#I take information from my brain and implant it in the minds of the youth

[kuroo-shitsurou]

Bestfriend (College!Childe x College!Reader) PART 1

note: hello! i'm going to be making an entire college au series for the genshin characters ehe. this is a pretty lengthy one so i had to cut it into two parts. i hope you enjoy!

word count: 4.4k

"Why can't I get this shit to work?!"

You checked the clock.

3:28 AM.

Great. You had a half-seven morning class with professor Cyrus, and yet, here you were. Baking cookies at 3:28 AM. Although, baking wasn't really the appropriate term for it. Maybe... burning was a better fit.

You weren't a culinary arts major; Far from it, actually. You were in a college course that needed immense analytical and critical thinking skills: Accounting. You loved your course. You were always amazed by how numbers can always add up properly if you analyzed all the transactions properly beforehand. It also gave you more patience to thoroughly understand each problem presented to you so that you'd end up with the right answer in the end.

Which is why you were so dumbfounded when your cookies looked like pieces of charcoal the moment you took them out of the oven.

You followed the recipe, didn't you? Why don't your baked goodies look like those gorgeous gooey chocolate chip cookies on the website?

That was the... fourth batch of cookies you made that night. Frustrated, you carelessly threw the still-hot baking sheet in the sink. You didn't even mind that there were crumbs and burnt cookie residue in your damp sink. Like, there were burnt cookies on your counter, on your dining table, and even on your stovetop. Why be bothered about the sink, right? You could clean it up in the morning, anyway.

"Why am I even doing this?" You sighed, eyeing how there was a bit of black smoke coming out of your oven. You opened a window and fanned it out to prevent the smoke detector from going off. You didn't need more nuances adding to your already dwindling patience.

Taking in the sight of the flour, sugar, and egg-coated workstation you had, you realized that baking just wasn't your forte. If only your boyfriend was interested in receiving his complete financial statements for the year, then maybe you'd have an easier time in thinking of a present for his birthday.

You looked at the calendar.

July 20th.

It was the day of Childe's birthday.

He informed you yesterday that his friends had invited him to go to a party the night of the 20th to celebrate his birthday, and you politely declined his offer for you to be his plus one. Of course, he was disappointed. You could notice by how his cerulean eyes drooped to the floor and how his thin, pink lips pushed themselves into a pout.

"But... You have to be there, _____." He whined, taking your hands in his.

"I know, Childe. But you know that I have to review my presentation for professor An's class. It's going to make or break my term grade." You were disappointed. You wanted to spend the entire day with Childe, maybe cuddled up in bed, eating hot pizza and watching Netflix. However, you knew how much he loved partying and hanging out with his friends- Kaeya, was it? and the other boys in their fraternity. You disapproved of his frat-boy party-going lifestyle, but you didn't want to impose, so you just kept it to yourself.

"But it's my birthday," He reasoned, voice laced with sadness.

"I know, darling. I know. We can still spend the entire afternoon together before you head out to party with your friends... If you want. You're free for the entire day, right?" Your voice faltered a bit, unsure of whether he'd accept your proposal or not.

"Mhm! I'd be more than happy to spend the whole afternoon tomorrow with you, babe. We can hit the amusement park, or maybe watch a movie, or maybe have a picnic, or..."

As Childe continued to ramble on about all the possible plans you could do tomorrow, you couldn't help but smile at him. How his demeanor changed, and how he could never seem to hold a grudge against you even if he was upset. He spoiled you so much and you wanted to let him know that you appreciate him as much as he loves you.

And... Here you were.

You didn't expect baking to be so hard. You thought that following a simple recipe would lead to a great outcome the first time around.

Look how that turned out for you. Your tokens of appreciation for Childe were there. In the sink, on the counter, on the dining table, and on the stovetop. All burnt and inedible.

"Fuck this baking thing, I'll just get Zhongli to help me before lunch." You muttered, taking off your apron and retreating to your couch. You didn't want to sleep in your bed because your clothes were still messy, but you were too tired to clean up (too pissed to even care, to be honest).

And so, you flopped on the couch and set an alarm for 6:00 AM before you drifted off to sleep, dreaming of burnt baking pans and noisy smoke detectors.

-

The annoying sound of your alarm rang in your ears like a never-ending mockery of how your life is going. Why do morning classes exist? Why do alarms exist?

You groggily rubbed your eyes and rolled off the couch, landing on the carpet with a soft "thud". You blindly felt around the coffee table to look for your phone. Upon feeling the silicone texture of your case, you pulled it towards your chest and squinted your eyes as the bright display of the lock screen glared against your eyeballs.

You opened your phone by using the passcode (0720, go ahead and guess what that means) and tapped on the green message icon to open your texts. You then quickly typed out a message for a certain history major.

[ Hey, Zhongli, mind if you help me out before lunch later so I could bake some cookies for Childe? ]

Sent 6:04 AM.

You looked up at the ceiling and waited for a while, already planning out your itinerary for the day. The ding! of your phone was heard, waking you more than you already were.

[ I don't see why not. I have a vacant period right before lunch. I'm off at 9:00 and I'm vacant until noon. Are you free then? ]

Received 6:06 AM.

You couldn't help but grin. Zhongli was so kind. He was Childe's friend since high school, and although you found him somehow... creepy because of the knowledge he possesses (Seriously, was his brain implanted with a computer chip or something?), you still considered him a good friend.

[ Thank you so much! Yeah, I only have one class today anyway. I'll meet you in front of the main building by 9:00. ]

Sent 6:08 AM.

You got up from the carpet and stretched for a bit, wincing when the small burn on your arm stung. You had a few cuts and burns on your hands, fingers, and arms because of how clumsy you were in the kitchen, but it was fine. Who doesn't fuck up from time-to-time

You headed to the kitchen to clean up. You dumped all the burnt biscuits into a large garbage bag, wiped the counters, and put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Most of the mess was already gone and disposed of, and you whispered to yourself that you could probably deep-clean later that evening after reviewing your presentation.

The ding! of your phone brought your attention back, and you smiled at Zhongli's response.

[ I'll see you then, _____. I appreciate you doing all this for Childe. ]

Received 6:15 AM.

You quickly made your way to your bedroom and grabbed different pieces to throw together a decent outfit. You assumed that Childe wouldn't let you go by the time that your little date would begin, so it's best to be prepared.

You hopped in the shower and did your morning routine, making sure to use your favorite body wash, which happened to be Childe's favorite scent. You dried your hair afterwards and threw on the outfit you prepared earlier. You checked your phone.

6:45 AM.

There weren't any new messages from Childe, so you assumed that he was still asleep. After all, it's his day-off from uni. The lucky bastard got to get one whole day without lectures, and the freest day you had still required you to attend one morning lecture.

"I have to rush to McDonald's if I want to make it in time," You whispered, grabbing your bag and slipping your shoes on before rushing out the door.

You wanted to buy Childe a nice breakfast before heading to your own class. So, you sprinted to the McDonald's just a corner away from your dorm and stood in line. You ordered his favorite breakfast meal: A big breakfast deluxe set with hot chocolate, five-piece nuggets, and a side of apple pie. You also ordered a McGriddle for yourself that you could sneakily bite out of in class.

Childe's apartment was right beside the McDonald's you went to, so it wasn't any trouble reaching where he was. You checked your phone again.

7:10 AM.

Crap. Twenty minutes until your lecture with professor Cyrus. Childe still seemed to be asleep, so you decided to leave his breakfast with the receptionist, Verr Goldet. She already knew who you were because of how often Childe invites you to his apartment.

"I'm really sorry to leave this with you, Verr. But I have to get to class in twenty minutes and I think that Childe is still asleep." You said sheepishly, placing the paper bag on her counter and fiddling with the strap of your bag.

"Oh, _____, you act as if I'm a stranger!" She laughed, taking the paper bag and placing it behind her. "Don't worry, I'll keep it warm for him. Would you like to leave a note?"

"Ah, yes please!" You took a piece of paper and a pen from your bag and scribbled a short message for the ginger.

Happy birthday, Childe! Have a hearty breakfast, I got your favorites. I'll see you later for lunch, okay? I love you! ♡

You tried to make your handwriting as neat as possible, and even added a messy doodle of the man himself. Although, it did look more like a potato than the man you were trying to draw.

"How cute you are." Verr sighed, "It must be nice to feel the wonders of youth."

"Thank you so much, Verr! I really have to get going if I want to get to uni in time."

"You're welcome, _____!"

You bid your farewells and headed out of the apartment's lobby, walking towards the shuttle stop nearest to you. You had at least fifteen minutes before professor Cyrus' class. The shuttle was about ten minutes away from uni, and it would take you a little over five minutes to get to his lecture hall. While waiting for the shuttle, you quickly tapped out a message for your boyfriend.

[ I left something with Verr for you downstairs. You better get it as soon as you wake up ♡ ]

Sent 7:15 AM.

The shuttle arrived as soon as you hit send. You showed your ID to the driver and scrambled for a seat, shoving earbuds in your ears to drown out the rest of the world with a bit of music. Fortunately, the shuttle ride was quicker than usual since there were lesser stops for that day. You gave a light bow to the driver before you rushed out of the shuttle doors and bolted to get to your lecture hall.

It was on the third floor of the left wing of the main building. You were desperately trying to catch your breath as you felt a burn rising in your lungs. You wanted to puke because of how hungry and tired you felt so early in the morning, but you brushed it off.

You sprinted down the hallway to professor Cyrus' lecture hall, seeing that nearly all the seats were occupied. There were still a few vacant seats at the back, but you were glad to see your friend, Xingqiu, waving you over from the middle row.

"Thanks for saving me a seat," You thanked your blue-haired friend, fixing your hair and disheveled clothes. You sat down just in time as professor Cyrus walked into the lecture hall and began setting up his laptop to present.

"No worries. I knew you'd be late. It's Childe's birthday today, no? You've been talking about it all week. I already expected that you'd do something for him this morning." He said, not even batting an eyelash as he carefully opened his laptop in front of him.

"That predictable, huh?" You chuckled, placing your own laptop on the table and taking out the McGriddle you shoved in your bag earlier. Professor Cyrus seemed to be tweaking a few things on his presentation, so you decided to use the spare minutes to eat the sandwich you purchased.

You scarfed it down in a few bites, leaving Xingqiu confused and a bit scared. He thought you were going to choke.

"Didn't you have breakfast before you left your dorm?" He asked, marveling at how you managed to eat the McGriddle in- four, maybe five? bites.

"I mean, I bought this," You said, motioning to the crumpled up wrapper in your hand. "It was getting late since I dropped by Childe's apartment to leave him his breakfast."

"How charming of you, _____." Xingqiu chuckled, slipping on his glasses.

"I wonder if he's awake now," You mumbled, loud enough for Xingqiu to hear, but he didn't react to it.

You opened your phone and saw seven messages from your dorky boyfriend.

[ _____ you're gonna make me cry ]

Sent 7:28 AM.

[ Where are you now? Are you already at uni? ]

Sent 7:29 AM.

[ God, I love you so much, _____! You even got me nuggets!! ]

Sent 7:30 AM.

[ I love you sooo much!! You're so cute it's unreal!! Btw, is this supposed to be me?? Do I really look like that??!! ]

Sent 7:31 AM.

[ I'm so lucky to have you, _____. You really are the sweetest!! ]

Sent 7:31 AM.

[ I'll see you later at noon. I'll pick you up at your dorm, okay? ]

Sent 7:32 AM.

[ You must be in class now. Good luck!! I'm already eating. Thank you so much, darling! I love you!! ♡ ]

Sent 7:34 AM.

You couldn't help but smile at how his aura radiated even through the screen of your phone. You clicked on the notification from Instagram and it opened to a video on Childe's story. It was a boomerang of him making a winky face and then showing his meal neatly placed on his table.

There was a caption beside a heart sticker which read:

What a great way to start my birthday. Thanks to my lovely @_____. I love you so much! ♡

A familiar warmth spread throughout your chest and you couldn't help but smile at how sweet he was. It was amazing, really. Childe's words and actions always had such an effect on you, and it didn't even matter how you were the one who did a romantic gesture for him because you were here all blushy and gushy over his sickeningly sweet messages of affection.

You put your phone away as soon as professor Cyrus soon started his lecture on the different trading policies limited by oversea regulations- or something like that.

The lesson itself was interesting, but you couldn't help to nod off and daydream about your wonderfully dorky boyfriend and his beautiful eyes, his cute button nose, his slim cheeks, his pink lips.

Childe sneezed.

-

As soon as the last bell rang, you quickly gathered your things and shoved them in your bag. You nodded a swift goodbye to Xingqiu before running off to the entrance of the main building.

Zhongli messaged you that his lecture ended earlier than expected, and that he was waiting for you by the entrance already.

You saw the brunette sitting on one of the benches, a thick history book in hand and reading glasses firmly sitting on top of his nose. You noticed a few girls just a couple of feet away from him. They were eyeing him up, probably drinking in the sight of this beautifully constructed creature.

You chuckled. It was common for you to be more aware of people fawning over Childe and Zhongli. They were a couple of incredibly hot males, you knew that. You got used to the sight of other people gawking and eye-fucking your boyfriend and his bestfriend that it was just hilarious and amusing at this point.

"Zhong!" You called, earning the attention of both Zhongli and the group of girls.

"Ah, _____. Glad you're finally here." He closed his book and tucked it away in his satchel (This man owned a satchel) before he stood up to greet you.

"Were you waiting long? Sorry." You said sheepishly.

"No, not at all. I was enthralled by this one chapter on the Ming Dynasty and their more underrated feats. History never fails to amuse me." Zhongli replied, a glint sparkling in his amber eyes.

"Hey, um," You inched yourself closer to him, "Mind if we go on ahead? Some of your fangirls are scaring the hell out of me." From the corner of your eye, you could see how they were drilling holes at your head from staring too hard. You could've sworn one girl was even holding her phone up, as if taking a photo.

"What?" The taller man whipped around to look at the girls and they scurried off upon seeing the intimidating glare in his eyes.

"You and Childe really attract attention everywhere you go, don't you?" You chuckled, walking towards the shuttle station.

"Childe, certainly. He, along with his... fraternity brothers do attract quite the crowd whenever they are together. As for myself, I doubt it. I'm more of the silent-type compared to him, anyway."

"Are you kidding me?" You bit your tongue to hold back the thought.

"I see."

"Those girls look familiar, though." He mentioned.

"Oh? Maybe history majors as well?"

"_____, if they were history majors, I would've at least recognized their faces more clearly. I feel like I've seen them somewhere."

"Ah, my bad. You and your eerily accurate memory." You teased, climbing onto the shuttle and sitting on one of the empty seats.

"It is not eerie, thank you very much." He retorted with a snarky tone, joining you on the seat.

"Of course it isn't. You remember what I said to Childe when we were watching that one movie Rex Lapis: Revenge of the Fallen?"

"Indeed I do. You said, "Rex Lapis would be hot if he was a human, don't you think?" and Childe replied, "Yeah, but I could probably beat him up. I'd be way hotter than him." It was comedy, really. Rex Lapis, although a fictional figure, has far more capabilities than Childe could even dream of."

"Do you... not see the eerie part of that?"

"What? That Childe thinks he can beat up an actual Archon?"

"No... Zhongli, we watched that movie three years ago."

"Your point is?"

"...I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday."

"Childe bought you some sushi."

"See what I mean?!"

"That means you have a poor memory, _____." Zhongli laughed at your face curling into a frown. "Anyway, while you were entertaining me with your banter, I recalled why those girls are so familiar."

"Do tell."

"They're part of Childe's posse."

You could've sworn your heart leapt to your throat. You knew that your boyfriend was pretty much sculpted by the Archons themselves, but, really? a fucking posse?

Zhongli noticed how the lump in your throat bobbed, and he decided that it was better to calmly explain how and why he knew about it.

"See, it was during the first year of university. Childe started hanging around Kaeya and his other fraternity brothers. There was this one occasion where Childe was nearly black-out drunk in a bar. If I didn't see on Kaeya's Instagram story, I wouldn't have known," You noticed how Zhongli's face visibly darkened, "These girls were hanging off him like koalas to a strong tree branch. It was unsightly."

"I... see."

"Although he was about to pass out, he pushed them away. Charming, really. He was already crazy about you even during the first year of uni. Even though you weren't together yet, he didn't want to "cheat" on you by entertaining other females." A soft smile made its way to your face upon hearing Zhongli's confession about how your boyfriend felt about you.

"I'm determined to make these cookies a success," You said determinedly.

"Glad to hear it. It seems we're already at your dormitory. You still have enough ingredients for the cookies, right? I assume you failed quite a few times yesterday."

"How did you even know?"

Zhongli once again laughed as you stepped off the shuttle, "Lucky guess."

Unbeknownst to the two of you, three figures were following you the moment you left the campus.

-

"_____ is so sweet! They got my favorite breakfast this morning." Childe mindlessly gushed over his significant other.

Diluc wasn't really one to listen to other people ramble on and on about feelings and love and romance, but it was his friend's birthday. He'd let it slide.

"Bro, that's just gross," Kaeya spat, taking a chug of his beer.

"Oh, shut up, Kaeya. Just because you don't plan on committing to anyone doesn't mean the people around you are obligated to do so as well." Diluc rebutted, without even looking up from his journal.

"You're in college. It's the time when you're supposed to have a shit ton of flings, no commitment. And yet you're here being loyal to _____?" Kaeya glared at Diluc, but the redhead only flipped him off.

"I don't see the problem with that." Childe spoke up, toying with the bracelet on his wrist. It was a gift from you during your first anniversary. You said you made it yourself, and although Childe could purchase all the expensive jewelry and accessories he wanted, this particular bracelet meant more to him than anything.

"The problem is _____'s going to hold you back!" Childe knew that Kaeya was half-drunk and it was still before noon, so he didn't really take his words seriously. "They aren't going to the party later, right?"

"No, unfortunately. They have to review a presentation for professor An's class."

"Hah! Review my ass. If I knew any better, that little toy of yours is just messing around with some other dude."

"Watch yourself." Childe stood up from his seat. He knew that Kaeya disapproved of their relationship because it wasn't really a "frat-boy" thing, but he didn't care about that. He cared about you more than a stupid reputation, and definitely more than a stupid lifestyle of partying, getting high, and getting drunk.

"Back up, softie. _____'s pussyness rubbing of on 'ya?" Kaeya's words were slurred, but Childe knew that there was malicious intent behind them.

"Look, I don't care about what you say about me. Call me a softie? Call me a pussy? I don't really give a shit. But the moment you start shitting on my _____? Don't even consider that I'd just stand around and let them be slandered, you piece of fuck." Childe was a few centimeters taller than Kaeya, and he always used that to his advantage when he wanted Kaeya to understand his point.

"Whatever you fucking say. It's your birthday, I'm not gonna fight with you on your birthday." Kaeya lightly pushed Childe away from him before downing the rest of the beer can in his hand.

"Don't mind him," Diluc spoke, staring into Childe's eyes. "He never thinks straight, whether drunk or sober."

"Yeah, I kinda got the message." The ginger chuckled, watching as Kaeya nearly tripped over his own feet while walking towards the case of beer supposedly for the party tonight.

"I'm glad that you and _____ are still getting along. It's refreshing to see normal people once in a while."

"Well, when you put it that way." Childe could only laugh.

"Where's the tall brunette at? Isn't he always with you?"

"Ah, you mean Zhongli? I don't know, actually. He has a lecture this morning and I wanted to meet him for a light meal before lunch, but he isn't answering my texts."

"I see."

As if on cue, Childe's phone emitted a soft ding!

He typed in his password and the screen faded into a photo of you. You were wearing one of his hoodies (it was way too big on you) and he could've fainted because of how absolutely adorable you looked.

He received a few Instagram DMs from Ellin. Ellin was a member of their posse. Childe would rather refer to them as "fraternity friends", but she insisted otherwise.

[ You're seriously praising _____ for being a good partner? Poor you, dear. ]

Received 9:41 AM.

He frowned.

[ What are you talking about? Mind your business. ]

Sent 9:42 AM.

[ Oh? It's not my business, sure. But you might wanna see this. ]

Received 9:44 AM.

[ 3 Images Attached ]

Received 9:44 AM.

Childe's eyes widened. Ellin sent three photos.

The first one was a photo of you and Zhongli standing awfully close to each other in front of the university's main building.

The second one was of you and Zhongli sitting beside each other in the shuttle.

The last one was... you and Zhongli entering your dormitory building.

"What the..."

He checked his messages to see if either you or Zhongli texted him about the ordeal. However, he was only greeted by messages wishing him a happy birthday from some of his family and friends back in their hometown. No messages from Zhongli, and no new ones from you.

"What the hell?"

He quickly typed out a message for his bestfriend. He didn't jump to conclusions; He trusted both of you, but what was this feeling in his gut? It felt icky, gross, and disgusting.

[ Where are you rn? Answer me. ]

Sent 9:46 AM.

His foot tapped against the floor at a rapid pace. Diluc wanted to question him, but the worried look on the ginger's face made him bite his tongue.

Childe wasn't the type of person to jump to conclusions, nor was he the type of person to get upset immediately over trivial things. But upon receiving an irksome reply from the amber-eyed bestfriend he knew and love, his blood began to boil.

[ None of your business. ]

Received 10:05 AM.

[tornrose24]

My Lordsona’s letters, diary entries, and journal entry in Mother Miranda’s Lab.

I remembered that in each of the lords’ areas, there tends to be letters/journal entries/notes that are either about them or that they wrote themselves in addition to what Mother Miranda wrote about each one in her lab. I thought it would be fun to make some for my lordsona as a way to add additional information (including what could have lead to getting a cadou in the first place, because I don’t think those are given out so freely).

There is mentions of  @artistcaptainbendy‘s lordsona Bendypants and their OC Benjamin.

TW: Mentions of gore

(All journal entries located in personal studio in the gallery. Some would hold clues to solving certain puzzles.)

Journal 1

May 3rd, 1968

(page 1)

I would rather swim in Moreau’s lake and be subjected to whatever goes on in Donna’s estate than give another art lesson to Alcina’s girls. She hoped I could cultivate some talent in the three of them, and there was some promise in both Cassandra and Daniela. Bela seemed disinterested and wanted to go to the piano instead. There was some frustration over the past few weeks and it made me thankful I’m their ‘aunt’ or else it wouldn’t have ended well for me.

Weeks later, they presented me with some abominable displays. That one ‘statue’ looked like one of the maids... or what was left of the poor woman. And I doubt that was red paint used on that canvas.

I don’t mind speaking with Alcina herself once in awhile when I want a bit of class and elegance. There’s certainly no denying her sense of taste in decor and her collection of artwork is incredible. But her daughters are too much for me and I don’t agree on her views of all men. She certainly never met my father or my...

(page 2)

Father....

Sorry, I got lost in my memories there for a bit. Tomorrow I am meeting with some of the village children and will give them an art lesson. They are more of a delight compared to those poor excuses for children in that castle.

They admire the other lords, but its possibly for the best that they aren’t allowed to get too close to them.

Reminder to self: Check to see if the Duke has any works of art to add to the gallery when he comes back.

Journal 2

September 2nd 1975

(Page 1)

It appears I finally have a new security guard. The bastard and a friend of his thought he could sneak into MY gallery and steal a painting that I said would cost a fortune. They fell victim to the Escher trap (clearly they didn’t pay attention to his surroundings) and the painting was destroyed.

All that trouble for a Van Gough replica that’d be worth not even a fraction of the true painting.

But then again, what should I have expected from the son of the drunkard who nearly paralyzed me for life with a bullet to the spine and sent me into Mother Miranda?

The man was completely brain dead. The friend was a bloodied mess, but I stitched his arms to the thief, added some details of my own, did a bit of fixing up, and used a Cadou. He’s dull as a rock and doesn’t recall his past life, but he’ll be good at protecting my gallery from other idiots. 

I call him David after the famous statue.

September 5th, 1975

(Page 2)

Unsurprisingly, Heisenberg thought my creation was, and I quote ‘a hunk of shit and dumbassery mixed together’ and said he could have done so much better. Unlike him, MY creations ARE true works of art. Of course I’m not interested in getting into an argument with him as he enjoys doing so with Alcina.

I brought David to someone else who’d be fascinated with him. Bendypants seemed intrigued and wondered if I could lend David to them to help build a set.

I’m deeply disturbed that I’ve sunk as low as the others. I didn’t think I’d actually use a cadou but I try to tell myself that what I’ve done was a fitting punishment. Besides, it keeps Mother Miranda off my back for a bit.

Note to self: Need to do something about the additional arms on David. They don’t look like they are as secure as I would like them to be.

October 10th, 1975

(Page 3)

It turns out David developed a soft spot for Benjamin. As in Bendypants’ favorite lycan. He’s been looking at him like a girl harboring a secret crush.

That was.... rather unexpected. I guess David isn’t as dull as I thought. I need to keep an eye on him in case he remembers anything about his former life.

Journal 3

January 20th, 2004

(Page 1)

Karl is crude and a bit much at times. But there’s no denying that he’s rather handsome and I finally was able to convince him to pose for some sketches for a painting after all these years. It took the finest bottle of whiskey the Duke had on hand to convince him.

Bendypants will be so envious of me. They too have a certain soft spot for our fellow lord. Perhaps I can gift them with a replica painting as a present in the future.

I admire that Heisenberg doesn’t bother putting on airs like Alcina and his.... extraverted nature is a breath of fresh air. However the whiskey caused him to spill something rather concerning. He seemed unusually interested in my family’s plot of land in the graveyard.

I’m very concerned about what his intentions are.

(Page 2)

I just paid the gravekeeper to unearth the remains of my family so I can burn them and bury them under the oak tree.

I am NOT letting any of the lords use my family’s remains for whatever they are planning.

March 15th, 2010

(Page 3)

Bendypants invited me to one of their plays. It was ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream.’ It was a delight and helped me take my mind off things. The idea of making some of the characters not quite fit into certain norms that are expected in the village would have made Mother Miranda squirm.

I showed them that painting of Ophelia drowning when we discussed Shakespeare the next day. Sometimes I wonder why the cadou didn’t make me lose my mind like Ophelia–would I have been happier without my sanity in the village, amongst the others? At least I wouldn’t have been aware of what sins I would be committing across the years.

I have deeply cherished my friendship with them. They were there at the funerals for each family member of mine who died. Their condolences were honest compared to the other lords and those who were trying to kiss up to me. Like me, they too have somehow defied time’s cruelty to the body, and have known the loss of a loved one. 

(Page 4)

The children are the only others in the village that I am fond of and would protect. Such innocence to the violence hidden in the corners. Sometimes I wish to give into the desire of motherhood, but that would have been the greatest pain I could experience....

(letter hidden in Lord Bendypants’ theater) 

Dearest B,

Regardless of what Miranda tells us lords, you are the only true family I have left in this forsaken village. I would have never imagined that wild, mud covered child of the woods would be the one person I could trust.

That woman never was and will NEVER be my mother. Regardless of what she gave to me, I had to watch my family succumb to old age and sickness while I still remain as I am–a Venus forever frozen in youth and beauty. I hope she burns in hell for her sins and for what she has turned me into across the years.

I suspect that whatever she wants with the infant she kept mentioning is not going to end well for us or the village. She is charismatic, but her lack of true warmth makes me uneasy. I get the feeling that death is certain, but as to who for is not clear yet. I have two requests for you if my suspicions are correct.

First, I am going to see if I can hide any children I can find. They were one of the few things that made me happy here and do not deserve whatever Miranda has planned, so I shall sneak them in a room within my gallery. Please do not let any of your lycans harm the children or attack me tomorrow night. Should things go according to plan, they will be able to have the true freedom that was denied to all of us.

Secondly, should I perish from whatever Miranda has in store, retrieve my body, burn it, and bury it under THAT oak tree where I placed the ashes of my family. I think I finally know for sure who was getting into the graves lately, but I will be damned if I let that asshole take my body too.

I will never forget our times together, or the visits to your wonderful theater. Thank you for being there when I needed it the most.

Your friend,

-R

(Journal in Miranda’s lab)

Subject Name: _______ Rose

Cadou Affinity: Somewhat Favorable

Brain Function: Normal

Subject’s spinal chord was damaged by a gunshot wound three days before procedure. Subject has regained full mobility after cadou implantation. Six horn like protrusions have grown out of subject’s skull, yet subject hasn’t suffered any damage to the brain.

Subject’s arms mutate into an armor and bone fragments extend out of limbs like thorns that are strong enough to tear through flesh when provoked. These abilities are somewhat similar to Alcina’s but pales in comparison to what she is capable of.

Insect-like wings extend right out of subject’s backside when the subject wills them to, yet immense pain makes this a rarity. The placement of the wings is exactly where a small piece of cadou was implanted to repair the damaged spine. Additional procedures were required to ensure that the subject could not be able to fly beyond the village borders.

Further mutation turns the subject into something resembling a fae, yet behaves and moves like an insect. However it takes the subject four hours to change back. Subject also becomes predatory in this state.

An unfit vessel for Eva.

[cryingcow]

Rikiya, Kiryu, & Haruka - Rikiya’s Lonely Struggle [RGGO] - Ch. 2-3

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 .

Watch me post this in the morning cuz its a holiday lol.

Previously: Rikiya wants to show Kiryu the famous Okinawan hospitality, but the people think that Kiryu is an evil mainlander who will take over their market, which is false. They also think that Kiryu has a bone-sucking fetish, which is true, if only because I had to type the phrase “suck on my bones” too many fucking times. Apparently Rikiya is so starry-eyed when it comes to Kiryu that everyone thinks he’s either in a Kiryu-worshipping cult or an active member of the Yakuza fandom (or both amirite? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ).

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CHAPTER 2

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Haruka: “Waa~ the meat is melting~!”

Kiryu: “It’s stewed well enough that you can eat the delicious cartilage.”

Haruka: “Rikiya-san, thank you for buying us the cartilage soki!”

Rikiya: “No, it was really cheap anyway. Hehe . . .”

Haruka: “Besides this, what other kinds of delicious food are out there?”

Kiryu: “This time, I’ll have to take a walk around the market.”

Rikiya: (They’re going. These two are more and more eager to go to the market. I have to get rid of the rumors circulating in the market as soon as possible. To do that, I have to get inside the Youth Club of the market, since they seem to be the source of the rumor . . .)

Kiryu: “By the way, Rikiya. Patriarch Nakahara called and asked me to drop by tonight.”

Rikiya: “To my boss’s place?”

Kiryu: “Yeah. It seems he wants to drink Awamori with me. Will you be present there?”

Rikiya: “I want to, but I have other plans tonight . . .”

Kiryu: “Why are you so busy lately? Are you involved in some kind of trouble?”

Rikiya: “What are you talking about! There’s no trouble! Anyway, thank you for being Boss’s drinking buddy! Oh, but if Boss has too much to drink, he has a habit of going on a rampage, so keep it in moderation.”

Kiryu: “So he’s a violent drunk. That guy should be more careful . . .”

Rikiya: “Well, I’m heading out for a while! Please give my best regards to my boss!”

----

Rikiya: “If you think about it this time, it’s questionable whether it’s suitable for me to be doing this, being Aniki’s younger brother . . . To not bother Aniki, I have to solve this problem not as his younger brother. Alright! I’ll definitely erase the rumors! Hmm . . . from what I heard, the Youth Club’s office should be around here somewhere . . . Oh! Here it is!”

Youth Director: “Who are you? Coming at such a time . . .”

Rikiya: “Are you a member of the market’s Youth Club?”

Youth Director: “Yeah. I’m the director . . . hm? You, you’re Rikiya of the Ryudo Family! What are you doing after getting brainwashed by Kiryu? Are you here to take down the Youth Club?!”

Rikiya: “Stupid guy. I can’t be brainwashed. What are you guys? Why are you blowing around fake rumors in the market?”

Youth Director: “Kiryu taking over the market . . . sure, we were the ones who gave this information to everyone. But that isn’t a lie . . . look at this!”

{The Youth Director takes out a sheet of paper with a flourish.}

Rikiya: “Hm? What is this letter??”

Youth Director: “This letter was found in the market’s opinion box.”

Rikiya: “Opinion box?”

Youth Director: “Customers write in their requests and points for improvement for the market. This letter was found in it. Read it.”

Rikiya: “‘Be careful. Kiryu Kazuma intends to take over the market. The market’s enforcers from the Ryudo Family cannot counter Kiryu. Because . . . Kiryu has already brainwashed the young captain Rikiya. Furthermore, Kiryu intends to kill the family’s head Nakahara in the future.’ . . . What is this letter! Who put it in the opinion box?!”

Youth Director: “The sender’s name isn’t written. It’s an anonymous report.”

Rikiya: “Do you guys really believe such a crappy letter?!”

Youth Director: “Well we didn’t bother with it at first. You were always on the land of Morning Glory, in a position to evict Kiryu. You couldn’t have been brainwashed by him. But then one day the situation changed completely . . . suddenly you started calling Kiryu, who was supposed to be the enemy, your Aniki! That couldn’t have been anything other than brainwashing, right? So that means what’s in this letter is true!”

Rikiya: “No, you’re wrong! That’s . . . !”

Youth Director: “There’s more. A new report was posted today. Here. Read it.”

{The Youth Director hands over another letter.}

Rikiya: “’Kiryu intends to poison the Ryudo Family’s head . . .’ Huh? Poison? He won’t do anything like that!”

Youth Director: “Hm? Oi, look! The man walking over there . . . !”

Rikiya: “A-Aniki . . . ?!”

Haruka: “Hey, Ojiisan . . .”

Kiryu: “What is it?”

Haruka: “Is it okay to give this drink to Nakahara-san?”

Kiryu: “Yeah . . . If Nakahara refuses, I’ll just make him drink it.”

Haruka: “Well, Ojiisan is forceful. But will this be effective?”

Kiryu: “Don’t worry. It’s a method that’s been used for ages. Now, let’s hurry up. I’m late for my meeting with Nakahara.”

Youth Director: “Oi! You heard that conversation just now!”

Rikiya: “Wait a minute! This has to be a misunderstanding!”

Youth Director: “Everyone, come out!”

{A bunch of guys exit the office.}

Member: “Is something wrong, director?”

Youth Director: “Kiryu’s heading over to poison the Ryudo Family’s head Nakahara!”

Member: “What! He’s on Tarekomi Street right now!”

Youth Director: “Let’s chase Kiryu down and kill him!”

Member: “Yeah! We’ll never let him meet Boss Nakahara!”

Rikiya: “Wait! Calm down!”

Youth Director: “Get out of the way, Rikiya! If you don’t know which side you’re on, then we’ll kill you too!”

Rikiya: “Just try it if you can! I will never let you through!”

{Rikiya defeats all the youth members.}

Rikiya: “So, Aniki isn’t going to kill the boss . . . but then what exactly was that conversation between Aniki and Haruka-chan? I don’t know . . . I should chase after them and see what happens . . .”

----

Haruka: “You said that it’s a method that’s been in use for a long time, but is that really true?”

Kiryu: “Yeah, if you’re an adult, it’s a story you’ll hear at least once. If you drink milk before drinking alcohol, a film will form on your stomach and it would be difficult for you to get sick.”

Haruka: “Hmm. Nakahara-san, I hope you can drink this milk properly.”

Kiryu: “Oh, the office of the Ryudo Family is just around this corner.”

{Kiryu and Haruka enter the office. Rikiya peeks out from his cover.}

Rikiya: “Haa . . . so that’s what it was . . .”

----

Youth Director: “Huh? Milk? Don’t lie, Rikiya!”

Rikiya: “I think this is all because of Kiryu-no-aniki’s fierce appearance and manner of speaking. Even in ordinary everyday conversation, it sounds scary when Aniki speaks. Maybe the guy who got into the opinion box misunderstood Aniki’s regular speech?”

Youth Director: “That can’t be it. There are multiple stories. The timing of the posting and the handwriting is different. You’re saying an unspecified number of people misunderstood Kiryu’s words all at the same time. Isn’t that quite the coincidence?”

Rikiya: “Well . . .”

Youth Director: “The problem here is you, Rikiya. Defending him with such an arduous excuse! It looks like you received a stronger brainwashing than I expected. Maybe something is embedded in your head?”

Rikiya: “Ha?”

Youth Director: “I saw it on TV before! Surgery to implant a chip in your brain! Could Kiryu do such a thing?!”

Rikiya: “No, that’s-”

Youth Director: “Do-Don’t come any closer! We can’t handle either of you! You guys . . . you’re no longer humans!! You’re monsters!!”

{The Youth Director runs inside the youth club office and locks the doors.}

Rikiya: “Haa . . . the rumors are getting more and more exaggerated . . .”

.

-END-

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CHAPTER 3

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Kiryu: “Shit . . . this guy’s been hurt for two hours and yet he’s still clinging to me. What a stubborn bastard. Should I submerge him in hot water next? No, I have a hand at stake . . .”

Haruka: “How is it, Ojiisan? Has it fallen?”

Kiryu: “No, it hasn’t fallen at all. He’s like the oil stains on this frying pan.”

Rikiya: (What’s this about oil stains . . . I thought he was torturing someone there for a moment . . . Those who put those claims in the opinion box really might have just misunderstood Aniki’s regular speech . . .)

Rikiya: “Hey, Aniki. Why don’t you try keeping in mind to speak a little more gently?”

Kiryu: “Hm? Speaking more gently?”

Rikiya: “Because your voice is powerful, you might be mistaken for a scary person . . .”

Kiryu: “Is there someone out there who misinterpreted me?”

Rikiya: “No, nothing like that . . . but if bad rumors about Aniki spread around Ryukyu, wouldn’t that be hard? It would be impossible to visit every single inhabitant to set the record straight . . .”

Kiryu: “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Rikiya: “Eh?”

Kiryu: “Where do you start when you untie a tangled string? Isn’t it at the ‘root’ of the string, not the tips? If it looks too intricately intertwined, the cause may be a slight twist at the root. If you fix it there, the rest will unravel. The same is true for rumors and misunderstandings.”

Rikiya: “That’s it . . . ! So if you correct the person who misunderstood first, the rest will be solved?!”

Kiryu: “Yeah. Everything is from the root. Both when it entangles and when it unravels.”

Rikiya: (In this case, the root of all this is the person who put the message in the opinion box! I have to find them and set the record straight! That said, I should go watch the opinion box immediately!)

Rikiya: “Thanks, Aniki!”

Kiryu: “. . . hm? Are bad rumors about me spreading after all?”

Rikiya: “Wh-What are you talking about! That’s not true! There are only kind-hearted people in Okinawa!”

Kiryu: “Speaking of kindness, what happened to interacting with the people of the market?”

Rikiya: “Sorry! I’m heading out now! See you next time!”

----

Greengrocer: “Have you heard? If you go to Kiryu, he can bury a chip inside your head . . .”

Meat Vendor: “And for the rest of your life, you’ll be brainwashed by Kiryu and live as his slave . . .”

Rikiya: (The rumors have gotten so exaggerated, it’s ridiculous . . . I have to find the person who posted the letter soon . . . Even though I’ve been watching the opinion box for hours, no one’s written a letter . . . Well, it’s not like people post letters everyday, maybe I should give up for today . . .)

Rikiya: (Hm? Those guys . . . ? I’ve seen them somewhere before . . . Ah, that’s right! They’re the bouncers hired by the Youth Club. Are they on patrol? They’re sneaky . . . Hm? Is the one on the right holding a letter . . . ?)

{The right bouncer posts the letter in the opinion box.}

Rikiya: (He put it in the opinion box! Why did the bouncer . . . ?! Are they the ones who posted the lie about Aniki?! Is their purpose to be hired as bouncers . . . ?! If you think about it, it makes sense!!)

Rikiya: “Wait a moment!”

Hooligan A: “Ri-Rikiya . . . ?! What for?!”

Rikiya: “The letter you put in the opinion box, I’m checking it.”

Hooligan A: “Wh-What the hell!! You don’t have that kind of authority!!”

Rikiya: ‘I’m pretty impatient. Did you put in a bad letter that you don’t want to be seen by me?”

Hooligan A: “It has nothing to do with you! Don’t you dare lay a single finger on the opinion box!”

Rikiya: “Heh. Does that mean I can’t see the contents of the letter without knocking you guys down first? Good! Come on! I’ll beat you guys down again and again!”

{Rikiya beats them down.}

Hooligan A: “Ugh . . . don’t touch that letter . . .”

Rikiya: “I can’t do that. The letter that you posted is . . . this. What-?”

Rikiya: “’Protest the youth in the market. The Youth Club has not paid a fair price for the bouncers they hired in preparation for Kiryu’s invasion. The Youth Club should pay the bouncers as promised.’ Wh-What is this?”

Hooligan A: “It’s because of what you did yesterday. The Youth Club said, ‘We can’t pay as promised to a bouncer who loses to Rikiya.’ They reduced the reward for us . . . this is a letter to protest against that!”

Rikiya: “In other words, you weren’t the ones making up lies about Aniki . . . is that right.”

Hooligan A: “What are you talking about?”

Rikiya: “That’s enough. You guys go home. Next time I see you in the market, this beating won’t be enough.”

Hooligan A: “Shit . . . !”

{The bouncers bump into a woman while they run away. The paper she’s holding is nearly knocked out of her hands.}

Rikiya: “Are you okay, Ma’am?”

Woman Passing By: “Yeah, sorry . . .”

Rikiya: “You . . . haven’t we met before? Weren’t you the one who told me rumors about Kiryu-no-aniki?”

Woman Passing By: “Oh~ that time . . .”

Rikiya: “You come to the market quite often to shop. Hm? That paper you’re holding . . . is that a letter?”

Woman Passing By: “Um, this, uh . . .”

Rikiya: “Can I take a little peek?”

Woman Passing By: “Y-You can’t!!”

Rikiya: “There is no delicacy in forcibly reading a woman’s letter, but because of the circumstances . . . I’ll borrow it!”

{Rikiya yanks the letter from her hands.}

Rikiya: “What, what . . . ‘Kiryu Kazuma’s market takeover plan’s follow up report: After taking over the market, Kiryu intends to demand expensive protection rackets from each store.  . . . he’s willing to kill those shopkeepers who don’t pay the racket under the guise of an accident.’ Th-This is a lie!!”

Woman Passing By: “Um, that’s . . . !!”

Rikiya: “Why is there a follow up report before anything has even happened?! What the hell are you . . . ?! What is this letter for?!”

.

-END-

.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Masterlist

[things2mustdo]

I went to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and as usual, I was confronted with numerous blue pill beliefs. While I’m no longer annoyed by these things, because I’ve gone through the “Return Journey” phase of swallowing the red pill, I did notice something that was extremely disturbing.

As I grew tired of arguing over basic political, economic, and gender points, I meandered downstairs to my family’s recreation room. There was a group of my younger relatives, aged 16-20, watching some show on Netflix about trans-gendered individuals.

I don’t know what the show was called, but one thing that really struck me was the show’s uncanny ability to use emotionally charged scenes and drama to elicit a feeling of compassion for the characters. In other words, numerous TV shows are now starting to take advantage of our natural empathy, and using it to sway our political and social opinions.

Emotionally Gripping

As I stood behind the couch watching a few minutes of this transgender show, I saw a very heart wrenching scene take place. Although the nuances of the story line were lost to me, I gathered enough information to see what was going on.

Basically, some guy was getting surgery to turn into a woman. As he was in the operating room, something went terribly wrong, and despite the surgeons’ desperate attempts to save him, he ended up perishing.

The following scene was comprised of extremely grief-inducing piano music played to various clips of the man’s children all mourning their loss. While this may seem innocuous, or like it’s just “creative, dramatic television,” I believe that it’s actually something far more sinister.

What’s going on here, is that the elites (because remember, this is a top down operation) are trying to traumatize the average American youth with images of the “horrors that transgender people go through!” They’re using television to create these emotional “triggers,” if you will, that will be ignited anytime someone says something against transgenders.

In other words, the trauma that occurs from becoming engrossed in this TV show (in our example) leaves an emotional residue of sorts, so that whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up in conversation, the viewer subconsciously remembers the emotions associated with the topic which the TV show implanted into his mind.

Emotional Triggers

This became abundantly clear to me as I was arguing with a friend from the West Coast over transgenderism. I very calmly said that I believe it’s a mental illness, and should be treated as such. I said that these people need help, and we shouldn’t encourage them. I backed my assertion by referencing how the chief psychologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital has vehemently called out doctors who perform transgender surgeries as “collaborating with a mental illness for profit.”

Despite my calm and collected assertions, she grew EXTREMELY emotional and automatically assumed a whole host of things about me:

I’m a disgusting, careless sociopath

I have no sympathy for others’ suffering and I’m a cold-hearted bastard

I vehemently hate anyone who’s different than me

Despite the fact that none of these things are true, it became clear to me why she automatically believed this about me: the TV shows that she watches had been subtly implanting little emotional biases into her brain. This is how manipulative our “real” media is.

What happened, in psychological terms, was that as I was calmly explaining my perspective on transgenderism, her subconscious was flooded with all of the EMOTIONS that she associates with the topic:

All of the pain and grief she experienced from TV shows depicting transgender “issues”

How Bruce Jenner is a “hero,” and how much mainstream “opposition” he encountered when coming out

All of the anger she experienced when the token “anti-transgender person” in each show was a huge dick to the main character (more on this in the next section)

All rational thought was completely stopped, as she had literally been trained to elicit a certain response whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up. Do you see my point? By repeatedly exposing people to scenes that elicit sympathy for transgenders, the media is engineering a widespread social response in favor of it.

Token Characters

As I alluded to before, another underhanded tactic that mainstream TV shows use is that they never have a rational, level-headed man who supports traditional marriage and normal heterosexuality. Any time someone in mainstream media doesn’t support the main character’s disorder, he’s always portrayed as a complete asshole.

This can take the form of him beating up the main character, bullying the main character, or what have you. I recall several years ago there was ample talk at the work place over some “anti-homosexual” character in glee that smothered a smoothie onto a guy just because he was homosexual, or something ridiculous like that.

Despite the fact that NOBODY I know would do something like this, the elite-sponsored TV utilizes token characters in order to implant a certain idea into our heads—the idea that everyone who opposes deviant sexual orientations is a cold-hearted bully. I recall that this was pointed out to me by a Catholic high school teacher, and it didn’t make any sense to me back then (before homosexuality was normal).

Now, in retrospect, I’m extremely thankful that he planted that seed in my class’s mind. The more that I look at television through this lens, the more I see what he was talking about. There’s never a level-headed, confident, genuine man that has game, either. It’s always either a completely meek beta male, or a chauvinistic “bad boy” Hank-Moody type character (although I do love me some Hank Moody).

This phenomena is taken even further as the transgender or homosexual person in mainstream TV is almost always portrayed as some brave, sweet, sensitive soul, with a hard life. In other words, the elites are engineering a dichotomy as Roosh has referenced before.

The dichotomy is that you’re either a sweet, empathetic, gentle-hearted person who supports transgenderism and deviant sexual preferences, or you’re a complete asshole who bullies and berates people just because “you’re mean.” This use of labeling brainwashes others into IMMEDIATELY putting you into the “sociopathic jerk” category if you don’t support transgenderism, making any and all rational discourse folly.

Subtle Desensitization

Another terrifying event that comes to mind of the media’s disgusting methods was when I was watching a popular kid’s TV show known as “Adventure Time,” a year or two ago. Again, I was with my family for some holiday event (I can’t remember which), and recall some of the kids watching this show.

Despite the fact that it’s labeled as a kid’s show, I saw an insidious little dialogue take place that was meant to desensitize children to pedophilia. In the show, there was some ball going on (I assume it was like a “prom” type deal), and the old wizard was looking for a partner.

He ended up going with some underage girl, who was probably 60 years his prior, and when the main character pointed this out, the old wizard simply stated: “Age…is nothing but a number!” Upon which the characters started dancing and doing comical things to prevent any sort of rational thought occurring after this was said.

After seeing this I became extremely disgusted and turned off the television, but that’s beyond the point. Why is this type of dribble being used to brainwash our youth? Anyone with half a brain can see that the point behind this scene was to start subtly implanting the seeds of pedophilia into a child’s mind.

Again, the words of my wise old Catholic high school teacher come to mind. I’ll never forget when he told me that “in 15 years, pedophilia will become normal.” My entire class was shocked, and couldn’t comprehend such a thing happening. He said this in 2009, and it seems that his prediction is coming true.

“First it will start with the media,” he said. “They’ll have some show where they make jokes about it and they’ll keep the humor very lighthearted, never showing the actual act. They’ll begin the process of desensitizing you, then eventually some politician will bring it up, and it will be an official stance that other politicians will be forced to take. This will begin the process of slowly normalizing it.”

My God was this man spot on, because this is EXACTLY how the media sways our opinions.

Keep in mind that their methods are SUBTLE, and that’s the point—they want to keep it below the level of thought so that you never question what they’re teaching you. Any time a strange or ridiculous belief is asserted, they very quickly move into a joyful scene or celebration to not only prevent you from thinking too much about the ridiculous belief, but to have you associate happiness with it, as well, which brings me to my next point.

Association And Correlation Bias

There’s a very powerful phenomena in psychology known as association; this is sometimes also called the correlation bias, or “Illusory Correlation.” This is basically your mind’s tendency to look for relationships where there aren’t any.

For example, why do you think most modern girls aren’t girlfriend material? Why do you think that the average man is weak, pathetic, and emasculated? It’s because of the media’s tendency to slowly create illusory associations within your mind.

The media causes women to associate happiness and a successful life with the following:

Being a man-hating feminist, who can’t submit to a strong, confident man

Not cooking or cleaning, because that’s “sexist”

Riding the alpha male cock carousel, and not getting married, because marriage is “oppressive”

The media creates a false correlation in women’s minds by constantly portraying bitchy, overly-masculine, slutty women as being empowered, sought-after, and happy. As any man who’s been learning game knows, this is absolute nonsense.

It doesn’t matter, though—once your brain has an association, it’s extremely difficult to get rid of it. This is why so many men are emasculated nowadays. It teaches us to associate:

Being a weak bitch with getting a hot girlfriend

Being a feminist and leftist with having girls think you’re noble and heroic

Courting a slut with being a gentleman

As any modern man who reads the manosphere knows, these are completely fallacious beliefs. Being a weak, low-testosterone man will not in fact land you the girls. Being a screaming leftist who holds those “I’m a feminist because,” signs will not get you the approval of women, and courting a washed up slut does not make you a gentleman (it makes you stupid).

Despite the obvious illogical nature of these beliefs, because the mainstream media has 8 hours a day to indoctrinate us, most men end up buying into them wholeheartedly, and will even berate you for having game when you CLEARLY get more women than them.

“So What Can I Do?”

First things first, stop watching mainstream media. In case you haven’t noticed, the MSM is starting to feel the effects of men waking up; in fact, they’ve recently gone on a long, drawn-out tirade about “fake news,” or in other words, news that is red-pilled.

I haven’t watched mainstream media EVER—the only time that I ever watch MSM is if they’re interviewing a pickup artist, a manosphere blogger, or if I’m trying to debunk their ludicrous reporting. I get almost all of my news from sites like ROK, Danger And Play, Info Wars, Natural News, and the people that I follow on Twitter.

In addition to only consuming a red-pilled information diet, ensure that your children don’t watch TV unarmed. I saw a phenomenal post recently on “How to Raise Red-Pilled Daughters,” and the ROK author talks about how he doesn’t flat out ban TV, but rather teaches his daughters to think rationally and learn to see the foolishness of MSM.

Aside from not watching MSM and raising your family to be skeptical of it, you can also support alternative media sites by simply tuning in. You don’t have to buy any of their products (although it helps); simply giving them your attention and leaving a thoughtful comment or two is enough to generate interest.

All in all, we’re facing extremely tumultuous times. More and more people are starting to break free of the MSM’s grip on their mind, but the men who get left behind end up more brainwashed than ever. Eventually, once the MSM dies, we can begin the long and arduous process of reclaiming our country—and this, my friends, is something I believe is worth fighting for.

Read More: Fact Checking Emotional Propaganda

When I was making a purchase at my local bookstore last week, the cashier solicited me for a donation. This donation was for a charity dealing with sick children or something. I told cashier I came here to buy a book not make donations. I guess she realized I am not one to be guilt tripped into doing things and told me that many people do not have the courage to say no. This pressure to comply due to emotional appeal has run rampant in America. When people make decisions on how they feel or manipulated by their feelings, not many good things can come of it.

Usually I do not delve into the details of the various schemes and manipulations that powerful people do in order to influence people’s behaviors. Someone actually fact checked one sales pitch for the limitation of guns. This exercise in breaking down an argument outside of the emotional shows that emotion is all it has. While the premise is guns, the method is pure emotional appeal.

The Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg has decided to throw his hat in, as well as his capital, in a political fight against the NRA by spending an estimated fifty million dollars to start up Everytown for Gun Safety @ Everytown.org. If you go to his website, one of the articles pops out on the front page is an “analysis” of the over sixty “school shootings” that have taken place since the Newtown massacre on December 12th, 2012.

In this era of political rhetoric and ideological echo-chambers, there is little in the way of fact-checking and realism with statistical data. The media is off  panicking the masses of soccer moms and metrosexual dads that mass shootings are a growing epidemic, apparently none of whom look at the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports of homicides every year. Of the sixty-two incidents on Everytown’s “analysis”, only one can be classified as a mass murder. The FBI is quite clear that a “mass murder” involves the homicide of four or more individuals with no cooling off period between the murders. The article would lead readers to believe that there have been sixty-two incidents of similar scope as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But this is simply not the case.

With a total combined death toll between the sixty-two “school shootings” of 39, it’s hard to match them up to Newtown, which in one incident saw 28 deaths, including the perpetrator, Adam Lanza. Despite what the media might portray for politics, ratings, or profit, such shootings are exceptionally rare. Of course, a large amount of the focus is on the AR-15 reportedly used,the  gun control advocates would like gullible Americans to think without which Adam Lanza would not have been capable of such carnage. But if you remember the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16th, 2007. Seung-Hui Cho managed to kill 32 people, then himself, with nothing more than a .22LR caliber Walther P22 and 9mm Glock 19; the Walther with a magazine capacity of ten rounds and the Glock a bit more at fifteen. There is little discussion of firearms in the Everytown analysis, probably because they are virtually all handguns or the suggested firearm for home defense of Vice President Joe Biden, a shotgun.

Let’s look at that the lack of analysis this “analysis” gives us, as it’s little more than a picture of a crying woman and a list of schools at which a firearm was discharged on or nearby campus grounds since December 2012. Thirty-nine people dead, because of school shootings, between December 13th, 2012 and mid-April 2014. It’s hard to find statistics for causes of death even near that number. The United States averages roughly 51 deaths due to lightning strikes per year, over the last 20 years; according to NOAA. According to the CDC, there was an average of 3,533 unintentional drownings per year for the years of 2005-2009. Yet where is a politically motivated and affluent billionaire to launch a safety campaign outlining the dangers of pools or thunderstorms?

The fact that Mayor Bloomberg has taken Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s now infamous quote “never let a good crisis go to waste” to heart, is no surprise. But who thinks about the political realities of why someone is making moves against one of the GOP’s biggest political lobbies, using a tragedy like Newtown as the crest on their flag; when they are busy being emotionally compromised by the idea of children being gunned down in their school classrooms?

Among the 39 deaths, there is a justified case of self-defense, a possible case of self-defense, and seven cases of nothing more then suicides by firearm. The biggest trend among these “school shootings” is the shooters and victims are young black men. This reality is in stark contrast to the media image of upper-class white elementary school kids gunned down by socially awkward psychopaths with AR-15’s or other “assault weapons”. Few if any of the mainstream gun safety campaigns reflect the reality of gun violence. Remember, you are more likely to be killed by bee stings than you are to be shot on or around a school campus.

In conclusion, this emotional appeal by Mr. Bloomberg seems to be all about coercing a population into following his politics through emotional appeal. His advocacy gives them an audience of motivated people controlled by their emotions. What could a powerful person do with this audience aside from campaign against guns. I signed up at this website to get the newsletter. This newsletter only talks about political activism for those that seem to not be able to make up their own mind. Be aware of those that appeal to your emotion, because they may not appeal to your interests.

Note: The author received help from “Glocktopus”, a member of the notorious “Donk Chat” in writing this article.

[horseluvr00-ff]

A Place to Call Home | Chapter 19

Masterlist Here

Rating: T+

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Genre/Warnings: action/adventure/family | kidnapping, violence, strong language.

Story summary: It’s been a few months since the Battle of New York. Steve Rogers is acclimating to life when he crosses paths with teenager Katelyn Sanders, a SHIELD recruit and highly valued asset with a dark past. Follow Kate’s adventure from SHIELD asset to Avenger to wanted fugitive over the course of her youth and into adulthood with her Avenging family. Follows Infinity Saga and beyond.

Words: 5,482

Disclaimer: Majority of properties within this fanfic are owned by Marvel/Disney. My OC Katelyn Sanders, as well as a few other unaffiliated things within this fanfic are of my own creation.

Author Note: Chapters usually average between 6k-8k words, but range from 4k to 10k. Relogs are welcome :) Please no plagiarism or reposts on other platforms. Updates occur weekly on Fridays, however posts on Tumblr usually occur Saturdays.

Full story available on FanFiction.net and A03 here and here

Chapter 19 can be found here and here in full. Go here to the full prologue tumblr post… So many options.

Check out a portion of Chapter 19 below:

The Next Day…

The evening had taken a drastic turn following the visit from the Bakers. Everything was going fine. The team was winding down following a broken dinner and everyone was going in and out of their separate corners. Flashback to said evening, and Kate had - what she later told the team - a mild panic attack. Following shattering a glass cup in her hand, Kate had pushed her way past everyone and escaped into the stairwell. The team looked for her for almost two hours before she popped back up out of nowhere to tell them she was okay. They collectively had already decided not to question her about it, and Bruce bandaged up her hand before everyone officially called in for the night.

The following morning, Kate was pretty quiet and didn't seem out of sorts. A bit quiet, but overall open to the team. Steve had informed everyone he was heading to his apartment to get a few things, and would be gone a few hours, leaving out the part about swinging by SHIELD before making the eventual trip back to the Tower.

He had put it off for too long. He needed to talk with Fury. Steve had called him on the way to the base, and the Director informed him Gordon would be present for some of their discussion and would most likely show up some time after Steve.

Most of the car ride there, Steve spent thinking over what he could say; what he needed to say. The Director knew Kate was at the Tower. However he most likely didn't know she was spending the majority of her time there recovering from her injuries sustained in her escape.

Steve's eyes are zoned out as he makes his way down the hall and towards Fury's office. The last time he visited Fury's office and they talked about Kate, Steve was less than discrete and overall realized trying to preplan the conversation usually didn't work and he just said what came to his mind in the moment.

Steve slows as he comes within feet of the office door, his eyes meeting the opening for a brief time before his gaze falls and he breathes out quietly.

"Captain," Steve's head snaps up, finding Fury leaning around the doorway with his brow knit.

"Director," Steve nods, posture straightening as he goes to follow the man into the office.

"Getting your last few seconds to prepare?" Fury questions, looking over his shoulder at the Captain who gave the littlest shrug of his shoulders as his hands rose to grip his belt buckle.

"Something like that," Steve breathes, a small sigh on his lips as he meets Fury's eyes once the Director is on the other side of his desk facing him.

"How is she doing?" The question is casual and Steve finds himself almost answering it.

"She's-..." Steve clenches his jaw, eyes returning to the Director with a somewhat narrow gaze.

Fury raises an eyebrow at Steve's silence and the Captain lightly shakes his head before looking down.

"... She's fine." Steve finally mumbles, reluctant but knowing they had to come to terms sooner rather than later.

"Everything's been alright with the team?" Fury questions as he opens a drawer from the desk.

"Yeah. They're fine too." Steve responds, hands still stationary on his belt as he watches the Director before his eyes trail around the room briefly.

"Gordon?"

"He'll be here with time. He was around an hour out last time I spoke with him, shouldn't be long, but for now we can still discuss. You two will butt heads on this matter,"

"This matter being?" Steve mutters, his voice reluctantly agitated.

"You know what Rogers. We need to discuss how long you'll be keeping our recruit hostage at Stark's building." Fury makes clear.

"Considering she almost severely injured herself breaking herself out of your care, I think we can both agree you were the ones holding her hostage," Steve snaps back, not bothering to hide the anger in his voice. If it was one thing he knew about all of this, his patience was basically nonexistent when it came to this Oriah program at this point.

The Director is quiet for a moment, mouth slightly ajar as if he was about to speak but paused at hearing Steve's words.

"Taking out her tracker implant," Steve explains. "She lost a good bit of blood, was half conscious when we found her in Tony's workshop, but… Bruce patched her up… She's doing much better." Steve nods, eyes falling as he recalls the night before.

The Director remains silent, processing Steve's words with a little nod of his own before he looks down towards the files he had gathered from the drawer in his desk.

"Thank you for providing her that care, however I think it would be wise for you to hand her back over to Oriah's medical tea-"

"Not sure that's the best thing for her if I'm being honest," Steve's lips form into a thin line as he shakes his head, meeting the eyes of the Director when his expression lowered.

"Rogers, let me be crystal clear in saying that this recruit you've latched yourself on to is more of a liability than you realize." Fury leans over his desk, hands perched on the ledge. "Her abilities make her extremely powerful, not to mention at times uncontrollable."

"Well if you spent less time trying to control her, and more time treating her like a human being maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation." Steve snaps back.

Fury is quiet in response to Steve's words and gives a sigh before flipping open the file on his desk, eyes finding the content within it before he turns it around and slides it towards the opposite end of his desk where Steve was.

"This is classified. You shouldn't be looking at it. Be grateful you are." Fury mutters before pushing off his desk, feet taking him towards the large windows a ways behind his desk.

Steve's brow knits as his hand finds the file, pulling it a couple inches closer as his other hand comes to perch on the corner of the desk, eyes finding the papers within.

"... What is this?" Steve mumbles, his brow knitting before he looks up towards the Director.

"When Sanders first came to SHIELD- Oriah was relatively new… the installation upstate wasn't yet finished and we didn't have many places to hold individuals like her… Nor did we have the knowledge of how to detain or control her if necessary."

"Maybe you should focus less on the security aspect and more on gaining her trust," Steve mutters with a shake of his head, eyes finding the images with mild confusion.

A few of the photographs were of a town, a snowy location. It looked like the town had been hit by a natural disaster or like it had been in a warzone. Buildings were destroyed and rubble and debris littered the streets.

"What does this have to do wi-"

"It happened shortly after Sanders was brought to SHIELD… The images you're looking at," Fury gestures towards the file Steve was eyeing.

"And?" Steve lifts his head to meet the Director's eyes, seeking further information.

"She was still distrusting and her abilities were unstable… She escaped… Had a run in with this town of civilians," Fury responds, once again gesturing towards the photos Steve was eyeing as he took a few steps closer back towards his desk.

Steve's brow knits almost immediately as he looks up to meet Fury's eyes once more.

"Severe damage to infrastructure, multiple fatalities and a serious wake up call for our team," Fury ends, his voice turning firm as he rests his hands back on the opposite end of the desk to Steve.

The Captain gives the littlest shake of his head as he eyes the photographs, placing a few of them aside to see one that had bodies in it. Steve looks away for a moment, not wanting to believe it. He couldn't. That-... That wasn't Kate. Not the Kate he knew.

"I hope you can understand why this recruit going missing may cause some anxiety for myself as well as the teams of agents that work with her," The Director's voice was still firm and Steve clenches his jaw, racking his brain for the right words but he can't find any.

"She hasn't given me any indication that she would ever want to hurt someone," Steve shakes his head, voice confident enough as he meets the Director's gaze. "She's- respectful and mindful of others-"

"Rogers you've known this recruit for a week." Fury makes clear, his tone expressing his opposition. "You don't know anything about her."

"I know enough," Steve snaps back before closing the file.

Fury clenches his jaw, gaze still firmly set before his eyes fall and he shakes his head, a smile coming onto his face.

"What's your plan, Captain? Are you looking to adopt?" The sarcasm leaks from the Director's voice and Steve shakes his head before raising a hand to his belt buckle.

"I want her to be safe." Steve makes clear.

"The safest place for that recruit is in SHIELD's hands where she can't hurt others or herself,"

"And what gives you the right to dictate that?!" Steve snaps back. "She's just a kid! She's scared and the last thing she needs is more scientists poking and prodding her with a complete dismissal of humane treatment."

Silence falls over the room once more as the Director drops his gaze to his desk with another shake of his head. Arguing with Captain Rogers was an impossible task.

"Do I have to get a group of agents together to physically remove her from Stark's building or are you going to make this easier for everyone by handing her over?" Fury mutters in question.

"By all means send a team of agents and see what happens," Steve smirks. "Honestly try it."

Fury clenches his jaw, eyes finding the file on the desk which Steve had closed once more before he breathes out through his nose with a small nod, eyes ultimately finding the Captain again.

"Alright Rogers," Fury starts. "You wanna drag this out, I'll let Gordon know Sanders will be staying at the Tower; assuming the whole team is on board with you keeping our recruit in the same building as them."

Steve is quiet, at a loss for words as his eyes fall for a brief moment.

The team. Right. The Team was- on board? Yeah… They were- probably most likely on board…

"For how long?" Steve questions hesitantly, still reluctant of the Director's sudden leniency.

"Let's just see about the next week or so before you start thinking long term, Rogers." Fury chuckles, gathering the file before holding it out. "Feel free to share this with the team, just be discreet. I'm assuming they're following your lead in all of this."

Steve slowly takes the file, brow knit before he lowers it to his side, eyes on the Director before he looks over his shoulder towards the door and begins to back up, turning as he went.

"I don't know what conclusion you're heading towards, Rogers. But there is more to this recruit than you realize. Don't get comfortable."

"Thanks for your time, Nick." Steve calls back as he leaves the room, all but ignoring the Director's words.

The rest of chapter 19 can be found here on FFN and here on AO3. Take a peak to keep reading!

Stay healthy, stay safe, sending lots of love. <3 

Masterlist Here

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU: have you ever considered an avengers-animorphs fusion?

[Contains spoilers only through Avengers (2012) and only oblique references to MCU events beyond that movie.]

Jake finds Cassie steadying, at a time when he could use a little steadiness.  She’s a soothing presence who offers shy smiles and subtly brilliant insights into the yeerks as she watches them all closely.  By contrast, most of the others are… overwhelming.  Rachel looks very much like her grandmother, managing to be even more brash and bold and trigger-happy as she paces the bridge pointing to read-outs of energy signatures and demanding that they go rescue a fellow agent named Tobias, immediately.  Ax cheerfully eats an entire box of pop-tarts in one sitting as he tells the SHIELD agents that andalites don’t normally behave this much like warring kaftids but that Alloran is clearly not himself right now.

Marco walks onto the bridge, looks around like he owns the place, and immediately starts ranting about how they’re all a load of idiots and SHIELD is lying to them.  Jake isn’t sure he even draws breath in between words.  Mid-cyberbabble, Marco suddenly spins around and falls silent.  For about half a second.

“Oh my god, you’re Rachel Berenson.” Marco practically throws himself across the table to shake her hand.  “I’m a huge fan, really.  I read all your magazine articles, I follow one hundred percent of your fashion advice, and I also love the way you turn into a human-bear-thing and rip your enemies’ heads off with your teeth.”  He’s still pumping her hand with what looks like genuine enthusiasm.  “Plus, unlike your fifth-cousin or great-uncle or whatnot Captain War-Prince Yeerk-Killer over there, you actually have a sense of humor—”

“My name is Jake,” Jake blurts.  They all turn to look at him.  “Just Jake is fine,” he mumbles.  “I’m not a real war-prince.  Not really.  It was all just propaganda at first, and then they only promoted me so that they wouldn’t have to court-martial me after I went on that stupid suicide mission to get my brother back.”  They’re all still staring.  “And anyway, the ‘Yeerk-Killer’ part is…”  Saying I don’t like it sounds like too childish a reason even in his own mind.  “It’s just something they called me.”

There’s ringing silence for several seconds.  And then Marco says, “Anyway, about this yeerk-helping dude who gave over all our intel.”

“Tobias is not working for the yeerks.”  There’s an edge of growl to Rachel’s voice, one that causes everyone else in the room to tense just slightly.  “He’s being controlled.  Involuntarily.”

Jake takes a moment, just one, to mourn the 1940s with an intensity that steals his breath away.  He misses everything he’s lost.  Like missing a limb.  Like missing home.  Like missing a brother.  Rachel is his only link to the past, and she’s a stranger; last Jake saw, his nephew Daniel was just a baby, and now Daniel’s own daughter is a grown woman while Daniel himself is dead twenty years back in a mysterious car accident.  Everything disappeared in the span of an instant.  Everyone died.  Only Jake is left.

And then Jake draws a deep breath and says, “Regardless of how they got it, the yeerks have key intel on our operation now.  And we need to get our shit together to figure out what to do about it.”  There’s no time for him to feel sorry for himself.

Rachel knows they don’t make a particularly inspiring picture, between Jake awkwardly standing around in full dress blues, Marco slumped against a computer console in a Demon Days t-shirt, Cassie in her green floral-print leggings and purple-and-grey leotard, and Ax striding back and forth across the helicarrier with whatever that cloak-thing is billowing behind him.  She’s not sure she trusts Ax, not when he’s freely admitted that he’s doing some kind of alien-magic-glamour-thing to appear human.  (Although, as he explained apologetically, he’s not nearly as good at it as his brother would be; from the way he tells it, Elfangor hung the moon, arranged the stars, and single-handedly invented the internet.)  She has no idea what to make of Jake, whose life story defined her entire childhood and who is proving to be just as much of a clueless idiot as the rest of them.  She actually likes Marco, not so much in spite of their verbal sparring but because of it, since she can tell that he enjoys getting a sharp comeback out of her almost as much as he enjoys scoring a hit himself.

“What’s a part-time CW melodrama actor even doing on this team?” Rachel asks him.  “I mean, take away those three Grammys you almost won, and—”

“I’m only the third-smartest person on the planet, head of R&D for the single biggest telecommunications contractor in the U.S., runner-up for a Nobel Prize thanks to my groundbreaking work in increasing accessibility for information technology, and…”  Marco pauses for dramatic effect.  “Fifteenth sexiest man alive for 2009, according to People magazine.”  He gives a tiny bow.  “Oh, and I build AI robots that help me save the planet from aliens, which is more than the fourteen men allegedly sexier than me can claim,” he adds as an afterthought.

“His ego’s only so big to compensate for his lack of height,” Rachel whispers loudly to Cassie.

“Whereas the biohacker who dosed herself with untested DNA-rewiring implants in order to avoid CDC oversight,” Marco drawls, “could never ever be accused of hubris.”

“Can we please get back to talking about how aliens are invading the planet?” Jake asks the room at large.

“I spoke to that other andalite,” Cassie says.

“Alloran,” Ax supplies.  “Looorrran.”

“No, actually.”  Cassie considers, choosing her words.  “There’s a yeerk controlling Alloran.  Calls itself Visser Three.  That yeerk is itself working for this other power, one called Crayak.  I don’t fully understand the nature of this Crayak person, but I did find out that he wants to use Rachel to…”  She pauses delicately.

“To let out my inner berserker, who will kill the rest of you?” Rachel suggests.

“You won’t let that happen,” Jake says stubbornly.

Rachel lets out a harsh laugh.  “This?”  She gestures to herself.  “This is Nice Rachel, and let’s be honest that I’m not that nice.  The other one?  Mean Rachel?  She might like all of you just fine, and she’ll still rip you all to shreds the first time you startle or annoy her.  Cassie can talk the other Rachel down sometimes, under the right circumstances, but the rest of you can kiss your butts goodbye if stuck in an enclosed little helicarrier with me when I get pissed off.”

“Anyway, we’ll keep Rachel nice and calm.”  Cassie offers a small smile.  “And leaving aside the fact that Crayak might be using this whole yeerk invasion as an opening play in some even bigger chess game, there’s still Visser Three’s stake in this all to consider.  Near as I can tell, his motivation is some mix of the usual—pride, greed, wrath—but this whole thing with wiping out the humans seems to have something to do with how much one of his fellow yeerks, Visser One if I’ve got the name right, happens to like this species.”

“You got all that from one conversation?” Jake sounds impressed.

“Please assure me you did not do anything… untoward to that host body,” Ax says.

“Nah.”  Marco’s tone is full of false brightness.  “Haven’t you heard?  Agent Werewolf here was a voluntary controller herself back in the wild days of her misspent youth.  I bet she and the ol’ visser cracked open a cold one and shot the shit about their glory days together, no thumb screws necessary.”

Rachel snarls, fiercely gratified to see Marco go dead white.  “That’s cute, coming from a war profiteering gunrunner.  You, what?  Followed daddy right into the rocket-making business, didn’t care if the rockets hit the wrong planet just as long as they performed perfectly?”  She shoves him in the chest; he stumbles back several feet.  “I know what you are.  I know it took one of your own bombs going off in your face for you even to think about giving a damn about what happened to them after you were done engineering them.  I know you have no right, no right to talk to Cassie like—”

“Rachel.”  Jake’s voice is quiet, but very firm.  “Rachel, put the scepter down.”

She swings around to point it at him, and wow.  She’s not sure when she even picked the thing up.  It’s heavy and hot in her hand, pulsing with her own raging heartbeat.

“I’ve acknowledged my past, and I’m learning to deal with it.”  Cassie faces Marco, but she’s speaking to Rachel as well, struggling to calm everyone down.  “Not knowing what I was doing at the time is no excuse for what I’ve done.  I let a yeerk into my brain, yes, even thought that I was saving a different host when I did so.  I’m the one who trusted them out of naïveté, and…”  Cassie draws herself up, looking around the room.  “I’m the reason so many of the U.S.’s enemies have the power to morph right now.  I’m no better than Seerow, in my own way.  If anyone here has a problem with that…”

“Then it can wait,” Jake finishes.  He’s looking at Ax, who stares at Cassie with something between anger and horror.

“Yes, Prince Jake,” Ax says.

Jake takes a breath.  “I’m not really a—”

“That title is not given out lightly.  Tlee.”  Ax smiles a little.  “Nor should it be set aside once given.”

Rachel finds she has lowered the scepter, set it back on the table.  That she’s breathing more normally, berserker kept at bay for the moment.  Cassie looks at her with a silent question, and Rachel nods.  She’s coming back to baseline, will be calm in a minute or two just as long as nothing else happens.

Which is, of course, when the goddamn helicarrier starts falling out of the sky.

Tobias rolls over, gasping for air, fighting down the desire to puke.  He’s back in control of his own body for now, which is good, even if he is pretty sure that things did not exactly go according to plan back there.  It probably wasn’t in the team’s response plan for him to get carried and then thrown across the room by Rachel—or rather, Rachel’s furry little problem—while Cassie rushed around dodging her and trying to make soothing noises.  The plan probably didn’t call for Odret 177 to take one look at the seven-foot-tall clawed-and-fanged version of Rachel and abandon Tobias’s body as a lost cause, even if that had worked out well.  The part where Marco had sprouted some kind of exoskeleton and gone to work on the helicarrier’s fried turbine, and where the andalite guy had dropped the human act in favor of using a massive dose of electricity to restart the engines… Well, that had gone okay as well.

With difficulty, Tobias shoves himself into a sitting position.  His entire body is shaking uncontrollably.  “Well,” he says hoarsely, “that was even worse than I expected it would be.”

“I know,” Cassie says, and she does.  She sits next to him, gently lowering his head to rest on her shoulder.  She knows what it is to have her mind overthrown, which is why she’s the one who’s here.

Then again.  Tobias’s eggs are still scrambled, but he’s starting to realize maybe Cassie is the only one available.  SHIELD is elbows-deep in the mess he just made.  Last he saw, Marco and Ax were still performing emergency repairs.  There’s every possibility Rachel hasn’t stopped rampaging.  After all, Jake had been the only one attempting to deal with her, and…  Well.  Tobias is sure he’s doing his best, and equally sure he’s getting his ass kicked.  Rachel will sometimes change back for Cassie, and she’d probably re-emerge if Ax managed to zap her unconscious.  Tobias, on the other hand… Rachel’s other self doesn’t hurt Tobias, but she doesn’t relax around him either.  Mostly she stuffs Tobias into a corner and then relentlessly scans for anything that could possibly hurt him, annihilating all threats with extreme prejudice.  And someone just hurt Tobias.

“How do we fight this?” Tobias asks Cassie.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m just some guy.”

“I think that’s true of all of us.”  Jake stands in the doorway.  He’s battered and rumpled-looking, but he’s still upright.  “Rachel’s gone.  Ripped a hole in the side of the ship and then…”  He winces.

“She’ll be fine.”  Cassie puts a hand on his arm.  “You all right?”

“Five by five.”  Jake looks from her to Tobias.  “You know how to fly?”

At that, in spite of the day he’s had, Tobias actually laughs.  “Yeah, man, I can pilot us.”

They commandeer a quinjet, mostly through the power of Jake “War-Prince” “Yeerk-Killer” “Captain America” Berenson’s legendary cussedness.  Although, as Tobias is figuring out, Jake’s not a particular fan of any of the nicknames the media has given him.  Understandable, really, since the guy clearly doesn’t revel in the spotlight like Marco or understand how to use it like Rachel and Cassie.

“Peregrine,” Tobias says on the tail of a sudden thought.

“What?” Jake says sharply.

“Peregrine.”  Tobias doesn’t look away from the quinjet’s viewscreen.  “That’s what your team called you, right?  Back during the war.”  He glances over long enough to smile.  “Don’t worry, I promise not to hold it against you.”

That name, unlike the Yeerk-Killer nonsense, seems to unlock something in Jake.  He chuckles, shaking his head.  “You jump out of one measly little airplane without a parachute one time, and you never live it down.”  He sits down next to Tobias, suddenly looking about 20 years younger.  “No one actually knows for sure that I achieved terminal velocity on the way down,” he confesses, “and no matter what the wiki pages of your web net might claim, the part where I destroyed a Panzer IV on the landing was purely accidental.  Anyway, why would you hold it against me?”

Tobias smiles.  “‘Cause peregrines kill red-tails.  My carnie nickname was Hawkeye, and they let me keep it as a call sign.”

“‘Carnie?’”  Jake frowns, confused.

“I ran away and joined the circus when I was thirteen.”  Tobias glances over long enough to raise his eyebrows and make it clear that no, he’s not joking.  “Got sick of being passed around from relative to relative, and by then I’d figured out I had skills that the performers could use.”

“What can you do, anyway?” Jake asks.

“Like I said, I’m a pilot.”

Cassie takes that opportunity to lean against his chair on the far side.  “He’s being modest.  If you think that Marco can do crazy things with flight tech, you haven’t seen anything.  Add to that Tobias’s affinity for birds—yes, even peregrine falcons, no matter how much he grumbles—and ‘pilot’ is an understatement.”

Jake’s mouth opens halfway.  “You talk… to birds?”

“I communicate with them.  Sort of.”  Tobias gives another smile, this one distinctly self-deprecating.  “My mom always claimed I was half-alien, if that explains it.  But, well, between the traumatic brain injury and…”  He sighs.  “Mostly just the fact that no one ever believed Mom because of the traumatic brain injury, I didn’t exactly give the idea much credence until I figured out about the birds.  Anyway, even if my dad is some kind of alien prince or whatever, he’s never bothered to send so much as a text message my way.”  He shakes his head, shaking off the impulse toward self-pity.  “Where the hell are we going, again?”

“You know that monument to his own ego that Marco was kind enough to build and then drop in the middle of Manhattan?”  Cassie raises her eyebrows.  “We’re pretty sure Visser Three is holed up there.”

Marco thinks he plays it off pretty well, all things considered.  After all, his team doesn’t have to know that he screams like a baby for over half his fall from the sky, and ultimately Dian gets the Mark VI armor to him in time to stop him from going splat on the ground.  He lands next to where the rest of the team (including Rachel’s smaller and nicer self) have congregated on a rooftop.  And by the time he slides the helmet off he’s barely breathing hard at all.

“So,” Rachel says, “I’m guessing the yeerks did, in fact, appropriate your giant phallus?”

“The EGS Tower is the single greatest zero-emissions energy source in the entire western hemisphere,” Marco says, only somewhat sulky.  “And anyway, not all of us can have our faces carved into Mount Rushmore.”

Jake cringes so sharply, body folding into itself as his entire face goes red, that Marco feels bad for having said it.

“Anyway.”  Marco shifts, still adjusting to the new armor, which forms a hard-shelled simian arachnid around his squishy human body.  “Our theory was right.  Visser Three tried to stick a yeerk in me, and this baby—”  He taps his cochlear implant.  “Fried it to death.  I told Visser Three the Animorphs were going to kick his ass, or at least that the rest of us would stand by and cheer as Rachel kicked his ass, he objected, and…”  Marco makes a gesture to approximate the part where he was thrown out a window.

“Animorphs?” Ax asks.  “Ah.  Niiii-morfs.”

“Sure,” Marco says.  “Between Bird Boy’s mind-melding, Rachel’s Dr. Jekyll act, the fact that you’re only human when you want to be, my own beautiful cyborg parts, the part where Cassie straight-up becomes a yeerk when she feels like it, and the way that questionable science transformed Jake into a walking action figure with Product of Mattel stamped on his perfectly-shaped plastic butt, I figured our little band of shapeshifters needed a proper name.”

“So, about this alien invasion…”  Jake looks around to be sure he has their attention, nods once.  “Tobias, gonna need you directing us from above, figuring out where the rest of us can be the most use.  Cassie, you’re the closest thing we have to an expert in yeerk tech, so get to work on the transmitter for that portal.  Ax, get her up there and then focus on shutting down those Bug fighter things as fast as you can generate the lightning to do it.  I’ll be on the ground trying to keep the human civilians separate from those hork-bajir-controllers.  Marco will keep to the air to try and draw the Blade ship’s attention.  Rachel…”  He gives a slight bow.  “You know what to do.”

She grins, showing all her teeth, which are rapidly multiplying.  She says something in response but it gets lost under the sound of her spine rippling and deforming to support limbs that have grown muscular and sprouted six-inch claws.  With a manic laugh she jumps, springing forty feet straight into the air to collide with a Bug fighter; the Bug fighter comes off worse.

Marco shifts his exoskeleton into place, brian implants controlling the four extra limbs attached to the armor.  “Dr. Fossey?” he says into the helmet, and hears his AI come online.  “All right,” he tells the group as a whole.  “Gonna go get some attention, bring the party to you.”

He takes off, but not before he hears Cassie sigh loudly and say, “I hate parties.”

Cassie waits until well after the battle is over, when they’re straggling in an uneven line down the street toward the shawarma that Marco promised to find them, before she dares reach out and very gently take Jake’s hand.  He looks over in surprise when she does, but also folds his scabbed and very dirty fingers around hers with a faint smile.

“If you don’t mind me asking…”  She glances up at him.  “Was that your first kiss since 1945?”  She phrases it that way since asking was that your first kiss outright would definitely be rude.

Jake clears his throat.  “Was… was that a kiss?”

She can see why he’d be uncertain.  He’d just fallen out of the sky, had come entirely too close for anyone’s comfort to getting smashed to pieces on the rubble before Rachel saved him, when Cassie had lunged at him with an uncharacteristic lack of caution and… Okay, she’s not sure how one could interpret it as anything but a kiss.  “I wanted it to be,” she says now.  “If you don’t, that’s all right.  So.  Was it your first since 1945?”

“I’m ninety-five, not dead,” Jake grumbles.

Which answers her question.  She’s not all that surprised; she knows his life story.  Knows that he managed to sneak his way into the Army in spite of being unable to make the cut for his high school’s sports teams, much less qualify for military service at age 19 after signing up for a experimental enhancement.  Knows that he went AWOL to rescue his older brother from yeerk hold, and that the surprising success of the mission gave the Army’s half-forgotten guinea pig an unexpected dose of legitimacy.  Knows that that same older brother was killed in action two years after that, leaving behind a wife who later founded SHIELD and a son who became Rachel’s father.  Knows that Jake himself was declared missing and presumed only a few months later, actually trapped in Arctic ice until he was discovered three short weeks ago.  There simply hasn’t been time.

She’s not sure if she should be more proud or worried that she just stole the first kiss of a national icon.  “I’m pretty sure you’re a decent human being,” she tells him.  She shifts her hand slightly to lace their fingers together.  “I’m pretty sure that decent human beings don’t turn into wolves and rip people’s throats out the way I do.  I’d probably still be refusing to take sides as the yeerks tore apart lives if Tobias hadn’t decided to spare my life in spite of all logic and in spite of direct orders.”

Jake is silent for a long time.  Finally he says, “World War II was only simple and heroic in the retelling.  The phrase Greatest Generation didn’t even come about until the late 1990s, well after most of the people who would have called bullshit were dead.  I just…”  He takes a breath, looking straight up.  “I just unleashed a nuclear weapon upon several thousand living beings, killed I don’t know how many.  The people who say that my hands are clean because I only kill aliens don’t deserve to call themselves human, much less Americans.”

“For pete’s sake, just kiss already!” Rachel calls loudly from behind them.  “You’re giving me a friggin’ toothache, and I’m already hangry.”

Ax realizes that the longer he spends on this strange little planet interacting with its strange little sentient species, the more he appreciates why his brother always enjoyed coming here.  Prince Jake might shy away from his title, but he also becomes the one to stop and check in on every member of his team after they are first seated at the food establishment, taking a moment to talk to each of them in spite of the way that he is himself swaying in exhaustion.  Rachel is a magnificent warrior and it was an honor to fight by her side, while Cassie defies every expectation through her undeniable competence.  Marco’s cheerful promise to introduce Ax to every food on a stick that Earth has to offer conceals a true offer of friendship at its core.  Ax went out drinking Tobias during the whole messy affair around his first landing on Earth; later, one of the SHIELD agents had started to explain Hawkeye’s role to Ax, and it’d felt right when Ax blurted out, “He’s a friend.”

This moment feels important, Ax concludes, and not just because of his fifth helping of delicious shaved meat products upon delightfully textured bread.  It feels like the start of something.  Rachel and Marco are bickering companionably about the exact nature of that alien portal, and you could almost miss the way that Tobias’s and Rachel’s legs tangle together as she curls her body halfway around him.  Jake looks ready to doze off, but pulls himself out of it every time he realizes what’s happening, while Cassie watches him with a gentle smile.

“So, you headed home after this?” Tobias asks.  He’s pale and bruised, but his appetite has proven to be healthy enough.

Ax considers.  “The Andalite Electorate will dispense justice to Alloran, both for his actions during the hork-bajir conflict and…”  He stops.  It doesn’t do to bad-mouth his own people when speaking to aliens.

“They don’t like that he got taken.”  Tobias smiles, bitter and tired.  “Their little Abomination is some seriously bad press, and they’re going to bring holy hell down on him for it.”

Ax sets down his pita and folds his hands on the tabletop.  They are strong and five-fingered and pale brown right now because he wishes them to be.  It is easy enough to manipulate the electricity that makes his shape take on different appearances, even if he will probably never have his brother’s gift for illusions.  “You’re not wrong,” he says at last.  “Once I believed… leeeve-ed.  That my people were without fault, that our causes were righteous.  Once I hungered for war.  Once I thought it to be nothing more than another driftball game with higher stakes and greater chance for glory.  Once I dreamed of that glory, dreamed of war.  Now…  Ow.  Wwwww.”

Tobias’s expression suggests that he knows perfectly well Ax is only playing around with mouth-sounds to buy himself time.

“Now I have few certainties,” Ax finally admits.

“You have us.”  Tobias doesn’t hesitate.  “For what we’re worth, that is.”  He glances around at where Cassie is giggling while Rachel flicks tomatoes into Marco’s hair.  She has one hand over her mouth to try and avoid making enough noise to rouse Jake, who is sleeping face-down in a blob of tabbouleh.

“You are all of you worth very much to me.”  Once again, the words feel right even as Ax says them.  “And I’d be honored to fight with you once again, should the need arise.”

[All my other AUs are housed here.]

[sirfrogsworth]

So Donald Trump continues to assert that he is the least racist person you will ever meet. In the history of time and space, no one has been less racist than him. 

This bothers me. 

Any time a person says they are unequivocally not a racist I become very suspicious. When they say things like, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” or “I don’t see color” or (my favorite) “I don’t care if they black, blue, pink, or purple”... I just politely nod and smile. 

It’s obviously a case of “the lady doth protest too much.” But beyond that, I don’t believe anyone who says they have completely rid themselves of racism. 

Here is a dirty little secret of most people who consider themselves allies. 

We struggle with racist thoughts. 

There is never a moment where we cleanse our mind completely and go, “Welp, the racism’s all gone. That’s a relief!” 

It’s an ongoing process of learning and relieving ourselves of ignorance. We must deprogram stereotypes and generalizations and other hurtful thoughts. Many of which have been implanted in our brains since youth. It would be awesome if we could just undo all of that and rid our minds of bigotry forever. But it doesn’t work like that and people who tell you they are “the least racist person you’ll ever meet” are liars and most likely the most racist person you are likely to meet. 

Most of the time it’s just an initial thought. A flash of memory or a sudden instinct you haven’t quite unlearned. Indoctrination can be powerful sometimes and it takes vigilance to resist having these quick, fleeting thoughts. Yes, our logical brain soon takes over and we realize how stupid and awful that thought may have been, but it’s disturbing that it existed. Many people think denial is best. They think telling others this never happens to them will make them look better. But I think admitting it shows honesty. And honesty builds trust. And trust is key to mending any rifts that may run deep through our communities. 

Knowledge is key. Seeking out better information and learning new perspectives can do wonders. Talking to people and learning their stories also helps. Any time you can humanize those who are different from you will help anyone become a better ally. I’ve worked hard to unlearn my racism. I do my best not to be racist. I will continue to work on this. 

I am not the least racist person you will ever meet. 

But I’m trying. And until I am, I will be the best ally I know how to be.

[theseventhhex]

Maria Usbeck Interview

Maria Usbeck

Photo by Holland Brown

Albums by Maria Usbeck unfold like the pages of a travel diary. Inspired and informed by her childhood in South America, her young adult life in New York City, and her many world travels in between, it’s music made by a visiting outsider, tapping into a shared core of human expression. Maria returns with her sophomore album, ‘Envejeciendo’, a collection of songs three years in the making, written and recorded across New York City, New Zealand, Japan, and Florida. Titled for the Spanish word for “aging,” ‘Envejeciendo’ is a concept album exploring the universal obsession with youth and our preoccupation with growing older. The tracks are anchored in Usbeck’s personal experiences with adulthood. Navigating unpopular subject matter with humour and tenderness, ‘Envejeciendo’ manages to be much more than a vehicle for sentimentality, and comes with the added benefit of a slew of beach-worthy, rose-tinted toe-tappers… We talk to Maria about using more of our brain, religion and visiting Galapagos…

TSH: How would you summarise your songwriting stance as you readied ‘Envejeciendo’?

Maria: The concept for the record which is the aging process is sort of what guided each song as I was writing them. Like I did for ‘Amparo’ my first solo album, I compiled ideas and sounds that I thought worked within the concept. Slowly mixing it all and defining each track to tackle its subject. It’s almost as if once I’ve got the overall idea for the record, I start living life slowly collecting whenever I find something that fits.

TSH: Having delved into youth and death on this release, do you feel you aligned yourself with these topics for certain reasons?

Maria: Yes, the idea came to me when a friend that I had not seen in a while mentioned that I had a lot of greys - meaning grey hairs that had grown on my head. At first I took it as an offense, it made me feel strange. Then later after reflecting about it more and more I came to the conclusion that it’s all in my head literally. The idea that changing and growing is frowned upon or not as interesting or attractive as youth is something we’ve been told by society - these strange norms of beauty that have been inflicted onto us. That’s just the physical aspect; I started noticing that my way of thinking was changing in regards to activities in my life such as partying. Going out doesn’t seem as appealing to me and certain things are becoming more of a priority over the “fun things”. This record is a reaction of how I feel about the topic and trying to get myself to embrace changing.

TSH: Having looked into the aging process, what did you take away from this subject overall?

Maria: It’s a process that I could dig into for eternity. I wish, obviously I won’t live that long. What I took away is that I really don’t have any answers on many things such as why certain people live longer than others, is it climate? Is it lifestyle? There really are a lot of factors and there is no real true way to prolong life. But we shall see what stem cell research comes up with. I also think that writing this record has helped me embrace the changes that age brings and hopefully people feel this way when they listen to the songs. Best to relax about it. Loving my greys now.

TSH: For this record was the idea of using your surroundings and travels to collage the songs a factor that came into play?

Maria: Yes, but not as much as it was on my previous record. On this one I did spend a lot of time digging the internet for answers. Technology rather than the real world came into play.

TSH: You had the gifted Jorge Elbrecht on board to mix this record, what was the experience like in working with him?

Maria: I’ve known Jorge for ages and he is endlessly talented. I’ve been wanting to work with him for a very long time. Very happy he was able to jump in and mix this record. He is very sensible and has the ears of a moth. Moths have the best hearing supposedly of any creature on earth. Moths and Jorge. I would recommend anyone to work with him if given the chance.

TSH: Talk us through the incentives that you drew on for the track ‘Adios A Mi Memoria’…

Maria: Well, I’m not sure if its technology dumbing us down or if it really is just aging but I find myself forgetting things. And the main inspiration for this song has been watching my grandfather deal with his hints of Alzheimer’s. Sometimes he is super sharp; sometimes he has no idea where he is. It’s really shocking to encounter this, but it also made me think that for him it’s a relief perhaps from some realities. Maybe when we get the brain chip implant that connects us all to the internet we won’t need to memorise or forget anything at all. Joking! I really hope we don’t go there, sounds terrifying and sort of the opposite of evolution in a way. I think we should be pushing to utilise more of our brain rather than just outsourcing it to devices.

TSH: What led you to selecting ‘Nostalgia’ as the album closer?

Maria: That’s what it all comes down to really. I can be nostalgic about physical things as well as emotional. I can miss certain smells and sounds from home as well as miss how my skin looked like 10 years ago. It all falls into this feeling. So it made sense for me to close the record with this song. Sound wise it also captivates some of my favourite sounds; it’s the dessert of the record.

TSH: Can you tell us more about the significance of the inclusion of the recorded interview with your late grandmother on this album?

Maria: My grandma was such a magical person. So full of life and very in touch with her emotions, and she lived in dreams. She read a lot and transported herself into stories. She would often talk out loud about her life and once I decided to record her. That’s where the sample came from. It just happened to be that she talked about this idea of a long lost loved one and I coincidentally was writing about this after meeting a man in New Zealand who brought up the topic. I had to then include her. Also, her voice was always one of the strongest and most emotional I’ve ever heard. So from the perspective of the sound itself it was a no brainer.

TSH: How vital can it be when forming new music to step outside of your comfort zone to allow for new perspectives?

Maria: I think it’s vital; I really did do that for my last record as much as I could. For this one I wasn’t able to as much. It’s interesting that you just get completely different results by experimenting more and more. That’s why I also try to work with others; always working with someone to co-produce helps me get that outsider perspective. I can get pretty wrapped up in concept and sounds very quickly.

TSH: Being immersed in music, which aspects do you feel most deeply connected to via being a musician?

Maria: The writing process and once I’m onstage - I love it. I feel at home. Right before it, I’m insanely nervous and weird but when I get up there it’s comfy. But yes, writing is my favourite part of it all: being able to express ideas via sounds.

TSH: Does religion and experiences of religion seep into your state of mind and thinking?

Maria: It did in the past. I grew up catholic so for my last record I had to express that. Let it all out and confess to the world, haha. I just had a lot of anger and resentment towards religion. I’ve calmed down quite a bit since then and now I choose to just practice my own beliefs which are purely scientific. But I do think that it’s important to embrace and to understand that we are small in this large universe and whether it’s just this one or multiple parallel ones, one has to keep centred and remain calm. It’s easy to overwhelm yourself thinking of the origin of things and the fate we may have. So if religion helps you to remain centred from any outer type of spiritual guidance, that’s excellent. Just no fanatics for me, thanks.

TSH: What were your highlights in visiting Galapagos for the second time recently since childhood?

Maria: Talk about a spiritual journey! It was incredible! The whole thing was a highlight. To be able to experience being there is beyond anything I’ve done anywhere else. It’s a magical place. I recently learned to swim so I was able to go snorkelling and that was definitely one of my favourite moments out there. Looking at the fish and sea turtles was great and I even saw a penguin swimming around and a manta ray. I felt like I couldn’t breathe for the first few minutes because it was so special - my body was in a slight shock. The ocean is a magnificent place and we must work hard to protect it. I’m cutting down my usage of plastics as much as possible and I hope this catches on for everyone.

TSH: What’s downtime like for Maria Usbeck?

Maria: Chillaxing in the woods on my hammock, spending time with my dogs and reading. And the most important part is the wondering. My friends and partner think that I space out a lot… I’m somewhere else sometimes in my head. This is my downtime - my mental exploratory time. It’s very important to wonder. I feel nowadays with phones and so much visual stimulation we don’t have the time to do so. Make the time if you can.

TSH: Finally, what sort of ambitions do you have in mind for your musical endeavours as you look ahead?

Maria: Just to continue to be able to work on more music. Hopefully it’s something that I will enjoy more and more as I grow older rather than the opposite. We shall see! I’m not interested in material success, I just want to able to find the time to express myself musically. If not, I guess there is always therapy and I’ll go there to express my feelings instead.

Maria Usbeck - “Nostalgia”

Envejeciendo

[anselm0]

Novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I knew this was going to be Something, and it sure is.

I’m not the first to remark on it, but that sure is a gay pride flag on the cover of this book/movie. A quick google reveals that the pride flag debuted in 1978, while TMP was released 1979, which by no means proves intent, but those are facts of general interest I’m going to share here.

Two things: 

LOVE INSTRUCTOR???? Her FIRST, no less??? what

Why am I being subjected to Roddenberry’s writing exercise of reviewing his own tv show while in character of one of the characters on said show

One actual thing that we learn from Kirk’s preface is that there are apparently two varieties of humans, the original flavor and then the super cool Crystal Pepsi humans who are wicked smart and pretty insufferable about it. Also not in Crystal Pepsi humans’ favor is that they SUCK at space travel because they can’t “help but be seduced eventually by the higher philosophies, aspirations, and consciousness levels” they encounter in aliens and doing a bunch of disappearances, defections, and mutinies as a result. So the moral of the story is we need humans too stupid or stubborn to want to be better to drive the space planes, I guess. 

I also find this amusing. The editor’s note on this line from “Kirk” is that he’s being modest, because he did a great five year deep space mission. ~~Kirk begs to differ, though: 

I also liked TOS, imaginary editor, but 94 deaths in five years of peaceful exploration is not an amazing statistic. Anyway, Kirk’s annoyed at how he and his five year mission got portrayed by the guy they sent to record it, what does that asshole have to say for himself?

what. is. happening. 

Look. I am all for world-building. But this is ridiculous. What kind of false modesty self-dragging self-insert Bolshevism

We are, by the way, only 11 pages in, and the story hasn’t even started officially. This will be the longest long post.

Chapter One opens with Kirk getting a semi-telepathic message from Starfleet that is the opening scene of TMP in which the space cloud zaps some Klingon ships.

Yeah, I can see where the public concern over this policy would come from, imaginary editor. It is bananas, and I hope consigned to a quiet ‘canon? never heard of her’ retcon. Imagine if this were still the case when the Borg came. Who could have guessed that having technological access to the brains of all the top brass in the Federation’s first and only major defense force might be, like, a bad idea!!!!!

It’s also a POINTLESS idea, because after getting the message, Kirk goes to a signal station to call Starfleet because he can’t reply (a design flaw) and also he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with this information because he didn’t get any instructions (why send classified info to people who don’t need to act on it???), and they just show the same scene to him again when he’s there. 

Before that happens, however, Kirk gets put on hold long enough to think thoughts and feel feelings he “had not permitted himself to admit” to himself. Like all former greats, he hates his desk job. He took it for reasons, despite this amazingly persuasive case against doing so:

We get it, you’re a Real Man. 

Literally the entire medical profession apparently agreed with McCoy that a desk job would be bad for Kirk, but Starfleet wanted him to be their posterchild of awesomeness for all those frickin’ Crystal Pepsi humans wondering if Starfleet is even necessary (why they would care about low intellectual ability Kirk is a mystery left unaddressed), so they made sure Kirk was persuaded to accept against medical advice. 

The way they did this was a combination of his sense of duty and a sexy lady. Of course. Sexy lady (Vice Admiral Lori Ciani, spelled Ciana in all subsequent mentions) is in fact the one Kirk gets connected to once Starfleet takes him off hold. Lori always gets his blood pumping, what with her “unusually large eyes and the slim, youthful angularity in her arms and legs” that “always reminded [Kirk] of a fawn’s wild grace and innocence”, even though he knows she’s actually a freak in the sheets. Oh, and she’s also smart and a great officer or whatever, her lips caress his name whenever she says it, he can almost smell “her body fragrance” and Kirk’s getting hard.

I wish I was exaggerating.

There are a number of concerning things here that I think McCoy should turn his attention to instead of whether Kirk can survive at a desk job. Are relationships one year contracts in the future? That seems like a bad idea.

Kirk has a paranoid fantasy that Admiral Nogura manipulated Lori Ciana into contracting sex/mothering/friendship with him and is pretty sure that Nogura told her to talk to him now to make sure he does what Starfleet wants again. 

I’m tired already.

It is not clear to me if she acts like he expects her to if his paranoid fantasy was real. In any case, the conspiracy theory and THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER was all for nothing because Kirk just goes to Nogura’s office and convinces him to give him command of the Enterprise.

On a more pleasant note, there was a chapter in the middle of all Kirk’s nonsense of Spock’s POV. He’s at Gol trying to achieve Kolinahr and he gets distracted by what seems to be the space cloud momentarily linking his and Kirk’s minds. Spock is shook and “knew in this instant that the human half of him was far from extinguished. That half had simply been capable of human guile and had learned to hide itself even from his own notice. He had foolishly and carelessly underestimated it and believed it to be gone. But like the enemy it had always been, his human half had merely lain in wait in order to assault him while he was defenseless.” 

MY POOR BB

Anyway, Kirk’s on his way to the Enterprise and once again thinking thoughts.

I’m going to guess that Kirk is not a great boyfriend.

There are several things going on here, none of them good or pleasing. 

There are some really uncomfortable descriptors for Sulu and Uhura, which are unnecessary in addition to being offensive because we all know what they look like. We know Sulu is Asian, so you don’t have to call him “the Asian romantic,” or really modify any descriptor of him to remind us that he’s Asian. Uhura initially has “classically lovely features,” which is okay, I guess, but then she has a “fine-boned Bantu face.” Um. 

There are some weird descriptors of Will Decker, too, who Kirk is coming to demote and summarily replace, but the worst one is this one, Scotty’s perspective on Kirk pulling Decker aside to tell him he’s being demoted:

My face is a rictus of horror. 

The description of the transporter accident is quite gruesome and Good. We all know the fate of the unfortunate Commander Sonak, but Roddenberry now reveals that the second person was sexy lady trap Lori Ciana!! Kirk inexplicably took over the transporter controls to try to save them her, but isn’t familiar with their new configuration, and is guilt-stricken by the uncertainty that their deaths might have been prevented by someone like Decker, who really knows the new Enterprise. Also, nobody knows why she was there.

FUCK YOU

I’ve been very negative so far. The novelization actually does a lot better than the movie does in conveying Kirk’s disorientation with the new ship and how much he’s second-guessing his fitness for command, despite his insistence before that he was the only one who could do this. On the other hand, he doesn’t realize that he should PUT DECKER BACK IN COMMAND. 

Oh, he makes Decker the science officer in addition to the executive officer because he won’t accept a different science officer in replacement of Sonak who isn’t Vulcan. Apparently there’s no replacement for a Vulcan science officer.     .   .   .        He immediately begins worrying that he’s overloading Decker with responsibilities. JUST MAKE BETTER CHOICES INSTEAD OF WORRYING ABOUT BAD ONES.

Hey, you know that dumb scene in TMP where all the crew gets together in an empty room to once again watch the Klingon ships get destroyed and since it’s a rehash, everybody spends it wondering why Starfleet has like eighteen different uniform designs in unflattering cuts and colors? Roddenberry knows we all think it’s dumb and has some strong words in response:

lol

Apparently that room is the “rec deck,” which is the largest interior space in a starship ever designed. Some people think it’s wasteful but real space veterans know that the rec deck is where “the most vital of the ship’s mechanisms [are] kept in peak operating efficiency through music, song, games, debate, exercise, competition, friendship, romance, [and] sex.” There were definitely regular public orgies on the five year mission, weren’t there. 

Thirty-one people bail after seeing the Klingon ships bite it, which seems like a thing that they shouldn’t be able to do?? Also, what was the point of all that secrecy with the secret implant for telepathic transmission of classified information if Kirk’s just going to show it to several hundred people who are free to leave if they want to?????

I know TMP gets shit for being The Motionless Picture, but you really have to read the novelization to grasp the complete lack of plot points. It’s EIGHTY pages before Lieutenant Ilia arrives. The book is 250 pages long. 

Uhura has some kind of Tone when she tells the bridge that Ilia is Deltan and Kirk rebukes her, “And there are no finer navigators in Starfleet, Commander.” 

This is a weird species whose major defining features are overwhelming sexual pheromones and a GREAT sense of direction.

Kirk immediately regrets chastising Uhura since she’s “the last one who needed instruction in diversity from him.” IS THE FUTURE RACIST OR NOT, GENE

Sulu seems not to know what a Deltan is, even though all the other TOS officers do, so I don’t know how that happened. I got my hopes up for ONE SECOND when he didn’t seem to care but he is affected by her allure after all. Stand down, gays. 

Kirk clocks the obvious clues that Ilia and Decker were involved before, and starts finding ways to make it his business. 

Sure, Jan.

Anyway, the ship leaves the orbital dock in a looooong and boring chapter, then spends another chapter flying past Jupiter at IMPULSE. Thank Jupiter and Zeus we did not have to sit through the slow ride from hell through the solar system. 

Some random things we learn in the meantime (a lot of meantime!!):

McCoy is a hippie who dislikes surgery and medicine, preferring to just berate people into healing themselves or whatever. I now see why starships would need ship’s counselors but there would be absolutely no Xanax or beta-blockers for the Reg Barclays of the future.

There are body scanners incorporated into all the new uniforms, which constantly transmit biodata to the medical bay. This was always a part of the costume design (it’s in those super ugly belt buckles!) but never mentioned or actually used to my recollection in TMP. It’s also not a thing in future Trek series, presumably because it would be boring to not have medical emergencies.

Chapel went on the five-year mission with a PhD and now has her MD! GIVE HER SOMETHING TO DO

McCoy resigned from Starfleet because Admiral Nogura would not heed his medical opinion that Kirk is a Manly Man who needs to be doing Manly Things out in space instead of working a desk job. 

Immediately after this reveal, Roddenberry reinforces how scientific it is by having Chapel say, “deprivation of [starship command] produced physical and emotional symptoms remarkably like those associated with narcotic withdrawal.” Okay!!

We only refer to Ilia as “the Deltan navigator” now.

“The so-called mutant-farm civilizations of pre-history had known [humans aren’t alone in the universe] of course, but their information had been a gift and not the result of human labor and growth.” W H A T 

What do these words mean

FEELS racist??? idk idk

also this:

What a piece of information to just casually drop with no followup whatsoever!

Roddenberry is basically masturbating himself and Kirk about how great it is that he’s back. Having Kirk command the Enterprise again is

“like Lazarus stepping out into the sunlight” plz

so spiritually moving that Decker is suddenly feeling fine about being inexplicably demoted (couldn’t Kirk have just been an admiral still? and Decker a captain?) and removed from command

By the way, Kirk apparently didn’t officially take command until moments before they left orbital dock, which feels wrong to me?? There were eleven hours where he was giving all the orders but had no official jurisdiction or responsibility for the consequences. Starfleet needs better command protocol.

making Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov ecstatically happy, a fact that Kirk somehow knows from looking at their faces despite not seeing any of them in years and having done nothing but demand the ship be launched before being properly tested or configured for warp and against the advice of his first officer and chief engineer omg you idiot

Kirk then orders them to go to warp agains the advice of his first officer and chief engineer, accidentally creating a wormhole the ship falls into along with an asteroid that nearly destroys them because Kirk doesn’t know how the phasers work on his new ship. Kirk then gets shirty with Decker when Decker factually states that Kirk doesn’t know what he’s doing and Decker does, and knowing things was useful in that it saved the ship being blown up by a series of stupid choices. GREAT FIRST DAY

Again, I do think the book is doing a good job of conveying Kirk’s motivation of scrambling to relive his glory days and his willful blindness to the consequences, but I don’t know how we’re going to get to a point where we’re actually happy this guy gets to be in command of a starship for another five movies. McCoy does call him out on his nonsense, but I don’t see him learning or growing at all yet and can’t foresee it from what I know of what plot is coming next.

Speaking of plot developments

SPOCK!!!

First of all, “severe black robe” is underselling one of the best looks ever served to my undeserving eyes. Second, no sooner has Spock stepped back on the bridge than everyone starts dropping serious hints about his relationship with Kirk. I mean

subtle!!

Spock is not a happy bunny, though. Everyone is happy to see him again - it’s been so long and Scotty’s so excited he apparently forgets that you don’t touch Vulcans? - but Spock’s ignoring them. As soon as he can, he finds a place to meditate.

Roddenberry wants to make absolutely sure we know that the Enterprise is a nonstop fuckfest. Consider me informed!

Spock needs to meditate because he was way too excited to see Kirk again. He’s pretty whatever about everyone else (”humanly human” McCoy and Chapel “with her bizarre and impossible fantasies of one day pleasuring him” ick) but his t’hy’la is a different story.  I MEAN!!!!

He has to go to a meeting with Kirk and McCoy (who’s now monitoring Kirk’s behavior re: his unfitness for command) and we get this little gem about the officer’s lounge:

I know it’s supposed to be a utopia but come on. 

WINK

They’ve established there’s some kind of intelligence in the space cloud that Spock can telepathically link with when the first probe arrives and injures Chekov. Chapel comes to treat him but she can’t do anything for him. Ilia does...something vaguely telepathic that usually happens during Deltan sex to make him feel pleasure instead of pain and you know what, I’m going to choose to not read into this. It does seem weird that Starfleet has extremely strict regulations about allowing Deltans to serve due to their pheromones but telepathy is A-okay. 

We learn during the probe’s visit that the only console hooked into the ship’s main computer and Starfleet databases is the science station’s, which seems pretty unbelievable. There isn’t even an uplink for centralized record keeping about course changes and phaser discharges? 

Ilia disappears and Kirk is surprised how much he cares. They did meet just today but SHE IS YOUR CRACK NAVIGATOR why wouldn’t you be upset! Her replacement comes up as they’re getting pulled into the space cloud and she’s also good; Kirk thinks, “There might be something about her worth remembering.” I’m concerned that Roddenberry doesn’t seem to realize how unlikeable he’s making Kirk. 

See the entire sequence where the Ilia probe arrives:

Gross.

Kirk does spend a lot of time thinking that Deltan pheromones don’t affect Vulcans and that Spock is annoyingly unmoved, but that’s just guys being dudes. 

Probe Ilia remembers Decker, so Kirk tells him to use that to try to establish productive communication with Vger. I know it’s spelled Vejur but that’s dumb. It’s Vger. V’ger if you’re nasty. Anyway, Kirk was making this traumatic assignment about him and his awesome sexual prowess. 

But he’s not done!! How could this sequence possibly end WITHOUT Kirk creeping on his first officer trying to fuck an alien probe!!!!

It’s completely normal! Look, Decker even expects it!

Decker is Manfully frustrated that his Manliness isn’t working on the probe. Kirk and McCoy are armchair quarterbacking this like the fans of weird sexual encounters they are. Chapel comes in to make a good suggestion and McCoy condescends to her, of course. There’s some worldbuilding around Deltan sexuality which seems to be just that there are psychic connections involved that make regular, non-psychic sex boring for humans afterward. Okay? I thought it was going to be something much weirder. Again, I don’t know why THIS makes Deltans have to take celibacy oaths to be in Starfleet but non-sexual telepathic actions are totally fine. 

This is all going on while the Enterprise is in the cloud, so they take a break from creeping on Decker and the Ilia probe to go to the bridge and have Kirk condescend to Uhura about how to do her job. Look, I don’t want to get into a whole thing about Kirk’s virtues as a commander but he is not better at Uhura’s job than she is. PLEASE give her something to do other than be impressed with Kirk.

Around page 209 (out of 250) we finally get a chapter from V’ger’s POV and it is legitimately Good. If Gene Roddenberry was capable of writing science fiction without obsessing over future sexuality, this book would be so much better. 

There are fewer than 40 pages left by the time we get to the iconic sickbay scene. 

This book is so weirdly paced. If you’re going to write about future sex, please let it be between the characters we actually care about!! For example!!!!!! But no, we get Decker and Ilia-probe, which may actually be Ilia’s psyche in a mechanical casing? Unclear, but Decker is pretty convinced.

Gross.

The rest of it is basically exactly the same as the movie: they get to V’ger and figure out it’s Voyager and respond with the correct code, but V’ger refuses to acknowledge it. Decker and Ilia somehow become noncorporeal entities joined with V’ger. It’s not clear how this is possible, but whatever. Kirk is, like, mildly regretful about the absolute shitshow this mission turned into and the fact that he lost two good officers to a space cloud, but he’s not torn up about it. He got his ship back! And he has no fear that it will be taken away again because he caused half the shitshow! In true Star Trek fashion, there is literally ZERO discussion of where V’ger, who is a perambulating cloud as wide across as a small solar system, is going to go now instead of Earth bc that’s a somebody else problem.

The end.

[riichardwilson]

Overthinking Things Is Killing Your Productivity. Let an NHL Goalkeeper Show You How.

April 11, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

One of the best descriptions for the mind I’ve ever heard is that it’s like the stomach for your thoughts. Put the right things in and you condition yourself to become stronger, leaner, more agile. Put the wrong things in? That’s where breakdown comes. When your mind takes in too many competing thoughts, questions, beliefs or ideas, it essentially shuts down. It gets tired, slow and unable to function properly — quite the opposite of productivity.

All it takes to validate this idea is to think about the way you talk to yourself every day. How do you feel when you overthink something? Anxious? Nervous? Defeated? Confused? On the contrary, how does it feel when you take those decisive actions? When someone asks you how to handle a problem at work and you confidently scan your experience and knowledge…and bam. The answer was right there all along.

Related: Just Do It: How to Work When You Really Don’t Feel Like It

Don’t overthink it

This principle in action was never more evident than what recently happened on a sheet of ice in Toronto. Teams in the National Hockey League bring two goalkeepers to every game: one who starts, and another backup just in case. In the event something crazy happens, like both goalies get injured in the same game, each game features an emergency “just in case” goalie in the arena who can sub in for either team. The odds of a team needing to call on one of these ringers is so rare that most teams don’t put much thought into who their emergency sub even is.

Well, luckily for the Carolina Hurricanes, their emergency goalie was a 43-year-old man named David Ayres. The night the Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Hurricanes, Ayres was a local part-time Zamboni driver (the Zamboni is the machine that cleans and smooths the ice between periods) sitting in the crowd enjoying the game with everyone else. Then the Hurricanes’ starting goalie got injured. Then their backup got injured. Suddenly, not halfway through the game, Ayres’ phone blew up from Hurricanes personnel.

“Can you come to the training room? We need you to suit up.”

What happened next became the stuff of legend. Ayres had played some minor league hockey in his youth, but he certainly wasn’t pro level. And yet he managed to stop eight of the 10 shots he faced and helped the Hurricanes win the game.

There are a lot of reasons to love this story. It hits on the human story in multiple ways. But the one I think we need to focus on the most closely is the fact that Ayres didn’t have time to doubt himself. One minute he was in a seat with everyone else, the next he was turning away hockey pucks and scrapping on the ice with some of the best hockey players in the world. Logic would tell you there’s no way Ayres should be able to save even one shot, let alone 80 percent. So how did he do it?

In the simplest terms possible, he didn’t overthink it. He didn’t have time.

Related: Want to Be Successful? Quit Overthinking.

Too much information

One of the biggest problems we face today is our economy of information. We’re continually inundated with plans, options, information, opinions. We’re bombarded with information all the time, from every angle and at every turn. In one sense, we’re in the most incredible time in human history for learning. As the executive of a training company, we have more resources to give our clients now than ever before, from e-learning tools to workshop materials and everything in between.

But that comes with a cost, specifically the fragmentation of the brain. This quote from economist Tyler Cowen is a good place to start the conversation: “The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce. It’s the willingness to do something with it.”

From an evolutionary perspective, being overwhelmed with choice triggers the fight, flee or freeze response in your brain. Your brain tells you to flee because it sees this information overload as a threat, so it shuts down. That goes back to our brain-as-stomach analogy. It’s getting too much food, so it’s sending frantic signals to stop eating (or, in this case, stop taking in more information).

Related: 10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

Just act

You won’t always have the ability to jump straight into the fire like David Ayres, but you can certainly follow his lead. When you stop deciding to act and just act, you’ll notice you access more of your ability than you thought possible.

Here are four simple steps to create a culture of everyday decisiveness for both you and the people around you.

1. Start every day with one action item. One of the biggest mistakes I see professionals make is wasting the early hours of their work day. Studies show your brain is most productive early in the day, and as time passes its energy slowly dissipates. So when you turn up to work and the first thing you do is get coffee, organize your desk, check emails and chitchat with a co-worker, you’re wasting all that productive energy.

That’s why it’s key to light a fuse underneath your day early. Make it a goal to accomplish at least one thing within the first 15 to 20 minutes of your workday. It gives you momentum and sets the tone for a massively productive day.

2. Hypothesize, test, pivot. This process has given me so many wins over the years that I can’t even count. And it’s so simple that you can start using it right now. First, come up with a hypothesis about what you think is going to happen (“When we execute this marketing agency campaign, we’ll get X engagement”). Then test that hypothesis in the real world (“We actually ended up getting less engagement than we thought”). Then pivot to a modified, upgraded strategy (“Now we’re going to try marketing agency campaign Y”). Again, it’s so simple it hurts, but it works like crazy. The key? It forces you to test your thoughts and theories in the real world. It implants action into the process. And it shows in the results.

Related: How to Disrupt the Way You Talk to the Person in the Mirror

3. Turn generalizations into proactive statements. Your self-talk is absolutely critical in these moments. Ayres is the perfect example. After the game he told reporters that he always kept up a positive string of self-talk statements to build himself up. Had he continually been telling himself “There’s no way I can do this,” he probably wouldn’t have. We can only succeed at the level we believe is possible for us.

So turn any generalizations into positive, proactive statements. If you say to yourself, “This project is too big for me,” that stops you from acting. Instead, get positive and proactive. “I will start preparing today so this project won’t be too big for me.” That kind of self-talk makes it a completely different conversation in your mind.

4. Focus on the next decision. Going forward, I want this to be your mantra: “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” You have to chunk it down to the smallest possible step so you can avoid feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances around you. When you feel overwhelmed, the brain essentially shuts down. It stops regulating a chemical called cortisol, which controls things like your energy level, how well you sleep and your blood pressure. In turn, you feel drained, your immune system doesn’t work properly, and you’re more likely to get headaches and crushing anxiety.

So how do you avoid all that? You chunk. It. Down. Every time you think, “There’s nothing I can do about the economy,” I want you to say to yourself, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time you say, “I can’t control my traffic,” I want you to think, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time it seems like the market is getting worse, I want you to feel, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.”

Do this and you’ll find that you have more motivation, fewer bottlenecks at critical moments and a more proactive belief about becoming more and contributing more right now.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/overthinking-things-is-killing-your-productivity-let-an-nhl-goalkeeper-show-you-how/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/615132674910240768

[laurelkrugerr]

Overthinking Things Is Killing Your Productivity. Let an NHL Goalkeeper Show You How.

April 11, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

One of the best descriptions for the mind I’ve ever heard is that it’s like the stomach for your thoughts. Put the right things in and you condition yourself to become stronger, leaner, more agile. Put the wrong things in? That’s where breakdown comes. When your mind takes in too many competing thoughts, questions, beliefs or ideas, it essentially shuts down. It gets tired, slow and unable to function properly — quite the opposite of productivity.

All it takes to validate this idea is to think about the way you talk to yourself every day. How do you feel when you overthink something? Anxious? Nervous? Defeated? Confused? On the contrary, how does it feel when you take those decisive actions? When someone asks you how to handle a problem at work and you confidently scan your experience and knowledge…and bam. The answer was right there all along.

Related: Just Do It: How to Work When You Really Don’t Feel Like It

Don’t overthink it

This principle in action was never more evident than what recently happened on a sheet of ice in Toronto. Teams in the National Hockey League bring two goalkeepers to every game: one who starts, and another backup just in case. In the event something crazy happens, like both goalies get injured in the same game, each game features an emergency “just in case” goalie in the arena who can sub in for either team. The odds of a team needing to call on one of these ringers is so rare that most teams don’t put much thought into who their emergency sub even is.

Well, luckily for the Carolina Hurricanes, their emergency goalie was a 43-year-old man named David Ayres. The night the Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Hurricanes, Ayres was a local part-time Zamboni driver (the Zamboni is the machine that cleans and smooths the ice between periods) sitting in the crowd enjoying the game with everyone else. Then the Hurricanes’ starting goalie got injured. Then their backup got injured. Suddenly, not halfway through the game, Ayres’ phone blew up from Hurricanes personnel.

“Can you come to the training room? We need you to suit up.”

What happened next became the stuff of legend. Ayres had played some minor league hockey in his youth, but he certainly wasn’t pro level. And yet he managed to stop eight of the 10 shots he faced and helped the Hurricanes win the game.

There are a lot of reasons to love this story. It hits on the human story in multiple ways. But the one I think we need to focus on the most closely is the fact that Ayres didn’t have time to doubt himself. One minute he was in a seat with everyone else, the next he was turning away hockey pucks and scrapping on the ice with some of the best hockey players in the world. Logic would tell you there’s no way Ayres should be able to save even one shot, let alone 80 percent. So how did he do it?

In the simplest terms possible, he didn’t overthink it. He didn’t have time.

Related: Want to Be Successful? Quit Overthinking.

Too much information

One of the biggest problems we face today is our economy of information. We’re continually inundated with plans, options, information, opinions. We’re bombarded with information all the time, from every angle and at every turn. In one sense, we’re in the most incredible time in human history for learning. As the executive of a training company, we have more resources to give our clients now than ever before, from e-learning tools to workshop materials and everything in between.

But that comes with a cost, specifically the fragmentation of the brain. This quote from economist Tyler Cowen is a good place to start the conversation: “The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce. It’s the willingness to do something with it.”

From an evolutionary perspective, being overwhelmed with choice triggers the fight, flee or freeze response in your brain. Your brain tells you to flee because it sees this information overload as a threat, so it shuts down. That goes back to our brain-as-stomach analogy. It’s getting too much food, so it’s sending frantic signals to stop eating (or, in this case, stop taking in more information).

Related: 10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

Just act

You won’t always have the ability to jump straight into the fire like David Ayres, but you can certainly follow his lead. When you stop deciding to act and just act, you’ll notice you access more of your ability than you thought possible.

Here are four simple steps to create a culture of everyday decisiveness for both you and the people around you.

1. Start every day with one action item. One of the biggest mistakes I see professionals make is wasting the early hours of their work day. Studies show your brain is most productive early in the day, and as time passes its energy slowly dissipates. So when you turn up to work and the first thing you do is get coffee, organize your desk, check emails and chitchat with a co-worker, you’re wasting all that productive energy.

That’s why it’s key to light a fuse underneath your day early. Make it a goal to accomplish at least one thing within the first 15 to 20 minutes of your workday. It gives you momentum and sets the tone for a massively productive day.

2. Hypothesize, test, pivot. This process has given me so many wins over the years that I can’t even count. And it’s so simple that you can start using it right now. First, come up with a hypothesis about what you think is going to happen (“When we execute this marketing agency campaign, we’ll get X engagement”). Then test that hypothesis in the real world (“We actually ended up getting less engagement than we thought”). Then pivot to a modified, upgraded strategy (“Now we’re going to try marketing agency campaign Y”). Again, it’s so simple it hurts, but it works like crazy. The key? It forces you to test your thoughts and theories in the real world. It implants action into the process. And it shows in the results.

Related: How to Disrupt the Way You Talk to the Person in the Mirror

3. Turn generalizations into proactive statements. Your self-talk is absolutely critical in these moments. Ayres is the perfect example. After the game he told reporters that he always kept up a positive string of self-talk statements to build himself up. Had he continually been telling himself “There’s no way I can do this,” he probably wouldn’t have. We can only succeed at the level we believe is possible for us.

So turn any generalizations into positive, proactive statements. If you say to yourself, “This project is too big for me,” that stops you from acting. Instead, get positive and proactive. “I will start preparing today so this project won’t be too big for me.” That kind of self-talk makes it a completely different conversation in your mind.

4. Focus on the next decision. Going forward, I want this to be your mantra: “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” You have to chunk it down to the smallest possible step so you can avoid feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances around you. When you feel overwhelmed, the brain essentially shuts down. It stops regulating a chemical called cortisol, which controls things like your energy level, how well you sleep and your blood pressure. In turn, you feel drained, your immune system doesn’t work properly, and you’re more likely to get headaches and crushing anxiety.

So how do you avoid all that? You chunk. It. Down. Every time you think, “There’s nothing I can do about the economy,” I want you to say to yourself, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time you say, “I can’t control my traffic,” I want you to think, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time it seems like the market is getting worse, I want you to feel, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.”

Do this and you’ll find that you have more motivation, fewer bottlenecks at critical moments and a more proactive belief about becoming more and contributing more right now.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/overthinking-things-is-killing-your-productivity-let-an-nhl-goalkeeper-show-you-how/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/04/overthinking-things-is-killing-your.html

[scpie]

Overthinking Things Is Killing Your Productivity. Let an NHL Goalkeeper Show You How.

April 11, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

One of the best descriptions for the mind I’ve ever heard is that it’s like the stomach for your thoughts. Put the right things in and you condition yourself to become stronger, leaner, more agile. Put the wrong things in? That’s where breakdown comes. When your mind takes in too many competing thoughts, questions, beliefs or ideas, it essentially shuts down. It gets tired, slow and unable to function properly — quite the opposite of productivity.

All it takes to validate this idea is to think about the way you talk to yourself every day. How do you feel when you overthink something? Anxious? Nervous? Defeated? Confused? On the contrary, how does it feel when you take those decisive actions? When someone asks you how to handle a problem at work and you confidently scan your experience and knowledge…and bam. The answer was right there all along.

Related: Just Do It: How to Work When You Really Don’t Feel Like It

Don’t overthink it

This principle in action was never more evident than what recently happened on a sheet of ice in Toronto. Teams in the National Hockey League bring two goalkeepers to every game: one who starts, and another backup just in case. In the event something crazy happens, like both goalies get injured in the same game, each game features an emergency “just in case” goalie in the arena who can sub in for either team. The odds of a team needing to call on one of these ringers is so rare that most teams don’t put much thought into who their emergency sub even is.

Well, luckily for the Carolina Hurricanes, their emergency goalie was a 43-year-old man named David Ayres. The night the Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Hurricanes, Ayres was a local part-time Zamboni driver (the Zamboni is the machine that cleans and smooths the ice between periods) sitting in the crowd enjoying the game with everyone else. Then the Hurricanes’ starting goalie got injured. Then their backup got injured. Suddenly, not halfway through the game, Ayres’ phone blew up from Hurricanes personnel.

“Can you come to the training room? We need you to suit up.”

What happened next became the stuff of legend. Ayres had played some minor league hockey in his youth, but he certainly wasn’t pro level. And yet he managed to stop eight of the 10 shots he faced and helped the Hurricanes win the game.

There are a lot of reasons to love this story. It hits on the human story in multiple ways. But the one I think we need to focus on the most closely is the fact that Ayres didn’t have time to doubt himself. One minute he was in a seat with everyone else, the next he was turning away hockey pucks and scrapping on the ice with some of the best hockey players in the world. Logic would tell you there’s no way Ayres should be able to save even one shot, let alone 80 percent. So how did he do it?

In the simplest terms possible, he didn’t overthink it. He didn’t have time.

Related: Want to Be Successful? Quit Overthinking.

Too much information

One of the biggest problems we face today is our economy of information. We’re continually inundated with plans, options, information, opinions. We’re bombarded with information all the time, from every angle and at every turn. In one sense, we’re in the most incredible time in human history for learning. As the executive of a training company, we have more resources to give our clients now than ever before, from e-learning tools to workshop materials and everything in between.

But that comes with a cost, specifically the fragmentation of the brain. This quote from economist Tyler Cowen is a good place to start the conversation: “The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce. It’s the willingness to do something with it.”

From an evolutionary perspective, being overwhelmed with choice triggers the fight, flee or freeze response in your brain. Your brain tells you to flee because it sees this information overload as a threat, so it shuts down. That goes back to our brain-as-stomach analogy. It’s getting too much food, so it’s sending frantic signals to stop eating (or, in this case, stop taking in more information).

Related: 10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

Just act

You won’t always have the ability to jump straight into the fire like David Ayres, but you can certainly follow his lead. When you stop deciding to act and just act, you’ll notice you access more of your ability than you thought possible.

Here are four simple steps to create a culture of everyday decisiveness for both you and the people around you.

1. Start every day with one action item. One of the biggest mistakes I see professionals make is wasting the early hours of their work day. Studies show your brain is most productive early in the day, and as time passes its energy slowly dissipates. So when you turn up to work and the first thing you do is get coffee, organize your desk, check emails and chitchat with a co-worker, you’re wasting all that productive energy.

That’s why it’s key to light a fuse underneath your day early. Make it a goal to accomplish at least one thing within the first 15 to 20 minutes of your workday. It gives you momentum and sets the tone for a massively productive day.

2. Hypothesize, test, pivot. This process has given me so many wins over the years that I can’t even count. And it’s so simple that you can start using it right now. First, come up with a hypothesis about what you think is going to happen (“When we execute this marketing agency campaign, we’ll get X engagement”). Then test that hypothesis in the real world (“We actually ended up getting less engagement than we thought”). Then pivot to a modified, upgraded strategy (“Now we’re going to try marketing agency campaign Y”). Again, it’s so simple it hurts, but it works like crazy. The key? It forces you to test your thoughts and theories in the real world. It implants action into the process. And it shows in the results.

Related: How to Disrupt the Way You Talk to the Person in the Mirror

3. Turn generalizations into proactive statements. Your self-talk is absolutely critical in these moments. Ayres is the perfect example. After the game he told reporters that he always kept up a positive string of self-talk statements to build himself up. Had he continually been telling himself “There’s no way I can do this,” he probably wouldn’t have. We can only succeed at the level we believe is possible for us.

So turn any generalizations into positive, proactive statements. If you say to yourself, “This project is too big for me,” that stops you from acting. Instead, get positive and proactive. “I will start preparing today so this project won’t be too big for me.” That kind of self-talk makes it a completely different conversation in your mind.

4. Focus on the next decision. Going forward, I want this to be your mantra: “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” You have to chunk it down to the smallest possible step so you can avoid feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances around you. When you feel overwhelmed, the brain essentially shuts down. It stops regulating a chemical called cortisol, which controls things like your energy level, how well you sleep and your blood pressure. In turn, you feel drained, your immune system doesn’t work properly, and you’re more likely to get headaches and crushing anxiety.

So how do you avoid all that? You chunk. It. Down. Every time you think, “There’s nothing I can do about the economy,” I want you to say to yourself, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time you say, “I can’t control my traffic,” I want you to think, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.” Every time it seems like the market is getting worse, I want you to feel, “One step, one decision, one moment at a time.”

Do this and you’ll find that you have more motivation, fewer bottlenecks at critical moments and a more proactive belief about becoming more and contributing more right now.

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[ricandhaiz]

Blindsided, Chapter 11

It was cloudy, threatening rain on the morning Aunt Lara drove Nic and Allie to Wagner University’s Eye Institute. Nic was beset by conflicting emotions as he held Allie’s hand in the back seat of the car and contemplated what might lay in store for them after her retinal implant surgery. Although he was eager to see the fruits of his efforts finally come to fruition, his fears about the numerous ways it could all go wrong gnawed away at him like a gnat buzzing around his ear.

Nic glanced at Allie, who was biting her lip and twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. He gave her hand a squeeze and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Just a little nervous, I guess,” she replied, her voice tremulous.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said in a reassuring tone. “You’ll see.”

Allie opened her mouth to speak but then stopped herself before uttering a single word. He’d sensed a restlessness about her in the two days leading up to her surgery that he suspected had little to do with her impending surgery. Was it due to something that Conner might have said to her when they’d met for coffee? If it was, Allie was being maddeningly tight-lipped about it and had, thus far, shown no sign that she was at all inclined or ready to divulge that information to him any time soon.

He continued to focus on this train of thought until Aunt Lara drove up to the Eye Institute’s entryway to drop them off. They exited the car and proceeded, hand in hand, to the third floor of the building to check in while her aunt parked her car. One of Dr. Severin’s nurses called out Allie’s name shortly thereafter.

They stood up and embraced. It was an emotional moment for them both. She looked anxious and vulnerable, which was so unlike her normally confident and irrepressible self. He racked his brain for some words of comfort or inspiration to impart to her, but every word or phrase that came to mind sounded too quaint and inadequate to express all that was in his heart and mind. In the end, he simply said, “Te quiero.”

“Love you more,” Allie replied with a faint smile and pressed her lips to his. She then turned to her aunt, who had just walked into the reception area, and said, “It’s time.”

“Just think positive,” Aunt Lara replied, sounding upbeat, even though her eyes and overall demeanor expressed a very different emotion. “Nic and I will be waiting for you right here and will come see you as soon as the doctor gives us the okay.”

Allie hugged her aunt. “Thank you so much for everything.”

Aunt Lara gently patted her back and kissed her on the cheek. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat honey. You know that your uncle and I would give you the world if we could.”

“Miss Jacobs are you ready?” the nurse asked. Allie nodded. The nurse then offered Allie her arm and led her away.

Nic felt a lump in his throat as he watched Allie disappear behind the hospital door. Aunt Lara came up beside him and said, “I’m going downstairs to get a cup of coffee and a snack. Would you like to join me?” Nic said yes even though he wasn’t feeling particularly hungry or thirsty and accompanied her to the elevator down to the first floor.

The cafeteria was near the entrance to the building. It was bland and sterile with white walls and bright lights. Nic snagged a chocolate chip muffin off a shelf and filled a disposable paper cup with steaming black coffee and then joined Aunt Lara at a table by a window.

They said little at first as they sipped their drinks and mindlessly nibbled at their pastries. He wondered if Aunt Lara, like himself, was thinking about the donation his padre had made to the Eye Institute in order to pay for Allie’s eye surgery and mulled over whether she’d be able to keep that fact a secret from her niece for the foreseeable future.

Aunt Lara was the first one to break the silence. “Would you do me a favor?” she asked and pulled a small envelope from her purse. Nic nodded. “Can you mail this card to your father for me? I just wanted to thank him for paying for Allie’s surgery.”

Nic took it and put it in his jacket pocket. “I will. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Aunt Lara replied with an apologetic look. “I wish I had the money to pay him back. Mike and I talk about that all the time.”

He shook his head and waved his hand. “Neither he nor I would ever consider it. He did it out of the goodness of his heart. Besides, he’s made more than enough money as a football player and a vintner to take care of himself and his family many times over. He’s donated both his time and earnings to many worthy causes over the years. He’s an extraordinary man in more ways than one.”

“And so is his son,” Aunt Lara replied as she reached out and patted Nic’s hand. “It’s just too bad that we have to keep your part in making this surgery possible a secret.”

“Your niece is a very proud and independent woman,” Nic said matter-of-factly. “She made it clear to me early on in our relationship that she would never knowingly accept money from a friend in order to pay for this surgery.”

“Do you think you’ll ever tell her what you did for her?”

“I don’t know,” Nic replied slowly.

Aunt Lara paused to take a bite of her chocolate croissant, then said, “She’s talked to me and her uncle about wanting to find out who paid for it. To be perfectly honest, neither of us think that you’ll be able to keep this from her forever. Knowing her like I do, she’s going to keeping digging until she figures out who her donor was.”

Nic furrowed his brow. Aunt Lara was right. The question was, would Allie be grateful or angry with him at that point? In truth, he could see it going either way. “I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.”

After playing out various scenarios in his head, he asked, “Have either you or your husband talked to anyone other than the doctors at the Eye Institute about it?”

Aunt Lara’s eyes dropped down to her hands while she fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. He, in turn, felt his blood pressure spike as he gripped his paper cup filled with coffee and waited for her to respond. “I did say something to Father Marcus, my parish priest, about it not too long ago,” she said in a slow and halting manner. “It was after our weekly bible study. He asked me about Allie and it just came out somehow during our conversation. But don’t worry, he’d never tell another soul about it.”

Nic felt far from reassured as he pursed his lips and tapped his fingers against the table. “I don’t doubt that, but do you know if there was anyone who might have overheard the two of you talking?”

“Well, Conner’s mom, Betty, and two other ladies from the church stayed afterward but they all went upstairs to help members of the Youth Group prepare for the annual Easter egg hunt on the church lawn. As far as I know, Father Marcus and I were alone in the main hall.”

Conner’s mom was there? Nic groaned inwardly as alarm bells went off in his head. “Was Conner there too?” Aunt Lara shook her head. He breathed a little easier.

Just then, a little brown-haired girl of no more than five ran past their table. Aunt Lara smiled. “Allie wasn’t much older than that she was when her father died. Has she told you much about her parents?”

Nic shook his head. “She only has a vague memory of her father and has said that she often remembered her mother being sad.”

“Her father, Sam, was tall, rugged-looking man with curly brown hair. My sister, Cathy, was an ER nurse and was just coming off her shift when they met. He’d responded to an emergency call and had accompanied the paramedics, who needed an extra hand, to the hospital. He asked her for her number and took her out to an Italian bistro in Little Italy the next day. They hadn’t even been dating three months before Cathy called and told my parents that he’d asked her to marry him.”

“It sounds like it was quite a whirlwind romance,” Nic replied, smiling.

“It was. They flew out to California and got married at St. Jude. They had Allie less than a year later. They wanted to have more kids, but my sister miscarried twice after Allie was born and then…” Aunt Lara paused and brought her coffee cup to her lips. He studied her face as she stared past him and took a sip. She looked distraught. “Cathy was at home with Allie on 9/11. She called us as often as she could to give us updates. As you can probably imagine, the phone connection into and out of New York City was sporadic at best. For days on end, we just kept hoping and praying that Sam was still alive somewhere under all that rubble.” She sighed then as she leaned forward and rested her head in her hands. “It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over eighteen years since it happened.”

An image of a five-year-old Allie crying for her father while her mother frantically waited for news of his whereabouts flashed through Nic’s mind, followed by thoughts of what the last few moments of Sam Jacobs’ life might have been like as he raced up the North Tower’s stairwell with his fellow firefighters. He shuddered as he pictured a sea of concrete raining down on those brave men, then said, “Was that when her mother started smoking?”

Aunt Lara shook her head. “She was only a teenager when she lit her first cigarette. It was the cool thing to do. Both my parents warned her against it, but you know how that goes. In one ear and out the other. She tried to quit a couple of times and swore to me that she never took a puff while she was pregnant with Allie but losing Sam broke her spirit. I think that part of her just lost the will to live after that. She went to counseling and often spoke to St. Jude’s parish priest at the time, Father Oliver, but nothing seemed to help. She was smoking up to two packs a day when the doctors gave her the bad news. She died less than three years after we lost Sam.”

Nic handed her a napkin. Aunt Lara thanked him and dabbed her eyes with it. He said, “Allie’s often tells me how grateful she is for the love and support that you gave her while she was growing up.”

“What else were we supposed to do?” Aunt Lara replied. “That poor child. Losing both her parents at such a young age and then having to deal with losing her sight on top of that. We took her to every eye doctor and specialist we could to see if any of them could help her, but they all said the same thing, that her condition was irreversible. She was tough though and took it all in stride.”

“I doubt she could have gotten through it without you.”

Aunt Lara smiled. “Thank you for saying that, but I can’t take all the credit for who she is now. As you well know, she’s always been a very strong willed and independent-minded young lady.”

“I’ve noticed,” Nic replied with a laugh. “She doesn’t like it when people treat her like an invalid.”

“Poor Conner,” Aunt Lara remarked out of the blue. “I don’t suppose he’ll ever learn, will he?”

Nic chose his words carefully and replied, “It’s not for me to say. You know him much better than I do.”

“That was a very diplomatic thing for you to say,” Aunt Lara said with a snort, “especially after all the things he’s said and done. I know you don’t like him very much, and with good reason, but he’s really not as bad a person as you think he is. Conner’s had his eye on Allie since grade school. His mom, who’s my best friend, loves Allie to death and has probably told him a million times what a nice couple they’d make and how much she’d love to have Allie as a daughter in law.”

Nic cringed inwardly at the thought and knew, based on the numerous conversations that he’d had with Allie about Conner over the last couple of months, that that was about as likely as a snow storm in the Sahara desert. Still, for the sake of propriety, he held his tongue.

Aunt Lara continued. “Imagine what it must have been like for him when you came into the picture. You completely upended his plans. Unfortunately, love doesn’t always bring out the best in people, especially when those feelings aren’t returned. Even so, I think he’s a nice young man who’s made a few bad decisions where Allie’s concerned because he thinks you’ve taken away the one girl he’s always wanted.”

“That makes no sense. How could I have taken away someone who was never his to begin with?”

“That may be true, but my guess is he thought he’d eventually wear down her defenses and get her to give him a second look.”

Nic was quiet for a moment as he tried to put himself in Conner’s shoes. After listening and thinking about what Aunt Lara had said, he almost felt sorry for the guy. But still, he doubted that he would have said and done all the things Conner had if the roles had been reversed. Although he would’ve felt wounded by her decision to be with Conner over him, his pride and his love for her would never have allowed him to do anything but step aside and move on with his life rather than sabotage Allie’s relationship with Conner at every turn.

“Do you think that either he or his mother know anything about what I did for Allie?”

Aunt Lara cocked her head to the side and gazed at Nic with a curious expression. “What makes you think that he would know anything about it?”

“I can’t say,” Nic replied. “It’s just this feeling I’ve gotten ever since Allie met him for coffee on Saturday. I think he said something to her…maybe not about what I did for her necessarily but something else about me that’s given her pause. There’ve been, for example, more than a few times when it seemed like she had something was on her mind but didn’t feel comfortable telling me about it.”

“Well, with the surgery and all, I’m not at all surprised to hear that she’s been a little out of sorts. Wouldn’t you be too? For goodness’ sake, it isn’t every day that a blind person is given the chance to see again. I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you.”

“I guess you’re right,” he conceded.

“Can I ask you a question?” Nic nodded. “What made you decide to do it?”

Nic sat back and twiddled his thumbs as he went over the reasons why he’d done it. Although he could have cited a few bases for his actions, he quickly homed in on the one that had motivated him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. And so, he simply said, “I love her.”

“Anyone with eyes can see that,” Aunt Lara replied with a smile.

Nic continued. “After my accident, I felt like I’d lost everything. My career, my girlfriend, and almost everyone else I’d called a friend or acquaintance, for that matter, except my family. I felt unlovable and guilty that I had lived while my friend and teammate Diego had not. I thought I looked grotesque and felt just as ugly on the inside too.”

“My padre and abuelos did what they could to help me, but it soon became clear to me that there were certain things that I needed to work out for myself. That’s part of the reason why I came here to study…And then I met Allie. She helped me to accept who I am and to make the most of the life that I’d been given. With her, I think that I’ve become a better person. Less selfish, more open and appreciative of the things and people in my life.”

“Do you know what you want to do and/or where you’re going to be after you finish your MBA program?”

Nic tried to hide his smile as he pondered how to best answer the unspoken question Aunt Lara had posed. “We’ve only talked in the most general terms about what might happen in the future. I’d like to think that she’ll be a part of my life for years to come but…”

“But what?”

“Do you think she’d be willing to move to a country where she doesn’t speak the language or know anyone but me?”

Aunt Lara nodded. “Allie’s a practical girl but she’s also got a romantic streak a mile wide. She’s a lot like her mom in that way. In fact, knowing her the way that I do, I think she’d do and try just about anything in order to make things work.”

After finishing their snacks and drinks, they headed back to the waiting room on the third floor. At first, Nic tried to study while Aunt Lara flitted through several magazines. He found it hard to concentrate as he read and reread sentences in the marketing textbook he’d brought with him. He eventually gave up and pulled out his cell phone instead. He played video games and exchanged texts with his padre and friend Matt about Allie.

A few hours later, Dr. Severin, who was still wearing scrubs, walked into the reception area. He came up to them and said, “She’s doing well and is being wheeled over to the recovery room as we speak. The nurses will monitor her there until the effects of the anesthesia have worn off and we’re sure she’s stable enough to be transferred to a hospital room.”

“How did it go?” Aunt Lara asked.

“As well as can be expected at this point,” the doctor replied. “There were no complications or surprises and the procedure itself went according to plan. As I told you before, we won’t be able to assess how much of her sight we’ve been able to restore until we take the bandages off and put the glasses on in a couple weeks. It’s different for each person.” She nodded while Nic stood stoically beside her.

“Give us a few minutes and then I’ll have one of my nurses escort you to her.”

When a nurse finally came for them, Aunt Lara immediately followed. Nic, however, remained where he was. His feet felt like they were rooted to the spot. Aunt Lara turned to him as she reached the hospital door and said, “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” he replied meekly as his leaden feet slowly carried him forward.

They were led to a rectangular shaped room lined with patient beds partitioned by curtains. Allie had been placed in the middle of the room and still appeared to be unconscious. He placed his hand on the bed rail and remained standing while a nurse hovered over her and checked her vitals. Aunt Lara took a seat opposite him near the head of the bed. He tried to think positive. For good or ill, he knew his destiny was sealed. He’d made his choices and had acted accordingly. So now, he could do little else but wait and see what fate had in store for him.

Once the nurse had moved aside and closed the curtain, Nic placed his hand over Allie’s. She looked so fragile and vulnerable, which was so unlike the woman he knew and loved. He closed his eyes and prayed. Please God, let everything turn out all right.

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

Breast cancer things every woman needs to know... by a breast surgeon who's had it twice

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Breast cancer things every woman needs to know... by a breast surgeon who's had it twice

Fearful but hopeful: Dr Liz O’Riordan, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015

I in no way for just one second imagined it would be me. And, statistically, it shouldn’t have been. When I was identified with breast cancer in 2015, I was 40 and fitter than I’d ever been, with no historical past of the ailment in my household.

In addition to, I was a specialist breast surgeon, the female who sits on the doctor’s facet of the desk breaking bad news and prescribing surgical treatment and chemotherapy, not the individual sobbing and angry on the other aspect. But there I was.

I experienced every little thing to are living for, my latest relationship to my spouse Dermot, now 54, a fellow surgeon and, potentially, parenthood.

When I wasn’t running on breast cancer sufferers at Ipswich Hospitals NHS Believe in, I liked walking my puppies, using my bike, baking sourdough bread and the audio of birdsong in my Suffolk back garden.

I’d experienced cysts in my breasts right before so when I noticed a new lump in my still left breast, I was not especially nervous. I only received it checked out since my mum, who was a nurse, told me to.

The mammogram was typical. The ultrasound scan wasn’t. The radiologist and I were being wanting at the screen with each other when we noticed the very same big black mass: most cancers. A subsequent biopsy would identify it as a blended ductal and lobular cancer which was huge and intense.

Usually I drip-feed people the aspects I believe they require at a time I imagine they can cope. In a heartbeat nevertheless, I knew all that lay ahead for me: a mastectomy, chemotherapy, the devastation about to be unleashed on my overall body, my marriage, my family members and my profession. Ultimately, I recognized what it was like to have cancer and not just to be an pro in it.

Suitable there, in that clinic area, I flicked a swap in my head and turned off my inner thoughts, to secure myself and my cherished ones.

But later on, my feelings retained surging to the surface area, and I built sense of them in terms. I commenced to weblog about my practical experience, signing up for a club no 1 wishes to belong to: cancer individuals who notify the reality about the ailment with honesty, heat and wit.

The amazing Rachael Bland was yet another member. The BBC news presenter who co-hosted the groundbreaking podcast You, Me And The Large C, died last 7 days.

I have recognised Rachael considering that her prognosis in 2016 – I’d been blogging for a 12 months about my most cancers and she bought in touch by way of Twitter inquiring for assistance about cure alternatives and clinical trials.

BBC newsreader Rachael Bland, pictured with her son Freddie, died aged 40 adhering to an inspirational two-yr public fight with most cancers

Her legacy is enormous. Rachael and her two co-hosts have made conversing about cancer normal – specifically for younger females who however want to have exciting, search excellent and stay their life to the fullest.

It is with this intention that I have penned a ebook with Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, a GP who was identified at the similar time as me, aimed at women like us and also males – due to the fact they get it much too – with breast most cancers.

Our mission is to convey to women of all ages all the items we want we’d recognized at the get started: the things I do notify lots of of my people now that I know what it is like to be in their sneakers.

It will be printed at the stop of this month, as I recover from an operation to clear away my ovaries.

In Could a regime assessment of what I imagined was scar tissue confirmed that my cancer had returned in which my breast experienced been.

Soon after an operation to get rid of it and a lot more radiotherapy, I need to get a unique sort of hormone-blocking medicine. In get for the drug to perform correctly, I will need to cease my personal generation of the woman intercourse hormone oestrogen, created by the ovaries, which is why I’m acquiring them taken off.

I am shocked and frightened, but it’s continue to treatable and with any luck , curable. And at least this time, I know so a lot more than I did in 2015. With all this in brain, below are 10 factors I believe all breast cancer clients need to know…

Don’t be ‘brave’

My husband and I were continue to determining whether or not to have young children when I was identified. But for younger females, chemo delivers on an early menopause and with it, infertility. When this hit me, I broke down, grieving for the little one we would in no way have. A further time I was so nervous driving from the clinic wherever I was the expert to an appointment of my very own, that I virtually threw up in the automobile.

You really do not have to place on a brave experience, and it’s superior to offer with these adverse emotions openly. Experience bleak, indignant, frightened or self-pitying is not likely to make you any considerably less likely to get better. But if these feelings turn into mind-boggling, you can seek out help from your GP or your professional group. The similar goes for actual physical soreness inquire for all the relief you need.

You can keep your determine

These days the greater part of women with breast most cancers do not have a mastectomy, involving the surgical elimination of the whole breast. Surgeons can complete a lumpectomy, removing up to a fifth of the breast and reshaping it to give a very good beauty consequence. They have perfected the artwork of hiding scars close to a nipple and borrowing fatty tissue from your facet to fill in the gap still left by the cancer.

Very significant breasts can also be lowered. Women do have options. You can nonetheless glance superior naked, in a bra, or with dresses on.

DR ELLIE CANNON: All doctors need to be this frank

As a revered breast surgeon, then a breast cancer patient, Liz has a exclusive viewpoint that no physician ever imagines they’ll have.

Of system, you never want to have cancer to take care of it. But I’ve adopted her journey on social media – during which she has charted the arduous procedure she’s undergone – and her assistance is spot-on.

As a GP who routinely sees clients with minimal illnesses who have worried them selves half to dying by Googling their signs, it’s reassuring to know commentators like Liz are out there giving reasonable, personalized suggestions that people today truly will need, from an informed placement.

Breast cancer treatment is superior right now than it at any time was, with client-particular therapies and pretty very good survival costs.

But as the tragic demise of Rachael Bland regrettably illustrates, women of all ages nevertheless die of this condition, and nonetheless have to confront traumatic encounters this sort of as infertility and disfiguring surgical treatment.

It is so critical that all medical doctors chat frankly about the actual aspects of most cancers remedy, in the way that Liz does.

It is crucial to offer truthfully with difficulties these types of as intercourse, infertility and demise which even numerous medical doctors truly feel awkward broaching.

I believe Liz’s web site and book should really be obligatory reading – for healthcare experts also.

If you do have to have a mastectomy, which I did since my most cancers was huge and I have small breasts, you can have a reconstruction utilizing an implant or your have tissue.

I made the decision to have a reconstruction. I didn’t want to improve the way I costume. Due to the fact I am trim, I did not have adequate pores and skin and body fat to choose from in other places, so I experienced an implant.

These are operations I do myself on a typical foundation and as soon as, I would have admired my handiwork, telling girls they experienced healed well.

But I now know there is far more to it than the way they appear. The breast skin is numb, and the implant is chilly. Most women are delighted with the way they seem but it’s Alright if you are not Okay, and medical doctors require to be open to that.

I had to have my implant eradicated when my most cancers arrived back. I’m now flat and scarred on a single side – a ‘uni-boober’. Absolutely nothing prepares you for how you appear devoid of your breast. I’m even now coming to phrases with it.

You may well not have to have chemo…

Only a third of men and women with breast most cancers will need to have chemotherapy. It is usually presented if you are youthful, or your cancer is big or has unfold to your lymph nodes. Most women of all ages will only need an procedure to get rid of the cancer, most likely adopted by radiotherapy. If their cancer is sensitive to oestrogen, they’ll be specified anti-oestrogen tablets as properly. We know that for these girls, their chances of recurrence are no larger devoid of chemo than with it, so there is no have to have to give it.

But you are going to cope if you do

Breast cancer chemotherapy is presented in cycles of 1 to a few weeks, and requires five months in total. You commit only a couple hours in medical center.

I was offered chemo due to the fact of my age and the dimensions of my cancer. It’s manageable, and there are coping tactics.

If you eliminate your hair, treat you to a shave in a Turkish barber’s store or consult with YouTube for great techniques to wear a head scarf.

At initial I hated becoming bald but did not want to use a wig. As a substitute I purchased some intense new glasses in the hope people today would appear at them as a substitute.

You have to have to consume a lot, but water tastes awful so use squash. Have some Vaseline helpful for the inside of your nose, which will crack and dry.

If you have insomnia – a side effect of the steroid medication you are given – online message boards are great, as there is always someone else awake at 3am.

I also found out items your doctor does not tell you, these as that your pubic hair falls out very first – so you get a cost-free Brazilian wax on the NHS!

Dr Google can be valuable

I utilised to inform all my clients not to Google breast cancer. I naively thought I could give them all the facts they wanted.

But it’s the very first matter I did when I acquired my biopsy consequence, and I’m an qualified. Some of what you will uncover online will be terrifying and inaccurate. But we stay in a digital age, so it’s unattainable to disregard it. Appear for secure, welcoming internet sites and applications that are authorised by the significant cancer charities or affiliated to the NHS.

Two apps seriously served me. Just one was the Macmillan My Organiser app, which is fantastic for running your life all through chemo, keeping up with drugs, appointments and monitoring aspect effects. The Breast Most cancers Care BECCA application is also fantastic and options mini web site posts from many others who have absent via it.

Do not conclude your sex daily life

Several women answer to a most cancers prognosis by contemplating their husbands must divorce them in favour of a person healthy. I did. It is a misplaced sense of guilt for putting them by the ordeal with you.

You might have to cope with an altered human body picture and a procedure-induced menopause, but never let cancer get absent your actual physical link.

Chemotherapy, ovarian suppression and hormone remedy can trigger fast menopause or worsen present menopausal indications these as slipping oestrogen amounts.

Oestrogen is a purely natural lubricant and without having it, everything dries up, but your intercourse life doesn’t have to. There are products and solutions that can help: lubricants like ‘Yes’ and little dilators and toys. I advise ladies to fill a minimal bag with the previously mentioned to continue to keep beside the bed. Companions may well want aid as well, and it’s crucial to chat about things.

Really do not be like 1 woman I know of who requested if was harmless to have intercourse all through chemo for the reason that she was scared she’d poison her partner.

Disregard snake oil

As a physician, I had no concept what a massive marketplace there is out there preying on the vulnerable. As a individual I acquired a glimpse of it, but actually, if turmeric and alkaline diet plans experienced been scientifically confirmed to remedy you, you’d get them on the NHS. For totally free. There is, on the other hand, evidence that exercising helps with exhaustion and lowers the facet effects of chemo, so test to walk every day or do some gentle yoga, accomplishing a lot more on great days if you can. It will give you religion in your overall body once again. I bought back again to triathlon schooling as shortly as I could.

Most cancers can occur back

Quite a few individuals do not realise their cancer can occur back again, even immediately after 20 decades, and that when it does, it simply cannot be healed. I am not in that predicament. My most cancers is a local recurrence of my most important most cancers it hasn’t spread somewhere else. You could possibly not be informed what the indications of secondary breast most cancers are when it will come back again in your mind, lungs, liver or brain. So get any new symptom, this kind of as a cough, bone pain, head aches or vomiting, that final for over a month checked out by your medical doctor.

Hope for the greatest…

… but strategy for the worst. Right now, the majority of women of all ages diagnosed with breast most cancers will reside extensive and wholesome lives and die of a thing else.

But we will have to not ignore that 30 British women of all ages die each and every working day from it. When treatments fail, you require to know whether you want to die at household or in a hospice, system your funeral and get your affairs in purchase.

One of the most difficult points for me to do was to create a will and discuss my funeral preparations with my partner. It took my neighborhood recurrence for us to finally face it, but you will come to feel calmer when you do.

You are not a selection

My likelihood of being alive in ten many years is 60 for each cent. I could be in the 6 out of ten individuals in my condition who endure or the 4 out of 10 who die, but these numbers are only estimates based on trials at the very least a decade outdated. New therapies are staying formulated all the time. You are not able to dwell each individual working day as if it is your final.

Retain a jar of joy

This is an concept borrowed from geriatric professional Dr Kate Granger, who died of most cancers in 2016. Each time some thing superior transpires, publish it on a card and put it in a jar. Financial institution the pleasure. When you have a negative day, go to the jar and read through a few of the entries. Withdraw what is on deposit. It performs, I promise.

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[mollyjoycupcake]

9/3/2018

Things have been quite a ride since I last wrote here. 

I did manage to survive the spring semester, if that is what you are wondering. I had to drop calc and physics, and take a medical withdrawal for linear algebra, but I ended up passing intro to engineering, engineering success, computer science, and latin sol immersion. Although I did make it through the semester, I am afraid it was to my detriment. Forcing myself to go through that simply wasn’t worth the sacrifice of my mental health. I’m fairly certain that I walked away with some trauma, both from specific events but also as a general effect of the constant, drawn out stress. I never quite got used to the noise at the apartment (I found out why, which is what I’ll talk about later), and I never quite made any friends, with the exception of Taksha. Although I was somewhat proud to finish my classes, I was much too drained to really appreciate that I had made it. And, of course, any positive emotion I would have felt was taken away by the unexpected news that VR wouldn’t cover rent during the summer (which I wasn’t aware of, nor was prepared for). So, because I couldn’t come up with $1,000 in rent in two weeks, I went back to Santa Fe to stay with Shawn. 

Although our relationship had almost completely fallen apart over the spring semester, returning to Santa Fe was an attractive (and probably my only) option at the time. My parents had moved out of their house to a campsite in June, rendering themselves technically homeless. I was at a negative balance both emotionally and financially, so I figured a familiar and low-key place would do me good. To this day, I’m not certain if it was really the best choice, because these past few months have been incredibly difficult. But, I guess it makes no sense to dwell on it. Just need to find a solution and move on. 

In June, after we took a trip to Florida and Disney World, I started modeling by being a part of Santa Fe Fashion Week’s runway show. I simply sent the director a DM and he put me in the show. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. After that, in late June through July, I then began working in background for television shows in New Mexico. I was featured background as a “cheerleader” and “high school student” for the new netflix show Chambers, background for Midnight Texas, and background for Messiah. I also had a small acting role in Midnight Texas as a ghost witch. I think I may get IMDB credit for it.  In late July/early August I began a 4 week job as a stand in for the main actress in a movie for Netflix called Walk Ride Rodeo. I also appeared in the background in several scenes as a nurse, a patient, and rodeo-goer. The hours were long and hard and I struggled to get through it. It was 5 days a week, for about 14 hours a day. I made decent money, but the exhaustion and the lack of free time made it hard to be worth it. Once that movie was over, I moved on to some more modeling with the RD3 Elite fashion show, and then I attended two casting calls. On one casting call, I was hired on the spot to do photos for the covers of romance novels. I am still waiting to hear back on the other one, so cross your fingers. If I get it, I will be part of a traveling fashion show out of LA (and it’s paid). Although all these experiences would be exciting for anyone, I have a hard time even feeling anything due to my mental state. It’s frustrating because I would like to appreciate it, but I can’t seem to right now. 

Aside from those activities, my summer has been relatively uneventful. I have struggled to get through every day. It has been hard to process all the traumas from the spring semester. Things with Shawn have been rocky, which is both a cause and effect of my perpetuated mood issues. I finally decided to seek help during the last week of August, when I couldn’t stop crying all week. I think the long hours on the movie finally broke me down. I decided to go to the ER to be evaluated. They had me stay overnight and I spoke to a few counselors and psychiatrists. We agreed that a likely cause for my symptoms was the Nexplanon implant, so we made a plan to get it removed at the women’s clinic the following week. The doctor also got me in to see a reputable psychiatrist the next week, who formally diagnosed me with PTSD (as opposed to the typical depression/anxiety diagnosis I was given previously). I started two new medications that are supposed to address PTSD specifically, so I am hopeful that it will be effective. I also did get my Nexplanon removed, but because I was so anxious and the implant was very deep, I had to be given Xanax and Oxycodone to get through the procedure. I think seeing that finally seeing that bloody thing in the tweezers in the doctor’s hand was one of the most relieving moments of my life! It is still too soon to tell if the removal of the nexplanon plus the addition of the drugs has helped me very much (its been less than a week), but statistical information has me hopeful.  

The biggest thing on my plate right now (aside from healing from PTSD) is now deciding whether or not to return to ASU or become a resident of New Mexico. Both situations have ample pros and cons. At ASU I would be closer to my family, and I would have the climate that I want. I also have a nagging suspicion that if my symptoms get under control, a lot of personal growth could occur there (at least, in the way I want it to). Also, there is something to be said about the youthful and vibrant culture that surrounds Tempe. However, staying in New Mexico could be good as well. There are several schools to choose from that are all reputable and more affordable than ASU. It is also less populated and therefore more peaceful out here. I would also remain close to Shawn, which is good if we decide to remain together. New Mexico also has a lot of modeling and film industry, as well as two national labs, so if I want, I do have a successful double life as a STEM person as well as an entertainment person. Additionally, the medicare in New Mexico has much better coverage and includes dental and vision (which AZ medicare lacks), so if I get medicare here, I can get my broken tooth fixed, which could save me a few thousand dollars. As you can see, both options seem fairly attractive. There are many cons to each option, however. For ASU, they are kind of obvious: if I can’t get my symptoms under control, I will end up overwhelmed just like the spring semester. It is also very busy and chaotic, which may simply may not be the best for me, regardless of mental health. I would also be far away from Shawn, which would really strain the relationship, as well as my emotional state, and could end up forcing us to split. I would also need to know exactly which major to pursue in order to secure VR funding, and there is no guarantee that the funding will be enough to guarantee a comfortable existence, due to the rising costs and the lowering funds available from VR. As far as New Mexico goes, by staying here I would be far away from my family. Although my family does stress me out sometimes, I do like to be close to them so that we can be there for each other (especially now, as things are stressful for all of us). I am also not entirely sure if I like UNM  or Albuquerque yet. There is also the fact that if I get residency here (in order to get medicaid and such) I would lose my AZ residency and VR funding, which would make it very difficult to return to ASU if I change my mind. I am not quite sure if I am comfortable with cutting the AZ ties just yet. Another fear I have about staying in NM is, what if Shawn and I end up splitting anyway? It would be extremely difficult to live in the same town if we were no longer together. Just the thought of potentially seeing him with someone else tears me apart. 

In general, this is a very huge decision. I would be lying if I said I felt equipped to handle such a major life decision. I have a difficult enough time deciding what drink to order at Starbucks (even though I always get the same thing), so deciding where I want to live and study for the next two years is extremely overwhelming. I am very distressed by it. Part of me just wants to be a kid again so I don’t have to be burdened by all these thoughts. I am far too aware, and worried of, all the implications that come with each possible route. All of this, combined with the fact that I don’t have much money, makes things seem impossible. I can’t even pay rent right now, so how could I possibly decide where to settle in for school? Do I even want to go to school any more? Do I even have a choice? Maybe I should run away and travel the world. But without money? Maybe I should just drop out and work and make lots of money. But how? And with what mental health? I guess the only place I can start is by listing my basic needs, which would need to be fulfilled regardless of location, and then selecting location based on what would be best suited for my needs.

As far as I know my needs include: healthcare coverage, adequate mental health/psychiatric support, friends, access to high calibur dance training, proximity to family, proximity to shawn, access to further STEM exploration and employment, a low stress living environment, quiet home, either living alone or with good roommates, a degree program that is fun and not too stressful, opportunities in modeling and entertainment, a structured schedule that allows for creative expression and self care.  I would type more, but my brain fog is starting to set in (along with a headache). 

Hopefully I will be able to reach a decision soon. Perhaps I am struggling because I am attempting to intuit a decision instead of making hard, conscious choices for myself. I’ve always preferred going with my gut, because I am terrified of making a conscious decision that ends up going wrong. I would rather blame god than blame myself.