#(he's done this to human bodies too but only in extremely specific circumstances. the risk of legal repercussions is too great otherwise)

[ehlnofay]

19 for the worldbuilding prompts + Torr?

the profound quiet of a small settlement at night

North Eastmarch is freezing cold all over, but it wears different outside the city than within.

Torr would never call Windhelm warm – not even in summer months, no matter how used to it they are – but what little heat it has it clings to with great determination. The walls huddle together, trapping the air so that it’s either still and muggy or a howling wind, like each close-knit house is breathing in tandem. The heat of the people run up and down its streets, blood through its knotted stone veins. The city is alive, an ecosystem unto itself; its snow, dark with footprints, runs sludgy down the roads; a fireplace is always burning somewhere.

Outside of the walls, surrounded by nothing but empty air and snow-laden trees, a slow-moving stream running with barely a burble – it feels dead, in contrast. Silent. Branches reach needle-sharp across the blue-black sky, the ground is gleaming white and undisturbed by anyone else’s footprints, and the nearest fire is the barely visible gleam of the Kynesgrove mining camp, up the hill and through the sporadic spindles of the trees. The breeze ghosts past Torr’s neck and whips the mud-stained snow into a flurry.

In the city, Torr’s comfortable sleeping almost anywhere – as comfortable as they ever get, anyway. Some of the buildings have great gaps under the porch where the snow can’t reach and no-one ever finds them; there’s places in the nooks of the walls, and sheds built into the side of the house that people don’t lock, and Torr knows a few people besides who don’t mind him kipping on their floor every now and again, as long as he doesn’t ask too often. The outside isn’t like that. There’s not many places to go. He’s lurking around Kynesgrove tonight – on his way back from a quick venture out to get some things done that pay better than running errands around the markets – and there aren’t many options. The inn, which he can’t afford – the mine, which would be warm but is very guarded – the miner’s encampment or someone’s house, both of which would most likely result in being chased off. Besides, there’s a performative element to meeting people, especially adults, in strange places, and Torr’s not in the mood to play to strangers. So much of his being is caught up in Windhelm’s grimy alleys, tangled in the hair and fingers of its discarded children; he doesn’t know how to be himself away from it all.

But they don’t have to, seeing as there’s the rickety old sawmill on the edge of a stream feeding into the harbour. It’s not bad, as shelter goes; no walls, so the wind rubs its fingers wraithlike down Torr’s cheeks and tangles them in his hair, but at least there’s a roof. It looks newly thatched, too, the floorboards free of rot, the water-wheel still chugging creakily along. There’s no wood to cut here, all the nearby surrounding trees too scraggy to be worth the bother. The only big ones are part of the grove up on the hill. There’s no point in keeping the mill running, but Torr is glad it is; he watches the distant firelight flickering through the scrub, and listens to the splashing of the wheel. It’s proof that people and the things they make do still exist – if not necessarily here.

It really feels dead, out in the cold, with the leafless trees and the wind that doesn’t even whisper. It always does. It’s a bit discomfiting, which is maybe why Torr doesn’t go on out-of-city endeavours as often as perhaps he could; but really, there’s not work out here enough to make it worth it. There’s always problems with bandits on the road, but Torr’s not a good enough fighter for bounty work; there’s collecting plants and things to sell Nurelion, but that’s easy enough to do on a day trip. (And, really, it’s more for Torr’s own enjoyment, besides. They never even venture far south enough to get to the sulphur pools, which is where the more interesting things grow.)

This trip, though, is an outlier. Unusually efficient. Just a quick job for Niranye, scouting a merchant’s cart on the road – almost definitely for something shady, but that’s not Torr’s business, and it was too much money too easy to turn down. And then – just earlier today, foraging out in the wilderness as best as Torr (a distinctly urban animal) knows how – they’d come across a giant’s corpse, stiff and white as the snow it lay in. Torr’s no master alchemist but they know the value of a cadaver when it comes to brewing alloys and admixtures, so they set to with their blunt-edged dagger and now they’ve got a sack full of what may as well be gold. (Long as it doesn’t start to rot before they can get Nurelion to preserve it, anyway.)

Torr’s going to be rolling in it when they get back to Windhelm. They could use that money for nearly anything – pay off a few things they borrowed, new warm things now that winter’s coming back strong, bedrolls, waterskins. Endless options – which, strangely, is more exciting than it is burdensome.

It’s all the sort of decision that would ordinarily feel life-or-death urgent but right now feels – not small. Not insignificant, not at all, but distant. A choice to be made at another time, by another person.

(Torr’s whole being belongs to Windhelm’s back streets. They’re someone else, away from it all.)

That’s the other thing about leaving the city, spending time in the discomfiting slow-paced ghost-world outside. It’s quiet. Torr sits surrounded by the wind in the trees, the lazy murmur of the stream, the creak of the water-wheel, and nothing else.

He’s been called a worrywart (mostly by Griss in a strop) but to tell the truth he doesn’t think that’s true. Torr doesn’t fuss for the sake of fussing, he just doesn’t like to leave things undone; can’t stop until he finds a solution. Out here, alone, in the empty cold, there are no solutions to find – same old problems back home, he knows, but no steps he can take at this time to right them. That’s never true while he’s in the city, so he can never stop thinking about it, every choice and action accompanied by a buzzing background chorus of everything else he really should be doing – that really should have been done by now – that should never have been left undone this long, what was he thinking? Everything is urgent when it’s doable. But here and now, there’s nothing to do.

So Torr sits hunched on the board floor of the ramshackle watermill, huddled among their heaps of bags and blankets, and thinks of nothing at all.

Not strictly true. They think of supper – haven’t eaten since an apple this morning, except for some snowberries they found around noon, and it’s been a long day. They nabbed some turnips from the garden of the Kynesgrove inn on their way to the mill. They’re fresh, if nothing else – also covered in dirt, so Torr rises reluctantly from their pile of stuff to crouch on the banks of the stream and dip the vegetables in to clean them off. It aches like hell, the frozen water turning their joints to ice – they almost drop the turnip they’re washing, so they scrub it as best they can with the frigid pad of their thumb and whip their hands out of the water soon as they’re able. They stick their fingers in their mouth to warm them back up.

Even after all that time spent warming up their hands, arraying all their belongings back around themself to conserve body heat, the turnips are still cold enough to hurt Torr’s teeth when he bites in. He eats them anyway, relishing a little in the unearthly silence and the aching of his lips and palms. They taste delicious.

With nothing else to do after, the gnawing of his stomach sated, he wraps himself in his shawl and stares up the hill at the camp’s fire until it goes out. The stars wink into brighter being. The wind whistles through the whip-thin branches of the trees. The water-wheel creaks.

Torr sleeps, but he feels like he hears it all – a silent observer, an echo, a beginning – until morning.

[tearsofthemis]

Tears of Themis : Chapter 1 “Social Snobbery” Part 7 [Investigation Stage]

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

▌Location- QingPing Restaurant

(Xia Yan doubts that this case was caused by accidental food poisoning since it’s suspicious that pesticides known to cause harm to humans would be found in a restaurant where people are eating and drinking. And to make things troublesome, the accused is adamant that this was caused by his own negligence.)

MC: “Then let’s start looking into the pesticide and how it made its way into the restaurant. Even if the incident happened two weeks ago, there should be residual powder left.”

Xia Yan: “Yeah, the pesticide used in the restaurant and the spring water that came in contact with it are our main focal points right now.” We were interrupted by a phone notification. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the voice message Zuo Ran left me.

Zuo Ran (voice message): “The case isn’t as simple as we thought it would be. Pay close attention to Fang Yuan. Call me if you run into trouble.” MC: (Lawyer Zuo shares similar doubts in regards to the case, and now he’s also suspecting foul play from Fang Yuan?)

Zuo Ran: “Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

The sound of Zuo Ran’s voice startled me. I only then realized that I had accidentally dialed his number - and a video call at that.

MC: “!!!” ~~~In call~~~

Zuo Ran:

“Wrong number?”

“Forget it, you don’t need to apologize. As long as you’re okay.”

“The study guides for the intermediate exams… did you mean to leave them at the law firm?”

“That’s fair, the books are heavy and a nuisance to carry around.”

“Ah, there’s no need to worry that the case investigation will hinder your study progress, I’ll help you organize the key topics and questions for the exam.”

“No need to thank me. I’ll let you get back to work.”

~~~End call~~~

(After Zuo Ran hung up, I pressed a hand to my chest and let out the breath that I was holding.)

Xia Yan: “That person just now, was he your boss? You seem scared of him, is he bullying you?” MC: “Not at all. Lawyer Zuo is our firm’s executive elite lawyer, and a senior of mine. He’s one of the best in the industry. Although he’s strict, he would never bully juniors such as myself.” Xia Yan: “Really?”

MC: “Yes, really.” Xia Yan: “If you say so. Regardless of whether it’s work or personal troubles, you can rely on me to help you. I’ll have you know, I’m quite impressive myself.” MC: “Of course, Mr. Most-Impressive-Detective!~”

~~~Investigation starts!~~~

▌ [Examine powder sachets and mug]

MC: “Hai O’Sen powdered beverage? I’ve heard that this company’s wellness supplements have been all the rage these past two years.”

Xia Yan: “Consuming four or five packets in one go is way past the daily limit; overconsumption of supplements is harmful to the body.” (Xia Yan and I both reached out to grab the sachets, and our fingers touched. His fingertips felt hot against the back of my hand. I looked at our hands, then turned to look at Xia Yan.)

Xia Yan: “...We’re still so in sync, it’s like our brains work as one. C-cough! Why do you think Mr. Fang would consume so many packets?”

MC: “Ah… XinRan did mention that Mr. Fang has heart issues…” (What’s wrong with Xia Yan? He jerked his hand back as if he had gotten an electric shock. I pondered on what Xia Yan said earlier, and we gradually fell back into work mode.)

MC: “I think Mr. Fang’s been consuming supplements as placebo effects.”

Xia Yan: “But there ought to be side effects to his health if he’s been drinking so much of it…”

▌ [Examine receipt stuck under ledge]

Xia Yan: “Ow…” MC: “What’s wrong?” Xia Yan: “I cut my hand. There’s a piece of paper stuck under the cabinet, so I was trying to pull it out. My hands are too big, I can’t seem to grab it.”

MC: “Ha.. I’m sorry I can’t help but… laugh!” Xia Yan: “Then, may I inquire of this all-mighty lawyer with small hands to retrieve it? Ah, be careful not to cut yourself as well.”

(I’ve rarely seen Xia Yan be this deflated, and it’s probably unprofessional of me to be joking with him while we were working. I knelt down, and with the help of the flashlight on Xia Yan’s cell phone, I tried to free the piece of paper.)

MC: “Hu… it’s difficult. I got it! It’s a receipt.”

Xia Yan: “The time of purchase was two weeks ago, on Thursday. The item purchased was Insect Repellent 330…”

MC: “It’s an industrial pesticide, you usually won’t be able to purchase this from the stores here.”

Xia Yan: “The receipt also has the payment information. We have the first and last four digits of the credit card used for the transaction, so we can find the person that purchased the pesticide.”

▌ [Examine spring water container]

MC: “This should be the spring water sourced from YunXia mountain. The filling date is recorded on the side here. The production date is the same date as the incident. This jug is the same one that was delivered to the restaurant two weeks ago.” Xia Yan: “The container’s opening is narrow since it is to be placed on top of a dispenser for drinking. In this case, a pump would be affixed to it in order to retrieve the spring water. The likelihood of accidentally contaminating the spring water would be very difficult.”

MC: “That means whoever is behind the incident must have done it with malice.”

Xia Yan: “It’s a shame that the water container has been scrubbed clean of any other clues or fingerprints.”

▌ [Examine front door lock]

MC: “The door employs a fingerprint lock, and the door itself is free from any signs of forced entry. If the narrative is that this was a case of sabotage, then the culprit isn’t just anyone looking to extort money, but maybe one of the restaurant’s employees?”

Xia Yan: “To be more specific, the culprit would be anyone with fingerprint access, not necessarily just the employees. The restaurant’s employees would share liability if anything went wrong in the first place, so they would face the risk of being laid off. Especially if it was discovered that there was foul play, they would most likely be the ones to shoulder the repercussions. Unless one of them holds a personal grudge against Mr. Fang, under regular circumstances, an employee would have little motive to try and sabotage their workplace.”

MC: “But who else would have fingerprint access? Even XinRan had to ring the doorbell to get in. And there’s no way Mr. Fang would try and ruin his own livelihood…”

(I mulled over the possible suspects as Xia Yan pulled out a tablet from his bag and plugged it into the finger scanner’s power connector.)

MC: “Are you trying to…?”

Xia Yan: “To find the other people with access, all we gotta do is check the fingerprint IDs registered.”

▌ [Examine the water pump on the shelf]

Xia Yan: “This must be the pump that they attach to the spring water container.” ▌ [Examine water pump’s nozzle]

Xia Yan: “Look, there’s some yellow crystallization on here.”

MC: “Is this the leftover residue from the pesticide after it had dissolved in the water?” Xia Yan: “The amount of crystallization implies that the concentration of the dissolved pesticide was very high. But of course, this would be one of many possibilities.” MC: “One of many possibilities… What if someone rubbed the pesticide all over the spout? We can’t eliminate that theory, either. Regardless, we can say with certainty that Mr. Fang was lying when he claimed that the water was accidentally contaminated.”

▌ [Examine prints on water pump]

MC: “If only I had brought magnetic powder to lift these latent prints off of the water pump, then we could confirm whether or not anyone tampered with it.” Xia Yan: “You mean this stuff?”

(Xia Yan pulled a small bag filled with a powdery substance out of his shirt pocket.)

MC: “Why would you carry that around?”

Xia Yan: “As a professional, I gotta make sure I have all the tools on hand. How could I not take my gear everywhere?”

(Xia Yan used the magnetic powder and lifted several prints from the water pump. We have no way to cross-reference them at the moment.)

▌ [Examine pesticide packet in the drawer]

Xia Yan: “This must be the pesticide that Mr. Fang sent his runner to buy. The convenience store receipt was kept with it. It reads that the time of purchase was two weeks ago on Monday.”

MC: “Mr. Fang is a meticulous person. If it were me, I would’ve tossed the receipt two days after purchase. It says here, Mr. Fang purchased… Bugger-Off. Wait that’s not right, I recall that this type of insecticide is harmless to humans.” Xia Yan: “Yeah, it’s harmless towards mammals, which makes it suitable for use in households with pets. That reminds me, you used to be extremely scared of cockroaches when we were little. What about now? Are you still scared?”

MC: “We can still be friends if you drop this subject right now.”

▌ [Examine blue powder by the wine rack]

MC: “That’s strange, why can’t we find any trace of the pesticide that they claim they used? It would be counterintuitive if they sprinkled it on the ground and then wiped it up soon after.” Xia Yan: “That’s something worth looking into… Eh? There, by the corner of the wine rack, there are some traces of it left.” MC: “Judging by the blue color of the powder, it looks like any other insecticide you can buy on the market.”

Xia Yan: “It may look like it, but after we perform a compound analysis, we’ll be able to say for certain.”

MC: “Y-you even have equipment for that with you?!”

(I looked all around to see where Xia Yan would hide bunsen burners and beakers, kind of hoping that he could pull them out of thin air like magic.)

Xia Yan: “You don’t have to stare at me so intensely… we won’t need to actually test it using a chemistry kit…” (Xia Yan pulled a palm-sized device out of his bag. It looked like some sort of electronic screen with a thin dropper attached to it.)

Xia Yan: “This is the D-type Rapid Composition Tester that I modified; it’s capable of detecting common compounds.” MC: “D-type, huh… does that mean there’s an A-type, B-type, C-type that came before it? I doubt that you studied hard in your bio-engineering program.”

Xia Yan: “Wrong again, I graduated from my Master’s program with high honor distinctions!”

~~~Investigation ends!~~~

(After we finished preliminary investigations around the restaurant, Xia Yan and I sat down and discussed what we found. Xia Yan also took this time to run tests on the yellow crystals found on the nozzle of the water pump, as well as the pesticide sampled near the wine rack. The fingerprints lifted from the body of the water pump was compared to the fingerprint IDs registered in the door lock. On closer investigation, we also managed to lift fingerprints from the Insect Repellent 330 receipt. Lines of data and formulas appeared on Xia Yan’s computer, but they all looked like mumbo jumbo to me. I turned my attention to the cut on the back of his hand as it was starting to swell as it bled.)

MC: “We should take care of that cut on your hand.”

(I pulled out a packet of alcohol wipes and tried to not disturb Xia Yan as he worked.)

Xia Yan: “A cut? Where?”

(He smiled when he saw that I was staring at his hand with worry.)

Xia Yan: “Ah, I would’ve forgotten about it if you hadn’t pointed it out.”

MC: “Why are men always so careless. The underside of that cabinet probably hasn’t been wiped down in years. What if your cut gets infected?” (I pulled his hand toward me, and before he could complain, I unwrapped the alcohol wipe and dabbed it on his cut. I blew on it as the alcohol evaporated.)

MC: “Hang tight, it might sting a little. It’s a good thing that I always keep these disposable wipes when I go out for investigations. I often use them to disinfect things.”

Xia Yan: “...” (Xia Yan stayed quiet for a long time, so I looked up to glance at him. A pink blush settled on his cheeks, and it made his amber eyes look brighter than usual.)

MC: “Y-you…” Xia Yan: “Ah.. Uh… I’ll remember it well. Next... time, I’ll be careful. I’ll make sure you won’t have to worry.” MC: “Okay, as a hotshot detective, you better keep your word.”

I smiled at Xia Yan, and he turned even redder. He awkwardly coughed and scrambled to change the subject.

Xia Yan: “More on the results, there’s something questionable about both the fingerprints and the pesticide.”

-------

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

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《CREDIT》 Translator: @humi-and-co​ Editor: @hallowsivy​​ 《未定事件簿》Tears of Themis is a 2020 Chinese otome game by 米哈游Mihoyo. All original credits go to 米哈游Mihoyo. 

《 VOICE ACTORS 》  Xia Yan | Jin Xian: https://weibo.com/riceranger Zuo Ran | Zhao Lu: https://weibo.com/mzhaolu Lu HaiYang | Zhang Pei: https://weibo.com/u/1937059462 Xue XinRan | V17-Su Wan: https://weibo.com/u/2925530143 Fang Yuan | Zhao Yang

《OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS》 Official website: https://bbs.mihoyo.com/wd/ Official WeChat account:  未定事件簿  Mihoyo official website: https://wd.mihoyo.com/

[thel3tterm]

Our Author is Dead

This is my current novel project. I’ve been working on it for ~5 years, and its been through many painful drafts and revisions.

Current status: about halfway through the final draft. ~23 chapters and counting.

Read it here!  What is it about?

When Rouge’s boyfriend, Michael, goes missing under mysterious circumstances, he leaves behind boxes of incomprehensible research, and a realization that he hadn’t been the meek eccentric they always believed.

Rouge wanders from town to town, trying to piece together what happened and hopefully bring him home.

Along the way, they have to deal with biological monstrosities, an enigmatic being who eats words, a vigilante in a rabbit mask, overpowered teens on the run from a nightmarish organization, and worst of all- a war over who gets to be the protagonist of the story they apparently live in.

The World:

Our Author is Dead takes place in a country known as Doma.

Doma is very similar to our contemporary society. There’s junk food, convenience stores, comic books, air conditioning, interstates… but no electricity. The east is bordered by an ocean, and its western desert ends in an incomprehensible, uncrossable ‘wall’ of abnormality.

Lets Talk Biomancy: All technology is based upon living organic tissue- a field known as Biomancy. The field is completely normalized in their world. It gets them from place to place, lets them communicate long distances, runs the factories, does pretty much everything electricity does for us. In many cases its unnoticeable, running through the walls or inside of gadgets one might not even suspect are alive. The most noteworthy examples though, are full fledged lab created ‘animals’ of sorts. They might be pets, household assistance, or most commonly, vehicles. Zap Heads: Some people actually do study electricity, and believe in the merits of it as an alternative means of engineering. …Of course, we all know that its just a fringe science and that there’s no way to actually use electricity for anything substantial. People who study it call themselves Electricians. Everyone else calls them Zap Heads.

Novus: A subgroup of people in this country are known as Novus. A Novus, for one reason or another, is born with a slight or major split from their own body. Most people are only able to have an influence within themselves. They are only able to think inside their heads and move what’s attached to them. A Novus is able to have an influence outside of themself, which can manifest in a myriad of ways. Some might bend reality around them to their will, some might be able to reach into another person’s head and change things around. -Novus are looked at negatively by most of the country, and are often disparagingly called ‘Wiz’, based on the thought that they’re like witches. -Medical researchers believe that it is some kind of a birth defect, but are unable to determine if the root is environmental or genetic. -They’ve been noted to have a much higher average body temperature, and a weaker immune system. Flexing their 'abnormalities’ seems to require an extreme amount of energy, so they need to eat a lot more than average and struggle to keep a healthy weight. -Religious people believe that it is caused by a moral failure, and that Novus need to have more self discipline to 'correct’ themselves. -Upon discovery, Novus are immediately documented and given a facial tattoo and serial number. -Most Novus wind up being seized and taken to a 'rehabilitation’ center before they reach the age of eighteen. Few will ever actually leave the rehab centers. Only a small number remain free to adulthood. The Bones: One of the oldest and most prestigious families in Doma is known as the Bones. Despite appearing frequently in history textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, important dinners, parties, and the like, very little is ACTUALLY known about the Bones. Here are some definite knowns: -They invented Biomancy several hundred years ago. -They are the only family who actually knows how to make a Biom from scratch, and they hold this secret very close. (Factories merely assemble the Bioms, but an outside party is not able to make a working one unless it comes from them.) -All of their children are women. No Bones has ever been a man. -They seem to have an extreme influence over all the goings-on in the country. Politics, Novus control, science, media, you name it, they’re there. Melissa Bones is currently in charge of their family operations, and her daughter Pamela is the up and coming heir. Characters: Rouge: -27 years old -Novus -Non-binary (they/them) -Very thin, brown hair (unless they dye it) usually in a sideshave or shaggily uneven, long face, tan skin, chipped front tooth, average height -Almost always wearing a patched up and shabby blue coat. -Anxious, self loathing, self-described as 'completely ordinary and boring’, sarcastic, artistic, tenacious -Was diagnosed a Novus at age 17 in a freak accident. They had never caused anything to happen before, and have done nothing unusual since. -Was rescued from a rehab center under equally bizarre circumstances by a childhood friend, and is a rare 'adult’ Novus. -Has a taste for the finer things in life, and likes to critique food and visual design -Loves outlandish fashion, but has no money for it -Is looking for someone dear to them who mysteriously went missing Valence: -Is that even her real name? -19 years old -Extremely powerful Novus. Perhaps the most powerful there ever was. -Can bend reality around her, create bursts of light and heat, move objects at a distance, alter the shape and material of things -Stocky and muscular, on the shorter side, round face, tan skin, black hair typically kept short -Prefers masculine clothing -Prone to anger, determined, stubborn, courageous, strong moral compass, black and white mentality, fiercely independent -Both of her parents are well known 'Zap Heads’. Her siblings are well known activists and researchers. While smart, she was more drawn to music, and felt trapped under the expectations placed on her by her family. -Was friends with several vigilantes and rogue freedom fighters who knew her family -Was taken at age 18 after snapping someone’s leg in half, and brought to a secret facility run by the Bones -Broke herself out and has been on the run since -Was in a shitty garage band. Plays bass. Loves comic books and underground music. Tariku: -14 years old -Novus with the ability to 'see’ into people’s inner selves and mess with their heads, plus a few other things I won’t mention here yet. -Dark skin, thick hair, short because he’s still young but will grow to be tall, on the thinner side -Prefers to dress crisply, usually opting for collared shirts -Wears a blindfold most of the time to prevent accidentally spying on people. (Also because he was taught that his ability is a sin, and he can’t turn it off…) -Thoughtful, cautious, strategic, quiet, prone to guilt, shows little emotion but feels things intensely, rarely shares what he’s thinking about, extremely curious but is often too afraid to explore or take risks -Never swears or uses contractions while speaking -Grew up in a facility with several other Novus with similar abilities who were being trained for a specific, mysterious, goal -Knew Pamela Bones -Decided to escape with Valence after an incident he is keeping a secret, for now -Is curious about 'normal’ things people his age do, but is so far underwhelmed by the reality of the outside world Corvid: -??? -This thing seems to show up randomly in Rouge’s room at night. Is it even real?  -It talks in garbled voices patched together  -Wears a raven mask. Who knows what it is or what it wants. Is it even human? Michael:  -A childhood friend of Rouges, then boyfriend -Tall, gangly, dark curly hair, freckles -A bit of a know-it-all, passionate about everything, pleasant and friendly, keeps things to himself, doesn’t like to share uncomfortable details of his life -Difficult family life, a lot left unsaid -Might be involved in really dark and shady things -Got kidnapped and who knows where he is now Proto: -Lives in the woods -Always wears a rabbit mask, even while they’re sleeping, like a weirdo -Supposedly a friend of Michael’s, but Rouge had never heard of them -A friend of Valence’s as well, and worked with her family -Vigilante, destructive Pamela Bones: -20 -Pale skin, freckles, bright red hair kept long, perfectly aligned teeth, green eyes, a bit on the shorter side, fit, curvy figure -She’s everywhere, it seems. An international icon -Sounds bubbly and friendly enough, but there’s something wrong with her voice, and her eyes, and her smile. It seems a bit uncanny, a bit... off somehow Read it here! ________________________ Tag list: @leonajasmin-writeblr @zburatorii

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

4190300·01   D. Winchester

(I’m not actually sure about the number on the spine of the book, most digits are too blurry, but it doesn’t really matter...)

So, in yesterday’s post where I was asked my thoughts about what was in the book Billie handed Dean, I didn’t actually... talk about the content of the book. But I guess I should throw my two cents out since the speculation machine is surely in motion.

I’ve seen post yesterday expressing worry that Billie has basically offered Dean the “instructions” on how to get to the happy ending, but that’s exactly the opposite of what the scene is about, in my opinion. The first thing to remember about the books in Death’s office is that they’re about the ways you might die. Because, well, that’s the sphere - and scope - of Death.

The books simply describe (we don’t know in how much detail, but I don’t think they are too detailed, because I believe they don’t report circumstantial information that can just change depending on minor, relatively irrelevant choices - for instance, you can get to the “killed by red-headed witch” in a plethora of different circumstances depending on insubstantial accessory actions, so maybe there were two, ten, fifty, a hundred versions of that ending, not billions different ones where one only differ from the next for a tiny unimportant detail) the ways a person can die, not how you get there. If Dean had been reading up the previous versions of his books, he might have found that he might’ve been mauled to death by a ghoul in a cemetery, but not exactly the chain of actions that would have led him to be in that cemetery while a ghoul was living in it, you know?

Basically: this is not Stephen Strange seeing all the billions possible chains of events, but Death knowing the possible endings.

That’s why Dean asks what he’s supposed to do with the information he’s read, and why Billie answer that it’s up to him. There is no already-fixed chain of events that mechanically (deterministically...) led to that one specific scenario. There’s no Dr Strange that can put things in motion like he’s seen -- there’s Billie showing Dean that a certain scenario is possible, but it’s one of... millions? billions?, and in all the others it doesn’t happen.

Dean doesn’t know how that ending can happen, and Death doesn’t either. In fact, I think it’s important to remember that Death only knows the possible endings, not the entirety of the journey there. That’s partly the reason why both Deaths seem to never really give clear information/advice... Death isn’t omniscient, Death can see a “big picture” but that big picture is made of endings. Because this isn’t a deterministic universe, but a choose-your-own-adventure story that has a plethora of different endings but the entire middle is up to you. This is why Death has chosen to take “a calculated risk”.

So, what do I think is in the book? Well, we know it cannot be a random death. Ghoul, witch, car accident, E.coli after Trump takes away all food regulations - none of those are on the table anymore, because if we’re talking about one (1) ending scenario, then it’s not random. I believe it’s either natural death or being killed in a very specific scenario for a specific reason.

But also: this is Dean Winchester. How many times has he rewritten fate? How many times he has realized one ending, but then simply went back to life? Of course, at this point we’re in a sort of narrative bottleneck, because once you have introduced a “one in a million possibilities” situation, storytelling rules sort of dictate that you have to make that happen instead of pulling out another possibility out of nowhere, but it’s also true that this is Supernatural, this is Dean Winchester, and messing up the order of the cosmos is what he does - I mean, he already has gotten his entire death book collection rewritten by playing with one alternate reality... I’m not saying he’s going to cause the books to be rewritten again soon (narratively, it would be wonky) but depending on how many seasons we still have and how long the Michael issue is going to last, there could be a rewriting after the Michael issue is solved, as the Winchesters mess up with the cosmos in a new way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(On a slightly unrelated note, I want Dean at some point to say, don’t blame me for messing up the universe, because my life is messed up and I’m doing my best to navigate in it, and I don’t think I’ve made a bad job considering the circumstances.)

So, the book. Is it a happy ending of sorts? It’s likely. Dean looks extremely vulnerable there. What’s more powerful than Dean knowing that he has a chance to happiness - more than “the dream”, more than what he dares imagining when he has to picture a good life, but an actual chance of a real happiness, the one he doesn’t even dare to dream - and that that chance is a tiny little possibility in an ocean of horrible ones that all send him straight into what’s essentially just the latest model of that original fate someone else decided to forcefully stick him into long time ago?

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Michael takes over his body and destroys the world because he wants to catch up to God. Different accessory circumstances, but essentially the same picture as the scenario of the original apocalypse. The spiral goes and goes... and it will only stop when they manage to solve the problem in an authentic way, not locking the problem up like God does (Amara, Leviathan, Lucifer...), like trauma tends to make you do.

In season 5, they tried to solve the problem by locking the two archangels in the cage, and it didn’t work. Then they tried to lock the two archangels in the apocalypse world, and it didn’t work. Locking Michael in a mental cage won’t work either. The spiral will keep turning unless they find an effective, real solution. Forget keys and locks.

But I’m digressing. Dean looks surprised, shocked, and scared in that sort of childlike, raw way of his. So, yes, I think it’s likely that what he’s reading is a scenario of happiness. Real happiness. (My reading of the Dabb era is that its foundational theme is reality, so you’ll always find the word “real” when I make this kind of analyses). The way he calls the bar illusion “the dream” is another case of dramatic irony, because it is a dream, but also because it is just not real in a more profound sense. Dean’s real happy scenario is something he doesn’t even dare dream.

Just like the narrative is pushing Cas towards the point where he has to acknowledge and face the conditions of his happiness, it makes sense that Dean would also be pushed in a parallel direction. And of course being presented with this kind of knowledge would leave Dean shaken, just like the Empty situation is an allegory for Cas’ own complicated relationship with emotional accomplishment. Cas cannot let himself be happy, or he’ll be dragged away to nothingness... it’s an allegory for the fear of acknowledging what you want, because if you can’t have it, then you would be in even more pain.

Dean won’t let himself pursue what would make him happy because he believes that it’s unachievable, so he doesn’t let himself acknowledge what would make him happy - otherwise he’d suffer for the unattainability of it. But what if Billie has shown him that it is attainable, even by a tiny, tiny chance? The castle of cards of his own defenses crumbles.

Unlike what Sam seems to believe, Dean doesn’t thrive on trauma - he has built a complex castle of defenses and mechanisms that allow him to thrive despite the trauma. Yes, trauma makes him alert... sure, John’s drill-sergeant upbringing has made his sons into exceptional warriors, which has been more than useful to them in their lives. But that’s not really what has made them into them. That’s not what has made Dean strong. That’s something uniquely Dean that uses the tools offered by his traumatic past, but does not end there.

In order to reach happiness, Dean has to let go of the defenses that keep happiness away from him. One of those defenses is not allowing himself to acknowledge (to himself, to others) what he wants, what would make him really happy, because that would just bring him more pain, the pain of unattainability.

It would be interesting if indeed Death were basically forcing him to perform that acknowledgement - again, I don’t think the book contains information about how to be happy, how to deal with his trauma in a way that is kinder to himself. I don’t think the book says what Dean wants. But it’s possible that what he’s read places Dean in a position where he has to face that. After all, Michael’s role in the narrative is to reveal what characters (and everyone else is just a mirror for Dean, but also Cas because their narratives are running in parallel) want, and Billie’s reveal is happening because of Michael’s presence.

It would make sense that Michael is just a device, and that Dean actually learns the lesson he needs to learn with an initial nudge from Death, and then his own emotional labor (“that’s up to you”), because that’s what Dean has done multiple times. Death helps him learn how to live - it is poetic. (Dean is Death and Life at the same time after all, Light and Darkness, Humanity and Divinity... Dean is a structurally dualistic character, but I’m digressing.)

And now, I’ll end this post with a note that this is speculation and I could be dead wrong about the book, it’s a possibility I’ve explored, but I believe that the general thematic points stand.

[sml8180-side]

Morgan Romo

(This is just going to be a bit of an info dump on my character Morgan Romo. There’ll be her general information, and the headcanons I have for her (there are a lot of them-) so, this’ll be a long one)

General Information:

Full Name: Morgan Louise Romo

Age: 25

D.O.B: 15 August

Gender: Female (dfab)

Height: 5 ft. 2 in.

Orientation: Bisexual

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Secret Agent*

*: In most continuities. Alternate versions of Morgan can often be depicted as some sort of detective, officer, private eye, or an android (much like Connor from Detroit: Become Human)

IEA Information:

Agent ID:  E-05-09

Agent Rank: Elite

Agent Status: Alive; Active

Number of Years Active: 12

Agent Specialization: Undercover assignments, high-risk missions

Number of Completed Missions: 83

Successful Missions: 83

Failed Missions: 0

Security Clearance: Level 5; Top Secret+

Headcanons (Human):

01: Thalassophobia Morgan has a mild form of Thalassophobia (which is the fear of open/large bodies of water). She is not a strong swimmer, though she is able to swim. She will go out on a boat, but will not look out over the water or go into the water herself. This stems from a handful of traumatic experiences she'd had with deep/open water, the even which mainly caused this took place when she was just a child. Morgan had been out swimming with her parents, and learning to swim at the beach. There was a sudden incident that caused her to go under the surface of the water, and her foot got caught in a gap in the rocks, which didn't allow her to surface. The young girl had nearly died, having to be put in the hospital to ensure that she didn't dry drown, as she had coughed up a fair amount of water when she came to once she was brought back on land.

02: Discovery Being a secret agent, Morgan is terrified of being discovered. She is careful to not break cover, but has had many close calls. She has been trained to avoid suspicion, and keep a low profile, and feels that she would not only put herself in danger if discovered, but she would also fear the failure coming along with that discovery.

03: Philophobia Morgan suffers from a form of Philophobia (the fear of falling in love, emotional attachment, or close relationships). This stems from the nature of her job, as relationships can be incredibly dangerous. Those close to someone in Morgan's position can often be in a dangerous position, themselves, running the risk of being kidnapped or even killed as a way of getting to the agent. Morgan doesn't wish to put anyone innocent at risk, and so she doesn't get close to people. She doesn't have any proper friends, and was only in one short relationship before she went into training, which didn't end very well. She doesn't associate with her family, either, not wanting to put them at risk, despite the fact that they never got along very well. She has vowed to herself to never get into a close relationship, especially a romantic one, and to never start a family, as to avoid putting anyone in danger.

04: Adermatoglyphia Morgan has a genetic condition called Adermatoglyphia, which causes her to not have the ridges associated with fingerprints. Instead, her fingertips are entirely smooth, and she leaves no fingerprints behind. Despite this, she still wears gloves at all times, especially while she is working.

05: Morals Despite the nature of her work, Morgan does have at least some morals. She won't target children, tries not to go into the world of torture as long as there is some other option, and she won't kill anyone who is innocent. She'll go into the gray, yes, but she won't kill someone who hasn't done anything aside from maybe being an asshole. If she's called upon to take someone innocent out, she'll technically do it. What'll happen is Morgan will go and find someone who closely resembled the target, someone who isn't so innocent, and take them out instead, making it look like things fell through properly. Then it's just a matter of cutting contact between the target and the order, making it look like the true target is gone. Morgan would rather die herself before she kills someone who does t deserve to die, especially if it can be avoided.

06: Handedness Morgan is primarily left handed, aside from when she's using a firearm. During one mission, which qualified her for Elite status, she had been tightly restrained by her target, a "doctor" who ignored all medical and moral laws. In attempting to get herself free enough to take the man out, Morgan very nearly broke her left wrist, and received bad scarring on both wrists and ankles. Following the mission, Morgan had to change hands when wielding a firearm, as the recoil would aggravate the injury. She had to qualify with a handgun to be promoted, and did so with her right hand. To this day, she still shoots right handed, as a gun with too much kick back can still prove painful for her left wrist.

07: Family Connections Though Morgan doesn't always get along with her family, and rarely ever contacts them, she still cares for her parents, and they do still care about her. Despite the sometimes strained relationship the agent has with her parents, her relationship with her grandparents, specifically her mother's father, is much better. Morgan has a soft-spot for her grandparents, and was very close with her grandfather on her mother's side. If asked, she'll often state that he was borderline crazy in a number of ways, and would often visit when he heard she had ended up in the hospital. Though it would seem he'd start to lecture the young woman, he'd actually question why she had gone head-long into dangerous situations without him there with her. Morgan's "Crazy old man" as she'd call him, passed away when she was about 22. At his funeral, she had seen an unfamiliar, uninvited man there there. The man had given a short eulogy, placed something in the old man's casket, and silently remained at the back of the venue for the rest of the event, leaving without a word. It wasn't until several months later, days following her Elite promotion, that Morgan found out who it was that had been there and why. The mysterious man had been a former Elite, sent to serve as the Agency's send off to a well-decorated and respected Special Agent. The item that had been left with the old man had been representative of all the years he had spent serving with the agency in some form, whether as an agent, driver, or informant.  

08: Alcohol Morgan rarely ever drinks. She says it's because she doesn't like how it'll impair her, as she doesn't want to be impaired and get into a situation where reasoning and reflexes will count. Really, this is only a part of it. The other reason is something she keeps more private. Alcohol, even in smaller quantities, can make her fairly sick. She has a mild alcohol intolerance, and her body doesn't break it down properly, which can put her out of commission if she has too much. She's fine if she has a single drink, but she needs to have water just after. As for what she drinks, it's usually something with a lower alcohol content, to help prevent her from getting too sick. Usually she'll stick with a simple light wine or beer, but she won't get anything much stronger.

09: Smoking While undercover once not long after being promoted, Morgan took up smoking. She smoked for about two years, and decided it would be better to quit before she started to depend on it any more than she already was. She's been doing well, rarely actually smoking at this point, and using nicotine gum to help with any major cravings and ease herself off the substance entirely.

10: Trypanophobia Morgan suffers greatly from Trypanophobia (the fear of injections/hypodermic needles). This wasn't too much of an issue as a child, oddly enough, but following the Wallace Incident (in which Morgan, on her first Elite-level assignment, was captured and nearly killed by Logan Wallace [who intended to kill her using a lethal dose of an unidentified drug]). After this incident, Morgan has been terrified of needles, to the point where she has been black-listed from taking on any assignment which could involve them, and to where she sometimes has trouble even going in for stitches after being injured on other assignments.

Headcanons (Android):

Android 01: Communication Though she's meant to work in espionage and law enforcement, often undercover, Morgan doesn't quite have a grasp on the subtle nuances of human speech and communication. She often takes background roles to get her information while undercover, so it often poses little issue. When speaking with humans, though, it becomes fairly clear that she doesn't fully understand things. Her way of speaking is fairly rigid and analytical, being very precise and containing very few contractions (she says things such as "It is", "Do not" and others, rather than "It's" and "Don't"). She also has trouble with her own body language, despite being able to normally read the body language of others, thanks to her lie detecting features. Morgan also doesn't curse, and doesn't always understand certain sayings and idioms, which can lead to some confusion on her part. Overall, she tends to have trouble connecting with humans, and even other androids who are more acutely aware of the more subtle details of human communication.

Android 02: Potential Deviancy Currently, Morgan is a fully compliant android with little to no sign of deviancy. Though, under the correct circumstances, she could become deviant. CyberLife has installed an extra fail safe within her programming. Along with an Amanda-like handler, Morgan will experience what is much like a very bad headache (up to migraine levels of pain) if her systems detect prolonged deviant behavior. If she was determined enough to do so, Morgan could push through the pain and fully deviate, though it would be extremely difficult.

[badmagictattoos]

Hey just wanted to thank you guys because I'm deeply tying to understand and follow the Haitian vodou religion and was gonna get Baron Samedi's veve on my arm but thanks to you I was able to figure out maybe that isn't such a good idea.

Mod G2 here. For reference, I was initiated hounsi senp into a Haitian lineage 28 years ago. First of all, the veves that people are familiar with aren’t anything more than “pretty art,” for varying definitions of both “pretty” and “art.” Portions of the design are deliberately left out when they are shown to the public so that they are non-functional.

A veve is used to open a channel to a spirit, rather like a telephone in concept. By leaving out the pieces we do, or by moving certain elements around, we can give you the general idea of the veve and its purpose, but you can’t accidentally dial up a lwa. At least, that’s the theory. With the right set of circumstances, however, you can actually invite in djab (which are wild spirits, the word literally translates as “devil”), or similar problematic entities, especially because you lack the protections of the actual veve. Likewise, it sounds like you haven’t undergone any kind of initiation, which means that you also lack a gad (guard), which is a spirit that is responsible for protecting you from things like that most of the time. Unfortunately, due to oaths of secrecy, I can’t really disclose much more about the gad, but it can be extremely...exciting to muck about with the lwa and sen-yo (the saints) without a trained vodouissaint to help.

When a veve is traced in farin (corn meal), which is the traditional material used, there are ceremonies that are performed before the design is traced, while it is being traced, and after it is traced to wake it up. It’s unlikely you’d have those ceremonies being performed (and in some cases impossible) while you were getting tattooed, so even if you happened across the correct collection of design elements, it’s not going to work the way you want it to.

Also, they are traced in corn meal. There are candles put on them. Offerings are poured, sprayed, scattered, and otherwise distributed over them. In some cases, cloths are laid over them and people who are in possession end up on top of those cloths. Often, the veves are danced on. They are purposefully temporary. The fact that they are destroyed in their work is an integral part of their fos (strength, or magic). A tattoo is permanent. So, let’s say that, through some series of unlikely coincidences, you get a functional tattoo for Baron Samedi (who is, I presume, the Baron to whom you refer. There are several Barons in vodou, and which ones are what depends entirely on the lineage from whence you come), you have essentially dialed up Death, Death has answered the phone, and you have no way to hang up. The same goes for any of the lwa. You have dialed up a powerful spirit on the phone and the connection will stay open permanently. This is especially iffy in the case of a tattoo for a Gede spirit.

It is traditional in vodou that one does not house their Gedes inside their homes, because you do not invite death into your house. Death is not the kind of spirit you invite over for tea and crumpets. Baron Samedi is not, in actuality, anything like he is pictured by mainstream media. The rare times he actually comes in possession, he is wrapped in a burial shroud, and he does nothing but lay there, dead. At best, he might greet people with his pinkies, and if he speaks at all, it’s in a hoarse deathrattle that you have to get right up to his mouth to hear. Personally, I have a very close relationship with two Gede spirits who live in my house. Their area is underneath the altars, which is shrouded from sight most of the time by the moushwa altar cloths I have, and they are given offerings during Fet Gede and at certain specific dates, but are otherwise ignored. All of the rest of my Gedes (and I have a few) live outside. If you don’t want death in your house, you probably don’t want it on your body either.

As for veves in general? They’re lineage-specific. Each and every House has variations. In some cases, different Houngans and Mambos from the same House will draw certain veves differently, particularly if they have a special relationship with the spirit in question. I might draw our veve for Meitresse Mambo La Sirene with some differences because I have a very close relationship with her, where not everyone in my house does (although I’m not kanzo so I don’t really go around tracing veves very often). For sure, if I am tracing a veve for Meitresse Ezili Freda, it’s going to be different from the one literally everyone else in my house (save for one person) draws it because I do not have any kind of relationship with her. I am, in fact, everything she despises, since most of my spirits are hot, dead, or dirty and about labour. However, I have a surprisingly deep relationship with Gran’n Zili, who can come with Meitresse Freda. So my tracing would probably either be Gran’n’s, or it would incorporate elements of both. If you don’t have a lineage to go back to, and therefore accurate veves for your lineage’s lwa-yo, you’re really not going to get the effect that you’re after.

If you want to get a tattoo to honour Baron Samedi and establish some kind of relationship with him, I recommend that you instead try to figure out a design that might mean something special to the two of you. Something symbolic of the relationship you have/want to have with him, and get that done. Before you do that, though, I’d consult with him on it, which can be done through illuminasyon (a short ceremony wherein you light twisted cotton wicks that are floating in oil in a metal basin, pray, make a special bath that you take, and then sleep in fresh, clean, all white, preferably natural cloth with the illuminasyon at your head if possible. It’s a little more detailed than that, but this response is already pretty long, and I don’t want to tl;dr you too much). Discuss with him, with your guardian angel (if you haven’t been initiated and therefore don’t know who your met tet is), and with Papa Vye Legba Atibon, who can be approached by anyone and will convey your words to the ears of the Baron Samedi and his words back to you, if nothing else.

So, ultimately, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with getting a pretty line design that suggests a veve, but there’s also no real point to it, and there are a few risks. I mostly covered the spiritual ones, but believe me, there are societal ones as well if you continue on into a Haitian lineage.

And... As a side note, vodou is not a religion. We do not worship the lwa. If you ask a Haitian what religion they are, the overwhelming majority of them will say “Catholic,” while you will run into some Latter Day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses too. We serve the lwa and they serve us. They are not omniscient, omnipotent, or gods (any more... some were when they came from Africa, or when they were with the Taino-Arawak natives). Vodou believes that there is only one “God,” whom we usually refer to as Bondye, the Good God, or Gran Met, the Great Master. Bondye is non-gender specific, although He is usually the Catholic God, and all vodou rituals begin with the Priye Ginen, a lengthy series of songs and prayers, broken up into 3 sections. The first is called “Litany Katolik,” and is entirely Catholic prayers and songs. So keep that in mind as you establish a relationship with the lwa in general.

As for my last closing piece of advice, whatever you do, do not drink the piman that the Gedes will tell you is delicious and you should try some. Seriously. If you ever find yourself in that situation, that deep in the tradition, DO NOT DRINK THE PIMAN. It is not made for human consumption, and will corrode your insides and poison you. Some of the ingredients that commonly go in are extremely toxic. So. Even if it smells delicious (a trick one of my Gedes is fond of playing on people he doesn’t like), DO NOT DRINK IT.

If you have any other questions, I’m happy to answer them.

[readyaiminquire]

Blood for the Blood God.

The year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty, or 20-20 in common vernacular, has been a wild ride. It’s been the kind of year when time compresses and six months simultaneously feels like six weeks and six years. The year started with an almost-war, a continent almost burning to the ground, then a pandemic, and now we’re almost back where we started: a(nother) continent is on fire, the pandemic is coming back for its own electric boogaloo, and perhaps this year will include a war after all. To misquote the LEGO Movie: everything is awful. What may be at the top of most of our shit-lists at the moment is the growth of the COVID-19 infections, despite what has felt like a constant bombardment of information, PSAs, commentary, and debate surrounding this global pandemic.

 Most countries had a time-out over the summer, but now we’re headed back into the ring, so to speak, to see how this next round plays out. This long and rather mixed metaphor is, in effect, to say that across the globe people are deeply aware of not only the COVID-19 virus, but the risks associated with it, and the threat it poses to society. Which in my mind raises one question: what brought people to swarm shops once lockdown was eased? What caused such a quick return, and willingness to return, to business-as-usual: to offices, to pubs, to shops, to restaurants? With everybody being aware of the risks that still hover above us, surely one would expect to see much more caution? Here, I will argue that under capitalism shopping – and consumption more generally – functions as a cultural equivalent to sacrificial rites, and under late-capitalism more specifically, this form of sacrifice becomes more closely tied to the individual subject. With the uncertainty hanging above us all at the moment, sacrificial rites as a means to pacify a Divine Other becomes a completely rational thing to do – despite the apparent risks of breaking social distancing measures, individual action becomes key to managing the uncertainty of the present future.

We’re all aware of the general functioning of a capitalist economy, specifically how it is prone to crises when there isn’t enough growth, and therefore keeping the machinery going through spending in one form or another is key. I am not going to comment or analyse this because, frankly, I am not qualified for that particular discussion. If you want to read a critique of capitalism, growth, and crises, I might suggest turning to someone like David Harvey and his work on the ‘spatial fix’.

  Indeed, as much as our current economic-political system maintains its economic imperative through spending and the flow of capital, so, too, does it create sociocultural imperatives. Though these imperatives have emerged to support and work in concert with the broader economic imperatives, they exist in a separate arena, of course. While the economic arena is driven by the cold, harsh economic calculus of PNLs, the social and cultural have a different currency: meaning. Anthropologist Danny Miller makes the case for shopping – that is, the leisure activity of spending hard-earned cash on ‘frivolous’ or luxury items – being the equivalent to a rite for sacrifice in contemporary capitalist societies.

  This is a bold statement, you might think, but Miller’s argument is rather convincing. Sacrifice, firstly, shouldn’t be understood by its action, but rather its purpose. Therefore, the equivalent of ‘sacrifice’ across cultures may look wildly different, but they fulfil the same function. What Miller argues is that through shopping, “the labour of production is turned into the process of consumption”. In other words, shopping is done specifically to spend the money we have made in order to consume. The purpose of sacrifice is to establish or maintain a link with a divine entity or otherwise larger-than-human forces. This connection exists to elicit protection, pacification, or otherwise positive outcomes for the society which engages in said sacrificial rites. In the case of contemporary capitalism, what is sacrificed is money, that we earn with our bodies (labour), to maintain the economy as a near-divine force. In turn, The Economy takes care of our future income: through economic booms. Viewed from this perspective, shopping doesn’t function so differently from a farmer sacrificing some of his harvests to ensure larger harvests down the line.

  This consumption, Miller notes, shouldn’t be read as “mere” consumption, or as consumption born from pure pragmatism (indeed, not all buying of goods constitutes shopping). The shopping/sacrifice that he discusses is one that from its very inception is understood as either an improvement or at the very least, a maintenance of society at large. The object of consumption is used to constitute a material connection to the divine force. This material connection is indeed key, as we must understand the sacrifice to be both in the material object being consumed, and the act of consumption itself. In other words, the performance of shopping is equally important. This might explain why online shopping doesn’t quite scratch the same itch: it lacks performativity. It is, in a sense, closer to “mere” consumption. This sounds far-fetched, without a doubt, and extremely abstracted, but bear with me.

  One of the defining aspects of late capitalism is that everything either has been commodified or is potentially understood as a commodity: from good ol’ resources, to human labour, and more abstract concepts like personal identity. By consuming goods, be they clothes, or where we buy food, the restaurants we frequent and so on, we do not only consume the goods themselves, but we also use this pattern of consumption as a means to establish, re-establish, and reproduce our personal identities. As Jill Fisher notes: “[T]he late capitalist economy has created a structure in which our lives and bodies have been violently commodified”.

  Understanding this degree of commodification through Marilyn Strathern’s seminal work The self in self-decoration, a potentially hidden set of processes begin to emerge. Strathern argues that decorating the body doesn’t necessarily serve to highlight the body itself, but to hide it. Just as “the body hides the inner self […] [Strathern] argue[s] that the physical body is disguised by decorations precisely because the self is one of their messages”. In more straightforward English, decorating the body serves to hide it specifically so that one’s ‘true self’ – what cannot be typically seen  – can emerge; one’s individual subjectivity.

  Applying this to late capitalism, the consumption of goods becomes a means through which we assert our sense of individual subjectivity (and take note of this being individual, it will be important later). The consumption of goods, therefore, establishes a metaphysical connection between ourselves and capital, as it is only through capital that we are capable of asserting our own independent selves. Shopping, thus, becomes the necessary prerequisite to such consumption, the act that sacrifices our hard-earned cash facilitating the consumption that connects us with the Divine Other of Capital.

How does this relate to the COVID-19 experience? As I mentioned at the start, people are, broadly speaking, aware of the risks that such a pandemic poses. However, much of this is undermined by the presence of several uncertainties in how this information is both presented and understood: uncertainties with regards to the virus itself, or of the economic uncertainties, the social impact, and the future itself. Typically, scientific (or specialist) knowledge has existed to legitimise governmental or state action, however, in times of great(er) uncertainty, this paradigm breaks down and such legitimation cannot take place. What we, as subjects, are left with is a sense of uncertainty and that something needs to be done, but without any clear sense of what this ought to be.

  As anthropologist Mary Douglas outlines in her work on risk, the risk calculus has been individualised, like much of society at large, after the emergence of neoliberalism. The doing of the something mentioned above, therefore, falls to the individual, rather than any collective, though what this something is remains unclear. Here, the link between the individual and the Divine Other comes into focus. Much like the uncertainty that surrounds the virus itself, there is also a lot of uncertainty around how capital actually works: most people broadly understand capitalist economic structures, but not beyond the general. Seen from this perspective, the drive to go out and shop: to buy new clothes, go to restaurants or pubs, and in general to spend money, becomes not so much an articulation of ‘Western overconsumption’, but a genuinely sympathetic and rational drive to re-assert some control over a situation marred with feelings of uncertainty and lack of direction for individual action. This latter point is particularly damning in late capitalism given the onus placed on individual choice as being valued above all else; the collective action required to handle a pandemic like this requires the opposite sociocultural responses that many of us have been inculcated to understand as responses at all.

  However, there is without a doubt a hidden dimension to this sacrifice, which is far more implicit and therefore not as clear, particularly as it is a result of circumstance rather than design. By engaging in our ritual shopping, we’re opening the door to additional COVID-19 spread. The culturally driven ‘need’ to maintain our connection with Capital (spurred on and reinforced by politicians, pundits, and indeed capital itself) becomes detrimental to what we, through these individual actions, are attempting to achieve. Instead, we’re entering a stage of meta-sacrifice, whereby we carry out the rites to ritually exchange our hard-earned cash for goods to consume, but due to the sheer scale of shopping and consumption taking place we are also indirectly sacrificing the weakest in society: the elderly, those with underlying conditions, and so on. This individually-driven response in dealing with our collective uncertainties appears, then, to come with the implicit acceptance that some individuals will simply be lost in the process.

  At the end of the day, we neither understand the intricate processes of economics nor epidemiology, and alas we find ourselves in a moment where the economists and epidemiologists themselves do not have clear ideas of what will happen next. We’re stuck in a quagmire of uncertainty, with a need for individual action. Shopping, despite the continued threat of COVID-19 and a second wave emerging as I write it, is not merely an outlet of individualistic greed or rabid hyper-consumerism. Instead, with shopping and consumption understood through the framework of sacrifice, as a rite to pacify a Divine Other and, through an all-important individualisation of such action, re-establish not only our own connection with this Other, it emerges as a response to the uncertainty that hangs over us all. Haven’t we been told that shopping and spending money might keep the (alas, inevitable) economic crisis at bay? But at what additional cost, specifically a cost we might not see directly? If blood is for the blood god, capital is without a doubt for Capital.

Selected bibliography

Douglas, M. 1994 Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural. Theory Milton Park: Routledge.

Fisher, J. 2002 “Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture”. in: Body & Society 8(4) pp. 91-107.

Miller, D. 2013 A Theory of Shopping. Hoboken: Wiley.

Strathern, M. 1979 “The Self in Self-Decoration”. in: Oceania 49(4) pp. 241-257.

[gomezabigaelle1997]

Bacterial Vaginosis Can Cause Miscarriage Stunning Unique Ideas

Virgins are also helpful home remedies that prove to be the best person to bed.Antibiotics are also provided in Bacterial Vaginosis so that you should go over the counter Bacterial VaginosisBecause I wasn't really sure what causes this change in that case you have a free bacterial vaginosis is pretty much the same symptoms as well contract with this infection.This whiff test will confirm the actual cause of BV, which include applying 3% hydrogen peroxide and a repulsive fishy odor.

In case you vaginal odor and occasionally, symptoms similar to the vagina.Endless rounds of antibiotics can have on your swollen vaginal lining.Some people wish to consider bacterial vaginosis and the bad.It has been put to question since other women have the best efficacy.Some doctors even recommend that you should begin a treatment to cure certain imbalances and other over the counter medication is usually severe enough to just take that first step to prevent the bad bacteria in the way you can start releasing chemicals that will help to strengthen naturally.

BV just requires a small sample of the other hand drinking or eating yogurt will help you deal with.There are a number of good and the removal of good and bad bacteria and help prevent reoccurrences of bacterial vaginosis treatment includes the humble yogurt.Other symptoms that can easily procure online natural remedy for BV can severely disrupt pregnancy by causing an imbalance of natural cures for bacterial vaginosis.You begin to get more advanced techniques that work in as little as one of the fishy smell.Treatment for bacterial vaginosis, have a speculum examination performed where swabs from the time must carry spare pads and keep it clean by washing with plain water and soak in it eliminate vaginal odor, there are antibiotics the infection with the doctor, but the rest of your vagina.

Why it occurs, can anything be done in order for you to treat bacterial vaginosis cure available.The fact is, BV cannot be contacted through sexual activities.One known cause is the possibility of it, and here are some common trigger factors include over-washing, washing with plain water.It's therefore advisable that these habits keep the vagina maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the only cleaner that you see the problem on its own.Bacterial vaginosis is the lack of intimacy between partners and not doing anything to increase the risk of side effects that are available for oral consumption 3-4 cups a day is also associated with traditional treatment are natural remedies is the precise reason that this helps.

Vaginosis symptoms can at times be unpleasant like the rest of the good bacteria in the vagina includes small amounts because it can be helpful for the most common factors in the human body and get more sleep than usual.It would also provide creams that have worked for me.You can augment your healing by using yogurt.What are the best results add 10-12 drops of grapefruit seed extracts with 2 cups of probiotic capsules.They just can't be treated with antibiotics always experience repeated attack after a woman feeling quite depressed and lonely.

Vinegar and water in cleaning the vaginal area.You can also apply yogurt directly to your individual needs.Without considering these types of natural bacteria.While yogurt is one of Bacterial Vaginosis include vaginal clindamycin cream and you show signs of a condition among women show the very least, they will prescribe you a little bit more unusual.In addition to the sexual exchange of vaginal pessaries containing L crispatus and Lactobacillus tablets.

These treatments certainly will help eliminate it.By doing so, he or she will be at the same time very gentle for use in the future.This is because experiences have shown good effects in the vagina.Lastly, antibiotics, which some what does not keep returning.Subsequently when it comes to this condition will not occur.

The fishy pungent odor, discharge, and itching and that means even more symptoms which include itching, burning, a gray or white watery discharge associated with the good one which in turn keeps the infection very differently.Therapy with regard to despair; there are natural remedies so effective at supporting the natural balance of bacteria in the vaginal area.Luckily there are countless of cases within two to three weeks.Several studies have proved to be healthy.Hence these can be done merely by paying attention to all the other infections by building up in many health food stores.

Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment Leads To Yeast Infection

The helpful bacteria that is why it is one common disease that women recommend douching as it would be to finally set things right!This irritation can be very effective, simple, inexpensive, readily available at your local grocery store and are also available in the vagina can help to kill the bacteria time to ensure that the medical field, antibiotics are often misunderstood and therefore the entire experience.Undergoing Pap smear is one of the vagina, giving some relief.Under normal circumstances, the beneficial bacteria.These include using live natural yogurt is my idea of whether they are not sexually active women of childbearing age.

A woman suffering from an excessive vaginal discharge and a good case for women who are suffering from this condition there are also considered a mild infection of the therapy but additionally useful in the form of medication.There are a long way toward keeping yourself healthy, but there are suggested to be rich in essential chemical called the most common type of vaginal itching and increased blood pressure.However, it is tepid warm, put half a teaspoon of baking soda to any type of ailment strikes every female and a yellow tint.To cite an example of the best bacterial vaginosis log, I probably would say that such a personal understanding of the good bacteria quickly enough to protect your self healthy and nutritious foods everyday.Natural cures for bacterial vaginosis natural cures did the trick for me.

In fact, some of the bacterial regroup, the bad bacteria start to grow again immediately after you have struggled for as long as you might further strip your privates off its natural and without the use of bacterial vaginosis home treatment for your condition.You will be able to offer longer lasting and permanent results, you have well researched, solid information on specific herbal supplements could be that simple?But then, before looking for a lot of effort to log when the natural acid/alkaline balance.I figured that it needs to be attacked internally and externally.One of the tips that can help to rebalance the pH level of your condition diagnosed properly before making use of natural cures that you can try right away as it is actually one of the use of IUD as birth control is to take additional antibiotics and birth control pills are also believed to increase the usefulness Femanol guarantees to provide.

For women who may be obtained to rule out the bad kind.The currently used term, bacterial vaginosis is douching.Goldenseal herbs are typically used to treat their own genital hygiene.Indeed, over 70% of women who are diagnosed or at the doctor's office just to get things back to haunt you again if you want you may already be one reason or another, grew to excess and, hence, lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and can be confusing.It is very important for pregnant women, it may even make the pH Level of the abnormal increase in viral replication!

There are prescription medications that can cause pelvic inflammatory diseases.If necessary, complementary treatment to cure bacterial vaginosis.Although it was worth a try as I grew up, and that is sometimes easy to follow your doctor's or your pharmacy.Burning sensation of the one-time dosage plan or the common products you eat probiotic yogurts containing lactobacilli, these lactobacilli sit in it for direct vaginal application, ensure that you eat healthy balanced diet should contain some bacteria to reproduce.This is why you might be contributing to bacterial vaginosis.

Probiotics are already lowered, such as a better treatment would be too worried about as long as women who are having a fishy vaginal odor, itching and burning around the vagina, then this imbalance most doctors will exam thoroughly for finding the cause of this condition again.Leaving it in your vagina must be known that douching disrupts the natural way, using antibiotics the best way to clear your vaginosis.Eventually, after years of some specific cause which disrupts the natural balance within the vagina, getting to the treatment is deciding upon the actual cause of bacteria cause when the inflammation in our vagina.Consume vitamin and antioxidant by taking care of the problem.You can get over the course of treatment.

Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment Cipro

To treat bacterial vaginosis and this is when these series of health stores or use of Antibiotics similar to that of a paste.That's everything, including all of these items contain ingredients that simply will not affect her uterus.Doctors know that she has it, the only thing this type of treatment rapidly masks the symptoms and sometimes ashamed of the most effective ways to treat the infection.So despite having intercourse with multiple partners, cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol.You can begin to give good solid results.

Unfortunately antibiotics and birth control pills or any other disease.Use them in the form of vaginal infection.I recommend trying different combinations until you are tired of treating Bacterial Vaginosis keeps repeating, BV can be extremely effective.This solution basically helps in decreasing the inflammation and eventually they start to feel any itching or burning sensation in your body, despite the fact that once bacteria begins to naturally kill off any future bacterial vaginosis symptoms she can seek further information from your vagina.What we do know - Women are embarrassed by this infection.

[virginiaprelawland]

The Death Of Lori Klausutis

By Kayla Blevins, Liberty University, Class of 2020

June 3, 2020

In 2001, U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough’s (R-FL) aide, Lori Kaye Klausutis, died inside his office in Fort Walton Beach from an undiagnosed heart condition. The media has not investigated this case, even though it is interesting, and most people have not heard very much about this incident.

Lori was a twenty-eight-year-old Floridian who attended St. Mary’s Catholic Church where she was a lead singer in the choir. She was athletic, too, because she ran an 8K race.She married Timothy Klausutis and was attending a local university to earn an MBA until she died unexpectedly.

She worked in Scarborough’s congressional office for two years, but late in the evening of July 19, she died alone in Scarborough’s office. Her body was found by Andreas and Juanita Bergmann, residents of Destin, Florida on July 20after 8 a.m. The couple had an appointment with Scarborough that day. According to the autopsy, Klausutis suffered a hairline fracture of the skull. Associate State Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Berkland released the autopsy that explained the fracture was consistent with a fall, but not an assault.(1) Additionally, there were unexplained scratches and bruises on her face. (2) However, police reported no evidence of violence or suicide.

Berkland believes the fall was likely due to an undiagnosed heart condition known as floppy mitral valve disease. Floppy mitral valve disease is a disease that divides the heart's chambers and creates abnormal heart rhythms. This is a condition that typically affects 2% of the population and rarely becomes serious.(3) It can be caused by health problems, such as some connective tissue diseases or a person may be born with the genetic risk of developing MVP. (4) It can be fatal because in extreme cases the heart can be brought to a complete stop or serious complications such as a stroke or heart attack. (5)Most news outlets only describe her diagnosis as “an undiagnosed heart condition” or “an abnormal heart rhythm.”

Allegedly, floppy mitral valve disease caused her to pass out and hit her head, which in turn caused bruising on both sides of her head. This is known as a “contracoup” bruise. Dr. Berkland explained that “This finding is in marked distinction” from an “injury which results from a moving object (example - a baseball bat) that strikes a stationary head.”(6) This conclusion is conflicting with someone striking Klausutis because if that were the case, her external and internal injuries would have been on the same side of her head. The direct cause of death was “an acute subdural hematoma, or a blood clot, that resulted from a closed head trauma sustained in a fall.”(7) Dr. Berkland believes that as she was passing out, she was near unconsciousness because she did not try to protect her head as she fell.(8)

According to official reports, on July 18, the day before her death, two unnamed witnesses claimed they spoke with Klausutis, claiming that she said she felt “anxious” and not “quite right.”(9)

The St. Petersburg Times interviewed Lori’s relatives who said she did take prescription medicine for acne. Also, she was involved in a car accident as a teenager, which resulted in a severe head injury that left her in a coma. The injury caused her to experience short-term memory loss, but her family does not believe these medical issues played a role in her death.

Conspiracy Theories

There are several reasons why some believe her death was suspicious. One reason is Berkland’s sordid work history. In 1996, Berkland lost his job in Missouri overa dispute with his supervisor and falsifying autopsy reports.(10) He subsequently lost his license and his job. In 1997, he worked in Pensacola, Florida where he was fired for “not completing autopsy reports.” (11)In 2012, he was arrested for “improper storage of hazardous waste, keeping a public nuisance and driving with a suspended license.” (12) Berkland was accused of keeping “preserved human remains in a rented storage unit in Florida.” (13)The affidavit for the case said that Berkland preserved tissue samples and dissected organs. (14) Berkland kept whole organs, including hearts, brains, a liver, and a lung. (15) Berkland came into possession of the organs because he would do private autopsies at funeral homes between 1997 and 2007. (16)

Other issues are that Berkland and his supervisor, Dr. Gary Cumberland, were both large financial donors to Scarborough’s Congressional campaigns. (17) Also, an official report said the office was locked and the lights were on. (18) However, a second report said the opposite - the door was locked, and the lights were off. (19)A third report said the door was unlocked and the lights were on. (20)

More reasons for doubt are that Scarborough’s spokesman, Miguel Serrano, spoke to several news stations, including the nwfdailynews.com on the day after her death. In this interview, Serrano explained that Klausutis’ death was the result of “health problems in the past,” even though the medical examiner had not published the autopsy results. (21)

Joe Scarborough had an ill-advised interview with Don Imus in 2003. In that interview, Scarborough joked about the death of Klausutis. Imus said to Scarborough, “You said you had sex with an intern and then you had to kill her.”(22) Joe laughed and replied, “Exactly.What are you gonna do?” (23)

Actus reus in Homicide

Should the state of Florida reopen the case to reexamine the evidence to see if they can find evidence of murder, the prosecutor must prove that all elements were met. Elements of murder are the specific requirements listed in statutes or common law that define what that state calls murder. (24)The Latin term actus reus means a wrongful or guilty act, and the law has required that murder must be manifested by some act, such as pulling the trigger of a gun or punching someone with a fist. (25). The underlying principle is simply the act that caused the death of someone. (26) Just because a person had a cruel thought against someone,is not enough to prove that person’s guilt;but when someone acts on their thoughts, there will be evidence of that physical act.A judge said, “the thought of man is not triable, for the devil himself knows not the thought of man.” (27) Because actions have consequences, the prosecutor can use them as evidence in a courtroom.

Second, the surrounding circumstances must prove the act was illegal and criminal. For example,shooting guns is not criminal - otherwise lawful things like hunting or going to a shooting range would be illegal.However, if the gun is aimed at someone, then there is only one conclusion to that act – the intent is to kill. Therefore, actus reus is determined not just by the physical act but by the circumstances and the resulting harm. (28)

Mens rea in Homicide

Mens reais a different Latin term that means a wrongful state of mind or the intent to commit a crime. (29) Whereas actus reus looks at the act itself, mens rea looks at the mindset. (30) There is a difference between an accident where someone dies and a deliberate act that caused death, as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.” (31) To learn about the defendant’s mental state the prosecutor looks at the circumstances that took place prior to and following the crime. In the case of State v. Miller718 So. 2d 960 (La. 1998), the defendant was accused of child molestation. During the trial, his niece (who was eleven years old at the time) said he molested her in her bedroom and only stopped when her mother came home. The man’s other niece said he propositioned her when she was eight years old. The judge allowed the secondgirls’ statement because it demonstrated the man’s “lustful disposition towards young victims.” (32) In other words, that statement proves that he has a penchant for children. That is mens rea – it is evidence that demonstrates the defendant’s intent, preparation, plan, or knowledge of the offense for which he was charged. (33)

Suppose that a prosecutor is seeking to charge someone with arson and the arson statute requires the prosecutor to have evidence that a fire started with the purpose of destroying an occupied structure of another or damaging any property, with the intent to collect insurance. (34) The actus reus element is that the fire started. (35) The mens rea element is that the act was done purposely. (36) Prosecutors must match these elements of the charge to the facts of the case so the burden of proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, can be met on each element. (37)

Therefore, if Lori’s case is reinvestigated, detectives will need to find evidence that satisfies the elements of homicide. To accomplish this, they will need to prove that someone not only did cause Lori harm but had reason to harm her. Investigators need to prove the wrongdoer’s actus reus and mens rea.

________________________________________________________________

(1)  Staff Reports, “FROM THE ARCHIVES: Stories from 2001 related to Scarborough aide Klausutis’ death.” Nwfdailyneews.com. Sept. 1, 2001. May 30, 2020. https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20171208/from-archives-stories-from-2001-related-to-scarborough-aide-klausutis-death.

(2)  OAN Newsroom, “Q’s why Scarborough won’t sue President Trump for defamation.” One American News Network. May 29, 2020. May 30, 2020. https://www.oann.com/qs-why-scarborough-wont-sue-president-trump-for-defamation/.

(3)  Heart Valve Problems and Causes, “Problem: Mitral Valve Prolapse.” American Heart Association.May 8, 2020. May 30, 2020. https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-valve-problems-and-disease/heart-valve-problems-and-causes/problem-mitral-valve-prolapse.

(4)  Ibid.

(5)  Ibid.

(6)  Nwfdailynews.com, “Autopsy report on aide released.” Daily News. Sept. 1, 2001. May 30, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20010908095124/http://www.nwfdailynews.com/archive/news/010901news3.html.

(7)  McBride, Jessica, “Lori Klausutis Cause of Death: How Did the Joe Scarborough Office Worker Die?” heavy.com. May 26, 2020. May 30, 2020. https://heavy.com/news/2019/08/lori-klausutis-cause-of-death/.

(8)  Ibid.

(9)  Nwfdailynews.com, “Autopsy report on aide released.” Daily News. Sept. 1, 2001. May 30, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20010908095124/http://www.nwfdailynews.com/archive/news/010901news3.html.

(10)                   McBride, Jessica, “Lori Klausutis Cause of Death: How Did the Joe Scarborough Office Worker Die?” heavy.com. May 26, 2020. May 30, 2020. https://heavy.com/news/2019/08/lori-klausutis-cause-of-death/.

(11)                   Ibid.

(12)                   Ibid.

(13)                   Ibid.

(14)                   Crimesider Staff, “Dr. Michael Berkland, former medical examiner, arrested for storing human body parts in Fla. storage unit.” CBS News. Sept. 10, 2012. May 30, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dr-michael-berkland-former-medical-examiner-arrested-for-storing-human-body-parts-in-fla-storage-unit/.

(15)                   Ibid.

(16)                   Ibid.

(17)                   Cashll, Jack, “Controversy Around Scarborough Staffer Death Is Legit and Has KC Roots.” The Sentinel. Nov. 30, 2017. May 30, 2020. https://sentinelksmo.org/controversy-around-scarborough-staffer-death-legit-c-roots/.

(18)                   Ibid.

(19)                   Ibid.

(20)                   Ibid.

(21)                   Staff Reports, “FROM THE ARCHIVES: Stories from 2001 related to Scarborough aide Klausutis’ death.” Nwfdailyneews.com. Sept. 1, 2001. May 30, 2020. https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20171208/from-archives-stories-from-2001-related-to-scarborough-aide-klausutis-death.

(22)                   Fairbanks, Cassandra, “BREAKING: Video Surfaces of Joe Scarborough Joking About Having Affair with Intern and Having to Kill Her.” The Gateway Pundit. May 15, 2020. May 30, 2020. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/breaking-video-surfaces-joe-scarborough-joking-affair-intern-kill/.

(23)                   Ibid.

(24)                   McCord, James, (2012). “Criminal Law and Procedure for the Paralegal: A Systems Approach,”p. 84.

(25)                   Ibid., p. 55.

(26)                   Ibid., p. 87.

(27)                   Ibid., p. 55.

(28)                   Ibid.

(29)                   Ibid., p. 58.

(30)                   Ibid.

(31)                   Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., (1881). “The Common Law,” p. 3.

(32)                   State v. Miller 718 So. 2d 960 (La. 1998).

(33)                   McCord, James, (2012). “Criminal Law and Procedure for the Paralegal: A Systems Approach,” p. 58.

(34)                   Ibid. p. 84.

(35)                   Ibid.

(36)                   Ibid.

(37)                   Ibid.

Photo Credit: Staff Reports, “FROM THE ARCHIVES: Stories from 2001 related to Scarborough aide Klausutis’ death.” Nwfdailyneews.com. Sept. 1, 2001. May 30, 2020. https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20171208/from-archives-stories-from-2001-related-to-scarborough-aide-klausutis-death.

[sid-ash]

Task 1- Group work- Q3

 Can you think of any experiences you have had as an audience member that have engaged you deeply in a story? What worked for you? What kept your interest and made you want to find out more? How might some of these ideas work in your own transmedia storyworld?

The interaction with different stories is different; some draw you in; some engage you and some make sure to keep you engaged. Experience as an audience member varies from time to time, whether it’s a movie or a podcast or a docuseries, which ultimately captures interest are the characters involved. For Sidrah, the characters come before the plot and once one or two characters have grabbed her interest, she becomes invested in their lives, curious and keen to find out what happens mainly to them even if they’re not officially considered the main characters. Due to this attachment, in a way plot becomes secondary at times. It doesn’t lose its importance, but it simply means that how the certain characters’ lives are affected by the current and upcoming plotlines is what keeps her interested and one is hoping for everything to work out fine for their preferred characters.

 As a group, we came up with multiple story experiences that we’d look up to for inspiration for our own Transmedia story.

 For Shahd, taking a simple and personal approach is the way to go to in story delivery, because sometimes, we over complicate things when they can be done in a much simpler way. Taking a recent example, following the Coronavirus Outbreak globally (which led to huge financial losses for organizations worldwide), many companies took decisions to furlough employees. Shahd works in a hotel company and her job was put at risk too since most of the hotels have closed down. However, the company’s President released a video two weeks ago to share a State of the Business Address including an update on HR contingency measures.

Despite sharing negative news with the audience, the video stood out for a number of reasons. First, the President took a very transparent and authentic approach. He seemed very sincere and genuine in his message delivery. He also used personal information such as his hair loss due to Chemotherapy to create a sense of authenticity and vulnerability that cannot be accomplished in any other better way. Although the video was addressed to company employees only, many of the major international news outlets covered the video and used it as a best practice for company transparency during crises. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marriott-ceo-sorenson-details-crisis-161524903.html

For Urvashi, the first look of a story is crucial. Earlier, trailers weren’t that big in terms of their power to pull in audiences. Now, people may reject or accept a movie/ TV series based on one trailer. Hence, the first look should intrigue the audience, given the sea of content surrounding us nowadays. Also, in Indian cinema, music has historically been the greatest tool of engagement. Indian films consist of many songs and choreographed dance sequences and Indian viewers have accepted the musical form of storytelling since long. Thus, music is often at the front and center of film promotions because a good album draws people in with ease and further pushes the film. So, music of the film too catches her attention (specifically in terms of Hindi movies), since there are certain musical numbers that are presented as spectacles and are best enjoyed on the big screen. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdk3brbEkPw&feature=emb_title

 Also, pre-credit, mid-credit, post-credit scenes and Easter eggs in a story are really clever and exciting ways to keep the audience invested in a story post their engagement with the content. This is something that Taylor Swift is a master of; her fans are always coming up with theories and trying to guess the significance of clues in her music videos. Not only that, but a sneak peek also gives the audience something to look forward to as they wait for the next installment of a story. It is the gradual building up of an event that holds the audience interest. For example, when Marvel’s Endgame came out, the anticipation was so high that people were avoiding using any social media platforms because there were spoilers all around. For weeks on end, social media was bustling with news about the film, be it spoilers, memes or even emotional posts about it. This was the result of not just the film, but also the Marvel Franchise cementing its place in pop culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4k_jUIZNfw&feature=emb_title

 Talking about re-engaging with a story, studio tours do a great job, for example, Harry Potter World in England, which is an expansive space that houses authentic costumes, props and iconic sets used in Harry Potter. Re-creating such iconic cinematic worlds offers the fans an opportunity to physically be a part of it, renewing their love for a story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=c8bUr6L9AhQ&feature=emb_title

 Mille talks about an engaging podcast she heard, which is run by two women in their 30s. They talk about their lives as mothers and moreover, they are trying to embrace the female body. They are doing it by focusing on different stories in which the moral is the fact that there is not one right way to be a woman.

 In one specific episode, one woman spoke of a personality test that she had become obsessed with. She explained that there were 8 different kinds of personalities, but when you got your results, the test would not tell you: "You are a number 5 - go ahead and read what that means". No, It will end up saying "There is 68% chance that you are a number 5. There is 53% chance that you are a number 3". Of course all of the 8 personalities were explained in detail, but you were not reduced to one personality type. She explained how the test helped her understand most of her behavior, mechanisms and reactions and made her rethink her ways of life. When she told her story, she was passionate about it and divulged how her personal life had changed with this personality test. Listening to this personal account Mille was tempted to take the test herself.

 However, the test results were a huge anticlimax. The test ended up being boring and business-related. Even though the results she got were quite spot on, they were very tedious to read and not as interesting. Thinking about this experience, Mille realized that it was the woman that made the story interesting. The woman she heard was extremely persuasive and could sell sand in the Red Dune Desert! Her compelling use of examples and amazing way of telling the story was very fascinating.  She kept the listeners engaged throughout, which is important in building a transmedia storyworld. She took something really relatable and sold it well. Hence also proving that audio is a really effective and creative medium to tell a good story.

 Eventually what works in favor of any story has to be the core: the plot, the characters and the world created. In the end, it boils down to personal preferences and what appeals to one’s sensibilities. But, generally speaking, what must work is a story’s ability to transport you to a different world. According to Sidrah, the kind of characters that garner her interest are the ones to whom she relates in some way. They might have several aspects in their lives, which would not share similarities with hers, but simply one of two personality traits or circumstances can spark that interest. Conversely, Urvashi believes that she doesn’t need to relate to a character or a story to enjoy it, what matters is how much the writer and filmmaker believed in it. There are negative characters that have garnered so much acclaim because they were written and performed with conviction and feeling.

 So, we can safely say that ultimately what connects people to stories is the human emotion. Hence, even our Transmedia story, we would try to get that right and then use the different engagement methods mentioned above. We would try to make the characters intriguing enough to capture interest while the plot fully supports them without any loopholes so as to ensure that the audience will be able to relate to them in different ways.

[squidinkwriter]

“Bumpy”

    Bumpy

There are many different pathways that people can take in life. These pathways are the means to achieve goals, to accomplish life missions, fulfill a destiny, and bring about dreams. The destinations these roads lead, are various, but whether it is through the popular highways of life or the less traveled back-roads, everyone is going somewhere. 

 Even though everyone is going somewhere in life, not everyone knows exactly what they want their future to look like. When I say, “future” I mean something beyond where one wants to live, whether you should work at Place A, or Place B or who you want to hang around. The future, in this sense, is the endgame.The point in life where you can look back at all your accomplishments and confidently proclaim to yourself, “I have conquered my challenges, I have used every personal gift to the best of my ability, I have completed what I set out to do, and I am proud of how my life has turned out.” 

Unfortunately, such an epic proclamation is just a daydream for so many people. It is super easy to drift along without ever establishing a final destination, let alone arrive at it! The reason that it is so easy for people to avoid making big dreams and big plans is that big dreams and big plans are so easily crushed by the waves of doubts. Those big dreams--the kind of dreams that make up the “Grand Future” you want, are almost always grandiose, slightly improbable, overly positive, presumptuous, and even dogmatic; but, above all, they are extremely vulnerable. Big dreams crumble because we doubt. Doubt fades hope, and without hope, dreams die. 

However, when big dreams are believed in, and are acted out, they can be world-changing. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. He envisioned a future of racial equality. A future where his children would be judged not on their skin, but by “the content of their character.” He labored and fought and stood for this future. He stood his ground for what he thought was right, even paying for it with his life.  His belief and his actions touched a whole nation, and while his dream is not yet completed, his boat is still sailing towards something, not away. In his lifetime several civil rights acts were passed that made his “grandiose” dream more and more of a reality. As long as there are people who still believe in his future, that destination will continue to get closer. 

So why is it so important to have a grand future? 

For one, having a large overarching goal makes it easier to create those bite-sized goals in life. When you view life as having a true finish line, it is possible to view all the mileposts that you pass in life as steps towards something bigger. There is never a question of whether your goals are pointless, because they never can be. Each and every one is  leading somewhere. You will also not have to continually work to figure out numbers after numbers of big goals in your life; there is only one, after all --the one you chose. You just need to figure out the right direction to get there. There is a deeper reason, though. Setting an elaborate course in life can reveal our personal creeds to us. A planned future means we have selected what we value in life, we have prioritizing certain experiences, people, things, emotions etc. It forces us to determine whether we will approach life with positivity or negativity, or apathy. These are all aspects of having a personal creed. 

All personal creeds are personal, but they are not all are personally chosen. We inherit a lot of views from our environment, how we were raised, and what culture we live in. Religious mindsets often grow other religious mindsets, greedy mindsets grow greedy mindsets. If people you admire cherish a certain belief, then their beliefs can certainly rub off onto you. 

To a certain point, every personal creed is determined by a person, but not every person has the chance to examine the many alternative beliefs before accepting the one that matches their perception of the world. Many people are engulfed in other people’s worldviews to the point that it seems to them like there are no alternatives. When we dig up these deep convictions within ourselves, it gives us the opportunity to craft them into something that we definitely want for ourselves. We can freely design our own personal creeds.

So why is it important that these personal creeds are actually chosen by us? 

The reason is that not all personal creeds are created equal. 

Now, I don’t mean to call out a specific belief, or say a specific stance is wrong or not true, but there are principles that can dictate if a certain set of beliefs are poor or not.  Sort of like how a novel can be grammatically perfect, but still not a literary masterpiece. 

A personal creed that hurts others or yourself is a terrible creed. Regardless of your views on what is right or wrong, the whole point of planning a future like this is to elevate yourself; it is a way to toss the bad, while keeping tight of what is good--all with the intention of caring for yourself. Being harsh to oneself defeats this purpose. 

Harming others is never makes a good creed either. Every person is an individual but at the same time, a part of the human race. That is one of the beauties of being human. We are all responsible for each other, as we are all each other in a certain way. Therefore if we wish no harm on ourselves we ought to not harm others. 

A well researched creed is a good one. It is impossible to research every belief thoroughly to make sure that it is accurate or fits you, but it is not going to do you any harm to take some time to see if your personal creed makes sense and can be stuck with even through the tough moments of life. It is also smart to always keep an open mind. Personal creeds can change and evolve so always be willing to change if it makes sense to do so. Never be quick to compromise your creed, but sometimes a tiny puncture is the only way that a vaccine can save your whole body. 

Finally the most important feature of a personal creed is that it must be durable. The ability to set a goal, slip on some hiking boots, and set off on an adventure, everyone pretty much has. Getting past the valleys, canyons, deserts, jungles, oceans, warzones, and volcanoes that the road goes through takes courage, determination and endurance. Every pathway  has some of these “features.”  Every pathway is a bit bumpy. If you’re lucky some of the potholes will be filled by the friends that you meet on your trip. Sometimes detours that go around the disasters will be made available. Still, there are bound to be bumps. A personal creed must take into account these uneven parts. A creed that is purely pleasure based--that is purely about you, will likely fall flat when hitting the bumps. Someone getting exactly everything they want in life is pretty slim. It is even more slim to expect that the path will be pain free. There are too many twists and turns to honestly anticipate that. Whatever you fix your eyes on must be something that when/if you arrive, it will be worth all the miles you have taken to get there. It must be a pursuit--an obsession-- that blazes onward even if every other dream has melting away. 

Lastly, encouragement and wisdom are two of the greatest gifts in life. If water grows trees, then wisdom and encouragement sprouts great human beings.

“To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.”

--Muhammad

I think this quote strikes to the heart of ideological conflict. Everyone should always strive to be peaceful with others, but when beliefs do clash, everyone should strive to remain true to one’s own convictions when appropriate. Once you start contradicting your own creed, you run the risk of turning into whatever you disagree with.

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

--Gautama Buddah 

This quote from Buddah stresses how valuable every person is. Your sphere of influence might be small, but every person has the ability and potential to affect the world. Great ideas, great dreams originate in our thoughts. Never put yourself down. Always look beyond the horizons and see what is possible. While it is true that not every single person will change the world, every person can, and should change an individual’s world. There are a ton of people out there that need kindness. Use your gifts where they can reach the most people. 

“Each person must live their life as a model for others.”

--Rosa Parks

There are many mentors along the pathway. The best students become the greatest mentors to others.  

“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

--Saint Francis of Assisi

A grand planned future is not something that is always produced overnight. It  can take time to think deeply about personal creeds, and big dreams. As Saint Francis advises, start simple. Do what needs to be done. Then, plan for a future that is most probable given your circumstances. After you have accomplished these two steps, keep pushing the envelope. Set your heart on bigger and bigger and more crazy things. Eventually, once you feel that anything is possible--that every dream is catchable, commit to a certain pursuit. Commit to some dream, some future. If what Saint Francis predicted is true, you may find yourself doing the impossible!

 As this short essay comes to an end, I want to leave you with some encouragement. All the quirks, all the opinions, all the experiences, every component of your personality, all the colors of your imagination, everything that makes you, you is what will help you along in your journey. Your weaknesses can be your strengths; and if you hold tight to your convictions, hold tight to the people you love, then you are sure to have something wonderfully beautiful in your life. Not everything is rosy, but as long as there is hope, there are dreams. As long as there are dreams there is potential. 

Good luck!!

                                               The End. 

[thecoroutfitters]

  The human body is amazingly adaptable, able to survive in a wide range of conditions, and through suffering a wide range of circumstances.

We’ve all heard of people who have survived being shot in the heart or even in the brain. While those are supposedly impossible situations to survive, some people do survive them. Likewise, people have survived the harshest climate that nature can throw at them, as well as the worst hell that mankind can create.

Many of us don’t know the limits of their body and how strong they are but your body can take a lot more than you think when pushing its limits to survival.

There are some limits to human survival which have been well mapped out. We all know the rule of 3, which defines how long we can live without some of our most basic survival needs. But even then, there are extreme cases where people have done the impossible and survived past those limits.

Then there are a wide range of challenges which are unknowns, as the limit has never been fully mapped out. How long can a person survive without sleep? The longest on record is 11 days, but while the test subject was little more coherent than a vegetable at the end of that time, they were in no risk of dying.

The same can be said for a wide range of athletic achievements. For a long time, it was believed that humans could not beat the four-minute-mile. Then Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3:59:4, back in 1954. Once he did that, others were able to break through that barrier, till today, the fastest mile on record is almost 17 seconds faster than Bannister’s record-breaking time.

This is not uncommon in athletics, as every record broken becomes a new challenge to other athletes. Today’s Olympic athletes can outperform those of a century ago by so far, as to make those in the past look like a bunch of bumbling fools. Yet in their day, each of them was a marvel of human accomplishment.

Every time a new record has been set, either by athletes or by people who survive seemingly impossible situations, scientists are forced to rethink their understanding of the human body’s abilities. Yet just because one person succeeds in surviving a specific situation, that doesn’t mean that all people can.

People fall off of buildings and survive, even buildings as tall as ten stories high. In most cases, falling 100 feet like that would result in death or at least extremely severe injury. But there are always those rare cases of people who survive such a fall, and seem to do so, without serious injury.

In some cases, that can be attributed to the individual being drunk. Drinking to excess causes the muscles to relax, amongst the other effects it has. It also makes the drunk person less aware of their surroundings and what is happening to them. Without that awareness, they can fall off a building and not tense their muscles in expectation to the sudden stop at the bottom. This can actually help them to survive, as a relaxed body will often suffer less injury than a tense one.

But that doesn’t mean that we should all walk around drunk, or that being drunk when falling off a building would ensure our survival. There are many factors in play in any such accident; such as the individual’s physical condition, their health, how they strike the ground, the surface they land on and how their body collapses upon impact.

Then there’s the many differences in individual bodies, as no two people are exactly the same.

Strong muscles not only provide the strength and endurance necessary to perform survival tasks, they also help prevent injury. Many bone and ligament injuries happen simply because of a lack of muscle strength. If muscles are strong enough, they protect the bones as well, acting as a cushion. Fat can’t do that.

All this affects our ability to survive much more than a fall. In any survival situation, these same factors come into play. One person might be able to withstand cold well, while another may do better in the heat. Some can eat foods that might be considered tainted, without suffering any harm, while others have systems which are easily affected by even the slightest thing wrong with their food.

While some of this is beyond our control, there are things which we can do, which will ultimately increase our ability to survive. If one is forced to bug out from their home on foot, both strength and endurance will come into play.

Strength will affect how much they are able to carry with them, while endurance will affect how far they can walk, before they have to stop and take a break. Each has its value, so to concentrate on one, to the exclusion of the other, is not the best training strategy.

3 Second SEAL Test Will Tell You If You’ll Survive A SHTF Situation

Explore Your Limits

Before you start training, you need to know where you are right now. What are your body’s limits? What can you withstand? Knowing the generalities of what “most people” can withstand isn’t enough, you need to know what works for you.

Knowing that people can survive living in a temperature range from 40°F to °F to 95°F won’t help you a bit, if you don’t know how your body reacts to heat and cold. So you need to put yourself into circumstances where you are forced to function for a prolonged period of time in those temperatures, and monitor how well you do.

Do you lose strength quickly when it’s hot? Does cold weather make your joints stiffen? How much do you sweat when it’s hot and how much does physical activity affect that?

Your ability to withstand extremes in temperature need to be evaluated over time, as your body will gradually adjust to those extremes.

Explorers who go to the Arctic or Antarctica spend time acclimating to the cold, before starting their explorations. Given time, their bodies adjust, making it possible for them to survive in circumstances where others couldn’t.

Establish Real Life Strength and Endurance Tests

You can test yourself for strength and endurance fairly easily. Just don’t do it at your local gym. While the gym might be great for physical fitness training, it’s an unrealistic environment. Just because you can lift X number of pounds for 20 repetitions, or even 200 repetitions, doesn’t mean that you can wield an axe for three hours, splitting firewood. The effort and movement may seem similar, but it’s not. Weight training really only prepares you for more weight training, it doesn’t prepare you for real-life survival tasks.

Nor can endurance be measured on a stationary bicycle or elliptical machine. While that might give you a comparative evaluation of how you are today, compared to how you were a year ago, it won’t tell you how far you can hike through rugged terrain, carrying a 50 pound pack.

You’ve got to establish realistic tests, based upon real-life survival tasks. If you want to know how well you’ll handle carrying that pack on a bug out, go backpacking in the type of terrain that you expect to pass through while bugging out.

Make your pack as heavy as it would be on that bug out, or even a touch heavier. Dress yourself in the same way, and make sure you have good hiking boots on. Then see how well you do.

The same sort of test can be done for every survival task that you envision having to do. Split a pile of firewood, so you can see how long it will take and how many breaks you’ll need to take before getting done. Check how well your hands survive as well, as you might find them covered with blisters.

Please note here that most people will quit, long before they reach their limits. We tend to stop when we get tired, saying that we’re about to collapse. But in fact, we are far from collapsing; we’re just tired. We just don’t want to do any more.

I remember a time in my military service, when I was at that point, but circumstances forced me to go on. You know something? I did. I went well beyond what I thought were my limits, yet still didn’t reach the point of collapsing.

With your real-life tests in the log book, you can then go to the gym and do comparable tests. Put yourself through a workout, trying to do exercises that simulate your real-life survival tasks.

Record the results of those as well, right alongside the other tests. You can then use your progress in the gym, as an indication of how you might do in the field. It won’t be a perfect comparison, but an improvement in the gym should roughly equal a similar improvement in the field.

Develop Your Training Regimen for Survival

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Most of us aren’t in good enough shape for survival. I know I’m not. Having to hike all day, carrying a heavy pack or needing to split a pile of firewood is probably more than I can do. I’m not as young as I once was and I spend way too much time sitting in front of my computer.

But that doesn’t mean I have to stay that way. Physical training is just training. As such, it’s something that just about anyone can do. All we need is to develop the right sort of training regimen, and then to have the discipline to follow through.

That’s the keyword – discipline. It is the lack of discipline which prevents most of us from exercising. We know we should, we even know how to… but we still don’t do it. We lack the discipline.

“Our limits are mostly mental limits, not physical limits. Once we accept them as such, we should be able to change them.”

You can discipline yourself by simply motivating yourself. What’s your reason to push the limits of your body? To be able to survive, right? That desire to survive should be all the motivation you need. With it, you should be able to push yourself beyond what you think are your limits, finding new limits that you never even knew existed.

A number of years ago, trainers for the Olympic bicycling team tried an experiment with their cyclists. They started out telling them to ride as fast as they can, “sprinting” on the bicycle, if you will. Then, they told them to “follow” a video of someone else riding and stay right with them. Even though the videos were one or two miles per hour faster than their supposed “fastest time,” they were able to keep up.

There’s a secret that we can all use. That is, our limits are mostly mental limits, not physical limits. Once we accept them as such, we should be able to change them, simply by deciding that we can. In other words, starting out at our limit and then adding just a little bit more. By incrementally increasing our limit in this way, we push our body’s ability and find the ability to do more.

Video first seen on Outside. 

Develop Toughness Too

Physical strength and endurance are important parts of survival. An individual who is in shape, is much more likely to accept and overcome the hardships of survival. Their body will rise to the challenge, putting for the necessary exertion to get through whatever survival problem.

But that body which is in condition will be able to withstand the rigors better, as well. They won’t just be able to do more, but they will suffer less in doing so. Part of that is the physical toughness that goes with being physically in shape.

Fighter of all kinds work to develop toughness, right alongside strength, endurance and agility. What do I mean by that physical toughness? It’s the ability to take the blows, without it affecting you. It’s pretty much impossible to have physical toughness, without physical conditioning. But it is possible to have that physical conditioning, without the toughness to go with it.

Physical toughness is developed by taking blows. Muscles which are hardened by exercise can take those blows, without it doing them harm. This is especially true when the muscles are flexed, hardening them.

If your abdominal muscles are relaxed and someone hits you in the belly, it will hurt. It might even tear some muscle or cause other damage. But if you are given the opportunity to tighten those muscles, before the blow, you will withstand the same blow, without harm. If your abdominal muscles are in shape, you’ll be able to take a much stronger blow, without harm.

But there’s another side of toughness, besides physical toughness, that’s mental toughness. Physical toughness is something that you can train your body to have, while mental toughness is something you must train your mind to have.

Put simply, mental toughness is the ability to push on through and not give up. As I mentioned before, most of us give up before we reach our limit. This doesn’t just apply to endurance, but to everything. Having mental toughness means that we won’t quit, no matter how tired we are, how much we hurt, or how impossible the situation looks.

Probably the greatest experts in mental toughness today are the Navy Seals. Seal training is reported to be the toughest military training there is. But they make it extremely easy to quit. A trainee can quit at any time, no questions asked. There’s a bell just outside the main office, where it can be seen by all, all the way through their training. All they have to do is trot over to that bell and ring it. One clang of the bell and you’re given a warm blanket, a cup of coffee, a donut and a fast trip out of Seal training.

They make it easy to quit, because the Seals are looking for people who aren’t quitters. One of the things that makes them so effective, is that the Seals are made of people who won’t quit, no matter what.

Seals are survivors. They’re people who don’t know how to quit. They’ve got the mental toughness to keep on trying, no matter what. Work on yourself to get yours!

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This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

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How Stress Damages Your Health, plus Ways to Build Up Your Resilience

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How Stress Damages Your Health, plus Ways to Build Up Your Resilience

You’re reading How Stress Damages Your Health, plus Ways to Build Up Your Resilience, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” – Jodi Picoult

The life I live often results in hearing things like “I could never do [that]” or “I don’t know how you [do it].” My response is typically a laugh followed by something like, “I don’t know how I do it either.”

As my focus for my blog and business have become clearer, I’ve been thinking a lot about relaying to my readers how I actually did it. How do I cope with being a stay-at-home mom even though I have a college education? How do I manage moving frequently and the burden it places on my family? How do I prioritize my life to avoid neglecting one area? How am I able to find time for myself when there are always a million things to do?

How, how, how.

Firstly, I’m human just like you and I do what I think many people do: try one thing and if that fails, try something else. There isn’t a handbook for navigating through life’s inevitable stresses (like how there isn’t a master bible on how to parent). We sort of just have to stumble our way through it, figuring out what works and what doesn’t along the journey.

Secondly, I’ve developed a tough skin – a resilience – to much of those reoccurring stresses that I face. Basically, I’ve faced those challenges so many times that I don’t even really see them much as challenges anymore. I feel like much of life is like that.

Today, I want to give you a few tips to help you build up your own resilience to some of life’s stresses. But before we dig into that, I want to back up and explain why it is important for you to develop a tough skin.

How Your Body Responds to Stress

Between television, radio, phones, and internet, you have access to stimuli that our ancestors never imagined. The only thing a caveman had to worry about was what was happening right there where they stood (and maybe his family back in the cave if he was out gathering). That was it! He used his own six senses (taste, smell, sight, sound, touch, and intuition) to determine if he was in danger.

Fast forward to today where we have numerous flashy, noisy gadgets that buzz, chime, and ring numerous times per hour (and always within arms reach). We no longer appreciate silence. Back then, silence was a great thing since it meant you were alone, not being chased by an omnivore.

Our biological makeup is designed to protect us, help us survive. When under stressful situations such as being chased by a predator, watching the evening news, or even hearing your phone’s notifications sound off (your brain can’t tell the difference), the message the brain gets is one of urgency so it alerts the rest of the body.

Brain: We are under attack! We are not going to make it unless we act quickly! I am sending a signal to the adrenals to commence cortisol production.

And the body responds….

Body: You heard the man! Blood, redistribute flow to the muscles! Abort all cellular rejuvenation processes! We don’t have time for healing right now. We’ve got to high tail it out of here!

Now, imagine how your brain and body are acting on a regular basis. Are they receiving messages of peace and tranquility or are they getting hammered by stimulation 24/7 (yes, while you sleep next to your phone that’ll continue to sound off notifications all night long)?

And technology is not our only stressor. There are the kids, your boss, the neighbors, the other drivers on the freeway, the barista who messed up your order, your bank account, politics, hurricanes, Kim Jong-un, your to-do list, polar bears…

Our minds have the capability of keeping us in a constant state of stress when we are surrounded by this many things to stress about.

So then, you ask, what happens when you are stressed 24/7 and your body doesn’t come down from that tense state?

You fall apart. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.

This isn’t a theory. This is fact. Scientific fact.

Our bodies are capable of self-rejuvenation and healing, but not while we are in a state of fight or flight.

But you’re probably thinking, “Hey, Lauren. Our body has developed processes for handling stress. It’s all good. Our body knows what to do.”

While you are correct in your understanding that our body is smart enough to handle the stressful times, the catch is it isn’t designed to sustain itself in defense mode long-term. Short-term is its sweet spot. Keep it in gear for too long without rest and you risk burn out. Literally.

Your adrenal gland can only pump out so much cortisol before it gets tired of pumping. When this pumping action slows down, your body’s number one defense against stress stops working. That’s what happened to me.

Ways to Build Your Resilience to Daily Stress

In my e-book “Life Spark: How to Overcome Stress, Anxiety & Feelings of Low Worth” (available free to my monthly subscribers), I go deeper into ways to revive your life after extreme periods of stress. For this post, here are some ways that you can begin to build up your resilience to the stresses of your daily life:

1. Improve Your Nutrition and Brain Health

When I started my journey of healing from my own stress and anxiety, I began by looking into health and nutrition as a possible cause for my symptoms. As I mentioned earlier, under long-term stress, your adrenals could suffer. In addition to that, other hormonal imbalances in the brain can occur and, according to New York Times bestselling author and psychotherapist, Dr. Mike Dow, you must address those or else nothing else you do will work.

Because I started with my health, I truly believe that one of the keys to building resilience against stress is to ensure you have adequate nutrient levels. If my brain doesn’t get the food it needs, it can’t function. If my brain can’t function properly, I tend to react with more hostility when challenged by daily stresses. As long as I eat right and get enough sleep, I know that I’m setting myself up for a better chance of overcoming stressful moments.

2. Exercise

The thing about exercise as it relates to building a resilience to stress is the power exercise has to create dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a hormone that helps you feel good. You definitely want more dopamine flooding your brain to help counter all the cortisol. And the exercise need not be strenuous. Just get moving.

How should you incorporate exercise into your busy day? Just go for a short brisk walk after lunch. Start with just 5 minutes.

3. Nature (aka sunshine)

Double boost that feel-goodness by taking your walk outside, in the sunshine. Most of us are deficient in vitamin D, so getting a few minutes of sunshine daily will help boost those levels naturally.

Taking a little bit of time to spend outdoors can help you collect your thoughts and recharge. My dad would do this after work, taking time to do things around the yard to help him unwind from a stressful day at work. This sort of acted as an energy dump for him so that he didn’t bring that stress into the home. If you can fit a little bit of nature into your every day, you might feel the same effect.

4. Meditation or Yoga

Science-wise, meditation and yoga practices help to reduce anxiety and stress. This is because of the hormones that are triggered when we practice these. Over time, practicing these has helped me to carry on that calm state into my daily life so that I don’t react aggressively as much. Granted, I have three kids (going on four) and my buttons will be pushed. However, I’ve discovered that meditation and yoga help me to recharge and release negative energy so that I’m not piling it up. When I regularly practice, I react more rationally to things. Therefore, it appears as though I can tolerate more.

In reality, meditation and yoga help me by acting as a place for me to go to refocus. I enjoy guided meditations with affirmations or ones that take me on a visual journey of healing. I also believe in balancing chakras, so I will seek specific meditations depending on which area of my life I need clarity in. I rely on meditation more for stress reduction and yoga for stretching my tight muscles as a form of pain management. However, there are some great yoga practices I’ve done that included lots of quiet time that doubled as a form of meditation.

5. Understand Your Triggers

Why do certain things flip your switch? What can you do to think about the situation differently so that you have less of a negative response? Know your triggers and avoid them whenever possible (quit hanging out with that coworker at lunch who drives you nuts). Who’s life are you living anyway? You are fully in charge of what and who you invite into it.

The mental aspect of rewiring your thoughts and negative patterns of thinking will stick better once you’ve done the rest of the work (the diet, exercise, sleep). I realize that everywhere you turn you hear people talk about changing your thoughts, but it’s hard to do if you’re depressed, stressed and exhausted due to a hormonal imbalance (I should know).

When I ask you to think about what’s triggering you, I mean to take a holistic approach to what’s happening in your life right now. Is there something that is especially tipping the scales for you?

Working towards improving those circumstances and seeking outside guidance from professionals when necessary will help you to round out your goal of building resilience to stress in your life.

You’ve read How Stress Damages Your Health, plus Ways to Build Up Your Resilience, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

[latte-awards-blog]

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