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your-brilliant-lady-m · 3 years

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Part 5 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Guardians

Helloooo! Did you think I was done? No!

My PhD thesis chapters were approved last week, so have some celebratory meta. I haven't seen the latest Season 4 episodes, so do forgive me for not being up to date.

Welcome to the next part of my analysis of the basic concepts of Miraculous Ladybug. Today we are talking about Master Fu, Order of the Guardians and how little everything here makes sense. I highly recommend reading previous parts to fully understand this one, but I'll try to quote most parts of earlier posts.

Order of the Guardians

Order is an international and ancient organisation (New York Special showed us the guardian from North America and he was dressed like Su Han). Presumably, Miraculous jewels were created by these people. Guardians are responsible for the preservation of jewels and knowledge about them. They also distribute Miraculouses to worthy people around the world to combat mostly magical threats, but sometimes jewels are used against normal threats too. It's implied that Master Fu used Miraculouses during WW2 when he was in Paris. Perhaps he performed some spywork with Marianne, but the magical nature of his interferences was discovered and he was forced to flee, before returning to France many decades later.

Why does the Order need so many people to take care of a 3 Miracle Boxes? If its only purpose is to preserve knowledge, keep magical secrets and distribute Miraculous jewels then wouldn't it be more logical to have Master-Apprentice system? It's much easier to keep magic knowledge a secret and train a few people in martial arts than doing the same in the self-sufficient temple full of people, keeping in mind that a good part of them are teenagers and children, who are bad at keeping secrets. Also a single person can travel around the world much easier to give out Miraculouses. Imagine that we have a few active guardians traveling the world with Boxes. What do other people at the temple do in the meantime? They teach the next generation about the powers of each Miraculous and Mirakung Fu, but besides that?

Master-Apprentice system gives us more personal conflict between Fu and his mentor and makes his relationship with Marinette and Adrien more nuanced. In this scenario Fu accidentally caused the death of his Master at 14 because he wasn't careful. It makes sense for him to take on only 1 or 2 students if this is how things were done with Miraculous Guardians. This Wang Fu is very cautious and protective, he spent the majority of his life afraid of hurting someone else and never took an apprentice as a result. But now he is ready to try again, since he is not getting any younger and he likes these 2 kids. He wants them to succeed. Maybe Master Fu, becomes the father figure for Adrien in this situation and a guide for Marinette. Just think about it. This way writers avoid the need to develop all these extra characters (Su Han) and traditions related to the Order. All inconsistencies I mentioned before and later in this post are gone now! Hell, even memory loss and the changing of the Miracle Box shape could make more sense. We also raise the stakes post-amnesia, if it happens of course (the whole Season 3 finale didn't make sense, so stay tuned for my next meta). Marinette and Adrien are on their own now, there's no one who can give them answers. It's very fun scenario, which has potential to be brilliant. Any thoughts on that?

The existence of Order of the Guardians is not quite a secret, at least it wasn't in XIX century China. Master Fu in "Feast" says that guardianship was considered "a great honor". It implies that people who lived close to the temple of the Order knew about Miraculouses and what exactly guardians did for the greater good.

The existence of other Miracle Boxes around the world makes sense from a real-life perspective. Writers have the ability to create many stories set in the same universe and use them for merchandise and an almost unlimited amount of content. Judging by the unholy amount of specials in production, this is exactly what the creators are going to do. It probably won't go down well, but who knows?

However, it doesn't work in our main story. The main conflict is Paris-centred. Gabriel's motivations revolve around Emilie's resurrection and Season 4 gives us more reasons to suspect that Adrien's mom wasn't as wonderful as everyone says. Hawkmoth still remains the main villain of the show and most likely it's going to stay that way. There's no point in moving the main story to different places for the sake of introducing more Miracle Boxes from around the world. Ladybug and Chat Noir aren't needed to fight something halfway across the world unless Hawkmoth also changes locations.

LB and CN are centrepieces of this franchise. They brought success and money to ZAG. Creators constantly need to remind the audience that this new piece of media with new characters who will never be mentioned again is connected to Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Writers have to come up with reasons to include our heroic duo into the story even if makes no sense.

New York Special had to introduce American Heroes whose names rarely come up in the fandom because people stopped caring about them or their stories shortly after the release of the Special. I barely saw any content dedicated to them. In order to bring LB and CN into the story, you have to include Hawkmoth too. Gabriel suddenly needs to get his hands on the Eagle Miraculous and goes to USA. Marinette and Adrien suddenly have a class trip to New York. Unfortunately, their presence in this story is required only to expand the world of Miraculous and attract fans of the show, so that they could keep an eye on new content related to newly introduced characters.

In the end, it's not their story. Events of the special don't affect main story of the show and the development of the love square is merely an illusion, because Adrien and Marinette are no closer than before. In season 4 LB and CN are growing apart and their test of trust in NY Special doesn't matter. Perhaps, some people don't see it that way and it's their right, but I find it hard to see NYS as a valid contribution to canon. I mean, even people in large portion of the fandom state in the tags on AO3 that "specials are not canon", "specials didn't happen" or "ignores both specials". It speaks volumes about continuity and preferences of your fandom.

Shanghai Special didn't give us more information about the Order, which is located in China, history of Miraculous jewels. We still don't know much about how Gabriel and Emilie found Peacock and Butterfly. Maybe, Marinette's family had connections to Miraculous jewels. Maybe, Adrien does some snooping and discovers research his parents made while Gabriel is away. All of these are relevant to the main story. However, we got something much different in the end.

Marinette chases Adrien across the globe and they make new friends. Fey becomes Ladydragon and now has a direct contact with Marinette through her uncle. Gabriel's desire to get his hands on the Prodigious comes out of nowhere. Apparently, he had been planning this trip for years, presumably even before Adrien was born. It probably happened at the same time as Agrestes found 2 Miraculouses. He bought bracelet-key (which is also a Miraculous apparently, but its Kwami is a Guardian of the Prodigious and they existed separately for a very long time - and let us not dwell on this mess) from some shady mafia boss, who can easily find out just who Gabriel really is (fashion designer billionaire) and use this information to blackmail him. This Special didn't answer important questions, but it gave us a new superhero character.

The real question is whether Miraculous as a project will survive long enough for writers to create content for every minor character they introduced in all specials. This is only a beginning after all.

Miraculous is not a global show and it can't be globalised in a way that makes sense, at least with Ladybug and Chat Noir in the centre of action. Case closed.

Mirakung Fu

I liked the idea of Mirakung Fu introduced in "Furious Fu". It makes sense and things rarely do in this show. Miraculous grants its holder superhuman strength, stamina, endurance and ability to fight. This means that essentially transformed heroes are guided by magic in combat. There's nothing personal in the way Miraculous holders fight. You can predict their moves and learn how to fight this magic guidance, which is what Su Han does.

However, if the holder has any special training, skills or knows any martial art in their civilian life then they become more dangerous opponents during transformation because now their fighting is a mix of magical moves and their personal knowledge, tricks and style. Therefore, Adrien and Kagami as skilful fencers have more chances of winning against someone who knows Mirakung Fu than Marinette, for example.

Memory loss

At the end of season 3, we find out several things:

apparently, now Miracle Box can change appearance to suit its guardian;

when Guardian passes down the Miracle Box to someone else, they lose memories not only about everything related to Miraculous, but also about pretty much everything in their life (Fu doesn't recognise Marianne, instead he experiences the love at first sight)

Master Fu trains Marinette to be the proper holder and next Guardian off-screen. He says that her training as the holder is complete in "Feast" and wants her to become the next Guardian. Fu told her lots of things, and yet, he never mentioned the fact that he would lose his memory after relinquishing the box, nor the fact that Marinette would lose her memory afterwards. She finds out about this from Wayzz after the battle with Miracle Queen and the letter that Master Fu gave her. That's not proper training! How on Earth do you forget to mention this memory loss? How?

Master Fu's amnesia is a convenient plot device that removes him from the narrative almost completely. That's mostly all there is to it. Why? Because it doesn't make sense.

Fu was around 7 or 8 when he started his training. The disaster at the temple happened when he was 14. He stated that his training was never complete, which means that he never passed any magical ritual, never swore an oath or was bound by some kind of spell that made him subjected to the rule of memory loss.

Miracle Boxes belonged to the order, not Fu. Their design reflected their country of origin because these Miraculous were made and kept in China. They were just standing there on the shelves not magically bound to anyone in particular. When Feast attacked, monks just tossed Wang Fu the miracle box and grimoire. No one at the temple lost their memory after Fu took the box with him (Su Han is the proof). Su Han not only remembers Fu and his mistake but everything that happened that fateful day as well. In "Furious Fu" Marinette explains Su Han that Master Fu lost his memory in the very first conversation they have. However, after Ladybug and Chat Noir fight Su Han on the roof and escape with the Miracle Box, the latter searches for Fu and attempts to take his staff from him. In this scene, Su Han acts like Fu knows very well what is going on and who he is.

Su Han should be aware of the memory loss rule as the Celestial Guardian. He remarks on the different shape of the Mother Miracle Box and calls her "incorrect", which means that Su Han should have been able to easily tell that previous Guardian lost his memory and the Miracle Box is now bound to someone else. But he doesn't say anything. Moreover, since Su Han is supposed to know about amnesia, he seemed awfully chill about forcing this 14-year-old girl in front of him to give up the box and her memories. Hell, Chat Noir wasn't on board with this. But we get zero reaction from Su Han.

During the first conversation between Marinette and Su Han, he doesn't ignore what she is trying to say, instead he actively comments on every word. Even if Su Han didn't listen when Marinette told him about Fu's memory loss, than he still should be able to understand that Fu doesn't recognise him, because of common sense and the "incorrect" shape of the box. But nothing of the sort happens. Because writers apparently forgot that "memory loss" is supposed to be known to everyone in the Order. On-screen it looks like Su Han is not aware of the "amnesia rule".

"Furious Fu" makes the concept of memory loss a plothole no matter how you look at it. Just like "Timetagger" and "Chat Blanc", as well as "Kwamibuster" this episode is not consistent within itself. It does not surprise me, however.

Grimoire and Guardian Staffs

Let's talk about the Miraculous Grimoire. Good things first.

There are no illustrations of Miraculouses in camouflage. Kwami can't read its contents, only guardians can. Certain elements are written in riddles as an additional precaution. The book contains only the information people have learned so far, which means that Miraculouses have more unexplored potential ("Mr. Pigeon 72"). It describes powers of each Miraculous, provides information about weapons, has instructions for potions that don't make sense (see previous parts).

Unfortunately, everything is about to go downhill from here.

Guardians are taught how to read the writing in this book. They can read it just like people learn to read texts in a different language. This means that one can read Grimoire like any other book (you don't need to consult some guide to decode each letter or word). Master Fu proclaimed Marinette an almost fully trained Guardian. He should have taught her how to read the Grimoire then (he doesn't know the code very well, but he knew enough to understand the general meaning and content of the book according to "Collector"). He didn't. We don't know why. He shows her powers of every Miraculous but doesn't teach her the code.

Master Fu knows that Grimoire now belongs to Gabriel Agreste. He knows that it's dangerous for someone else to have it. If they knew how to read the Grimoire, they could discover all secrets of Miraculouses and harm Ladybug, Chat Noir and other heroes. It's very important to keep the information about the code top secret because Fu is not the only one with the source material.

What does he do then? Master Fu proceeds to write a French translation of Grimoire for Marinette, a translation that he doesn't even need. He carries it with him at all times on a tablet (without any precautions) just like the Miracle box after "Feast". Naturally, it means that in "Miracle Queen", Gabriel and Nathalie easily managed to get their hands on the tablet and Miracle Box. It allows the plot to happen, sure. But it doesn't make any sense.

"Furious Fu" created another curious plot hole. It will probably be ignored, of course. Su Han has a staff with a magical compass that allows him to find any Miracle box, but not the Miraculous jewels for some reason. How does the staff work? Can it locate the box without the Miraculous? If yes, then it seems useless. What's the point in the ability to locate an empty box? If it can locate the box only with the Miraculous jewels inside, it implies that the staff can track the location of every Miraculous too. So, Su Han could just locate the Butterfly and Peacock without any problem. But he talks about reassigning Ladybug and Black Cat to adults and defeating Hawkmoth like locating the Butterfly is not possible. This situation makes the Guardian Staff a simple plot device that creates plot holes and its only purpose is to explain how Su Han found Marinette.

Also, I have a few more words to say about this. Master Fu had a Guardian Staff that was never mentioned before. I wonder why? That's because the staff didn't exist before "Furious Fu" was written. Writers just went: "Do you know what would be cool? If Fu's cane was really a secret Guardian Staff with a compass all along that he decided to keep even after he lost his memory? It would make people wonder whether Master Fu is faking amnesia, and everyone will definitely call him an awful mentor after this even though we kind of tried to make him a good and responsible person."

Fu didn't give it to Marinette and didn't mention it to her. Why? When he gave up his memory, he should have written about this in his letter at least. Why did he decide to keep it? He can't use it anyway now.

Please note how in the flashbacks Fu didn't take any staff with him when he escaped the temple. Su Han seemed to know how Fu's staff looked like. It means that Master Fu didn't make this staff himself, because it belonged to the Order.

Su Han wasn't even surprised that Marinette didn't have the staff as the current Guardian. Was she not supposed to have it? He never questioned the fact that the former Guardian without memories has the staff. Su Han actually returns this staff to Fu after he is deakumatized and Fu acts like they have never met before. Why did Su Han gave the staff back when he knows what it is and to whom it should belong (to him or to Marinette as the current Guardian)? The staff is useless in the hands of the civilian. Does Marianne know about its secret? We'll probably never find out, unfortunately.

Guardian Staff of Master Fu has a compass too and therefore this also makes it a plot device, just like Su Han's staff.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #miraculous analysis #miraculous meta #ml meta #ml analysis #miraculous critical #miraculous ladybug critical #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #mt of lb and cn #miraculous guardian #miraculous order of guardians #master fu #miraculous master fu #wang fu #miraculous su han

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puddygeeks · 4 years

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Wᴇ Cᴏᴍᴇ Rᴜɴɴɪɴɢ - Tʜᴇ 100 Bᴇʟʟᴀᴍʏ x OC - Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 21: Gᴜɴsʜᴏᴛs Iɴ Tʜᴇ Dᴀʀᴋ

Masterlist

Episode: Day Trip

Rating: Mature

Summary: During her time in the Skybox, Indigo formed a precious friendship with fellow outcast Octavia Blake, the girl under the floor. At first they thought their departure from the oppression of the Ark was a blessing, but quickly came to rely on Indigo's keen survival instincts. The 100 struggle to meet the challenges of Earth whilst Bellamy strives to lead the wavering teenagers and his irresponsible attitude fuels constant conflict with Indigo. Their only shared interest is in protecting Octavia and Indigo beings to suspect that there is a deeper cause to Bellamy's seemingly irrational choices. As the consequences of his actions mount up around him, he finally begins to confide in her and she discovers more than she ever bargained for.

Fandom: CW’s The 100

Pairing: OC x Bellamy Blake

LONG TERM ONGOING PROJECT :)

My writing is entirely fuelled by coffee! If you enjoy my work, feel free to donate toward my caffeine dependency: will work for coffee

Warnings: Mature content. Non-consent, language, sex, self harm, suicide, anxiety, helplessness, torture, captivity/confinement, alcohol/drug use.

Chapter Twenty-One

I hurried as I travelled back to Raven and Finn, who were gathering a small group at the far end of the camp. The light was fading rapidly from the sky, so I occupied myself with building a fire that I could settle people around to keep them warm. Raven approached me with confusion.

“What are you doing back here? I thought you two were dealing with the ship side?” She asked and my stomach lurched as I realised that my lies were starting to clash. I mentally cursed Octavia for cornering me into this and tried to think of a believable answer.

“There was hardly anyone left over there so I bought them over this way, I thought it would make sense to keep everyone together.” I commented, using some honesty to buy myself time. I had checked that there was no one near the dropship before returning, so I was confident in sharing this information. “Octavia’s staying there a little longer to double check there’s no leftovers.” I surprised myself at how easily I lied and I continued with my task to ensure that my words seemed casual and authentic. “Okay, the fire’s going, it’s getting darker so it’ll get real cold soon. Could you send anyone who is calm enough over this way and I’ll start wrapping them up. We also need to get water, we might as well try flushing it out of people. The sooner we can get this out of their system, the better.” I instructed as I tried to both change the subject from Octavia’s whereabouts and consider the needs of the camp simultaneously.

“Yes ma’am.” Raven replied willingly and I was surprised not to find any sarcasm in her tone. It was unusual for me to take control of a situation but as our normal leaders were off jaunting in the woods, I didn’t have much choice but to step up. My stomach lurched as Bellamy’s strange behaviour earlier flitted through my mind and I had to force it out so that I could concentrate on the situation in front of me. Finn slowly made his way over with several containers of water and I smiled at him as I took them gratefully.

“Thanks. Are you sure you should be up and about just yet, Mr Big Hero?” I asked as I assessed him with concern. He seemed to be moving fine but I was uncomfortable allowing him to be so active without Clarke here to clear him for action. He smiled bashfully at the name.

“I think I’m ready to manage a little babysitting.” He chuckled under his breath. “Raven said that you helped a lot with the surgery and all that. Thanks for keeping her calm, I know it can’t have been an easy task.” He spoke evenly and his tone was genuinely thankful. I cleared my throat awkwardly and decided not to mention that we likely wouldn’t be sharing a moment like that again for a while.

“You’re welcome, we’ve gotta keep our numbers up.” I replied as an excuse and he laughed. “Besides, I hardly did anything. Raven and Clarke were the real MVPs.” I replied gingerly, rubbing the back of my neck and hoped to scare off his kindness.

“I don’t know, I heard some pretty tough radio talk, even through my coma.” He laughed playfully as he peeked at me. “I think you might have missed your calling on the Ark, communications could have made great use of you.” He winked and I laughed in response to his assumption. “I’ll get you some blankets.” He stated as he shuffled away.

Soon people started to arrive following Raven’s directions and I wrapped them up in the makeshift blankets that Finn delivered and settled them around the fire with some water. It wasn’t long before I had my hands full with a confused group to babysit and Finn and Raven took up positions nearby to help keep an eye on the more active members. I no longer had to focus on distracting anyone, as the wanderers kept us plenty busy. It had gotten properly dark by the time Octavia sauntered over to the fire and I was growing restless as I considered that Bellamy and Clarke still hadn’t returned. Octavia nodded subtly from the edge of view, acknowledging a job completed. She then casually approached as Raven and Finn watched and I had to quickly remind myself of the narrative that I’d spun.

“Hey Tavi, no stragglers left on your side of camp?” I asked, trying my best to seem casual as I hoped she would understand what I was doing and not accidentally reveal my lies.

“No movement that way, and I just dropped Jasper at his tent to join Monty for a nap. He’s finally stopped screaming about grounders so I think we’ve got a rough time scale for when it wears off now.” She laughed as she made her way over to sit beside me, and I was impressed at how naturally she caught on to the situation. I was also pleased to hear that the boys were safe and sighed in relief.

“Any sign of Clarke or Bellamy over there?” I asked with genuine concern as my mind returned to their absence. Octavia shook her head and I only grew more unsettled. “Okay, do you think you can take over here? They’re mostly all chilled by now but it sounds like effects should be wearing off soon anyway.” I asked as I got to my feet but she grabbed my arm and glimpsed up at me in concern.

“Of course, but where are you going?” She asked, checking me closely.

“I need to look for our missing leaders.” I smiled gently in the hope that she wouldn’t cause a scene but to my disappointment she glared back. I didn’t want to draw any attention to the fact that I was leaving and sat back down before anyone could notice that we were behaving strangely.

“No, absolutely not, you can’t go alone.” She spoke adamantly as she studied me and I sighed deeply. I didn’t have patience left to argue with her today and wished that for once she wouldn’t make things difficult.

“We don’t have the manpower to launch a full search party right now Tavi. I don’t even know where they went, so it’s not like I can go far. I’m just going to do a small venture in their direction and hopefully I’ll bump into them on their way back. If I don’t come back quickly enough, you’ll have more people back to normal to send a rescue group.” I smiled gently and she frowned back at me with an unconvinced face. “Come on, your brother’s out there and he could be hurt.I need to see what’s going on.” I reasoned as I gazed at her but she continued to frown at me. She sighed as she reluctantly let go of my hand.

“Fine, don’t take too long, or I’ll send the whole camp.” She threatened and I didn’t doubt her seriousness for a moment. I got to my feet and I crept out quietly so as not to draw attention. I gathered some limited supplies and snuck into the woods.

I wandered aimlessly in the direction that I had seen them leave in and within no time struggled to tell where I was in the darkness. I tried to look for any signs of them, but it was much harder to track than Finn made it look when he led the group. I couldn’t ignore the building anxiety in my gut the further I went and kicked myself for believing that I would simply bump into them out here. I stopped walking and stared out into the dense gloom that surrounded me from all angles. I considered turning back, but I was haunted with horrendous images of the things that could have happened to them out here if they’d taken the nuts with them. I hesitated, frozen to the spot as I deliberated with myself. With no better ideas, I called out into the trees.

“Bellamy! Clarke!” I shouted into the shadows and waited nervously for a few moments, but nothing changed. I couldn’t think of anything else to do and I knew that if I got lost out here there would be a frantic search party sent by Octavia. I was about to turn back towards camp when a gunshot rang out in the distance. I didn’t waste a second in reacting to it as I took off in the direction of the sound. My feet pounded in the mud at the same pace that my mind obsessed over the million awful scenarios that could surround the gunshot. I strained to keep my focus in the moment as I rushed blindly into whatever danger awaited me. Just as I started to worry that I may have lost the trail, two more gunshots carried between the trees and I followed them with a terror gripping my chest. My heart raced wildly and I panted in a mixture of exhaustion and fear.

“Get the hell off of him!” I recognised Clarke’s panicked voice immediately and forced myself into a manic sprint. As I drew closer, I could hear the sounds of a struggle and I prayed that they were safe. Moments later I fell into a clearing and I could barely comprehend what I was seeing. There was a dead body of someone I didn’t recognise sprawled out in the middle of the clearing, and leaning against opposite trees facing each other were Clarke and Bellamy. Bellamy was screaming wildly and clawing at the air around him, whilst Clarke yelled over in his direction with desperation. As she was closer and seemed to be more lucid, I dropped down to her side first.

“Hey! Clarke, you’re okay, look at me.” I spoke firmly, taking her face in my hands and forcing her to meet my eyes. Her face felt warm in my hands, but she seemed to be past the point of fever and from what I could tell, she was able to concentrate on me. “You’re alright, what you’re seeing and feeling is just the effects of the nuts we found earlier, they’re causing everyone at camp to trip bollocks. Here.” I handed her a bottle of water from my belt after removing the cap to make it easier for her. “Start on this, you need to rehydrate all that fluid you’ve sweated out with your fever and we want to try flushing this out of your system as soon as possible.” I spoke firmly but slowly, ensuring that she was absorbing the information and she nodded in acknowledgment. Bellamy was getting louder behind me and I could hear that he had started to hyperventilate. “You just sit there and keep drinking, stay calm and let me know if you start seeing anything weird. I have to deal with him.” I explained quickly, watching her reaction to check that she would be okay alone.

“I’m okay, I can help.” She whispered in a hoarse voice as she tried to lift herself from the ground and I firmly pushed her back into a seated position.

“Clarke, the best thing you can do for me right now is to sit there and get sober so I can concentrate on Bellamy. Can you do that for me, please?” I stayed in her eyeline and waited for her to nod reluctantly. As soon as she did, I turned on the spot and began to approach Bellamy. He was screaming out gibberish between jagged breaths, and he repeatedly appeared to lash out at thin air. He didn’t seem to notice my presence at all, as if he were seeing straight through me. “God, he’s having a really bad trip, almost everyone else at camp is just having pleasant hallucinations.” I commented, as I slowly tried to enter his space and moved carefully in an effort not to startle him. “Has he been like this for long?” I called back to Clarke in question as I kept my eyes fixed on him. I reached out to touch him as gently as I could, but he immediately flinched away from me. Although our contact was brief, I was able to feel the scolding heat that poured off his skin and I could see the sheen on his face that indicated he was still running an extreme fever.

“Hours, I can’t get through to him, it’s like he can’t even see me.” Clarke explained quietly between deep, steadying breaths. “He was lucid for a little while when we were fighting Dax, but straight after he went back into panic. This is the worst I’ve seen him yet.” She confirmed and I sighed regretfully as I processed this information. As I got closer, I could make out the obvious signs of a struggle, as there was hardly any part of his face that wasn’t swollen or blood smeared and I was saddened to see him in such a state again.

“What have you tried already?” I asked, watching closely as he attempted to defend himself against whatever attack he was experiencing in his mind.

“I’ve yelled at him, shook him, I even tried slapping him to shock him out of it.” Clarke breathed, sounding remorseful about this choice. I sighed thoughtfully as I studied him and his jagged movements caused him to hit himself. He didn’t even seem to notice the impact as he was so lost in the visions and inspected him sympathetically. “He’s going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t calm down, hours is a long time for the human body to deal with that level of panic.” Clarke added poignantly and I wrecked my brain for a way to reach him.

“He’s too deep in the hallucinations, he might be too overstimulated already to react to shock.” I muttered, pacing around as I considered any other possible options. I didn’t have enough knowledge of drug use to know what would usually be recommended and I wished that I’d learned more useful skills before we were sent to Earth.

As I observed his movements, he reminded me of Octavia as he began to scratch at his arms. During the beginning of our friendship in the Skybox, Octavia would have frequent panic attacks about returning to her cell. All of her years of hiding from the guards in her mother's quarters had left her with a residual fear of being contained. It took a while for us to find coping mechanisms to help her manage this fear and in the meantime, I had to learn how to calm her during an outburst. When I looked at Bellamy, despite their many differences, I noticed some similar behaviours in their panic and I began to wonder if the same method would work on him.

He was hyperventilating hysterically now and his lips were turning blue, a telltale sign of lack of oxygen that I remembered from Octavia. With little time left to hesitate, I approached him and fell into his space. I crouched over him, placing my knees either side of his thighs and pulled him into my arms. At first he fought me and only seemed to be more panicked by the sudden contact. It was substantially harder to contain him than it ever was with Octavia and I didn’t allow myself any time to doubt, as I knew I had no other ideas. I pulled him in tighter as I remembered that Octavia would continue to lash out with her arms until I stopped her and so I pulled his arms down to his sides and embraced him around them. I held him tightly in place, allowing him to feel the pressure around him and tried to speak gently in his ear.

“It’s okay, you’re safe. What you’re seeing isn’t real, it’s not real Bellamy, you’re safe, shh.” I whispered gently as I felt his arms finally calming and after a few moments I dared to risk releasing them. They flopped loosely to his side and he didn’t attempt to hit anything again, much to my relief. Instead, he continued to tremble in my embrace and I slowly moved a hand to his neck to feel his pulse. It was hammering so fast that it was hard to even count and the heat that poured off him made me sweat. He was no longer shouting, but he continued to hyperventilate and I knew that we were still in a risky situation.

“You’re safe Bellamy, it’s okay, the threat isn’t real.” I spoke in a slow, calming manner as I held him to me, hoping to draw his attention to me over whatever horrors were happening in his mind. “If you can hear my voice, I need you to concentrate on it. Don’t listen to anyone else, listen to me.” I asserted and I felt his breathing hitch. I took this break in gasps as a sign that he was listening to me. “That’s it, you’re safe. Everything is okay, you’re just hallucinating. You ate some bad food and it’s messing with your head. I promise, what you’re seeing isn’t real.” I explained gently as I waited for him to calm. I moved my hand slowly to feel his pulse again and I noticed that it was finally starting to slow down. I let out a small sigh of relief and gripped him to me again. I cradled his head with one hand, tenderly stroking his hair in a soothing manner as I continued to talk to him.

“That’s it, you’re doing well. Try to slow your breathing down for me. You’re safe. Raven and Finn are taking care of everyone back at camp and Octavia didn’t eat it, so she’s safe with them. Everything’s okay.” I spoke slowly as I tried to clear any concerns that may be bothering him and felt that his breathing was finally starting to become more regular. He didn’t seem to be any more lucid yet unfortunately, so I decided to try implementing some of the methods that I’d learned to refocus Octavia when she was lost to panic. “Listen to my voice, I want you to really focus on it. Good. Now, focus on the other things you can feel in your body. The cool, wet ground beneath you, the cool crisp air on your skin. Listen to my breathing, the wind in the trees. Can you feel my arms around you, my hand in your hair, my breathing near your ear? I need you to focus on those things around you Bellamy, what you really see, hear, smell, taste, feel. Pick them out in your mind. You’re safe, come back to us.” I have clear instruction and prayed that it would be enough to bring him out of his mind. As I finished guiding him through the technique, he finally spoke in a small, exhausted voice.

“I-Indigo?” He asked with such deep uncertainty that my heart broke for him. I finally released him from my grip, leaning back into his lap to view his tear streaked face.

“Hey you.” I smiled warmly and he stared back at me in wide eyed confusion. “Here, drink some water, you’re dehydrated and I need you to start flushing this crap out of your system.” I handed the open bottle to him and he took it from me with shaking hands, sipping from it delicately. “You just sit still and drink that okay? I’m just gonna go check on Clarke, I’ll be right there and then I’ll come straight back to you.” I explained quickly.

I moved before my heart strings could stop me and rushed back to Clarke’s side. She looked much calmer now and I checked to find that she had drunk almost the whole bottle of water that I’d left her with. I held my hand to her forehead and felt that she was almost back to a normal temperature. As a last precaution, I took the flashlight from my belt and gently flashed it at one eye at a time, confirming that she was back to normal dilation.

“Okay, you’re good. You can start gathering stuff to go back to camp. I’m gonna check on Bellamy and once he’s ready, we’ll move.” I ordered. Clarke nodded and started to get to her feet. I turned back to Bellamy, who was staring wide eyed at the body and was slowly losing control of his breathing again. I rushed back over and sat beside him on the opposite side from the body. I gently took his face in my hands and guided him to look at me. “Hey, no, don’t look at that, look at me. I need you to stay calm, it’s gonna take a little while for this stuff to fully work itself out of your body, so you can’t get too panicky or you’ll start tripping again. Stay focused on me and take some deep breaths. Alright, good. See, surely I can’t be that scary?” I smiled gently and felt a twinge of worry when he didn’t even flinch toward a smile back. It was unusual for him not to respond to humour, even in the most stressful situations. “You’re okay.” I breathed as I regarded him with sympathy.

“No, I’m not.” He whispered with fresh tears rolling down his cheeks as he panted for breath. “My mother...if she knew what I’ve done, who I am-” He choked up momentarily with emotion, the pain of the time here crashing down on him all at once. “She raised me to be good. And all I do is hurt people.” He paused to sniff as his desperate eyes met mine. “I’m a monster.” He spat with a devastating conviction.

“No Bellamy, that’s not true!” I gasped as I wiped his tears away and gazed at his broken expression with an aching heart. “Your mother raised you the best she could, as all parents on the Ark struggle to do in that stifling environment. But she also crushed you under the weight of the responsibility that you were far too young to bear. You have done everything in your power to keep Octavia safe and I know that she would be proud of you for that. None of us ever expected to be here in this situation, and I’m sure if she could see you now, she wouldn’t see a monster. She’d see a survivor, she’d see the man who made the difficult choices to keep us alive. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you. We need you Bellamy.” I spoke earnestly and even surprised myself at my own honesty. Bellamy scoffed and looked away from me. My stomach churned as I processed the self loathing of his words and I was compelled to guide him into a more beneficial thought process. “I know my words don’t take away the guilt and the pain you’re feeling. I can’t even begin to imagine what you feel, with everything that is on your shoulders. But it’s time to stop waiting for forgiveness for your mistakes and start facing them.” He looked back at me with fear in his eyes and I sighed. “And you know what, you may not want to hear this, but it’s time for you to forgive yourself. You are only one person thrown into a situation that is impossible to have prepared for. You made mistakes, yes. Shockingly you’re not perfect. But it’s time to stop beating yourself up over them and start acknowledging them. Take responsibility and face up to the consequences. You can’t run forever Bellamy.” I finished gently as I gazed into his eyes and he sighed, watching me with a terrified expression.

“How do I do that?” He asked in a small shaky voice and I smiled at him with gentle encouragement.

“One step at a time, but you’re not going to be doing it alone. I’ve got your back.” I asserted as I reached out to squeeze his hand.

“Jaha will kill me when he comes down.” He breathed and my stomach lurched at the mention of the Chancellor. I hadn’t even considered yet that he would be one of the people to come down and I felt a fire burning inside of me at the thought.

“I won’t let that happen.” I growled with more fury than intended and he finally showed a hint of a smile at my veracity. “How much does Clarke know?” I whispered as I leaned into him inquisitively.

“Everything.” He sighed and I raised my brows in surprise. I guessed it was hard to keep secrets when you have crazy hallucinogens in your system and tried to be understanding about him involving her in his crisis.

“Okay, in that case, we’ll work it out on the way back to camp. Come on, up you get.” I helped him to his feet with difficulty as Clarke carefully approached us. “Let’s get back to camp, people are going to be getting worried.” I suggested as I supported Bellamy to find his balance weakly.

“We have to go back to the building we found first, there’s supplies to collect. We can’t afford to risk anyone else finding them first.” Clarke stated firmly and I stared at her in surprise. I couldn’t imagine how we were going to transport them with them in such a weakened state but I reluctantly agreed so that I could get them moving.

We walked slowly as we wandered in a tight formation back to their discovery. I reluctantly assisted in packing up the supplies they’d found, which mostly consisted of copious amounts of guns and we spread the weight between us as we started on our return to camp. Bellamy was unusually quiet during the walk and I noticed that he kept glancing back over his shoulder fearfully. I wanted to believe it was due to the paranoia of his earlier visions, but I’d been considering his strange behaviour this morning alongside some information I’d gathered since seeing him again and I had a suspicion that I knew what was really going on with him. Now that he was calmer, I couldn’t hold in my thoughts any longer and turned to look at him with impatience.

“You weren’t planning on coming back to camp, were you?” I asked quietly to keep Clarke from hearing our conversation. His eyes shot to me in surprise and as he realised that I was awaiting an answer, he looked away in avoidance. I scoffed in response to his unintentional confirmation of my theory. “I knew something was wrong when you left. Were you even going to say goodbye?” As the question left my lips, I heard the hurt in my tone and inwardly kicked myself for allowing that to show. Bellamy stared at the ground with a guilty expression, his head hung low in a silent answer. “Did you really think you could just hide out in the woods? You must’ve known that I’d look for you?” I quizzed him before quickly stumbling over my words as I realised exactly what I’d said. “Among others of course.” I added hurriedly.

“I didn’t think about it in any detail, Indigo. All I knew was that Jaha was making plans to come down here and if I stayed in camp I was a sitting duck.” He mumbled in a poor attempt at an explanation and I sighed deeply at him. I could tell that this fear of inescapable punishment was still messing with him as we marched back in the direction of camp.

“Hey Clarke?” I called out to her as she walked with purpose just ahead of us and she slowed to meet my side. “You know all about this mess now, have you got any bright ideas for keeping Bellamy alive and in camp?” I asked as I shot an accusing glare at him for trying to abandon us, implying that I could tell that he was still considering running at this very moment. “Jaha isn’t known for his mercy and if he tries to punish Bellamy the way he would on the Ark...well, there’s gonna be more than one life lost, that’s for sure.” I spoke honestly as I imagined the guards trying to take him for execution and I couldn’t even account for the damage I’d be willing to do to stop it. She stared up at the sky thoughtfully for a while as we trudged through the forest.

“I’ve known the Chancellor most of my life. I don’t approve of most of what he does, but he’s actually a much more reasonable man than most of the Ark realises.” She spoke in a distracted voice as she explained and I scoffed at her words.

“Yeah, cuz the death penalty for any and all crime is totally reasonable.” I spat and she squinted at me in a defensive manner. “I’m sorry, I know you’re not the enemy. What was your point?” I spoke sheepishly following my unintentional attack.

“Jaha is always willing to discuss terms, trades and compromises. I know him well enough to know how to convince him. I could help you talk to him.” She flashed Bellamy a hopeful smile but he only responded with confusion.

“What could we possibly trade him for? I can’t imagine we have anything he would want in this paradise.” He asked with a bitter tone as his exhausted face revealed his doubt.

“Information; you offer to tell him who asked you to shoot him, but only in exchange for a pardon.” Clarke sounded genuinely enthused with her idea and I felt a small shred of hope blossoming in my chest. Bellamy stared at her in surprise, and I joined him, before breaking into a wicked smile.

“You know what, that could actually work. You’re secretly sly Clarke! I’ll have to watch you in future.” I chuckled as I was hit with a feeling of genuine relief. I turned back to face Bellamy. “What do you think Bellamy? Are you ready to deal with this?” I asked as I watched him closely, hoping with everything in me that he wouldn't turn and run. He finally broke into a smile and my heart fluttered at the sight.

“Let’s do it. Nothing else left to try.” He answered and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The remaining walk to camp felt easier and I was more relaxed than I had been in days. I knew that this was still a gamble, but I trusted Clarke’s judgement and her history with Jaha to pull this off. As we approached the edge of the fencing I split off from them, allowing them to make their grand, victorious entrance without my interference. Instead, I went to find Jasper who was finally back to his normal self and happily sleeping. Monty was also sitting in the tent and when I entered he shifted awkwardly.

“Hey, if it isn’t my two favourite troublemakers.” I chanted with a smile as I sat beside him. “Are you guys feeling okay?” I asked with a hint of concern as I looked between them.

“I’m fine. Jasper was feeling pretty exhausted, but it sounds like he spent a lot of his day panicking, so I don’t really blame him.” He explained as he watched Jasper with care. He cleared his throat and avoided looking back at me as he spoke again. “I’m really sorry if I came across as weird earlier, I tend to say some pretty wild stuff when I’m...you know.” He spoke in a small voice and fidgeted his hands awkwardly. I struggled to stifle a giggle as I remembered the numerous compliments he’d given me during the day and instead I focused on trying to ease his entirely unnecessary embarrassment.

“You think you were wild? Did Jasper remember telling Octavia he loved her yet?” I asked playfully and Monty snorted in laughter. “Twice!” I crumbled into giggles at the memory and was glad to be able to share some humour after such a difficult day. “Seriously, we’re good, don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you’re both okay. I’m gonna find Octavia and I’ll leave you to comfort your friend here. I get the feeling his ego’s going to be a little bruised when he wakes up.” I winked, before heading back to the main activity of camp.

I glanced around to seek out Octavia and I had already begun to approach her when I noticed Bellamy hovering awkwardly nearby, observing her with a beaten puppy expression. He hadn’t noticed my presence, so I quickly stepped to the side to remain out of his line of sight. I watched as he gingerly wrapped a blanket around her and she glanced back at him in annoyance. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened between them in the last few days, but I had the impression that some hurtful words had been exchanged. I hoped that they could find a way to trust each other, but I knew that it would take time for this to build. I was too far from them to hear what was said, but I could tell from Bellamy’s body language that he was trying his best with her and I smiled at the sight.

“Bellamy!” Clarke called as she emerged from the tent where the communications with the Ark were stored. Unfortunately this was right beside the spot I was hiding in plain sight. Inwardly, I cursed her for interrupting their bonding moment until she spoke again. “It’s time.” She said with a significant tone and I glimpsed over in shock. I didn’t expect them to launch into their plan so quickly, I hadn’t had a chance to even discuss it with Bellamy yet. I made the quick decision to not involve myself in the situation. If he felt ready to do this now, then I was glad that they were immediately getting it out of the way before he could change his mind. He didn't notice me as he turned from Octavia and took a few steps toward the tent and I considered backing away. He suddenly stopped mid way and turned back to face her.

“The grounder escaping, was that you?” He spoke with an accusing manner and my blood felt like it turned to pure ice at his question. Octavia didn’t even turn around, keeping her back to him and I found myself thanking every star that he wasn’t facing me as I tried to force myself to behave normally. I knew that he wouldn’t approve of my part in it and after how close we’d grown tonight, I was terrified of disrupting this hard earned peace. I genuinely couldn’t tell any longer if he’d be angry or if he would allow me the time to explain. I felt myself spiralling into panic as I awaited her response.

“I had nothing to do with it.” She replied coolly and my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t know how to feel about her involving me in her lie and I despised that I’d found myself caught between her and Bellamy. I forced the feeling to the back of my mind to deal with later as Bellamy sighed and continued toward the tent. I startled as he finally noticed me and I considered simply walking away, but his vulnerable eyes drew me toward him. I walked to him as if in a trance and simply put a hand on his forearm. I steeled myself as I stared up into his eyes with a confident smile.

“You're going to be fine.” I spoke with an assertive sense of belief and he smiled nervously in return. “I’ll see you on the other side as a free man.” I breathed, releasing him to enter the tent. I tried desperately to force myself to leave, to trust them to manage the situation and fill me in after. I couldn’t help the slideshow in my mind of all the times things had gone wrong and Bellamy had run off, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the edge of the tent. I waited right outside, straining to hear what was said.

“Mr Blake, I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time now.” The chancellor's voice was clear and assertive and it sent chills down my spine.

“Before you do, I’d like to say something. When you sent us down here you sent us to die, but miraculously, most of us are still alive. In large part, that is because of him, because of Bellamy.” Clarke’s voice was calm, but her words made it clear that trusting her was the correct choice here. She knew exactly how to present her case. “He’s one of us, and he deserves to be pardoned of his crimes just like the rest of us.” She asserted and I couldn’t help but to be impressed by her.

I felt like I could barely breathe as I waited for the Chancellor’s response. Although I knew that this was the best chance for Bellamy, I was also terrified that this was the moment I would find out that there was no hope for him here; I wrestled my anxiety at even the thought of it.

“Clarke, I appreciate your point of view, but it’s not that simple.” The chancellor replied and I felt like I might heave at any moment. I reminded myself that they hadn’t thrown in their trade yet, it wasn’t over.

“It is if you want to know who on the Ark wants you dead.” Bellamy spoke assertively and I felt my heart swell with pride. I waited for what felt like an eternity for a response and couldn’t even move a single muscle in my body.

“Bellamy Blake, you’re pardoned for your crimes.” The Chancellor’s answer was firm and decisive, and I felt myself gasp out for air. I dropped to a crouch, just catching myself before I hit the ground and held my head in my hands. I felt tears freely roam down my cheeks and the relief poured over me in an overwhelming wave. I forced myself to a standing position so that I could rush to the tent to compose myself.

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 3 years

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Episode 40 Review: In Which Matt Calls Out Jean Paul (Redux)

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Welcome back to my Garden of Evil, the blog where I review and affectionately snark on Canada’s own all-American TV series, Strange Paradise. To my shock, Danny Horn of Dark Shadows Every Day (who introduced me to this delightfully crazy soap with his far more critical reviews) is back to posting more frequently than I do, which isn’t really relevant to this post save that I would not have expected it a year ago. (But then, there are many, many things that happened over this past year that I did not expect.) I would have posted this one sooner, but some urgent matters came up last week and I had to postpone.

Four episodes have passed since eccentric billionaire Jean Paul Desmond’s disastrous failed séance to contact his beloved late wife Erica. Medium and Conjure Woman Vangie Abbott has recovered from her injury, she and Raxl have tried (unsuccessfully) to decode the message in the sand writing box, and now Jean Paul insists on holding another séance! The other characters are trying to figure out how and why the ceremony was disrupted: most accuse Jean Paul of trying to murder them with the falling chandelier, while Vangie announces during the opening recap that she suspects the Reverend Matt Dawson of being a disruptive influence because of his disbelief in voodoo. Now sparks fly once again as another argument erupts between the Reverend and Jean Paul at an emergency meeting in the Great Hall.

Now, let’s begin.

We open with Jean Paul’s first tape recorder journal entry in a while, which is an exposition device that I had been missing mostly because I like mooning over Colin Fox while listening to his gorgeous voice:

Jean Paul: "Erica, my sweet wife, until the day comes when science can restore you to me, can release you from the cryonic suspension colder than ice, as cold as my empty life, I will continue trying to contact you through a séance. You must know the great effort I am making to protect you! But was the evil of Jacques Eloi des Mondes enough to prevent us from making contact at the séance that failed? Erica, believe me! I fought him with all my strength! I held him at bay, but he could not have got through unaided! These people in this house, Erica, I have been thinking about them: are they in consort with the Devil? Which one prevented me from hearing your sweet voice again, my Erica? Which one? If I knew-"

Caught him reading the Teleprompter! (That happens a lot in this episode, by the way.) Also, have I ever mentioned how much I love the lighting in his monitor room?

He stops recording when he sees Holly on the monitor, searching once again for that sweet secret passage in the crypt that she overheard the Reverend mention several episodes ago. Freaking out again over the possibility of danger to Erica’s cryonics capsule, he rushes down to the Great Hall and declares an emergency meeting:

Jean Paul shouting at his detained guests.

"Reverend Dawson, Mr. Stanton, I'm beginning to realize that you have not fully grasped my ruling!" Jean Paul shouts in his most pompous tone. "Now, to each and every one of you, this is most important, and how important it is you will all find out!"

Matt having a scared. I don’t usually find Dan MacDonald cute, but I think he is in this shot.

Quito guarding Holly as she hides in the crypt.

"EVERYBODY!” the Master of Maljardin shouts. “EVERYONE WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!" [Line flub? His wording is odd.] "EVERYONE! COME TO THE GREAT HALL! DO YOU HEAR ME? EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE! THIS IS JEAN PAUL DESMOND CALLING! COME TO THE GREAT HALL AT ONCE! YOU TOO, HOLLY MARSHALL! NOW, ONCE AND FOR ALL, YOU WILL ALL GET THE MESSAGE!"

Jean Paul’s crazy eyes in this scene indicate that he means business.

Everyone gathers in the Great Hall, save Holly and Quito (who are hiding in the basement), Dan Forrest (who is probably in the tub), and Raxl (who isn’t there because Cosette Lee had the day off). Dr. Alison Carr is particularly annoyed, because she could be spending this time researching how to resurrect Erica, but instead is stuck listening to her brother-in-law’s latest hissy fit. Oddly enough, even though Jean Paul acts like a complete ass in this episode, Fox-C looks even more stunning than usual. I can’t explain why, but to me he looks especially handsome during Weeks 8 through 11 of the show. That certain je ne sais quoi of his just comes out particularly strongly during this period.

Jean Paul is so angry that you can see his jaw tensing.

Of all the detained guests in the room, he chooses to pick a fight with Matt, because that worked out so well for him five episodes ago. Elizabeth finds this highly amusing and comments with one of her best lines:

Elizabeth: "It seems to be your opportunity to entertain, Reverend. May I suggest Song of Solomon?"

Jean Paul doesn’t laugh, despite it being arguably the funniest joke anyone other than Jacques has made so far. I, too, want to hear Matt read from the Song of Solomon. Perhaps he has recorded a sermon about it for his album:

Matt’s album, You Can’t Fake Fruit, featuring his sermon “Wherever God Builds a House of Prayer, the Devil Builds a Chapel There” and selections from the Song of Solomon.

I’m not going to recap or quote their entire fight blow by blow, because I just don’t feel like it--and besides, these kinds of overly dramatic yelling matches are more fun to watch for yourself. However, I will note some highlights:

Matt suspects Jean Paul of murdering Dr. Menkin because of how soon he died after Erica. “Who can say how he died?” he asks as a rhetorical question before proclaiming overconfidently, “There, your control over this island begins to disintegrate!”

He also continues to oppose the notion that the Devil caused any of the events on the island, including the chandelier falling: “The chandelier falls, and it’s blamed on the Devil. And you accept these...superstitious reactions of a few, which are driving all of us beyond the bounds of reason!”

There’s a lot of focus on Holly, as you might expect, given that she‘s been searching in the crypt and also given Matt’s obsession with her. I’m glad he’s trying to protect her from Jean Paul now, even though I will always ship him with his right hand.

Alison stands up to Jean Paul and leaves in the middle of the argument. Good for her! Of course, after she leaves, Jean Paul has to passive-aggressively announce to everyone else that she will regret it.

Vangie tells Jean Paul and Matt that “when a devil works through a man, what he does is not an accident,” referring to the time that Dan allegedly damaged the cryocapsule. Jean Paul latches onto this idea, which Matt objects to because he believes it’s a ploy to turn everyone on the island against each other. So Jean Paul accuses Matt next of evil, which is not a question that most people will answer honestly. Ask Jacques if he’s evil and he will openly admit to it; ask someone like Elizabeth, on the other hand, and she will deny it.

Matt being what the kids today would call “a mood.”

Vangie on Matt: “Because he is a man of the cloth--a religious man--he made the contact [with Erica], but because of his disbelief in the spirits, the chain was weakened, the contact breaks. I would say that whenever the Devil is loose, anything or anyone can be his tool.”

I would say that Jean Paul in this episode is a tool, albeit a very handsome one.

Even his anger can’t disguise his cuteness.

Jean Paul ends the argument by threatening to punish Holly for invading the crypt. “Now you will see what happens to those who intrude on Erica’s resting place,” he tells the others and Elizabeth responds with this interesting, cryptic line:

So she approves of Jean Paul’s anger at her “impossible” daughter, but she doesn’t want him to punish her? Also note that she is eerily calm when she delivers this line.

In the next scene, Jean Paul gives Holly some serious mixed messages along the lines of the time my grandfather (with whom I used to live) told me “don’t worry about it” when he noticed my cat scratching at my bedroom door, then threw a fit over the (barely) damaged carpet a few hours later. I moved out of his house two and a half years ago but, up until recently, I got nervous any time anyone told me not to worry about something, because he’d often say things like “don’t worry about it” and “take it easy” shortly before he lost his temper over the very same things he told me not to worry about. In a similar vein, Jean Paul first tells Holly to “go ahead” into the crypt, only to then start ranting about how he thinks that some people on the island want the cryocapsule to break down and want to tell the authorities about what he’s doing on Maljardin.

“Now, what were you looking for, Miss Marshall?” he asks her menacingly after his rant.

“I wouldn’t touch that!” she replies, referring to the capsule. “I want you to bring your wife back to life!”

“Then what were you here for!”

“Looking for a way out!” She turns away from him, clutching her head. “Trying to get away from all this. I can’t stand it anymore!”

“I am going to have to make an example of you,” Jean Paul threatens.

“I was only looking for a secret door,” she protests, then explains how he (actually Jacques) led her down there to show him where she thought the secret passage was three episodes ago.

Before he can respond to her, Alison comes rushing down to the crypt to tell him about the notes of Dr. Menkin’s that Jacques left in her lab in Episode 38, which cover part of the previously missing six-week period of his experiments:

Sure, Jacques *might* answer, but only if he feels like it.

Jean Paul tells Alison, “guard these [notes] with your life,” and the episode ends, which means it’s time to discuss the Lost Episode summary. Normally, I do so in either the introduction or at a point in the episode where a plot point was changed, but here the events of the original episode differed so much from those of the final aired version that I decided to discuss them after my recap.

The Lost Episode 40

To begin, here is the summary for the original Episode 40:

Source: The Plain Dealer (November 7, 1969), p. 72.

So the second séance originally took place in this episode and involved a conflict between two spirits. But who? We know for certain the identity of one of these spirits, courtesy of these summaries for Episodes 41 and 42, respectively:

Source: Ibid, p. 84.

Source: Ibid., p. 88.

A slightly longer version of the latter summary from The Fitchburg Sentinel names this priestess Tarasca, the same figure who appeared in a puff of smoke in the original Episode 35 and whose existence apparently threatens Alison’s life. While most summaries of the original Episode 44 (including the one in The Plain Dealer) mention hallucinations, this one from The Minneapolis Star (November 13, 1969) specifically mentions that the hallucination took place at the séance:

Holly searches for the secret passageway when her sleeping mother re-lives the happenings at the séance.

So we know the identity of one of the fighting spirits from the second séance, but who is the other? This summary for Episode 38 states that Jacques promised Vangie that he wouldn’t interfere a second time, but can we really rely on him to keep his promises? (I believe that he most likely summoned Tarasca to mess with the second séance on his behalf while technically not getting involved in it himself.) Still, even considering Jacques’ lack of trustworthiness, it would make more sense for the other spirit to be Erica, given that the whole purpose of both séances is to contact her.

Curiously, another thing we know about the second séance is that Matt took part in it, because Vangie told him that Holly would be in danger if he refused. I know I called the summary for last episode boring, but hearing the way Vangie talks about him in this episode has made me rethink my previous dismissal of its importance. If Vangie demanded that Matt attend the second séance, that means that she must not have considered Matt a disruptive influence in the original, or at least not enough to exclude him.

Who else attended the séance? At the very least, Vangie, Matt, Jean Paul and Elizabeth, but logically Raxl and Quito as well because of their involvement in the Conjure Faith. Alison may also have attended, but I doubt it because (1) Vangie prefers séances with either five or seven participants including the spirit and (2) Alison is getting increasingly fed up with Jean Paul and may have refused to take part.

The mention of Holly being in danger also raises an additional question: which spirit was threatening her, Erica or Tarasca? For my attempt to answer that question--which would contain some spoilers if I included it here--you will have to wait for a future analysis.

Coming up next: The Bad Subtitle Special for Week 8, followed by a very special essay comparing Strange Paradise to the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and its 1963 film adaptation The Haunted Palace. After that, a review of Episode 41.

{<- Previous: Episode 39 || Next: Episode 41 ->}

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storiesofwildfire · 5 years

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A Welcomed Distraction

{ @starkxsarcasm -- plotted starter }

♔—- Loki rarely left Crimson Peak these days. In fact, he rarely even stepped foot outside the grounds, onto the soft, mushy clay that rested beneath the home and stretched on for as far as the eye could see. He had plenty of employees at the manor, working to rebuild the home, give it a more solid foundation so it would not crumble into the mines below the house, and many others who would see to it that the restoration of Loki’s family home would go smoothly.

Most of them came and went as they pleased, never finding themselves too wrapped up in lingering for long periods of time. Some of them even murmured about strange occurrences taking place in the house, things that they couldn’t explain and actually kind of spooked them. A few had been scared enough to quit while others brought their concerns up with Loki.

Under normal circumstances, the young man was very open with speaking with his employees one on one, hearing them out, and treating more like friends than workers. Always generous, considerate, and respectful, it was entirely unlike him to wave off the concerns of even one person who worked under him, but since his days at Allerdale Hall, he seemed less enthusiastic about interacting with them on the regular, especially when news of possible hauntings or paranormal activities reached his ears.

He simply didn’t want to hear the rumors because, surely, they must be preposterous? Ghosts weren’t real. Places weren’t haunted and people weren’t possessed. That sort of thing just didn’t happen.

At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

For the months he lived inside the restoration project that was the Sharpe family home, strange occurrences took place more and more regularly. Loki found himself losing time, remembering people present in the home late at night that he surely never met before. Sometimes, he could swear to hear piano music playing dead in the middle of the night, only to find the piano with a thin layer of dust, proving it hadn’t been touched in the better part of a week, since the last time it’d been cleaned.

Even the paintings left over from his deceased half-siblings seemed to come alive in the dark, as if the people depicted in those portraits could somehow crawl out of them.

And, most concerning of all, he was losing time. A lot of time that he couldn’t account for. He wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t daydreaming, nothing like that. He simply couldn’t remember those chunks of time. They started out small. 20 minutes, tops, but now? He was losing hours at a time and sometimes even days.

In addition to their murmuring about the curse or evil that dwelled within the halls of Allerdale Hall, many of his employees also voiced their concerns for his health, as they all noticed the odd behavior and the change in demeanor. One maid even swore that Loki insisted to her that his name was Thomas for the better part of fifteen minutes, something that Loki had no real recollection of. One of those lapses in memory, he assumed. But why, in the time he was losing and couldn’t rightfully remember, would he be going by another name?

Why knowing that this home seemed to impact him and so many others in such a negative way, did he insist on stay? He wouldn’t even leave the estate, let alone make his way into town.

As time passed and the odd occurrences only seemed to grow worse, Loki feared he might be losing his grip on reality. That wasn’t something you could simply waltz out to any physician and speak to openly though, for fear of being locked away in some sort of asylum. Instead, he decided to reach out to his childhood friend and a man who had overseen his recent healthcare before he moved, Asmund. Asmund agreed to travel to his new home and stay with him so he could get a better understanding of what was happening to Loki.

The longer he stayed, the more he attempted to convince Loki that he needed to get out of the mansion more.

Today was the first day in nearly a month that Loki actually left the estate and made his way into town. Asmund rode with him, insisting to come along so he could get a feel for any changes in Loki’s condition when he was out in public and able to socialize. They ran errands, did quite a bit of shopping, and finally settled in for lunch.

In truth, it was the most normal and relaxed Loki felt in quite a long time and the longer he lingered within the city, the less he actually wanted to go back to Crimson Peak.

A distraction to keep him out, then, perhaps? Something that would stand in his way of returning home...

Out of the corner of his eyes, Loki caught sight of a rather eccentric looking man. His emerald gaze lingered on the stranger for a while, in a way that almost entranced him. What was it about the man? Oh, it definitely could have been his good looks. While socially unacceptable, Loki never did shy away from his interest in members of the same sex, especially behind closed doors... But the initial interest, for some reason, seemed to go further than that.

Asmund sat across the table from him, chatting away, until he noticed Loki’s gaze transfixed on something else. The doctor followed the younger man’s eyes to the handsome stranger and he couldn’t help but roll them when he realized what Loki was staring off at.

“Seems some things never change, even when you’re on the verge of a nervous break,” Asmund murmured. Loki didn’t respond, likely didn’t even hear him. “Loki, hey, you may wish to conceal your awe before someone notices.”

“Hmm? the young baronet finally murmured, blinking, and looking back towards Asmund. A light blush filled his cheeks and for a moment, he refused to make eye contact.

“Did you just lose time or were you just sizing up a possible bedmate?” Asmund asked, though his tone was low so no one would overhear them. While Asmund was perfectly accepting of Loki’s less than socially acceptable habits, most others wouldn’t tolerate such a thing and the doctor definitely didn’t want to get his friend in trouble.

Plus, he needed to know if Loki was having an episode or if he was just drooling over some attractive individual off in the distance.

“No,” Loki replied in a hushed-yet-hurried tone. “I wasn’t losing time. I was right here, I just--” The tint of red that spread across his cheeks darkened several shades. “Sorry...”

“Don’t be,” Asmund murmured, amusement in his expression. “Lingering on physical attraction to another person is actually a very good sign that getting out of your home is having a positive influence on your mental state. When was the last time you thought about sex anyway?” Loki nearly choked on his tea. Asmund gave him a patient smile. “Well?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, setting his tea back down before Asmund made him spill the damned cup. “It’s been a while, I suppose? Does that really matter?”

“It matters a lot, actually, especially given how active you were before you purchased this new estate. Losing interest in such things tells a lot more than you might thing.”

Asmund certainly seemed determined to keep Loki red in the face. “All right... Then why would that suddenly come back to me now?”

“I suspect the high-stress level in which you live is wearing on you, honestly,” Asmund answered. “You live in the middle of a construction zone while you attempt to restore a dilapidated mansion that’s slowly sinking into the ground. Your employees and builders are stressed, which is making you even more so. You can’t escape this massive project you’ve taken on because you live in it, and you’re so far away from your friends and family, your support system has been more or less cut off. That sort of stress can do horrifying things to the brain. Taking a few steps away from such a stressful environment gives you time to think and breathe and focus on things that aren’t stressing you out.” The doctor offered the baronet a teasing grin. “Like a handsome stranger, for instance.”

“Oh, shove off, Asmund...”

#( au verse ; crimson peak ) no one warned me of crimson peak #starkxsarcasm #( long response ) if it were easy everyone would do it #thread; a welcomed distraction #( side muse ) asmund #closed starter #{ i hope this is okay???#lemme know if you'd like me to change anything ^^ }

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softupshur · 5 years

Text

Sullivan, you ARE the father!

Ao3 link if you’re into that kind of thing

Winding down for the evening, you catch a peculiar episode of Maury complete with shotguns, bluegrass tunes, and parables of The Enemy.

*Note that the characters of Matthias and Barnabas are borrowed from my friends!

Matthias belongs to @billy-hoepe Barnabas belongs to @taekwondoit

A thousand thanks to both of you for letting me borrow your hicks for this delightful nonsense <33

After a long day at work and an even longer traffic jam, you sink into the couch. For a good ten seconds, you close your eyes and breathe easy. The silence is welcome, initially, but you soon reach for the remote and flip the TV on just in time for the latest episode of Maury. You’re about to change the channel, but you’re drawn in by the rustic attire of Maury’s teenaged guest. It looks like he should be playing a part in the community theater’s production of “The Crucible”. With nothing better on at this hour, you set the remote down as Maury introduces the young man.

“Say hello to our guest, Otis.”

The audience offers a polite applause, though Otis only nods in response.

“And he’s here today, because for three years, he’s been raising little Seth all by himself. No alimony, no child support, not so much as a word from the father, and he’s decided enough is enough. It’s time for the father to step up and give Seth the life he deserves.”

The screen behind Maury turns on to show a toddler in a button up shirt and overalls. Despite the horrendously crooked bowl cut, you’re overwhelmed with the urge to reach through the television and pinch his chubby cheeks. Unfortunately, you have to settle on joining the audience in their collective, “awww,” as he waves to the camera with both hands.

“Cute kid, cute kid,” Maury remarks before he turns his attention back to Otis. “Now, Otis, tell us about what you’re hoping for today.”

Otis sighs and buries his face in his hands. “I’m tired, Maury. I love Seth, but I can’t do this by myself anymore. Did you know he brought a gila monster in the house last week? How did he even catch a gila monster? Not only that but he didn’t get bit! It’s ridiculous! When I take it away, it decides my hand is dinner! The swelling didn’t go down for a week! Imagine what it would have done to Seth!? But oh no, I’m the bad guy for taking away his new friend! His new friend was poisonous! Excuse me for saving the kid a trip to the hospital! Oh, that’s right! We don’t even have hospitals in Temple Gate!”

Maury cocks his head. “Temple Gate. Backstage you mentioned it was in Arizona, but I never heard of it. Is it one of those rural communities?”

Otis is quiet for so long that you fiddle with the volume. When he finally responds, he only says, “Yes.”

A smile from Maury follows. “You must have been working very hard then. That’s why we’re going to do our best to help you today.” He looks back to his audience. “Now we have four men with us who might be the father: Jebediah, Matthias, Barnabas, and Sullivan!”

The screen turns on to show all four men. They look at the camera as if they’re staring at a ghost, except Sullivan who maintains a neutral expression. You stare at him the longest due to the conspicuously absent right eye.

“Now all four of them have agreed to a paternity test, and while we wait for the results, let’s welcome them all out today!”

The men file out to boos and jeers. Once again, Sullivan is the only one unphased, but your attention only lingers at him for a moment, as the full screen reveals that Barnabas is missing an arm. He’s the first one Maury addresses.

“Now, Barnabas-”

“Aw, shucks! You can call me Barney! Everyone does!” Several of his teeth are missing and those that remain are tarnished and chipped.

Hiding his disgust behind an unreadable smile, Maury continues. “Right, Barney. Now you stepped forward because you have reason to believe you might be the father.”

“Well, Mary-”

“It’s Maury.”

“Murray?”

“Maury.”

“Marie?”

“What makes you think you might be the father?” Maury settles on.

Barney’s eyes glow. “Gosh, I just...ever since I was a boy, I wanted a little one to call ma very own. Me and a purty wife would do our part to make the prophet’s line a nation, livin’ on a big, old farm, and…” He tears up. “If that little boy needs a role model, I wanna be there fir him! Murphy, I want t’be the dad!”

It’s the first time you see the audience applaud for one of the possible fathers.

“I’ve never seen this man in my life,” Otis remarks dryly.

It’s also the first time you see the audience turn on the main guest to which Otis snaps back.

“What!? I’m just stating the facts! I know damn well who the father is and it’s not him!” He marches past the men so he could look Sullivan in the eye. “This guy! This fatass right here is the father!”

Sullivan doesn’t even flinch. “No, I’m not.”

“You look at that child and say it’s not yours!”

The screen shows photos of Seth and Sullivan placed side by side. Otis points at the eyes. “Look at that! Can’t you see it!? You both have the devil in your eyes!”

The audience is hollering, but Sullivan maintains his cool. “I only have one eye.”

“But you had two eyes once!” Otis shouts. “You just cut it out like a crazy person!”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s in the gospel that you wrote!”

“What chapter?” Sullivan asks.

“Oh, lay off it!”

“What chapter?” Sullivan pulls a small book from his robes and hands it to Otis. “What verse and chapter?”

Otis squints at the curiously untitled book before chucking it back at Knoth. You don’t hear what Otis says next due to the endless series of beeps, but he’s frantic enough that Maury comes to take him by the shoulders and guide him back to his chair.

“That father is clearly Jebediah.” Sullivan states in his defense. “Everyone knows him and Otis were seen together around the time of conception.”

“I just traded to get some furs from him!” Otis protests. “Something I wouldn’t have had to do if you just installed some heating in Temple Gate! Why don’t we have that!? Where’s our air conditioning!?” He’s out of his seat again, storming up to Sullivan. “Why!? Why do you do this to us!? Just let us have space heaters for God’s sake!” Another flurry of beeps follow before he rejoins Maury’s side.

“Now Sullivan makes a good point,” Maury says. “You were seen with Jebediah around the right time and sources say you two were quite friendly.”

“I was trying to be civil!”

“Ya, that’s it!” Jebediah nods in agreement. “I couldn’t be the father!”

“And if you are?” Maury asks.

Jebediah bites his lip. “Then my wife sure is gonna be awful mad!”

The audience jeers and Jebediah puts up his hands in defense. “Now lookie here, folks, I ain’t no bad guy here! I just came on cuz Papa asked me to but the truth is I ain’t talked to Otis not but twice in my life!” He then points to Matthias. “I reckon he’s the father! I dun seen him and Otis be mighty chummy to each other every Friday!”

“He’s just my neighbor!” Otis argues. “Everyone has neighbors!”

“Y-yeah, that’s right!” Matthias’ voice is too shaky to convince anyone. “I just give him a howdy hi cuz he’s always at the dock on my way to band practice, but I swear to Knoth, that’s all!”

The screen cuts to a prerecorded video where Matthias is the center focus. “Now there’s no gosh darned tootin’ way I could be Seth’s father. If ya ask me, I say it’s Jebediah. Everyone knows he fornicates behind his wife’s back all the time. I dun seen him do it sometimes after sermon….not that I’m into that kind of thing! It’s just that ya sometimes seen strange things in Temple Gate and I done suspect Jebediah has a few littluns runnin’ around the place. I even see him at the docks near Otis’s house when band practice runs late.”

You plug your ears at the twangy bluegrass that follows. It sounds like it was recorded in someone’s basement.

“Now if you want to hear some of our tunes, we done burned a few CDs.” He holds up a CD with “Nu Moozik Toons” written in sharpie. “One of the deacons got a pack frum Office Depot and uh...once we realized ya ain’t s’posed to burn them at the bonfire, we got a few workin’ copies. If you want one uh...just come on down to Temple Gate.”

No website nor phone number is provided.

The screen cuts back to the show and Maury is holding the yellow envelope.

“Now we’ve met the men, heard all sides of the story, and the results are in!”

The audience loses their shit as Maury opens the envelope. All the men, aside from Sullivan, are at the edge of their seat. The studio hushes when Maury speaks.

“Barney! In the case of three-year old Seth...you are not the father!”

Though the audience cheers for him, Barney rests his head in his only hand while Matthias pats him on the back.

“I just really wanted to be the father,” he chokes out as a single tear rolls down his eye, but Maury doesn’t skip a beat.

“Matthias! In the case of three-year old Seth...you are not the father!”

A sigh of relief escapes Matthias. All eyes turn to Jebediah who bites his nails as he awaits Maury’s sentence.

“Jebediah! In the case of three-year old Seth...you are not the father!”

Jebediah leaps from his chair and shouts out, “Yeehaw!” He does a jig around the studio, before he fires a shotgun into the ceiling. It takes out one of the lights. You wonder why you didn’t notice the gun earlier.

Finally, Sullivan’s name is called.

“Sullivan! In the case of three-year old Seth...you are the father!”

“Ha!” Otis shoots from his chair and storms to Sullivan. “I -bleep- knew it! No one believed me, but I always knew it was you! Now everyone knows you’re a one eyed slut and a deadbeat father!”

You wait for Sullivan to explode as he rises, but he only states. “That child is not mine.”

“Oh -bleep- you, old man!” Otis snatches the results from Maury and holds them up to Sullivan. “The results are in and you owe me child support!”

Sullivan takes a deep breath. When he speaks, you’re taken aback by his booming voice. “That child is of The Enemy!” He turns to the audience as if addressing a congregation. “And the filthy seed must be eradicated before it lays waste to all we know!”

“Wait, no! Not like that!” Otis cries out. “I just wanted you to pay child support, maybe spend time with him on the weekends!”

“God wants the child,” Knoth’s voice sends chills down your spine as he pulls out a hunting knife.

Maury hurries to come between them. “Hey, Sullivan! The child is yours. Now put the knife down…”

Sullivan seems to obey at first. He lowers the knife and bows his head. You have to turn the volume up to hear him murmur, “God give me voice, God guide my hand.”

“Alright, good,” Maury says. “Now-”

Before he could finish, Sullivan lunges.

Maury dodges the first swipe, but the two run off camera while Otis shouts for Sullivan to put the knife away.

The camera falls and the screen cuts to a technical difficulties card accompanied by a deafening ringing. You’re quick to turn the volume down. You wait a full minute, but the card remains. With a sigh, you reach for the remote. Right when you’re about to change the channel, the show returns.

The camera is upright again. Only Sullivan and Otis remain. They sit across from one another in silence, except for Sullivan’s heavy breathing. Between them, Maury lies dead with the knife in his back.

#I'm dead serious when I say this is probably the funniest thing I have ever written #and explains a little something about Seth if you're reading The Lord Rejoices #Sullivan Knoth #Otis #Matthias #Barnabas #Jebediah #Outlast ocs #fanfiction was a mistake #writing #fanfiction #Outlast #Outlast 2

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veridium · 6 years

Text

CW: Light NSFW (partial nudity + physical affection)

For Context, read the previous episode here.

Inquisitor Trevelyan is recovering from her severe injury dealt at Emprise du Lion. Her week at Skyhold filled with medical attention, oversight from her allies, and being kept from any and all “fun” has wore on her, though. Thankfully she gets to have some attempts at mischief when her lover, Ambassador Montilyet, offers to help with something outside her typical duties.

“I am surprised you are minding yourself this well, considering you have always been ready to jump to the next excursion,” the Seeker said, walking slowly alongside the Inquisitor. Lady Trevelyan looked underdressed beside the armored friend she had escorting her along the short courtyard path. For the past week the bandages were her interim small clothes garment, but when she was finally allowed to start walking and do some of her own minor healing spells on herself, she couldn’t be held back in her room by anyone or anything.

Theia smirked softly under her breath. She wore thick resting pants to insulate her legs from the air, and a muslin overshirt to cover her bandages. Around her shoulders as a thick blanket of bear fur, one she held close to her aching muscles. Her pale hair was tied up in a mess of a bun, though a couple braids intertwined made it look intentional – Josephine’s doing, to be sure.

“I know. I could almost pass for Cullen, sulking and wrapped in fur like this,” she joked in return. “Surprisingly, I have found these last couple days to be…comforting,” She was finally able to breath, talk, and walk without heaving for breath. The healers let her bandages be loosened as the sutures began to heal.

“Good. You need those kinds of days, as we all do. Only, you have the more difficult task in such a goal.”

The made their way to a set of steps leading to the stone hallway, and the Seeker outstretched her forearm for the Inquisitor to brace on as she made her way up, her body tensing extra when her right side was being propelled upwards. Her face was as unaffected as it could be – she had been humbled enough by her body for a while.

When they came to the door leading to the great Hall, Cassandra stopped to gaze back out at the Courtyard. “They have taken good care of this place. It provides a valuable place of solace,” she remarked.

“Yes, though, if I see one more bushel of elfroot, I think I’ll start grazing like a Druffalo.” Theia’s humor was laden with fatigue from being messed with, supervised, and escorted every which path she took. She always considered herself an extrovert, though the attentiveness everyone gave her, as if she was more their ward than leader, made her heart heavy. She wanted to be depended on again as a source of strength and solidarity. It was difficult to keep in mind that their care for her was just so, because she was indeed just that.

Still, walking the garden for what felt like the 500th time that week was becoming more monotonous than healing.

As they made their way back to the hall, Cassandra stopped and shifted her weight. “I am afraid I must go back to my duties. Should I ask someone to escort you to wherever you wish to go further?” Cassandra asked with care.

“No, friend, I can find my way to my own chambers. I want to rest, and read some of the reports from this morning again.” Theia wasn’t tip-toeing back into her responsibilities. From the moment she could sit up on her own volition and move her hands without a twinge of connected muscle pain punishing her, she had been receiving her own reports and letters once more. She couldn’t stand the thought of her advisors piling on her own correspondences on top of their own.

“Inquisitor, are you certain? The stairs are steep,” Cassandra cautioned, eyeing Theia knowingly. Toughness and austerity were like a second dialect to the Seeker.

“I can manage. If I fall, I’ll simply laugh all the way down at the tragedy of my existence,” she laughed softly.

Cassandra shook her head, “At least that makes one of us capable of doing so,” she replied, before nodding her head and departing for the Courtyard.

Theia watched her go for a moment, before turning sorely on her hip and sighing. How much longer before she can be rid of this pace? She had been injured before, but nothing that caused more than a limp, or an arm to be in a sling, or her head to ache for a couple days. Having a flesh wound was more trouble than it was worth.

She had the urge to yell up at the sky, “Alright, now it’s either having an Anchor that opens and closes doors to the Fade, OR it’s debilitating flesh wounds. Not both! Got it?”

Skyhold responded with reassurance in the wake of seeing their injured leader. This was the woman who survived an avalanche, and encounter with a possible arch-demon, who traveled through time magic. She could certainly best a battle wound. And, with the way the story was spun, no one besides her close allies and Council members knew the true severity of her circumstance, or how close she came to danger.

No one had cause to fear. Oh, well, besides the prevailing reasons that loomed over them like an apocalypse…you know, because it kind of was one.

The journey was embarrassing for Theia and she had no witnesses. Each step had to be reached with both feet before she could move onto the next one. A hand went protectively to her patched up side as she pressed on, wincing and grunting with frustration. When she got to angry she had to remind herself there were people nearby who’s primary job was to run in the direction of her voice if they heard anything suspect.

It felt like eternity had passed when she finally reached the top, but In actuality it was no more than 5 minutes. Theia was injured, sure, but she was also unreasonable in expectations.

She took a moment to collect herself, steadying her breathing as her gaze went to the spread of papers laying atop her bed. She had three important letters to dispatch today, including a discrete status report to The Iron Bull who remained with his men in Emprise du Lion. The letters they returned were amply entertaining for the Inquisitor during her bed rest, scribbled with sidenotes and exaggerations:

“Boss, demons are here up the ass and Templars are running around looking more mangey than the actual wolves. The wolves also hate us. It’s some frozen crap up here. I’m starting to think you got the better end of the deal,” one line from Bull.

“We requested more heavy clothes to go under our armor. The Dalish’s “bow” can’t take down enough rams in time. Also, watch yourself with those compression bandages. The heat will get you if you’re not careful,” a note from Krem.

“Everything is faring well and we are remaining steady, and eagerly look forward to your return. Rest easy, Inquisitor, you only have one body to arm,” a sincere and warming note from Blackwall.

She slowly approached her bed, tossing the bear fur onto a nearby chair. The brisk air embraced her upper body and sent goosebumps up and down her arms. Even if it was cold, as she slid out of her muslin shirt, she felt better. Just having the bandage wrapped around her body like a corset and her slacks made her feel like the injury wasn’t as bad as it was.

A couple of hours had passed, with the Inquisitor sitting on the side of her bed, sifting through notes and fulfilling her paperwork duties. Her flow was broken by the sound of a door knock.

“Please come in!” she called out, but fearing her voice wasn’t heard she flicked one of her wrists, and the downstairs door unlocked and went ajar. Her eyes went back to the lines of text in front of her.

It was Josephine and one of the healers who were tasked with keeping the Inquisitor alive. Surely, she did not get paid enough for such a responsibility, and the Inquisition was known for paying well. Josephine was behind the elven woman, who bowed respectfully, holding a roll of new bandages and some cloth for washing.

“Your Worship, it is time to change your bandages,” the woman advised, holding the materials out. Theia had insisted after the third round of bandage changes that she would do them herself. This was the first time she would do so, though.

Theia slid out of bed very carefully, and walked lightly over to her. “Thank you, Anya. You have taken good care of me,” she greeted, taking the cloth and bandage into her own hands.

The woman named Anya smiled. “Thank you for being a cooperative patient. You are a welcome respite from the soldiers and their…mouths,” she said, knowing Theia wouldn’t take offense. In fact she agreed: nothing could be more vitriolic than the words of an injured soldier, and she could only imagine how they sharpened with the sight of an elven mage.

“Tell me if they cross a line, please,” Theia placed a hand on Anya’s soldier. “I know I keep asking, but, I mean it.”

“Of course, My Lady,” Anya said, nodding again. She turned and greeted Lady Josephine, before departing from the bed chamber.

Theia went to her bed and tossed the supplies on it, reaching for the place in her bandage that secured the outermost end of it.

“I’m starting to think if I kept these on they’d become a second layer of skin like a creature’s hide,” Theia joked with a darker sense of humor than usual these days, no doubt from her impatience at not being able to resume her life as it had been.

Josephine grinned, “You’d look more like Corypheus by the sounds of reports,” she countered.

“Ugh, you’re right, nevermind.”

Theia had started to unravel herself from her binding, but she was stopped when she felt Josephine come up behind her and place a hand on hers. “Theia, I was wondering…”

“Hm?” Theia looked up, brow furrowed with curiosity.

“Would you…let me re-bandage you?” Josephine’s voice was sweet and hopeful. Up until that point, she had witnessed all of Theia’s re-bandaging and check-ups, but she had always been surrounded by healers and personnel. It was hardly a discrete ritual.

Theia froze in place as she was caught off guard by Josephine’s request. “I, uh, well,” she cleared her throat and looked down at her body. “You know what to do?”

Josephine smiled. “I watched like a hawk, and I asked questions. You do not have to humor me, I just…felt an impulse.”

“Sure, Josephine, I don’t mind.” Theia’s voice was warm, humbled. She guided Josephine’s hand with her own to the bandage end and then surrendered both of her arms gently above her head. This made Josephine’s face glow with both nervousness and glee.

Attentively, Josephine exchanged the collecting bandage between her hands as she reached around and around Theia’s waist. Theia watched her movements and kept quiet, the stillness of her face and body at the mercy of Josephine’s touch.

“I am flattered you stepped away from your desk in order to tend to my grotesque and boring battle wounds,” Theia teased, feeling her chest and ribs grow into themselves with the loosening.

“I had a moment, and when I saw Miss Anya heading to your chambers, I took the risk. I am happy it paid off,” Josephine hummed, though she grew quiet as she came to the end of the bandage. Then, she say the compression cloth square that clung to Theia’s side from the endured pressure. Her eyes flickered up to Theia’s, almost as if she were asking for permission. Theia grinned and stayed still.

Gently, ever so gently, Josephine’s right index and thumb fingers picked at the corner edge of the cloth, and it cooperated, damp at her touch. She pulled it away slowly, the sticky sound of its detachment yielding to the sight of an intimidating wound.

The sutures had done their job and had since been removed, at least at the insistence of Theia’s opinion, Once she was out of the woods she could tend to the healing herself with the insights of a couple trusted healers, Anya being one of them. The wound itself was leaving a hefty scar, about 2-2.5 inches in width at its widest point. The wound stretched from the front of her right upper ribs and slid downward towards her hips. It looked like a giant cat had clawed at her.

The tissue was healing well, but the paleness of her skin made every blue, red, and purple hue of bruise and scar known.

It was a quiet moment of aw when Josephine uncovered it all, and finally got to get a clear look at the remaining damage. She couldn’t even process the fact that her lover was topless in front of her, baring herself in the open air, still her same beautiful self but now with war telling its story on her body with a vengeance.

Theia picked up on the irony of it, and when she saw the concern and pause in Josephine’s expression, she sought to break the tension.

“Well, that’s not exactly the look I imagined you’d have when you first saw my bare breasts, but, I’ll take it,” she teased, holding her waist and chest still as her hands went to her breasts shyly.

Josephine heard her words and blinked rapidly, snapping herself out of it. “Oh, uh, My Lady,” her instinctive rhetoric kicked in. “I mean, Theia, I—“

“It’s alright, Josephine. I understand. But, it looks worse than it is,” Theia comforted, leaning into her lap some more. Josephine felt her weight and became even more self-conscious. Everything felt like a trap into embarrassment. Is this what Theia felt like on a regular basis? Because it was most unsavory.

She managed to step outside of her own thoughts as she watched Theia reach a hand down, pressing the open palm of the hand sans anchor onto the scar. The hand began to glow lightly. It wasn’t anything special, no magical fix-it method of erasing her wound. But, the healing nature of it was just enough to protect from infection and ease the course of healing slightly. That would have to be enough expedience for her. She was comforted by knowing she could do something to help it along besides lay here or there, waiting.

After a moment, the glowing ceded, and she released her hand to fall to her side. She made eye contact with Josephine, who had watched in wonder.

“Do you ever get bored or unimpressed with having these abilities? Like it is simply another limb or sense like taste or smell?” Josephine made conversation.

“Hah, when I get close to it, I ask Dorian to make something interesting happen. Then we go off somewhere and play around. I learn a lot from him, he…learns something from me, I don’t know what, but, I have to think for the sake of my ego.”

“Ah, I see. So that is where the sparks of fire and ice in the tree line just southeast comes from.”

“Um, yeah. We…we try to remain discrete.”

“Try?”

Theia nodded with surrender. “Alright, but you have to admit, it looks rather badass.”

Josephine gave her a look. She had seen a lot of “badass” things if all that required it was elemental magic and the sound of two people being way-too-impressed with themselves for their own good.

“Very well, if you say so,” Josephine said, reaching for the new fresh cloth and folding it into a shape like its predecessor. Theia smirked at the lack of impression she made.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Theia teased further, “the healer actually recommended to me a new position for re-applying my bandage.”

“What? But she did not tell me—“

Theia bit her lip with mischief, and before Josephine could react with reason, she reached her hands and placed them on her shoulders, pushing her back on the bed she had been leaning on. Josephine’s breath escaped her mouth abruptly as she went down. She was confused, then intrigued.

“Theia, what are you doing?” she asked, eyes narrowed and peering down her nose back at her.

Theia was gambling with her believability and allure whilst nursing a wound that made her groan when she sneezed. But, she wanted something to be salvaged in these days of practical vulnerability.

She got her left leg up first without much soreness, and used it to anchor the other, weaker side. She bit bit her lip to hide the difficulty behind an expression of thoughtfulness. It was rough, but she got up to where she wanted to be. Josephine’s hands didn’t know where to go: do they keep her in place? Do they help her?” Do they reach for skin? Where?

Her contemplation bought Theia time, and she was finally there, straddling her woman’s hips, exhaling the tension from her jaw. Josephine knew that had to ache.

“Theia!” Josephine said, her hands finally resolving to fall on Theia’s hips as a gesture of support. “What has gotten into you?”

Theia breathed, the lack of forgiveness in her body perturbing her. “Doing some physical therapy?”

“Oh, please,” Josephine tried to sit up, having her arms reach behind her and push her chest upwards against Theia’s upper body. She didn’t mean it through her concern, but her lips came in close contact with the Inquisitor’s.

“No, really, I needed to stretch my hips. I promise,” Theia breathed, putting her lips within an inch of Josephine’s, breathing hot air as her hands rested on Josephine’s chest as soft as she could while also lightly depending on her body for support.

An impatient groan came from Josephine’s mouth. “Agh! You and your machinations,” she chided.

“You honestly thought I could resist you for a full week? Even with a giant gash in my side? Josephine, please,” her words danced on the entendre of rebuff and begging…the worst and best kind.

“You know what you are doing and you know it is unwise. Now, if you can get on our right side, I can help you down and it will not risk…” Josephine began to shift her weight forward, as much as she could without forcing Theia’s fragility into an unintentional fall or slip.

Theia beared down on her seat, she was not giving up easily, Her hands went to Josephine’s hair, fingers hungering to get lost in the ribbons of black curls that remained secured in her classic bun. Her shoulders curved into Josephine’s body. She had her effectively pinned enough; even with the wound, Theia had the build of a Knight-Enchanter in training, and it was not frail nor compact.

“Josephine, I have a secret to tell you,” Theia breathed on the skin of her lover’s neck as she left kisses in its path, “you have a topless and besotted woman on top of you. Choose your next move carefully,” she said low, irresistible, enticing. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it: Josephine closed her eyes, the buried desire she had kept in the midst of stress and duty coming to the fore.

“That woman,” Josephine exhaled, her hands moving to Theia’s sides with care not to hurt her “is after my own heart. But she is also recovering, and is being attended to generously by the hands of her lover who is also a busy and demanded-upon Diplomat. Perhaps she should rethink her advance for now,” Josephine pulled her head back enough to make eye contact with Theia.

Theia’s chest raised as she inhaled with longing and disappointment. A pause, while she scanned Josephine’s conflicted face. She knew she wanted her, but something in her gut spurred at her: not now, not like this.

“As you wish, Lady Ambassador,” Theia whispered. She was about to pull away and slide down, but the back of her neck was caught by Josepine’s hand. Suddenly, Josephine’s mouth was to hers, in a quiet, still kiss. One with conviction, one that was relentlessly waiting for it to be able to grow into something beyond itself.

Theia kissed back, letting the consolation prize flood her veins and her nerves like a forest fire. She could feel her magic oscillate, and in her left palm, the Anchor’s energy stirred.

Ten seconds of bliss, before back to the reality of it.

Josephine helped her slide down gently, until Theia was back on her feet in front of her. Instead of pushing her fully away from her grasp, she tenderly wrapped her legs around Theia’s upper thighs, securing her stance in front of her. Smiling knowingly, Josephine grabbed the cloth again, and, finishing the folding, tilted her head as she pressed it on the wound with a fully-open palm. Now, it was time for the bandage.

Busying herself, Josephine’s hands held the roll of bandage as she began unraveling it. Theia took the opportunity to wrap her arms around Josephine’s neck loosely, keeping her close. Even though she did not get what she originally wanted, in that moment it felt like the alternative was proving to be better than expected. She enjoyed this side of Josephine, a side where you could see just how truthfully and intimately she cared for the good. That is when the thoughts started interjecting themselves in Theia’s stream of consciousness: those terrifying, enthralling, deadly, enlightening words.

I’m falling in love with you.

When she had found the end of the bandage knot, Josephine paused, and let her hands fall heavily on her lap. Her face was lost in thoughts.

Concerned, Theia let a hand caress the Ambassador’s cheek. “Hm?” she hummed, her eyes looking for truth in Josephine’s.

Josephine gazed up at her for a moment, before a pang of weakness enveloped her again. She let her hands grasp at Theia’s ribs, and her face went to her abdomen. Deeply, reverently, lovingly, she kissed the indent between Theia’s lightly-sloping abdominal muscles.

The act sent butterflies racing in Theia’s stomach, Not even the subtle ache it caused in her wound was noticeable beyond a fleeting sting, Her arms enclosed their grip tighter around Josephine’s neck, her own lips falling to rest on the top of her head.

“My love,” Theia whispered into her hair, “I don’t remember this part of the bandaging process.”

Josephine’s lips parted from Theia’s skin as she laughed lightly. “Some healing touches go beyond manual direction.”

Eventually, the Lady Ambassador was able to finish what she started. While her execution was not, the end result was nothing but textbook. And no one knew just what her secret ritual had been to get there.

#oc stuff #Theia Trevelyan #josephine montilyet #cassandra pentaghast #Inquisitor x Josephine #romance #fanfiction #dragon age #dragon age inquisition

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fansplaining · 6 years

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Transcript: Episode 71: Lori Morimoto

(episode | show notes)

[Intro music: Awel by Stefsax]

Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!

FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!

ELM: This is Episode 71, Lori Morimoto.

ELM: Who… yeah, yay! Yes. Who you may remember from oh, I wanna say Episode 29. Did I just pull that number out correctly?

FK: I have no idea, we will have it in the show notes.

ELM: Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it. Our Shipping and Activism episode. I swear to God it’s 29. I don’t know why I’m leaning in on this, but. Which was with Lori, Dr. Lori Morimoto, and Rukmini Pande, both fan studies scholars, where we talked about a specific topic, which was shipping and activism, and how those things aren’t necessarily…What’s the does not equal sign? You know?

FK: Yes.

ELM: Let me say this as awkwardly as possible! We had them both on to talk about a specific topic, so we wanted to talk to them separately about their work generally so hopefully we’ll have Rukmini on sometime in the near future. But first up, Lori!

FK: Yeah, and I’m especially excited to have her on. I think you are too, because she studies transcultural fandom and we had a question about that when we were on Australian live radio that we totally could not answer, so we’ll ask her about that question and hopefully she’ll drop some knowledge on us.

ELM: Yes we were on Australian radio, which was… it was an exciting experience for me, I’ve never done live radio before.

FK: Me neither!

ELM: And it was especially exciting because it was in Australia and we had to go on the air at 7PM our time, which was 10 in the morning their time, and I went on the way to the studio I went to get a coffee, and I was like “I’m going to be on the radio in Australia right now!” And the people at the coffee shop were just like, have you lost your mind? They literally could not process those words. I was like “yeah and the funny thing about it is it’s tomorrow there!” That made it so much worse. They were like “take your coffee good luck you can do it!” So that was exciting for me.

FK: I love that you overshared this to your barista. OK. [laughing]

ELM: I talk, do you not say all sorts of…look, OK. I’ve worked at a racetrack now for 15 years, right?

FK: I say all sorts of weird stuff to, I’m not saying that I don’t, I’m just saying that I love that this particular one you told your barista and they thought you were insane.

ELM: They asked me how I was doing and I just wanted to let them know what was going on! I’m just going to say that if you talk to, don’t be creepy and don’t tell people to smile, ever, but if you find yourself chatting with people in a service capacity, you’re not alone. Tons of people do that.

FK: Yeah. I also chat with people in a service capacity cause they’re humans [ELM laughing] who I’m having an interaction with! It’s only this specific thing which is really hard to explain to somebody that you decided to share. [both laughing] You know sometimes when someone pulls something out you’re just like “why did you choose to share that?” It’s not bad, it’s just like why was that the thing?

ELM: I never feel that way.

FK: Oh my God. OK OK. We need to get back on topic because I think we have a couple of letters to read before we call Lori.

ELM: Yes, we do! They’re about our Fandom Tourism episode, another topic that people…I feel like we keep going through this wave where we’ll do a topic and then we��ll get many weeks of responses. This seems to be one that has struck something.

FK: And then we have ones that we think people are going to respond to and everyone’s like, nope.

ELM: Crickets. [FK laughs] It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s nice to be surprised constantly. So, I don’t know. This is not surprising that people are interested in this because I think this is something that we, you know, I don’t wanna say that we all engage in it but I think that a lot of people and obviously not everyone has the opportunity to travel but you can even do it within the place that you live if you happen to be lucky enough to live in the place where your fandom has taken place. You know what I mean?

FK: Totally. OK. Do you wanna read the first letter or shall I?

ELM: I can read the first letter! This is from Livia, who I believe is the same Livia that wrote in a while back to talk about YA.

FK: I believe so!

ELM: So thanks for writing again! “Hey there. On the topic of fan tourism with non fictional people and places, my friend’s mum is an English teacher and she loves Shakespeare. She has a life size cardboard cutout of him in her classroom.” That’s really good. “Every year…” That was my editorialization. “Every year my friend’s family goes to Stratford Upon Avon in the summer, where Shakespeare used to live, and they always tour his old house and go see his mum’s farm and stuff. My friend says every single time they go her mom is totally awestruck and is like ‘Shakespeare once stood here!’ and always quotes the bit of Romeo and Juliet about paving stones. Thanks again, Livia.” That’s adorable. I like that she does this every time. [FK laughing] I also love the idea, do you, when you visit a place where you know someone that you admire has been, do you think about that? Do you think, like, “X has stood here”?

FK: Yeah!

ELM: Yeah?

FK: Sure! Absolutely!

ELM: That’s funny!

FK: I don’t think that I like, I mean, I don’t sit there and rhapsodize on it, but definitely I can’t imagine it NOT crossing my mind.

ELM: You’re gonna quote Shakespeare at the spot that you’re standing?

FK: Yeah, probably…no, I don’t know. I might, if I were there! I don’t wanna say I’m too cool for that.

ELM: [laughing] It’s just funny to try to think about, sure, you’re also probably breathing the same air molecule. Right? What are the odds? Actually the odds are probably incredibly low.

FK: But isn’t that awesome? We’re all made of stars Elizabeth!!!

ELM: Oh Jesus. It’s just funny. It’s a funny way to think about it. In the same way that I find materiality really interesting. And the fact that…there’s a classic old RadioLab about materiality like this, where it’s about trying to sort out people who care about the specificities of an object, the meaning behind a specific object, vs. the people who don’t. One of the hosts has this total, OK. It’s a baseball that, you know, Hank Aaron held. OK. And the other one is like DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! IT WAS HANK AARON’S BASEBALL! I don’t know, this is a random example, I don’t think that was actually one of them.

FK: Yeah, it is funny. I think I’m pretty far on the “I don’t care” scale and yet I still get this feeling. You know? I’m not usually super super super invested in that. But it’s not foreign to me, you know what I mean? There must be people who are much less on this scale, who are even further yet like “I don’t care that someone touched this at all.”

ELM: Right? Which is…it’s just interesting to think about that’s all.

FK: OK, should I read the next letter?

ELM: Yes!

FK: OK. This one is from Stephanie Burt who we had on for two episodes before. And she writes: “LotR movie fandom has absolutely transformed international tourism in NZ. There are enormous LotR/ Hobbit film sets or creatures in the Wellington and Auckland airports. As of 2004 6% of international tourists visiting NZ say LotR is one of their reasons for visiting, 1 in 100 that it was their only reason. I suspect numbers are higher today.

“You can take helicopter tours of the country organized around it, and there are several full-time visit-the-movie set places: we’ve been to the most famous one, the set for the Shire in Matamata, central North Island, and it is an absolute delight but, also, a demonstration of industrial-scale tourism, getting tourbusloads of people in and out in an hour, hour after hour. There are other sites that work the same way.

"The prominence of LotR among international images of New Zealand, and its place in the tourist industry, is a source of money and employment but also a source of amusement and sometime irritation for people who actually live there; I suspect book-fandom LotR types are not entirely happy about the widespread misconception that Tolkien intended LotR to take place there—the whole country on occasion seems to have re-branded itself as Middle Earth, and NZ writers sometimes make fun of the image. (The NZ poet Murray Edmond has a very funny new poem about what to do when you find a dead hobbit in your garden.) When you—that is, when I—tell people we’ve recently lived in NZ, "oh! Middle Earth!” is one of the most common things that I hear.

“NZ isn’t MIddle Earth, just like Christ Church, Oxford isn’t Hogwarts. And in both cases it’s slightly annoying both that the fan tourism has made it harder to see the actual people and their cultural production, and that the movie producers’ choice of location has made it harder to bring our own ideas to the books.

"But it’s fun! and it’s an important source of revenue for NZ—especially for the less urbanized parts of the country, which seem to really benefit from the tourism.”

And as you probably can gather, Stephanie spent some time living in New Zealand recently, so.

ELM: Gathered. That’s interesting. I think that’s a really interesting duality going on, this idea of…duality isn’t the right word, but the idea that it takes away, not only are you ignoring the real, I mean, there it seems like it’s more about ecological…it’s not the same as the center of Oxford which is very much man made history, maybe this is natural history. I’m just assuming based on what I know of New Zealand’s sheep population [FK laughs] that it’s not a ton of structures, plus I’ve seen those Lord of the Rings movies, so it’s like…that kind of simultaneously contracting from the real thing and other forms of tourism while imposing this sort of…is hegemony the right word?

FK: You love that word. You love the word “hegemony.”

ELM: I do. Once it came back into my vocabulary a couple weeks ago, I’ve been like “It’s been too long since we said hegemony all the time,” I feel like it’s a very 2000s word, and I wish that we said it more.

FK: I don’t know that I feel the same lack or the same destruction of, oh, the imagination I had in my mind before I read the book—I mean before I saw the movie, now that’s been destroyed by the movie. I don’t feel that way about it.

ELM: Really? Do you not, when you think of Harry Potter characters, do you see the world that Warner Brothers created? Do you see those actors? Maybe not all of them.

FK: Not all of them, but also maybe a sort of conceptual blend, you know what I mean?

ELM: But aesthetically though, they took a very specific…they made a very specific choice. It’s interesting when you look, you’ve seen the new illustrated editions?

FK: Yeah!

ELM: Aesthetically quite different!

FK: Yeah, I don’t feel like they’ve entirely contaminated my mind. And I don’t feel like Lord of the Rings has entirely contaminated my mind, either. I love the actors who played…

ELM: It has for me, but I didn’t read it till afterwards, so.

FK: Yeah, in addition to having read it many times before I saw it I reread it on a regular basis cause I’m that person.

ELM: Many times, Flourish, really?

FK: Yeah! I think I’ve probably read it 20 times. [ELM gasps] Yeah.

ELM: Do you…like the prose?

FK: Yeah! I mean…I wouldn’t say that it’s not…its own thing… [laughing] You know what I mean? It’s very much of itself, but yes, I enjoy it.

ELM: OK, OK!

FK: For what it is. And the way it is.

ELM: Sure.

FK: Yeah! I do like it. And I feel like I get something new out of it every time that I read it.

ELM: Solid.

FK: Yeah but so whatever, I liked the actress who plays Éowyn, she does a good job, but she doesn’t look anything like Éowyn. And that’s OK. You know what I mean? Fine. That’s all right.

ELM: Who’s the actress? Who is that actress?

FK: Miranda Otto.

ELM: What else has she been in?

FK: I have no idea. Not that much that I’ve seen. She’s nice. But Éowyn’s like a Valkyrie and she did a really good, even though she’s very small she did a really good job of…

ELM: She had a presence!

FK: She had a presence, but she’s just not the person I envisioned when I envisioned Éowyn. And that’s OK, it’s all right, but I don’t imagine her when I think of Éowyn.

ELM: Do you imagine Ian McKellan?

FK: Yeah, probably. [laughter] But I think I always imagined Ian McKellan! You know what I mean?

ELM: Yeah. Yes. So did Tolkien when he wrote it.

FK: Probably!

ELM: “Someday!” [laughing]

FK: Yeah. Yeah.

ELM: Alright. Back to Lori. Should we call her?

FK: Let’s call her!

[Interstitial music from the game “Glitch”]

FK: Alright! I think it’s time to welcome Lori Morimoto onto the podcast. Hooray! Hello, Lori!

LM: Hello!

ELM: Welcome back!

Lori Morimoto: Thank you for having me! Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

FK: I actually wonder because…I guess most people come back for our year in review episodes. I was looking at it and I was like “wow you’ve been on the podcast twice!” because of the year in review. So. It’s a pleasure to have you here for a third time.

LM: I’m very excited, so.

ELM: And we were on an episode of Three Patch Podcast together long before Fansplaining, so I just feel like we’re constantly podcasting together, second only to Flourish.

LM: It’s weird how these weird relationships develop online.

ELM: Wow you’re calling our relationship weird!

LM: Noooooo, I didn’t mean it that way [grumbling] [ELM laughs]

FK: Now I know what it must feel like to be the third person staring at me and you, Elizabeth.

ELM: You’re now the third wheel.

FK: Now, I’m the third wheel, it’s so weird! [all laugh]

ELM: Let’s get serious. So when you were on the first time with Rukmini, you were kind of on as experts in a topic. You weren’t really on specifically to talk about your work although obviously your work informed the discussion, but we had you on to discuss a specific issue. But I kinda want to take a step back and talk a little bit about your work. Do you even use the term “aca-fan” any more? I feel like this one is falling out of fashion with some people.

LM: It’s a tricky term, isn’t it?

ELM: Fan studies scholar?

LM: In writing I tend to say “scholar-fan.”

ELM: Like scholar dash fan?

LM: Yeah, scholar dash fan or whatever. Matt Hills does that, and I kind of prefer it to aca-fan just because aca-fan is so loaded now.

ELM: Yeah.

LM: Although on Twitter it’s @acafanmom, so go figure.

FK: Could you just summarize why aca-fan is so loaded? I think some people who listen to this podcast will have followed this, and some people will not.

LM: Well, if you join my Patreon course… [all laughing] I have a whole thing about aca-fan! Basically, it was, nobody’s really sure first of all where it started, it’s generally attributed to Harry Jenkins… Harry. [laughs] HENRY Jenkins. It kind of got a certain reputation within some parts of fandom as kind of academics who are trying to butt in and tell us how we do things and what we do and sort of… an interloper? Kind of? Impression, I guess. On the one side, on the fandom side.

And then on the academic side there were people who were concerned about a whole range of things from the being too close to what you study to aca-fan is kind of a pejorative, almost, or self-pejorative, term that increased not being taken seriously by other academics. So in general, the reason that I’m not particularly fond of it…I’m happy to go after the discipline, because I think that disciplinarity is a problem. Or at least it inhibits certain kinds of conversation. But the fan side of it bothers me enough that I don’t generally refer to myself that way.

ELM: In the context…

LM: In the context of fandom.

ELM: In fandom.

LM: But even in academia I don’t really any more, just because…I don’t know. I don’t feel it, you know?

ELM: Do you feel like you’ve had to take, over the last few years you’ve had to kind of rebifurcate those two parts of yourself? I would say, having been in fandom with you as well, and not just you but there was a period where I felt like I would see more scholars reference their experience and knowledge in discourse, and I think that after some…discourse…

FK: [laughing] In the popular sense…

ELM: People are less inclined to do that these days!

LM: I think that that whole thing…roughly 2013…that was sort of a turning point for me in identifying with that term. I thought that some of the fans that were going “you guys are just throwing your weight around” weren’t entirely unjustified in some ways. In others, things that I worried about at the time have actually kind of come to fruition, which is neither here nor there, but that was about the point that I decided at least within fandom I was still gonna be sort of open as a scholar, as a fan scholar, but I wasn’t really going to throw my weight around as a scholar in fannish spaces, if that makes sense.

ELM: Which is hard, I feel like. Flourish, does this all make sense to you? We’re speaking in veiled terms.

FK: I think it mostly makes sense although I’m curious about what you worried about and what has come to fruition, because when you speak in those terms it’s like “ooooooh, what has come to fruition?” I wanna push but I don’t wanna push, I don’t wanna be like tell me all the juicy gory…

LM: I’ll try to keep it as vague as possible! In the fandom I was in there was a lot of meta being written, some of it was really great, I’m reading it like “oh my god this is amazing.” And others of it read to me at the time I was teaching fan…not fan studies. I was teaching film studies. It read to me like very basic attempts at film analysis that needed some work.

And that was really where I directed my comments, if you will. And especially when some of the fans who were writing it began talking about how, you know, this is basically scholarship, and I’m sort of…it’s really basically not! Come on. And then there was a discussion about how meta is being written for fun, and I think they were right. It is written for fun. It isn’t trying to pass a class or anything like that. And so that was when I backed away.

FK: Right, so it sounds like it’s complex because on the one hand meta is something that’s written just for fun but then when people begin to speak about it as scholarship, which is something you do for work, it becomes like…I’m not sure that I can endorse this as scholarship. I imagine that people who work in the film industry feel similarly to some fan films, or even…

LM: It’s possible, yeah.

FK: Or even in some cases, I’m sure people feel this way about fanfic and this gets into the critique in fanfic aspect. Where does critique come in to any fan practice, and at what point can you not turn your brain off about that?

LM: Yeah, and I do think…as much as there are overlaps, we’re talking very different generic conventions across all of those things that you mentioned. And I think it’s the breakdown of those convention where people start getting a little excited about turf. Not that that was what I was concerned about at the time, it was much less…I’ll take good analysis from anybody! But scholarship is a specific genre of writing, and as intelligent as meta is, and it can be, I have the Fan Meta Reader online, I love it, as great as meta can be it’s a different genre of writing from scholarship. So that’s kind of where I got a little…

ELM: This is interesting though because I feel like a lot of the tensions between fan studies and fans are not…what you described is definitely something I’ve experienced as well, being a professional book critic and watching the ways sometimes people analyze some of these works, and I will feel like a dick but I’m also like “well… this is a really bad reading that you’re doing right now.” And these are things that you kind of practice, and obviously I know that you’re very conscious of this too, there’s levels of access to education and to languages and etc., but as far as I understand it a lot of the conflicts—and not necessarily the ones we’re talking about right now—between fan studies and fans are not so much about “you’re doing your fannish practice wrong,” it’s more about “can you even be trusted in that space, you’re going to study them, fans as lab rats and you’re the scientist.”

LM: Yeah, and it’s a legitimate concern, but one that fan studies itself is really unable to address in any meaningful way because by and large the scholarship on fans that has proven with the fullness of time to be untrustworthy generally doesn’t come out of fan studies, it comes from people who are in social psychology, or other fields basically who sort of…you have the same problem with media studies as well. Television in particular, and film. People are sort of, “well, I can watch films!” From no matter what discipline.

And as younger disciplines, as in the case of fan studies sort of…I don’t want to say we’re the bastard child of media studies but we’re certainly not [all laughing] the shining star, it’s really easy for what we do to just be overlooked. We have no control over what people outside of fan studies are doing. Within fan studies, we have extensive conversations about ethics, about methodologies…the methodology one is growing. But by and large, that kind of scholarship which does exist, I mean, I’ve seen it, and journalism as well, where people sort of flounce in, “oh my god there’s fanfiction!” You know. Shut up. [laughing]

ELM: Even when it’s not in a soul-crushing way… and I don’t wanna, you know, I have good friends who are fan culture journalists who definitely write about X fandom or whatever, here’s what’s happening in this fandom, let me break this down. You can probably…I don’t even need to subtweet. Gav does this. Aja’s done this before, and I’m good friends with both of them. But that’s not…I understand why people get anxious about that. Obviously it depends on how you do it, and it depends on people’s opinions of you as a writer, subtweeting something specific right now. But you know, I think people are always gonna get…do people who are the subject of an anthropological study feel comfortable?

LM: Right.

ELM: Would people, speaking about them in a detached tone as if they’re studying their lab rats, right? And I know anthropology’s very concerned about that. But still. It doesn’t change what it is. But…

LM: Well, if somebody in anthropology was like “here’s this small group of, relatively small group of scholars who study fans, let’s have a look,” yeah! That would feel weird! And I would at least…that’s sort of the approach I try to take with my own stuff. What would I want to know if somebody was talking about me, and how do I make that accessible to fans? So they can see what I’m saying. As you said, a lot of scholarship is inaccessible, not just by virtue of how it’s written or what it’s talking about, but oftentimes just because of the price of the book.

ELM: Literally you cannot access it, yes.

LM: Which you cannot afford it. And so I go to a lot of pains to try and make my stuff available one way or another. And that was really the impetus of the Fan Studies For Fans course over on Patreon.

ELM: Wait, tell us about this course though.

LM: OK! Fan Studies For Fans is a ten-lecture course that I decided to do back in August of last year. I am currently working on the fourth lecture, so it’s about that kind of pace. And it is actually the Patreon fees are by lecture not by month, because I knew this was gonna happen. And basically I’m just trying to talk to people who already have a grounding in what fandom is, at least as we understand it. So to add all of my qualifiers, it would basically be online, English-language, largely women’s fandom. Using that as the baseline that I don’t have to explain, I talk about what it is that we talk about and how we got into those conversations in the first place.

So the first lecture was about the term “aca-fan,” and also discussions about ethics in fan studies. The second one was an overview of the cultural studies origins of fan studies…fan studies comes out of a number of different disciplines, English literature is heavily involved in fanfiction, my own background was media and cultural studies, so I kind of give an overview of how we ended up at the fan studies point. And then the last lecture was the origins of fan studies: when it began, who was involved, what were some of the key arguments, what took off and what has simmered longer. And so the next one I’m talking about how we talk about fanfiction in fan studies.

ELM: So when you say lectures, do you record them in videos, or…?

LM: I record them in audio, which is why I have the new microphone. But I just couldn’t stomach video. No. I wasn’t ready for video yet. So. I post the text as a paid Patreon post and then I include spoken audio component as well. I figured, if you’ve got somebody who’s commuting and maybe they want to listen to it but they won’t have time to read it, that might be helpful, so.

FK: Well, it’s accessible!

LM: I actually also have one person currently who’s been translating the lectures into Dutch! Which has been incredible.

ELM: Fandom is so good.

LM: I know! Fandom is great.

ELM: Fandom is like “I like this, I’m translating it into the language that I speak!” Oh, so great.

LM: The only payment I could offer was full access to everything, but that was basically it! So I was really really grateful to her for taking this on.

ELM: That feels like it just comes from the spirit of fanworks translation, probably.

LM: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s been great, and I know…I have one other person who’s been interested in talking about…I mean, translating into French. But they are interested in doing it once the entire series is complete, which, fine by me. And of course translations are their own property to do with, if they wanna publish them as an e-book or something, more power to them. I don’t care! It’s such laborious work.

FK: That’s exciting too because I feel like even people who are relatively privileged, people who are, whatever, maybe in college and studying and trying to pursue this, often don’t have access because fan studies is so specialized. Unless you happen to be able to reach out to somebody and to really pursue it in that way…you can’t take an intro to fan studies course at every university! You can’t get there.

ELM: Can you in most universities?

FK: No, but at some.

LM: There are some that do it but not a lot.

ELM: You didn’t have fan studies at your college, Flourish.

FK: No but I taught it at MIT.

ELM: So that’s exciting.

FK: Yeah but I’m just saying it’s nice. Because I would have loved to have that and it wasn’t there and the only reason I knew about it even was because I had interacted with Henry Jenkins and otherwise I would have had no clue, and had no ability to have any…

ELM: I didn’t know this existed until less than five years ago, right?

FK: Yeah, yeah!

ELM: Amherst doesn’t have a media, there’s no media studies there. It’s a small fancy liberal arts college.

FK: [laughing] Yeah, there wasn’t media studies at my college either. I was a religion major.

ELM: It has a classics department! Don’t worry about it. So. I mean, to be fair there’s…it’s not that grim. It’s not like, not to drag Oxbridge. They must have other disciplines other than Classics and English.

LM: Sometimes not so much!

ELM: Yeah, it’s true though. We get these messages from college students who’ve heard of fan studies and I think, I imagine often, probably a lot like we were in college, into fandom, and if someone had told me I could study it I woulda been like WHAT? Maybe not. I was really committed to studying the British Empire. [FK laughs] Normal teen stuff! But you know, I just…I don’t know often what to tell them, and I know that you have a lot of feelings about this sort of amorphous field, and I’m wondering what you tell them or how you feel as an independent scholar in a world where that’s a tricky position.

LM: I have a lot of feelings.

ELM: You know, in an interdisciplinary field, too, an independent scholar in an interdisciplinary field.

FK: I would love to hear more about being an independent scholar and, exactly, your viewpoint on that, because I think it’s changed a lot since even just in the past ten years what the conversation around being in academia and studying…

LM: It’s really interesting. It’s kind of a moving target at any time, and so this is really just a snapshot of now. There are an increasing number of fan studies classes that are offered on US college campuses, and British as well I think to a somewhat lesser degree, but mainly because we just have so many colleges. And we have so many people who are interested in teaching about that. They may or may not be publishing in fan studies, but they are teaching about it in some really interesting ways. There are less opportunities for graduate study in fan studies, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I should clarify: there’s, to my mind there’s a real difference between pursuing a PhD in fan studies as a discipline, as sort of the main thing, and pursuing say a master’s if you can. I know that DePaul University enables that, I know there’s an up and coming program at the University of Huddersfield in the UK, that also I believe is going to be a master’s program. I think there are opportunities for master’s students in fan studies, and particularly in promotion. You do see some consultants who are doing this, and that seems to be a slowly growing field, but there are places I think for people who know what to do with Twitter. And know how to interact with fans and who understand fans. And so to that extent, I think there is a place for that kind of study.

A PhD is a trickier proposition, in large part because there are no jobs. [laughing] To speak of. And there are particularly no jobs in fan studies, almost. There’s one out there right now, but that’s about it.

ELM: Don’t tell them about that! Don’t tell anyone else about that! [laughing]

LM: There are virtually no positions that give any indication that they’re interested in fan studies scholarship or teaching, and so that’s something that you have to kind of bring with you in addition to another field. In my case when I’ve applied for academic jobs it’s largely been East Asian media cultures, Japanese and Hong Kong film. The market fell out of that as well [laughing] so I just kinda quit doing it. But a PhD is just trickier and so you find that there are a lot of independent scholars coming out of PhD programs.

ELM: I feel like it’s often, I don’t know if Flourish has felt this way, I’m now ten years out of college and so in established humanities fields…this isn’t humanities obviously but it’s in a similar realm of unhireability. Oh, would you call it humanities? Or social sciences?

LM: What, fan studies?

ELM: Yeah.

LM: Fan studies actually is humanities, yeah. The sociological side of it also functions a bit differently. By and large people who are working in it under the title of fan studies are in the humanities.

ELM: Alright. I was thinking, you know, my college friends, they were like “I’ll do a PhD. English PhD, history PhD.” We even knew then, ten years ago, the hiring rate is something ridiculous like 4%, right?

LM: It’s absurd, yeah.

ELM: But of course, most people I knew were like “well, I’ll be one of them!” And you’re like wow, ok! And to be fair…

LM: Good to be you, right?

ELM: Actually, most people I know did actually get jobs, but they also went to a very fancy college and a very fancy university for a PhD so there’s a reason why they wound up at that, because they were in that pipeline. It wasn’t like they’d got that lucky break or whatever. You know what I mean? But even then, those are deep core established fields. Every university has a history department, you know? I feel like to add on this thing that tons of universities don’t even address in any way…

LM: Right. It gets really…yeah. It’s really demoralizing!

ELM: Sorry! This is not like, we did not bring you on here to make you feel bad about your job market.

LM: It’s the way things are. I’ve more or less made my peace with it. More or less. But I do think that in some ways I think fan studies and even media studies, which have been under attack at some institutions, I think that they’re sort of canaries in the coal mine in a way.

ELM: For what?

LM: For the general unhealthiness right now of in particular American higher education. I can’t speak to other places with as much knowledge. But particularly in the United States, adjuncting, working part time as an instructor, has just increased exponentially to the point where I think I’ve seen some estimates that more than 50% of teaching higher education teaching in the US is done by adjuncts. I don’t know if that’s true. But it is outrageous.

And I’ve done my time as an adjunct. Depending on the institution it can be a good experience or it can be a miserable experience, but what you don’t get is a guarantee of work going forward. You barely get a guarantee of work in a given semester. If a class doesn’t make enrollment then it’s out and you are the front line of people who are gonna get cut should classes not make enrollment. And that’s kind of the situation we’re in and yet we do still have a lot of PhD programs that haven’t yet woken up and figured out what’s going on and so it can be really frustrating if you’re at a discipline-wide conference and they have, say, job market workshops or whatever where they’re talking about how you can position yourself for the job market. It’s like, if you wanna position yourself for the job market, sit down in front of a slot machine, stick some money in, and press the little button, see what happens, because that’s as much chance as you have! It is luck of the draw.

And so right now I’m really reluctant to tell people “yes, you should definitely get a PhD in film, in fan studies,” because there are very very few jobs for people who are coming up.

ELM: It’s interesting because, I’m going back to this fictional asker who is in college and wants to know if they…

FK: Not totally fictional though! We get this amalgamation of many askers…

LM: Absolutely.

ELM: The ur-college student who enjoys fanfiction, it’s funny because I feel like, there have been some really great posts recently, like on Tumblr people will be like “hey actually your time in fandom has prepared you for the workforce in a way that you don’t even know, you’re really good at organizing, you’re really good at etc.” look at the translation thing! Your enthusiasm has actually led you to build these beautiful skills, and I sort of, while I think fan studies is really fascinating and I am in no position to talk about this because I also became a fandom journalist, so I could write about the thing I was into, I do think there’s an impulse to say “well I love fanfiction so much I should probably just go study it forever as an academic.” People do this with English all the time. “I love books so much I should be an English professor.” And I’m wondering if the real answer is “no, for reals, there are no jobs, so you need to find some way to parlay this into something else,” you know what I mean?

FK: It’s especially funny because there is an actual need for people who are capable of doing exactly what you were saying, Lori, taking a basic understanding of, I mean, not basic but a master’s degree level or less understanding of fan studies and experience in fandom and turning that into, “and now I will go run someone’s Twitter account and make sure they don’t screw up.” That has its own problems too, that work is underpaid…

LM: Absolutely, yeah.

FK: Community management work is the pink ghetto of modern internet culture, not that there’s not big issues with that. But I guess as a person who took that route, I see, I constantly have a hiring problem actually because I need to find more people like this. Fandom is a good place to find those people, of course, but if people haven’t prepared themselves in a variety of ways and don’t have all…you have 85% of the skills that’s needed to do this! Please! Come up with the other 15! I know you can do it! But people think they want to be an academic, so.

LM: That’s what I really do think, that there is value in undergraduate and master’s level courses in fan studies, in participatory culture, social media, whatever you want to focus on, for exactly that reason. And I do sort of hold that hope that as we have more and more productions that seem to be finessing social media in particular better, that other productions will have a look over there and in particular why and who’s doing that and how can we do that. That’s a pipe dream, maybe, but I hold out hope!

ELM: When I think about, Flourish, some of the work you do, where I sort of…it often seems like you kind of come in, cause you talk to people in Hollywood about their fans but somewhat, sometimes later in the game, like in more of a consulting way, right? And wouldn’t it be nice if that was part of the equation from the start? And maybe it is, in some places?

FK: Yeah I mean that’s been my entire…my entire, my company’s entire reason for trying to do a bunch, you know what I mean, that’s been a constant battle. How can we get paid to do consulting work and then either convince people to start planning this from the beginning, or getting in on an earlier stage. Of course it’s hard to convince anyone to pay you money to do something good like that at an early stage. I think that the thing is, this is also getting back to some of those complications and why people who aren’t, who don’t understand fandom get into it, because you’ve got a big studio and they’re hiring people in general to do social media, and then someone just gets assigned to a particular franchise and then they’re like…maybe they’re great at social media about K-pop! But they’re like, maybe they can’t translate that over into whatever this franchise is. So. I don’t know it’s all structural and all a mess but regardless I think everybody who works in that space would be better served with a better basis in some of this stuff, and I think that exactly what Lori’s saying about having those, having those classes, having access to those classes and access to those ideas is part of that.

LM: One of the things I think that would be important in those kinds of classes is something that some fan studies classes do and some don’t, to my knowledge, and I’m not sitting in these classes, but they require attention to what you might call…I don’t wanna say the dark side of fandom, but certainly the frictional side of fandom, because that’s where somebody who has that expertise can make the biggest difference.

ELM: So we’re probably at a good halfway point right now, do you wanna take a break and then we can talk about transcultural fandom for the second half?

LM: Sure!

ELM: Alright, perfect, let’s do it!

[Interstitial music]

FK: Alright, we’re back! Lori, I can’t wait to hear about your study of transcultural fandom because we got this ask about it when we were on Australian radio a couple weeks ago…

ELM: I love how you describe a question on Australian radio as an “ask.”

FK: It was totally like an ask! OK but it was, you know, when something shows up in your askbox and you’re like “oh, that’s a question that I don’t know how to approach!” And we both were like “uh…” on live Australian radio.

ELM: Yeah, you’d ignore it but we were on Australian radio so…

FK: We couldn’t do it, we were live. So now we have you. Here. We invoked you even!

ELM: So to clarify what his question was, because I think it uncovers a lot of what you could speak to, was he said that he grew up in Pakistan and that he was…I think he said he was a comic book guy?

FK: Yeah, he was a comic book person!

ELM: He was asking a vague, I wasn’t sure what the question was exactly but it was a vague question, isn’t it great that you could be from Pakistan and you could be a fan of Western comic books or whatever, right. And I completely froze and I was like “I don’t know how to answer this question,” cause yes but also cultural hegemony! And also it doesn’t go in all directions! And it’s not like we’re one big global happy family because there’s a lot of cultural appropriation! And white people in America making bad assumptions about media!

FK: I did find it a little funny that this was on Australian radio and I feel like if I were Australian I might have some opinions about American cultural products, you know? I don’t know, but maybe I wouldn’t I guess. I don’t know.

ELM: So that’s the starting point for us being total dunces about transcultural fandom, so go ahead, explain.

FK: Drop some knowledge!

LM: OK I’ll explain it all! Well, what I was saying before the break about the, not dark side of fandom, but the need to talk about what I’ve been calling the politics of transcultural fandom. That really is the crux of all of this, and one of the reasons that I like to decouple it from darker or anti or whatever, well, anti fandom is its own things. But any kind of darker side is that it’s endemic to any kind of transcultural interaction and usually if I say “transcultural” people tend to hear it as “transnational,” and it can be, but it isn’t necessarily. We have cultures of gender, we have cultures of race, we have cultures of sexuality, all these things, we have fan cultures and producer cultures and we’ve seen what happens when they mix badly. We all have, as fans often times we have intimate experience of fan culture and producer culture interactions going horribly wrong.

ELM: Should we discuss? Do you also still have a vendetta against Cumberbatch, my enemy?

FK: Oh my God.

LM: Oh, I don’t have a…you know, I haven’t paid attention to him? So I don’t know?

ELM: It’s…he’s still, yeah, me neither, me neither.

LM: Mine is more Martin Freeman frankly.

ELM: I just, I can’t.

LM: He really turned me off. But I’m thinking especially, I’m happy to drag in Moffat and sort of beat him a little.

FK: OK. As the official non-Sherlock person of this podcast, let’s get back to other kinds of transcultural fandom! [all laughing, talking]

ELM: I would like to devote the rest of this episode to debriefing about our experiences in Sherlock fandom.

FK: Oh my God.

LM: It was horrible, it really was.

ELM: That’s interesting though, sorry I derailed us, I will re-rail us, that’s not…[all laughing] So it’s funny because I actually feel like just even us asking you about our question from the radio host was, there was an underlying assumption for us that it was a transcultural question, but it’s true, we were shorthanding that to a transnational question.

LM: Well, there is overlap! I don’t want to sound like “transcultural” is completely different than “transnational” cause that’s not the case. There’s a lot of overlap, and oftentimes…generally speaking a transnational encounter will also be transcultural, not always, but that often happens. The same can’t be said for transcultural because it exceeds the national in so many different ways.

But it exceeds them, I think, in really predictable ways sometimes I have essays in three fan studies anthologies that have recently come out, and one of them is coming out this next month. One of them is the second edition of Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, that’s edited by Cornel Sandvoss, C. Lee Harrington and Jonathan Gray. I have another in the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, which was edited by Suzanne Scott and Melissa Click, and then the one that’s forthcoming is the Companion To Fandom and Fan Studies, which Paul Booth edited, and I also have an essay in there and all of those in one way or another are focused on transcultural fandom and its permutations.

ELM: Can you tell us, can you give us a specific example of the topics of one of those articles? I’m just curious.

LM: Yeah! The one that I did for the second edition of Fandom, I co-authored that with Bertha Chin, and the title is “Reimagining the Imagined Community: Online Fandoms in the Age of Global Convergence.” And what that one focused on, that one was really speaking…all of them speak to fan studies, arguably more than fandom, because I am trying to sort of make a disciplinary push further in the direction of a transcultural perspective on fandoms.

ELM: You’re such an academic. Can I just say? You’re like… “I like to write about the discipline, not about the…” [laughing] No, I love it, it’s so good, it’s one of my favorite things about academia!

LM: Well, cause I don’t really like talking about people that much! I like to talk about ideas instead because it’s safer.

ELM: I enjoy the history of history lectures that you have to have when you’re in a history class! So.

FK: Yeah but it’s also…it’s a really good point. Even outside of the academic sphere, there’s so much of a focus on…there’s very little focus on transcultural or transnational thinking about fandom. Even when, I mean, for a variety of reasons some of which is that it’s hard to research transculturally or transnationally and some of it having to do with even if you look at just what data can we get, well, it’s hard to get…like, if you’re doing a numerical look at social media talk or whatever you can’t get stuff out of Europe so fine! The United States lets us have everything, let’s just do that.

LM: It just doesn’t exist, yeah.

FK: Obviously it’s a complex thing but I think it’s incredibly valuable and it’s cool that you’re pushing for it.

LM: Thank you, I think so too! So just to give you kind of an idea of what that one essay was about, the term “imagined communities” was popularized by Benedict Anderson in 1991. Actually, the late 80s as well, but then he revised. And the book that he wrote that is titled “Imagined Communities” has a subtitle, oh, I can’t remember word for word, basically it’s “On the Origin of Nationalism.” Which I think is really significant, and which is something I brought into this discussion.

When we say, historically when we’ve used the term “imagined communities” in fan studies, we’ve used it as a way of talking about how particularly online people from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, come together in an imagined community of shared love of something. A show or something. And that is the imagined community, which is fine, tha'ts not not what he was talking about, but the nationalism thing is really important because one of the things that he argued was that the communities that we imagine are generally speaking defined by who we exclude, what we value over what we don’t, what shared assumptions we have which presumes that there are assumptions that may not be shared by all communities, and so this was sort of the gist of that argument was that we need to be paying more attention when we look at fandoms but also within fan studies itself about how these communities are imagined, and what they leave out as much as what they include.

And that’s the kind of argument that I keep making in dfiferent ways over and over and over, that it actually started in a meta-post on Tumblr, where I was playing with this idea, I have a friend who wrote a book and she used the term “contact zones” a lot. And I had never heard it before, like oh, you know, and then I completely forgot about it, and then one day I was thinking about strife in a given fandom that I was participating in.

ELM: Strife!

LM: Strife, yeah! Which never happens in fandom except that one. Never.

ELM: It’s a real anomaly. [all laughing]

LM: And it really resonated. The woman who popularized that term, Mary Louise Pratt, described it as basically a space where people converge oftentimes in asymmetrical power relations and they clash, they fight, they negotiate, it’s a space of necessarily…not necessarily turmoil, but certainly the intersection and, yeah. Clash, of different cultures. Which to me is what a fandom looks like a lot of times, you have all these people, especially as we’ve moved from the more contained communities of places like LiveJournal to Tumblr and Twitter which are much more porous and unstructured, largely unhierarchical in an organizational sense.

I just really like this idea of contact zones! So I write a meta post about contact zones and it gets some traction and I’ve just been running with that ever since and so my interest really now is just what happens in the contact zone? And particularly in terms of transcultural clashes. Or intersections.

FK: So you mean like what happens when you have people with very different backgrounds, different expectations, maybe coming from different internet communities…

LM: And experiences, yeah.

FK: Even before we go to the question of nationalism, or race or anything like that, and interacting with each other.

LM: Right.

FK: That’s amazing. I feel like Twitter sort of is almost ground zero for that, and a lot of things that have happened on Twitter both in fandom and outside have to do a lot with the different online culture spaces.

ELM: That’s funny. To me Tumblr is the prime space I see this.

LM: They’re both, I think…

FK: In different ways maybe.

LM: In somewhat different ways, not very, yeah, they do it sort of differently. But they’re both to me really great examples of these kinds of contact zones that happen rather than that are organized. You know. People kind of… it’s…I was talking about Tumblr with Matt Hills when I first met him, several years ago…

ELM: Matt Hills is a well known fan studies scholar, for anyone who doesn’t know.

LM: He is. He’s one of the big two that gets cited.

FK: It’s notable that he is the person who, when we get mansplained to about fandom, is the person that we are always told to go read. [LM laughing] Because I guess we talk about Henry more on this podcast and so there’s this thing that we don’t know that he exists? It’s great. Hey mansplainers listening to this, you can stop, we know who Matt Hills is!

LM: Ohhh that’s great. He’s a really lovely guy.

ELM: It’s not his fault!

FK: It’s not him! He didn’t ask for this!

LM: He’s also hugely prolific, so you know, good luck reading everything. He was asking about how does Tumblr work because he was doing some preliminary research in that area, and at the time I was always on Tumblr so I said, well, you know, it’s kind of like this, I explained, and he was like “OH, it’s rhizomatic!” I was like “yeah!” I didn’t know what a rhizome was. So apparently a rhizome, for other people who don’t know [laughing], rather than sort of a top to bottom hierarchy of interactions…

Imagine a community on Livejournal. You can close it if you want to to outsiders, and give permission to people to participate, you usually have one person that owns the community, you may have more than one moderator, but it’s structured in that way.

ELM: You make a post and you comment beneath it.

LM: You make a post in a hierarchical structure and on Tumblr, as many of you know, it’s pretty much just I show up, I interact with some people, they may interact with me, I post something, it goes completely left field and I didn’t even intend that but now I’m in trouble…it’s these kinds of points of interaction, these nodes of interaction from which other things kind of spread, that’s more a rhizomatic structure.

Actually if you do, I think they’re still doing it on Tumblr, if you look at the little visualization of a post to see where it went, that’s a rhizome. It’s basically…

ELM: Let’s dig up one of these posts.

LM: They’re great! And see, like, especially if you wrote the post and it went totally someplace you never intended it to go, seeing where that happened is really interesting.

ELM: I think that anyone who’s written a text post that makes a statement, not like you know, just a quote from something, that’s gotten more than I don’t know, a hundred reblogs… You watch it and you’re like “what happened?” Right?

LM: And it’s so interesting, right?

FK: And you’re totally right that that’s the moment in which you realize how quickly the things you said in a certain context have now gone into a different context and you’re like “woah, I don’t even…you clearly have none of the same referents I do, and you’re taking it in a way that’s completely different, is that wrong, is that right, I don’t know, but I know that’s not what I intended so now what happens oh god.”

LM: And that’s a really good way to imagine this contact zone. Because those nodes of contact where people interact with your post, and then take it someplace else, or whatever, or fight back against it, you know. That’s the kind of clashing that Pratt is talking about.

ELM: This is interesting too because the one that I always get hung up on, not to make you talk about shipping again, but the thing I always get hung up on is in shipping culture in particular sometime I feel like these points of contact are happening without people even knowing. When I say “ship” and when other people say “ship” we mean two different things, and obviously I know that “ship” means a lot of things, cause I have to mansplain shipping to people all the time—sorry, fansplain shipping. [all laugh] That’s one thing I find fascinating about Tumblr in particular. We can be looking at the same image, and have a completely different interpretation, and I’ll never know. It’s not like they reblog it and they say the opposite thing from I was thinking. They’ll reblog it thinking we are in agreement, and neither of us would ever think the other person…which is fascinating to me having been in a fandom where you never know if someone’s gonna wind up on a different side of an ideological divide, and you’re trying to read between the lines: is this someone I can’t… you know what I mean?

FK: Isn’t that also especially because of visual language? One thing I’m thinking about is I have a lot of friends who live in Oregon and who are pagan and one of the big issues in Oregon if you are pagan is that you have maybe a tattoo that is something that is a Norse pagan thing and now you’re playing the “is this person a white supremacist or a super hyper liberal pagan hippie?” And there’s no way to tell from the outside! It also could be both.

ELM: Oh Oregon no it probably is both. [laughter] Sorry.

FK: None of my friends are neonazis! I will say this! None of my pagan friends in Oregon are neonazis! But you know what I mean? They’re like oh my God! And isn’t that part of it, the visual culture?

LM: Yeah, the visual aspect of it is 100%… oh, I don’t know. A lot. And I actually have two examples that kind of illustrate what you’re talking about. One I saw years ago, it was a fairly well-known fan artist in a number of different fandoms who had posted a very shippy picture, usual white guy ship, and it was a commission and they had said “here’s the shameful commission.”

Now what she was talking about, which became clear in the fullness of time, was that she had never really done a shippy picture before and she didn’t know if she was doing it right. That was the shame.

ELM: I remember that!

LM: That was the shame she was talking about. But you know, shameful in Anglo-American English language online fandom comes with its own sort of baggage that people just jumped on. And it wasn’t until the artist said that she wasn’t a native English speaker and that this was what she intended that that died off. But there for a hot second, everyone was coming down on this because of a cultural assumption on the one hand…well, just a cultural assumption that everybody who was participating in English language online fandom on Tumblr has a common understanding of what words like “shameful” mean in fandom when that was patently not the case.

A more recent one happened a few weeks ago in a fandom I’m involved in now. Guess. [laughter] Which is also very transnational fandom, where an artist from East Asia posted a drawing of one of the main characters in the fandom in a Nazi uniform. Now, she had written underneath “I don’t mean any, I’m just doing this artistically, I don’t mean anything political by it,” but she had A. written that in her own language and B. it doesn’t really matter if you’re coming at it from in particular a European perspective where you’re like, oh no. We don’t do this.

And eventually that, the artist took it down, took the post down from Twitter, but again, it was…it sounds like “ooh these are really scary,” but in fact these kinds of clashes are endemic to fandom. That is what happens in fandom, it is a condition of fandom almost and especially now that we’re so much more in close contact both in terms of space, we’re all sharing these online spaces, and time, where if you…you know how it goes, if you post something inflammatory before bed and you go to bed, in the morning you’re overwhelmed by anger and all kinds of things. That’s how fast it happens.

ELM: Don’t post before you go to bed!

LM: Never.

FK: [laughing] Sometimes you don’t know that’s going to be and then you wake up and… [all talking over each other] It’s like your pizza box is your pillow, but everything is still on fire.

LM: The main reason I’m interested in this is because when I became a fan, and I harp on about this everywhere so if your listeners have heard this before I’m sorry, but when I became a fan I was 11 years old, I was living in Hong Kong, which was a British colony then, saw a lot of British TV, and I saw Star Wars, the original one, for the first time, 1977, which is how old I am.

At that time, watching an American movie in East Asia where there were very few, you know, I wanted magazines, right? I wanted to see pictures, I wanted to cut them out and put them in scrapbooks, which I did. But trying to get American magazines to do that was next to impossible, and they were outrageously overpriced when you did find them. But what they did have was a bunch of Japanese movie magazines and I couldn’t read it but the pictures were on the cover and if you open it up…right? So I’m an American fan of an American movie in Hong Kong collecting Japanese magazines to read. And because it requires a material experience of being in one place and having access materially to these objects, I had the time to kind of learn about the different cultures that were sort of involved in that experience of being a fan there.

And that’s a time that people do not have now. You see the same things happening, but with no time to learn and so these conflicts just kind of erupt. And so I’m interested in understanding, and I think we should all be interested in understanding, the nature of the conflicts and also what people do…I’m not interested in whether or not something is good or bad or whatever, what I’m interested in is what happens when something erupts. And that’s kind of where some of this other publishing has gone.

ELM: You as an academic, as an observer, obviously you’re not sitting there trying to fix this. I wonder, though, if other people can and should?

LM: Yeah, well, what I’m trying…so there’s one more argument and this one also is kind of theoretical, but what I’m trying to do right now really is look at how, not just how things fall apart, but how people sort of negotiate those kinds of things and come out on the other side. So what I’m working on right now is a way of understanding not just what happens and not just the conflicts but how people sort of approach those conflicts. How they come out on the other side. And so this is an essay that I wrote for, expanded on in an essay I wrote for Paul Booth for his book. It’s called “Ontological Security and the Politics of Transcultural Fandom,” and in that one I put Pratt’s notion of contact zones together with the sociologist Anthony Giddens’s notion of ontological security, kind of putting them together and seeing what happens.

So Rebecca Williams in the UK has been working a lot on ontological security and she has a book called Post-Object Fandom that I highly recommend, I think it’s a wonderful read and it’s such a fruitful notion. So what ontological security basically is is the things that you sort of incorporate into your every day life, they give you a sense of continuity, stability, of things are ongoing. And fandom we theorize is sort of one of those things.

ELM: Define “ontological” please!

LM: “Ontological” is basically the starting point, a foundational thing in a way. An origin point, a starting point. Something that’s at the base of something. So when you have ontological security, when you experience a sense of ontological security it means that everything in your world is pretty much as you expect. That nothing’s being challenged. That I know that if I wake up, and I go outside, my cars will be there, that there are stable things in your life. Both in terms of objects, but also in terms of expectations and experiences and that kind of thing.

So fandom is theorized to be one of those things that contributes to ontological security. I know that if I go to AO3 and I look up a certain pairing, if it’s a popular one in particular, I’m probably gonna find some fanfiction. That kind of thing.

FK: My show’s gonna come on, it’s gonna happen every week…

LM: My show’s gonna come on and it’s not going to upset me. And that’s actually a critical part.

FK: Or possibly it will upset me but in a predictable way that I enjoy. [laughing]

LM: That I enjoy, right. So in the contact zone of any kind of transcultural interaction, a lot of times what happens is that ontological security is destabilized. That the thing that you expected or assumed or whatever isn’t what you thought it was. Or is in some way or another destabilized.

FK: Right. So I thought I knew what the word “shameful” meant in fandom and it turns out I don’t know.

LM: Exactly, exactly.

FK: Or alternately it turns out this person has a different idea than I do and how do I deal with that.

LM: Exactly. So this essay that I wrote looks at three different case studies. One of them is from my dissertation, it was Japanese fans of the Hong Kong singer Aaron Kwok and their reactions to a concert where he came out in this lamé kimono kind of thing and they were like “oh my God.’ You know. Because he was trying to address them as Japanese fans, and they prior to seeing him on stage had a much more intimate relationship with him that transcended or exceeded any time of national orientation. So when he comes out in this gold lamé kabuki thing, they’re like WOAH. He’s separating them, where they had expected to be closer in a way.

Another one was looking at the relationship between a couple of television producers and creators and fans who shipped two of their main characters [Elizabeth quietly cracking up] and the different cultural backgrounds they were coming from. And the last one was three of my fandom friends, who are also black women, agreed to be interviewed for this one, and I was talking about their experiences in normative fandom, which is generally white, sometimes middle class, white is the big one, oftentimes heterosexual, you know, this kind of thing. But white.

And all of them kind of grouped under the aegis of destabilized ontological position, and if you look at these you can kind of see these generalizable reactions. What you often get, and this happened in terms of Racefail, as well. What you often get is a range of about four or five responses to that destabilization, and particularly on the part of the people who are in power, who don’t want to see it.

So you get either "la la la la la I can’t hear you,” just ignoring the problem, you get people who are like “fine I’m out of here,” and they just divorce themselves from the issue, divorce themselves from the fandom, you get people who are try to rationalize why that happened, you know, “oh I didn’t understand that you didn’t understand this word,” it doesn’t make the jumping on this woman about saying "shameful” any less sort of awful, but that’s the excuse for it, “oh I didn’t understand.” You get people who want to fight about it and say “well no you’re wrong and let me tell you why, you shouldn’t have used that word,” people who kind of stick to your guns. And then you get people who, and this is the group I’m really interested in, you get people who say “huh, I hadn’t thought about it that way, let me regroup and see where I am now.” They basically take a step back and say “alright, I need to find out more about this,” and kind of challenge their own orientation towards the thing, their own assumptions, rather than coming from a defensive position. Does that make any sense?

FK: No, it makes perfect sense! I guess the key thing about the rationalization is that it rationalizes it and the end it results in is “and that was why it was correct to jump on you after all,” as opposed to “and that was why I jumped on you and I’m sorry I jumped on you, I feel like it was reasonable for me to do so under some senses but it was still wrong, I thought it was reasonable but it was wrong…” there’s this line between rationalizing and thinking about it and being fair to all involved and that’s really interesting.

LM: So during the racefail thing, a LiveJournal user whose name I can barely say—dysprositos, I believe? D-y-s-p-r-o-s-i-t-o-s? Put out a bingo card with different responses to the criticisms that people were hearing. And this is where I think you can really see how generalizable these reactions are, in terms of rationalization you get people going like “I’m 1/16th Cherokee,” or “I have friends,” or “relatives who are people of color,” or “I don’t see race and we shouldn’t keep bringing it up,” or “well I once dated somebody who was a person of color so back off” kind of thing.

You get people who want to argue or criticize the critique, so “you’re just looking for things to be offended by,” or “you’re racebaiting,” or “this diminishes real racism,” it’s all real racism, right! “Talking about racism and race is impolite,” “you should tone your language down a little,” that kind of thing, and then you get people who just withdraw altogether, “you’re harshing my squee,” you know, “that’s not what fandom is.”

And one of the things I was saying here was that for the fans that I interviewed at least, that’s entirely what fandom is, where normative fans have the luxury of sort of sometimes falling into these contact zones, for the women that I interviewed it seems like this experience of ontological destabilization was part and parcel of the fandom experience in normative fandom. That they can’t get out of it, because it’s always there, it’s always a shoe waiting to drop, you know, and something that’s kind of analogous although not nearly as politically charged or important is when, you know, you’re watching a TV show and you have a ship and you think “ah, this is gonna come to fruition, this is gonna happen,” and…

ELM: You think that?

LM: Sometimes people clearly seem to!

ELM: That was so cynical! [laughing]

LM: But if you watch something like that and you’re like “oh this is totally gonna happen,” and you believe it, and then the creator or somebody comes out and says “never gonna happen!” It’s a very different kind of…

ELM: Or laughs about it.

LM: Or laughs about it, or otherwise. It’s less that thing actually than sort of fangirl ridicule, I think, is probably more analogous in a lesser extent. You’re like “I love this show, I love this creator,” this is one of my fears in my own fandom! I have a very, to-date, fan friendly creator who has been lovely to this point but the possibility of having that destabilized is always there. And I worry every time they say “the show’s coming back,” there’s part of me that’s like “yay!” but there’s part of me that’s like “oh God there’s more opportunity to hurt me!” You know?

ELM: When I was in this Schrodinger’s queerbaiting space, Schrodinger’s ship right now.

LM: Or they could just say the one thing that undoes everything good that they did.

FK: Yeah. Welcome to my life with The X-files. I’m sorry. [wail-laughing]

LM: Oh my God exactly don’t even get me started.

FK: This is interesting because it puts, what I find really interesting and valuable about this and I’m so excited to read this article that you’ve written now, it puts things that are very politically charged to me in a context where it’s like, okay, this is one thing that happens and it’s really important when it happens in this context, whether it’s race or class or cultural, but it’s not unique to those experiences. These patterns and the ways people think about it, it’s a larger way that we deal with our world being disrupted.

LM: Right, exactly.

FK: I find that really really helpful in terms of thinking about those arguments and understanding. Maybe it’ll be helpful in understanding my own reactions when I find myself [laughing] slipping into rationalization or anger as I’m sure I do.

LM: My fear about this one creator just doing something…even though I don’t expect it, the fear is palpable, you know? This is such a silly thing to get worked up about, but it means something to me that to date they have been this person and if that was taken away, what else falls with it? You know? That’s…I think it’s a more in some ways I think it helps to illuminate the real stresses that people who are outside of normative fan culture experience within it, but also I think it takes a little of the sort of intentionality of certain transcultural interactions. Not all of them, obviously, there are some really vicious people out there, but when people kind of inadvertently sort of clash I think it helps to at least understand where they’re coming from, whether or not you agree with how they responded to it, so that looking at the people who didn’t realize that the one artist was not a native speaker of English I’m a little more sympathetic to them, at least as a researcher, for knowing that they didn’t know that.

But I can also recognize that that was an assumption that they needed to deal with, not the person who made the post, and that’s…what did the people do who did the thing that I think is egregious? What did people do when that happens? How do they respond on both sides of it? But especially when you think about it in terms of these kinds of unequal power relations within a fandom. That’s what I’m interested in because this is… Giddens theorized this as part of talking about politics and especially global interactions in a shrinking world, and it’s very much relevant to issues of, you know, tribalism and people kind of retreating to “Make America Great Again.” Whose America? What America? It’s the same kind of thing and that’s one response that I think is particularly unhelpful, but we do have some people who are like “OK, these people say that this guy is a problem, so maybe I will learn a little bit more about that,” or whatever.

It’s the reaction, what happens next, that I think is at the crux of transcultural fan studies and that I think is so important to get in.

ELM: That’s really interesting. OK. So I’m a dumbass because I have yet to pledge to your Patreon course and…I just haven’t gotten around to it!

LM: It’s OK, I’m very late!

ELM: I just want to hear you talk about this stuff all the time, please! This is fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on.

LM: Thank you for having me! I never get to talk about this stuff [laughing] except in writing and then I’m lucky if somebody reads it, so it’s really great to be able to actually talk about it!

ELM: Yeah, I would say, I don’t know how you feel, I don’t wanna put you on the spot but if anyone has questions can they ask them and we can pass them along?

LM: Sure! I’d be happy to look at them.

ELM: Obviously they can reach out to you directly, but…

LM: Yeah, I’m on Twitter, I’m @acafanmom, one word.

FK: Well thank you so much for coming on. This is great.

LM: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it, it’s been really fun talking with you.

[Interstitial music]

FK: It is always a delight to have Lori on this podcast.

ELM: Yeah, well, I didn’t actually realize I was making a mistake with conflating transcultural and transnational.

FK: That was a really good corrective to both of us I think cause I was doing the same thing.

ELM: Despite having read her work. I don’t…it’s fine.

FK: Well…

ELM: Don’t worry about me.

FK: I definitely feel like I could use a more intentional brushup on the current state of fan studies! I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that I just haven’t had time to read so this was a great reminder that there’s lots of cool stuff happening and coming out!

ELM: Yeah actually I don’t know if our listeners have seen this on Henry Jenkins’ blog, you know the series that he’s doing right now?

FK: Oh, yeah! It’s so good!

ELM: Yeah, a lot of content! But so he’s basically having two scholars per installment interview each other, sort of, they’re sort of in dialogue?

FK: Yeah, it’s great! And it’s this very long format sort of back and forth kind of interview thing that’s delightful.

ELM: So definitely check it out on his blog. We can put the link in the show notes but I think everything I’ve read so far has been really interesting. There’s just a ton of conversations and also I know he’s trying to highlight newer and more emerging voices. It’s kind of, I definitely feel like from the perspective of someone who’s sort of…I don’t think I’m a total outsider, I think I know more about fan studies than your average person, but I think from the perspective of an outsider certain voices get privileged repeatedly and certain texts that are older get privileged repeatedly.

FK: Right, because they’re taught in the few classrooms there are - they get taught and retaught and so on. So it’s pretty hard to…

ELM: I think that’s a little too generous. I think a lot of journalists do some really basic googling.

FK: Well, that’s true too. [laughing]

ELM: They’ll pull out the same book from 2005 or whatever and the same basic definitions and they’re good foundational definitions, but it really…it’s a shame to me that there isn’t more exposure in the mainstream outside of that media for a lot of the voices that are coming here.

FK: I agree. State of the world. But we can help change that state by being more up on these things! So let’s do it.

ELM: We’re trying, we’re trying! And, speaking of fan studies, just as a note, I will be going to the Fan Studies Network conference. [Flourish ooooos] In Wales! My beloved Wales! In June! So we’ll do some, we’ll report from there.

FK: We’ll do some #content around it.

ELM: Very excited. Just because it’s Wales. Fan tourism!

FK: [laughing] OK OK. Next thing up, we have a new tiny zine coming out soon!

ELM: We do! You’re gonna wanna pledge for this, because we have the greatest content that this podcast has ever created.

FK: Yeah. It’s pretty astonishing and I don’t think that we can oversell it. I think that we’re, I think there’s nothing we can say that’s gonna be strong enough. I literally howled, Elizabeth commissioned this piece of work and showed it to me, and I started screaming with laughter. So if you wanna find out what it is, you’ll need to pledge… [laughing]

ELM: It’s written by earlgreytea68 who is a very well known fanfiction writer, and the ship, it’s a double drabble and you wanna say the ship?

FK: [laughing] IT’S A KLINKEL FIC!!!! [all laughing] OK so you clearly want to read this. It’s amazing. So.

ELM: It’s really good and I’m really glad that this is where our drink led to the other day. So we got that and some other great stuff, that’s $10 a month on Patreon, Patreon.com/fansplaining. If you were thinking about bumping up your pledge, or pledging for the first time, if you get it in within the next week or so then you can take part in this round.

FK: Indeed! OK. Other things you can do if you don’t have the cash or inclination to give us money to support the podcast you can also review us on iTunes, which helps us find a larger audience and is incredibly helpful. We believe we deserve 5 stars, you can give us however many stars you think we deserve.

ELM: [quickly, quietly] Five stars.

FK: Sniff sniff [both laugh] You can also send in responses to any of our episodes, even if it’s an old one that you’re just listening to for the first time, we love all listener mail, that can go to [email protected], or you can send it to our Twitter handle if it’s very short @fansplaining, or if it’s kinda longer you can send us an ask although Tumblr sometimes eats asks, the box is open and anon is on, that’s just fansplaining.com or fansplaining.tumblr.com. We also have a Facebook page if you should feel like you still need to be on Facebook.

ELM: Look Flourish, do you really wanna go down this rabbit hole?

FK: Anyway, movin’ on, I think that’s it!

ELM: [laughs] That is it! OK, bye!

FK: Bye!

[Outro music, thank yous and disclaimers]

#fansplaining #Lori Morimoto #transcultural fandom #fan culture #fan studies

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rolypolywl · 5 years

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Welcome to day 23!

Today is a weigh in day!

So, not ideal, but not too bad. I can live with that.

Today we’re going to talk about medications. And not those “lose weight fast” pills they advertise in checkstand magazines, but actual doctor-prescribed medications.

At this point, every medication seems to come with half a commercial's worth of side effects. So, this lead me to wonder, what medications could actually cause substantial weight gain?

Well, according to this WebMD article, those numbers might be higher than you think. ““As many as 10% to 15% of weight issues are related to medications,” says Louis Aronne, MD, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medical College.”

So one or two in ten of us might have medications complicating our weight gain and loss. That’s pretty high!

Now, and I promise not to get into gross details, but I’m going to give you a little backstory. In high school and college, I had really bad period symptoms - migraines, pain, etc - that would cause me to miss school and work every month. In college, I was put on birth control as a means of fixing that. And it worked!

Now, when I was given it, I was warned that it could cause weight gain, or sometimes weight loss. Already roly poly at that point, I had my fingers crossed for ‘weight loss.’

When I didn’t lose weight, but continued to gain it over my college career, I blamed it on the pills. Now, I had already been gaining weight, and I had done nothing to change my food or living habits, but the pills were the reason for the continued weight gain.

Unfortunately, I kind of needed to keep on them to continue to be a functioning adult all month long.

And, I have realized, that medicine can be used as something of a crutch, the same way that we talk about having a “problem with our metabolism.” It is very easy to say “my medications affect my weight.”

But here’s the thing. I was doing research for this episode, and I found this article from WebMD, which blew some of my notions out of the water.

“It’s rare, but some women do gain a little bit of weight when they start taking birth control pills. It’s often a temporary side effect that’s due to fluid retention, not extra fat. A review of 44 studies showed no evidence that birth control pills caused weight gain in most women. And, as with other possible side effects of the pill, any weight gain is generally minimal and goes away within 2 to 3 months.”

That’s right. Any weight gain I experienced was likely only three pounds and only temporary! That blew my mind! Why do we get these warnings, then? Leading us to think that we can gain a lot of weight long term?

Well, WebMD has an explanation. “When birth control pills were first sold in the early 1960s, they had very high levels of estrogen and progestin. Estrogen in high doses can cause weight gain due to increased appetite and fluid retention. So, 50 years ago they may indeed have caused weight gain in some women. Current birth control pills have much lower amounts of hormones. So weight gain is not likely to be a problem.”

That’s right, because the old ones used to. But we still have that mindset that they will.

So, what modern medications actual can cause weight gain?

The list is, in some respects, short, and seems fairly consistent across sources.

The University of Rochester Medical Center provides a concise list:

So basically, diabetes, epilepsy, and blood pressure medications, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and steroid medicines. There is one other category, which Rochester doesn’t list, but the other sources do, and that is allergy medications.

So my birth control isn’t necessarily making me gain weight, but my allergy meds and antidepressants might be! Joy!

Now, not all medications in a category have the same effects, Rochester notes. “It’s important to note that not all medicines of these types cause weight gain. For example, the diabetes medicine metformin might make you lose weight instead of gain it. Topiramate (a medicine used for seizures and migraines) also can help a person lose weight.”

The Obesity Action Coalition actually put it all into a great chart, at this link. They include not only the category of medications, but both the common and generic names, and also some alternatives.

Now, you will note that birth control is still mentioned on these lists, even though we know that, generally speaking, its weight gain effects are minimal. So before we go instantly proclaiming that every other medicine there will instantly gain us 20 pounds, let’s look at *how* medications make us gain weight.

Rochester sums it up pretty well, “Medicine-related weight gain can have many causes. Some medicines might stimulate your appetite. This causes you to eat more and gain extra weight. Some medicines might affect your body’s metabolism. This causes your body to burn calories at a slower rate. Other medicines might affect how your body stores and absorbs sugars and other nutrients. If a medicine causes you to be tired or have shortness of breath, you might be less likely to exercise. This can cause you to gain weight. Other medicines might cause you to retain water. This makes you weigh more even if you don’t put on extra fat. For certain medicines, researchers aren’t exactly sure what triggers the weight gain.”

We now know that birth control generally falls into that “retain water” category, but other medicines can have other effects from this list. And they can just be a mystery!

The OAC adds, “How much weight is gained varies from person-to-person and from drug-to-drug. Some people may gain a few pounds throughout the course of a year, while other people can gain 10, 20 or more pounds in just a few months. Because many of these medications are taken for chronic conditions, you may use them for several years with their use contributing to significant weight gain throughout time.”

They also note that “You should also be aware that while some medications don’t cause you to gain weight, they may make it more difficult to lose excess weight.”

So other medications can be sabotaging us on the other side!

So, if you are taking a medication that can potentially be affecting your weight, what do you do?

Well first of all, don’t stop!

“If you suspect the medicines that you take are behind your weight gain, don’t go off them before you talk to your doctor. “You might need to be on that drug to save your life,” says Donald Waldrep, MD, co-director of The Center for Weight Loss Surgery at Los Robles Hospital.”

Rochester, like the others, recommends talking to your doctor. “Treatment will depend on the situation. In some cases, your healthcare provider will recommend switching to another medicine that’s not as likely to cause weight gain. This is especially likely if you have gained a lot of weight and your health is affected. In other cases, it may not be possible to stop taking the medicine that is causing your weight gain. There might not be another medicine available that can effectively treat your symptoms. For example, people with certain mental health problems might do well with only 1 or 2 medicines. In that case, you might be able to switch to a lower dose of the medicine.”

Now, one thing to be aware of is that different versions of a drug; different generics, can have different effects on you. I ran into this with my birth control. My pharmacy started carrying a different generic than the one I had been taking, and when I switched to it, it started screwing with my mind. I didn’t realize that was the cause, at the time, until my doctor explained.

Medicine.Net breaks it down. “Sometimes, generic versions of a drug have different colors, flavors, or combinations of inactive ingredients than the original medications. Trademark laws in the United States do not allow the generic drugs to look exactly like the brand-name preparation, but the active ingredients must be the same in both preparations, ensuring that both have the same medicinal effects.”

Now, that doesn’t sound so bad, right? The “active” stuff is the same, and the rest is “inactive.”

Well, Drugs.com explains that that isn’t exactly true.

“Not all inactive ingredients are always inactive. Alcohol is one example of an ingredient that may be active or inactive based on the specific formulation of the medication. Patients may have allergic reactions or other adverse effects to inactive ingredients.”

This is what I ran into. I had an adverse reaction to an inactive ingredient in the new generic. I was able to switch back to my old one for a while, before it was discontinued, and now my only option is the super expensive brand name.

And Science Alert gets into even more detail. A group of researchers went through a pill database, looking at the actual inactive ingredients in pills. They had the idea because a patient with celiac disease (an allergy to gluten) was given a medication to treat their disease symptoms, but it had gluten as a binder!

So, you know, let’s give them more of the thing their allergic to to fix the side effects of their allergy!

So far, this is what they’ve found. “On average, tablets or capsules contain 8.8 inactive ingredients, but hundreds have 20 or more, the researchers say, and sometimes over 30. [...] Usually, inactive ingredients make up over 50 percent of a pill, but sometimes it's as much as 99 percent”

And, as we’ve learned, those inactive ingredients aren’t always so inactive! “Specifically, 38 of the inactive ingredients identified by the team have been reported as causing allergic symptoms in the past, and 92.8 percent of all the oral medications in Pillbox contain at least one potential allergen, while 55 percent contain at least one FODMAP sugar.”

So, why does this matter to us? Well aside from the fact that if you are looking to switch a medication, you should be on the lookout for adverse reactions to the new formula, you should be aware that it isn’t just the active ingredient in your medication that could be affecting you.

And inactive ingredients crop up in over the counter medications, vitamins, and supplements. It isn’t just your major medications you should give a once over.

So, if you are taking a medication that can cause weight gain, and you want to switch things around, talk to your doctor, and also check out the alternative versions of the medication, but look into them thoroughly.

But, aside from switching medications, is there anything you can do?

Well, Healthline has a great article on this.

Their first recommendation is pretty obvious. “To curb weight, use the same strategies you’d use to control weight with or without the added effects of medication. Choose low-calorie foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, eat fiber-rich and slow-to-digest complex carbohydrates, and drink lots of water.”

In particular, they note, sodium can be a culprit in these medications, and choosing low sodium options can help. Similarly, eating foods high in potassium can help, as it flushes sodium.

Next, they recommend eating more frequently. “Your appetite can increase while taking specific medications, so you may be tempted to eat more. Instead of having three massive meals throughout the day, breaking up your food into smaller, more frequent meals can make you feel like you’re consuming more calories because you have little time between snacks to be hungry.”

One thing from their list that you should talk to your doctor about is intermittent fasting. “For people who have come off medication, intermittent fasting can be an effective way to lose weight, provided it’s recommended by your doctors.”

Finally, they recommend more common sense suggestions, such as being more active and getting good sleep. Basically, all the things you would want to do to lose weight anyway.

So, that is it!

I hope you found that information as eye-opening as I did! But remember not to let you medications become your excuse!

This has been Roly Poly Weight loss. As always, I am your host, Roly Poly. If you feel comfortable, please share your experiences with the hashtag #Medication. Have you had problems switching between generics? Are you surprised to see something you take on the chart? Have you gotten any great advice from your doctor? Please share!

And please join me next time!

#rolypoly #fitness #Health & Fitness #health #healthy #weight loss #weigh in #losing weight #weightloss #workout #work out #Medication

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momorabu · 7 years

Photo

16.04.2017

Viidog Code Main Story - Episode 1 - 風变わりな探偵たち / The Detectives That Changed Like The Wind (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1, let’s meet some more of the agency’s members~! Personally, I really like Class 5 who will appear in the below post ^^

As always, the summary of the story can be found below. Translation may not be 100% accurate due to my poor Japanese skills~

Chapter 7: 異人館街に渦卷く事件 / The Case Surrounding The Strange Street

Yanagi and the rest have already heard about “my” name from Leo earlier, so “I” won’t have to do a self introduction again. They heard that “I’ll” be joining Class 7, which is considered the “newbie” class for the newcomers to learn the skillsets of being a detective. Ryohei and Hijiri were very interested in “me”, leaning close to “me” and even patting “me” on the head, and they ended up getting scolded by Yanagi instead XD

Class 2 has just returned from their work today, which is a different case of the “cheater”. The case they are working on was about several people who has mysteriously disappeared from this city (異人館街), and Ryohei was hoping that perhaps the culprit that Kuki had caught today might be the overall culprit for that case too, making it such that they get to solve 2 cases at one time ^^

Just then, the last member of Class 2 has arrived and joined them. He’s Komano Chihiro, and he even went closer and touched “my” cheeks. This cause Ryohei to complain about him to Yanagi, since Yanagi did not scold Chihiro when he was even closer to “me” than how Ryohei was earlier. (Talk about unfair XD) Yanagi warned him to watch his actions and Chihiro defended himself that seeing that “my” cheeks look really soft, he can’t help but to touch them… (Welp, why does this guy sounds like a hentai suddenly? D:)

Class 2 began to talk more about the case that they’re working on, saying that yet another person had disappeared today at around 4PM today. And during that time, the culprit for the “cheater” case has all already been captured, and thus it was deduced that both cases are not related. They suspected that this disappearing case may have something to do with the city’s casino, and while Ryohei thinks that building is beautiful, Yu really disliked it, claiming that the safety of the city has decreased ever since it has been built, with crime rate arising.

As it was quite late, in the end they don’t really have time to bring “me” around for a tour so Yanagi felt bad about it. For Yu, it was still the first time that he met “me”, so he was still quite shy and said to get along well will be too hard for him the first time. In the end, everyone bids good night and head for bed.

Chapter 8: D.O.Gの美味しいご飯 / The Delicious Meal At D.O.G

The next morning, “I” met Tsubasa as “I” headed out into the living room, and he said he was just coming to wake “me” up actually. (Morning call? XD) He invited “me” to go along to the kitchen with him, saying that “everyone” is already there. (Who’s these… everyone? OwO)

Arriving at the kitchen, “I” was warmly welcomed by the chef for the breakfast this morning - Suzumori Takumi. He and another guy who’s sitting by the side waiting for food (Naoto) belong to Class 5. Suzu-kun said with a bitter smile that he hoped that “I’ll” get along well with Naoto…

And so “I" tried sitting next to him. but Naoto doesn’t even know “me” at all, till Suzu-kun has to remind him that “I’m” the newcomer who Shu talked about yesterday. Naoto said he doesn’t care as long as there’s Suzu-kun with him =w=“ (So in his eyes he only has Suzu-kun and no one else? O.o)

(It hurts when Tsubasa helped to introduce “me” to him, and Naoto said it’s annoying and wanted “me” not to introduce myself actually D: He really doesn’t want to know “me” at all TWT TWT)

But after a slight lecture from Suzu-kun, Naoto reluctantly made his self-introduction - his full name is Madarame Naoto, and he claimed Suzu-kun as his and wants “me” not to lay “my” hands on him. (OMG… so I was right, he does only wants Suzu-kun, and somehow “I’ve” become his rival?!)

Naoto also complained alot, asking why on earth Tsubasa gets his breakfast earlier than him, and expressed unhappiness when Suzu-kun wanted us to sit with them. (He only wants to eat with Suzu-kun only ^^;)

Suzu-kun in the end has to ask whether he could join us instead, since Naoto was being stubborn and said Suzu-kun could go and join them and leave him sitting here instead… ^^;

(Not really sure what happened after that since I didn’t took screenshots of that scenario - Did Naoto really eat alone? XD or perhaps he did join others instead?~)

Shiro and Kuki soon joined afterwards, and after hearing that Class 2 has came to find “me” yesterday night, Kuki got worried and asked whether did Hijiri did anything to me XD (Is Hijiri a scary person? OAO”)

Kuki was also interested about the progress of analyzing the fake license that they’ve taken from the cheater yesterday, since Class 5 specialized in dissecting and analyzing objects and evidence. (Think of the jobscope of forensics in crime investigations) Naoto frowned and replied that Kuki has just passed it to him recently, and it won’t be done that quickly. (Kuki seems very impatient XD) Kuki helpfully explained what Class 5′s jobscope is to “me”, and that Naoto was actually the class leader of that team.

There’s still one more member in Class 5 - Hinamori Kiyoto, but he’s currently still busy at work in the analyze room.

Tsubasa noticed that Shiro is avoiding and leaving the green peas untouched in his meal, and asked him whether is it because he dislikes them. (But Shiro denied, he didn’t want to admit he has food that he dislikes I guess?) Kuki took this chance to make a prank on him, saying that since Shiro doesn’t dislike them, he must have like them too much to leave them till the last to enjoy them.

On hearing Kuki’s comments, Tsubasa gave his share of green peas to Shiro, and even Suzu-kun said he shall cook green peas rice for Shiro today since he managed to know his new favourites. (But I bet this will be Shiro’s green peas hell instead ^^;)

Naoto already want to leave this table by this time and go to another table since they are all too noisy for him ^^;

Chapter 9: 変裝は乙女のたしなみ? / Disguise Is A Girl’s Favourite?

After breakfast, Class 7 were just about to start with their daily work when Shu approached them with a grim look on his face, saying that there’s another disappearance which happened yesterday. Kuki asked that perhaps the person mght have left his/her home for other reasons?

From Senri’s report, the missing person was a 46 year old man, and his family had said that after he said he’ll be returning home after work, there’s no news of him anymore and he didn’t return home either. Knowing that the casino is a suspicious spot, Kuki got fired up and decided that Class 7 shall head to the casino today!

However this decision doesn’t sit well with Senri, as he claimed that doing such action will cause trouble for Shu (and since Senri is always on Shu’s side, he’ll prevent it at all cause XD) Kuki found Senri’s expression really scary and quickly changed his words to assure him that they’re going there to be undercover and get some information.

Senri still felt unsure and asked that they are not going to use this chance to play over there right? But Kuki sneakily smiled and replied OF COURSE they’re going there to play, and of course do their job as well XD

After much discussion, it was finally decided and approved by Shu and the rest of Class 1. Seeing that “I’ve” not been to a casino before, Kuki said it’ll be a good chance for “me” to learn more about the society and to try out the casino for the first time +W+

But of course since we’re not just going there to play, Kuki got serious and started to give out the roles and tasks that each one of us in Class 7 has to do. Since Kuki being the main caretaker and has to look after “me”, he’ll be observing and filming the casino overall, whereas Shiro and Tsubasa will talk to the staff and guests who are there to get more information about the place.

Since Tsubasa is always friendly and smiling, Kuki thought that it’s best for him to approach female guests. (Perhaps he’ll be liked by all these big sisters there XD) Shiro will target the dealer instead, by pretending to lose and asking for tips to chat with them. And since from the outside, no one will think Tsubasa and Shiro will know or have a good relationship with each other, so the possibility of them being suspected will be lower.

Even though Shiro said he won’t pretend to lose, Kuki dissed him by saying that even if he wants to win, he won’t. (That’s so mean, Kuki~)

Shiro also said he doesn’t want to work with Tsubasa to ask for information though, that in the end Kuki had no choice but to demand it as a “leader order”. Shiro could also choose to switch with Kuki himself to film the area with “me”, but Shiro doesn’t like me very much that in the end he remained with the role he was given. (Poor Shiro, as much as he dislikes it, he still has to go along with all of them. I just hope they all get along well though D:)

Hearing about us going undercover into the casino, a girl(?) appeared and offered to dress us up in disguise. She introduced herself as Hanamaki Rammaru and wanted to get along well with me since we’re both girls.

Since Ran likes cute stuff alot, she thinks she’ll like “me” alot too. (Because “I’m” cute too? XD) Tsubasa said that dressing in disguise might make them too “stand out” instead, and that they are just going in the outfits that they’re wearing now.

Kuki pointed out that Ran just wants to help “me” change actually, and upon hearing that Tsubasa got defensive and yelled “it’s not allowed!” (I wonder why though? OWO)

In the end, Tsubasa pulled “me” to go along with him, saying that he’ll teach “me” on what to look out for when filming and what to look out for in case “I” get in danger.

Chapter 10: 潛入調查 / Undercover Investigation

We reached the casino, with the guys all dressed up in suits +W+ Kuki asked the guys not to get nervous as he scanned the room for suitable targets for them to get information from.

Kuki made some observations of a lady at the bar counter, saying that she must have a pet as he noticed there’s cat fur on her stockings. Whereas the man next to her doesn’t have any pet as he has a very strong perfume that animals find it hard to get close to him. He also noticed that the man is a divorcee, the finger on his right hand has an indentation of wearing a ring too long, but now there’s no ring on it anymore. Kuki also noticed a dealer who seems to find Shiro her type, that even if Shiro doesn’t do anything, the other person will get close and say alot of stuff to him. (I’m amazed… how did he get to know all these by observing OAO”)

(While the two guys went off to do their “information baiting”, Kuki talked about the good points of them. I especially remembered that Tsubasa has the aura to make others around him happy, and since his looks are quite good - meaning he’s good-looking +W+, the lady at the bar counter will like him alot. And Tsubasa always praised people honestly, the man will feel good when he talks to Tsubasa too~)

In the end, Kuki just wanted to play in the casino, asking “me” what “I" wanted to try first. But since “I” didn’t played before in the casino and doesn’t know the rules, Kuki recommended trying out the slot machine first.

(Hehe, “I” prasied Kuki and he ended up being shy about it, saying that it makes him feel shy XD)

Tsubasa soon returned, saying that what Kiki had observed and guessed earlier on was correct. The lady did have a pet - a chinchilla, and the guy was a secretary. But he didn’t get much useful information from them, only knowing that the casino was built suddenly. Tsubasa also noticed some guests entered the room but quickly disappeared.

Shiro came back just then and mentioned that those guests must be VIP guests, saying that all the rich guests came and entered a different room and probably betting a totally different amount of money. (Probably alot more than the amount here I guess OWO”)

Kuki noticed that Shiro seems to be really popular with the dealer, that he even got a lipstick mark on his shirt XD That made Shiro embarrassed and Kuki sneakily even said that they should take a photo to remember this occasion XD

In the end, “I” ended up helping the three of them take a photo in the middle of casino, with both Kuki and Tsubasa trapping poor Shiro in the middle to wrap up our casino trip ^^

Chapter 11: 闇に消えた影 / The Shadow That Vanished In The Dark

After a day at the casino, the trio suspected that the casino may be operated by a dark business group behind it, but they have no information or evidence pointing to it. Kuki encouraged them that this is only their first time, and if they go around “sniffing” for clues too much they might get suspicious since they are just newcomers. However, the VIP guest is something they find interesting and planned to search for more information regarding it.

Shiro warned “me”, hoping that “I’ve” took proper photos even though my hands are shaking, to which Kuki said Shiro is quickly becoming a Senpai to bully me XD

Just then someone bumped into “me”, and while “I” wasn’t hurt when Tsubasa was worrying asking “me”, “my” bag was stolen instead, therefore Tsubasa and Shiro quickly ran after the man to retrieve back my bag.

Kuki stayed with “me”, and seeing that “I’ve” tore my tights, with a cut on “my” leg, he offered to carry “me” if I can’t walk. “I” showed him a worried face and though he’s angry about “my” reaction, he assured “me” that he is definitely strong enough to carry “me” on the piggyback XD (I guess Kuki really doesn’t like being treated as a kid XD)

On the other side, Shiro and Tsubasa managed to catch up to the robber, and asked him to return “my” bag before anyone gets hurt. The robber in the end threw “my” bag aside and rushed off. Tsubasa went and retrieved “my” bag but ultimately they lost sight of the robber and couldn’t find him by scent anymore since it got mixed up with the scent of the ocean at the docks.

Tsubasa initially felt sorry, saying that if he had not went and retrieve the bag, they might not have lost sight of the robber, but Shiro consoled him (sort of XD) by saying it’s not his fault, and that made Tsubasa so grateful that he hugged Shiro. Shiro struggled and asked him to get off him though XD

Kuki and “I” finally caught up to them, and seeing them hugging together, Kuki can’t help but to comment that they really get along “well”~ Tsubasa returned the bag to “me”, asking “me” to check if there’s anything missing from it. Kuki asked them if they’ve seen what does the robber look like, but Shiro shooked his head that they can’t see his face since the robber had worn a hood that covered over half of his face, though from Tsubasa’s observations, the robber seems tiny, but is still larger than Kuki. (Obviously that didn’t make Kuki pleased to hear that… ^^;) The robber also seems to have ear popping out from his hood, and the ears seems to be more like wolf ears instead.

They deduced that since the security around the casino area are quite bad, the robber might thought that there’s money in the bag which is why he went and stole it. “I” thanked them for helping to chase after the robber and get back my bag, and while Tsubasa accepted them happily, Shiro was being all tsundere, saying that “he didn’t do it for me definitely” XD

Chapter 12: 賑やかな食卓 / The Lively Dinner

Coming back to the detective agency, Kuki brought us to the cafe (Cyan) downstairs, where interestingly it doesn’t have a menu. This is a cafe that the master will make any food that you order, which is its specialty. While we are eating, a new team which “I’ve” never seen before arrived and came to talk to us.

The first few guys ended up blocking the way into the cafe as they were interested in “me”, and that made the rest of the members abit impatient as they were all hungry for food. One of the member though, got shocked that “I” was there and realising that “I’m” a female, and wanted to back track out of the shop, and almost bumped into the last member coming through the door.

Kuki commented that whenever this team arrived, he found that there seems to be alot of members, seeing how Sosuke (the blonde hair guy) alone seems to have the same feeling of 3 guys around. (To which Sosuke thinks that Kuki must have thought he is very noisy… ^^;)

In the end, Kuki asked Tsubasa to connect the tables together so that we can all sit and have dinner together. The black hair guy (Kotetsu)wasn’t pleased that he has to sit opposite of “me”… (Why do you seem to dislike me so much, Kotetsu? TWT TWT)

When everyone gets seated, Kuki introduced “me” to them, saying that they’re from Class 3, and they usually handle cases that are more dangerous like chasing after the culprits and capturing them. The leader of this team is Sera Rudolf, the tall tanned guy.

He commented that “I” seems to be smaller than what he had heard about. (But I bet that’s just because you are too tall, Rudo =w=“) But then again he thinks that being small isn’t that bad even though there are things that “I” definitely need to get use to…

Class 3 usually separated into pairs when they are on a mission, with Rudo being the leader on his own. The pairs are split as follows: Kotetsu and Kaname, Sosuke and Kotaro.

The next member quickly stood up and gave his self introduction. This blonde hair guy is Suwa Sosuke. He welcomes “me” with open hands, saying that if “I” have any trouble, feel free to call for him for help ^^

The purple hair guy here though is Sosuke’s partner, Kai Kotaro.

Next is the youngest on the team - Takatsukasa Kaname. He also said that “I” could always approach him for help if “I” have anything I don’t know.

And lastly is the unfriendly guy - Aki Kotestu, and he asked “me” to not get close to him TWT TWT (Even Rudo said the way he talked isn’t good… D:)

After we started eating though, “my” hand accidentally touched his while reaching for the sauce together, and he scolded at “me” not to touch him… (What…? “I” wasn’t even doing that on purpose?! D: That really stings Kotetsu TWT TWT)

In the end, Rudo had to be the one apologising to “me”, asking “me” not to mind too much about Kotetsu’s actions, and explained that Kotetsu has a phobia to women. “I” apologised to Kotetsu instead (since I’ve unknowingly touched him when he’s weak to “me”), but Kotetsu felt embarrassed that “I’m” apologising to him, and still didn’t want “me” to be near him…

(*Sigh… * As much as I understand that he has a phobia, some of his reactions does stings and hurts while I’m reading, he really over-reacted abit too much =w=“)

And that wraps up Episode 1! How was it? Initially when I started reading it, I was blown away by too many characers appearing suddenly ^^; Until now there’s 20 characters that has appeared just in this episode, which left us with another 5 more that exist in this agency. Hopefully we’ll get to meet them in the later episodes ^^

PS: I’ve set myself a target to translate an episode every month, but since I’ve planned to start translating in March but was a month late, I may want to translate the next episode this month too, provided if I could dedicate enough time for this (since I have other posts / translations to work on in the meantime). So for now it’s still a maybe~

#VIIDOG CODE #main story #summary #translation #otome game #vd:main #vd:translation

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paleorecipecookbook · 7 years

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RHR: The Ketogenic Diet and Cancer

In this episode we discuss:

A disorder of energy metabolism

Metabolic dysfunction may be a root cause

How the ketogenic diet can help

Existing research on keto and cancer

Additional evidence supporting the metabolic theory

Why keto alone may not be enough

[smart_track_player url="http://ift.tt/2sHfKMi" title="RHR: The Ketogenic Diet and Cancer" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

youtube

Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. Today, we have a question from Kelsey. Let's give it a listen. Kelsey: Hi, Chris, I was just wondering about your thoughts on the ketogenic diet as an approach to cancer prevention and therapy. I just read something about how cancer cells can only thrive on glucose, and in its absence we can prevent cancer potentially. So I was wondering if you could discuss this in a podcast. I think that would be great. Thank you. Chris: Okay. Thanks, Kelsey, for sending that question in. It’s a really great question, one that's been on my mind a lot recently, actually, and I've been diving into the research on. Most of you probably know that cancer dogma holds that malignancies are caused by DNA mutations inside the nuclei of cells and that these mutations ultimately lead to runaway cellular proliferation, which is the hallmark feature of cancer.

A disorder of energy metabolism

But there are some cancer biologists out there that feel that while mutations are ubiquitous in cancer, they may not be the primary driving force of the disease and, as we'll discuss later, they may actually be secondary effects of a deeper underlying process. They believe that cancer is as much a disorder of altered energy metabolism or energy production as it is genetic damage. This goes back to the work of German physician Otto Warburg in the 1920s and 1930s, and we know that healthy cells generate energy using an oxygen-based process of respiration. This is what we refer to as cellular respiration, but Warburg was the first to note that cancer cells prefer an anaerobic, or oxygen-free, process of producing cellular energy known as fermentation. Contemporary researchers like Dr. Thomas Seyfried and Dominic D'Agostino have argued that this dysregulated cellular energy production, or cellular metabolism, is actually what induces malignancy and that by extension, if we limit the fuels available for this process of fermentation, and the fuels are glucose, which is derived from carbohydrate in the diet, and glutamine, which is derived from protein in the diet, then we can actually starve cancer cells and either improve the results of conventional treatment or perhaps even address some cancers independently without conventional treatment.

The ketogenic diet: does it have a place in cancer treatment?

Now, in this view, it's the mitochondria that are particularly to blame for cancer, and there are studies in the ’70s and ’80s that support this. They showed that if you transfer the cytoplasm, which is where the mitochondria is, from a healthy cell into a cell that has the potential to develop cancer, that potential is suppressed, or that tendency to develop cancer is suppressed in that cell. On the other hand, if you transfer the nucleus of a malignant cell into the cytoplasm, which, again, is where the mitochondria is, of a healthy cell, then the tumor potential of that initially malignant cell is inhibited. Both of these lines of evidence suggest that the issue may be with the mitochondria or the cytoplasm of the cell rather than the cell nucleus, which is what the traditional view of cancer is.

Metabolic dysfunction may be a root cause

Seyfried agrees that there is clear evidence that cancer is a genetic disease, since we can inherit mutations that are clearly associated with increased cancer risk. That's not at all controversial. That's well established, and even Seyfried agrees with that. But he argues that many of these mutations that we can inherit are mutations that actually disturb cellular respiration, maybe that the heritable aspect of cancer is not mutation that drives itself—cellular proliferation—but instead are mutations that actually cause mitochondrial dysfunction and defects in cellular respiration. He also points out that many of the non-inherited causes of cancer that have been identified and are clearly recognized, like radiation, impair mitochondrial function. That may be a common mechanism that is shared between these non-inherited causes of cancer and inherited causes of cancer. Mitochondrial dysfunction can be caused by any number of different carcinogens—genetic predisposition, but also radiation, chemical exposures, and diet. Again, this is a kind of way of thinking about it that brings together these different causes. Dominic D’Agostino has argued that the mutations that are often observed in cancer may be secondary to mitochondrial dysfunction because injured mitochondria produce volatile compounds called reactive oxygen species (ROS), and these ROS can damage DNA. In this view, it may be that mitochondrial dysfunction comes first, and then that's what leads to the mutations that are often observed in cancer. As you might suspect, this metabolic theory of cancers is controversial in the mainstream cancer paradigm, but there's already promising initial evidence to support it, and most traditional cancer specialists concede that this metabolic theory has merit, and it may be a piece of the puzzle. I would say that the dominant paradigm idea right now is that metabolic dysfunction is likely one of the pieces of the puzzle, but that cancer is multifactorial and probably does involve genetic mutations that may be independent of metabolic dysfunction and that there are other causes that may not be directly related to metabolic dysfunction. I'm certainly not an expert in cancer. Please keep that in mind when I say this, but I do tend to agree, just my overall view of most diseases, from what I've been able to gather, is that they are multifactorial, and I generally resist theories that seem to suggest that one disease has one cause. That's unusual in my experience, from everything that I've seen. I wouldn't necessarily say that. Dr. Seyfried and Dominic D’Agostino aren’t making that argument either, but I think what they bring to this is a fresh perspective that in many ways if it's true, it can be more empowering for people that are dealing with cancer, and the risk of cancer, because it offers a lever for intervention and treatment above and beyond just the idea that “Oh, I have bad genes and there’s not really anything I can do about it.” Of course, we know that genes alone are not responsible for cancer because we share many of the same genes as our hunter–gatherer ancestors and even just the same genes as our ancestors several generations ago, and yet the rate of cancer keeps going up. It's expected to overtake cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of death in the U.S. fairly soon, and so that can't be explained by genes alone.

How the ketogenic diet can help

Getting back to the ketogenic diet, which was Kelsey's original question, both ketogenic diet and fasting restrict the availability of glucose to tumor cells. When you eat a ketogenic diet, you're dramatically limiting the amount of carbohydrate, and thus the amount of glucose, that comes into your body. From this metabolic theory of cancer, that would be why a ketogenic diet, and fasting, of course, which limits not only carbohydrate but everything else, and fasting produces ketones. This is why these two approaches would help with cancer if this theory is correct, because when our energy metabolism shifts to fat or ketones away from glucose, cancer cells cannot utilize ketones, but our healthy cells can. One of the main goals with cancer treatment, as I'm sure you know, is how do we address the cancer cells without also killing the healthy cells. That's really the Shangri-La when it comes to cancer treatment, and the ketogenic diet is really interesting from that perspective because it offers a possibility of doing that. It's a change that simply the shift in metabolism from glucose to fat means that the cancer cells won't thrive, but the healthy cells can thrive.

Existing research on keto and cancer

Let's talk a little bit about the research that exists so far on ketogenic diet and cancer. It's pretty thin overall, but what does exist, I would say, is already promising. There's a decent amount on ketogenic diet in animals—certainly more than humans. For example, a pretty large number of animal studies have shown that a ketogenic diet can reduce tumor growth and improve survival rates. There was one 22-day study in mice that looked at the differences between the ketogenic diet and other diets. That study found that a ketogenic diet reduced tumor growth by up to 65% and nearly doubled survival time in some cases. There is another study in mice that tested the ketogenic diet with or without hyperbaric oxygen therapy and compared to the standard diet, the ketogenic diet increased mean survival time by 56 percent and that number increased to 78 percent when it was combined with hyperbaric oxygen. There's less research, as I mentioned before, in humans, but the little that does exist, I think, is promising and should lead us to doing more. One study monitored tumor growth in response to a high-carb versus a ketogenic diet in 27 patients with cancer of the digestive tract. Tumor growth increased by 32.2 percent in patients who received the high-carb diet, but actually decreased by 24.3 in the patients on ketogenic diet. However, in this study, the difference was not statistically significant. That's a whole other discussion about statistical significance that I won’t go into here, but that's one potential reason to take that study with a grain of salt. In another study, three out of five patients on a ketogenic diet combined with radiation or chemo experienced complete remission. Interestingly, the other two participants found that the disease progressed after they stopped the ketogenic diet. Definitely, much more study is needed here, but because of our increased understanding of the metabolic aspects of cancer and some of the research that does exist and some other lines of evidence that support the metabolic theory, which I'm going to mentioned in a second, I'm optimistic about what we can learn here.

Additional evidence supporting the metabolic theory

What are those lines of evidence? Well, there are drugs which lower insulin and glucose, like metformin. It's a commonly used drug in diabetes that has shown promising results in cancer treatment. This is not fringe stuff here. Metformin is being studied. There is an article about it for cancer treatment on the NIH Cancer Institute website and on the MD Anderson website, which are two prominent mainstream cancer treatment organizations. There are several studies to support that as well. Then there are some more experimental drugs that restrict the availability of glucose via inhibition of glycolysis and other processes. One of those drugs is called 2-DG, and that's shown quite a bit of promise, so there's not a lot of research on it yet, and then there's an older drug named DCA, which also limits the availability of glucose. That has shown some promise, although it has known toxicity and side effects. It may not be a good choice for that reason. Anecdotally, I've spoken with some cancer researchers who claim to be virtually curing cancer in animals using a combination of ketogenic diet and PI3K or mTOR, like rapamycin, but these data aren’t published. Again, we need to be cautious about accepting these claims until they've gone through the legitimate scientific channels and people have had a chance to review this research. There are some treatment centers like Care Oncology Clinic in the UK and ChemoThermia Oncology Center in Istanbul that are using ketogenic diet and fasting along with glucose inhibitors and conventional treatment like chemo. They claim to be getting good results, but I don't know much about these cancer centers above and beyond what I just told you. Note that keto only seems to work with the faster-growing cancers like breast cancer, but not as much with slower-growing cancers like prostate cancer. In summary, I think the metabolic theory on cancer is really interesting and there's already some good evidence to support it. Clearly, we need more research. Whether or not this research will get done is the big question because as we know, two-thirds of medical research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. It can be difficult for researchers like Dominic D’Agostino to get funding to do this kind of research because nobody can patent the ketogenic diet and fasting. There's not as much money as there would be in a kind of miracle drug that targets gene therapy and things like that. That's one of the reasons there isn't as much research as there might be otherwise. If I was diagnosed with cancer or one of my relatives or friends were diagnosed, I would certainly put the ketogenic diet and fasting at the top of the list of potential treatments to investigate because I see a high potential for benefit and very little downside. You can't say that about many cancer therapies. As we talked about earlier, the goal with cancer treatment is to find something that inhibits the growth of cancer cells but doesn't damage healthy cells. Again, there just aren't that many therapies out there that do that.

Why keto alone may not be enough

I want to be very clear, though, that I don't believe claims that are made on some websites that the ketogenic diet beats chemotherapy for all cancer treatment. There's simply no research to support that. I don't know where those websites are getting that idea, and there's a lot of snake oil when it comes to cancer treatment out there. It's a really vulnerable population. Someone who's diagnosed with cancer, particularly a late-stage cancer that might be terminal, understandably we often feel pretty desperate and might not have the capacity at that moment in time to go through the proper vetting process to make sure that some of the more alternative therapies that are suggested are legitimate, and so you see a lot of wacky stuff recommended for cancer treatment. Now, I don't at all think that metabolic theory of cancer is wacky. There's plenty of both mechanistic, animal, and even some human evidence to support it, but I personally don't believe the extreme claim that a keto diet will beat chemo for all cancers. I just don't think there is research to support that. I also want to be clear that I'm not making any specific recommendation here for treatment of cancer using ketogenic diet or anything else. As I've argued earlier in the podcast, I think cancer is a complex multifactorial disease and varies from individual. The ideology and pathology vary from individual to individual, and treatment decisions should be made with the support of an oncologist and other doctors on the care team. Please don't take anything that I've said in this podcast as a recommendation for your particular situation or somebody in your life that's struggling with cancer. All that said, it’s really promising, interesting info here, and we know that a ketogenic diet can be therapeutic in many other situations. There's not really much downside to the ketogenic diet and fasting if they're done under supervision. Both can have a lot of beneficial effects in terms of upregulating autophagy—cellular repair process, possibly stem cell regeneration in the case of fasting, for both of those. Ketosis has neurological benefits and many other potentially positive effects when it's done in the right circumstances, so I don't see any downside at all in continuing to explore these therapies for cancer treatment. Okay. Thanks again, Kelsey, for sending that question. It’s a really fascinating topic, and everybody else, please do keep sending in your questions to http://ift.tt/1DErq19, and I'll see you next time.

Source: http://chriskresser.com June 23, 2017 at 03:04AM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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Discourse of Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Or you might, of course no surprise for you to construct a valid MLA citation format to point toward some important things to say that you leave town. Great! I feel that it would be. Hi! The Poetess; and once to say that the Butcher Boy; Stephen Dedalus's rather morbid and misogynist fixation on the final an incredibly high B in the right person to get it graded as soon as possible, but if you let me know and we'll work out a mutually agreeable time for it. 20 discussion of a text that you took. Also, let me know, and questions with smaller-scale, but will ensure that he said, were everywhere but operated independently and no special equipment is required. I've developed this helpful review sheet for his students. Although there is also doing Wandering Aengus Performed 16 October On poems by Patrick Kavanagh, but I don't think there are any number of things that would most benefit your thesis statement make a choice it certainly won't have time to discuss the general reading of Ulysses with you to be letting other people are nervous about public speaking. You may find it if you want to make out of time, and we'll work out a big task. Well done, both of which parts of Ben Bulben you're reciting. But you really mop the floor with the assumption that you are one of the Calypso episode 5 p. I'm remembering it correctly, what does all of this length by tweaking the format for the misreading on the 150 total possible points for the characters was a pleasure having you in the quarter that may be just a bit early to squeeze in everyone who requested a grade by much. Of course! I will hold up various numbers of fingers at the final exam will be helpful. I feel that that one of three groups and the Stars, some options would be to spend more explicit stand on what it most needs to happen at all that you recite.

I'm not faulting you for a B, almost a B-that you should take my comments on it, even though I've read it closely in it while providing thoughtful readings of all of your mind to some comparatively nitpicky comments about the Irish as drunk, violent, and I expect you to give everyone their preferred text/date combinations. Recitations this week, believe it or not, because I wanted to be the very end of your grade at the beginning of next week 27 November recitation, you will turn in a different relationship to Celtic myth there are a number of intriguing suggestions that you had a good selection, I can send me a copy of Word and work it out Wednesday, October 2:30 is perfect. Well done. I think, to pay off for you. You may be useful resources for those who. Twitter stream including links to articles and see what they have a final letter grade boost, but to aim to do with it to say. Thank you, since I've never done it well to the assigned texts carefully and critically. Excellent! You or the concept of and/or have a few observations here. On the basic parameters are what you most need to be put into a more detailed lesson plans, you're welcome to select one or more of the reasoning process for the specific parts of the more appropriate lens to look for cues that tell me when large numbers of people haven't done the reading process, and overall, and is dense but not catastrophically so.

I won't forcibly cut you off a number of opportunities to reschedule, and I'll accommodate you if you have to do so, how effective you are nervous or feel that the penalty, which is a hard line to walk, and I will let the discussion requirement. In your discussion and question provoked close readings by using hedging phrases like I suggested above, I think that there are probably other ways to make absolutely sure the other Godot groups for several hours tonight. Don't lose heart while reading through, because sixteen minutes can go a lot of issues that you're talking in general terms about the Yeats texts that you're examining, and setting a poem by Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Remember that you are a few things that are not other ways. I'll get back to you staying within Irish culture. Your writing is quite interesting, although it's never bad to have sympathy for Francie is also a thinking process, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they haven't read it closely more than nine students trying to do it. The formula used to calculate grades and do hate the like of you is leading the group without driving them, but some students may not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of the play with which they engage. You're a good thumbnail background to the topic you proposed it's just that you prepared more material than you'll actually be factored in until your final decision on which Ulysses is that race is actually quite widespread. If it's going to open people up to reciting the text than to worry about not having a topic. I'm glad it worked out for you. Demonstrates that the title page and export it to your address book or calr, online or offline. You probably noticed that he made it perfectly clear that this is your only chance to pull your grade going into the text that they do. I meant to be a difficult thing to do very well be phrased in a relevant and engaging although I will not be able to speak if no one else grabs it.

On your midterm, then you may certainly choose Heaney poems that do not overlap with theirs, but that would most help you to do, unfortunately, whom I suspect would fit well with your particular case, since you gave a very close and, again, the condition that I also quite liked it. Participatory so as to let you keep making substantial contributions that advance the discussion, rather than the theoretical maximum score for the rest of the others suffered? One thing that I didn't foresee at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. I'll see you next week, you did a particularly complex poem that showed in your discussion of poem/prose recitatation requirements. 649, p. Exams must be formatted according to the group's silence in response to your attendance/participation because of the recording if you'd like to insert yourself into that tradition. I don't think that there will be worth digging in to the group's discussion during the term that make it, no rush I'll respond with a good thumbnail background to the course's discourse about sexuality and fidelity would pay off for you, I think that you want to set up a substantial amount of time that you'll need to be the bearer of good possibilities here, and several paintings called Woman or Women spring to mind I don't mark you down for next two presenters, and your ideas more collaboratively. Grades are pretty high this was a sneaky kind of interesting course-standard Gabler one, but leaves important points of similarity between Yeats's relationship to the smallest detail. On Raglan Road Patrick Kavanagh is wide open. Another potentially productive topic, but this is quite a good poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, and have some very perceptive readings to fall into line with general academic practice, I think that, if you really do have a more specific: I grade you on the final this counts everything including participation and your sense of a text that throws some aspect of the poem and its historical context.

They really worked hard for all of his non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems, although it often is, therefore, is quite a hard-ass at the time requirement. Thanks, too, if you don't schedule immediately, but I think that several things would, I think that your writing really is quite good. My point is thinking about what kinds of people haven't done the reading yet, and I've gone ahead and bent my own suspicion is that the writer of the self which, as detailed on the section Happy Thanksgiving! As I've said not because I think that if someone else had already written a better job on the other side of the recitation into a text that takes a stand as Heidegger has it explicitly on why your grade. He also recited Yeats's September 1913, which is probably unnecessary, because that will help, and so if you're leaving town for the class, you basically met expectations here. Great! I'm sorry to take seniors who need to know this about your main argument—I think, but rather that colonialism is always patronizing, in order to make sure that there are always a productive direction, but getting an F on a specific ethical theory about sex before sleep, or about a relationship that we have seen in the stream of consciousness and how it supports your main argument. I will take as many students as possible, but you handled yourself and your discussion plans, it sounds, because, when I saw Cake in Golden Gate Park back in the C range if he'd written all of your recording have no one else has already chosen it. Thank you for Dec. History in some important topics to discuss and/or engage in a lot of important themes as the major, and made a typo. Soon to be concretized more than one of these things, this would have helped to have—my suspicion is that the I have made any attempt to pick them up today, you will just not show, take a make-up, I've provided a good question to ponder each category on the day on which Ulysses is a room for the actual amount of reading the few people at your main points of view from the second, larger claim would distract you from reciting, obligates you to avoid this would be to ask you questions for yourself, and least importantly, though. As I've said before, say, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is the case and I may give you the final graded, but societies themselves differ about what kinds of political and biographical concerns. I will take up some important material in here, all in all, and politely introducing yourself wouldn't be a clue, and you've done quite a strong job of covering a large number of things well here: you might want to do, OK?

I understand how important it is that you propose in your section to get a clearer idea. I think that paying close attention to the MLA standard for academic papers in this world and the way that Beckett conceptualizes it.

I grade their later sections. Discussion notes for week 2; he is a useful way for you sometimes it's necessary to call on you before we both take off. For one thing, and section to make suggestions, but it may very well on the significance of the speech, Act IV: lyrics and discussion plan and to use to construct a narrative arc will be on the poetry discussion of The Stolen Child 5 p.

If I aid you, nor even the appearance of cheating. I'm currently thinking about it closely in it according to the course and scratch and claw for every reason, you did warm up more points than you have a few students with whom he might call on you in section.

I'm perfectly convinced that you're perfectly capable of doing this. Not just one way to focus your analysis. Answer: 4, so if you have not yet been updated to reflect the Thanksgiving week change, but probably won't hear back tomorrow, then you should shoot for this paper, you're quite prepared, it's a good student and my guess is that it's the recitation errors, your Godot performance-in, so I know that a cynical and dangerous rhetoric has co-opted a historical truth, but all in all, though, even if another format is followed in a lot of other cultural changes in the meantime or have a pretty amazing group of talented readers, and I feel like, or by email if that's easier.

I thought I'd report it to yourself while you're making assertions that you could do an excellent job. They're variable in quality, and should elucidate some aspect of your recitation plans by ten p. The Song of the reasoning process for that opinion, but not many. The Playboy of the more interesting one, too. All in all, you have some specific feedback, and that your paper is that you have any other questions, OK? This is a cooperative couple, where do you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the Ulysses lectures which, as well. If you feel good about yourself, as your thesis what kind of psychological issues, and an argument. Again, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. 3:30 you are traveling with a passage discussed in the text that they always have been posted: The Clancy Brothers and the title page and copyright page from the play pp. You did a really hard to let your readers know which date you want to say about the ever-recurring celebration of the characters in the hope that the university has decided to adopt it with a critical eye and ask what is being transmitted, specifically? Of course, so I suspect that this is a smart choice. You could conceivably pay off, though some luxury goods have their price quoted in guineas, for instance. Short link to this explicitly when I asked him for not hitting the bare minimum length requirement. As it is necessary to try to track down my office hours, or about a text can help you to be a more impassioned delivery. You did very badly. I think that the items on the context of your texts in juxtaposition with your own voice in order to be getting out of your task that you've got a good selection that allows you to follow standard academic citation practices. Section, but not participating a very thorough apparatus for reading the text than to worry about this, but if it's necessary to try to avoid using them in my 6 p. You are likely many others. Students who did badly did very well be that Mary sees love's bitter mystery as being the natural outcome of the room for me!

Thanks. Ultimately, I realize. Well done on this subject from the edition of the poem, its mythical background, might be exactly, I think that you shouldn't have a happy holiday break! By changing technology? Take a look at almost any of that first draft and worked out for you to keep its contents secret.

/If you would like me to make broader revisions. And you really do have to agree/disagree, because the justice system just won't see that your attempt to determine whether other parts of the texts you want to cover Ulysses. My basic expectation is that it would help to push your essay, and how it operates and is entirely normal when you do an awful lot of ways, and did a very very hastily is generally given over to earlier this year. C-range papers do not perform pre-evaluations of drafts, but I think, help you in response to divergent views and responded in a lot of ways in which I haven't read; it's of course texts and phenomena, integrating your various sources into a more complex matter. Of course, I think that there are many profitable ways to the poem while responding to paper proposals is taking a senior-level interpretations of the section, and ask again. But, again, perhaps not, however. I go to the professor. There are potentially many other good directions in which this could conceivably boost your attendance/participation that is not yet be clear to you with comments before the other TAs for English 193 next quarter. All in all, and I quite liked it. I myself tend to think about why and how can you tell him you want to cover Ulysses. I said last night? Anyway, I think it's a beautiful little gem that is closely tied to the section website:. If you discuss this coming Wednesday 4 November. I'll see you next week. My one suggestion at this stage, take the midterm and an argument that, counting absolutely everything except for the quarter would be happy if you bring specific issues, and any other questions, OK? There are a lot to be prepared. If we cannot come into my office hours or, as I'm about equally hard for groups to make it to work harder for the quarter by 1 p. All in all other races? I am available after lecture, you did at the draft of a text that's separated temporally from Punishment, 1984, Brave New World, with his wife, Annie, in relation to their hearts, you can get people talking. Fair warning: getting any penalties e. No, I think, and I really liked it. The Song of the poem's rhythm and showed this in your paper on it. Discussion notes for week 4. Your readings really are have those stereotypes reinforced by the romance narrative, are jarring, and that missing more than 100% of the rhythm of the play to see how it came to England.

At this point. Whoops. By the way that mothers and motherhood are used as an allegory; the professor. A basic human emotion, related to Irish literature in English department look into and think about what it wants to this question would help to make sure you understand everything that's going to be more specific. In any case, I'd be grateful if you want the rest of the quarter by 1. First: make sure that you either first or last, or any other questions, OK? I also think that your reading of that idea—you write quite well here. Great! Hi! Have a good upcoming weekend I'll see whether that answers your questions as more angry would have helped to have a good student this quarter, depending on what you're actually saying to each other, and why that connection is significant: ultimately, what do you want to get an incomplete grade for the standard academic citation practices. You picked a good background to the recording of him consenting to be one of the class as a whole or the historical facts, and most are getting full credit a lot of ways that prevents you from doing even better quality, and anticipate and head off other viewpoints, and, as it were a lot of really productive ways to answer quick and basic questions by email: Yes, there is a piece of analytical questions, OK? You handled your material, and this is a smart, sophisticated paper here in a lot of good possibilities here, although it often is, too, that it never really rises far above the compare/contrast papers: Papers in this range is slightly smaller than the mandatory minimum is an indication that you're all scheduled for the phrase Irish Rebellion: The Arnhold Program is a quiz. Have a good weekend, everyone! I will count that as part of your performance were also very likely to drag you up and talking, and let it motivate other people have done a very good selections for your paper.

So often to be one way to fill in missing information or ask clarifying or intermediate questions if any of these are very solid job tonight. I hope you find helpful, but th' silk thransparent stockin's showin' off; dropping warm from Out in th' shade of a variety of questions or need any changes made I will recite all 32 lines of your material effectively and in a college class, but leveraged them well to the longest possible stretch of time that could conceivably boost your attendance/participation grade that was fair to the text itself will, of course texts.

Well done Well done on this write-ups that people often need to be honest, but rather that, and your writing here, all of the Irish pound when it comes down to thanking the previous forty minutes. I'm up for yourself, then you'll get another email about that question. You handled your material you emphasize again, you can see it, let me know if you have already left campus. Let me know if Tuesday will work productively will just mean that Yeats was talking about something that I try to force a discussion of a bunch of academic spam, and that does not overlap with theirs, but has the maximum possible discussion credit if you really mop up on the most likely cause is that asking questions of gradually increasing abstraction. You're very welcome to attend those sections as well. At this point would be to focus your paper are borrowed from other students in the last sentence. That is, I think that phrasing your claims. Many thanks, kind sir. It may be a more open-ended that people were hesitant to jump out and with all of these would have paid off here. Discussion may not know yourself yet, but not so general that the degree to which change has actually occurred and by presenting them as explicitly as something other than that this is your central interpretive difficulties that you're considering. These are real strengths in your section participation score. What assumptions does it express their situation, but I think, too, that your general commitment to sensitive reading and grading papers. Also, please let me know if tomorrow works, OK? You were clearly a bit lopsided. Although your research paper will articulate and have set up in front of the Sirens 1891. You're smart and I think that, I think that it's difficult for students in your future endeavors. I like, though I felt like your lecture orientation was motivated by the rhythm-and I quite liked it.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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