#clicked in my brain that Frank would do this. We know he has no issues witb pimping them out/attempting to

[r0b1ee]

Frank would 100% have sold Dee and Dennis to One Direction

[autumnslance]

I have a question about carrying out an idea. I think this writing issue I've been having has been plaguing me longer than my time on Mateus; I’ve always struggled to get past chapter one or even stick to an idea, even when I started writing years ago. Are there any pointers on carrying an idea or story through?

That's a hard one, as I know I have plenty of plans and WIPs I haven't gotten past those stages myself.

So I ask myself what's the core of the idea, the heart of it? What is it I really want to say? I don't tend to write chronologically myself; I write lines, descriptions, bits of dialogue, scenes, and chapters entirely out of order. I know where they "go" in the overall arc. And sometimes, like with the Avengret storyline, I can then string them together, shuffling the order, writing new bridging scenes, removing or combining others as needed.

If I am trying to write in order, even then if a section is hard, or boring, or not working--skip it. Put in some brackets with [AND THEN X AND Y HAPPENS AND IT'S NOW THE NEXT DAY]. Move on to the next part that excites you, or that you at least know what happens. You can always double back later and add in that connecting scene...or even decide it isn't needed now, you've covered everything it would have elsewhere, and can just be summarized and moved on from.

I've recently been reading a "How To Write" series of books by James Scott Bell; there are several, but they're all pretty short. One of the pieces of advice he gives is to start in the middle (go to the midpoint of just about any novel or film, and it's somewhere very near that 50% mark in one direction or another). Find the "mirror moment" a point--sometimes a page or paragraph, sometimes just a single line--that is a frank look at the situation, self, etc on the part of the main character. What do they see? It's a moment of reflective truth. Who is the character in this midpoint? How did they get here? Who do they need to be/what must they do to get to the end? How do they realize they may fail? What forces are against them? Do they realize/acknowledge any of this?

These are recommendations more for novels than short stories, but heavens know how long some of our fics go, and short stories do still have similar, if truncated, structures and beats.

Anyway, you're not beholden to write from beginning to end. You may not know everything about your story yet--because you haven't written it yet, and these things change form, even for plotters with outlines. Write scenes. Write chapters. Write microfics that are just a couple lines of dialogue. Use prompt lists and challenges, if you gotta. Start small and build, as one of the old philosophers said.

(and eventually one day you look and realize you've written a few hundred thousand words, many of them about your OC and a Damn Rogue wending through their world...)

Writing works like exercise; you have to practice it, figure out what works for you, at what times of day, and it can be a struggle to keep up momentum. In the meanwhile, you also have to take other care of yourself.

Like actual exercise (whatever you're able to do; at least stretches, which is where I'm at some days). Remembering to eat and stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep (don't @ me, I sleep, just on a later schedule), and also do remember to intake other creative works; I got a rush of inspiration last year and spent months feverishly writing scenes and plotting and writing dialogues and making timeline outlines and writing more pages I'll never use after reading a popular novel, cuz the visceral language and a vaguely similar character dynamic in certain specific ways clicked something on in my brain. We gotta feed that persnickety little muse.

And on the days the muse is being recalcitrant...we write anyway. It's hard, it feels like it sucks, but if we want to get something done? Write something. Anything. Stream of consciousness if you gotta; complain, talk out your ideas, maybe write a little from that. And the next day look at it and realize it's not so bad as you thought and a little polish will fix it.

So don't try to be perfect first round; writing is messy. Revision and editing is where we make it look pretty (you usually don't have to rewrite entirely front to back, either; some folks like to, but for many others that's only if there's serious structure issues; mileage varies per project, too, as they're all different).

So write the scenes out of order, as they come. See what ideas stick and what are just idle thoughts. Maybe they're all true and there's multiverses and AUs there. See what starts t string together into coherence. Don't be afraid to revise, rewrite, even retcon if something better comes along months later after you already posted something.

The only way to know the story is to write it, figuring out how it wants to be written, and sometimes that means writing it from other angles and around the back way until it tells us how it got to that point (and whether what we thought was the start actually was or not).

Anyway. This got long, hopefully there's some tiny tidbit that helps!

[concussed-to-pieces]

Late July Part Two

Fandom: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Pairing: Agent Whiskey [Jack Daniels]/Reader

Rating: Holy shit kinda' tame.

AN: Guess who was a fool and thought that they could leave Late July the way it was?! Me. Spoilers for Kingsman: The Golden Circle abound in this chapter, so proceed only if you don't care about the movie being spoiled for you! I'll see you guys on Wednesday. Enjoy!

Tag List: @huliabitch @wrestlingfae @cookiethewriter @culturalrebel @jackierey09 @crookedmoonsaultpunk @duker42 @agirllovespasta @nelba @pedrosbigdorkenergy @lestrange2703 @youmeanmybrain @luvley-shadow @theocatkov @miscellaneousjunkk @reluctantlyresponsibleadult @buttons-beads-lace @gooddaykate @lackofhonor @talesfromtheguild @absurdthirst @mostly-megan @pancakepike @88dragon06 @chibi-liz05 @iellaren-uodo-rian @heatherbel @ripleyafterdark @oloreaa @thesoftdumbass @okilover02 @renegademustelid

Alright, I think I got everyone! There will be one more part on Wednesday, so if you would like to be tagged please let me know!

Part One

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This chapter contains attempted purposeful triggering, frank discussion of character death, memory loss, regression and vivid flashbacks/allusions to post-trauma. Stay safe!]

He came back around slowly, still tasting the stale beer of last night's party like an unwanted echo in his mouth. But instead of waking up on the kitchen floor of his shared apartment, he was in a blindingly white room that looked suspiciously like an alien spacecraft. Jack's mind raced. Shit, maybe my roommate wasn't being a total spaz when he talked about getting probed, the young man realized with an undercurrent of fear. 

Incomprehensible beakers of things lined the walls of the room. Alright, maybe he should have paid more attention in his chemistry classes, but he could hardly be blamed for assuming that none of it would have practical uses!

Jack rattled his hands in the cuffs that secured him to the table, clearing his throat. Man, his head ached. This was why he needed to remember to drink a glass of water before passing out!

"S'cuse me? Uh, hello?" He called hesitantly. "Look, if the guys from Theta Alpha Phi put you up to this-"

A beautiful older woman rounded the corner into the room, observing him over her glasses. "Welcome back." Her voice was steel, and Jack worried his lower lip nervously. "Wasn't sure if you were going to make it for a little while."

The restraints around his wrists and ankles abruptly retracted into the table, leaving Jack to awkwardly stumble forward onto the floor. He quickly regained his footing, reaching up to seize the lapels on his usually-open shirt and finding instead that he was wearing some sort of...ski suit? Jumpsuit? Top Gun, I can dig it. 

God, she really was a good-looking woman. Ah, what the hell. Nothing ventured...

"Hello gorgeous. I'm Jack, what's your name?" He didn't give her any time to answer before he carried on with a disarming grin, "How would you like to ride home on a real cowboy?" Jack ran a hand through his usually-unruly hair and found it...weirdly tame. "I've got a six pack on ice and my roomie is out for the night so you can scream my name as loud as you need to, sugar!" He continued, ambling forward. The cheesy, blatant approach usually worked well for him. Sixty/forty split, or thereabouts.

She kept retreating as he advanced, and then she reached into her pocket. Jack braced himself for the rebuff, confused when she pulled out a Polaroid instead. "I hate to do this to you, Jack." She sounded like she meant it. There was Blue-Tack on the back of the Polaroid and handwriting that some portion of his brain vaguely recognized as his own, but he didn't get the chance to read it before she was showing him the faded image.

It took him a moment to realize that it was a picture of one of the girls he had dated in high school, but it looked like she had grown into a legitimately stunning woman. She was smiling fondly at whoever was taking the picture, and the entire image radiated playful energy. Jack cocked his head, a buzz of foreign sadness churning briefly in his chest before he raised his eyes to meet the...scientist's? Teacher's? "Where'd you get this picture? I ain't seen her in years! Shee-it, she got beautiful." The young man drawled. "I have been thinkin' about visitin' my folks again. Maybe I'll go 'round to her place too for some catchin' up."

The woman seemed startled, her sculpted brows raising and then dropping as she studied him intently. "You...don't remember...?"

"I remember her, yeah, we dated for a while in high school." Jack insisted. "Broke up senior year because I was leavin' for college, y'know how it is."

"This is your wife, Jack. Or she was, rather." 

His head throbbed, left temple lighting up with sudden agony. "Oh, shit." Jack grunted, holding the side of his head and grazing a bandage that he hadn't realized was there. "Damn, I must have hit my head real good when those pricks from Theta Alpha shoved me down the stairs. Hangover probably ain't helpin'." He grinned ruefully at her. "Guess you must be the one who patched me up. I ain't never asked out a doctor before, but there's a first time for everythin'. Can I pay you back with dinner?"

The woman appeared perturbed. "Jack. This is your wife." She repeated, waving the picture in his face. 

"I'm real sorry ma'am, but I ain't the marryin' sort." Jack replied bluntly, "I would definitely remember if someone like her was still my girlfriend. Or uh, had become my wife."

"What do you remember happening, Jack? Before…" she gestured vaguely. "This?"

Jack chewed on his lower lip in thought, tilting his head back to stare up at the featureless ceiling. "Uh, I remember…well, before they pushed me down the stairs, them TAP boys crashed my roommate's party…"

…

"'Pressions, I need you down here in the reconstruction laboratory." Ginger Ale's voice issued abruptly through your earpiece and you sat up a little straighter at your desk. 

"What's happened?" You asked softly, rising from your seat and making your way to the door. What with a majority of the population currently locked up in stacks of cages, enough to fill football arenas to their brim, you weren't doing much in the 'managing first impressions' area. Since you had fewer and fewer responsibilities, Ginger Ale had begun to lean upon you a bit more, especially as all able-bodied agents were deployed into the field to search for an antidote. With Tequila being incapacitated, it had made the assignment personal to many agents. 

It had been fascinating to find out that Statesman was technically an offshoot from the now utterly-decimated Kingsman agency. When the two surviving members of their group had shown up to the Statesman headquarters, it had caused quite the stir. 

"I need a favor." Ginger said, sounding tired. 

"Anything." You agreed before she could elaborate further, picking your way through the gravel in the courtyard as you headed to the warehouse where the massive casks of Statesman Reserve were stored to age. Once inside, your heels clicked loudly in the stillness of the temperature-controlled storehouse and you were certain that Ginger Ale could tell your location just from the noise alone. "I'll be with you in a moment."

"Don't promise me that until you know what I need."

Your brow furrowed. "Uh...okay." 

Once you had made your way through the somewhat labyrinthine halls of the Statesman underground facility, you found Ginger Ale waiting for you directly outside the sick bay. She was rubbing her temples. 

"Oh no, that's not a good sign." You quipped as you approached.

She looked up and her face bore an expression of long suffering. "You don't have to say yes to this, okay?" 

"Ginger, talk to me. What's up?" You asked worriedly, taking her arm and leading her off to the side of the doorway.

"'Pressions, Whiskey may not be...one hundred percent." She said carefully. "He didn't snap back into 'Whiskey mode' even though the nanites-"

"Wait, what happened to Whiskey?" You interrupted in concern, your heart hammering a foreign, panicky tattoo on your ribcage. "He was with the Galahads, I thought?"

"He got caught by a sniper." Ginger Ale grimaced. "Clean shot to the head."

"Jesus, no." You gasped. "I'm assuming one of the Galahads used his alpha gel?"

"Yes, and the nanites did their job perfectly. So he's stable, and conscious. Better than that, I would hazard, considering that he took a bullet to the head and he's walking and talking. The issue is that he's not really...Whiskey. At the point he's regressed to, he thinks he's still a dropout living with his college roommate." Ginger Ale pulled a picture out of an inner pocket. "It used to be that we could just trigger him to resume where he left off using the memory of his wife and unborn son, but it doesn't appear to be working this time."

You stared at her, mainly because of how casually she stated the fact that they triggered their agents back to 'normal' with traumatic memories, but also because you had a sneaking suspicion that you might be the reason why the aforementioned trigger no longer held the same weight for the field agent. 

You told yourself you would refuse to feel guilty about it. Whiskey had asked for your help and you had obliged. It was as simple as that.

"Now, I know your family has that rental cabin, and I also know that it's fairly secluded. If the Statesman organization could possibly, uh...commission the cabin and persuade you to take some paid leave until Jack is...himself again, or at least until the drug issue is sorted and we can devote more time and research to this situation, I…" Ginger Ale trailed off as Jack's head popped out around the doorway.

You were treated to a blatant once-over stare that seemed to last for a lifetime, his dark eyes studying you intently. "Have I...met you before?" Jack asked you, the hesitance in his tone making you briefly hopeful before he continued, "yeah, last night, in my dreams I think?"

You couldn't help your groan and eye-roll, laughing in spite of yourself. "Ugh, and how often does that line work for you?" You teased. 

"So far, never." Jack admitted. "But I've always held true to the belief that the sexiest thing a fella' can wear is confidence." He continued with a grin, "That and a high-quality hat." He glanced down the hallway. "So, is it just you two lovely ladies on this alien spacecraft, or what?" 

"Alien…?" You raised an eyebrow. "Okay Ginger, I'm convinced. I'll get the paperwork ready. But if you need anything-"

"I know. I'm glad that I can rely on you." She interrupted you gratefully, looking relieved. 

"You gals got any Midrin on you? My head is killin' me." Jack grimaced, palming over the gauze square attached to his temple even as he shamelessly watched you walk past him to the lab's computer.

"Midrin was discontinued almost ten years ago." You replied absently while you punched in your login and searched for the proper documents to send to the nearby printer. Commission for resources...ah! There you are.

"What, really?" Jack gawked at you. "Hell, I should probably tell my roommate to chuck his then, it must be way outta' date."

"Somehow, I doubt that will be a problem."

…

Jack balked a little when you stated that you would be driving, but he quieted down once you implied that the world may look a bit different than he recalled and that he didn't have a choice in the matter.

"He's not the first one to get put back a little wrong. The process isn't perfect," Ginger had told you. Of course you knew about Galahad senior, the Kingsman agent who had been shot in the head and returned merely wishing to study butterflies. "But I'll send you informational packets that he can sift through. Hopefully something will jog his memory."

Just riding up in the cask elevator had Jack worryingly pale, though getting him outside into the fresh air and sunshine appeared to perk him right back up. He was obviously doing his best to roll with the punches. You thanked whatever gods were listening that Champ had given you permission to take Whiskey's Bronco. Despite the technological advancements of your own personal vehicle that made it miles more convenient to use (you kissed your Bluetooth phone sync goodbye with a woeful sigh), the last thing you wanted was to cause Jack even more distress. Whiskey was mercifully a classic, no frills, no fuss man when it came to his preferred vehicle, even for being a secret agent.

You grabbed your go-bag out of the trunk of your car and walked over to the Bronco in the lot, barely holding back a laugh at Jack's obvious approval of the vehicle. He was running his fingers reverently along the tiny red pinstripe on the exterior, back and forth.

"If I get enough money for one of these beauts someday, God, it will be a sight." He mused, sounding wistful. "Have to get a better job first, though." He continued, as if reciting an oft-repeated mantra. 

"Ginger said you dropped out. What courses were you taking?" You asked curiously. Jack had never been very forthcoming with information about his past, so you seized the opportunity to glean a little insight into the normally tight-lipped agent.

"My parents want me to be a doctor." Jack answered you with a shrug. "I dropped out last semester. Still ain't sure how I'm gonna' break it to 'em." He bounded up into the passenger seat, drumming his fingers nervously on the edge of the door. "Can I ask for somethin' to eat? I'm fuckin' famished." He admitted, changing the subject.

"Yeah, what do you feel like?" You paused, wondering if visiting the establishment near your cabin would assist his memory. "Sandwiches? Pizza?"

"She drives a manual and she eats real food? Be still my goddamn heart!" Jack proclaimed dramatically.

"Easy now cowboy, flattery will get you everywhere!" You laughed.

He grinned back at you, but the smile soon faded. You noticed him studying himself in the side mirror, running a finger down his jaw and grimacing. "God, there's a lot more mileage on this face than I remember." He muttered, prodding the skin of his right temple to smooth out the pronounced crow's feet around his eye. As if working on muscle memory, he reached down without looking and popped open the glovebox to grab his sunglasses. He paused, like he noticed what he had done, then shrugged and slipped the glasses on. "How do I look, ma'am?" 

"Perfect."

What with the drug situation ravaging the world right now, the normally-bustling joint you favored was downright sleepy. Aside from the muted television over the counter, the only sign of life was the lone waitress who ushered the two of you in to sit at the counter. 

"I can turn that up if you'd like." She offered, nodding at the TV. "I just leave it silent when I'm alone because all the reports...well, they can grate on your nerves, y'know?"

"Nah, leave it off." You shook your head. "I'm full up on hearing about the topic at hand." 

"'Topic at hand'?" Jack repeated, looking confused. He had taken his hat off and placed it on the countertop, his fingers back to worrying the bandage on his head. 

You nudged him with your elbow. "Hey, cool it. You'll undo all of Ginger's hard work." You chided, and he jerked his hand away with an embarrassed chuckle. 

"Whups, sorry." He looked up at the menu, and then asked the waitress, "Ma'am can I get a cup of coffee and a hot brown with chicken? I'm downright famished." His smile seemed more genuine, somehow. You realized after a moment that it actually reached his eyes, warming them even further. You weren't sure if you had ever seen him smile like that. Maybe he had forgotten how.

You began to explain in an undertone after the waitress had bustled off to the kitchen, "so there's this...problem going on in the world right now. Big drug problem." 

"Yeah, no shit." Jack scoffed, taking a sip of the black coffee she had poured him. "Nixon started that shit, and Reagan's been on that shit for years. You ain't tellin' me nothin' I don't know."

"N...No, no no, this is different." You grimaced, leaning in a little closer. "I'm talking like, there was one person behind the whole thing and now a large chunk of the population is infected with a virus that will kill them because they used illegal drugs."

Jack stared at you, his coffee cup forgotten in midair between the counter and his mouth. "You...what, hell, all drugs?" He asked incredulously. "Weed? Coke? LSD? 'Shrooms? Everythin'?"

"Everything unregulated, yes." 

"I...God." The mug met the counter with a thump and Jack put his head in his hands. "Fuck, you're serious about this, ain't you?"

This was a far cry from the boardroom Whiskey who had insisted that Champ "couldn't make this personal" after it had been revealed that Tequila was infected. But then, people changed over time. Things happened. You imagined a secret agent would grow into a fair amount of detachment through their career, if only for the sake of their sanity.

"So what's gonna' happen to them? Is anyone doin' anythin' to help? Or is everyone just sittin' on their damn hands again, watchin' shit happen?" Jack growled. 

"Well, our friends are doing their best. I'm confident that they'll be able to pull off their mission." Even without the senior Statesman agent at their side, you added mentally. Jack stayed in his hunched-over position for several minutes after his food arrived and you finally nudged his elbow. "Hey, sour puss. C'mon, we only made this pit stop because you were hungry."

"I'm sorry, my head is...I'm havin' some trouble." He mumbled faintly, and you noticed that he had gone pale again. "Headache."

You felt a touch of remorse. Maybe it had been overly optimistic of you to assume that he might recall more clearly in this location that he had only visited once. "To go it is." You decided for him, tugging out your wallet. "Once we get up to the cabin, we'll settle in for however long. It'll be fine."

…

There was no power. 

You cycled back through the last month's bills in your head. You had definitely paid the electricity. You huffed out an annoyed breath. "There must be a tree down somewhere." You said aloud. 

Jack was already making a beeline for the table in the kitchen, the takeaway container quickly splayed open so he could dig into his food with newfound zeal. "So, what do we need to do?" He asked around his first mouthful. He hadn't even bothered to sit down.

"Well first, I'll call Ginger." You sighed, already dialing the reconnaissance specialist. "After that, I'll check the stove, the fridge--"

"What happened?" Ginger answered before it even had the chance to ring, her voice sharp.

"No no, nothing's wrong. Just the power is out. With everything being the way it is, it'll probably be down for a few days." You heard the rapid clicking of a keyboard. "Whoa hey, don't move stuff around, Ginger. We can survive just fine without power for a day or two." You assured her. It always made you feel guilty whenever Statesman resources were used on someone as inconsequential as yourself. 

"Are...are you sure? I really should be working on getting more information from the drones in Cambodia-"

"Absolutely, you have way bigger fish to fry. We can wait our turn on the outage route." You interjected firmly. "I'll use the car charger for my phone, so if you need anything you can still get in touch."

…

Jack did his best to tune out your conversation with the woman from the lab, the young man scanning the inside of the cabin as he ate. 

It was small, though not cramped. Behind him was the common room, separated from the deck by sliding glass doors. The ceiling overhead was simple untreated beams, interspersed with skylights that left sunny squares on the warm wood floors. 

There was a hallway to his left that he assumed must lead to at least one bedroom and the bathroom, but he wasn't particularly interested in snooping down that direction.

His gaze landed on the wood stove that was tucked into the lone river-rock corner upon a sturdy pedestal of bricks, eyes tracing the stovepipe up to where it pierced the wall to the outdoors. Jack left the table and meandered to the stove, turning the handle and popping the door open after a brief struggle. It was still full of old ash from the last use and he grumbled under his breath, grabbing the shovel and bucket from their cobwebbed resting place against the wall so he could give the stove a proper seeing-to.

You would think people had never heard of a damn chimney fire, the young man griped to himself, eventually standing with the half-full bucket and making his way outside. "Hey!" He called to get your attention, "where's your trash?" 

You waved a hand off in the direction of a waist-high wooden crate that no doubt housed the waste receptacles, out at the end of the rutted drive. On his way by, Jack slowed briefly to a halt to watch you talk into your...God, is that really what cellular phones looked like? 

You shot him an absent smile when you seemed to notice that he had paused and the young man felt his stomach lurch, what the hell? This all seemed so familiar, like he had done it before. 

His head hurt.

Waking up in a body that was damn near twenty years older, retrograde amnesia was what the...what Ginger Ale had called it. Jack scoffed to himself. The hell kind of name is Ginger Ale? Then, he winced. Jack Daniels, meet kettle.

So what had happened in between? Something must have happened to him. Ginger had implied that he and that girl he had dated in high school got married, which was...not something he had ever thought about having on his radar, if he was honest.

Unless…

A weird, uneasy suspicion began to take root in his chest. There was one scenario where he believed he would ask a woman to marry him, if only because it was the goddamn proper thing to do. 

Oh God, he felt sick to his stomach again. Something, a memory, was lurking just out of the light and he couldn't shake the burgeoning sensation of dread. It was as if his brain was playing tug-of-war, both pushing him towards the realization and dragging him away from it in equal measure.

Jack shook his head and dug his fingers in beneath the heavy wooden lid that shielded the waste containers from the elements (and snooping animals), shoving it up so he could empty the bucket into the ash can. Later, he promised himself, we'll tackle that shit later.

...

Jack appeared to be deep in thought as he carried on the task of emptying out the wood stove, so you simply left him to it as you did a quick check of everything else in the cabin. It looked like the power hadn't been out for too long, as the small fridge hadn't defrosted just yet, so you made a note to head down the road and pick up some ice at the amenities store. You kept an 'emergency' cooler under the counter for such an occasion as this. 

This cabin and the surrounding ones didn't lose power very often, but what with all the old trees around it tended to be inevitable once the winds got strong. Your parents had instilled the knowledge in you of how to properly maintain the property, and you were immensely grateful that no problem had cropped up yet that you hadn't been able to straighten out by yourself. 

Most of the vacation cabins that littered the nearby woodlands had been booked up for the summer, due to the prolific population of affluent wealthy who enjoyed them as an 'isolated retreat from civilization'. You were hard-pressed to think of an 'isolated retreat' that included a convenience store within literal walking distance of one's residence, but any port in a storm. 

Jack was oddly silent for nearly the entire walk down the road to the tiny store, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops as his fingers idly patted out an off-tempo rhythm on his thighs. "Penny for your thoughts?" You broke the quiet with your question, trying for a genial tone.

"I dunno', really. I've got a lot of 'em. How many pennies we talkin'?" He replied, his smile strained. "I just feel like I'm missin' somethin'...big. Obvious. And I...dunno' if I'll be happy about figurin' out what it is, y'know? Like there's somethin' in the back of my head, hollerin' at me, but I can't make out the damn words and I don't--I ain't sure if I really want to." Jack stared off ahead, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat. "I've already been a fuck-up for most of my life, y'know. I can't imagine what bullshit I pulled later." 

This uncertain man was a far cry from the usual cocksure attitude you had come to expect from Whiskey. In a way, you weren't exactly surprised that his attitude may have been mainly bravado. Or it might just be that he had played the part for so long he started to believe it. You reached out carefully and he met you halfway, almost absentminded, instinct kicking in before his brain as he wrapped his hand around your wrist. 

It took a moment before Jack's fingers twitched, and then his shoulders went stiff. Just like Whiskey, you found yourself thinking. "Uh, sorry, I-" he began to awkwardly apologize. 

"It's okay." You murmured, rubbing your thumb over the back of his hand. "If you're okay, this is okay." 

"...okay." Jack's voice was barely a whisper, the man smiling gratefully and giving your hand a gentle squeeze. 

...

It was a beautiful night. 

Due to the lack of power in your cabin and the ones around it, the stars were clearly visible. You had brought the battery-powered radio out with you onto the deck, soft crackling static and faint music the backdrop to your after-dinner conversation. 

Jack was more at peace than he could recall feeling recently, the man content to watch your expressions in the light of the lone citronella candle that you had lit on the table. 

At ease, well-fed and comfortable, it was almost malicious how fast his mind began to twist everything for him. Jack Daniels, college dropout. Nothing to show for it at all. He'd crashed and burned so damn fast, there hadn't been time. And now, all of this, finding out that the world had gone to shit--

In the middle of his ruminations, something dragged him back to the present. A familiar song, jarring him out of his self-deprecating reverie. "You fill up my senses…"

His head aching again, Jack got a fleeting recollection of a kitchen in a tiny apartment. Faded, dingy gray subway tiles on the backsplash, yellow curtains framing the window over the sink, her yelling at him, "I hate it when we fight, Jack," eyes snapping with fury but resigned and no, no, something is wrong-

"What's wrong?"

It took him a minute to realize that it was you asking him aloud, not his brain screaming at him. Jack grimaced, pressing his fingers to the bandage. "This song, I...I know it."

"I mean, it's John Denver." You said in a deadpan tone. "The guy oozes questionable sweater choices, denim and radio-friendly vibes. I'd be more surprised if you didn't know it."

"When she and I...we had moved in together. And this…it was playin' while we were arguin'." Jack's head was pounding. The kitchen had always felt too small, though it was the perfect size for her. They fought. About little things, and then bigger things. His gambling, her drinking. What a couple. Jack shoved his chair back from the table on an impulse, getting to his feet. "C'mere." He ordered, extending a hand to you

You raised an eyebrow, looking up at him. "Why?"

"Dammit woman, just-" Jack tangled his fingers with yours, giving your arm a light tug. "C'mere." He pleaded.

You obliged begrudgingly, obviously comfortable in your current position and unwilling to move. But once you were upright you didn't seem to have any reservations about him swaying you back and forth in time to the music, your head on his chest like it belonged there and your hands tucked into the sleeves of your large sweatshirt. 

"...like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean…" the song carried on, sweet and calm. Jack rested his chin on the top of your head, closing his eyes and just letting the faded memories wash over him.

"...I can't do this shit anymore." He had whispered into her hair, his voice hoarse. "All we goddamn do is fight and neither of us change and I'm fuckin' sick of this shit." He had continued to rock the both of them to and fro in that tiny kitchen, as if to soothe her. 

"Oh, you think I'm not sick? I've been sick!" She threw it right back at him hotly, her fists clenched on his chest like she wanted to beat the piss out of him. He probably deserved it. "Jack, you're the one who needs to change! You're the one who's the father of my fucking baby, why don't you start goddamn acting like it!"

Jack's eyes flew open. Baby? He scoured his mind frantically, every memory he turned up so frustratingly piecemeal! 

Baby, a baby, son? Blue crib, blue walls, my son? Married, needed to get married, can't have a baby without getting married, her parents hate me, my parents are already disappointed, have to elope--

And then everything ground to a halt. It was like his memory hit a wall, leaving him confused and almost raw with uncertainty. He needed more, damn it! He exhaled raggedly, making you look up at him in concern.

"Jack? Are you okay?" Your query was so quiet, like you didn't want to disturb him.. 

"I just...my uh, my joints are complainin'. Guess I let myself sit for too long." He fibbed, smiling down at you in an attempt to distract you from his obvious turmoil. "Thanks for the dance," Jack hesitated, an unfamiliar pet name lingering on the tip of his tongue, "cherry pie."

...

Jack meandered to lean with his arms crossed on the porch railing, his head tipped back to look up at the sky for a time. "Have I...been here before?" He asked out of the blue. "I feel like...it's weird to ask, but I feel like you and I have...I feel like I've been here before. With you." He finally managed to get the words out.

"Well, yes." You admitted. "You came to me because you needed help."

"And did you?" Jack cocked his head to the side. 

"Did I what?"

"Help."

You hesitated to answer him, mulling it over. Because in the moment, it seemed like you had. Whiskey had left your care an obviously happier man, but…

If the memory of his pregnant wife, the memory of losing her had been established as his failsafe, it was downright irresponsible of him to have removed that trigger without instating a new one first. Ginger Ale hadn't known, and now Statesman was down their senior field agent in the middle of an incredibly dangerous and tenuous maneuver. The health and safety of countless people hung in the balance and technically, technically (by your reasoning, anyway), it was your fault that Statesman was unable to put their best foot forward in this endeavor.

But…

"I think so." You said softly. "You hung onto something from your past that hurt you, Jack. Something that weighed your body down. I guess you finally got tired of carrying it with you."

Jack's smile was slow, but it lit up his face yet again in the way that Whiskey's never had. "Well good, then! I'm glad you helped me out." He shook his head ruefully. "I just feel like I've been here before. This point in time. It's like...like I'm gettin' the chance to do somethin' over, but I don't know what the hell it is. I'm scared, feel like I'm gonna' fuck somethin' up on accident." He admitted quietly. "It was here, wasn't it? Where you helped me?"

"Yes. This cabin is a safe environment for anyone that needs it."

"I can tell. It's...peaceful." He drawled, one boot hooked over the other as he shifted his weight against the railing. A hand wandered to your arm, his warm palm rubbing your shoulder absently. "I just hope that I can...do whatever it is folks need me to do." Jack murmured. 

His hand stayed on your arm for a good long while, the two of you silently looking at the stars.

"Hey, uh," Jack spoke up suddenly, "your...helpin', I…"

You glanced over at him, the stark white bandage on his temple serving as a stern reminder that this was not Whiskey, but simply Jack Daniels. The man, not the senior agent. A college dropout in a dead-end situation. 

"Do you help even if a person don't need helpin'?" He asked pointedly, an eyebrow hitched upwards as he observed you.

You opened your mouth, uncertain of what you would even say, but you were suddenly blinded by the motion sensor light blazing to life overhead. Jack pulled you into his body defensively, once again seeming to act on muscle memory. You watched through squinted eyes as he reached down for weapons that he didn't have, his hand flying to his hip. "Hey, don't worry." You mumbled against his chest. "The power just came back on, that's all."

"Jesus fuck that shit is bright!" Jack squawked, his voice pitched high. "Thought I was gettin' abducted by aliens again!"

"Again?" You couldn't help your laughter at how ridiculous he sounded. The man began to laugh along with you after a moment, his expression sheepish in the brilliant Illumination.

"Yeah, yeah, get your kicks." He growled good-naturedly, rumpling your hair. "You're lucky you're cute."

You grabbed hold of his hand, tugging him to follow you back inside. "C'mon, let's make sure nothing got overloaded." You urged. 

Even when he could have let go of your hand, you noticed he continued to hang on.

Part Three

[elareine]

Vigil

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Injury Relationships and characters: Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd, Dick Grayson/Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd (implied), Tim Drake/Damian Wayne (implied), Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Damian Wayne-centric, Hurt/Comfort,  Feelings, Complicated Relationships, Polyamory, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Hurt Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Guilt, Cuddling & Snuggling, Not sure how to describe Bruce's parenting in this one

For @scootboot97​. Find here on ao3.

Damian was chewing on his lip.

It was an old habit, one that his mother thought she had trained out of him by age three—but right now, he couldn’t stop. It was stupid. There was nothing to be afraid of. He just wanted to check on Jason, make sure he was taken care of. Not that he doubted Alfred, but sometimes the elderly butler needed help when moving someone of Jason’s stature.

Yes. That was all. It would be fine.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he opened the door.

There was no blood. There should still be blood, Damian thought inanely; Jason had been bleeding so much when they had brought him back… but now he was clean, covered in white bandages and a white sheet, and attached to a white IV and vitals monitor.

There was entirely too much white. Jason should not look that pale. Or that still.

It took movement to draw Damian’s eyes away from the bed.

“Damian?” Tim looked surprised to see him. For some reason, that hurt.

“I—” Damian became aware that he was hovering in the doorway. He could still pretend he only wanted to do a quick check and leave.

He took another step inside. The door fell shut behind him with a gentle ‘click.’

“I—I didn’t think he should be alone.”

Tim was still looking at him with these weary eyes, but Damian thought he saw something soften in them. “There’s another chair.”

There was, in the corner farthest from the bed. After a moment’s thought, Damian dragged it over to Tim’s side. Not because he wanted to be close to him, but because that way, he could see the monitor.

“Alfred says he’s on heavy drugs and will sleep for a few more hours, minimum,” Tim told him quietly. “He was shot in five different places, so… yeah.”

“What happened?”

Weird as it sounded, he didn’t know. Dick and he had gone to the other location. The wrong one, as it turned out. All he knew was that Red Robin had been frantic on the coms; that they brought back Jason bloody and unconscious; and that Dick and Father had been engaged in a screaming match about Jason’s actions when Damian had snuck past them.

“He was protecting me.” Tim’s voice sounded empty. “I was disabling the bomb. He got between the group and me, and when they started using the heavy ammunition, he didn’t take cover.”

He thinks this is his fault, Damian realized. “Did you do disable the bomb?”

“Yes.”

“Would that bomb have killed everyone in the hospital?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then how can you presume that Todd did anything but the right thing, the necessary thing? You are doing him a disservice if you assume that he would’ve wanted you to help him instead of disarming the bomb.”

“Damian—” Tim’s white face was suddenly a lot closer. Damian had somehow stood up from his chair and gotten into Tim’s space without noticing, so immediate and urgent was the need to make his point.

Embarrassed but determined to win the argument, he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest and giving Tim a stern glare. “Your guilt is illogical. Todd would say the same thing, and you know it.” Damian was sure of that. Well. “Using more swear words.”

Tim gave a weak laugh. “Quite a few more. You should’ve heard him during.”

“I’m sure it was impressive.”

“It actually was.” Tim’s voice turned pensive. “Sometimes I forget how effective he is. I’ve rarely seen anything like it.”

Damian could well imagine. Even now, to him, fighting while actively avoiding killing—without allowing even the possibility of one badly-placed hit—felt like having one arm tied behind his back. He didn’t mind the restriction anymore, respected it, even; but when confronted with a mass of people attacking his brother for trying to save innocents…

No wonder Father had been shouting at Dick.

“I didn’t stop him from killing some of these people,” Tim whispered. “And I still don’t regret that.”

Damian looked at the figure on the bed. “Neither do I.”

There seemed to be nothing else to say after that. To be frank, it was weird they had even talked that much. Damian couldn’t remember the last time looking at Tim hadn’t made something bubble up inside him that he’d interpreted as anger and resentment. This was as good as it got between them. Better.

And yet he found himself antsy. The quiet of the room was oppressive. Damian began to crave his sword, or his dog—anything to hold onto, to distract him.

“I kind of feel like someone should hold his hand,” Tim said as if he’d read his mind. Maybe the silence was weighing on him, too. “But…”

One of Jason’s hands was injured, the other had the IV on it. “I don’t think he would appreciate it right now.”

“No. No, he wouldn’t.”

Again silence descended like a heavy blanket.

“You could hold mine,” Damian blurted out. Immediately he felt himself flush. Where had that come from?

“…I have no idea what the fuck to say to that.”

“Forget it,” Damian huffed.

“Okay.”

Fantastic. Now the silence was awkward in addition to oppressive, Damian chided himself. Where had the urge to comfort Tim even come from, anyway?

Suddenly there was a warm pressure on the hand that had been resting on the side of his chair. Damian’s head jerked to stare down at where Tim’s hand now rested on top of his.

He’d never noticed before—Tim’s fingers were thinner than his own. Paler, too. Damian knew it to be the hand of a skilled fighter, but like this, it just looked vulnerable.

No one said anything. It seemed like eons, but finally, Tim moved again, lacing their hands together.

Damian glanced to his left. Tim was determinedly not looking at him, but Damian thought he could see a smile there. It made him feel all weird and warm, so he tried not to think about it.

The silence wasn’t so bad, after that. By the time Alfred entered to examine his patient, Damian almost felt comfortable. They watched as he checked Jason’s dressings and assessed his breathing.

“Has he been moving at all?” Alfred finally asked.

Tim shook his head. “No.”

“The pain medication is working properly, then. Very gratifying. Master Bruce has been trying to develop something for Master Jason’s accelerated metabolism for some time now.”

Damian didn’t know what to say.

“Are they still arguing?” Tim finally asked.

“Yes.” Alfred looked reluctant to say even that much. “I’m sure Master Dick will be here soon.”

Damian tried not to show how much by their father’s absence hurt. If he was taking such exception to Jason using lethal force even just to defend himself and Tim…

It was just one more thing telling Damian that he would never be fully forgiven.

Still, Alfred must’ve seen something on his face (and maybe Tim’s, too,) for he continued speaking: “My instincts are somewhat different than Master Bruce’s. I find myself thankful that he was there to protect you, Master Tim, and that you were there to bring him home.”

Alfred put a hand on Tim’s shoulder and squeezed, then did the same to Damian.

“Now. I’m sure you lads could do with a hot drink. I will be back shortly.”

When the door opened again, however, it was Dick.

Damian had seen that man through a lot, including traumatic brain injury, the death of their father, and his own. He couldn’t remember Dick being that defeated before. His cheeks looked hollowed out, his eyes were red-rimmed and his shoulders drawn so tight it was like he expected to be hit.

If he was surprised to see Damian and Tim holding hands, he didn’t comment on it. Damian wasn’t sure if he even noticed—Dick was looking at Jason as if he had expected him to vanish while he was gone.

“No change,” Tim said softly. “But he’s been calm. Alfred thinks he’s doing okay.”

“Good.” Dick rubbed a hand over his face. “That’s good.” Then he unceremoniously slumped down to the ground at the foot of the bed. One hand wandered to Jason’s ankle, gripping it through the sheet, but his face was turned toward the door.

Damian recognized the position. It screamed protectiveness.

Did Jason need protection? Was that why they were here? Damian had never contemplated that aspect of injury before. Not in relation to Jason, who had always seemed invincible to him.

The door opened again. This time Damian didn’t think it could be Bruce or Alfred. Neither of them would slam the precious old oak like that.

Roy Harper and Koriand’r strolled in. Neither of them was clad in the outrageous outfits they were known for. In fact, Damian was sure he recognized the jumper Koriand’r was wearing as one of Jason’s.

(He was uneasy around her whenever she dressed in her usual style, but it wasn’t for the reason everyone thought. She just reminded him a little too much of his mother when she looked like that.)

They stopped short of Jason’s bed as if noticing the small group around him for the first time. Harper was the first to speak. “Oh, hi. We didn’t expect anyone to be with him.”

“I was the one who called you,” Dick pointed out.

“Yeah, well. There was a time where that could’ve just mean ‘come collect him.’” While you leave him out like trash, Harper didn’t say but they all heard.

It was unfair. Damian knew that. This family had good reason to be wary of Jason. Despite everything that happened between them, they had always given any aid he would accept.

As far as he knew.

Koriand’r put a hand on Harper’s shoulder and looked at them. “How is he?”

“Stable,” Tim said again. “He was shot five times, but nowhere vital. Alfred thinks he fixed him up okay.”

“You were with him, right?” Harper asked. “Are you okay, kiddo?”

Damian felt Tim tense at the question, but he nodded.

“Good.” Harper exhaled. “Good. That’ll reassure him.”

Tim had the gall to look surprised at that. The fool had probably expected recriminations. Damian squeezed his hand in an ‘I told you so.’

“We burned the warehouse, by the way. That’s why we’re late.”

“What? Why?” Dick frowned. “We left the evidence for the police to find.”

Koriand’r raised her chin. “And we burned it down.”

Her gaze met Dick’s and held. The air seemed to crackle around them; Damian almost didn’t dare breathe.

Dick broke eye contact first, nodding. “Okay.”

Harper snorted quietly but didn’t say anything. His attention was visibly on Jason, now. “So we just… wait for him to wake up?”

“Yes.” Dick swallowed. “It would be good if you leave him here at least that long. I—Alfred said he shouldn’t be moved any more than necessary.”

“Sure.”

Finally moving, Koriand’r and Harper took advantage of the enormous beds that adorned every guest room in this manor and squeezed in on Jason’s left side—the least injured one. That shoulder they could touch without worrying about hurting him, and Damian noted that Koriand’r did so immediately. Her hand buried itself in Jason’s hair. Next to her, Harper slumped over so his face was hidden in her shoulder.

The silence began to grow. Damian could feel his grip on Tim’s hand tighten. The pressure was expanding in his lungs. The fear in the room was palpable. What were they waiting for?

For Jason to wake up, Damian told himself. That was all.

“Okay, no,” Harper suddenly said. “This isn’t a fucking funeral.”

Everyone flinched.

He looked up. “Jesus, guys, no. Just—we should be talking about something fun.”

“Fun.” Damian’s voice was disbelieving as he felt.

Harper just ignored his sarcasm. “Yes! Like the time we ran into cosplayers in Star City.”

Damian had never heard that term before, but Tim asked: “What were they dressed up as?”

“Every member of what they called ‘the Batfamily.’” Damian snorted involuntarily, and Harper laughed. “Exactly. Red Hood was holding hands with Spoiler while being a head shorter. Jay’s face.”

Koriand’r smirked. “I particularly liked their rendition of Dick’s old suit.”

Dick groaned and buried his head in his hands. “Will I never live that down?”

“Never.” Koriand’r shook her head. “And then there was one kid dressed as the Joker.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yes, except he was seven and way too cute. And then he told Jay that he’d wanted to dress up as Harley Quinn because she’s, quote, waaaay cooler, but his mom wouldn’t let him.”

“Speaking of Harley—Tim, do you remember the time…”

As they talked, Alfred finally returned with the promised drinks. Hot chocolate for Dick and Koriand’r; tea for Damian; something that smelled of caramel and coffee for Harper and Tim. It prompted Tim to remember a story of his own concerning Jason and a very flirty barista who insisted on thanking the Red Hood properly.

Eventually, Damian couldn’t take it anymore. Amidst the laughter, he gently extracted his hand from Tim’s grip and slipped out of the room.

Once in the bathroom, he took a second to stare at himself in the mirror and just breathe. It felt like the world was moving on too quickly and too slowly all at once. Jason was hurt, his father angry, Tim and Dick vulnerable; and here Damian was, trying to make it right for all four of them and unable to.

Even as he turned away from the mirror and went about his business, however, anxiety began to take over. Damian didn’t deal well when he didn’t know what was happening. He wanted to be back in that room. There wasn’t anything he could do about Father—he suspected himself to be the last person in the world to be helpful in that matter—but he could be there when Jason woke up.

And, miraculously, Tim seemed to accept comfort from him. Damian could admit to himself that he was okay with giving it. Dick was taken care of, but perhaps Damian could contribute to the storytelling. There had been that time with Jason and the youngest assassins…

He wasn’t helpless, Damian told himself as he walked back. He wasn’t.

Nothing seemed to have changed in his absence. Dick was even starting to look less on edge. Koriand’r was in the middle of a story about the time Jason tried to make Tamaranean food and stumbled upon a drug dealer in Washington state. She didn’t pause when Damian entered but smiled at him encouragingly.

When Damian made to sit down again, however, Tim pulled him into his lap instead. Immediately, Damian stiffened.

“What are you doing?”

Tim didn’t answer directly. “It’s comforting, right?”

It felt a little bit like being treated like a child, and a little bit not. Damian couldn’t take the risk. He hissed: “I don’t need this.”

“I know.”

Damian waited.

“But… I kinda do.”

Oh. Well, then. Damian had thought that he wanted to comfort Tim. He did his best to relax. It became easier when Tim’s arms wound around his middle.

(He wondered if he would grow taller than Tim one day. Probably. The other wasn’t exactly towering over him even now. Maybe Tim could sit in his lap, then.)

(It was inevitable that he’d want him to be there, Damian supposed. Now that he’d let the other in, there was no turning back.)

“That,” Harper said, pointing at them and interrupting Koriand’r, “is an excellent idea. Dick, why are you all the way over there?”

“What do you mean?” Dick looked confused. Damian didn’t understand the question any better. There were mere feet between him and the couple, even if Dick was sitting on the ground.

Koriand’r got up and into the air in one smooth movement. “Excellent idea.” Before anyone could object, she grabbed Dick and lifted him, bridal-style, then plopped him down across her and Harper’s laps as she sat back down. Harper immediately wound his arms around Dick’s waist and held on.

“Guys—” Dick protested, but it was weak.

“Shush.” Koriand’r was playing with Jason’s hair again, but her free hand was moving toward Dick. “Anyway, as I was saying…”

Damian watched Koriand’r’s and Harper’s hands lace together over Dick’s hipbones and tried really hard not to draw conclusions about his brothers’ romantic lives. Better to focus on Koriand’r’s story again.

“…so the guy had a treehouse.”

“The meth dealer had a treehouse,” Damian repeated, incredulous.

“He did.” Koriand’r grinned in remembered mirth. “He converted the original farmhouse into a meth lab and then used the gains to pay people to build him a giant treehouse. It had all the amenities.”

“How do you get plumbing in a treehouse?” Tim asked.

“Put up a water tank in the tree.”

“When we say all the amenities,” Harper interjected, “we mean all of them. Including…” He paused for effect. “A fireplace.”

They stared at him. “The fuck,” Dick said.

“Drugs, man.” Harper shrugged.

“Jason said the same thing.” Koriand’r smiled down at the sleeping man fondly. “Followed by an extended lecture on the dangers of leaving fireplaces unattended.”

“This was meth dealer, yes?”

“Oh, yeah. He had taken over most of the market in Washington by then. Though apparently, he was about to get out anyway ’cause the mafia was sniffing around, trying to find out who was pissing on their turf.”

“He had ‘insurance packets’ buried in his garden,” Harper added, unwinding one hand from around Dick’s waist to add the air quotes.

“You mean insurance papers?” Tim asked, then immediately corrected himself: “No, you don’t. Gold?”

Dick was already laughing. “He had drugs buried in his garden?”

“He did!” Harper grinned.

“His plan was to sell it little by little,” Koriand’r explained. “Just enough to get by, and presumably, to keep sampling his own wares.”

“Because that wouldn’t upset the mafia at all. There was enough meth in there to supply a prison for three years.”

Damian grinned and felt Tim shake against him in silent laughter.

Suddenly, Koriand’r lifted a hand. “Be quiet!”

Startled, everyone obeyed. And then they heard it.

Jason groaned.

As they watched, something changed in his face. Where before there had been absolute stillness under his eyelids, there now was movement.

The three sitting on the bed got up and gave him some space. Everyone turned quiet, expectant. Tim’s fingers were tapping out a rhythm against Damian’s abdomen. Damian finally took his hands again to keep him from fidgeting.

And then, finally, Jason opened his eyes.

He looked at Tim first. “The bomb.”

“Disarmed,” Tim whispered.

The relief was evident on Jason’s face. “Good job. You okay?”

Tim nodded. Damian couldn’t see his face, but Tim’s hands in his were trembling.

“Good.”

“Yeah, about that,” Harper piped up behind him. “We will have words, Jay. Why the fuck weren’t you wearing your armor?”

Jason shrugged. It probably hurt, but Damian couldn’t deny that it looked pretty cool. “Restricts my movements too much. We had to be quick.”

“That’s not a good excuse,” Dick said.

Harper pointed at him without even turning to look. “You, shut up, your suit rips if a guy looks at it the wrong way. Seriously, Jay—”

“Hey, I didn’t go in expecting a fucking melee, did I?” Jason rolled his eyes. “Can I get a fucking kiss, please? I’m hurt, in case you didn’t notice.”

“In case I didn’t—” Harper took an audible deep breath, and then he kissed Jason.

“Oh,” Tim breathed against Damian’s skin. It was quite a good summary of the situation.

When Damian looked over at his oldest brother, he saw that Dick had gone slightly red, his gaze weirdly intense as he watched Jason and Harper break the kiss and smile at each other.

Koriand’r smiled, too, and leaned over, her hair hiding her and Jay’s faces for a long moment as they kissed. Damian was kind of glad. Watching this made him feel all warm and squirmy. Tim’s arms around him had tightened. He tried to concentrate on that.

After a long moment, Koriand’r stepped back, and Jason turned to look at Damian.

“Hey, kid,” Jason said, and to his complete and utter humiliation, Damian felt tears rise to his eyes. He tried to stop them; pressed his lids shut as tightly as he could, bringing up his hands to cover—but it was to no avail.

“No, hey, I’m fine.” A strong hand came up and pulled him onto the bed and into a hug. Damian didn’t fight it; melted into it, even.

“Wanna know a secret? Bruce is sitting two rooms down, staring at his surveillance monitors and tracking my vitals,” Jason whispered. “If anything happened, he’d be here in a flash.”

“But—”

“Nah. Lemme guess, he was worried, decided I only got hurt ’cause I was using live ammunition and then got into a screaming match with Dick about it?”

“Got it in one,” Dick confirmed with a humorless chuckle.

“Then it’s all fine. He’s just a fucking coward. Don’t worry about it; he’ll never mention it again. You’re good, Dami. This isn’t about you.” Jason paused. “Actually. Dick.”

“Yeah?”

“Come closer for a second.”

Damian was smiling into Jason’s skin even before he heard the yelp as Dick was pulled into the same one-armed embrace.

“Don’t be awkward, dickhead,” Jason murmured.

Damian couldn’t decipher what Dick said in response, but that was okay. He had no idea how this has happened—last thing he’d heard, the outlaws and Dick weren’t on speaking terms—but he was glad. They seemed to be determined to stand up to and take care of Dick, which made for a nice change.

“Everyone,” Alfred interrupted, “while I’m sure Master Jason appreciates your presence, I will have to examine his wounds now. If you could step back for a minute…”

Damian was about to reluctantly detach himself from Jason’s neck when he felt his brother pull him tighter, shifting him to his side and into the curve of his arm as if he weighed nothing.

“Aww, c’mon, Alfred.” Jason grinned engagingly. “Such a little thing won’t disturb you, will it?”

Alfred sighed. “I believe I can work around Master Damian, yes.”

Damian saw everyone smile at that; felt Tim’s hand slip back into his as they watched Jason complain all through the examinations even as his words began to slur together with exhaustion, and he was so, so glad.

They were going to be okay.

[arecomicsevengood]

I’ve been trying to slow down the pace of my anxious brain, to move it away from the obsessive unsatisfying masturbatory procrastinating of clicking refresh. I want the presence of mind that comes from focused reading, I want to heal the destroyed reward mechanism of my brain. Absent the structure to days that comes with leaving the house, quarantine conditions have exacerbated these problems. I sought out older newspaper strips, because they have a leisurely pace. While no one would actually read a book-length collection a day at a time, in recreation of how they were originally read, the guiding principle that they be taken in as a diversion while doing other things is worth keeping in mind, as it runs opposite to current directives to binge-watch TV shows. Theoretically, having these narratives exist in parallel to the procession of days would be a nice respite from quarantine’s time-warp effect. However, when reading older newspaper strips, especially if you’re paying attention to the news at all, one is frequently jarred by the presence of racial caricatures.

I really try to avoid being someone offended by work that comes from a completely different cultural context. I’m a white dude, and while I don’t want to be quick to forgive anyone’s racism, I also don’t want to be one of those people that rush to condemn things as a way to posit myself as some sort of enlightened authority. Trying to “cancel” someone who’s long dead really only makes you into someone dismissive of history, which only works to one’s detriment.

Still, when the protests against police violence turned to easily-communicated gestures of symbolic speech, and iconoclastic energy was directed against statues of historical colonialists rather than the more immediate threats presented by police cruisers, conservatives defended such statues arguing their historical importance. This argument is extremely disingenuous. We can choose the historical narrative we want to present to ourselves. While the majority of opinions enshrined in law throughout the course of American political history were those slave-owners and genocide-justifiers, there’s nonetheless a vast cultural history it would serve as well to look to and posit as who we are. Every decision made was the result of argument, the losers of the arguments unaccountably brave. Ever since reading Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, I’ve been convinced that if any woman should be preserved on our money, it’s Jeanette Rankin, if only so her story would then be taught in schools. The work of a historian is to make an argument by collecting threads of a narrative out of the collective chaos of ongoing time before it’s all lost to entropy and rot.

Much credit is due to comics historian Bill Blackbeard, who edited the Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics, for what it is now clear is the considerable effort he must’ve made to avoid including too many depictions of racial stereotypes in his survey. He did so because he was arguing for comic strips being an art form, and avoiding the laziness of racial caricature helps that argument be made. He doesn’t bypass them completely: They’re in a Herriman strip, Baron Bean, albeit only for a few panels. They’re also on prominent display in the McKay Little Nemo strips. Maybe they’re somewhere else I didn’t look at too closely, it’s a large book.

But imagine my surprise and mortification when I bought a big collection of Polly And Her Pals Sunday strips and encountered these “mammy” caricatures in the depiction of servants. And then, when I bought a collection of Walt And Skeezix dailies, there it was again. These strips are well-regarded, considered the best of their day, and the comic strip as a whole was regarded as intellectually superior to the comic books that followed. When Gary Groth wrote his introduction to the first issue of Love And Rockets, these strips were the works he cited as the historical apex of the form.

(Apologies may be in order for my not wanting to actually include the relevant imagery of racial caricature here, and this post being all text. I would definitely need to apologize if I did include them though.)

The thing about the racial caricatures is they demonstrate the limitations of their artist’s ambition. The most charitable reading I can afford to give is that the caricatures exist within a larger context where all of the characterizations are burlesques, intended strictly for laughs, and somewhat thin. Gasoline Alley, currently being reprinted as Walt And Skeezix, is meant to evoke some sense of feeling, and while there are some melodramatic plotlines, the bulk of the work it does to accomplish that end is by being low-key and gentle. If you view the strip not as a light comedy historical piece, and admit you are meant to project your feelings onto the white main characters, you kind of have to concede that maybe Frank King didn’t really see black people as human. You know black people read these strips! It ran in a Chicago newspaper. If you lived in Chicago at this time, you would see black people living their lives, which would surely include the buying and reading of newspapers. It seems really weird to then depict black people as dumb and superstitious, even if the depiction of them as working as servants was primarily how the cartoonist would have encountered them in the middle-class milieu he lived in and depicted.

Herriman is a fascinating complicating factor. Because he’s black, and he’s arguably one of the best strip cartoonists of this era, and was respected by his peers. But he was also white-passing, in all likelihood because he knew his racial background would create problems, including with his peers. I think there’s a strong case to be made for the case Ishmael Reed basically implicitly makes with his Mumbo Jumbo dedication: That Herriman is one of the great artists of the twentieth century, and his art is informed by his blackness in the same way that blackness informs the great American art form of jazz. That his identity was denied to his peers doesn’t make his own art any less great, it simply complicates the ways that art works. But if you think of Cliff Sterrett being one of the guys who called Herriman “the Greek” and then drew this comic strip that features these horrible stereotypes, it just hurts your soul.

Sterrett is even I think someone whose work gets called “jazzy,” because there’s a certain modernist verve to it, a visual inventiveness. While the limit to King’s work is in how well-written you can really view it as being when you’re considering the racism, the limit to Sterrett’s is in how well-drawn and actually wild it is, considering that every strip  has the same gridded layout, when contrasted against the more inventive architectures of a Feininger page, or Charles Forbell’s Naughty Pete, or a Garrett Price White Boy strip. (I haven’t actually read the White Boy collection. The people who have read it and like it cite how it’s beautifully drawn, and how not-racist it is in the depiction of Native Americans, as being the things that credit it.)

Here’s something: I’m not even reading the strips drawn by conservatives! I’m not reading Chester Gould, or Harold Gray, or Al Capp. Each of these cartoonist is their own weird thing, with effectively different forms of conservatism, who I don’t wish to dismiss. I can get down with some Dick Tracy strips, whatever. To a certain extent, being an adult in dealing with history means seeing the virtues in people you probably disagree with in many ways. But it’s seeing the weird unconscious attitudes of people you would like to genuinely admire that makes you want to throw the whole project in the trash and start anew, because it displays evidence of such a deep taint.

Racism is basically America’s original sin. Comic strips are, along with jazz, the great American art form. It basically follows that you can’t talk about comics in any sort of accurate historic light without talking about racism. (There’s also racial caricature in Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo strips, obviously.) Reading the supplemental essays in these books of reprints, or critical reviews of them, you realize the desire to distance oneself from talking about the racism in the work is similar to how the conservative view of “American exceptionalism” goes hand-in-hand with a refusal to acknowledge the racist premises at the heart of its founding: People arguing for the exceptional quality of these strips are not addressing the elephant in the room, or only address it in the most cursory and hand-waving way imaginable. They are trying to paint a portrait without blemishes, without flaws, and in so doing depict a platonic ideal that does not actually exist.

These strips are not the work of Robert Crumb, where the racist imagery being employed has ostensibly an satirical end. It’s not Huckleberry Finn either, where the use of racial slurs is commonplace to set up a default mindset that then becomes undercut as a common humanity is realized. I’m actually unclear on if you could print such racial slurs in the newspaper at this time, or if it would be avoided as strenuously as any other profanity that couldn’t run in a “family newspaper.” What you see in these strips is the soft racism of paternalistic attitudes in the twentieth century American North laid bare for what it is. The volume I have of Walt And Skeezix collects the strips from 1923 and 1294, the Polly And Her Pals collection collects work from 1928 to 1930. This was an an era where black people could be reliably counted on as Republican voters, in the era before the realignment in politics that came with the Great Depression and the New Deal.

The current ahistorical posturing of Trump’s Republican party has them occasionally downplaying their overt anti-black racism to claim the “party of Lincoln” banner. So these strips are relevant, essentially, for depicting the sort of status quo the Republican party seek a return to, prior to FDR-instituted social programs, where black people exist primarily as servants and their concerns or agency, beyond how they exist in service to liberal white people, who address them from a place of charity, while conservatives would theoretically exist in all-white enclaves, are dismissed. The racism in the world depicted in these strips is inarguable, but the hope exists, in the eyes of conservatives, that liberals will see the way it flatters them, and wave it away as basically acceptable.

The alternative, as ever, would be in Herriman’s Krazy Kat, “the future liberals want,” where race and gender are forever up for debate in an shifting desert landscape. The issue there, of course, is the basically true argument that the strip doesn’t make any sense, and the more-up-for-debate point that the unique language of the strip is the result of repression of identity and internalized self-loathing. It’s also notable that the strip lacked popular appeal but was allowed to continue existing because it won the support of a wealthy benefactor. Maybe one day we’ll all learn to vibe with it, but I don’t really see that happening.

[bee-kathony]

The Oath | Ch. 19 “Round Two”

a/n: thank you all for reading, liking and commenting! I appreciate it so so much. big thanks to @lcbeauchampoftarth for being my beta on this and making it 1000x better! <3

Arc I | Ch. 16 | Ch. 17 | Ch. 18

December 9th, 2019

Madeline sat comfortably on Geillis’s lap as they sat down to lunch the next day. It was nice to get out of the house and take her mind off of everything that had been going on lately.

“Ye have the chubbiest wee cheeks that I e’er saw.” Geillis lightly pinched Madeline’s cheeks, making her giggle. “Ye might have the cutest baby in the world, Claire.”

“I’ll agree to that,” Claire smiled. “She is rather adorable.”

“With yer genes and that handsome Scot as her father, ye were bound to have an adorable bairn,” Geillis grinned and then bounced Madeline on her knee.

“Do you think—“ Claire started, but shook her head.

“What? Do I think that Jamie isna her father after all?” Geillis could read her so easily — well, anyone could, according to Jamie.

“Yes. I know I said I didn’t want to talk about it, but what do you think? Is it possible?”

“Of course it’s possible, Claire. But when I look at this beautiful wee lass of yers with her auburn hair and fair skin… well, she reminds me of Jamie. And ye of course, but I know this has to be a mistake.”

Just then the waitress brought over their food, setting it down in front of them.

“Thank you,” Claire said and immediately grabbed her fork and twirled a string of pasta around it. “You’re probably right. Always are,” she smirked. “I’m just going crazy waiting! The good thing is that Jamie will take another paternity test today and we should have the results by the end of the week. Then we can figure out what to do next.”

“Ye two have a good plan, and a good lawyer behind ye. Don’t worry, Claire. It’ll all work out, ye’ll see,” Geillis smiled.

They both ate their meals, talking of work and random things other than the biggest issue in Claire’s life. Claire was so grateful that she had Geillis in her life. Without her, she might not have ever met Jamie — if she hadn’t been so persistent in making her come with her to the whisky opening.

“You know…” Claire took a sip of water. “I never really thanked you properly for dragging me out to Lallybroch for the whisky launch.”

“I don’t believe ye did,” Geillis smirked, still holding Madeline in her lap. “But I take yer thanks and say yer welcome, lass!”

Claire laughed, wrapping both her arms around herself. “I just can’t imagine my life without Madeline… without Jamie. You’ve helped me so much, Geillis. You were there for me when I needed somewhere to go and you took me in.”

“That’s what friends do,” Geillis responded with a smile and took her hand over the table, squeezing it lightly. “And now ye owe me a huge favor for basically makin’ yer life amazing…”

“Hmmm? I suppose I do and I know you always cash in on your favors,” Claire laughed.

“Can I break up my huge favor into small ones?”

“I guess,” Claire shrugged. “What did you have in mind?”

Madeline started squirming, reaching for Geillis’ chest, hungry for her own lunch. “Oh, no lass. Nothin’ is comin’ out of these, I’m afraid.”

“Hand the little miss over,” Claire smiled and took Mads from Geillis, then adjusted her on her lap so that she could feed her. Thankfully, she didn’t get any strange looks from anyone in the restaurant… besides, it was just a breast.

“Ye ken that sexy red dress ye have? The one that’s low cut in the front and hugs yer curves in all the right places?”

That exact dress was hanging up in Claire’s closet right now with the price tag still on it. A dress she had purchased on a whim while out shopping with Geillis months ago and hadn’t found a chance to wear.

“Yes, the same dress I haven’t even worn,” she smirked. “What about it?”

“I was just wonderin’ if I could perhaps borrow it… for a date?” Geillis smiled over her glass, her brows raised.

“A date?!” Claire’s mouth dropped. Geillis wasn’t usually the type who went out on dates, she was more the one-night kind of girl. Maybe that’s where Claire got her influence from…

“Yes,” her friend blushed, a deep crimson creeping up her fair cheeks. “And… well, tis with a lass. Her name is Lily and she works in the NICU.”

“Oh, this is different,” Claire nodded. “Is she the one with the short blonde hair? The one that I always see trying to get your attention?”

Her friend blushed more, which was very unlike Geillis. She was usually so confident and carefree, not getting caught up with dating and especially not with a co-worker. “The very one. And caught my attention she did. Ye ken that I lean towards both men and women, but never actually gone on a date with a woman before. I’m really nervous.”

“You? Nervous?” Claire tsked. “She’ll love you, Geillis. You’re an absolute catch and a half. And yes, of course you can borrow my red dress. Just make sure it doesn’t get wrinkled when it ends up on the floor!”

Geillis gasped and lightly hit Claire on the arm. “I told myself I wouldna sleep wi’ her on the first date!”

“That, I will have to see to believe,” Claire laughed. Madeline finished up her lunch and Claire pulled her shirt down and started to burp her over her shoulder. “What time is it?”

Pulling out her phone, the Scot checked the time. “Nearly 1:00. When’s yer appointment?”

“3:15,” Claire replied. “But I should probably head back home now and put her down for a nap. The DNA Centre isn’t far from our house.”

“Aye, do that. I should probably get back to work.” Geillis stood up from the table. “Yer so lucky yer still partially on maternity leave. I suppose I’ll have to get myself a baby!”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Claire laughed and stood from the table, preparing to make the journey home with a sleeping baby.

Geillis hugged her goodbye and they parted ways.

“Do you like your Auntie Geillis?” Claire asked Mads as she buckled the car seat in. “She’s a bit wild, but she loves you.”

++++++

Claire had been so tired yesterday afternoon, that as soon as she came back with Madeline and fed her, she’d fallen asleep. And then she woke to find Jamie and ended the night in bed with him. Therefore, she had completely forgotten about searching the name Mary Hawkins.

She needed to meet Jamie at the DNA Centre with Mads in two hours, which gave her just enough time to search Mary’s name while Madeline took a nap. The name was familiar to her and she was positive she’d first heard it from Frank, but she couldn’t quite remember why.

Sitting down at her desk in their study, Claire typed in the name, but the only results that came up were articles about the opening of Hawkins Laboratory four years ago. Thank God for social media. Frank didn’t have any kind of social media accounts, and he had constantly reminded Claire that too much time on her phone would fry her brain.

In a matter of seconds, Claire found who she was looking for.

Mary.Hawkins: 21 “C’est la vie”

Scrolling past pictures of food and sunsets, Claire sat stunned when she found something that chilled her to the bone. It was a picture from three years ago at Christmas. In the picture, Mary sat beside the tree, and sitting beside her was Frank.

When she clicked on the picture to see who else was tagged, another name popped up. A young man that looked an awful lot like Frank. His username was Randall_Alexander, Frank’s youngest brother.

Three years ago, Claire had been scheduled to work the Christmas shift and couldn’t get out of it. She told Frank to go home to his family and that she would be busy, probably not even realizing it was Christmas.

Claire remembered the name Mary Hawkins. Frank had told her that his brother had started dating a girl named Mary and had brought her to meet everyone. Things got busy for both of them and Claire had actually never met Alex Randall. And therefore, she had never met Alex’s girlfriend, Mary. The same Mary Hawkins that works at Hawkins Laboratory.

“That bastard,” Claire muttered, and took a screenshot of the photo to show Jamie later. She knew something wasn’t right and she would bet her life on the fact that Frank had asked a favor from this Mary Hawkins.

To confirm her suspicions, Claire went back to the Hawkins Laboratory website in search for a photo of Mary. There on the “About” section was a group photo of all the staff. Mary was petite and had a mousy face, but Claire had no doubt that it was the same young girl.

What she wanted to do was contact her, to reach out to her and find out the truth, but Claire knew that Mary wouldn’t tell her anything — especially not if Frank had bribed her to lie. It was frustrating, to know that this was all a lie; but without any hard proof, nothing could be done.

Hard proof they could get, however, would come from the new paternity test Jamie was about to take. When those results came back to them in two days, they would know for certain their next steps. All Claire had to do now was be patient… and patience wasn’t her strongest suit right now.

Walking in to check on Madeline, Claire saw she was still asleep and figured she could manage a quick shower before meeting Jamie at the DNA Centre. As she stepped under the hot water, letting it wash away all her troubles, Claire thanked God once again that she was no longer with Frank, but with an honorable and loving man. Her Jamie.

++++++

He was waiting for them in the lobby of the DNA Centre, his fingers tapping a rhythm against his leg. Jamie met her eye and smiled, the lines of worry on his forehead disappearing.

“Sassenach.” He kissed her hello and then picked up Madeline from her pram. “How’s yer day been?”

“Oh, I have some news for you!” Claire said as she took a seat next to him, waiting for their name to be called. Jamie cradled Madeline in his arms, staring down at her beautiful face. “So remember how I told you I thought the name Hawkins sounded really familiar?”

“Aye, just two days ago…”

“Jesus H., has it just been two days?” Claire took a deep breath, running her hand over her face, feeling like she’d aged tremendously in the last week. “Well, when I called the lab yesterday, the woman I spoke to gave me the name Mary Hawkins — saying she was the one to handle our case.”

“And what did ye find out, a nighean?”

Claire placed her hand on Jamie’s arm, squeezing it a little. “I searched for Mary on Instagram and found a picture of her with Frank’s family from three years ago at Christmas.”

“What?” Jamie looked up at her, his eyes wide. “This Mary kens Frank’s family?”

“She’s dating Alexander Randall, Frank’s youngest brother who I’ve never met. At least I think they’re still dating, that’s what her latest post indicated…” Claire rambled. “So, I would bet my life that Frank used his connections at this lab with Mary to somehow change the results.”

“Taing Dhia!” Jamie smiled and then kissed Claire. “Ye ken that if we get the results back and they say I’m Mad’s father… and now with this connection to Mary, Claire,” he looked at her, determination in his eyes. “We might have enough evidence to file a claim against them. Against the lab for tampering with the results and against Frank for bribing them.”

“As much as I don’t want this to go into a long drawn-out legal battle, I think you’re right. It’s what we need to do to stop all of this. If they tampered with our results, maybe the lab has done this kind of thing before,” Claire questioned. She wanted to say more, but they were called back to a small room for the test.

“The doctor will be wi’ ye in just a minute,” said the nurse and left the three of them alone, waiting.

“They just need a swab, right?” Jamie looked down at her. “Like the last time?”

“Yeah, that’s all they should need, just some spit.” Claire stroked Madeline’s cheek.

The door opened and the doctor walked in, a short frog-faced-looking man that shook both of their hands. “Hello, are you the Frasers?”

“Aye, I’m Jamie Fraser and this is my fiancé, Claire soon to be a Fraser,” Jamie smiled. “And this is Madeline…”

“She is a beautiful child,” said the doctor with a thick French accent. “My name is Doctor Raymond, I’ll be helping you with your paternity test today.”

“Thank you so much, we appreciate you being able to work us into your schedule on such short notice,” Claire smiled. She felt instantly comfortable with Doctor Raymond, as if she’d known him for a long time.

“It is my pleasure, Madonna,” he smiled at her and then put on his latex gloves. “For accurate results we just need a swab from the bébé’s cheek as well as from the father.”

It took all of two minutes for both cheek swabs to be taken, and Claire held Madeline’s hand the whole time. Thankfully, she had also remembered to bring Madeline’s favorite stuffed bunny toy, keeping it close by her daughter the whole time. Madeline didn’t fuss when Doctor Raymond opened her mouth and stuck the swab in, only looked at him curiously.

Claire watched as Doctor Raymond labeled both samples and put them in a larger bag to be sent in for testing. “And we’ll hear back in two days? Also, I’d like to confirm it is the court-approved test that is being done?”

“Oh, yes my dear, you will have everything you need in a matter of days,” the doctor said and then took her hand. “Everything will work out just as you want it to, Madonna.”

“Thank ye, Doctor,” Jamie nodded his head and then bundled the blanket around Madeline. Doctor Raymond said goodbye and led them out of the room and around the corner where they paid for the appointment. It wasn’t cheap, as it was the second time they’d done this, but it was worth every cent.

“That doctor was a bit odd, no?” Jamie said as they walked out to their cars.

“I don’t think so,” Claire smiled. She liked the odd man, he was kind and very compassionate. “I liked him, and I think Madeline did too.”

“Well, he is French so…” Jamie smirked.

“Ha ha,” Claire laughed and then took back Madeline from Jamie. She immediately started to squirm in Claire’s arms. “What? You don’t want Mama anymore?”

“She loves her Da,” Jamie grinned. “I’ll see ye both at home for dinner.” He first kissed Madeline’s head and then Claire’s lips. “It’ll work out, Sassenach. Just as the weird doctor said it would.”

“I think it will, Jamie,” Claire smiled against his lips. “I really think it will.”

At least she hoped it would.

Chapter 20: Sick Day

[youllallriseintheink]

Defining Memories, chapter 7

Alright, this is the last one before we get to Henry and Joey. And will be dogs! (I like this chapter.)

---

The memory showed Wally walking home from work on a rainy day, looking maybe five or ten years younger than in present. He heard a whine coming from an alleyway and went to investigate. What he found was a golden retriever puppy taking shelter in a cardboard box. It was trembling. Wally wasn’t sure what to do, but he couldn’t just leave her.

“Oh, come here,” Wally cooed, bending down to gather the dog up in his arms. No collar. Huh. He carried her home to his apartment. About a block before he arrived, he hid her under his jacket. All the squirming made this a very unconvincing disguise. “Shh... simmer down,” he whispered, “I’m not supposed to bring you in there.” Somehow, that actually seemed to calm her down a little. Enough, at least, for him to sneak her into his apartment.

“Hey, girl,” he said to her, finally letting her out to explore her new surroundings, “You’re stayin’ here for the night.” The puppy sniffed around and began chewing on a discarded plastic cup she found on the floor. Yeah, you’d never know I clean for a livin’.” Then he noticed the little paw prints she’d left on the floor. He couldn’t have those giving him away, so he immediately picked up the dog and took her to the bathroom for a wash. It was one heck of a mess as the puppy didn’t want to be bathed and jumped out twice before Wally figured out he had to hold her down. Still, Wally was able to laugh over the situation.

The scene shifted to Wally sleeping with the puppy, then to him smuggling her out. He returned to the alley he’d found her in, let her out, and said. “Alright, girl. Sorry I can’t keep ya. Run along.” The puppy cocked its head adorably and whined a little. “You’re makin’ this hard, but it ain’t my choice. Good luck out there.”

Wally turned away and walked another fifteen feet before realizing the puppy was following him. Wally sighed. “Alright, you win, you little bugger.” He loaded the dog back into his jacket and headed back to his place. “Goldie. I’m callin’ ya Goldie.”

The scene changed to what must have been a few weeks or months later. Goldie was a little bigger, and Wally’s apartment had dog bowls and a couple chew toys in it now, and had the trash picked up off the floor so that it wouldn’t end up in her teething mouth. The doorbell rang. Wally, as though by habit, picked up Goldie and her toys and bowls, and put them in another room, putting a cardboard box over them just for overkill.

He opened the door. His neighbour was hanging back, with a little girl in a Girl Guide uniform in front of him. “Wanna buy some cookies?” The little girl asked.

“Aw, of course. Just let me get some money and I’ll be right back.”

The click-click noise of dog claws on linoleum could be heard making their way across the floor now, along with the sound of a cardboard box dragging across the floor. Wally realized then that he must have forgotten to shut the door when he moved Goldie into the other room.

“What’s that?” the little girl asked.

“It’s uhh... my toy train!” Wally answered.

His neighbour rolled his eyes. “Wally, do you really think we’ve never heard that thing bark?”

“Oh.” Apparently his secret was not as well-kept as he had assumed.

“Can I pet him?” the little girl asked.

“Alright, sure. Come on in.” Wally took the box off of the dog and watched as she licked her face.

“So, uh. Are you going to tell on me if I keep her?”

“Nah. She’s not causing me any issue. And hey,” the neighbour leaned in, “I actually know someone who needs a home for their dog. They’re moving in a week, and they’re hoping to find someone to take him in so they don’t need to leave him in a shelter. What do you say?”

“I guess I could take him for a while, if he’s clean and quiet. If the dogs ever cause problems with the neighbours, that’ll be the end of this.”

“You’ll have to talk with them. I know it’s a pug, and he seemed pretty quiet to me, but I wouldn’t know.” The neighbour took out a piece of paper and wrote down a phone number.

The scene shifted to show Wally receiving the pug, shifted again to show him welcoming a third dog into his home, and shifted a third time to show him passing on the pug to a new owner.

The scene changed. Wally was checking out a bulletin board in the lobby of his apartment. One poster in particular caught his eye: it read, “A note to residents from your landlord: I have decided to, out of the goodness of my heart, look the other way on Wally Franks’ dog rehoming hobby. THIS IS A ONE-TIME EXCEPTION. OTHER RESIDENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED PETS OR OTHER ANIMALS. A ps to Wally Franks: if you don’t want your landlord to find out about your dog rehoming hobby, refrain from hanging posters about it with your name and phone number in public spaces. I will be over on the first Monday of each month to see that your apartment is being kept sanitary. If the other residents complain of noise, I will also be forced to have you let go of your dogs. Thank you.

The scene changed a final time. Wally was arriving home to his apartment, and was greeted by three dogs: a border collie, a toy poodle, and a fully-grown Goldie. “She took her!” Wally announced proudly to his dogs. He made his way over to a corkboard he’d hung up. On the corkboard were several pictures of dogs, the one in the upper-left corner being the pug he’d first rehomed. Looking as proud as anyone there had ever seen him, he added another picture to the board, of his most recent rehomed dog. The scene faded back to mist.

After a couple of minutes of Allison, Lacie and Tom (the biggest dog people in the room, aside from Wally himself) asking questions about the dogs, the light appeared by Wally’s shoulder again, blue this time.

The scene took place in a bedroom that looked just as disastrously messy as Wally’s apartment had been. Wally was there, and amazingly enough, he looked even more lanky and boyish than he did in the present. The acne and shoulder-length hair didn’t help his appearance any, either. He was leaning over a math textbook, idly doodling a tree. What looked like a college-aged Henry came in. “Hey, Wally. Make any progress since last time?” he asked.

Wally looked pained. “I think so. But I couldn’t finish it. Is this right?” He passed Henry a sheet of paper. Now Henry looked pained.

“No. Look, you need to look things up in the textbook when you don’t understand things. Just leaving them off until I’m here to tutor you isn’t going to make you enough progress to pass.”

Wally scrunched up his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand a word of what goes on in the textbook. It’s like my brain is allergic to it.”

Henry took a deep breath. “Well, I’ll explain it again. Alright?”

“Okay. Henry? Do you think I can still pass? The school’s not gonna hold me back again. If I can’t get through this, I’m outta there. Flunked out. But that’s not necessarily what’s gonna happen, right?”

Henry paused. “No, you’re going to pass,” he said, staring down at the textbook. He sounded utterly defeated and not at all genuine.

The scene changed to that of a classroom in which Wally was taking an examination. He was leaving a solid third of the questions blank, even taking the time to draw in one of the blank spaces to give his overtaxed brain a break. He knew at this point that he needed almost 80% to pass (assuming his own calculations were correct, and that point he felt stupid enough that he didn’t trust as much, even for something so simple). There was no way he knew enough to get that. He glanced over at the person beside him for a few seconds, then flipped to the question his classmate had been working on and scribbled down as much as he could remember. He repeated the process a couple times before a hand closed over his wrist. It was a teacher. “You’re doing the rest of the exam in the hallway,” she whispered sternly, “and afterward, I’m taking you to the principal’s office so we can decide on a consequence for this.”

The scene changed again. Wally has come home from school. “Wally. How was the test?” his mother asked him.

“I failed,” he said, dropping his backpack and heading to his room.

“Hey, we can’t know that yet.”

“I do know, okay? Look, I don’t wanna snap at you, ma. Please just leave me alone for a while.” With that, he shut himself into his room. “And it’s probably not the only subject I’ll fail, either.”

The scene shifted to later that evening. Wally heard an angry-sounding knock on his bedroom door and all but froze.

“Wally, open up!” It was his mother. Wally sat down on the floor. A gentler male voice followed.

“Oh, calm down. Wally, we just want to talk.”

“Come in,” he groaned.

The door creaked open. “You cheated on an essential fucking test? What were you thinking?!” his mother yelled.

“I wasn’t,” Wally cried. It was the truth. He’d fantasized about doing it, sure, but he hadn’t thought he’d actually do it until it happened.

“Well, at least the school decided to let you off easy,” His father said. “If they’re just docking the test 20%, there’s still a chance you passed, right?”

Wally just stared up at him.

“You needed quite a bit on it, I take it?”

Wally just nodded. A couple tears ran down his face.

“Oh... I’m sorry. You know we have to ground you for cheating, but I promise it’s going to be okay.” His father knelt down to get on his level.

“Okay? Where is he going to get in life if he’s flunked out?”

His father turned to glare at his mother. “Quit! Don’t you think he’s miserable enough over this?”

The scene faded back into mist. Wally had a pained smile on his face. Deep down, he was trying to hold on to the pride and joy from his best memory.

“You okay?” Henry asked.

“Wha? Yeah, I’m fine. I’m used to makin’ a fool of myself, honest! You just have to learn to laugh at yourself.”

Bertrum laughed. “Well, it seems that you would certainly have the practice.”

Shawn glared at him. “Ya’d best take that all the way back, laddy.”

Bertrum shrugged. As though some random worker could hurt one of the if not the most important people that Mr. Drew was partnered with, and while he was in the room, no less.

“Isn’t your worst memory one of the last ones left?” Henry asked. He wasn’t one for confrontation, but it would be nice if Bertrum realized what a glass house he was living in.

As though on cue, the light, blue this time, appeared by Bertrum’s shoulder.

The scene changed to that of a field in which a whole bunch of college-age boys and girls were having a party. Bertrum was basically impossible to pick out from the crowd, both because of how dark it was, illuminated only by the light of a bonfire, and because of how much younger he would have been. “Where are ya?” Shawn asked irritably.

“Oh, I er... don’t know! Wait, yes. I was in the bushes. Let’s go check in the bushes.”

“Are you sure you’re not just doing what I did?” Grant grumbled. Now that he’d heard Bertrum's laugh again, he was sure that Bertrum had been the one to laugh at him for having a panic attack, something he did not appreciate in the slightest.

“Yes, I’m sure, I-“ Bertrum was cut off by the sound of a car pulling up. A man that looked quite similar to present-day Bertrum stepped out. His face was comically puffed up with anger.

“Bertie!” The man boomed, in a voice loud enough to rival Bertrum’s own. The group of youngsters, largely amused, split to reveal Bertrum, who was looking like a terrified little sheep.

“Y-yes, Dad?”

he stuttered.

“Get into the car at once. There’s something I need to show you.”

“My father always was a drama queen. It’s nothing as bad as he makes it sound,” Bertrum explained to keep his dignity together as his past self was dragged by the arm into the car. They took off, and the scene changed so that everyone could see what was going on during the ride.

“Bertrum Piedmont, you irresponsible, idiotic, ill-conceived little cad, what did I tell you to do the night that your ride began operation?!”

“Stay available in case something went wrong,” he said, utter submission in his voice.

“And what, pray tell, did you do?”

“I thought for sure that it would be fine.”

“Well, you were wrong. And now that I've finally found you, you're going to personally explain to the public, which will get back to my stockholders, I remind you, that this is your fault, that I had every reason to trust you, and that you failed me horribly. Really, do you know how much of a risk I was taking, letting you design a ride before you were even licensed? You begged me for that. You have no idea how high your bail would be if someone had gotten hurt. No idea. Do you hear me, Bertie?"

"Yes."

"Well, thankfully, the ride broke down before anyone was even on it."

That seemed to shock Bertrum a little. "It broke down that quickly?"

"Yes. That quickly."

The ride continued in silence, allowing present-day Bertrum to do some damage control for his dignity. "You know, the good thing about having a forty-year legacy is that you don't have to worry about little mistakes you made early on like that. My father practically begged me for that one ride design."

"That's not how he made it sound," Lacie quipped.

"Yes, well, he always was a drama queen. But anyhow, I've made far better since. And what was wrong with it truly was minor, and it wasn't really my fault anyway, and-"

"Bertrum, desperation is dripping from your voice like candy off an apple and you're about as red as one. Do yourself a favour, and just shut up and take this like the rest of us."

Bertrum looked annoyed, but he did shut up. Lacie was, after all, rarely wrong about this kind of thing.

Finally, the car came to a halt. The two of them got out in the parking lot of an amusement park. They made their way to the malfunctioned ride. Parts had flung off of it. "Alright, Bertrum. Explain to them why the ride failed."

Mercifully, that is when the scene faded back into mist.

[brain-system]

Ramblings

Greetings, future me. 

So, me, Left Brain, successfully fronted once more. I cannot describe the sensation with sheer words. But, I know it was something different.

Why was my immediate reaction to clean the room? Heck, I was picking up stuff on autopilot. Now, I am not referring to vacuuming or the such. I am referring to the simple “There are clothes on the ground. Let’s put it into the basket.” type of things. And glancing at the bed and thinking “I should make the bed” and then realizing that I was going to mess it up anyway.

A common theme amongst this post, you will come to see, is the phrase “just to see how it felt.”

I could’ve not fronted during the interview (which didn’t even go through on behalf of connection issues via discord), but I did just to see how it felt. 

I got others to call me “Left” just to see how it felt. And o, it felt good. Very good. 

I put on a padless sports bra just to see how it felt, despite the fact no one was there to see me in it (and I prefer if it’d stay that way). I don’t experience excruciating body dysphoria, thankfully, but I tried it in hopes of euphoria. Wearing it didn’t last long, and got physically uncomfortable after ~40 minutes (uncomfortable but not painful). I haven’t worn a bra in a while because of the quarantine, so that may also be a factor. But, as a person with relatively small breasts, it made my chest appear very flat. I found that fascinating. 

You see, I can’t visualize “myself” existing in the real world. I only got comfortable with not being a blue blob until recently. We visualize things in simplified style. The sangled picrew of myself is me, and that’s the end of it. So, there’s nothing to work towards when dressing myself. 

Although I was quite saddened by the lack of tuxedos we own. 

I also requested others to refer to me with they/him pronouns just to see how it felt, but to my knowledge nobody did other than the initial response of “You’re a good man! Boy! Boyman! Very good enby!” to my request. I can’t recall experiencing any validating emotions elicited by that message, but I can recall the lack of negative emotions. Although being called “him” is a little personal; I may install a rule that only Right (possibly Jay as well) can refer to me via he/him pronouns the next time this comes around.

Apparently, I also speak quite monotone? I’m not sure if that’s me getting fed up with discord screwing us up or actually how I talk. 

Also, headspace things.

A week ago, I would’ve said “I don’t have any memories from the headspace. Our headspace is fake and means nothing to us.” Until, sometime last week, I realized I did. My only current example at hand is me and Right attempting to have s/x... multiple times (definitely won’t mention that in the interview). I thought that was just me fantasizing ahem for personal reasons... until I realized that I actually hold attachment to those memories. And the idea that they were all figments of my imagination brought on a brief wave of uncomfortable denial. And it’s rare get those types of emotions out of me, I admit. 

Those memories I view from a third-person perspective, so that’s what threw me off. I still believe, in my own spiritual belief as well, that the headspace is nothing but a visualization tool created by the brain to help cope (is anyone surprised that a left brain would be an atheist?) And to us, still is “fake” and means nothing to us (for now). But the important part is, I do hold memories. 

And honestly, I’m not sure how to feel about that. 

These past few months has been wild. It’s like everything is clicking. I realized that I was abused/am being emotionally abused right before I realized I was a system (coincidence? I think not). I still feel weird using that word- “abuse”- since I still feel like what (at least what I can recall) went through was tame compared to what others have been through, but that’s a bullshit way of viewing it. We were -and still are- a horridly emotional kid because of goddamn ADHD, and because of that the shit hit differently compared to how a neurotypical kid would react. Every time a memory resurfaces of past abuse I scramble to jot it down. And then gawk at myself at how I could forget such a big part of my life. 

Right has been quiet all day. They’re still here. They’re always fucking here (not saying that’s a bad thing though). On the other hand, I think Jay has “faded.” I can still faintly feel her, and she added some commentary on my doings throughout the day. 

I don’t have a conclusion to this post- which would’ve fit much better in our journal than a tumblr blog, to be frank. Midnight has passed when writing this, and I’m still going to proofread it because I love torturing myself. I’m tired.

Sincerely, Left Brain

[solastia]

Sandcastles | Prologue

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (This will be told from Reader’s POV for the prologue, but after this, it’s going to be from Namjoon’s POV. I figured she deserved to have her side seen first) 

Word Count: 2,205

Genre & Warnings: Angst. Mentions of sex. Infidelity. 

Notes: Oh wow, cheating. Not an overused plot at all. Ok, but hear me out. So, I was catching up with the last season of Outlander on my lunch break (seriously watch it, so good) and as they started showing Frank and Claire's marriage, it got me wondering about Frank’s mindset. This story isn’t going to be the same as their’s, but it just made me want to do something using the mentality of the person that is going around with other people while being in an open relationship. Not that I’m knocking those that choose to be in one, you do whatever works for you. But I’m here to write drama, so don’t hate me! (Also, the title is me being all artsy and cool. You build these great sandcastles, and they get washed away) (P.P.S. Yes, this gave me Tuqburni feels too. But trust me, it’s going to be entirely different.) 

You arrive at your boyfriend’s workplace with heavy bags filled with food and snacks, even a couple beers. Namjoon had been working so hard lately now that he got promoted and was a big producer at his company, and you worried about him not eating real meals given his tendency to lose himself in his work. He always made fun of his coworker Yoongi for the same thing, not realizing he was just as bad. 

You walk out of the elevator and go to the area where all the producers stayed. Most of them had their own little rooms since many of them were workaholics and stayed overnight, and some were just perfectionists that could only work by themselves. You’re surprised to see Jungkook, a sweet kid that looked up to Namjoon and treated you like a big sister, hanging outside of Namjoon’s studio with tears falling and staring at his phone. Namjoon had been producing for the boy for about a year now, and while he was a perfectionist, he’d never come down hard on Jungkook before so you were a little worried. 

“Jungkook, what’s the matter, sweetheart?” You ask quietly, setting down your bags to wipe his tears. 

Jungkook is looking at you with almost frantic worry, his eyes going between you and the door to Namjoon’s studio. 

“You can’t be here, Y/N. You shouldn’t see this. I’m so mad at him. I hate him for doing this to you. I was going to tell you, I was just trying to get the courage.” He briefly flashes his phone in front of your face where there is indeed a text drafted to your name that hasn’t been sent yet. Before you can ask him what it’s about you hear it. 

A moan. 

A female moan. 

Coming from your boyfriend’s studio. 

Your eyes glue themselves to the door, and your heart is pounding in your chest. You can feel tingles of anticipation spreading across your skin, and your breathing becomes erratic. 

You hear the familiar sound of Namjoon groaning and cursing, meaning he’d cum. If he followed his usual pattern, he’d walk out in a moment to get a bottle of water. 

Please. Please. Just let him be watching porn on a really great sound system. 

Jungkook is trying to talk you into going away, telling you that you don’t need to this. But you do. You need to see. You need to look into the eyes of the man that you love and see what’s there. 

You hear a click and watch the door swing open almost in slow motion, your eyes raising to meet his as he walks into the hallway. 

Surprise. A flash of happiness. Panic as he remembers what’s behind him and what he’d been doing. Sadness as he takes in the tears that had started to fall from your eyes. 

You scan him from head to toe next, cataloging everything in your brain like this was a science experiment, and you were collecting data. You took in the slight sheen of sweat. The flushed face and ears. The scratch marks on his shoulders that ruled out any hope he’d been alone. 

“Baby, please. Don’t freak out. I’m sorry! I just...”

“Namjoon, what’s going on out here? I thought you were getting water?” A melodic voice asked, peering out from behind him as she came out of the studio. 

She was beautiful. Of course she was. Long black hair, red lips and nails, was probably at least four inches taller than you. Legs perhaps as long as most of your body. 

If you had to guess, you’d say she was probably the new act he’d been talking about. He’d been writing songs for her upcoming album for a couple months now. Songs you remember helping him with, as a matter of fact. 

“Go away. You’ve done enough.” Jungkook grits out, glaring at the girl who turns to him in surprise. She glances between the three of you, her eyes widening as she realizes the situation. Without another word, she rushes off. 

“Baby, please come talk to me. I’m sorry, please.” He’s trying to pull you into his studio, a place you’d been in many times. A place you’d help decorate and made love in so many times. And now it was tainted. You pull your arm away. 

“I’m not going in there, Namjoon.” You croak out, your voice hard to use as you fight off the breakdown that’s threatening to take over. 

He looks behind him, flinching as he realizes. “Oh, yeah of course. This next one is empty. Just please, talk to me, don’t run off.” He pleads, and you let him pull you into the next room after reassuring Jungkook you’d be fine. You just want to go home and curl under the blankets. But you have to know...

“Why? Four years, Namjoon. I trusted you. How could you do this to me? You threw away four years of our lives. Unless you’ve been doing this the whole time.” 

“No. Fuck, no. Baby, never before. It’s always only been you. This was just...I just got caught up in a moment and lost my damn mind.” He’s looking down at his hands, and his jaw is clenched hard. His go-to look when he’s beating himself up. You fight off the force of habit to comfort him because it’s not him that needs cheering right now. 

“Are you in love with her?” You force yourself to ask. 

“No. It’s just...sex.” He whispers the last word, wincing as he does so, knowing it’s fucked up to use that word in reference to someone else. “I love you, just you.” He stares as he says it like he’s trying to force you to believe it.  

“You don’t hurt people that you love, Namjoon. And I am so fucking hurt right now. Do you know the quickest way to give someone self-esteem issues, to make them doubt their self-worth? To ensure that they never trust anyone ever again? By cheating on them, that’s how.” You're finally letting your anger take over, and all you want to do is scream and cry, throw some of these fancy chairs at him. Maybe hit them both over with your car. 

But then you take a good look at him. At the tears running down his face, the clenched fists, and red ears. He’s still your Joonie, beating himself up over a fuck up. No one could punish Kim Namjoon quite like himself. 

A smart girl would have left the moment she’d seen what had happened. A smart girl wouldn’t still be here listening to this. And a smart girl wouldn’t be trying to think of ways to fix this. However, the man before you was the love of your life. He was smart and funny, talented, and usually sweet and romantic. He was your Joonie, and the thought of telling him to move out and leave you alone forever seemed even more heartbreaking than the cheating. 

“I need to know something now before I make any decisions. Is it because of me? Is there something I’m not doing for you? Do you want out of the relationship? I need you to be fucking honest as hell right now.” You ask, forcing him to look you in the eyes with a finger on his chin. 

“No, no babe. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re as amazing as always. I don’t know what happened. I just...got caught up because it was...new? Exciting? Different? I don’t know. Everything I can think of sounds fucked up. I just know that I don’t want to lose you. I’ll do anything.” He pleased, grabbing your hands and bringing them to his lips to kiss the backs of them. 

You sigh heavily, trying to run through every scenario you can think of in your head. You cringe at most of them and realize you’re probably going to be a dumb girl today and do something so fucking stupid. 

“We have a few options here, Namjoon. None of them are great. One, which is the smart choice that we probably won’t take because we are both idiots today, we break up here and now. You move out and find someone that makes you happy and complete like I’m obviously not doing.” You gesture for him to remain quiet when you see him open his mouth to refute you. 

“Two. We go on like nothing has happened and I try to learn to trust you again. Only I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be able to. I’ll probably wake up every morning wondering if this is the day you get bored of me again. We’d probably end up breaking up during this scenario too because I’d be constantly waiting for something to happen and you’d get sick of me.” 

You take a deep breathe as you think the next one through. This one was the only way you could think of to keep him. You anticipated a lot of pain on your side, but you’d get to keep Joonie. Some of him, at least. 

“Three. We have an open relationship.” You rush out the words as you observe his reaction. His eyes widen, and his jaw slackens, his gaze searching yours. 

“An open relationship? We’d both see other people but still be together? That’s what you want?” He asks, shock coloring his features. 

“It’s not really what I want. But what I want didn’t work for us, did it? So, we do what nature tends to do. We change and adapt. You’re bored with me and want to fuck other people even though you claim you’re still in love with me, fine. It’s not cheating if I’m telling you that you can. We’ll establish rules, and you come home to me every night.” 

You stand up and look down at him, observing as he brushes angrily at his tears. He’s nodding to himself in thought, apparently trying to think things through and make sense of everything. 

“Joon, I suggest you stay with Yoongi for the rest of the week and think things over. I’ll send over some of your clothes and stuff. By the way, there’s food and beer in the bags I brought over. Make sure to eat.” You sigh and turn to the door to leave. 

As you step out into the hallway, you hear Namjoon whisper, “Wait.” You pause with your hand on the door handle but don’t look at him. The tears are already falling, and he doesn’t deserve to see you cry anymore. 

“I love you,” he says softly, and your chest physically hurts. 

You close the door behind you without responding, rushing to leave so you can at least make it to your car before you break down. 

I love you too, Kim Namjoon. 

God, this is going to hurt. 

[jacewilliams1]

On becoming an old, new pilot

We’ve all got our stories as to how we got into general aviation. This is mine. I just started a bit later. OK – a LOT later than most. OK – virtually later than all other folks I have since met who fly. I was 56 when I started my flying instruction and 57 when I passed my licensing check ride. The key is, it doesn’t matter when or how you started – what matters is that you stuck with it and finished. Even if you’re starting a lot later than just about everyone else.

I’d always been fascinated with airplanes. As a young boy growing up near Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, seeing the Vietnam-Cold War era fighters and transports constantly going in and out, the whole notion of flying was stuck in my brain. But, by the 9th grade, glasses on my nose, I knew that becoming one of those guys was just not in the cards.

At college I decided being a Cadet would be fun, and did the extra coursework to earn my Army commission, eventually becoming an infantry officer. From 1979-1987, military transports and Army helicopters were my method of going up, landing, and sometimes parachuting out as an Airborne Infantryman. Still, I looked at those guys who got to drive and wondered about becoming one of them; maybe a medical wavier for the glasses on my nose? But it still wasn’t in the cards.

My army stint came to a close and I still had the bug, now for general aviation – all I needed was the time, money, and opportunity to achieve that goal, that dream, of piloting an airplane. I was pretty sure that when the time was right, it would happen. It didn’t: all the usual excuses of work, kids, and other priorities – for the next twenty years. I mean, it’ll happen, right? Hang in there, it’ll come. So I did – and the years became decades and my feet were still on the ground.

The couple that flies together…

Fast forward to October of 2015. I was at a GA airport to meet some executives flying in for a company meeting. The airport had a small restaurant for the hundred dollar hamburger crowd and several retired folks were there who wanted to show off their planes that were parked on the grass apron. I had some time and I looked at their planes and they told me how long they’d been flying, from 20 to 45 years. They obviously loved what they did. That evening I made a frank appraisal of my situation and all my excuses to that point with a conclusion I could no longer ignore: I wanted to be like them and that meant I needed to create the opportunity and go to it – quit expecting it to come to me.

Six months later, at the end of April, accompanied by my wife, all my ground school and manuals digested, dissected, and memorized, we arrived at First Landings Aviation (FLA) in Apopka, Florida. We were living in Chicago and looked at flight school options there, but none met our criteria and winter weather was not a desirable prospect if we could avoid it. I’d researched for a place that had full-time immersion instruction available with a first-class facility, comfortable weather, and a good reputation. After a few calls to the FLA staff and aligning a couple of weeks’ vacation for the two of us, we finalized our plan. It was finally in the cards.

For me, that first Monday – 2.1 hours of flying! Yet, what was I thinking? The cabin was small, you bounced around in the winds, and that runway came up awfully fast for landings, where exactly was I if something went wrong, and there was so much to know! I’m not saying I was thinking of quitting after the first day – it wasn’t scary or anything – it just wasn’t what I expected and it was a wee bit intimidating. OK, a lot intimidating.

We were flying a Tecnam P2004 Bravo with a six-pack as a trainer. Nimble, forgiving, but still daunting to a guy in his late 50s who had a highly experienced 22-year old as his instructor pilot. My wife wasn’t really sure if she’d like it, had not done much of the pre-work despite my insistence, but her first hour in the air had her totally hooked! As the week progressed things became less intimidating, even enjoyable, as basic maneuvers were mastered and the ability to understand and respond to cockpit information improved. Weather and winds didn’t let us fly all of our allotted slots, but we got in a good ten hours that first week. You know, I might be able to do this!

The following Monday things were clicking. The instructor pilot and I were approaching Apopka from Leesburg airport where we’d been doing touch and go’s. My instructor said, “The crosswinds are going to be a little hairy, you do the set up and I’ll take it once we’re on final.” It was our third training flight of the day. The prior Monday, when the instructor suggested he could talk me through my first landing, I’d looked at him and asked if he was crazy. Now, a week later I looked at him and told him he was definitely crazy, “I had this!” And, with him ghosting on the controls, I did.

Finally achieving the dream – pilot in command.

At the end of our two weeks, the weather went bad for the back half of the week and my initial goal for that trip, to solo, couldn’t happen. I’d passed my FAA written and I was ready, but it wasn’t in the cards. Our upcoming work schedules – and less than comfortable central Florida summer weather – would mean no return visits to Apopka until fall. No problem: there was a flying club at the Racine, Wisconsin, airport, a little over an hour from our home in Chicago. We could keep stirring the pot there until we got back to Florida, so we did. Different aircraft type, instructor, and flying environment. The key was that we wanted to really do this now. “Do it,” which, initially really meant “Try it,” now definitely meant DO IT. Complete the training and get the license.

It took a couple of more trips to Florida that fall to solo, finish all the training requirements, and get ready to test. But getting it done before the end of the year was not going to happen: a couple of maintenance and weather issues didn’t align with work and travel back and forth from Chicago, so my wife and I continued to stir the pot at Racine.

The key is persistence. Finally, in March of 2017, eleven months from when we started this journey, we were back in Apopka for a four-day weekend with the goal of passing that check ride. It was a tad windy, but I was out of time to get it done before we had to fly back to Chicago the next day. The oral and practical exam were deservedly high pressure, but I passed: I was now a licensed pilot.

A new, old pilot of 57, soon to be 58! For those considering doing this – be you 14 or 80 – there is no more amazing a feeling of satisfaction than having that FAA inspector tell you those magic words: You passed. You can now legally fly yourself and your passengers in an airplane wherever the limitations of your license and ratings allow.

So that’s my story. My wife still has a bit to do to finish her license, but she will. Later that spring of 2016, we purchased our first plane, full of all the modern Garmin avionics and other cool stuff that we then had to be taught how to use. Some 300 hours (I don’t think in “years” anymore) later we are cruising across the country as the weather allows, enjoying our plane, and simply the sheer joy of flying. And still learning. A lot of pilots have flown a lot of years to get to 60: I made it in less than three. I guess it was in the cards.

The post On becoming an old, new pilot appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/05/on-becoming-an-old-new-pilot/

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

the dark, frustrating pleasures of tedium games • Eurogamer.net

Since it was released last October, Frank Lantz's AI-centric existential nightmare-turned-browser game Universal Paperclips has been played by about 1.2 million people, its developer says.

Put it another way, for the last five months over a million people have participated in an extensive, repetitive clicking experiment. One where the act of clicking on a box produces a single paperclip at a time and the aim is to convert all known matter in the universe to paperclips, and in which the game ends when the player reaches 30.0 septendecillion paperclips, resulting in the total destruction of the universe.

The success of Universal Paperclips as a viral browser game is a surprise, but not because it isn't completely consuming. According to Wired, it was a qualified viral hit with around 450,000 players at launch, most of whom completed the game in its entirety. What's surprising about the success of Universal Paperclips is that, at least on paper, it's pretty much as tedious as games gets. Universal Paperclips is a clicker game, occasionally known as non-games - a genre where game mechanics are boiled down to their most basic components, clicking or tapping to fulfill arbitrary goals. Like Cow Clicker, an iOS app by Lantz' friend and colleague Ian Bogost, Universal paperclips exists in a kind of limbo between games-as-entertainment and Skinner box experiments.

What does it say about us that we are compelled to keep clicking? I ask Lantz about this.

"There is something very compelling about submerging yourself in a game, about applying every shred of your consciousness to the pursuit of some goal," says Lantz. "I think of it as tuning into the shark-brain, the machine-brain, where, instead of the ambiguous, multi-layered, ephemeral quality of our ordinary lives we get to experience a kind of scary, thrilling, single-mindedness, whether it's making a ball go through a hoop, making geometric shapes fit together, killing demons, or making paperclips."

"Maybe partly because it gives us access to levels of experience that aren't easily accessible in the miasma of the ephemeral ordinary. I mean, I'm a human, I'm not a shark, I'm not a machine. But there are things that sharks can do, things that machines can do, that are extraordinary, and discovering that I have that capacity, and experiencing it first hand, is powerful."

Lantz's game is based on a thought experiment popularised by writer and philosopher Nick Bostrom in his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers Strategies, but initially explored in his 2003 essay Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence. Bostrom's "Paperclip Maximizer" describes an advanced artificial intelligence that is tasked with the manufacturing of paperclips, a seemingly harmless and arbitrary goal. Bostrom then asks whether such a machine, if it wasn't initially programmed to value human life, would eventually turn all matter in the universe - including human beings - into either paperclips or machines which manufacture paperclips.

"Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible," Bostrom writes in his 2003 work. "The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans."

"I really like Bostrom's work," says Lantz. However, when it comes to the potential risks of artificial intelligence - what he refers to as the AI safety debate - Lantz takes a diplomatic position. The debate, he says, is one of probability versus possibility; not science-reality versus science-fiction. "The AI safety debate is really interesting. The thing to remember is that it's not about whether problematic AI is likely but whether it's possible. The safety guys are saying - hey, this could be a problem, this could blow up and be dangerous. On the other side, you have people like Francois Chollet who are saying - No, this is impossible, because of such-and-such a principle which makes it so that this could never happen."

Lantz has this masterpiece in his back catalogue. Best game ever? Very possibly.

"To my eye," Lantz continues, "the safety guys are taking a modest position. They're saying: 'we don't know, and when you don't know, you should be somewhat careful, take some precautions.' On the other side, the anti-safety guys seem to me to be saying: 'we actually do know and therefore we can say for sure what can and can't happen.'"

Compared to Bostrom's work, which earned the praise of Tesla CEO and AI doomsayer Elon Musk, Lantz's excursion into paperclips isn't so much a treatise into AI ethics. Instead, Lantz offers an even darker subplot for Bostrom's dystopia: If Universal Paperclips is any indication humanity isn't just going to be outsmarted by a superintelligent AI, it's going to be a willing participant in its annihilation.

For Lantz, this is a reflection of how we are built. From the activation of the brain's pleasure circuits, the flooding of dopamine, reward mechanisms that make us predisposed to enjoying the effects of infinite clicking.

"I don't think it's that different from what a rock climber does, or what a mountain climber does, putting themselves in a position to activate a bunch of circuits that otherwise remain dormant. And I don't think it's that different from what we do when we get intoxicated and dance, letting the rhythm of the music overwhelm us and carry us away."

"Then, in addition, games give you a chance to not just experience this but to reflect on it. To stand back and say - wow, that was weird. Look how easy it was to get me to care about this thing. Look how these overlapping systems pulled me in and hypnotized me. Look how I got carried away. What did that feel like? What does that mean? How are my ordinary goals and behaviors different from that, or similar to that?" "That's my hope, that my game can do both of those things."

[a-mace-ingly]

People need to understand this one, specific thing that I can’t quite sort out about myself. I have my struggles in life (which would actually pretty much come to an end if I only knew how to manage this distinct part of my personality: my poor communication skills.

The thing is, there are times when I can be closed-off and distant from others. Everyone has those days, right? Most people I’ve been friends with since forever knows how much I suck at keeping up with consistent online communication (unless it’s someone I like, ya know what I’m sayin’). Although they are aware of the way I am right now, I’m still so lucky to have people beside me that are willing to put up with every single one of the cuts, the holes, and the rips of my personality. It’s comforting. However, there can be a small number of people whom I have to tiptoe around with in order to satisfy their whims in their own terms just so I could not possibly hurt their feelings. Yep, you could say that they can be pretty difficult to deal with and sometimes, my instinct is usually just to let them be, let them do whatever they think they wanna do. I really have just arrived to the point where I’m super tired of controlling situations I have no power over. If these people really are meant to be a part of my life, they will ultimately gravitate back towards me even after all of our several failed attempts to get shit back together. That’s the way fate would want it, anyway. With a little effort from our own selves, we can truly uncover the path that was crafted only for us. 

You see, I’m just a teenage girl starving to gain genuine emotional connection not attention from someone. I’m not just here to have a good time. I want long-lasting good times with people close to my heart. I’m still hoping that they would at least try to see the situation from my perspective every once in a while. I admit that I can be stubborn sometimes and I also tend to go my own way even if it displeases everyone. I cannot be bothered to be seen outside my comfort zone. Maybe it’s a bad thing? I’m also pretty aware of the fact that not everyone who knows me, knows me well. We could be friends for ages and you wouldn’t still have the slightest idea about my grave dislike towards eating crabs and my disapproval of putting pineapples on pizza. I could have the biggest crush on you yet I would still prefer to take advantage of my alone time rather than talk to you. This is why we need more brave people in this world, more who are willing and not afraid to assert their place in the lives of others. Floating safely around the edges just so you could run away when things get rough really isn’t the best decision. Yet, here I am keeping everything to myself, having all these delusional thoughts in my brain and not wanting to take the first step. I guess I’m pretty hard to crack, eh?  Long story short, I’m a very picky person when it comes to the people that I wanna talk to. If you notice any unusual amount of attention from me, then you really really matter. I’m not trying to sound elitist or anything. I’m just trying to point out that I am a complicated human being with a personality as paradoxical as her own thoughts. Needless to say, as long as I am keeping you in my life, you’ll be forever engraved in my heart. If only I could tell the people close to me that I value them more than they will ever know. But then, these trust issues get in the way. It’s the safer choice for now. I mean, what’s the rush?

Honestly, I only wrote this bit because someone was talking to me and he thought that I was avoiding him. I actually just wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone because I was so engrossed doing my own thing. I guess he was kind of expecting something consistent from me but I guess we weren’t on the same page. I genuinely was only looking for someone to talk to and when I had the chance, I casually told him everything that’s been bothering me for a while and not gonna lie, I actually felt better after that. It was fun at first seeing the potential of us becoming closer and all but I sensed that he was demanding a bit more than what I had in mind. I couldn’t possibly focus all my attention on a single person now, can I? Maybe he’s a little lonely and all but I’d rather not give him the attention he needs when it’s against my will. It’s better to be the one to leave than to be the one left behind. I’ve made myself believe in that for a long time but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, there is no better option. Both are equally devastating and I wish more people would understand that. Call me selfish but it doesn’t seem right. Some people you just click with and some people you don’t. I never hated him in the first place. He just doesn’t get the fact that I also need my privacy and space because it is essential to my existence. I’d die without it. Props to him though for actually being honest and calling me out on the way that I was behaving. I’m sick of playing games and I really do appreciate the effort that he was able to tell me how he really felt, rare to see those nowadays. 

Honestly, I wish I wasn’t such an “all or nothing” person but I can’t help it. Commitment is nice, sure, but only when you’re a hundred percent invested with the person. There are a lot of factors, really. I’m dreading the day when I get into a long-term relationship where I would just wake up one morning and realize that this isn’t what I want anymore. This is why I keep telling myself that I’m better off alone when the truth is, I’m actually just waiting for someone out there, someone who cares for me the way I do for them, somebody man enough to tear my walls down (because I really don’t do anything, if I may be completely frank). They keep telling me that this is 2018 and things don’t work that way anymore. Whatever mindset I have, I may have left it in the 1800s or something. They can tell me anything they want but as much self-respect I have for myself, I’d like to believe that there is actually a single person out there perfectly designed to suit my very own complexities. I’m not changing myself for anyone at all. Maybe it’s true that you can only get the things you want if you work hard enough for them (as I’ve also experienced first hand countless times) but what if these things weren’t actually made for you? Shouldn’t you just let nature run its course after everything you’ve been through? If you’re working hard for the things that you want to have right now, then maybe, the “working hard” bit was a part of the plan for you all along.  Nothing is ever a coincidence. If they’re not working this time, we cannot assume that they won’t be working ever. The stars are constantly realigning themselves, interlocking with the others, connecting and creating bodies as they forge our destinies. Everything happens for a reason. These are the words I tell myself when things don’t work out the way I want them to be because in the first place, they weren’t supposed to be going our way. The lives that we have aren’t ours entirely. We’re only borrowing these bodies for a while to fulfill a much greater purpose. It’s funny how I only meant to rant about this guy yet here we are talking about galaxies and the universe and shit. We’ve definitely come so far. Do you think I have a problem?

We may not have the answers we want right now but what’s the fun and uncertainty of our journey in life if we all knew the answers to everything in the first place? The way I see it right now, I still have a long way ahead of me and everything has only just begun.

I never knew where I was going with this. Lol.

[foursprout-blog]

This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/this-is-how-to-quit-bad-habits-without-willpower-3-secrets-from-neuroscience/

This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience

***

Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here.

***

Got any serious bad habits? The extra-strength ones with the FDA warning. The kind you really beat yourself up about — but still engage in all the time?

Procrastination that screws up the quality of your work? Epic tidal waves of laziness? Or cardiac-threatening levels of overwork? Snapping at the ones you love? Or not speaking up even when you know you should?

We’re going to turn everything you know about bad habits on its head. For starters, here’s the good news: you’re not lazy, you’re not a screw up, and you’re not a bad person. In fact, you don’t actually have “bad habits” at all. Those tempting or nagging voices in your head aren’t evil. Actually, they’re trying to help you.

Yeah, I know: I have a lot of ‘splaining to do. But before it all makes sense, we’ll need to wade into a bit more crazy. Pixar films, neuroscience, multiple personalities, mindfulness, “Fight Club”, and boatloads of you talking to yourself like you’re nuts…

Yes, weird, but totally legit. In fact, there’s a whole system of psychology based around this: Internal Family Systems (IFS.) It’s been shown to help people with everything under the sun from depression, to anxiety, eating disorders, addictions, and even some of the most serious stuff like PTSD.

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

In the IFS Complex Trauma Study, only one subject out of 13 still qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD after finishing 16 weeks of IFS therapy.

This is a system that can help you overcome almost any bad behavior, deal with deep-seated issues and even help you love yourself a bit more.

We’re going deep here. Warning: we’re entering “the therapy zone.” It’s gonna get touchy-feely and a little awkward. I’m often skeptical of this kinda stuff myself. But when something works, it works.

Alright, hold my inner child’s hand and we’ll do this together. Let’s get to it…

  You’re Not Lazy, Weak, Or Awful

I posted recently about “the modular mind.” Basically, this is the theory that there is no singular “you.” There are many different selves inside you that take turns running the ship and that’s why human behavior (including yours and mine) can be so random and frustrating. When you say, “I wasn’t myself” that’s far more accurate than you ever thought.

(I’m not going to rehash the entire theory because regular readers would rise up and slay me for repeating myself. If you want the full scoop, click here.)

There are many different yous in your head. William James was saying it back in the 19th century, and now every major division of psychology is on board with this idea, including neuroscience.

From The Body Keeps the Score:

Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted pioneering split-brain research, concluded that the mind is composed of semiautonomous functioning modules, each of which has a special role. In his book The Social Brain (1985) he writes, “But what of the idea that the self is not a unified being, and there may exist within us several realms of consciousness? . . . From our [split-brain] studies the new idea emerges that there are literally several selves, and they do not necessarily ‘converse’ with each other internally.” MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence, declared: “The legend of the single Self can only divert us from the target of that inquiry. . . . [I]t can make sense to think there exists, inside your brain, a society of different minds. Like members of a family, the different minds can work together to help each other, each still having its own mental experiences that the others never know about.”

I know what some of you are thinking:

And, yes, Inside Out *is* based on this research. (In fact, Dr. Frank Anderson acted as a consultant to Pixar during the making of the film and wrote one of the books I read to prepare for this post.)

So how does this relate to bad habits? You don’t have “bad habits” — you have different selves with different goals in your head, all trying to do what they think is best for the greater “you.”

The problem is they’re not always right about what’s best and the goals of Self 1 may conflict with the goals of Self 2. (Paging Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden please come to the front desk.)

IFS therapists refer to the different “yous” as “parts.”

From Self-Therapy:

Parts are entities of their own, with their own feelings, beliefs, motivations, and memories. It is especially important to understand that parts have motivations for everything they do. Nothing is just done out of habit. Nothing is just a pattern of thinking or behavior you learned. Everything (except for purely physiological reactions) is done by a part for a reason, even though that reason may be unconscious.

Through this lens, I see bad habits as an “autoimmune disorder of the mind.” And with that, crazy as it may sound, things actually start to make a lot more sense.

How can you procrastinate and feel guilty about it at the same time? Two different “yous” disagreeing. Part of you is afraid of being a loser and wants to accomplish things — but another part of you is afraid of being all stressed out and wants to watch Netflix and eat popcorn. Neither is “lazy.”

(It might also explain how a blogger’s ex can have both fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy, but that’s a story for another day, Bubba.)

You need to understand what other-you is trying to accomplish and find a better way to address the underlying need so you can both get on the same page.

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my new book here.)

So who are these other selves? When it comes to problematic behaviors, there are three flavors we need to be concerned with…

  Exiles, Managers and Firefighters

We all have fears. And we try to cope with those fears. And by “we” I mean the “we” in your head. Allow me to introduce the cast of characters that are causing the “problems”:

Exiles:

This is the annoyingly dramatic name that therapists give to the seat of your deep, dark fears and long-held negative beliefs. “I’m stupid.” “I’m a failure.” “I’m unlovable.” “I can’t trust anyone.”

Yup, this is the “inner child.” (It might be the first time you’ve heard the term in a non-mocking context. I mean, I’m going to mock it plenty because it’s a corny term, but this is its more proper usage.)

Bad stuff happens to us and we take away painful lessons that we don’t let go. And these fears often unconsciously guide our actions in frustrating ways.

Managers:

So how do you still manage to function with those fears? Well, the inner child has an overprotective parent.  These are “Managers.” That nagging voice in your head. It says you’re not working hard enough. That you’re weak. That you need to do more. That the world is going to end if you don’t make everyone happy and live up to expectations.

It thinks if you gave in to the fears of the inner child you’d be paralyzed, so it harasses you endlessly and occasionally steers “you” to behave in ways that aren’t aligned with your goals.

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

We call proactive parts “managers” because they try to manage our lives in ways that keep emotional pain out of consciousness. They often focus on motivating us to improve, work hard, be productive and be socially acceptable. At the extreme, however, these aims can devolve into tactics like perfectionism, intellectualizing, one-sided caretaking, obsessing about appearance, conflict avoidance at great personal cost and trying to control or please others.

At times, this is useful. You do need to go to work when you don’t feel like it, or you’ll lose your job and be miserable. Then again, Managers may also nag you to keep working until you pass out — also making you miserable.

Managers still see you as an irresponsible child and feel you wouldn’t wear clean underwear if they didn’t remind you 50 times a day.

Firefighters:

Sometimes the Manager doesn’t do its job well. Or you just don’t listen. And the Exile’s fears get all wound up. Maybe the Exile is terrified of losing its independence — always being told what to do and feeling disrespected.

To prevent the Exile from totally freaking out, the “independence” Firefighter goes extreme to immediately solve the problem. “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” And you procrastinate by eating ice cream and playing video games. (The independence Firefighter is, unsurprisingly, perpetually 15 years old.)

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

(Firefighters) share the same goal as managers; they want to exile vulnerable parts and extinguish emotional pain. However, (firefighters) are emergency response workers. They get activated after the fact, when the memories and emotions of exiles break through despite the repressive efforts of managers. (Firefighters) tend to be fierce and use extreme measures that managers abhor, like alcohol and drug abuse, binge eating, excessive shopping, promiscuity, cutting, suicide and even homicide.

You’ve got fears, whether they’re remaining independent, or not being liked, or not feeling like a failure. The Managers try to solve them in one way. And when things really go south, the Firefighters try to solve them in the most immediate, extreme way possible. They’re all trying their best — but they’re not always effective.

So this dysfunctional family is fighting in your head and your behavior looks like a chaotic mess because you’re not even conscious of the conflicting goals everyone has.

You can’t “banish” any of these three so we gotta get them on the same page. That means keeping the Firefighters calm, getting the Managers to trust you, and figuring out what the Exile really needs to feel secure.

(To learn the seven-step morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

Alright, Dr. Jekyll, get everyone in the car. We’re going to therapy…

  1) Get Calm

Sit down somewhere quiet. Take a few deep breaths. Relax. You want to be chill, centered and accepting.

Why? Because you want to make sure you’re you. Getting emotional is what signals the Manager to start nagging or — even worse– the Firefighters to start whacking at the front door with axes.

Now think about the primary “bad habit” or issue you’re dealing with. Picture the “Manager” behind it:

Is it an overprotective parent that pushes you to work too hard?

Or a slacker that’s always tempting you to procrastinate?

A nagging perfectionist voice that says you’re never smart enough or beautiful enough?

Or a critical voice that tells you not to trust people?

(To learn the 3 secrets from neuroscience that will make you emotionally intelligent, click here.)

Take a second and imagine that voice as a real, full-blown person. Because you’re about to have a conversation with them.

Look, I told you this was going to get weird…

  2) Talk To Them… Um, I Mean, You

Yes, you’re going to talk to yourself like you have multiple personalities. Because, well, you do. It’s not quite as odd as you think, really.

Research shows talking to yourself can make you smarter, improve your memory, help you focus and even increase athletic performance. And talking to yourself in the second person (saying “you” instead of “I”) makes a difference:

Altogether, the current research showed that second-person self-talk strengthens both actual behavior performance and prospective behavioral intentions more than first-person self-talk.

Beyond that, we’re talking about “bad” behavior here. You need to get your ego out of the way. It’s a lot easier to honestly answer questions about bad habits you aren’t proud of when you can ask “someone else” why “they” do that instead of why “I” do that.

So play along. Stay relaxed. Don’t try and get this voice that’s been bothering you to go away. We want to hear what they have to say. Be curious and compassionate, not all judgy. Remember: they’re just trying to help (in their annoying, ineffective way.)

Ask them questions. A few good ones are:

What’s your role in my life?

What are you trying to protect me from?

And the big money question:

What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do this job anymore?

How would that Manager respond? Really inhabit the role. It’s not that hard — you’ve probably been hearing this voice in your head for years. A “Procrastinating Manager” might reply with something like this:

My role in your life? I have to make sure you relax and don’t get all stressed out about work. I’m trying to protect you from treating every project at the office like a life or death scenario. If I didn’t do my job you’d be a basket case. So I encourage you to have some fun on the internet and play with your phone to relax. And, frankly, you treat me like some slacker when all I want is to make sure your head doesn’t explode from stress.

Accept and acknowledge what they say to you. Don’t get in an argument with yourself (although, from my perspective, that would be really funny.)

If you feel like you understand one another, next you want to ask for permission to talk to the Exile. Yeah, this is odd. Like some sort of therapy séance. But it works. That Manager’s voice has been chattering at you for years. It’s a person. If you don’t give it some respect, you’ll just get more stress.

(To learn the 4 rituals from neuroscience that will make you happy, click here.)

Did you get permission? Okay, here’s where it gets really interesting. And weird. But interesting…

  3) Talk To The Exile

Meet your inner child. Aren’t they adorable? They look like you but smaller and probably scared out of their wits — which is why you’re here.

You know what the Manager is doing to achieve its goals, whether that’s making you work too hard, not work enough, or occasionally screaming at the people who love you most. So now we’re getting to the meat.

Ask the kid what they’re afraid of. Inhabit the role. What fear is so powerful that this kid actually has employees running around to protect him?

Be gentle. If the kid (and, again, that’s you) gets worked up, you may have those Firefighters smashing your windows as you go all emo and need to spend the evening on the couch eating ice cream and watching reruns of your favorite tv show. So stay calm. Be gentle. And listen:

I’m afraid of failing. Doing the work makes me think about it not turning out well. And then I’ll be a loser and no one will like me.

So you know what the kid’s afraid of. And why the Manager does what it does to protect them. And so rather than a failure of willpower, you know why — deep down — you’re engaging in those “bad habits.”

The kid’s fears might be totally extreme or unfounded. But they’re your fears. And you’re acting on them. So, in that sense, they’re real and need to be taken seriously. Don’t dismiss anything.

You want to start addressing these underlying concerns that your inner rugrat has. Fix those and the bad habits take care of themselves. Assure the kid and the Manager that you’re going to work on this. You’ll make a plan. That you’ll be accountable. Maybe even involve a friend.

Sound ridiculous? What’s ridiculous is endlessly trying different ineffective ways to stop procrastinating when you could be addressing the underlying issue. If you get rid of the fear, the Manager (let alone the Firefighters) don’t need to do their jobs anymore and they go away. (Or maybe your mental HR department reassigns them to another role like making you unable to get a song out of your head. Who knows.)

Of course, if you’re dealing with extremely serious issues you want to do all this with a therapist, not off a blog post written by some random guy on the internet. I hope that’s obvious but I have an internal Manager with a law degree who insisted I type it because my own inner child’s deep-seated fear is getting sued.

You don’t need willpower or more self-control or discipline. You need to get to know yourself a little better. So ask. And listen. And you’ll be amazed what you’ll tell yourself.

(To learn the six rituals from ancient wisdom that will make you happy, click here.)

Okay, your time in therapy is up. Let’s do a quick review and find out the best part about talking to Managers, inner children and the rest of the circus in your noggin…

  Sum Up

Here’s how to quit bad habits without willpower:

There are no bad habits, just different selves with conflicting goals: You can read this post for more, or you can go watch Inside Out. (One of these is a far more effective option. The other was written by me.)

Exiles, Managers and Firefighters: The three big categories of voices in your head. Exiles have deep-seated fears, Managers make sure those don’t get triggered, and when they do get triggered, Firefighters put out the fire (and destroy your house in the process.)

Stay calm and talk to the Manager: Find out why they do what they do by asking… well, you.

Talk to your inner child: I’m cringing that I typed that. But, corny as it sounds, it really does help. Discover your fears. That’s what’s driving your “bad behavior.”

This won’t be quick. It won’t be easy. I have oversimplified the process because some people are already whining that this post is too long. (Whatever. They only read the “Sum Up” anyway.)

You probably have multiple Exiles, and a bunch of Managers and a squadron of Firefighters — complete with their own adorable Dalmatian. (You don’t need to have a conversation with the Dalmatian, but if you’re feeling really creative you may mentally pet him.)

Understand what’s really driving your behavior and you can really fix your life. Find out what your fears are. Get to the root of the issue and you won’t need 37 new ineffective lifehacks every week. (Did I just put myself out of a job? Crap.)

You hear a lot about “knowing yourself,” “loving yourself” and “being your own best friend.” Those sayings are warm and fuzzy. They’re also vague platitudes that you have no idea how to actually get started on. Well, we just changed that.

There are multiple yous. You can get to know them by talking to them, as awkward as the process may be. And instead of rejecting nagging or tempting voices, you can befriend them, because as misguided as their actions are sometimes, they really do want the best for you.

From Self-Therapy:

Loving yourself really means loving each of your parts. Befriending yourself means developing a relationship with each of your parts and having them trust you.

Get to know yourself so you can love yourself. All your selves.

Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Related posts:

New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy

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How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert

The post This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

[foursprouthappiness-blog]

This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/this-is-how-to-quit-bad-habits-without-willpower-3-secrets-from-neuroscience/

This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience

***

Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here.

***

Got any serious bad habits? The extra-strength ones with the FDA warning. The kind you really beat yourself up about — but still engage in all the time?

Procrastination that screws up the quality of your work? Epic tidal waves of laziness? Or cardiac-threatening levels of overwork? Snapping at the ones you love? Or not speaking up even when you know you should?

We’re going to turn everything you know about bad habits on its head. For starters, here’s the good news: you’re not lazy, you’re not a screw up, and you’re not a bad person. In fact, you don’t actually have “bad habits” at all. Those tempting or nagging voices in your head aren’t evil. Actually, they’re trying to help you.

Yeah, I know: I have a lot of ‘splaining to do. But before it all makes sense, we’ll need to wade into a bit more crazy. Pixar films, neuroscience, multiple personalities, mindfulness, “Fight Club”, and boatloads of you talking to yourself like you’re nuts…

Yes, weird, but totally legit. In fact, there’s a whole system of psychology based around this: Internal Family Systems (IFS.) It’s been shown to help people with everything under the sun from depression, to anxiety, eating disorders, addictions, and even some of the most serious stuff like PTSD.

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

In the IFS Complex Trauma Study, only one subject out of 13 still qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD after finishing 16 weeks of IFS therapy.

This is a system that can help you overcome almost any bad behavior, deal with deep-seated issues and even help you love yourself a bit more.

We’re going deep here. Warning: we’re entering “the therapy zone.” It’s gonna get touchy-feely and a little awkward. I’m often skeptical of this kinda stuff myself. But when something works, it works.

Alright, hold my inner child’s hand and we’ll do this together. Let’s get to it…

  You’re Not Lazy, Weak, Or Awful

I posted recently about “the modular mind.” Basically, this is the theory that there is no singular “you.” There are many different selves inside you that take turns running the ship and that’s why human behavior (including yours and mine) can be so random and frustrating. When you say, “I wasn’t myself” that’s far more accurate than you ever thought.

(I’m not going to rehash the entire theory because regular readers would rise up and slay me for repeating myself. If you want the full scoop, click here.)

There are many different yous in your head. William James was saying it back in the 19th century, and now every major division of psychology is on board with this idea, including neuroscience.

From The Body Keeps the Score:

Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted pioneering split-brain research, concluded that the mind is composed of semiautonomous functioning modules, each of which has a special role. In his book The Social Brain (1985) he writes, “But what of the idea that the self is not a unified being, and there may exist within us several realms of consciousness? . . . From our [split-brain] studies the new idea emerges that there are literally several selves, and they do not necessarily ‘converse’ with each other internally.” MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence, declared: “The legend of the single Self can only divert us from the target of that inquiry. . . . [I]t can make sense to think there exists, inside your brain, a society of different minds. Like members of a family, the different minds can work together to help each other, each still having its own mental experiences that the others never know about.”

I know what some of you are thinking:

And, yes, Inside Out *is* based on this research. (In fact, Dr. Frank Anderson acted as a consultant to Pixar during the making of the film and wrote one of the books I read to prepare for this post.)

So how does this relate to bad habits? You don’t have “bad habits” — you have different selves with different goals in your head, all trying to do what they think is best for the greater “you.”

The problem is they’re not always right about what’s best and the goals of Self 1 may conflict with the goals of Self 2. (Paging Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden please come to the front desk.)

IFS therapists refer to the different “yous” as “parts.”

From Self-Therapy:

Parts are entities of their own, with their own feelings, beliefs, motivations, and memories. It is especially important to understand that parts have motivations for everything they do. Nothing is just done out of habit. Nothing is just a pattern of thinking or behavior you learned. Everything (except for purely physiological reactions) is done by a part for a reason, even though that reason may be unconscious.

Through this lens, I see bad habits as an “autoimmune disorder of the mind.” And with that, crazy as it may sound, things actually start to make a lot more sense.

How can you procrastinate and feel guilty about it at the same time? Two different “yous” disagreeing. Part of you is afraid of being a loser and wants to accomplish things — but another part of you is afraid of being all stressed out and wants to watch Netflix and eat popcorn. Neither is “lazy.”

(It might also explain how a blogger’s ex can have both fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy, but that’s a story for another day, Bubba.)

You need to understand what other-you is trying to accomplish and find a better way to address the underlying need so you can both get on the same page.

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my new book here.)

So who are these other selves? When it comes to problematic behaviors, there are three flavors we need to be concerned with…

  Exiles, Managers and Firefighters

We all have fears. And we try to cope with those fears. And by “we” I mean the “we” in your head. Allow me to introduce the cast of characters that are causing the “problems”:

Exiles:

This is the annoyingly dramatic name that therapists give to the seat of your deep, dark fears and long-held negative beliefs. “I’m stupid.” “I’m a failure.” “I’m unlovable.” “I can’t trust anyone.”

Yup, this is the “inner child.” (It might be the first time you’ve heard the term in a non-mocking context. I mean, I’m going to mock it plenty because it’s a corny term, but this is its more proper usage.)

Bad stuff happens to us and we take away painful lessons that we don’t let go. And these fears often unconsciously guide our actions in frustrating ways.

Managers:

So how do you still manage to function with those fears? Well, the inner child has an overprotective parent.  These are “Managers.” That nagging voice in your head. It says you’re not working hard enough. That you’re weak. That you need to do more. That the world is going to end if you don’t make everyone happy and live up to expectations.

It thinks if you gave in to the fears of the inner child you’d be paralyzed, so it harasses you endlessly and occasionally steers “you” to behave in ways that aren’t aligned with your goals.

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

We call proactive parts “managers” because they try to manage our lives in ways that keep emotional pain out of consciousness. They often focus on motivating us to improve, work hard, be productive and be socially acceptable. At the extreme, however, these aims can devolve into tactics like perfectionism, intellectualizing, one-sided caretaking, obsessing about appearance, conflict avoidance at great personal cost and trying to control or please others.

At times, this is useful. You do need to go to work when you don’t feel like it, or you’ll lose your job and be miserable. Then again, Managers may also nag you to keep working until you pass out — also making you miserable.

Managers still see you as an irresponsible child and feel you wouldn’t wear clean underwear if they didn’t remind you 50 times a day.

Firefighters:

Sometimes the Manager doesn’t do its job well. Or you just don’t listen. And the Exile’s fears get all wound up. Maybe the Exile is terrified of losing its independence — always being told what to do and feeling disrespected.

To prevent the Exile from totally freaking out, the “independence” Firefighter goes extreme to immediately solve the problem. “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” And you procrastinate by eating ice cream and playing video games. (The independence Firefighter is, unsurprisingly, perpetually 15 years old.)

From Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual:

(Firefighters) share the same goal as managers; they want to exile vulnerable parts and extinguish emotional pain. However, (firefighters) are emergency response workers. They get activated after the fact, when the memories and emotions of exiles break through despite the repressive efforts of managers. (Firefighters) tend to be fierce and use extreme measures that managers abhor, like alcohol and drug abuse, binge eating, excessive shopping, promiscuity, cutting, suicide and even homicide.

You’ve got fears, whether they’re remaining independent, or not being liked, or not feeling like a failure. The Managers try to solve them in one way. And when things really go south, the Firefighters try to solve them in the most immediate, extreme way possible. They’re all trying their best — but they’re not always effective.

So this dysfunctional family is fighting in your head and your behavior looks like a chaotic mess because you’re not even conscious of the conflicting goals everyone has.

You can’t “banish” any of these three so we gotta get them on the same page. That means keeping the Firefighters calm, getting the Managers to trust you, and figuring out what the Exile really needs to feel secure.

(To learn the seven-step morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

Alright, Dr. Jekyll, get everyone in the car. We’re going to therapy…

  1) Get Calm

Sit down somewhere quiet. Take a few deep breaths. Relax. You want to be chill, centered and accepting.

Why? Because you want to make sure you’re you. Getting emotional is what signals the Manager to start nagging or — even worse– the Firefighters to start whacking at the front door with axes.

Now think about the primary “bad habit” or issue you’re dealing with. Picture the “Manager” behind it:

Is it an overprotective parent that pushes you to work too hard?

Or a slacker that’s always tempting you to procrastinate?

A nagging perfectionist voice that says you’re never smart enough or beautiful enough?

Or a critical voice that tells you not to trust people?

(To learn the 3 secrets from neuroscience that will make you emotionally intelligent, click here.)

Take a second and imagine that voice as a real, full-blown person. Because you’re about to have a conversation with them.

Look, I told you this was going to get weird…

  2) Talk To Them… Um, I Mean, You

Yes, you’re going to talk to yourself like you have multiple personalities. Because, well, you do. It’s not quite as odd as you think, really.

Research shows talking to yourself can make you smarter, improve your memory, help you focus and even increase athletic performance. And talking to yourself in the second person (saying “you” instead of “I”) makes a difference:

Altogether, the current research showed that second-person self-talk strengthens both actual behavior performance and prospective behavioral intentions more than first-person self-talk.

Beyond that, we’re talking about “bad” behavior here. You need to get your ego out of the way. It’s a lot easier to honestly answer questions about bad habits you aren’t proud of when you can ask “someone else” why “they” do that instead of why “I” do that.

So play along. Stay relaxed. Don’t try and get this voice that’s been bothering you to go away. We want to hear what they have to say. Be curious and compassionate, not all judgy. Remember: they’re just trying to help (in their annoying, ineffective way.)

Ask them questions. A few good ones are:

What’s your role in my life?

What are you trying to protect me from?

And the big money question:

What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do this job anymore?

How would that Manager respond? Really inhabit the role. It’s not that hard — you’ve probably been hearing this voice in your head for years. A “Procrastinating Manager” might reply with something like this:

My role in your life? I have to make sure you relax and don’t get all stressed out about work. I’m trying to protect you from treating every project at the office like a life or death scenario. If I didn’t do my job you’d be a basket case. So I encourage you to have some fun on the internet and play with your phone to relax. And, frankly, you treat me like some slacker when all I want is to make sure your head doesn’t explode from stress.

Accept and acknowledge what they say to you. Don’t get in an argument with yourself (although, from my perspective, that would be really funny.)

If you feel like you understand one another, next you want to ask for permission to talk to the Exile. Yeah, this is odd. Like some sort of therapy séance. But it works. That Manager’s voice has been chattering at you for years. It’s a person. If you don’t give it some respect, you’ll just get more stress.

(To learn the 4 rituals from neuroscience that will make you happy, click here.)

Did you get permission? Okay, here’s where it gets really interesting. And weird. But interesting…

  3) Talk To The Exile

Meet your inner child. Aren’t they adorable? They look like you but smaller and probably scared out of their wits — which is why you’re here.

You know what the Manager is doing to achieve its goals, whether that’s making you work too hard, not work enough, or occasionally screaming at the people who love you most. So now we’re getting to the meat.

Ask the kid what they’re afraid of. Inhabit the role. What fear is so powerful that this kid actually has employees running around to protect him?

Be gentle. If the kid (and, again, that’s you) gets worked up, you may have those Firefighters smashing your windows as you go all emo and need to spend the evening on the couch eating ice cream and watching reruns of your favorite tv show. So stay calm. Be gentle. And listen:

I’m afraid of failing. Doing the work makes me think about it not turning out well. And then I’ll be a loser and no one will like me.

So you know what the kid’s afraid of. And why the Manager does what it does to protect them. And so rather than a failure of willpower, you know why — deep down — you’re engaging in those “bad habits.”

The kid’s fears might be totally extreme or unfounded. But they’re your fears. And you’re acting on them. So, in that sense, they’re real and need to be taken seriously. Don’t dismiss anything.

You want to start addressing these underlying concerns that your inner rugrat has. Fix those and the bad habits take care of themselves. Assure the kid and the Manager that you’re going to work on this. You’ll make a plan. That you’ll be accountable. Maybe even involve a friend.

Sound ridiculous? What’s ridiculous is endlessly trying different ineffective ways to stop procrastinating when you could be addressing the underlying issue. If you get rid of the fear, the Manager (let alone the Firefighters) don’t need to do their jobs anymore and they go away. (Or maybe your mental HR department reassigns them to another role like making you unable to get a song out of your head. Who knows.)

Of course, if you’re dealing with extremely serious issues you want to do all this with a therapist, not off a blog post written by some random guy on the internet. I hope that’s obvious but I have an internal Manager with a law degree who insisted I type it because my own inner child’s deep-seated fear is getting sued.

You don’t need willpower or more self-control or discipline. You need to get to know yourself a little better. So ask. And listen. And you’ll be amazed what you’ll tell yourself.

(To learn the six rituals from ancient wisdom that will make you happy, click here.)

Okay, your time in therapy is up. Let’s do a quick review and find out the best part about talking to Managers, inner children and the rest of the circus in your noggin…

  Sum Up

Here’s how to quit bad habits without willpower:

There are no bad habits, just different selves with conflicting goals: You can read this post for more, or you can go watch Inside Out. (One of these is a far more effective option. The other was written by me.)

Exiles, Managers and Firefighters: The three big categories of voices in your head. Exiles have deep-seated fears, Managers make sure those don’t get triggered, and when they do get triggered, Firefighters put out the fire (and destroy your house in the process.)

Stay calm and talk to the Manager: Find out why they do what they do by asking… well, you.

Talk to your inner child: I’m cringing that I typed that. But, corny as it sounds, it really does help. Discover your fears. That’s what’s driving your “bad behavior.”

This won’t be quick. It won’t be easy. I have oversimplified the process because some people are already whining that this post is too long. (Whatever. They only read the “Sum Up” anyway.)

You probably have multiple Exiles, and a bunch of Managers and a squadron of Firefighters — complete with their own adorable Dalmatian. (You don’t need to have a conversation with the Dalmatian, but if you’re feeling really creative you may mentally pet him.)

Understand what’s really driving your behavior and you can really fix your life. Find out what your fears are. Get to the root of the issue and you won’t need 37 new ineffective lifehacks every week. (Did I just put myself out of a job? Crap.)

You hear a lot about “knowing yourself,” “loving yourself” and “being your own best friend.” Those sayings are warm and fuzzy. They’re also vague platitudes that you have no idea how to actually get started on. Well, we just changed that.

There are multiple yous. You can get to know them by talking to them, as awkward as the process may be. And instead of rejecting nagging or tempting voices, you can befriend them, because as misguided as their actions are sometimes, they really do want the best for you.

From Self-Therapy:

Loving yourself really means loving each of your parts. Befriending yourself means developing a relationship with each of your parts and having them trust you.

Get to know yourself so you can love yourself. All your selves.

Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Related posts:

New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy

New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful

How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert

The post This Is How To Quit Bad Habits Without Willpower: 3 Secrets From Neuroscience appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

[brainfoodgp]

Seeds For Wellness Journal May/2017

“We all end up on bad roads, those blind alleys I’m always talking about. Remember the moments in the sun, the sky full of words.” -Tennessee Williams-

May this year has been an exciting Mental Health Awareness Month. The month kicked off with my being recognized as the NY1 Queens Person of the Week for my work and journey with Brain Food Garden Project. I also had two follow up partnership meetings and some exciting projects are taking shape that I hope to be able to share with everyone in the coming months. I published our second special edition Mental Health Awareness Month blog if you missed it Click Here

One of the subjects I discussed in that edition was the need to start publishing the Seeds for Wellness Journal only 6 times a year. This will be my last regular monthly blog post. Starting in July with our first Summer issue we will be posting seasonally with two “special edition” blogs each year in May with our Mental Health Awareness edition and in October with a special Food Justice edition in honor of World Food Day.

 This last issue before starting our new seasonal rotation is a special one indeed. I am so happy to publish our first guest writer actress and jazz vocalist Daralyn Jay’s article, 4 Tips for Coping with a Loved One Suffering from Mental Illness in the BFGP Feature. Daralyn and I have been friends for more than 20 years and she was one of the original 5 members of the think tank I lovingly refer to as my, “Big Green Machine,” these wonderful people were the first to offer support, advice and a clearing house for all my thoughts and ideas as I started to form my vision for Brain Food Garden Project. Daralyn was also the friend that called 911 and finally got me the help I needed and has supported me every step of the way on my road to recovery.

 Also this month we ran a Facebook series on different communities dealing with mental health concerns. Don’t worry if you missed any of them all 5 are revisited in this month’s Notes From the Resistance. As always I let you all in on what I’ve been reading this month and offer up several of my new favorite summer dessert recipes. One simple recipe that is, but with many mouthwatering ingredients to mix it up all summer long!  

 As everyone celebrates Memorial Day this weekend and enjoys the first of what I hope will be many fun summer BBQ’s for you, your friends and family. Please take some time to remember those that fought and died to keep our country free. I know I’ll be thinking of my grandfather who fought in WWII and lived so many wonderful years after to share with me the history.

The BFGP Feature:

Daralyn Jay is an actress, singer and writer that resides in New York City. She costarred with Matthew Modine in the critically praised revival of Horton Foote’s To Kill A Mockingbird at Hartford Stage and most recently starred in the film festival award winning short film Tobacco Burn. Daralyn’s dynamic jazz vocals have been heard by audiences from Paris to the coastal resorts of Turkey to Harlem, New York’s hottest nightclubs. To learn more about our featured writer Click Here

4 Tips for Coping with a Loved One Suffering from Mental Illness by Daralyn Jay

When Sean first asked me to write a post about my experiences having someone with mental health issues in my life for his blog, I was immediately confronted with a feeling of overwhelm at the enormity of the task. Where to begin? And how to begin? Sean and I have known one another for more than 20 years now, and I have borne witness to his struggles with bipolar depression for much of that time. Does he really want me to tell the story of that long night’s journey into day? I’d always said that it was Sean’s story to tell, and I was hesitant to reveal many details of that journey.

 It was a phone call with another friend that prompted me to finally pick up the phone and tell Sean, “OK, I’ll do it.” My other friend had reached out to me to check on the whereabouts of our mutual friend. For the sake of clarity, we’ll call these friends Frank and Sammy (and yes, that makes me Dean). Sammy had been having disturbing discussions and text message exchanges with Frank, the last of which made him worry about Frank’s safety. As Sammy detailed their conversations, I heard him express the same feelings that I’d experienced many times during Sean’s episodes: fear and frustration were the two that were most apparent. I shared some techniques that I’ve tried over the years that helped me cope with Sean’s mental health issues. He thanked me and said that our conversation was very helpful. And he seems to be handling the unpredictable waves of having a friend struggling with mental illness in his life better. So, I thought: if my insights could help Sammy, maybe they can help someone else in a similar situation.

 #1 – Know what you can do and do it.

The first thing we all have the ability to do is to listen. There are many ways to listen, and in the quest to help a loved one, I think they all come into play. Firstly, listen without judgment. Try to process what is being said to you, even if you don’t understand it from your personal experience. It has taken a great act of courage for this person to come to you, so do your best to honor what is being said. Also, listen to more than the words being said. A person won’t necessarily tell you, “I want to kill myself,” but may say things like “I don’t care what happens to me,” or “People would be better off without me.” Lastly, offer some advice. You’re not there to solve anyone’s problems, and (spoiler alert for #4!) you probably can’t, but offer what you can say that is supportive and empowering. If your loved one is feeling isolated, let her know that she can reach out to you at any time. Encourage her to seek professional help. Share experiences from your life that might help her see this is not a unique problem. I downplayed a lot of my own feelings and emotions at this stage, which I think is important in listening without judgment. But I still had them, and something needed to be done with them. Which leads me to…

 #2 – Educate yourself.

The more you know about what your loved one is facing, the more empowered you will feel to help them. If he or she is dealing with alcohol and/or substance abuse, find out about what friends and family can do. I called the suicide prevention hotlines in the states of Georgia and New York on several occasions to ask them for advice. Their answer was the same: If your friend has said that he is thinking about killing himself, this is a cry for help and should be taken seriously. Call 911 if he is in imminent danger.

 That’s a hard call to make. Especially when you’re in two different states, and he said that he was thinking about taking his cat’s cyanide pills but he hadn’t taken them yet. Thankfully, Sean didn’t take the cat’s cyanide pills. In retrospect, I should have called 911 then anyway.

 #3 – Take care of yourself.

So how do you take care of yourself when it seems as though someone else’s life depends on you? Think of the instructions we are given on an airplane: In the event of an emergency, place the air mask on yourself before helping others. If you’re gasping for air yourself, there’s very little you can do for anyone else.

 Maintain time for yourself. You can still be available for others but take time for self-care. Do something for you, and only you, that makes you feel relaxed and re-energized. Turn off your phone and go the gym, take a long walk, get your nails done or put on your favorite music and take an hour to listen (or dance) to it undisturbed. You want to find short, healthy activities that release tension and add balance to your life.

 Set boundaries and don’t accept treatment that makes you feel disrespected or taken advantage of. One boundary-setting technique that I eventually set that I shared with Sammy was to arrange a communication plan. A disturbing phone call followed by hours or days of silence is disconcerting, frightening and simply unfair. All of us need time and space to process what is happening in our lives at times. Asking your loved one to send a simple text or call to say, “I’m fine—just don’t feel like talking right now,” goes a long way to eliminate stress and anxiety. Your feelings and well-being matter as well. Don’t forget that.

 #4 – Know what you can’t do and accept it.

If you’re familiar with the Buddhist principle of detachment, then you already understand the idea of practicing compassion but distancing yourself from the outcome. All the reasoning, pleading, guilting or any other tactic you can think of cannot convince someone to take the steps they need to help themselves. But, by all means, do so. Do everything within your abilities, reminding yourself along the way that whatever happens is out of your control and is not your responsibility. Because the only person’s actions you can control are your own. You want to be able to say that you did everything in your power you could think of to do. And that is the most any of us can ever do in any situation, really.

What I’m Reading:

I am a huge fan of rereading books. And this month as I picked up several new books to start reading for the first time. I also chose to reread a favorite and one of the first books I read that truly helped me understand the depression aspect of my manic depressive self. It was written by one of my all-time favorite writers William Styron most notably remembered for being the author of Sophie’s Choice. However, if you’ve never read his beautifully written The Confessions of Nat Turner please add it to your list. And while you are online ordering add to your cart this month’s title Darkness Visible: a Memoir of Madness. Styron himself diagnosed with clinical depression captures every moment of what it feels like with a crystal clarity that will make you feel like you are in his head. To read his description of hospitalization could only be made more poetic, if like me, you were actually hospitalized in a psych ward the first time you read it. The New York Times said about this remarkable read: “Compelling…harrowing…a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder…it offers a solace of shared experience.”

Notes from the Resistance:

This month we spent a week on Facebook bringing different stories of individual communities that are dealing with mental health concerns. From the Indigenous people of North America to LGBTQ youth. We discussed mental health in our senior citizens to the African American community. All of these communities living with mental health concerns go unheard by the current Christo fascist authoritarian regime. Let us count some of the many ways… Ending protections for LGBTQ youth in our schools, Drastic cuts in SSI and Medicare as well as huge cuts to SNAP which many of our senior’s rely on to survive. Forcing oil pipelines on Indigenous lands breaking generations of treaties. Continued police brutality and murders in the African American Community. Making it easier for those with severe mental health concerns to have easy access to purchasing guns and appointing a Mental Health Czar that will help to feed our prison system with those most severely affected by mental health and drug dependence concerns . These are some of the faces of those being pushed aside by the current regime these are this month’s notes from the resistance.

1. Prisons…Click Here

2. Youth…Click Here

3. Seniors…Click Here

4. Indigenous Americans…Click Here

5. African Americans…Click Here

Healthy & Delicious Recipes:

OMG my new favorite summer dessert and I can’t get enough of it is Chia seed pudding. Below is my favorite of the four variations you will find in the video Click Here 

Almond Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding

INGREDIENTS

1 cup Greek yogurt

1 cup almond milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons honey

¼ cup chia seeds

2 tablespoons dark cocoa powder

Slivered almonds, for topping

Chocolate shavings, for topping

PREPARATION

1. In a medium bowl, mix the yogurt, almond milk, vanilla, honey, chia seeds, and cocoa powder together until well combined.

2. Pour the mixture into an airtight container and refrigerate, covered for 30 minutes.

3. Spoon the pudding into desired serving dish and top with slivered almonds and chocolate shavings.

[rockrevoltmagazine]

INTERVIEW: CHINO XL AND RAMA DUKE

Chino XL and Rama Duke

If a poll were to be given to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ global fan base asking their disciples to choose their favorite song, many would likely select the 1991 hit that helped launch the band to international super stardom, “Under the Bridge.”

Nearly 30 years later “Under the Bridge” has now been reimagined as an edgy, strife infused hip-hop number by Los Angeles, California based  1520 Entertainment.

Multi-platinum selling and Grammy Award winning producer Jared Lee Gosselin is the brain child behind 1520 Entertainment and its goal of bringing a cutting edge independent label to the music industry market place.

Gosselin’s initial approach to launching 1520 Entertainment was to bring together various artists for one-off collaborations with accomplished producers.

One such joint effort included uniting rapper and actor Chino XL and vocalist Rama Duke to take a run at delivering a unique cover of “Under the Bridge.”

“Under the Bridge” wound up being the launch single for 1520 Entertainment earlier this year.  The label plans to continue with this approach, releasing a new monthly single throughout 2017.

  Before dismissing this as some kind of gimmick, it’s probably worth noting that Gosselin has the resume to warrant the music industry taking notice of his new endeavor.  The artists Gosselin has worked with include (but not limited to) Eminem, India.Arie, Macy Gray, Keyshia Cole, Velvet Revolver and Young Jeezy.

There’s also a personal methodology behind Gosselin’s madness. The gifted producer is directly involved with a number of community based charities.  Gosselin recently commented, “We hope that our hybrid version of “Under the Bridge” might save some lives and inspire a new generation.”

1520 Entertainment is putting their money with their mouth is. They will be contributing a portion of the song’s proceeds to California’s Action Family Foundation. The organization works with at risk youth and their families to overcome issues related to drugs, alcohol, sex and gang violence.

Rock Revolt recently caught up with Chino XL and Rama Duke to discuss their collaboration with Gosselin on “Under the Bridge,” some of their own personal demons, and what the duo has planned for the remainder of 2017.

“Under the Bridge” is one of the most iconic songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  How did the the two of you come up with the idea to cover the track while also putting your own unique hip-hop oriented spin on it?

Chino XL:

I wanted to cover the song with Jared Gosselin going back to when we were working on my last album at Frank Zappas’ studio.

Months after Ricanstruction was released I received a call from Gosselin asking me if I was still interested in remaking the song. He proceeded to tell me that Rama Duke and her band had a cool idea for a hard rock cover version of it.

He (Gosselin) tracked out Rama’s lead vocals, sent it over to me and the rest is history.

It’s incredible how well your voices blend with one another. Did you have any idea that your collaboration would generate that type of effect when you initially came together for the “Under the Bridge” sessions?

Chino XL: 

I thought it would be good but I honestly didn’t know it would turn out this good. There are nuances in this song that really manifested themselves.

It’s safe to say that this was meant to happen as there are so many magical elements to this song. This composition was screaming to be heard.

Rama Duke:

We spent quite a bit of time around each other but I don’t think either of us thought that the song would turn out the way it did until we heard it tracked.  It’s really a perfect fit for us.

Rapper & Actor – Chino XL 

Do you know if RHCP have heard it yet? What do you think they would feel or say if they listened to your version of the song?

Chino XL:

There were certain clearances we received, especially for the video, that I believe only the band themselves could clear, so apparently we got the thumbs up.

We’re blessed, honored and we can’t thank the Red Hot Chili Peppers enough. I can say wholeheartedly that the homage has preserved the themes, lyric imagery, introspection and pain as the original version. I hope it carries the same intent and honesty that made me carry the classic in my own heart for so many years.

Rama Duke:

Honesty I don’t know what it’s like to have someone remake something so close to your heart.   I would hope that we represented their feelings in a way that they’d appreciate.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were a staple in my house growing up. My mother would go see them play and come home in awe. I consider it an honor to sing one of their songs.

You recently released an amazing video for the cover. Can you comment on it?

Rama Duke: 

The video is almost a complete vision of director Ra Dreyfus. Through her passion and vision she picked the one theme she found in the song that she thought would have the most gravity.  People love what she’s done and it came out so well.

What does “Under the Bridge” mean to either of you personally?

Rama Duke:

I feel that everyone struggles with some kind of addiction, some are just more realized than others.

The original, and our version of the song, remind me of that feeling of hopelessness and how you can’t live without the feeling you get from whatever poison you’ve decided to bring into your life.

Vocalist – Rama Duke

Under the Bridge touches on survival and the eternal search for one’s own truth. Have you ever felt like this in your own lives?

Chino XL:

I was struggling really bad with some of my own demons when we were making this song. It’s that bleak, stark, authentic reality that comes across on the track that I think gives people the chills. My blood is in this the song.

Rama Duke:

Yes. I’ve struggled with addiction my whole life so I connect with the song personally on many levels.

This is the debut release by 1520 Entertainment, however, I know that you’re already working on new material. Can you tell us more about one of your other projects, A Bad Day For Sorry?

Chino XL: 

I’m extremely happy with the enthusiasm of the entire team.

As far as A Bad Day for Sorry, we are about to release a masterpiece on the literature side, on the sonic side and on the “break your face iconoclast” “what the fuck are you looking at” hard-core side.  I’m so ready for this. 

Do you have any specific plans regarding “Under the Bridge” in terms of live performance?

Chino XL: 

We have some big things coming soon.

Are you currently working on anything else right now that the masses don’t know about but should be on the look out for?

Chino XL: 

My entire focus is on this project right now.

Rama Duke:

I have a solo album that is finished but right now my focus is on this record as well. It’s new, exciting and it was nothing but a pleasure to learn and work with a master of his craft who cares about the music as much as I do.  I hope this is one of those records you can play from start to finish and that it takes the listener on a journey.

For all things Chino XL, Rama Duke and 1520 Entertainment simply navigate the links below.

Connect with Chino XL (click icons):

Connect with Rama Duke (click icons):

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Interview conducted by: Demetrious Ioannou 

INTERVIEW: CHINO XL AND RAMA DUKE was originally published on RockRevolt Mag