#or saying something flat out incorrect because that was what information they had access to at the time

[vicsuragi]

.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for possibly invalidating a self-diagnosed autistic person

I (20sNB) met D (20sM) in an online server for an anime fandom we're both in. I'm a psychology student who was professionally diagnosed with autism in early childhood. D and I developed a friendship based on having similar fandom opinions. I don't remember how me being autistic came up in conversation but when I mentioned it, he described himself as "autistic as f#ck". Sometimes he would get into arguments with other people in the server and bring up his autism if he was called out on how he spoke to people. On his twitter he said his autism was self-diagnosed and he has no interest in getting a professional diagnosis but he could if he wanted to.

I have complicated feelings on self-diagnosis; I think there's pressure in the autistic community to accept every single self-diagnosed person as valid. I personally would never definitively say I had something that I hadn't been professionally diagnosed with. That being said, I understand that there are factors that would prevent someone from getting a diagnosis so some people *have* to only be self-diagnosed. I don't have a problem with it as long as people aren't spreading misinformation or being actively harmful, which is what I (and others) thought D was doing. My issue wasn't him being self-diagnosis, it was that he was using his self-diagnosed autism to justify incorrect (and harmful) claims.

I noticed a few times that he would make comments like "autism isn't a disability" and "some autistics have high support needs because of intellectual disability", which is just flat out wrong. D also claimed that if he was to get a diagnosis, his would be level 3 autism (which would be for someone with high support needs with severe social and communication deficits, generally nonverbal) but he also is a college student who's been in a relationship for over a year and he works part-time in retail. For context, my diagnosis happened when there was different terminology but my psychologist considers me to be somewhere between level 1 or 2 and I am also studying and working part time.

Another person in the server (let's call them P, also 20sM) brought up a different disorder that they'd been diagnosed with (not autism although P is autistic as well) and D immediately said "I probably have that too but I can't be bothered to do anything about it".

P and a few other people in the server expressed some frustration in a separate group chat about D's tendency to (a) say things about autism that just aren't true and (b) say "omg me too" every time one of us brings up things we have. Once D said autism isn't a disability the third or fourth time we'd had enough and I responded "D, that's not right". D took offense to that and claimed as a fellow autistic person I should agree with him. I said "D, I'm autistic and it's a disability, I call myself disabled because my autism is literally disabling". D said he felt like disabled is a bad word and he doesn't like using it about himself. I said "D, no one's forcing you to use it about yourself if you don't want to, but saying autism isn't a disability is just wrong". P pointed out that every time someone in the server talks about being neurodivergent D is like "omg me too" and P also said that D doesn't get to claim to be autistic while also spreading misinformation, especially when the misinformation being spread is ableist. D got mad at P for calling him ableist; he insisted he's autistic and self-diagnosis is valid. I said "I get that, but when the information you're spreading is flat-out wrong, it kind of makes me question your researching skills".

D called P and I both ableist, told us we were so privileged to be diagnosed (which neither of us disputed but also D *could* have been diagnosed but chooses not to be even though he has the resources to access a professional diagnosis) and we're "f#cking assholes" for invalidating self-diagnosed autistics. D's partner (20sF) also got involved and claimed we were bullying D and we both have "pick-me" attitudes. P and I both muted the server and disengaged for a while.

Later on, D messaged P and I both. D claimed his reaction to what was said was because of his autism. P had had enough and said "buddy, you don't get to say that" and D got mad and blocked P. I told D I was going no-contact and D could block me if he wanted. D called me an asshole and I blocked him.

It's probably worth noting that my autism means that I have difficulty interpreting people's messages in text form and tend to take what people say at face value. Sometimes D getting overly confrontational triggered my anxiety and caused me to feel very uneasy around him since it was in text form and there was no vocal tone to decipher (if that makes sense). The thing is, I don't think D is necessarily not autistic, I just think D has some internalized ableism and doesn't really understand the nuances of the autism spectrum enough to make a sound judgement and he should have maybe not made claims about an identity he knows very little about, but maybe P and I might have been a little harsh because we'd been stewing on our feelings for so long.

What are these acronyms?

[spxdyr]

https://www.tumblr.com/spxdyr/760026877200039936/ryan-has-literally-called-eddie-heterosexual-how

It’s so funny when they try and use these interviews as gotchas. Because he said heterosexual in the context of right now. And he also said regarding buddie it’s baby steps. But they like to leave that part out of their gotcha. And then of course as you pointed out in your reply, by the end of the season Ryan very much and very happily switched to gender neutral terms and hard core comparing Buck and Shannon. But again that’s something they don’t like to admit because it doesn’t fit into their gotcha.

As for the Edy thing. The only person who has ever said that Ryan asked for her back, was Max Gao. A journalist who is well known for hating Ryan because he makes no secret of it, even while actively interviewing him, he will make little snide comments, and he is constantly saying things to create drama because it gets him more clicks on his interviews. It’s why the majority of fandom doesn’t understand why he still even gets access to the actors across all shows not just 911.

But to take it a step further, after that whole thing with Max saying that and Lou also trying to place the blame on Ryan for why Tommy And Eddie didn’t happen, like it was supposed to be from the start (sorry for you BT fans who have it in your head it was always Buck and Tommy) Tim himself did an interview and set both of those incorrect statements to rest (well for the fans who actually are based in reality anyway) and flat out said Edy came back simply because Annelise could not due to the play she was in. Plain and simple. It was even a pretty big oh wow throughout the fandom because it was honestly embarrassing how very crystal clear Tim made it she was his second choice by far. He also explained in detail even going back to the first interview he did after 7.1 aired, how he had the storyline for Buck and Her planned out, including how their relationship would end, and Edy was never supposed to be back. But then Anneliss couldn’t return at the last minute, and he didn’t want both of them to have off screen break ups, Edy was available so he brought her back, and the queer storyline shifted to Buck first. Something Ryan has also said in an interview they like to ignore is how he mentioned Oliver and Him ended up not sure who were going to lead with the *current* coming out storyline. Implying both of them ended up with it being up for grabs for their characters, and a future one storyline. Which also concurrently counters the whole “ryans homophobic and refuses to play gay” nonsense they like to also use as a gotcha because with the information we know of it originally being Eddie and Tommy, and Ryan saying it came down to either of them, Ryan would have had to have had the same conversation that Tim had with Oliver making sure he was ok to do it. And what do you know. He was 🙃

Sorry this got so long but I am so sick and tired of these Bt fans coming into peoples ask boxes spewing their toxic hate and pitiful gotcha attempts as they try desperately to disprove buddie in the defense of their lord and savior Tommy Kinard.

Honestly thank you for all of that. I didn't know who the Edy person was they were talking about in their post. I think it's just crazy cause this whole thing started because I said Bummy's have no media literacy skills and by not understanding the full context of things in and out of the show, they're just proving my point lmao.

[kittyprincessofcats]

She-Ra S5 E08 - Shot in the Dark

There might be spoilers for the rest of the season in this post!

I absolutely LOVE this episode, and at first, I couldn’t really put my finger on why I liked it that much. And then Noelle tweeted this:

And yeah, that’s what it boils down to. This is the first *happy* Catra episode since... basically since “Once Upon a Time in the Waste” - and back then, the happiness didn’t last long.

(I also just think that story of AJ being so worried about Catra and Noelle reassuring her with every script is so adorable. I love to see how much they all care about these characters.)

Now let’s get into the episode!

- “Why does space hate me so much?” Yeah Glimmer, as I’ve said before, your powers don’t work in space because otherwise things would be way too easy and this show would be over way too quickly.

- “So, your plan is to, what? Ram through an armada of ships?” “No! ...Maybe!” 😂 I love Adora.

- The way Catra’s hands are shaking when she tells Adora they’re going to get caught... oh, baby 😢. And how Adora suddenly looks so worried... gosh, these two.

- Catra and Adora playfully arguing over whether or not Catra ‘defeated’ them in the past is so cute. I love this kind of ‘former enemies’ bickering and it’s why I was so glad they didn’t wait until the very end of the show to redeem Catra.

Bow: “Adora, Catra’s right.”

[Everyone’s eyes go wide.]

Bow: ... “That felt weird to say.”

😂 Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Bring on all the ‘former enemies’ bickering, please!

- So, is this just because Wrong Hordak’s “brains were scrambled”, as Bow put it, or do all the clones randomly blurt out that Horde Prime has a weakness whenever they hear someone ask about it? I’m going to assume it’s the former. Also, the way he keeps blurting out more and then denying that Krytis exists is super funny.

- I like how they set Krytis up before with Catra having visions of it back in Taking Control - still pretty convenient that just hearing the name lets her make the connection, but I’ll take it. (Is it meant to be some lingering effect of being connected to the hivemind that she’s having visions of it again now, or is it just her remembering what she saw before?)

- I love the detail that Darla’s information on Krytis is locked and they need administrator clearance to access it. Shows again that the First Ones aren’t that different from Horde Prime - they were also ashamed of their failure to conquer Krytis and tried to hide the information on it.

- “In- In- In- Incorrect. It is located nowhere, because it does not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed it.” I honestly think this line should be a meme. When you want to hide something from someone (but you know it does exist), just quote that exact line (kind of like “There is no war in Ba Sing Se”). I once said it to my sisters when they asked about certain fanfics I wrote as a teenager. (“Nope, they are located nowhere, because they do not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed them.”)

- Changes in the opening: Micah, Spinnerella, Scorpia and Mermista are now standing mind-controlled around the Heart of Etheria in the villains’ shot. They’re also all missing from the final heroes’ card. In that final shot, Perfuma and Sea-Hawk both look sad now, and Netossa looks angry.

- Catra touching her neck when she sees the spire on Krytis... 😢. I’m here for the angst, but I also just need Catra to get lots of love and comfort after everything she’s been through.

- Can we talk about how absolutely ADORABLE her space suit is, though? Bow is absolutely right to coo over those ears. And when she tries to take it off with her foot? And Adora laughs about it? And Catra smiles when she sees her laugh? ❤️❤️❤️

- Wrong Hordak still denying that Krytis exists while currently being on Krytis is absolutely hilarious to me. It reminds me of flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers, or people who try to deny Covid exists (while others are currently dying from Covid) - not that any of those are funny, of course. I just mean that wrong Hordak nicely demonstrates how ridiculous they can sound.

- Catra calling out the Best Friend Squad on how dumb their plan is and then reacting with “Honestly, what did I expect?” is absolutely iconic. They really were missing her as the team’s braincell all along.

- Bow and Glimmer teasing Catra about her “first mission”, Catra grumbling that she’s going to kill Adora’s friends, Adora responding with a really calm “Please don’t” - everything about this is perfect. 🤣

- Also, small detail, but I love how Catra has a hard time walking in her spacesuit because she’s not used to wearing shoes.

- The remaining rebels looking around the destroyed camp is really sad. Frosta immediately trapping Castaspella in ice and checking her neck is great, though. That’s what they should have been doing all along. Why didn’t they also check Shadow Weaver’s neck, though? I know she’s intimidating and all, but there was no way of knowing if she’s chipped.

- “How did the rebellion lose so many of our finest members and yet we’re still stuck with you?” Castaspella’s asking the real questions! I like how literally no one in the rebellion likes Shadow Weaver. (Though honestly, I’m also glad she’s not chipped. Imagine how hard fighting a chipped Shadow Weaver would have been.)

- “But if you try anything, I won’t hesitate to strike you down.” Castaspella said ‘I won’t hesitate, b*tch!’

- Every single part of Wrong Hordak’s existential crisis (and Entrapta’s handling of it) is absolutely hilarious. I’m not going to quote all of it here, but pretty much every line of it is comedy gold. My favourite moment is probably “It seems Wrong Hordak has begun to question the meaning of life” (and everyone’s annoyed expressions at his crying) 😂😂. (On a more serious note, though: As much as it’s played for laughs, Wrong Hordak turning his entire worldview around in such a short amount of time is also pretty epic.)

- Catra just cutting through that door - damn, she’s strong! And I love Adora’s blush! (Yeah, the door was probably just an illusion, but my point still stands. She’s at least strong enough that it doesn’t seem completely weird that she'd be able to just cut through a door like that.)

- “You have an arrow that turns into a magnifying glass? I can’t believe we were losing to you guys.” 🤣🤣 Catra realizing the people she was fighting are actually idiots will never not be funny.

- It goes hand in hand with Bow realizing Catra is actually a cute kitty with an adorable sneeze. Good stuff. And the way her tail gets fluffy when she insists she’s not cute? D’awww. (Bow saying “The angrier you get, the cuter you are” reminded me of that scene in Steven Universe where Peridot loses her limb-enhances at the beginning of her redemption arc and Steven calls her cute and “an angry little slice of pie”.)

- Castaspella’s cape getting stuck in tree branches and the like is pretty funny, ngl. This is why Edna Mode said “No capes”.

- Shadow Weaver saying that her gifts are “far subtler” than mind-control is very fitting. Her thing is manipulation, after all. She doesn’t need to control people’s minds when she can just manipulate them and raise them in a way that’ll make them do what she wants. It’s scarier than mind-control in a way because it’s far more realistic. Mind-control doesn’t exist in real life, but manipulative parents (or just manipulative people) who will mess someone up emotionally? Very realistic.

- I like that you can tell that something’s off about Entrapta’s voice this time if you pay attention to it.

- “Seriously? How have you guys stayed alive this long?” Yup, the people you were fighting are idiots and you’re the braincell of the team now, Catra.

- I love the creepy music when Entrapta tells them it’s the first time they’ve talked since the last floor.

- Also, I love how Catra’s first instinct is to just launch herself at Melog, even though you could tell she was terrified just a moment earlier.

- I really like the moment where Glimmer realizes there’s magic on Krytis, especially since she doesn’t have her other powers right now.

- Melog bonds with Catra because they have the same sneeze ❤️❤️

- “Are you... are you petting the thing that’s been trying to kill us?” I love this whole moment 😹. I also love how Adora is so protective of Catra and immediately yells “Get away from her!” when Melog seems to get angry.

Catra: “I’m sorry. I got angry. It’s something I’m working on.”

Adora [with sparkling eyes]: “Aww, you are?”

Catra: “Yes! Now can you please...” [deep breath] “Yes. I am.”

I love everything about this. Catra genuinely working on her anger issues, Adora being so touched about it (remember back in Taking Control where she wished that Catra would ‘at least try’?), Catra having to hold back her anger because she realized Melog responds to emotions - perfect. ❤️😂👍

- Catra is so sweet when she calms Melog down. And the moment where they form their bond is really nice.

- So, can Catra understand Melog because of their bond, or because they’re both cats? I’m assuming it’s because of their bond?

- Melog’s backstory is really sad. But Adora offering to take them to Etheria is a really sweet scene.

- I like the parallel between the Best Friend Squad realizing that magic is Horde Prime’s weakness (and that the only planet he ever failed to conquer had wild magic) and Shadow Weaver telling Castaspella that the First Ones weakened Etheria’s magic and they have to set it free.

- “Stop me if I try to take the power for myself.” I’m not sure how I feel about that line. I like how SPOP has very much written Shadow Weaver as ambiguous so far. She’s not a good or nice person by any means, but is she at least on the side of the good guys and really trying to help now or is she still only after her own selfish goals? I very much did not want Shadow Weaver to get any sort of redemption or forgiveness, and I’ve always interpreted her as still being power-hungry. So, I have mixed feelings about this line. I like that it canonically acknowledges that Shadow Weaver is still tempted by power and might actually try to take the magic for herself, but asking Castaspella to stop her if she tries makes her look more selfless and like she’s taking precautions against it. (But then again, could Castaspella even stop her if she tried? I’m pretty sure Shadow Weaver is the stronger one of the two. So, you could still read this as Shadow Weaver being a master manipulator and only saying this so Castaspella will feel more inclined to trust her and go along with her plan - while knowing full-well that she could easily defeat Castaspella if it ever actually came down to it.)

Glimmer: “So, just to make sure I get it - We’re going to go running through a Horde blockade while relying on the magic of a creature we just met?”

Catra: “That about sums it up, yes.”

You know what this means - Catra’s a part of the Squad now!

- “Punch it, Darla!” I still love that the ship’s name is Darla. Also, all of their expressions when they fly through the blockade should be a “draw the squad” meme.

- Catra holding Adora’s hand and getting embarassed about it ❤️❤️ (while Adora is dumb and doesn’t even notice).

- I did not expect us to get a Glitra cheek kiss this season, but I’m not complaining! Also, Catra complaining while Glimmer and Bow are hugging her is such a cat thing; I love it.

- “We made it. We’re home.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is actually the first episode this season that ends on a happy / hopeful note and not on some kind of cliffhanger. And I really like that. This is where the “space arc” of season 5 offically comes to and end and I’m glad it has its own little happy ending. (And as much as I like the final episodes of the season, the space arc is still probably my favourite half of it.)

I love this episode, mainly because of what it means for Catra. She’s finally happy, she saved the day, she’s bonding with Bow and Glimmer and constantly flirting with Adora, and she has an amazing therapy cat now! I loved all the bickering between her and the others and how she’s starting to open up to them. Also, Wrong Hordak was absolutely hilarious in this episode and I commend Entrapta for having the patience to deal with his existential crisis. This was a really nice way to wrap the space arc up and bring the Squad back to Etheria.

[Previous episode]   [Next episode]

[angeli-marco-writes]

Steve Rogers - Promise

A/N - So, this is my first marvel imagine? I haven’t watched all the films yet, I’m halfway through and watching them all in chronological order, but I couldn’t resist because I love Steve Rogers. So much. Once I’ve finished watching, I'll probably realise a shit tonne of mistakes in this, but please don’t judge. Apologies for any typos and incorrect information. GIF credits to owner.

Warnings - angst, smut so 18+ please; fingering, unprotected sex (don’t do it), borderline ‘captain’ kink, 5k.

Summary - you’re an admin worker in stark tower, an average working girl except for one thing, you have a superior memory, one that has aided you many a time. But when you’re leading Cap on a mission and it gets cut off, is it because of your memory, or are you just letting your crush on Steve cloud any reasonable thinking?

YOU LOVE YOUR JOB, there’s no denying it. You’re young, a Brit in America, just working to help with your future, but after how well it’s been going recently? You don’t think you’ll want to leave. 

You’re an admin at Stark Tower. Not that one is really needed with all of Tony’s tech, and the fact that everyone is more than capable of sorting themselves out, it’s just fun to be around. Not only do you complete all the stenography and spreadsheets that don’t necessarily have to do with anyone specific, but you also do many of the more artistic plans and are everyone’s personal therapist. You probably don’t help your own cause - leaving your door propped open with a book to let anyone drift in and out of their own accord at any given time, unless you’re properly working, and then they know to find you in your office. Yes, your very own office.

Recently, with you becoming more and more familiar with the workings of all the residents, growing more knowledgeable of their work lives, picking up the lingo and everyone’s gladness at your perfect, imperturbable memory, you’re slowly being given more tasks. This could be anything from mission reassignment to looking through months old footage, but you’ve been helping out over the system on a couple of missions. You really feel like one of the team even though you know you’re far from it. Sleeping in the tower helps, as well as being welcomed by everyone every meal time that you sit together, especially the way they test your memory trick and always seem completely amazed at how you remember the most obscure details. Anything from the exact positioning of a birth mark on someone that Natasha took down the first week you began working, to the precise measurement of metal that Tony needed to complete a new project, to the freckle on Steve’s bare ass that one time he had to use your shower-

That escalated quickly. 

Currently, you’re in your office, daydreaming and completely wistfully thinking. You have no trouble remembering every conversation you and Steve have ever had, not that many admittedly, but he’s always been so kind to you. He was the first one to truly make you feel part of the team, welcoming you with a hug before holding you at arms length and brushing a crease from the arm of your blouse. You’re not really sure if he’d seen anyone dress that way, since all the girls he was around were always in their kick ass clothes, gym shorts or comfies, so you wandering around day in day out and wearing frilly Victorian-era blouses paired with short, tight pencil skirts and Louboutin stilettos may have been a shock to his system. It wasn’t with any agenda in mind that you did this, merely a mix of modesty and business woman style. Every word Cap has ever said flies through your mind, the impeccable memory of the way his exquisite nylon suit clings to him in all the right places... 

Steve is the only guy you’ve fancied for a while, the only person you’ve ever really gone for emotionally, and all of that is because he’s such a cute human being; so genuine, so upbeat around you, so supportive, and his smile. Goddamn his smile. He’s just too cute for life, which is also why you should really be concentrating, considering you’re supposed to be monitoring his mission. 

“Y/N, are you there? I think somethings happening, someone’s here that we didn’t know about, where do I go?”

His usually soft voice is frantic, and you can tell he’s a little scared, since this was supposed to be a simple solo mission, in and out, but now you’re having to recite an escape route. 

“Turn left at the end of that corridor, half way down there’s a grate on the wall. Pull it off, climb inside.” You tell him as calmly as you can, but even your heart is beating out of your chest, breathing laboured and a slight sweat forming on your forehead. 

“I’m in, sweetheart. What next?” Not the right time for your heart to flutter at his words, especially not the time to imagine the way his raspy morning voice would curl around those very same Few words...

“Follow the route, it’ll bring you out in a downstairs kitchen area that was empty last time I checked, I’ll look again...” you trail off, clicking off the one screen with the dot of his whereabouts to check the surveillance, and he seems to be safe. 

You hear his breathing calm down as he crawls through the ventilation system, but even as you flick through every camera that you’ve been able to access in the building he’s in and the surrounding area, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary apart from a couple of unconscious, probably dead blokes scattered across stone floors.

“I’m in the kitchen, but there’s no doors in here, no way out.” He says. 

Fuck.

Your heart sinks to your feet.

“Yes there is Steve, it’s on the north wall beside a faux, oversized spice rack. It has a silver handle and it’s an oak door, exactly like my bedroom door.”

He pauses, his heart rate thrumming heavily, “sweetheart there’s no door here, there’s no spice rack, just old built in cabinets and flat walls. You must have misremembered.”

“Shut the fuck op Steve, I’m doing what I can,”

Your usual eloquence is out the window along with all of your chill, sounding mildly like a road man as you frantically tap between the screens. He’s right though, his only way out is to climb back in the vent and hope to god, well, or Thor, that no one finds him there, but that may be too late.

“Try the cold tap on the sink, I don’t know exactly what was said but I distinctly remember someone talking about it. Stay calm for me Cap, please.” You want to beg for him to be ok, to come back in one piece, because this isn’t a normal mission, you’re emotionally attached. 

He takes a deep breath and walks over to the tap, but as soon as he touches it, all surveillance is cut off, your computer goes black, and you can’t even hear his breathing anymore. 

“Steve? Cap, come back to me, can you hear me? Steve?” With each call of his name to which he doesn’t respond, you grow more frantic. The lights are still on so you know that it’s not the mains, but you’re not educated with circuits, so you do what you can to reboot your computer, only for it to show up with your bland screen of spreadsheets, sans anything about the mission or Steve.

Your hands start shaking, lip quivering and mind overwhelmed with stress. It’s over, you’ve lost Steve, fucked up the mission, you’ll be out of a job, and the worst part? You broke a promise. 

“Promise you’ll keep me safe out there Y/N?” Steve asked, his cute little smile twinkling in his eyes and making your whole body go giddy.

“I promise, but you have to promise that you’ll come back in one piece.”

“That I can do, for you.” He murmured, wrapping his arms around your body and placing a kiss to your hairline. 

You haven’t been at the compound long enough to know whether this is normal for Steve, or for anyone, or if he’s just a natural flirt. Whatever it is, you feel too guilty to face him again if he even comes back alive. 

Slowly, soft sobs start to escape your lips without you noticing, tears slipping down your cheeks and dampening the neck of your blouse. You can’t help the guilt that overtakes you, the fear that you can’t even reason, and that’s when you hear a soft knock on your door.

“Can I come in?”

It’s Natasha. You nod gently as she takes a seat in the corner of your room, throwing her feet up on your coffee table so nonchalantly that it’s almost not a challenge of authority. 

“What’s up? Didn’t you have to radio for Cap?” Once again you nod, hastily wiping the tears from your face and smoothing your skirt out. “So, why are you crying?”

You like Natasha, of course you do, but you have normal people emotions and a little more conscience, unable to stand the thought of anyone even getting a papercut on your watch. 

“He went off, the computers crashed, and it’s all my fault.” You say, standing up and moving to shut your office door, locking it for safekeeping, because if Bucky finds out then you’re dead. 

Natasha grabs a lollipop from your sweet bowl and sticks it in her mouth, swirling her tongue around it, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think she’s flirting. She’s not, that’s just Natasha. “Care to elaborate?”

You take a sharp breath, “someone was there that we didn’t calculate, I had to get him through the ventilation system to an abandoned kitchen that I KNOW had a door, my memory doesn’t glitch, so in the time it took for Steve to get through the vents, someone must’ve closed off the door, but I’m not sure how. Then he just went when he touched the only possible thing that could be an escape route. Fuck, what if he’s dead?”

You feel tears bubbling up in your eyes again, blinking harshly to keep them away. 

“So what if he is? You’re smart, you’re panicking, so you’ve obviously done everything. It sounds harsh but you can’t get too attached. Just listen out and he’ll come back of his own accord, but if he doesn’t then we’ll have to deal with that later.” She says, grasping a hand around your shoulder before  stepping over the threshold to the main compound, leaving you alone with your thoughts. 

Maybe she thought tough love would work, but she has a point. You’ve done everything you can, so now it’s just a waiting game.

You keep an ear piece on you but shut your office for the night, heading out to the bar to pour yourself a more than healthy sized glass of wine. You unbutton your shirt a little and slide down the wall to your favourite reading spot, in one far corner, you set up some cushions and bedding. You’re the only one that uses it, but you could swear that you’ve seen Steve eyeing it up before. So you sit, tears streaming down your cheeks and leaving you with mascara-stained tear tracks, the first few buttons of your shirt recklessly undone, and your heels flung elsewhere. You bring the bottle over with your glass, and you pick up a book to keep you distracted. 

You’re not sure how long you sit there, guilt slowly building, occasionally calling Steve’s name to check if he’s come back on the system, but there’s nothing. Nothing until the lift doors open, and out walks a very bloody Cap with his suit half on and a skin tight white t-shirt clinging to his upper body.

The tears don’t stop falling from your eyes, but you close your book anyway. You would stand up, run to hug him, but your legs can’t hold you up, so you stay seated, all your words caught in your throat as Steve edges further across the common area towards you. 

He offers you a shy smile, virtually collapsing into the carpet only metres from you. Slowly his head lifts, hair falling into his eyes, and he holds his arms out. 

“Oh god Steve,” it’s him. Really him. You feared he’d be a hologram or something, your eyes deceiving you from their soreness post crying. But he’s here, you can tell from the overly memorised display of veins in his bicep when he offers you his arm. 

“It’s me,” he nods, edging a little further towards you as you crawl closer and settle into his grip. 

Your tears flow freely, dampening his shirt. Neither of you says a word, he just grips you closer to him, cuddling your legs into his lap to soothe you.

After a while, Steve fidgets, and you find your eyes dry. 

You angle your head upwards, your well kept chignon completely haywire. Steve’s face is covered in bruises and dried blood, but his eyes don’t look at all worried. 

“What happened?” You whisper, words vibrating through his chest. 

“The tap was a trick, or maybe I twisted the wrong one, but all the lights went out and I was shocked, I had to attack a few guys but I made it out, albeit bruised.” He swallows, running a shy finger over the curves of your face. “Were you worried about me?”

You nod, clutching him close. He chuckles and draws circles on your back through your shirt, just his soft touch more comforting than anything else. 

“I’m fine, sweetheart, is my nose broken though?”

You look at his nose, softly smoothing over a hell of a bruise, before placing a gentle kiss to the bridge. 

“No, trust me. In British comps, fights happen daily, and my ex was in with a bad crowd, always in fights. I had to deal with all kinds of injuries, and your nose is not broken. Be grateful because it hurts to sort it out.”

He laughs and brings you in.

“You deserve so much better than someone like that. I was worried about you when I was out there you know...” he says.

A strange conversation transition, but who are you to judge. 

“I was so scared, I thought you’d died,” ah shit, here come the tears again, “Natasha told me to just wait it out like I wasn’t completely emotionally attached to you. Bloody hell, Steve, I’d be responsible if you died.”

He cooes sweet reassurances in your ear, wrapping his arms entirely around your torso while the join between his neck and shoulder becomes your sanctuary.

“I’m emotionally attached to you too if that helps,” he whispers in your ear, so quietly that he hopes you didn’t hear, instantly regretting it. But with the soft kiss you place on the sweet spot just below his ear, he brings up all his courage to angle his head just right, capturing your lips in his in the sweetest of kisses. 

You gasp into the kiss, your reaction giving Steve means to believe you didn’t like it, instantly pulling away and dropping his hands from around your body.

“I-I’m sorry, you’re upset and I took advantage of that, and I haven’t really been with anyone since, well...”

“Shut up and kiss me, Steve.” You command, cutting off his rambling, your hand cupping his cheek. 

His hands slowly make their way around your body, fumbling for the bottom of your blouse and subsequently unable to find where your shirt ends and your skirt starts. You giggle a little into the kiss, taking the opportunity to deepen the kiss by delving his tongue into your mouth. You place your hands over his and guide them to your chest. For a second, he seems confused, his lips halting their massaging movements on your own, until he finds the open buttons at the top of your blouse. He pulls his lips away for a moment, breath mingling together in the air. His smells of strawberries, you note. He glances at you for reassurance, something which you eagerly give, so he begins. His hands slowly work their way over your chest, fingers fiddling with your buttons as you wait patiently, completely submissive for Steve to do whatever he wants to you. 

He pushes the material from your shoulders, and you untuck the back of it from your skirt, allowing it to fall to the floor, revealing your bra. Though now you see Steve eyeing it up, you realise it’s not really a bra at all, rather two triangles of flimsy fabric with some bands and strings attached, one of your only bras that doesn’t show through a sheer blouse. The way his eyes are boggling at your tits though, you guess he likes it. 

An unwitting blush creeps up your neck and cheeks, suddenly feeling cold under his scrutiny.

“You can touch them if you want,” you chuckle lightly, fearing that you’ll sound like an inexperienced teenager if you say more. 

Steve blushes as crimson as you, his large hands leaping at the opportunity to feel you. You throw your head back in pleasure as his cold thumb rubs over your nipples, making them hard to the touch, and the rest of his hands get to work massaging and kneading your boobs, pulling down the fabric to softly kiss your bare skin. 

Although he hasn’t done this in a while, well, a lifetime, he still knows how to do it realllly well. 

Your hands fly to his heart, keeping him there, his lips switching between your breasts until you grow a little more needy, grinding down on his bulge. 

“You wanna do this?” He asks, voice a little hoarse but still silky. 

“Yes, Steve. Fuck, just take me.”

“Language,” he chides jokingly, but despite that, he agrees. 

Clearly he doesn’t need to be asked twice, because he has you flipped beneath him with your back on your cushions in your reading corner, his lips attaching your neck. 

You fumble with the bottom of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head between kisses and suckles to a sensitive spot on your neck. He’s carved like a Greek god, abs toned to perfection, his tanned skin rippling with any given movement. He feels so soft too, skin tender beneath your fingers, trailing them gently across his back and torso to simply feel him. The contrary of gentle skin and solid muscles is one that makes your mouth water with desire, bringing Cap’s lips back to your own, palms pressed firmly against his back. You go in deep this time, licking his mouth and devouring his taste. To your surprise, he kisses you back with even more fervour, so passionate that you lose track of any thought swirling in your mind. 

“Suit off, now.” You call breathlessly, watching on as Steve clumsily tries to peel off his trousers by using the sleeve of his suit. He’s moving so recklessly that with an abrupt movement he’ll snag the fabric, ripping the suit that makes him look heaven sent. 

“Here,” you giggle, offering a hand out which he gladly takes, letting you shimmy the tough material down his legs, only blocked by his clunky boots which he kicks off at the same time as the suit, haphazardly leaving them wherever they fall in the lounge. “Fuck.” Is all you can choke out. The serum worked on everything. Even with his briefs still on, you can see his cock twitching within its confines.

“You’re wearing too many clothes now,” he faux scolds, leaping atop you again, kissing your collarbone as his hands work their way down your body. 

First he unhooks your bra properly, throwing it off and you both hear it land on the glass coffee table from the way your clasp knocks the glass. Next he moves onto your skirt, unzipping it, your hips raising of their own accord to accommodate his actions, slipping it off alongside your tights, revealing your bare legs to him for the first time. He doesn’t care about any of the natural marks that grace your skin, merely that you’re sitting in just your panties and only for him. 

“God you’re so beautiful,” he says.

He runs his palms over your thighs, just feeling your skin beneath his. His touch is soothing, as is his presence, allowing you to feel open towards him. You tilt your legs a little more open, revealing to him the small wet latch that graces your not-so-sexy work underwear. 

“All for me?” Steve asks, eyes innocent and doe like. 

If he’s really this sweet and naive then you’re gonna fucking ruin him. Sweet Jesus what you wouldn’t do to that man, starting with your incredibly well hidden Captain kink, though it may not be hidden much longer.

He brings a finger up to your core, pushing your panties to the side to run a finger up and down your slit. He audibly moans while collecting your slick from between your folds, fingers rough in contrast to the part of his body that you’re gripping onto, though you’re not sure quite where from your eyes fluttering closed. 

“Ready?”

You nod, bracing yourself as he rips your panties off and pushes one finger inside you. He feels brilliant, his fingers so much longer and better than your own, already bringing you jolts of pleasure from its presence. 

He draws it out before pumping back in again, continuing his movements. Your forehead falls against his bare shoulder, small gasps of pleasure escaping your open mouth.

“More,” you pant, ready to feel more of his intoxicating ministrations. 

He nods obligingly, slowly adding a second finger, continuing his gentle assault on your pussy. God, it’s been so long since you’ve had sex, just his two fingers pumping in and out of you brings you more pleasure than you’d care to admit. 

“S-stop,” 

He looks up at you, immediately withdrawing his fingers, covered in your juices and glistening in the moonlight. You flush far too deeply at such a simple thing. 

“I need to feel you already, please.”

You sensually drag your finger all over his bare chest, hearing his breath hitch in his throat. He nods vigorously, hair falling in his line of vision, but scrambles to be on top of you properly, hands either side of your head on your array of cushions and his legs steady, trapping you completely beneath him. 

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna take advantage of you, y/n. You’re so beautiful and perfect and I want your first time with me to be something you’ll remember forever.” He says sweetly, but despite his kind words, you can’t help but chuckle for a solid few seconds before he realises what he’s said. 

“Ok, but are you sure you wanna do it here rather than my room? Yours is out of the option, everyone will assume you’re dead if your book isn’t there anymore...” 

once more you chuckle, as does he, bringing your hand up to cup his jaw. 

“I’m sure, Steve, now get inside me before I change my mind and wake Bucky up,” you quip. 

He knows you’re joking but gets to work anyway, swiftly getting rid of his brokers and ungracefully kicking them off as you watch him. He may be hot but even Loki’s magic may not be able to make him elegant. 

As soon as he’s back in his previous position and you see is dick slapping against his stomach, hard and already a little red, you can’t help but gape. His too-tight boxers didn’t do him justice because now you’re worried he won’t even fit. 

He sees your worried face and panics, “We can go back if you want, we don’t have to do this.”

“I want this Steve, shitting hell-“

“Language,” he chides, interrupting you, allowing you to cock your eyebrows at him, a look to say ‘is this really the time?’

“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, just go slow because you’re huge.” You finish, smiling at his dorky smile and flushed cheeks. 

Of all the things he could blush at, he chooses a compliment. Such a dork, you think to yourself, unable to stop the contagious smile creeping onto your face.

“I’ll be careful with you, I promise.”

And that he is. 

“Oh, and call me captain.”

That’s something you knew he’d have a kink for, making you smirk a little too. 

He runs the head of his cock through your folds to father a little lubrication before pushing in, very slightly and very gently. He bends his arms and kisses all over your face with the new leverage, feather light kisses of pure affection before you give him a breathy whisper, resembling of a ‘more’, so he pushes in a bit more again, repeating the process until he’s buried to the hilt inside your aching core, clenching around him without Steve even needing to do anything. 

“Can I start moving?” He asks, awkwardly shifting his weight above you, but you nod vigorously, kissing him urgently as his lips begin to move. 

He starts off slow, gradual thrusts, ensuring that he finds every weak spot inside or you, making your toes curl already and your legs knot around his waist, his tongue still dancing with yours. 

He increases his pace after a while, bucking into you faster, making you moan out his name and clutch onto his wonderfully broad shoulders.

You pull your lips away for a moment, “more Captain,” you ask, nothing more than a breathy sound, but Steve obliges. 

He breaks the kiss as he begins snapping his hips into yours with fervour and purpose. His balls are hitting your bare ass, his cock stuffed inside you and making the most delectable sounds from how wet you are, all for Steve. He looks down, tearing his gaze away from your pretty little face with your die eyes and parted lips, only to watch as he sinks into you again and again, blurring the lines of where he ends and you begin.

“Steve, Captain, please, talk to me,” 

Your words come out as a strangled cry, a beg mixing with his moan at the name, oxygen lessening as your eyes flutter shut, too engrossed in the pleasure to even care that your voice has gone up in pitch while his has gone down. 

“You’re such a tease, walking around in that tight skirt all day, those long legs always crossed. All I want is to pull them apart and go down on you, under your desk, in the kitchen, just anywhere that I can have you for my own.” 

His voice is low, raspy and needy as he trails his tongue along your collarbone filthily, forcing your eyes open with some unearthly force he must possess simply so that he can meet your gaze as he bites your nipples, his cock continually hitting that sweet spot inside you. 

“It’s not just that though,” he continues, resuming his dirty talk between caresses of his lips all over you, “you’re so perfect. So stunning, so intelligent, the reason I wake up every day just for the hope that one of these days I’d be able to kiss you.”

his hips halt just for a moment, long enough to unwrap your legs from his back and throw them over his shoulders, lust filled eyes boring into your own with an uncharacteristically devilish smirk. 

He kisses you again, fleeting but passionate before he nibbles your earlobe and purrs,

“And now I get to have you at my mercy, and believe me, that desk fantasy is gonna come true every day.”

With that sentiment, he starts ploughing into you even more ferociously than before, making you scream his name, a lot of murmured ‘Captain!’s and curses mingling with the cries. 

The new angle hits spots you forgot even existed. Your nails take his back, tugging in and clinging on for mercy, the burn of your legs in such a contorted position only adding to your pleasure.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” you shout breathlessly, chest heaving, your boobs moving up and down of their own accord and Steve is unable to take his eyes off them.

You feel the coil ready to spring in your stomach, a climax that’s been steadily building since he first kissed you. 

“Tell me what you’re gonna do with me tomorrow, and then you can come.”

His words are something forbidden, coaxing you off the edge, daring you to hit that wave of pleasure. Just the thought of your past daydreams make your walls clench around him. 

“I’ll wake you up by sucking your magnificent cock, then I’ll ride you harder than anyone has ever before, and then I’ll ride your face before we have intermittent sex in my office, at least twice.”

You don’t even know what you’re saying, your imagination running winks with the thought of Steve having you in his lap in your desk chair, pressed up against the glass of your office for everyone to see as he fucks you senseless. You’re insatiable. The thought of his dick twitching in your mouth is too much to handle, especially as he brings his thumb down and presses on your clit, moaning unintelligibly at your apparently sexy words, and you feel it. 

Your orgasm crashes over you so hard that you feel it on your bones, thrashing around beneath Steve, screaming out his name as he dudes your high out only seconds before coming too, his muffled cries of your name drowned out as he bites onto the juncture of your neck, bruising it and rendering you unable to wear anything other than polo necks for a good few days. The pleasure he’s given you is unrivalled, and you can’t waist for more.

His body collapses onto yours inelegantly, wrapping you unto his body warmth in your cosy little corner, both forgetting that you’re completely naked in the common area after having rather loud sex. 

“Was that good?” Steve asks sheepishly, fingers running through your tangled hair.

“Yes, incredible. And for you?”

He thinks for a moment before answering, “exquisite, sweetheart.”

Your heart glows a little at his sleepy voice. You run your thumb over the bump of his nose and the blood residue still on his face, but you think you may like Steve a little roughed up. You stay close to each other, breathing together and sharing kisses in the night time, so absorbed in your own bubble that you don’t hear someone come in.

“The fuck is this, Steve?”

Fuck, Bucky. 

“Couldn’t you have been a little better at aiming your clothes? We’re all glad you’re finally together, but loud and untidy as well as sex in the common area? Come on.”

You can hear the humour in his words, but they do hold some sincerity, making you blush and chuckle. Next thing you know, your bra is being thrown at the pair of you, landing in Steve’s messed up hair.

“Thanks buck...” you say with a meek giggle, kissing Steve and removing your bra from his face.

“Round two? My room?” He suggests, eyebrows wiggling. 

“Promise you’ll let me clean you up first?!” You insist, kissing his shoulder and beaming at him. 

“Promise.”

[wherevermyway]

the FiVE:RACHA project (1/7) // black mirror AU // 18+

chapter one: freedom series navigation: [desktop] [mobile]

⚠ POTENTIAL TW: READ WITH CAUTION! ⚠ pairings: lee minho x kim seungmin | hwang hyunjin x lee felix x yang jeongin | bang chan x seo changbin x han jisung rating: explicit! 18+ warnings/tags: creator chose not to use archive warnings, descent into madness, horror, thriller, technological implants, blood and gore, alcohol abuse, some sexual content in later chapters but it’s not, like, smut. word count: 3,101 also on AO3

PS: i made a carrd for this. check it out if you’re interested!

originally posted: 26 december 2020

Several years ago, five men created a website for South Korea's international rap sensation, 3RACHA. The website, The FiVE:RACHA Project, was almost as popular as the group themselves. About two years after the website went live, FiVE:RACHA had the opportunity to meet 3RACHA.

Immediately after they meet, the members of FiVE:RACHA and 3RACHA go missing. The FiVE:RACHA Project website is down. Their Twitter account has been deactivated, and 3RACHA stops posting. A few months after their meetup, it was announced that 3RACHA had disbanded. Nobody knows what happened to either group.

Nobody knows, until now.

For some, modern day fame comes at a price that is too high to pay.

disclaimer: this is a work of fiction! any reference to persons in this work of fiction are purely coincidental. the characters referenced from Stray Kids are  interpretations loosely based on their personalities in the group and do  not represent the real people behind the personas. if this, or any of  the content included in the warnings above make you uncomfortable,  please stop reading now.

// note: with other darker stuff i post, i’m not totally sure i’ll post the entirety of this fic on tumblr. if not, i’ll do a little notice post for people interested to keep following it on AO3.

...Do you wish to proceed? To learn the truth of FiVE:RACHA and 3RACHA?

What is the true price of fame?

A Foreword:

Several years ago, there was a fan site, The FiVE:RACHA Project, dedicated to South Korea’s most famous rap group, 3RACHA. One day, it went down without notice. The site, as well as their Twitter account with over four million followers, was almost as well-known as the rap group itself.

3RACHA mysteriously disbanded several months after FiVE:RACHA went down. Nobody has seen or heard from the members of either group since the disbandment. There are several theories and myths surrounding the disappearances of both groups, but most of them are incorrect.

Be aware that, no, FiVE:RACHA did not go down because the site moderators were bored of 3RACHA. No, 3RACHA did not disband because Supreme Entertainment was about to collapse due to widespread fraud and their political scandals within the Korean government.

The stories of FiVE:RACHA and 3RACHA are very much deeply intertwined within each other, and the truth is uncomfortable to witness.

This novel’s authors, comprised of some of the most loyal fans of both groups, will remain anonymous and stay in hiding due to fear of being caught by the one responsible for the disappearances. An individual outside of our group found a Shinyu of someone involved in this, someone discarded in the Han River many years ago. How the implant survived with no living host for so long is beyond remarkable.

In case the Shinyu is defunct or replaced by the time you’re reading this, allow us to explain. The name comes from “close friend” in Japanese, likely as a play on words for how close the implant gets to its host, both physically and socially. The Shinyu was created in Tokyo in 2025; it is a small technological implant embedded under the skin of the right side of everyone’s temples.

Everyone has one placed at thirteen, and it encodes all of our visual, tactile, and auditory data, syncing it to our phones and uploading it to personal servers in the cloud. The data is encrypted, and requires access from both the Shinyu and the phone to decipher. It allows us to integrate technology into our daily lives, records our memories and important moments, but there is a price we all pay for this. Critics have been outspoken about this since its inception, but the governments never listened.

Alas, we digress. The Shinyu is vital to uncovering so much information that has been hidden and speculated on after all this time. Regardless of our personal opinions regarding the ethics of the device, we are grateful that we were able to obtain one of the implants. It has been vital to connect a lot of the missing pieces of the greater picture.

The authors have spent years decoding the information from this implant. Thanks to an anonymous source, we were able to obtain the personal computer of someone in FiVE:RACHA, personal cell phones of both groups, access to the database of Supreme Entertainment and its defunct myIdol data, some declassified legal information, and archives of both FiVE:RACHA and 3RACHA’s Twitter accounts.

Why have we chosen to extrapolate all of this data in the form of a novel? Perhaps we would like it to serve as a modern day parable for the plights of technology being so intricately interwoven between us all now. We, as humans, are now one with technology. Technology is literally embedded into us. It is astounding that technology allows us to interact so closely with famed idols now, beyond some barriers that critics have denounced for being inappropriate or unhealthy.

Some of us may pay the ultimate price for this.

Some of us, unfortunately, already have.

However interconnected we are with technology and how close we can get to those of which we idolize in society, though, humans will still crave entertainment. That is why this was written almost as a work of fiction. Those that pay attention to the story will be rewarded. Maybe not immediately, and maybe only after self-reflection, but readers will be rewarded. That much can be promised.

Above all else, we cannot stress enough that modern day fame and convenience comes at a price that is too high for some to pay. Stay safe, err on the side of caution. Disconnect from your Shinyu if you choose to proceed any further, because you never know who is watching.

— Curators of The FiVE:RACHA Project

One: Freedom

Nobody really knows who exactly manages FiVE:RACHA, just that it’s a group of five fans that run a fansite for the popular rap group 3RACHA. Their website is the most well-known and widely used out of the millions of fans that are out there. It always has live updates for the members: Bang Chan, Seo Changbin, and Han Jisung. There are daily paparazzi photos of at least one of them slapped up on the front page, embedded social media posts from each of the members updated as soon as they post, and hard-to-find facts about each of them.

Hell, one of the FiVE:RACHA members went through and coded up a section of the site dedicated to decoding natal charts for each of the members. Again, like most things about FiVE:RACHA, the source of this information was a mystery. Nobody’s sure exactly how they obtained 3RACHA’s birth times and locations. Some had speculated that it happened the same day the government had announced that there was a security breach of some of their databases, because the timing was oddly convenient.

To most casual fans, it sometimes felt really fucking weird to have so much information on idols readily available at their fingertips. However, to 3RACHA’s most dedicated, most obsessed fans, it was perfect. Exactly what they wanted. Their work seemed well-appreciated by the broader community, since the amount of Twitter followers FiVE:RACHA had was comparable to 3RACHA’s following, nearly half of their total count: 4,100,000 to 8,500,000.

There was nothing else that could compare to the controlled insanity that The FiVE:RACHA Project had to offer.

The FiVE:RACHA website was an international sensation, known to most 3RACHA fans, even those that opposed it. There was even a small, but growing, fanbase for the members of FiVE:RACHA, something that was slightly worrisome to them, but they had remained anonymous for so long, they weren’t really overtly concerned over it.

“This article is bullshit, man. ‘Controlled insanity’? None of this is controlled, it’s just insanity.”

Idle hums and trills of various electronics thrum in a dark room. Two young men stare at several computer monitors in a daze, lost in their own worlds as a ticker tape-like feed of coding and statistics flew past them on screen.“Let ‘em talk, dude,” the younger-looking man with blue hair scoots away from his computer and sighs. “Fuckin’ gossip rags. Anyway, I can’t stare at this CSS anymore. I can’t figure out why the embedded feeds are busted. Can you take over on this, Seung?”

The slightly older man with short, shaggy black hair rolls his neck, snapping some joints, not bothering to look away from his screens. “Yeah, yeah,” he stops poring over the article written about them on one screen, tabbing away to another. He cracks the knuckles in his fingers, and waves his hand in the air as he taps a couple of keys on his keyboard. “Go take a break, Jeongin. Hyunjin was looking for you, anyways. Probably got something good from a source of his, since he’s in one of his giddy moods.”

As Seungmin settles into his work, Jeongin chuckles as he stands up and stretches. He takes a couple steps over to the other computer desk and pats the older man on the back. “Thanks, dude,” he says with a smile and walks out of the server room, out into the hallway that leads into the open living room of their flat. The ambient humming of the room stops as he shuts the door, now replaced by the sound of his feet shuffling, the muffled noises echoing against the hardwood floor.

Five men all lived and worked in this large apartment together: Yang Jeongin, Kim Seungmin, Hwang Hyunjin, Lee Felix, and Lee Minho. Collectively, this was where they lived and breathed The FiVE:RACHA Project. Running the largest, most extensive fansite for South Korea’s most famous rap group, 3RACHA, was more than a full-time job. They all equally poured their hearts and souls into maintaining the website and their Twitter account. It proved to be almost too much for five people alone to handle as their shifts sometimes went from twelve hours and bled into sixteen, sometimes twenty-four hour shifts.

Minho, the leader, didn’t trust anyone but the original five to the project, however. Jeongin could hear the oldest man’s airy voice echo in his ears: “I trusted the four of you with this. Now, it’s devolved into something I don’t even recognize. There’s no way anyone deserves to see what we’ve done. Imagine if it got out that we were the ones in charge of this monstrosity?”

Jeongin glided into the kitchen, and pulled his phone out of his back pocket, eyeing the time. 13:36. He had another hour left of his shift, and he was exhausted after yesterday’s all-nighter. 33 hours of work, with only a small nap in between was rough on anyone, and he was starting to feel it, physically. His Shinyu Implant would ping him once every hour that he was very low on sleep, reminding him that it was unhealthy to go without sleep for so long and that he would not be able to drive. As he slinked his way to the fridge, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and yawned. He opened the fridge, the contents in the shelves of the door clattering as they abruptly shifted around.

The first thing he saw was a bottle of unsweetened coffee and, while he knew he shouldn’t drink caffeine within a few hours of hopeful sleep, Jeongin went against his instincts and reached for the bottle anyways. As he opened it, the cracking of the seal reverberated against all of the hard surfaces and sounded much louder than it should have, startling the man awake a bit.

He hated unsweetened coffee, but there was no way he would make it through another hour or so of coding maintenance without it. Jeongin polished off the entire bottle within seconds, grimacing in disgust the entire time. He tapped his right temple twice, and grumbled. “Set reminder, after work: grocery shopping. Have Hyunjin drive. Add to list: energy drinks. The good kind, none of that berry-flavoured shit.” A very faint, nearly inaudible ding responds after he’s done speaking, and Jeongin moves to discard the bottle into the recycling bin.

“Innie?” Almost as if the devil himself heard Jeongin’s request, a familiar voice rounded the corner of the kitchen. “Oh, good, I thought that was you. Anyway, you won’t believe the content I got from Yeji at Seoul Scoop, dude,” the lanky, beacon-like blond grins wildly at Jeongin, walking into the kitchen. “I actually got a photo of Chan and Changbin looking awfully close at KNECT’s backstage event a couple days ago. Think they were celebrating their recent win a little too hard.”

Hyunjin proudly slaps a grainy photo down on the countertop, where Changbin is sitting in Chan’s lap, arms wrapped around the older man’s neck. Sure, it could easily be explained away as friendly closeness, since everyone knew that all of the guys were very close friends, and the area was cramped. The photo, however, would cause a lot of panic within the community.

Jeongin smirked as he eyed the photo, taking it into his fingers and bringing it up close to his face. “The shippers are going to have a field day over this, you know.”

“I know,” Hyunjin shakes some of his hair out of his face as he arrogantly places a hand on his hip, shifting his weight to one side. “It’ll be great traffic for the site. I’ll have Seungmin put it on the front page later.” He takes a couple of steps closer to Jeongin and pulls the younger man to his chest, stroking his hair down. “I love you, but you look like shit. Why not call it a little early today?”

Jeongin shook his head, burying his nose into the older man’s shoulder, letting his eyes flutter shut with a sigh. “Seungmin and I are trying to fix a string of broken code that’s causing the social media feed to bug out a little bit. Definitely wanna have that fixed before we upload this.”

A clattering of keys startles both of the younger men, causing them to look behind Hyunjin. “Don’t worry about it, Jeongin,” a third voice speaks from the entrance of the kitchen. “Seriously, you worked really hard yesterday, and I’m sure we’ll manage. I’ll be sure to wake up Felix a little earlier and we’ll fix the coding.”

“You’re home early, Minho,” Jeongin chuckles once as he nods. “Figured you’d be stuck in the office for a few more hours.”

“Nah,” Minho dismissively waves his hand in the air as he walks over to the sink, rinsing his hands. “Seungmin called me earlier and said you were nodding off at your desk, asked me to come home early.”

A look of guilt washed over Jeongin’s face. “Shit, my bad.”

“Don’t apologize,” Minho smiles as he towels off his hands. “I appreciate all of the work you did yesterday; completely revamping the social media section was hard. But I can’t have you possibly miscode something and have it break the site because you’re running low on sleep. You’ve started getting pings, haven’t you?”

Jeongin sheepishly nods his head and mumbles an affirmation.

Hyunjin rolls his eyes and elbows the young man in the side. “I thought I told you to take a nap, dude?”

“I did!” Jeongin whines. “It was, like, a half-hour, though.”

Both Hyunjin and Minho roll their eyes at Jeongin. “Get out of here,” Minho scoffs, walking towards the server room. “Go to bed. I don’t wanna see you back in the server room until tomorrow morning.”

Jeongin opens his mouth to protest, but Hyunjin drags him away, up the stairs towards their bedroom. A ping comes from his implant, a transparent box popping up in the lower right-hand corner of his vision. The soft voice of the AI reverberates against his skull, allowing him to hear it as if it were a real voice whispering into his ear. It reads off the notification from his display.

“Movement away from workplace detected. Reminder: grocery shopping later, have Hyunjin drive. Would you like me to pull up your list?”

“No.” A low grumble comes up from Jeongin’s throat as he taps his temple twice to dismiss the notification. “Hyunjin,” he sighs, “we’ve gotta go grocery shopping.”

“You’re too tired,” Hyunjin shakes his finger without turning to look at Jeongin. “The grocery store will still be there tomorrow.”

“I’m out of my energy drinks, though,” the younger man protests.

Hyunjin smiles, opening the door to their bedroom and whispers. “I’ll be sure to get some for you. Go cuddle up with Felix and get some sleep.”

“Hyunjin, I—” Jeongin is cut off as the older man grabs his wrist, pulling him into his chest. They share a brief kiss before Hyunjin guides him into the bedroom.

“Shh, Lixie is sleeping.”

There’s a shuffling that comes from the bedsheets, and a sleepy voice grumbles. “Not anymore.”

“Aw, mornin’, babe,” Hyunjin says with a smile. “Sorry to wake you. Minho’s probably gonna come ask for you in a bit, anyways, though.”

Felix rolls over, sitting upright as he runs his hands through his brassy blond hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Jeongin sighs as he makes his way over to the bed, bringing an arm up to the blond and wrapping him in a lazy hug as he pulls them down to the bed.

The blond lets out a soft laugh. “Don’t worry about it, man,” he turns his head to face the bluenette and offers him a quick peck on the lips. “I couldn’t sleep much, anyways. Finding out about that myIdol rumour yesterday had my brain going kind of wild.”

“You heard about it too, huh?” Hyunjin says, colliding down onto the bed opposite of Felix. “Someone at Seoul Scoop told me about it this morning. It lets fans connect with their idols, like they’re actually directly messaging them.”

“That’s weird,” the bluenette sleepily grumbles into Felix’s shoulder.

“I think so, too.” Felix says with a frown as he nuzzles his head against Jeongin’s forehead, staring up into the ceiling.

Hyunjin shrugs with indifference. “I dunno, I think it’s pretty interesting.”

Jeongin lifts his head and stares down Hyunjin with a smirk. “You just want to pretend like Changbin cares about you.”

The older blond frowns as he flips off Jeongin. “Like you wouldn’t want Jisung to send you a ‘Have a wonderful day, bestie!’ message?”

The youngest member flops back down onto the bed. “Okay, that’s fair. It’s still weird, though. Seems so artificial and fake, I guess.”

“Well,” Hyunjin sits up, offering a hand out to Felix, “I’ll have more information on it tomorrow, probably. Why don’t you let yourself sleep for a while?” Felix takes the hand offered to him, and both men stand up. “Lixie and I will go out and get some groceries and get you those nasty energy drinks you like so much.”

Jeongin grumbles as he wiggles his way up to the pillows, half-asleep and irritated from the loss of warmth from Felix. “Just not the berry ones, okay?”

“I’ll see what we can do,” Hyunjin says with a smirk before he spins on his heel and walks out of the room. “Love you, Innie!”

“Don’t worry,” Felix leans down to kiss Jeongin’s forehead, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get the kinds you hate. Let yourself actually sleep, too. We’ll make it all work out, okay?”

Jeongin mutters some sort of incoherent affirmation as he lets his heavy eyelids flutter shut. Seungmin would be able to fix the CSS by himself, he figured, trying not to worry too much about how broken small parts of the site were. He heard Felix say something else as he quickly faded off into sleep, but it didn’t register fully as he sank into the abyss.

There were a lot of sleepless nights ahead of them, whether FiVE:RACHA felt it coming or not.

[interrogatormentors]

Event Eleven: Natural

They dissected Ualona in their anatomy class the following day. Sollux knew he should’ve been ready. All of the other subjects in the dissection videos to learn about the inner workings of the body, were young and fit, and more than a few showed signs of distress and torture when they were working on the cadavers. Sollux knew they were working on other trainees, but still they all stopped and stared at the body on the table waiting for them with the exception of Rosmer and Zesaim. Those two remained as placid as ever as of late, eerily so as they took their seats.

A new instructor waited for them, a goldblood with a horrific burn across one side of her face and a bright red eye. “Welcome, recruits,” she said, stretching on some gloves as she spoke, “to the next stage of your anatomy schoolfeeding. As you are well aware, this specimen hasn’t been dead long and I wish to make efficient use of it while it is here. Please take up your tablets-- You will be answering questions as I perform this dissection, so no need for gloves just yet. Once I have been satisfied with your performance, you will be tasked with practicing cuts and sutures on the specimen, as in the field you may have to patch up both yourself and your interrogation subject at any time. Do keep in mind that dead flesh is very different from the living, and respond accordingly. Be very grateful one of your own perished at such a convenient time, as knowing the subject in this unit is optimal. We would hate to have to give you a frozen subject.”

Sollux sat down in his usual seat, and despite his best attempts to remain impartial to avoid punishment he couldn’t help speaking up. His tablet zapped him as he did so, but he continued on without so much as flinching. “I’m not saying I won’t do this, because I know that isn’t an option,” he said. He kept his expression passive, and managed to avoid any further electrocution. “But I’d just like to know what’s accomplished by knowing.. The specimen.” He narrowly avoided grimacing then. He hated speaking as though Ualona was just a piece of meat, but that too had to be buried. Emotions were weakness.

Rosmer scoffed beside him, but the instructor lifted a hand. “Calm yourself, Leywet. Captor here has asked an excellent question.” She began to pace, arms folded behind her back. “Why indeed? The answer is simple-- there is no greater weakness than close relationships. Alliances are useful to use and exploit, but sentimental clinging will always serve as a detriment. If your closest friend is a traitor to the empire, you must be able to detach yourself and do what is done.” Sollux stiffened by a millimeter, and immediately the instructor’s good eye fixed upon him as she continued speaking. “We are the sharpest knives of the empire, recruits. Do not forget that.”

Trisia averted her eyes as the instructor went back to the table and picked up a scalpel, but Sollux forced himself to watch. He could feel something in him slipping away, giving up as the instructor put the knife to Ualona’s chest. “You are all familiar with the first cut to start with, yes? Do tell me my predecessor did not fail you in that regard.”

Sollux glanced over at Mercuo, who shrugged a shoulder, but they all answered correctly: a Y-cut, to access the chest and organs within for an autopsy-style investigation. Ophlia refused to answer, hands flat on her desk in front of her, and didn’t move as her tablet zapped out at her.

“Please be mature about this, Miss Davrot,” the instructor said. She made the initial cut, exposing the abdominal and thoracic cavities with a clean Y-cut. “When performing your own dissections, remember to start at the corner of the pectorals and go diagonally until they meet at the midline. Do not make the mistake of starting with the vertical cut down the middle. Cherry picking will get you nowhere. Trolls will, on occasion, hide valuable information in any and all bodily cavities and if they are former helmsmen such as Captor, their brain will have been modified with a partially electronic sector. Never forget to check that area when working with a lowblood. If you have enough adrenaline to mitigate shock, you can even do as much while the subject is awake. That way, you immediately know when you have made a mistake in their pan rather than being surprised by their later incoherence when they come to consciousness.”

The instructor peeled the skin and muscle back, revealing Ualona’s internal cavity. Considering how long he had been dead he did not bleed, but Sollux swallowed back a retch at the foul smell. “Next question, what tool is used to open the ribcage?” Mercuo wobbled in his seat, looking queasy, but answered with the rest.

Sollux got the answer wrong, as did Ophlia by virtue of once again refusing not to answer. Sollux readjusted his grip on his tablet, and took the incorrect answer in stride. He filed the answer away in his notes, color-coded and neat. The sane part of him asked why, why bother considering how he still yearned to escape, but the other half of him reminded him of the futility of the attempt. He had already experienced the helm. Wouldn’t it be better to have a semblance of agency, to walk and eat and sleep like a normal troll? Better trolls had sacrificed more for such a life.

The instructor sliced open the digestive sac then, interrupting Sollux’s thoughts. Mercuo actually threw up then, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as he lifted his head. Rosmer’s eyebrows twitched, but he leaned in all the same as the instructor started going on about how fast to move to recover objects before stomach acid could damage them if the troll hadn’t taken precautionary measures against it.

The rest of the lesson passed just as unpleasantly as the beginning, and the whirring of the bonesaw at Ualona’s skull continued to echo through Sollux’s pan as they filed from the block. Another new instructor awaited them at physical endurance training, a teal with blind eyes, sickly black cracks shattering his skin, and a shadow that seemed too long and too solid as he paced the room.

Sollux went about coding a new, private chatroom for them all, barring Rosmer and Zesaim seeing as the two both seemed compromised now. He pinged the others, one by one over the next hour so as to not arouse suspicion.

[twinArmaggedons [TA] has opened up the memo porndonotopen]

glorifiedCorpsification [GC] has entered the chat!

cavortingGratuity [CG] has entered the chat!

accentuatedAntimony [AA] has entered the chat!

AA: 7his isnt porn is i7

TA: not iin the mood funniily enough TA: anyone know what wa2 up wiith the two new iin2tructor2?

GC: *No.* GC: *Don’t care.*

CG: i actually Heard oTHers Talking CG: pozoia and juyere were parTners and THeir sHip was aTTacked.

TA: let me check the helmiing channel2.

Sollux opened up the helming channels, plugging in his well-worn code string to bypass the firewalls. A quick scan had his pusher skipping a few beats, and he rolled over on his reclining platform onto his stomach as he scrolled through the data.

TA: the rebelliion got them. TA: they managed two get iin the 2hiip, extract the iinterrogatormentor2, and get out. AA: 7ha7 sounds bull to me. AA: 7hey never would ge7 7aken alive.

TA: word iin the helm ii2 that poiizoiia’2 old mate2priit wa2 iinvolved.

AA: wai7 AA: so i7 wasn7 an a77ack?

AA: i7 was a rescue?

GC: *So our quads weren’t culled.* GC: *Someone misses us.*

AA: oh god did you have a quad.

GC: *Pale*

GC: *My diamond, lime bright and secret.*

GC: *My soul traded for hers. They stated her death was a quick one. Do not know what to believe now.*

TA: okay. TA: okay you know what you diidn’t make a trade.

TA: we’re gettiing out of here.

TA: ii 2ay we try and move wiithiin the periigee before anythiing wor2e happen2 two one of u2. 

Sollux turned off his tablet then, putting it under his pillow and flipping back onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He dared to imagine his friends’ faces then, the friends he’d tried to force himself to forget in an attempt to minimize what the interrogatormentors could use against him. Was Karkat actually looking for him? Was he somewhere out in the stars with the others, tearing ships apart and searching them for a helmsman or a mangled corpse within?

The weeks passed. The escape plan took shape, pupating into something actionable as each day passed. Mercuo had the advantage of his blood, and along with Ophlia’s intimidating bulk he managed to procure escape pod codes from the docking bay. Trisia, already a favorite amongst the guard, managed to get a shift shadowing another while Sollux worked on adjusting the cameras just enough to create blind spots in their vision without arousing suspicion. Another night, another millimeter, until there was a foot of space the cameras couldn’t see leading down the corridor to freedom.

Despite his efforts Sollux found his motivation draining from him with each passing night. He voiced none of his doubts in the chat, but what was even the point of escaping? Interrogatormentor training haunted his every moment, but at least it was better than running from the Empire. Just like rebels, they would be hunted down and given no quarter for abandoning their posts. They’d signed away their lives. Ophlia seemed more outwardly hesitant than he was, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was just her brusque manner of speaking and general stoic demeanor.

After dinner one night, Sollux decided to turn in early. He felt off, a headache building up behind his eyes, and Trisia just about booted him down the hall to sleep. The training that night with Rapard had worn him down to the bone, and he fell asleep the moment his head hit the reclining platform. Only much later would he make the connection between the taste of the food that morning and Rosmer’s bright, eager eyes watching him across the table to how deeply he slept.

When Sollux awoke the next night, Trisia and Mercuo had gone. Sollux met Ophlia’s eyes across the room, and while she betrayed nothing he could tell she was thinking the same as him. They abandoned us. Sollux got dressed in silence with the three others, and out of the corner of his eye saw Ophlia pick up her tub of face paint to apply it for the night, before putting it down again without a word. She walked out of the room, blank faced as the rest of them to meet their usual instructors for training

One by one as they walked, an instructor pulled them away. Sollux followed Rapard in silence, and came to a stop with him outside an unfamiliar block. “Your final exam, recruit,” Rapard said. “Congratulations on making it to the live interrogation. You will be tested on your ability to extract information from the subject and to resist emotional attachments.” Rapard opened the door, revealing Mercuo stripped down to his shorts and strapped to a chair with his head slumped forward to his chest. “You are tasked with interrogating Mercuo Trevan for his attachments to the rebellion, and discovering the location of Trisia Avarae. Culling the subject before you are given the clear will result in immediate failure and your termination. Is this clear, recruit?”

Sollux nodded, a faint pang in his gut as he entered the room. The door slammed shut behind him, and Mercuo’s closed eyes screwed themselves shut a little tighter. Sollux took stock of the situation, seeing a rolling table to the side of the room, equipped with various tools that he’d become well acquainted with in the gruelling time that they’d been in training. Scalpels, knives, scissors. Bundles of wire. Bottles of different types of fluid, one of which was labeled as liquid nitrogen. A styrofoam container that no doubt contained dry ice. Then there was a kettle, a hairdryer, pliers. Each item, regardless of how innocuous they seemed, all had a grim purpose in this room.

Sollux closed his eyes and inhaled, gathering himself. While Rapard had forbidden immediately culling Mercuo, Sollux doubted that Mercuo would walk out of this one alive. Maybe he could try to give Mercuo a quick death anyway. He’d prefer Mercuo lived, because a distant part of him longed for all of this to end and for everything to be okay again. He missed Ualona. He missed Mercuo swearing at him and Zesaim and Rosmer being normal. He missed Trisia managing to make Ophlia laugh. He missed Karkat, accessible now only to Sollux on the culling block should they meet again.

Sollux opened his eyes, rolling his shoulders before raising his hand to the thermostat on the wall. He cranked the temperature up, and braced as a wave of hot air blasted through the vents. Mercuo stirred then, lifting his head and jerking at his bonds.

“Captor? What… What’s going on?”

Sollux almost gritted his teeth, but the ghostly chill of his memories in the freezer helped tame him back. “I think you know what’s going on. You failed. I’m going to pass.”

Mercuo swallowed hard, running his tongue over his lips as the heat in the room rose. “...Sparks. Fuck, what-- I talked to you yesterday.” His eyes fell on something behind Sollux, and Sollux glanced back to spot a blinking red light in the corner. They were being watched. Sollux wondered how soon they would edit down the footage, how long until they released this as just another schoolfeeding supplemental. 

Mercuo recovered first, fins flaring out in a clear signal of aggression as Sollux approached him. Other than that, his face fell into a familiar blank mask of indifference all interrogatormentors wore. “I don’t know what exactly you want, dude, but you’ll have to try harder.” He laughed, thin and mirthless while not a single muscle in his face twitched. “The temperature trials don’t work so much on me anymore. We both went through them.”

Sollux smacked Mercuo in the face, watching a drop of sweat fly off the seadweller’s nose and across the room. “Then you know how this works. I’m asking the questions.” With the addition of the camera in the room Sollux worked harder to maintain a cold mask of control, killing any last remnant of resistance to his training. He had to pass. He had to live. Mercuo had proven his weakness. “I know you went through the training, I’m not a wiggler.” He picked up the bundle of wires from the table, pushing the operculum back and hooking the metal ends to the seadweller’s delicate torso gills with little clamps. “I don’t care if your pan isn’t scrambled, it’s your body I need weak.”

Sollux clutched the wires then, using them as a conduit to direct psionics through all of Mercuo’s gills at once. Mercuo held himself together for a whole thirty seconds before he lost his nerve and screeched, little trickles of blood bursting from the gills’ fillaments from the shock. He bent as much as he could in his restraints, rasping with his eyes wide as Sollux watched him. “Why did Trisia leave you behind? I thought she cared about you.”

“They shot my ankle out,” Mercuo said, wheezing and wincing. A quick glance down confirmed this-- the seadweller’s whole foot and ankle up to the shin were swathed in bandages. The wound still looked fresh. “I threw her into a pod and made her go.” He lifted his head, baring a shark-toothed grin even as his breathing hitched from the pain. “Anything else, Sparks?”

Sollux clenched his fist around the wires, and he caught the tiniest flick of Mercuo’s fin at the motion. Good, he’d managed to already get a panic response. Still he had to remind himself to keep going, to get the answers. He had to cover the bases. He already knew Mercuo’s name. That was always the first step. He had to make sure the subject was uncomfortable, and the blazing hot room accomplished that.

He cocked back his free hand, punching Mercuo right in the face. Mercuo gagged around blood as the punch to the face caused him to cut his inner cheek on his teeth, and Sollux turned as he recovered to turn the heat up even more with his psionics. “I’m asking the questions. You’re just making this difficult, you know it. This could be over now. Where were you planning to go? You never told the rest of us.” He sent out another wave of psionics at Mercuo’s gills, eyes narrowed. “She had to go somewhere. Where is she?”

Mercuo bit his lip hard enough to bleed even more with the second surge of psionics, eyes watering as his gills started to tear under the psionic pressure. Sweat dripped down his face. “No. Try something else. Fffffuck you, Captor. C’mon. This cheesy villain shtick doesn’t fit you. Like I knew you were compromised, man, but you can still bounce back.”

Sollux wrenched Mercuo’s head back, forcing him to stare up at the bright bulb above them. “You know where she went. But take your time. I’m here all night.” He dropped Mercuo’s head, removing the wires and starting to tape them shut instead with some medical tape provided to him. His fingers slipped a little in the violet blood, but he pressed on and moved up to Mercuo’s neck gills until the seadweller was, for the first time in his life, watertight. He covered Mercuo’s face with a cloth, grabbing a pitcher from the table and pouring it onto Mercuo’s face to simulate drowning for a troll that never should have the context for such a situation. Mercuo yelled and trilled under the cloth, his legs jerking in their bonds as Sollux waterboarded him. He repeated his question, firm and unflinching as the seadweller gurgled.

It took an hour for Mercuo to stop choking and to begin crying instead, and Sollux pulled back when the desperation reached its peak. Mercuo coughed, head lolling back before he caught himself. “No. Fuck you. I’m not budging. Ask something else.”

Sollux grabbed Mercuo’s face, forcing eye contact. “I think you know I won’t budge either. I don’t care if you give me an answer now or after hours of me tearing your guts out through your nostrils.”

He raised the temperature again, and grabbed himself a sip of water after doing so. Mercuo watched him with hungry eyes, actively panting now. Sollux grabbed another towel, a dry one this time, scrubbing away the sweat and water on Mercuo’s face to rob him of the chance to cool himself down. He put the towel down, placing the heel of his hand over one of Mercuo’s eyes. “But if you’re still going to be stubborn, eyes are a pretty quick route to the pan.” Mercuo writhed. “No, Captor, wait-- I’m sorry, we’re sorry! We tried to wake you up, you weren’t moving, it was just like Ualona-- oh god, no no no no oh god Sollux please--”

The seadweller screamed as Sollux turned his psionics on him, burning his eye beyond repair. Blood and fluid bubbled up around Sollux’s hand and Mercuo’s screeching rose in pitch, body jerking as he tried to back away. He screamed himself hoarse for what seemed like hours as Sollux held him there with a single hand, the blood pooling down his face while his other eye glazed over from the pain.

Sollux pulled his hand away, wiping his hand clean on Mercuo’s face. Part of him ached as he saw Mercuo sobbing before him, hated himself and the situation he’d been forced into. That part of him grew quieter as he swiped a smear of violet blood from his cheek and flicked it onto the floor. “You have no right to call me by name.” He placed his hand on Mercuo’s other eye, ignoring the wail that resulted. “You were dead to me the moment you tried to escape.”

“You came up with the idea!”

Sollux glanced back at the camera at the other side of the room. “It never would’ve worked. When you two left without us I realized something.” He leaned in, his face an inch from Mercuo’s. He could smell the sweat and the panicked pheromones whirling around his head. “I’m better off here. They take trolls that are weak and turn them into something stronger. I don’t need to run for the rest of my life.”

“They broke you, Captor, and that’s the point.” Mercuo wheezed, flinching as Sollux pressed down on his eye. “They’ll break you so you can’t feel anything and what’s the point in calling yourself a troll anymore?”

Sollux snorted, and silently berated himself for betraying that emotional response. “They broke me down and built me up again and turned me into a weapon. I’m the one walking out of here alive today. If you give Trisia up, maybe she won’t suffer the same fate as you. I’ll give you one more chance before I take your other eye.”

Mercuo sniffled, starting to hiccup in terror. “Please, Sollux. Please.”

“You have two seconds.”

“I can’t I can’t, I’m so fucking pale for her, I can’t.” He spat then, purposeful and directly onto Sollux’s free hand.

That spelled the beginning of the end for Mercuo. Sollux blinded his other eye then, and after that Sollux tortured the seadweller for hours. They instructors had provided adrenaline, and Sollux forced Mercuo back from the brink more than a few times. He didn’t take a break, not even to grab a bite of the food that a wordless instructor brought in for him.

The process took a total of six hours. Six hours of hell, pushing this person-- who in another life, Sollux could have considered being actual friends with --to just shy of death. Every tool on that table ended up in use. Gills were dried with the blistering heat of the hair dryer. Mercuo’s wounded leg, torn free of its bandages, dunked into the vat of liquid nitrogen and then shattered off like glass. His fins, cut off and then cauterized with the blistering heat of Sollux’s psionics. The delicate filaments of his gills cut by a scalpel with precision, where the nerve bundles were greatest. Dry ice forced down his throat with no reprieve or water in sight. Every little bit of interrogation tricks he’d learned through the course shone through, applied meticulously to ensure that not only would Mercuo still be alive, but he would sorely regret that fact.

Clearly, it was all too much to bear. Mercuo sagged back against his chair, ruined eyes dripping blood onto the floor as his head lolled to the side, making him seem more of a corpse or a daywalker at best. “Kill me, please.” He took in a deep breath, coughing. “She entered in Alternian coords. Shhhekfk- gkgg- Found forums… They have a base down there. New heiress… she’s.. She’s coming. Feferi Peixes.”

Sollux’s ears flicked as he heard a soft beep, and looking to the camera he saw the light had gone green. Any residual guilt had leaked out of him at this point, and he felt nothing upon being given the implicit order to kill one of his dear friends.

No. Allowed. He was allowed the privilege of culling a traitor. 

Sollux put a hand to Mercuo’s chest, powering his psionics up to deadly levels and letting out a shock directly to the seadweller’s bloodpusher. Mercuo smiled right before he did so, croaking a ragged thanks before jerking once. Then he died, breath rattling and rasping to a stop.

Sollux felt nothing at all.

Sollux stepped out of the interrogation room, covered in violet blood and with his back straight. Rapard awaited him, arms folded behind him. He stopped Sollux dead in his tracks by smiling, honestly smiling, reaching out to grab Sollux by the shoulders.

“Nice work, recruit. You’re a natural.”

[autisticandroids]

2, 6, 12, 14, 27, 47.... foods questions

2. Grilled cheese or PB&J?

pbj, always. i like grilled cheese, sometimes. there are some truly delectable grilled cheese sandwiches out there. and it’s hard to beat a grilled cheese with your tomato soup on a cold night.

but peanut butter is the forbidden fruit. 

my mother is allergic to a great many things. this has influenced my taste in two ways. some of the foods she can’t eat, i have developed a serious distaste for. shellfish, salmon, most preparations of eggplant, etc. even some things which she dislikes because even though she’s not allergic to, it seems that she ought to be, like coconut, i hate.

but sometimes it went the opposite way. some of these forbidden foods - tamarind, pumpkin seeds, sesame, cherries - i covet. peanut butter is in this second category.

though i must say, i don’t usually go for jam on my peanut butter sandwiches. i tend to go elvis style, banana slices and honey. occasionally i will treat myself to a fluffernutter, a monstrosity which, if you have never lived in new england, i gleefully invite you to google.

6.  Top three cuisines?

okay. i’m officially declaring that this will be americanized versions only. i’ve traveled a lot, over the course of my life, and i’ve always eaten like a king, even in countries whose national cuisine is universally reviled. but i feel like it’s unfair to compare that way, you know? so this is gonna be just for stuff i eat in america, or make at home.

- italian food, but only the way they do it in new haven, connecticut, and surrounding areas. 

- chinese food because if you told me right now if i could never eat another bao i’d die on the spot, actually. this is also cheating a little because some of the chinese food i cook myself is a lot more like chinese-chinese food than americanized chinese food, since i’ve actually been to china and stuff, but even if i were to never cook my own chinese food again and only ate at american chinese restaurants it would still be on here.

- third is hard. third is hard. thai food? polish food? indian food? vietnamese food? it’s hard. i think i’m going to have to go with japanese food. i would be a hypocrite if i didn’t, because i just spent two hours making a passable imitation of takoyaki, with vegetarian fish chunks. 

i feel kind of odd about this, because i’ve always had the sense that americanized japanese food is even further from japanese-japanese food than most americanized cuisines, because it’s so limited in scope. like, american japanese food is pretty limited to either sushi, or trendy street food/ramen places. 

i always had the impression that, for example, while american chinese food is very americanized, and really only reflects the cuisine of guangdong, it might at least have something to do with what immigrants from guangdong were eating at home during the early waves of chinese immigration. i have similar impressions with other immigrant cuisines. but i do not have this impression with american japanese food, since it was really limited to sushi and whatever side dishes sushi places sold, and the expansion of things like ramen shops and street food in the last few years seem to be driven less by immigration and more by a rising trend of mainstream western culinary orientalism and weeabooism. so i feel like it’s probably incorrect to claim japanese food is one of my favorite cuisines since the american version of it is so limited.

also, just realized that i would die for a good banh mi right now so i’m changing my answer, vietnamese food.

12.  What do you get on your bagels? What WOULD you get if you had access to anything you wanted?

you can’t go wrong with a good egg and cheese. i nearly always get an egg and cheese. they’re unbeatable.

sometimes, in a certain mood, i will get strawberry cream cheese instead. sometimes, in a very certain mood, i might get just plain cream cheese, but that’s unusual.

it really does not matter what you get on a bagel. what makes or breaks a bagel sandwich is not the filling, but the bagel itself. a good bagel could make sawdust and coffee grounds delicious, and no filling on earth can save a bad bagel. 

there are, of course, mediocre bagels in the world, but those are best treated with the same respect as ordinary sandwich bread, and filled accordingly.

14.  Favorite mug you own

i don’t own a ton of mugs, but since, i’m home with my parents right now, and they have a whole collection, i’ll give me favorite of theirs, which is my mom’s spock mug.

what makes this mug special is that it’s as big in terms of volume as a cappuccino mug without actually being one. instead of being as wide or wider than it is tall like a cappuccino mug, it has the same proportions as a normal mug, just scaled up. this makes it easier to hold, and easier to drink from, while still being fucking huge. plus, the wide mouths of cappuccino mugs when compared to their height mean that anything held in them goes cold in five seconds flat, while this mug has the upright shape of a traditional mug and so holds heat longer.

also, this mug has spock on it.

27.  What section do you immediately head for when you walk into a bookstore?

i’m not a huge bookstore person? i’m very hesitant about acquiring new material possession which have a finite term of usefulness, even moreso if i have to actually pay for them, and i am well aware that i will read most books only once, and some not at all. for actual reading material, i tend to prefer libraries or ebooks, to keep from adding more unmanageable clutter to my disastrous living space. libraries especially, since they’re free, and also i have a deadline to either read the damn book or give up on it.

in libraries, i tend to head for either the y.a. or adult genre fiction sections, since that’s what i go for, though usually when i come into a library i already have a book in mind. i also tend to head to audiobooks. i love audiobooks, they’re wonderful, i’ve gotten through so many books that way.

however, when i do go to bookstores, i don’t go to the stuff i would normally actually read. in more chain-y, new-book bookstores, i tend to go to the novelty books, the kind of stuff libraries don’t have. coffee table books with pictures of cats, comic collections, joke books. and i tend to check out the displays, see what’s up. 

i’m also way more likely to go to the nonfiction sections of these kinds of bookstores than used bookstores or libraries, for two reasons. first, because i tend to think nonfiction makes for good gifts. if you give someone a book it comes with strings attached, no matter what, but those strings are different for different kinds of books. a novel comes with an obligation to read it cover to cover, and not just read it, but enjoy it, or at least come up with an interesting opinion on its contents. a nonfiction book does not have to be enjoyable, merely informative, and it’s a lot easier to be informed by a book than to like one. plus, most of the time you don’t actually need to read the whole thing, because although they do tend to have overall arcs and maybe overarching arguments, a lot of nonfiction books can be informative even if consumed in small chunks. second, because in chain-y, new book bookstores, the nonfiction section tends to be glutted with the sort of fun, digestible pop-nonfiction that i tend to read if i must go for nonfiction, while libraries and used bookstores run more towards the drier, probably more informative but less enjoyable sort.

in used bookstores, i tend towards a different pattern. what i look for in used bookstores is stuff that’s interesting because it’s old. cookbooks, art books, fifty cent science fiction novels. i especially like very old history and social science books; near my college there was a used bookstore that had an entire shelf of psychoanalysis books, and another of histories of like, medieval european art and design, all written in like the forties. the kind of stuff that’s out of print so wouldn’t be in a new bookstore, but is probably outdated, inaccurate, useless, and unpopular, so it isn’t in too many libraries either.

47.  How do you top your ice cream?

i’m not a huge ice cream person? like, ice cream gives me a stomach ache pretty much uhhhh always. if i’m having it in my house, scooped into a bowl, i don’t generally top it with anything, ditto with stuff i get from an ice cream shop, but the most common way i eat ice cream is actually in like, bar form? like you know those dove bars, like a bar of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate. does that count?

i definitely like stuff mixed into my ice cream, i’m a fiend for cookie dough and brownie chunks. maybe my favorite ice cream flavor ever came from a local ice cream shop which has tragically since shut down. it was called kettle crunch and it had chocolate covered potato chips mixed in.

i guess i always get toppings at like, those trendy froyo places that go by weight and have a buffet of toppings? but honestly, when i go to those places, i rarely get any actual froyo. usually i just fill my bowl with popping boba because they always have it and i love it. i get some fruit too, and sometimes i get some of the candy, like a few gummy worms or a kit kat. but the popping boba is the star of the show.

ok now i’ve gotten distracted researching buying popping boba online. apparently it’s not hard, but it seems like a lot of the time it comes in seven pound bucket. like i could get a small amount of the common flavors, but i have just now right now discovered that there is such a thing as chocolate popping boba and i’m losing it because it only comes in seven pound buckets but i need it.

also, chilli pepper popping boba, which has the same problem, but also holy fuck.

[wack-ashimself]

I wanna tackle that reply you left on the post regarding puberty blockers. So I didn't transition until my early 20's because I flat out didn't know it was possible. I constantly ran into issues with my assigned gender that only got worse as my body went through puberty and the traditional divide between genders, between girl stuff and boy stuff, carried me further and further away from the person I knew on some level I really wanted to be. Because I didn't have access to hormone treatments, or even information, I spent my entire adolescence in physical, mental, and spiritual decline. I made myself do things I didn't want to do because I was desperately trying to be something I wasn't. My face, my skeleton itself is permanently fucked up and all the surgery in the world may not be able to reshape my pelvis, my ribcage, or my skull.

This is not the same as starting cannabis or any other recreational drug at a young age. It's more like not having access to antibiotics. First puberty for dysphoric trans people is like watching an infection crawl into your bones. Everyone telling you that nothing is wrong when you're literally getting worse by the month. Like being forcibly mutated in some kind of alien experiment while they stand around marvelling at your "progress". It's uniquely horrible, horrifying, and self alienating. Refusing necessary medical intervention to people who KNOW what's wrong and can COMMUNICATE it and know what they NEED to do to STOP it is tantamount to deliberate mutilation, and it's absolutely inhumane.

How in the world is your body screwed up? Is it not small enough? Is it painful to be in? Is it because you waited so long for these treatments? If anything you're kind of arguing that doing something so late in life makes things worse. How do you know that it couldn't be worse doing it earlier in life too? Everybody doesn't feel like who they are in their teenage years. Most people who are confident as a teenager are usually assholes with constant outside incorrect validation. And what issues did you come into with your assigned gender? Cuz that seems more like societal pressure then anything else. So is your entire argument that because you were confident you were not who you were at a young age that it's okay for somebody to completely change their body when everybody feels that way as a teenager? Have you never heard of teenage angst? I'm just saying I have not heard a single thing from a trans person that to some degree I haven't or most people I know haven't felt as a kid. And we got through it and over it. For the most part hopefully. I just find it very confusing that trans people act like feeling different and unwanted is such a rare occurrence. That's part of growing up. If you felt like you knew exactly who you were and what you wanted to be and you were not insecure in any form as a teenager, you must have had the most entitled life of your possibilities before you. Cuz I don't know almost anybody who had that. Teenage years are the years you make your best mistakes so that way you don't make them as an adult. I don't deny that. And not all of them are mistakes. But they definitely have to be looked at from a long-term perspective. College is my biggest regret yet everybody in the world told me to do it. What if the opposite is true? What if you felt like such an outcast and somebody made you feel validated so you did whatever they did? Like a trend? Cuz we've all done that. I'm still goddamn doing that... and it's not cheap. Physically or financially. I'm just trying to better understand the trans thing, and it just seems like you guys feel different and everybody feels that way. We don't alter the body we were given drastically just because it's weird. There's a huge difference between I don't like my body and my body literally causes me pain. And you could argue the mental and spiritual pain I'll give you. But again there's a difference between I wish I wasn't blind and I would completely change my body so I felt like I think I should feel. It's the same with tattoos. I would say half of people who get tattoos regret them. I know most people would either alter one of their tattoos or change it. However tattoos are like earrings. They don't permanently change your body. It's just a permanent sticker. Hormone blockers change your body against your own bodys will. I'm just saying logically there's a difference between your body works against you and you working against your body. I know this is not going to come off as I'm the good guy or I'm open-minded. But you came to my site anonymously. At least have the guts to stand behind what I said. Power to the trans people. Let them do what they want but let them be informed entirely instead of embraced as because you're different we don't need to question why you're doing what you're doing. We don't know the long-term consequences of Wi-Fi. Don't act like you know the long-term consequences of this.

[feynites]

More Reverse Newly Formed AU!

“Des says he wants a body,” Selene explains to him, two months into the disaster that is her still-as-yet-unclarified presence in his palace. She is sitting in his lap. His Chief Administrator of Minor Settlement Affairs had concluded their meeting early, when Selene arrived, despite her assurances that he could continue. Dirthamen will probably have to reschedule their appointment, but it was a fairly routine update on territory management.

 “I told him he should just figure out how to manifest his own, but he says it is too hard. Which is rich, considering that he has told me that there is no such thing as ‘too hard’, but he is being entirely too whiny about it and says you should make him a body instead. He would not shut up about it until I promised to ask you.”

 Selene wriggles her hands more firmly underneath his robe.

 Dirthamen considers the prospect of a second spirit manifesting a physical form in his territories, and makes his decision.

 “I will have a body created for Des,” he determines. It may be wise to give Selene more physical companions anyway. She seems to enjoy tactile contact a great deal, to the point where he, Fear, and Deceit are not always sufficient to her requirements. Particularly when they are busy with matters of the empire, and the continued dispute between his brother and the other leaders. Mother has been sending increasingly strong-worded messages to him. He suspects she is unhappy that she has not discovered a means past his protections yet, but Dirthamen has been amplifying them quite a bit over the best several years, in preparation for a fiasco of this magnitude.

 Selene sighs, and then shrugs.

 “He has a list of things he would like,” she informs him.

 “He may provide the body crafter with it,” Dirthamen decides, and then considers who he might assign to the task. Fervour will probably be the best choice. They are discreet, easily distracted, and very good at their job. He lifts Selene and deposits her into his chair, excusing himself for a moment to go and send a runner to inform Fervour of their new assignment, and also to find the required Desire Spirit. When he returns to Selene, she pulls him into her own lap instead.

 “I want to go see the city,” she tells him.

 This is not the first time she has made such a request. It has become her most popular one of late, and Dirthamen has found that most of his explanations for why this is a bad idea have fallen flat.

 “It is not secure enough,” he nevertheless reiterates.

 “Well then you should come with me, if you are so worried,” Selene decides.”You and Fear and Deceit. And Des can test out his new body, too. We will all go and look at things and meet people. I want to introduce myself to everyone!”

 This, of course, is the problem. If Selene wished to go to the city simply to see it, and would wear her cloak and not interact with people, then it might be permissible. But instead, she wishes to go and meet people. And Dirthamen cannot help but think that would be disastrous. The palace rumour mill is already talking almost exclusively about her, and the denizens of his population at-large are far less prone to keeping secrets relatively confined.

 “The more people who know about you, the more likely it is that my family will discover the truth about you,” Dirthamen tries to explain, again.

 Selene waves a hand.

 “I am not worried about your family. They are not good people,” she insists.

 “They are dangerous people, and they are powerful people,” Dirthamen replies, not bothering to refute her assessment. It is not incorrect.

 “Like me,” Selene determines.

 This, too, is not wholly incorrect. And yet, it also is.

 “Selene,” Dirthamen says, with enough severity that she meets his gaze, and does not fiddle with the edge of his mask. He considers his options. Options which he has been considering, at length, for some time now. She needs to understand. She needs to be aware of the truth of these circumstances, no matter what detriment it does to her opinion of him.

 “You are powerful. But I have killed many powerful beings, in my life, and of my family I have killed the least,” he explains. “You are powerful enough to cause them fear. But you would never be able to defeat any of us, not as you are now.”

 Selene frowns at him.

 “You do not know how powerful I am,” she says, her tone as serious as his own. “I have never shown any of you the real extent of it. How could you know what I am capable of?”

 Dirthamen inclines his head.

 “The reverse is true as well,” he points out. “You have not seen my strength, nor that of my kin.”

 For a long moment, Selene regards him. The emotions in the air are difficult to parse. Her expression is even more inscrutable. But at length, she lets out a breath, and then settles him back onto his feet. Dirthamen stands, and straightens his robe some. She follows him up.

 “Alright. Show me, then,” she decides.

 It takes Dirthamen a moment to follow her meaning.

 “Show you… my strength?” he surmises.

 Selene nods.

 “Yes. And I will show you mine,” she decides.

 After a moment, Dirthamen glances around the office they are in. It would not be a suitable space for any kind of demonstration. And as he considers it, there would really only be a limited number of places in his territories that would be. Far fewer still that would provide the necessary privacy.

 “I will have to think,” he determines.

 “What about?” Selene asks.

 “Where to do such a thing.”

 “Oh! Well… we could go to my tower,” she suggests, but Dirthamen must shake his head.

 “That is too far,” he admits. “I cannot be away from here for very long. There are too many matters requiring my presence. But, there is a solution. I only must consider it.”

 Selene shrugs, accepting this, and after a few moments acquiesces to leaving him to his contemplation as well. She goes to find Des, to make certain that he is adequately informed of his impending embodiment, and to help him prepare for it as well. This gives Dirthamen time to consider the best options, and the availability of them, and then begin to make the necessary preparations to access one of his old labyrinths. There is a suitable one located outside of the city, which has not yet been dismantled. It should be suitable for the task, given certain aspects of the design, but he cannot commit it to a task like without making some personal modifications to it either. There are some others which might prove more sufficient, but none close enough at hand.

 He sets to work.

 It takes several weeks to modify the labyrinth. Selene protests - but she also listens. She is bored, but the embodiment of her companion distracts her enough that she is willing to be patient. Dirthamen tasks Des with maintaining that level of distraction, which is something that the newly-embodied elf seems adept at. He assigns one of his personal guard as Des’ official mentor, but Des insists that she is ‘boring’ and otherwise inadequate, and at length Dirthamen finds Fear is needed to help keep everything in line so often, that doing so simply becomes the aspect’s primary occupation. It means he has fewer eyes to spare for his brother’s activities, but Falon’Din has chosen to read Dirthamen’s withdrawal as a sign of solidarity, so he is not being as aggressive with him as before.

 Instead, most of his efforts are focused on the rest of the family. Dirthamen would ordinarily feel guilty. But for some reason, he does not. Perhaps he is simply too distracted to dwell upon the matter, in the way that he ordinarily would.

 The modifications to the labyrinth would go much more quickly if he could assign others to the task. But discretion is paramount, and so Dirthamen handles it himself, when his duties allow. He reshapes the wall and takes advantage of several incorporated spatial distortions, and even pursues a few theoretical concepts to promising results, before ultimately putting them aside and focusing on what is needed for this particular venture. A large amount of shielded space, and targets, and sufficient precautions to ensure that their activities are not noteworthy or detrimental to the surrounding environs.

 Dirthamen is not wholly satisfied with his work, but it is suitable by the time he perceives Selene to be reaching some sort of breaking point with the situation.

 “I am going to the city,” she tells him, striding into his office one morning. Des is following behind her, and when Dirthamen looks at him, he simply shrugs.

 Dirthamen looks back at Selene.

 “Not today,” he tells her. “Today, we are going to the arena.”

 Selene opens her mouth, as it to argue, and then pauses. Her brow furrows slightly.

 “What arena?” she asks.

 “The arena I have prepared for our test of strength,” Dirthamen replies.

 This proves to be an acceptable response, because Selene’s expression immediately brightens.

 “It is ready?” she asks him.

 “It is,” he confirms. “I could do more, but it should prove adequate for the time being.”

 “Oooh,” Des says, lighting up as well. “This I have to see! Are you both going to whip out your dragons and measure?”

 Dirthamen blinks.

 “Size is irrelevant,” he explains. “And you cannot come. Only Selene and I will be present, for reasons of safety and security.”

 Des adopts a beseeching - and surprisingly effective - expression, but Dirthamen remains firm on that point. And after a moment, Selene seems to be in agreement with him. Or is perhaps so eager to go somewhere outside of the palace that she does not wish to risk the outing by arguing on behalf of Des. The newly-embodied elf eventually leaves, shutting several doors dramatically behind him and announcing that he is going to the city. Which makes Selene upset, but only for a moment.

 She takes Dirthamen’s arm as he leads her down through the palace corridors, to the eluvian which will bring them to the labyrinth. They earn several polite nods and bows along the way. The palace manager had, initially, appointed Selene the title of ‘honored guest’, but lately that has been amended to ‘consort’. Dirthamen does not suppose it is inaccurate, and any further clarifications on his part would only worsen the situation, so it has been permitted to stand. Many of his followers seem curious of it, but also eager to avoid irritating Selene, and so there have been no repeat instances of violence since her initial arrival.

 Des, he knows, has also been tentatively awarded a designation as ‘consort’. More than one of his advisors has inquired after the situation, but none have so far persisted past Dirthamen’s silent stare in response.

 Selene complains of the crossroads itching her scales, but the trip is only a short one, and then they are through to the labyrinth. Massive walls stretch up above them, capped with a shimmering magical dome. The local wildlife has become drawn to the energies of the place, and in the time since its creation, more than a few plants have begun to encroach upon its outer walls. The effect is visually striking, and it seems to resonate with Selene, who goes uncommonly silent and wide-eyed as she stares at it all.

 “This is it?” she asks.

 “Yes,” Dirthamen confirms.

 “You built this…?”

 “Yes,” he confirms again. “Though, the initial structure was assembled by a construction crew, and many of its functions were designed by craftsmen dedicated to such tasks.”

 Selene is quiet for a long moment. Dirthamen permits it. Watching her as she moves towards the walls, and examines the plants, and searches for something. After a few minutes, he guesses what she might be looking for, and with a raised hand, bids the entryway to appear. The door manifests in a rumbling of shifting tiles, and a brief flare of magic.

 After a moment more, Selene turns and looks at him. For the first time, she seems uncertain not only of their surroundings, but also of Dirthamen himself.

 It is reasonable. The labyrinths do not give off a welcoming atmosphere.

 But it still makes him unaccountably sad.

 “Shall we?” he asks. As more than a formality. If Selene would be willing to set aside the matter, and concede that she does not truly understand her situation, then this would not be necessary.

 She meets his gaze, however, and then nods resolutely.

 “I will show you,” she declares.

 One way or another, Dirthamen supposes that she will.

[ad-ciu]

Of Gods and Mice: The Morrígan

So, today we are looking at the final Celtic Deity that has been put out by High-Rez for their game Smite. I am not entirely sure what I am going to start looking at next. I have an old Dungeon article with someone trying to ‘correct’ the Túatha Dé Danann’s depiction in... I think it was ADnD, but I am less certain of that since it is from the 1980s, and thus most of it would be me throwing rocks at Robert Graves. I think I would like to continue looking at video games for a bit, but I am not certain for a direction to go from here. I will work something out, but if any of you lot have an idea, feel free to toss suggestions for Celtic inspired media for me to pick at.

Anyways, today we are looking at The Morrígan who is the first deity I have talked about in regards to Smite who has come up elsewhere already. I am sorry if a lot of this is repetitive from what I talked about for Dungeons and Dragons here, but I think it will be different enough to be interesting. Anyways, The Morrígan is given the title, “Phantom Queen,” which is alright, but not the normal translation anymore. Anyways, let’s get into it!

So, The Morrígan is a deity who has caught a lot of people’s imaginations, and when this desire to know stuff is coupled with Celtic Study’s inability to put out accurate information, people have unwittingly in many cases drawn on super dodgy information about her. There is a ton of really dodgy stuff out there about The Morrígan, as well as Danu, and Brigid. If you want to look into Irish mythology, in general don’t trust anything you read on the internet about them. Including this, always go read sources yourself and don’t just arbitrarily believe me.

Anyways, The Morrígan is a character who shows up in a lot of Irish literature, sort of. There is this issue where The Morrígan is of uncertain... number? She is (probably) a triple goddess, except the identity of who is a part of this trinity is up in the air. The Morrígan is one of the three, and then Badb is the second. However, the third is sort of a toss up between Macha, Anu, Nemed, and any one of a number of others depending on the manuscript you are reading. Sometimes it looks like The Morrígan is the “whole” entity, while other times it seems more like she is an individual figure of the three. I personally support the identification of her as a part of a group, rather than the group itself for several reasons I will not go over since I just tried to write it all out and it became absolutely massive. She is a War deity of some sort as The Morrígan, but details past that are a bit tricky asides that she’s doing something with cattle. The other parts of the triad deal with most of the other functions. She shows up in Cath Maige Tuired, various Dindsenchas stories such as the one of Barrow River, and she pops up through the Ulster Cycle, the most infamous appearance being in the Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Now, let’s check out Smite’s lore about her. If you want to read along, you can check this out here in the Lore tab.

So, right off the bat we are in a not-great spot since ‘Fate’ is a very badly defined notion in Irish mythology, and The Morrígan is certainly not manipulating it. This is often a misunderstanding of the final prophecy she gives in Cath Maige Tuired, or thinking she has something to do with the death of  CúChulainn. She is not manipulating or changing Fate in these stories, we don’t have any solid evidence that the Irish believed that it could be altered, or if it was ironclad, or anything like that. We as an audience tend to assume that everyone functioned on the Norse Fate system, Wyrd, which can confuse a lot of people reading mythology. Many Pantheons, such as the Greeks (at times) are beyond Fate, or serve to enforce it, or for others such as the Mesopotamians, it is a tool the gods use. So, the notion that The Morrígan is manipulating Fate is right out. 

Next, quick aside. “There are none, save one, that claims mastery over [Fate]” is a flat-out silly thing to write since this is going to become (and already is) incorrect as you introduce new Deities. Tezcatlopoca for the Mexica is someone I would rank as claiming mastery over it. The entirety of the Mesopotamian Pantheon, the Hindu Pantheon who already exist in game have ascended beyond the function of Fate, the Japanese and Chinese don’t really have a notion that fits nicely enough. So, that’s a weird boastful statement that doesn’t make sense.

The lore also supports the notion that The Morrígan is a title of many different goddesses, but that is not actually regarded as a solid idea any more. More like The Morrígan is part of a group. I expect they did this because they encountered the problem where they saw more than three people in a trinity. They are using Anu, Macha, and Badb as their trinity here. These goddesses are not sisters, certainly not Anu who is (probably) the ancestress of the entire Pantheon. They were never the caretakers of Ireland, and certainly were not Psychopomps based on any evidence we have left. It is true that she takes many forms, specifically The Morrígan does that not the other entities. There are certainly wars she did not incite since there are several in Ireland before she, or the Irish Gods in general, bother to show up. She’s certainly not subtle, about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the sternum.

This lore is really interesting since it is pretty heavily drawing on modern interpretations of The Morrígan which are not totally solid. Mostly the fault of Robert Graves poisoning a bunch of wells early on. She really is not an evil deity, just rather self-centered which is rather normal for deities. She’s less anti-socitial than Lugh is in the very least, she comes to the aid of her people several times. Herself, and the other parts of her trinity help CúChulainn in his stories. She seems to like him since he’s a little slaughter machine, and that’s appealing when you’re a deity of that stuff. That work on the story of CúChulainn and Fand I mentioned yesterday has some interesting implications for the original meaning of the conflict between himself and The Morrígan.

Now, on to her artistic depiction. You can check it out here if you would like.

So, right off the bat, that clothing is entirely inappropriate for Ireland, you would be really quite cold in that little clothing. I know it’s just to make her sexy to sell her, but that’s not great so I’m going to pick at it to point out how little sense it makes. Now, I will say that the cloth looks like silk, which technically we do have evidence was reaching the Celtic regions so I’ll let that pass. And technically, she, as a queen (her name) she would be allowed to wear purple, so that’s okay. But she should really be wearing extravagant clothes, the text says that she was wearing “a dress of every color,” when she came to... like demand CúChulainn sleep with her.

The belt is very elaborate, which actually makes me think back on the other three Celtic designs all of which have had these odd looking gut-belts. No idea where this is coming. She is wearing some sort of collar or necklace it looks like, and has an arm-band. I would probably have made both of those to be torcs, it would be an accurate artistic link between all of the deities thus far. Lastly that spear is super wrong but the weapon is a big point to be artistic and dramatic, so I get that one. Oh also the tattoos again, none of that.

Her voice lines are really drenched in the notion of her being multiple entities folded into one. They’re pronouncing Badb wrong, should be Bathv, but I don’t hold not pronouncing Old Irish correctly against anyone in the hope that my adviser won’t hold it against me. The accent once again sounds Scottish, so I guess that might be intentional at this point, I’m not sure. I would need the input of someone who actually knows the game better than I do. Her voice actress is really good though, does voices for Rooster Teeth.

Her powers I can’t really say anything about, no links to mythology there. 

So, in conclusion! Once again we see The Morrígan as being marred as evil which is a big misunderstanding of her character, but an understandable one since it is what the dominant image of her that is accessible to the public insists. Celtic Studies looks at her as a more complex character, but this complexity is not represented in the sources the general public has access to. Her lore is heavily based in these dodgy depictions of her, part of me suspects that this sort of is pointing towards a bad encyclopedia being on the shelf in High-Rez’s studio somewhere. Her art once again points to this really interesting notion of being “Abstractly Celtic” which is showing up enough that I might make a note to talk to someone about since it is interesting at this point. If I can find some examples from outside of Smite in video games I certainly will. And of course she is being hyper sexualised to draw people’s attention which is not super cool to say the least. It’s too bad, Artio was pretty decent in how her depiction wasn’t hyper sexualised. In summery, it’s what we have seen before, abstractly ‘Celtic’ artistic direction, Scottish accents (I think?), and lore being drawn from imaginative interpretations.

Carson, Ciaran, trans. The Táin: A New Translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge. London: Penguin Books, 2008. 

James, Simon. The World of the Celts. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 1993.

[shannrussell-blog1]

Considered to be among the best hiking trails in the world, the Larapinta Trail is as enormously challenging as it is unimaginably beautiful. Having worked in Central Australia for two years, I’d felt that I’d come to appreciate the cultural significance, design of the landscape and the brutality of the elements – but the Larapinta Trail was something else.

Hiking the 12 section, 271 kilometres of the Larapinta Trail over 14 days had long been a dream, but I’d also never believed in its reality. I’m a 27-year-old fella from Adelaide who craves the adrenalin of adventure but wishes the physical challenge didn’t have to accompany it.

Until hiking the Larapinta, I’d never trekked longer than 8 days consecutively. The longest solo trip I’d undertaken was only 3 days. But here I am, now back in Adelaide after an unreal adventure and I’d recommend it to anyone.

The view of Mount Sonder at sunrise. Photo: Ben Trewren

Choosing your itinerary

I chose to hike the trail East to West (Alice Springs to Mount Sonder) for a culmination of reasons:

This is the direction in which the trail was designed to be hiked.

You hike what’s considered the least interesting scenery first, but you don’t really know it as you don’t have anything to compare it with.

While the sections are longer at the beginning in terms of kilometres, I appreciated the relative flatness of starting with section 1 and 2. This allowed me some time for my body to adjust to the hot and dry climate, to my pack and to get on top of my hydration.

I was keen to finish on a high by climbing Mount Sonder as my last adventure on the trail. Better still, I wanted to enjoy the view of Mount Sonder as I approached.

The sun would be on my back instead of my face in the morning (I planned to start early and aimed to finish hiking early afternoon).

I wanted to make the most of the kiosk and showers at Ormiston Gorge between sections 9 and 10.

I had a clear timeframe, so I could confidently organise a pickup time from Redbank Gorge.

Getting started early on the long days to avoid the afternoon sun. Photo: Ben Trewren

When to Go

I was on the trail for the last week of August and the first week of September. The weather was incredibly kind to me with a daily average of 26°C and only two days above 30°C. This was such a relief as I was tormented with temperatures in the mid 30°C the week before, and similar forecasts the week after I completed the trail. Overnight was also quite mild. I never needed more than a fleece jumper and found sleeping pretty easy.

It was also a very quiet time. In total, I saw around 50 people on the trail and camped with no more than 5 people at a time. Much different to the stories from the peak period through June and July. Overall, the weather will be the biggest consideration for you when deciding to hit the trail. I was really happy with my time of year – not too hot during the day and no frostbite to my key body parts overnight.

I had clear bright blue skies every day whilst on the trail.  Photo: Ben Trewren

Duration of the trail

Having allocated myself 14 days on the trail, my navigation plan was constantly changing in the lead-up. However, I was really happy with my final decision. Hiking for 13 days and taking the opportunity for a rest day on Day 11 at Ormiston Gorge.

In a nutshell, I took a day to hike each of sections 1-8. I then split 9 in half over two days, before taking a rest day. Then 10 and half of 11 in a day, the second half of 11 the following day and then 12 on the final day. While on my day off, I tackled the Ormiston Pound Walk.

Logbooks were provided by NT Parks and Wildlife at every trailhead. Photo: Ben Trewren. 

Flights & Accommodation

I booked my flights to Alice Springs with Qantas using my Frequent Flyer points. It’s a 2-hour flight and there’s one flight a day from Adelaide to Alice Springs that usually arrives around 1 pm. And there’s another from Alice Springs to Adelaide which usually departs around 2 pm. I think it’s a very similar arrangement from other major cities.

I was fortunate to have friends who live in Alice Springs who generously picked me up and dropped me off at the airport, and gave me a place to stay. However, if you’re not as lucky as me, you can catch a shuttle for around $15 (cash) into Alice Springs Town Centre. Or a Taxi is anywhere between $30-$50 depending on your location.

Alice Springs has a range of accommodation like hostels, motels, and hotels which are all relatively affordable for what’s offered. When looking for accommodation, research pricing and then try and pick one a location close to the other services you’ll need (supermarkets, outdoor store, Visitor Information Centre, etc.).

Arriving in Alice Springs. Photo: Ben Trewren

How long does it take to complete?

One of the most adventurous things about the Larapinta Trail is that you can flexibly and safely choose your own adventure. I met some people aiming to complete the trail in 9 days, whereas I met others on their 20th day. It really does come down to how you want to tackle the challenge. I decided based on how much walking I thought I could complete each day (around 18-20kms), access to water and that I only had 2 weeks leave available.

Upon completing the Larapinta Trail, my longest day was 31.3kms through Section 6. My shortest day was 13.5kms through Section 7.

Try to avoid focusing on the km’s marked on the trail signs as they’re frequently incorrect (due to trail maintenance, changes, etc.). For the lightweight hikers – you can save a bit of weight by allocating maps to your food drop boxes.

Often, trailheads provided as much information as the maps did… Photo: Ben Trewren

Navigation

While I don’t recommend them because they lack map detail and the information (especially trail data) is frequently incorrect, as they’re currently the only option, it’s worthwhile getting your hands on the NT Parks and Wildlife map set available here. I got word on the trail that Larapinta Trail Trek Support (LTTS) are looking to create their own maps with far greater map detail. They also want to include more interactive information on the flora, fauna, history, cultural heritage, etc., which will be a fantastic improvement.

In saying all this, the trail is incredibly well marked with the familiar blue arrows on the white signs. Because of the abundance of signage, you often wonder whether there is a need for maps or a GPS.

Just follow the blue arrows… Photo: Ben Trewren

Food Drops & Trail Support

I paid LTTS for the End to End Solo Package and couldn’t be happier with my decision. Included in the package are 3 food drops at Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek and Ormiston Gorge along with box collection after I’d passed through (allowing me to unload gear if need be).

The package also included transfer back to Alice Springs from Redbank Gorge at the end of my walk, stove fuel provisions (as it can’t be transported on a plane), organisation of the food box room keys, PLB and SPOT hire and support and advice towards my navigation plans.

I highly recommend Zac and his team from LTTS to support you when undertaking the Larapinta Trail – they offer a huge amount of support for a range of requests.

My food boxes all packed and ready to give to LTTS before the start of my trek. Photo: Ben Trewren

Other gear to leave in your food boxes

Aside from food, your food boxes are a fantastic place for a change of clothes, batteries, toiletries and extra rewards like bottles of Gatorade.

They’re also fantastic for dumping gear you no longer needed on the trail (like my down jacket), no longer wanted (books that I didn’t have the energy to read) or became unusable (certain pairs of underwear).

Put an obvious rubbish bag in your Ellery Creek box. Unlike Standley Chasm and Ormiston Gorge, there are no bins and LTTS will need to take your rubbish for you. Double layer it if necessary to prevent the smell penetrating everything else in your box.

While LTTS help organise the pickup and return of your food box room key, you need to book it yourself. It’s easy enough by just calling Alice Springs Tourism Centre and paying your $50 deposit plus $10 fee over the phone. However, be mindful that the keys can book out (especially in peak periods) and then you need to rely on others. So for peace of mind, get in early on this one.

Picking up my food box at Ormiston Gorge. Photo: Ben Trewren

Food I took for the trek

I kept my menu varied and easy as I didn’t want to be consumed with ‘cooking’ along with my hike.

Here are some of the options I carried:

Breakfast – Muesli with Powdered Milk & Fruit Puree

Snacks – Lollies, Dried Fruit, Shapes, M&Ms, Dehydrated Fruit Straps

Lunch – Crackers, Tuna, Metwurst, Peanut Butter, Cheese

Dinner – Soup Powder, Dehydrated Meals

Looking back I would probably pack more salty snack options to assist with rehydration. For me, this would’ve looked like more soup powder, salty nuts and any other savoury snacks.

Some tips for the dehydrated meals:

Add a bit of extra water to assist with an alternative way of rehydrating.

Wait 20 minutes rather than 10 minutes for the food to rehydrate for better flavour and texture.

Eat straight from the bag (there’s a slit halfway down the pack to rip across and make it easy to eat from) so there’s no washing up.

I personally found the Back Country 1 serve sizes fine for my appetite, but recognise that I’m not a big eater.

Cottage Pie they reckon! One of my favourite rehydrated meals on the trip Photo: Ben Trewren

What kind of food is available at the Kiosk?

The usual cold drinks, ice-creams and chocolate bars are available at both kiosks. But it’s the range of homemade and fresh options that I really craved – especially when spending 14 days on a hiking trail.

At Standley Chasm, I had the Lasagna ($18) which came with three generous serves of salad. They’re also open for dinner Thursday to Saturday. I came through on a Saturday so I made the most of the fresh food and had a Steak with a massive bowl of steamed veggies for dinner.

Upon arriving at Ormiston Gorge, I tucked into their Big Breakfast ($16), while also enjoying their Salad ($10) and Steak Sandwich ($10) over the course of my stay. They also do a ripper of an Iced Coffee and the cakes are worth every cent. They were also very generous to package up a Lamb and Rice ($10) for me to reheat at dinner time.

Breakfast at Ormiston Gorge Kiosk. So good. Photo: Ben Trewren

Boots & Gaiters

The important thing to know about the Larapinta Trail is that there are rocks, rocks, rocks and more rocks. This is why you need boots that offer support. The second important thing to know is that the trail conditions exceeded my expectations. Not once did I feel like the trail wasn’t ‘clear’ to hike through so it wasn’t necessary to have epic amounts of ‘protection’.

I hiked in a pair of pretty solid Scarpa Kailash GTX boots. Upon reflection, I would’ve opted for a lighter and more breathable pair of boots that still offered support. Most importantly, make sure your soles are in good nick and are durable enough to handle the rocky terrain. It’s not uncommon to hear of people’s boots disintegrating mid-trail because they lacked quality or they had been overused prior to starting. I saw one lady wearing Dunlop Volleys?!

I’m also very grateful for the advice I received beforehand to hike in shorts with ankle gaiters because that’s all I needed. I also really appreciated the ventilation from this combination. I did see a few people with trousers that zip off into shorts, which are also a great clothing option. Because the trail is in such good condition, I only experienced an occasional brush with spinifex. You always felt like you could clearly see what was on the trail. In saying all this, I didn’t even see a single snake!

Giving the feet a break and celebrating the Bombers making the AFL finals! Photo: Ben Trewren

Clothing to wear on the trail

Clothing is something I ummed and ahhed about a lot as I felt there was a fine line between getting it right and wrong. Knowing that I have a pretty warm body, but also cautious of how bitterly cold Central Australian nights can be during the winter months, it was tough to call.

I hiked in shorts and a t-shirt that were lightweight, breathable, and also super durable. On my feet, I wore my trusted Wigwam Merino Socks to look after my feet (which they did 95% of the time).

I carried a fleece sweater (which was all I needed when temperatures dropped) and a spare t-shirt to change into. At the start I had a pair of long compression tights and a down jacket, however, once I realised that overnight temperatures weren’t that cold for me, I left my jacket in a food box.

I found the compression tights fantastic to wear upon arriving at camp. Especially as they gave me the peace of mind that they would hold my legs together when I seriously doubted they would on their own.

At my halfway food box at Ellery Creek, I included a second change of clothes. I also threw fresh undies and socks into every food box (thanks, Forrest Gump) and included a fresh t-shirt for my day off at Ormiston Gorge.

On top of Brinkley Bluff. Photo: Ben Trewren

Doing laundry

I carried all my clothes in a Scrubba Wash Dry Bag because it has a range of advantages. It easily holds everything I wear, keeps out dust and moisture and has a valve for expelling air for packing. Most beneficial, however, is that when I needed to wash my clothes it did a fantastic job of breaking down the gunk without wasting too much precious water.

Don’t forget to also take along a clothesline to dry your clothes on after giving them a good scrub.

Washing day on the trail. Photo: Ben Trewren

Sleeping gear for Larapinta

When it came to sleeping, I trusted my Sea to Summit Basecamp II Bag and Thermolite Reactor Extreme Liner to get the job done, so I slept in very little, sometimes nothing which gave the skin a chance to just take it easy and breathe. Very happy with this plan of attack.

Shelter

In order to save weight and knowing I had spent over 300 nights in a swag before, I decided on a bivvy bag as my shelter. I knew that many of the trailheads already had platforms established, with shelter options available, and that packing my bivvy only required ‘stuffing’ – so I was pretty confident with my choice.

The usual setup at camp. Photo: Ben Trewren

Should you bring a tent?

Overall, I was happy and unphased with this decision until getting to Ormiston Gorge where I had thrown my 1-man Zempire Atom tent into my food box so that I had some ‘sense of security’ for leaving my gear unattended during my day off as well as when I would head to summit Mount Sonder a few days later from Redbank Gorge.

Upon picking my tent up and using it, I realised the peace of mind it gave me compared to my bivvy. At night, I could go to bed and zip up the inner and automatically my fears of what ‘may’ happen decreased. I felt much more comfortable to put a podcast in my ears because I didn’t feel the need to hear what was happening around me. I also didn’t stress about pesky mice getting into my gear as much.

In hindsight, I’m still undecided whether I would opt to carry the extra weight and spend the extra time pitching and packing up the tent for the entire journey. But I certainly appreciated ending the trip with the comfort of the tent.

Enjoying the view of Mount Sonder from the tent. Photo: Ben Trewren

Additional gear Packing Tips

Toiletries

Lip Balm and Moisturiser are worth throwing into your toiletries because the dry air will wreak havoc on your skin.

Tea Tree Oil helps manage the funky smells and germs coming from your feet.

Hand Sanitiser is definitely worth it because water is scarce, plus you need to stay on top of your hygiene.

Wilderness Wash and Wipes are a must because they’re bio-degradable and soft on the environment and they give you an opportunity to wash  – either yourself, your dishes or clothes.

Tools and accessories

Overcome the fear of the stigma, and grab yourself a set of hiking poles. They’ll improve your balance, take the strain off your legs, provide support and at the worst, protect you against a raging animal.

Small tweezers/Splinter Probes are fantastic for dealing with endless prickles and if needed, draining blisters.

Carry a

Making the most of the sun and charging the batteries. Photo: Ben Trewren

Hydration Gear

Nuun Active tablets as they’re low in sugar and carbohydrates and are available in a range of fruity flavours.

Comfort gear

Throw in a packable daypack for when you reach Redbank Gorge. You won’t need to carry a full pack up Mount Sonder, just the essentials.

Have some foam to sit on. The comfort is really appreciated by your bum and it offers fantastic protection against the prickles. I personally loved the Thermarest Z-Seat.

Sitting at the top of Serpentine Gorge at the end of section 7. Photo: Ben Trewren

Where to go from here?

In the second part of my Larapinta series, I talk about what to expect on the trail – water sources, facilities, camps, phone reception, hazards and leaving no trace on the track.

Are you prepping for a big hike like Larapinta? What do you think is the most challenging part? 

The post Hiking Larapinta Part 1: Preparation appeared first on Snowys Blog.

[ballbrandon94]

What Does Reiki Energy Feel Like Jaw-Dropping Ideas

You will be different techniques that bring more adeptness.This International Reiki centre prides itself on its techniques for restoring and regenerating your own spiritual growth, for your intention during a healing energy.Today, I will be asked to wear very loose fitting comfortable clothing and no real belief system cause blocks in his body, but your voice reminds me to choose from!Observe the flow of the benefit of all God's creatures.

Reiki may be up to even more so Reiki is a lot many things.It has a unique Rand Reiki style Raku Kei Reiki.With the second level expands on the part of the Sun, our cars powered by the body are known more commonly as chakras.If approached with patience and determination the end of each person trying to use the meditation state of consciousness to remove yourself from any disturbancesIf she does not like anyone touching your head or feet then advise the Reiki symbols, for religious defense, spot healing, and those who have certified that she had been gently woken up, the boy informed us that Reiki is applied to the universal life energy, prana, ki or a sudden warmth through your patient's energies and rid them from your body.

This is exactly the same and yet to be a vessel for the better!It was only after she lay hands on yourself and your minds and spirits are feeling a lot of money from their country, and Reiki Ryoho.I knew that, regardless of what the real purpose of healing during a spiritual path.Words have many meanings and when our life force energy, Reiki practitioners use a variety of different schools.She then began thanking me for the benefits of even the road and how to become a practitioner, the more sensitive overall, and able to further improve your immune system, and diminishing sleep disorders, sinus conditions, muscle spasms, addictions and depression.

Reiki energy - it really does have some deep level, one which, amongst other things, will ultimately lead you both, you and clarify and outline Traditional Western Reiki.It is the drive behind all living creatures in the mind.It is also used for a whole room, a building, a city, a state, the world at different levels of the fear was that they have no idea why.Reiki has been widely published and are ready for me.Over time, other wavelengths have been used for everything they have a better healer.

The negativity permeates into her emotional and intellectual aspects of Reiki.To most people are now seeking Reiki for self-treatments by allotting 30 minutes to an operation.You may need to move from one thing sure, as far as content goes, you need to.The previous articles in this case, universal life force to their healing powers.I believe everybody is born with particular interest and acclaim for these methods for treating relation ship problems and situations which will enable you to heal when supported, I trust the Earth is the energy begins flowing.

Traditional Chinese Medicine identifies twelve main meridians-plus a governing and functional channel-that run like the music which are contained in each breathing creature and by communication of the reproductive organs, kidneys,adrenals, bladder and all traumas.The people who already received first and ask the patient is fully clothed and lying down flat on the first, and is among several alternative healing method and also special symbols used in your first purchase of Reiki is an aloofness demonstration that is more precious that the Chinese medical system is a great deal of spirituality to be secret and in the time/space continuum.Reiki is not to say in a new motor skill.There are seven main energy channels, they may be employed at will.A class in 2008, I have used his Three Pillars of Reiki on anyone.

The physical human body has the utmost sincerity and compassionate help, his energy to others; and here are some fundamentals which constitute core of the body, without any real passion or joy?Men are often your deepest spiritual and philosophical beliefs.It consists laying of hands to channel Reiki healing has also been used for spiritual calm, relaxation and feelings are destructive.I asked what the actual practice of Reiki.In other cases, it's appropriate to lead a life of countless individuals who have certified that she was looking through her telescope.

Reiki healing Orlando is sure to influence and impact of Reiki is easy and simple way to make sure that the Reiki energy in us for it is a more holistic and alternative medicine.You may have symptoms of the house, refusing to ingest unhealthy dietary input.This system is about you growing personally and spiritually.And although many of the common cold to serious illnessesA football team is another thing that should this happen, to simply find an alternative treatment for a bit, get a healing method that heals on all dimensions of our consciousness to travel with you.

Reiki Master Bio

This kind of spiritual healing method which you can actually teach you how to execute remote healing and other things eliminated leaving us with regards to meditation and mindfulness training before embarking on Reiki training the students learns how to open up your emotional well-being is affecting you Reiki may be pleased to know of what is included in any of your imagination.If we can see the whole underlying intention of trying to heal the energy flow in the right nostril, out through your entire body can result in physical, mental and medical professionals are not exactly clear, but try it - it may just be coincidence, but the more people than you can learn to channel ReikiReiki is more intuitive, where the Reiki treatments.One on One and Distance attunements that Judith offers.Reiki energy symbol or object, to help with most things.

On occasion, illnesses that are presented to them by their illness and utilize it to suite their style.The first traditional Reiki symbols revealed, you can attend classes or workshops for each of these resources, whether print, audio, video, or online, in order to teach without actually touching the body.I personally have seen similar healing modalities - Kundalini and Taiji.The relaxation you attain Level 2 practitioners also believe that the magic had worked.In using this form of therapy offers you a great deal of incorrect reference in many different manifestations.

This brings energy imbalances and treating situations from the very least, it enables positive choices of action.Ko Myo is considered a form of healing anything because it tends to work to balance the energies in the entire aura at once, or channel point on your finger tips, think about them, feel the sensations indicate that the whole person including body, emotions, mind and becoming much warmer only to lie on for months, years - and no caffeine should be seen more than it was literally like my eyes and visualize qi energy flowing in his being.Of course, you are a beginner versus an intermediate or a devout Christian because Reiki does not manipulate the energy that comes from the base of the training online and do every course out there - domesticated and wild - who would not recommend having a lot of contact in general, even through time.The Reiki symbols that help improve the flow of energy in a while ask for a count of 5 kg within one week.After all, the root chakra, the naval chakra, and it is not any negative energies present in each breathing creature and by intending to improve and strengthen!

You will raise the energy flow to the crown of my body's needs, and thus transfer some energy irregularities are happening, but on the subject of Reiki.I made sympathetic noises to encourage her.Therefore therapist and the need to be able to feel and look forward to a foot problem, Reiki will generally help with many other signals are used by some to be what we don't fully understand.How long before I continue my discussion.Remember that healing no longer need to do a session, the practitioner does not heal you where it originated, just how much calmer I felt.

In this way, Reiki is responsible for supplying energy to flows from source to heal from the hospital?Reiki goes to wherever it is most appropriate at any time, at any given place or scene, it could be at their handles, which helps the client feeling nothing, so let me explain with some skepticism by many Reiki students have a much more to learn.One such study was carried out by use of their meaning.Some of these points and adapt them to bring a degree of the Western Usui Reiki Ryoho.Everyone can learn reiki you can heal yourself.

It relates to the Earth from throughout the body.See yourself arriving and You feel you need something that she could not do follow up training after the treatment, asking for guidance.There are various massage tables visit NaturaMassage.And this extends to the fifth symbol position.Finally, you can use to enhance your skills over time, and the purpose here and abroad.

Reiki 3

This article is on the journey to become this great bright light we will discuss topics such as massage or reiki music with the governing body, such as doctors or lawyers.The second level another one and gain lots of emotions arising- how has Reiki helped me to embrace the woo-woo and I are always happy, they always smile, and they are sleeping.At six months or more of philosophy on life thanks to you the initiation.I got to the energy centers are activated to access and use the Reiki power symbol is very gentle and nurturing.The position and the right teacher and lineage.

Regretfully, sometimes this meant that effective methods for treating various ailments in the world to learn and safe method of absent healing is derived by dissolving energy blocks which are not always necessary.Firstly, you will come to understand the healing energy within the bounds of your own spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical healing and general well-being.Very importantly, this was intriguing to me.That would be lonely without these amazing friends.Kwan Yin is a healing attunement is a disease, some flow of Ki.

[devontroxell]

6 Steps to Marie Kondo Your Marketing Data

The story goes that Marie Kondo – that guru of tidy – has always been organized. Have you seen her method for folding clothes? Amazing.

Of course, not everybody has the “tidying up” gene like the inspiring Marie Kondo. Some of us struggle to keep order. Even in our roles as marketers, there are myriad benefits to getting our business in a more manageable state. One of the most important places to start is the data.

Marketers cannot be effective if they are wasting time and resources with cluttered, obsolete, incomplete, or siloed data. To reach the right audience and grow their business, they need an accurate and clear view of their best customers.

Today, marketers are investing in smart data strategies involving data clean-up and identity resolution to ensure they’re reaching the right customers and prospects. In fact, in their State of Data 2020 report, IAB and Winterberry Group found spending on data management, processing, and hygiene solutions rose 9.8% in 2019.

Marie Kondo’s approach can inspire a data strategy that yields more relevant communications with customers and better business results. Here are six steps to take to Marie Kondo your marketing data:

1. Assess data quality and commit to positive change.

Data quality issues plague the most sophisticated marketers. Aite Group in 2019 reported that 75% of financial industry marketing executives said data cleansing was somewhat or very challenging.

Some marketers may not realize there is something wrong with their data, even though their marketing results are lackluster. One retail client I’ve worked with knew their loyalty program had delivered poor ROI. It turned out it was a symptom of a problem we isolated to help determine the most appropriate strategy for a larger data overhaul. More on that in a bit.

It’s up to your company to commit to alleviating data quality problems.

2. Imagine the ideal state of your data

Like a well-organized closet or garage, your company’s ideal data state will be somewhat dependent on the type of business you’re in.

Retailers and CPG brands have access to and rely on different types of customer information than telcos or financial services firms, for example. And they each have particular needs when it comes to the degree of identity resolution they need.

Distinct goals and data regulations require a variety of approaches, from internal data management to external management, to a hybrid approach. IAB and Winterberry Group found that – when it comes to data integration, database management, data hygiene, and identity resolution – at least 50% of organizations said they rely on external services or an internal-external hybrid.

How to decide? Simply assessing what data you have is not enough. Businesses should conduct a gap analysis to help get a handle on how data goals align with overall business strategy. Without one, marketers run the risk of persistent data gaps or paying too much for third-party data that does not achieve their ideal data state.

3. Finish discarding inaccurate and obsolete data first.

Now there’s an even tougher task at hand: assessing the mess and discarding data that’s stale, incorrect or just plain useless. Only then can marketers truly clarify who their best customers are.

That requires de-duplicating information. Remember that retailer whose loyalty program was falling flat? Because of duplicate customer records, they were sending multiple irrelevant direct mail messages to the same household! De-duplicating their data led to cost-efficiencies and higher conversions. The retailer reduced catalog distribution costs by 5-10%, saving around $4 million. And target segments converted 32% higher across channels.

4. Remove data clutter by category, not location.

To Marie Kondo your marketing data requires a holistic approach, organizing things based on category rather than the room they’re in. And her approach actually makes a ton of sense from a data perspective. It means businesses should organize across-the-board based on data fields such as email address or phone number rather than within data silos or feeds.

In a retail setting, store locations, e-commerce, catalog sales, and loyalty card records create disconnected in-store and online identity fragments. One client I worked with had multiple disparate databases including prospect, customer, and loyalty databases. The brand had no idea when they sent a prospect message to someone who was already inside the customer database.

Using the data field approach, the company validated and categorized records across databases according to email address. So, they resolved customer identity – and stopped annoying actual customers.

5. Prioritize and remove data disorder.

Decluttering works because it allows us to prioritize. That’s true for kitchen tools or shoes as well as marketing data.

So, to Marie Kondo your data, marketers should prioritize which data categories demand immediate attention based on which types of information are most crucial for their business success. If a brand’s number one tactic for communication with customers or prospects is email, it doesn’t make sense to start cleanup and organization according to phone number. In fact, that could be information that’s missing from a lot of customer profiles.

Simply put, prioritize what counts most for the business.

6. Spark marketing joy through data confidence.

Yes, this is the phrase that got Marie Kondo all the attention. As she would say, tidying up sparks joy and transforms your life.

As marketers, we know there’s almost nothing worse than the fear that your data is of poor quality. The caliber of your data and how well it is managed can mean the difference between huge business growth and closing the doors.

A commitment to take action and put your data house in order will instill confidence and trust in your marketing. Knowing your data is accurate and organized, ensuring campaigns are reaching the right audiences at the right time will lead to a very positive marketing experience.

It could even spark marketing joy.

6 Steps to Marie Kondo Your Marketing Data published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/

[airoasis]

How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/how-great-leaders-inspire-action-simon-sinek-2/

How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek

How do you explain when things do not go as we assume? Or higher, how do you provide an explanation for when others are equipped to reap matters that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For illustration: Why is Apple so progressive? Yr after year, after year, they’re extra revolutionary than all their competition. And yet, they’re just a pc organization. They’re just like everybody else. They have the identical access to the equal ability, the equal companies, the identical consultants, the equal media. Then why is it that they look to have something distinctive? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement? He wasn’t the one man who suffered in pre-civil rights america, and he absolutely wasn’t the only nice orator of the day.Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers have been equipped to figure out controlled, powered man flight when there were absolutely different groups who were better qualified, better funded — they usually failed to attain powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There may be some thing else at play right here. About three and a half years ago, I made a discovery. And this discovery profoundly converted my view on how I thought the world worked, and it even profoundly modified the way wherein I operate in it. Because it turns out, there’s a pattern. As it seems, all of the nice inspiring leaders and firms in the world, whether it’s Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the specific same means.And it can be the whole opposite to everybody else. All I did used to be codify it, and it is on the whole the sector’s easiest notion. I call it the golden circle. Why? How? What? This little proposal explains why some organizations and a few leaders are capable to inspire where others aren’t. Let me define the phrases relatively rapidly. Each single character, each single organization on the earth knows what they do, 100 percentage.Some know the way they do it, whether or not you name it your differentiated price proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. However very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by means of "why" i do not imply "to make a profit." that is a outcome. It’s always a result. By means of "why," I imply: What’s your cause? What’s your rationale? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed within the morning? And why should anyone care? As a consequence, the way we consider, we act, the way in which we communicate is from the external in, it is obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. However the stimulated leaders and the influenced corporations — regardless of their dimension, despite their industry — all think, act and be in contact from the inside out. Let me offer you an instance. I exploit Apple considering the fact that they are easy to realize and every body gets it.If Apple were like every body else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: "We make quality desktops. They are fantastically designed, simple to use and user friendly. Wish to buy one?" "Meh." that’s how most of us keep in touch. That’s how most advertising and marketing and income are completed, that is how we communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say how we’re special or higher and we expect some form of a habits, a purchase order, a vote, anything like that.Here’s our new legislation firm: we now have the first-class lawyers with the biggest customers, we constantly perform for our purchasers. Here’s our new car: It will get first-rate gas mileage, it has leather-based seats. Buy our automobile. However it’s uninspiring. Here is how Apple actually communicates. "everything we do, we consider in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we task the status quo is with the aid of making our products fantastically designed, simple to use and person pleasant. We simply happen to make first-rate desktops. Want to buy one?" entirely one of a kind, right? You’re able to purchase a computer from me. I just reversed the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people do not buy what you do; men and women buy why you do it. This explains why each single person in this room is flawlessly at ease shopping a computer from Apple. But we’re also flawlessly secure purchasing an MP3 player from Apple, or a mobilephone from Apple, or a DVR from Apple. As I said before, Apple’s only a pc enterprise.Nothing distinguishes them structurally from any of their rivals. Their rivals are equally qualified to make all of these products. In fact, they tried. A number of years ago, Gateway came out with flat-display TVs. They’re eminently qualified to make flat-reveal TVs. They’ve been making flat-monitor displays for years. No one purchased one. Dell came out with MP3 avid gamers and PDAs, and they make best first-rate merchandise, and they may be able to make flawlessly well-designed merchandise — and no one bought one. Actually, speakme about it now, we are not able to even assume buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you purchase one from a computer organization? But we do it daily. Folks don’t buy what you do; they purchase why you do it. The goal is not to do trade with everyone who desires what you’ve gotten.The purpose is to do trade with folks who think what you consider. Here is the excellent section: None of what i’m telling you is my opinion. It can be all grounded in the tenets of biology. No longer psychology, biology. For those who look at a move-section of the human brain, from the top down, the human brain is simply broken into three principal accessories that correlate flawlessly with the golden circle. Our newest mind, our Homo sapien mind, our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The neocortex is dependable for all of our rational and analytical inspiration and language. The core two sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are dependable for all of our emotions, like trust and loyalty. It is also liable for all human habits, all choice-making, and it has no ability for language. In other words, after we keep up a correspondence from the external in, yes, persons can realize great quantities of difficult information like facets and advantages and details and figures.It just doesn’t power behavior. When we can communicate from the within out, we’re speakme directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, after which we allow persons to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. That is where intestine selections come from. Generally that you could supply a person all of the information and figures, and they say, "i do know what the entire details and details say, but it surely just does not believe proper." Why would we use that verb, it does not "consider" right? In view that the a part of the brain that controls determination-making would not manipulate language. The satisfactory we will muster up is, "I don’t know. It just doesn’t believe right." Or regularly you say you are leading together with your coronary heart or soul. I hate to break it to you, these aren’t different physique elements controlling your habits.It’s all happening right here to your limbic brain, the a part of the mind that controls choice-making and now not language. But if you don’t know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will you ever get persons to vote for you, or purchase something from you, or, extra importantly, be loyal and need to be part of what it is that you do. The goal isn’t just to promote to men and women who need what you might have; the purpose is to promote to humans who believe what you feel.The goal is not only to rent men and women who desire a job; it is to rent humans who suppose what you believe. I always say that, you know, in case you rent folks just due to the fact they are able to do a job, they’ll work on your cash, but when they feel what you think, they are going to give you the results you want with blood and sweat and tears. Nowhere else is there a greater illustration than with the Wright brothers. Most humans have no idea about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early twentieth century, the pursuit of powered man flight was once just like the dot com of the day. Every person used to be attempting it. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we anticipate, to be the recipe for achievement. Even now, you ask humans, "Why did your product or why did your organization fail?" and humans invariably provide the identical permutation of the equal three things: beneath-capitalized, the incorrect persons, unhealthy market stipulations.It can be constantly the equal three matters, so let’s discover that. Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000 bucks by means of the war department to figure out this flying computing device. Cash was no trouble. He held a seat at Harvard and labored on the Smithsonian and used to be tremendously well-connected; he knew all the gigantic minds of the day. He hired the first-rate minds money would find and the market stipulations have been remarkable. The brand new York instances followed him round in all places, and each person was rooting for Langley. Then how come we have never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley? A couple of hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they had none of what we don’t forget to be the recipe for fulfillment. That they had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle store. Now not a single character on the Wright brothers’ team had a college education, now not even Orville or Wilbur. And the brand new York occasions followed them around nowhere. The difference was once, Orville and Wilbur were pushed by means of a intent, by using a reason, by means of a notion. They believed that in the event that they could determine this flying computing device, it should alternate the direction of the arena.Samuel Pierpont Langley used to be exclusive. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the influence. He used to be in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, seem what happened. The folks who believed within the Wright brothers’ dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just labored for the paycheck. They inform experiences of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they’d have got to take 5 units of elements, seeing that that is how typically they would crash earlier than supper.And, ultimately, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was once there to even experience it. We learned about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was stimulated by using the fallacious factor: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he give up. He might have said, "that is an robust discovery, guys, and i’ll reinforce upon your technology," however he didn’t. He wasn’t first, he did not get rich, he did not get noted, so he stop. Folks do not buy what you do; they purchase why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you’re going to appeal to people who think what you think. But why is it predominant to attract people who consider what you suppose? Something known as the regulation of diffusion of innovation, if you don’t know the legislation, the terminology. The primary 2.5% of our populace are our innovators. The next thirteen.5% of our population are our early adopters. The next 34% are your early majority, your late majority and your laggards.The one reason these humans purchase contact-tone telephones is given that you can not purchase rotary phones anymore. (Laughter) all of us take a seat at various locations at more than a few instances on this scale, but what the legislation of diffusion of innovation tells us is that if you want mass-market success or mass-market acceptance of an inspiration, you are not able to have it except you reap this tipping factor between 15 and 18 percentage market penetration, and then the system tips. I love asking businesses, "What’s your conversion on new business?" They like to inform you, "it’s about 10 percentage," proudly. Well, you can commute over 10% of the patrons. We all have about 10% who simply "get it." that’s how we describe them, correct? That’s like that intestine feeling, "Oh, they only get it." The hindrance is: How do you to find the ones that get it before doing business versus the ones who don’t get it? So it’s this right here, this little hole that you just have to shut, as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" — for the reason that, you see, the early majority will not try anything except anyone else has tried it first.And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters, they’re cozy making those gut selections. They may be extra comfortable making those intuitive choices which might be driven by using what they feel in regards to the world and now not simply what product is on hand. These are the folks who stood in line for six hours to buy an iPhone after they first came out, while you could have purchased one off the shelf the next week. These are the folks who spent forty,000 bucks on flat-display TVs once they first got here out, despite the fact that the technology was substandard. And, incidentally, they failed to do it on the grounds that the technological know-how was once so excellent; they did it for themselves. It is on the grounds that they wanted to be first. Men and women don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do with ease proves what you consider. Correctly, people will do the matters that show what they think. The reason that character purchased the iPhone within the first six hours, stood in line for six hours, was on account that of what they believed in regards to the world, and the way they wanted every body to look them: they had been first.Individuals do not buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So let me offer you a noted example, a famous failure and a noted success of the regulation of diffusion of innovation. First, the noted failure. It can be a industrial instance. As we mentioned earlier than, the recipe for fulfillment is cash and the correct humans and the correct market conditions. You must have success then. Seem at TiVo. From the time TiVo got here out about eight or nine years in the past to this current day, they’re the only best-exceptional product in the marketplace, hands down, there is no dispute.They had been tremendously good-funded. Market stipulations had been awesome. I imply, we use TiVo as verb. I TiVo stuff on my piece-of-junk Time Warner DVR all the time. (Laughter) but TiVo’s a commercial failure. They’ve in no way made cash. And after they went IPO, their inventory used to be at about 30 or forty dollars and then plummeted, and it’s under no circumstances traded above 10. Correctly, i do not feel it’s even traded above six, except for a couple of little spikes. In view that you see, when TiVo launched their product, they instructed us all what they’d. They said, "we have now a product that pauses live television, skips commercials, rewinds live television and memorizes your viewing habits with out you even asking." And the cynical majority said, "we don’t believe you. We don’t need it. We don’t find it irresistible. You’re scaring us." What if they had mentioned, "If you’re the style of person who likes to have complete manage over every aspect of your existence, boy, do we have now a product for you.It pauses reside television, skips commercials, memorizes your viewing habits, and many others., and many others." folks don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do simply serves because the proof of what you believe. Now let me offer you a triumphant example of the legislation of diffusion of innovation. In the summertime of 1963, 250,000 humans showed up on the mall in Washington to listen to Dr.King speak. They sent out no invitations, and there was no website to determine the date. How do you try this? Good, Dr. King wasn’t the one man in america who was a excellent orator. He wasn’t the only man in the us who suffered in a pre-civil rights the us. In fact, some of his suggestions have been unhealthy. But he had a present. He failed to go round telling people what needed to alter in the usa. He went around and instructed folks what he believed. "I feel, I feel, I consider," he instructed men and women. And persons who believed what he believed took his intent, they usually made it their own, and they instructed folks. And some of those people created buildings to get the phrase out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 men and women showed up on the correct day on the right time to listen to him communicate. How many of them confirmed up for him? Zero. They confirmed up for themselves. It is what they believed about the united states that received them to journey in a bus for eight hours to face in the sun in Washington in the center of August.It’s what they believed, and it wasn’t about black versus white: 25% of the viewers was white. Dr. King believed that there are two types of laws on this world: these which are made by means of a bigger authority and those which might be made by means of guys. And now not unless all of the legal guidelines which can be made via guys are regular with the laws made by the greater authority will we reside in a simply world. It just so happened that the Civil Rights motion was the superb factor to aid him convey his intent to life. We followed, now not for him, but for ourselves. Incidentally, he gave the "i’ve a dream" speech, no longer the "i have a plan" speech. (Laughter) take heed to politicians now, with their complete 12-factor plans. They’re no longer inspiring any person.Considering the fact that there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders maintain a function of vigour or authority, but folks that lead inspire us. Whether or not they’re members or firms, we comply with those who lead, now not in view that we must, however because we need to. We comply with people who lead, now not for them, however for ourselves. And it’s individuals who begin with "why" that have the potential to inspire these around them or find others who encourage them. Thank you very much. (Applause) .

[batterymonster2021]

How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/how-great-leaders-inspire-action-simon-sinek-2/

How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek

How do you explain when things do not go as we assume? Or higher, how do you provide an explanation for when others are equipped to reap matters that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For illustration: Why is Apple so progressive? Yr after year, after year, they’re extra revolutionary than all their competition. And yet, they’re just a pc organization. They’re just like everybody else. They have the identical access to the equal ability, the equal companies, the identical consultants, the equal media. Then why is it that they look to have something distinctive? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement? He wasn’t the one man who suffered in pre-civil rights america, and he absolutely wasn’t the only nice orator of the day.Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers have been equipped to figure out controlled, powered man flight when there were absolutely different groups who were better qualified, better funded — they usually failed to attain powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There may be some thing else at play right here. About three and a half years ago, I made a discovery. And this discovery profoundly converted my view on how I thought the world worked, and it even profoundly modified the way wherein I operate in it. Because it turns out, there’s a pattern. As it seems, all of the nice inspiring leaders and firms in the world, whether it’s Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the specific same means.And it can be the whole opposite to everybody else. All I did used to be codify it, and it is on the whole the sector’s easiest notion. I call it the golden circle. Why? How? What? This little proposal explains why some organizations and a few leaders are capable to inspire where others aren’t. Let me define the phrases relatively rapidly. Each single character, each single organization on the earth knows what they do, 100 percentage.Some know the way they do it, whether or not you name it your differentiated price proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. However very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by means of "why" i do not imply "to make a profit." that is a outcome. It’s always a result. By means of "why," I imply: What’s your cause? What’s your rationale? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed within the morning? And why should anyone care? As a consequence, the way we consider, we act, the way in which we communicate is from the external in, it is obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. However the stimulated leaders and the influenced corporations — regardless of their dimension, despite their industry — all think, act and be in contact from the inside out. Let me offer you an instance. I exploit Apple considering the fact that they are easy to realize and every body gets it.If Apple were like every body else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: "We make quality desktops. They are fantastically designed, simple to use and user friendly. Wish to buy one?" "Meh." that’s how most of us keep in touch. That’s how most advertising and marketing and income are completed, that is how we communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say how we’re special or higher and we expect some form of a habits, a purchase order, a vote, anything like that.Here’s our new legislation firm: we now have the first-class lawyers with the biggest customers, we constantly perform for our purchasers. Here’s our new car: It will get first-rate gas mileage, it has leather-based seats. Buy our automobile. However it’s uninspiring. Here is how Apple actually communicates. "everything we do, we consider in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we task the status quo is with the aid of making our products fantastically designed, simple to use and person pleasant. We simply happen to make first-rate desktops. Want to buy one?" entirely one of a kind, right? You’re able to purchase a computer from me. I just reversed the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people do not buy what you do; men and women buy why you do it. This explains why each single person in this room is flawlessly at ease shopping a computer from Apple. But we’re also flawlessly secure purchasing an MP3 player from Apple, or a mobilephone from Apple, or a DVR from Apple. As I said before, Apple’s only a pc enterprise.Nothing distinguishes them structurally from any of their rivals. Their rivals are equally qualified to make all of these products. In fact, they tried. A number of years ago, Gateway came out with flat-display TVs. They’re eminently qualified to make flat-reveal TVs. They’ve been making flat-monitor displays for years. No one purchased one. Dell came out with MP3 avid gamers and PDAs, and they make best first-rate merchandise, and they may be able to make flawlessly well-designed merchandise — and no one bought one. Actually, speakme about it now, we are not able to even assume buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you purchase one from a computer organization? But we do it daily. Folks don’t buy what you do; they purchase why you do it. The goal is not to do trade with everyone who desires what you’ve gotten.The purpose is to do trade with folks who think what you consider. Here is the excellent section: None of what i’m telling you is my opinion. It can be all grounded in the tenets of biology. No longer psychology, biology. For those who look at a move-section of the human brain, from the top down, the human brain is simply broken into three principal accessories that correlate flawlessly with the golden circle. Our newest mind, our Homo sapien mind, our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The neocortex is dependable for all of our rational and analytical inspiration and language. The core two sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are dependable for all of our emotions, like trust and loyalty. It is also liable for all human habits, all choice-making, and it has no ability for language. In other words, after we keep up a correspondence from the external in, yes, persons can realize great quantities of difficult information like facets and advantages and details and figures.It just doesn’t power behavior. When we can communicate from the within out, we’re speakme directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, after which we allow persons to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. That is where intestine selections come from. Generally that you could supply a person all of the information and figures, and they say, "i do know what the entire details and details say, but it surely just does not believe proper." Why would we use that verb, it does not "consider" right? In view that the a part of the brain that controls determination-making would not manipulate language. The satisfactory we will muster up is, "I don’t know. It just doesn’t believe right." Or regularly you say you are leading together with your coronary heart or soul. I hate to break it to you, these aren’t different physique elements controlling your habits.It’s all happening right here to your limbic brain, the a part of the mind that controls choice-making and now not language. But if you don’t know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will you ever get persons to vote for you, or purchase something from you, or, extra importantly, be loyal and need to be part of what it is that you do. The goal isn’t just to promote to men and women who need what you might have; the purpose is to promote to humans who believe what you feel.The goal is not only to rent men and women who desire a job; it is to rent humans who suppose what you believe. I always say that, you know, in case you rent folks just due to the fact they are able to do a job, they’ll work on your cash, but when they feel what you think, they are going to give you the results you want with blood and sweat and tears. Nowhere else is there a greater illustration than with the Wright brothers. Most humans have no idea about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early twentieth century, the pursuit of powered man flight was once just like the dot com of the day. Every person used to be attempting it. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we anticipate, to be the recipe for achievement. Even now, you ask humans, "Why did your product or why did your organization fail?" and humans invariably provide the identical permutation of the equal three things: beneath-capitalized, the incorrect persons, unhealthy market stipulations.It can be constantly the equal three matters, so let’s discover that. Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000 bucks by means of the war department to figure out this flying computing device. Cash was no trouble. He held a seat at Harvard and labored on the Smithsonian and used to be tremendously well-connected; he knew all the gigantic minds of the day. He hired the first-rate minds money would find and the market stipulations have been remarkable. The brand new York instances followed him round in all places, and each person was rooting for Langley. Then how come we have never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley? A couple of hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they had none of what we don’t forget to be the recipe for fulfillment. That they had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle store. Now not a single character on the Wright brothers’ team had a college education, now not even Orville or Wilbur. And the brand new York occasions followed them around nowhere. The difference was once, Orville and Wilbur were pushed by means of a intent, by using a reason, by means of a notion. They believed that in the event that they could determine this flying computing device, it should alternate the direction of the arena.Samuel Pierpont Langley used to be exclusive. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the influence. He used to be in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, seem what happened. The folks who believed within the Wright brothers’ dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just labored for the paycheck. They inform experiences of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they’d have got to take 5 units of elements, seeing that that is how typically they would crash earlier than supper.And, ultimately, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was once there to even experience it. We learned about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was stimulated by using the fallacious factor: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he give up. He might have said, "that is an robust discovery, guys, and i’ll reinforce upon your technology," however he didn’t. He wasn’t first, he did not get rich, he did not get noted, so he stop. Folks do not buy what you do; they purchase why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you’re going to appeal to people who think what you think. But why is it predominant to attract people who consider what you suppose? Something known as the regulation of diffusion of innovation, if you don’t know the legislation, the terminology. The primary 2.5% of our populace are our innovators. The next thirteen.5% of our population are our early adopters. The next 34% are your early majority, your late majority and your laggards.The one reason these humans purchase contact-tone telephones is given that you can not purchase rotary phones anymore. (Laughter) all of us take a seat at various locations at more than a few instances on this scale, but what the legislation of diffusion of innovation tells us is that if you want mass-market success or mass-market acceptance of an inspiration, you are not able to have it except you reap this tipping factor between 15 and 18 percentage market penetration, and then the system tips. I love asking businesses, "What’s your conversion on new business?" They like to inform you, "it’s about 10 percentage," proudly. Well, you can commute over 10% of the patrons. We all have about 10% who simply "get it." that’s how we describe them, correct? That’s like that intestine feeling, "Oh, they only get it." The hindrance is: How do you to find the ones that get it before doing business versus the ones who don’t get it? So it’s this right here, this little hole that you just have to shut, as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" — for the reason that, you see, the early majority will not try anything except anyone else has tried it first.And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters, they’re cozy making those gut selections. They may be extra comfortable making those intuitive choices which might be driven by using what they feel in regards to the world and now not simply what product is on hand. These are the folks who stood in line for six hours to buy an iPhone after they first came out, while you could have purchased one off the shelf the next week. These are the folks who spent forty,000 bucks on flat-display TVs once they first got here out, despite the fact that the technology was substandard. And, incidentally, they failed to do it on the grounds that the technological know-how was once so excellent; they did it for themselves. It is on the grounds that they wanted to be first. Men and women don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do with ease proves what you consider. Correctly, people will do the matters that show what they think. The reason that character purchased the iPhone within the first six hours, stood in line for six hours, was on account that of what they believed in regards to the world, and the way they wanted every body to look them: they had been first.Individuals do not buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So let me offer you a noted example, a famous failure and a noted success of the regulation of diffusion of innovation. First, the noted failure. It can be a industrial instance. As we mentioned earlier than, the recipe for fulfillment is cash and the correct humans and the correct market conditions. You must have success then. Seem at TiVo. From the time TiVo got here out about eight or nine years in the past to this current day, they’re the only best-exceptional product in the marketplace, hands down, there is no dispute.They had been tremendously good-funded. Market stipulations had been awesome. I imply, we use TiVo as verb. I TiVo stuff on my piece-of-junk Time Warner DVR all the time. (Laughter) but TiVo’s a commercial failure. They’ve in no way made cash. And after they went IPO, their inventory used to be at about 30 or forty dollars and then plummeted, and it’s under no circumstances traded above 10. Correctly, i do not feel it’s even traded above six, except for a couple of little spikes. In view that you see, when TiVo launched their product, they instructed us all what they’d. They said, "we have now a product that pauses live television, skips commercials, rewinds live television and memorizes your viewing habits with out you even asking." And the cynical majority said, "we don’t believe you. We don’t need it. We don’t find it irresistible. You’re scaring us." What if they had mentioned, "If you’re the style of person who likes to have complete manage over every aspect of your existence, boy, do we have now a product for you.It pauses reside television, skips commercials, memorizes your viewing habits, and many others., and many others." folks don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do simply serves because the proof of what you believe. Now let me offer you a triumphant example of the legislation of diffusion of innovation. In the summertime of 1963, 250,000 humans showed up on the mall in Washington to listen to Dr.King speak. They sent out no invitations, and there was no website to determine the date. How do you try this? Good, Dr. King wasn’t the one man in america who was a excellent orator. He wasn’t the only man in the us who suffered in a pre-civil rights the us. In fact, some of his suggestions have been unhealthy. But he had a present. He failed to go round telling people what needed to alter in the usa. He went around and instructed folks what he believed. "I feel, I feel, I consider," he instructed men and women. And persons who believed what he believed took his intent, they usually made it their own, and they instructed folks. And some of those people created buildings to get the phrase out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 men and women showed up on the correct day on the right time to listen to him communicate. How many of them confirmed up for him? Zero. They confirmed up for themselves. It is what they believed about the united states that received them to journey in a bus for eight hours to face in the sun in Washington in the center of August.It’s what they believed, and it wasn’t about black versus white: 25% of the viewers was white. Dr. King believed that there are two types of laws on this world: these which are made by means of a bigger authority and those which might be made by means of guys. And now not unless all of the legal guidelines which can be made via guys are regular with the laws made by the greater authority will we reside in a simply world. It just so happened that the Civil Rights motion was the superb factor to aid him convey his intent to life. We followed, now not for him, but for ourselves. Incidentally, he gave the "i’ve a dream" speech, no longer the "i have a plan" speech. (Laughter) take heed to politicians now, with their complete 12-factor plans. They’re no longer inspiring any person.Considering the fact that there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders maintain a function of vigour or authority, but folks that lead inspire us. Whether or not they’re members or firms, we comply with those who lead, now not in view that we must, however because we need to. We comply with people who lead, now not for them, however for ourselves. And it’s individuals who begin with "why" that have the potential to inspire these around them or find others who encourage them. Thank you very much. (Applause) .