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descendantofthesparrow · 4 years ago

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Bad end rewrite concept - Arwen

Fae are a fickle type of being, once they turn 18 they have a yearly “mating” season that lasts from a day to a full week (similar to a period but once a year) only activated once the fae finds their “mate”. in the case of Mal, who is a dark fae and has yet to meet her “mate”, has never had her “mating” season.

both light, dark, and “regular” fae all have this “mating” season after they turn 18 and find their mate, but unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, FG and Jane were unaware that Jane had found her mate in Gil, so when the young fae turned 18, and that time of the year came around, she wasn't exactly...prepared for what was happening.

FG had explained once about the fae mating season to jane, but...faes usually don't know they’ve found their mate until they reach the once a year “mating season” and her mating season ended up being only just a week after her 18th birthday.

as both Jane and Gil were unprepared for the situation, along with them both being pretty much unknowledgeable about sex.ed and Gil wanting to get rid of the pain Jane was under(less painful more just really uncomfortable), had unprotected sex. and around two months later, Jane noticed her period was late...and she hadn't had one the previous month. panicked she quickly confided in Evie and (y/n), who calmed her down and (y/n) went out to get her friend a pregnancy test.

minutes after Jane took the test, Evie gently showed her the stick, with two pink lines.

Jane was pregnant as a result of the mating season.

while she was terrified of both her mothers and Gils reaction, with the support of her friends she told them both. Gil was ecstatic, but knew that they were both very young and having a child might not be the best idea at the moment. her mother was just as supportive, blaming herself for not properly preparing her daughter for fae mating season.

another month of talking between Jane, Gil, and her mother, the two young adults decided to keep the unborn child that was growing within Jane. FG was ecstatic that she would soon have a grandchild and did her best to help jane through her pregnancy, even though she had never gone through it herself she was a fairy godmother, not just a fairy.

six months later, out came a red cheeked little girl, to which the two new parents named her Arwen. they soon discovered while Arwen looked completely human, she had inherited her mothers fae genes, her eyes, while normally honey brown like her fathers, became iridescent when she was tired, and then when angry, like when they saw Arwen's first temper tantrum, glowed and turned blue with purplish pink magic flowing through her iris, her pupil turning to a thin pink slit. her teeth, specifically her canines and lateral incisors, where fangs, sharp enough to rip through skin if she wanted too. she was a sub-type of fea known as “wild fae” who had connections with nature and life

her magic burst forth wildly when she was only two months old, Jane staring wide eyed as her ,not even a toddler, child hovered her father upside down in the air in front of her, clapping happily as her father stared at her in shock and awe. it was almost effortless for Arwen, doing things even fully grown faes had trouble with sometimes, such as lifting an entire human into the air with no incantation.

FG was just as perplexed, in the end only suggesting that those born of true love/between a fae and their mate, had extremely powerful magic. an example being Maleficent herself, while she was a dark fae she had been born from fae mates and therefore had powerful magic, sometimes not even needing a verbal spell to cast her spells.

content with FGs answer but still in shock, Jane and Gil did their best to raise their magic rampant half fae child.

but one day...a bit more than one year after she had fled Auradon in shame of her failure, Mal returned. with vengeance.

she quickly took control of Auradon and the isle, spelling Jane and killing Gil with the Ember Mal had stolen back from her father, upon learning about Arwen, she ordered the newly spelled Jane to bring her daughter to her, what she would do with it she didn't know, it all depended on how powerful Arwen was.

Jane obeyed, taking the hardly over a half year old Arwen to Mal. but as she looked into the iridescent eyes of her only child, Jane was freed for a moment, and in that moment she raced off to the other edge of the enchanted forest, and left her child in a bush. in tears she left Arwen in her peach baby blanket with a spell to keep her warm and fed, along with a note.

-to whoever finds Arwen, please please take care of her and protect her. Mal wants her, and i cant bare to let my child into her clutches, i cant let her die. tell Arwen her mother loves her and to be strong.

-thank you, Jane-

just as Jane entered the castle that Mal had taken, the spell Mal had placed on Jane returned. Mal was confused, the baby wasn't with jane, so where was she? Jane took Mal to where she had left Arwen, only for her to be gone.

the two faes stood unaware that a woman that was thought to be dead already had the child, and she vowed that she would protect Arwen with her life.

(y/n) took Arwen away from Auradon and to a nearby country, luckily finding a cabin the middle of a forest, she rebuilt it and raised her friends child alone in that forest, waiting for the day that Auradon and its people would be freed from Mal’s clutches.

four and a half years later, Arwen is 5 years old, she knows her parents loved her very much, she knows her mother was forced to give her up to protect her from the evil Mal, she knows her father died to protect her, she knows that she loves her auntie (y/n).

she knows she is powerful, she knows she controls the forest around her, she knows she commands the animals before her.

she knows one day she will get her mother back and avenge her father. but for now, she is only 5 years old, and her auntie wants her to have a happy childhood before she gives it up to war.

so she will, for now.

yep...Arwen! so i posted this concept art for bad end rewrite and with the addition of Arwen, the timeline and story of this concept change. this is the original timeline and story which originally started around the end of D3 and took maybe a couple months for the timeline to run through, but now starts a bit more than a year after D3, and spans over a good couple years, im debating on weather or not to have it go to where Arwen is a teen and fights along side (y/n) and the others or too have her still be 5 when Mal is defeated. depending on what i chose the story will be changed, so ill decide on that later.

her magic is pretty nature like in concept, she can control nature and command animals, and when she was a toddler she “tamed” an entire wolf pack that now waits on hers and (y/n)s command.(her favorites are Artimus and TC) when she uses more of a...physically? visible? magic it flows like water and smoke, colored like her eyes when she is tired (aka its iridescent)

again she has very sharp teeth (and at the moment is missing one of her front teeth cuz she's five) and i added a new eye thing for her, when she gets angry, her eyes turn blue with purple/pink glowy stuff and her pupil becomes slanted and glows pink/purple

more of her info can be found on the other concept art i posted of her so ill just stop here cuz its 5am and im tired~

Again inspired by the Dream smp and @disneyfan50 “true defender” fic, and also thanks to disneyfan50 for helping me find a name for Arwen

#Descendents #descendants #disney descendants #bad end rewrite #concept art #arwen #janexgil #jane descendants #gil descendants #oc #child oc #magic #fae #art #my art #i suck at drawing wolves forgive me for those two at the bottom lol

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nordleuchten · 4 years ago

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La Fayette in Prison - Part 2 - Magdeburg

After Wesel, off we go to Magdeburg. Here La Fayette and his fellow prisoners stayed from January 4, 1793 until January 4, 1794. Just like Wesel, Magdeburg was and still is a prominent city in modern-day Germany (back then in Prussia). And just like Wesel, Magdeburg lies near a river, the Elbe to be precise. And again, the prison laid inside the city’s fortress. Large parts of the fortress are still intact and are the sites of numerous activities throughout the years, such as re-enactments, historic festivals, historic guided tour ... visitors are also free to request an individual guided tour, unrelated to any other activity. La Fayette is once more named as a noteworthy inmate by the Homepage of the organisation charged with taking care of the fortress. But he was far from the most prominent inmate – Germans at least will recognise the names of Fritz Reuter and Werner von Siemens (the guy who founded the company “Siemens”). Whoever created the Homepage either did not do their research or disliked La Fayette. It is stated that La Fayette attempted an coup d’état that failed and that he initiated the Champ the Mars massacre ... both statements are grossly oversimplified at best and utter nonsense at worst. During La Fayette’s stay Ludwig Karl von Kalkstein (then a Lieutenant-General) was the Governor of the prison and Otto Kasimir von Meerschneidt (then a Major-General) was its Commander.

La Fayette and is fellow Frenchmen were brought to Magdeburg by means of an open cart. What was in all likelihood intended to degrade them further, was actually a blessing for the prisoners. They now had fresh air and the open, blue sky in abundance, something that had been denied to them all those months prior. Something else happened as well. People recognized these august men and apparently also cheered for them. Where the Prussian and Austrian authorities had a keen dislike for La Fayette, the population was in large parts in favour of him (more on that in a bit). Though he may have been touched by the cheering, such outpours of affection did not help La Fayette endear himself to his jailers – not at all. Nevertheless, conditions at Magdeburg were better ... far from good, but better.

La Fayette was allowed to obtain some books. Among other things he read mostly about agriculture and this knowledge would later come in handy when he ventured into the farming business after his return to France in 1799. He was furthermore allowed to write and receive letter ... but there was a twist. You see, when a letter for La Fayette arrived, the authorities in Magdeburg would open it, read it and decide if La Fayette was allowed to receive this letter. If so, they would go into his cell and read the letter aloud to him exactly once. If he was allowed to reply, his letters were checked and if there was something in them that did not please his jailors, well, the letter then moved directly into the bin. Lovely!

Nevertheless, things were looking up for La Fayette and he started writing letters to the full extent of his possibilities. Although he ached to let his wife Adrienne know that he was more or less okay, he did nor dare to write her. She was still imprisoned in France and La Fayette feared that somebody there might recognise his handwriting and subsequently destroy the letter. Instead he tried to reach his English and American friends (both in America and as envoys in Europe).

La Fayette described his cell in a letter to an unknown friend in England:

“Imagine an opening made under the rampart of the citadel, and surrounded with a strong, high palisade; through this, after opening four doors, each armed with chains, bars, and padlocks, they come, not without some difficulty and noise, to my cell, three paces wide five and a half long. The wall is mouldy on the side towards the ditch, and the front one admits light, but not sunshine, through a little grated window. Add to this two sentinels, -- whose eyes penetrate into this lower region, but who are kept outside the palisade, lest they should speak other watchers not belonging to the guard, and all the walls ramparts, ditches, guards, within and without the citadel of Magdeburg, and you will think that the foreign powers neglect nothing to keep us within their dominions. The noisy opening of the four doors is repeated every morning to admit my servant; at dinner, that I may eat in presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and at night, to take my servant to his prison. After having shut upon me all the doors, the commandant carries off the keys to the room where, since our arrival, the king has ordered him to sleep. I have books, the white leaves of which are taken out, but no news, no newspapers no communications, -- neither pen, ink, paper, nor pencil. It is a wonder that I possess this sheet, and I am writing with a toothpick. My health fails daily (��).”

(I am a bit irked by the fact, that I can neither associated an recipient nor an exact date with the letter. The letter otherwise seems authentic and the content is similar to other letters by La Fayette that we have more information on – that being said, I gave the letter a pass although its provenance is not what I would like it to be.)

I have seen some people argue that La Fayette mostly managed to keep his spirits up, because he did not complained an awful lot in his letters – but when assessing such a statement, you have to keep in mind that La Fayette really could not complain a lot in his letters, otherwise they would never be posted. It is true though, that there were small betterments. I already mentioned the letters and books, but he and the other prisoners were also allowed to take regular walks in the yard of the prison. They walked separated from each other and were heavily guarded. But La Fayette fell ill again, this time with a fever. His illness was not as serious though as it had been at Wesel.

La Fayette also received some money from his friends in America. Some of his friends, such like Washington, privately send money for La Fayette to use. Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, found a way for the Government to pay La Fayette some money. He argued that La Fayette had offered to serve in the Continental Army without pay but that there was no official document of the Continental Congress accepting this offer. It follows that the Treasury owned La Fayette six years of pay and furthermore ten years worth of interests since they had “forgotten” to pay him the money since the end of the war ten years prior. Jefferson wrote a letter to Washington on December 30, 1793:

“Soon after his captivity and imprisonment, and before the ministers had received our instructions to endeavor to obtain his liberation, they were apprised that his personal restraint, and the peculiar situation of his fortune disabled him from drawing resources from that, and would leave him liable to suffer for subsistence, and the common necessaries of life. After a consultation by letter, therefore, between our ministers at Paris, London, and the Hague, they concurred in opinion that they ought not in such a case to wait for instructions from hence, but that his necessities should be provided for until they could receive such instructions. Different sums have been therefore either placed at his disposal, or answered on his draughts, amounting, as far as we hitherto know to about twelve or thirteen hundred Guineas. This has been taken from a fund not applicable by law to this purpose nor able to spare it: and the question is whether, and how it is to be made good? To do this, nothing more is requisite than that the United States should not avail themselves of the Liberalities of M. de la Fayette, yielded at a moment when neither he nor we could foresee the time when they would become his only resource for subsistence. It appears by a statement from the war office, hereto annexed, that his pay and commutation as a major General in the service of the United States to the 3rd of nov. 1783 amounted to 24,100 dollrs thirteen Cents exclusive of ten years interest elapsed since that time, to the payment of which the following obstacle has occurred. at the foot of the original engagement by Mr Deane, a copy of which is hereto annexed, that a certain roll of officers there named, and of which M. de la Fayette was one, should be taken into the american service in the grades there specified, M. de la Fayette alone has subjoined for himself a declaration that he would serve without any particular allowance or pension. It may be doubted whether the words in the original French do strictly include the general allowance of pay and commutation. and if they do, there is no evidence of any act of acceptance by Congress. Yet, under all the circumstances of the case, it is thought that the legislature alone is competent to decide it. If they decline availing the United States of the declaration of M. de la Fayette, it leaves a fund which not only covers the advances which have been made, but will enable you take measures for his future relief. It does it too, in a way which can give offence to nobody, since none have a right to complain of the payment of a debt, that being a moral duty, from which we cannot be discharged by any relation in which the creditor may be placed as to them.”

Washington forwarded the letter to the Congress and on March 27, 1794 Congress passed a bill to pay La Fayette the money he had not accepted as a General during the Revolutionary War. To nobody’s surprise, neither Congress nor President Washington had any objections and the bill was approved swiftly.

Prisons in the 18th century (as well as today) often development into some sort of parallel society. Money and especially bribery could get you far in prison and La Fayette experienced that first hand. On November 18, 1809 La Fayette enclosed an account of his financial situation in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. It seems as if this lengthy report had been written by one of La Fayette’s secretaries. Here is a short excerpt of the English translation of the report:

“The expenses caused by his captivity were enormous; the prisoners had to pay their own way as long as their money lasted, and as General Lafayette was the only one with some money, he had to take responsibility for his fellow prisoners. But this was a small matter in comparison with all that his European friends did financially to save his life, to correspond with him, and to facilitate his escape. Some of them made great personal sacrifices, and the sums generously sent by the American government were swallowed up. General Lafayette’s family provided for its own expenses while living in Olmutz. So that on arriving at Hamburg after an imprisonment of five years he found nothing of what had been intended for him and only an increased debt to Mr. Gouverneur Morris up to the time when he was paid 68000.₶; to Mr. Parish former United States consul, forty three thousand Livres; to Mr. Bollman a contract reduced to 30000.₶”

(You see, a great deal of the financial troubles and transactions came after his stay in Magdeburg but since everything started in Magdeburg, I thought it convenient to discuss the monetary issue here in full.)

We see the United States taking actions to the best of their abilities and we see also more letters discussing La Fayette’s fate. News travelled slowly in the 18th century and it took the three months that La Fayette stayed in Wesel for the world to find out that he even had been arrested. But after the knowledge was out there, we see an increase in letters and also in newspaper coverage. So much so that Adrienne could read in the French newspapers that La Fayette was presently alive and in Magdeburg. We can further observe that people all other he world started petitioning the Prussian King for La Fayette’s relief. His friends, English Members of Parliament (although it would take a couple more years before the House of Commons would discuss the topic in full), Washington and his friends in America, Americas envoys in Europe, the list goes on. Some of La Fayette’s fellow prisoners, mostly unassuming secretaries and aids, had been released almost immediately and were now also trying to secure La Fayette’s freedom – some even returned to France to do so. We also see Prussians citizen petition their King. Most of these petitions were simple letters, but some petitioners had the money to spare and printed their petitions as pamphlets – many of them can today be found online.

Although the instructions for the guard were not less strict then they had been in Wesel, the guards in Magdeburg appeared to love to gossip. During his stay La Fayette was kept more or less up to date on the newest developments in France and the war. Eight months into his stay in Magdeburg he was also given some news about his wife Adrienne. La Fayette wrote Charles Pinckney in London on July 4, 1793:

My dear Sir,

Whilst on this anniversary my American fellow citizens are having their joy, I join in a solitary bumper with the happy remembrances, the patriotic wishes which are crowding upon us (...) Owning to your kind interference, my dear Sir, the crowned gaolers have consented after eight months to let me know that my wife and children were alive – be pleased to acquaint them that my health is tolerably good (...).

(Can we please acknowledge the fact that La Fayette took the time out of his day and remembered that it was the anniversary of American Independence?)

There is another letter that I want to give the spotlight. La Fayette wrote on March 15, 1793 to his friend, the Princess d’Hénin. In this letter he wrote that:

“I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne; but I hope Madame de Lafayette will take care that the negroes, who cultivated it, shall preserve their liberty.”

La Fayette had bought a plantation in the French colony of Cayenne and implemented a system of gradual emancipation. The plantation was later sold by French authorities and the people there re-enslaved. Although his endeavour ultimately failed I found it interesting to see that La Fayette, even during such a dark hour, thought about others as well.

Before we move on to the next prison, this time in Neisse, on last titbit. The Baron von Steuben, the absolutely legendary legend, was born in Magdeburg and as a man of military background probably spend some time in the fortress as well.

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bcbdrums · 4 years ago

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Purification

All right. @cocoa-at-night was mad at me, and I know others will be... So this is in fact a second sequel to "Torment.” I already had this idea in my head as a possible sequel so... Who says I can’t write two! Therefore, readers, you get two options now. Decide which way you prefer the story to end.

To be very clear, this is a different sequel than “Immolation” and follows a different path to a different ending. It begins the same however. Please enjoy “Purification.”

FFn AO3

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Purification

Shego ran the dampened washcloth over the smooth, polished surface of the bar and stared at the grains of wood beneath. She nearly had them memorized, for how many times she'd run the cloth over them to wipe away the condensation left by the rims of drinking glasses. She always tried to find vague shapes in their patterns; faces and objects and sometimes familiar ocean waves. She didn't have anything else to do with her days, after all.

The small wall-mounted television in the corner continued to play news from the local channel, and after three years she could finally understand the Spanish of the broadcast. She'd picked up the local slang faster by necessity, since she couldn't use her powers to protect herself from the type of crowd the bar attracted. It was ironic, for its nearness to the Caribbean, but the slums of El Salvador had been the perfect place to hide. She easily translated the broadcast into the more comfortable English:

"...And here is Dr. Drakken only days ago, unveiling his latest innovation at the world's largest scientific conference in Berlin..." the voice from the TV cut through the minimal noise at the late hour in the bar.

A soft smile came to Shego's face. And then suddenly her vision was filled with the large form of a dark-skinned man wearing a t-shirt that had seen too many years, and with a face that hadn't seen a razor in weeks.

"Venga, chica. Bailar conmigo."

Shego stepped back from the strong scent of alcohol and scowled at the man, a regular at the establishment, but one who never quite took the hint. Especially not when he had had too many.

"Raquel?" came the accented voice of Esteban, her boss and the owner of the place, from across the room where he was wiping down tables and stacking chairs for closing.

She leaned around the offensive man to merely smirk at her boss knowingly in return. He grimaced slightly, no doubt wondering how much of a mess there would be to clean after she was finished with the brute.

Truthfully, she didn't always reject the men who asked her to dance. Whenever she'd had a few shots it was easier to say yes, and she enjoyed closing her eyes and moving to the rhythm of the music, and imagining herself in a different place. But it would always end the moment any of them tried to lay a hand on her...

She couldn't cross that line. There was only one set of hands she ever wanted to touch her, and they never would. Allowing herself to indulge once and pretend with anyone else would open the gate to far worse sins than her most definitely out of control drinking, and she didn't want to deal with the ramifications of heading down that path.

She still wasn't sure when she'd fallen in love with Drakken. She'd certainly been in love with him before she left, but she'd only realized the fact while in her self-imposed exile, when all she could think about was him.

Numerous magazines and newspapers were delivered to the tiny room she rented above the bar, but not of the variety she'd used to get. Now it was all science periodicals, and world news... And her wall was adorned with newspaper cutouts with his familiar, confident grin. The only reason she watched the news at all was for word of him.

She was pathetic.

Her 'clean break' as she'd hoped to make it seemed to have worked for him. He was finding the success she knew he would as soon as she was out of the picture, no longer holding him back. She knew that would have been the result had she stayed, making him question his sudden yearning for 'good.' Less for good, she knew of course, and more for the recognition and honor his genius rightly deserved. She wouldn't have said that years ago, but with the new understanding she had of her feelings...

She couldn't have stayed. He would have denied himself for her. And she refused to let herself think it was because his feelings were deeper too. No, that wasn't possible. It had been made abundantly clear to her over their four years as partners in crime that he simply didn't think of her that way. She was little more than an asset and a comfort; a listening ear for his endless dronings and rantings, easily replaced.

So she had left a note on her pillow one day after painfully listening to him describe the amazing job offers he had received, and simply vanished. She knew he would come looking for her, as he always did because 'he needed her,' so she had made herself impossible to find. She'd not hardly used her powers in three years, and she'd managed to convinced the locals in the high-poverty, high-crime rate slums she'd hidden in that her skin color was due to something between genetics and illness.

'Shego' was gone.

Now she was Raquel, the barmaid who drank too much, wouldn't let anyone get close, and who had a strange obsession with science magazines. Esteban and others had tried to get her to talk about herself, or her apparent science interest for awhile, but they'd finally taken the hint that she was out there in the middle of nowhere, at one of the only respectable establishments in those slums, to make sure know one ever knew her story.

Shego waited until Esteban wasn't looking, and then she lifted her hand above the leering man's head as his greasy fingers reached across the bar for her, and she let him have just enough of a pressure blast from her glow to knock him out. When the man's large, dead-weight hit the floor, her boss turned with a start.

"Ai ai ai, Raquel! Someday I will see how you accomplish that."

Shego merely smirked as her eyes shifted back to the television. It was a simple, lonely life... One that she might leave someday to pursue other interests. 'Shego' as the world had known her could probably never return, after her world-saving ventures with Drakken. She wouldn't want to put his career at risk in any way. But living from day to day and drink to drink, with only her periodicals and the TV to briefly soothe the ache in her heart wasn't plausible. She needed to move on.

The reason she hadn't was for the lack of one thing in every photo, article, and broadcast about the blue former villain who had saved the world: he was always alone. Even the candids taken by paparazzi that she would find in the trash magazines she had specially delivered only ever showed him having breakfast alone at a sidewalk cafe, or seated alone in an audience as he waited to accept an award.

Why hadn't he met someone and settled down already?

That was the last piece... That was what was missing. When Drakken finally had a woman on his arm, and his happiness was complete...then she could risk moving out into the world and being seen again. If he had someone else, he most definitely wouldn't need her. And she wouldn't have to face up to the fact of possibly seeing him again, with the feelings she'd been harboring for too many years that simply refused to die.

"...It has been confirmed to have been a suicide attempt now, as a note was leaked to the press by a source who wishes to remain anonymous from within Japanese Intelligence..."

Shego's attention snapped to the television, where now a years-old photograph of Drakken at the UN, wearing his medal, was displayed in the corner of the screen as the Spanish news anchor continued to read the copy.

"The note was addressed to fellow-hero Kim Possible, and the text reads: 'I can't figure out what I did wrong. I can't live without her anymore. I'm sorry.' The note was not signed, but handwriting analysis easily showed it to be in the script of Dr. Drakken."

Shego felt the world spinning around her as her vision seemed to spin in the opposite direction. Her head swam and ached all at once, and she could see bright spots dancing in front of her eyes even as her view darkened. She stumbled forward to lean against the bar as she struggled to listen to the television.

"And the world remains in shock, one week from the date the acclaimed scientist attempted to take his life by jumping from the roof of the Osaka World Trade Center. We will keep you updated with more details as the story continues to unfold. This is Paola Ramos, reporting."

Suicide attempt? Drakken, of all people? It didn’t make sense... He had everything...everything he had ever dreamed of, and more. She had made sure of it by removing herself from his life so he would have nothing holding him back. How could he have attempted suicide?

"Raquel! ¿Qué pasa?"

She peered upward and let Esteban take her hand and help her straighten up from where she had all but slumped over the bar.

"Phone..." she managed to get out, her throat strangely tight. “I need...I need to know...”

“You need to make a phone call?” he asked.

Shego nodded. As Esteban fumbled in his pockets for his cell phone, Shego thought about what had been reported as the contents of the suicide note.

"I can't live without her anymore," it had read.

He couldn't... He didn't... He wouldn't...mean me?

Shego felt like she might throw up, and as Esteban offered her the phone, she moved past him and all but fell onto one of the bar stools, suddenly feeling like her feet would fail her. She began dialing a long-memorized number, then realized as the phone rang that she didn't know if the number would be the same after so long, but that thought was broken by Esteban stepping into her vision.

"Are you calling 911? What is wrong?" he asked, his dark eyes wide and worried as he studied her. But then, the phone connected.

"Hello?" the familiar voice said through the line.

Shego suddenly realized she had only ever called the girl 'Princess' or 'Pumpkin' or 'Kimmie,' and wasn't sure how to address the now young woman and for a brief time, ally.

"Kim..." she finally settled on, the name leaving her throat hoarsely.

"Yes? Who is...?" A familiar gasp sounded through the phone. "Shego?"

"Drakken..." was her one-word answer as suddenly tears began filling her eyes. "Drakken's note."

"Where have you been!? Where are you? We looked for you for over a year!"

"Did that note... Was it real? What I saw on TV, did he really...try to kill himself?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before digging her fingers tightly into her side as her hands started to shake. When had she started crying?

“Yes... He did.”

Shego’s throat tightened. “Have you...seen him, or talked to him?”

“Yeah, right after it happened, but...he doesn’t want to see anyone. He’s angry and embarrassed that it didn’t work. Shego—”

“Did he, I mean...how is he? Is he okay? How did he survive?”

“His vines. Their own sense of self-preservation must have kicked in, and they grabbed onto the building partway down. He’s in the hospital.”

Shego realized tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her hands were shaking so much it was hard to hold the phone. She closed it hard as she let her hands fall to the bar, and then she leaned forward again.

“Raquel! Mi lucecita, what is wrong?”

Shego took a breath and gathered her strength to push away, even as her vision swam. She left the phone on the bar, knowing exactly what would happen, and then reached across the smooth wooden surface for a bottle of tequila. She ignored Esteban's words as she numbly made her way to her room, climbing the stairs and pushing through the door to stumble against the bed, the bottle of alcohol falling from her grasp. She spun around, and after shoving the door closed she fell back to sit on her narrow, uncomfortable mattress as she fumbled with the lid of the tequila bottle.

She looked around at her walls, with their newspaper clippings and magazine cutouts of photos and articles about Drakken's successes. Tears fell from her eyes anew as she brought the bottle to her lips and soon felt her throat burn nearly as badly as her eyes. And the words of Drakken's note played through her mind repeatedly, her every thought and excuse for the past three years dissolving into torment.

-------------------------

The next morning a pulsing, booming sound caused her to wake, and as she sat up hurriedly with hands alight, the vision of red, purple, yellow, and black that swam before her eyes brought back to mind what she had drunk the bottle of tequila to forget. She let her glow die as she fell back on the bed and hid her face from the light with a pillow.

“Shego!” the astonished voice of Kim Possible resonated against her skull. She regretted the hangover, but she couldn’t have handled her thoughts the night before. Tequila had been the only choice.

“Are you all right? You don’t look so good,” the side-kick’s voice followed just as loud with concern.

“You’ve lost so much weight!” Kim continued.

“Yeah, what about it?” Shego said into the pillow, even her own voice painful to her ears.

“Is this where you’ve been all these years?”

“What have you been doing?”

Shego grit her teeth and ignored the questions of her former enemies-turned-allies after Drakken saved the world, finally moving the pillow to narrow her eyes at them.

“Will you take me to see Drakken, or not?” she asked bluntly.

The brows of both young adults rose, and they looked at each other.

“That’s the only reason I let you find me. Cell phone trace, right?” Shego said, grimacing against the throbbing in her head as she rolled over and got her feet on the floor.

“Yeah... It only took Wade—”

“Will you take me to see Drakken?”

“Yeah... I guess, sure. We can do that.”

“Good. Wait downstairs, I need to shower,” she said.

The two young heroes didn’t move, and Shego realized they were studying her walls with the photos and newspaper clippings of Drakken. But she was under too much stress already to worry about what two college kids thought of her. As she painfully stood, her eyes lighted upon a figure hovering in the doorway. Esteban was hanging back in the shadows, watching the interplay nervously.

Kim and Ron were still staring at the walls, and Shego first beckoned her employer into the room before frowning and sighing dramatically at the other two. They both looked at her.

“Haven’t you already read a lot of this stuff? Hurry up, I want to get to Japan before tomorrow.”

The pair gave her another once-over before glancing at each other and finally slipping through the door, giving an even more confused look at the curly-haired Latino who had been welcomed in. They closed the door behind the darker-skinned man as he looked curiously at the adorned walls which Shego had called home for three years. Finally, he sighed.

“You are going to him, then? This man, from the news report.”

Shego nodded, grateful for her boss’s softer tone.

“Yes,” she said.

“He is the reason you came here?”

She nodded again, sitting on the bed as her head pounded.

“...Why did you run from him?”

Shego’s brows knit together, but after all that Esteban had done for her over the years, she supposed it wouldn’t matter to give away a little more. Especially since she would never be seeing him again.

“I thought I was doing what was best for him,” she said with a shrug.

“But surely, if you were in love...? Was there some problem?”

Shego looked up, her brow twisting further in confusion.

“What... You think...he was in love with me too?” Her head was reeling again. That couldn’t have been what his note was about...could it? He had never showed any sign of having those types of feelings for her...

‘You never showed any of your feelings to him.’

She grimaced at that thought. And she wondered with a sickening feeling...had it really been necessary? All she’d done for three years was wallow in her own misery and loneliness and think of nothing but him. What if she had just...taken the risk?

“If the note on the news was real, then it would seem so,” Esteban had replied as she’d been thinking. She looked up again.

“Then I... I... I have to go.”

She stood again to get some fresh clothes and then paused, looking back at the suddenly long face of her boss.

“I hope you can find him. He will recover under your smile.”

Impulsively, Shego closed the distance between them and threw her arms around her boss’s neck. She felt his large palms hesitantly rest on her back.

“Thank you, Esteban...”

“Goodbye, Raquel.”

---------------------------

Shego raked her fingers through the ends of her hair for what must have been the tenth time just walking down the hall. As she found the correct door number she pushed her hair back over her shoulder, and then tugged down the simple green blouse and black jacket she wore. Possible had been right before... The garments weren’t fitting her as they should, but that was a concern for another day. She took a shallow breath and with a trembling hand, pushed the door inward.

The hospital room was dim and silent but for the beeping of monitors. On the bed, a familiar blue face lay atop a pillow, bandaged, like much of the rest of his body that could be seen. One forearm and foot were in casts, and his other arm was bandaged with the slightest of bloodstains showing through, like the one on the side of his face. She held her breath as she stepped in silently, as if walking into a dream. But he heard her.

The corners of his lips turned down before his eyes opened to slits, but then widened slightly upon seeing her. She hesitated only a moment before continuing her slow approach. She could see now the one side of his face was swollen, and his lower lip was split and bruised. She tried not to picture him falling from the top of a skyscraper, smashing against its sides on the way down only to be inexplicably rescued by his own mutation. Instead she fixated on his eyes that were bleary, shocked, and disbelieving.

“Shego?” he croaked out.

She fought the tears that tried to come to her eyes. “Yes. I... I’m here,” she managed, her throat tight.

He seemed to be studying her as she sat down on the edge of his bed, afraid her legs wouldn’t hold her and also needing to be nearer. The thought that he could have...that he very nearly died, and she didn’t even know...

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her lips parted as she stared at his expression that was quickly becoming anxious, despite the haze in his eyes she was sure was in part due to the heavy painkillers that were doubtless coming through his IV line.

“What...?” she breathed.

“Whatever...I did...to make you leave...” Drakken said quietly, each word coming out labored through his dry throat. “I’m sorry. Please...forgive me.”

Shego didn’t bother trying to stop her tears anymore. She took a slow breath to try to calm the ache in her chest as she tore her eyes from his, instead looking at his hand lying on the bed, his knuckles bruised and scraped. She hesitated, but then gently held his hand in both of hers. His skin was clammy and cold, and she noted for the first time the too-slow beeping of the heart monitor.

“You...you didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, looking back at him. His confused and now fearful expression was a blur through her tears. “I did.”

“...What?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she repeated with more strength, recalling the words of his note. “I did. It was just me. I...I’m so sorry, Dr. D.”

Her voice rose on the last as her throat tightened, and she closed her eyes tightly as hot tears slid down her cheeks. She tried to keep her cries quiet, and some time later her attention was drawn back by his hand shifting in hers. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. He looked a bit more focused, and a familiar, analytical expression had joined the caution and confusion on his face.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said. His fingers curled around hers and held on firmly.

Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she let her gaze fall to her lap. She had already broken her promise to herself, to never see him again... But clearly, that had been a mistake from the beginning. If she was honest...then at least she would know, there was nothing else she could have done. And yet, the most important words she could say to him still died on her lips.

“I didn’t want to hold you back,” she said, staring down at their joined hands. She was careful not to hold too tight for his bruised knuckles. A long moment of silence passed before he spoke again.

“What...? But... Shego...”

“I didn’t want to be part of...this world,” she said, lifting one hand briefly to gesture weakly at the opulence of the hospital room. Not exactly what she meant, but she hoped the point would get across. “But I know you, Dr. D.... You...you wouldn’t have taken any of the jobs, without me. I just...wanted you to be happy. And I didn’t want any of this...”

There was another silence, broken only by her sniffling as she gradually brought her tears under control. She heard Drakken take a long breath in through his nose and then release it just as slowly.

“Thank you for visiting me...”

Shego turned abruptly, her tears stilling with a silent gasp. Drakken’s eyes were on their joined hands, and he looked sad.

“You look...” he began, glancing up at her briefly before his gaze fell again. “Hm. Where will— That is...”

He trailed off, glancing away toward the curtained window in the room with a slight grimace. Shego tried to follow his train of thought.

“I don’t...have to leave right away,” she ventured carefully. He looked back at her, his expression guarded. “We could...catch up for a while? If...if you...”

She broke off as tears threatened her eyes anew. Who was she kidding? His note had been clear...

‘I can’t live without her anymore.’

“If you...don’t mind having me around, I could stay...longer.” She set her hand back atop his, minding the scrapes on his knuckles. The pressure of his fingers against her palm hadn’t diminished.

Drakken’s swollen lips parted, his dark eyes seeming to glitter even brighter for the mottled bruising on his face. And then, a shadow came over his features.

“No, that’s...that’s all right. You can go back to...your life.”

Shego held her breath. She thought about telling him she knew about the note, but...what if that only made things worse? Then he would be embarrassed, and he had already...apparently given up on living. What would that new revelation do to him?

His words were also unknowingly meaningless, she realized, as because for the past three years she...had had no life. Only worrying and pining over him, waiting for the day he married so she would know he didn’t need her anymore, and then and only then could she come out of hiding. But she had left El Salvador behind fully when she had come to Japan. The bar was already out of her mind. All she wanted, and what she really needed, was...

She took a breath. “Drakken...”

When she met his eyes they were sad. She looked down again.

“I...I also left because...because I’m in love with you. But I knew...you didn’t feel the same. I knew you could find someone to replace me and...really fulfill you, and it seemed like...the best way I could give you everything you wanted...was to be out of the picture.”

She sniffled, bringing one hand up to wipe her eyes and nose before straightening up from the tense hunch she’d found herself in and then leaning back on her hand, the other still firmly gripping his. She didn’t want to hear his confirmation, but she needed to. Knowing that her feelings weren’t reciprocated would mean it was all worth it. Even though it didn’t explain his years of solitude...or the note. She didn’t want it to be about her. She couldn’t be the reason that he’d nearly—

“Everything I wanted? Shego...”

She cast a cautious eye on him, and he looked a mixture of confused, hurt, but somehow resolved. His hand suddenly left hers, and her throat constricted with the sudden loss. And then she was gasping in worry as Drakken started trying to push himself up.

“All I’ve ever wanted—” He stopped short with a hiss of pain, shaking as he paused halfway up.

“Dr. D....”

“...Is you.”

Her breath caught, and they stared at each other eye to eye. Drakken’s expression was steady but fearful, and her own she knew reflected utter shock. She was so startled she hadn’t even realized she’d spoken a response until he answered her.

“The note was about me...”

Drakken let out a soft, almost exasperated puff of air and lightly shook his head.

“What did I do to...make you think I didn’t love you?”

Shego blinked rapidly as tears filled her eyes.

“Oh, Dr. D.!”

Her arms were flung around him as her lips gently pressed against his, minding the cut and swelling. His least injured arm raised to wrap around her, but without the support his frame shook and he began to fall. Shego guided him down, never breaking the intimate contact. Her tears fell on his face as she cried through the kiss, but his hand pressing into her back strengthened her. She let her fingers move through his hair, ever so softly touching the swollen parts of his scalp as their lips barely moved. She was careful to keep her full weight off of him, but the warmth of their chests together was like a salve, beginning to mend the wounds in her heart.

When they finally parted and she opened her eyes, she found his just as wet.

“Shego...” he whispered hoarsely, and she heard a catch in his throat. “Don’t leave me.”

She held him tighter. “Don’t let me go.”

--------------------------

One month later, Shego was grinning happily as she pressed her face further into Drakken’s neck where they sat together on the sofa in his new apartment. She sighed contently as she snuggled closer into his left side, her arms around his neck and her legs folded and halfway over his lap.

“Shego...” Drakken whispered, “this isn’t exactly...it’s not...”

“Mmmh, let everyone see how much I love you...” she murmured, turning to face the camera placed in front of them, the magazine photographer looking at them quizzically as she offered something between a smile and smirk. The interviewer stood close by, equally ill at ease, but Shego didn’t care.

She positioned her hand on Drakken’s shoulder so the diamond of her engagement ring sparkled in the light. Her heart warmed when his healed left hand reached up to hold hers, and she laced the fingers of her right hand through his, setting her left on top again to show off the ring. She tilted her chin up toward him and was rewarded with his radiant smile.

“I love you...” she said softly, “and I want to spend the rest of my life telling you.”

“I love you, Shego,” he breathed.

Their lips met in a gentle, ardent kiss. Beyond them, after a long minute, the camera flashed.

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tsukidrama · 4 years ago

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i’m glad you could have your weekend off! i hope you had some rest :)

i’m really happy we agree so much on yelena! but also thank you for making me discover her more it’s been really interesting to talk about her!

same for zeke, season 4 managed to make me forget about what he did to erwin but it still happened and i never thought i’d cry for a man until he died. i was very sad but also kinda mad for feeling so devastated about a man lmao.

i’ve seen more lara tybur works lately, even a nsfw alphabet and honestly she DESERVES, if you ever write for her again i’ll gladly read it!!

i (re)read some of your annie fics today and she really is one of the best aot characters, i can’t believe i didn’t care about her at first. i thought she was so cold (partly because of the dub version of my country) and before knowing more about her and how marley works i really was mad at her for killing all these people but context is very important in her story. anyways i read your post rumbling headcanons and it’s so SOFT, annie really deserves it after everything she had to go through, especially since she thought she was gonna die at a really young age, she can fully enjoy her life now. i am also a big supporter of lesbian annie, i don’t like her with men and annie x armin makes me uncomfortable for some reason, people ship it because armin kept visiting her when she was in her crystal but it was him being obsessed while she couldn’t do anything and i don’t really see how it’s supposed to be romantic? so yeah i really don’t like that ship but if i have to be honest i don’t really like either of armin, eren or mikasa. all the side characters are so great and so interesting that the main ones can seem boring at times.

i’ve also read the great hair massacre of 857 and please it was so sweet and funny!! the whole conversation was already funny but then “There you go saying that gay shit again…” actually made me laugh out loud askljldfijdf. the dialogue in this fic was really great, it seemed so natural!! i really love seeing that side of annie, thank you for blessing us with that content! she was so in character too, the reference to her relationship with her dad was subtle but very welcomed, her tearing up after saying “i left” made my heart clench, her relationship with her father is very complex and you wrote it well!

after reading i got curious and wanted to see annie with actual bangs (apart from that flashback we got in season 4) and i couldn’t find anything, i really wish i could draw rn. oh and both the headcanons and the fic being in canon made me so happy too!! i know i’ve already said it but it’s so rare reading aot stuff in canon i really cherish canon fics when i find them! (that being said, I absolutely love your AUs, i guess i’m just a big fan of your writing!!)

annie kinda feels underrated sometimes which is weird because she seems present in a lot of fics and fanart but she doesn’t seem to have that many fans? especially compared to some others. she 100% deserves more love.

-j

you're so sweet 🥺 thank you. i've been a bit sick lately (chronic illness so nothing out of the ordinary unfortunately) so i'm definitely getting lots of rest!

of course! like i said it is ALWAYS my pleasure to spread the love for yelena. i told you i could make you like her 👀 i didn't even mean to get into her as much as i have but she's so interesting and hot. i'm glad you leaded up liking her!

I WILL NEVER FORGET AND I WILL NEVER FORGIVE! i cry about Erwin on a regular basis. i've always felt really strongly about his character and i feel his loss all the time in the final arcs of the story, every time hanji and levi are without him 💔 if there's any man worth making an exception for it's Erwin, that man chugs his respect women juice.

oh fuck yeah! good, it definitely is what she deserves. now i'm gonna go scour the lara tybur tag...

pppffft i was in the opposite situation - i loved her before i knew shit about her character and then felt like a traitor when i pieced together who she was and what she had done.... not sure when you got into snk but i watched season 1 the year it came out and kept up with it so i've really felt every cliffhanger in my bones. i started reading the manga after season 2 aired. my point is that i loved her through Annie all along with her flaws from the beginning, and i've never thought she was "good" per se but it's also obvious that she's affected by what she's done. i always figured there was more to her story than we knew; her reactions, the way she cries over the dead, and the fact that she gives up on her mission that's literally her purpose in life all indicate remorse beyond just regretting being caught. even way back in the day i was like: SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE DOING THIS!! IM TELLING YOU! my brother would constantly be telling me to shut up slksajdfkj but in the end i was right! i just didn't realize that pretty much ALL of the warriors didn't want to be doing what they did, or how complex it all was. she really does deserve a peaceful life being able to do what she wants. i used to cry about her having to die at age 24 a lot, so the ending taking away the titan curse is just about the only part of the ending i vibe with.

yep, same. i absolutely despise that ship-that-must-not-be-named, in my opinion it's a disgrace for both of their characters, but especially hers. it's really creepy, i agree. i don't blame Annie, being in a crystal with only annoying ass people talking to you for 4 years just left her a little confused. armin is gay anyway, i literally just block ppl who post about the ship. i love Mikasa but the other two i agree are pretty crap characters overall.

heheh well there are the manga caps from 139 but it'll be a while before we have her bangs animated. i'm actually so proud of how the great hair massacre turned out, it was such a sweet and goofy story that shows the lighter part of Annie's personality. eee thank you as always and i'm especially happy you mentioned the dialogue! and how it felt natural, that's such a reassuring compliment ❤ and for the bit about her dad. i feel like i'm the only person who likes him alkjdfalksjd i know he's an asshole and he messed up bad but he does really care about Annie and he's important to her therefore her is important to me. can u tell that i have parents-in-law?

i agree! a lot of people seem to either have the attitude of "o yea she's pretty cool i guess" or the full on EVIL MALICIOUS BITCH!! SHE KILLED LEVI SQUAD REMEMBER THE YOYO! i will eternally point out the hypocrisy - Reiner and Zeke do just as bad and worse as she does but the fandom doesn't hate on them. whatever, i'm happy in my bubble over here!

#one time i got hate from an a/ru/an/i shipper telling me to go fuck myself with my faggot fantasies or something like that #and i was like hmm sounds nice will do. and tbh it is i highly recommend coming over here and joining me #j anon #tsuki answers #annie-isms #long post

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hollenka99 · 4 years ago

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2020, According To My Tumblr Archive

January

Like many, freaked out about the Dhawan!Master reveal

Unus Annus reached 2 million subs

Ethan finally saw his sub count reach 1 million

Reblogged the elf pussy post with a version of the elf practice meme and now every time I see that meme, I think of that post

Finally made my Dyspraxic!Chase post

Fleshed out Creator!Jackie a little in terms of Nyesha (his girlfriend) and his prosthetics

February

Got really into Take Me or Leave Me for a short while which led to me watching RENT for the first time

Finally made that follow up to A Talk With The Creator I’d been meaning to write for months (aka A Day Long Overdue)

Started posting Unus Annus trigger warnings for a few weeks after the video where they demonstrate how they’d kill each other as a joke

Reached the 100 follower milestone after nearly 4 years on this site

Got very into WTNV again and binged like 60+ episodes in the space of 2 or so weeks

March

Watched Starkid’s Black Friday

Posted The Doctor on the anniversary of The Friend’s posting

Made some posts about the women of TLoJJ for International Women’s Day

Bupine received an anon ask teasing her about a typo which is common in our friendship group. Usual suspects were accused until the true culprit revealed themself via an acrostic (aka me being extra and I loved every second of it)

Went to the cat cafe in Nottingham

Made sure people were aware of World Puppetry Day by sending anon asks to people I thought might get a kick out of it

Posted Fighting Stolen Breaths

Steven Universe Future ended

Having been in the beginning stages of creation since ~Oct 2019, Jumbled AU content starts appearing

April

Spent the 1st doing an ask event for the Jumbled AU as a way of properly introducing it

Confused a bunch of people outside the Jacksepticeye community when I made a post saying how great it was that $400k had been raised in 2.5 hours during the HopeFromHome stream

Posted The Vlogger for Chase’s birthday

Got hyped to write a Śmigus Dyngus fic featuring Jumbled!Chase and his kids but got sick (regular illness, don’t worry) and therefore never finished it

Norbert Moses existed for 24 hours but he will exist much longer in our hearts

Managed to stay up to see 4:20am on April 20th

Posted the prologue and officially began the story of Jumbled

Watched Ghost for the first time

May

Fanders finally got the continuation of Selfishness vs Selflessness (Putting Others First aka SvS Redux) and learned Deceit’s name

Started talking about The Fall of Naesia

Pretty sure I hyperfixated on Queen for a week or so

Got introduced to ‘Storp Chorleigh, this game has gorn on lawng enuff’ and my life has significantly improved

CumGate happened

Got into ATLA

Black Lives Matter

Created the ‘it’s gonna be gay’ post that would destroy my inbox for the next few days

Had my first experience behind a wheel

June

Posted Flag, the response to which has made me proud of it

Poland scares and disappoints me part 1 (queer rights edition)

Sean posts another blooper video which causes me to make edits that subsequently inspire me to write Little Interruptions

Created an entire mythology purely because I thought a winged humanoid/merperson pairing was a cool concept

Reminded my friends why I should never be allowed to stay up until 4am because I just start talking nonsense

July

Finally watched An Inspector Calls and immediately wanted to make a Sanders Sides au with it.

Started talking about Creator again

Had another ask event to celebrate Jackie’s birthday

Also posted Photographs for his birthday which I love

Reached 150 followers around the middle of this month, I think

Discovered Kipo but wouldn’t fall for it head over heels with it for another month

One Direction celebrated their 10th anniversary and I was possessed by my 15 year old self for a week

Posted The Mediary which properly brought Creator AU back to my blog for a short while

August

Eddsworld came back after years

Posted The Creator and officially completed the main part of the au

Poland scares and disappoints me part 2 (queer rights edition continued)

Finally revealed Jumbled Anti’s identity to the world and got threatened on my birthday because of it

Discovered the Unus Annus video I’d been waiting all year for would be centered around them chewing on dog toys but it did feature “I’m the Unus to your Annus” so that was cool

Binged the first 2 seasons of Kipo in like a day and correctly predicted the Mega Monkey’s identity ages with very little foreshadowing to go off of

September

Started showing my love for Puppet History

Among Us was a thing

Got back into Playchoices

BBC Ghosts came back for series 2

Watched Pride twice in 24 hours and made sure everyone knew I’m heart eyes for it

October

Trump got sick

Family friend took one of my teeth

The world was blessed with Patton in a dress

Replayed Septiscape ahead of Soulscape’s release and liveblogged it

C!Thomas got a love interest and I’m really happy for him

Kipo season 3 came out

Literally the next day, the Dream SMP brainrot officially began

Discovered Thanzag existed and fell for the angsty side of their relationship despite knowing barely anything about the game

Poland scares and disappoints me part 3 (abortion edition)

Started bingeing The Magnus Archives and got through 150 episodes in about 2 weeks

Halloween was an eventful night for both the Jacksepticeye and Unus Annus communities

November

Unus Annus began its epilogue period

Watched V For Vendetta for the first time which was probably the least eventful thing to happen on the night of November 5th 2020

Destiel became somewhat canon and people found out Putin was thinking of resigning because of that

US elections

Unus Annus died following a 12 hour livestream

Somehow, my mad attempt to summarise every video of Unus Annus kinda paid off

Supernatural trended again because of its finale

Went through a period of questioning whether I’m asexual but settled on ‘sex ambivalent allosexual’ for now

Destiel became canon again but reciprocated and Spanish this time

Discovered Webtoon and Castle Swimmer

December

The monolith saga began

Elliot Page came out as trans

Mark went to hospital for an obstruction again and the community became very invested in his recovery process

Scotch eggs with your drinks became a brief meme over here in Britain

Your New Boyfriend was released

Destiel’s canon status was brought back to the spotlight once more

Watched The Godfather for the first time

Reached 200 followers

We got somewhat of a Dan and Phil video after so long with Phil trying on clothes while Dan reacts behind the camera

BBC Ghosts came back for Christmas to say Tories suck and you should make the most of your time with your family

Got into Mother Mother after Wilbur played the intro to Hayloft and I decided to see what the fuss was about

Watched Bridgerton and immediately felt the need to write something historical

The Mishapocalypse returned

#holly talks #2020 #year in review

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canteeth-gumsgrowback · 4 years ago

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Can Gum Grow Back?

The good bacteria in your mouth to start to deteriorate as the illness progresses. But lots of people don't understand that they will need to eat more raw fruits and vegetables, as these foods often nourish the good bacteria.

The thing you want to do is find natural approaches to reverse receding gums to help nourish the good bacteria in your mouth. Among the very first things you should do is locate a quality toothpaste.

Some of the very popular toothpastes available on the market today contain ingredients that can help protect your teeth and protect against plaque build up. The problem with these hot toothpastes is they don't feature any of the natural ingredients that you need.

There are several ways to get toothpaste that comprises each of the ingredients you require, however they're not as hot as toothpastes that contain natural ingredients. Consequently, if you fail to find toothpaste that has natural ingredients in it, you may want to use and locate some different toothpaste.

You could also start looking in to using natural ways to reverse receding gums which will help to promote the very good bacteria in your mouth. One of the best natural methods to do so would be to drink lots of water.

Cure For Receding Gums Naturally

Drink at least eight glasses of water each day. That's a huge number, however it's far better than eating a lot of processed foods, that is packed with sugars and other additives. You could also use natural ways to reverse receding gums by taking a herbal supplement. Consider obtaining a nutritional supplement which includes ginger root and flaxseed.

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spookytomatoetuesday · 5 years ago

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Project Wolf´s Cove

One – Tumbling towards catastrophe

The road ahead was winding, following a cliff´s edge. It was summer and therefore a bright day even though it was still early in the morning. It was definitely summer and the radio kept reminding its listeners of that fact. For the moment, however, the summer hits where too distracting. Becky turned the car radio off. She then returned to the conversation she had with her friend Rose who was sitting in the passenger seat. “The film wasn´t a period piece.”, Becky insisted. “It was set in a period in the past.”, Rose gave back. “No! The film is not on the nose about it, but it was set in the future. The future from when it was produced anyway.” Rose frowned at this just to reiterate: “Yes, and this means that it was still set ten years ago. That is the past. I cannot remember ten years ago, not with a living memory. It might as well be a chapter in a history book. Plus that it is a time ten years ago as imagined by people living 40 years ago. So this is like a page in a fictional history book from a freak dimension.” Becky laughed. She gave in: “Okay.” “Well, that is not my point anyway.”, Rose continued in a mockingly serious voice. “The man issue I wanted to raise was that the protagonist was absolutely alien to me. Not because he lived in a different time, mind you. I had issues with him because of how he acted.” “You mean how he dealt with a world full of isolated people and ravaged by a virus?”, Becky injected. “Yes! The illness is obviously transmitted from person to person. So you keep away from the next best person. Problem solved. The so-called protagonist, on the other hand, did it all wrong, sacrificing not only his life but also the one of his gal-pal.” “She was severely underdeveloped as a character. That was more scary then their fate actually.”, Becky observed. “True. There was just one reason the dude did dude around with her, mouthing about and ruining it all.”, Rose summarized. “Even if he made decisions for others that were not his to make, I think his motivations where understandable. You can’t be alone for all eternity.”, said Becky, while she turned on to the parking lot of Wolf´s Cove High School. “There needs to be a sense of community. If you can’t interact with the ones you actually spent time with, how do you know that you even exist and that you are not just an idea of a person that might be easily forgotten? Apart from that, loneliness hurts if it is not voluntary.” “Okay, fair. You raise some good points as well. I see a use for people in the plural there.”, Rose conceded. “Still, there is a danger to closeness that is not always only down to emotions.” She was quiet for a moment while she and Becky got out of the car, took their backpacks, and went towards the school entrance. “The thing is…”, Rose continued right before they climbed the four steps to the grand double doors. “You get only to take a limited number of breaths on this crummy planet. So you might as well be selective as to who you spent them with.” Becky smiled at her friend. “I thought I was.”

Biking to school always seemed like a good idea when the weather was clear and bright. That was until the last part of the road served as stark reminder that it was more sweaty than fun to bike upwards the serpentines leading to the cliff top where the school was located. John remembered that now. “This was not a good idea.”, John managed to say while slowing down despite putting all the more effort into cycling. His legs started to hurt. Neil nodded: “Fnaf.” “What?” “Fair enough.”, Neil pressed out. “Should it not be fen then?”, John wondered and had to slow down to do so. Neil shrugged and both continued their track up towards the high school in silence. Finally they made it to the big main parking lot and chained their bikes to a lantern there. They noticed Becky’s car as the only one parked here at this early hour. “Oh boy, if I’d known Becky would be here this early as well, I’d have asked her if she could pick us up on her way. Maybe next time. She’d surely do it.”, said Neil shaking his head. John just grunted and then decided to say defensively: “I do not think she is here that early regularly. No one but you is.” “And you, fellow friend and confidant. However, someone has to man the commissary and make sure that it is open when all the breakfast-skipping students arrive hungry from the long way up.”, said Neil. The two made their way to the side entrance of the main building. “I am not a fan of that name. When you say it, I can almost hear boots and trumpets.”, John commented. “The food stall then. After we’ve got rid of the old and truly awful name, we have no official title for it. I’ll still call it commissary on my CV. Universities and prospective employers like that kind of entrepreneurship and lexical knowledge. You should get an activity like this too. They expect this.” “I thought it is the point to stick out, to be so unique that others are interested in you. How does doing what everybody does the same, because that is what everybody has to do, help there?”, John asked while Neil unlocked the foods stand and went into the back where the wares were stored. Neil pointed at some packages of soft drinks. “Need to unpack those and put them into the fridge first.” While they both got to it, Neil added: “So we both understand the system. There is what they say and there is what they want. Still, I think my way to deal with that could pay off in the end. Maybe even more so than yours.” John nodded when Neil reached out for another soda can. They finished the work in silence. Afterwards, Neil put on his work apron and took up his place behind the counter. Above him on the wall painted in a fresh white there was the faint shadow of a mascot which had fallen out of time. In front of him, there was the tip jar while the cassette with the change was hidden under the counter. Neil seemed a little tired but content. John waved to him. “I will try to get some more sleep in on one of the lounge sofas before class. See you later.”, John said. “See you.” The most comfortable couches stood in the lounge of the Science Building that was still missing an S. So John went directly there after leaving the food stall. Once in the lounge, he noticed a movement coming from the astronomy room. Through the large windows in the double door he could see Becky and Rose working on something inside. He hesitated. Beyond the doors was the opportunity for a nice conversation with his friends. He should say hello. He was sure that would be nice. Still, he hesitated. For no reason and yet he still did not jump at this possibility. On the contrary, he had to push himself even though it was a push towards people he liked. For a moment, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again. This was a warm-up and a collecting of resources. Then he knocked on the window in the door. They noticed him and he had to go inside now. “Good morning.”, John greeted. Becky answered with a “Hello, how are you?”, while Rose waved and nodded. “What are you doing?”, John asked to avoid an awkward break. Becky was still looking at him. “We got permission to use the school´s telescope to track the asteroid tonight.”, Becky explained. “It has a projector and with this camera here, we will be able to record the passage of our little friend while it passes through the night sky. We just set it up now before class.” “Interesting.” John strolled closer to the telescope while being careful not to touch anything. “Yeah.”, Rose added, “I hope the asteroid breaks open and reveals a truth about the nature of nature that is so unexpected, belittling, and unsettling, that it drops us into sheer horror.” John looked at her decisively unsurprised. “Or maybe it is just a cool image of an asteroid. Astronomy rocks and space is great.”, Rose more pretended to emote than said. But then she paused and added sincerely: “There is beauty among the stars.” “With some luck…,”, Becky added, completely serious, while finishing up with some adjustments, “We will get another glimpse at the vastness that surrounds us. How could not look at the sky with curiosity.” “Tonight you say?”, John inquired. “Yes.”, Becky answered. “Around midnight, it should be dark enough and we should be able to see it even with the naked eye.” “Will you be here and watch it?” “No.”, Rose said, stretching the o maybe a bit more than it was called for. “They do not want us here at night. So we have to set this up and hope for a great recording.” “Well… hope it works out.” John smiled at Becky and nodded at Rose. Then he excused himself and headed for the couches. He did not want to sleep just outside the astronomy room. So he went to the relatively lumpy couches in the Art building, named after local celebrity Burton Art. Becky and Rose continued to set up the telescope until the doors closed behind John. Rose peeked over the telescope and through the windows in the doors. When she saw that John was beyond earshot, she nodded as if she was part of a secret ring of spies. “Nice nice.”, Becky uttered in lieu of anything more substantial to say and tried to look even more busy. “Yeah. Nice how nice you two still are with another.”, Rose probed. “Almost as if it did not hurt.” “Hm…”, Becky answered. “It still does hurt a little. But it just was not… Well, it does still hurt. There´s a scar now on the heart. Maybe it´s healing, sometimes it feels like that. So it won´t hurt in the future or only when the weather is about to change. In any case, I feel that it´ll stay in some form.” “Sounds at least like it was real.”, Rose concluded and duck back down behind the telescope. The day that had begun so early dragged on in the middle. Biology class was turned into self-study by the absence of the regular teacher and the lack of a qualified substitute. John flipped through the textbook with his right, while his head rested on his left. There were not going to be any more test or quizzes or projects this year. Knowing that, John did not pay much attention to the contents of the pages and let his thoughts wander. “Do you think you would notice it as different when you were a duck?”, he quietly asked Neil who sat next to him. “Up until now I thought this self-study was even less useful than sex ed last week.”, Neil moaned loudly instead of giving an answer. Nearby, sitting at a bench next to Becky, Rose snickered. Some other students laughed, most were indifferent and bored. The moment passed. “Like, if you woke up tomorrow and were a duck. Would you remember how it was to be a person? Would you want to remember?”, John continued. “All I can say to this is: I hope not – on the duck thing. My uncle hunts those. This would make for super awkward Thanksgivings.” Meanwhile Becky read the newspaper, searching out the reports on the asteroid. “You cannot pretend to do biology while actually doing some work on another science.”, Rose insisted as she noticed. “That is like cheating. A weird way of cheating, but still… You should at least cheat on biology with social studies, or history. English or a foreign language would work as well, I guess.” “What are you doing?”, Becky asked back, looked up from the paper and at her friend. Rose pointed to her sketch pad. “Take it in. These are the initial drawings of the cycle of Solomar. You see them here as first mortal before they conquer the world by storm.”, Rose exclaimed. “Looks great.”, Becky said, studying the drawings. “I like this lone heroine. Looks a bit like a barbarian, like as if she was about wrestle with a dragon.” “How do you know that she is a lone heroine?”, Rose asked. “She’s one of yours.”, Becky said. At some point, the time for self-study officially ended. The students packed their things quickly into their bags and were in the midst of storming out. Neil strolled over to Rose and Becky, braving the current of leaving classmates. “Rose, you have a minute? There is something we should talk about. Something important.”, Neil announced. “Important like art, or just like life and death?”, Rose inquired while stuffing her textbook in her backpack. “Or like love?”, Becky added with a side-glance at Rose. Neil hesitated, clearly thinking about a reply. “Super important. This is about the social studies project we did together.”, he explained. “The one we handed in and got a grade? I thought the circle was completed, the fate sealed.”, Rose answered. She then waved Becky a short goodbye as Becky was leaving for English less prepared than she could have been. “Yeah, let´s see about that. I don´t think that it should be sealed. We should talk to Ms. French about the grade. -See you Becky.- Fran agrees with me on that. Let´s meet her now and go to Ms. French.” “Ok. But afterwards it is lunch time. Actually, I think it is lunch time now – but if you insist, I will postpone my meal. I hope you will use this chunk of my life time gifted to you to a proper end.”, Rose stated and grabbed her bag. “Of course. Have I ever wasted my or anybody else’s time?”, Neil replied. Both they then left the classroom and made her way to the Art building and Ms. French´s office. The cafeteria was emptier than usual. Rose and Neil had no problems finding an empty table. “Told you that it would go well. We just had to highlight the amount of work that had gone into the project.”, Neil repeated. “Hm.”, Rose replied and then decided to dig into the pasta instead of expanding on that. “I mean, your contribution was obvious. The illustrations were both bloody and really good. They might have distracted Ms. French a bit. It was her fault, though, as she gave us this particular topic. Thanks for showing up with Fran and me anyway. Now we can be satisfied with the grades.”, Neil said, a fork with food hovering close to his mouth. Rose nodded. “It was a fun project. We should hang out more often. Like we used to in the golden days of our youth. Like, like we used to up until a few weeks ago.”, she added. “Yeah.”, he put down the fork again. “Only… weird without the other two and weird with them now. That was easier before.” “True.” She eyed a suspicious lump in the red sauce. “There is one group-thingy I like and now it is that… weird. I wonder if they thought about what they are doing to us when they… did what they did. Now we are like a family, divorce and all.” “Hah, true.”, Neil exclaimed and then finally took a bite. “Maye we can educate the others and reduce the awkwardness.” “There’s only so much time before everybody moves away for college next year.”, Neil said in a low voice, leaving it open if this was unclear if this was an argument for or against. “Oh.”, Rose grunted. “Maybe we should not have sought to improve our grades then. And we should find a way to drag the ones of the others down. Then we can repeat a year or two or more. Stupid maybe, but happy.” “Yeah… no. Not sure if this would even work.” Neil decided it was time to go over to the dessert. “So this remains an issue for future me an you. It is also for future Becky and John, of course.”, Rose suggested. She discovered that the lump was just an oddly shaped noodle and ate without concern. “Future me and future you, future us, and them too.”, Neil repeated. Both he and Rose lifted their heads, smiled, and listened in anticipation. Instead of music, Becky arrived with a food trey and sat down next to Rose. “Hi. How are you two?”, Becky asked. “We are doomed due to our feelings and the feelings of others.”, Rose declared. “Of course we are. But who are the others this time?”, Becky wondered. Rose sighed theatrically and Neil smirked before shaking his head. After lunch, Rose and Becky had some time before the next class that was not already assigned to any task or activity and went outside. Rose walked directly to one of the battered blue payphones and punched in a number. “Hello, I would like to talk to the Ericsons, please. Yes, whoever of them is available right now… I am their daughter. The other one. Yes… thank you Mr. nurse.” While Rose talked to the bodiless voice in a strange city, Becky settled in the corner made by the phone and the concrete wall of the main building. There was a pause as Rose waited for her parents. Becky imagined how now their names would be called out over PA, how one of them would move through the hallways of the hospital, looking for the next available phone. While she imagined this, Becky looked across the school parking lot and then beyond its chain-link fence at the town across the small straight. It was nestled on that small ragged island with curved bays and towering cliffs with sharp edges. It was a rugged place between the ocean and the mainland. It was as if the town was clinging to a rock among the waves. There were a lot of houses with great views as they were built close to the cliffs. Even greater must have been the view for the cedars. The trees filled still the spaces people had left for them. Some crept very close to the edges and others even hang out a bit over the ocean, just barely hanging on to the rock. And yet they did. They even managed to reach out to the sky. Some storms were strong enough to break them and take them away. But a number of them was still left. Becky had some favourites among these cedars. Old and brave ones she always sought out when she had a minute to look out over her home town. Faster than expected, Rose was connected. She exchanged individual words with one of her parents. By the sound of this, it was her mother. No, Becky decided after three more words, probably it was her dad. “Well but that is good… like, given the situation. Hugh her from me… if, if this is possible. …Yeah. Bye.” Rose hung up. “Well that was… yeah, good. At least she is fine. For the moment at least she is fine. That is a win.” Becky turned towards her friend and nodded, then laid an arm around her shoulders. “Yes it is, Rose. I´m glad she’s doing ok.” John stood, his bike and himself ready to leave, already on the parking lot, a few steps away from the main building. Neil, on the other hand, still fiddled with his padlock, aiming to free his bike, but as of yet unable to make that plan a reality. Then he stopped suddenly in mid-fiddling. “Shit… should take a look and check if Pete has locked the commissary. I guess I should.” Neil wavered a bit. “Yes, should do that.” He let the padlock be for the moment and sprinted back to the main entrance. “Maybe go ahead without me. We can meet at my place. One of my parents is probably home. They´ll let you in. And if it´s my dad, you might get some chocolate milk while you wait.”, Neil said to John over his shoulder. “No. It´s ok.”, replied John. “I´ll wait. Let´s go together.” Neil gesticulated vaguely but then nodded. When he passed the doors and went into the main building, he passed Rose, and both gave each other high fives in passing. Rose then made her way to John. She stopped beside him on the parking lot under the warm sun. “All done for the day?”, Rose inquired. “Yes, all done.”, he reported. “Not just for today even. There is nothing going on tomorrow, right? Besides getting on the bus, I mean.” “True. So you are good and settled for the whole year then. Great!” “You?” “I am done as well. Done and done. Except for the asteroid business, but this is more of an extra credit and in any case something I do more to give a hand to Becky.”, Rose replied. “Look at us. We got all taken care of. So if we were to die now, we leave nothing behind that can further bind us as wraiths to this plane of existence.” “Lucky us.”, John smiled. “Could be an interesting experience to be a wraith, though.” “Nah.” Rose shook her head. “Probably not. Besides, that is something that you can try in the far-away future after dying of old age.” She mustered him. “How is our story going?” “It is going well… I hope. Maybe a few more weeks of work and then it is ready to be rejected like the other ones.” Rose nodded gravely before cocking her head and smiling a bit mischievously. “Well if this is not something to live for.” She was about to add something, but in this moment, Becky drove towards the two. She stopped the car and let the passenger side door swing open for Rose to get in. “Have a good one.”, John said. “See you.”, Rose gave back. “And remember: Always create something that, if aliens from the future would find it as only surviving artefact of our civilization would understand us at least a bit. Picture mankind naked and write about it.” “Will do.”, John said and laughed. Then he and Becky exchanged a smile and a wave, before the girls got into the truck and drove off. John was not alone for long, though. Neil returned right afterwards. “Oh, should have asked her to give us a lift.”, Neil exclaimed. “She’d have done it.” “Of course Becky would have done it.”, John said flatly. “Her pickup even has space for bikes in the back. That would have been great.” “We are not really going in their direction.”, John replied. Neil just shrugged and then went to unlock and unchain his bike. “Could transport at least one caged dinosaur on that truck. God, how I miss that old rusty lady.”, Neil exclaimed. After a brief pause, he added: “I mean the truck. With old lady, I mean the vehicle.” He then finally was able to open his rusty lock and free his bike. He went over to John and both took to their saddles and started to bike down to town. “Think Becky is going to sell her car when she moves for college?”, Neil wondered aloud and very eager to move the conversation forward. “Ask her. But do not take it for free.” As everything failed, there was nothing left but drifting into the cold darkness. All that while the mind raced and tried to imagine the end. A whole world was about to lose itself in the eternal night. The end and the way there would be lonely. Soon it would end, but the time until then was still long. Too long not to fear madness before the darkness. But then there was a little blue spot shining in all the darkness. Maybe this one was hospitable enough, close enough to save a life.

#horror #spooky #monster #fiction #writing #story

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recedinggumpaintreatment-blog · 5 years ago

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Receding Gum Pain Treatment

Receding Gums Pain Natural Treatment

Home remedies to repair Receding Gums are becoming increasingly common. There are many explanations for why people choose to make use of home remedies whenever it is impossible for them to get the help of a dentist.

The majority people understand the demand for natural teeth cleaning. We've got a dentist but sometimes they can not be reached if we are handling problems like Gum Disease or periodontal disease. If we have been suffering from gum disease, it is crucial to discover an easy method to eliminate plaque and tartar therefore that it will not interfere with proper oral hygiene.

Someone who has periodontal disease might find it difficult to consume certain foods or drink specific fluids. This isn't a concern that a lot of people deal with when they go to the dentist but this really is something they are going to have to manage. That is also not something that will disappear completely if they don't look after their teeth in the very first place. Click Here To Know More About Receding Gum Pain Treatment

There are many home remedies readily available today to help the ones that cannot afford dental fees. Many of the home remedies involve cleaning and keeping the oral health of the person by using such things as tea tree oil and baking soda.

Using tea tree oil and baking soda when brushing your teeth may help to prevent gum disease. Both of these natural ingredients will help promote the production of saliva, which is vital for healthy teeth and gums.

If you have no use of these products, you'll find different ways which you may start looking for natural teeth and gum cleaning treatments. One of the most useful home remedies to make use of on your own to help with your problem is really to rinse your mouth daily with a mild mouthwash. You may either choose to make use of a mouthwash that's herbal or purchase one that contains a mouthwash treatment called fluoride.

Receding Gum Pain Treatment

It is crucial to remember that you do not have to goto the dentist to utilize this procedure. It is possible to clean and state your own teeth the natural way and be certain that it stays healthy. This is a really significant part your oral hygiene routine and should not be dismissed.

Teeth and gums will need to be cleaned regularly so that you need to be sure you keep them tidy and free from plaque. The above mentioned home remedies can help to clean one's teeth and gums and help to prevent them from being affected by gum disease.

The best thing about those home remedies is they do not ask that you devote a great deal of funds on these products. The majority of these things may be available at the local drugstore. They are also easy to use which means you will not have a problem making your mouth genuinely believe that they require cleaning.

When you are looking for the products, be certain you read labels carefully. Some of them have a set of ingredients they feature. Make certain you utilize the one which doesn't need any famous bad ingredients.

Make sure that you opt for a good mouthwash. You ought to make sure that the mouthwash is constructed of natural ingredients. You don't need to use anything that may cause problems. For example, alcohols and perfumes.

You also want to make sure that the mouthwash that you buy does not contain any form of bleach or whatever else that could possibly be detrimental. Lots of people find that using mouthwashes comprising these chemicals can be harmful to the oral health of the individual.

Receding Gum Pain Remedies

You should make certain that you inspect on the company that makes your mouthwash as well. You ought to make sure they will have a fantastic reputation. There are companies out there that utilize chemical based products and also this can be quite harmful to the mouth.

The main reason for this is that they are able to be simple and inexpensive methods for treating the symptoms associated with gum disease. You don't need a health bill to prove that you have a problem with gingivitis. Listed below are some home remedies to treat the issue.

To begin with, your dentist should ensure that you have an everyday brushing with fluoride toothpaste. Fluoride works by eliminating tartar and plaque from your teeth. By cleaning your enamel off your teeth, it helps your gums remain healthy. The teeth will probably look much better overall if there are no tartar build up.

This really is among the cheapest methods to get rid of tartar. Once you brush, the pop will work to eliminate plaque from the teeth. If you do not brush regularlythen you can add baking soda to a plate of water, pour just a little on a cotton ball, and brush your teeth.

Next, you may want to use natural remedies. For example, vegetables like broccoli and spinach are high in fiber and minerals. A excellent way to enhance your immune system would be to drink vitamin C and herbal teas like peppermint, chamomile, and spearmint. There are several more which are equally favorable.

Third, if you have a problem with bad breath, then a next point you will need to do is always to make use of mouthwash to get rid of the bacteria and also the food that is causing it. The easiest method to do so would be to use water. You may choose to add some mint extract to the mouthwash. If you are using mouthwash that has alcohol content, then you will want to dilute it with water before using.

Receding Gum Pain Home Remedy

Fourth, if you have a problem with bad breath, you may want to work with developing a fantastic oral hygiene routine. Regular cleanings may also help prevent bad breath. Oral hygiene will help keep your gums healthy.

Eventually, they may utilize natural cures to fix receding gums and prevent the bad breath. The 2 most common problems associated with gum disease include overgrowth of plaque and overproduction of spit. In the event the bacteria that cause these illnesses have formed, they are going to create pockets of tartar under the gum line. These may be filled up with bacteria and also food. If this really is the case, then you'll need to follow your home cures to fix receding gums to treat the problem.

Once you follow these hints, you'll quickly realize that the problem will go off and your teeth will appear as great as you can. It's really that simple.

The first thing you need todo is to understand the great things about natural methods. Using these natural techniques will not just help you treat the symptoms of gum disease, but it is going to also help you prevent the problem from coming back in the future. These natural techniques include chewing gum which includes no sugar or artificial flavorings.

One other important part of this technique will be to brush your teeth at least twice a day. If you don't need problems with gum disease or gingivitis, brushing twice a day isn't likely to hurt.

Home cures to fix receding gums are one of the simplest and most affordable techniques you can utilize. For a comparatively small cost, you're able to stop the nasty breath that causes so much embarrassment.

Whenever you use natural methods for your oral care, then you will be amazed how much more comfortable you will feel and how healthy your smile looks. You will desire to speak with your doctor about other things that you could do to help your gums, just like a better diet and a successful daily oral hygiene routine.

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the-colony-roleplay · 6 years ago

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The storm starts to dissipate by Monday, January 31st.

The howling winds slow, the white caps soften and begin to recede back into the navy masses of an ocean grown tired of its lengthy growling. The dark clouds overhead have lightened, like they are considering letting up and moving on but have yet to commit to doing so. Rain still falls, but it’s lost its menace for the time being and though the grounds are still soaked, some merchants and trainers venture out under rubber hoods to assess the damage.

By the first day of February, the skies have cleared, and the lockdown is officially lifted. Down at the docks, ships are finally able to set sail to collect resources and make other deliveries, now nearly a week behind schedule. The people of Colony 22 look to the horizon with grumbling stomachs, hoping to see new ships on course this direction, bringing fresh offerings from the trade agreement to help out their depleting shelves.

Hunting chores and fishing do resume, but the Hub remains closed as Merchants take a day to make any necessary repairs and sort through stocks that may have been drowned during the storm. Training also remains cancelled, as the grounds try to recover from the flooding.

The morning of Thursday, February 3rd, the Hub reopens and the training is officially back up and running. This is the day the package arrives.

A ship has docked at the shores of Belvedere Island and a couple of water logged Marine Merchants lug several large wooden crates up the front steps of Colony 22. ‘FRAGILE’ is stamped across each of them in imposing red letters. The Marines bring the crates directly to the Chancellor’s office, to be delivered into his hands only, as per their direct orders. They apologize profusely for the delay; they’d been docked up near the Southern coast of Wales, their last delivery point, unable to take to the water again while the storm had raged on.

Accompanying the crates is a letter, addressed to Chancellor Dervilia, which is pulled from inside the Merchant’s jacket and is the last thing passed Quinn’s way before they take their leave.

The envelope is a little damp, and the slightly thicker drafting stock paper folded in clean lines. The letter simply reads:

Chancellor Dervilia,

Enclosed in this shipment is a specimen that has been engineered in the labs of Colony 1. It has proven to have significant effect on the faculty of the Infection abilities, however it remains temporary, and its side effects are currently too substantial to be of immediate use. We have now distributed this sample to other research labs across the Colony system to expedite progress.

Please put your best scientific personnel on this immediately for further research. The constitution of new veins and varieties of this specimen by way of research and testing is encouraged, and any resulting conclusive progress made should be reported immediately back to you, and then to Reformist Headquarters, respectively.

It is IMPERATIVE that information regarding this specimen be STRICTLY PROHIBITED to NWRF personnel ONLY, exception made only for non-NWRF lab and research specialists. However, all parties must be instructed to keep the existence of this specimen and all research surrounding it STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, and any breach of this NWRF mandated privacy must be reported to Headquarters immediately and face further government investigation.

Thank you for your cooperation and commitment to the Mandate,

Regards,

NWRF Headquarters

Though the information is reasonably restricted, this delivery sounds like good news to the NWRF aligned. Perhaps a cure is within their reach.

However, it takes less than 24 hours for the truth to become obvious.

In the labs, researchers and technicians have been testing the contaminated flour tied to the spread of the Colony-wide parasite for several weeks. Though they have not come up with any conclusive answers, they know the nature and base structure of it well. It only takes a couple preliminary observational tests, and a peek through a microscope, for it to become obvious that this is the source of such a parasite. This man-made compound has been engineered to manifest the way it does, meaning that just as some anti-NWRF had already feared, the ‘contaminated shipment’ of flour had been no accident. It had been a full scale experiment.

What is most worrying, however, from a Reformist perspective, isn’t the execution of the experiment itself (though some who remember the severity of their own illness may staunchly disagree), but the fact that it’d all been done under the intentional ignorance of the Colony Reformist Reps—even the Chancellor himself had been left in the dark. What does this kind of revelation say about their reigning government? Is this a betrayal of trust for the NWRF Reps or simply necessary means to conduct testing vital to the future of mankind?

As the discovery spreads in shocked whispers and moments of uneasy disquiet throughout the labs, the forthcoming becomes nauseatingly obvious: someone will need to inform the Chancellor, and quickly. But who will carry such a burden, and how should it be handled? And more particularly... how will Quinn react to such news?

Once these decisions are made and the Chancellor is informed, Quinn will in turn be faced with his own quagmire—will he personally inform the rest of the NWRF Reps and agents about this matter? Will he hold a meeting, or pass on the responsibility to his subordinates? Will he confront the NWRF HQ about this betrayal and demand answers, or will he decide to keep his mouth shut? Where do the Colony 22 Reformists go from here?

A/N:

Hey team!!

So, this ~tantalizing~ new plot drop is sort of like a secretive prologue to part three of our Fever State event! But what makes this plot drop so unique from our previous one is that this is largely an OOC reveal. That is to say, we’re letting you, the muns, in on some pieces of the story to which 80% of the characters will remain totally oblivious for now.

However, this is a vital stage of what will come in the next stages of Fever State, and as you can see, directly affects the NWRF characters, (especially the Reps & Elite NWRF) as well as any and all Scientists, Lab Researchers & Techs, etc—even those not specifically aligned with the NWRF.

While plotting and brainstorming the details of the unfolding of these incidents and spreading of information should begin in the NWRF OOC starting now, and will be soon seen hitting the dash in various forms, it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL THAT NO NON-NWRF CHARACTERS (WITH THE EXCEPTION ONLY OF LAB RESEARCHES & TECHS) ARE PERMITTED TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. That is to say, that you may NOT plot to reveal or leak this info to ANY characters outside of the group stated above, even if you have NWRF characters with close relationships with Non-NWRF characters. This is strictly because the future of this plot that Lottie and I have been formulating for the past year, relies on this element remaining under wraps for the time being, but we definitely wanted to give the NWRF characters some interesting new elements to work with!

We highly encourage applicable muns to use this information once their character(s) find out about it, and explore this development in plots with other NWRF, as well as in internal narration, while keeping this huge secret. Keep in mind too, that NWRF characters of various ranks will find out in different ways and at different times—Lab personnel would be first in the know, then most likely the official Reps & Quinn etc. Non-Elite NWRF, who are not directly involved, would likely not know immediately and would have to find out some other way, if at all. (e.g. Felix is NWRF aligned, but he is not of any kind of Elite status, and therefore has no immediate right to the knowledge. His father, however, would be informed relatively swiftly, but is something this confidential the kind of thing he’d tell his petty, self-absorbed and immature son? Probably not.) This kind of plotting should be taken to the NWRF OOC to be immediately accessible to all muns with whom it directly relates.

In the meantime, however, Non-NWRF characters are seeing the end of the storm, and can be focusing on the lift of the lockdown, outdoor resource chores going back to normal, training being back in rotation, Merchants repairing and reopening the Hub, the Catch and Stables being accessible again, and the lingering affects of the flooding of the grounds.

The verse timeline will move forward to the first week of February, but as this is not an event, you have the regular amount of vague flexibility. However, please use the specific dates listed in the post above as official canon reference points, and plan your threads and plots accordingly. Your plots should not extend past the 5th or 6th of February, until the next timeline update.

Other things to think about is that Game season is coming up again, at the end of Feb/beginning of March, so training will likely intensify in the coming weeks. Is your character looking forward to off season being over, or dreading it? We may also have some chore-related changes and plots in the near future for you, which will be a bit of new content for y’all to gnaw on, and chore rotations will be updated on the main this weekend as well.

Finally, with regards to the NWRF skeles, as you know, that task got backburnered with the loss of my grandfather, but once this plot element is safely underway, I hope to start gradually working on this again with Lottie in the coming weeks!

Alright kidlets, you know the drill! If you have any questions or concerns or wonderments, please bring them to the main blog! Preferable the ask box, so we can reply publicly and help out others who may have similar questions!

Love you all so darn much and happy Evil Scheming and Drama-ing!

xxColMods

#col22admin #col22feverstate #post apocalypse rp #literate rp #original rp #timeline

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 6 years ago

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Not "Just Hair": Exposure, Autonomy, and Vulnerability

Hello friends, In the past couple days it's become clear to me that I've hit a certain (unwelcome) cancer milestone: I'm losing my hair. Right now it's just shedding like crazy. (If I had a contest with my cat--who's losing his hair for summer right now--I would still totally win!) I don't know why, given that it's a primary side effect of this drug (90% of people lose their hair), but I'm somehow still surprised. I think I felt that, having been in in an improbable, tiny percentage on most other things related to this disease I might at least have the chance to be in the special 10% on something positive. Not so! Perhaps I'm also surprised, though, because my other symptoms haven't been very bad...so much so that (as I wrote about before) I'm in a constant anxiety spiral about whether something physical is a sign or symptom and, if so, whether it means the treatment is working or not. Hair falling out is unquestionably a sign that the chemo is doing something--that it's doing precisely what it's supposed to, in fact, and targeting fast-growing cells of all types. So, yes, in that sense I want to lose my hair. Right when I was first diagnosed I wanted them to hit me with everything all at once: chemo, surgery, radiation - I wanted to be assaulted by every weapon the medical profession had to wield against cancer and I didn't care what I looked like or how I suffered. I wanted to enter treatment as a warrior and I wanted to look like one, shaved head and all. Somehow, though, I lost that attitude. It's not that I don't want to fight, but that the stance of being a warrior all the time is exhausting. There's a lot that's less than ideal about using the language of conflict and battle (and implicitly of winning and losing) to talk about something that you don't have any control over. If this chemo agent doesn't kill enough cells (as my pessimistic side believes it won't) it won't be because I did or didn't do anything. If it does work, it's only my victory in the sense that it's good luck for me. My body isn't the warrior so much as a field on which battles are waged on a cellular level. And my mind has nothing to do with the success--or not--of these conflicts. Fundamentally, I have no control. And that's the hardest thing for me about losing my hair. [More below including Buffy gifs!!]

The loss of bodily autonomy involved in having cancer is huge. Not only does it feel like it's something personal, since it's your own cells (sometimes directed by your own DNA) that have betrayed you, but it's also something you can't fix; you can't do anything to change the outcome of your treatment. You can change the treatment itself (different chemo agents, additional drugs, supplementary radiation), but you can't train for it the way you train for a marathon, where your own commitment to training can pretty much guarantee you steady progress and a positive result. You can supplement your own treatment with things (vitamins, injections, crystals, chocolate) that you believe may help. You can train yourself in healthy ways to respond emotionally. (I was already in therapy but everyone involved with cancer treatment should be.) You can go to the gym and keep your body "otherwise healthy"--a phrase that my doctors said to and about me repeatedly during the diagnosis phase and that I never stopped finding funny...being perfectly healthy EXCEPT for Stage 4 cancer is something of a cosmic joke. (I know that they meant that, unlike many of their patients, I could endure the treatments very well and with minimal complications. That IS a good thing. But still...) You cannot train for cancer treatment. It's a battle, but one you must enter alone, untrained, and unarmed. Fundamentally, you have only yourself. And that must be enough. (I don't mean to dismiss the wonderful community of friends and family here; you all give me the strength to fight this fight. You just can't go with me.) There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show which I love and which has meant a lot to me at different times in my life, where Buffy must fight her vampire ex-boyfriend Angel (who SPOILERS used to be a good guy because he was cursed with a soul but he lost it because he experienced true happiness with her) who has been systematically finding the best ways to hurt her, psychologically, before killing her. In this final battle, he backs her against a wall, sword pointed at her and says, "So that's everything. No weapons. No friends. No hope. Take all that away and what's left?" to which she replies, while grabbing his sword midair with her bare hands, "Me.":

(Gif source: x)

If you want it, here's a clip on YouTube (this exchange is about a minute in). That moment has been my inspiration from the first moment of diagnosis. I had already used it to get through my divorce when I felt I had lost everything. I hadn't, though, because I was still me, with a core resilience and self-confidence and the righteous strength that enabled me to keep going, to thrive. It is grossly unfair that, less than a year later, I need to draw on that same energy again, but that is how battles work. We survive to fight another day. No weapons. No friends. No hope. Take all that away and what's left? Me. I know I've just employed the rhetoric of battle immediately after saying it's not ideal. It's not. I'm a peacetime creature, really, as are most of us. But I won't back down from a fight or sidestep necessary conflict either. And being a warrior is not the same as being embroiled in constant battle. Even Achilles put down his shield and wept in Priam's tent. In fact, all this content is on another blog whose title is "Pitiless Achilles Wept." You can read here about why I called it that, but here's the most important part that I wrote about the scene where Achilles and Priam cry together:

"They speak the universal language of human beings here: grief. They weep as fathers and sons and lovers because that’s honestly the only constant in our small human lives. So here I am, recording my grief, with the hope that at least, by being together, we can get through the evil I have to endure. I actually thought that the blog title was a quotation–and a beautiful line of poetry–but nowhere can I find a translation that reads, 'Pitiless Achilles wept.' But I still cannot think of a line that feels more appropriate to record the thoughts of someone who has to be both a warrior (brave, fierce, pitiless) and a frightened, vulnerable person."

Tonight I am that frightened and vulnerable person, furious that (without my permission) my body is shedding the hair that I have always loved and scared at how it will change my experience of being in the world. When I got my hair cut two weeks ago it showed no signs of giving up the ghost. My stylist tugged on it and pronounced that "you have really strong hair!" and I allowed myself to think that, somehow, that would protect me. Ah yes, I thought, my hair is strong like all the rest of me; it will endure.

Losing it therefore feels symbolic on a number of levels. I know that it doesn't make me weak, but it does make me vulnerable. How can I be so exposed, without any hair to duck under when I feel anxious? How will I get through the day without being able to run my hands through my hair (a nervous tic that is a self-soothing gesture...and currently hastening my hair loss)? How will I cope with being no longer regarded as immediately aesthetically pleasing (from my privileged position as someone who ticks many of the stereotypical boxes for attractiveness) by people who don't know me? (I did not realize how much I relied on this to navigate the world but it has certainly been made visible to me now. Perhaps this warrants another post later.)

Losing my hair is a good sign. We all want chemo to be as effective as possible so the more fast-growing cells we see being targeted the better. But as it marks me, visibly, as "sick" it robs me of the opportunity to choose whether to tell people or not--yet another loss of autonomy. I do have a wig that looks as much as possible like my regular hair. (I don't love everything about it but unless you have one custom-made you're not likely to find anything that looks precisely like you do.) This should enable me to pass as healthy, barring other obvious symptoms. But I imagine I might be the kind of person who would rather go bald (or at least with a 1930s Norma Desmond head wrap) as a way of owning my illness, taking back some of what it has stolen. I might rather this say, "Yes, this illness is a part of me now--even if it's not pretty. That's what a warrior looks like." No weapons. No friends. No...hair. Take all that away and what's left?

#my life as a cancer patient #vulnerability #autonomy #invisible illness #btvs #buffy #hair loss #I guess this might help in that tag?#bex writes

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thealexdee-blog · 6 years ago

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How I cured a recurrent UTI

For a period of about 7 months I had a recurrent UTI. I eventually healed, but only by departing from conventional methods. I’m going to share my story with you in hopes of helping those who are in the same boat I once was.

To level set, here is my health history related to UTI’s:

1. I had one UTI about 15 years ago and never another one again until this 7-month bout.

2. Ultrasound tests show that I empty my bladder fully when I urinate, and my anatomy is completely normal from urethra to kidneys.

3. Test results for STD’s are all negative.

4. I am healthy: low BMI, good diet, fit, no other illnesses, proper immune function.

Here are the details of the 7-month saga of my recurrent UTI:

1. Woke up one morning with a bladder on fire.

2. Went to doctor, complained of symptoms. Doctor took urine sample. In office results did not show any leukocytes in my urine, but I was nitrite positive and pH was normal. I had taken an Azo prior to the appointment which can cause nitrites in urine, but given that there was no presence of leukocytes, I likely did not have a significant infection.

3. Received rx for sulfa drug without culture results.

4. Doctors office calls me 2 days later to tell me my culture was negative.

5. Took sulfa drug for 4 days and felt better.

6. Two weeks later: pain returned with a vengeance.

7. Went back to doctor. Got another rx for sulfa drug without culture results.

8. Took sulfa drug for 4 days and felt better.

9. Doctors office calls me 2 days later to tell me my culture was negative.

10. For 4 weeks I felt better and had no symptoms.

11. Wake up one morning and bladder is on fire again.

12. Head to the doctor and get a rx for sulfa drug without culture results.

13. Start taking sulfa drug.

14. Doctors office calls 3 days later to tell me my culture was positive for e-coli that is resistant to sulfa drug.

15. Get rx for Macrobid and take that for 2 weeks.

16. Feel better for about 6 weeks.

17. Another UTI hits and get a referral to urologist.

18. Culture is negative.

19. Urologist confirms normal anatomy, complete elimination, etc.

20. Urologist offers me the following options:

a. Take low dose antibiotic for 6 months

b. Take antibiotic prophylactically (as needed)

c. Get my bladder scoped

21. I decline the above 3 options and go take matters into my own hands…

I love PubMed - PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval.

For weeks, I find myself on PubMed daily looking for data on all things UTI. One study that really peaks my interest came out of the Netherlands.

**For reference, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries are FANTASTIC stewards for antibiotic use. It’s not common practice for antibiotics to be administered routinely for things like UTI, eye/ear/nose/throat infections. The reason for this is not only because of antibiotic resistance, but also because of the damage that antibiotics do to our immune cells. Don’t get me wrong here, antibiotics absolutely have their place, but should not be taken unless ABSOLUTELY necessary (and the bacteria is known and culture shows it responds to the antibiotic you are about to take) and by that, I mean life and death necessary or if you have an infection that your immune system can’t eradicate on its own.

Ok, so back to this study. This study details the results of holding back treatment of UTI’s with antibiotics until culture results have returned. Usually takes 48-72 hours for culture results. The patient is sent home with instructions to drink a lot of water, urinate often and take Azo as needed. By the time culture results returned, most patients symptoms disappeared, and they rarely had another UTI. This goes back to the pre-antibiotic era when people got UTI’s, they suffered through it, healed and then never got another one. Why? Because their immune systems could do their jobs and developed antibodies, particularly in the protective lining of the bladder preventing bacteria from being able to “hook”.

More about antibiotic damage: For the most part, folks are aware that antibiotics kill bad bacteria, but also our good bacteria. What most don’t know is that antibiotics can be particularly anti-inflammatory as well – therefore sulfa drugs had me feeling better. They suppress the inflammatory response which is what causes us pain with UTI’s even if they aren’t killing the bacteria. The anti-inflammatory abilities of antibiotics persist for days after cessation of use, so this can also explain why I suddenly woke up 2 weeks later in horrific pain all over again.

So why do our doctors go so quickly to antibiotics? A couple of reasons:

1. You are in pain and complaining of pain. They can be sued or lose their license if they don’t adequately treat pain in the US.

2. If your UTI does go septic or into your kidneys and they haven’t offered you an antibiotic if a UTI is suspected, they could be sued or lose their license.

Ultimately, it’s a “Cover Your Ass” situation that is doing a lot of damage.

All this said, the first thing I did was commit to never taking an antibiotic again for a UTI, UNLESS I developed the following symptoms: flank pain, nausea, headache, dizziness, and/or vomiting. These symptoms are indicative of a kidney infection which is absolutely life or death and needs to be treated ASAP as the bacteria is now likely moving into the blood stream. But, for regular old lower urinary tract infection (urethra and bladder), I vowed to suffer through. And you bet your ass, if I ever need to take an antibiotic again, I will not do so until a culture confirms the type of bacteria and the type of antibiotic it responds to. These drugs are NOT consequence free and we are dealing with increasing resistance all the time. (Side note: if you think that drug companies are rapidly bringing new antibiotics to market, you are wrong. Most antibiotics take about 10-15 years to make it through all FDA testing phases, making it a massive investment for drug makers for which they rarely see return. One drug company recently found an antibiotic that treated MRSA but went bankrupt trying to bring it to market). I cannot stress enough that you should absolutely NOT be taking antibiotics without test results or absolute need.

Enough on antibiotics, I think you get the point.

Next, I discovered in many studies that the notion of cranberry helping UTI’s is largely anecdotal, so I threw that idea out the window too. No more cranberry. In fact, cranberry is very acidic, so it can irritate the bladder further. And, sadly, most people think that drinking sugary cranberry juice is helping, but sugar is food for bacteria and empty calories for us. If your cognitive dissonance is well intact and you firmly believe in drinking cranberry, get cold pressed fresh cranberry concentrate – you can find this at health food stores in the fridges. Or, you can take a cranberry concentrate pill. If nothing else, it is full of vitamin C (a fantastic antioxidant), however, there is evidence that vitamin C in high doses is very irritating to a compromised bladder.

Additionally, I started taking high dose raw/live probiotics. 4-9 doses per day of this: https://www.gardenoflife.com/content/product/raw-probiotics-women/ I do this not only to repair my good bacteria colony from the antibiotic use, but to also promote the recovery of the immune cell damage I’ve done to my bladder. Make sure the probiotic you are taking is raw. Raw probiotics must be refrigerated as they are live and active. Shelf stable probiotics are simply not as effective, and I suspect you’re wasting your money if you use them.

I also take D-Mannose daily. 1000 mg twice per day, morning and night (2 grams or 2000 mg is the therapeutic dose for D-Mannose). You can find D-Mannose on Amazon or at your regular health food store like Whole Foods or a Co-op. D-Mannose is a simple sugar that has no impact to our blood glucose level. It’s reasonably harmless, but what it does is attracts e-coli bacteria away from your bladder lining. E-coli has tentacles that “hook” into our tissue, but apparently it prefers D-Mannose. We easily eliminate D-Mannose along with the bacteria when we urinate. Regardless of the type of bacteria that caused your last UTI (if you know at all), take this. Your bladder is compromised and give it all the weaponry you can.

Of course, drinking water is a must and I drink A LOT of it (about 1 gallon a day), urinate often and never ever hold it. I will literally get out of my car and pee on the side of the road if I must. Urinating is the key here. Nothing is more effective than the mechanical action of flushing bacteria out of our urinary tracts. I also make sure I pee at least 3 times before falling asleep after sex – if this means I stay up until whatever ungodly hour chugging water, I do it. Make sure you empty your bladder fully. A simple test at a urologist’s office can determine if you do this. If you leave any urine in your bladder, you might also be leaving bacteria in your bladder as well. To help with elimination, put your feet up on a stool when you sit on a toilet or squat on the toilet. Peeing is your lifeline, prioritize it.

Lastly, I have less sex. My guy and I like to marathon and sometimes have sex a few times a day. The friction alone causes damage to our delicate urethral, vulvar and vaginal tissue allowing bacteria to flourish. Don’t get me wrong, we still have great/fun sex, but try to limit it to every second day and only once. Also, when I got my last infection, I said no sex for 6 weeks – I need to heal. We didn’t make it 6 weeks, but we did make it 2 weeks (I couldn’t help it, he’s too damn sexy) and I can say that it helped immensely. If your partner puts pressure on you to have sex even though you are injured, get a new partner!!! No relationship is worth compromising your health (goes for mental health too). I’ve always been big on personal hygiene, but now I’ve stepped it up:

1. No overly scented soaps that contain sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate. I go with plant-based soaps that are scented only with essential oils. My guy does the same for me, because residue of awful soap can be left on the penis. I pack soap for both of us when we travel. That is how important this is.

2. NO LUBE – nothing water or oil based. Get on with more foreplay, but lube is just a vessel for bacteria to be pushed up into the urethra and stick there. Also, lube can disrupt your precious pH and natural flora both being your first line of defense. If you think coconut oil is benefitting your lady parts and preventing infection, you are incorrect.

3. No douches. Never have I used a douche, but I’m putting this here for you because douching disrupts the pH and bacterial colony of your vagina. If bad bacteria flourish in the vagina, they can infect your urethra/bladder.

4. Wash hands before touching genitals. Your UTI’s could be coming from bacteria on your hands rather than your genitals. I’d bet your hands are currently dirtier than your anus or vagina, to be honest. So, both you and your partner need to give your hands a good scrub with water and soap referenced in point 1 before touching each other. I now was my hands before AND after using the bathroom.

5. Pee and rinse your genitals after sex right away – if you are worried this is going to be embarrassing for you, get over that quickly and/or get a new partner who will support peeing and rinsing. My guy always checks in now and says, “good pee?!” and we are both equally happy when I’ve indeed had a great pee. Also, there is some evidence that semen can really irritate female genitalia, so get that out of there or have your guy ejaculate elsewhere.

6. Sleep naked or without anything tight fitting on against your genitals. Let them breathe! Air circulation is so important for limiting bacterial growth.

7. Change your underwear after a workout or excessive sweating. Our groins can be the sweatiest parts of our bodies, so don’t sit around in sweaty underwear – for a lot of women this means thongs. Our sweat is wet and what do bacterial love? Dark, wet and warm environments.

8. Cotton underwear only for regular daily wear. Cotton allows air circulation.

9. Wipe front to back. This pushes bacteria away from your urethra. When you wipe back to front, you introduce bacteria from your vagina and anus to your urethra.

10. If you are like me and fly a lot for work, shower as soon as you can after getting off the plane. Airplanes are absolutely disgusting and covered in ample e-coli, strep, staph and who knows what else…

Here is the kicker, none of what I told you is going to be an overnight fix and it’s a commitment – you will likely have to do this for the rest of your life.

First things first, your bladder needs to heal. This can take months. Inflammation is tricky and doesn’t go away overnight. Paired with the antibiotic damage a lot of us have done by blindly taking antibiotics, you might be looking at 6-12 months for the inflammation to subside. This just takes time. So be careful and delicate with yourself. It has taken a very very long time for my urethra and bladder to feel normal again.

In parting, UTI’s hurt and cause us to panic, but your body is designed to overcome them. No one knows your body better than you do, so pay close attention for signs of sepsis or kidney infection as I’ve noted earlier. If none of these concerning symptoms arise and your pain is reducing over the period of 3-7 days, your immune system is doing its thing. Chug that water and pee freely. Use Azo – I take up to 400 mg at a time despite the instructions on the package. The standard dose (usually 182 mg) does not help me at all. After two days of a lot of Azo, water and peeing, I rid myself of my UTI’s on my own.

Here is some great news: I don’t get UTI’s anymore and I’m confident that if you’re healthy and make some lifestyle changes, you can rid yourself of yours too without doing further damage to your health.

**I have gone over all of this with my urologist and GP and they love hearing about the success of it to pass on to their patients, but they ALWAYS document that they have offered me an antibiotic and that I have declined**

#uti #urinaryinfection #urinary tract infection

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commentaryvorg · 6 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 2.5

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, we had the first of many adorable training sessions as Shuichi and Kaito officially became friends (and Shuichi unofficially became Kaito’s sidekick, though there may be a tiny part of Kaito that’s confused as to why Shuichi even needs it), Himiko had been brainwashed by Angie and announced tomorrow’s magic show, and Kaito ate way too much breakfast, which might have something to do with the fact that he’s already sick.

Bonus scene time! Kaito shows up to the impromptu casino gathering, despite how stuffed he apparently is, to make his second terrible decision of the morning.

Kokichi: “Why’re you here, Kaito? I thought you swore off gambling forever?”

How do you know that, Kokichi? You weren’t there when it happened, and there’s no way Kaito would have mentioned it to you.

Kaito: “I didn’t come here to gamble! I just don’t understand why the instincts of Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, were off!”

…So, in other words, you came here to gamble.

Kokichi: “Kaito, it’s good to be confident, but not when you’re wrong about everything all the time.”

Much as Kokichi might not like to think so, Kaito is often right about a lot of things, which is partly why he’s able to be so confident. This, however, is not one of those things.

Kaito: “Don’t you dare underestimate the instincts of Kaito Momota! I challenge you, Kokichi!”

Instincts don’t work on slot machines, you doofus.

Ryoma: “He’s so easily manipulated…”

Ryoma here pointing out the fact that Kokichi has figured out it’s easy to get Kaito to do pretty much anything you want if you present it as a challenge.

I like how in the illustration as Kaito loses spectacularly and is being laughed at, Shuichi looks amused but also sympathetic. Friends don’t laugh at their friends’ misfortune! Even if they brought it upon themselves.

Meanwhile, Ryoma wins spectacularly.

Ryoma: “I’ve just got a knack for it, I guess.”

Kaito: “What, you mean you’re lucky? That’s just superstition!”

Says the guy who was convinced that “instincts” could help with this.

That said, I want to believe that Ryoma isn’t magically lucky. Magical luck superpowers were a thing in the other Danganronpa universe, but this is not the same universe and that concept is nonsensical enough that it shouldn’t be expected to also be a thing in this one.

Kiyo: “Kotodama is a belief that words contain power that can influence reality itself. Speaking positive words leads to fortune, and negative words lead to misfortune.”

Interestingly, the Japanese term “kotodama” is also the term for Truth Bullets in Japanese.

Kiyo: “When someone facing a challenge hears negative words, they might feel it is unlucky. That feeling of misfortune may then affect their focus or motivation, yes?”

I can buy that hearing certain words that influence their feelings can change the outcome when someone’s undergoing a mostly skill-based challenge, sure. In fact, that’s a lot of the reason why Kaito is always so motivational – if he helps people feel like they can make the impossible possible, then they’ll be more likely to actually be able to do so!

But this should still not apply to slot machines. Those are pure luck. (At least, as far as I’m aware?) Plus if we’re trying to claim here that being confident would positively affect performance at slot machines then that’s clearly not true, because look at Kaito.

Kiyo: “Words are powerful. Truth or lies may both be fired as powerfully as a bullet from a gun.”

And there we go, throwing that reference out there even for the localisation. It’s a neat link to the theme of the game, that fiction can change reality – the idea that words can influence people’s feelings and therefore the outcome of events even if there’s no actual evidence behind those words. Since the Japanese term for Truth Bullets already meant something like that in the first place, maybe it’s no surprise they decided to theme this entire game around that concept.

Kaito: “Hey, Ryoma… Didn’t you have any pre-game rituals or something?”

I appreciate this tiny moment of Kaito interacting with Ryoma normally and asking him something about tennis. He’s usually so busy being bothered by Ryoma’s weakness that he doesn’t get any chance to treat him like a regular person. Maybe it’s because Ryoma just won at something and isn’t showing any obvious signs of weakness here that Kaito’s able to forget about that for a bit.

I still think these slot machines are probably rigged against Kaito specifically, just to mess with him. And maybe also rigged in Ryoma’s favour, apparently.

Kaito: “My skills are suited for the universe! That’s why they don’t work on gambling!”

Sure, let’s go with that, Kaito.

Shuichi: (I took a very depressed Kaito back to his room, then returned to mine.)

I love how this matches with the line just after breakfast last time. Kaito’s status: now both stuffed and depressed. (And Shuichi is still a good friend.)

Shuichi: (There has to be something I can do… Yes, I’m going to do something about this!)

Time to try prying Gonta away from Kokichi again, since they’re still sneaking around together!

(Also, Shuichi sounds amusingly like Kaito when he says it like that. I wonder if that’s deliberate.)

Kaito is in his room, lamenting his terrible choices.

Kaito: “Uggghhh… How could I have eaten so much? It was pathetic of me…”

He doesn’t mention the gambling because that was an optional scene, but we can pretend he’s lamenting that, too.

Also, here’s further evidence that Kaito does not usually eat this much and his decision to do so was likely motivated by something specific. But if his lack of strength last night during training was because of his illness starting to affect him, then, yeah, eating way too much food would definitely just make things even worse. Good job, Kaito.

Ryoma: “Your face looks more dependable… To not focus on the past… in a place like this… I don’t get it…”

It’s because of Kaito, Ryoma! It’s just a shame that Kaito won’t do the same for you.

Ryoma’s obviously stuck focusing on his past and the loved ones he lost even though he’s desperately trying to look to the future and find a new reason to live.

Angie and Himiko are both locked in the gym preparing for the magic show and are unavailable to hang out. Meanwhile, Tenko is standing in front of the gym, glaring at the door and repeating Himiko’s name.

I haven’t been mentioning it every time, but Maki has been in front of her lab the whole time, refusing to let anyone in or even to hang out. She is so, so terrified of anyone finding out her talent. During chapter 1, she was still happy to hang out with Kaede if asked and would talk about things that have nothing to do with her real talent, but here she’s not remotely open to even that. Having her lab opened up and being so starkly confronted with her identity and the fear of people finding out about it has made her too afraid to even talk to anyone in case that somehow ends up coming out.

(I mean obviously the real reason she won’t hang out now is that her FTEs with Shuichi are focused around her life as an assassin so we can’t do them before the reveal, but it still makes heartbreakingly much sense in character too.)

Kokichi and Gonta are both hanging out in Gonta’s lab. This is not a good sign. Let’s try to intervene. (It won’t work, but, shush.)

Gonta: “Hey, Shuichi. Others gather at dining hall, right? Gonta think about going… but Kokichi say he wanna have strategy meeting with Gonta…”

Aww, of course Gonta still wanted to go and meet up with everyone at breakfast! Kokichi probably manipulated him out of it because he figured Gonta would be more likely to not go along with his plan if he spends time today being influenced by actually decent people.

Also, I’m amused that Kokichi called it a “strategy meeting” just like Kaito’s one in chapter 1. This one contains equally little strategising, since Kokichi has already come up with the plan on his own and is just going to manipulate Gonta into following it.

Kokichi: “Hm? You want Gonta, Shuichi? I don’t mind, so go ahead and take him off my hands, okay?”

HE IS NOT AN OBJECT. Oh my god, that is so telling for how Kokichi really views him, at least on the surface. What a dick.

Gonta: “D-Don’t talk like that! G-Gonta not property!”

At least Gonta realises that and stands up for himself. Dammit, stand up for yourself more and realise that Kokichi is just using you, Gonta!

Let’s pretend that Kokichi fucks off somewhere else while Shuichi and Gonta hang out, because it makes me uncomfortable to picture him still being in the room eavesdropping on their conversation. Especially given the content of this one in particular.

Gonta: “There no bugs here, but Gonta enjoy Shuichi’s company!”

Uhhhh, we’re in Gonta’s lab right now. There are bugs. This is awkward.

Regardless, they start talking about Gonta’s forest family… and Gonta very apologetically admits that he was lying when he said they were wolves.

Gonta: “Gentlemen don’t lie. Gonta know that. Gonta don’t wanna lie, but… But… Gonta have to lie… for forest family… Gonta very sorry!”

I think it’s neat how the game establishes with this that even someone as innocent and kind and earnest as Gonta will still lie, even outside of the situation where he becomes a murderer, if he has a good reason to.

Gonta: “So, Gonta actually raised by… Reptites.

Shuichi: “…I’m sorry?”

Gonta: “Dinosaurs not go extinct… Dinosaurs become dinosaur people – Reptites. Reptites live alone, deep in forest… They raise Gonta.”

So I was already going to comment on how ridiculously unbelievable this is… and then I found out that this is specifically a reference to a race from Chrono Trigger, apparently? Which makes it even more completely unbelievable. Things like this just give all the more credence to the fact that everyone’s backstories were made up and written by someone who has their fingers in a few too many fandom pies.

Shuichi: “Ah, then why lie about the wolves?”

Gonta: “They told Gonta to keep secret. Said bad things happen if humans know. Reptites and humans fought long time ago. But Reptites lost, and humans become dominant species… And Reptites not wanna fight anymore.”

I don’t know how accurate this is to Chrono Trigger lore, but the important point is that Gonta had a very good reason to lie! He did it to protect his forest family!

Shuichi: (This story is literally incredible. But this is Gonta… he wouldn’t make up this story.)

Shuichi is having trouble believing it, understandably, but is also quite right to assume that Gonta wouldn’t lie about something like this, especially after he already admitted to lying and said he’d tell the truth now. And of course Gonta doesn’t even realise how completely ridiculous this story seems, because it’s just the normal facts of life to him.

Gonta goes on to talk about some “strong guys” who came to the forest to fight him one day.

Gonta: “Gonta shocked most by… man from India who breathe fire. And another man from Japan who charge Gonta with flying headbutt. Gonta also fight professional wrestler – Red Cyclone! Him so strong and cool!”

Shuichi: (…That *definitely* sounds like a video game.)

So, uh. Shuichi is right. These are all apparently Street Fighter references? Geez, Tsumugi, calm the heck down a bit when writing these characters’ backstories. What kind of crazy crossover universe are you implying exists here?

That said, though I know basically nothing about the Street Fighter games, Gonta for Street Fighter when??

Gonta: “Gonta face all challengers… focus only on fighting… Do much growing that day… Gonta think now, he prolly coulda made friends with them.”

Of course Gonta would also think fighting can foster friendship! He’s not so good with words, after all.

Gonta thanks Shuichi for believing his story.

Gonta: “Everyone else make fun of Gonta. Call Gonta liar.”

Shuichi: (It is a suspicious story… but Gonta is a good person. He wasn’t being malicious.) “They were wrong to do that, Gonta. I know you wouldn’t lie just to trick people.”

Aww, people would be mean to Gonta about this story because of how ridiculous it sounds! Good thing Shuichi can tell that Gonta isn’t the sort of person who’d make something up for a petty reason and must be telling the truth (at least, what is the truth to him) despite how unbelievable it is. And it also says a lot about how much Gonta trusts Shuichi that he told him all this even though most people don’t believe him!

These stories of his are also, interestingly, an example of Gonta earnestly telling the truth about something that is actually not true, because Gonta’s memories are wrong and so he genuinely believes it to be the truth and is not lying even though his story is provably false. Which is what ends up happening in trial 4 as well.

Shuichi: (There’s still some time left—)

No, there isn’t, Shuichi; can’t you hear that the music just stopped?

*ding-do-ding-do-ding-do-ding-do-ding-dong!*

Shuichi: (Huh? I guess that’s Kaito, but…)

I love how Shuichi has figured out how to identify Kaito by doorbell enthusiasm now.

Also, it’s a small thing, but I like that Kaito went out of his way and risked getting caught by Gonta in order to warn Shuichi about him. They are friends.

Kaito: “If we both make it out of this alive… Let’s train again.”

Geez, Kaito, you don’t say things like that in a killing game! Sure, he and Shuichi do both survive and train again many times, but damn, this sure is the narrative trying to make you think Kaito is super dead soon.

Gonta is already too far gone. We can assume this is happening at least a little while after our hangout with him, then. (This makes sense: if I’d instead hung out with for example Kaito, he then still finds time to help set up the tank for the magic show before being chased by Gonta now, so apparently there’s a chunk of time in between the FTE slot and now regardless. I guess Shuichi, introvert that he is, needs an hour or two to himself to wind down in between hangouts.)

While understandable, it is a little frustrating how all our FTE-ing with Gonta feels essentially non-canon right now. Shuichi would probably be having some kind of thought about how surely Gonta wouldn’t try and attack him because they’re friends, right? if the FTEs were able to be acknowledged.

Given what I recently learned about Gonta’s backstory, I would now also not be remotely surprised if Ryoma’s “Shukuchi Method” flash-step turns out to be a direct reference to some tennis anime.

Ryoma: “By the way… I’m sorry. For saying something so uncool like ‘I’ve got no reason to live’.”

It’s interesting that Ryoma himself believes that feeling this way is “uncool” and something worth apologising for, despite that he’s been saying stuff along these lines the whole time. He knows he’s being weak and wants to find a way to get stronger! …If only Kaito could have heard this.

Gonta: “Sorry, but… is for your own good!”

And by “for your own good”, Gonta means “you need to learn how good bugs are”, because Kokichi has been a manipulative asshole. This isn’t even about the motive videos to Gonta.

(This also won’t be the only time Gonta does something bad to everyone else because Kokichi has manipulated him into thinking it’s for their own good. Gah.)

Shuichi: (And in this pitch-black world, I thought to myself… This is what it’s like… to die.)

Wow, Shuichi, that’s melodramatic of you. I guess he briefly assumed Gonta had murdered him before passing out? Ouch. That would be a very short and very heartbreaking trial.

Tenko: “But Shuichi’s the only one who got knocked out.”

Keebo: “Gonta apologized for that.”

At least Gonta did apologise, but it’s a shame he didn’t do so while Shuichi was awake to hear it.

Kokichi: “As soon as I told him that everyone who hates bugs was trying to get rid of them… he started crying and said that he would get you guys to love bugs… or something like that.”

Aww, of course Gonta would get really upset by that! His poor bug friends! Kokichi is such an asshole. He’d already convinced Gonta that sharing the videos was a good idea – all he needed to do was get Gonta to bring everyone here for the sake of that, not to go and make him upset and angry for a completely unrelated reason. And, you know, if he’d done that, this viewing party might have worked, since there’d have been no lying involved that Keebo could later call him out on.

Tsumugi: “You’re terrible… You tricked Gonta.”

Kokichi: “Isn’t it great!? Only an evil supreme leader like me could do something so… eeeeeevil!”

By which Kokichi means that his concept of “evil” equates to “being as unnecessarily dickish as possible, because it’s ~fun~ fucking around with other people!”. He isn’t straight-up evil in that he enjoys people seriously suffering and dying like he claims later on in the story, but this much is true. There is still a certain level of suffering involved that Kokichi is enjoying here – everyone who’s uncomfortable with bugs being chased around by them for hours, and Gonta believing people want to hurt his beloved bug friends. It’s still not okay to get a kick out of that, even if it’s way way beneath the kind of suffering Monokuma is inflicting on them.

Kokichi: “And I wanna see your videos, too, so I figured we could all binge-watch them together!”

…Except that he’s planning on watching them all himself as soon as he steals them without waiting to be with everyone else. He probably wants to do so so that he can know everyone’s secrets, be less likely to be surprised by someone secretly turning out to be a horrible person, and also just have more ammo for manipulating people. I wonder if he’s actually willing to show everyone his own video or is planning to somehow make an excuse to avoid that – he is very attached to his lie that his organisation is the supremest, evilest organisation ever, after all.

Kokichi: “Umm… Everyone will know their motive and a killing will be more likely to happen? But I like playing on Mean difficulty.”

I wonder whose fault it is that Kokichi thinks of the hardest difficulty setting as being called “Mean”, hm, Tsumugi?

(Also, yes, he explicitly knows that showing the videos will make a murder more likely, and he’s doing it anyway.)

Kokichi: “I wanna win this killing game! So I’m not gonna run from it, I’m gonna crush it!”

Kokichi is planning on “winning” the killing game, for his own definition of “win”, which means “beat Monokuma at his own game”. But I don’t know how he thinks getting everyone to see their videos and making a murder more likely is going to help with that.

Maybe part of the reason he does this is just that he gets so caught up in the massive lie he’s telling himself that he’s totally having fun with this, right? that he has to act in accordance with that or else he won’t be able to keep convincing himself that that’s how he feels.

Kokichi: “If the thought of playing a death game doesn’t excite you, you’ll never win. Understand?”

Like he’s afraid that the moment he accepts that he hates this and is terrified of being killed, that’ll be what happens to him, so he has to keep up the lie. Newsflash, Kokichi: everyone else here is not having fun (with… a couple of exceptions), but none of them are automatically going to die just because of that.

Gonta: “Thank you for waiting! Gonta bring Himiko and Angie!”

Gonta is so polite about having kidnapped everyone, oh my god.

It’s a little questionable why Gonta didn’t bring Kirumi just because Kirumi said she was busy.

Gonta: “Sorry… Not even Gonta strong enough to overcome Kirumi…”

I guess Kirumi just has such an aura of hard-working responsibility that Gonta couldn’t bring himself to disturb her from the important magic show prepwork she was totally doing that definitely wasn’t setting up a murder.

Kokichi: “I like bugs even more than you do, Gonta.”

If Kokichi was spewing lines like this earlier to get Gonta to agree, I’m surprised Gonta didn’t just get so excited that he immediately tried to have Kokichi meet some of his bug friends. That would’ve shut him up.

Keebo: “It seems I must be the one to take care of this. With my talent, Kokichi, I will stop—”

Keebo gets interrupted here, but why doesn’t he just play the recording right now anyway? It’d save us all a lot of hassle and a lot of bugs.

Kokichi: “Let’s see… it’s exactly 9 p.m. right now.”

Mentioning the exact time, yeah, that’s not going to turn out to be relevant to the murder that’s probably about to happen soon or anything.

Keebo: “…We still have a chance when Kokichi comes back. That’s when I will take care of this. Everyone, please just endure it until then.”

…Why does Kokichi need to be there for you to play the recording, though? The point is to convince Gonta that he’s doing this for the wrong reasons and get him to stop. All we need to do is make him realise that Kokichi lied to him about us all hating bugs and that we all actually love bugs, really.

It’s a shame that Gonta’s idea of an “Insect Meet and Greet” is so over the top. One time I was at a natural history museum and there was a demonstrator there who had a praying mantis and was letting the visitors hold her if they wanted to while teaching them facts about mantises and answering their questions. That’s an Insect Meet and Greet! Gonta would be so good at that! He should just do that with all of his bug friends in turn, one by one, and it would be precious.

Still, I hope Tsumugi genuinely hates bugs and is regretting everything right now.

Kokichi: “The bugs look really tired, and a gentleman knows how to do things in moderation, y’know?”

For once, Kokichi is right. The way Gonta went about this meet-and-greet really was not very gentlemanly.

Kokichi: “So let’s start already.”

Gonta: “…Start what?”

Gonta doesn’t even know that the motive videos were meant to be a part of this! Even though the whole time they were scheming together they were talking about that! Kokichi really did just decide to completely change tack and go about this in the most unnecessarily underhanded and cruel way possible instead of being even the slightest bit honest with Gonta.

This sure is a dramatic illustration with fancy flashy light effects for Keebo using a tape recorder.

Gonta: “Kokichi… what you mean? You… not like bugs?”

Kokichi: “…Maaan, now it’s boring.”

Really, Kokichi? Because I think you having your own assholery backfire on you is pretty entertaining, actually. Apparently things are only “fun” to Kokichi when he’s not the one on the receiving end.

Shuichi: (After leaving the room, I could still hear the muffled buzzing and Kokichi screaming.)

It is very reassuring to know that Kokichi actually hates bugs too. He deserves that.

They’re assuming that Monodam will return each of the Kubs Pads back to the person who originally had them, but that shouldn’t be possible. They were mixed up completely randomly by mistake – Monodam shouldn’t know who had whose. If anything, he’ll just do it correctly this time and give everyone their own. Yet apparently he does somehow give them back mixed up exactly like they were before, since Ryoma is now going to go and get his from Maki?

Tsumugi: “But out of all of them, we can probably trust that one, right?”

…Hm, though the fact that it is specifically Tsumugi who mentions Monodam’s trustworthiness makes it slightly more likely that she knows that Monodam has some kind of way of knowing where they should go. Or that she’s going to liase with him to make sure it gets done right. The Nanokumas at least should have caught who had whose.

Other question: How did Kokichi manage to sneak into the rooms of the handful of people who weren’t at the Meet and Greet and would have gone back to their own rooms to sleep? For example, Kaito states in the trial that he went back to his room once nighttime started, so Kokichi shouldn’t have been able to steal the video that he had. Also, Kirumi.

Shuichi: (I just remembered, I wasn’t able to train with Kaito today. Ah, too bad. We can do it tomorrow night, though. It’s not like I’ll never see him again or anything.)

Shuichi, stop tempting fate! You and Kaito are both terrible at this! It’s a good thing Kaito is nowhere near as expendable as the narrative is currently trying to make him seem.

Shuichi: (I collapsed onto the bed and quickly fell asleep.)

Apparently running away in terror from bugs for two hours is also a good way to get yourself exhausted enough to sleep easily without any intrusive thoughts.

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canadian-riddler · 7 years ago

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Morality of a Supercomputer: Why GLaDOS is not evil (or inherently a bad person)

(under a readmore for length)

Part A: Aperture Itself is an Immoral Corporation Run By Immoral Employees

- Cave Johnson was the was the CEO of Aperture from 1947 to sometime in the 1980s. We can infer that his employees either a) had similar beliefs to himself or b) were content to adhere to his ridiculous whims while also turning a blind eye.

- Cave never, ever expresses remorse for killing his first set of test subjects. He treats it as an inconvenience. He literally doesn’t care that he killed a bunch of promising members of society during a bunch of horribly conceived tests with a horribly built device that was proven not to work. Your introduction to the Repulsion Gel includes him making a joke about someone breaking all the bones in their legs.

- Aperture put to market two separate gels that were not fit for human consumption. Again, Cave doesn’t seem to care one bit about this. He takes a stance more akin to ‘oh well, we’ll just… use them for this experimental quantum tunnelling device, I guess’.

- Aperture’s unethical disaster experiments are all played off as inconsequential or mildly amusing inconveniences.

- Cave does not take responsibility for his own ill-advised actions. He shoulders them off onto everybody else. People were accepting this responsibility willingly.

- Cave publicly disrespects, insults, and demeans almost every person that works for him. He fires without notice people who disagree with him.

- Cave’s plan, after killing the astronauts and Olympians, was to specifically entice the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children to do his tests for him. That is, he specifically wanted populations that nobody would cause a fuss about if they went missing. This tells us that Cave Johnson has no regard for human life and, additionally, that his employees willingly went along with this. Aperture was taken to court not for injured astronauts, but for missing ones. Somebody got rid of what was left of them. People also agreed to this marketing campaign and put it into action.

- Because Aperture wanted only populations that nobody would miss, we can infer something very important: nobody ever survived the testing process. Every single person who went into the testing tracks died.

- During Test Chamber 18 in Portal, there is a room with craters in the wall panels where the energy pellets have been colliding with them. No other chamber has this. Therefore, before Chell arrives, nobody has ever solved that chamber. Every person who has gone through the testing track has died before reaching this point. In Portal, GLaDOS is not shown to have the ability to reorder the facility. All she is able to do is position turrets and activate the neurotoxin, so we know that she does not reorder the tests. They are static and she merely resets them after they are complete/failed partway through.

- Test Chamber 19 appears unfinished, which follows from the previous point that Test Chamber 18 was never solved so Test Chamber 19 was never fully built. GLaDOS, additionally, seems baffled that Chell ends up at the end of it and is forced to improvise when she escapes, which GLaDOS does not know how to do because she has never done it before.

- In Lab Rat, neither Henry nor Doug Rattmann seem to be overly concerned with whether GLaDOS is a person or not, and not at all bothered by the fact that Caroline is supposed to be in there. They talk about her like she is a bothersome computer and that is all. You could argue that Henry does not know about Caroline; however, Doug’s murals prove that he does know. This doesn’t seem to influence his decisions whatsoever.

- Lab Rat also states that they turn GLaDOS off and on at will, ‘off’ usually involving a ‘kill switch’. Given that GLaDOS is a computer from the late eighties/early nineties, which took forever to turn off and on, and GLaDOS is shown to be immediately shut off, the ‘kill switch’ is probably actually her being crashed. Crashing software creates a whole host of problems for non-sentient software; therefore, every time they turned her back on again her system would have been a horrible mess. This would have created massive system instability… which nobody seemed to care very much about.

- GLaDOS is described on a PowerPoint presentation as ‘arguably alive’, but in the same presentation they propose selling her to the military as a fuel line de-icer that doesn’t have the ability to do anything else. Therefore, they are fully aware that she is alive and she is a person… they just don’t care.

- It is explicitly shown that most of the work done on GLaDOS is carried out without her consent. The very act of Caroline’s upload is done with the consent of neither of them. Henry is extremely blasé about the Morality Core and there are approximately forty cores shown in the clear bin during the end of Portal 2. This implies that they have been installing them on her for a very long time with no regard at all for her or the Cores, even though they have very blatantly failed multiple times. They just build sentient, arguably alive AI with the sole intention of corralling GLaDOS temporarily, and when the Cores fail they are basically put into storage forever.

- GLaDOS’s job in Portal was to supervise the tests. As concluded above, she doesn’t demonstrate the ability to build them herself. Therefore, she was watching people be maimed and killed within human-designed tests under the supervision of her engineers before she ever killed anyone herself.

- Aperture had over ten thousand people in cryogenic storage waiting to be awoken for testing. The Extended Relaxation Vaults at the beginning of Portal 2 have a ‘packing date’ (in 1976/77, when GLaDOS did not exist even as a concept yet) and an ‘expiry date’ (in 1996, which means that they were all brain-dead before GLaDOS took over the facility). GLaDOS does not have any human test subjects between the conclusion of Portal 2 and the first DLC, and she doesn’t know about the existence of the human vault. Therefore, Aperture put tens of thousands of people into indefinite, unstable storage with no regard whatsoever to what state they would be when, and indeed if, they woke up, and they did not tell the AI they put in charge of the facility so said AI so much as knew they existed.

- The very fact they gave literal people – including children – an expiry date when they put them into a metal box for twenty years really tells you all you need to know about Aperture as a whole.

What does this teach GLaDOS?

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them. You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.

- Dying during the test is a controlled variable. There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.

- GLaDOS does not actually understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects. They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

Part B. GLaDOS, as We Know Her, is Pure AI

Before we get into this, it is important to establish that it is implied in-universe GLaDOS herself is actually the DOS; that is, GLaDOS herself is the operating system. If you believe GLaDOS and Caroline are the same person, that’s fine; please hear me out regardless.

- She has a prototype chassis in the Portal 2 DLC with an earlier version of her OS on it. This has an in-game date of 1989 and, since we know that GLaDOS took over the facility nearabouts the Black Mesa Incident in 1998/1999, we know that she was in development for at least ten years.

- There was, at one point, a Portal 2 hype website where you did a survey and it was run by an early version of GLaDOS; it is no longer active but it was a real thing.

- GLaDOS is incredibly, genuinely clueless about things that any regular person knows: she believes a bird has malicious intentions to destroy her facility; she believes that motivation consists of telling blatant, obvious lies to people; her grasp of social niceties is completely nonexistent.

- Because it is stated that there were multiple versions of GLaDOS, this means that she is a person built from nothing. Everything she knows was either provided to her via Aperture’s database or taught to her in some way by GLaDOS’s engineers. GLaDOS does not know a single thing she was not directly taught by somebody else.

- GLaDOS is never shown to have a ~normal~ conversation with anybody. Every time she talks, it is to convince someone to do what she wants them to do. Because she is AI, this behaviour was learned and, given how the engineers at Aperture regard her and the Cores, it is not illogical to say that pretty much the only conversations they had with their AI were probably along the lines of ‘do this for me because my neck is on the line here’.

- During the instatement of the Morality Core, Doug Rattmann tells Henry that the Morality Core is not going to be enough because you can always ignore your conscience. However, in the second half of Portal 2, GLaDOS is shown to be unable to ignore it. What is the difference?

- The Morality Core was not a true conscience. It was, yet again, the scientists telling her what to do. It was, like all the other Cores, an annoying new set of restrictions that had no purpose except to impede her. Henry describes it as ‘the latest in AI inhibition technology’. It did not exist to teach her morals. It was created to slow her down.

- It’s entirely possible that nobody actually told her what morals were or what the Morality Core was actually for. Additionally, we don’t actually know what the Morality Core was telling her, since it is never mentioned and the Core never speaks.

- The conscience that GLaDOS comes across is her own conscience; she literally says so (‘I’ve heard voices all my life, but now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying, because for the first time… it’s my voice’) which, unlike the Morality Core, she cannot ignore.

What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

Part C. GLaDOS’s Thought Process

- GLaDOS, as pure AI, operates on a binary scale; that is, everything to her is either yes or no, on or off, with her or against her. Prior to being placed in a potato, GLaDOS never had a reason to think outside of this binary. GLaDOS has no concept of an in-between and does not understand grey reasoning.

- As a robot whose sole purpose was to run variations on the same test ad nauseam, it would never have occurred to GLaDOS to do anything else.

- GLaDOS says about herself in an unused piece of dialogue: ‘I’m brilliant. […] I’m the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that’s ever existed. I’m not bragging. That’s an objective fact.’ Therefore, she knows she could do literally anything with her intelligence and her hardware… but that would require her to think outside her binary of testing and not testing. So she does nothing.

- This is established several times: as soon as she reactivates after her death, she starts testing. As soon as she sends Chell away, she sends her robots into testing. As soon as she finds the test subjects, she starts testing. She constructs ‘art pieces’… which are simply more tests. Her ‘training’ for the co-op bots are… you guessed it… tests.

- As an extension of the above point: she could build any robot she wants or anything she wants. She in fact talks about doing other experiments. She doesn’t. She opts to build testing robots and test elements. And that’s it.

- Upon discovering her conscience/the ability to think in grey, she says, ‘I’m serious! I think there’s something really wrong with me!’ She doesn’t understand that this is a normal thing for a person to have or to be able to use. Conscience and morality are things that were neither demonstrated nor explained to her and so when she comes across them herself, she thinks it is a problem.

- Additionally, when Chell fails to react to GLaDOS’s dialogue about her fledgling ability to think in grey, she immediately reverts to her old standbys of binary thought and manipulation: ‘You like revenge, right? Everybody likes revenge! Well, let’s go get some!’ She’s now aware of the concept of a middle ground, but does not know how to do anything with it.

- GLaDOS states about Chell: ‘I thought you were my enemy, but all along you were my best friend.’ This is another example of her binary thought process. A person who helps you when it’s mutually beneficial, as Chell does during Portal 2, is not necessarily your best friend. At best, they are usually your temporary ally. But because GLaDOS only understands binary concepts, that’s the conclusion she comes to.

- She states ‘the best solution is the easiest one, and killing you is hard’. This slots neatly into her binary: if killing you down here is hard, then letting you live up there is easy. In Want You Gone she says, ‘when I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad’ so we know Chell exists outside of her binary at that point, but she doesn’t know what to do about it so she forces a binary decision on the situation anyway.

What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

Part D. What All of This Means

Gathering the previous points gives us these clues about GLaDOS’s behaviour:

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them. You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.

- Dying during the test is a controlled variable. There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.

- GLaDOS does not understand death.

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

What this tells us about how GLaDOS operates is the following:

- There are no consequences for anything whatsoever, as long as you’re the one in charge.

- You can do whatever you want to somebody else, as long as you come out on top.

- Death is meaningless.

- She sees people as objects and she treats them as such.

- She does not know how to talk to people. Only at them.

- She knows that morals are rules people want her to follow, but she doesn’t understand them and has never seen them in action.

- Grey thought is anathema to her. If something does not fit into her binary, she will force it to.

All of these rules are challenged when Chell, through her actions, personally demonstrates morality to GLaDOS. Chell helps GLaDOS not because she needs to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Instead of attempting to skip town and leave GLaDOS to fend for herself (which she was well within her rights to do), Chell returns GLaDOS to her chassis. And at this point GLaDOS immediately demonstrates grey reasoning both when she elects to save Chell and when it is shown that she does not kill Wheatley. This is not the behaviour of an evil person. This is the behaviour of someone who understands there was something wrong with their previous actions and has decided to do something about it. GLaDOS’s behaviour towards the co-op bots is less malicious than it is the fumblings of somebody whose worldview has skewed, but they aren’t sure what to do about it and there aren’t any binary answers. Because of her extreme isolation, it is going to take her a long, long time to get things right, but once she is exposed to the concept of grey reasoning she does attempt to figure out what to do with it.

GLaDOS is not evil, nor are most of her actions inherently ill-intentioned. Some of them are. To claim all of her actions are borne of evil and come from a place of inherent malice shows a misunderstanding of the sort of environment Aperture was and the kind of people who would populate such an environment. At the end of the day, she’s still not a very nice person. But to write her off as evil is oversimplifying a lot of what we are told about her and a misunderstanding of computer science as a whole. Artificial intelligence is not developed in a vacuum and a computer only does exactly what it’s told. All of GLaDOS’s behaviours are learned. The people who created her may have been evil, but she herself is not. And when given the choice to be something else, something she never knew was an option… she takes it.

#GLaDOS #Portal #so says Indy #I hope you didn't think I was joking because I wasn't

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Episode Quality:

Exciting and full of strong fodder for discussion and debate; by the same token, potentially frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha directs comments to Wanda in Nigeria, but Wanda addresses her response to the team as a whole.

Female characters:

Wanda Maximoff.

Natasha Romanov.

Maria Stark.

Mrs Spencer.

Sharon Carter.

Mrs Zemo.

Aunt May.

Male characters:

James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve Rogers.

Sam Wilson.

Brock Rumlow.

Howard Stark.

Tony Stark.

T’Chaka.

Vision.

Thaddeus Ross.

James Rhodes.

Helmut Zemo.

T’Challa.

Everett Ross.

Peter Parker.

Clint Barton.

Scott Lang.

OTHER NOTES:

My immediate thought on the concept of the Avengers being directed by a United Nations panel is the Rwandan genocide; follow from that, any number of other major atrocities that have taken place while the rest of the world sat back umm-ing and aah-ing over whether or not they should intervene. Anyone who knows a speck of history should be very reticent about the idea of being shackled by such political whims.

Ross refers to the unknown locations of Thor and Bruce Banner as being like ‘misplacing a couple of megaton nukes’, as if they’re objects and not autonomous sentient beings who can go where they please without having to declare their intentions, and that should really be the first major red flag to everyone that this guy ain’t on the level.

Vision’s equation about causality is a false equivalence, and an irrelevant one anyway, since oversight doesn’t do anything to hamper his theory about strength inviting challenge. You’re not actually reducing your strength, you’re just making yourself less able to meet those challenges as they come. I feel like Vision should be a Hell of a lot smarter than this absence of logic (also, looking at the threats themselves in previous films, the only ones which can be considered ‘strength inviting challenge’ issues in which the actions of any Avenger characters have ‘bred catastrophe’ are the Iron Man films, and Age of Ultron, all of which are examples of Tony’s hubris coming back to bite him, specifically. The conflict of every other film stems from either 1) trouble predating Iron Man (most of it SHIELD/Hydra related), or 2) other-worldly overspill where Earth becomes the battleground for something uninvited (Asgardian and/or infinity stone bullshit). And even when Tony is the one creating his own demons, he usually doesn’t do so actively through his Iron Man tech or persona (Obadiah Stane’s villainy is what led to Iron Man’s creation, not the other way around; yes, Tony’s grandstanding did directly invite competition in Iron Man 2, but he didn’t make an adversary out of Ivan Vanko, that was his father’s legacy; and Tony’s particular cruelty may have incited Aldritch Killian, but that event predated the creation of Iron Man by nine years, so it’s not a response to that strength. Only Ultron was genuinely a catastrophic consequence of Tony’s (and Bruce’s) abuse of power, but hobbling the Avengers’ ability to operate does nothing to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, it just stymies their ability to halt the onslaught after it begins. You solve that one with legislation limiting what anyone can recklessly create and unleash (which includes Vision himself, incidentally)).

And see, Steve is right; the Sokovia Accords just shift the blame when things go wrong, functionally it makes the Avengers less accountable for their actions by allowing them to play the ‘just following orders’ game. And the point he makes about the panel still being run by people with agendas is exactly what I’m talking about in that first dot point; when decisions are being made on a political basis instead of according to need, you get atrocities, and any person working for the United Nations is a political agent by default. Sokovia is actually a great example of the kind of place that falls through the cracks on the political stage, as it was noted to be ‘nowhere special’, i.e. not politically valuable, and therefore unlikely to receive a swift response from powerful nations who have no vested interests in the good of the country.

Tony’s argument here is extremely personal and emotion-driven; it’s all his own guilt about Ultron and Sokovia and his decision to stop manufacturing weapons, etc, and none of that is relevant to the rest of the team’s situation or their choices. He’s also utterly oblivious to his own privilege here, in that it’s super easy for him to handwave the particulars of the Accords, because he’s a filthy-rich white American whose main ‘thing’ is new technologies, which are not being restricted at all by these Accords; he has the luxury of just signing on and hoping to negotiate amendments later (and also, of having the resources to be able to thwart anything he disagrees with and just do what he wants regardless if he decides he’s right). He’s not taking a moment to consider what the Accords really mean for those members of the team with powers they can’t just ‘put down’, who don’t have the kinds of options and opportunities he has, up to and including the bargaining power to have the Accords ‘fixed up’ later. I really do my best to see both sides of this situation because there IS merit in the idea of the Accords, but no one in favour of it makes a good argument for it and it’s really frustrating.

Who tells someone that a close beloved friend is dead in a fucking text message??? The real villain of this film.

It goes without saying but I’m gonna say it anyway: it’s very hypocritical of T’Challa to support the Accords while also donning his super-suit and taking matters in foreign countries into his own hands. All of the destruction that occurs in Romania after Bucky escapes from his apartment building is because of T’Challa’s involvement (because he was trying to commit a literal murder!), and that kinda gets glossed straight over here.

Tony falls for Ross’ trick by referring to Wanda as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ in the process of his efforts to justify her internment. It’s all really solid writing, really, vernacular choices that highlight the dehumanisation at the rotten core of the Accords and how good people can be suckered into it without realising until it’s too late (even when things like, say, denial of legal representation should definitely be red-flagging up the wazoo right now). But honestly, it’s such a wild leap from ‘Wanda can’t go on missions anymore’ to ‘we’re going to forcibly deny her the ability to go out in public’. Keep trying to tell yourself that’s not a fucked up situation, Tony.

Steve Rogers holding down a fucking helicopter is just...peak Captain America and I’m so glad.

The part where Tony recruits an actual child who is not involved in this situation at all, spiriting him away to another continent to fight supersoldiers, that’s just...beyond, honestly. I hate this as an introduction for Spiderman because it’s so wildly irresponsible of Tony, it’s an unforgivable thing to do. He’s a kid. This has nothing to do with him. This is where Tony officially loses me in this movie. You can take your self-righteous attempts at justifying your actions and shove ‘em, buddy. You’re actively endangering a child.

We really don’t need Steve to kiss someone every Cap movie. We didn’t need him weirdly mackin’ on his recently-deceased ex-love’s niece. Seriously.

Spiderman’s particular brand of quipping while fighting really irritates me, also. It’s altogether a big no from me on the Spiderman front.

Still love Ant-Man, though. He’s delightful. I also enjoy Hawkeye so much more here than I have in the Avengers films.

C’mon, T’Challa. You can’t attack and attempt to kill a guy outright and then play the ‘you must be guilty because you ran away’ schtick. Do a brain about it.

See, everyone else knows why they’re there and what they’re fighting for, they know the stakes. Scott is the only one on Cap’s side who isn’t already part of the situation anyway, but he’s read in on why he’s being asked to get involved and he’s a grown adult person making an informed decision. Peter doesn’t have that, he’s there fighting because Tony said so, and that’s just fucked up.

Heavy sigh. And here we go with the emotional Tony thing. Yeah, he just saw how his parents were killed by the Winter Soldier. That’s rough. It’s really rough. But he doesn’t just have an immediate emotional outburst, he has a sustained homicidal rage, which includes not only trying to kill Bucky, but also beating the Hell outta Steve, who, y’know, did not kill Tony’s parents. The fight scene lasts way too long and involves too much opportunity for cooler thought to prevail (both in problem-solving and in conversational moments), and someone whose emotions can send them reeling so completely out of control - even when they actively know they’ve been manipulated into it! Zemo literally just told you to your face that this was his plan! - someone with so little impulse control should never be given the power to make decisions for others or wield anything over them. This is all just a really, really great case for why Tony is ill-equipped to be an Avenger at all.

Watching Bucky digging the repulsor out of Iron Man’s chest with his metal hand is...so exciting. Rest in peace, awesome metal arm.

Zemo’s just a regular human, but he gets locked up under utterly inhumane circumstances. Again, the Accords involved a deal with a pretty insidious devil, and they didn’t actually have to prove that Steve’s position was the correct one to such a strong degree (we could have had a more nuanced conversation about the subject of accountability if the two sides were more evenly presented), but damn, the red flags, guys. It shouldn’t have taken Tony until he was horrified seeing his friends in the raft prison to finally clue in.

Ok, so, I know I already played the ‘I’m pregnant’ card to explain away my meandering commentary for Ant-Man, but it’s still true and only getting more significant as time goes on, so I regret to announce that - despite having looked forward to disassembling this movie since I started on this Marvel adventure - we’re now only a day out from publication and I haven’t written anything yet. I know, the deadline isn’t exactly set in stone and I could just hold off publishing until I’m ready, but that’s a slippery slope and if I start telling myself to just ‘get to it when you get to it’, who the fuck knows when it’ll happen. This isn’t supposed to be stressful, so I’m just gonna ramble a bit and see what comes out. There’s a thing wriggling in my guts and I have a house to paint. I’m doing my best.

First things first: my stance re: Accords is that the best method of oversight is the one which emphasises accountability, rather than permission (with acknowledgment that this is a fictional universe with threats and powers which do not reflect the real world). The kinds of issues our Avenger characters get involved with are typically of the sort which has to be nipped in the bud right-quick before it becomes untenable, and also not infrequently, the types of problems which do not offer them bountiful evidence to present to a board for evaluation before they get the ok to counter it. Faffing about with diplomacy and bureaucratic carrying-on is a great way to, say, allow Hydra to launch the Insight helicarriers and wipe out all dissenters to their rule before you have the chance to stop them, or (if Zemo’s apparent plan with the Winter Soldiers had been his real plan after all), to be stuck mopping up the global damage as an elite death squad roams around destabilising governments. I’m not a supporter of the adage ‘it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission’ in the real world, but in a comic book universe, with the supervillains and the world domination and the plots which consistently include chronic time-sensitive action and little if any concrete evidence? The Sokovia Accords are woefully inadequate. By all means, the Avengers should be answerable to someone, and being required to submit reports justifying their actions (and face disciplinary measures or even criminal charges if they cannot explain themselves to a satisfactory degree) is a completely reasonable thing to convene a United Nations panel to oversee. Maybe Tony can hop down off his high horse and face actual consequences for the Ultron fiasco. That’s fine with me, and it’s a logical thing for the world to clamour for. Shifting responsibility to a panel of UN politicians who will then no doubt be reticent to send the Avengers into anything pre-emptively (or within any kind of useful time frame) for fear of backlash is a terrible solution, and even more so when you’re being pushed into it without any time to evaluate and amend the original document before it becomes law.

(It’s worth noting that the person most likely to appreciate how easily the UN panel could be hijacked by political machinations not in the interest of the public good is Steve, owing to his personal role in uncovering and thwarting Hydra’s plans; Sam was roped into the Avenging world through that event, and thus it’s unsurprising that he would have the same concern chief in mind when refusing to sign. While Natasha does sign on to the Accords, she explicitly does not do so because she thinks the Accords are a good idea; she’s playing the political game and ‘reading the terrain’, as she says, and that’s consistent with her character. Tony being impulsive and dangerously emotion-driven is also unfortunately consistent, as is his self-righteousness about imposing his will on others to assuage his own guilt. Vision really has no excuse for being so bad at logicking his way to signing the Accords, but it’s no surprise to me that the most clear-headed staunch Accords supporter would be Rhodey, since following orders from others and unquestioning trust in your governing body is dead-on character for him as a career military man. I think he’s categorically wrong, yes, but I’m not mad at Rhodey for being a True Believer any more than I am at Natasha for being mercurial; both are in-character choices and ones which involve evaluative thought processes, and while ‘in-character’ may still be in play for Tony, evaluative thought processes are not, and that does make me mad. As I’ve noted before, he tends to work as a likable character despite his MANY flaws when he’s in his own movies, because acknowledging those foibles and working to fix them is a core part of his personal arcs in each Iron Man film; it was an essential quality missing in Age of Ultron, and one which made a monster of the character which I AM glad this movie is addressing with fallout; still, there’s a lack of tangible self-reflection and making amends from Tony in this movie, alongside some of his worst personal decisions, and I sincerely do not love him by the end of it.)

The good thing is, despite a few lazy elements - Vision! You tool! - and despite some very frustrating decisions, the central dilemma of the film is a strong and nuanced conversation-starter (and perhaps, argument-inducer). Even though the specific scenario and the people involved (Ross (both of them) and the floating Guantanamo, et al.) skews the narrative definitively against the Accords by the end, there is still fodder there for an intelligent debate about the merits of the concept if not the execution. And, most importantly, Steve’s position on the matter is the MCU’s Captain America to a T - a political story about the appreciable and essential difference between doing one’s duty to a concept, vs adherence to a moral code. Disobedience is a core part of Steve Rogers’ dilemmas - not that disobedience IS the dilemma for him, but that it is at odds with the patriotic good-ol’-boy image he is expected to inhabit from outside. Every Captain America film carries with it the idea that to do the highest good can mean rejecting everything that the people and institutions around you try to insist is right; refusing to play a role that has been prescribed to you; always making the choice for yourself, by your ethos, no matter how hard it is. Refusing to compromise when you see the compromise as an evil; planting yourself like a tree, and saying ‘No. You move’ (a great way of keeping Peggy’s influence alive and moving in the plot, by the way, and a key demonstration of how she and Steve met on the same wavelength. Lots of strong details in this movie, tbh).

My primary complaint, however, is that this is also too much like an Avengers film; nearly all of the other major characters are there, and Tony especially gets a LOT of screen time, and since Cap and his films are my uncontested faves I am pretty salty about having to share the stage for his last outing. The tone and the subject matter are still totally on-brand, but the focus is split, and that’s particularly annoying for what it leaves behind. While Bucky is made central to the drive of the plot, Steve finally being reunited with him, bringing him in, getting the cathartic other side to what was so exquisitely set up in The Winter Soldier, it falls by the wayside a bit and comes off underdone. Sam is certainly there, being wonderful as always, but he doesn’t get a lot to actively influence, he’s mostly just That Other Guy, and it’s a real shame since he was a highlight among super-stiff competition in his introductory film. The touch of Peggy that shines through the film is poignant, but Sharon Carter gets the bad end of the stick with under-developed characterisation and a very ill-advised zero-chemistry attempt to stir a speck of romance in a story with no room for it, and altogether, the kinds of quiet character moments which added so much depth to The Winter Soldier are very much lacking here. We’ve got so many other characters on deck already, plus the introduction of two new major players (T’Challa has a solid, sombre presence which suits the film, and even his hypocrisy fits snugly into the plot so as not to be a barb against him, but as I’ve mentioned already, I am squarely against Peter Parker’s squeaky excessive comic-relief inclusion and the dire implications it has for Tony Stark’s moral compass), and we’re already spending so much time on beefing up Tony’s side of the Civil War. I don’t personally think the movie is bloated, overlong, or incoherent, but it definitely wanders close to all three and I wouldn’t be inclined to argue very strenuously with anyone who wanted to denounce it on any of those fronts. It has a lot going on, not quite too much for an ensemble movie, but more than it should as a story with a single character’s name in the title. I’m still mostly-satisfied by it, and consider it one of the stronger MCU films to date, but as a third Captain America, specifically? A bit of a let-down.

#Marvel Cinematic Universe #Captain America: Civil War #Bechdel Test #female representation #MCU #Captain America #Civil War

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