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bau-rookie · 4 years

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a close examination of Hotch and Foyet

in which Hotch’s greatest strength becomes his fatal flaw.

(a/n: super long essay, because i don’t know how else to consume media apparently lol. i’ve been sitting on this since “100″ because it is really sad and I just wanted to make sure I get all my thoughts in order. It is, to my discovery, Aaron Hotchner’s birthday today, so what better way to celebrate than by explaining all the ways the Foyet arc reads like a Greek tragedy and how Hotch is an amazingly well-written character. Sorry the only way I can think about paying tribute is by making myself sad. Oh there’s GIFs too! I made them and that’s neat :D)

I. Ingredients for a Greek tragedy.

Greek tragedies stem from classical plays, usually about the nobility, and is centered around their struggle against the Gods/Fate. The noble character has a hamartia, or a fatal flaw, usually their own arrogance, that brings upon their own downfall.

Technically, Criminal Minds would fall under the category of modern tragedy which focuses more on common people and everyday problems. (Though you could argue that being a BAU profiler isn’t your typical career, which makes our characters noble not by blood, but in spirit.)

In modern tragedy, there is less of an emphasis on the involvement of a higher power or Fate. Every bad thing that happens is of mankind’s own making, and this is something that CM discusses often, that evil isn’t necessarily brought upon by a higher power. It’s brought upon by ordinary people choosing to do terrible things.

And Foyet is no different. He chose to kill all these people because he wanted to, but his fascination with Hotch and how his plans for him play out, entrap Hotch in a tragedy more Greek in nature.

What Foyet ultimately does is take Hotch’s greatest strength—his stoic resolve to serve justice—and uses it to hold him personally responsible for the death of his ex-wife, all while bending the hand of Fate to his will.

II. Hotch as a noble character.

In “Omnivore” we are introduced to the Reaper and the many ways he tries to exert control and power over his victims. After killing so many times loses its appeal, the Reaper decides to toy with detective Tom Shaunessey by offering him a deal—if you stop hunting me, I will stop hunting them.

While we sympathize with Shaunessey simply trying to save lives, he does so with the knowledge that he is deliberately letting a serial killer go free. The fear and the guilt eats away at him until his death.

Hotch, on the other hand, quickly establishes himself to be a resolute pursuer of justice. We don’t get to make those decisions. We don’t let them get away with it. He holds onto the idea that they have no right to decide who lives or dies and that the victims that unsubs like the Reaper takes, are not something he, or anyone in his line of work, should feel responsible for. Their sole responsibility is to stop them.

This isn’t to say that Hotch is unaffected by the increasing number of bodies. When he turns down the deal and the Reaper attacks the bus full of people, he is visibly shaken by this, so much so that we see Hotch cry for the first time. It takes Rossi delivering some tough love to remind him of what’s important.

Look, if you want to end up like Shaunessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead. But that voice in your head—it’s not your conscience. It’s your ego. This isn’t about us, Aaron. It’s about the bad guys. That why we profile them. It’s their fault. We’re just guys doing a job. And when we stop doing it someone else will.

Hotch and the team in general, are faced with constant reminders that they are only human. They are fallible and cannot control every outcome.

Not everyone can handle the stresses of being a profiler. Despite the horrors, the chance of failing, Hotch’s greatest strength is his stoic resolve. He’s become our beloved Unit Chief, the person on the team who takes on the most pressure, takes it upon himself to, at times, shield the rest of the team from the greater burdens. Personally, he’s arguably also the one who sacrificed the most to have this job, having lost his marriage.

Yet despite the horrors, despite the toll, Hotch shows up for the job anyway. Because he can’t imagine letting the bad guys get away with it.

III. Foyet as a representation of Fate

“The Eye of Providence. A symbol adopted by the U.S. Government with the words: Annuit Coeptis. Latin for “Providence or fate has favored our undertakings.” The Reaper seems to see himself as the personification of Fate.” — Dr. Spencer Reid, “Omnivore”

From the beginning Foyet is shown to have a flair for theatrics. He leaves markings of the Eye of Providence, writes Fate in blood, calls himself the The Reaper. He has delusions of grandeur and posits himself as a higher power, one who gets to decide the course of other people’s lives. Everyone who has the misfortune of coming into contact with the Reaper, becomes another chess piece in his twisted game of Fate.

In another life, Hotch would never cross paths with Foyet. But because he did, Foyet acts as Fate, bringing down divine intervention in the form of driving Hotch into a tragedy of his own making.

Foyet acting as Fate is, paradoxically, also an argument against the actual existence of Fate. Everything that happens is a result of Foyet’s choices. It is him, a man, and not Fate who is choosing to kill, maim and be cruel.

When it came to Shaunessy, Foyet also emphasized pinning the blame of the death of innocent lives on the failure of law enforcement. It isn’t Fate when there’s something you could do to stop it. Shaunessy took the deal because he felt personally responsible for the possible loss of lives, an outcome that Foyet pretty much predicted, but one that doesn’t really affect him. Shaunessy agrees, he gets off on controlling the police. If he doesn’t, well, he can just keep on killing.

Foyet repeats the deal with Hotch. Offers him the deal, which Hotch refuses then immediately murders 7 people on the bus, setting a chain of cause and effect that makes it seems like Hotch’s actions led to this gruesome outcome. Again, placing the blame personally, on Hotch. And Hotch does blame himself, if momentarily.

Later, once Foyet escapes and corners Hotch in his own apartment, he makes it clear, you should have made a deal. Foyet acts as a vessel for Fate, a vehicle through which the consequences of Hotch’s actions are served.

Foyet takes it a step further, when he puts Haley and Jack in witness protection. Left all the usual clues, to simply say your wife and child are in danger because you never took the deal. I hold all the cards here, your fate will come for you eventually.

Then Foyet disappears, and waits. Leaving Hotch filled with guilt over endangering his ex-wife and child, at the mercy of Foyet’s arbitration of Fate.

IV. Dominoes and fatal flaws

By the time “100″ rolls around, you’re so captivated by the action happening on screen that it’s easy to overlook how we got there. When I first watched this season, I had assumed that Foyet would be put on the back burner until the end of the season. His quicker-than-expected return seems to be happenstance, the writers behind-the-scenes doing some plot magic, but if you reexamine the events that lead up to “100″ we see Foyet’s greater machinations at play.

On the surface, the preceding episode “Outfoxed” seems to be a straight forward throwback to an earlier case. Faced with a family annihilator, Hotch and Emily visit the original Fox in prison, believing the current unsub might be a copycat. The episode seems to be about the mental toll being a profiler brings, with Emily contending with a sense of disgust at having to get intimate with a serial killer (post-”Lauren” this reads very differently, but I digress). Until right at the end, when they reveal the admirer letters were actually from Foyet, and the one being outfoxed is Hotch.

When the events of “100″ go down, we hear Foyet repeatedly blame Hotch for what happens with Haley, calls out what we see as a noble resolve to instead be Hotch’s fatal flaw. It was the same thing that led Haley to leave him, a failing borne from Hotch’s own ego, the part of him that insists that it be him who catches the bad guys, that it be him who risks it all. And Foyet uses that to his advantage, uses Hotch’s resolve to trick him into thinking that maybe he did cause all of this tragedy to happen.

One small detail that caught my attention, and set me on this Greek tragedy path, is when they try to track down Foyet in “100″, Garcia notes that he had set an internet search alert for the name “Peter Rhea.”

At this point, Foyet was ready to go after Haley and Jack. He already had pictures and surveillance of the U.S. Marshall in charge of them. He could’ve gone and killed them anytime, but that’s not how Foyet operates. He needs Hotch to feel personally responsible for things ending badly. He set the bait with the letters and simply had to wait for Hotch and the team to get close enough, to find Peter Rhea. This is, of course, incredibly risky. The team could catch him before Foyet gets anywhere close to Haley and Jack, but Foyet is sure of himself and is an extensive planner. He made sure he was always two steps ahead.

The irony is that Foyet would never have gone after Haley and Jack if Hotch and the team didn’t get close to tracking him down. There’s an added layer of Spencer figuring out Foyet’s alias using his genius anagram deciphering brain and Garcia’s expert tech analyst skills. Foyet managed to hurt Hotch because this specific BAU team are just too damn good at their jobs.

Foyet set up dominoes that only Aaron Hotchner could tip to fall. He does it so well it almost feels like Fate.

V. The inevitability of fate

“Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster called destiny.” — John Hobbes, “Omnivore” closing quote.

A key aspect of Greek tragedy, is that Fate is often the result of divine intervention. They cause certain events to happen in certain ways so as to result in the most tragic outcome, usually death. It’s designed so that the audience is aware of what’s to come, and can see no other way for the story to end. The tragedy is supposed to feel inevitable.

One could argue, that there is no such thing as Fate. Life is simply a sequence of random happenstance, but our need to prescribe meaning to the chaos cobbles up stories of predetermined destinies. Especially when the idea of owning up to our mistakes and their consequences is too much.

All of this was the result of one sick man, George Foyet, choosing to be so cruel. And Hotch was simply a victim of circumstance because if Foyet wasn’t going after Hotch, he’d be going after someone else.

But what are the odds that Hotch’s first case as lead profiler happens to be The Boston Reaper? It was from that moment that Hotch’s fate was really sealed, he and Foyet would be forever intertwined.

Hotch, being who he is, had inadvertently, made the Reaper personal. Even when his BAU team was sent away, his resolve wouldn’t let the Reaper simply disappear. It led him to build his profile, alone and over many years. Any other person might’ve just let the case go, but not Hotch.

So when Shaunessy died and the Reaper resurfaced, the only person in the world who knows enough about the Reaper to track him down, is Hotch. It’s what leads him to George Foyet, a victim at first glance, and Hotch comes to him unaware that he is promising The Reaper a new, worthy adversary, one a decade in the making. And everything, from his prison escape, to his attack on Hotch in his apartment, plays out exactly as Foyet expects it to, because as much as Hotch can read him, Foyet can read his behavior too.

At the end of 5x03, “Reckoner”, Rossi talks about what could have been when it comes to his childhood sweetheart to Hotch. About how he was too obsessed with his job, with the hunt that he gave up his chance of having a family. Rossi warns Hotch, don’t make my mistakes, kid.

You have a family. When all this is over, what are you gonna do to make sure you’re not a lonely guy wondering why you let the purest thing in your life get away?

My initial reaction was that they were setting up for Hotch to leave the BAU for good. The man who hung on to the job so much that it cost him his marriage, for the first time, actually considers leaving it all behind him. Because what Rossi says to him, driven by the circumstances that Foyet has created, is too profound for him to ignore. Foyet is too big of a thing to just move on from once its over.

Of course, my hopes of Hotch riding off into sunset to live a quieter life and watch his son grow up were optimistic at best. It’s a fantasy that purposely ignores the reality of who Hotch is, simply because I want the alternative to be possible. By the time Haley is buried, and Strauss offers Hotch retirement, we already know what his answer is going to be. Because everything we know about this man can only lead us to one conclusion.

Aaron Hotchner is the man who goes after the bad guys, the man who doesn’t let them get away with it. No matter how much I yell at my screen about how Hotch should just retire and spend all his time with Jack, deep down I knew that was never going to happen. Him losing Haley and still going back to work, seems like the only logical outcome. It’s almost feels inevitable.

VI. Catharsis

The point of tragedy is, according to Aristotle, to achieve catharsis. The purging of emotion through the telling of another person’s suffering. And that’s what “100″ does (unless your heart is made of stone and you somehow did not tear up even once).

Others would say that tragedy is meant to teach us a lesson. Meant to teach us the limits of our mortal abilities, to warn against hubris and arrogance; to remind us that they are higher powers and unseen forces beyond our understanding or control.

Criminal Minds doesn’t try to give us that lesson. Like in so many previous cases, the premise of a crime procedural is really a way of examining human nature. Why do people do bad things? More often than not, though our profilers can figure out how an unsub goes from doing thing A to thing B, they don’t have a satisfying answer for why.

In Foyet’s case, he does all of this to Hotch because he can, because he enjoys making him suffer. It is evil, unnecessarily cruel. There is no sense to be found in what happened.

But “100″ does not deliver pure tragedy. It ended in the death of Haley but it also provided hope in the survival of Jack. Hotch finally rids the world of Foyet, though the way it went down, you can’t help but wonder about the price of justice, if the cost is too much for this one man to pay. But then the show reminds the audience, that this one man isn’t bearing that cost alone.

Aaron Hotchner has his team, his family, and with their support, a chance to recover from the tragedy that Foyet wrought.

I used to think that, despite being dead, George Foyet still won. He set out to hurt Hotch, and that’s exactly what he did. We’ve only seen Hotch openly cry twice at this point, and they both were directly caused by Foyet. And I suppose that’s still partly true. It’s hard to really tell with our stone-faced unit chief, but it’s hard to see how Foyet wouldn’t linger.

But that victory isn’t absolute. Foyet is gone, and he loses every time Jack gets to spend another day happy and alive. Foyet loses, every time Hotch shows up for the job and doesn’t let another unsub like him get away with it.

And maybe that’s the lesson. That though good doesn’t always triumph over evil, there is a way to move past tragedy. And that path lies not in solitude, in carrying the burden alone, but in the solace of our friends and family who can bear witness to all that we must face.

For all all my waxing poetic about how Hotch is a noble hero, this entire ordeal just shows how human he is. Yet despite his flaws and the tragedy, the core unassailable truth of who he is, the values he represents, remain unchanged.

He is Aaron Hotchner. The guy who hunts down guys like Foyet. The guy who doesn’t let the bad guys get away with it. The guy who, despite everything, managed to save his son. The guy who will keep his promise to the woman he was once married to, to teach their son that love is the most important thing. The guy who makes sure that his son knows that good people do exist.

Aaron Hotchner is the guy who, despite all the hurt, the pain and the loss, chooses to be the hero. And that’s the farthest thing from tragic.

#did i spend all day thinking too much about a fictional character?#hell yes #i don't know how else to be #i just think aaron hotchner is neat ok #and he deserves the happiest of birthdays #maybe i'll write a fic about it tomorrow #but for now i rest #criminal minds #charlie watches criminal minds #aaron hotchner #david rossi #george foyet #mine: gifs #criminal minds gifs

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hwallout · 4 years

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our little secret - csy (iv)

summary: as a CEO of one of the country’s most powerful companies, you had your secrets to success. no one ever gained power without ruthless, filthy and unfair play, it’s all okay if no one knows right? well, what happens when your little secrets fall into the hands of someone you can’t get rid of that easily?

words: 7,1k

genre: angst, drama, some fluff if you squint

warnings: language

early an: honestly,,, is this worth continuing?

first part

second part

third part

The remark had different meanings for the both of you. Seungyoun was speaking his thoughts, but not exactly clear enough to be understood immediately. There was a hidden message behind the strong wall of his words, but the heir wouldn’t allow it to be known before the time’s right.

You looked at him with attentive eyes, pupils slightly dilated due to the sudden change of light. The moon carefully caressed Seungyoun’s features, making his skin glow bright. It seemed as if the heir wanted you to interrogate further, and with the curiosity that tickled your mind, it was only natural to do so. For whatever reason, the tiny voice whispered that it might just be what you were expecting all along - the door through which one would be able to regain control.

“What do you mean?”

“The drinking. I’m not an alcoholic, yet look at me” Seungyoun blurted out. There was a quiet but audible laugh coming from his end, which contrasted your sudden disappointed expression. Little did you know that Seungyoun wasn’t laughing because he was amused. The male was in disbelief, because even in such a state, he managed to hold his ground and lie.

The heir poured himself another glass of wine, the big black bottle now empty. He reached underneath the table and pulled out two things – another smaller bottle and one more transparent glass. Once opened, the aroma from inside of the bottle entered your nostrils almost immediately. It was strong and alluring, just tempting to reach for and taste. Seungyoun filled your glass and stood up, grabbing the other bottle by the neck and walking inside to throw it away.

The song playing changed but a new melody followed the same feeling. Calm and slow notes only immersed you more in the view, a rustling city that seemed so little and easy to crush from this high up.

Once Seungyoun came out, there was a little bluetooth speaker in one of his hands, while the other held his phone. A sincere smile caused by emotion one could only be able to describe as pride, was a rare sight on his features. The man sat down and sighed out loud after placing the two objects on the table.

“You know, this isn’t exactly where I saw myself a couple of years ago. Simply said, I still can’t see myself in a position of a future CEO”

This time though, as if some drastic change happened, Seungyoun approached his thoughts from a different angle. The tone used was unlike any other you’ve heard before. It wasn’t stern or emotionless, no, on the contrary, it was full of a certain something. You took a sip of the dark liquid, shivering at the taste.

“I always wanted to do music” He mentioned and you nodded along, already familiar with the fact. It wasn’t rare that the media pulled out that card when speaking about the heir. Blamed for being uninterested in business or praised that he’s doing well despite wanting to pursue a music career. Sometimes the only emotion one could feel while reading those was pure pity for the man. Could he really not do what he loved?

The melody changed pace. Your body unconsciously swayed back and forth, carried by the rhythm. The piece was so beautiful that it caused sadness, for you’ve been missing out on it for so long. Every beat was hitting just the right places in one’s mind and heart, awakening a thousand other feelings as it progressed. Unintentionally, your eyes closed and you relaxed back into the seat.

Soon, a soft voice accompanied the melody, and with careful, beautful words, only made the song better. The male singing had a mesmerizing voice, hushed and breathy to fit the current rhythm. Visible goosebumps formed on your arms, a smile sneaking up to beautify your facial features.

Then, out of nowhere, that exact voice - just a little bit louder - sounded only a meter away.

It didn’t take long to catch up on the fact that Seungyoun was singing along. What took a moment to process was that Seungyoun’s voice matched the one in the song. Every single note, pitch, whisper was the exact same. Shivers ran down your spine in realization, but you didn’t dare interrupt the showcase just yet.

Once the last few beats faded away, the male turned around and locked eyes with yours, a huge smile on his lips, pearly white teeth bidding their hello. His happy expression contrasted yours, which was one of pure surprise.

“I made that” Seungyoun whispered. Short silence enrolled right after, but it wasn’t anywhere near uncomfortable. It was just a moment you dared take to properly swallow down the information that Seungyoun was actually seriously working on his music. A certain feeling welled up in your chest, caused by pure admiration for the man who still pursued his dreams, despite everything else.

“That was... pretty good if I’m being honest, Seungyoun. Good job” You replied, praising the other for the first time. The male looked at you staggered, as if the compliment was something much more serious, and maybe, for him, it was.

Without any more words exchanged, you stood up, taking hold of your glass and walking towards the railing. Leaning against the handrail, you continued staring into the distance, still mesmerized by the overall view. Silence once again filled up with a calm melody, you heard Seungyoun shuffle in his seat, before standing up to approach you. Taking a generous sip of the strong beverage, you felt another shiver overtake the body. The drink was something you’ve never tasted before, for it had a pretty strange, sour, yet addicting taste.

“You know...my father and I... I was always a disappointment for him” The heir spoke with a calm and collected words, which was somewhat surprising due to the amount of alcohol he consumed. Seungyoun didn’t look at you, but he was well aware that his every word was being listened to.

“I was the creative kid, with a great voice and feeling for composition. I’ve never really been interested in what my dad was calculating or making business calls for late in the night. It never appealed to me”

You listened, although not exactly interested in the topic. Truthfully, you paid attention not to be rude more than anything else. In the end, the man was speaking about an emotional and serious experience for him, so really the least one could do was listen. Taking another sip, you looked at the other, noticing the little frown on his lips.

“When I wrote my first song and presented it to my parents, it’s an understatement to say they weren’t pleased. My mother had to shield me from his harsh words of discouragement. I still remember every single thing he has said” Seungyoun’s voice broke at one point, but he tried to cover it up with a forced cough. The heir was a decent businessman, but actor? Not so much.

“You can imagine how a kid with broken dreams feels like” At that, Seungyoun broke a smile. A pitiful, weak smile, that still held that certain, hidden emotion behind it.

“I’ve built this empire, expecting it to grow stronger in the future. I didn’t throw away my whole youth to not have a responsible heir take after me! I’m not going to accept my son screech into the microphone when he can rule the world!”

Seungyoun’s words suddenly seemed to hit a certain spot inside of your heart. Gulping down what was left in the transparent glass, you went to pour some more before returning. The little ‘break’ allowed you to take a few deep breaths and calm down the heart that was unreasonably getting sad and empathic. It took Seungyoun a few seconds to continue with his talk, the man playing insecurity about continuing further which you dismissed with a soft hand gesture.

“Over time, you learn to be silent and take it. There’s no other way, really. You’re obliged to follow up and continue what someone else has started in such a situation. But... it hurts more when you’re guilt tripped into it as a child”

Another long moment of silence enrolled. The chill wind grew stronger, caressing the warm surface of your skin in a hurried manner. The alcohol flowed freely through your bloodstream, already having a strong effect on the heartbeat that quickened and mind that opened. You’ve never been someone who can handle a lot of alcohol well, but still far away from a lightweight. Often, you’d drink just enough to feel just a little carefree, but that line seemed to have been passed long ago. Surprisingly, it took two glasses. Who knows what kind of wine Seungyoun had at home.

A feeling of guilt bid its hello. Suddenly, the weight of words became far too important and noticeable. You remembered the times you’ve intentionally tried shaming the man in front of his father, not aware of the consequences they had. One voice whispered that those were asshole moves, something you should be apologizing for, while the other yelled that you shouldn’t be backing down and caring so much. The mind was walking a path that branched into two and it had no idea which one to take.

The one that whispered appeared close and intimate, speaking slowly, softly, yet louder as you took another sip. The second voice seemed more distant as time went by, it yelled and tried to warn of the possible consequences, but it was so, so far away.

“I... I’m sorry...” You muttered quietly, unsure if the words should reach the heir’s ears. Unfortunately, they did, for Seungyoun turned to face you with one eyebrow lifted and a smirk on his lips. There it was, the true emotion surfacing. You could’ve left it at that, but without much reason, decided to continue.

“I must’ve affected and fueled the fire with my words in the past... I’m... I’m really sorry, Seungyoun” Your free hand moved and took a hold of his, feeling the contrast in temperatures between the two bodies. Seungyoun’s look turned more curious, but only to hide the sly one hiding behind. Despite it all, his chest squeezed tight, the space inside becoming way too small for the erratic heart. It encouraged the man to act up on the emotions he’s trying to dismiss and replace with something fake.

Seungyoun finally found the hole that allowed entrance to the space of your mind and heart, yet restrained himself from acting on it. So far, the heir was managing just fine, finding out what were the exact weaknesses of your being, and using them properly against you. Manipulation – his face contorted in disgust at the word.

Of course, there was that voice that yelled at him for playing the game in such a way. Just your tentative hand on his forced the heir into rethinking all of the planned steps. You weren’t supposed to give in so quickly, to show the hidden, caring fragments of personality he never saw. Seungyoun suddenly felt guilty, although he tried fighting it off. The immediate battle inside of his mind, housed two worlds that clashed against each other. It was either he stuck to the plan until the end, or let fate do its job. It was either he won the game immorally, or accepted the guilt and opted not to ruin the life of someone he cared for. Success or possible elimination.

Sighing out loud, Seungyoun threw the dice and let them fall however.

“It’s okay. I’ve gotten used to it” That was such an asshole reply, and the male was aware of it. This way, he indirectly confirmed that you did have an impact, causing your heart to ache.

Seungyoun both did and didn’t deserve this. There were many reasons that stood behind both of those statements. He was the one who approached the whole thing incorrectly, and although blindly, added yet another problem to his plate. On the other hand, Seungyoun had a proper and overall pure cause for his initial actions. The son only wanted what he thought was the best for his father, something that would finally get him the smallest bit of appreciation from the older.

After all, Seungyoun never once used the knowledge to his advantage. One call, click, or talk would do so, so much irreversible damage and it was that easy. You always jumped over it so carelessly, thinking that Seungyoun wasn’t dumb enough to ignore your threats and put his own head on the gambling table.

But that simply wasn’t the case. Seungyoun has been putting something else on the table, something that made him look like an even bigger fool. The heir wasn’t scared of your threats and power, for he knew you just couldn’t put a bullet through his head no matter what.

The worst thing was, that you were aware of it too. You were aware of just how strong Seungyoun’s check mate was. But it was your pride and ego that always tried pushing those thoughts somewhere far, far back, or under the mat.

The alcohol once again did its thing, blurring your thoughts and causing yet another unnecessary question to spill out. At this rate, who knows what kind of trouble you’ll get yourself into tonight...

“Don’t use my question as encouragement but...” The words were quiet once again, but the eyes that looked into Seungyoun’s were far stronger than before. Your irises focused on his, as if searching for something that would wake you up from the current state of mind.

“Why aren’t you using what you have against me?”

“Why would I?”

Seungyoun’s reply was met with hush and a dumbfounded expression from his partner. Why, he asked? The man had the power to end the whole INVICTA empire, the power to prove the elder that his son was no little kitten. Yet... why?

You remained silent, afraid of giving away any ideas. But there was no need.

“Do you not realize my goal is not destroying your company?” The tone Seungyoun used to say those words appeared a bit too harsh. Visibly taken aback, you took a step away from the other, a breath you weren’t even aware of holding in, coming out in a form of sigh.

“My goal is gaining my father’s trust. Everything else is just a part of the plan that will help me accomplish it” His face was surprisingly emotionless while speaking. The words seemed to have an effect on the organ inside of your chest, for it squeezed tight once before letting go. The revelation of being used was never a pleasant feeling, but you swallowed it down shamefully, tasting its bitterness.

Seungyoun turned around, facing the city and away from you. This were the facts and his selfish nature that occasionally surfaced as a defense mechanism. He didn’t want you to know the proper, complete truth, and decided to choose the rougher path to walk on. The not so irrational fear of losing you so quickly was too strong.

Maybe it was the better for you to know partial truth, which in most cases was better than none. Or, may haps it wasn’t, because from now on, there will always be that heavy feeling of being used hanging just above your head.

“I’m sorry that you were the one who got tangled into all of this, though”

The atmosphere was quiet for a little while. Both took time to take in the situation. With gazes trained far away, the two souls got lost in imaginary world. Chilly wind continued caressing the hot skin of your face, a light reminder of the present, but not strong enough of a sensation to begin sobering you up. That exact breeze messed Seungyoun’s hair up, strands flying in all directions, making him seem a little more boyish than usual.

The man wasn’t physically holding you back. He never did. You were allowed a chance to go home, rethink the whole deal over, change the gaming plan. Yet, for the first time ever, there were invisible chains pulling your legs down, making them too heavy to move. You couldn’t step away, and the other was well aware of that.

“If only you knew how delighted my father was when the news of us came out. He was so happy to see that his passive son found someone who’d maybe pique his interest for business” Seungyoun laughed pitifully and spoke with a voice that was much quieter than before. He resumed staring at the disappearing car lights in the distance.

His words once again hit the soft spot. They had you thinking about your own parents, with a heavy heart. Losing both parents was the worst trauma you ever had the chance of experiencing; but even with that behind you, it wasn’t possible to imagine the pain of losing their support. Being distant emotionally with someone so close was on another level.

Seungyoun, intentionally or not, was playing all the right cards to awaken the emotional and trusting person that you tried so hard to hide. Especially in front of him.

This was the first time the two of you had a serious conversation about personal topics, which was a surprisingly pleasant change. It allowed you to get more comfortable and intimate with the other.

On top of everything else, looking at the heir was a different sensation tonight. The stray strands that flowed freely through the breeze, occasionally covering his dark eyes. His skin glowed under the moonlight, the straight nose bridge emphasizing his beautiful side profile. And the soft, rosy lips that were just slightly parted, calling out to have a finger caressing over them.

As if the desire you’ve been hiding for a while decided to come out and play with your already fragile mind. It suddenly fought all the pitiful emotions felt before, giving you all the different new ideas you’d usually be vary of.

It was the alcohol. The unknown, dark liquid that tasted better with each sip that made you feel such ways. With feelings all over the place when drunk, you were prone to sudden and drastic changes of mind. But even the tiniest pieces of sober mind weren’t making an effort at preventing your actions this time.

“Take a picture, it will last longer”

“I’d rather enjoy it live, thanks”

Seungyoun’s cheeks rose higher, lips lifting upwards as a flustered giggle escaped through them. His hand came up over his mouth, trying to hide the smile that was too hard to control. After a few seconds, the heir glanced at you, noticing the hazy look in your eyes. Slowly, but surely, your body slowly rocked back and forth, as if carried by the wind.

At one point, it looked as if you were going to stumble back, but Seungyoun was quick to step closer and prevent it from happening. A wide grin spread over your soft features upon feeling strong hands on your waist. The dilated irises only now proved your drunken state, as if the alcohol only now intensified its effect.

“Seungyoun?” You whispered, the grin never once disappearing. The heir hummed along, never once weakening his hold. A free point finger traced unknown patterns on his chest, the sensation slightly ticklish for the other.

“What if I... willingly helped you with the plan...” Seungyoun’s eyes widened at that, head moving backwards for an inch. It was impossible to believe that those words left your lips and entered his ears properly. The finger moved upwards, tracing a line over the male’s exposed collarbones, your gaze never once decreasing its strength. Even in such a state, you had Seungyoun on his toes.

“But!” Of course, there was a condition.

“You have to... get rid of all the evidence you have against... me. No bullshit because I will find you out”

At such a proposition, the male didn’t need a minute to think of an answer. Immediately, he let go of your waist, extending an arm with a smile.

“Deal” Seungyoun replied, watching the way your gaze fell to look at his hand, before they travelled back up with a mischievous grin. In a blink of an eye, your bodies were pressed against each other, fingers gripping the neckline of his loose t-shirt, pulling down lightly.

“I’ll rather sign this way” Closing in the last piece of distance, your lips pressed against his in a hurried manner. Seungyoun was quick to reply, fingers once again positioned on your waist, trying to pull the two bodies even closer. Eventually, with one hand situated just behind your neck, the heir controlled the kiss and allowed it to grow more heated as time ran by.

Seconds turned into minutes, kisses into bites, sighs into moans. Seungyoun carried you back inside, opening unknown door and entering what you supposed was his bedroom. The man sat on the bed with you now placed on his lap, hands wandering beneath the thin shirt and over his back.

Hungrily, Seungyoun’s lips trailed down, leaving light kisses on your jaw, before moving to the sensitive skin of your neck. Moving around, you allowed more space for the sinful bites, that the heir left behind with each kiss.

Eventually, your fingers threaded through his thick strands, pulling with the slightest bit of force, just to have Seungyoun crane his neck back. He looked at you with hooded eyes, lips curving into a wicked smile, a silent laugh escaping through. Diving down, you excitedly began returning similar marks on his neck, listening to the most beautiful sighs and sounds that the man produced.

All while, your hips dragged down over his, but neither made an effort to take everything just a step further. Shirts were thrown down on the ground, but nothing more. It was the mutual understanding that although the moment was heated and tense, both parties were drunk, mind clouded and driven by more factors than just lust for each other.

Therefore, the night continued with the same feeling. The only sound inside of the room were lips smacking against each other, sighs and occasional, slipup moans.

The morning brought a slight headache with itself. It was kind of unusual, for you appeared to have a mild hangover because of just two glasses. Truthfully, who knew what it exactly was that Seungyoun offered last night – probably something with a high alcohol percentage.

Your eyes opened a few seconds later, studying the small view of the dimmed room. The surface your head was pressed against was much firmer than a pillow, and it moved. Needless to say, it took a confused moment to process that you were laying down on the heir, who was still deep asleep.

Raising your head as high as possible, you studied the male. His face looked puffy, lips pouting slightly and eyelashes falling beautifully over his soft cheeks. Seungyoun’s hair was disheveled and sticking in many directions, alluring calling for a hand to run through and fix it.

He looked like a sleeping beauty.

As your eyes travelled down, towards the man’s exposed neck and chest, you found a few deep purple marks. With eyes shut and brows furrowed, you sighed out loud, remembering the whole timeline of last night’s events. There was no doubt that similar purple rings would appear on your own skin too; a low curse perishing into thin air.

The plan on how to stand up without waking Seungyoun up demanded a few minutes of thinking. In the end, you decided on moving as slowly and lightly as possible, freezing up the moment the other moved.

It took about ten minutes to execute, but in the end you managed. Once on the other, free side of the bed, you rolled down in an ungraceful manner with a slight thump. Laughing quietly, you stood up and looked around the room. It was huge, with similar aesthetics to the rest of the apartment. The curtains allowed only the slightest bits of light inside, making the space look incredibly dim, but light enough to see and navigate through properly.

Although usually clean, the floor was now a mess thanks to your clothes. Despite remembering not doing anything too scandalous with the male, you looked down in panic. Thankfully, your body was covered up with an oversized shirt. Upon investigating what’s under, you noticed that fortunately, the underwear was still there, in its place.

Opening the door of the bedroom, you clumsily navigated towards the bathroom. Locking the door behind, you stepped inside the shower, opting to take a refreshing shower. Cold water felt arousing to the hot skin, body moving in different directions to seek more feeling. The sensation elicited a soft moan and you froze, hand coming up to prevent any more sounds from escaping. You supposed the towel from the bunch of neatly folded ones in the cupboard were clean, so that’s what you used to dry off.

There was a big mirror above the sink, showcasing just what type of mess you currently were. Although clean, your hair needed good grooming, which you solved easily using a small black comb placed right beside the sink. Next, and also big reason for worry, were the expected purple marks. Fortunately, none were too high up, most of them decorating your collarbones and lower neck. Unfortunately, there was nothing but clothes you could hide them with for now. That was a job for later.

Without a toothbrush, you chose to take a little bit of the Seungyoun’s red mouthwash on the cupboard. The liquid burned the mouth, and you spat in out quick after a few seconds. Although not perfect, the mouthwash effectively dealt with horrible morning breath.

At that moment, you felt like a parasite living off Seungyoun’s necessities. Oh well.

When you walked back inside of the bedroom to pick up all the clothes scattered on the floor, there was a quiet but sensual melody playing. The small bluetooth speaker from yesterday was placed on the bedside table – exactly where the sound was coming from. Seungyoun was obviously awake, but his eyes were still closed.

“Good morning” You chirped, faking charm while coming over to sit next to the heir. A hand came up to caress the man’s forearm. Soft fingertips touched the outlines of his bicep tattoo, before moving down to trace the circle on his inner elbow. The action tickled Seungyoun, eliciting a quiet but childish giggle.

“Good morning, I’m surprised you’re still here” He answered, voice hushed and groggy.

“I can leave?” You answered, jokingly sitting up with intention of walking towards the door, but the man was quicker to grab your wrist. Almost stumbling forwards, you gasped, but Seungyoun was there to prevent the fall from happening for the nth time. Once you were safely situated back on the bed, he replied.

“Stay for breakfast at least?” Seungyoun’s eyes finally opened, immediately scanning your beautiful appearance. Despite the room being dimly lit, his irises shone with their own kind of light. The organ inside of his chest skipped a beat, noticing all of his marks on your skin.

“I was planning to, but thanks anyway” At that, you stood up, breaking out of the light hold without much force. Picking up the heir’s shirt that still rested on the ground, you threw it back at him. The cloth barely flew through the air before it fell on Seungyoun’s face.

“Go shower, I’m gonna prepare us something to eat”

“Don’t burn the kitchen down!”

“So, let’s set this clear, now that both of us are awake and sober” You said, chewing on a smaller bite of omelet with bacon. Seungyoun took a sip of yogurt, before taking a bite of his own omelet. The male hummed in appreciation at the taste, and although it was a rather simple dish, you felt happy that he enjoyed something you made.

“I will do what’s in my power to help your situation and you will get rid of any form of evidence you have against me and my company” While speaking, you lowered the fork and knife down, looking at the other with serious eyes. Seungyoun swallowed down with an audible gulp, choosing to imitate your actions and become more serious. Still, there was a smudge of yogurt left on the corner of his lips that made your façade break into a slight smile.

Reaching out, you wiped it off in a quick motion. Seungyoun nodded and coughed to hide the embarrassment he felt.

“Yes. You said that you’ll have me found out if I don’t” The heir laughed, but it wasn’t because he found it funny, rather because the tension started to build. Your gaze turned sharp, warning the other about the situation still being quite serious.

“How can I know that I can believe you, though?”

“Well miss, you’re a businesswoman, a CEO, you’re supposed to know which deal is worth taking, no?” Seungyoun bit back, raising one eyebrow at you. Honestly, it should be expected that the heir will take whatever chance he gets to tease. You leaned back in the seat, sighing out loud with arms crossed. The other coughed again and straightened his posture.

“Okay, okay... how can I be sure you’ll help me though?”

“Because I already am, although unwillingly. It wouldn’t be a problem for me to put in more effort. We’re only bargaining for 25/75 here. You’ll get my whole support and won’t have to act like a piece of shit to get what you want, while I guarantee safety for my own company. You’re getting more than you lose here”

Seungyoun acted as if he thought it over. The reasons seemed perfectly legitimate. Of course, the male didn’t have a problem with the whole proposal, from the moment it was suggested last night. It was only that he wanted to see you in action, negotiating the best possible outcome for INVICTA.

“You mentioned your father loving me. Just imagine what I can do with that information, Seungyoun. Winning the game is just a decision away from you, but so is losing. Think about how much impact I have on both outcomes. Confirm that INVICTA’s secret database won’t be in your possession, or anyone else’s for that matter, and I’ll play an angel”

The heir cocked his head to the side, prolonging the anticipation of the outcome. He watched your eyes grow more nervous, and it was almost possible to hear your hurried heartbeat. The scene was unbelievable, almost as if both of you weren’t aware that the deal was approved last night, almost as if the night didn’t mean anything.

But it did. It meant a lot. In many ways.

“Deal” Seungyoun said confidently, standing up and extending an arm over the dining table. Pleased with the answer, you did the same, accepting the handshake with a strong hold.

After breakfast, you decided to leave. At the doorway, Seungyoun pulled you into a quick kiss, not leaving much time to process the situation, before you instinctively kissed back. The act lasted only a few seconds, but it left you feeling dumbfounded once finished. Looking at the man with dilated pupils, you bid a quick farewell and stormed towards the elevator.

It was almost 10am, which meant you a small amount of time to stop by the apartment and fix your appearance up. The Porsche roared as it glided through the streets slightly past the speed limit, the pleasant sound all too familiar to your ears. Thankfully, you arrived in a matter of twenty minutes, all but teleporting out of the car and inside of the building.

Changing into a new set of formal clothes didn’t take long, for you already had them ready in the wardrobe. Makeup took more time though, the marks on your neck appearing a bigger problem than you initially thought. The clock was ticking and you decided on covering only the ones that were higher up. Rest of the purple bruises will be hidden by the buttoned-up shirt, anyway.

Taking one last look in the mirror, you hummed in satisfaction, before heading outside.

While driving towards INVICTA, an unknown fatigue blurred your vision. Shaking it off and turning on some music to wake up, you slowed down, entering a gear two levels lower for safety precaution.

The strange energy continued to fluctuate even as you walked through the glass entrance of the expensive building. Every single employee seemed to be staring with a curious look. It wasn’t every day that their boss was late, therefore such circumstance piqued interest. The obnoxious sound of heels clicking against the ground served as a great distraction and stimuli to keep grounded. Which was funny, because in your eyes, the ground was slightly shaking, and in no way completely steady.

The inside of the elevator was covered in mirrors. There, you leaned against the metal rail that went around the walls, sighing out loud. It was hard maintaining a straight and stoic posture, especially during days like these. Looking at the completely normal, clean reflection in the mirror, you wondered what exactly it was that had everyone staring. You’ll hear the rumors fast if there were any, anyway.

With a soft ding, the elevator door opened in a swift motion. Eunha was standing right outside, as if she’s been waiting for the boss’ arrival all this time. Your frowned slightly.

“Good morning, Miss” She chirped and walked alongside you. The assistant had a vibrant smile on her face, an expression much different than the ones you’ve encountered at the entrance. She made no remarks about your timing, which you deeply appreciated.

“Good morning, Eunha” You replied with an unusual tone. It lacked energy and the usual upbeat. Time was barely morning, almost eleven o’clock, but it still seemed like the most appropriate way to reply to her greeting.

Only when you flopped down into the comfortable leather chair, did your mind begin to blur. Seeking more air, you unbuttoned the collar of your shirt, head leaning back against the backrest. Eunha watched carefully, contemplating whether or not to ask about your state. Something happened to deter her from doing so, for she knew you’d tell her if it was anything serious.

But that tiny purple patch on your now exposed collarbone perfectly triggered her curiosity. The assistant could only hope you’re going to speak up about it.

“A few people called, but no one who I couldn’t have rescheduled, not knowing you were planning on showing up today” She said, standing straight and swiping over the sensitive screen of a big tablet. Her pencil skirt was an unusual color of baby pink, different from her normal black, and instead of listening to the list of calls, you focused on the refreshing change.

Your eyelids started dropping the more she went on, and all that you’ve picked up from the presentation was that working overtime tomorrow is a must. Currently, it didn’t matter because all that you wished for was another nap, being just millimeters away from dropping down and taking one on the desk.

“Miss? Should I leave and then come back later?” Eunha interrupted, immediately collecting all attention on herself. She was close to the desk, but ready to leave. Her head was cocked to the side while gentle hands held the tablet tightly against her thighs. You looked up at her and tried signaling something with a weird hand gesture.

“I’m sorry” You whispered, watching the other’s expression turn surprised.

“Why, Miss?”

“I’m not feeling that well...I feel drained...” You continued, opting to massage your temples, hoping it would somehow help the situation. Eunha placed the big device on the desk, crouching down to be eye-level with you. The female had her own assumptions about your state, eyes still occasionally wandering down your neck and towards the little mark.

“Should I bring you some water or coffee? Aspirin maybe?” She questioned, tone nothing else but caring.

“You’re a sweetheart, please do” You answered, head finally lowering onto the two crossed forearms. It was a makeshift pillow, that you hoped would at least help make the short rest more comfortable. Eunha giggled at the passing compliment, whispering a quick ‘it’s my job, Miss’ before heading outside.

Just when the fatigue was slowly getting the best of you, eyes steadily closing shut – your phone vibrated. The screen turned on, a colorful background now blurred, with a notification of a new message. With a sigh, you moved to throw a quick glance on it, interest immediately piquing at the name of the sender. It was Seungwoo.

Clumsily pressing in the four-digit passcode, you unlocked the device, reading the message in a hurried manner. Even though the man wasn’t anywhere near, you still heard him through the text, voice soft and cheerful.

------

Snoopy – 10s ago

Hey, how about we go to our café later today? I’ll wait outside when you finish, I got discharged early.

Can you come pick me up in twenty minutes? I don’t feel well and I don’t think I can drive home. We can pick up something on our way back. It’s on me.

-------

With the way your state keeps worsening as the day progressed, you didn’t want to risk driving home. At the same time, you couldn’t have asked for a better-timed moment to meet the other. Time with Seungwoo was extremely limited and rare nowadays, both being way too busy with work.

Often, the male appeared whenever you needed help. It was strange because frequently, Seungwoo didn’t do it intentionally – much like today. Sometimes, you wondered if he had a special sense that detects whenever you’re feeling even the slightest bit wronged. Those thoughts would usually paint a shy smile on your expression, easing off the tension felt at the moment.

Without any questioning, Seungwoo texted back, saying he’s already out and will be waiting. Unconsciously, you cooed at the other.

Eunha walked in, carrying a glass with water with a dissolving tablet inside. The sound of tiny bubbles travelling up from the bottom filled the quiet room. Once the drug dissolved, you chugged down the liquid, eyes opening wide afterwards, as if to get yourself to shake of the never-ending daze.

Just then, upon a quick glance at the assistant, you noticed the direction of her eyes. Looking down at your chest, it didn’t take long to connect all of the dots. With a half-hearted, more so pitiful laugh, you motioned towards the chair. There were still fifteen minutes until you had to head out, there was just enough time for a quick recap. Eunha was quick to follow orders, hands neatly placed in her lap as she waited for the boss to talk about last night’s interesting events.

Maybe it really was the aspirin, or the excitement of meeting with Seungwoo, but you appeared more awake.

Putting on the usual stoic expression, you walked with much more confidence, greeting everyone with a strict nod and gaze. The employees bowed politely, going back to their usual work without much eye contact with their boss. No one dared to stare anymore.

Outside, Seungwoo stood leaned against his car, eyes travelling all around the place. The man wore a red silk shirt, fitting black jeans and black shoes. Needless to say, without much effort, Seungwoo was the center of everyone’s attention.

His hands were tucked inside of the jean pockets, long fingers occasionally coming up to sweep through his dark hair. It only took the man ten seconds to lock eyes on your approaching form, immediately noticing the slight sway of your hips.

Pushing off the expensive Aston Martin, Seungwoo leaned in for a hug. Strangely enough, his arms lingered on your body way short, hold similar to a light breeze. Throughout the years, you got used to warm and strong hugs, ones that lasted a lifetime from the other. Therefore, the sudden and drastic change was nothing but unpleasant and disliked.

Swallowing the annoyance down and opening the door, you lowered down into the comfortable leather seat. It was as if you heard the white Porsche weep while you drove away in another car.

“So, what’s up?” The male asked, head tilting in your direction as he spoke. The pure, raw sight of him right now would arouse anyone. Seungwoo’s gaze was sharp but friendly, an eyebrow raised in curiosity and lips forming a teasing smirk. One of his hands was comfortably placed on the gear stick, while the other rested on top of the wheel.

“Ah, I don’t know what has gotten into me...” You sighed, relaxing further back into the cozy seat. “I’ keep feeling more tired as the day goes on, I was late to work too. That never happens?”

While shuffling to a more comfortable position, the white shirt underneath your blazer moved, exposing that annoying hickey you haven’t covered. Seungwoo’s eyes absentmindedly moved to that area, immediately picking up the sight of it. His brows furrowed and the male reached out to pull the shirt back up, effectively covering the mark up. At least from his own eyes.

“It’s quite obvious what has gotten into you. Just tell your boyfriend to be a little bit less obvious next time” Seungwoo noted, with a voice he rarely ever used. You never caught onto its meaning, despite being good at reading people.

The male locked his sight on the road, making sure to drive under the speed limit. The streets were bustling with people, and usually you’d look outside, enjoy the urban city, yet this time you couldn’t. Of course, it was only to the closest of friends, but why have you been so eager to tell Seungwoo that Seungyoun wasn’t your boyfriend? Why were you silently hoping that he’d speak up just so you could dismiss his statement?

“Seungwoo, he’s not my boyfriend” With a certain kind of pride, the words escaped through your lips. A tentative hand reached out and patted Seungwoo’s arm, feeling the tension of his muscles. As if externally sensitive, they visibly flexed underneath the careful touch.

“The mark on your neck doesn’t agree” The other spat again, this time with a noticeable amount of displeasure. Choosing the moment to tease the other and ease the tension, your hand that was previously on the man’s arm, moved to his sharp jawline. Your fingers gently caressed the soft skin.

“Is that what’s suddenly bothering you?”

Seungwoo looked at you as he came to a red light, different emotions flashing inside of his irises. They were dilated, while his lips parted slightly, just barely showing traces of shock. He was ready to lie and disagree, but your thumb and point finger moved to grasp his chin.

“Would you feel better if it was yours?”

A/N: Hi! Uh this took... a lot of unreasonable time to write, I’m sorry. I was confused about what I want to do and what to write, and honestly I hope you guys still remember this fic and wanna keep up haha. Please be careful and stay healthy!

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mannatea · 4 years

Note

Excuse me I want the opinions about the apocalyptic humans are the real monsters please!

>Are you sure you would like to board this train?

Anyway, sure! I have a lot of thoughts. And opinions. And considerations. Hopefully this train of thought is worth the trip. All aboaaaaard!

Part I: This Mentality Doesn’t Exist in Just Fiction!

I take issue with this phrasing as a general rule because humans are still human. Calling them “monsters” for their evil deeds—something everyone is capable of performing, by the way—is just...asinine to the nth degree. Sure, we’d all like to imagine we’re not capable of Great Evil, but WE ARE.

I don’t want to dive into Purity Police Politics here, but here’s a question for (general) you: where is the line drawn? What makes a “bad” person “a monster” vs. just being a bad/thoughtless/careless person?

I think we can all agree that objectively some acts are evil. If you’ve been following the news this year, you probably have a million examples, but (TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS LINK) here’s a particularly terrible one; they even call the abusers monsters in this news article. Why? I think you know why. They want to emotionally distance themselves. They want to believe that these people are unique in their ability to cause harm and suffering to another human being.

But WOWEE!!! Spoiler alert: the writer is just as capable of abuse as the people who committed the crime!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I think most people are UNLIKELY to commit a crime like that, or even hurt another person with malicious intent or hatred in their hearts. But to pretend we are not all capable of it is putting yourself on a pedestal above the rest of humanity, and...I dunno. That’s awfully cocky.

Tumblr in particular loves to talk about toxicity and abuse, and they love to paint themselves as “better than” or “above” that behavior, but 1) we are all capable of toxicity, have been problematic in our lifetime, and have probably done something abusive to someone else at one point or another, and 2) we must remember that this is true of everyone else as well as ourselves. The important thing is that we strive to behave better, to learn to recognize when we are hurting someone else, to CARE THAT WE MIGHT BE HURTING SOMEONE ELSE, and to actively work to just be better/kinder people.

I totally get the desire to call a cruel, abusive, or evil person “a monster” but THEY ARE NOT. They are people. People are not infallible. Monsters by definition are imaginary creatures, but the abuse these people inflict is real. The crimes are real. The hurt is real. The effect these people have on those around them is as real as they themselves are, and to pretend for even a moment that it’s not, that they are somehow separate from you and I, that the rules apply differently for them than you and I, is just...harmful?

Because again, where do you draw the line?

Part II: Using Monster as an Insult

Monsters are creations, always, as they are by definition imaginary creatures. I think some might look to the Nature vs. Nurture Debate when it comes to criminal acts to try and justify their use of the word “monster” to refer to people like the abusers in the link above (aka: “society shaped them into that, it was never their natural inclination”) but that feels vaguely like cherry-picking to me, and I don’t like it.

Also, “Monster” is used as such a joking insult online these days (you’re a monster for dissing my anime waifu headcanons) it’s lost its bite if it ever had it to begin with. My beloved cat CiCi’s nickname was ‘Monster’ because the first Christmas I had her she rolled around on the Christmas presents and hissed at anyone who tried to move them. We also have an energy drink named Monster. Cookie Monster. Created ‘monsters’ with their own lore like werewolves and vampires and kelpies and Bigfoot.

So you risk one of three things by calling someone a monster: 1) it comes across like a joking insult/cute pet name, 2) you’re putting them on par with beings that literally do not exist except in fiction, and that half of this hellsite wants to fuck MANY people actually enjoy talking/reading about as part of an entire literary genre, or 3) you’re saying they’re literally not human beings and therefore not worth being considered as such.

None of these options are good.

Part III: “Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!™”

Maybe when literacy levels were super low and only the wealthy had the leisure time and access to literature they could read for fun, this kind of reveal was Intriguing, but I’m here to tell you that it’s never been interesting to any person who has lived in the real world, like, ever.

I feel like for children this may be different (I dunno, as a child you don’t always understand what’s going on around you/are more likely to be sheltered from these kinds of truths outside of fiction), but I highly doubt that, say, peasants in 1620 weren’t well aware that humans were capable of evil.

Sure, they did the same thing we like to do and called people who committed particularly heinous acts ‘monsters’ (probably for the same reasons we do as well as because they wanted to believe they were safe in their communities and that their neighbors were also different and not capable of doing that sort of thing) but again you see the general level of denial:

This person is not like me.

I am different.

I must call them something else.

Which, yes you are different, but the difference is NOT in WHAT you are, it’s in HOW YOU ACT and the emotions you act upon!

Society has a history of doing this separation, and of revealing in fiction that humans are actually the real monsters, but again, those of us who exist in the real world already know that human beings are capable of great evil. Even if we are surprised by the level of vileness or not is irrelevant; we all know that logically this kind of thing happens in the real world and that human beings are responsible for it.

Part IV: Bad Reveal. BAD!

In some pieces of media, the writers go out of their way to be like, “THE MONSTERS WE’VE HATED ALL THIS TIME AND HAVE BEEN FIGHTING WERE ONCE HUMAN LIKE US. WE COULD BECOME LIKE THEM! OH NO!”

Which...lol.

Let’s look at zombies, a monster created for the sake of this kind of narrative. They were “once human” but are now mindless beings completely unaware of the hurt they are inflicting, even on those they might have known in their lifetime. Zombies can infect living human beings, turning them into zombies. The humans in these stories don’t want to become zombies, so they fight the zombies (with varying results, depending on the particular piece of media you choose to consume).

Zombie stories have a huge cult following; people love this kind of thing. On the surface you might think zombie stories fit the above narrative, and they do, but like...literally. “They were human once but aren’t anymore!” is almost never a reveal in these stories; it’s something everyone already knows and is actively fighting against.

"Humans are the real monsters” rarely has much to do with the zombies. It almost always occurs when a human in the group of survivors betrays the others in a big way.

The betrayer is then painted as the REAL monster here, the REAL threat. You might notice that lot of post-apocalyptic and/or humans-vs.-monsters fiction follows the same pattern: humans fight monsters, (optional ingredient: the monsters were once human!), and then they find out that Actually, Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!

Again, anyone reading this post already knows that. They go out in public and see people who can’t be assed to wear a mask. “Wah it itches.” “Wah I can’t breathe.” “Wah it’s inconvenient for me and I’m not infected I know I’m fine!”

These same maskless fools would tell you to your face that the betrayer in these stories is a monster. They themselves, however, are not capable of hurting other people! They’re better than that! That person is a monster! They would never betray their allies. Except they do, every day, by refusing to wear a mask to protect other people from themselves. “Just in case” isn’t a good enough reason for them because it’s an inconvenience and they don’t like how it feels.

Sure, wearing a mask during a pandemic seems like such a small thing compared to, you know, betraying your fellow survivors in the apocalypse, but you have to consider context. If wearing a mask during a pandemic that has literally killed huNDreDS oF thousands is so inconvenient they won’t even wear it for the 3 minutes they are in the gas station...would you trust this person in a post-apocalyptic setting? Would they gather food for a physically disabled survivor? Would they literally fight to protect someone ill? Share resources fairly? You know if they can’t wear a mask for three minutes in a whole damn day they wouldn’t step up like that. They could easily end up being the betrayer in a situation like that. They’ve never been desperate enough to do something like that before, and they probably don’t think they’re capable of it now, but we know what they do when something is a minor inconvenience to them. Imagine a major inconvenience. Imagine their whole life being turned upside-down!

My issues with the reveal of “Humans are actually the real monsters!” are many, but the biggest issue I take with it from a writing perspective is that it’s almost never accurate when you look at the scope of the story.

Tens of thousands of zombies vs. one (1) betrayer: and you’re telling me the betrayer is the real monster? The bigger threat??? BULLSHIT. Sure, it takes a real asshole to betray people during the literal apocalypse, but that act doesn’t take away from the fact that they are human, LET ALONE the fact that using this particular point as a Big Important Reveal tells me you’re a shit writer who thinks you’re smart.

(For the record, you might have a character who will prioritize this and consider that betrayer the bigger threat, but we’re not talking about character development/motivations so much as overarching narratives the writer includes in the story separate from that.)

Anyway, I’m not saying stories with this premise in them are shit, I’m saying that this concept as a big plot reveal/climax of a story is shit. How can this even be a reveal worth revealing? Has anyone ever turned on the news?

Part V: Drawing the Line and Other Particulars

I definitely do not have the expertise or the experience to make this a detailed point, so please forgive me for that, but let’s talk about that line again, because this point absolutely cannot be overlooked.

Where is it? What makes one person who commits a crime or evil act a monster and not another? Is it the act committed? Their mental state? What about the mentally ill? What about neurodivergent people? What about children?

As an extreme example: is a woman who throws her baby off a building a monster? NO!!! SHE’S HUMAN and she did something terrible. We might like to say we’re different and we would neVeR do that, but we don’t know because we have never been in her shoes. We are missing context even the courts will never have or fully grasp. We do not know or understand her mental state no matter what the doctors say. Calling her a monster doesn’t do anything but put her in a separate category from the rest of us, which is harmful on SO many levels, starting with the fact that it means nobody talks to her, nobody gets her side of the story, nobody listens, and so we have no perspective, no understanding, no desire to learn.

Things like this are why it took so long for PPD to even begin to be understood, and why EVEN NOW women are afraid to talk about it and all related issues. I follow a ob-gyn on YouTube and the amount of women in her comments who thank her (oftentimes VERY emotionally) for openly saying it’s normal to not immediately feel a connection to your baby when they are born is mind-blowing. Not everyone will feel that! Sometimes you have to get to know your baby because they are an individual person and that is how love works for some people! But 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago: that was unthinkable to admit. You lied about it and you felt like a terrible person instead. What kind of mom doesn’t love their baby instantly? You must be the worst. Meanwhile, the woman you’re getting your information from doesn’t feel that bond either and is lying about it because she feels pressured and just as bad as you do. All this suffering, and for what?! Stigma. Being told you’re not human if you don’t feel like that.

Don’t you know the bond with that baby suffered from this issue, too? Don’t you think it affected the parent/child relationship for the rest of their lives?

Not everyone who commits a crime falls into a category like this, and maybe the woman in my example doesn’t either, but I hope your takeaway is that calling people monsters keeps them separated from other people to the point where their story becomes just as fictional as the monsters they are called, and when it is heard it is enjoyed as fiction, rather than seriously considered.

Let’s not pretend that this separation of humanity into “human” and “not human” based on the way someone acts hasn’t hindered progress in the mental health/medical fields for everyone. When people are not considered human they are not given human treatment, rights, consideration, or empathy.

Part VI: TL;DR:

we are all human and capable of doing bad things.

the difference between a bad person and you or I is a lot more complex and multilayered than “they did a terrible thing and I did not do that terrible thing.”

calling people ‘monsters’ for the bad things they do dehumanizes them and may:

strip them of responsibility for their actions by insinuating they were born that way or they aren’t actually human like you and I, and/or

prevent them from getting the help they need/from others who have not done anything bad yet getting the help they need

it’s not a good reveal in fiction

because most of us already know people commit evil acts,

and it is oftentimes is presented in a way that doesn’t actually make sense for the story.

Sorry that it got long and probably isn’t very well organized! I wrote it in bursts at work. But anyway yeah...

I don’t mind when characters feel this way about other characters, but to see it used as a narrative feature/reveal/et cetera in fiction is like, so tiresome. No shit, Sherlock. I turn on the news. I followed true crime for a while. WE ALL KNOW PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING TERRIBLE, AWFUL THINGS TO OTHER LIVING THINGS.

Having *that* be your big reveal in a story is so childish it embarrasses me to see it. Wow, congrats on figuring out something at 47 that the rest of us learned on the playground before we turned 7!

#highwind91 #answered mail #tw: abuse #long post #idk i feel like posting this is a bad idea...??#oh well it's make idiot decisions day!#it's ok to reblog if u want thx for asking chi!

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lovelybrittxo · 4 years

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where do I even start?

I’m literally only writing this for myself since typing a whole novel out on the computer is way easier than writing this in a physical journal which is what I normally do. I come to Tumblr though when I have way too much to say and don't know how to say it. I just need to get it off my chest before I blow up. so here it goes...

shall we start at the beginning? I grew up in a decently religious household. my mom, sister and I went to church almost every Sunday with all our aunts and uncles. don't get me wrong, I still believe in God and whatnot and I wouldn't change my upbringing in the church for anything. but it may have suppressed my views on the world. something my aunt said to me a few years ago has stuck to brain ever since and I can't seem to shake it. she told me that she actually believes that being gay is a sin and that you can love the sinner but not the sin. so like, she believes if you're gay, you can be gay but don't act upon it/the sin. she believes, for example, that being trans is a mental illness. like, I just can't wrap my head around that. and honestly, she spoke with so much conviction and “sense” that she actually had me fooled to think the same way for a hot second. and then to learn that my other “cool” aunt also believes this... kinda sad. both of those aunts have literally talked down upon family (and our family is very tight knit) and people they love... what would they do if they ever found out about me?

ive felt a lot of feelings ever since I was young. mostly towards males... but also towards females. I just thought the female part was me wanting to be like them or be their friend and just have them like me and accept me as a chill person to be around. but fast forward to a couple years ago. I was bombarded (in a good way) by social media flaunting (in a good way lol) different sexualities and things. its hard to describe but that “world” was just becoming more prominent to me I guess.

I started to try and put my religious upbringing in the background so I could focus on trying to figure out who I really was. ive been doing this for at least a couple years now. and although im still trying to really figure it out, right now half way through 2020, I think im getting closer to an answer. and guess what has helped me the most? tiktok lmao! no but for real, the internet is an amazing place for discovery in any form. after I started to get into real communities online (like kpop and penpaling) i’ve never felt more connected to the internet and it allowed me to try and find real personal help... if that makes any sense. i’ve just tried to put myself out there and not just google my feelings but piece together a map from asking real people over the Internet here and there to try and figure out who I am.

sometime last year (or maybe earlier) I found a YouTube video of a popular creator retelling her coming out story. I just randomly commented on the video about how I had been feeling, not to get a reply but just to comment. but then I actually got a real reply (not from the creator but still a nice person). they said something along the lines of me basically being bicurious. I had never in my life heard of such a word and I had thought that this person was just making it up. one google search later I found out it was a real thing. although at the time of first looking it up I was still very confused about the word... still kinda am? lol. however, just a couple weeks ago I had seen a post somewhere (an ad I think selling pride flags) saying there was an official bicurious flag. I was in shock. I thought it was a scam, but its not, it’s real (I just don't think it’s talked about very often cause it doesn't seem like a solid sexuality that you can claim your entire life). but anyway.

now what i’m gonna say next I don't want to come off in the wrong way (you nonexistent person reading this lol), but I feel like dating a trans person brought me into that “world” a bit more. like, i had literally never met anyone who was trans before him or anyone who was gay or used a they/them pronoun... never. but in his world, all of that was common and normal. and this is where I don't want to come off wrongly... I don't wanna make it seem like because I dated a trans person i’m qualified to be included in the LGBT community now or to talk about LGBT stuff or whatever. I just think because I dated him, it opened up my shallow world a bit. especially because he’s open about it (on a side note I always loved looking at his huge trans flag above his bed. that was the first flag I had really ever memorized because of him. besides the rainbow one obviously lol). like, his best friend uses they/them pronouns, and although i’ve always been aware of that, i’ve only ever seen things about it through YouTube videos and whatnot. I had never had to actually use those pronouns for anyone I knew in real life until I met his best friend. like, everything I knew about that “world” had only been through online researching/consuming. i’d never experienced it in real life before.

I remember one night we talked about it a little. I knew he was bisexual and so I asked him if he’d ever dated a guy. he asked me if I would ever date a girl and i just said that I had always thought about it and that my tinder profile was set to find both genders. then we talked about pride since it was at the beginning of quarantine and we didn't know if parades were still gonna happen or not yet. he said I could always go as an ally because I told him I felt ashamed and like I shouldn't be allowed to attend a pride parade. (of course he reassured me I can go and he wasn't shocked about me liking both genders at all...he just said ‘nice’ lol)

I still have a little inkling in the back of my mind that I still shouldn't be able to attend though. honestly because I don't know what I would be attending as. I feel like an imposter. I don't want people thinking that im doing all this for attention or just because I dated one person in the LGBT community. i’ve been struggling with this for so long... but it just so happens that now at 27 years old im coming to terms with who I am. I just feel like because I didn't figure it out earlier that I’m not “worthy” of being included. I feel like such an outsider because no one’s “invited” me in yet lol because im still trying to figure it out.

and on the same note, I don't feel like i’m worthy because I still really don't have a solid answer. at the moment I just use bicurious because ive never dated a girl before. the trans guy ive been talking about has been the only person i’ve ever been romantically involved with. im serious. I made it 26 years without being with anyone in any type of way. I feel like I don't have the right to call myself bisexual. however, I feel a tiny bit more confident in using that label maybe after I do end up dating a girl in the future and not feel guilty about using it because that same guy calls himself bisexual but told me right out one day that he’s way more attracted to girls than guys and im in the same situation but opposite. the only difference at this point in time is that he’s dated both and I haven't. but thennnn on the other hand, do I even need to label myself at all right now??

even if I did wanna come out, I don't wanna do it until I really have a solid answer about my identity. i just feel like such a fraud or something because im trying to figure it out so late. and like, im going so over the top with my support this year because I feel like I should fit in and maybe im trying too hard? again, I just don't want people thinking its because I dated one trans guy and all of a sudden im huge into the LGBT community. it’s not like that. all of this is just helping me bring out my true self. ugh this is the part where it gets confusing to put into words. i’m aware and I have pure intentions. im just trying to figure out myself after a long time of trying to figure out myself lol

some days the research is overwhelming. there's so many facts and opinions and different people’s stories and labels. as crazy as it sounds I just want someone who’s been gay their whole life to come up and tell me “yup, your bisexual no doubt” lol or something like that. I guess I just want to be validated in my exploration. and i’ve seen random tiktok comments saying stuff like that, that validates me, but the difference is that their comments aren’t directed specifically to me. they don't know me personally. it’s hard to have a random social media comment resonate with me. honestly, and this may sound selfish and not right, but when I was talking to the guy I was seeing, I almost wish he just told me straight out what I was that day. but instead he said I could go to Pride as an ally. and that was probably just him being respectful and not forcing me to be anything, but it almost had the opposite effect on me. by saying I was an ally it felt like he was giving me that permanent label even after telling him I like guys and girls.... ya know?

something recently happened to me that really stuck with me and I was so happy. I have a penpal who is very southern Texas raised religious. she knows the Bible better than I do. I had posted a Pride doodle I did on my Instagram at the beginning of this month and she was the only one who personally responded with an encouraging and supportive dm. if she can support whole heartedly the LGBT community and still love God, then why can't I?? and that's when I trulyyyy knew that I was right and my aunt’s were wrong and I wasn't going insane lol

I wanted to buy a bicurious or pride flag recently. but then was torn when I saw the ally flag (which I also didn't know existed until recently) and the bisexual flag. I know they're just flags but it feels so solid?? like you buy one when you know what you are.... and I don't yet. so I ended up not buying one at all :/

again, there was no purpose to this post because I know no one is going to read it but I just had to type it out into the world so I didn't have to bottle it up anymore.

#lgbt #pride #pride 2020 #lgbt community #bisexual #bi curious #trans #transgender #questioning #sexuality #coming out #me #personal

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onepunchmiss · 5 years

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OPM Live Blog s2e4

“The Metal Bat”

So I technically watched then episode the day after it aired and wrote this up but of course Tumblr was being sketchy and wouldn’t load anything I tried to post. So sorry this is super late but so without further delay ITS TIME FOR MY BOY. As always, I’m watching from the perspective of someone caught up on both the manga and webcomic.

OOHHH!!! I just assumed we weren’t getting child garou’s backstory! This is such a good surprise and I love the old-timey feel of the footage. And his voice is adorable. Honestly I’m EXTREMELY surprised that Garou isn’t my favorite character, because we’re practically the same person. I have always been partial towards the villains of nearly every piece of media I consume. My entire main blog is pretty much dedicated to villains- Garou my trash son I feel for you and love and support you and agree with you deeply. I hope we keep getting all the little kid Garou flashbacks like this. Neat transition from the flash back to the present as well. I dig I dig. Man I just really love Garou’s voice.

YES MY TRASH SON YES WHERE YOU BELONG SHH ITS OK

Ok so we’re at the hero association meeting and my heart rate is skyrocketing because I know my boy is bout to make his big season 2 debut and I’m gonna flip hhhhhhhh

[screaming]

ok. Waganma sounds less annoying than I imagined. Also.

Look at him. I love him. Heads up every screen grab is probably gonna be Bat. He’s a delinquent but he’s a WELL MANNERED delinquent mind you. I like that the anime actually has him grab the plates out of their hands, too. OH MY GOD the ‘GIH-!” He does when Zenko calls him. Just. Perfection.

WAIT. I just realized we’re gonna get to see ZENKO SOON. [screaming]

“I am the one who should be crying”- Bat’s voice actor killed this line the serious tone killed me. R.I.P.

Aaaaaand I can’t wait to watch this action. But now we cut to super fight tournament. So we’re pretty much following the manga play-by-play here, which makes sense. So I guess we’ll get Suiryu’s introduction right about now then?

And this face. right. How horrifying

Pffft, Saitama literally saying “SAFE..!” in english?? Or does that just sound really similar?? I cackled. And now back to Garou!! and Tareo!! BOI I’m too impatient for three story lines to happen at once I feel like i’m being spoon fed jeez I just want all of them immediately and I know this is not a valid complaint hhhhhhhhhhhh

JC Staff loves Garou. All of his faces are done so perfectly, like they’re pulled straight from the manga. I really appreciate that.

“He’s a Hero” Mumen Rider is too pure for this world. We know this. Yet it must be said. And so is Saitama for that matter. Is it even humanly possible to not respect that guy? Sticking up for Charanko really for nothing, like it made no difference to anyone at the end of the day but Saitama just does it like it’s second nature.

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS IN MOTION I FEEL SO ALIVE “Let me get a few pics” EYyyyyyyy me too Narinki me too.

... lads what

excuse me what the fuck I’m still dying after centisempai and you hit me with this Image how dare you I need recovery time plz What are they going to call Elder Centipede???

Anywayyy There are a lot of cool shots in this fight. I want to include so many but that’s beyond unreasonable. Oh god greater centipede’s face Actually moving while talking is absolutely uncanny I hate it it’s great thanks

Side note- I never considered the centipedes being suck vibrant colors and it threw me off at first, but its growing on me. Same deal with their voices I kinda pegged them to sound like Mezalgald but these voices are much worse in a good way. if that makes any kind of sense.

YO it never occurred to me that Bat’s face became bloodied when he hit himself, NOT as a result of getting beat up prior. Really goes to show how strong that boy is. Only he could damage himself. and thE MUSIC KICKS UP. YES GETTEM MY BOY GETTEM FIGHTIN SPIRIT YES

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS PANEL FOR. SO . L O N G

FUCK THAT ONE TOO THERES just TOO many GREAT SCENES in this I have been slain FFF

“Ah, Thank goodness for Metal Bat” -that HA guy but also me, every day of my life

ELDER CENTIPEDE HAS ARRIVED AND IS HORRIFYING AS EVER. Dragon Thrashing!! I! Just! Love! This! I! Cannot! Good as hell fight, hype as hell I’m so glad this is being done justice. Which makes me even more excited for THIS

ITS. HAPPENING.

ALso I wasn’t Wrong! Post credits! SUIRYU! There he is! I dig the little violin jig his theme has going.

Anyway, I’m limited on time here but I’m glad I was even able to watch the episode this week. I have no complaints only hype. Be back next week with the regularly scheduled Blogging! Thanks for reading yall!

#opmiss mumbling #live blogging #sorry again yall #garou #metal bat #junior centipede #senior centipede #elder centipede #season 2 #s2e4 #s2e16 #one punch man #spoilers #anime

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jamietung · 6 years

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The Marías

ASK ME ANYTHING // CONCLUDE

Oh how this assignment has been so much fun yet stressful at the same time. BEFORE i get into the GUTS of how i used my hands to make things, i’d just like to congratulate everyone for making it through these 12 weeks and how amazing everyone's ask me anythings look. Im really blown away by how our cohort can produce so much creative work. M I N D B L O W N

ALRIGHT!

So the The Marías are a band who formed in LA late 2016. The members include Maria, Josh, Carter, Jesse and Edward. Their unique style of music fits under the genre psychedelic-soul. I was introduced to them last year by a friend and fell inlove with their dreamy like composition. The reason why i decided to do a band instead of a Graphic Designer or Illustrator was because i realized that music plays a major part in my everyday life. The amount of music i consume some would say is unhealthy but i just find so much inspiration through what i listen. So when we were given the assignment of Ask me anything, The Marías was immediately on my list.

The creation of this small publication was probably the most fun ive had designing something. Since this task was driven on more interest in your artist rather then criteria, i knew this would be a great way to explore and really experiment with various medias. I started of searching my local thrift stores for items that could be of use. I happen to come across a few old books which had wonderful hard covers. I was lucky enough to find one that was red! This started the ideas flowing on how i could construct everything.

I had also found myself very interested in cassettes and cassette players. Growing up i never got to really experience the period where cassettes were booming. I found the concept of having physical music to be fascinating and oddly satisfying. Also i had no idea how tape worked so im pretty sure it was magic. Since The Marías had only one album out, (Superclean vol.1), I was determined to record it onto a cassette and find out how to do it. (with their permission ofcourse). After some research on how to record onto cassettes, i borrowed a old stereo player from a friend which enabled me to experiment with recording ontop of old cassettes from spotify. I experimented with different recording settings and Type 1 & 2 cassettes. After some frustration, i recorded the album onto a cassette and sliced the tape so it would only be the duration of their album. With 6 songs in their album, i split 3 and 3 and recorded them onto both side A & B. mmm quick math

The second medium i tried for the first time was Embroidery!!! After having difficulty finding a method to create a foil on my hardcover, i decided to give embroidery a try. With the help of a few youtube tutorials and Matilda’s wisdom, i recreated The Marías logo (which was already an embroidery but on a larger scale). and stuck it onto the front of my cover. Embroidery was alot of fun but it was definitely a risky pathway as it was my first and anything could have gone wrong. It also took a long time so a few ghibli films passed the time :’)

Designing the content within the booklet ran pretty smoothly. I knew i wanted to implement this psychedelic theme into the design aswell as their signature red. What was slightly stressful was the replies coming in 2 days before the deadline. It was another very risky gamble however it was all worth it. Since i had designed everything else, all i had to do was plonk the answers into the slots and rush to dinkums. Note to self, if ever creating another booklet, set up your documents as individual half pages instead of two pages on one piece of paper. Deciphering the correct order on what goes where is a nightmare.

The whole concept of my project was that while you listened to the music, you would read through the booklet and create a connection between the two. I found that the experience of sitting infront of a stereo and having to listen through each song and then flip the cassette, a very warming and meaningful experience. I guess you cant really skip a song forcing you to listen to what the artist has to express. I shrink rapped everything together at the end to give the user (Andy and Karen lol) a real experience of something you would purchase from an artist.

Overall it was SO MUCH FUN creating this and learnt so many new things from it. Id like to thank everyone who helped me with feedback and advice on making this and ofcourse, The Marías for giving me this opportunity and answering my questions.

If you were curious on what they sound like: https://soundcloud.com/themarias/sets/superclean-vol-i

Much much love

-Jam

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featluke5sos · 7 years

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Can you please do a imagine with Luke where he overworks himself and gets really stressed and ends up in the hospital where you take care of him. F l u f f y please. Thank you so much, I really appreciate your work. 💗

Thank you so much for the lovely request! So, I kind of wrote this leading up to why he was taken to the hospital… if anyone wants it, I can write a part two about after they come home with Ashton, Michael, and (Y/N) being like the three mothers Luke never wanted :) but I hope you like this! xx

“Luuuuuke,” you whine as you lean your head on his broad shoulder. “You’ve been at this for hours. Why don’t you take a break and come upstairs with me?”

Your boyfriend has been downstairs with his guitar all day trying to write music for his band’s upcoming album. Normally, he and his band mates would work in pairs to get the songs done, but the other boys are all taking a well-deserved break from music. They’ve just finished a year long world tour and so they’ve been spending a lot of time with their families and friends.

Luke, on the other hand, has thrown himself into writing new music. You love his passion for what he does, but it’s been a long time since the two of you have had the opportunity to spend any quality time together. It seems like he’s hardly even looked at you since he got home and you’re honestly starting to worry about him.

He’s not sleeping or eating properly, and the only time he even moves from the couch is when he has to use the bathroom. You don’t really know what’s going on with him, but you know that he’s spiraling. Fast.

“Let me just finish this song, babe,” Luke mumbles as he places his hands on the guitar strings.

He strums a few chords, but then stops and leans down to scratch something out on a piece of paper.

You sigh. “Luke you said that five hours ago. I’m worried about you. You’re overworking yourself.”

He just shakes his head and continues playing the same chords over and over again at different tempos. Tomorrow you think you’ll have to call the boys and ask for their help if Luke doesn’t snap out of it. This behavior has been going on for over a week now, and it can’t be healthy for him.

You don’t move from your spot on the couch. The bags under Luke’s eyes and the fact that some of his bones have become worryingly prominent makes you feel like he might disintegrate if you leave his side. You yawn a few times, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His mind is on the song in front of him which clearly is not coming together the way he wants it to.

You’re on the verge of falling asleep on his shoulder when he suddenly sets his guitar down. You sit up and take your head off of him because you assume he must have to pee. When he doesn’t move, though, you gently place your hand on his thigh.

“Luke?” You ask softly. “Are you okay?”

When he turns to look at you, his eyes are wide with panic. His chest is heaving rapidly and he suddenly falls onto your lap. His arms wrap around your small body and he clings to you like his life depends on it.

“I- I can’t- breathe,” he whispers.

You start to panic at the sight of Luke panicking. You pull him a few inches away from you so that you can look at his face. You can see beads of sweat beginning to fall down his forehead and you quickly wipe them away with your hand.

“Babe, I need you to take some deep breaths for me,” you say, trying to keep your voice calm.

You count out some breaths with him, but it hardly seems to help. You reach over to the coffee table and grab a water bottle that you’d left for him earlier in the day. You unscrew the lid and hand it to him, urging him to take a sip.

His hands are shaking so much that he can hardly hold onto the bottle, and he ends up dropping it on the couch, and it spills all over the floor. You reach for your phone to call an ambulance at that point. You’ve witnessed panic attacks before, but nothing quite like this.

You dial the emergency number and wait for the operator to pick up, but before they do, Luke suddenly slouches over and falls onto the floor. You panic and begin screaming his name as you kneel down beside him. He’s unconscious and no amount of screaming on your part is going to wake him up.

When you remember the operator that is now waiting on the phone, you begin quickly explaining the situation to her and she immediately sends an ambulance to your house. She stays on the phone with you and tells you a few things to do to try and help Luke, but none of it works. He’s lying in a heap on the floor and you’re desperately sobbing as you attempt to hold his large body in your arms.

The ambulance arrives a few minutes later and the paramedics waste no time in loading him into the back. They allow you to ride with them and you keep your hand firmly clasped around Luke’s limp one as they perform all kinds of tests on him and hook him up to a million different needles.

Your mind all but stops functioning, and everything starts to blur together. You’ve never been this worried in your entire life, and your brain starts working through a hundred scenarios in which Luke doesn’t make it through this.

You hardly even notice when the ambulance comes to a stop and they unload Luke on a stretcher. They push him through some double doors, and you try to follow him, but a paramedic restrains you. He takes you to the waiting room and tells you that you’ll have to wait there while they figure out exactly what’s wrong with Luke. The paramedic seems hopeful that Luke will be fine, which gives you a tiny bit of relief. You won’t be able to really breathe, though, until you see him again with your own eyes.

An hour passes, and you’ve texted everyone close to Luke to let them know what’s going on. His parents have been on vacation in Scotland, and you had to do some hard convincing to get them to stay there. When you told his mom that he was in the hospital, she tried to hop on the next flight to Australia, but you told her that he would be fine. Even if you don’t fully believe that yourself, you don’t want her to worry too much. Luke will call her if he wants her to come home.

You also texted the boys to let them know what’s going on. Ashton and Michael got back to you right away and promised that they’d come stay with you and Luke in the morning. They’re both on the other side of the country doing god-knows-what, but they insisted upon dropping everything to take care of their friend. You haven’t heard back from Cal yet, but he’s in America spending time with some friends, so he’s on a completely different time schedule than the rest of you.

You try to keep yourself occupied with talking to Ashton and Michael so that you can’t worry too much, but it hardly works. Thankfully, a nurse comes to get you a few minutes later and leads you back to Luke’s hospital room. She explains the situation in as much detail as she can before you see him.

He’s been overworking himself and the mental and physical exhaustion finally caught up to him. He hasn’t been sleeping most nights or eating like he should, and that contributed to his massive panic attack and are also the reason he passed out. She says that they’re going to keep him here overnight and give him some fluids, but he should be good to go home tomorrow.

You still have tears rolling down your cheeks when you’re finally able to go into his room. He’s awake and as soon as you walk in, he smiles weakly at you. He’s got a bunch of needles still stuck in his arms, and he looks so pale and weak. You can’t believe you let him get to his point. Right now, you feel nothing but heartache and guilt.

“Baby,” Luke whispers when he sees the tears on your face. “Come here.”

He opens his arms and you quickly walk over to him and crawl into his bed. You curl yourself up against his chest and he wraps his arms around you as best he can without pulling any of the IV’s out.

“I’m so sorry, Luke,” you say, your voice slightly muffled by the fabric of his hospital gown. “So, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” He asks, clearly confused. “For what? I did this to myself.”

“I should’ve noticed the signs earlier,” you tell him. “I never should have allowed you to get to this point.”

He shakes his head and places a gentle kiss on your forehead.

“You tried,” he reminds you. “I just felt so much pressure to get this third album out, and to make sure that it’s perfect, and I let it consume me. I know that I should’ve gone on break with the rest of the boys, but I thought that if I did, then the fans and the media would be mad. I never want to disappoint anyone.”

“You’re not disappointing anyone, babe,” you say. “Everyone understands how exhausting that tour was for all of you, and nobody is going to blame you for taking some time to yourself. You can’t put so much pressure on yourself, okay?”

He smiles again, and some life returns to his beautiful, blue eyes.

“I’m so lucky to have you,” he whispers. “So damn lucky.”

You let your lips curl into a smile as your phone beeps to let you know that you have another text.

“Oh,” you say, remembering Ashton and Michael. “I texted the boys to let them know what’s going on, and Mike and Ash insisted upon coming to stay with us tomorrow.”

Luke groans. “Great. They’re going to treat me like a child, you know.”

“I know,” you giggle. “But maybe a little love from Mama Ashton and Mama Michael is just what you need right now.”

You can’t help but laugh at the annoyed look on his face. Tomorrow should definitely be interesting, but for right now, you just focus on Luke. You have your arms wrapped tightly around him, and you don’t plan on letting him go any time soon. He thinks he’s the lucky one in this relationship, but you definitely know that it’s you.

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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27 Gruesome Facts About The Real Life Killer Known As ‘The Monster Of The Rivers’

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/27-gruesome-facts-about-the-real-life-killer-known-as-the-monster-of-the-rivers/

27 Gruesome Facts About The Real Life Killer Known As ‘The Monster Of The Rivers’

1. Arthur John Shawcross was an American serial killer who killed between 1972 and 1990 around Rochester, New York. Shawcross is known to have killed at least 14 people, as well as being a known cannibal and mutilator.

2. Shawcross was also known as “The Genesee River Killer” and “The Rochester Strangler” all due to how he would carry out his murders and where he would frequently dump the bodies of his victims.

Murderpedia

3. Shawcross was born in Kittery, Maine in 1945, the oldest of four children. There are several different accounts of what his IQ actually was—some records show it as 86 or “below average” while other accounts report him testing slightly above average at 105 and 107. However, Shawcross was born with XYY syndrome.

4. Shawcross has claimed that his mother and an aunt repeatedly molested him as a child and that in junior high he had a sexual relationship with his younger sister as well as a cousin. His mother has denied that there was any sort of abuse in their family. Shawcross, however, was a very troubled child and would often bully other children and act violently at school, even developing a habit of bringing an iron bar with him to classes. He eventually dropped out in 1960.

5. In 1967 he was drafted by the US Army at age 21. He served one tour in Vietnam, but despite never actually serving in combat loved to brag about violent, gruesome atrocities like such as raping and cannibalizing children and “beheading mama-sans and nailing their heads to trees as a warning to the Vietcong.” All of these stories would later be proven to be fabricated. After Vietnam, he was stationed in Oklahoma where he remarried (Shawcross was already once divorced and had given up parental rights to a child who he never saw again) and worked as an armorer.

6. After his release and discharge from the army, Shawcross and his second wife would move to Clayton, New York where Shawcross would terrorize the surrounding counties until his final arrest.

Murderpedia

7. His second marriage quickly ended in divorce, after which Shawcross became a frequent arsonist. He set fires to a local paper mill and the factory where he worked before being arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. Shawcross claims while in prison he was raped and after extracting revenge on his attackers, he was transferred to another prison to serve out his sentence. After his involvement in protecting a guard during a prison riot, he was granted an early release in October of 1971.

8. In the Spring of 1972, 10-year-old Jack Owen Blake disappeared after going out to play near the Cloverdale apartments where Shawcross lived. Shawcross had gone fishing with the boy a few days earlier but denied knowing where he was. When Jack’s body was eventually found (after Shawcross’s arrest months later) he had been suffocated, mutilated, and molested. Shawcross would later admit to luring the boy into the woods, forcing him to strip naked and run before murdering him and consuming his heart and genitals.

9. Months after Jack’s murder, 8-year-old Karen Ann Hill disappeared while on a Labor Day vacation with her mother. Her body was found under a bridge near the Black River and she had been raped, mutilated and strangled. After reports surfaced detailing that Shawcross had been seen with Karen before she disappeared and he later was seen eating ice cream cones on the bridge where the body was found, Shawcross was brought in for questioning.

10. After being arrested for the both children’s murder, Shawcross confessed and agreed to reveal the location of Jack’s body which was still missing in order to have his charges dropped from homicide to manslaughter. All other charges were dropped and he was sentenced to a 25-years in prison.

Jack Blake and Karen Hill/Personal Photos

11. Shawcross had served 12 years, roughly half of his sentence when inexperienced staff and social workers made the call to grant him parole stating he was “no longer dangerous” despite numerous psychiatrists warning that he was a schizoid psychopath. His parole officer would later be quoted about his release saying, “At the risk of being melodramatic, the writer considers this man to be possibly the most dangerous individual to be released to this community for many years.”

12. Initially, upon his release, Shawcross moved to Binghamton, New York, then relocated to Delhi, New York to be with a woman named Rose who would eventually become his third wife. He had trouble relocating and settling into work as people were aware of his past and would protest his presence in their communities. Eventually, Shawcross’s parole officer settled them in Rochester without properly notifying authorities. His apartment, 241 Alexander Street, is still there today.

241 Alexander Street/Redfin

13. Shawcross began developing a habit of looking for prostitutes and would use his girlfriend (who he was having an affair with) Clara’s car to go to Lake Avenue near the Genesee River which was an industrial area well known for cheap prostitutes and drug dealers. Shawcross would find his first victim, 27-year-old Dorothy “Dotsie” Blackburn around this area. According to Shawcross, Dotsie bit his genitals drawing blood and began to call him names, which enraged him. He began biting her groin in retaliation before strangling her to death. He dumped her body into the Salmon River, one of his favorite fishing spots.

14. Following Dotsie’s murder, Shawcross became a Lake Avenue regular and was known to the prostitutes by the name of Mitch. He wouldn’t kill again for several months, but after being laid off from his job went into a rage and picked up Anna Steffen. When he was unable to get an erection, Anna began to make fun of him. Shawcross began to beat her and as she tried to get away through the Genesee River, he drowned her and let her body float downstream.

15. Shawcross’s third victim of the 20-month spree was 59-year-old former waitress, Dorothy Keeler, with whom Shawcross had struck up a friendship. The day of her death, October 21, 1989, Dorothy and Shawcross had spent the day fishing and having sex before getting into an argument about Shawcross’s various affairs and how he’d been stealing money. Angry that she was going to reveal his affairs to both Clara and Rose, Shawcross grabbed a log and beat her on the side of the head. He hid the body and left but told police that he later returned and threw her skull into the river.

16. His next three victims, 25-year-old Patricia Ives, 32-year-old Frances Brown, and 22-year-old Maria Welch, were all prostitutes Shawcross picked up and murdered while having sex with them. Shawcross’s story for all three was that he saw them trying to steal from him, became angry, and killed them. He hid Patricia’s body under scraps of construction material, Frances’s down a nearby embankment and dumped Maria into roadside bushes.

17. After Frances Brown’s body was found the media began to catch wind of the killing happening in the area. Nicknames like “The Genesee River Killer”, “The Monster of the Rivers”, and “The Rochester Strangler” began popping up. Some people speculated that Seattle’s Green River killer had merely moved locations and was now terrorizing Rochester.

The High Falls of The Genesee River (Ken Gallagher/Wikipedia)

18. 30-year-old June Stotts was the first of Shawcross’s victims where he dove back into his love of cannibalism and mutilation. After suffocating June, a family friend of his and Rose’s, Shawcross cut her open with his knife to remove her organs and speed up the decomposition process. Shawcross also removed her genitals and consumed them as well as the removed organs. Her boyfriend waited 3 weeks to report her missing.

19. Elizabeth Gibson was merely waiting in Shawcross’s car to keep warm while Shawcross was getting a cup of coffee at a nearby diner. Shawcross again claimed that after engaging in mutual oral sex Elizabeth tried to steal his wallet. He also said that while strangling her she struggled so hard she broke a gearshift in his car. She was the only victim where he went to Wayne County to dispose of the body because he could sense that police were catching up to him and wanted to throw them off the trail.

20. Both Darlene Trippi and June Cicero were prostitutes that Shawcross picked up, strangled, and disposed of in December of 1989. He murdered Darlene after she made fun of him for failing to get an erection and hid her body in the woods. After throwing June’s body off a bridge by the Salmon River, Shawcross returned two days later and sawed of her genitals and ate them.

Murderpedia

21. His final victim was Felicia Stephens, another 19-year-old prostitute. Shawcross claimed he couldn’t recall any details of the murder other than he did it and disposed of her body near the last two. Felicia went missing December 26, 1989, and a few days later on the 31st, a pair of hikers found some jeans with her ID in the pocket. An aerial search commenced and her body was found on January 3rd.

22. During the aerial search for Felicia Stephens’ body, the helicopter made out the shape of a corpse under the ice as well as a car cruising the area. Shawcross had returned to visit Jean Cicero’s body. The helicopter followed his car and tracked the license place number, leading back to Shawcross. After a photo of Shawcross was confirmed to be “Mitch” and police threatened to implicate Clara in the murders (Shawcross had gifted her a piece of jewelry from one of the victims), he confessed to killing the women detailing the reasons why he was “forced” to do it.

23. In November 1990, Shawcross went to trial for the 10 murders that had occurred in Monroe County. His defense team attempted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity citing his turbulent upbringing, PTSD from Vietnam, as well as claiming he had a genetic disorder and a cyst on his brain. However, he was declared sane and fit to stand trial and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. A few months later, Shawcross was taken to Wayne County to be tried for Elizabeth Gibson’s murder. He and his team did not try to plea insanity and received an eleventh life sentence.

Shawcross with his Daughter and Granddaughter in 2002 (Wikipedia)

24. At least for a time, Shawcross believed that the spirit of a thirteenth-century cannibal “Ariemes” possessed his body and drove him to rape, murder, and cannibalism. He agreed to be interviewed for a 2003 documentary about cannibalism where he bragged about slicing out and eating the genitalia of three victims but refused to discuss the eating the genitals of his first victim, Jack Blake in 1972.

25. Shawcross married his longtime sweetheart Clara in 1997 while behind bars.

26. Shawcross is in part responsible for the 2001 ban of prisoners being able to sell artwork they create while incarcerated. The “Corrections on Canvas” show had been staged for 35 years where inmates bought their own art supplies but were allowed to keep half the proceeds from their sales, with the other half going to the state Crime Victims Board. There was an immense criticism of Shawcross being allowed to participate—he’d previously served 9 months of a 2-year solitary sentence for giving art to outside individuals to sell on eBay, which is not allowed. After the criticism, the Department of Correctional Services banned the “Corrections on Canvas” in 2002.

A portrait of the late Princess Diana was among 10 sketches and paintings by him that sold for as much as $540 a piece.

27. On November 10th, 2008 Shawcross complained to officers about a pain in his leg. He was taken to the Albany Medical Center where he went into cardiac arrest and died that night. He was cremated.

#Happiness

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spacedinosaur2000 · 7 years

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thoughts on diversity headcanons on Tumblr

Wew boy this ones probably gonna be a tough on to answer.I dont pay a whole lot of attention to a lot of fandom stuff surrounding whatever media I consume, for me personally when I consume any piece of media Im consuming what the creator has to offer and not my own tweaked version of it per say. But thats me personally and thats for AUs and other things in general. Diversity headcanons, I guess Im fine with when other people do it themselves, for me personally I never do it. The closest is actually at one point I thought about a Native American version of Chris Redfield and I only ever thought about that because of the old rejected live action resident evil george romero script where chris is a native american farmer but at that point I actually repurposed that au as my own thing. I apologize for the self shilling but anyways one of the two game ideas that Im trying to develop is a little survival horror game that I want to do cause thats a genre I live so I thought "hey I'm making a resident evil like game, how about of the pkayable characters one can just be this chris redfield like character that I had an au for" basically I tried to do my own thing cause that makes more sense to me. Id rather make my own thing than try to take another media that someone else made. Hell I wouldnt even have these tweaks and alterations of another story if it werent for the story itself being mad by someone else so it kind of feels like id be piggybacking on someone elses work (I make it sound like Im making a legit sequel and not like fan art but bare with me its late at night and Im a little tired). And I guess headcanons are a little different than AUs in that AUs acknowledge its an alternate take where as headcanons are just kind of your own accepted fan canon of something and not everyone takes their headcanon's seriously but me personally id find it weird especially if the media in question already has a sort of diverse cast (I was gonna have a brief tangent avout the definition of diversity but thats a sketchy topic and Id rather not get into so just use you the reader's general version of it) so like say Berserk where most of our main party is white except Casca so like headcanons altering guts's race and gender feels a little weird especially when you start to add the rest of the cast which then includes more canon male/female/black/white/etc like is your headcanon gonna extend to everyone else or just the main character?. I dunno I think ultimately its harmless and you do want you want to do but for me Im fine with the media (unless theres flaws but thats more for critique rather than any sort of fandom creativity thing like fan art which alot of these headcanons usually come into play) that someone painstakingly wrote what they thought was an interesting plot with original characters and etc But in short I guess Ive rambled on like I usually do and this isnt 100% about the question of diverse headcanons. Again you do what you do. Headcanons are harmless but even outside of just that specific headcanon genre, me personally I'd feel it'd be pointless, I paid to see someones content, I wanna see what they made and not my own version of the thing that I need to see first before I even make. And I guess cause I want to create things on my own I'd rather just do that, make my own thing so instead of diverse headcanons I just have a diverse cast of my own. I dunno this topic is a little sketchy and Im rambling on. I apologize if this is long, rambly, and deviates from the question a little.

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seanmeverett · 7 years

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The Coming Gold Rush of Space Manufacturing

Why China is well positioned to lead the biggest industrial revolution in the history of mankind

I. Setting the Stage

Space is beginning to see a resurgence. What started with a few billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Branson pouring cash into new rocket companies has resulted in new startups being formed attempting to take advantage of the new Space Race.

And it’s not just hard tech. It’s content strategy fingerprints are all over Hollywood lately. Luxury fashion brands like Coach and Chanel’s latest runway feature rockets ready for blast-off. It’s even reached the middle market with Budweiser’s latest campaign.

We’ve previously written about our Space as a Platform thesis, as well as a short deck describing what new space startups and investors should be focused on. You can also read through our entire Space channel.

But as we ponder the almighty chess game of business, we’ve found most all roads lead to the same place: space manufacturing. And who, if not China, has developed the skills and experience of how to manufacture the world’s goods at scale.

As any great engineer will tell you, you automate a manual process that people keep repeating.

II. Space Startups

As we’ve shown previously, the number of startups focused on space has been growing exponentially in recent years. But compared to the sheer volume of all funded startups, it represents a drop in the bucket.

To put this 200 space startups into perspective, we did a simple Crunchbase Pro search of all startups that closed any funding round in the last 2 years. Take a wild guess how many there were.

33,308 startups closed a funding round since March 2015.

That means Space funding only represents 0.6% of the total number of startups funded. If we do a search for “Space Travel” startups in the same Crunchbase database, we only get 79 companies. Here’s a link to a simple spreadsheet listing them.

So basically, you can surmise that nobody believes Space is as good of an investment as social media, photo sharing, or SAAS products.

That means we have a battle on our hands to prove to the rest of the world that this coming gold rush is very much real. And potentially the best way to do that is to show who is already investing in it.

If you respect what these people have done in the past, and believe that they’re smart enough to understand the value and aren’t just throwing money away, then you might have to agree with them on the outcome. The two big boys are Musk and Bezos.

III. Requirements to Getting There

When you dig into what many of the current high-flying Space startups are focused on, you begin to see the gaping hole that nobody is focusing on. Namely, the Intelligence and Robotics piece.

If we are going to get to space, settle there, build there, and make things there, we’re going to need an extra pair of hands. No longer is it good enough to assume we’ll have a massive work force living in Low Earth Orbit or colonizing Mars.

We believe Musk said it would take something like 100 years of constant back-and-forth trips to get a 1 million-person settlement going on Mars, which is what’s required to be self-sustaining.

If we’re relying on humans to do all of the necessary work, then we’ve failed before we’ve even begun. But even so, we’re aren’t yet focused on the things that are necessary to have humans survive in space. For example:

As you can see, we have quite a ways to go.

IV. China’s Preparations for the Gold Rush

In one bit of news that likely slipped by even the most discerning of radars, in the tail end of 2016, a university in the UK partnered with China’s space program. For what, you might be asking? For manufacturing their space station, of course.

From the article:

University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) signs agreement to launch new joint research institute with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST)

SAST is working on the development of the Tiangong Space Station, scheduled for launch in 2020

AMRC will work with SAST to develop thin-walled structures for commercial rockets

What began as only the 3rd country to launch a human into space, they’re now projected for 30 launches in 2017 alone. That’s about one launch every two weeks. Does that frequency remind you of anything? Namely, a two-week sprint cycle for software development.

And we’re squarely back into our “when push to PROD means launch into space” thesis.

According to Wikipedia, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation had revenue of $43 billion in 2013. In January of 2017 they released a white paper detailing their plans in space over the coming five years. Below are the exact words copied from their press release:

Work will go on in the basic nuts and bolts of the space industry, with extensive research breaking new ground in essential technology

Around 2018, the Chang’e-4 probe make the first soft landing on the far side of the moon.

By 2020, China’s first Mars probe will be launched to carry out orbiting and roving exploration, and a BeiDou network consisting of 35 satellites will provide comprehensive navigation services around the world.

China will activate a heavy-lift launch vehicle project in the next five years.

To summarize: landing on the moon, Mars rovers, multiple satellites, and a heavy launch vehicle. They are essentially copying the roadmap laid out by SpaceX for heading to Mars and Blue Origin for heading to the Moon.

These are China’s current products and services:

China has become so good at copying luxury hand bags and reverse engineering Silicon Valley, that they’re now starting to do the same with their space programs. Expect them to keep leveling up, and use their billions of skilled labor expertise to include manufacturing in the mix, once we figure out how to mine metals from asteroids.

V. What’s Next

The Space Angels network published a story about the untapped potential of manufacturing in space. They look at the market slightly different than we do. Below is a graphic of how they see the future economy playing out, as of 2016:

You’ll notice the logistics piece, which is squarely in Amazon’s territory of expertise. Bezos is no dummy. He’s using the people and expertise developed on-ground, then shifting it straight up. You might see China’s future space manufacturing operation being fulfilled by Amazon Space to ship it straight to your door from a few miles above you.

That’s why he’s building rockets. Not to go to Mars, but to go to future profits.

And that’s the problem with SpaceX. They don’t have any sort of voluminous consumer relationship. A bit with Tesla and Solar City, but nowhere near that of Amazon. So, if SpaceX tries to get into the Space Shipping market, they’re going to be competing against the 800 pound gorilla that is Amazon Prime (now shipping from space).

Your Recommended Reading

Space as a Platform

Space Startup & Funding Deck

The Threat of China’s Space Program

Robot Operating System 2.0 Update, Jan 2017

Biologic Intelligence Channel

The Coming Gold Rush of Space Manufacturing was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean Everett on Medium http://ift.tt/2mQXTyZ

#Stories by Sean Everett on Medium

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

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Ask D'Mine: The Shot Heard 'Round the Blogosphere & Insulin for Weightlifting

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-the-shot-heard-round-the-blogosphere-insulin-for-weightlifting/

Ask D'Mine: The Shot Heard 'Round the Blogosphere & Insulin for Weightlifting

Welcome once again to our weekly advice column, where we talk all about navigating life with diabetes. In this edition of Ask D'Mine, our host Wil Dubois ( veteran type 1, author and diabetes community educator) takes on another prime time TV show that recently "tried" to address diabetes, and he also gets at the real story behind insulin being used in the weightlifting world.

Got your own questions? Email us at [email protected]

Nancy from Missouri, type 2, writes: I've been enjoying the new TV series Touch. Sort of. But a recent episode on Hulu had Kiefer Sutherland finding an unconscious man whom it turns out was diabetic. "There are some loaded insulin syringes in the fridge..." Kiefer injects the man in the crook of his arm with what—despite the dialog—looks like glucagon, and the man recovers consciousness almost immediately. It's such a glaring piece of dangerous stupidity... we see diabetic inaccuracies in the media all the time, but this one was a killer. What can we PWDs do to fight these kinds of things?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Talk about the shot heard 'round the blogosphere, this little scene has generated quite a bit of conversation and commentary. As it should!

Where to even start? Oh my goodness!

Now, Mr. Sutherland, there're three main reasons a PWD (person with diabetes) might be unconscious. First: their blood sugar might be too low and they've passed out. Second: their blood sugar might be too high and they've passed out. Third: they might be stone-cold drunk and they've passed out.

How you should respond to each of the three is different.

If they're too low, giving insulin will actually make them lower, and probably kill them. So, please, Mr. Sutherland, don't give me insulin if you find me passed out from a low! Now, glucagon, which we'll talk more about in a minute, would be appropriate—but there's actually something better you can do.

If they're high, Mr. Sutherland, insulin will help. But frankly, if they're high enough to have passed out, they're going to need a lot more than insulin; and anyway, at this point, the insulin really needs to be pumped into their bodies through an IV in a controlled way. Not shot into the crook of the arm.

If they're drunk, giving them insulin can actually trigger a low. Skip step two and go directly back to step one, Mr. Sutherland. Coffee and a call to their spouse/parent is actually the most appropriate action in this case.

Of course the real problem is that you have no easy way to know if the PWD is low, high, or drunk (or do you know how to use a glucometer, Mr. Sutherland?). Because taking blind intervention, as I've just shown you, can make the situation worse, the best thing to do is do the exact same thing you'd do if you found a non-PWD passed out: call frickin' 911.

But what about that glucagon? You know what? Don't f** with glucagon if you aren't trained to use it, and if you don't know the passed-out person's blood sugar. If you know the person is low, by testing, and if you know how to use the glucagon kit (which is never "loaded" in the fridge, but involves injecting water into a vial, mixing it, drawing it up again, and injecting the appropriate amount into the PWD), then by all means please do so. Otherwise, just wait for the damn ambulance.

By the way, if you've been trained in glucagon and you use it properly, will the dead-to-the-world PWD then recover "almost immediately?" No. It can take up to 20 minutes before the lights flicker back on in the PWD's head following a glucagon shot.

Oh. And the PWD will as likely as not throw up as soon as they recover. Didn't see that on TV, did ya?

Oh, and they still have to go to the frickin' hospital, too. Glucagon dumps the liver's stores of glucose to bring us back from the dead. All the stores. Post-glucagon, we have nothing left if there is an after-shock hypo.

So you still should have called 911, anyway.

So much for the review of the facts. Touch got it all wrong. Both in dialog and visuals. Now what? What can we do? What should we do?

I am sharpening my pitchfork as we speak. (I love a good revolution.) I think a merciless barrage of emails, faxes, letters, and calls is the best approach. I think, as a community, we need to both make a lot of noise and have a zero-tolerance policy every time this kind of nonsense happens. The general public is clueless enough without the entertainment media making things worse with dramatic falsehoods.

If we took even 10% of the energy vented in our own communities over this, and turned that energy outwards, maybe we can change the world. One TV show at a time.

May I suggest attacks at the following "enemy" locations:

Touch's Facebook page is here. Friend and flame.

FOX TV email links are here. Ya gotta scroll to the bottom and click the big blue (ironic) ASKFOX. Or find your local FOX affiliate here.

You can find a snail-mail address for Touch creator Tim Kring here, and you can get the low down on the production companies here.

Last but not least, Touch's star Kiefer Sutherland has his own website (with guest book, chat, and contact links) and Facebook pages. Maybe you should (all) reach out and touch him. Let him know we're watching.

And that we don't like to be misrepresented.

John from California, type 1, writes: I've heard that insulin has a "growth factor," and some bodybuilders actually use it to help grow muscle (which sounds crazy). So. If you're weight training you can put on muscle a little bit easier than regular people. That's what my endo told me, too, but he probably just wants me to dose precisely and aggressively. Wil, please confirm or deny!

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Oh God, this is just like when my son Rio asked me why the sky is blue. I know the answer, but how to explain it without taking all day? And I'm guessing that just saying "because" isn't going to cut it with this crowd!

So... foundation first. A "growth factor" is a substance that stimulates cellular growth, and these substances are most commonly proteins or steroids.

I think you can all see where this is going: steroids, weightlifting... Oh, and insulin is a protein, of course... But hold on one second. It's not a simple as you might think.

Because insulin itself isn't really a significant growth factor. But another pair of hormones called IGF-1 and IGF-2 are. IGF stands for Insulin-like Growth Factor. These are hormones that are kinda sorta like insulin, but aren't really insulin at all. (IGF can be measured by a lab to check for pituitary problems or growth issues, especially in children.) But, as their name suggests, they're growth factors.

Still, what you heard was more or less right. Growth factors do make cells grow. So IGF could help you build muscles, at least in theory; which has led to a not-so-cottage industry of IGF pills, sprays, and shots. Well, more correctly, pills, sprays, and shots marketed as IGF. Here in the USA, most aren't really IGF at all, but are substances alleged to stimulate the body's IGF production. But in other parts of the world, or with a prescription pad, you can get the real stuff.

So, with all of that said, do some crazy-ass weightlifters use IGF? Yes. And other crazy-ass people jump off suspension bridges with rubber bands tied to their feet. That doesn't make it a good idea. In addition to making muscle cells grow, IGF can also help cells you don't want growing to grow, too, like cancer cells. Cancer cells have a tendency to grow too damn fast to start with, so do you really want to light a fire under those puppies?

But what about insulin itself? Is anyone out there injecting insulin instead of taking IGF? No. Not in mainstream bodybuilding anyway, although there is a lot of talk about diet plans to maximize endogenous insulin in the body-building community. But out on the fringes, yes, there sure are people shooting up to try to beef up.

It risks hypos for non-dFolk, and hasn't been proven to be effective... and probably isn't, as insulin itself isn't a truly potent growth factor.

Still, that doesn't keep some people from trying. If there's anything we can count on it will be that some people will try anything, and that kids will ask why the sky is blue.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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