return. His rattling speed of speech implies efficiency. I am presuming he is Frank.

He introduces himself in a position of power, having startled them. He wields his authority by assuming his orders are being followed, leaving sharply without checking to see if the kids are following. He speaks in a low flat monotone manner. He uses an air of disdain to keep himself distant and above those he is talking to, and his default position is to look down at you with narrowed eyes. These are things we have learnt about Frank.

This Denouement lets the kids know he is coming, calling out to them softly and clearly. He is smiling and welcoming. His quick speed of speech implies enthusiasm. He sounds relieved to see them, thus initially giving the impression of power to the Baudelaires. His open manner invites openness in return. He is the only one to ask outright for vital information. I am presuming this is Ernest.

He talks calmly and clearly, and emphasises important words that he wants the kids to pick up on and react to. He looks and sounds appropriately curious, worried, and pleading when he asks for information, hoping for an automatic sympathetic response or at least to evoke some sort of tell. When he gets an answer he doesn’t like, he signals being disappointed and hurt. However he still seems very distant from what he’s saying, and his expressions are switched between quickly and grandly, like a performer. It feels disingenuous and too symmetrical. His default position is looking up at you with an expression of concern. These are things we have learnt about Ernest.

Now there is Dewey. He does not have the facade of his brothers. He alone has natural asymmetrical expressions that lend him a twinkle in the eye, as if about to wink, and an actual air of confidentiality. Incidentally, ‘dewy’ as a word doesn’t only mean moist, but also naive, innocent, unwary etc, implying a lack of artifice. He talks quietly and furtively, conveying information quickly because There’s Not Much Time.

So we have our potential players. Now lets prove the theory.

Who does Violet meet?

He remains impassive, does not speak until asked and considers his answer, he seems tired, aloof and critical as if he knows that he knows best. He speaks in a low voice and only in factual information. And, he is very blunt, for example saying very clearly that Not Doing This Would Be Suspicious and saying the name VFD out loud. He’s Frank.

Who does Klaus meet?

That’s Ernest.

Therefore Sunny...

There’s nothing to suggest this isn’t Dewey.

We have a Confirmed Ernest appearance, and he does superficially appear deadpan and stern, possibly throwing doubt on the definitions. However, he is no longer trying to be ingratiating, he is acting villainous and threatening and theatrical. Which is very much in line with what we presume to know of him.

In Part 2, we have a Confirmed Frank appearance, which I have documented here. I think you’ll agree Frank’s manner is perfectly in line with previous conclusions - the mask-like lack of reaction, the disdain in his comment to Poe, the looking-down-from-above posture, the unmoving mouth. Yet there is emotion in his eyes for the first time, staring hatred towards Olaf (and being rough with him) outside of his safe businessman persona. I think some of that is directed towards the Baudelaires too, as he approaches his gaze is fixed on them like a laser. But that could also be an unspoken question for them, or high emotions in general.

[Edit] Further analysis and other possibilities discussed here.

Supposing all of the above is correct, here’s how I see the courtroom scene.

Frank on the left, having had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Ernest on the right, holding a tense but pretty unreadable expression of attentiveness.

Ernest is the one to let Olaf out of the closet. That’s his same thug stance and poise type from when he’s facing down Larry. It’s Ernest’s way of making himself look big - Frank’s way is to appear a superior authority. ....also, there’s the rope thing.

At the submission of the harpoon gun and mention of Dewey’s killing, Frank looks down and is visibly processing. Watch his mouth. Ernest remains an entirely emotionless mask and bows his head at the appropriate time.

Then the Baudelaires make their statement.

Ernest is showing a textbook expression of wonder and compassion, and immediately joins in when the clapping starts...

...and Frank is exasperated. He hates it. It’s fair to say he knows his brother and very clearly doesn’t believe a metaphorical word of it. And I don’t either. Because we’ve seen Dewey happy. We’ve seen Max Greenfield play genuinely happy. And this perfectly even grin does not reach his eyes in the slightest. There is no twinkle. And to my eye Frank’s reaction backs me up on that.

Here, Count Olaf is listing shooting Dewey Denouement as one of the Baudelaire’s crimes. What Ernest is doing is visibly blinking back tears. I do not know whether they are real or fake or both. I do not know what Frank is thinking. It’s something, but I don’t know what it is.

Until finally, we end up here.

Why would the brothers appear to swap roles, Ernest supporting them and Frank condemning them? Here’s what I think.

Both brothers are feeling the loss of Dewey equally deeply.

Frank has come to blame the Baudelaires, perhaps not directly but at least in the sense of them bringing their situation and causing unpredictability in the perfectly ordered hotel. Certainly in this moment, he blames them from an emotional standpoint and is incensed enough to argue with the kids almost on principle. Or, perhaps, he does in fact truly blame them. They weren’t very good at their job, they were indiscreet and didn’t know any codes, perhaps that made him suspicious of them and was already unsure about working with them before Dewey died. It certainly didn’t seem like the kids ever convinced him of anything, and it’s reliably reported in all the news that the Baudelaires are definitely there when firefighters die.

Ernest, while running on almost an autopilot of acting how he is expected to be seen, has come to blame Count Olaf. He knows first-hand that Olaf’s thirst for violence, specifically for the people in this hotel, is very real and dangerous. After all, he did just boil a man with him. Ernest may not care about the Baudelaires, but he very likely doesnt care for this nonsense of a court proceeding either, and wants eyes on Olaf as soon as possible. Or, perhaps, he does in fact truly believe them. Maybe Dewey’s death sent him reflecting on the probably unbelievable and definitely tragic series of events that got the triplets to where they are now. Maybe he is feeling the futility and wants even just a small revenge or point scored. Olaf was right, there is arguably a lot more truth on the firestarting side and Ernest knows, he knows with a certainty his brother cannot have, that the Baudelaires didn’t murder anyone.

#asoue #denouement siblings #asoue spoilers #frank denouement #ernest denouement #dewey denouement #a series of unfortunate events #max greenfield #asoue theory #the penultimate peril #penultimate peril #netflix asoue #netflix a series of unfortunate events #netflix scrutiny #hotel denouement #denouement #denouement brothers

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aconitemare · 5 years

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Asylum: The Fixations of Ivan Braginski

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<<Previous Chapter

Summary: “You were close to Alfred prior to the incident, weren’t you, Ivan?” his doctor asks. Ivan’s eyes slide lazily over to her if only to avoid rudeness. He tries to avoid rudeness with Héderváry. Out of everyone here, she probably wields the most power over him.

He suspects she is catching onto him, although that’s hardly relevant when he’s already sealed the deal: he is insane. This is where he belongs.

Ivan doesn’t like these circumstances, but Ivan hasn’t liked many of his circumstances in life. He’s learned to live nonetheless, if not thrive during some high points.

A/N: Cowritten with @writingandchocolatemilk

The sun is spilling over into the white-walled, white-floored, white-ceiling common room. Dr. Elizabeta Héderváry has pulled up two chairs for them in a secluded spot right by the glass wall overlooking the hospital gardens. His gaze is downcast; the light, while refreshing, is causing his eyes to ache. He remembers his father telling him that the sunlight was always worse for those with fair eyes. He remembers asking his mom why that was and her answering, “Because they’re so pretty, the sun wants them for itself.” Funny, Ivan reflects, how little things from childhood carry over like that. He wonders if it would make sense to his mother, this thing with Alfred. If her explanation would contain the same logic. “You were close to Alfred prior to the incident, weren’t you, Ivan?” his doctor asks. Ivan’s eyes slide lazily over to her if only to avoid rudeness. He tries to avoid rudeness with Héderváry. Out of everyone here, she probably wields the most power over him.

Ivan cannot circumvent her power like he usually tries to with people, particularly the people in the ward. He finds most people easy to pin like butterflies. Upon their initial meeting, Ivan didn’t think of her as a potential exception. She’s an honest woman, or at least seems to be, and there’s an accidental bluntness to the way she speaks sometimes like she forgets she’s a therapist and not a peer. Yet every time Ivan thinks he might get somewhere with her, the professional boundary slams down between them like a firewall.

He suspects she is catching onto him, although that’s hardly relevant when he’s already sealed the deal: he is insane. This is where he belongs. Ivan doesn’t like these circumstances, but Ivan hasn’t liked many of his circumstances in life. He’s learned to live nonetheless, if not thrive during some high points.

Ivan’s eyes catch on Ludwig, the guard in his pocket. One of many employees in his pocket. He is talking to Feliciano, the schizophrenic who’s always on the verge of tears, while Feliciano plays a one-man game of jenga on a plastic table in a fold-out chair. Ivan wants to tut at Ludwig for being so transparent, but he knows why he’s being bold as of late. Alfred has thrown the ward into a tizzy over his stunt and it may be awhile before anyone regains the energy to scrutinize interactions that don’t outright involve boxcutters.

“Ivan?” Dr. Héderváry prods. “Are you with me still?” It’s the subtle, unprofessional impatience that leaks into her tone that goads Ivan into cracking a smile.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” he assures, returning to their conversation. He considers outing Ludwig right now, but he tamps the anger down instead. Ludwig is not wholly useless yet. However much it feels that way with an empty, quiet bedroom.

Ivan tilts his head and feigns having to think about Dr. Héderváry’s question. “Yes, you could say we were close. I was closer to him than I was to, say, Lukas. Or yourself,” Ivan throws in for the sake of distancing himself from her in a conversation with such a slippery edge. Revealing his cards now may remove all possibility in the future of reuniting with Alfred. “But whether I was closer to Alfred than Feliciano was, well, that I cannot vouch for. Sharing a room with someone for six months doesn’t make for acquaintances, but neither does it make for best friends.” Here, Ivan smiles politely with the faintest hint of amusement, like the whole situation is silly to make sense of.

He watches Dr. Héderváry’s face. She does not have a poker face so he takes advantage of this by always tracking her expressions when he plays along. She’s visibly mulling over Ivan’s half-confession. Her lips quirk to the side; shrugging with her mouth. “I guess you’re right,” she decides.

Ivan feels some relief at successfully navigating his first session post-incident. Mostly, though, he wants to play jenga with Alfred.

Alfred talks an excruciating amount. Ivan does not welcome it at first. Natalya had sent him a box of his books from home, and although he’s read them all before, anything worth finishing the first time is worth starting again. Ivan is used to time with his thoughts and his books; he hasn’t had a roommate since his first partner requested to be away from him; a request that certainly would not have been granted had Feliciano not mentioned being uncomfortable in the dark alone.

Ivan learned quickly how things worked around here. He didn’t confront Ludwig right away because Ivan didn’t know what he wanted yet that wasn’t already provided, either through his eldest sister Katyusha who worked in security or his youngest Natalya who, since childhood, had a way of getting what she wanted that Ivan genuinely envied. Doors didn’t part for Ivan the way they did naturally to pretty, soft-spoken girls like his sisters. This is fine with him; he trusts them both to always work in his interest.

Nonetheless, there isn’t much else available in a psych ward beyond extra perks in the commissary and a camera that never notices when Ivan takes out items he probably shouldn’t have.

Until Alfred, that is, who is a migraine and a half to share space with. He bounces his knees and taps his feet constantly. He manages to pace the tiny floor of their room every day, which would be impressive if it wasn’t aggravating. It was like living with a puppy that didn’t want to be housebroken. This early on, Ivan has not yet learned how to handle Alfred.

It gets easier when he stops tuning him out. Alfred is not always coherent, but he is entertaining and his company becomes a reprieve from his one-sided relationship with books. Alfred regales him with daring accounts of his firefighting adventures, which soon become touching recounts of the lives he’s healed as a doctor, and occasionally James Bond-esque missions will decorate his memories from spyhood, which are top secret and only revealed to Ivan because the same agency must have deployed them here. Ivan appreciates the spy fantasies the most for their applicability to daily life in the hospital. The General would be Ivan’s favorite character, whose schemes compose much of Alfred’s struggles and quests.

It’s during his doctor phase that Ivan asks for a diagnosis from “Dr. Jones.”

Alfred sits in a chair in the common room, wholly transfixed on the text before him referencing medications and the DSM-5 in every sentence. It’s one of the books Ivan studied for his graduate degree. It’s not a light read by any means, nor an enjoyable one. “If you would allow me to pick your brain,” Ivan asks cordially, standing beside him.

Alfred does not look up from Ivan’s textbook. “Well, you’re a clearly a neurotic,” he says to Ivan’s surprise. “What with your lack of trust and your conspiracy theories.” Ivan has never seen such a direct example of projection. He feels a little pang of excitement, not like how one might feel on a rollercoaster, but — similar, he supposes, to when starting a long trip to a place he’s never been before. “Not to mention your general shiftiness,” adds Alfred.

Ivan quirks an eyebrow. “I’m shifty?”

Alfred looks up at him from the open book. His eyes are round with honesty and a bright blue more genuine than the sky. “Yeah, you didn’t want a roommate, right?” he points out. Ivan wouldn’t call that the case, but he knows by now Alfred is set to believe Ivan was the one with the problem their first night at 3am. “Distrustful of someone new,” Alfred explains, reasoning packed up nice and neat.

Ivan can’t fault him on that last part. Ivan has trusted people’s known longer less. But he thinks he enjoys Alfred nonetheless and, despite himself, finds him to be objectively trustworthy. Alfred can hardly remember anything that doesn’t have his name in it, let alone something he could use against Ivan. “Actually, I’m very pleased with the turn of events that led to my new roommate,” he confesses. Alfred is a novel experience and a reason to look forward to the otherwise redundancy of the hospital. “Thank you, Alfred, this has been enlightening.”

Alfred may have also added something that wasn’t present even in Ivan’s life before the court order. What it is, Ivan isn’t sure, but he thinks he’s getting warmer when he squeezes Alfred’s elbow on his way past.

Alfred is tucked into the arm of the floor’s only loveseat. He’s only reading a comic book, but Ivan has noticed him linger on pages longer than necessary and even flip back a few times. His focus is somewhere else, which is strange, because even before the medications kicked in Alfred was easily engrossed by his reading.

Ivan walks over to him. “May I sit?” he asks.

Alfred’s eyes flicker up briefly before returning to the page. “Free country.”

“For some,” Ivan agrees and takes a seat. The cushions are just a bit small for him, and the way Alfred is sitting with his feet up on the couch makes some touching inevitable. Ivan ignores how Alfred wiggles his toes inside his socks and how the tiny movements brush against Ivan’s thighs. He tries to ignore them anyways. He is not doing too well. “Your brother visits you often,” he comments. It’s not an accurate statement; Ivan actually receives far more visits than Alfred and Feliciano has a visitor every day. Mattie’s visits are irregular and spaced out over the course of weeks. Ivan is looking for a place to start, that’s all.

Alfred scoffs and turns a page too roughly. The thin paper tears in the middle. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stop,” he says stormily. Ivan is mildly surprised; he’s fairly sure Mattie is his only visitor.

“You would be alone without him,” informs Ivan. “Only Mattie ever comes, yes?”

Alfred bristles. “What of it?”

“Family is important, Alfred, you don’t want to risk isolating yourself. Mattie is your only connection to your family.”

“How do you know that?” Alfred eyes him suspiciously. Ivan is just pleased he is gaining Alfred’s full attention.

“Well,” says Ivan, spreading out his palms, “they’re not here, are they?”

Alfred glares at him before looking sulkily at the pages. “Shut up,” he says.

Ivan purses his lips so he doesn’t smile. It is hard not to smile around Alfred. “Where is your father, Alfred?” he pushes.

“Fathers,” Alfred says.

“Hm?”

“I have two. Dad and Pop,” Alfred elaborates. Ivan realizes he was being corrected. Before he can prod, Alfred continues, “Neither of them are my biggest fans.” The admission is an unhappy one that easily betrays the nonchalance he is trying to affect.

“I find that hard to believe,” Ivan lies.

Alfred snorts. “Believe it. Papa never trusted me and Dad is convinced I’m full of it and only here for, I don’t know, shits and giggles probably.”

Ivan leans his head back and considers Alfred. It looks like he’s trying to build a wall around himself. His shoulders are hunching and, to Ivan’s dismay, his feet have pulled in enough to allow space between their bodies. Ivan plucks a brick from the wall. “Do you want them to visit you?”

Alfred lets his issue fall to his lap. He rests his elbow on the arm of the couch and props his head up. He’s facing Ivan, but his eyes are closed. “Don’t know,” he finally says. “It’s been a long time since Dad’s been happy to see me. Seeing me here would make that worse.”

It’s the most sober Ivan has ever seen him. He wishes Alfred would open his eyes for it.

“And Papa?” Ivan says, ever so softly so as not to scare him off.

Alfred does his open his eyes for this. “We gave up on each other a while ago.” Alfred smiles, his feet pushing out.

Ivan lets Alfred return to pretending to read his comic and enjoys the nervous toes pressing into his thigh.

Alfred is like one of Ivan’s old students. He’s young and mercurial, prone to passion that carries him halfway and then drops off before the finish line. There are glimpses of intelligence that are sparked by special interests, but anything short of exciting is not merely dismissed but rejected with a degree of indignation. Ivan finds himself slipping into lectures around him. At least, he suspects they are lectures because he tends to drone on with little response from his audience. Nonetheless, it is a habit Ivan is not particularly motivated to kick as it fills the silence and lends him an opportunity to explore his thoughts aloud.

Ivan offers reading suggestions but Alfred shakes his head and says they’re too wordy. “Does every book you own try to use the biggest words possible?” he gripes.

Ivan knows it’s just an excuse of many, but he takes the bait anyway. “Precision in language is an advantage you shouldn’t take lightly. There are languages with far fewer means of expression as well languages with far more. One says ‘extraordinary’ rather than simply ‘great’ because ‘extraordinary’ better captures the breadth of its significance. How else would you say that something is so great that is beyond the ordinary?” Ivan poses.

Alfred tosses Ivan’s copy of A Man Called Ove back in the box and shoves it under Ivan’s bed. “Just like that, I guess,” he mutters. “Nothing wrong with using full sentences.”

“Ah, but even those sentences are restricted when we try to eschew words uncommon in colloquial speech. After all, how frequently do humans actually say what they feel in explicit detail?” asks Ivan. “We contain depths that are unknown to even ourselves until we put words to them. Did you know it is philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who said, ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’ We conceptualize reality around the vocabulary available to us, and the vocabulary available to us is shaped by the perceptions shared by our unique society.”

Ivan nearly jumps when Alfred settles his head onto his knee. Ivan pushes himself to continue talking without fully understanding what he’s saying. He doubts Alfred is listening anyway, which is a small comfort. Ivan doesn’t understand how they got into this position; Ivan sitting on his bed with Alfred nearly between his legs, cheek on his knee. Nothing leading up to this point had stood out to him. It was just Ivan and Alfred as they always are, talking at each other more than to each other, each seeking an escape in books that never changed and always let go eventually.

Ivan looks at Alfred, this ever-changing man who varies by the hour and excites as much as allays him, and thinks he does not want to let go. Carefully, Ivan removes the crooked glasses from Alfred’s nose so they won’t get bent. Still talking, he folds the glasses and sets them to the side. As he waxes on about the expressive nature of language, about its ability to give life to latent thoughts, Ivan thinks that he may not have to let go.

It was only a matter of time before Ludwig became useful. Ivan definitely did not expect this to be the favor he calls in, but it’s a worthy one all the same. The lights have been out for an hour and Ludwig still has two hours left to his shift. Ivan can be satisfied with three hours total. It is more than he would have with any other guard.

On the bed opposite him, Alfred is for once blissfully asleep. It is the ideal night to do this. Ivan waits until he hears familiar footsteps nearing his room, then slips out the cover and pads softly into the hall. The lights are dimmed but still on and Ivan meets Ludwig halfway so he doesn’t wake Alfred. “Get in your room, Braginski,” Ludwig immediately orders. Ivan holds his ground and smiles.

“Security is sparse at night, isn’t it?” he remarks, keeping his hands in front of him so as not to spook the man. It’s not just sparse on the floor, either; Ivan has a sister who works the cameras three in the morning. Most days, she’ll be the only one checking aside from Ludwig.

Ludwig visibly appraises Ivan, narrowed eyes roaming from his feet to his scalp. He doesn’t reach for his taser, which is a good sign, although his pace has slowed significantly. Ivan hardly had a calming presence as a tenure-track professor with a fiancé and a good home, but it is entertaining to see how much people recoil from him now.

“Get in your room,” Ludwig repeats.

“Just you in this hall,” Ivan continues.

Ludwig’s hand moves to his utility belt. The warning is not lost on Ivan. “I’m enough,” Ludwig assure. “Now get in your room and lie down.” Ludwig is losing patience as Ivan’s aberrant behavior gets to him. Best to move things along. “You are enough for Vargas for sure. But sir, who is to watch the rest of us when you are watching our little Feliciano?”

Ivan fancies that Ludwig’s blanched face pair nicely with the bleach-white of the walls. “Excuse me?” Ludwig says, quiet and rough. Danger lies on his tongue like a serrated edge, but the growl is a tell in itself.

Ivan doubts he has to spell it out for him. There’s no confusion in Ludwig’s eyes. It is refreshing, being on the same page so quickly with someone. Ivan thinks he might have liked Ludwig outside the hospital as just two men hiding poor life decisions. “How about tonight — or tomorrow even, if you would prefer a day to think about your situation — you keep an eye on our friend Feliciano and I keep an eye on my roommate?” Ivan propositions. “Think of it as a buddy system.”

Ludwig glances quickly between Ivan and his room where Alfred is fast asleep. “You think I’m like you,” he says.

“I know you are,” Ivan replies.

“I should’ve transferred you out of here the second I saw the signs,” Ludwig says angrily, stalking towards Ivan. “Relationships between patients are strictly prohibited — ”

“Oh, indeed!” Ivan concurs. “Unfortunately, so are relationships between patients and staff. In fact, any case you could launch against me would soon be pushed to the side when I revealed just why you were so motivated to transfer one of us.”

Ludwig freezes. He looks uneasily at Ivan’s room. “He knows too?”

Ivan nods with a sympathetic smile. It’s a lie, of course; Alfred would play Ivan’s cards the second he opened his mouth. But Ludwig needs to fear both of them for this to work.

Ludwig’s jaw clenches and he shakes his head, slow and pained. “We’re not like you two, just remember that. Feli isn’t like you. He’s fallen on a rough patch but he’s got family and a good head on his shoulders.”

Ivan lets his amusement play on the cold upturn of his lips. “Oh, he’s special, is he?” he mocks.

“He is,” Ludwig answers without hesitation. “He’s getting better and one day, he’s going to get out of here and we’re going to be together. The correct way. Whatever sick thing you’ve got going on with that headcase in there, it’s doomed. You can’t afford a lawyer good enough to reopen your case and Jones? He’s only going to get worse in here.”

Ivan is grinning now with all his teeth. He locks his fists behind his back so Ludwig can’t see him clenching them. “Maybe one day,” he admits, thinking of Feliciano with a clean bill of health in the arms of a man no better than Ivan. “But that day does depend on how well we get along tonight, doesn’t it?”

“Why are you here, Ivan?”

He’s not prepared for the question. He thinks of how to answer without answering. He thinks of the evidence laid out before him, how pleading not guilty just wasn’t an option. He thinks of Katyusha and how relief overtook her in shaking shoulders and muffled sobs. He replays the faces of Tommy’s parents, how they contorted in disgust and grief when they knew Ivan would be okay. He remembers Tommy.

“Because I was ordered to be here,” says Ivan. Before Alfred can inquire further, he asks, “And why are you here, Alfred?”

Alfred is silent long enough that Ivan believes he’s dropped the conversation. Then a voice arrives from the silence, not small but still scared. “I’m not like Feli,” Alfred insists.

Ivan smiles fondly at Alfred even though he can’t even see it through the thick darkness. Ivan finds himself smiling for just himself more than he ever has before. “No,” he agrees. No, you are most certainly not like Feliciano. Which begs the question, doesn’t it?”

“I think Matthew put me here,” he speculates, but it’s no more an answer than Ivan’s. Alfred must not be in the mood to answer the million dollar question either. Instead he asks Ivan, “Do you think that medication works?”

Ivan searches his memory for what Alfred called it. He does his best to stay in Alfred’s world with him. “Flutix?” he recalls.

“No, the shit they give me,” Alfred snaps. “The same bullshit they give Feli. Do you think it works? Do you think it’s working? Do you — ”

Ivan interrupts before Alfred can work himself into a panic. “I certainly think it does something.” He doesn’t know if this is what Alfred wants to hear or doesn’t, but it is the truth. He’s more focused of late, sometimes for the better and sometimes, like now, for the worst. Alfred is in danger of thinking himself into a rabbit hole. No wonder his mind runs rampant with delusions, Ivan muses. All those thoughts had to go somewhere.

Alfred falls back onto his bed, head hitting the pillow with a heavy thump. He’s pressing his hands into his eyes, rubbing violently, and Ivan is up before he can think his next action through. Ivan gently, gently holds Alfred’s wrist and sets it on the pillow. Alfred jerks his eyes open when he does, but they slip shut in within seconds. Ivan squeezes Alfred’s wrist again, feels the pulse beating beneath his skin before quitting his side. He settles back onto his bed and counts Alfred’s breaths until Ivan falls asleep.

“My kid knew you.”

Ivan looks up from his tray to the cafeteria worker. Her auburn hair is tied into a neat bun but otherwise there’s no net. She has more crow’s feet than lines on her forehead, so she’s probably lived a relatively happy life. Ivan says nothing; waits for her to give him back his tray with his order. She doesn’t do that, just keeps looking at him with the order slip in her hand.

“He says you were a good professor,” she adds. Ivan doesn’t know where she’s taking this but he finds himself slightly grateful that, if he had to find the one person in the hospital directly related to his past, it probably wasn’t the parent of one the students he failed. “I don’t watch the news too much,” she continues, “it’s chock full of sad things and I don’t have the energy for that. I asked Steve not to tell me or it will keep me up at night. Would it?”

Ivan almost tells her yes. Instead, he says, “I don’t know how appropriate this conversation is.” He glances behind his shoulder at where Alfred is sitting. He always sits with Feliciano. Ivan still hasn’t received a proper invite to sit at his lunch table so he just sits at the table in front of his where he can watch his expressions and movements from a distance.

The cafeteria worker shrugs and begins assembling his tray. “Not much appropriate left in the world, I’m afraid,” she observes. She fixes the Jell-O cup atop the tray as the finishing touch. “And what little there is, isn’t here.”

Ivan takes the order when she hands it to him. Ivan hums in agreement, taking stock of the food today: chicken parmesan with a white bread slice, an apple, microwaved green beans, and of course, dessert in the form of Jell-O. Ivan can’t remember a time a balanced meal offered less real nutrition. He’s about to take his usual spot when he overhears Alfred’s voice raising. He stands in the middle of the cafeteria, his curiosity stilling him as Alfred waves something in front of Feliciano’s face. He’s standing on his knees at the table like a toddler, looming over the small schizo and his weepy brown eyes.

“There’s other shit, too, you get more bathroom breaks at night, and I bet you there’s other shit I didn’t notice, either,” Alfred is ranting. Ivan is actually bordering on appreciative how Alfred’s body, still broad despite the lack of exercise softening his muscles, imposes itself over the frailer creature.

Feliciano has to look up at Alfred as he tries to defend himself in a shaking voice on the verge of tears. Oh, Feliciano, Ivan thinks piteously, life is ever so trying for you. He has to wonder why no one on the clock has to jumped in with soothing words yet. He glances around but only one of the three nurses usually on the floor is in the room currently, and she’s reading a book at Ivan’s otherwise empty table. “I’m sure if I just tell — ”

And Ivan steps in before Feliciano can follow that thought to a process and actually raise suspicion on himself. “Alfred,” Ivan beckons. He notices his fingers are clamped around his tray and consciously instructs his body to relax. Between two nervous wrecks and a guard afraid of his own desires, someone has to maintain a degree of poise. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” he says this as neutrally as possible, trusting that if one elevated voice was to carry to the nurse it would be Ivan’s, although makes sure it still comes off as an order and not a request.

Alfred roughly breaks away from the table and leaves his tray there. Ivan presses a light hand to the small of Alfred’s back, guiding him forward. As he does, he smiles courteously at Feliciano, the poor bastard’s eyes actually welling with tears, and sets his own tray beside Alfred’s abandoned order. The two of them head over to a comparably private corner of the cafeteria, Alfred fuming beside him.

Before Ivan can open his mouth, Alfred is off like a pop. “Listen, I’m telling you, Feli,” Alfred jabs his thumb angrily in Feliciano’s direction, “is shifty as fuck. I’ve been noticing all kinds of shit but not saying nothing, but that brownie is the final straw. Something is off, okay, I don’t know what but Feli definitely has connections — a key to this place or something; maybe he’s feeding notes through the heating vents to the kitchen — ”

“Alfred,” Ivan interrupts in a heavy sigh. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose as if he could will his mounting frustration away. He’s finally rearranging the hospital into some resemblance of a life and Alfred is going to topple that with his fat mouth. He counts to three in his head before fixing Alfred with a cool stare. “Do you really think Feliciano could pull all that off?”

Alfred doesn’t respond, just watches as Feliciano opposite the room tries to control his breathing. Ivan is certain Ludwig will hear about this and Ivan is not thrilled for tonight. Ludwig doesn’t have much on him, but deals like theirs are best maintained with little communication and excess tension. And if either Alfred or Feliciano take this brownie garbage up with staff, Ludwig will be out and there go Ivan’s nights.

Feliciano may still bring up the matter of his party favor with someone trusted, like a nurse or his doctor, but Ivan is confident Ludwig will nip that in the bud. All Ivan has to worry about his own pet psycho looking like he’s ready to snap off Feliciano’s trembling hands. “Right, see,” Ivan murmurs, hoping to bring Alfred back to him with composure, “it doesn’t make sense for Feliciano to be the one orchestrating any grand brownie heist, does it?”

Alfred’s brows fold and Ivan can tell he’s hard at work, disentangling his suspicions and trying to make sense of his constructed world again. It was amazing how Alfred just built cities of incredibly history and infrastructure within seconds. Ivan wonders if he’ll ever be able to tear them as down quickly; or if he’d rather live inside them with Alfred.

“No,” Alfred slowly concedes. “He’s still caught up in something, though,” he insists, and there it is, the cogs turning in his blue-sky eyes; another city being built. “Something he has no idea about that’s right over his head, a mile high.” Alfred’s finger taps his bottom lip thoughtfully and Ivan has to resist the urge to pull it down, replace Alfred’s fingers with his own.

“It’s just a matter of who,” mutters Alfred. “Of course, the obvious answer is whoever’s keeping Feli here and, by extension, the people keeping me here — but why?” Alfred’s eyes snap up to Ivan’s, earnest if not one-sided. He’s not so much asking Ivan as asking Alfred’s reflection. “And what does the brownie have to do with it?”

Ivan rests his head against the wall and decides to wait this out. “Well, it’s obviously a reward,” Alfred says so quickly the sentence may as well be one long word. “Even if poor-stupid-Feli has no idea it is,” he says, emphasizing every syllable of his insult. He’s too close to home now and Ivan is itching to seize Alfred’s shoulders and shake him until all those thoughts fall out of his loose head, but he keeps going. “If there’s one thing Feli is, it’s talkative. He never shuts up, you know? He talks about tile colors and — flowers, dumb shit, so he is a spy, he has to be,” and as he talks, his volume is increasing and the people in the cafeteria are beginning to look at them warily.

“Come on, Alfred, you can do better than that,” Ivan coaxes. He smiles reassuringly over Alfred’s shoulder at Feliciano who is looking at them panicked. “I do wonder the coincidence, though,” he mentions and hopes Alfred’s mind sticks on the key word. “Don’t you?” he prods.

Alfred pauses and actually bites his lip, and that’s a new quirk, isn’t it? Ivan almost bites his own lip in a mirror image. Alfred is so beautiful. Ivan can tell he’s getting closer to another revelation when he starts rocking on the balls of his feet. “Okay, okay. It has to do with me, I bet you. I’m the only guy in this place who’s going to notice something like that, the only one who can put this together. It was a message from…” here, Alfred trails off, clearly frustrated as he hits a wall.

All that matters is that Alfred’s train of thought is on a safer path. “Feliciano as a means of communication,” Ivan repeats in order to cement the belief. “Yes, Alfred, I like that,” he approves. And because he can’t help it, not when Alfred’s eyes are so earnest and his face is so excited, he reaches out to pet his soft hair, smoothing back the cowlick that pops right back up from under his thumb. “Good boy,” he compliments.

The hours following the brownie incident are a practice of patience. The afternoon passes pleasantly for Ivan but Alfred is a wreck of chaotic energy, head swiveling to track the source of every sound, feet tapping, skin-picking. He’s like a dog with a bone and it’s Ivan can do to avoid being bitten when he tries to put it away — “Just for tonight,” he assures. “You don’t want to alert the others that you’re onto the game.”

Alfred nods, albeit with the slightest petulance to the pout of his lip. He sees the value of waiting till there’s fewer eyes even if he doesn’t want to. And so Ivan enjoys his book during reading time, occasionally placing a hand for brief moments on Alfred’s knee whenever it begins to shake too hard, and he even encourages him to play Monopoly with a few others during game time while he meets with Dr. Héderváry. She asks him leading questions while he insists on playing Solitaire. All is well.

The calm even lasts well into Ludwig’s shift starting at 4pm. Predictably, Ludwig hovers over Feliciano more than strictly necessary and only pries himself away when the nurses seem to be paying attention. Ivan is tempted to roll his eyes but doesn’t want to risk drawing any more attention to Ludwig and Feliciano than Alfred already has.

Look at Ivan worrying about eyes on him. Clearly Alfred is rubbing off on him.

Equally predictably, it’s the second Ivan is alone that Ludwig pounces. He sees Ludwig waiting by the door on his way out the bathroom and this time Ivan does roll his eyes. He stops short so there is an appropriate amount of distance between them, folds his hands in front of him, and says, “I take it little Feliciano told you of his day?”

This, apparently, is all Ludwig needs to jump in. “You keep Jones away from him, do you hear me? Your boy is bad news for him and I will not have him risk Feliciano’s progress.” His voice is hushed but not soft. Ivan appraises his body language, how Ludwig is practically leaning forward while glued in place. He’s impressed; he thinks Ludwig may have actually had the nerve to accost him had they been but two men on the street.

Ivan sighs lightly for show. “I’m afraid you are not in a position to be giving the demands, Ludwig,” he mourns. “But if you have problems with my boy,” Ivan quotes, and though he means it ironically, he ends up liking the taste of it on his tongue, “by all means, take it up with him.”

Figuring the conversation finished, Ivan walks forward. He thinks he’ll join the knitting circle today for its last half hour, but he is stopped by Ludwig’s hand on his shoulder. He glanced down at the limb like a flea. “Is that such a good idea?” Ivan murmurs, his eyes tracing the tendon in Ludwig’s fist to his arm up to his enraged face.

Ludwig doesn’t even bother checking behind his shoulder for onlookers. He gets right into Ivan’s space. Ivan immediately dislikes the invasion, is reviled by it, but stands his ground nonetheless. He gazes to one of the cameras meaningfully and hopes that sends Ludwig a message. The attempt is a failed one; Ludwig’s glare is so focused Ivan realizes quickly there’s no use in avoiding his next words:

“I mean it, Braginski. If so much as a hair on his head is touched, if Alfred does absolutely anything to compromise Feliciano’s progress — I don’t give a damn what happens to me when they find out. I will come for you, and maybe you’ll be safe but you’ll have no one to cover for your sick ass when I’m gone.”

Ivan stays stock still and simply stares Ludwig down for a while. To his surprise, there is not a hint of a bluff. And if Ivan is being honest with himself, Ludwig doesn’t seem the sort to lie about his pet. Eventually Ivan lets out a puff of air in a breathy chuckle. “Oh my,” he exclaims, “I do believe you’re serious, aren’t you? How touching,” he compliments, removing Ludwig’s hand from his shoulder with only a faint expression of disgust. Ludwig lets his hand drop to his side, still balled in an angry fist. “Alright, then, comrade,” Ivan agrees and winks.

He leans down close so his eyes are level with Ludwig’s. His voice is barely a whisper: “I’ll see what I can do about our boys, hm?”

This time, Ludwig lets him leave. Ivan’s a tad irritated, he’ll admit, but he’s confident Alfred will do just fine with less one friend.

Alfred paces their bedroom like a caged tiger. Back and forth, back and forth he goes in the sliver of space separating their beds. Natalya has sent Ivan a new book that was on his reading list, so he keeps his gaze on the pages and tries not to let Alfred’s nervous energy distract him. He is having little success.

“I just can’t think,” Alfred says and digs his fingers into his scalp. “But I need to think, they want me to think, that’s why they’ve been doing all this, I just need to focus —because there is something up with that brownie —” Ivan slams his book down on his lap. “For the love of God, Alfred, stop with the brownie,” he begs. He thought Alfred had moved past that, but apparently not. It’s getting difficult to decipher what goes on in Alfred’s head these days. The meds don’t stop his wheels from spinning; they just make the engine quieter. That much became clear during yesterday’s lunch with Feliciano.

“I have a plan,” says Alfred, halting mid-step and looking Ivan dead in the eye.

“A plan,” Ivan repeats, unimpressed. If it involves Feliciano whatsoever, Ivan doesn’t know how he’ll get Alfred to back off. He once again can’t help but envision Alfred a dog, this time chewing on a Feliciano-shaped squeaky toy.

Alfred darts forward and leans over Ivan’s bed, tail practically wagging. “I have big tonsils,” he says like this right here is the key to the world.

Ivan lifts his eyebrows and waits for Alfred’s usual elaboration. None is provided, but he doubts Alfred’s oral anatomy is going to directly involve his chew toy, so Ivan isn’t alarmed. He picks up his book and sifts through the paragraphs to find the sentence he left off on.

Alfred squeezes the mattress impatiently. “Seriously, they’re big, Ivan. I used to look at them in the mirror when I was a kid and one time I made Matthew open his mouth and his were way, way smaller.”

Ivan has a brief moment wherein he tries to imagine what Alfred must have looked like as a young boy and not this broad-shoulder, muscular man before him whose world so easily bends to its knees. He can’t, which is a pity. “I hardly see what this has to do with the brownie,” Ivan says, “or more importantly, what this has to do with your special message.”

He wonders if Alfred has any pictures of himself as a kid online that Natalya or Katyusha could find him.

The next morning comes and the nurses make their med rounds. Ivan takes his first, shifting his tongue this way and that and saying ‘ahh’ until the nurse is satisfied. They’re mood stabilizers and while they may have an effect on them, Ivan hasn’t noticed anything beyond general drowsiness — and even that could just be a symptom of the hospital itself and not the stabilizers. Alfred is summoned into the hall after him. ‘Miss Michelle,’ as she insists the patients call her, inquires into Alfred’s sleep last night as she hands him the pills in a cup. Alfred says he slept fine, thank you for asking, then he goes ‘ahh’ and is permitted to return to his bed.

Miss Michelle is already at the next room when Alfred walks back in and begins hacking into his hand. He holds out his palm and there, sticky and crumbling, are two little pills. Alfred is grinning proudly. “Tonsils,” he explains.

Ivan makes a mental note to guide Alfred towards a hand sanitizer dispenser later. “That was disgusting. But clever,” he acknowledges. He’s impressed by Alfred’s strange ingenuity. Alfred is at constant war with reality. For Ivan, a war like that would feel unwinnable. Around Alfred, though, the walls that build their world seem flimsy. They collapse, fall to the wayside, because what are walls to a man who can climb them?

Alfred puts Ivan’s efforts to shame.

Alfred brags about his cleverness while flicking the chalky remains into the heating vent. He strides over to Ivan, folding his arms over his chest and looking like a fallen king soon to reclaim his title. “Now I can think again,” he says, lifting his chin.

Ivan looks back at Alfred and admires the confidence in his brow, the strong jawline, the sheer way he holds himself as if he knows better and it’s the rest of the world that’s trapped. “And what a delight that will be,” murmurs Ivan.

“Wanna’ see ‘em?” Alfred asks. Ivan hums inquisitively. “My tonsils,” Alfred clarifies and opens his mouth wide.

Ivan places a finger under Alfred’s chin and gently elevates it. “They’re pretty big,” he agrees. He waits until Alfred is done demonstrating and then Ivan drags Alfred’s lips to his. Ivan means to keep it brief, but when he pulls away, Alfred follows in the same fluid motion. Ivan sucks on his bottom lip, reveling in how easy it is to take. He thinks of Alfred biting his lip that day in the cafeteria and nips at him, drags his bottom lip with his teeth. He’s about to go in for another kiss when he hears footsteps. Ivan’s hands come down on Alfred’s shoulders like cinder blocks and he thrusts Alfred off of him.

Nurse Erika, a petite blonde who wears ribbons in her hair like Natalya, pops her head in. “Are you two ready for breakfast?” she asks.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” answers Alfred. Ivan lets him lead the conversation as they follow Nurse Erika down the hall. Alfred’s abrasive voice strips away the moment they shared, giving none of them, least of all sweet Erika with ribbons in her hair, time to speculate where they were going and where they could’ve gone.

It’s quiet time. Everyone is allowed to do whatever quiet activity they please except nap. That, Nurse Michell explains when she catches Ivan dozing off, would mess with their circadian rhythm. Although the hour has far more freedom than most of the day, the hospital has infected its patients with routine. Feliciano and Lukas rarely talk to each other, but every day during quiet time they sit side-by-side in the common room, Feliciano finger-painting and Lukas drawing with the bluntest pencil the nurses can find. Ivan used to read in the common room, listening to Alfred try to talk to others and getting shushed by nurses every five minutes. Now Ivan reads in their room and Alfred accompanies him.

Unlike the others, Alfred rarely spends quiet time in the same manner as yesterday. He’s tried reading, he’s tried writing, he’s tried drawing and finger-painting and crosswords puzzles and sudoku and every other imaginable way to shut Alfred up. Today, he sits on his bed and stares eerily at the ceiling, occasionally jotting something down in a notepad with frantic speed. It’s probably not the most comforting sight to whoever is watching the cameras today, but it is safe and quiet.

Ivan hasn’t been a light sleeper since he came to the hospital. The strict routine and the drowsy meds have brought the one shining benefit of uninterrupted sleep. That’s why Ivan feels the need to investigate when he awakes for no apparent reason. Ludwig is on tonight, giving Ivan relatively free range of at least this hall. Alfred is fast asleep in his own bed, limbs awkwardly splayed and tangled in the sheets. Both his feet are out and one is missing a sock. Ivan has to hand it to Alfred — for all his chaotic energy during the day, he is a sound, albeit rough, sleeper.

Ivan leans down to plant a kiss on his nose. Alfred’s face scrunches and he rubs his nose with a clumsy, flailing arm before rolling to his side.

The hallway is deserted. Ivan looks at the ceiling for a flickering light or a leak — nothing. He quietly pads over to the rooms around him and peers into each one, expecting someone awake or at least a snore. Everyone is still. And where, oh where, could Ludwig be?

What is Feliciano’s room number again? Ivan racks his brain. It’s some doors down, he knows that, because he and Feliciano rarely run into each other in the morning or the night. He also remembers hearing his old roommate say the number to a friend when he was transferred to Feliciano’s cell. Ivan keeps walking, knowing this isn’t a game to play and yet unable to deny his curiosity. Would he find them in the throes of passion right there? Would Feliciano’s roommate be asleep beside them as they made love like a silent movie, movements rushed, jerky, mouths open with no sound?

Doubtful. There are cameras in every room even if night security is lax. Ivan doesn’t worry too much about his room’s camera, not with Katyusha working 7pm-3am, but he’s not sure Ludwig has the same connections.

He might. But even then, Ivan can’t picture Ludwig being so bold. He imagines Ludwig sealing his hand over Feliciano’s mouth and driving into him, fast before they run out of time, before their luck runs out and Feliks wakes, and – Ivan almost laughs at the thought. No, as dirty as Ludwig is, it takes a different kind of man to commit a crime of that intimacy; to do it where his lover sleeps. Although Ludwig’s lover may be malleable enough for him to get away with it, Ivan muses.

He does find Feliks in bed, jaw slack and a trail of drool dribbling down his chin. A long strand of hair sticks to the saliva there. Ivan is not surprised, however, to find Feliciano’s bed empty. Ivan is about to head to the bathrooms when he hears voices from the behind the double doors leading to the staircase. Ah, so this is what woke him.

The doors open revealing Ludwig with a hand on Feliciano’s back. Feliciano is whispering something to him and Ludwig looks at him fondly. Oh, to be young and in love. Ludwig’s gaze is on Ivan in the next instant and all tenderness abandons his expression as his brows come crashing together and his teeth bared. Ludwig hurries Feliciano towards his room, inserting himself between Feliciano and Ivan who still stands by the doorway.

Feliciano’s hair is well-mussed, lips swollen, and nightshirt crooked over his shoulders. Ivan nods politely to him and Feliciano is clearly about to speak when Ludwig orders him to get in bed with a fierce whisper. Feliciano obeys without a word, which has Ivan raising his eyebrows. “You’ve got him well-trained,” he compliments, already moving away from the door. Ludwig follows him. “I’m impressed, truly. If I tried that on Jones, he’d ignore me or sock me.”

“Hey,” Ludwig practically spits. “We are not like you, okay? I’m not like you, so don’t start making comparisons as if we’re friends swapping tips.”

“My mistake,” Ivan quips, “I thought we were both carrying illicit relationships inside a mental hospital with men who cannot separate life from delusion. But no, you are right, we have different concerns. Yours thinks the sky is falling and mine thinks he caused it.”

“Shut your damn mouth,” growls Ludwig. “You can laugh all you want at Jones but I actually care about Feliciano. That’s what separates us. I love him. We have dreams together. He’s not going to rot in here like you two. He can tell what’s real and what’s not because he’s not content thinking everyone else is out to get him.

“You can have all the fun you want with your partner – ” Ludwig’s tone catches mockingly on that word, “— but Feliciano and I want better. We’re going to get out of here and do this right.”

Ivan stops walking a few feet short of his room. He locks his fists behind his back, hides the anger turning his knuckles white, and just stares at Ludwig for some time. He tilts his head at him. He’s learned something new about Ludwig, he thinks: Ludwig is quite good at compartmentalization to humanize Feliciano alone.

It’s frustrating and almost laughable how Ludwig sees Feliciano as special in a hospital full of people just like him; people labeled crazy and then neatly boxed up until they’re presentable enough to be unwrapped for society. As if Feliciano is the exception and not the rule.

“I have a question for you,” Ivan finally says. “You do not have to answer it, but I know you will think about it and I only hope you can be honest with yourself if not with me: what makes your actions so drastically different from mine?” he questions.

“Intent,” Ludwig answers automatically, but Ivan’s next words begin just as Ludwig’s end.

“You think I do not want the same?” Ivan asks. Whatever Ludwig wanted to say, it’s been stopped with a foot to the brakes at Ivan’s question. “You think Alfred and I are content to live in instability without privacy, without intimacy, until one or both of us are eaten alive by these walls?”

Ivan takes a step closer. “Do you think I don’t miss my family, or do you think I don’t have family? Or do you just not think of us at all?” He leans in so he can whisper almost into Ludwig’s ear. “Do not think yourself special for craving your own happiness,” Ivan advises.

Finished with this interaction, he goes into his room and waits for the sound of Ludwig’s departure. Sleep comes slow and bittersweet. He dreams of the house he once shared with his sisters, and of going to work and meeting a blue-eyed boy with a cowlick and wide tonsils.

Ivan is sitting at his usual spot with Dr. Héderváry. Right now, she’s telling him how disinterested he has come off lately in their sessions. She worries he may be regressing in his treatment and wishes he would engage again. Ivan is vaguely aware of apologizing to her. He’s more focused on Alfred who, as of ten minutes ago, took a seat beside Feliciano. They are just far enough away so that Ivan cannot overhear them. He can only watch as Alfred grows increasingly animated, hands gesturing wildly and his voice becoming violently loud at some points before abruptly dropping to a whisper.

Ivan is halfway to convincing himself it’s fine, that Feliciano may not even tell Ludwig about Alfred’s conspiracies today, when Alfred throws another emphatic hand into the air and accidentally nails Feliciano in the face. Ivan instinctively stands, but then so does Dr. Héderváry. Feliciano looks okay; the smack must have been light.

He glances at his doctor and smiles playfully. “Going somewhere?” he asks lightly.

Dr. Hédérvary’s expression if one of pure bafflement. “I should ask you, Ivan,” she counters.

Ivan lowers himself back into his chair. “You are lucky I am not the skittish sort,” he teases. “I have seen patients here accuse their doctors of violent intent for less.” It’s an innocent comment, but Dr. Héderváry does not take it that way.

“Do you believe I have violent intent, Ivan?” she asks, sitting back down as well. Again, with the leading questions, he thinks wearily.

“No,” he answers easily, “I am just pointing out how unconventional you are sometimes.”

Dr. Héderváry does not like how the conversation is unfolding if her checking her watch for the first time is any indication. He’s been keeping track of the time with the analog clock on the wall behind Alfred’s head. They have some time to go.

“Unconventional how?” Dr. Héderváry inquires.

Ivan considers his phrasing. He shrugs. “You are just very genuine, that’s all. Most psychologists prioritize composure above all else, always scrutinizing their patients for any sign of upset.” Ivan stretches his legs forward so they rest against Dr. Héderváry’s chair. “What would you have done had I,” Ivan flicks his fingers, “run off? Would you have chased me down?”

He hears Alfred groan in exasperation. Ivan can hear him exclaim, “No, he’s not… ” before Alfred’s voice drops to a whisper again.

“Would you like to end our session early, Ivan?” asks Dr. Héderváry.

Ivan tears his eyes away from Alfred’s table long enough to take advantage of the out. “You are always a delight, doctor,” he praises, “and we may have just found something in common; yes, I think an early end may be the best for today. Always next week,” he assures, already standing up.

“This isn’t about what I want,” Dr. Héderváry tries to clarify, but Ivan has a deal to make good on. He strides over to the table where Alfred and Feliciano are seated.

“Feliciano,” he greets, resting a hand on Alfred’s shoulder and smiling apologetically. “Would you mind giving Alfred and I some privacy?”

Feliciano’s eyes are wide. Ivan checks his face for the slightest injury, but Alfred’s clumsy enthusiasm has left no mark. Regardless, Feliciano plays the part of kicked puppy perfectly. Ivan wonders how his family manages to leave him here every day after visits with those shaking shoulders and tucked tail.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Feliciano says and attempts a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Ivan briefly worries that his smiles aren’t all the way there either. Ivan dismisses the thought for later as Feliciano scampers off.

Ivan takes his place with no complaint from Alfred. He doesn’t even bother starting over, just soldiers on in his theory that “the doctor” was keeping everyone here against their will. “Really?” Ivan asks if just to see where Alfred takes this. “Why would he want to keep people here?”

Alfred rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s simple, isn’t it? Doctors have egos, everyone knows that, and this is how they can flex. So when doctors like,” Alfred trails off, visibly floundering.

“Dr. Väinämöinen,” Ivan guesses. He knows him to be Alfred’s doctor. It’s doubtful Alfred would have had enough interaction with anyone else’s doctors here to appropriate them into his web.

“Right, yes!” Alfred pounces. “When Dr. V got some people who were misunderstood, it made him feel like he had a big dick to keep me here.” Alfred rests his arms on the table and crosses them angrily. “The fucker,” he spits, looking down to the side. “He’s not completely evil,” he mutters. Ivan watches, enraptured, as Alfred recreates this man he barely knows. “He just wants to see if you’re smarter than him,” he explains, opening his palms and staring at them hard. Ivan wonders what he sees.

“If you’re smarter than him and you can solve his puzzles, catch his clues,” Alfred reasons, “he’ll let you go.”

“You see a way out,” Ivan states. He brushes his fingertips over Alfred’s open, empty palms.

“Yeah,” Alfred says, either to Ivan or himself, and nods. “Shit like that. Shit like the brownie.”

Ivan leans back in his chair with a tired sigh. “You are obsessed with this brownie.”

Alfred slides his hands to the end of the table and grips the wood. For the first time in their conversation, Alfred is looking Ivan in the eyes. “It’s all a part of the puzzle, Ivan,” he says with utmost sobriety. Something tender makes itself known in Ivan’s chest as he stares at this beautiful young man who never learned self-doubt. And then he thinks of Ludwig’s prediction, of Alfred only getting worse as everyone who tries to help him is suspect, and something sad envelopes that something tender.

Alfred has an appointment with his doctor today. It is schedule during small group activity time. Ivan has joined the modest crocheting circle which consists of Nurse Erika and one other patient besides Ivan. He’s working on a headband which he plans to give to Alfred as a sleep mask because he often complains about the bright lights of the hallway keeping him up at night. The colors are red, white, and blue.

Nurse Erika brightly asks, “Oh, like the Russian flag?”

Ivan frowns. Did he get the color order wrong? He tries to count the pattern but it’s a circle and maybe Erika just looked at the wrong color first —

His thoughts are interrupted by three guards barreling down the hall with one nurse in tow. Immediately the common room erupts in chatter as patients ask what’s happening and nurses tell them all is well, please remain seated and continue group activities.

Ivan watches the spot where the guards just were. Then he looks around, tries to remember all the patients and perform a head count. They’re all here. All of them except for Alfred.

“Don’t you want to finish your headband? It’s looking so good,” Nurse Erika patronizes. Ivan glances down at the sleep mask in his lap, tries to picture Alfred wearing it to bed. Feeling cold, Ivan picks up his hook and winds the red yarn around, around, around.

Ivan waits two weeks for a word of Alfred. Not a word from — he doesn’t expect Alfred to reach out. Even sharing a room, Alfred struggled with the concept of the other. He spoke to whoever would listen and Ivan simply did his best to be the one listening. Now that Ivan isn’t physically around, he’ll likely fade as a character in Alfred’s universe. Object permanence doesn’t seem his strong suit and as upset as Ivan is, he can’t fault Alfred for being himself.

Ivan does make inquiries. He hasn’t much to risk now that he’s lost. Unfortunately, hospital staff are tight-lipped. He asks Dr. Héderváry to find out, pleads with her even, and it’s his vulnerability that likely made her give in. By their next meeting on the second week, Dr. Héderváry can confirm he has been transferred to another hospital. He asks her where, but she claims confidentiality about the exact location. When that argument doesn’t work, she tells him the truth: it’s best that he move on.

So, he asks Katyusha to keep her ear to the ground. She says the people she works with aren’t really the people who would know, but — “well, like I said, I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

He asks Natalya who has his answer by Friday afternoon. Alfred is in the same state, just an hour north at St. Peter’s Hospital. Natalya sourced her information from a nurse whom the incident details had trickled down to. “His name is Toris. We had lunch earlier,” she tells Ivan, glancing sheepishly up at him from under silvery bangs. “He’s very manly,” she adds.

Ivan spends the rest of that day thinking over Natalya’s information. Somehow, Alfred had obtained a weapon — a boxcutter with a half-inch blade — which he used against his psychiatrist, Tino Väinämöinen. The hallway outside Tino Väinämöinen’s adjunct office had been empty save for Ludwig Beilschmidt, a guard who had come in earlier than his shift to drop some papers off. He heard shouting while passing by and ran in to find the doctor backed into the wall with bloodied hands. The guard immediately tackled the patient to the ground, where his weapon was removed and he was chemically and physically restrained by three other guards.

Ivan’s mind catches on Ludwig’s involvement, naturally. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. His presence, Natalya informs him, is regarded as a somewhat of a miracle by hospital staff. Ivan and Ludwig have not interacted since the night outside the room he once shared with Alfred. Any conversation would be pointless beyond giving Ludwig the chance to openly gloat, and he’s too busy basking in his victory to taint it with Ivan’s two cents.

Ivan sits back in that one loveseat in the hospital. He sits back and watches Ludwig lingering near Feliciano. He watches Ludwig far more closely than he ever bothered before. He wonders if his face has always been this open around Feliciano, or if this has newly developed from his sense of hard-won freedom. Ideas unfurl across Ivan’s mind like invisible yet hard-to-shake spiderwebs. Once the thought flies into his brain it can’t break free. It spins itself tighter and deeper until Ivan is all but consumed by it.

Ivan’s bed is perfectly made. The pillow case is smooth, the sheets turned down in a straight edge, blanket tucked in at the corners. It has not been touched since the morning following Alfred’s final appointment with Dr. Väinämöinen. Ivan has taken to sleeping in Alfred’s bed. He pretends to rest when the nurses come by and turn off the lights. He waits there, on Alfred’s mattress, although his warmth and his scent has long since left it, until he hears the familiar footfalls of Ludwig. Then Ivan pushes the blankets to the bottom of the bed, turns his legs over, and walks over to the doorframe.

Ludwig pauses in his pacing at the sight of Ivan, but his paralysis is short-lived before he quickens his pace towards him. Ivan almost expects Ludwig to grind out an order of, “Go to bed, Braginski,” but Ludwig says nothing as he closes the distance.

“I do wonder how he got the boxcutter,” Ivan remarks. Ludwig’s jaw flexes beneath his skin. “It’s a small room with not much ground to explore. I would have noticed something like that if it had been there even two days before Dr. Väinämöinen’s little surprise,” he assures Ludwig. “And I know Alfred’s family hasn’t visited him in, gosh, months. Who could have possibly given him a knife?” Ivan raises his eyebrows and stares at Ludwig almost imploringly. “Who could’ve benefited from such reckless endangerment?” he asks softly.

Ludwig swallows something hard in his throat. “Go to bed, Braginski,” he commands.

Ivan nods, not surprised. “Good night, Ludwig. I hope you have been enjoying you dreams lately. I know I will enjoy mine tonight.”

Ivan returns to the room, getting to his knees to remove the box of books from beneath his old bed. He opens the box and retrieves his notebook along with a mechanical pencil courtesy of Ludwig some time ago. Curling beneath Alfred’s sheets, Ivan spends the night writing instead of sleeping. The hours shift from late to early, but Ivan pays no attention to the ache in his tired eyes and bones, only the unfurling of a web onto paper.

#rusame #amerus #aph america #aph russia #alfred f jones #ivan braginski #ivan braginsky #fanfiction for the void #ne ne motherfucker #otp: mutually assured devotion #fic: asylum #biffle

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[PANN] THE TRUE NATURE OF EXO’S LEADER SUHO

Let’s explore EXO’s leader ‘Ek-jel-ut’ Suho Junmyeon

1. Ek-jel-ut, alias ‘EXO’s funniest guy’ It’s the nickname EXO-Ls gave! Suho himself said that he really likes it and is satisfied with it ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

2. Manners I don’t remember which but an educational book? this picture was published in the book and shown as an example of proper manners. When a lady is walking down the stairs, don’t hold her hand but offer her your wrist? Also when it was raining, he kept his umbrella and greeted the fans. And I don’t have a photo of this so I didn’t upload it but one time, when Chanyeol was on a variety show, he (suho) wanted to greet an elder so he buttoned his button. Because of these instances, his good manners have become a topic

3. Fan love Starting with the posts he wrote on ‘From EXO’

He doesn’t use other SNS but he posts on ‘From EXO’ often and shares bits of his daily life

Also, when you mention EXO, they’re famous for repaying the fans. Even recently, at the last show of his musical, he gave the fans that came hot packs and water that he personally prepared. It’s not just the photo below, there are more if you search it up, but I’ll just post this because it’s too tiring to look for all the photos ㅋㅋㅋ

Also he works hard in order to communicate a lot with the fans, to the point where it’s almost scary.

“These days I write down the trendy slang that the fans like, or words that the fans say often, in my smartphone’s memo. So that I can use these words when the situation calls for it in the future.”

It’s not just this, another popular anecdote is when they were doing this program, and the guards were mistreating? the fans, Suho then directly told the guards to stop. There is a voice recording of this too

4. Lastly, his face

Actually today was a very happy and precious day for Suho - the last stage for ‘The Last Kiss’! But because he couldn’t attend, and because of some complicated emotions, he was upset, got choked up and cried.

“I hope that people receive positive influence when they see my work. That is what I want to do as EXO, with the EXO members, and it is my life’s reason.” Suho said this. After seeing this, I grew to respect him more. It’s seriously the first time in my life that I have thoughts like “I want to be like that person, I respect him” while fangirling.

What should I say to wrap this up. Be pretty, our leader

[PANN] The true nature of EXO’s leader.txt

Overall: +1350; -91

[+275;-4] Suho who protects his members just like his name.jpg [suho=“protect”]

[+254;-4] Please give ‘Dinner’ and ‘Do you have a moment?’ lots of love!!!

[+215;-3] Ek-jel-ut.. Kawaii... saranghae

[+110;-1] If I say that my role model is a celebrity, there are many people who would look down on me, but I respect Kim Junmyeon not as Suho, but as Kim Junmyeon

[in every year of high school, the student and the parents write their respective ambitions (for the child) in the report card. in junmyeon’s case, from year one to year three, his ambitions were ‘CEO, celebrity, celebrity’ while his parents’ ambitions were ‘CEO, lawyer, celebrity’. this shows that his perseverance not only changed his parents’ minds, but that he also worked hard and achieved his dreams!]

[+92;-2] Not that all celebrities ‘sell’ their personalities, but I think only the ones that constantly have good stories told about them and are constantly showing their good personality through their actions are trustworthy. I wish there were more good people like this. ㅎㅎ Junmyeon-ie whose face, personality and proportions are all perfect, is the best leader

[+77;-1] The picture that was published as a reference in a textbook!

[+67;-1] I’m another group’s fan but seriously I don’t think there is anything you can diss about Suho. I see a lot of Suho’s manner-pics on ‘Talker’s choice’ [t/n: trending section on Pann], he seems like a really good person... Reading this post, I was really amazed by how he would write down the trendy slang his fans used [t/n: commenter also uploaded a photo proving that she is a Bangtan fan]

[+63;-1] I got very choked up seeing you cry on V-app today. Really, he’s prettier than anyone else. I’m so happy to like you. Junmyeon-ie, you always be happy too, I hope you’ll do everything that you want to do. I’m really thankful that you’re EXO’s leader. Thank you for always thinking of EXO-Ls, I love you

#exo #suho #ktrans #pann #happy suho day

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lelou-quotes · 3 years

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A few weeks ago, Jennie and I were sitting at brunch with a group of friends. (Yes, I go to brunch sometimes. I’m not gonna apologize for it; brunch is delightful.) About halfway through our meal, someone brought up the topic of self-comparison.

All of us at the table agreed that we’ve been guilty of this particular behavior, and wondered why — despite our ages and accomplishments — we continued comparing ourselves to other people, even though we knew it was a pointless and often destructive tendency.

That’s when John, who had been quiet throughout this conversation, chimed in.

“Actually, I feel like I compare myself to other people relatively rarely,” he said, with a satisfied smile.

We all looked around at each other, then back at him.

“You mean…compared to other people?” someone else asked.

John stared at us for a moment, then broke into a laugh.

In that moment, we knew that this was one of those secrets we all shared, a habit we just can’t seem to beat, even when it seems like we’ve beat it.

We All Compare Ourselves to Other People

We do this even when the comparisons aren’t meaningful. Even when they make us unhappy. Even when they don’t actually make us better, smarter, or more productive human beings.

And we seem to be doing it more and more — as if this plague of constant self-comparison really only became a phenomenon in the last five years. Which, in a big way, it has, but we’ll get to that in just a minute.

So why do we compare ourselves to other people?

Is there any benefit to seeing how we stack up against others?

And if there isn’t, how can we stop?

Look at Me (Looking at You) (Looking at Me)

We’re designed to understand ourselves. This capacity for self-reflection is one of the defining characteristics of our species. It’s what makes us look up at the stars and ponder our purpose, keeps us from behaving like freshmen on spring break at the office Christmas party, and pushes us to cooperate and compete with the other highly evolved apes we interact with every day.

In other words, we have a fundamental need to evaluate ourselves, and the only way to do that is in reference to something else.

And since we live in a world populated by other life forms that look and behave a lot like us, that something else becomes someone else — other people.

Which is why you’ll compare yourself to a model on the cover of Vogue or the ripped guy in your bootcamp class, rather than your internal standard of beauty or a textbook on human physiology.

When nonsocial concepts aren’t available or compelling enough for comparison — and, spoiler alert, they’re usually not — we’ll start to see how we stack up against other people.

This peculiar drive was first explored seriously by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger in 1954.

Festinger basically said that people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to other people for two reasons:

First, to reduce uncertainty in the areas in which they’re comparing themselves.

And second, to learn how to define themselves.

He called this concept social comparison theory, and it’s one of the biggest contributions to the field of social psychology.

What Festinger really nailed was that human beings can’t actually define themselves intrinsically or independently. They can only define themselves in relation to someone else. When it comes to the big questions of Identity and Self and Who the Hell Am I?, we need to look at other people.

But he actually went a bit further than that, and that’s where things really get interesting.

For one thing, Festinger pointed out that the tendency to compare ourselves to another person decreases as the difference between our opinion or ability and the other person’s increases.

In other words, the more similar we are to another person in some way we think is important, the more we tend to compare ourselves to that person.

That means we’re more likely to compare ourselves to a colleague at our level than we are to the CEO, just like we’re more likely to compare ourselves to a runner in our weekly running group than we are to Usain Bolt. The difference between you and Usain Bolt is astronomical, but the difference between you and another amateur runner is probably quite small — which makes them a more attainable, and therefore compelling, comparison.

Festinger also pointed out that when we stop comparing ourselves to other people, we often experience hostility and derogation toward those people — as long as continuing to compare ourselves to them brings unpleasant consequences.

In other words, if we stop comparing ourselves to that super fit runner in our running group because it’s making us feel bad, then we’ll tend to deal with those feelings by mentally tearing them down. If we can’t deal with the negative feelings of the comparison, then we’ll swap them for more “helpful” ones — anger, hostility, or a tendency to simply write the other person off.

(If you’ve ever felt a twinge of envy about someone close to you, and then found yourself subtly turning against them in your mind, then this process will sound familiar. It’s a strange script that all of us have running in the background to keep us feeling secure in our positions and self-concepts. Oh, humans.)

Finally — and this is probably the most important thing for us — Festinger pointed out that the more important we think some particular group of people is, the more pressure we’ll feel to conform to that group in our abilities and opinions.

In other words, we’ll feel more pressure to kick ass in our SoulCycle class than we will to perform like a random group of cyclists on the street. The difference is that we think our SoulCycle class is a more important comparison group, whereas the ability of some random cyclists on the street probably matters very little.

(Which, if you think about it, helps explain why we pay so much for those SoulCycle classes. We pay because we think the group is important, but we also think the group is important because we pay — and because everyone else is paying, too. Crazy hall of mirrors, right?)

Now, all of this might sound pretty obvious. We know we have a need to compare ourselves. We know we tend to compare ourselves to people who are similar to us. We know that we compare our abilities and our opinions to groups we deem important. And we know that that comparison often dredges up some unpleasant feelings.

So what? Isn’t that just the way we’re designed? And don’t we need to compare ourselves to other people in order to know how we’re doing? Otherwise, why would we become better? Is comparing ourselves to other people really so bad?

Great questions.

To answer them, we need to understand why we’re comparing ourselves in the first place.

Self-evaluation vs. Self-enhancement

For years, I listened obsessively to as many podcasts as I could fit into my day. I’d take walks to Terry Gross, make lunch to an up-and-coming amateur interviewer, and fall asleep to Larry King. In a given week, I’d listen to dozens and dozens of podcasts all across the spectrum, from poor to amazing, niche to mainstream.

All the while, I’d be taking mental notes, picking up tricks and tips, trying to see where I fit in the podcast hierarchy, figuring out how I stacked up against my idols and my peers. I did all this in the name of research, as a way of gathering new skills and measuring my progress along the way.

Sometimes listening to these shows would leave me swollen with excitement and pride. Hah! I’m totally better than these guys! I can do this! I’m putting out a kick-ass show!

Other times, listening to them would leave me confused and dejected. Man, I’ve got a lot to learn. I’ll never be as good as these guys. What do they know that I don’t?

It took me years to realize that by comparing myself to other people, I was actually doing two things: trying to figure out how good I actually was, and trying to make myself feel better.

Recognizing the difference between these two motivations for comparison is the key to separating out healthy comparison from unhealthy comparison.

Let’s return to the example of the colleague at work.

Say you compare yourself to Andrea in marketing — she’s the same age, has the same position, and has a similar talent and ability. Out of all the people in the department, Andrea’s the most compelling to compare yourself to, because her skill level is comparable and attainable, and because she’s part of a group (your company) whose opinion matters to you.

So when you’re sitting in a meeting with Andrea, you’ll probably find yourself wondering how you stack up. Do I present as well as she does? Do people care what I say as much as they care about what she says? Are my Excel models as solid? Do people find me as trustworthy and insightful? These questions arise automatically and often unconsciously — as if just by being near Andrea, you can’t help but wonder how you compare.

Behind these questions, though, you’ll notice a few different motivations.

One motivation is to understand the objective quality of your work.

When you compare your presentations to Andrea’s, you’re trying to understand whether your presentations are as interesting, and how they could improve. When you study the way the rest of the team responds to her recommendations, you’re trying to gauge whether your colleagues feel similarly about you, and how you might become more authoritative, convincing, or influential.

In that scenario, Andrea becomes a sort of benchmark — a source of feedback you can use to become better. She’s a model for the level of ability you’re striving toward. She’s a way for you to assess yourself against a relevant source of comparison. That’s not only normal, but essential.

A very different motivation behind the comparison to Andrea is to see yourself more favorably.

From this perspective, when you compare yourself to Andrea, you’re looking to her to help build up your sense of self. When you compare your presentations, you’re looking to feel better about your own persona and style. When you study the way your colleagues respond, you’re looking to confirm that you’re the more talented and respected colleague, that people take you as seriously, that you have more authority or influence or charisma in the office.

In other words, you’re not studying Andrea to improve your self-evaluation. You’re studying her to boost your self-esteem. And that is the kind of comparison that gets us into trouble.

As it happens, this kind of comparison often gives us a very distorted view of ourselves. In fact, research has shown that we tend to prioritize feedback that makes us look good and desirable, and ignore feedback that makes us look weak, undesirable or generally “less than.” So even if we “succeed” in making ourselves feel “better,” our brains are often playing a clever trick with the data we’re using to arrive at that conclusion.

As long as self-enhancement is your goal, then comparing yourself to other people will always make you miserable.

Either your comparison will artificially boost your ego, temporarily making you feel superior to the people you’re comparing yourself to, or your comparison will unearth the vulnerabilities you might not want to face, leaving you exposed to familiar feelings of anger, envy, and shame.

Which brings us back to our original question: Is it really so bad to compare ourselves to other people?

The answer is: it depends.

If we’re comparing ourselves for self-assessment, then wondering how we stack up is natural, healthy, and often very helpful. I’d even argue that it’s necessary.

But if we’re comparing ourselves for self-enhancement, then this process can quickly become obsessive, toxic, and often very confusing.

The problem is that when we compare ourselves, we’re often doing both simultaneously, without even realizing it.

And oftentimes, we think we’re trying to assess ourselves when we’re actually trying to enhance ourselves — which is how we can justify this destructive habit under the guise of “doing our research,” just as I used to do when I listened to all those podcasts.

That’s a trap some of the highest performers in the world can fall into. And it’s one of the biggest paradoxes of self-improvement.

We need to study other people in order to measure our progress. But by measuring our progress, we often end up inflating ourselves, tearing ourselves down, or toggling between one or the other — often at the expense of the people we’re comparing ourselves to.

And those people, in turn, are almost certainly doing the exact same thing with us. And because no one talks about it, we don’t realize that we’re all comparing ourselves to one another in a bizarre, unstable, often toxic hall of mirrors. No wonder all this comparison makes us miserable!

But there’s another reason that comparing ourselves to other people makes us so unhappy. And it has to do with the ideas we already have about ourselves.

Just Tell Me I Am (What I Already Know I Am)

When we compare ourselves to other people, we tend to think of it like fishing: We cast our nets around the people we choose to compare ourselves to, check out the catch of observations that comes back, and then use those observations to form an opinion about ourselves (whether we’re as good, as smart, as talented, as good-looking, and so on).

In reality, the process is much more complicated.

Because when we compare ourselves to other people, we almost always have some preexisting idea about how we stack up. Remember, we’ve been engaging in social comparison since the time we were kids. That means we’ve had years (decades!) to form all kinds of opinions about ourselves — about everything from our professional talents to our social skills, our athletic abilities to our moral standings.

Those opinions are what make up our self-concept and self-esteem. They’re like the scaffolding of our selves, the pylons propping up our identities. Psychologists call these core beliefs self-views, and we carry them around with us wherever we go.

Our self-views are insanely important. They help us make sense of the world around us, and allow us to navigate that world in a way that is safe, coherent, and stable.

For example, if you have a self-view that says I am a capable professional, then that belief is likely to help you to walk into your office with confidence, handle a difficult meeting, and take on a tough new project.

Alternatively, if you have a self-view that says I don’t know enough to be in my position, then that belief will probably make the office a stressful place, encourage you to take a backseat in meetings, and shrink away from more responsibilities.

But here’s what’s interesting: no matter what self-view you happen to hold, that opinion is allowing you to make sense of your world.

With one belief, your world is a positive, promising, growth-oriented place. With the other, it’s a self-conscious, taxing, demanding one.

Either way, the views you hold about yourself will keep that world consistent. And to your mind, it doesn’t matter if those views are totally accurate. It only matters that they work. And they “work” by propping up that self-concept and keeping your world stable and consistent.

So it’s no surprise that these self-views are very precious to us. We need them. And because we need them, our minds become very anxious when those beliefs get threatened. We need to constantly keep feeding them, reinforcing them, building them up.

Because who would we be if we didn’t think these thoughts about ourselves?

What would the world be like without them?

It’s like driving across a rickety bridge every day, knowing that the bridge is in a state of disrepair. The thought of tearing it down and building a new one might be the smartest thing to do, but hey, it’s getting me across, and it’s been getting me across for years, so, you know, maybe let’s just leave the bridge alone. I like this bridge. I know this bridge. Don’t mess with my bridge, man.

So we end up protecting these views about ourselves very carefully. To do that, we seek out feedback that confirms that the office is friendly and exciting or stressful and hostile, depending on which self-view we happen to hold.

Which means that when we compare ourselves to other people, we’re often comparing ourselves with a certain opinion already in mind.

We’re not acting like a blank slate, waiting for comparison feedback to tell us who we are. We already know who we are — or, rather, think we know who we are — and then compare ourselves to others in a way that helps confirm that preexisting belief.

That allows us to maintain the ideas we have about ourselves, so we don’t rock the mental boat too much. It also helps make us stable and predictable to one another, so that when we come across a new person — or interact with an old one — we can predict how they’ll behave and decide how to behave toward them in return. William Swann developed this theory, called self-verification, which was another major contribution to social psychology.

So What Does This All Mean for Us?

Well, two things. Plus some really great news if comparing yourself is making you unhappy.

First, when we compare ourselves to other people, we’re not really comparing ourselves to other people.

What we’re actually doing is comparing our ideas about ourselves to other people — then using our observations about those people to validate those preexisting ideas.

If you think about it that way, you’ve never really compared yourself to another person in your entire life. You’ve only compared your idea about yourself to another person.

What’s more, the last few years have added a whole new level of abstraction to this process in the form of social media.

Now, when we compare ourselves to other people, we’re actually just comparing ourselves to versions of other people — the versions they choose to put out into the world. We’re comparing our blooper reel to someone else’s highlight reel, and judging ourselves against that prettified proxy. This isn’t news, but it’s worth remembering. People’s digital selves are not their real selves, no matter how much time they spend on Instagram or use the word “authentic” or hashtag their photos #nofilter!

That’s why comparing yourself to other people these days feels so much worse than it used to.

Not only are you comparing your idea about yourself to another person, you’re comparing your idea about yourself to someone else’s idea about themself!

And since that person is also comparing their idea about themself to you (and your idea about yourself, and hundreds of other people and their ideas), a huge chunk of life is really just ideas comparing themselves to other ideas.

Which is actually pretty hilarious, once you see it for what it is.

Second, when we compare ourselves to other people, we’re usually just confirming the ideas we already have about ourselves.

In other words, we compare ourselves to other people to verify the self-concepts we already hold, not to develop new or accurate ones.

We look at Bridgette in SoulCycle and think, Yep, I knew it, she’s way more fit than me, I’ll never be in that kind of shape. Or we look at Trevor in marketing and think, Wow, his skills are paying off. If he can get ahead, I can too, I just have to keep putting in the time.

Since the human mind seeks stability and coherence above all else, we’re almost always using those observations to confirm that we’re “right” about the people we think we are. Because if we were truly honest about the comparison data we received, we’d have to rewrite all of our mental models about ourselves and the world.

A person convinced that she’s the greatest employee on earth would have to adjust to the idea that she still has a lot to learn, do, and prove. A person convinced that he’ll never find a partner would have to adjust to the idea that he’s worthwhile, in control, and responsible for his relationships.

For most of us, rewriting those fundamental self-concepts would be terrifying. So we just go on verifying the ones we already have, and we don’t even realize it.

Which is also kind of funny, if you think about it. We spend all this time obsessing about how we stack up against other people, but in many cases, we’ve already made up our minds!

So if comparing yourself to other people is making you miserable, then ask yourself what your motivation for comparing yourself really is.

Is it to assess your abilities and opinions?

Is it to enhance your sense of self about those abilities and opinions?

Or is it to verify the beliefs you already hold about those abilities and opinions?

Many of us will be surprised by the motivations lurking beneath the self-comparison we’re engaged in on a daily basis.

What seems like self-assessment can subtly turn into self-enhancement when we realize we don’t quite stack up the way we’d like.

What seems like self-enhancement can turn out to be self-verification when we realize that we’re seeking out comparisons that reflect the people we believe we are.

And what seems like self-verification can suddenly become true self-assessment when we realize that we’ve only been trying to protect ourselves.

But no matter what your motivation really is, at the end of the day, the buck ultimately stops with you. And that is great news.

Because if self-comparison is making you miserable, then it’s only because of the reasons you’re doing it in the first place, and the ideas you choose to form as a result — both of which are, over time, totally within your control!

Still, we’ll never stop comparing ourselves. Not really. This instinct to self-evaluate, to look to other people for information about ourselves, is deeply wired into our species.

But you can notice the tendency to self-compare, and just by noticing it, refrain from doing it when it’s not truly productive.

And you can investigate your motives for self-comparison, and make sure that you’re comparing yourself for reasons that are productive and healthy, rather than egoistic and toxic.

And, with enough self-awareness, patience, and kindness, you can eventually learn to use that comparison not to unfairly tear yourself down or artificially build yourself up, but to find out — and I mean really find out, for real — if the ideas you hold about yourself are actually accurate.

Starting with the one idea that brought you to this article in the first place.

I need to compare myself to other people in order to be happy.

https://www.jordanharbinger.com/why-you-compare-yourself-to-other-people-and-how-to-stop/#:~:text=Festinger%20basically%20said%20that%20people,learn%20how%20to%20define%20themselves.&text=They%20can%20only%20define%20themselves%20in%20relation%20to%20someone%20else.

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thegreyestwarden · 6 years

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I was recently tagged by @opal-bee to for an OC info meme! I’ve talked about Evrion Cousland so much that a lot of these questions have been answered times over for him... I haven’t talked about Trixie Trevelyan, though, and now that I have an OC page and screens of her, I’m taking this opportunity to introduce her!

General Details

Name: Beatrix Hortensia Trevelyan

Aliases: Trixie

Genders: Female

Ages: taken to the Circle of Montsimmard at 5, (roughly) 38 at the time of the Conclave in Haven

Place of Birth: Ostwick

Spoken Languages: Trade, Orlesian

Romantic/Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Occupation: former mage of the Circle of Monstsimmard; now an apostate, much to her discomfort (she’s more a companion character, as opposed to an Inquisitor, because I don’t want bad things to happen to her)

Appearance

Hair Color: mouse brown; she dyes it blonde (...she’s a mage in Orlais, there has to be a way, and if there isn’t, she found it)

Eye Color: brown

Height: 5′1″

Scars: cuts on her hands from when she was younger and her knife skills were not up to par for herbology

Burns: no burns

Overweight: no

Underweight: yes

Favorite

Color: pink, purple

Hair Color: no preference on others; loves blonde on herself, is pretty displeased when she can’t maintain her roots (it’s a sign that she’s not okay if she has the means to do so and simply doesn’t)

Eye Color: light colors

Music Genre: traditional Orlesian

Movie Genre: N/A

TV Show: N/A

Food: pies and biscuits

Drink: tea, wine

Book: she’s not much of a student, so textbooks are out; but Trixie loves fairytales, plays, and romances (like The Rose of Orlais, for example)

Has Trixie…

(by the time the Inquisition is official)

Passed University/College: yes; she’s a Harrowed mage, though not of any rank. she doesn’t have any particularly useful magical talents by the time the Circles fall, but has taken up learning healing magic since

Had Sex: yes, some

Had Sex In Public: no, and she’s prudish, so don’t ask unless you want to see how dramatically appalled she can get

Gotten Pregnant/Gotten Anyone Pregnant: no

Kissed a Boy: yes

Kissed a Girl: no(t yet)

Gotten Tattoos: no

Gotten Piercings: no

Had a Broken Heart: she thinks so

Been In Love: she thinks so

Stayed up for more than 24 hours: since the Mage-Templar war began, oh yeah

Is Trixie…

A Virgin: no

A Cuddler: yes

A Kisser: yes

Scared Easily: yes

Jealous Easily: she likes to think not, but yes

Trustworthy: very

Dominant/Submissive: submissive

I usually hesitate to tag people in these things, because I don’t want anyone to feel obligated, but... I wouldn’t mind seeing some OC info from @lavalampelfchild, @disreputabledog, @soulfish32, @dwarrowdams, @sirotras, and @lizmapes

#prompts #beatrix trevelyan #mars.txt

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sayantandodo · 4 years

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The Best Way to Ask For Online Mentorship and Approach to SkillPal.

There’s no doubt that a great mentor can be invaluable to your career — after all, mentors are able to provide you with insightful feedback, introduce you to important connections and maybe even help you find your dream job. Unfortunately, a great mentorship opportunity rarely just lands in your lap. More often than not, you need to proactively reach out in order to build the kind of professional relationship that can really benefit you. But you can’t just waltz up to someone and ask, “Do you want to be my mentor?” Well, you could, but it probably wouldn’t be very effective. The purpose of mentoring is to tap into the existing knowledge, skills, and experience of high performing employees and transfer these skills to newer or less experienced employees in order to advance their careers. The SkillPal mentorship is a relationship between two people where the individual with more experience, knowledge, and connections is able to pass along what they have learned to a more junior individual within a certain field. The more senior individual is the mentor, and the more junior individual is the mentee. The mentor benefits because they are able to lead the future generation in an area they care about and ensure that best practices are passed along; meanwhile, the mentee benefits because they have proven that they are ready to take the next step in their career and can receive the extra help needed to make that advancement.

Before you ask someone to be your mentor, you should make sure that they’re the right person. “Don’t expect someone in a high-level leadership role, like the CEO of a large company, to immediately agree to be your mentor. While they may want to mentor you, they might not have the time to do so,” says Mary Grace Gardner, career strategist at The Young Professionista. “A helpful mentor to have is someone who is two or three levels above you but doesn’t work directly with you. It’s more difficult for a mentor to give you neutral, constructive feedback if your work directly impacts them.” To hone in on who you should choose, think about what you need most right at this moment in your career. People who act as a mentor usually supposed to say something as free. But if you go to an expert mentor he or she maybe ask for some payment. SkillPal is here to provide expert mentors. On this platform of SkillPal, mentors supposed to provide knowledge and ideas against some money. You can get a shoutout video message regarding mentorship. This personalized video will help to develop your plans and ideas.

“Start by asking yourself how having a mentor will benefit you in your current situation and what you will gain by beginning this type of relationship,” says Eden Waldon, Career Specialist at Ama La Vida. “Perhaps you are seeking a mentor who can support your career goals and offer sound career pathing advice. Or maybe you are looking for someone with subject matter expertise to help you navigate a particular problem. You may even have different mentors that provide you with support in professional, personal and spiritual capacities.” Mentorship is best done by SkillPal. Unlike a management relationship, SkillPal mentoring relationships tend to be voluntary on both sides, although it is considered possible for a line manager to also be a mentor to the people that they manage. Unlike a coaching relationship, mentoring relationships are more usually unpaid. The idea behind mentoring relationships is a semi-charitable one: that the more successful, senior partner, the mentor, wishes to pass on some of what they’ve learned to someone else who will benefit from their experience. Some organizations run formal mentoring programmes that match mentors with learners. However, less formal mentoring relationships can also work well for SkillPal.

British mentoring programmes tend to have four key elements: improving performance, career development, counselling and sharing knowledge. In other countries, especially the US, there is also an element of the mentor acting as a sponsor for the learner, but this is not usually seen in the UK. These four features are also relevant for SkillPal also. Mentoring relationships, especially formal ones organized through a mentoring programme, are often entered into with a defined time limit, or a defined goal. Having such a framework in place can be easier for both parties to agree than an open-ended commitment. For example, a learner may agree to work with a mentor for a year, or until they achieve a particular desired promotion. After they have reached the time limit or achieved the goal, terms can be renegotiated. The mentor and learner may decide to continue to work together, especially if the relationship has been productive and helpful to both.

Asking someone to mentor you can feel a bit awkward, however – after all, this is a pretty big favour to ask. So before you pop the question, it helps to first look for indications that someone might be open to stepping into a mentorship role with you. Has this person shown an interest in you and your career? Have you had discussions about work-related questions that resulted in useful action items for you? Has he or she shared professional knowledge in a caring and supportive way? Has your potential mentor been willing to patiently spend time with you to help you grow your skills when asked? And does this person have the right knowledge/experience to address your specific mentoring issues?

If so, then you’ve probably identified someone who’s great mentor material. Your goal should be to build on those existing positive interactions to create a more structured learning relationship. And that starts with you first thinking through exactly what goals you have for the relationship, how to structure your work together, and what specifically you’re going to ask your mentor to do.

Schedule an initial conversation. Ask your potential mentor if he or she can make time for a 15-30 minute chat with you. You don’t want to be rushed, and you want plenty of time for the other person to ask you questions about your goals, etc.

Clearly describe the guidance you’re seeking. This is where that preliminary brainstorming on your part will help you articulate just what you have in mind.

Confirm your willingness to do the necessary work and follow-through. There’s nothing more frustrating than mentoring someone who doesn’t do the work necessary to take advantage of the advice, so you want to make it clear to your potential mentor that you’re ready to commit the time, energy and effort to make the most of their counsel (and time).

Acknowledge and respect the individual’s time. Most people who are asked to become mentors are highly successful in their careers, which means they’re also very busy and much in demand. So it’s important for you to acknowledge that reality, and make it clear how much you appreciate their considering your request. This is also the way to provide a graceful “out,” letting the other person cite an overbooked schedule for declining your request.

From my experience, a good SkillPal mentor must possess the following characteristics:

· Extensive experience in a related or relevant field

· Similar educational background

· Has overcome relatable challenges

· Friendly and genuine personality

· Credible and trustworthy character

· Must not feel threatened by empowering others

· Favorably disposed to flexible mentoring styles

· Open to learning from the mentee

Education gives us a knowledge of the world around us and changes it into something better. It develops in us a perspective of looking at life. It helps us build opinions and have points of view on things in life. People debate over the subject of whether education is the only thing that gives knowledge. Some say education is the process of gaining information about the surrounding world while knowledge is something very different. They are right. But then again, information cannot be converted into knowledge without education. Education makes us capable of interpreting things, among other things. It is not just about lessons in textbooks. It is about the lessons of life. One thing I wish I can do is, to provide education for all: no child left behind and change the world for good!! SkillPal is one of the best platforms for providing education. In SkillPal there are so many mentors from different fields. They will come to the students via the internet or web to provide knowledge and help them to grow up. Interested candidates will ask the mentor for a video session and the expert will send a suitable message to the candidate in 7 days.

#SkillPal #education #edutainment #mentorship #Personalized mentorship #shoutout #life coaches

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btsdadd-blog · 7 years

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hi, i'm really glad you're back and i'm sorry for all that happened, but i have to ask.. could you, if you don't mind, say some more details or examples about what has been happening/happened before you got help? because while reading about your experiences, it seemed like you were describing me, but like in worse state. So i also want to ask, should i also get checked somehow or do you think that it won't develope to that kind of a worse... illness?

so, i’m not a psychiatrist. im just some kid with a sickness. so i have no idea how you are and what you may be but i can definitely describe what my experience with schizophrenia is like? and i have minor symptoms in some areas, so ill also describe what they can be.

also, for the second half of your question, you really have to look at yourself. are these symptoms something you worry about, or do they affect your daily life? are they causing problems for you? have they changed your behavior? because they might be strong enough to consider seeing a psychiatrist. you could talk to a doctor and see if they can find a psychiatrist? or try to make an appointment with one? a consultation or somth might provide some answers, and you could take it from there if it is something to worry about.

hallucination- ive been having minor auditory hallucinations since i was little. i hear buzzing, knocking, clicking, and thumping that no one else hears. as a kid, i complained about my ‘brain creaking’ and was kept up at night feeling that someone was knocking on the walls, or the front door. i know these are in my head because ive learned to check them- i move my head left and right, and if the sound changes, i can tell that it is outside my head.

however, some people hallucinate voices. they could hear anywhere from whispering to yelling, one to many voices. ive met other people with voices and they really take up their heads. command voices are the worst of them, voices that tell the person to hurt themselves, hurt others, or voices that say terrible and offensive things.

visual hallucinations for me would be two things. my main hallucination is a tall, smoky man made of black sticks and mist. his name is the Cornish Man. when i was having my psychotic episodes, i would see him outside the window or past the fence, waiting for me. i also was deluded; i knew that he was going to hurt me, and that he was Death. i knew that the moment i relaxed, he would come to hurt me. minor hallucinations of mine would be seeing pieces of him in my peripherals, things moving in dark areas, and pulsing of objects in low light.

other people can experience really any other hallucinations- theyre just something you see that others dont. i dont really know other people with visual hallucinations so i cant really provide explanations

paranoia- i was paranoid about several things- i believed that the government collected peoples DNA for some sinister purpose, and because of this refused to give blood or leave things like band-aids or other things with my dna on them in public trash cans, etc. as well, i believed that not only was i being watched by the Cornish Man, but i was also being watched by a ton of other people. i felt their eyes on my back everywhere i went. i couldn’t sit with my back to a window. the blinds were usually drawn in any room i was in, especially at night. i also feared mind readers. i thought that my brain wasnt private, and would suddenly ‘scream’ in my head to see if anyone around me was surprised, if they had been reading my mind. finally, i also knew that microphones and video cameras were hidden in rooms, and routinely checked for them. i refused anyone who told me that they werent there.

i think that there are a lot of different paranoias, but mine were pretty textbook?

oh yeah btw, im using past tense because my meds have really helped me have a clearer head, but i still cant shake some of my symptoms. im just trying to used past tense so that i can try to put them ‘behind’ me.

delusion- delusions for me were very similar to my paranoias. i was deluded into thinking these were true. as well, i was very stuck in the idea that people were out to get me. however, for other people, they may be deluded into thinking they are a god, robot, all sorts of things.

thoughts- for a long time, my thoughts were very disorganized. i jumped from one topic to th next very quickly, used made up or mashed together words, and lost focus and my train of thought (this made if very hard to write my stories)

as well, i was very socially… distant? i was not very emotional and most of my interactions were forced. ive never truly felt romantic feelings towards someone? all of the things ive been talking about on here were just like, surface vanities? i was trying very hard to feel these things, so i acted like i did. it never worked though. i never really felt anything. when funny or sad things were happening, i had to mock the facial expression i was supposed to do. most of the time, had i not been mocking, i would have been straight faced and uninterested.

there are lots of other symptoms of schizophrenia. these are jus the main ones that ive experienced and met others that do. please look them up on your own on trustworthy websites because of course, again. im just some kid with a keyboard. im no doctor, not a professional.

#ace #basically i describe in depth all my symptoms so if you arent down for that....#yeah i understand #Anonymous

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newtshirtcom · 4 years

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daisy4793-blog · 4 years

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ronijashworth · 5 years

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SearchLove London 2019: The Great Big Round Up

On 14th and 15th October, we made our annual visit to The Brewery in London for our UK edition of SearchLove. This year’s conference was our most successful yet, not only in terms of the number of folks attending but also with regard to the high calibre of speakers who joined us over the jam-packed two days to share their invaluable industry insights.

Let the show begin! #searchlove #seo pic.twitter.com/zDIRbbX2KG

— Udo Leinhäuser (@u_leinhaeuser) October 14, 2019

This post is a quick-fire summary of the knowledge our speakers had to share, plus their slides & a few photos from across the conference. All sessions in their entirety will be available with a DistilledU membership in a couple of weeks' time. And don’t forget that if you feel you missed out this year, make sure you sign up to our mailing list to be the first in the know for next year’s conference! Are you ready? Let’s get started!

Marie Haynes - ‘Practical Tips For Improving E-A-T’

Google’s algorithms are increasingly considering E-A-T components (expertise, authority and trust) when evaluating sites. Marie shared why and how to improve E-A-T so that you have the best chance at winning in the current and future search landscape.

One of the most important things to focus on is the accuracy of the information on your site. This is especially important if your pages are primarily YMYL (‘your money or your life’, in other words, content that can affect someone’s health, safety, financial stability, etc.).

Google’s quality raters use the quality raters guidelines as their textbook. If you take a look at the guidelines, you can get a better idea about what Google is actually looking at when they’re evaluating E-A-T components. Try doing a CTRL+F for your industry to see what they suggest for your vertical.

There are some practical things you can do on your site to help Google understand that you’re trustworthy and authoritative:

Have contact information available.

If you’re eCommerce, ensure that your refund policy and customer service information is clearly accessible.

Make sure your site is secure (HTTPS)

Have correct grammar. How your page reads is important!

Make sure that the information on your site doesn’t contradict any known facts, something called scientific consensus. Site all sources as necessary.

SearchLove London 2019 - Marie Haynes - Practical Tips for Improving E-A-T from Distilled

Sarah Gurbach - ‘Using Qualitative Data To Make Human-Centered Decisions’

SEOs have a huge amount of data to work with, but often, the data that gets overlooked is that which comes directly from the humans who are driving all of our data points.

By performing qualitative research in tandem with quantitative, we can get insights on the actual human wants, barriers, and confusions that drive our customers to make their decisions and move through the funnel.

Sarah’s steps to conducting qualitative research include:

Defining your objective. Write it as a question. Keep it specific, focused and simple.

Asking open-ended questions to customers to define the personas you should be targeting. Sarah recommends surveys of 10 questions to 5 customers that should only take around 20 minutes each. More than this will likely be redundant.

Actually observing our users to figure out what and how they’re searching and moving through the funnel.

You can then quantify this data by combining it with other data sources (i.e. PPC data, conversion data, etc.).

If you don’t have time to conduct surveys, then you can go to social media and ask a question!

Want more on questions you can ask your customers? Check out this resource from Sarah.

SearchLove London 2019 - Sarah Gurbach - Using Qualitative Data to Make Human-centered Decisions from Distilled

Greg Gifford - ‘Doc Brown’s Plutonium-Powered SEO Playbook’

Greg delivered an entertaining, informative and best of all highly actionable talk on local SEO. If you have physical locations for your business, you should not be neglecting your local SEO strategy! It’s important to remember that there is a different algorithm for local SEO compared to the traditional SERP, and therefore you need to approach local SEO slightly differently.

Greg’s key tips to nailing your local SEO strategy are as follows:

Links are weighted differently for local SEO! Make sure you acquire local links - quality, and whether these are follow or nofollow, matters far less than in the standard SERP. The key is to make sure your links are local - get your hands dirty with some old-school marketing and get out into your local community to build links from churches, businesses and community websites in your area.

Content needs to actually be about your business and local area. If you can use your website copy for a site in another area, you’re doing it wrong. Also, make sure that your blog is a local destination - if your content is more localised than competitors, then you’ll be one step ahead of competitors.

Citations are also important, but you only need a handful! Make sure you link to your website from places that customers will actually see, such as your Facebook, Twitter and other social profiles. Ensure your business information is accurate across platforms.

Reviews need to be strong across platforms - there’s no use having excellent reviews in Google My Business, and then bad reviews on TripAdvisor!

Google My Business is your new homepage, so make sure you give it some attention!

Bear in mind that users can not only ask questions but also answer them - make sure you create your own Q&A here and upvote your answers so that they appear at the top.

Also be aware that clicks from GMB are recorded as direct! If you use UTM tracking parameters, then you can update the tracking so that you can attribute it correctly to organic.

SearchLove London 2019 - Greg Gifford - Doc Brown's Plutonium-powered Local SEO Playbook from Distilled

Luke Carthy - ‘Finding Powerful CRO and UX Opportunities Using SEO Crawlers’

Luke Carthy discussed the importance of not always striving to drive more traffic, but making the most of the traffic you currently do have. More traffic does not necessarily equal more conversions! He explored different ways to identify opportunities using crawl software and custom extraction, and to use these insights to improve conversion rates on your website.

His top recommendations include:

Look at the internal search experience of users - do they get a ‘no results found’ page? What does this look like - does it provide a good user experience? Does it guide users to alternative products?

Custom extraction is an excellent way to mine websites for information (your own and especially competitors!)

Consider scraping product recommendations:

What products are competitor sites recommending? These are often based on dynamic algorithms, so provide a good insight into what products customers buy together

Also pay attention to the price of the recommended products vs. the main product - recommended items are often more expensive, to encourage users to spend more

Also consider scraping competitor sites for prices, review and stock

Are you cheaper than competitors?

Do competitors have popular products that you don’t have? What are their best and worst-performing products? Often category or search results pages are ordered by best-sellers, and you can take advantage of this by mining this information

To deepen your analysis, plugin other data such as log file data, Google Analytics, XML sitemaps and backlinks to try to understand how you can improve your current results, and to obtain comprehensive insights that you can share with the wider team

SearchLove London 2019 - Luke Carthy - Finding Powerful CRO and UX Opportunities Using SEO Crawlers from Distilled

Andi Jarvis - ‘The Science of Persuasion’

Human psychology affects consumers’ buying behavior tremendously. Andi covered how we as SEOs can better understand these factors to influence our SEO strategy and improve conversions.

Scarcity: you can create the impression of scarcity even when it doesn’t exist, by creating scarcity of time to drive demand. An example of this is how Hotels.com creates a sense of urgency by including things like “Only 4 rooms left!” Test and learn with different time scales (hours, days, weeks or more) to see what works best for your product offering.

Authority: building authority helps people understand who they should trust. When you’ve got authority, you are more likely to persuade people. You can build authority simply by talking about yourself, and by labelling yourself as an authority in your industry.

Likeability: The reason that influencer marketing works is due to the principle of liking: we prefer to buy from people who we are attracted to and who we aspire to be. If we can envision ourselves using a product or service by seeing ourselves in its marketing, then we are more likely to convert.

Pretty Little Thing has started doing this by incorporating two models to model clothing, to increase the likelihood of users identifying with their models

Purpose: People are more likely to buy when they feel they are contributing to a cause, for example, Pampers who has a partnership with Unicef, so consumers feel like they are doing a good deed when they buy Pampers products. This is known as cause-based or purpose-based marketing.

Social proofing: It’s been known for a long time that people are influenced by the behaviour of others. In the early 1800s, theatres would pay people to clap at the right moments in a show, to encourage others to join in. Similarly today, if a brand has several endorsements from celebrities or users, people are more likely to purchase their products.

Reciprocation: Offering customers a free gift (even if small) can have a positive impact on re-purchase rates. Make sure though that you evolve what you do if you have a regular purchase cycle - offer customers different gifts so that they don’t know what to expect, otherwise the positive effect wears off.

SearchLove London 2019 - Andi Jarvis - The Science of Persuasion from Distilled

Heather Physioc - ‘Building a Discoverability Powerhouse: Lessons From Integrating Organic Search, Paid Search & Performance Content’

Organic, paid content and the like all impact discoverability. Yet, in many organisations, these teams are siloed. Heather discussed tips for integrating and collaborating between teams to build a “discoverabilty powerhouse”.

There are definite obstacles to integrating marketing teams like paid, social, or organic.

It’s not unlikely that merging teams too much can actually diminish agility. Depending on what marketing needs are at different times, allow for independence of teams when it’s necessary to get a job done.

Every team has their own processes for getting things done. Don’t try to overhaul everything at once. Talk with each other to see where integration makes the most sense.

There are also clear wins when you’re able to collaborate effectively.

When you’re in harmony with each team, you can more seamlessly find opportunities for discoverability. This can ultimately lead to up-sells or cross-sells.

By working together, we can share knowledge more deeply and have richer data. We can then leverage this to capture as much of the SERP as possible.

Cross-training teams can help build empathy and trust. When separate teams gain an understanding of how and why certain tasks (i.e. keyword research) are done, it can help everyone work better together and streamline processes.

SearchLove London 2019 - Heather Physioc - Building a Discoverability Powerhouse from Distilled

Robin Lord - ‘Excel? It Would Be Easier To Go To Jupyter’

Robin, a senior consultant here at Distilled, demonstrated the various shortcomings of Excel and showed an easier, repeatable, and more effective way to get things done - using Jupyter Notebooks and Python.

Below we outline Robin’s main points:

Excel and Google Sheets are very error-prone - especially if you’re dealing with larger data sets! If you need to process a lot of data, then you should consider using Jupyter Notebooks, as it can handle much bigger data sets (think: analysing backlinks, doing keyword research, log file analysis)

Jupyter Notebooks are reusable: if you create a Jupyter script to do any repeatable task (i.e. reporting or keyword research) then you can reuse it. This makes your life much easier because you don’t have to go back and dissect an old process.

Jupyter allows you to use Regex. This gives a huge advantage over excel because it is far more efficient at allowing you to account for misspellings. This, for example, can give you a far more accurate chance at accounting for things like branded search query permutations.

Jupyter allows you to write notes and keep every step in your process ordered. This means that your methodology is noted and the next time you perform this task, you remember exactly the steps you took. This is especially useful for when clients ask you questions about your work weeks or months down the line!

Finally - Jupyter notebooks allow us to get answers that we can’t get from Excel. We’re able to not only consider the data set from new angles, but we also have more time to go about other tasks, such as thinking about client strategy or improving other processes.

Robin has so many slides it breaks Slideshare. Instead, you can download his slides from Dropbox.

Jes Scholz - ‘Giving Robots An All Access Pass’

Jes Scholz uses the analogy of a nightclub to explain how Googlebot interacts with your website. The goal? To become part of the exclusive “Club Valid”. Her main points are outlined below:

As stated by John Mueller himself, “crawl budget is overrated - most sites never need to worry about this”. So instead of focusing on how much Google is crawling your site, you should be most concerned with how Google is crawling it

Status codes are not good or bad - there are right codes and wrong codes for different situations

In a similar vein, duplicate content is not “bad”, in fact, it’s entirely natural. You just need to make sure that you’re handling it correctly

JavaScript is your ticket to better UX, however, bear in mind that this often presents a host of SEO difficulties. Make sure that you don’t rely on the mobile friendly testing tool to see if Google is able to crawl your JavaScript - this tool actually uses different software to Googlebot (this is a common misconception!) The URL inspection tool is a bit better for checking this, however, bear in mind it’s more patient that Googlebot when it comes to rendering JavaScript, so isn’t 100% accurate.

SearchLove London 2019 - Jes Scholtz - Giving Robots an All Access Pass from Distilled

Rand Fishkin - ‘The Search Landscape in 2019’

As the web evolves, it’s important to evaluate the areas you could invest in carefully. Rand explored the key changes affecting search marketers and how SEOs can take these changes into account when determining strategy.

Should you invest in voice search? It’s probably a bit too early. There is little difference in the results you get from a voice search vs. a manual search.

Both mobile and desktop are big - don’t neglect one at the expense of the other!

The zero-click search is where the biggest search growth is happening right now. It now accounts for about half (48.96% in the US) of all searches!

If you could benefit from answering zero-click searches, then you should prepare for that. You can determine whether you’d benefit by evaluating the value in ranking for a particular query without necessarily getting traffic.

With changes in Google search appearance recently, ads have become more seamless in the SERP. This has led to paid click-through-rate rising a lot. However, if history is correct, then it will probably slowly decline until the next big search change.

As Google’s algorithms evolve, you’ll likely receive huge ranking benefits from focusing on growing authority signals (E-A-T).

Check out Rand’s slides to see where you should be spending your time and money as the search landscape evolves.

SearchLove London 2019 - Rand Fishkin - The Search Landscape in 2019 from Distilled

Emily Potter - ‘Can Anything in SEO Be Proven? A Deep-Dive Into SEO Split-Testing’

Split testing SEO changes allow us to say with confidence whether or not a specific change hurts or helps organic traffic. Emily discusses various SEO split tests she’s run and potential reasons for their outcome.

The main levers for SEO tend to boil down to

1. Improving organic click-through-rate (CTR)

2. Improving organic rankings of current keywords

3. Ranking for new keywords

Split testing changes that we want to make to our site can help us to make business cases, rescue sessions, and gain a competitive advantage.

Determining which of the three levers causes a particular test to be positive or negative is challenging because since they all impact each other, the data is noisy. Measuring organic sessions relieves us of this noise.

Following “best practices” or what your competitors are doing is not always going to result in wins. Testing shows you what actually works for your site. For example, adding quantity of products in your titles or structured data for breadcrumbs might actually negatively impact your SEO, even if it seems like everyone else is doing so.

Check out Emily’s slides to see more split test case studies and learnings!

Lessons from another year in SEO A/B Testing - SearchLove London 2019 from Emily Potter

Jill Quick - ‘Segments: How To Get Juicy Insights & Avoid The Pips!’

In her excellent talk, Jill highlights how “average data gives you average insights”, and discusses the importance of segmenting your data to gain deeper insights into user behaviour. While analytics and segments are awesome, don’t become overwhelmed with the possibilities - focus on your strategy and work from there.

Jill’s other tips include:

Adding custom dimensions to forms on your website allows you to create more relevant and specific data segments

For example, if you have a website in the education sector, you can add custom dimensions to a form that asks people to fill in their profession. You can then create a segment where custom dimension = headteacher, and you can then analyse the behaviour of this specific group of people

Build segments that look at your best buyers (people who convert well) as well as your worst customers (those who spend barely any time on site and never convert). You can learn a lot about your ideal customer, as well as what you need to improve on your site, by doing this.

Use your segments to build retargeting lists - this will usually result in lower CPAs for paid search, helping your PPC budget go further

Don’t forget to use advanced segments (using sequences and conditions) to create granular segments that matter to your business

You can use segments in Google Data Studio, which is awesome! Just bear in mind that in Data Studio you can’t see if your segment data is sampled, so it’s best to go into the GA interface to check

If you want to hear more about Jill's session, she's written a post to supplement her slides.

Segments in Google Analytics from The Coloring In Department

Rory Truesdale - ‘Using The SERPs to Know Your Audience’

It can be easy to get lost in evaluating metrics like monthly search volume, but we often forget that for each query, there is a person with a very specific motivation and need. Rory discussed how we can utilise Google’s algorithmic re-writing of the SERP to help identify those motivations and more effectively optimise for search intent - the SERPs give us amazing insight into what customers want!

Google rewrites the SERP displayed meta description 84% of the time (it thinks it’s smarter than us!) However, we can use this rewrite data to our advantage.

The best ways to get SERP data are through crawling SERPs in screaming frog, the scraper API or chrome extension, “Thruuu” (a SERP analysis tool), and then using Jupyter Notebooks to analyse it.

Scraping of SERPs, product reviews, comments, or reddit forums can be really powerful in that it will give you a data source that can reveal insight about what your customers want. Then you can optimise the content on your pages to appeal to them.

If you can get a better idea about what language and tone resonates with users, you can incorporate it into CTAs and content.

Check our Rory’s slides as well as the Jupyter notebook he uses to analyse SERP data.

SearchLove London 2019 - Rory Truesdale - Using the SERPs to Know Your Audience from Distilled

Miracle Inameti Archibong - ‘The Complete Guide To Actionable Speed Audits: Getting Your Developer To Work With You’

It can be a huge challenge to get devs to implement our wishlist of SEO recommendations. Miracle discussed the practical steps to getting developers to take your recommendations seriously.

If you take some time to understand the Web Dev roles at your company, then it will help you better communicate your needs as an SEO and get things rolled out. You can do this by:

Learning the language that they’re using. Do some research into the terminology as well as possible limitations of your ask. This will make you more credible and you’re more likely to be taken seriously.

A team of developers may have different KPIs than you. It may be beneficial to use something like revenue as a way to get them on board with the change you want to make.

Try to make every ask more collaborative rather than instructive. For example, instead of simply presenting “insert this code,” try “here’s some example code, maybe we can incorporate x elements. What do you think?” A conversation may be the difference in effecting change.

Prioritising your requests in an easily readable way for web dev teams is always a good idea. It will give them the most information on what needs to get done in what timeline.

SearchLove London 2019 - Miracle Inameti-Archibong - The Complete Guide to Actionable Speed Audits from Distilled

Faisal Anderson - ‘Spying On Google: Using Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights’

Log files contain hugely valuable insight on how Googlebot and other crawlers behave on your site. Rory uncovered why you should be looking at your logs as well as how to analyse them effectively to reveal big wins that you may have otherwise been unable to quantify.

Looking at log files is a great way to see the truest and freshest data on how Google is crawling your site. It’s most accurate because it’s the actual logs of how Google (and any other bot) is crawling your website.

Getting log file data can be tricky, so it’s helpful to ask devs about your hosting setup (if your server uses load balancing, the log files may be split between various hosts). You’ll want to get 6 months of data if you can.

The three main things to evaluate when you’re analysing log files

Crawl behavior: look at most and least crawled URLs, look at crawl frequency by depth and internal links

Budget waste: find low value urls (faceted nav, query params, etc.) there are likely some subdirectories you want crawled more than others

Site health: look for inconsistent server responses

Using Jupyter to do log file analysis is great because it’s reusable and you’ll be able to use it again and again.

SearchLoveLondon 2019 - Faisal Anderson - Spying on Google: Using Log File Analysis to Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights from Distilled

Dr Pete Myers - ‘Scaling Keyword Research: More Isn’t Better’

Dr Pete Myers discussed how more is not better when it comes to keyword research! Ditch the thousands of keywords and instead focus on a smaller set of keywords that actually matter for you or your clients. Below are his top tips:

Pete has developed a simple metric called RankVol to help determine the importance of a keyword

RankVol = 1 / (rank x square root of volume)

Using this metric is better than sorting by search volume, as often the highest volume keywords that a site is appearing for are not the most relevant

Lots of data in keyword research can be irrelevant. Using John Lewis as an example:

9% of keywords John Lewis ranks for are mis-spellings

Almost 20% of keywords they rank for are very close variants (plural vs. singular, for example)

Dr Pete provides a short script in his deck to group keywords to help strip out noise in your data set

If sitelinks appear for your website, Google thinks you’re a brand

A new SERP feature (‘best of’ carousel) is appearing in the US, and will likely be rolled out into Europe soon

This feature takes you to a heavily paid SERP, with lots of ads (some well-disguised!)

If a keyword has a heavily paid SERP, you should probably not bother trying to rank for it, as the pay-off will be small

‘People also ask’ is on 90% of searches - be sure to try and take advantage of this SERP space

To summarise, perception is everything with keyword research - make sure you filter out the noise!

SearchLove London 2019 - Dr. Pete Meyers - Scaling Keyword Research: More Isn't Better from Distilled

Lindsay Wassell - ‘Managing Multinational & Multilingual SEO in Motion’

Lindsay covered the many challenges involved in handling migrations involving multiple international site variants. Her key points are highlighted below:

Ask your dev team to make sure it’s possible to implement hreflang via XML sitemaps or on-page; then if there are problems implementing one method, you have another as a fall-back option

When deciding site structure and where international sites should be located (sub-folder? Subdomain? ccTLD?) bear in mind that there are no one-size-fits all solutions. It may be best to have a mixture of solutions, depending on each market.

If you have hreflang relationship issues, Lindsay advises to use Google Sheets to manage hreflang mappings, in combination with a script that can automatically generate XML sitemaps (link provided in her deck)

In order to encourage more people in your organisation to understand the importance of SEO and to make it a priority, highlight statistics such as traffic levels and revenue coming from organic search

Also keep in mind that every department has a wish list when it comes to a migration! Be tactical and tack onto other people’s wishlists to get SEO items implemented

As a final tip - check redirects before going live, as often dev teams will say it’s under control, and then there can be problems at the last minute

SearchLove London 2019 - Lindsay Wassell - Managing Multinational & Multilingual SEO in Motion from Distilled

Stacey MacNaught - ‘Actioning Search Intent - What To Do With All That Data’

By analysing search intent, you can gain a ton of really insightful data. Stacey discussed how you can utilise all of this data to optimise your site for organic search and ultimately increase revenue and traffic.

Traditionally, search intent is categorised broadly as navigational, informational, and transactional. However, it’s often unclear where things are categorised because sometimes keywords are really ambiguous. Often you can break these categories down into more specific categories.

In terms of targeting keywords on your site, look out for opportunities where you may not be delivering the right content based on what query you’re targeting.

For example, if you’re targeting an informational keyword with a transactional result, you’re not going to rank. This can be an opportunity for you to create the kind of page that will rank for a select query. If the phrase is “best ballet shoes” and the results are informational pages, then you shouldn’t be serving a transactional result.

If you can be objective about the topic at hand and you have someone qualified to write that content, then you should definitely do it.

If your rankings drop but revenue unaffected, it’s likely you’ve lost rankings on informational keywords

Don’t assume that users will come back of their own accord - work with PPC and get them to retarget to users who have read your content

Build out different audience lists according to the types of content or topics that users have been reading

Build out separate PPC campaigns for this so you can easily monitor results

Stacey saw CPA fall by -34% when she did this for a healthcare site

To generate content ideas, talk to the sales and customer service teams to find out what users are asking, then build content around it

You can also use Google Forms to survey previous customers to find out what drove their purchase

SearchLove London 2019 - Stacey MacNaught - Actioning Search Intent: What to Do with All That Data from Distilled

Will Critchlow - ‘Misunderstood Concepts at the Heart of SEO - Get An Edge By Understanding These Areas’

Most things in SEO can be boiled down to technical accessibility, relevance, quality, and authority. Or: can it be crawled, does it meet a keyword need, and is it trustworthy? However, some of the foundational elements of SEO are misunderstood.

Regarding crawlability, it’s important to understand how setting directives in robots.txt will impact your site if handled incorrectly.

Robots.txt directives do not cascade. For example, if you set a specific directive to disallow Googlebot from /example, that is the one it will follow. Even if you specify that * (all user agents) are disallowed from /dont-crawl elsewhere in the file, Googlebot will only follow it’s set directive not to crawl /example and still be able to crawl /dont-crawl.

The Google documentation, robots.txt checker in GSC, and the open source parser tend to disagree on what is allowed and disallowed. So, you’ll need to do some testing to ensure that the directives you’re setting are what you intended.

We often have a lot of intuition about how things like pagerank work, but too many of our recommendations are based on misconceptions about how authority flows

There are some huge changes coming to major browser cookie handling. The cookie window will be shorter, which means that a lot of traffic that’s currently classified as organic will be classified as direct. Understanding the language around the changes that are happening is, and will be, important

There are common misconceptions too about the meaning of ‘long tail keywords’

50% of Twitter respondents incorrectly think it means that there are many words in a query

40% understand the correct meaning, which is that they are keywords with low search volume

SearchLove London 2019 - Will Critchlow - Misunderstood Concepts at the Heart of SEO from Distilled

That's it for our London conference for another year. But the good news is we are heading to San Diego in March where we'll be getting some sun, sea and search at SearchLove San Diego!

If you have any questions about our conferences please leave a comment below or come and say hello over on Twitter.

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/searchlove-london-2019-round-up/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#digital marketing

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dillenwaeraa · 5 years