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luminouslumity · 7 months ago

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So I've been wondering whether or not to write up a post on myth retellings, but with Cinzia's new video and these other two that I found recently, honestly, these people describe my feelings perfectly! That's not to say I don't like retellings at all, but even with the ones I do like, I feel like a lot of them fail at what they set out to do, especially in terms of characterization.

Actually, you know what? Incoming rant below! And obviously, more power to you if you like these retellings. Again, I don't hate all of them (for example, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint and The Private Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine are actually two of my favorites, and I found Katherine McDonald's Fairies of the Underworld series to be really fun), I just have a lot of thoughts I've been feeling the need to let out.

This is what I like to call Hades Syndrome and Demeter Syndrome, where you have a mythological character who more or less gets the overcorrection treatment. So basically Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Villainy respectively, but for mythology specifically.

I feel like you see this a lot with Helen, with her portrayal in The Penelopiad being the most egregious example that comes to mind in terms of a negative portrayal. But on the flip side, you have Daughters of Sparta, which does give a positive look on Helen, but at the expense of making nearly everyone else around her into a terrible person. The author of the latter does the same thing in The Shadow of Perseus, in which almost literally everyone else is an overall good person except for Perseus! I talk a little bit more about both books here.

And if I had a nickel for every time I've seen a terrible portrayal of Thetis, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Speaking of, The Song of Achilles really does do a disservice to The Iliad in general—especially where Patroclus is concerned—and I'm saying this as someone who liked it!

And then, of course, you have the big ones: Hades and Demeter. Of course, my little term for this trope comes from them, as Hades has been portrayed as more of a hero in recent years and Demeter the villain... and honestly, it's gotten kinda exhausting at this point. As a sort of simplification of everything I'm about to say, I'm not expecting something like Hercules or Hadestown to be mythologically or culturally accurate and of course you can enjoy whatever you want, but if you're going to portray Hades as something other than Greek Satan, then it'd be nice to see that same courtesy be extended to Demeter as well. The only recent retelling I've seen this done with is Winter Harvest, and even then, it falls into the same trope of completely villainizing certain gods right from the start.

Now, even though I'm speaking more so narratively, I also think it's important to keep in mind the culture of the time, because at the end of the day (besides providing an explanation for the changing of the seasons, of course), this is still a story about a mother trying to find her daughter after she'd been wed without her knowledge, in a time when women were treated as little more than property. The fact that Demeter tried to defy this says alot!

However, I do think there's something to be said over portraying her—or any character, really—in the exact opposite direction, considering, well...

But golden-haired (xanthe) Demeter sat there [in her new-built temple in Eleusis] apart from all the blessed gods and stayed, wasting with yearning for her deep-bosomed daughter. Then she caused a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind over the all-nourishing earth: the ground would not make the seed sprout, for rich-crowned (eustephanos) Demeter kept it hid. In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail. So she would have destroyed the whole race of man with cruel famine and have robbed them who dwell on Olympos of their glorious right of gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus perceived and marked this in his heart.—Homeric Hymn to Demeter (trans. Evelyn-White)

And if you want to get into the Romans (though their versions of course came much later), we also have these two incidents:

"When Zeus commanded Plouton (Pluton) [Haides] to send Kore (Core) [Persephone] back up [to her mother Demeter], Plouton gave her a pomegranate seed to eat, as assurance that she would not remain long with her mother. With no foreknowledge of the outcome of her act, she consumed it. Askalaphos (Ascalaphus), the son of Akheron (Acheron) and Gorgyra, bore witness against her, in punishment for which Demeter pinned him down with a heavy rock in Haides' realm."

[...]

"But he [Herakles while in Hades] did roll the stone off Askalaphos (Ascalaphus). . . As for Askalaphos, Demeter turned him into a horned owl."—Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (trans. Aldrich)

"The Sirenes, daughters of the River Achelous and the Muse Melpomene, wandering away after the rape of Proserpina [Persephone], came to the land of Apollo, and there were made flying creatures by the will of Ceres [Demeter] because they had not brought help to her daughter. It was predicted that they would live only until someone who heard their singing would pass by."—Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae (trans. Grant)

Then there's Hades, who I'm super glad is no longer being seen as pure evil in recent years, but then again...

Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl—a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and is smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above and the whole earth and the sea's salt swell laughed for joy. And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her—the Son of Cronos, He who has many names.

He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tender-hearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios, Hyperion's bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he, that Son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot—his own brother's child and all unwilling.

And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope calmed her great heart for all her trouble (lacuna)... and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea rang with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her.—Homeric Hymn to Demeter (trans. Evelyn-White)

On through deep lakes he [Hades] drove . . . past Bacchiadae [Syracuse], where settlers once from Corinthus' isthmus built between two harbours their great battlements. A bay confined by narrow points of land lies between [the twin springs] Arethusa of Pisa (Pisaea) and Cyane. And there lived Cyane, the most renowned of all the Nymphae Sicelidae (Sicilian Nymphs), who gave her pool its name. Out of her waters' midst she rose waist-high and recognised the goddess.

‘Stop, stop!’ she cried, ‘You cannot take this girl to wife against Queen Ceres' [Demeter's] will! She ought to have been wooed, not whirled away. I too, if humble things may be compared with great, was loved; Anapis married me; but I was wooed and won, not, like this girl, frightened and forced.’

She held out her arms outstretched to bar his way. But Saturnius [Haides] restrained his wrath no longer. Urging on his steeds, his terrible steeds, and brandishing aloft his royal sceptre in his strong right arm, he hurled it to the bottom of the pool. The smitten earth opened a way to Tartara (Hell) and down the deep abyss the chariot plunged. But Cyane, heartbroken at the rape of Proserpine and at her pool's outrage, in silence carried in her heart a wound beyond consoling, and in endless tears she wasted away. Into the pool—her pool and she but now its deity—she spread dissolved. You might have seen her limbs soften, her bones begin to bend, her nails losing their hardness. All the slenderest parts, her wave-blue hair, her finger, legs and feet were liquid first; the change is slight and short from delicate limbs to chilly water. Next her shoulders, back and sides and breast dissolved in slender rivulets and disappeared, and last, in place of warm and living blood, water flows in along her wasted veins and nothing now that you could grasp remains.

Ceres [Demeter] meanwhile in terror sought her child vainly in every land . . . She turned again to Sicania (Sicily) and there, in wanderings that led her everywhere, she too reached Cyane; who would have told all, had she not been changed. She longed to tell but had no mouth, no tongue, nor any means of speaking. Even so she gave a clue, clear beyond doubt, and floating on her pool she showed the well-known sash which Persephone had chanced to drop there in the sacred spring. How well the goddess knew it! Then at last she seemed to understand her child was stolen, and tore her ruffed hair and beat her breast . . . Then that fair Nymphe [Arethusa] . . . rose from her pool and brushed back from he brow her dripping hair [and told her that Haides' was responsible for the abduction of Persephone]."—Ovid, Metamorphoses (trans. Melville)

RIP, Cyane!

And then of course, there's Persephone.

Dreaded Persephone!

Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring!

Let's take a look back at the seed incident, shall we?

When he said this, wise Persephone was filled with joy and hastily sprang up for gladness. But he on his part secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, taking care for himself that she might not remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter. Then Aidoneus the Ruler of Many openly got ready his deathless horses beneath the golden chariot. And she mounted on the chariot, and the strong Slayer of Argos took reins and whip in his dear hands and drove forth from the hall, the horses speeding readily. Swiftly they traversed their long course, and neither the sea nor river-waters nor grassy glens nor mountain-peaks checked the career of the immortal horses, but they clave the deep air above them as they went. And Hermes brought them to the place where rich-crowned Demeter was staying and checked them before her fragrant temple.

And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother's sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her. But while Demeter was still holding her dear child in her arms, her heart suddenly misgave her for some snare, so that she feared greatly and ceased fondling her daughter and asked of her at once: "My child, tell me, surely you have not tasted any food while you were below? Speak out and hide nothing, but let us both know. For if you have not, you shall come back from loathly Hades and live with me and your father, the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honoured by all the deathless gods; but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for gods and mortal men. And now tell me how he rapt you away to the realm of darkness and gloom, and by what trick did the strong Host of Many beguile you?"

Then beautiful Persephone answered her thus: "Mother, I will tell you all without error. When luck-bringing Hermes came, swift messenger from my father the Son of Cronos and the other Sons of Heaven, bidding me come back from Erebus that you might see me with your eyes and so cease from your anger and fearful wrath against the gods, I sprang up at once for joy; but he secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will. Also I will tell how he rapt me away by the deep plan of my father the Son of Cronos and carried me off beneath the depths of the earth, and will relate the whole matter as you ask. All we were playing in a lovely meadow, Leucippe and Phaeno and Electra and Ianthe, Melita also and Iache with Rhodea and Callirhoe and Melobosis and Tyche and Ocyrhoe, fair as a flower, Chryseis, Ianeira, Acaste and Admete and Rhodope and Pluto and charming Calypso; Styx too was there and Urania and lovely Galaxaura with Pallas [Athena] who rouses battles and Artemis delighting in arrows: we were playing and gathering sweet flowers in our hands, soft crocuses mingled with irises and hyacinths, and rose-blooms and lilies, marvellous to see, and the narcissus which the wide earth caused to grow yellow as a crocus. That I plucked in my joy; but the earth parted beneath, and there the strong lord, the Host of Many, sprang forth and in his golden chariot he bore me away, all unwilling, beneath the earth: then I cried with a shrill cry. All this is true, sore though it grieves me to tell the tale."—Homeric Hymn to Demeter (trans. Evelyn-White)

That said, the two did seem to have a pretty peaceful marriage; in the hymn itself, Hades essentially says that she'll rule alongside him:

And Aidoneus, ruler over the dead, smiled grimly and obeyed the behest of Zeus the king. For he straightway urged wise Persephone, saying : "Go now, Persephoneia, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless dods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore."—Homeric Hymn to Demeter (trans. Evelyn-White)

We also have sources that suggest Persephone actually preferred living in the Underworld to the mortal realm and that she had an estranged relationship with her mother, so this common trope actually does have credence in the ancient world, but again, it's important to note that these are much later compared to the original hymn.

First, Virgil:

“Tartarus hopes not for you [Caesar in the guise of Hades] as king, and may such monstrous lust of empire never seize you, though Greece is enchanted by the Elysian fields, and Proserpine reclaimed cares not to follow her mother.”—Virgil, Georgics (trans. Fairclough)

Then Lucan (twice):

"I invoke the Furies, the horror of Hell, the punishments of the guilty, and Chaos, eager to blend countless worlds in ruins; I cry to the Ruler of the world below, who suffers age-long pain because gods are so slow to die; to Styx, and Elysium where no Thessalian witch may enter; to Persephone who shuns her mother in heaven, and to her, the third incarnation of our patron, Hecate, who permits the dead and me to converse together without speech."

[...]

"I shall tell the world the nature of that food which confines Proserpina beneath the huge weight of earth, the bond of love that unites her to the gloomy king of night, and the defilement she suffered, such that her mother would not call her back."—Lucan, Pharsalia (tran. J.D. Duff)

Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead also gives a brief scene in which Hades allows a fallen soldier to see his loved one again only after Persephone convinces him to:

PERSEPHONE: Husband, doctor that disease yourself: tell Hermes, as soon as Protesilaus reaches the light, to touch him with his wand, and make him young and fair as when he left the bridal chamber.

PLUTO: Well, I cannot refuse a lady. Hermes, take him up and turn him into a bridegroom. But mind, you sir, a strictly temporary one.—Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead (tran. H. W. and F. G. Fowler

And returning to Ovid's Metamorphosis:

The new-wed bride [Eurydike (Eurydice) wife of Orpheus]... fell dying when a serpent struck her heel. And when at last the bard Rhodopeius [Orpheus] had mourned his fill in the wide world above, he dared descend through Taenaria's dark gate to Styx to make trial of the Umbrae (Shades); and through the thronging wraiths and grave-spent ghosts he came to pale Persephone and him, Dominus Umbrarum (Lord of the Shades) [Haides], who rules the unlovely realm, and as he struck his lyre's sad chords he said : "Ye deities who rule the world below, whither we mortal creatures all return, if simple truth, direct and genuine, may by your leave be told... for my dear wife's sake, in whom a trodden viper poured his venom and stole her budding years. My heart has sought strength to endure; the attempt I'll not deny; but love has won, a god whose fame is fair in the world above; but here I doubt, though here too, I surmise; and if that ancient tale of ravishment is true, you too were joined in love. Now by these regions filled with fear, by this huge Chaos, these vast silent realms, reweave, I implore, the fate unwound too fast of my Eurydice. To you are owed ourselves and all creation; a brief while we linger; then we hasten, late or soon to one abode; here on road leads us all; here in the end is home; over humankind your kingdom keeps the longest sovereignty. She too, when ripening years reach their due term, shall own your rule. The favour that I ask is but to enjoy her love; and, if fate will not reprieve her, my resolve is clear not to return: may two deaths give you cheer."—Ovid, Metamorphoses (trans. Melville)

And sure, there was Minthe and Adonis, but neither incident seemed to have had much of an affect on the relationship anyway, and with Minthe specifically, either she was a concubine and got turned into mint by Persephone (Strabo) or she's actually a former lover of Hades and gets turned by Demeter herself only after the nymph boasts about being better than her daughter (Oppian).

And before anyone says it, no, there's no such myth that we know of regarding Persephone going down to the Underworld willingly and/or ruling it on her own. There are certainly other female death deities that fit this description somewhat (Hel of Norse mythology, for example, has no consort), but not Persephone specifically. In fact, that seems to come directly from a book by Charlene Spretnak, which featured stories she wrote for her young daughter.

The closest I can find was this, regarding the Pelinna tablets:

However, Persephone is not merely the consort to the king of the underworld. Rather she appears as the supreme power in the realm of the dead, the figure to whom the deceased must appeal to complete successfully the journey to the underworld. Her husband, Hades, is not even mentioned in the Pelinna tablets, while the Thurii tablets contain only a passing reference to Eukles, who seems to be the equivalent of Hades, the consort of Persephone in the underworld, the male ruler of the dead. Eukles, however, seems to play no important role in the deceased's journey, he is merely saluted, along with Eubouleus and all the other gods to whom the deceased must give honor.—Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Myths of the Underworld Journey

This isn't to diminish Persephone as a powerful goddess, btw, but that's the thing... she already is. A nature goddess who gets raptured away, but quickly grows to become a ruler who is not only on equal footing to her husband, but more feared than him? That sounds pretty powerful to me. And that's to say nothing on her mother, how gray-cloaked Demeter almost literally upended Heaven and Earth in order to get her daughter back and won.

#lady of the library #kate alexandra #greek mythology #greek myth retellings #books #bookblr #hades #persephone #hades and persephone #demeter

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phawareglobal · 1 year ago

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Sam Rayner, MD - phaware® interview 451

Dr. Sam Rayner is an assistant professor and pulmonary hypertension specialist at the University of Washington. In this episode, he discusses the different ways physicians can get involved in pulmonary hypertension research. He explains that he is a physician scientist, dividing his time between patient care and scientific research focused on PH.

My name's Sam Rayner. I'm an assistant professor and pulmonary hypertension specialist at the University of Washington. I'm a physician scientist, which means I divide my time between the clinical care of patients with pulmonary vascular disorders, like pulmonary hypertension, and scientific research focused on pulmonary hypertension. I wanted to talk to you today a little bit about the different ways that physicians get involved in pulmonary hypertension research, including the kind of research I do, and delve into what it is like, at least for me, balancing research and PAH patient care, and discuss the importance of having physicians involved in research into complex diseases like pulmonary hypertension. Physicians are often classified as either being pure clinicians, whose main job is to use their medical knowledge to improve health and help patients, or as being physician scientists who spend a significant amount of time doing scientific research in addition to seeing patients. Of course, this is a simplification and people have many unique careers existing all across the spectrum. But especially in a university setting, careers are often structured based on these categories. In my case, I've known since before medical school that I wanted to be a physician scientist. I worked in a lab before and throughout medical school at the University of Minnesota under a researcher named Dr. Nobuaki Kikyo, who had both an MD and a PhD. I was fascinated by how much he knew about human health and disease and how he would focus his research to address questions with real implications for human health. When it came to my fellowship training, which is the period of training after residency where I specialized in pulmonary and critical care medicine, I became fascinated by pulmonary hypertension and I knew that this is what I wanted to study. I felt that in some aspects, PAH was a basic science success story. Here we have a rare disease, which in many ways is very difficult to study in the lab. Yet over three decades we've seen more than 10 therapies FDA approved for PAH via multiple routes of administration with more in the pipeline. We've developed understanding of which groups of patients these medicines work for and which they don't. Most importantly, we're now seeing patients live longer and with a better quality of life. Yet, PAH remains a terrible disease and there is so much more work to do to really understand it and find true cures for the disease, which means there really is a need for people doing research in this space. I found all this very compelling and I set out to think of exactly how I could study PAH as a researcher in addition to a clinician. Again, an oversimplification, but when thinking of different categories of research that one can engage with, we often think of a spectrum of research spanning from laboratory science, or what we call bench research or some people might call basic science where work's done in a laboratory with cells or animal models, all the way through clinical research on the other end where the focus is entirely on human subjects or clinical data. In the middle of these two sits what's often called translational research, which spans the gap from basic to clinical research and where I've sort of found myself. When I was learning about pulmonary hypertension and trying to choose a research direction, it was quickly evident that a lot of the prior work in the field had been done using animal models. A lot of important discoveries have been made this way, leading to the therapies that we now have. Yet the animal models that we have don't perfectly represent human PAH, and there have recently been numerous treatments which have shown tremendous promise in these models and yet failed when tested in humans. There also are humane reasons to minimize our dependence on animal models whenever possible in research. For all these reasons, I wanted to try to find a way to build new models using human samples to study PAH in the lab and find new ways to analyze samples that we do obtain from patients. I was very fortunate at this time to find Dr. Ying Zheng at the University of Washington as a research mentor. She's a bioengineering faculty here and a pioneer in developing engineered models of human blood vessels. The idea is that we can use a variety of micromanufacturing techniques to create patterned tubes in materials like collagen that have the geometry of human blood vessels which we can line with cells, grow in the lab, and create living replicas of human blood vessels. These engineered vessels can then be used to study human diseases or test pharmaceutical compounds. Our work has involved developing new ways to create more sophisticated blood vessel models. I'm now working to develop models specifically of the pulmonary or lung blood vessels that we can use to study PAH. I'm using models that we've already developed to study how human cells from patients with or without PAH behave under environments that mimic what we see in the body in pulmonary hypertension. One of the exciting things is that it is becoming cheaper and cheaper to do some of these complicated studies on human samples. So things like sequencing all of the RNA or all of the DNA or examining nearly all of the proteins within human cells or human blood or human tissue, that's now something that is accessible to most labs doing research in a way that it wasn't five or 10 years ago. So as the technology advances and becomes more readily available, I think there's more and more work that we can do in human samples. Similarly, the bioengineered models, or what some people might call “organ on a chip” studies, are continuing to advance, become more sophisticated. The hope is that eventually these will become more mainstream and available and things that you just order from a manufacturer and are ready to go and become more and more affordable. I think we're still in an era where there's a lot of bespoke models where each lab has their own bioengineered model and less of centralized models that everybody's using, although some are becoming more commercially available. But I think we still have some ways to go until we have truly plug and play models that approach the complexity that we see inside of the human body. It's hard to know what the future might hold. I think we're definitely going to see as these preclinical models using human tissue get better and better, we're going to see new discoveries happen because we're using human tissue instead of animal tissue. I think we're going to see the number of animal studies that we need to do come way down as we can do some of the initial studies using human tissue. Whether we can truly replace in-human studies, it's hard to know. I hope we get there someday. I think we're a ways from that yet just given the complexity of the body and how hard it is to fully match that in the laboratory setting. At the same time as doing this more basic science research, I've been fortunate to be involved in more clinically-focused research with another mentor and colleague, the director of our pulmonary neovascular disease program, Dr. Peter Leary. We've been doing things like analyzing circulating markers in the blood of patients with PAH and trying to understand how pulmonary hypertension differs across the different causes of PAH. For example, how do patients with idiopathic PAH differ from those who have PAH from lupus or liver disease or methamphetamine use? I'm hoping to combine these two avenues of research moving forward, incorporating human samples into new engineer models. Doing this kind of research as a physician requires quite a lot of balance, and my day-to-day activities vary quite a lot. Some days, I may be fully in the clinic or hospital. Other days, research demands most of my attention. And some days I may start my day in the hospital and end it in the laboratory. Having specialized in a severe illness like pulmonary hypertension, however, one of my priorities is that I remain available to my patients and colleagues whenever clinical issues might come up. This can be challenging from a day-to-day aspect as it can mean getting pulled away from research experiments or research meetings for clinical issues, often many times a day. This can sometimes be stressful, but actually, sometimes, especially if experiments aren't going well, it can actually be rewarding to be pulled away and be able to be helpful to a patient or another physician and recenter myself. I honestly enjoy the variety and the opportunity to do something different every day and throughout my day. Even though a physician scientist's time is divided like this, I really think that researching a disease gives a practicing physician a unique perspective and a unique understanding of a disease like PAH that can help them be a more thoughtful physician. I think the reverse is true as well, that our patients and our clinical care can inform the questions we ask while doing research, and help make sure that the research we do is focused on improving human health. It's not easy balancing these two worlds, especially when considering that physicians may be involved in numerous other activities including education, administration, conferences, et cetera. This is one reason that we're unfortunately seeing less and less physicians doing laboratory science. We are starting to become rare. I worry about this, as I think that physician scientists play a vital role in the research of diseases like PAH. With a disease that's this complex and multifaceted, a practicing physician who knows the disease clinically is going to understand it in a way that a researcher might not who doesn't see patients in clinic. The flip side of this is that the peer researcher may have cutting edge scientific skills and knowledge to offer beyond what somebody who splits their time to include clinical care might be able to maintain. But a nice facet of modern research is that it's more and more being done by teams of researchers instead of single researchers, and each member of the team can bring in specific skill sets. I really believe that continuing to have physician scientists as leaders and members of those teams is critically important. I think it really does make a huge difference to be able to put patient names and patient faces to a disease when you're conducting research. I think it makes the research real. It helps you know what questions to ask and why asking those questions is important. It really keeps the research experiments that you conduct focused on helping real people. So I think it helps in a multitude of ways to have that dual perspective. This is an exciting time for pulmonary hypertension research and I'm honored to be able to be involved. My name is Sam Rayner, and I'm aware that my patients are rare.

Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Follow us on social @phaware Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware Share your story: [email protected] #phawareMD @uwepidemiology

Listen and View more on the official phaware™ podcast site

#pulmonary hypertension #phaware #rare disease #lung disease #clinical trials #podcast #PH #asthma

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jonathankatwhatever · 2 years ago

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It’s 5:25AM on 8 Dec 2023, and I’m trying to read the cat’s mind, which is impossible because he doesn’t know it himself. I think he may actually just want to stare out the window. I sat down to give him space to make a decision, and it’s a bit of affection and staring out the window for rabbits. I know the last part because I chased away a few when I was outside with him at 4:35. There are a lot of rabbits now that the coyotes have killed the feral cats.

I just did the best physical stretches since I was a child: I got into a variety of really deep squats from the perspective of first completely folding over and then dropping the hips while bent all the over, and then getting into various positions to rise from. Like one was with the weight centered at the point in the foot where it hinges so I drove my body up timed to the lifting of the rib cage, emulating a ski jumper coming off the slope on the big hill, trying to get that snap and thus force into the movement, experienced as smooth and continuous rather than as bang it happened. A quickie. My mind and sexuality. A quickie can take many forms. What does that mean? A quickie can be for the effect, for the release of a tension which is enacting, which perhaps is being displaced into the act and thus action. A quickie can enact intimacy within a relationship, so there’s a grabbed moment which shares the attribute of being different because you can’t choose your relatives but you can choose whom you are intimate with and the degree to which that intimacy runs and to which it is kept a mutual secret.

Another form is the stolen moment. These are all recognized literary tropes. I can’t make up new ones because the universe we know is finite, is constructed, and thus has a history. That’s why this entire over-turning of history conception is truly the devil’s work. It’s a refusal to accept results. Like if Dewey were still contesting the loss to Truman. Like it’s a rematch between Ali and. Frazier. Don’t you love my dated references? You can attach newer ones. The first is obviously Trump, so the idea is to imagine that Truman and Dewey were immortal and each election is between them because they each refuse to accept defeat. You can see the Alternation there, meaning refusal to accept defeat continues a state of conflict, a perpetual war which breaks out from time to time, You can thus see the choice.

I’ve been waiting for a big leap in Storyline because the huge simplifications of the last few days carry implications which need to be expressed in Storyline. And this time it went: they talk and she talks independently about how she studied him, and I could see this now from the 2 sides, which is clearly (!) an expression of the 2Square conception described yesterday. That deserves another ! That is, the orthogonal 2Square expresses into and maps to the 1Square scale. One way is that the walls are 1Square, so the orthogonal value of 2Square flips open to the image of a gs. This just takes the inversion idea, stands it straight at you so you can see anything but the one End, then flips it open. All those states exist because we have these scales. Another approach is older than the Pythagoreans, that value of the squares of sides can be laid out alongside the line, as though the other 3 lines were there even though you only drew a triangle. The only way that can happen is if we have the orthogonal state and treat that as rotated, and of course rotated back because that communicates the identity. This kind of mechanics is necessary because these are all constructions.

Cross-identification. Isn’t that interesting. Already redefined the Jesus story so it becomes the expression of the female giving birth confronting the impossibility of that happening, so the death is the sacrifice of the mother, which is also then literalized into the Mary stories. So it tacks on to the trope of the mother dying at childbirth, with all the orphan stories and family and step-family stories, etc.

Another form of ‘reverse squat’ becomes the bottom of a deep squat where the weight is on the full foot but forward onto the balls of the feet, but not over to the toes. These are the anti-chains we described years ago. We proved their existence as part of the construction of Triangular over gs because that cross-identifies, and that cross-identification requires pathways which actually connect or which approach in ways taken to connect. That latter is the gap or delta effect of 0-1-0. It’s what we often think of as renormalization, and I think that may clarify what that is: measurements are of something and that something is an End, meaning a construction, a union which Attaches structures. Example is that hatreds of people, particularly of Jews, are flips of the Attachments. The process is like described yesterday: take the positive contributions, note that they don’t fix you, say they’re holding you back, are plotting against you, so you identify the hatred within you with the hate of them because they aren’t perfect, etc.

OK, so to not stop on that note, I looked in the mirror while the cat was out and noticed a few obvious ‘errors’ which I cut away, thinking about how what I liked before now isn’t as finished as I thought it was, but that it’s getting better because I looked at the guy there and he looked like the combination of characteristics I’ve always wanted to see.

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irontacotimemachine · 1 year ago

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I have theories which I'm sure come from fandom conversations so they're surely not original to me. But I assume there are good reasons for things, like the ingredients in Yogurtschmidt only resemble the ingredients in our/Urano's world so presumably the non stupid non alien past peoples developed 'throw away water cooking' because it had a benefit. Safety or taste? Our crops change over time due to our actions, perhaps once their staple crops needed this method and now they don't. Or perhaps the loss of the benefit of throwing away water is not noticeable within the short period of the story. These are all fannish things unless there is a canon explanation of course but I personally don't want to stop at, everyone was bad at cooking until a gremlin wanted to eat food from another world.

Myne likes to read the way I liked to read as a child. Constantly, quickly, and without discernment, but discarding large sections of the material as fast as it's consumed if it didn't feel relevant. She struggles with romance metaphors and flowery prose, she seems to like to gather more straightforward facts. I can really relate to her style of reading as I enjoyed the act itself and held onto some things very well and others not at all. With how fast she reads and her ability to learn to read the ancient language I think it's at least partly driven by what knowledge motivates her.

Did Ferdinand teach her or tell her to learn the ancient language? No one spent enough time teaching her very relevant modern euphemisms, she can't read them without putting effort into translating. But she can quickly translate this archaic language!

Saying I think it's just what she's motivated to learn and retain is a bit of a simplification if she has mental ability reasons why some things are easy and others are hard but again anything like that is not explicitly in the source text. I'll keep my headcanons about Myne herself in a fannish context and not worldbuilding theory/canon.

crazy how for a story about making books, linguistics have basically no presence in aob. like urano becomes instantly fluent in [unnamed language](of which there is only one and which is based exclusively on german) through myne's memories and only needs to learn the alphabet, it has no presence except for vocabulary, and then despite the "ancient language" being such a huge plot point it's never actually discussed in detail. is it just flowery language or is it literally as archaic forms of languages are to their modern equivalents where the two are mutually unintelligible? if it's the second, did she really learn it by comparing one single book across the two? rozemyne copies the lyrics of japanese songs and they still rhyme and fit the rhythm despite being in yurgenschmidt's language. she continues to use japanese words for things that don't exist in the language but outside of rinsham which is only altered for length, those words are never altered to better fit the language they're being translated into phonetically or given soundalike names. does lanzenave seriously not have a different language or even a different dialect?

#ascendance of a bookworm

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complaints-from-poland · 2 years ago

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Can we please talk about the portrayal of domestic abuse in children's media?

Because it's fucked up.

Trigger Warning / Content Notion: I'm talking about my experience and trauma as a child abuse survivor, nothing graphic or drastic, no details about the abuse, but it is a bit bleak and might be upsetting, especially for people who have experienced abuse themselves and/or are very sensitive to other people's pain. There's some cursing.

A great example of this is Harry Potter (of course the TERF princess Jowling Kowling Rowling isn't the only one guilty of it, it's all over the place - which makes it even worse, because we're bombarded by this bullshit from everywhere, with almost no alternative).

The main character is abused by the family he's living with, socially isolated, bullied at school, has no support system, and the abuse is the only thing he knows. And then he goes to magical school, and BAM, he's making friends, he's assertive, confident, brave, sets boundaries, goes on to save the fucking world (yeah the surface-level understanding of oppression and bigotry in HP is a topic for another time).

I'll admit, relating to Harry when I was a kid did help me survive. But at the same time, it gave me very unrealistic expectations of what the trauma will do to me. I thought something is wrong with me, that I'm weak, because the abuse didn't make me stronger, it fucking destroyed me.

As you probably already know, and as I know now, that's what abuse does. It doesn't make you stronger, it doesn't build you up, it doesn't do anything good, it destroys you, sometimes forever. To grow as a person you need love, safety, support, good role models, space to learn and explore you interests.

I made myself strong. I'm cool, smart, interesting, kind, brave, caring, resilient and a good friend not because of the abuse, but despite it. I owe nothing to my abusive parents; every good thing I have in my life is there thanks to the people that helped me escape from them, protected me from them, made me feel safe and at ease, showed me love, compassion and understanding, gave me the space to be my hurt self, with all the good and bad, appreciated me, assured me that what I was put through was fucked up and nobody, especially a child, should ever be treated like this.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't be a very interesting action movie character, with my sleeping for days, crying, not leaving the house or showering for a week, not being able to make any friends, jumping at every sudden noise, not eating, nightmares, being barely conscious because I can't sleep and all the other fun stuff PTSD does to you. But maybe your hero doesn't have to go through abuse. Maybe losing your parents as a baby is tragic enough. Fuck, the Dursleys could even still try to isolate him from anything magical and oppose to Harry going to Hogwarts, not because of hatred, but because they would want to protect him from his parents' fate.

This narration is not just minimizing the impact, it's gloryfying abuse, trying to paint it as something with positive consequences. It doesn't have any. There's no "good damage". I could've been safe, happy and healthy for my whole life. Nothing good came out of my suffering. Maybe if I knew it, I would've asked for help earlier.

Children deserve to know the truth. Sometimes you need to simplify it a bit, but stories about heroes becoming good people because of their trauma are not simplification, they are lies, and they are further hurting people who are already hurt and vulnerable.

#harry potter #jowling kowling rowling #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts letter #harry potter fandom #hp fandom #fuck jkr #jk rowling #child abuse #bullying #literary analysis #protect trans kids #protect children #what doesn't kill you #what doesn't kill you right away will slowly suck the life out of you #survivor #powered by spite #cs survivor #child abuse survivor

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fatelesschild · 4 years ago

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If Ten and Pompadour had kids in EoR does that mean it's really canon that time lord sperm works on other species? or something else– (also, thoughts on the sob story?)

Short answer

From my point of view - yes! I think we've got enough validation at this point to justify saying that gallifreyan sperm and eggs work (at the very least with humans).

We've got quite a lot of reasons to back it up now:

In the Doctor's Daughter, the Doctor referenced diploids and haploids, meaning gallifreyan chromosome carriers are recognisable to humans. And if there's any argument the Doctor was paraphrasing or being 'translated', remember all this tech to manipulate them was made by human/hath scientists.

Tentoo is half-gallifreyan, and now he and Rose have a child.

Also, Tentoo himself is a hybrid who has now reproduced, which is hugely significant in terms of hybrid biology, and in antiquated definition nearly makes him a new species.

Susan (gallifreyan) and David (human) had a child in Big Finish.

Leela (human) and Andred (Time Lord) had a son in Lungbarrow.

Now we've got EoR.

So there is even evidence from the TV show that gallifreyans can reproduce with humans and it's gotten very hard to ignore.

In summary, yep, they can reproduce.

Long answer (you knew it was coming)

Right.

That's all a bit cosy and simple, right?

Gallifreyan reproduction is a super mysterious thing. It's still a bit of personal choice as to how it works, and it's also a question of just how many trades you're willing to do with the Lore Devil.

In a 70 year old definition that for some reason many biologists aren't willing to shirk, organisms are 'of the same species if they can interbreed and produce healthy/fertile offspring'. By this definition gallifreyans and humans must be the same species. This is over simplification.

Interbreeding and producing hybrids has been going on forever in the real world, and the viability of the hybrid offspring all comes down to chromosomes. For examples, a mule is the sterile offspring of a male horse and a female donkey, and the reason a mule is sterile is because its parents each have a different number of chromosomes, so a mule has an odd number of chromosomes that cannot split evenly, and therefore a mule cannot reproduce.

So with this is mind, Gallifreyans have 69 chromosomes split into three sets of 23, because they have triple-helix DNA with a third strand added for gallifreyan superpowers. Humans have 46 chromosomes split into two sets of 23, because we have double-helix DNA.

Therefore, a gallifreyan/human hybrid child would need to inherit its gallifreyan parent's triple helix DNA structure in order to get everything it's due. That's one strand from the human parent, another strand from the gallifreyan parent, and the other strand the gallifreyan party piece. If that child is created with a double-helix, it will die as an embryo, or be born unhealthy, or it will be sterile, or it will not possess any special Time Lord powers such as regeneration. If it's triple helix, it'll be a bouncing healthy fertile baby with basic gallifreyan enhancements.

Then of course, the mitigating factor is science fiction being science fiction. Maybe gallifreyan sperm is just super potent, or gallifreyan eggs super receptive. If true, then where do you stop, and why? What's stopping a romantic evening over some wine and spag bol producing a brand new bouncing baby gallifreyan/Dalek hybrid? After all, the Tenth Doctor successfully spliced his DNA into healthy Dalek/human hybrids, which although isn't the same thing does indicate all three of them are compatible in some way. Can't be of the same genus ... surely? :D

In short, there is no legitimate biological reason gallifreyans and humans cannot mate, and there never has been. Other species? Not really evidenced as far as I know.

Wait ... what sob story? xD

#you totally didn't ask for this but here it is anyway #doctor who #gallifreyan biology #gallifreyan anatomy #ask answered #fcgallifreyana&p #dw meta

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inspiteallthedanger · 3 years ago

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I’m looking forward to your Eric Clapton wedding story. I’ve often thought about John’s comment that when he was strong, Paul was weak. He was very perceptive because it turned out to be the case even after his death - when John was a hero, Paul was a villain, and now it’s the other way round. If Paul had been weak in the 70s (eg, if Wings had been a disaster or if Linda had died then) would John have been strong?

Hello lovely. Thank you so much! I’ve been writing bits of it today. It’s a lot of fun; I reckon it’ll be a bit lighter than some of my other stuff. Hopefully done in under 30k. Just a silly little romp.

I'm not sure I’ve seen the comment that way around. Just John saying that if he felt weak, he assumed Paul must feel strong when they were arguing. He also said that when he was going through hell Paul was doing really well. But I suppose that doesn’t really impact your question one way or another.

I do think it’s interesting to consider what would have happened if Paul had just flopped massively with Wings and/or Linda had left him. What’s that mean for John? Let’s review the options.

I think there’s a strong argument that he’d do less. His competition with Paul was the big thing in spurring him into action in 1980 and probably for Walls and Bridges too. So, without that, does he just not bother with it all? Especially if he felt he’d “won” by having two successful albums and Paul didn’t get that. I mean, it’s a huge over simplification because John was an artist. He had the drive to create and for others to see it (him). So it’s pretty unlikely we never hear from him again. But I do think it’s possible it’d be less.

The other option is that they’d have collaborated before the end of the 70s. I say this because John’s hang up was how “unequal” they were because of Paul’s success. Of course Paul might have the same thing but he’s literally never suggested he’s ever felt inferior to John so I dunno. Can he feel that? Would it bother him? Perhaps John isn’t interested without a successful Paul, but I doubt that a lot.

Finally, it’s possible he does feel freer. He does whatever he wants and as the only Beatle that would have been doing well by the middle-end of the 70s, perhaps he rides that wave. I think, given the timings, he’d have still had his lost weekend. And, if we believe Paul, without him there to nudge John back to Yoko maybe he doesn’t go. In which case, yeah, we get at least another album. And a good one too, because I see him as being super creative during that time and growing as a producer too. I do think he’d have taken a break regardless - perhaps he and May would have had a baby. If so, he’d have likely been coaxed back to work sooner.

Again. If he’s the only Beatle doing it, I reckon the press would likely have treated him well. As they sort of did most of the time anyway. Especially if he was consistently “playing the game”

Anyway! What do you all think? This was fun to write and think about.

#beth rambles #sorry this took ages #signal is BAD

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i-am-ironic · 5 years ago

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The time that Dick dragged Marinette and Damian to the police because damian was nice to someone.

The title is a bit of an over simplification but it got the most votes and i think its funny. This probably isn't what you were expecting but damian wasn't expecting it ether so here we go!

Part 2

*********************

Damian was not having a good day. It had started out fine. He had gone to Wayne Enterprises to look over some paperwork and was planning on introducing his long time girlfriend to his family later that day. As he was headed back home he saw a flower shop, it had been a while since he had gotten marinette anything after work so he decided to stop and get her a bouquet.

He picked out a beautiful set of flowers, with lilys and some yellow flower he didn't know the name of.

But, as he was walking down the sidewalk toward his car a woman stopped him and said, "would you mind holding this for me? Just for a second?"

Now usually he would say no but marinette had been telling him he needed to be nicer to people so he said, "yes, just hurry."

He soon learned he should not have said that.

The woman handed him a bundle. Right before sprinting back to the flower shop and around the corner.

Damian's first though was 'well crap. This is a bundle of dr*gs isn't it?'

He carefully stated to unrap the bundle so he wouldn't disrupt what ever was in there. He didn't want any of it on him and he didn't want to touch any of it.

Well it wasn't dr*gs.

When he removed the blanket from the top of the bundle he found a face. The eyes were closed and the little pink mouth was open. Soft black hair was poking out from the edge of the blanket.

This was a baby.

He was just handed a baby on the sidewalk.

The baby was asleep.

He didn't know what to do. He couldn't process what just happened. So he did what any logical man would do. He walked to his car, and got in it. Then he realized he couldn't drive anywhere with the baby so he got out of the car and started walking back to his apartment.

He must have looked pretty strange walking down the street with flowers in one hand and a baby in the other. He was still wearing the suit from the office and he was a Wayne. As the youngest of the Wayne's and only blood son he was pretty recognizable by the public.

When he finally reached the apartment the first thing he said after walking in the door was, "Marinette I'm never going to be nice to anyone again."

"Why babe?" Marinette called from the kitchen where she was cooking something for dinner. "What's wrong? Oh you brought me flowers how kind!" She grabbed the flowers turning on her heal to go put them in some water.

"Mari, im sure what ever you are cooking will be great," he said, she knew that today was his day to cook but they would have to talk about her overworking herself later, "I need some help over here."

"Why? What happened........." she saw the baby but then put her head in her hand before saying, " Damian Wayne is that a baby?"

"It is and I don't know what to do, and we don't have milk or diapers, or clothes, or....... Marinette? Are you okay?"

"Just give me a minute, I wasn't expecting my boyfriend to come home with a baby today." She stood there for a second before shaking her head and looking back up at damian. "OK so we have a baby. I guess we should see if he or she needs to be changed before we go to the store."

"We don't have any diapers." Damien added helpfully.

Marinette took the baby and walked to the living room as she said, "okay so go to the kitchen and get a towel and while you are in there turn off the stove."

As damian looked for a towel he heard marinette yell from the other room, "its a girl!"

After the 'diaper' situation was taken care of the two of them just stared at each other and the baby between them. She had woken up. She had the biggest blue eyes ether of them had ever seen. She couldn't be more then a month or two old. But she wasn't crying. She just looked around.

"Okay, so," mari started, "how about you tell me how you acquired a baby girl, in the car to the store."

"Yeah, about that, um, you see I didn't have a car seat so I just kind of walked here from the flower shop."

"Of course you did. It's fine we can walk, ill hold the baby if you promise to carry all the stuff we buy."

"Deal." He could carry all the things they would need, plus it would give him a great excuse to show off.

"So.... are you going to tell me where you got this baby?"

"Well, pretty much i went to get you flowers and as I was leaving a lady asked me to hold something for her and I remembered how you told me to be nicer to people so I agreed and then she took off running and I saw the baby and brought her home."

"So a lady just handed you a baby and ran, dang. You are aware no one is going to believe you right?" Mari said still trying to process everything.

"Yes I'm aware. Anyway we can't keep calling her 'the baby' we have to give her a name."

"Any ideas?"

"Marry."

"Kate."

"Emma."

"We are not naming her emma. What about Adélie?"

"How about Martha?"

"After your grandmother? That would be a good middle name." She paused for a moment, "I know Gabrielle, Gabby for short."

"Gabrielle Martha Dupan-chang al Ghul Wayne, poor kid has such a long name." Damien laughed.

"We might not be able to keep her dames, then what?"

"First we are going to get clothes, diapers, clean blankets and some formula. Then we can go to the police and file a report for fear for the safety of a child. The fact that she was just handed to me on the street should be enough evidence, they should give us custody until everything goes through. In the mean time we can try to get approved to foster her and maybe even adopt."

"One step at a time."

By this point the two of them had reached the store. (Im imagining like a Walmart or Target type of store) They made a bee line for the baby section. Neither of them had any idea what to look for and they didn't want to call any more attention to themselves then they already had. After all this was Damian Wayne walking into a store with a girl no one knew, and a baby, who had a dish towel wrapped around her waist. Needless to say people were staring.

Marinette picked out three outfits, a pastel purple dress, a green onesie and a blue onesie. Then they got some bottles and pacifiers before heading over to the diaper section. Neither of them expected to see Dick Grayson-Wayne walk around the corner as they were trying to figure out how many diapers a baby really needed for a few days.

The shock on Dick's face was worth all the questions he was inevitably going to ask. First he looked at his brother, then marinette, then the baby products damian was holding, and finally the baby in marinette's arms. He closed his mouth that had been hanging open and nodded, walking over to the three of them.

"Im not going to ask about the dress," he said Indicating the baby clothes marinette had handed damian " or the girl, and frankly I'm too scared to ask about the baby, but are you still coming to dinner tonight?"

"We don't know yet." Obviously annoyed Damian looked between his brother and marinette, "we didn't expect to have a baby this morning, so the plan has changed."

"What do you mean you didn't expect to have a baby? If you're girlfriend is pregnant then you are going to have a baby! That's usually how that works. Honestly Damian!" Then he seemed to remember all the days of school Damian had missed because of Robin dutys, "oh no. Damian when you were in high school did you miss the class called-"

"Im going to stop you right there," Marinette finally cut in "um, you see this isn't, exactly,our baby."

"And to the police we go!" Dick said dragging them out of the store barely letting them pay for their stuff. When ever ether of them tried to speak he would shush them and say they should tell it to the judge.

Did he honestly think they had stolen a baby? Well, to be fair, that's pretty much what Bruce did to Jason soooo....... and he had just met marinette and didn't know what kind of person she was. But they were planning on going to the police after the store anyway so this actually worked out.

Once they arrived marinette went to the bathroom with Gabby to change her diaper and put on some of the clothes. Damian and Dick went to Commissioner Gordon so Damian could explain the situation.

Marinette walked in right as damian was finishing the story, " And Dick saw us in the picking out a bottle and he asked about the baby and when I told him she wasn't our he dragged us here."

"So what your telling me is that you want to keep the baby until and unless the parent or gardien comes forward?" Commissioner Gordon looked quite surprised, "Damien you are so young, you don't need a baby that isn't your responsibility, and what does your girlfriend think about all of this?"

"I agree with damian," the three men looked up at Marinette holding baby Gabrielle, they had been so caught up in their talk they hadn't noticed her walk in, "i know what foster care is like, one of my roommate was in the system and she barely mad it out alive, it's been years but she still has nightmares and calls me in the middle of the night. Ha," her laugh was humorless and cold, "we bonded over our trama. I wont let this sweet little girl go through that when I can stop it."

Dick had slight tears in his eyes he remembered life before Bruce adopted him. There weren't many good memories. "I think they should keep her. If anything goes wrong they have the whole family to help, and no one should have to wonder where they are going to sleep that night."

"If you all are that determined then i'll start the paperwork. But," he said stopping the smile that had started to form on the new parents faces, "you will both have to agree to give her up if we end up finding her legal gardien, before you officially adopt her. After you adopt her she is yours and no one can take her back."

Marinette and Damian hugged making sure not to squish Gabrielle. They went back to the store, while Dick told the rest of the family Damian and his girlfriend would be a little bit late, and they had a surprise for everyone.

Damian walked in front of marinette as they entered the house.

Alfred the butler was there to great them, "good evening Master Damian and you must be miss mar-" the shock on Alfred's face was evident as he stared at Damian's tiny girlfriend holding a baby's car seat. "Is-is that?"

"Alfred could you please tell my family to gather in the living room we will be up in my room until then so they won't see the 'surprise'." He put emphasis on the word 'surprise' gesturing at the car seat.

Alfred nodded and smiled mischievously. Damian lead marinette to his room were they left all the baby stuff. When you have a baby you have to travel with a ridiculous amount of stuff.

When Alfred came back to get them he started at the baby girl, "what is her name?" He asked softly so he wouldn't wake her.

"Gabrielle Martha dupan-chang al Ghul Wayne." Damian answered just as softly.

"How old is she?"

"We aren't sure, we when to the doctor earlier today after we finished at the store and he said she was about two months old."

Alfred looked quite confused but knew they would explain once they got to the living room with the rest of the family.

Damian walked in first to block marinette and the baby from his family's view. The room was packed, there was Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, Stephanie, and Barbara, not to mention Selina Kyle Alfred and Duke. When they had said the WHOLE family wanted to meet Damien's girlfriend they ment the whole family. When Damien sat down and they saw Marinette and Gabrielle, and i am not exaggerating when I say, all hell broke lose.

In the chaos it was hard to hear what specific people were saying but someone said, "i knew it wasn't like you to want us to meet your girlfriend now it all makes sense!" And "Well Bruce, at least he knows about his kid." There was also lots of swearing probably by Jason. Tim chugged an entire pot of coffee. Only Bruce was silent. He started at the them and waited for the room to quiet down.

"Damien, would you like to explain yourself?"

"Well this is all marinette's fault if you think about it."

Marinette looked offended as she responded "it is not my fault! You were the one who took a random baby home!"

"YOU KIDDNAPED A BABY!!!" Jason cut in.

"I mean its kinda the opposite of kidnapping if you think about it."

"I did not kidnap Gabrielle, she was handed to me on the street and I didn't know what to do so I took her home."

"Oh my God!" At this point everyone was confused. "What do you mean she was handed to you on the street?"

"Well i was walking out of the flower shop and a lady came up to me and asked if I would hold something for her and I said yes, so she gave me something and took off running. I looked down and there was a baby. I took her home and then marinette and I went to the store to get her some stuff. That was when we saw Dick. When he found out Gabrielle wasn't our baby he took us to the police i explained everything to them and we are going to keep her until her guardians can be found. If they don't find anyone we are going to keep her."

"What a story." Tim said. "Well that clears that up let's eat."

They continued talking late into the night about all the things that would have to change. But all things considered it went pretty well.

When the little family got home marinette went through the blankets Gabrielle had been wrapped in and found a letter.

"Dear Mr. Wayne,

This is my daughter, I don't have the money to take care of her, please give her a good life I don't know what will happen if she is put in the foster care system and I don't want to think about it. If you decide to keep her I will sign over all parental rights to you, I just ask that you give her the life that I couldn't, and that you let me see her on holidays. My name is Amanda Jones you can find me if you want to or just let me be. tell her I love her but I couldn't keep her. I love her so much."

She would have to give this to the police in the morning. But for now she had to get some sleep before Gabrielle woke up.

***************

This took forever to write but here it is i hope everyone likes it and thank you to everyone who voted on the name for this. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out but its not bad, and I don't think it's going to get any better.

(Part 2)

@wannajointhecrabcult

@corabeth11

@i-wanna-be-a-ninja

@animegirlweeb

@spyofthenightcourt

#batfam #damian wayne #damien #maridami #marinette cheng #marinette x damian #miraculous marinette #maribat #marinette x damian happy #daminette #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #bruce wayne

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fromthedeskofthecaptain · 4 years ago

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Ghosts Empire Online Spoiler Special final part...

Ben, Larry and Martha.

Martha notes Fanny’s character development. They are planning to show more of her soft side in series three.

Ben wants to hold back from the Captain’s death, partly because it’s not the most interesting thing about him. He’s very aware that the tone needs to be quite carefully balanced between comedy and genuinely heartfelt emotion and doesn’t want to get too “heavy” with the Captain’s storylines, while still injecting drama and focusing on why he is as he is. Larry says they knew very early on how Cap died, but some of the characters have not been worked out fully or have changed because they realized something else has more dramatic possibilities.

Episode 1 -

Larry makes the point that the ghosts are like toddlers “with their hands tied behind their backs” in that they can do very little for themselves and Alison now has a morning routine revolving around setting them up for their days. He felt they had to do a ghost hunter episode at some point because it was obvious and a reversal of series one’s “cynicism” about the existence of ghosts from the living characters.

Cap’s fitness obsession is in there in part because Ben is really into running but Larry points out that his own run through woods in episode five was harder on him than filming the Captain’s short jog was on Ben! Ben had a stunt coordinator to help him do a tiny jump onto a crash mat when he was leaping to save Lady Button from being seen. They all found this hilarious because it was such a minor stunt and they’d all done loads of falling over in Horrible Histories.

Episode 3 -

They talked about the level of explosion they needed to have to warrant the Captain’s concern about the buried secret (once we discovered it wasn’t wholly a metaphor) without it being something that would’ve killed everyone. Larry finds it funny that Ben was so into war films as a child that he immediately said “oh, you’d need a limpet mine!” (These are attached to ships to create holes below the waterline).

Captain’s viability as a character comes from his internal conflict over being gay. He thinks the Edwardian era until the 50s was probably harder for gay men than prior to that. He doesn’t elaborate on why, but seems to say there was something about that time period in particular.

(Ed: He doesn’t say why he thinks this. I speculated on a few ideas

1. Perhaps the late Victorian surge in the power of the national press and use of the camera reduced people’s sense of privacy and enabled people to be the subject of campaigns and notoriety, e.g Oscar Wilde.

2 Perhaps he meant the 1885 Labouchere Amendment to the criminal law that made “gross indecency” short of proven anal sex a crime as well. Prior to that the law on male homosexuality was from Tudor times and required evidence of anal penetration proven to a legal standard. Any other sexual or intimate act between men had been legal (albeit not necessarily socially accepted). The amendment meant anything that could be considered foreplay or “coming on” to someone was now illegal. No definition was provided in the Act, which made it easier, not harder, to prosecute.

3. The First World War and all that surrounded it led to the particular construction that can be summed up as “patriotism requires battle-readiness, which means skills and virtues of traditional masculinity which are predicated on heterosexuality.” This is a drastic simplification, of course.

Aaaannnd back to Ben...

He says he never expected the degree to which the Captain has been adopted as significant character that embodies how so many people feel. Larry says that he thinks this is because Cap is a character who is gay, not a gay character and the majority of his story is about his functioning as a personality. His personality affects how he processes being gay and how he processes many other things too, but it isn’t that being gay IS his personality. (Ed: This is so important! As a gay woman I really struggle with characters who are written as “scene” because often that does mean that their entire personality is their sexuality, which I find reductive and alienating. It’s also exhausting when people have this self-portrayal in real life.)

Larry says he thinks the Captain would never have “allowed himself the possibility” that he’s gay because what could he have done about it in his time with his personality and attitude to risk, etc. Ben says Cap’s sexuality has never been treated as a joke in itself.

Fanny has a sexual awakening over Mike that the host described as “going Benny Hill”. Martha can’t watch it because it’s too much. They had to edit it a bit because she went over the top.

Larry says Robin being a conspiracy theorist is because he has no frame of reference for any of the things being discussed so he just believes everything that auto plays on YouTube.

They have to check about swearing and sexual references with Compliance. Ben says it’s funny what they will have problems with and what will be fine. (He seems to say it seems to lack internal logic.) Larry thinks being a quite daft show with a lot of overt silliness helps them get away with e.g. Pat saying “bullshit.”

Martha and Larry love that Simon puts a word in when he is making a noise of exertion when he’s moving things. He’s done Shawaddywaddy, Nixon, and has moved on to footballers’ names. He ad libs them all. They realized that with the burglary episode Julian would have to do everything because otherwise the plot wouldn’t work but thought it’d be ok if they had him be overtly annoyed about it and showed him to be the work shy layabout he thinks poor people are.

Initially, in their first pitch, Julian was dressed in PVC with a ball gag etc and they realized (Ed: thank god!) that they just couldn’t put that on television, so suggested what had happened in a much more likely to be allowed on TV before midnight way.

The hitchhiker Alison meets gave them pause due to its bleakness. Larry says they kept it to remind the audience that ghosts are everywhere and it is a horror comedy. He likes to keep the tone shifting and keep things unexpected. They reference how eager Fanny was to help the burglars, in that she can’t bear to see people do a task badly.

Mary and Kitty work as a team because the actors get on together, plus Kitty is so naive and Mary is such a “wildcard” that “if they only have each other to keep themselves on track” it’ll all go wrong (Larry). They joke about Cap being excited to have a moment to fight off insurgents. Ben calls it “frontline stuff!” and notes that Cap is an appalling military leader “in the wrong job.” This is partly because of leaving those two to do an important job, but generally, too. (Show some respect, Willbond).

Kitty’s song for Music Club was going to be “Saturday Night” by Wigfield, but they couldn’t get clearance. Larry also mentions not being allowed “Come on Eileen.” It’s clearly affected them all very deeply!

The End! (Until the last episode of the podcast, which I think is just about the Christmas special.) x

#bbc ghosts #ghosts christmas special #the captain #ben willbond #martha howe douglas #fanny ghosts #larry rickard #robin ghosts #empire online spoiler special

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jonathankatwhatever · 2 years ago

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About adoration. I want to look up at you with unconditional eyes, with total acceptance of your caring for me, as the literalization of the inversion scheme. If I capitalized that, it would be perfect, because that is the fundamental attribute of IS, that it inverts over the 2T space, as represented by invertible Ends along the szK, generating into and out of the Bip of Between.

I need to explain that vision better. The image is of 4gs, which is important because at 4gs there is a translation into 4Square, which is what we’ve often called IC without realizing this part. So as I’m seeing this, we connect layers exactly as we laid this out in fCM, at the multiples of 1 to 4, there is a grid square orthogonal, meaning the basic premise of the ‘invisible axis’ which projects into the flat grid. This requires a mechanism by which projection can occur, meaning some form of lens. That lens requires transmitting information down to the projection. Imagine that happening from both sides in a pair, then imagine one shifting all the way around in either direction. Then imagine how this must occur globally and locally, so the projection mechanism, which remember also generates D3 and thus 3 dimensional reality within D-structure, must be highly portable, which is the conception of God accompanying the Israelites around Sinai as a portable God, one who comes with you rather than one who ties you to a place. Another reason I see the genesis of the Jewish idea as wanderers who learned by being settled in Egypt, with much of the story being an ancient separation or purity story. Weird thing is I was thinking about this earlier today, in the context of Ishmael and the way Jews act as canaries in coal mines, given they’re connected to Christianity and Islam, and to any group of dispossessed at some point in their history, but particularly African-Americans, who identify as Ishmael. The point of the canary is to tell when the air is bad, and the air is bad because the lesson is not learned: these are separation stories, not stories about blame, so when you take over Jewish stories for your purposes, you blame Jews because you are making your separation story.

Interesting because I identified Jesus with you a few days ago. I mean he talked to me with the most sincere honesty and care. And I remember the other voices better now too, and the discussions about what each had in them, good and bad, but very carefully without judgement because so much of what we talked about was the failure of Christianity to teach the ideals of Christianity, meaning they could not understand them, which of course was explained to me as part of my job, that being to develop an indisputable proof.

Is that done? I don’t mean written but done. I know I wrote a version out some years ago; I saw a copy of it in my old papers as I packed them. If we assume those ideas were largely correct, then we’ve added substantially to the understandings as we’ve generated the math to go with the ideas. I mean we’ve added the detail.

That’s another example of inversion: a Metaphoric Bundle can expand from a moment’s detail or from a far more general level. This maps in both cases as from an End to the 1-0Segment. BTW, you can see here why we need 1Segments: the simplification of messaging, of processing, when the connections from the 3rd End are 1Segments, meaning they run one way at a time.

Every single bit of the math backs up this specific form of entanglement. And from that we can build everything.

My head is starting to spin. I did some of the most demanding stretches, twists, movements as I was typing this. A lot of deep knee work, left side pulling out, right side contraction, and so on.

Oh, I’m letting my beard grow out. I realized today it meant I could cut my hair to be sleeker, so I did that and I like it.

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for-peace-war · 5 years ago

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do you think "race-swapping" a character in writing matters or is a good thing in representation? (for example, if harry potter who is "commonly portrayed as white" is portrayed instead by a black or arabic boy/man.)

I apologize in advance for how long it took me to get to these questions, and honestly, probably how long the answers will be to them. So if you don’t want to see some discourse on race-relations in fantasy, then smash that J button and keep on moving.

Anyway.

Question 1:

In regard to the first question, that of “race-swapping,” I would compare it to the art concept known as “paintovers.” Although the term is stigmatized in many circles because of how [lazy] it is, the truth is that there is an artistry and skill involved in being able to take something and remain true to its premise, while at the same time modifying its appearance. In that field, let’s just simplify it to: there are good and bad paintovers.

I feel that the race-swap has the same standard of qualification.

The essential question I always ask myself is: why. Why does this character need to be swapped, why did you pick this alternative, why do you feel this enhances the story in some way? Why is not an argumentative or even exclusionary inquiry: it’s asking the creator to return to their first impulse and exam what it is.

So we have “Arabic or Black Harry Potter.” There are a lot of questions that come up there, but I’ll divide them down into this:

Does Arabic/Black Harry Potter represent something White Harry Potter doesn’t?

Can this character be conveyed without an over simplification of some cultural aspect to “mark” them.

Who is this for?

In the case of the first question, I think that a Black/Arabic Harry Potter already has a lot of merit. The issue is, we equate Englishness with Whiteness and to have a titular character in a series, a “nerd,” no less have the qualifications of something other than “just your average white Briton!” then I think you already have something there.

Of course, people will consider this tokenism at its outset, but I’d disagree. While taking a Literary Criticism class, the discussion of Harry Potter actually came up. In the conversation, one of the students said: “Well, I wouldn’t mind fi Ron or Hermoine were black, to be honest.” Which is, on its face, a fine statement—I too am glad that you wouldn’t mind a black character existing — but the beauty of it of course, came from what was being excluded: Harry Potter, by contrast, shouldn’t be black.

This is why I would say that something as miniscule as swapping a color palette on a character is more than tokenism: by the simple act of existing as a marginalized person, the main character has already made a statement that people will take issue with. How often do we see “politics in gaming!” when a main character isn’t a heterosexual white male?

So, if Harry Potter was a non-white character? I’d say it’d be worth examining. But that delves into the second part. Can this be shown without it becoming a series of stereotypes?

I would say yes. Assuming that a person didn’t want to keep the stock nature of Harry Potter’s backstory consistent, which honestly I have no opinion on, there’s nothing wrong with drawing into consideration the places that people of various races/ethnicities are most prevalent. So, if for instance, Arabic Harry Potter lives in an area that differs from White Harry Potter that isn’t bad, but it is worth expressing what this means in comparison to the former: how does this change influence the character’s core self and beliefs? Does it not? At all?

England has always had a fetishitic view of “Englishness,” and as media can [reproduce] life into the format the creator wants, it’s worth really examining what could be said by Harry Potter, the main character of an English series, not being as “English” as the aforementioned view might have indicated. In a post-Brexit world, after all, we have seen that the notion of Englishness has become something of increasing fantasy.

So put Harry Potter the non-white in conflict with something “traditional” in its English nature, and this doesn’t even mean a racially themed motiff, it could be class or even generationally based. Just say something with the change that isn’t already being said.

I’d like to take that point to also say, people probably should break their desire to have non-white represent non-traditional in all other ways. It’s a bit on the nose when people’s avatar for social disorder have to be coded as being non-white. I’ll touch more on this in the second question.

The last part ties back into the first: who is this depiction actually for? Is the purpose of this to show people that it can be done, or children of this background that they are being thought of? Both have good and bad sides to them, with the former’s benefits being that it brings to an end “conventional wisdom” like “Black Superhero Movies Never Sell!” (See: Black Panther), whereas the downside is you risk rushing into doing something with ltitle thought beyond that change.

As to the latter issue, the downside can only be that you may have to essentialize what the acceptable rate for this character is. For black people, I’ll say out the gate that shadeism will always be where you see how an author views their subject matter. If the attractive woman has to be of a lighter hue, then really it comes down to telling black girls and women that their skin needs to be lighter. So in that regard, likely consider the choices you make when you make them.

In closing, my view on race-swapping is have a reason to do it. If you don’t, then probably leave it alone.

Question B:

This is a two part question but I think they can be synthesized down into one answer.

This is going to go back to my “non-white doesn’t mean non-traditional” thing and it’s a point I’ve had before, so whatever. We’ll take “black elves” and look at them as a specimen of fetishitic racism.

Here’s the thing. When we think of elves, generally yes, we do think of white people. It’s just how it’s coded. But the whiteness isn’t even necessary: be it duskwright, kaldorei, or drow: you know what they are when you see them. So an elf doesn’t “need” to be white or maintain whiteness. So why is it whenever the whiteness is removed, the entire semblance of what an elf is switches as well?

In the case of the former: unnatural hues make the “non-whiteness” a non-factor. Duskwrights, Kaldorei, and Drow by standards don’t have “human” tones and so, their non-whiteness is more an aspect of just being fantasy characters. But when people begin working in “shades of brown,” the themes immediately change: fatter, more aggressive, scarred, etc.

Here’s the thing. If your statement is “body positivity is good and I want my black elf to be fat,” then okay. That’s cool. I guess. My issue is that this goes more in line with the notion that black people occupy more space than we should, and as a result, will do no less externally. I’ll just also say right now that fat fetish characters that are about “how much she (almost always a female) eats” or “how many rolls she has,” is not an argument in favor of body positivity. It’s both specifying the deviation from the “norm” and also deriding it through eroticism obsession.

But, I’m sorry. The entire issue here is that dark characters exist to be, well, disgustingly perverse to social norms. I understand that people want to show “badass” characters, but the more “badass” and scarred, the more the skin begins to darken. This is, I believe, a subconscious aspect of what we view in characters: that there is something inherently dangerous, virile, and wild when it comes to darker complexions.

So how does this tie back into elves? Well, show me some elegant black elves.

Elegance and refinement, typically, describe an elf. Outside of any “racial” view, so long as the character has this [traditionalist] allure of an essential beauty and grace and has long ears, then yeah. You have an elf. Simple as. No doubt about it. So why do black elves need to be fat, having missing ears, be angry, etc? Because what the writer subconsciously feels is that these traits are more authentic to the black experience, and that is terrible and dangerous.

When writing a character outside of yourself (which I strongly sugegst people do), I think that you need to be aware of your design choices (research and respect).

So we can use World of Warcraft’s denizens as an example. WoW’s always had a “world is white” standard to it. That’s problematic, I guess, but whatever. Racial representation wasn’t big in the 90′s and still isn’t really that important to most people. Yet even with that being said, players began trying to explain where their characters came from that weren’t white. “Blacks come from Stranglethorn!” “Browns come from Tanaris!” on and on, and yeah, there are problems there, but the more pressing matter is that WoW just dropped the ball on different races of people.

Here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with people coming from different places. You don’t need to go all Conan on it and say they came from Iraqistan and Zembabwe, but it’s worth noting that we all come from somewhere and end up where we do. I’d rather authors put more effort into examining that than they do in making up monsters and animals to represent these same groups of people in exoticisized and disturbing portrayals.

There’s also the option that race just doesn’t matter in your world. It’s fantasy, why not? We became so obessed with GRRM reminding us that “fantasy” means “imagine a world where white men have all the power and it’s okay!” and forgot that it can also mean “imagine a world where this problem just doesn’t exist.” So if you do that, then it’s fine. Code everyone together. But make their representation reflect that. If, say, in WOW race just didn’t matter then the breakdown of heroes would reflect that. It doesn’t obviously.

So if you want to theme something like Zulu, then I guess I’d say do your research on it and know it beyond surface level considerations. If you do that, then really do whatever.

And I’ll say, I don’t find people racist for not including non-whites in their stories, to an extent. But when it’s a glaring omission based purely on the desire to “keep Albion pure,” then it’s like, alright. You’re being a racist and that’s your call.

That’s all. A lot of words. Hope whoever sent this even sees it, lmao.

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egoat · 4 years ago

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disco elysium thoughts

he he

i think, overall, it’s great of course; not only is disco the rare example of really smart, leftist art, as well as the even rarer example of dense, literary-bent video game, but it has the greatest trait of media; an intensely detailed, practically overwrought with detail fictional universe that seems to sprawl outwards in every direction, the kind of thing you can get lost in. i’m very interested in this quality of worldbuilding - it’s the thing media now practically revolves around, the capacity of provoking imagination, fandom, interpretation, speculation. a great work can create a world that generates this sort of fascination from as little as two hours of movie runtime, like in the case of the people that became obsessed with having blue alien-sonas after watching avatar. disco has less of a hill to climb because a lot of its lore is pretty clearly spelled out in the over-a-million lines of dialogue it has to offer.

i think there’s sort of a problem here with the presentation, though. the world is, yes, gorgeous and mind-boggling and extremely interesting to speculate about, but i only came to that conclusion probably over halfway through the game. the setup of this suffers from a few things - primarily, the game lacks real focus. the major motif is of course the failed revolution in revachol and the aftermath of that. the game has some real material to cover in the union debacle, and it sort of gives the impression that the game might involve actually getting involved in and resolving the conflict between the union and wild pines, but then that turns out to be a feint and the investigation gets buried down different paths. then the game introduces you to the characters that only want to talk about race, which are amusing enough, but unfortunately unload so many lore terms on you that even the simple joke commentary is rendered indecipherable. the real stumbling block for me was the trope of “fantasy countries that are basically analogous to real countries” - revachol being france, mesque being mexico, etc - which is the sort of thing that always turns out to be so boring it instantly makes you tune out. except things are immediately more complicated than that - “mesque”, for instance, is mentioned as losing international favor as it turned sharply to the far-right, the events of the revolution which would seem to be analagous to the french revolution are actually far more analogous to the russian one and then, what is the state of this world, anyway? why are there certain features of modernity and not others? what’s with “radiocomputers”? once you get to tunneling down these strands, learning about the religion and ancient history and occult elements of the world, namely the “pale”, things come into far better focus and seem way more interesting.

the plot itself doesn’t have quite as much magic as the setting, unfortunately. perhaps it was just how my particular story worked out, but i didn’t end up getting nearly as much resolution out of the main mystery part of the game as i had hoped for, with two main characters disappearing from the map inconveniently before i had the chance to fill out the gaps in the noir timeline. ultimately, the way the actual mystery shakes out ends up being basically two deus ex machinas, which i feel is sort of flawed. a great mystery should give you enough clues to unravel it - and there are a lot of subtleties and second-glance sort of things in the building action of the story, just enough suspicion scattered carefully on the right characters, that it seems committed to this model, but at the very end, the game produces a character completely unconnected to the rest as if to hurriedly wrap things up (and then another character, right behind them, that you also never would have guessed, but that one’s quite a bit more funny, at least). ultimately, the noir aspect of the game doesn’t matter too much - it’s the overall tone, the flavor, the prose, the dialogue, and the side content that more than make up for it, but it ends up being a bit disappointing all the same.

i think this gameplay system, such as it is, is interesting, but leaves something to be desired. you’re running all these checks, and there’s a basic sort of rpg input-feedback logic to it, but i think the reality of play is that there’s no benefit to “builds” and no real method to the madness of these skill checks. by the end of the game, i had pretty much discovered that i wanted every of the 20 skills because there was no rhyme or reason as to which one you’d be tested on, and i would have to obsessively shuffle my clothes and available skill points and saves to pass the check to progress. it’s not too cumbersome, but given that it’s practically all there is to the gameplay, it could have used a bit of paring down and simplification, and probably could have taken randomization out of the equation completely.

the other ways the game “gamifies” the dialog tree are quite interesting in places. because you have to be actually concerned about the consequences of dialogue, it isn’t as simple as clearing out every option - there are real choices, which will have consequences on sometimes your health or morale meters or a check later on in the tree, which makes you be a lot more conscientious in engaging with how you talk to people. unfortunately, this made me very paranoid and avoid picking a lot of the joke options in the game, which are ever-present and sometimes very funny. probably the best example of this is the conversations with klaasje, which feature your skill checks contradicting each other, and you having to choose between them, rather than them giving you the right answer, or the set piece of the mercenaries, which is a bit obtuse, but fascinating in how many ways it can play out.

genuinely, though, it’s such a well-written piece of work, and i’d love for more from its creators. i saw in its wikipedia page tho that they had greenlit a tv show based on disco elysium, which, lol

#disco elysium

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prorevenge · 6 years ago

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Bully me for four years, I'll make sure you go nowhere in life.

I apologize for the unusually long back story TL; DR at the bottom.

So to understand all of what I'm going to write its important to understand that I was bullied heavily in school. I have talked now and again about it here in the past and understanding this is important to understand why this person effected me so much. After leaving school things started to get better, it took me a while to recover with the help of some great friends. At one point I needed to start looking for work. At this point, it was 2005 - 06. Things weren't going so well in the job market around my area and being broke I couldn't just leave for better pastures so I ended up joining the army instead. It didn't last (that's another story), what's important happened after. While I was away my friend's group picked up a couple more nerds for the crew. Among these was useless bully (or UB for short). Thing is that this guy was a gamer like everyone else for the exception of one large quark. He was very egotistical and really liked talking shit. It didn't take long for him to single me out, it really does seem like bullies can sniff out what they call a good target. He really likes to talk shit, often crossing the line between common bullcrappery and real insults. It was obvious he didn't seem to like me but for some reason liked having me around. Some of my other friends even noticed and tried getting him to stop but he took it like a badge of honor, even told me so himself once. I'm not going to get any deeper about what he did as its not the point of this story.

So now you ask why did I stick around and why did my friends put up with such a douchebag. Well, for one thing, I knew my friends far longer then he was around and they were fine. They themselves weren't good at conflict and UB was very smart. He knew exactly what to say to skirt around things if needed. So part of the time they would enable him and the rest he knew how to manipulate them so they would give a pass. It was an abuse cycle, he would act like an asshat one moment and the next to be all nice, in the end, they got too used to this and became a little blind to what he was doing.

But let's continue. I'll start with one particular event that started it all. As anyone who knows me knows, I'm a computer geek. I like to work on them, build them and so on, and it's important to know that so does UB. Like a typical bully, he labeled me as incompetent in all things and treated me accordingly. So to him, I am not even a novice, even though by the time I met him I already started building. Enter that key moment. One night after a night of LOL (League of Legends) I decided to ask the guys something. I asked him and the rest what the L cache was for a CPU. Something I didn't know yet at the time. He, of course, blew me off. Later that night I googled it and while doing so I had an epiphany. Just because UB refused to be helpful shouldn't mean I can't be. So I started offering help at work, beginning with word of mouth then over time I went freelance and time marched on. I eventually moved away met my now wife and broke ties with UB. I kept up with some of my friends though, if they wanted to be friends with him I didn't care as long as they respected the fact that we won't be going near each other.

Time still passed, I got better as a freelancer and eventually earned my way into a legit IT job in my home town. Things are great, one of my dream jobs. Eventually, the shit hit the fan when not long ago my co-worker got fired for doing something he shouldn't have done. (Don't ask, I'm not going to post any info about it.) This of course left a spot open. In the search for a replacement, I offered the spot to one of my friends who declined, but through him, as I found later, UB found out. Low and behold a couple of applicants later he showed up for an interview. My boss sets these up and would take my exco-worker to the interviews, but now I fill that role. So when UB showed up I was surprised, I kept my cool though and so did he. It was obvious he recognized me but shown no fear. Remember this guy is really egotistical and probably thinks things are in the bag already. The interview was normal, I'll skip to the nitty-gritty here so I'll skip to the later part of the interview. Please note that any extra info trickled to me over the years was from the friends that still hang out with him.

B =Boss UB= Useless bully Me=Me and only me.

B: Do you have any experience in an independent team environment?

UB: I'm a manager at Wall-Mart and I know the ins and outs of teamwork. I can handle myself. (Note he managed the electronics and wasn't very respected)

Me: Do you have any experience with a ticket system or ordering system.

UB: No, but I think I can handle it.

Boss: On your resume, you turned in says you went to college for a degree in computer repair but you forgot to put in when. When did you get your degree?

UB: I forgot to finish that I actually finished a year ago.

I knew this was bs, he actually graduated a year before I met him so it's been over a decade by this point. At this point, I started to lay down some pressure and sow the roots of this mans demise.

Me: In your resume, it only shows you working at two different places and there is a time gap in between both of several years, can you explain that?

UB: Oh that was a typo I worked at xx place for a while, I ended up quitting and a month later I started as a manager at Wall-Mart.

Note that made that whole thing suspicious because I knew for a long time he job hopped a lot, even while we hung out he lost three jobs. He did actually get hired straight into his role at Wall-Mart but he didn't mention the job where earned his way up to that position and got fired for being an asshole to his co-workers.

Me: If a computer went down on the shop floor, how would you handle the situation?

UB: I would go down and fix it duh.

Me: What if it was completely unserviceable.

UB: No, there is nothing I can't fix.

His ego was showing through, just as I wanted. Time to start cutting this interview down to size.

Me: So if the memory were to say go bad, your telling me you could fix that?

UB: Well I'm sure I could handle it.

My boss looked at me a bit wondering about why I kept going with it but he let me continue.

UB: Don't you have replacements for memory and things?

Me: Some times.

UB: Well that's bull.

I was surprised he said that but I knew he was starting to slip. He gets mouthy when he feels his ego is being stroked even if it's just him doing the stroking.

Me: So out of your experience, would you say you are a hardware specialist or a program specialist.

UB: I can do both but I can lean towards hardware. I can fix anything you toss my way.

Me: So lets test that a bit. Boss do you have any hardware questions you want answering?

Boss: Sure, how long does a coax cable have to be before any signal degradation starts?

UB: uhhu.

He struggled, I could tell he slipped, that question is my bosses go to question because most people don't know it and he really just wants to see how they respond.

UB: I don't remember at the moment, I did some work hooking up cable for people in the past when the cable company needed some help so I'll remember it sooner or later.

MORE BS.

My boss was seeing through it to, he knows this business like the back of his hand so he knows what's up.

Boss: "Me" do you have any questions?

The sign my boss was done with the interview.Me: Sure just one last question.

I turn to UB and I grin. I look him dead in the eye and ask.

Me: So what's the purpose of the L cache of a standard CPU?

He went white, he knew the jig was up. I don't think he fully knew what I meant but he knew enough to know when to give up.

UB: I don't know that one, it was never brought up in class.

I accepted his last statement, and we ended the interview. My boss told him he would be contacted within 24 to 48 hours with any results. He left and my boss looked at me a little annoyed. He asked me what was going on and I explained it all. That I knew UB, what kind of person he was and about the lies on his resume and in the interview. I told him I just wanted to give him a chance to either mess it up or prove he could handle it. My boss is pretty understanding so he let it go. Needless to say, UB was not chosen to fill the vacant spot.

Two days later UB showed up at my door unexpected. It was Saturday and I figured he found my place through one of the others. My wife answered the door not knowing who he was. Dude fricken walked in like he owned the place. I stopped him at the front mudroom, there was no way I was going to let him in any further. Note that there was more yelling than this but I cut it down for simplification.

UB: So what the hell happened?

Me: What not even a hello how are you?

UB: I never got a callback so I called to ask and they said I didn't get the job.

Dude had a bad tone in his voice, I knew he was here just to rage. A person that egocentric always blames others and I was target numero uno.

Me: What the hell are you here for!?

UB: What the hell did you tell him about me?

Me: Nothing that wasn't true, now get the fuck out!

UB: Bullshit, I know you can't really handle that kind of work, what did you do, suck some one-off? You just didn't want around because you know I would upstage you!

Me: What the hell would you know, you wouldn't even let me talk about computers when we hung out, you just labeled me and treated me like shit. Dude, I told my boss exactly what happened, how it happened, I didn't have to lie or exaggerate. You choose to act terribly, you choose to bully someone, you choose to create a bad representation of your self, as far I see it, its just karma. If you really cared instead of barging into my house you would be trying to fix where you fucked up.

UB: I don't need to do anything, go back and fix it!

Me: Screw you get the hell out before I call the cops.

UB: I'm not afraid of them.

Me: Fine!

I yelled to my wife to call the cops, after this UB new I wasn't screwing around and left in a huff.

The aftermath so far from this is him calling everyone he could to tell them how bad of a person I am like some 14-year-old kid bitching to his classmates at school. Figures because of how immature he really is, or at least, in my opinion anyway. So far no one has taken him seriously enough and some of my friends said he is still fuming but pretty demoralized. As for the position, it has yet to filled.

TL;DR Friends introduce a bully to the group, he shits on me for four years so years later I screw him out of his dream job and a better life.

(source) story by (/u/Atlusfox)

#prorevenge #by /u/Atlusfox #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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yarnzipangirl · 5 years ago

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Stargirl E1 - First Impression

So I, of course, am a DC Universe subscriber so I got to watch Stargirl today instead of waiting until tomorrow. TLDR - I’m SUPER pleased with it so far, because while it’s not mindblowing television like something akin to the 2019 Watchmen series, it’s good and solid and endearing and it loves it’s source material.

(very minor spoilers below)

First of all, I want to give props to the opening section where we watch the ‘demise’ of the Justice Society. This, unlike certain other live action dramatizations, give this ‘destruction’ the respect it deserves. This is a major event and so many members of the team get to either cameo or have their contributions seen and acknowledged. Alan Scott may not be seen, but you watch an explosion of green fire and you know where it came from. Wesley Dodds isn’t mentioned by name, but he’s among the fallen you see. Jay isn’t seen, but there’s a charred helmet. Lots of these little call backs and references, a reminder that these characters exist and fought, little treats for people who know the canon.

Wildcat, one of the few we see outright, looks SO right I was just squealing in my seat. I’m sincerely looking forward to watching Ted get his due (...we’re not talking about what Arrow did with him) and a quick view of Dr. MidNite also makes me excited for how Beth is going to take over there. Also Hourman! Already being more effective than he was the last time he showed up in a CW show... (Okay, okay, putting down the bitter...)

Joel McHale was definitely the ‘...whaaaat?” casting for me when it came to Sylvester Pemberton but I think he pulled it off pretty nicely and gave his own little signature flare to it as well. The scene between him and Stripesy did make me laugh, which was no doubt helped by having seen the full run of Community recently. I get the feeling they’re going to be blending a little bit of Jack into his characterization, but they still shifted him into ‘Starman’ well while keeping his Star-Spangled Kid roots.

The Cosmic Staff is definitely a slightly different thing than the comics have it, but I found the changes charming and the simplification of it’s origins entirely reasonable; for all that I love the comics, I wouldn’t say I’m a comics purist so much as I ask that they at least care about what they’re shifting and smushing as opposed to using something from a wiki article they read once to fill a plot hole in a narrative they already planned. This definitely felt like they were changing things for an interesting narrative for the Stars, a woefully underloved superhero group since like... the 90s. If we get more Stars of all stripes (badum ching) in comics or elsewhere, I’ll be a happy girl.

Courtney was... honestly really good. Some of her early character points are the kind of thing I find a hard sell for appeal but the actress sold it and charmed me in spite of that. She feels very teenager, as do the rest of the kids that are going to take up the JSA mantles; unlike some shows about teenagers, they don’t feel like a bunch of 20 somethings in designer clothing and bad haircuts. I’m curious to see what they’re doing with Yolanda for plot and I thought Beth, what we saw of her, was adorable. Rick... oh shoplifting Rick... I’m curious what they’re going to do with you.

The villains definitely seem interesting and the frame for the plot is very cool. It’s an interesting set up in Blue Valley, and I don’t want to talk about it too much other than to say that there’s quite a few pieces that aren’t quite... right and they’re clearly not quite right for a reason as you keep watching. The plot stuff is actually intriguing!

Luke Wilson as Stripesy is... WAY more appealing and genuine and sweet than I was expecting and I care more about him than I thought I would. Things I never thought I’d say: I feel like I care a lot about him and his family and that’s good acting and good writing!

The graphics are pretty darn nice, definitely on the higher end and just above the usual CW stuff, and both the fight scenes and the gymnastic bits are really neat and just enjoyable to watch. The staff looks good and so does Courtney. As do some of the powers and things we’ve seen. I’m excited to see more.

All in all, it was an absolute treat. While it’s clear that this story can only cover so much of the pieces of what I love about the JSA and the Stars, it feels like they’re giving enough nods to the fans of both to say ‘look, we know, maybe we’ll get to it if we have time’ because they’re focusing to make the plot feel right as opposed to ‘we don’t care, we took what we wanted from these stories, fuck you if you care about it’. It feels like they want to tell more stories here, want to give us more, care about those of us who love these characters already and give us little extra things and not just to throw us scraps. It was a good feeling and I feel like already, the JSA are in good hands.

...now all they have to do is go find Sand in Wesley’s basement and I’ll call it my favorite TV show ever. *cough*

All in all, great stuff, can’t wait for more, totally pleased, high high hopes. 9/10

#stargirl #jsa #justice society of america #dctv

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