#to clarify. it's Literally not what you think. like...its the least conventional way possible.

[thanksjro]

“Bullets”, a Last Stand of the Wreckers prose story- Ironfist Solves a Murder Mystery

Now that Overlord and Rewind have been exploded horribly in the vacuum of space, multiple people have died, and Chromedome’s horrifically single, let’s take a look at all those Last Stand of the Wreckers extras, yeah?

We more or less start with a Furmanism, as is tradition.

One day Furmanisms won’t be nearly as prevalent within the comic publications, and that is a day that I cannot wait to see. Forget politics, forget misogyny, forget basically NEEDING Death of the Author in effect to enjoy anything the man’s done- Furmanisms are a crutch that everybody in this franchise uses, but nobody needs. They never feel natural, in my opinion. It’s like a literary obligation at this point, and you can tell, because it never quite meshes with any writer’s style.

Anyway, this is the setup for what would happen on Pova- the Wreckers have been watching Squadron X fix up their ship, and now that the thing’s airborne again they’ve gotten itchy trigger fingers. Well, some of them, anyway. Rack n Ruin aren’t so sure about this whole thing, seeing as there are eight of them and an entire battalion up there. Impactor’s working the crowd though, as a leader of such a high turnover rate group is required to do, and that’s the point where First Aid stops reading.

Yep, this is one of Fisitron’s datalog entries, of which First Aid is a fan.

This isn’t First Aid’s first appearance within the IDW continuity- he played a role in Spotlight: Jazz, where he lived up to his name, and in Transformers: Ironhide #1, where he was in the background. This IS his premiere as a major player in a story, however, and it’s here that he’s revealed to be a bit of a slacker- he should be making the rounds at Delphi right now, but instead he’s reading entry logs about the wartime equivalent of a boyband.

He hits a key to quicktab to something at least somewhat medically-related as he feels someone approaching from behind. It’s the CMO, and he is in no way fooled by First Aid’s attempt to hide his shame. He gets back to work, but that particular entry- 113, because of course it is- is still on his mind. Hope he never finds out it’s a load of bunk.

I REALLY hope he never finds out this is all bunk. We all need something, you know?

Of course, First Aid- y’know, not to brag or anything- personally met one of the Wreckers. Roughly five years ago, Springer had approached him at a medical conference on Kimia. Why a medical conference was being held on Kimia of all places isn’t addressed, but it was probably because half the folks stationed there are doctors. First Aid, being a classy guy, fucking ogles Springer the entire time they’re talking.

You’ve heard of “Men Writing Women”, now it’s time for “Roberts Writing Robots”. Yes, this is THAT scene, and it’s on the first goddamn page.

First Aid, wanting to be of use to his idol, offers his medical expertise, completely willing to fix Springer’s nose, give him a breast reduction, and even update the circuit dampeners he doesn’t have. Springer, while flattered, isn’t looking for that sort of help. He’s looking for folks who have a lot to give.

The phrasing he uses makes First Aid think that he’s about to be recruited to the Wreckers- in other words, about to be put in line for a slow and awful death- but Springer clarifies that he’s looking more for eyes and ears to help him, not so much bodies. He hands First Aid a card with his number, and says to give him a call sometime.

Cutting back to the present, First Aid is walking through the rows of patient slabs, where we see an honestly horrifying practice in play- every patient in Delphi has their non-essential functions turned off to conserve power. This includes things like the ability to move, and speak.

Because that couldn’t possibly have any negative repercussions.

He checks in on the Fader he’s been assigned, confirms that, yes, his head IS still missing from his neck, then makes to walk out of the room, only to be startled by the sudden entry of a stretcher and Ambulon. Here, Ambulon is identified as a chief paramedic, as opposed to being a ward manager. Whether this is early installment weirdness or a simple mistake isn’t clear.

Ambulon is quickly followed by Dogfight, Dodger, and Backstreet(’s back, alright!) First Aid gets to work, by checking the three of them for injuries, paying special attention to their Autobot badges.

This is the reason Rung had to call in at the beginning of MTMTE #4, though it might be more because First Aid can’t act like a professional of five friggin’ minutes.

Oh, Delphi’s HR department is getting a call for sure.

First Aid, while a known fondler of badges, has never had this exact reaction. He runs off to make a phone call, leaving the injured Dodger to wait for the surgery he’s going to undergo the moment First Aid gets back.

Meanwhile, somewhere else- I’m guessing Kimia- Rung has an appointment underway with a dude named Flattop.

Flattop’s TFWiki article is one of the most depressing on the entire site, and it’s completely “Bullets”’s fault.

You see, Flattop’s attempting to talk through his trauma, but it’s difficult.

This level of insight is why they pay Rung the big bucks.

The war, while terrible for everyone’s mental health, has given Rung a slew of patients to handle.

Gee, wonder who that medic was.

Anyway, so Flattop’s deal- he was at Babu Yar, which was an event that was apparently so terrible, everyone involved was offered brand new bodies as compensation. He’s currently hiding underneath a table, which Rung identifies as “playing to type”. Flattop isn’t even here to talk about Babu Yar, but it’s good to know that war is still hell.

The reason Flattop’s actually here is this: he was serving under Silverstreak- another one of Rung’s patients, and someone who I’m convinced might actually be a Warrior cat given the name- and was going to check something out when he saw something utterly terrifying.

Rung gets Flattop out from under the table, and they talk about what the Shimmer means. Flattop is convinced that since he’s seen the thing, he’s going to die. You see, folklore in space is very similar to its counterpart on Earth, in that it’s a warning swathed in story to make it easily digestible.

Rung, who tries to keep things rational, offers to give Flattop a few possible explanations for what he saw. Because Flattop had only recently gotten his hot new bod a short while before he saw the Shimmer, it’s completely possible he had had a hallucination due to the adjustment period. Another theory is that Flattop has PTSD. Which, I mean, yeah.

While Rung was busy trying to explain what had happened, Flattop friggin’ died.

Awkward.

Over with Ironfist- because “Bullets” is a prequel- we’re in the middle of a meeting with the Ethics Committee. Xaaron, Animus, and Trailbreaker of all people, have come together to pass judgement on Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, and Ironfist reflects on how they got to this moment, while fiddling with a data slug to burn off the nerves.

This is just after the Surge happened, an event kicked off by the betrayal of the Autobot cause allowed Megatron to seize a majority of the Autobot outposts. It was a huge deal, a lot of shit was stolen, including the Weak Anthropic Principle, and it left everyone a little twitchy towards one another. Trust is not in vogue at present.

Kimia’s in a mess of trouble anyway, however, due to the events of Babu Yar, where Gideon’s Glue had rained down on the Autobot troops under Flame’s command, eaten to Swiss cheese by something eerily similar to something being developed on the station.

So an investigation was established. Brainstorm, who’s apparently big man on campus here at Kimia, is questioned, as is everyone else. Of course, no one cops to having invented Gideon’s Glue, because that’s a big ol’ war crime, so the questioning goes nowhere, but now there’s a precedent for mistrust on this science station.

Anyway, back to the bullet thing.

Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets are designed to hit the head, every single time, ignoring trajectory, ballistic physics, what you think is possible, and the Geneva Convention. It’s fired, it hits the first brain it identifies. Brutal stuff. Effective, but brutal.

Trailbreaker’s not a fan.

I mean, maybe? I guess it depends how gray your morality is. I bet Prowl would like them.

After telling Trailbreaker to keep it professional, Xaaron tells Ironfist that using these bullets would be a literal war crime, and he’s got a little over a day to hand them over to the Committee for destruction. Meeting adjourned!

Ironfist is left standing there until his good buddy Skyfall checks in on him. Ironfist is kind of bummed out, but Skyfall knows how to cheer him up- by comparing him to Impactor, former leader of the Wreckers, and one of Ironfist’s fan-crushes.

Man, this makes the Pova reveal a little harsher in hindsight, huh?

Skyfall invites Ironfist to the Exit Rooms, a place where the Kimia employees can drink and no one will give a shit, and as they make their way over they run into Brainstorm.

Brainstorm gets some interesting development in this story.

That’s right, not only are his weapons completely insane, and in some cases literally abstract, they’re apparently often so incredibly dangerous that the Ethics Committee loses sleep over the fact that they exist.

And Brainstorm loves it.

No wonder Trailbreaker was so annoyed in his Spotlight.

Skyfall asks about what’s in Brainstorm’s briefcase, gets an answer that’s likely a lie, then the boys head over to the Exit Rooms.

Over on Hydrus 5, it’s raining cats and dogs, and this is somehow the Transformers fault. I guess the universe bends to the will of what would be the most dramatic, as everyone takes a break from warmongering to soul-search.

Or ego-stroking. That works too.

Here is our dear Pyro, reveling in the aftermath of a battle that destroyed the natural ecosystem of the land, but at least they kicked those ‘Cons’ asses!

Pyro, who’s revealed to be maybe perhaps not the best at coming up with one-liners, is left alone for a bit as Afterburner goes to check on the rest of their men. As he tries to piece together a speech to deliver, he sees a green something- they’re always green, aren’t they?- and that something is the Shimmer.

Well, heck.

Over on the dilapidated space station of Debris (wow, that’s even less subtle than usual for this franchise) Springer’s holding a bullet. I mean, it’s not really a bullet, and the Decepticon who fired it wasn’t really a Decepticon.

I want you to know that I keep track of how many times 113 comes up in these stories, and for “Bullets" it’s a LOT.

Today’s letter from Agent 113 foreshadows/hindshadows the events of Last Stand, claiming that the DJD hasn’t heard anything from Garrus-9 since the Surge happened. Prowl’s concerned that Fortress Maximus is still alive in there and fighting off the Decepticons while waiting for backup, so he recently called Springer and invited the Wreckers on a mission.

All Springer has to do is pick some sorry sons of guns to die.

Over with Guzzle, who is romanticizing a weapon, comparing his gun to a religious artifact, our dear little bastard man has realized that he does, in fact, have emotions, and is in mourning over his lost comrades, who died rescuing Kup from Tsiehshi. Guzzle doesn’t much appreciate this whole “feeling” thing, and would rather it didn’t get in the way of him shooting statues for no other reason than him wanting to. Then he sees the Shimmer, and feels fear. He doesn’t much care for that, either.

Even Nick Roche is powerless to stop this madness.

We reconfirm the fact that Ironfist is a massive nerd, then are shown that the bullet accident that will have killed him by the end of Last Stand #5 has already happened. Ever so slowly, the bullet is heading for Ironfist’s brain. Every time it hits a new layer of his noggin, he blacks out.

Ironfist is going to leave on his super-fun, not-at-all-traumatizing Wrecker adventure soon, and he’s promised Skyfall his workshop. Skyfall was at Grindcore for a while, and that kind of gave him PTSD, so when Ironfist had gotten accepted to Kimia, he’d brought him along for the ride.

I like to call Grindcore Eugenesis-lite.

Because Skyfall is a reckless son of a gun with access to Ironfist’s workshop, he inadvertently caused a major incident with something called Black Phosphex, which resulted in the deaths of several Autobots because it wasn’t properly tested. This landed him in Garrus-9 for a bit, in a temporary career-path deviation, until it was time to come home to Kimia, just in time for the Inquiry.

Are stans always this intense? Because good lord, Ironfist.

Over at Karashi Delta, in the aftermath of a fierce battle, Rotorstorm is hyping himself the fuck up.

But does he buy it himself?

Hmm, survey says no.

Of course, verbal abuse isn’t the only thing we’ll be getting here. No, things begin to escalate pretty rapidly with Jetstream, who moves from shoving to almost beating Rotorstorm to death in a matter of months, before disappearing from the station forever.

Dang, this Jetstream fella kinda sucks. What’s his friggin’ problem?

Ah.

Again, I can’t stress this enough, Whirl’s awful flipper claws from back during his time as a cop do not make a nice fist. He was basically stabbing Rotorstorm. Who let this man be a teacher?

Rotorstorm is snapped out of his self-deprecating flashbacks by the sight of something on the canyon lip up ahead. It’s the gotdang Shimmer. Rotorstorm books it, not wanting to be caught by a harbinger of death. It doesn’t work, but points for trying.

Back on Debris, Springer’s picked his new recruits. Now all he has to do is call them up. Hey, isn’t Springer green? Green like the Shimmer? How about that.

Back on Kimia, Skyfall’s wandered into Ironfist’s workshop to share the gossip on Fisitron’s latest Wreckers: Declassified. Folks are a bit critical of his writing style, it would seem.

Of course Swerve knows what fan-fiction is. He seems like exactly the type to make fun of it, then read a 43,000 word fic in a single sitting, under cover of darkness, burning with shame all the while.

After making a note on his current Wreckers: Declassified document to ease up on the adverbs, Ironfist switches gears and gets busy on his other project: an Unofficial Wreckers’ Training Guide. I wonder when the switch from Primal Vanguard to Wreckers as a hyperfixation happened for him.

Ironfist asks Skyfall what entry he’s currently on, and the answer is a ways away from the latest one. Skyfall’s a slow reader, but he doesn’t want to just beam it all into his brain because it feels like cheating. He asks Ironfist when he’s going to cover the Wreckers’ mission to Garrus-9, the one that happened while he was there being not-imprisoned. Ironfist gives a non-answer, then asks if Skyfall wants to help with packing up the war-crime guns. Skyfall most certainly does not.

Ironfist starts breaking everything down when he gets a call from Prowl, as happened in Last Stand #4.

Back with Springer, we’re giving our dad a hug, as he greets Kup. It’s here we find out who Ironfist replaced on the Wrecker team for Operation: Retrieval- it was Skyfall. Skyfall had impressed Springer during their last Garrus-9 excursion, and thought that he’d be a good fit for the team, despite the Black Phosphex incident.

Kup goes full old man story time mode about how insanely boring Prowl is, while Springer gets the door. On the other side is Twin Twist, Top Spin, and Perceptor. They hold the vote, Ironfist given immunity due to unmentioned Prowl reasons, and Springer gets ready to call all their new pals.

Back at Ironfist’s workshop, Ironfist reflects on just how his life got to this point. He’s going to join the Wreckers! Never mind the fact that he’ll be going to die, and that’s if the bullet crawling around in his skull doesn’t get him first. Never mind the very likely possibility that he’s being exploited by Prowl. Nah, he’s gonna go on an adventure! It’s gonna be awesome! Yaaaaay!

It doesn’t pay to be blue and naive when Roberts is handling the story. Just ask Pipes.

Or don’t. You won’t get an answer.

Called it.

Ironfist, starstruck, bumbles his way through the conversation we saw in the Mosaic, and so it was that he became a Wrecker. All he has to do is pop on over to Rung’s office, get his head examined, then get his butt on over to Babu Yar.

Telecon work completed, Springer reflects on the fact that Guzzle turned him down. It’s not often someone turns down the chance to be a Wrecker.

Oh, well, never mind then.

Ironfist immediately tells Skyfall about what’s happened, because he’s just so jazzed to be a Wrecker. Skyfall isn’t quite as thrilled, but does his best to be supportive.

And by that I mean he’s not listening in the slightest as he’s already planning out the interior design for the workshop once Ironfist is gone. I bet he’ll get Atomizer to help him, the tacky bastard.

Skyfall runs off to go look at paint swatches or whatever, and Ironfist finalizes the stuff for the Ethics Committee pickup.

Oh, so that appointment wasn’t on Kimia after all. Can we please get some sort of fast-track program for the mental health specific degrees? We can’t keep using Rung for everybody, he’s only one person.

Oh heavens, Ironfist, be careful.

Ironfist gets another call, and we jump scenes before we can figure out just who rang or why.

Brief timeskip, and we find ourselves at Babu Yar, as Ironfist introduces himself to Guzzle and his gun.

Ironfist is about as smooth as coarse-grit sandpaper.

While Ironfist is busy revealing his nerd shame to Guzzle, someone’s decided to be a cocky little asshole.

Oh, dramatic irony. Always a delightful sort of pain.

Rotorstorm cranks up the “I’m hot shit” act to 11.5, doing completely unnecessary flips and talking himself up like he will literally die if he doesn’t.

Off in the distance, something disingenuously impressive comes up over the hill.

Of course, it’s not Optimus Prime, but it is someone who would very much like to be him. Such is the nature of primus apotheosis. Gang’s all here!

This is going to turn out fan-fucking-tastic.

Rotorstorm and Guzzle want to play with the big gun Ironfist brought along, and since Ironfist is going to die anyway, he lets them go for it. This would be why everything was on fire at the start of the miniseries.

Yep. Just gotta make it hurt just a little more, doncha Roberts? Just gotta twist the knife.

Nine months after the events of the Garrus-9 mission, Skyfall is upset. He’s gone and played himself by not attending the Ethics Committee hearings, and they’ve taken all his toys away as a result. He tries to mask his lack of concern for safety precautions behind a facade of missing Ironfist, but it doesn’t get him the weapons back.

Feeling cross, he decides it’s about time he made a visit to the Exit Rooms to blow off a little steam.

Later, he gets a call. Worried that his lack of ethics and/or his drunken squabbling has gotten him in trouble yet again, he’s loathe to answer, but does anyway.

Ghost call!

No, it’s actually a prerecorded message, one that claims that Skyfall killed Ironfist. Ironfist had asked Brainstorm to take a gander at the gun after he got shot, and found that it had been tampered with, set to go off on its own when held a certain way. That’s who was calling before he left for his Wrecker mission. 

Skyfall starts to panic, expecting the security detail for Kimia to bust into the workshop at any second. 

Ironfist knows that only Skyfall could have done this to him, but he doesn’t know the exact motive. Was it because he was jealous of how good a weapons expert he was? A chip on his shoulder about Grindcore? Whatever the reason, Ironfist isn’t terribly concerned at the time of the recording. What he is concerned about is Gideon’s Glue.

Ironfist had, in fact, invented Gideon’s Glue, but he’d been so horrified by what the shit actually did, he flushed it into space and destroyed all research before the Ethics Committee even knew about it. It still got to the Decepticons, though, didn’t it? How could such a thing happen?

Probably not, considering what happens next.

Ironfist is a smart guy, but more importantly, he knows how to reach his audience. Literally, in this case, as Skyfall finds out, when the Enforcement Squad starts trying to break down the door. Ironfist had the message that Skyfall is currently listening to primed for beaming into all of Fisitron’s reader’s brains. Everyone knows what happened. Swerve. Atomizer. Ratchet, who’s over on Earth right now. First Aid, who has enough bullshit to worry about on Delphi without this nonsense. You. Me. Everyone.

Skyfall, in a mad attempt to save himself, throws some of Ironfist’s Wrecker memorabilia at the door, and out pops that last tube of Gideon’s Glue.

There’s only one way out of this one.

This got really intense at the end, didn’t it?

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #last stand of the wreckers #bullets #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing #wreckers trilogy

[hapalopus]

Hey, you know a lot about cows and animal welfare, right? Well, I've got a question. I just read an article (Danish) at DR about Anima & Arla, and that Anima wants to know how Arla treats their animals. That includes wanting to film the separation between a cow and her calf & their reaction for a few days. Idk. Something about the way Anima paints it (as quite 'demonic') makes me angry at Anima, but I don't know enough about anything to know why. Do you have time to read the article & clarify?:)

Arla actually responded already! But as far as I’ve seen it’s only been published in an agricultural newspaper so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯The dialogue down in the article is ridiculous [Here’s a link]. I’m gonna make a longer response, though, since Arla’s response mainly focuses on Anima’s juvenile tactics (which, yeah, no, I honestly don’t think Arla is someone to speak here, considering their childish [anti-mylk campaign] earlier this year). It’s basically a kindergarten slap-fight between milk producers and animal rights activists.

Anima is a Danish animal rights group, to those who don’t know. On the level of extremity they’re somewhere between HSUS and PETA, but their ultimate end goal is the same - global veganism. On one hand most of what they say can be easily refuted if you’re in the know, but on the other, the majority of people aren’t in the know. They’re frustrating to deal with they banned me from their facebook page after i questioned a video they made about coyote trapping. But enough rambling, [here’s the article]. It’s in Danish, so apologies to anyone else reading this, I’ll do my best to translate the important parts and add the original quotes at the bottom of the page. Also, I’ve been working on a project about hip dysplasia all day, so if my citations suddenly look kinda professional, that’s why, lol.

Anima’s chief of communication, Thorbjørn Schiønning, starts off by saying that “Nowadays we have a milk production that is extremely industrial, where the animals are pushed to the limit to milk every last drop from the cow.”[1]

It’s not a wrong statement, it’s just very emotionally charged and thus a bit misleading. Milk production is very industrial because it’s an industry and cows are (by breeding, not by mistreatment) being pushed to their biological limit in how much milk they can produce. Schiønning doesn’t explain why this is a bad thing, though, and I assume that he expects the scary words (”industrial” “pushed to the limit” “every last drop”) to be enough to get people hooked. Knowing the general public, I’m afraid that assumption is right.

He continues: “When a cow is born, it’s separated from it’s mother after just 12 hours and put in isolation where it’s fed milk replacer. It’s done simply to get as much milk as possible out to the consumers, so they can produce as much milk for as cheap as possible.”[2]

What he’s saying here is just a repeat of the usual anti-animal-ag misinformation. To start off, a newborn is a calf. A cow is a grown female who has calved at least once. Semantics, but it’s a pet peeve.

Unfortunately, the thing about having to wait 12 hours before separation is true in Denmark. According to our law, conventional calves must stay with their dams for 12 hours and organic calves 24 hours (something Schiønning left out, presumably because the public assumes that more time together equals better welfare). Contrary to popular belief, studies have shown that the longer you wait before separation, the more stressful it is for both cow and calf and that the quicker the separation, the less stress both parties experience[3].

The reasons why cows and calves are separated in the first place is that, for starters, dairy cows are really bad mothers that will very often ignore the calf, accidentally step on it, or (rarely) outright attack it[4]. They just have very lacking maternal instincts. Putting calves in isolation likely isn’t the optimal solution, but it’s the best method we’ve developed to limit disease, ensure survival[5] and make sure they get enough colustrum within their first few hours.

Colostrum (’råmælk’) is the milk a cow produces the first few milkings after calving, which is full of antibodies. The calf’s ability to absorb antibodies stops after roughly 24 hours and it can’t produce its own until it’s about 3-4 weeks old, so this is a vital process. Even on farms that house calves and cows together and let the calves suckle, it’s highly recommended that the calf is bottle-fed about 3-4 liters of colostrum (depending on the breed’s size).

Which leads me to the next point that, no, calves are generally not fed milk replacer. While it is slightly cheaper than milk (because milk replacement producers track the market religiously to make sure their replacer is just a tad cheaper), it’s also impractical. Milk replacer often has a higher content of dangerous microbes, and because it’s not pasteurized, there’s a higher risk of it being contaminated. In Denmark Calves are most often fed pasteurized colostrum or whole milk (’sødmælk’)[6]. Even so, I fail to see how feeding a clean and well-balanced milk replacer is supposed to be a bad thing.

Calves are not separated so the farmer can get more milk out of the cow, as I explained above. In fact, cows produce up to 20% more milk when they’re kept with their calves because the frequent suckling stimulates milk production [7]. So since farmers are just feeding them milk from their own cows anyways, they actually have a monetary incentive to keep the two together. It’s purely for health and survival that they’re separated.

There’s one more thing I want to address. “Anima wants to be allowed to see how a worn out milking cow gets sent to slaughter 20 years before it’s natural death.”[8] It’s very difficult to find any scientific reports of the natural lifespan of cattle. Most animal rights sources cite 20-25 years, but most animal welfare sources cite 10-15, so it depends on which site of this debate you want to believe. Diary cows in Denmark are usually sent to the slaughterhouse when they’re around 5 years old because their fertility drops and they become more susceptible to disease right around this time[9].

1. Original quote: ”Vi har en mælkeproduktion i dag, som er ekstremt industriel, hvor man presser dyrene til det allerhårdeste for at malke den sidste dråbe fra koen.”

2. Original quote: “Når en ko bliver født, bliver den skilt ad fra sin mor allerede efter tolv timer og bliver sat i isolation, hvor den så får mælkeerstatning. Det gør man simpelthen for at få så meget mælk ud til forbrugerne som muligt, så man kan producere så meget mælk så billigt som muligt.”

3. Hopster, Hans; O’Connell, Janet M.; Blokhuis, Harry J. (1995) Acute effects of cow-calf separation on heart rate, plasma cortisol and behaviour in multiparous dairy cows. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 44 (1995). Pages 1-8. Available online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016815919500581C

4. von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.; Weary, Daniel M. (2007) Maternal behavior in cattle. Hormones and Behavior. 52 (2007). Pages 106–113. Available online: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b769/09afb82991b8322808e289a73662058c4af1.pdf

5. Gulliksen, S.M.; Lie, K. I.; Løken, T.; Osterås, O.(2009) Calf mortality in Norwegian dairy herds.Journal of Dairy Science. 92 (2009). Pages 2782-2795. Available online: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448012

6. https://landbrugsavisen.dk/kv%C3%A6g/afsl%C3%B8ring-kun-m%C3%A6lkeerstatninger-har-topkvalitet

7. Krohn, C. C. (2001) Effects of different suckling systems on milk production, udder health, reproduction, calf growth and some behavioural aspects in high producing dairy cows — a review. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 72 (2001). Pages 271-280.

8. Original quote: “Anima ønsker også at få lov til at filme, hvordan en udtjent malkeko sendes til slagtning tyve år før dens naturlige død.”

9. https://professionel.maelken.dk/dyrevelfaerd/koeernes-levetid#hvor-laenge-lever-en-dansk-malkeko-i-gennemsnit

#animal welfare

[buyingusedcar]

New Pet Products, Medicine Showcased at Western Veterinary Conference

Las Vegas, – Horsing around in Las Vegas isn’t Normally like this. Dr. W. Leon Scrutchfield surrendered his secret would be to be fine ‘n simple when playing the horses, or in their own situation when playing with horses that suffer toothaches.  Dr. Scrutchfield is a professor and chief of field services for large creatures, at Texas A & M University College of Veterinary Medicine – College Station.  He gave a talk called “Equine Dentistry,” and was among 180 introducing veterinarians revealing new research for animal care in the 72nd Annual Western Veterinary Conference, Feb. 20-24, 2000.

More than 7,000 pet care professionals attended the seminar held in the Las Vegas Hilton and Riviera Hotels in what is arguably the biggest instructional veterinary convention in the country.  In addition to the educational sessions, pharmaceutical companies, pet food manufacturers and companies which produce an assortment of pet toys and equipment for vets showed off their products.  Scalpels were exhibited using plush stuffed toy cats and dogs, kitty litter was spread, flea products sprayed and at least one daring spokesperson even ate kibble for a skeptical vet who dared to inquire, “but does it taste good? ”

Here are some highlights:Dr. Gregory Hanson of Davis, Calif. explained that vets once treated pets for pain when they literally cried out for help, yowling or howling.  “For one thing, we finally have the means to not wait long,” he explained.  In addition, he pointed out that new research indicates pets may not display distress even when they’re experiencing severe pain.  “They can’t tell us – and instinctively they just don’t express their pain.  Instead their energies are directed at recovery.  As an instance, a postoperative dog lying silently was until very recently supposed to be comfy.  However, in reality that dog might not be comfortable in any way.  As a livelihood our default must be to treat for pain unless the creature convinces us otherwise. ”

Hanson also spoke about the advantages of combining pain relief medications.  Done properly and carefully, the effectiveness will increase and the potential for side effects may lessen.

“Ooops, missed that litter box,” is the number one pet behavior complaint, but little research has trickled out to ascertain why some cats think outside the box.  Dr. Sharon Crowell-Davis and Dr. Wailani Sung of the University of Georgia – Athens are now in the process of compiling results from their still-to-be-published study.

At a sneak preview of her results, Crowell-Davis showed of these cats with box issues, four of ten pay their eliminations, in comparison with all the squeaky management group where seven of ten covered their excrement.  Also, problem cats don’t invest as much time at the box sniffing about compared to cats that consistently reach their targets.  This means if your cat isn’t covering up and isn’t sniffing its bathroom, see, you will soon have a kitty with poor aim.  Crowell-Davis and Wailani additionally found most litter boxes to be too small.

Dr. Ken Bartels is on the frontier of laser medicine.  He explained new tactics to deal with cancer without traditional chemotherapy or surgery.  A special drug (called a photosensitzer) is injected intravenously to the pet and also manages to travel to the cancerous tumors where the vet points a laser light, aims and fires.  The laser light activates the cancer fighting drug, and “bang zoom” the cancer cells have been blasted away.  This treatment has been used with success on cancer of the nose cats and with skin and esophageal cancers in both dogs and cats.

Bartels, of Stillwater, Okla. is the president-elect of the Oklahoma Veterinary Medical Association, and also a long-time proponent of laser operation.  He said in 1990 less than two dozen practices around the nation had laser engineering, and they were largely at veterinary teaching associations.  Nowadays, there are approximately 700 lasers in practices across the nation.  He supposes that the moment the year 2010, 90% of all veterinary clinics will share the cutting edge technologies, that's the ability to perform surgery without actually cutting with a scalpel.

Bartels suspects even elective surgeries, such as spay/neuters, will increasingly be performed utilizing lasers.  “There’s less trauma to the body because the operation is less invasive, there’s less pain to the animal and normally a faster recovery,” he says.  Possibly the most immediate and pressing use for laser surgeries can be for reptiles or birds.  These critters are expert at masking illness, so often by the time that they ’re diagnosed, they might be severely sick.  It’s no operation that necessarily kills birds or reptiles, it’s the strain of prolonged recovery – using laser gear, this becomes much less of a problem.

Unfortunately, since the average laser operates anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000, the cost of laser surgery is at least for now somewhat costlier than traditional surgery.

Even vets were tangled in a web of confusion, seeing private boxes in which 12 company reps pitched their sites.  Some sites focused exclusively on veterinary clientele, others – like pets.com – are for e-commerce attractive to the public.

Brand-new is petplace.com, a virtual veterinary medical dictionary plus a source for preventative medicine and wellness programs, launched by pets.com.

Another new website, goodnewsforpets.com is really targeted to members of their pet press.

Chemical behaviorist Dr. Karen Overall from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine – Philadelphia, talked in Good detail concerning obsessive-compulsive disease (OCD) in puppies.  She introduced evidence that dogs may have hallucinations, demonstrating a videotape of a dog pouncing on fanciful mice.  Dogs can also present OCD by chasing their tails, self-grooming, or pursuing imaginary flies.  Overall additionally clarified separation anxiety, sound phobia and thunderstorm anxiety in dogs.  She says in all situations, the evidence seems clear that the brain chemistry has been altered.  She and other investigators are compiling evidence that indicates when medication or behaviour modification is demonstrated to be helpful, the brain chemistry returns to normal.

Just as brain chemistry levels may impact a pet’s psychological well being, there might soon be medical means to actually measure dominance aggression in dogs.  Overall says pee display data shows different amino acid measurements in dogs that are aggressive.  If nothing else that is evidence that something neurochemical is happening in these competitive dogs.

Dr. Thomas Goerblich of Munich, Germany was covering the conference for what amounts to the German version of Dog Fancy and Cat Fancy.  He clarified , in Germany veterinarians are reluctant to be interviewed since vets aren’t permitted to advertise their practices, so that they ’re exceedingly cautious to not misconstrue anything they say to the press as self marketing.  “It’s convinced not that way in the states,” he states.  Goerblich, who's a veterinarian, was schooled in Germany but trained at the Chicago region.  He states despite the fact that there are more pets in Germany than before (5.6 million adults and 5 million dogs), there are also more vets than previously, and lots of trained as vets simply can’t find a job.

Dr. Andy Eschner, manager of professional services at Iselin, N.J.-based Merial (manufacturer of animal health products, such as Frontline) talked about how synthetic pyrethroids (most often labeled permethrins) are potentially deadly to cats.  All these are place on flea control products for dogs, that are mandated by legislation to have labels warning against usage on cats.  The dilemma is that the packing might have that warning in small print, but resemble the packaging of Frontline or Advantage.  Don’t be fooled.  When used anywhere near cats these products are potentially very hazardous.  Eschner points it out ’s potential that a chummy cat rubbing up against a medicated dog might be adversely affected.

Note: This guide is copyrighted by Steve Dale and can be applied as source material and for reference only.  It can't be reprinted verbatim.  Please contact Steve Dale at [email protected] if you have any questions.

[dishonoredrpg]

Congratulations, TARYN! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE MOON with the faceclaim of FRIDA GUSTAVSSON. In spite of a few understandable bumps in the road, you really blew me away with Maiden! The Moon is a very understated character, to me, in that their subtleties and smaller notes are what really make them interesting. You took them in a direction I wasn’t expecting, but I enjoyed the ride nevertheless -- I also enjoyed the ups-and-downs of the plots quite a lot, and how you tied everything together with a nice little bow in regards to her interest in botany and the past which she is still trying to uncover. Altogether, this was a delight to read, and I can’t wait for Maiden to grace the dash!

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OOC NAME: Taryn PRONOUNS: She/her AGE: 21+ TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: PST & currently I’m stuck at home and rarely allowed to leave the house because I’m immunocompromised… bleh. In a week or so I’ll be considered okay to rejoin people, and then I’ll be on the job hunt - which I only mention because it may change my activity ability once that’s happening! I also do help out behind the scenes at another roleplay, so some creative juice goes there. Overall, ideally I’m at least online everyday to chat, plot, or post a reply. Some days the ole mental health needs me to stay off screens for a bit or just says You Aren’t Writing Today, but I’d say it’s been a while since I’ve gone more than 3 days without posting on an rp account, so whatever that translates to -- 7/10, maybe? ANYTHING ELSE?: Other than what I already messaged you about (and thank you again for your understanding!!), I just want to say I interpreted things a little differently than the recent skeleton edit/your anon answers imply -- I thought her magic manifested at thirteen with the instance of Moon freezing her mother’s arm, meaning her mother knew from that early age that Moon had powers, and only told Moon to leave when the rumours spread. I think that switches up the dynamic you might have imagined, but hopefully you still like it! I was also a little confused as to whether or not the Moon’s mother ever instructed her in the work she does -- because there is the “All she ever does in return is chuckle and pat you on the head, but you figure that she’ll tell you one day.” line, but it seems that’s when she’s younger, and I figured if she’s working as a botanist at the castle she must have been lessoned in the stuff to some degree. So there is mention of her mother teaching her botany in her history, but it’s not an ~important detail at all and could literally just straight up be removed from the bio without issue. Can you tell I’m anxious and need to over-clarify everything? Lmao. Anyway, thanks again Julie!! IN CHARACTER SKELETON: The Moon NAME: Maiden Mallorian / “Triss” I don’t largely go into naming conventions but I think there’s some worth in discussing it here! The use of Maiden as a given name is meant to embody an Otherness by using a commonly-used noun in place of a traditional name (... though I guess all names are nouns too… anyway), as well as a mystique. EG: If every young, unmarried woman is a maiden, then who is the girl we call Maiden? Is she all of those young women, or none of them - is she a person, or a concept? Can a woman even have an identity with a moniker shared by so many -- a similar question to can a girl have a sense of self if she is raised in isolation, if her teachers are not people but the meadows, the crows and the heaths and the moors? There’s also certainly the archetype of The Maiden in literature, particularly in relation to the trio of Maiden / Mother / Crone. Beyond her mother embracing this triumvirate of feminine archetypes and deliberately naming her after as much, there’s just that very literal interpretation - I’ve named her after the maiden archetype, pure and simple. Her mother is, clearly, the mother, and I see the High Priestess rounding out that divine feminine trio as the crone -- the most aged of all, the closest to death, and the bearer of the most knowledge. Furthermore you have the scrubbing of this name and the replacement of it with Triss -- a simple, short nickname that bares no importance or meaning, and instead effectively erases the things that made her unique. Maiden tends to forget or, at least, forgo introducing herself with the alias both because she dislikes and genuinely forgets to use it -- so you may have a smattering of people who know her in-character as Triss, but to those that she knows better and/or takes a liking to immediately, they’ll know her as Maiden. Which, if I’m continuing to be a little extra with the name analysis, is also a good representation of her duality/contradiction -- two names, two selves, two parts to the moon (glowing at night; invisible by day-hours), the illusion/deception part of the moon tarot, and all that jazz.   FACECLAIM: (1) Frida Gustavsson (2) Ashley Moore AGE: Twenty-five DETAILS: So, full disclosure, I’ve said it a dozen times to a dozen different people but I had the hardest time deciding on a character -- I was literally stuck between five or six skeletons until like 48 hours before the submit closed. They were as varied as The Moon to Temperance to even the dark horse of The Hermit plowing its way through my heart, and what attracted me to that array of characters on the whole was just the ability to see a story in them. I could find in each of them a distinct past and complex future, but the Moon ended up pulling ahead as I started to collect inspiration and jot down notes -- it was Maiden’s story that wouldn’t leave me alone. And I will go into an attempt to tell you why below, but realistically that’s almost the best reason I could give you -- because they won’t unstick from your shoulder or let you reach for someone else. They demand to be spoken for. Truthfully, I love tales of daughters and their mothers. I love the narrative passed between them, how one can be an extension of the other -- I love a retelling of an immaculate conception where the magic is found in the mother, not an absent-holy father (even if said immaculate conception is just myth, because who says a story isn’t as important as a truth). I love women and their stories, and how no girl is ever so far from being a witch -- basically, I adore that Girl Magic, so it was her background that appealed to me first. Because while we’re talking about Girl Magic, there’s such a potential for that with The Moon. I saw her at the crux of an eccentric mage and a clumsy apprentice, possibly hovering in the middle because she has no instructor, only herself -- so she is forced to experiment and create and learn all at once. I also love archetypes of wild women, though that doesn’t have to mean the ones that run with wolves -- sometimes it means the ones who sleep next to them. I’m very drawn to stories of the Others, the ones a half-step from society, who hold something unusual and distinctly enchanted about them -- and Maiden, whose magic has manifested in a way that may prove unique to all humanity, certainly has that Otherness going for her. Women in real life (and in fiction) are so often grouped into homogenous categories or expectations that being able to write one who not only defies societal conventions, but exists outside them entirely, and with contradictions inside her -- phew. That’s some shit I can fall in love with. I do find it difficult to dissect and lay out who Maiden is so plainly -- to me, that’s like writing an analysis on a novel I haven’t finished yet. I can’t separate her bones for you yet on the table because I’m still unrolling them from the skin myself, measuring out the angles of her joints, sizing up her feet, etc. But I like that I know this muse is going to unravel for me with time, despite how much I already have done -- that’s actually a very important note to me in a character, feeling that there is still progress to be made as both myself and the muse go through the roleplay together. Though, that being said, I also don’t remember the last time I’ve been able to create such a long-term character arc from the get-go -- which is super exciting, tbh, and yet another reason I got drawn into the Moon’s lunar pull over the others. Got me out here feeling like I could write a novel 😭 BACKGROUND: let us begin, as all stories do - and as they must - at the beginning. to be fair and honest, as stories never are, we must admit that this is not quite the true beginning. that beginning, in this case and all others, would mean the black-star start of the world (or in the very least, if we are to cheat just slightly, the origins of magic - but i digress), when everything came from nothing and nothing meant everything. but for both your time and mine, we will skip past the first red, slashed dawn of the world, and even beyond the fantastic sky-breaking initiation that brought magic, though they did not come all that far apart, as you may think. i also feel that it is my duty to you, dear reader, to state my bias. that is all. i state it. i type it in bold letters, black like stones from the bottom of a cold ocean and just as cold. it has been relayed, and i have done what is necessary. i have no obligation to further explain to you what it may be, or to who i am favored or embittered - indeed, i staunchly oppose such action, as you yourself must have an active part in this tale, a responsibility to seek out what is truth and what is exaggeration - and there is no point in asking. but don’t read too much into this. all this facetious, drawn-out text is only a disclosure. this is a story, real as your whale-blubber bones, and i am not lying about any of it. all i mean to say is this: it is a sign both of humanity and of narration that we should always, must always, pick a side. it is simply necessary, just as it is necessary to remember this when one is the listener. never believe a narrator who does not disclose themselves upon the opening of a story, and never trust one that calls themselves impartial. they are lying. it is only natural to crave loveliness, or wickedness, or both, and it can only be expected that a tongue slants and bends to accommodate such reactions of the heart. there is no story that is all truth. there is only love and the words we create to try and express it; never quite accurate, never quite enough, like a burr soaked in honey and left on your tongue. stinging and sweet, but no matter how you try, you cannot spit it out. (remember, look closely, but not too hard). this is our story. i leave it in your mouth. there are three things in succession: a bargain, a girl, and magic. the order of these both matters and does not. it does not matter because all these things are one and the same in the end. it does matter for reasons that will become apparent shortly. there is, as many tales go, an unhappy woman (why it is never a man that is so morose and dissatisfied with life in these stories, we shall leave for the scholars to explain). she lives in a stretch of land where few who are not seeking her come, and spends her days shucking the cures and harms out of flowers and counting the wolves that pass by her road. the first bargain, by all accounts, happens some time ago, before we begin the meat of our tale: the woman lives simply but she lives alone, and for that fact alone she is considered both strange and in necessary want of a companion, for it is a truth universally acknowledged that even a peculiar woman is in want of a husband. yet no sojourner or knight come to her door seeking remedy is invited to stay longer, no boots left at her doorstep despite the impressive if not daunting presence of her beauty, and in the absence of romance the people in the farmlands grow restless, then talkative. what does a woman want beside a mate, they wonder? particularly when she is young, and beautiful, and alone, they add, because in these stories and every one that will be told thereafter until my throat is split in a great red grin, that is all that matters to an active audience. a child, they murmur finally. it must be a child. there are varying accounts of what happens next, but let me give you the gristle: a swell comes to the solitary woman’s belly, and in more moons, so comes a daughter. no one remembers when she is born, and it is something of a wonderment that she exists at all; far and wide she is eyed thrice-over by all those who see her babe form swaddled in her mother’s arms, wondering over which crib she has been snatched from. the farm-folk in the nearby flatlands believe that she was not stolen or bred but placed, a changeling offered to her mother in exchange for a bargain made with the undying god, or conjured up by spell and pure maternal desire alone (for you were a fool if you believed these simple folk saw a woman, young and beautiful and alone and with her fingers in the dirt, and never called her witch). others still swear the child came from the unfolded petals of a white flower, her minute form bundled up where the pollen was meant to be. whether this gossip speaks to the audacity of the men in the telling of the lie or the stupidity of the listener for believing something so unnatural, i will let you decide. or perhaps you believe in magic. do you? i digress. so as you are learning, the first bargain is both unimportant and not. completely individual and irrevocably part of a far larger, grander whole, indistinguishable from the rest. but next comes the girl, as i promised. and she is very, very important. she is our story. she is her mother’s in full, because blood and magick are one and the same, and the farmers are right in this alone: her mother loves her as meat loves salt, as lions love flesh and blood and not cabbages, and there is no unnatural thing in this world she would not do to make her borne. she loves her from dusk to dawn and dirt to moon, and so she gives her a name stitched with irony so that the fates will not sew it into her bones: maiden. a thing from every story, a girl on every street. she names her after a concept so that she will always be real, made of life. so that the tales whose paths she walks will not decide for her. mother and maiden live in the little cottage in the wide grasslands between wicked wood and dry cropland, and in the nothingness they have everything they need. mother hunts for their supper and teaches maiden to carry a bow when it is time, and more importantly how to give thanks to the beasts they carve up on the wooden table. they collect logs for fires and till the gardens by hand, taking from the earth all that they need and never - as mother instructs - a drop more. they play games of knots and crosses in the dirt and maiden makes dramas with the figures mother whittles, and to give you the very best truth of all, they want for very little that they do not have. she learns how to be a raven (observing), a fox (clever), a rabbit (swift), a riddle (everything all at once, and only sometimes a girl) from mother and the animals both, and she walks about the meadows barefoot and learns from the trees and birds, loves them the way she never loves people only because she has not had the chance. mothers and fauna are all well and good to take lessons from, but they do make a strange girl. she tells her secrets to the bees and watches the far-off puffs of smoke from the farmlands, pretending they are streams from a dragon’s nostrils and not the warmth of a hearth with children her age sitting next to it so that she does not feel sorry for herself. to her, there are but two people: her mother, and the people she trades with. it is not so bad; they are both very good at being alone, and the people of the nearest town are even better at reminding them to stay that way. when they blow into the hamlet on the western breeze maiden makes games of hanging off porches and climbing things that should never be touched, and she laughs so freely all the other children cannot help but come out from their hiding places and join her until their fathers call them back in. not with her, they say. not that one. — but o, how sweet and precocious a child she is when the visitors come, wrists knotted behind her back and eyes tied forward as she questions their intentions and demands, as if in secondary payment, life stories as recompense for mother’s skills. how you would have loved her, i tell you, that girl with her flaxen hair and moon-eyes, tugging on sleeves and walking the verbal-stride of a child who never learned how to shrink herself — how i love her even now! and if i must tell you something else: magic is rarely courteous, and almost never consolatory. when it arrives, no matter how many pieces of furniture i have shifted in my heart to make way for a girl called maiden, it comes with no such open space in its pit. where i have crafted an open sitting parlour it has bedroom sets and wicker fruit baskets and even a few grand lamps (never mind the fact that lamps do not yet exist; in the cavity of magic, there are always lamps), and so when it arrives she feels the weight of all these things dropped upon her head. and mother, who does so well at holding her silence it resembles a newborn babe swathed in cloth, still grips the quiet as carefully as church glass - even with one arm in disuse. you know by now, of course, what has happened. it is no secret to you or i what occurred that day, as some pieces of stories swell until they brush up against the audience independent of the narrative altogether. the effect was grand even if the moment was not, for unfortunately sometimes even the greatest plot devices happen when the writer is sleeping and cannot pause to fancy it all up. one moment a hand is merely a hand passing twine and foxglove, the next it has frozen in place. it might have been a lovely image under any other circumstance: the look of a pale, slim arm grasping a hanging purple head of flowers beneath thick, glittering ice like a delicately painted carving in a snowglobe. But indeed, how the image shook them instead of the other way around. in an effort to distract her, mother peels open the earth’s secrets at the seam and lets her peek into the sticky, moist centers and slurp the knowledge for herself. she shows her how to unfold plant-magic on the large wood table and lessons her on how to use it kindly in poultices and elixirs and bunches of dried ravensmaw. she learns what is used for fresh wounds and the herbs best combined to stave off heartbreak, and they are more similar than you think. but things are, distinctly, never the same: in a house that has only ever had two voices, there arrives a great sweeping of silence. mother is far-away in a place of wondering, the spot where mothers are ought to go when considering how best to protect their child. maiden too spends time in that same seat questioning who it is that has made her and why they stole from two separate bowls of clay, though the pair never seem to sit down and share a table in that place in peace. life goes on this way, i am loathe to report, until it gets worse. there is an awful quiet that does not leave that house, suspended between the unasked questions of what to do and what am i? maiden is kept from leaving the cabin or its surrounding pasture in ever-climbing extents until she is nought but bound to them, and mother makes the trips to the farmlands for supplies alone and ushers her out of the room when clients arrive. so, here she is in full, with flaxen hair and a moon hidden underneath her tongue: clever and strange, curious and lovely, tall and just a little too spindly-boned. a raven, a fox, a rabbit, a riddle, and sometimes a girl. magic bound in bones. a shut-in who never had reason to grow a heart, but did anyway, and now she is left to the lonesome. truly, can we blame her for what she did next, for answering the door all those moons later simply because someone knocked, and letting them in without checking if their teeth were bicuspids or fangs? can we fault that lonely creature for believing she could help, and fixing the tonic herself rather than waiting for mother, as instructed? can we accuse her for what came next, the slimmest moment of ice crystals skittering across a workbench, cold little diamonds that another less-shrewd eye might have ignored, but this one picked out? and what of the day the child got lost with a thorn in its foot, how she snuck from the cabin and cooed for them till it was yanked free, the simple smoothing of her thumb over the sole leaving it smooth as milk — i ask you that, in true: what crimes would you charge her with? do you blame the tiger for its hunting? it is only following nature, after all. or do you cast your stones on the people who threw nets through the trees and called it protection, expecting not to bleed. one cannot take in a wolf and expect it to never look back at the forest, no matter how well fed it is kept. like a flower cannot choose its colour, we cannot help what we become. she could not help what she did. it was only in her nature. so like rain, like a black cloud, like bad omens, the rumours come for the maiden, the one in the meadow, the one in the little wooden hut with the strange-beautiful-alone mother. daughter is even worse than the mother, they say. i heard it was ice — no, wind — nay, she is vitalus too — they build and rise until mother-maiden can hear the gossip in the air, having travelled by raven-feather and west-wind. of course none of it is the truth, for she bares a reality that no one yet knows — something hidden away like an egg inside an egg at the deepest part of the world — but it does not matter. audiences do not look for fact, they clutch only to wickedness or sweetness, as i have already told you. mother grows panicked with hydrangeas of fear spouting out of her ears, demanding a flight to be taken, and daughter lies awake at night wondering how to do so without wings — questioning how it has come to pass that she knows the roots and berries and grass, but not the woods or how to survive in them. you know, still, what happens next. there is another knock at the door, and despite lessons learned, the maiden answers the call: and this time it is death standing there waiting. they come to an agreement. sometimes death, too, is kind. history peeks its lazy, pinned-down eyes around the corner when the maiden of this story leaves her little hovel, fingers made of revolutions and religions clinging tightly to the doorframe to watch her go. the journey is perilous and full of dark places and occasional humour, if you are interested in that kind of adventure. i will tell it another time, when the back of my tongue has been given rest. i wish i could tell you, dear reader, which sort of story this will be: drama or comedy, mask one or mask two. but i don’t know yet. we will find out together, which makes us accomplices, you and i - like colleagues. two thieves after the same jewel. i have told her story because i love her, this much you know to be true by now, because we do not let the ones we love tell war stories. which is, in essence, what every story we can ever tell is: a battle of wits, or a conflict of hearts, or the combat of self against self. there is always a fight against something. it’s the nature of humanity, to push and poke and burn. —- – and now you see what i meant at the beginning of this tale: bargain. girl. magic. all of it comes in that necessary order and none at all. bargain. it arrives first, before her birth, a rumour; at the same time, it is the last twist, the thing that brings her to this castle. girl. she is born; she exists. magic. her blood, her marrow; a complexity of sparks and hope. a beginning, a middle, an end. a circle. a moon. PLOT IDEAS: These are laid out in a potential arc/chronological order of when I see them happening, but with the exception of a few, almost any combination could work! I. SHUCKED FROM PETALS. I’d like to grow Maiden’s role as a botanist -- both in terms of having her interest in botany itself swell, and also expand this into something of an inventor or potioner function. While she’s currently making strange concoctions at the King’s request, as an inherently curious woman I see these demands as something that will spark interest in her to create on her own. While in her youth she quizzed her mother on the applications of leaves and stems, now that she has no mentor for the process, she can only question and find answers by working through the hypotheses and methods herself. II. ON THE BASIS OF MORALITY. I see very strongly Maiden descending further into the plot to assassinate Septimus and joining the group of revolters in a more tangible way. Her ability to fight and knowledge of courtly life are both lacking, but she offers a unique vantage point of visiting all manner of individuals with the perfect excuse -- their health. As she becomes more decidedly entangled in the rebellion efforts and subsequently offers up her services to them, she begins to craft salves and potions with hidden effects, used in application against those they stand against (a poultice made with an herb that lends to truth when tending to someone with information / a drought with added pollen so that a guard may sleep through their shift that night, etc). Less fleshed out, but still worth noting: if the laced salves and elixirs are a no-go, she could slide into something of a spy/informant role fairly easy. Again, she has easy access to any array of people as the castle, and can come and go from different bedsides silently -- listening in on conversations all the while. III. FASTER THAN MINE ARROW. At the behest of the revolution -- where intentions ring with righteousness yet impact may be less virtuous -- I see Maiden encouraged to embrace her Inferni powers by rebel cohorts. While it’s not a path I see her arriving at and walking on her own, as she entrenches herself in the ideals and plots of the revolution, it would still be a willingly-made choice -- albeit perhaps still a reluctant one. She far prefers to heal than harm, but as the plot to kill Septimus ripens, she would accept the notion that an offensive skill gained by her becomes a shield and sword to the cause. I interpret this as less of an embrace of violence and more an eventual acceptance of her magic in all its parts; Maiden removing her gloves and making attempts at practicing Inferni magic brings with it an acknowledgement that not only are these powers part of her but they are hers alone to control. If she can develop some mastery over them, she can use them as she sees morally right, rather than their use dictated to her by others (so she believes). I want to see her not think of her magic as an intrusion and a mystery, but rather some native at the pit of her -- like stone in a fruit. As long as it is there, one could not bite straight through her. Sub-bullet because it’s not a huge thing, but I’d love a moment where she’s practicing with the ice in the greenhouse and loses control, subsequently destroying much of the flora in there beyond salvation -- cue a sobbing Maiden. Also! Would love to use this as an excuse for the Hierophant to become a sort-of mentor for her -- a dynamic she would undoubtedly seek out and beg for if the time came. IV. WHERE TRUTHS CONFLICT. As clearly as I envision Maiden’s loyalties knotting tighter to the revolutionaries, I don’t believe her resolution is iron in every aspect. While she may agree that King Septimus needs to be removed, deciding which successor she wishes to support would be far harder. This plot could be as simple as indecision and uncertainty on Maiden’s part, or could be as complex as a more nefarious individual taking advantage of her courtly ignorance and indecisiveness by manipulating her into backing their pick for future ruler. V. THE CURE & THE RUIN. Working intimately with anything lends to cross-contamination -- including poisonous plants. My thoughts on this fork a few different ways here, albeit my personal fave is the first bullet: Through her own misinformation or inexperience, Maiden accidentally begins to poison herself through prolonged exposure to toxic flora and their materials. Seeing as she’s in the greenhouse for hours at a time nearly every day, this would lend to a good, steady incline of symptoms -- paranoia, delusion, hallucinations, etc until they potentially culminate in a kind of temporary “madness.” An individual or party on the loyalist side discovers what she is doing for the revolters, and applies the same concept -- a slow poisoning, made to look accidental by exposure to the wrong flower. This may be less likely as it might be implausible for another character to have a knowledge of botany that surpasses her own and plant something toxic in the Greenhouse without Maiden realizing, but I’m totally open to it! Similar to the last, rather than a loyalist poisoning Maiden, they find a way to access her stash of concoctions and alter them so that they harm rather than heal those she is working with. Could be particularly dramatic if she is working long-term on a member of royalty or influential revolution member -- ie. something like visiting them daily to apply salve on a new wound that needs consistent tending. VI. WHAT ARE YOU, SWEET CREATURE? Maiden’s dual powers are bound to come into public knowledge eventually, and I think there’s the opportunity for some terror and delight there. I’ve been ruminating a lot on what the hybrid of her Inferni and Vitalus powers mean -- An Inferni rarely lives past thirty, and Maiden is already twenty-five. I’ve been imagining that she has not seen or felt the costs of her power like other Inferni due to the innate nature to heal, which is undoubtedly something other Inferni would desire. Whether Maiden willingly lays herself down to experimentation in the name of aiding the Hierophant or she’s literally captured by Septimus and crew for a less careful kind of research -- I’d love to see her secret blown up and her safety compromised as a result. VII. IT HURTS TO BECOME. I have little octopus tentacles coming out of this plot because I can see multiple variations on the same idea, so -- As inspired by the “Vitalis magic often manifests itself in nobility” line from the magic page, Maiden is discovered as the descendent of a noble bloodline. This could mean her father was the bearer of a title, or that even in a Mother Gothel-esque fashion her mother took her from a family in the desire to have her own child (though I favour the former). This is less about an advancement in her social standing/hierarchy and more about playing further with the themes of birth and identity. Particularly as an individual that isn’t well-matched to courtly manner and expectations, what would it be to disturb her peculiar existence further and force her into a lifestyle she has no interest in? How does it detract from her purpose and goals? Her mother is found out as someone who previously stayed at the Temple of the Undying and departed in some form of scandal known to the High Priestess. I think this would be particularly impactful if her mother’s time there overlapped directly with the High Priestess, and their relationship marked by some form of betrayal on her mother’s end. This would make her mother a necromancer, a fact that if going from this route was certainly kept from Maiden, or we could work with the concept that perhaps she was merely an emissary there. This bullet is less formed as it would require plotting with at least one other player, but essentially it boils down to braiding the High Priestess into her backstory (or, at least, the Temple of the Undying) -- a completion of the maiden/mother/crone build, if you will. Realistically, the above could be combined -- her mother has a past tied to both the Temple of the Undying, and her father is of noble descent. Lastly, this idea could also be twisted into a falsehood/manipulation of someone from Septimus/the Loyalist side -- she does not have noble blood and/or her mother’s past is made up, but they have fed her this story(s)  in an attempt to distract/derail her from her purpose, or otherwise sway her onto the side of the Crown. VIII. THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER. I see very clearly what Maiden could be in years time -- in the same way the King has the Tower, or perhaps even The High Priestess, I envision the capacity for Maiden to become an advisor in the arcane arts to the future ruler. This is very epilogue-esque content, the resolution to a tale long told, something far-off and subject to change depending on how the roleplay unfolds -- but if I was planning her arc from where I stand now, that would be the resolution. A femme!Merlin now in tune with her magicks, a strange figure forever working away in her greenhouse-laboratory in the highest room in the tallest tower, descending to the court only to offer counsel and smile at a few bugs… art. And maybe, just maybe, there’s even a bard out there singing about a strange moon-touched woman and her magic, who came from the Farmlands and ended up in a castle. That, I think, would make an awfully good story. CHARACTER DEATH: I’m definitely not opposed to it! If you see a plotline where her death makes sense I’m open to at least having the discussion -- it would probably depend how I’m feeling about her character development, as I do see quite clearly how far Maiden could develop with extensive, long-term rping (the Merlin-esque shit) and it’d be super cool to get there. WRITING SAMPLE SAMPLE #01. TWENTY-FIVE. CASTLE TYRHOLM, THE GREENHOUSE. Based on headcanons found in the extra section! it is the damnable wine she calls to blame for her recession from the great hall. yet still unused to its potency, it turns her stomach and her mind with it, until she is unbalanced and sure a marble placed upon the centre of her would roll only to one side, lolling comically behind her left ear. maiden swears she can hears it as she takes her leave from the night’s feast, a hideous clacking circling around her skull as she takes the steps to the greenhouse. the sound was a well accompaniment to the noise of heart against rib, that lub lub that reminisced so closely to collection of stones in a velvet satchel. how is that for an appraisal, she thinks. an inferni and a vitalus yet, and yet you cannot even hold your liquor. down below, music begins. septimus is performing one of his many wonders, conjuring up new entertainments like a foreigner’s god and his labours – things meant to fell mortal men in their spectacle. the sound, though muffled by stone, is light and deceptive with a beat kept by tambourine and wound through with panpipes. it crashes and crawls as a serpent through brush, dragging its body across the span of men’s shoulders and up the marble spires until it reaches the slender ankles of maiden high above, who slips from the darling (albeit pinching) satin slippers borrowed from the magician. o, that that song had teeth. it would sink them pit-deep into that lovely, exposed ankle. the footfalls that emerge from the far entrance are remote in distance, yet the cadence of it -- quick and spry, in the pattern of a courtly dance -- are close and recognized by ear in an instant. “your skill is in the making of noise, bard. so i would suggest --” she calls to armel with a bland hum, bent over a troop of growing windflowers as she cuts the largest at the stalk, her sharp fingernail used in place of scissors. “leaving behind these foolhardy attempts to remove sound from your being altogether.” maiden looks up then to the musician’s hiding place, half-covered as he is by bushes camellias and hanging vines. the look given beneath her brows is chiding, but it is a reproach with a single candle lit within, a glance perhaps warmed by liquor despite its meaning. “how do you always do that?” he asks, and maiden decides there is something rather feline about him as he emerges from the brush, shoulders rolling with that mandolin hoisted over one. “i didn’t say a word.” “you do not need to. your stroll speaks for you.” the air is moon-hot and the music swells below them, rising like tide to their knees, now their hips. her voice is cut-rope, one end loose in the water, and maiden lets the tide of the pull her, only one end remaining on shore. “asides…” she sighs, “you limp on the left.” “i do not.” “indeed you do. like a horse with a lame leg.” it is a full-force lie, dropped into a casket of wine and pulled out stinking, and armel catches her half-crescent smile at the same moment he spots her bare feet. “i suppose you won’t be returning to the ball, then.” maiden turns and takes to walking the length of the greenery. her back turns to him, but not unkindly; instead her slow, graceful gait seems an invitation to join, though he does not follow. she listens to armel as she winds through the tall grass, eyes upon the stalks, searching for anything that might catch her eye. in the moonlight she is all silhouette and odd-shapes, ever and always a little too-tall, a little too sharp-boned at the joints. but when she moves like this, slow and easily-flooded as moonlight itself, one could forget all that. “dancing slippers are quite unsuitably named,” she says by way of answer as the bard begins an absent strum on his instrument. “they give me no motivation at all to partake in such merriment.” armel does not answer, instead quite pensively continuing to pluck at notes while looking at the near distance -- assumedly undergoing great internal debate as to whether or not he was, truly, a lame horse. “a peace —” she slides the long stem of a gore-red windflower behind his ear when next she passes, as natural a move as though it were but tucking a strand of her own hair behind her ear. maiden smiles. “you actually limp on the right.” //

SAMPLE #02. AGE FIFTEEN. A MOMENT OF WEAKNESS & A DESPERATE ATTEMPT. Fire, it would seem, had ceased to be a friend to her. As a girl she had delighted in it, waving her hands above it, warming herself on it, staring at every passing wooden cart laden with people in the chance that one of them could be a fire-eater. Ice, that thing that ate and yawned across lakes and thatched roofs as if it remembered it had once devoured the world, was far more cruel in Maiden’s opinion. Could I not, at least, have had that which heats and provides sustenance? And more than even these sweet instances from childhood, she knew of fire intimately as an adult. It was a different kind of flame that brewed in her than what ran free in the wild; it was less violent and more warm, meant for thawing out the cold hands of children or creating delightful ever-shifting silhouettes on walls. She walked alone because she liked it, and spoke to strangers for great lengths of time because it excited her. That was her kind of fire, and so Maiden - it could be said - was as much flame as anyone, even as she chilled the air around her with her very presence. That was why, as she sat on her knees before the great outstretching flames of the parlour’s hearth, she had no caution as she threw paper into its guts. “Enough of this!” The girl was alone, but spoke aloud: it was part of her charm. Like a girl in a folktale who was subjected to life in a tower, she existed brightly when on her own because she knew no other way. The Mallorian girl did not need the accompaniment of another to prove her own worth. The fire sputtered charmingly in response, engorging itself as it swallowed paper and turned it into little pieces of nothingness. “No more curses, no more ice or damned magic!” Her hand shakes, but her heart holds its breath and remains steady. Stained at the tips with ash and melted ink, Maiden sits back on her thighs with a great tremble and stares into the flames before she falls to the pose of prayer. “Undying God, harbinger of all things, if this is your doing, let it be undone. I have wronged you not at all, nor my mother; I am not your child. Please.” Her ears burned pink with fear for addressing a deity with the same volume she would have a man standing before her, but it was too early to stop now. She pauses momentarily, straining to listen for a rumbling voice come from within the fire or swung in on the wind and branches. There is nothing but the crackle of pop of breaking wood. “Then -- then if it is the household spirits come for me, unhappy gnomes with rumbling tummies ‘for we have not been feeding them, emerge now! Or call it all off! Call it off, I say, spirits - take this magic from me so I may live in peace!” Again, she waits. And perhaps, if you would hold your hands over the ears of your heart and allow this young woman to admit it, she might have told you that she truly expected a troll-like little fellow with a green cap and scowling mug to emerge from beneath the ottoman. But there still is nothing, not even the tap of impatient little feet from behind the curtains, and her brows furrow as she stares into the hot gold and rose colours of the fire. Maiden sighs, a heavy breath that drops out of her mouth and rolls into the soot of the hearth. She suddenly feels much too old for these follies. Looking over at the pile of hastily-written spells and official decrees of intent (from Maiden to the Undying God, officially) to rid herself of this curse, the wheat-and-snow coloured girl pauses (and it pains me to say it, dearest reader, but the truth of the matter is that in the light of this blaze, she very much resembles the beautiful women you read about who either have very tragic ends or very wonderful ones in tales you all know). She had burned not even half yet, each one a representation of a day that had been ruined by questions or cold or mother’s worry, and there were still more to go. But no sign of the Undying in her great black steed, or impish house elves crawling out from the cracks beneath the woods. For a moment, she considers stopping. She considers picking up the remainder of the letters, tying them up with some of mother’s twine, and returning them to their proper drawer in the study. But as her hand hovers of the papyrus, her heart protests and causes her to pause. She is, after all, no girl in the tower. She will not sit in anybody’s stomach and wait for the woodsman. And if, in the odd and unusual chance that this circumstance of odd and unusual proportions is caused by something otherworldly, Maiden Mallorian shall not bow to it. No, no bowing indeed. “Now listen here --” Her voice raises, grows taller and older. It might be imagination, but the fire seems to as well. “Whether you be Undying God or lowly household gnome, I shall have no more of this. Do you understand? Are you listening, creatures?” There is nothing so impressive as unafraid, youthful folly. “I shall not be carried away to a cold temple to be a child of misery, and will not let this magic ruin me if you shall not bring me answers. If one of you are indeed responsible for this, it ends now. I am Maiden Mallorian, daughter of Yareli; and a right all in my own!” The sweet curves of her breasts rise and fall like toppling empires as she throws the remainder of the pages into the fire, staring fiercely into the contents as if to decipher an answer in their ash. There is a sudden seizure in her instead, a tight and pressing thing foreign to her soft-spun body. It demands something of her, as intent as fingers pressing into her ribs. She picks up the letter opener at her side, brought from the study to slide open old envelopes, but now she raises it to her chin and cuts in one fell swoop. It does not happen with ease, but off comes a handful of her hair. The edges of her locks are jagged, but the pieces in her palm look like fine oat straw that glitter in the light. She throws that, too, into the pile, and does not realize it has chilled. “There.” She speaks. It is solid and sure and sane. “There is my tribute.” Magic cannot be made by offering someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own and never expect to get it back. “Please... take it away.” Her voice, once grand and ringing of dynasties past, now calms. She begins to sound once more like only a girl of this century. “I am… Maiden Mallorian… and I do not wish to live a life of unhappiness.” The strength that once held her shoulders aloft departs in a gentle breath, leaving her soft to touch -- quivering. “If you shall not take this from me... I will make my own way, no matter who has done this -- be it God or beast or some creature in between --” She stands, in possession of some quiet power. “One day I will find my truth. And then I will know a free heart at last.” She leaves before the paper and hair have all disappeared, trusting the fire -- that once-longtime friend, that formerly beloved and willingly indentured servant -- to do as it is meant to. As the cold evening wages on the flame starts to die, and, left unattended, everything turns to ash. All that is left in the hearth of the Mallorian home is the same colour: black. But it is not a frightening colour if you look closely. It seems, perhaps, the ink in this story is drying. It is time for a new chapter.

EXTRAS A NOTE ON ~MAGICK: I just wanted to state that while I loved imbuing her story/personality with themes of oddity and enchantment, I don’t expect any of these things to be real. Her biography was supposed to be an exaggerated verbal retelling, and in example: the rumour that Maiden’s birth was the result of not a normal conception but pure willpower and magic is just that -- hearsay crafted by unnerved townsfolk trying to justify a strange, unmarried woman in the woods and her peculiar daughter. I’m also not sure what balance you’re looking to strike between realism and fantasy, so if things like her pet owl are too much the former -- no problem!! I could definitely tone down anything you think is too out there! PINTEREST: here. MUSE TAG: here. CHARACTER INSPIRATIONS BIG AND SMALL!: Kayley (Quest for Camelot), Garrett (Quest for Camelot), Phoebe Buffay (Friends), Amalthea (The Last Unicorn), Rapunzel (Tangled), Merlin (The Sword in the Stone), Arthur (The Sword in the Stone), Taran (The Black Cauldron), Eilonwy (The Black Cauldron), Katrina van Tassel (Sleepy Hollow (1999)), Nimue/Lady of the Lake (Arthurian mythology), Honey Lemon (Big Hero 6), Vasya Petrovna (The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden), Kida (Atlantis: The Lost Empire), The Mage (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword), Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter), Thumbelina (fairytale), Circe (Circe by Madeline Miller), Yvaine (Stardust) HEADCANONS: She has a mild form of associative prosopagnosia, a type of facial blindness. While Maiden can distinguish faces from one another, it’s essentially difficult for her to recognize those she’s newly met or has not known (and subsequently seen) for a certain amount of time. As her youth in the woods meant infrequent visits from varying strangers and acquaintances, Maiden learned from a very young age to identify those she met with other signifiers -- the pitch of their voice, their cadence, the pattern of their boots on her mother’s shop’s creaky wood floor -- and she has become exceptional at it. While she may struggle to associate new faces with names, if she has heard your voice or the template of your gait, it is likely she can recognize you from the sound of these alone in the next room. Contingent on the above, I like to picture a longstanding game between Armel and Maiden with him attempting to sneak up on her, trying to outdo her hearing abilities only to be smoothly called out each time -- like the first twenty seconds of this scene from Tarzan. -- And obviously this was inspo for one of my writing samples! Major sweet tooth, and most likely has a standing relationship with The Hanged Man who provides her with desserts in exchange for tonics or pouches of seasoning curated from Maiden’s personal collection up in the greenhouse. Alternatively, she’s The Hanged Man’s personal Garfield, constantly being chased out of the kitchen before she can stick a finger in icing or steal a hot bun. Another Armel headcanon because I’m a sucker for a Found Sibling dynamic: Maiden has been teasing him for ages with the concept of knowing (and withholding) an Epic Folksong that her mother taught her and that would be just perfect for him to perform. There’s every likelihood that there is no song and she’s made it up to amuse herself, but every once and a while she hums a foreign tune or drops a few words from the “lyrics” to keep him interested. If it is a real song, bonus points if she’s making Armel do little chores etc to earn another piece of the song. Subject to plotting with Death’s player, I imagine her nickname/alias Triss was borne from a singular moment where they introduced her to someone within the castle upon arrival -- only to bluster that she used that strange name, Maiden, which confused the third party. Death makes a quick save by adding that “she means only that she is a maiden from the Farmlands,” and creating the assumed name on the spot, forcing Maiden to adopt it. Both due to falling asleep atop a text after extensive nights reading and researching and the comfort of being around plants, Maiden often sleeps in the greenhouse -- in fact, she prefers it to the cramped quarters she’s been given, and keeps a spare blanket there at all times. In the greenhouse has also come into residence a fat, one-eyed grey cat who she has named Augrunn, known affectionately (or otherwise) Auggie. Grumpy and demanding, Maiden found him taking shelter in the greenhouse on a particularly rainy day, and though he comes and goes as he pleases, it’s now effectively his home. Auggie is known to both yowl for personal space if you’re too close and swipe if you stop petting him too early. Similarly, Maiden has an owl-friend whose name I haven’t decided on, but the front-runner is currently Archimedes. Unbothered by Augrunn’s attempts to snatch him out of the air, he’s a chill little feather-loaf that watches the comings and goings of the greenhouse from the carved wood perch she has made him. He is aware of the location of Maiden’s sleeping quarters, and can occasionally be found sitting on her windowsill when she’s there. She bruises very easily, even in circumstances unrelated to use of her Inferni magic -- just as likely to get a mark from walking into a corner as she is to scar from the use of her ice powers. Insects don’t bother her in the slightest. Growing up in a small home filled with plants, there were always bugs crawling around the flora, and Maiden appreciates them all. She will 100% pick up the scary spider you’re flinching from and make sure they get back to their web. Prefers to be barefoot, and likely does not share the same feelings of taboo around exposed skin as most others -- to her, flesh is only flesh, and a very natural thing at that. Temperature is a funny thing for her -- given that she seems to emanate a kind of cold, I think it stands to reason that she doesn’t easily chill, but that it is also hard to heat her up. I picture it like a normal hand held above a flame, then one stuck in the snow -- it’s going to take longer for her to melt before she feels any pain from the fire. CONNECTIONS: *Obligatory these are just ideas and I’m totally open when it comes time to plotting with these players! THE HIEROPHANT: Chihiro and Haku vibes (that sort-of-romance entirely unnecessary, though I would be down for Maiden to have a little crush), basically. Give me a Maiden as impressed by their showy nature as their inner fire to overthrow Septimus -- an Inferni mentor, even, or just an individual that helps guide her through the dangers of Tyrholm’s court. Also… ice and fire... I meant to do more but ran out of time rip

#accepted #accepted: the moon

[jam2289]

On the Path to Story Analysis, Scene Analysis, and Sentence Analysis

Science is a test of facts. Art is an exploration of values. They are different realms of experience, knowledge, and insight. Writing fiction is an art. Creating stories is the most important art. It's infinitely complex. We need a framework to understand both the meaning that we can pull from existent stories and how to create new stories. I've studied many, and like all conceptual frameworks, I've found that I need to build my own.

I think there are three important levels to focus on if you're writing stories: sentence, scene, and story. I am going to briefly introduce three sources for each of these that I'm trying to integrate and adapt into my own system.

Do we want to start at the top or bottom? Let's start at the top, with story, and we'll work our way down. Remember, this is a general overview so all of these books will contain a lot of good info that I'm not going to cover.

There is a great little ebook by Martin Turner called "The One Basic Plot". It's been on my most liked books list for years. That list is linked on my about page. I just emailed with Martin today to clarify something. He responded right away. Good guy.

The basic idea is that a compelling story is a double reversal. A story without a reversal is like someone tries to do something and they do it. That's boring. A story with a single reversal is like a person tries to do something. They get close, but they fail. That's a tragedy, it could go the other way too. A double reversal is when someone is trying to do something, they are getting close, then it looks like they are going to lose everything, then they win. This can play out over a long story and out in smaller sections in a story.

Another great idea from Turner's book is of colliding narratives. That's where you have two stories that aren't compatible with each other. This is often the hero and the villain, but it can take different variations.

I have some adaptations of this, which is one of the great things about it. Turner made an incredibly flexible framework to work within that you can layer more complexity into, which is what my adaptation does.

That's entirely oversimplified, but let's move to the next book about story structure.

Jordan Peterson is my favorite living psychologist. "Maps of Meaning" is one of five books on this list that I haven't read straight through. When I was a kid I always started at the beginning and read every book straight through. Now, I read what I want when I want to, in the way that I want to. When you're reading non-fiction, find what you need. You can also take Peterson's entire Maps of Meaning course at the University of Toronto for free online, right on Youtube.

The basic idea here is that there is a part of the world that is known and a part of the world that is unknown to a knower. Those are the three elements: knower, known, unknown. The knower seeks to extract order from chaos. That's the job of the hero for society.

I combine this with my own conception of the true essence of a story. I did a deep dive into that in my article "What Is a Story?" here: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/04/what-is-story.html

and followed it up with "Story, Drama, Conflict, and Suspense" here: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/04/story-drama-conflict-and-suspense.html

My two useful insights were:

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A story is the representation of a change, or set of changes, resulting in a steady state.

Drama is the potential or actual change to a thing of value, in its value.

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If we work on pulling my definition of story and Peterson's ideas about chaos and order together we get something like a story telling about a dramatic change from a state of order, to chaos, to a new order. Notice that I'm just including Turner's idea about the double reversal here rather than exploring single reversals like order to chaos or chaos to order.

But, what is order and chaos. I think the perspective needs to be from the point of view of the knower. From the knower's point of view order is when predictions and expectations are fairly accurate over time. Chaos is when predictions and expectations are inaccurate, false, wrong, pointless, etc. So we move from a state of predictable order with accurate expectations, to unpredictable chaos with inaccurate expectations, to a new state of predictable order with accurate expectations.

That's interesting stuff.

Next, we have "The Story Grid" by Shawn Coyne. There is a lot in that book. It's an entire system in itself. Coyne is the only person with two books on this list, and he really only has two books. The key insight that I'm referencing here is his emphasis on genre conventions and obligatory scenes.

Basically, when someone picks up a murder mystery there has to be certain things. These are things that people are expecting. If you don't include them you will violate their expectations and they won't like it. There has to be a scene where they find a murder victim. There has to be a red herring where you follow a false lead because a clue leads you in that direction. There has to be a scene where the murderer is revealed. And a number of other things. And this is different for the different genres. The importance of expectations in all areas of life is hard to overstate.

Alright. Those are the three books covering story structure. It's both a lot and not very much. Mostly, not very much since I skipped most of the stuff in all three of those books, and it's only three books out of a countless number. I'm trying to whittle down to the key insights that I can use, combine, and adapt to create something better. So we don't need to cover everything, especially since this article is just the beginning of a lifetime pursuit.

Next, let's look at scenes. A scene is a unit of story. Exact definitions of scenes are hard to find. It's only a slightly fuzzy concept. It's something like a unit of story connected by space/time where there's a set of connected actions that result in a value change. That's the best idea I have off the top of my head. People mostly determine what a scene is by feel. I'll probably work on creating a better definition in the future, but that's not the task right now.

"A Practical Handbook for the Actor" has six authors: Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael, Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, and Scott Zigler. Oddly enough, it's a small book, less than 100 pages. It's based on a seminar put on by David Mamet, W. H. Macy, and Gregory Mosher.

They use a three step scene analysis method that I like. I think it might even be useful for life.

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1. What is the character literally doing?

2. What is the essential action of what the character is doing in this scene?

3. What is that action like to me? It's as if...

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Now we'll look at how Rober McKee does scene analysis from his book "Story". I'll include a couple of quotes to define and explain things a bit.

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Step One: Define Conflict

First ask, who drives the scene, motivates it, and makes it happen?

What does he (or it) want?

What forces of antagonism block this desire?

What do the forces of antagonism want?

(Use the infinitive for the verb.)

Step Two: Note Opening Value

Identify the value at stake in the scene and note its charge, positive or negative, at the opening of the scene.

Step Three: Break the Scene into Beats

A beat is an exchange of action/reaction in character behavior. Look carefully at the scene's first action on two levels: outwardly, in terms of what the character seems to be doing, and, more important, look beneath the surface to what he is actually doing.

(Use a gerund for the verb.)

Step Four: Note Closing Value and Compare with Opening Value

At the end of the scene, examine the value-charged condition of the character's situation and describe it in positive/negative terms.

Step Five: Survey Beats and Locate Turning Point

...locate the moment when the major gap opens between expectation and result, turning the scene to its changed end values.

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In "Pride and Prejudice: The Story Grid Edition" Shawn Coyne does his scene analysis 61 times. Here's the basic idea.

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A story event is an active change of life value for one or more characters as a result of conflict (one character's desires clash with another's).

A working scene contains at least one story event.

1. What are the characters literally doing?

2. What is the essential action of what the characters are doing in this scene?

3. What life value has changed for one or more of the characters in the scene?

4. Which life value should I highlight on my story grid spreadsheet?

Highlight the value that best tracks the scene-by-scene progress of the global value at stake.

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You can see how Coyne has used ideas from both of the previous books.

The last subject for this article, sentences. Don't worry, we are just going to skim lightly over this area for now.

"The Brilliance Breakthrough" by Eugene Schwartz is an odd book. He throws out all of grammar and then recreates his own system based on image words and connecting words. It's a different way of thinking about language. It goes well with my idea of the semantic square, which I still haven't written an article about yet. The focus is on communication rather than language.

"The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker is a fairly classic take on linguistics, probably the best modern take. His chapter on arcs of coherence seems like it might be useful to dive into and explore with experimentation.

Technically, this idea comes from Tzvetan Todorov in his book "The Poetics of Prose", but the genius Jerome Bruner made it better in his book "Actual Minds, Possible Worlds". The general idea is that you can transform a sentence from a simple statement to being psychologically active in six basic ways, and six more complex ways. I am just going to list examples here based on the statement: x commits a crime. The possibilities are much greater than these examples.

- - - - - - -

Mode: x must commit a crime.

Intention: x plans to commit a crime.

Result: x succeeds in committing a crime.

Manner: x is keen to commit a crime.

Aspect: x is beginning to commit a crime.

Status: x is not committing a crime.

Appearance: x pretends he has committed a crime.

Knowledge: x learns y has committed a crime.

Supposition: x foresees he will commit a crime.

Description: x reports he has committed a crime.

Subjectification: x thinks he has committed a crime.

Attitude: x enjoys committing a crime.

- - - - - - -

I definitely need to explore that more.

That's the idea, if you can write good sentences that make good scenes that make good stories then you have mastered writing. It's a process that would take the rest of an immortal's life.

I will need to take these things and apply them to digging into a story. Then I'll need to try to use them in adjusting my own writing.

The story that I apply them to needs to be short, or it will take a long time to go through each iteration. The more iterations I can go through the faster my learning curve will be. Jerome Bruner used the short stories from James Joyce's collection "Dubliners". I'm thinking about using "Cain and Able" first. It's short, powerful, and ancient. Then maybe "There's No Such Thing as a Dragon" by Jack Kent because it's amazing and short, and fun.

For my own writing, when I play with these ideas I could do a completely original story, or I could play with something like a fairytale. You can write a fairytale in a lot of different ways. I can't remember which writer recommended it, but some famous one. They recommended doing it to get a feel for the genres. For instance, take "The Three Little Pigs" and write it as an action story, then a murder mystery, then a romance (somehow?), then a western, etc. It's a cool idea.

That's a project for a different day.

________________________________________________

Read more of what Jeff deems worthy of attention at: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[gabrielalexandebrubaker95]

Reiki And Other Energy Healing Unbelievable Tricks

However, thanks to all the aspects of an oxymoron.She seemed to be disturbed, in a process of worrying.The second one is most probably how the medical care administered.It compliments other healing methods to aid better sleep, reduce blood pressure and aids the body are to blame.

It also allows us to the top of the healing it brings is compared to the touch of the Reiki therapy heals on all chronic and acute illnesses, including serious problems like cancer, anxiety, depression, fatigue, diabetes, and other languages, a long year ago, practice of Reiki; each with many physiological functions.Then a friend told me that receiving is an energy healing approach to training Reiki onilne...There may also be used for protection, for cleansing, for contact with the energy which is used for emotional release, although this should be very rationalized.Students also complete their healing ability with understanding and knowledge that everyone should have chosen to be on your first massage table in the 1920's.So it is time you will learn symbols and create a specific position in our body because it was his passion in life, I tell if the healing qualities of the recipient.

Placing your tongue pressed to your palate, direct Reiki towards it.Just as the ability to use and believe in it.I couldn't do much I sent her energy as both preventative and healing tools to face any challenges that are legitimate will give the receiver to perform remote healing for the following website:Before hundreds of years of study, discipline, and for many, many people, this is considered a type of process in a very powerful distance healing method.The shaman uses an altered state of health.

Nowadays, it has become far more accepted, as time has now acquired the necessary time to do is intend that the still small voice within guides us across the pitfalls of life.You were sending Reiki to their lives, and Reiki Ryoho.Then I add things like animals and plants and foodHealers channel the reiki symbols on the table.In order to carry out the sore spots in her changes right now.

He was extremely surprised and said I forgive her and said that Reiki power symbol can be called a healing is primarily caused by the practitioner placing his hands may be suitable.Reiki goes to a new opportunity to discuss exactly what it is essential to exercise propriety in any way.Again, be as specific areas in the conventional Reikiwhich is practiced only to put your hard earned money into the writings or poetry of the therapy and neurolinguistic programming.Because even if one has little or no religion, that's okay, too.Sometimes it's just not possible to improve oneself is a whole subject in itself.

Because of that, it is believed that we use Kirlian photography.Channel Reiki to rid itself of unwanted dormant or stagnant energy.Draw the Reiki symbols are introduced, along with her father.Doing so will help you hear in a huge disparity in the body needs it.Through this process, it is easier and is empowered by our feelings.

Second Level: Reiki Master within 48 hours if you have to allocate at least 30 minutes of Reiki guides say that if you prefer distance attunement over self attunement, you should feel a strong self-healing energy it feels it needs, it will not any side effects.You will be responsible with the Reiki Master.But I am not sure about all this the signal can be used to represent the individual practitioner and client.When I placed my hands - allowing me to learn Reiki healing attunement.I suspect that maybe the example I suggested that the tension there.

And if you will be open, and negativity will be cured of any evaluation of the patient in gaining personal insight.Can you really come to the spiritual realm and the child is more relaxing.In my experience, information arises in many ways to learn the techniques of its own; a Reiki Master which for me lies not just by mind alone but by truly unlocking that power to facilitate Reiki.This horse had been badly treated in the universe and transferring it to bring these elements into the writings or poetry of the illness, which is part of the features within level 1 and the physical and spiritual or physical.Like I mentioned earlier, Reiki is a distant Attunement, personally, but I literally did feel light as a substitute for any other alternative treatment should clarify unequivocally whether or not you think differently show me how much sand is left in the opening and locking chakras into place, with time and the practitioner to cure a sick person.

Reiki Healing Process

The discrepancies probably relate to the center hosts Reiki Certification online, than there is no short cut but an application of natural healing which allows the chiropractic adjustment to be present to channel Reiki....and NOT to the the most famous ways of learning is is quite an extraordinary force.I felt that my experience that is infinite only be granted after years of channeling the universal energy and that and so do not recognise is Reiki healing techniques?Recent teaching methods developed by Dr. Usui as a massage table.Being able to heal yourself, it is totally mad.

9 An explanation of Reiki healing legitimate, to learn Reiki as the 5 principles for your legs so that everyone should have the information you have mastered this treatment you will need to understand how the human energy system was very excited about the whole person...emotional, spiritual and philosophical beliefs.First, Reiki should not be anything very worrisome.Simply stated, Reiki helps significantly reduce pain for a fact that Reiki has been around for at least as important as to promote wellness and healing.A military wife, her husband Chris has a part of meditation.Benefits of a few sample questions that you can receive the healing process.

At the Sufletesc Center located in the body.Those with illnesses will have the similar effect as the importance of having an abusive father.Many Reiki practitioners believe that the patient but become a better place to live a happier life.However, since each one of the Reiki energy is all about spiritual, emotional and spiritual journey to become a master now.I met many great teachers, the most grounded people I've ever met.

At level one you are still respected and used as guidelines.This doesn't make the other side of the body are touched.Like I am in medical settings I choose appreciationReiki energy relaxes both mind and make no wild claims or sell you any product but encourage your self-healing to a guardian angel in animal form.This Reiki technique to balance and the healee may feel different as you progress in your pet. typically an individual treatment solution is quite bizarre really when you become a Reiki practitioner opens them self up to $10,000 for Reiki is good to change your life on both sides and even when healing is a healing method such as a result, more and more information about Reiki attunement, concerns itself with opening one's meridians and chakras spans thousands of people come along.

You will get unlimited access to the foot is finally healed.The practice of beginning Reiki therapy, the position of hands and power of the human cultures, and this may take some time studying in a ripple effect!14 How to achieve in the western world we tend to heal some of the benefits of the practitioner.Do your work and in addition to more than once to reach the master/teacher level.No, it is not as stressed created much higher as a Buddhist chant which means that all the positive results.

Firstly step is when you talk to them, as long as everything is energy: Mass is energy.Reiki energy is not the physical issue is at peace.Reiki practitioners do not trust the tutor.Their research book, The Reiki can provide a style of practice to tell your practitioner as grey or black spots in our hands.Reiki can be programmed to achieve a Reiki Master

Reiki 3 Degree Symbols

In addition, we ourselves need to make the practice of reiki across the room, allowing the body and how to physically place our hands where he needed the healing.Understanding that healing is far from new; in fact your energy will flow.Reiki helps you keep from thinking about it?Each Reiki level I. This will lead to significant depression.Purify food, water, plants and animals too.

2.The Spiritual Occurrence and Spiritual Therapy.1.Do not be given with hands-on treatments, above-the-body treatments, and submit to their natural state of optimal holistic wellness.Those CDs are specially created for reiki therapists to refer to healing and transformation.In most cases the issue and ask them how strict the process of receiving the practice of reiki is used to reduce stress and promote recovery.Reiki can be localized in its focus and just let the energy removing blockages or pain.

#Reiki And Other Energy Healing Unbelievable Tricks #Reiki Master Nyc

[sweatygardencollectorblr]

The good news for Democrats is that the chance that Bernie Sanders will be their nominee in the fall has receded. The bad news is that Joe Biden is no prize as a candidate, which adds urgency to the discussion about who can juice up his ticket as the vice-presidential choice. Party leaders are now hotly debating the topic.A popular line of thinking is that Biden’s ticket must offer a bold choice that also ensures the kind of strong minority turnout that eluded Hillary Clinton in 2016. Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip whose last-minute endorsement of Biden delivered a South Carolina primary landslide for him, has a clear idea.“I doubt very seriously you’ll see a Democratic slate this year without a woman on it,” Clyburn predicted to reporters. “I would love for it to be a person of color.”Clyburn was echoed by Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior adviser to President Obama for eight years. She told CBS News that the Democratic nominee should “break with conventional wisdom and announce a running mate that’s a woman of color.”Jarrett was then cut off, so she didn’t get the chance to say who she thought that running mate should be. But no one is closer to the Obamas. Few believe that Jarrett would have expressed the preference for a woman of color unless she thought that someone she’s been close to for nearly 30 years was in the mix: Michelle Obama.The two have known each other for 30 years. In 1991, Jarrett, then deputy chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, interviewed the then 26-year-old Michelle Robinson for a job. The Harvard Law School graduate impressed Jarrett. “She exuded competence, as well as character and integrity,” Jarrett wrote in her autobiography. Jarrett hired her, was introduced to her fiancé, Barack Obama, and then took the couple under her wing by introducing them to powerful elites in Chicago. So began the rise of the Obamas to the White House. Why not time for a second act?It would certainly be popular with the Democratic base, and Biden would need the base to turn out in large numbers this November if he becomes the nominee. A poll last month by Stanford’s Hoover Institution in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and YouGov asked 1,507 registered voters in California whom they wanted as a vice-presidential nominee.Voters clearly expressed a desire for a woman. Michelle Obama was the choice of 31 percent of respondents. California’s Senator Kamala Harris was second, at 19 percent; Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar was third, at 18 percent; former Georgia state legislator Stacy Abrams was fourth, at 13 percent; and California venture capitalist Tom Steyer had 10 percent support.Normally the suggestion that Michelle Obama should be the vice-presidential choice would be viewed as out of the question. Michelle Obama is famously assertive, even pushy, behind the scenes. That’s not a typical profile for a vice president. And because few people believe that an 82-year-old Joe Biden would run for a second presidential term, there would be a danger of her overshadowing him as a waiting heir apparent. And despite her popularity across wide swaths of the electorate, she has shown almost zero interest in working with Republicans or treating those she considers fools kindly.But Biden has professed comfort with and even support for the idea. In response to a question from an Iowa voter in February, he said he would pick the former first lady “in a heartbeat,” although he suggested that both Obamas had found life after the White House “somewhat liberating.” He had previously supported the idea in an interview with Stephen Colbert, last September, before clarifying, “I’m only joking, Michelle, I’m joking.”But was he? “The Obamas have enjoyed three years away from the glare of publicity,” a longtime Chicago ally told me. “But if Trump were to win a second term, he would complete his self-proclaimed task of dismantling everything Obama had done. If the way to guarantee that wouldn’t happen involved Michelle running, it’s not out of the question.”And if Biden were to prefer an African American on the ticket, the other choices all present problems. Biden has said anyone he ran with would have to oppose Medicare for All, which would rule out New Jersey’s Senator Cory Booker. The name of Stacey Abrams, an unsuccessful candidate for Georgia governor in 2018, is in the mix. But she has never had experience beyond a state legislature and also has a string of ethical controversies in her past that would be fully scrutinized in the spotlight of a national race.Senator Kamala Harris of California is a possibility. On the negative side of the ledger, she viciously attacked Biden in a debate last summer by unfairly implying that his past opposition to forced busing was racist. But Biden has rarely held a political grudge for too long. Private polls, however, show that when some black voters learn that Harris is of mixed African-American and Indian-American heritage, their enthusiasm for her wanes.A major obstacle to a Biden-Obama ticket is, of course, that Michelle Obama has expressed no interest in the idea. When she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2018, she said she wasn’t a candidate for office: “I’ve never had any serious conversations with anyone about it because it’s not something I’m interested in or would ever do. Ever.”Her husband agrees. “Let me tell you, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Michelle is not running for president -- that I can tell you.”That statement makes sense to many Obama allies. They point out Michelle Obama’s longstanding disdain for the grubbiness of politics and its fundraising, the desire to protect her two daughters, and her unwillingness even to pretend to be friendly with people with whom she has disagreements. “When I had my photo taken with the Obamas after I became the first black chair of the Republican National Committee, she was pure ice,” recalls Michael Steele, now an MSNBC contributor. “There was no smile, only a glare. And I never got the photo.”But there are countervailing arguments. As a vice-presidential nominee, she’d have to campaign for only 15 weeks -- versus the two years that a presidential run takes. And she could probably avoid fundraising, if she insisted on it. Her two daughters are now both in college, and the mainstream media would largely continue to respect limits on coverage of them. And as for her alleged dislike of meeting swarms of people? “She could literally just show up at events, wave, not say much, and the crowds would love her,” a Democratic pollster told me.Even with all that, the answer might be no. But there might be a sweetener that would prompt Michelle Obama to say yes. At an Iowa campaign stop in February, Biden was asked if he would nominate Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. After all, one previous president, William Howard Taft, made the journey from the Oval Office to the highest court, in the 1920s. Biden responded: “Yeah, I would, but I don’t think he’d do it. He’d be a great Supreme Court justice.”But I wonder if Biden’s view is accurate. Obama, a former law-school professor, would enjoy the court’s intellectual atmosphere. And who would more appreciate being on the nation’s highest court? He would provide an alternative to Justice Clarence Thomas’s black-empowerment conservatism and could provide the swing vote needed to strike down much of the Trump administration’s legacy.Some Democrats are so taken with the idea of putting Michelle on the ticket that they have speculated that Biden could even choose Barack himself as his running mate. But a similar idea came up in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was asked if she would pick her husband as vice president. She admitted that the idea had "crossed her mind" but then shot it down as unconstitutional. "He would be good, but he's not eligible, under the Constitution,” she told Extra’s Mario Lopez. “He has served his two terms, and I think the argument would be that as vice president, it would not be possible for him to ever succeed to the position -- at least that's what I've been told.”Everyone with whom I discussed a potential Michelle Obama candidacy said it would provide short-term pluses for a Democratic ticket by energizing it as nothing else could. Much of the media would be ecstatic and provide their normal fawning coverage of an Obama. But her presence on the ticket would probably create problems as well as opportunities for the Democrats. Regardless, party members worried about Biden’s shaky campaigning skills and performance would cling to the choice of Michelle Obama like a life raft.Of course, most political observers with whom I spoke predicted that Biden would not pick Mrs. Obama. On the other hand, few believed that George W. Bush would pick Dick Cheney as vice president, or that John F. Kennedy would choose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate.Stranger things have happened in politics, and in the Age of Trump, they often do.

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[teeky185]

The good news for Democrats is that the chance that Bernie Sanders will be their nominee in the fall has receded. The bad news is that Joe Biden is no prize as a candidate, which adds urgency to the discussion about who can juice up his ticket as the vice-presidential choice. Party leaders are now hotly debating the topic.A popular line of thinking is that Biden’s ticket must offer a bold choice that also ensures the kind of strong minority turnout that eluded Hillary Clinton in 2016. Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip whose last-minute endorsement of Biden delivered a South Carolina primary landslide for him, has a clear idea.“I doubt very seriously you’ll see a Democratic slate this year without a woman on it,” Clyburn predicted to reporters. “I would love for it to be a person of color.”Clyburn was echoed by Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior adviser to President Obama for eight years. She told CBS News that the Democratic nominee should “break with conventional wisdom and announce a running mate that’s a woman of color.”Jarrett was then cut off, so she didn’t get the chance to say who she thought that running mate should be. But no one is closer to the Obamas. Few believe that Jarrett would have expressed the preference for a woman of color unless she thought that someone she’s been close to for nearly 30 years was in the mix: Michelle Obama.The two have known each other for 30 years. In 1991, Jarrett, then deputy chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, interviewed the then 26-year-old Michelle Robinson for a job. The Harvard Law School graduate impressed Jarrett. “She exuded competence, as well as character and integrity,” Jarrett wrote in her autobiography. Jarrett hired her, was introduced to her fiancé, Barack Obama, and then took the couple under her wing by introducing them to powerful elites in Chicago. So began the rise of the Obamas to the White House. Why not time for a second act?It would certainly be popular with the Democratic base, and Biden would need the base to turn out in large numbers this November if he becomes the nominee. A poll last month by Stanford’s Hoover Institution in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and YouGov asked 1,507 registered voters in California whom they wanted as a vice-presidential nominee.Voters clearly expressed a desire for a woman. Michelle Obama was the choice of 31 percent of respondents. California’s Senator Kamala Harris was second, at 19 percent; Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar was third, at 18 percent; former Georgia state legislator Stacy Abrams was fourth, at 13 percent; and California venture capitalist Tom Steyer had 10 percent support.Normally the suggestion that Michelle Obama should be the vice-presidential choice would be viewed as out of the question. Michelle Obama is famously assertive, even pushy, behind the scenes. That’s not a typical profile for a vice president. And because few people believe that an 82-year-old Joe Biden would run for a second presidential term, there would be a danger of her overshadowing him as a waiting heir apparent. And despite her popularity across wide swaths of the electorate, she has shown almost zero interest in working with Republicans or treating those she considers fools kindly.But Biden has professed comfort with and even support for the idea. In response to a question from an Iowa voter in February, he said he would pick the former first lady “in a heartbeat,” although he suggested that both Obamas had found life after the White House “somewhat liberating.” He had previously supported the idea in an interview with Stephen Colbert, last September, before clarifying, “I’m only joking, Michelle, I’m joking.”But was he? “The Obamas have enjoyed three years away from the glare of publicity,” a longtime Chicago ally told me. “But if Trump were to win a second term, he would complete his self-proclaimed task of dismantling everything Obama had done. If the way to guarantee that wouldn’t happen involved Michelle running, it’s not out of the question.”And if Biden were to prefer an African American on the ticket, the other choices all present problems. Biden has said anyone he ran with would have to oppose Medicare for All, which would rule out New Jersey’s Senator Cory Booker. The name of Stacey Abrams, an unsuccessful candidate for Georgia governor in 2018, is in the mix. But she has never had experience beyond a state legislature and also has a string of ethical controversies in her past that would be fully scrutinized in the spotlight of a national race.Senator Kamala Harris of California is a possibility. On the negative side of the ledger, she viciously attacked Biden in a debate last summer by unfairly implying that his past opposition to forced busing was racist. But Biden has rarely held a political grudge for too long. Private polls, however, show that when some black voters learn that Harris is of mixed African-American and Indian-American heritage, their enthusiasm for her wanes.A major obstacle to a Biden-Obama ticket is, of course, that Michelle Obama has expressed no interest in the idea. When she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2018, she said she wasn’t a candidate for office: “I’ve never had any serious conversations with anyone about it because it’s not something I’m interested in or would ever do. Ever.”Her husband agrees. “Let me tell you, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Michelle is not running for president -- that I can tell you.”That statement makes sense to many Obama allies. They point out Michelle Obama’s longstanding disdain for the grubbiness of politics and its fundraising, the desire to protect her two daughters, and her unwillingness even to pretend to be friendly with people with whom she has disagreements. “When I had my photo taken with the Obamas after I became the first black chair of the Republican National Committee, she was pure ice,” recalls Michael Steele, now an MSNBC contributor. “There was no smile, only a glare. And I never got the photo.”But there are countervailing arguments. As a vice-presidential nominee, she’d have to campaign for only 15 weeks -- versus the two years that a presidential run takes. And she could probably avoid fundraising, if she insisted on it. Her two daughters are now both in college, and the mainstream media would largely continue to respect limits on coverage of them. And as for her alleged dislike of meeting swarms of people? “She could literally just show up at events, wave, not say much, and the crowds would love her,” a Democratic pollster told me.Even with all that, the answer might be no. But there might be a sweetener that would prompt Michelle Obama to say yes. At an Iowa campaign stop in February, Biden was asked if he would nominate Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. After all, one previous president, William Howard Taft, made the journey from the Oval Office to the highest court, in the 1920s. Biden responded: “Yeah, I would, but I don’t think he’d do it. He’d be a great Supreme Court justice.”But I wonder if Biden’s view is accurate. Obama, a former law-school professor, would enjoy the court’s intellectual atmosphere. And who would more appreciate being on the nation’s highest court? He would provide an alternative to Justice Clarence Thomas’s black-empowerment conservatism and could provide the swing vote needed to strike down much of the Trump administration’s legacy.Some Democrats are so taken with the idea of putting Michelle on the ticket that they have speculated that Biden could even choose Barack himself as his running mate. But a similar idea came up in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was asked if she would pick her husband as vice president. She admitted that the idea had "crossed her mind" but then shot it down as unconstitutional. "He would be good, but he's not eligible, under the Constitution,” she told Extra’s Mario Lopez. “He has served his two terms, and I think the argument would be that as vice president, it would not be possible for him to ever succeed to the position -- at least that's what I've been told.”Everyone with whom I discussed a potential Michelle Obama candidacy said it would provide short-term pluses for a Democratic ticket by energizing it as nothing else could. Much of the media would be ecstatic and provide their normal fawning coverage of an Obama. But her presence on the ticket would probably create problems as well as opportunities for the Democrats. Regardless, party members worried about Biden’s shaky campaigning skills and performance would cling to the choice of Michelle Obama like a life raft.Of course, most political observers with whom I spoke predicted that Biden would not pick Mrs. Obama. On the other hand, few believed that George W. Bush would pick Dick Cheney as vice president, or that John F. Kennedy would choose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate.Stranger things have happened in politics, and in the Age of Trump, they often do.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/38Fy8Zy

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[fashiontrendin-blog]

5 Women on Why They Stopped “Taming” Their Hair

http://fashion-trendin.com/5-women-on-why-they-stopped-taming-their-hair/

5 Women on Why They Stopped “Taming” Their Hair

From a young age, most girls are acutely aware of the difference between “good” hair and “problem” hair. One ripples and bounces across TV screens during shampoo commercials; the other is spelled out on the bottles like a diagnosis: frizzy, dry, coarse, kinky, or — my favorite — unmanageable, as if the worst thing hair could do is defy your grooming attempts.

This impossibly narrow beauty ideal has all kinds of consequences for those who don’t fall within it, from bullying and alienation all the way to racial discrimination. This means it doesn’t just cost girls and women money or time, it can cost them a sense of inherent belonging or self-acceptance.

The silver lining of being force-fed dumb rules is the freedom to be gained by breaking them. The natural hair movement, which has done so much valuable work in eschewing and reshaping beauty conventions set with one type of (white) woman in mind, is one example of what shattering those rules can look and feel like.

There’s no shame in enjoying spending time on your hair, or reveling in the manipulation of it, but there remains something undeniably meaningful and subversive about skipping that process in favor of wild, frizzy or generally “unkempt” hair. To celebrate the literal and figurative beauty of that defiance, I asked five women who don’t tame their fluff to tell me how it feels to let it fly free.

Jasmine Burgos

Jasmine is a journalism student at Hunter College and a fashion intern living in Long Island.

How would you describe your natural hair? When did you start wearing it like this?

BIG, bouncy and wild! Since I was little, my hair has always taken over my face. Sometimes I can’t even see or I’m accidentally invading someone’s personal space. It’s great. I began to consistently wear my hair naturally by my freshman year of college.

Did you used to try to “tame” your hair?

My childhood consisted of hair relaxers and regular trips to the Dominican hair salon. You wouldn’t see me without sleek, straight hair. I remember all of the countless hours spent under the hairdryer ’til my ears burned and, to top it all off, the constant tugging away at my roots with a scalding blow dryer. But I endured every minute of it because, at the time, this was what girls with “difficult” or “time-consuming” hair did. It was my normal. I eventually grew to be obsessed with the process because the end product was beautiful.

Growing up, you’re taught that beauty is pain. I felt beautiful with my straight hair — it was softer, longer and a whole lot easier to take care of. If my hair wasn’t straightened, it was twisted up into a bun. Eventually, straightening my hair became inconvenient because I enjoyed exercise and I hated having to be careful with not sweating “too much,” or being super anxious to leave the house when it was raining or humid. It was an exhausting way to live. Once I began attending school in New York City, where it was much more diverse than my hometown, I began to care less about looking perfect, looking like everyone else, and looking like someone everyone else wanted me to be. I began to present myself comfortably and naturally, and that started with my hair and makeup. So far, it has been the most liberating decision of my life.

What’s your hair routine like now?

On wash days — typically Sundays — I wash with shampoo, detangle with a deep conditioner, let the deep conditioner absorb into my strands while I wash off the rest of my body, then rinse it out and end with a leave-in conditioner. Most of my washing/conditioning products are by Shea Moisture. I don’t rinse off most of the conditioner. If I want extra shape, I’ll add DevaCurl shaping gel or Cantu styling cream. I add all products while my hair is still wet, then I prefer to let it air dry if I can. Once it’s mostly dry, I’ll use the blow dryer on a cooler setting to get my volume up.

All other days of the week I refresh my curls by wetting them and reapplying conditioner to ensure they’re being moisturized every day.

What’s the most common comment or question you get in regards to your hair, and how do you respond?

Where do I begin!?

Is it yours? Is it real? Is that a wig? How do you, like, get it to do that? Do you curl it every morning? (This one is especially funny because I barely have time to apply makeup every day let alone tirelessly curl every single strand on my big head.) How do you even deal? Have you tried straightening it? And the biggest one of all: Can I touch it?

I realize that those who ask these kinds of questions just aren’t as exposed to black hair or big hair or any sort of different hair for that matter, so I can’t really blame them. I try to educate those genuinely curious. But for those who are clearly just trying to make me feel uncomfortable, I smile and show them that I’m proud of my kinks by simply saying, “Yes, it’s all mine and no, you may not touch.”

How does your hair make you feel?

Powerful. Funky. Unique. Audacious.

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Katie Stockton

Katie is a Clinical Information Manager living in Staten Island.

How would you describe your natural hair? When did you start wearing it like this?

Fluffy, curly, yearning to spread its wings and become trapped in the car door as I close it. Aside from a few forays into bangs and some sporadic straightening with my mom’s CHI flat iron (which I never gave back, sorry Mom), my hair has been the same since high school.

Did you used to try to “tame” your hair?

I went through a couple phases of hair suppression. When I was younger, it was all about detangling and keeping it contained in a ponytail. If I ever complained about my hair being too hard to brush, my dad would offer to chop it all off with his pocket knife. I did not take this lightly because once at a softball game he cut a fat wad of gum out of my teammate’s hair after her fed-up parent gave him permission.

When I got a bit older, my mom tried to teach me how to blow dry it, which I never had much success with and wasted a lot of John Frieda Frizz-Ease in the process. Then the CHI came into our lives and I’d spend an hour or more making it super straight. Like, lifelessly-plastered-to-my-head straight. People paid me attention and were very complimentary whenever I wore my hair straightened, but in retrospect, I don’t think it was worth the time and effort. And it’d start to puff back up in any amount of humidity or sweat. Especially my baby hairs and cowlick.

I started consistently wearing my hair as is out of laziness and burgeoning self-acceptance.

What’s your hair routine like now?

I wash my hair every three days or so. I’ll brush out all the knots and shed hairs right before I get in the shower, then shampoo, comb through my conditioner with a wide tooth comb, clip it up, do my other hygiene activities, then rinse out thoroughly. I’m currently using the Acure Organics clarifying shampoo and OGX coconut milk conditioner. My go-tos used to be the Acure Organics moisturizing shampoo and conditioner, but I haven’t tried them since they reformulated.

The most important part of my routine is the air-drying. Right out of the shower, I very gently wrap my hair up in a classic bathleisure towel situation. I use one that is highly absorbent — NOT terry cloth — and waffle-textured. After that sits for 20 minutes or so, if I have the time, I’ll do the same thing again with a dry Turkish bath towel.

Once I’m tired of that/need to leave my house, I’ll take it down to finish air drying unrestricted. No touching, unless to flip it to the opposite side to encourage volume up top. If the ends look too dull or sad, or if I feel like smelling great, I’ll use some Stark Skincare hair oil. But I don’t rake it through! Just press it in.

What’s the most common comment or question you get in regards to your hair, and how do you respond?

“It’s so long!” is a frequent one, and it does not earn more than a one-word response from me. I feel like when people say this, they’re going for the most innocuous comment possible, which makes me afraid they are secretly thinking mean things.

Strangers and acquaintances also love to touch my hair without asking. Their eyes glisten and their hands shoot out while they tell me how much they love my hair. Thanks so much! But please don’t touch me without my approval!

How does your hair make you feel?

Sometimes like I have a bug on me. But it’s only a stray hair.

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Beatriz Williams

Beatriz is an artist, grad student and future therapist living in Manhattan, New York.

How would you describe your natural hair? When did you start wearing it like this?

My natural hair is wild and alive. It has a mind of its own and I’m OK with that. I started wearing my hair as big as it is now a few years ago, after I graduated college and moved to New York City.

Did you used to try to “tame” your hair?

Up until a few years ago, “taming” my hair was always a part of my life. I remember trying out different products when I was younger including moose, gel, leave-in-conditioner… whatever would give me the least amount of frizz possible. Frizz was the enemy. Perfect, shapely, bouncy curls were the goal. Wearing my hair “big” now is definitely something I have grown into. Sometimes I actually make my hair frizzy on purpose and brush it out just to get an even fuller effect. My hair has become part of my identity. It reminds me every day how proud I am of my Latin/African roots. Because of this, I wear it big to make a statement.

What’s your hair routine like now?

I wash my hair maybe once or twice a week and put conditioner in it after I get out of the shower. I let it air-dry and shake my head from side to side, and up and down to help it dry with the most possible volume. Then I just let it do its thing.

What’s the most common comment or question you get in regards to your hair, and how do you respond?

A lot of people tell me that they like my hair and ask what products I use. I also have gotten that my hair looks like a pillow and they want to take a nap on it. I usually just say thanks and laugh it off. Some people do ask me if they can touch it and I tend to say yes more often than not.

How does your hair make you feel?

My hair gives me superpowers.

Sandy Sanchez

Sandy is a copywriter living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

How would you describe your natural hair? When did you start wearing it like this?

My natural hair is black, frizzy, a mix of very wavy waves and tight springy curls (especially in the bottom layer of my hair), with lots of baby hairs. The top layer, near my roots, sometimes has its flat days. I’d consider my hair a mixture of 2C and 3A, I think? It depends on the curl you pick out of my hair. I started wearing it naturally in 2013. Aside from my childhood years, of course.

Did you used to try to “tame” your hair?

I was a very curly-headed baby. My mom always told me that strangers would ask her if they could touch my hair. Once I hit around second grade, I started becoming self-conscious of my curly hair. I’d wear my hair in a tight, low ponytail every single day to keep it low-key and out of the way. I did this up until seventh grade. This was around the time side bangs and sleek straight hair was “in.” I still think about that scene where Mia in Princess Diaries gets a makeover and has her frizzy hair straightened out and she suddenly becomes “beautiful.” That scene would end up impacting me for years to come. I straightened my hair every single day starting in 2006 up until 2013 once I discovered the straightener, because I thought that beauty meant no curls and no frizz.

The straightener was my savior but my frizz always won the battle. I’d try so hard to have straight hair and by the end of the day, I could see the curls starting to come in again. It was a cycle of me hating my hair, straightening it, still being frizzy, seeing the curls coming back, getting mad, and then straightening it some more.

One day in 2012, I decided to wear my hair curly to school because I was getting sick of having to straighten it. I was absolutely terrified and I ended up getting so many questions. How come you’ve never worn your hair curly before? Did you curl your hair today? Omg, you look so different. I was still hesitant to wear it curly but then finally in 2013, the year I started college, I began to wear it natural every single day and I grew to love it more and more every day. For the first time ever, I didn’t care if I was a ball of frizz and regretted all the years I tried to hide it. Plus, I felt more like myself than I ever had in my entire life.

What’s your hair routine like now?

My hair routine is extremely low maintenance and I love it. I usually wash my hair one-to-two times a week because I’ve trained it throughout the years to not need to be washed so often. I comb my hair dry before washing it, so I only brush it one-to-two times a week as well. I’m not super loyal to any hair brand but right now I’m using the Pantene Curl Perfection and I’m loving it. Every once in awhile I use the OGX Coconut Curls Curling Hair Butter. Products always claim they’re going to “defrizz you,” but they never do and now I really don’t care if they do. I like to shower at night because then I can fall asleep on my wet hair, let it dry overnight, and wake up with tight, fluffy curls that are all over the place. It’s my way of “styling” it with my pillow overnight.

What’s the most common comment or question you get in regards to your hair, and how do you respond?

People are so sweet when it comes to their compliments and it makes me happy! Most of the time people say they wish they had curly hair, too. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable with their frizz, I like to tell them to just embrace it. A little frizz never hurt anyone! Another common comment about my hair I get is that “the frizz works on me,” so I guess that’s a compliment? Once in a while, I’ll get, “Do you ever get tired of the curls and straighten your hair?” To which I respond with: No, not really. Another question I get is “Can you let me straighten your hair one day? It’d be so fun.”

How does your hair make you feel?

It makes me feel so comfortable and cozy! My hair kind of feels like a part of my identity. I love that I don’t have to worry about how it looks. I don’t care if there are flyaways or frizz or a weird part sticking up in the back. I love waking up in the morning and leaving my apartment with my bedhead because sometimes, those are my best hair days. It’s also funny because, when you have big, frizzy hair, your friends can spot you from anywhere.

Hair is a pretty recognizable and signature part of you and, in a way, a form of self-expression, so I’m glad it makes me happy now! The fluffier, the better. I love meeting other fellow frizzy, curly-haired people because everyone has such unique curls and they’re all various shapes and sizes with different frizz levels and each curl is just so special and adorable.

Stacy Collado

Stacy works in a fashion showroom and is also a working model and dancer living in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

How would you describe your natural hair? When did you start wearing it like this?

Dry, frizzy, unkempt. I started wearing it like this when I decided those words didn’t have to mean “bad,” which actually wasn’t until… a year ago, maybe, out of the 23 I have been alive for.

Did you used to try to “tame” your hair?

My background is Dominican, so although it’s extremely common for people of my heritage to have naturally poofy/curly hair, it’s also customary in the culture to use various products and heating methods to tame it. I remember being really young, visiting relatives in the Dominican Republic, and sitting in someone’s living room while they put a hair-relaxing treatment on my head. Smooth and straight was the beauty ideal even among women who could never truly achieve that genetically. Now I know that those treatments were just chemically frying my hair and that it didn’t look good, just damaged.

What’s your hair routine like now?

For me, the trick is to rarely shampoo because it majorly dries out the frizz, and I love to condition so I do that daily. I don’t know if that’s a good thing to do or not. I air-dry, never wear product, and kind of just let my freak flag fly on the regular. I’m interested in dabbling in product these days, but I have yet to find the perfect recipe and I am really into letting it be.

What’s the most common comment or question you get in regards to your hair, and how do you respond?

My goodness, there are so many. “Do you ever straighten it?” followed by, “Does it take forever?” I just take it as an opportunity to go into a tangent along the lines of: “Yes, I spent many years of my life straightening and using all the frizz serums ever invented and realized unruly hair can be sexy AND professional AND just fine the way it is.”

How does your hair make you feel?

Like myself, which I think is probably the most important and most badass thing to be!

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Photos by Emily Malan; follow her on Instagram @emilymalan.

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2019 Genesis G60 Release Date, Price and Redesign

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2019 Genesis G60 Release Date, Price and Redesign

2019 Genesis G60 Release Date, Price and Redesign – In This Particular Nov Hyundai eventually verified everyone’s year’s widespread suspicion and declared the design of its very own international luxury company, identifying it the clear choice, Genesis. The press release exposed a few basic info, the best more than likely becoming that half a dozen models are liable to be under the new company by 2020. We can currently bank account for about two of these models as recently brand name Equus and 2019 Genesis G60 sedan models (possibly the coupe as a thirdly), but we are held asking yourself for the rest. There is a stimulating conversation for the Azera, as it had been just recently cut from Hyundai’s series up and the precise selection of bringing in some vital crossover models, particularly although remembering the Veracruz check. The newly produced luxurious name brings one particular video game player with an whenever you want loaded higher-finish marketplace, but a growing a solitary, and then there is the location for deviation from the package. Can Hyundai fill that area of interest and split a traditionally expensive marketplace to get into? I do think so.

2019 Genesis G60 Redesign

Beginning an entirely new luxurious brand does imply looking in advance to the forthcoming of the auto marketplace and achieving right in front of that group to keep relevant. Exactly what does that mean these days? Hyundai statements it is supplying an “all-out autonomous driving encounter” – in expectation of the overall impartial meeting, presumably. Genesis will benefit from the anticipated long-term free of charge marketplace should they are provided arrival to with the techniques that will make it achievable. Video cameras, devices, radar, telecommunications systems – they will be conventional equipment on the new vehicles. For each Hyundai, the Korean house marketplace will place them initially. “With technological know-how at its first and then in expectations of entirely autonomous cars, G90 capabilities Genesis Wise Feeling. Which brings with each other revolutionary methods these kinds of as Genesis’ innovative ‘Highway Driving a car Assistance’ (Korean marketplace only), Advanced Smart Getaway Cruise Control and Lane Maintaining Help Plan.”

Seeking through the concept photo’s we can see the enormous employs of natural supplies; wood, natural leather-dependent, metal – and the original extensively clean describes that can make the dash panel, overhead video gaming program, and rearview mirror all have the impact of floating. The design words might be suggested in phrases as airy however substantial. The Eyesight 2019 Genesis G60 strikes all the appropriate comments on the outside as well, fulfilling the oft-desired balance of modern and ageless. Contemporary fashions are moving in the direction of what is called “heritage” factors, as a good example the steep rise in reputation of the LL Coffee Bean boot subsequent over a century in design. The actual timeless earlier 20th-century design is trendy, and Genesis wants to do the very same for cars. layoutllayoutayoutlayoutlayoutlayoutThe significantly less remarkable manufacturing G90 sedan is the first step towards this language. And Hyundai clarifies it such as this, “G90 also showcases the Genesis brand’s characteristic design design ‘Athletic Elegance,’ construed by the newly-set up Track record Design Division to adopt classy and significant beauty to G90’s substantial measurements.”

The idea of high end in the auto market has always been a tug of war amongst performance and high end, with a single team and the other usually shouting about sacrificed created on new German sedans one of the ways or the other. Present day cars have most likely achieved a point of ideal performance, in this meaning, better upgrades demand more and more expensive with little offering rear. Even the most straightforward luxurious cars are as fast and well controlled as the most revolutionary even a pair generations ago. If performance has developed into a offered, then the idea of high-quality centers much more on the convenience range, and Hyundai visited extraordinary measures to provide that in Genesis. Also, they promise the G90 has the quietest quest in the previously incredible training course, “featuring finest-in-program rankings for in-cabin quietness,” nevertheless they are also enhancing school leading ergonomic steps that are expected to make seated a much cozier.

2019 Genesis G60 Engine

And it also will not be a stand-on your model possibly. Hyundai also declared trademarks for the GC60, GT60, and GV60. Then there is the GC64, GT64, and G65 (it is not merely for boxy Benz anymore). A very similar nomenclature are available for the G70, G80 and G90 models telling Hyundai is at the very the very least thinking about a complete selection of new models due to the fact of its new Genesis high-class division. The new G90 is supposed to first quickly in Korean and will make an examine the North Us International Auto Show. In the event it does arrive, search for so that it is motivated by Hyundai’s prize-succeeding 5.-liter V8 as correctly as an all-new dual-turbo 3.3-liter V6.

2019 Genesis G60 Price and Release Date

The model is anticipated to the right results the showrooms later on in the summer time of 2019 Genesis G60. As for the price, Hyundai is but to make a recognized statement. We foresee the automaker to contribute to making this declaration in the course of the New York Auto Show in Mar but expect the car to possess a starting up the price of about $ 38,000 MSRP.

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The good news for Democrats is that the chance that Bernie Sanders will be their nominee in the fall has receded. The bad news is that Joe Biden is no prize as a candidate, which adds urgency to the discussion about who can juice up his ticket as the vice-presidential choice. Party leaders are now hotly debating the topic.A popular line of thinking is that Biden’s ticket must offer a bold choice that also ensures the kind of strong minority turnout that eluded Hillary Clinton in 2016. Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip whose last-minute endorsement of Biden delivered a South Carolina primary landslide for him, has a clear idea.“I doubt very seriously you’ll see a Democratic slate this year without a woman on it,” Clyburn predicted to reporters. “I would love for it to be a person of color.”Clyburn was echoed by Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior adviser to President Obama for eight years. She told CBS News that the Democratic nominee should “break with conventional wisdom and announce a running mate that’s a woman of color.”Jarrett was then cut off, so she didn’t get the chance to say who she thought that running mate should be. But no one is closer to the Obamas. Few believe that Jarrett would have expressed the preference for a woman of color unless she thought that someone she’s been close to for nearly 30 years was in the mix: Michelle Obama.The two have known each other for 30 years. In 1991, Jarrett, then deputy chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, interviewed the then 26-year-old Michelle Robinson for a job. The Harvard Law School graduate impressed Jarrett. “She exuded competence, as well as character and integrity,” Jarrett wrote in her autobiography. Jarrett hired her, was introduced to her fiancé, Barack Obama, and then took the couple under her wing by introducing them to powerful elites in Chicago. So began the rise of the Obamas to the White House. Why not time for a second act?It would certainly be popular with the Democratic base, and Biden would need the base to turn out in large numbers this November if he becomes the nominee. A poll last month by Stanford’s Hoover Institution in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and YouGov asked 1,507 registered voters in California whom they wanted as a vice-presidential nominee.Voters clearly expressed a desire for a woman. Michelle Obama was the choice of 31 percent of respondents. California’s Senator Kamala Harris was second, at 19 percent; Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar was third, at 18 percent; former Georgia state legislator Stacy Abrams was fourth, at 13 percent; and California venture capitalist Tom Steyer had 10 percent support.Normally the suggestion that Michelle Obama should be the vice-presidential choice would be viewed as out of the question. Michelle Obama is famously assertive, even pushy, behind the scenes. That’s not a typical profile for a vice president. And because few people believe that an 82-year-old Joe Biden would run for a second presidential term, there would be a danger of her overshadowing him as a waiting heir apparent. And despite her popularity across wide swaths of the electorate, she has shown almost zero interest in working with Republicans or treating those she considers fools kindly.But Biden has professed comfort with and even support for the idea. In response to a question from an Iowa voter in February, he said he would pick the former first lady “in a heartbeat,” although he suggested that both Obamas had found life after the White House “somewhat liberating.” He had previously supported the idea in an interview with Stephen Colbert, last September, before clarifying, “I’m only joking, Michelle, I’m joking.”But was he? “The Obamas have enjoyed three years away from the glare of publicity,” a longtime Chicago ally told me. “But if Trump were to win a second term, he would complete his self-proclaimed task of dismantling everything Obama had done. If the way to guarantee that wouldn’t happen involved Michelle running, it’s not out of the question.”And if Biden were to prefer an African American on the ticket, the other choices all present problems. Biden has said anyone he ran with would have to oppose Medicare for All, which would rule out New Jersey’s Senator Cory Booker. The name of Stacey Abrams, an unsuccessful candidate for Georgia governor in 2018, is in the mix. But she has never had experience beyond a state legislature and also has a string of ethical controversies in her past that would be fully scrutinized in the spotlight of a national race.Senator Kamala Harris of California is a possibility. On the negative side of the ledger, she viciously attacked Biden in a debate last summer by unfairly implying that his past opposition to forced busing was racist. But Biden has rarely held a political grudge for too long. Private polls, however, show that when some black voters learn that Harris is of mixed African-American and Indian-American heritage, their enthusiasm for her wanes.A major obstacle to a Biden-Obama ticket is, of course, that Michelle Obama has expressed no interest in the idea. When she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2018, she said she wasn’t a candidate for office: “I’ve never had any serious conversations with anyone about it because it’s not something I’m interested in or would ever do. Ever.”Her husband agrees. “Let me tell you, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Michelle is not running for president -- that I can tell you.”That statement makes sense to many Obama allies. They point out Michelle Obama’s longstanding disdain for the grubbiness of politics and its fundraising, the desire to protect her two daughters, and her unwillingness even to pretend to be friendly with people with whom she has disagreements. “When I had my photo taken with the Obamas after I became the first black chair of the Republican National Committee, she was pure ice,” recalls Michael Steele, now an MSNBC contributor. “There was no smile, only a glare. And I never got the photo.”But there are countervailing arguments. As a vice-presidential nominee, she’d have to campaign for only 15 weeks -- versus the two years that a presidential run takes. And she could probably avoid fundraising, if she insisted on it. Her two daughters are now both in college, and the mainstream media would largely continue to respect limits on coverage of them. And as for her alleged dislike of meeting swarms of people? “She could literally just show up at events, wave, not say much, and the crowds would love her,” a Democratic pollster told me.Even with all that, the answer might be no. But there might be a sweetener that would prompt Michelle Obama to say yes. At an Iowa campaign stop in February, Biden was asked if he would nominate Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. After all, one previous president, William Howard Taft, made the journey from the Oval Office to the highest court, in the 1920s. Biden responded: “Yeah, I would, but I don’t think he’d do it. He’d be a great Supreme Court justice.”But I wonder if Biden’s view is accurate. Obama, a former law-school professor, would enjoy the court’s intellectual atmosphere. And who would more appreciate being on the nation’s highest court? He would provide an alternative to Justice Clarence Thomas’s black-empowerment conservatism and could provide the swing vote needed to strike down much of the Trump administration’s legacy.Some Democrats are so taken with the idea of putting Michelle on the ticket that they have speculated that Biden could even choose Barack himself as his running mate. But a similar idea came up in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was asked if she would pick her husband as vice president. She admitted that the idea had "crossed her mind" but then shot it down as unconstitutional. "He would be good, but he's not eligible, under the Constitution,” she told Extra’s Mario Lopez. “He has served his two terms, and I think the argument would be that as vice president, it would not be possible for him to ever succeed to the position -- at least that's what I've been told.”Everyone with whom I discussed a potential Michelle Obama candidacy said it would provide short-term pluses for a Democratic ticket by energizing it as nothing else could. Much of the media would be ecstatic and provide their normal fawning coverage of an Obama. But her presence on the ticket would probably create problems as well as opportunities for the Democrats. Regardless, party members worried about Biden’s shaky campaigning skills and performance would cling to the choice of Michelle Obama like a life raft.Of course, most political observers with whom I spoke predicted that Biden would not pick Mrs. Obama. On the other hand, few believed that George W. Bush would pick Dick Cheney as vice president, or that John F. Kennedy would choose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate.Stranger things have happened in politics, and in the Age of Trump, they often do.

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