#think of all the physical punishment data takes over the series WHY WOULD YOU NOT PUT SOMETHING BETWEEN THE FAUX SKIN AND HIS GUTS????

[qsupremacy]

The way data and lore’s circuitry and wires and shit are just under a layer of faux skin is wild to me. Like i get it in the sense that they weren’t actually built to be like constantly on away team action bonanzas and to be as humanesque as possible in their design but idk man

Noonien soong is stronger than me just seeing shit like data’s wires after a minor cut to the forehead is so anxiety inducing for me. Put that shit under a metal casing bruh do you care NOTHING for the safety of these parts????

[jcmorrigan]

Tales from the Scrap Heap: Nothing to Lose but You

I decided to start “Tales from the Scrap Heap” as a little series on my blog for fanfiction ideas that I never got into print. Because my brain is really, really good at coming up with way more long-form plots than I can ever realistically hope to publish. I have to be picky about which plot bunnies I follow and which I don’t. The stories here are the ones that I considered and ultimately didn’t motivate me as much as what I have up on my AO3 account.

For the first one, I’m aware I’m putting myself in the Discourse Box here but it’s a Voltron: Legendary Defender fic. However, it’s for the absolute only ship I have never seen contested, largely because I don’t think anybody remembers these guys: Vakala/Remdax. Something about them really intrigued me (probably that they’re silly x straitlaced, have a size difference, and bicker constantly, which is almost a full row of JCMorrigan OTP Bingo). If you don’t remember, they’re the two aliens who found clone!Shiro on the ice planet shortly after he escaped (this is when we thought he was real!Shiro) and decided ultimately not to eat him and instead to give him a shuttle to escape back to Voltron. Anyhow, one day I just had too much Worldbuilding Juice and decided to come up with a little history for them, and because they’re rebels hiding in a remote location in a seemingly neverending war, it is one of the darkest story ideas I have. There’s a happy ending for our two leading men, but because this is indeed a wartime story, what I came up with to explain why they were on that ice planet and so willing to even cannibalize any Galra who showed up ended up having elements of colonialism, prison/labor camps, fugitive life, and a worldbuild flavoring that implies some noncon happened somewhere at some point. So if these things are not what you want to read in a hypothetical Voltron fanfiction outline, please keep movin’. Anyway, this is the one story I most regret never finishing because I had so much of it fleshed, but my Voltron muse is long gone and I have no enthusiasm, so here’s what I would’ve written, had I the energy.

·      Title is “Nothing to Lose but You” because the point of this story is these two go through the wringer and are literally all each other have. It’s that kind of story

·      I decided to call the planet Vakala and Remdax are from “Taxalai,” and the name for a resident is “Taxalan.” Taxalan society has a heavy emphasis on technology (which is why Remdax not knowing how to work a computer or being able to remember a password is such an oddity and so frustrating to pretty much any other Taxalan), and pretty much everything is computerized to some degree. Screens everywhere.

·      We open on Vakala, who is living in a mansion that used to belong to his family but has since been taken over by an invading Galra general. This was going to be an OC who I could just make nasty, but then I got re-introduced to Morvok, the Galra’s resident black sheep, and I will take any excuse to write Morvok so let’s just say it was he who took over Vakala’s family manor and just sits on the couch all day regaling people with stories of his greatness (none of which are true).

·      Vakala himself is a servant to Morvok, having to bring him whatever he wants and be at his beck and call.

·      One day, Vakala decides he’s done taking orders and declares he is no longer going to be in a position of servitude in his own house. Morvok simply dismissively says to “Take this one away wherever you take the ones that act up so I don’t have to look at him.”

·      And Vakala is arrested by a Galra squadron and brought to a prison camp many, many miles away.

·      It’s night when he’s delivered, so he’s brought right to the cramped barrack where a bunch of Taxalans who have been there longer are stacked in bunk beds. Vakala’s first night there, he screams and claws at the door that’s been sealed behind him, begging to be let out because he’ll follow orders this time.

·      The other prisoners there are veterans, so they all tell him to shut up because they’re never gonna listen. All but one.

·      Enter Remdax. He’s from another part of Taxalai – Vakala’s voice sounds more American to me while Remdax is definitely British, so I assume they have to come from different parts of the planet. They also have different physical structures that may suggest ethnic divides, though their color palette affirms they’re both of the same planetary origin. It’s also worth noting he has both eyes still at this point. This is very important.

·      Remdax is here because he was part of an anti-Galra rebel squad that was largely made up of his friends and family. The Galra found and closed in on their base, and Remdax ran out and got himself arrested for the purpose of slowing down the Galra officers enough that his friends and family could escape – which they did.

·      Anyway, that exposition would come some time later. For now, what’s happening is Vakala is having a panic attack in the middle of the night and everyone’s telling him to shut up because it’s futile. Except for Remdax. Remdax stands up and essentially says, “We’ve all done the same thing when we first arrived. Let him feel what he feels.”

·      And he approaches Vakala to try and calm him down verbally – just by saying his feelings are validated, and yes, it’s really awful, but he’ll survive, and Remdax will do his best to make sure Vakala survives. But he can’t really tell him it’s “okay” because it is quite clearly not.

·      Vakala eventually gives up and goes to sleep, quite depressed and for good reason.

·      The following morning, Vakala is put to work on an assembly line making Galra weaponry. This is what all the Taxalans in this particular camp must do. It’s very mechanically inclined, not many screens, not the way Taxalans usually work.

·      I don’t know if pacing-wise, it would be better to have this happen the first time or later, but Vakala ends up trying to pick up a cooling metal part way too soon and burning his palm horribly. He has to finish the rest of his shift one-handed.

·      Again, the other imprisoned Taxalans avoid this situation, largely because anxiety is high as-is, but Remdax steps forward once more, trying to care for the burn as best as he can. And he has zero supplies, so the best he can do is run a whole lot of cold water over Vakala’s hand and wrap it up in fabric he tore off his clothing.

·      Vakala ends up underperforming because of this injury and receives some punishment later. I didn’t think too much on exactly what – had I fleshed this out fully, I’d at least imply strongly what happened

·      Remdax has a bit of a crisis over this because he invested in protecting this guy, he failed, and there was literally nothing he could do. He’s in here for self-sacrifice in the first place, so he keeps thinking there’s always something he could do to help someone else if he gives something up for himself. But sometimes, he doesn’t even have an opportunity to do so, and it’s driving him into panic.

·      It’s shortly after this that he starts getting into his head that maybe the only way to help Vakala and himself is if he finds a way to escape.

·      There’s a day in which Remdax and Vakala are assigned to work outside on the grounds, and down comes an inspector from another sector on a shuttle. Remdax sees the opportunity and waves Vakala over.

·      They only have one shot, and it will unfortunately mean leaving the rest of their people behind, which is a horrible sacrifice, but it’s either they go on their own or nobody goes at all.

·      Remdax rushes the Galra inspector and attacks him. They get in a physical brawl while Vakala hurries in and hijacks the ship, which isn’t difficult for his technologically-inclined mind.

·      During this fight, Remdax either knocks out or kills the Galra inspector, but in the process, the inspector stabs one of his eyes completely out.

·      Remdax hops onto the ship and they have to go right away or else lose their freedom and maybe their lives forever. Vakala is freaking out because Remdax’s eye is bleeding, but Remdax is trying to act casual and make jokes about it because Vakala needs to be calm enough to drive.

·      They get off Taxalai on that stolen shuttle and land on the nearest planet, which I never named.

·      They’re aware they’re fugitives at this point.

·      They end up in a metropolitan area, where they check into a hotel so they have somewhere to sleep. I hadn’t worked out how they pay for the first night – maybe with favors, because Vakala eventually ends up a receptionist at this hotel and earns good wages, so maybe he gets his foot in the door by saying “I’ll do anything” and the receptionist is already pulling double duty and just goes “Do the second half of my fourteen-hour shift”

·      They have to finish wrapping up Remdax’s eye in that hotel room as best they can. Thankfully, it doesn’t get infected.

·      Immediately their first thought is to go out and find a way of bringing in income. As I said, Vakala makes a good receptionist and is excellent at filing client data on computers, so he ends up with a good-paying job that way.

·      Remdax takes a job down at a garage working with vehicle mechanics and engines, since that’s what he’s better at. Not in the manufacture of those parts (never again), but in fixing up broken vehicles. (I would’ve made it something more interesting than simply cars for this planet because Voltron planets are all about interesting possibilities for new civilizations.)

·      There’s some down-time where they live rather domestically this way, just earning enough to buy simple food and extend the stay in their small and shabby hotel room, but also bonding and becoming better friends.

·      A lot of people assume they already are a couple. Remdax in particular gets asked about his “husband” at the garage and he has to keep denying it.

·      There’s one night where they’re just having a relatively good time, taking a night to relax and appreciate that they can do nothing and be okay, and Remdax very gingerly brings up he wants to ask something of Vakala that might be too much. Vakala agrees to hear him out, and all Remdax wants is to be hugged for a bit while he thinks about how far they’ve come. So they hold each other, just lying on the bed and muttering to each other about the way things used to be, the way things are now, how lucky they are to have each other.

·      It’s actually some time later that they start seeing each other in a romantic light. Before this, they were a lifeline to each other, and in the heat of the worst moments, they couldn’t even really think about romance – they had to be preoccupied with survival. But now that their life is settling down and they’re starting to pack away funds for a small house, they start thinking…we’re basically life partners. Are we attracted to each other?

·      Answer: yes.

·      They kiss one night over a pretty meager dinner spread out picnic-style on their bed.

·      Shortly after this is when the Galra troops come into the city, looking for the two fugitives who attacked an inspector and fled custody.

·      Vakala and Remdax end up having to escape out the window, flee down the fire escape, and hijack a ship from Remdax’s garage.

·      They’re floating between worlds yet again.

·      They are eventually found by another ship, and they fear the Galra have finally captured them – but it’s a ship of rebels who’ve had similar stories. Vakala and Remdax are two of the Galra’s most wanted, and these rebels realized they would make great additions to the team in exchange for some stability.

·      So they work out a plan where Vakala and Remdax man an outpost on the ice planet, one of the most remote they have, that monitors Galra communications.

·      The rebels drop in supplies regularly and also have left a shuttle in case of emergency.

·      Vakala and Remdax both haaaaate the cold and so use the first week or so as an excuse to snuggle a lot.

·      And things go pretty okay. Remdax is still technologically illiterate and Vakala is just like “Are you even a Taxalan”

·      This is where they start bickering, which they like because finally, finally the stakes are low enough where they can afford to just rag on each other and still like each other at the end of the day.

·      They get more physical at this stage, too, but of course I can’t write a lemon to save my soul so it’s just a lot of implications

·      Things start going wrong when a Galra officer finds the base on a planet. This is far too dangerous and they both know it. If this guy gets two steps further, their location is blown and they are both dead. So Remdax kills him.

·      It’s been a while since their last supply delivery. And they figure it’s best not to waste anything…so they decide the Galra they killed has to go into food reserves.

·      Vakala nearly has a full-on panic attack while cannibalizing another person, even if that person was dangerous.

·      Some time later, another Galra shows up, but this one’s different. She claims to come in peace, and introduces herself as Acxa.

·      Remdax is ready to murder again, but Vakala holds him off because he can recognize Acxa isn’t a full-blooded Galra and in fact, he’s pretty sure there’s Taxalan in her genetic makeup based on how her face looks.

·      Acxa confirms. Her grandmother was a Taxalan and forced to be a servant of a Galra commander who impregnated her (here is the strongly implied noncon).

·      Acxa offers to help, swearing to secrecy. Vakala and Remdax deny her help but let her get away with her life, wondering if they’d made the right decision.

·      A month with no contact and they’re fairly secure Acxa didn’t snitch.

·      Then in comes Shiro, and canon events happen. These would be briefly recapped.

·      The important thing to note is that they let Shiro have their only shuttle, and that was a boo-boo, but it’s okay because the rebels are gonna drop off supplies anyway, so they shouldn’t need it.

·      And then the other rebels never show up.

·      I’m not sure if I’d have them literally be dead or leave it up in the air, but their supplies are cut off. They ration out their remaining food for the next few years. There’s at least one more Galra who shows up that they have to eat. And it does last a few years, until the end of VLD canon.

·      They’re starving to death. Skin and bone. And we get them eating their last ration over the fire and since they’re both used to cannibalizing Galra by now, their minds are on the obvious. Each is ready to kill himself so the other can live longer.

·      For dramatic effect I might have let them get close to pulling the trigger before the sound of someone showing up alerts them

·      They go outside, hoping they’re saved and not screwed…

·      And wouldn’t you know. It’s the paladins of Voltron. Also Acxa.

·      Allura has already been exchanged for the restoration of all realities (which Vakala and Remdax have no idea happened because when you’re in a reality that disappears and reappears, that has no bearing on your memory because you literally did not exist and suddenly existed again with no idea of the gap)

·      Altea and Daibazaal have been restored and now the paladins are working on bringing peace all over the universe

·      And Shiro remembered the two who helped his clone out because of…memory merging?...and Acxa brought up “We really need to check on those two”

·      They get Vakala and Remdax on a warm ship, find them food, get them cleaned up

·      And then bring them back to Taxalai, which has just been liberated from Galra control. We see the more unforgivable Galra getting their due punishment. The camp administrators are now incarcerated. Morvok is doing community service scooping poop at the zoo or something horrible because it’s Morvok

·      Shiro is considering his retirement, but first, he addresses Vakala and Remdax, asking if they want to govern the reclaimed Taxalai and help make it a beautiful place where their people can flourish

·      Vakala is trying so hard not to break down and cry, but it’s Remdax who hits his knees and starts bawling first

·      The final line would be about how they were finally “home” for the first time in their entire lives

[3w-writer-with-wings]

Does Takeru have high pain tolerance?

Just a little thought that I’ve been having ever since Takeru’s story has been revealed.

So when Takeru was rescued, he looked exhausted and sad, but otherwise not really looking like he had just been through six months of torture. In fact, when his grandparents showed up he even smiled and said he was okay. What truly breaks him is when he finds out his parents died while searching for him. So what Takeru has to deal with is an emotional pain, grief and blame. I’m not sure if that’s 100% accurate, but sometimes people with high physical pain tolerance are more affected by emotional pain than other people.

Now this shot might break this theory since Takeru reacts to the shocks pretty much the same as Yusaku, though it can also be possible that he was screaming from fear and disbelief that his favorite card game has been turned into a personal hell for him (I think he mentions during the duel with Go that Lost Incident took the fun from Duel Monsters for him). Either way, Lost Incident scarred him deeply, but not necessary due to the pain from electric shocks - he was isolated, starved, forced to undergo experiment and he also lost parents because of it.

Another scene that may break my pain tolerance theory – Burning Draw. Due to the taken damage Takeru falls on his knees, similar to how normal person would from the pain. However this is not the same moment when he activates his skill – if he really had low pain tolerance, he would be hurting when activating his skill, not long after. He probably collapsed due to exhaustion and not really the pain.

The lyrics from opening also kinda bring up the topic of the pain. In a way it is a song from Takeru for Yusaku: “I feel your flame” - I know how you feel, I’ve been there and it adds “I want to share your pain” - I know your pain was greater, let me take some of it away from you. Since he joined Yusaku, Takeru has been trying to help him in any way he could. He saw that Yusaku fought his enemies despite the trauma, but deep down he probably knew that he is hurting and decided to give him a hand.

Yusaku suffers from many things, but unlike Takeru, he can’t really smile or still enjoy duelling, meaning accident affected him differently. It could be that whenever he experiences the effects of PTSD, every possible positive emotion is ripped away from him so after so many failed attempts to try to live normally – Yusaku simply gave up as he no longer saw the reason to smile. PTSD reminds him of pain, pain reminds him of Lost Incident and because of it, Yusaku can hardly live normally by this point – the only thing left for him is to bring the people who scarred him to justice.

Somehow Takeru remains in his high spirits, not completely due to the loss of his parents, but he’s far more open with everyone than Yusaku. Once he started living with his grandparents he started hating everything and became depressed and closed, similar to Jin, though it was again because of his parents passing and not really the Lost Incident itself. Kiku even points out that Takeru has always been full of life and still is. It could be possible that he used to be a happy child but once Lost Incident happened, he started blaming it and therefore himself for his parents’ death and locked himself from the world as a form a punishment. That liveliness of his remains sealed within him until he sees the article about Playmaker, Go and Blue Angel. Not sure how he found out about Yusaku being a Lost Child, but in one way or another – those articles awakened something in him. Maybe after years of self-imprisonment, he has finally realized there is a way he can help and soon his cheery persona is back. When he tells Go that he needs to continue winning, he was probably pointing to the fact that the more he duels, the more his heart can be unlocked.

The first time Takeru was announced as a new character, I honestly expected another computer nerd like Revolver and yet still somehow chill person like Kusanagi. In no way I thought Takeru would be the cheerful friend that Yusaku needed for the past fifty episodes and even share the same past as him. Now that I’m putting pieces together, I kinda believe that Takeru is using Yusaku as his anchor, as the reason to continue fighting just like him. Perhaps once he met Flame and realizing Yusaku is a victim of Lost Incident just like him (I mean Takeru knew awful a lot about Lost Incident that Yusaku only came learn over the past episodes – like knowing about Dr. Kogami, the fact that each Ignis is based on a Lost Child and Cyberse world stuff – though then again Flame could tell him all of this – another a bit farfetched theory is this:

Though I doubt Takeru could afford it – yeah, Flame most likely told him everything completely for free (And I still wonder who bought the data – maybe Bowman and Haru? Or the shadowy figure they work for.)

Back to the main topic – maybe the whole fighting with himself was a result of him trying to let go of the blame for his parents’ death. He didn’t feel the same pain as others did and believes the emotional pain was a punishment he deserved and needed a while to know it is not. Maybe he’ll continue returning to his true self by each duel – with Blue Girl now. Maybe he secretly wishes to duel Playmaker but at the same time knows Yusaku would do everything not to lose so that’s why he tries to be helpful all the time. He still wants to challenge Yusaku, but not just yet – not until Yusaku is ready.

In the meanwhile Takeru tries to be a friend that he himself needed to Yusaku, knowing that Yusaku’s mental state is everything but okay. He tries to not be too intrusive and surprisingly Yusaku doesn’t mind it one bit, even allowing him to call him by the first name – something that is usually allowed to only close friends and family. I surely hope that Takeru uses his inability to feel pain to help Yusaku and healing his own soul through it.

The whole reason I came up with this theory is mainly Yugo from ARC V manga (in case you didn’t read all 34 chapters – the following contains heavy spoilers so read at your own risk).

Unlike Yuri and Yuya who both collapsed from the pain during the duel with Sora, Yugo looks surprisingly alright, even smiling and manages to get them all away to safety in time.

(may I also add how adorably similar the two of them look too?)

Okay back to the point – just like mentioned previously, despite the smile, Takeru is also grieving inside. Just like Yugo:

Yugo can handle the worst pain, like the after effects of receiving damage and continue riding his D-Wheel after nearly dying, but what he cannot handle is his family suffering – in this case, Yuya.

We still don’t know what exactly happened (hype for chapter 35), but whatever it was, the sole memory of it would, according to Yugo, make Yuya suffer. Because of that, he’d keep on erasing his memories and even Yuto would do everything to keep them from Yuya. In all cases, Yugo deeply cares for Yuya and would do anything to protect him.

Just like Takeru.

I believe that Takeru sees Yusaku as the family he wishes to protect from any more harm and uses his pain tolerance to provide support that Yusaku needs. Jin was too traumatized by it and Specter enjoyed, so Takeru is really the only one who understands Yusaku’s pain and is still capable to help him out.

Considering Kusanagi might switch sides and therefore leaving Yusaku, the poor guy will at least still have Takeru. Who knows, maybe after the whole betrayal episode, Kusanagi might reveal his true identity to SOL and Yusaku will need a place to hide – bam Takeru takes him to his hometown, away from Den City where Yusaku can emotionally recover after the betrayal and talks about personal things with Takeru for the first time and maybe he meets Kiku and his grandparents and learns to trust people again.

Anyway, hopefully, Takeru’s and Yusaku’s relationship is explored further in the series! I really love the two of them and they deserve the world!

[tomfooleryprime]

Voq, Ash Tyler, and Growing up Star Trek

We learned a lot more about the curious case of Lieutenant Ash Tyler/Voq in the Star Trek: Discovery episode, “Vaulting Ambition.” It was finally confirmed in the previous week that the character we know as Ash Tyler is harboring some Klingon memories, but the precise mechanism behind how that happened was still a mystery, until Saru finally brought up the thing we were all wondering about:

Which prompted L’Rell to spill the beans.

“The one you call Tyler was captured in battle at the Binary Stars. We harvested his DNA, reconstructed his consciousness, and rebuilt his memory. We modified Voq into a shell that appears human. We grafted his psyche into Tyler’s, and in so doing, Voq has given his body and soul for our ideology.”

—L’Rell

It’s not all that shocking. Months of fan speculation aside, it’s not like this is a new trope for this franchise.

Remember this guy? 

What L’Rell revealed last night opens up an opportunity for Star Trek: Discovery to venture into classic Trek territory in a very un-Trek way. How the hell are we supposed to figure out what to think about Ash Tyler’s situation? 

The Trek formula of old would have given us a tidy episode in a box where the captain was confronted with some dilemma and spent the majority of the fifty-two minutes of air time chewing on it in such a way that the audience wasn’t really required to ponder the ramifications because we had a Picard or a Janeway to serve as the wise parental figure and do the messy business of thinking for us.

Yet Discovery lacks that central guiding ethical compass: its main character isn’t a captain, she’s a convict. That arguably makes Michael Burnham the most dynamic lead Star Trek has ever put forward, but because she’s too busy finding her place on a ship in the midst of a war with the Klingons and crawling over heaps of inner turmoil, that doesn’t leave her a lot of free time to tell us how to approach the wider problems presented in each episode. She tries to speak up as the voice of reason (miss you, Ripper!), but thus far, her objections are often drowned out by a plot that’s constantly blazing forward at Warp 10. It makes for good storytelling and character development, but it leaves the analysis of complex issues to the audience.

Think about it—every incarnation of Star Trek up until now had a way of introducing us to problems that were so obviously an allusion to the issues of their respective decades, whether it was Kirk meeting a society of people who desperately needed birth control or Archer ending up in a Suliban detainee camp courtesy of President George Bush… er, whoever the Tandaran leader was during the 2150s.

Captain Picard was the ultimate master of holding viewers’ hands all the way through the first four acts of an episode, carefully spoon feeding us both sides of an issue before finally allowing us to absorb the full weight of an enormous moral, ethical, or philosophical question in the final act with an impassioned speech or contemplative captain’s log entry. We were allowed to be mentally lazy. 

Is Data a person? Who’s to say? Let’s literally hold a trial to weigh the evidence!

The issues surrounding Ash Tyler are so enormously complex and raise questions about the nature of consciousness, self, immortality, and bodily autonomy, as well as the role of crime and punishment in society. It seems pretty ambiguous whether or not the real Ash Tyler is still alive in a Klingon prison somewhere, but regardless, maybe we should start by exploring whether we can really call the person lying in Discovery’s sickbay Ash Tyler. 

If someone were to duplicate your consciousness and place it into another living being, how would you define that individual? Say hypothetically that you are still alive, so is the other being with your consciousness now also you, an extension of you, or a completely independent being that simply carries your memories? If the original version of you is destroyed, did you really die, if a carbon copy of your mind exists somewhere else? If such a procedure is possible, doesn’t that imply we could theoretically live forever through a series of host bodies?

I feel like this is the premise of one-third of all Black Mirror episodes.

Hopefully, next week’s episode will iron out some of the details behind how the procedure was performed and whether or not L’Rell successfully removed Voq’s consciousness from Tyler’s physical form, but that just raises more questions. 

L’Rell indicated that the albino Klingon we knew as Voq in the first three episodes gave up his physical form to look like Ash Tyler, so the body was originally Voq’s.

Alien talent for crafting human flesh bags into suits varies by franchise. 

So if L’Rell manages to remove Voq’s consciousness from the body he and Tyler share, is that the equivalent of killing Voq? Conversely, if she snuffs out any trace of Tyler, has she killed Tyler? Last night’s episode made it apparent that if someone didn’t do something soon, the guy in sickbay screaming Klingon curses one minute and weeping human tears the next was going to die, but is it ethical to take one life to save another, and how do we decide?

I think the natural instinct is to say that obviously Voq needs to go in favor of Tyler. It’s easy to justify too: Voq knew what he was risking, the Klingons and Federation are in the midst of a war, and it doesn’t really seem like Tyler had much say in the medical experimentation performed on him. Not to mention, it kind of seemed like it was Voq shining through when Hugh Culber was killed. The Voq side of this person is clearly violent, dangerous, and a self-proclaimed enemy of the Federation.

Now consider how you feel about the death penalty. If you ardently support it, I question why you watch a show featuring people from an idealistic utopia where the death penalty was abolished, but hey, I’m sure the issue of what to do about Voq must seem pretty cut and dry. If you oppose the death penalty for any reason, now is probably a good time to ask yourself exactly why that is and apply it to this very bizarre situation.

Before you start hurling digital rotten produce at me for daring to suggest that Voq be given rights over Tyler, I’m not advocating for that, I’m merely asking you to consider it, because while the DNA is Tyler’s, the body is Voq’s. The heart of so many modern issues rests on a similar platform, this idea that we have the right to decide the fate of our own bodies, no matter what else we’ve done. 

It’s why we don’t harvest organs from criminals or force them to submit to dangerous medical experimentation, even though some *cough*Nazis*cough* might argue in favor of crude social arithmetic that there’s some net “good” to be had by testing unproven HIV vaccines or pioneering brain surgery on our convict population. To be fair, Voq decided to become Ash Tyler, and in doing so, it seems so unfair that I should even be considering his rights when it certainly seems like Tyler’s rights were so brutally and traumatically stripped away from him.

But Star Trek has also never shied away from unfair predicaments. Remember that time Trip Tucker was in a coma and Phlox collected his DNA and injected it into a Lyssarian Desert larvae to grow a Tucker clone, which they later named Sim, just so they could harvest Sim’s neural tissue for a transplant? OG Tucker was unconscious and didn’t consent to the procedure, and while Tucker 2.0 also didn’t ask to get made, which one deserved to live?

Yeah Sim, he owed you so big. 

No matter what happens, the whole business with Voq and Tyler is a bloody damn mess and there’s no chance for real justice for anyone involved. By stuffing Ash Tyler’s consciousness into Voq’s body and then mutilating Voq to look like Ash Tyler, L’Rell created an individual who is arguably somehow both Voq and Tyler and also neither Voq and Tyler at the same time.

Star Trek built an entire species based around this premise in the form of the Trills. For seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the symbiont Dax put us through our paces as we teased apart Jadzia from Dax and all of her previous hosts. There are too many episodes featuring Jadzia conflicting with the memories of her predecessors to count, but it was always interesting, watching Jadzia stand trial for something Curzon allegedly did, and it was heartbreaking watching her husband Worf interact with Ezri, Dax’s next host, after Jadzia’s untimely death. However much fans wished Ezri would love Worf as much as Jadzia had, Ezri wasn’t Jadzia and she deserved the freedom to make her own decisions.

So, I have to come back to the question, is Ash Tyler even really Ash Tyler? Can a copy be as good as the original? In many cases, sure. If someone torched the Declaration of Independence, its meaning isn’t lost forever; we have countless copies in textbooks and Internet archives. Ideas and facts are obviously more important than the paper that they’re printed on, but aren’t people greater than just the sum of their thoughts and experiences?

Star Trek: The Next Generation asked that question once when a transporter accident spawned a clone of William Riker, only he wasn’t technically a clone, because he shared all of Riker’s memories leading up to the accident. A clone implies an individual whose genome was copied from another individual, but the person created in that transporter glitch was an exact copy.

You know Riker II is looking at Riker I and thinking, “I grew a beard because I didn’t have a razor. Don’t tell me you grew that shit on purpose?”

Are they really exactly the same though? Once their paths began to diverge with differing life experiences (one got stranded on a station while the other went on to have a successful career in Starfleet), they really became two separate individuals, more like twins than the exact same person. So, I would argue that whether or not the original Tyler is really alive out there, the Tyler we know isn’t really Ash Tyler. 

But whoever he is and however he was created, he has rights too. He’s the only innocent person in this whole shitty scenario, and even if Voq’s consciousness is removed, no doubt the experience will irrevocably alter Tyler.

But what if L’Rell can’t separate them? I think of all the options, a plot twist that finds a way for both Tyler and Voq to coexist in the same body is easily the most complicated and daring path forward. Tuvok and Neelix had polar opposite personalities, but at least when they got spliced together, they generally lived by the same moral code. All the incarnations of Dax were also wildly different, but they jived well (so long as you forget that whole uncomfortable Joran incident).

Voq and Tyler are essentially Jekyll and Hyde. Voq killed Hugh Culber and attempted to kill Michael Burnham, so should he (they) be punished for those crimes? American Horror Story: Freak Show tried to address a similar situation when one conjoined twin murdered her mother in a moment of rage. It forces us to ask which is worse, “Deliberately punishing an innocent person or allowing a guilty one to go free?”

I have no idea what will happen in future episodes, but the idea of Voq and Tyler having to learn to live together might actually provide this show with something it’s been largely lacking thus far: a character who has to learn what it means to be human and who can provide an outsider’s commentary and insight on our odd little species, much like Spock, Data, The Doctor, Seven of Nine, and T’Pol did. Given Michael Burnham’s upbringing and life sentence for mutiny, it seemed like she was well-poised to fit this role, but while she spent the latter part of her formative years on Vulcan and is a lot less emotional than most of her crewmates, she’s fairly clued in to the human condition. 

Not so great at beer pong, but still a competent human. 

Ultimately, I can’t wait to see how Ash Tyler’s situation gets resolved, but I can now safely say Discovery might be my favorite series in the franchise. Some people hate it because it’s a lot of explosions and fighting and thus far, it hasn’t really felt like Star Trek with its power-hungry captain, Klingons with heavy prosthetics, and exceptional CGI. 

No, it ain’t your momma’s Star Trek, but maybe that’s a good thing. I grew up watching The Next Generation and later watched Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and it was nice having Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer gently guide me to the answers with calm, well-reasoned thinking. In a lot of ways, they taught me how to think about morally complex matters, and now that I’m older, I’m able to think for myself while I watch Discovery, and that is precisely why I love it so much. 

Discovery is Star Trek all grown up.  

[shirlleycoyle]

The High Price of ‘Making the Numbers’ at the USPS

This article was sent on Tuesday to subscribers of The Mail, Motherboard’s pop-up newsletter about the USPS, election security, and democracy. It is the second in a multi-part series about working conditions at the USPS. Subscribe to get the next edition before it is published here, as well as exclusive articles and the paid zine.

This is Part II of a multi-part series looking at working conditions at the post office. If you missed Part I, click here.

For a brief period, it looked like the post office would finally be changing. On Valentine's Day in 1992, eight union leaders and USPS management signed the Joint Statement on Violence and Behavior in the Workplace (JSOV). Spurred by the Royal Oak shooting we covered last week, the one-page document was much more than the "thoughts and prayers" style platitudes we have since become accustomed to after a mass shooting. Instead, the JSOV declared that "grief and sympathy are not enough. Neither are ritualistic expressions of grave concern or the initiation of investigations, studies, or research projects." 

The statement went on: "This is a time for a candid appraisal of our flaws and not a time for scapegoating, fingerpointing, or procrastination." It affirmed that "every employee at every level of the Postal Service should be treated at all times with dignity, respect, and fairness…'Making the numbers' is not an excuse for the abuse of anyone."

But among the missing signatories was the American Postal Workers Union, one of the biggest and most influential unions representing postal workers. 

Years later, APWU Eastern Region Coordinator Mike Gallagher wrote a position paper to stewards about the continuous problem of workplace violence at the post office. He explained that his union chose not to sign because "quite frankly, we knew that the USPS would apply the principles of the Joint Statement against bargaining unit employees and not against managers." The APWU's position was this statement wouldn't change much, because the causes of workplace violence at the post office were fundamental to how it operated. Even a blanket zero-tolerance policy wouldn't change that.

Over the last few months, I have been interviewing postal workers about what it is like to work for the post office. They express a range of sentiments, from pride to gratitude to frustration and exhaustion. As I have said before, the post office is an impossibly vast and diverse organization that defies simplicity. 

The most common sentiment I hear is postal workers are proud to work for the post office because it is inherently meaningful work. But they also wish it was a more humane place to work, that problems actually got fixed instead of ignored or passed along. Most of all, they wish the USPS was a place where being a good boss or being a good worker actually mattered. There is a maxim at the post office that doing your work well only gets you more work. It was a maxim 30 years ago, and it's still a maxim today. 

I found the most revealing part of this reporting process came when I asked a few of the postal workers I interviewed what they thought of a 1994 Government Accountability Office study, its results succinctly summarized by the title: "U.S. Postal Service: Labor-Management Problems Persist on the Workroom Floor."

The seven postal workers from around the country who volunteered to read the study unanimously agreed the basic characterization of the postal service from 1994 is still accurate. It is an authoritarian, top-down organization in which policy is set by higher-ups who have often never done the work of sorting and delivering mail. The people actually doing the work—or even the people managing the people doing the work—have little to no say in how the work is done. There is a widespread perception that supervisors are not selected based on their management skills. As a result of the basic metrics and incentives upper management creates for both supervisors and workers, an "us vs. them" mentality between labor and management dominates daily routines.

To the question of "have things gotten better since the 'going postal' era?" I received a resounding "no."

"I cannot even begin to tell you how incredulous I was reading this," a 27-year-old mail handler at a processing and distribution facility in Oklahoma wrote in an email. "To know that my same daily complaints and laments were a problem back nearly as far as when I was born—and that they haven’t been resolved in the slightest!!—is so disheartening to me."

Another processing and distribution facility worker from the Pacific Northwest echoed similar sentiments. "That was 10 years before I started, and I have to say overall, No. It has not changed much."

Today's edition of The Mail is going to be about why so little has changed even after the rash of shootings that resulted in dozens of dead and wounded and permanently tarnished the post office's reputation. But it's important to acknowledge this is not just about the post office. Violence—both verbal and physical—in the American workplace was not a new phenomenon when Patrick Sherrill killed 14 coworkers in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986. The U.S. workplace too often treats workers as little more than extensions of the machines they operate, measuring success and failure by "hitting the numbers," callous to what that sort of treatment does to human minds and bodies. We often think of the post office as a quintessential American institution. Unfortunately, when it comes to how it treats its workers, it is.

In 1994, two different letter carriers filed grievances against supervisors who were allegedly harassing them. The cases were consolidated into one national-level arbitration hearing in 1996. The national-level arbitration was not about the specific harassment allegations, but whether the JSOV, by then four years old, was an enforceable agreement. In other words, could a carrier file a grievance against an abusive manager for violating the JSOV and have that supervisor disciplined, transferred, or even fired? Or was the JSOV just another empty promise from management?

The JSOV itself appears to be quite clear on this question. "Let there be no mistake," the statement concluded, "that we mean what we say and we will enforce our commitment to a workplace where dignity, respect, and fairness are basic human rights, and where those who do not respect those rights are not tolerated."

But by 1996, USPS management didn't see it that way. They argued the JSOV was merely a "pledge" and did not override its right to manage the workforce as they see fit. They said the JSOV was nothing more than an effort to "send a message to stop the violence."

Just as the APWU predicted, management was using the JSOV to punish rank-and-file employees for offenses like cursing at managers while simultaneously arguing the JSOV was nothing more than a toothless document when wielded against abusive supervisors.

The arbitrator sided with labor. "The Joint Statement marked a departure from the past and pointed the way to organizational change," the arbitrator found. "This was a document that evidenced an intent to take action rather than a mere statement of opinions and predictions." 

It's difficult to objectively evaluate the JSOV's effectiveness in curbing workplace violence at the post office. But the broad consensus among postal workers and union stewards I've spoken to is the JSOV is better than nothing but hasn't done much in practice. 

On the one hand, there is some evidence that working conditions at the USPS have gotten better. In 2000, there were 10,553 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints filed against the USPS by employees out of a workforce of 786,516, or a rate of 1.34 percent. By 2018, the latest year for which these statistics were available, there were just 4,081 complaints out of 633,641 workers, or a rate of .64 percent, less than half what it was in 2000. But factors besides working conditions at the USPS—such as the perceived worthiness of filing complaints with the EEOC—can also impact those rates. 

Likewise, grievances that went to arbitration show some tentative signs of progress. Since 1996, when the JSOV became contractually enforceable, there have been 1,195 grievances involving the National Association of Letter Carriers with a JSOV-related complaint, or about 50 per year on average, according to a copy of the grievance database reviewed by Motherboard. Of those, 611 of the complaints were denied by an arbitrator, leaving 584 cases ruled at least in part a violation of the JSOV.

But, again, this data is not capturing the whole picture. These numbers are not the total JSOV-related grievances, just those that reached arbitration for this one union. And although the years with more grievances came prior to 2000—the most was 145 rulings in JSOV cases in 1997—this is probably because workers had this new avenue to file grievances they didn't previously have, so it captures events dating back several years and conflicts that have been stewing for a while. Rulings per year gradually declined until 2008 with a low 14, before rising again to about 35 per year in recent years.

Source: NALC arbitration database obtained by Motherboard

Moreover, some of the rulings detail that postal management continues to look the other way on problem supervisors, a key issue highlighted by the Congressional investigation into the Royal Oak shooting. 

For example, in 2008, an arbitrator found a supervisor in Oakland, CA had "a history of cease and desist orders…at stations throughout the Bay-View Postal District." Management was aware of these previous violations of the JSOV and the history of worker complaints against this one supervisor, but management "failed to take appropriate action." The arbitrator said the supervisor's actions of calling his employees "muthafuckers" and "bitches" was "exactly the type of work place behavior that the JSOV was intended to prevent." The arbitrator ruled the supervisor could no longer be anyone's boss, but only in the Pacific Area region. 

Sometimes, the arbitrators themselves do little more than shuffle off problem supervisors to other locations. In 2009, a supervisor in Gaithersburg, MD repeatedly threatened and harassed workers, which the arbitrator found to be "abusive behavior which holds open the potential for violence." Nevertheless, the arbitrator's ruling was to reassign the supervisor to another nearby post office and receive sensitivity training. 

Also in 2009, a union steward and postal supervisor in Stockton, CA got into a physical altercation when, after an increasingly escalating shouting match, the steward accused the manager of sleeping with the postmaster in order to get her job. The manager then slapped the steward, who restrained the supervisor and left. Despite the police being called and a statement taken, the supervisor received only a written warning while the steward was suspended for 21 days without pay. The arbitrator discovered this was not the first time local management had looked the other way on complaints of this particular supervisor violating the JSOV.

And these are just a few of the examples that have been documented. More often, postal workers and union officials say, violence and harassment in the workplace goes unreported as an accepted part of the job. In 2018, NALC Branch 343's newsletter succinctly summarized just how little has changed since the "Going Postal" era:

It has been my experience that seasoned carriers often times will ignore or shrug off this type of behavior because they have been exposed to it for such a long time. This speaks volumes. Many of these carriers have seen worse and nothing happened. 

Why is the post office such an enduring hotbed of workplace conflict? This is a question I've asked postal workers around the country over the past few months. And the most surprising element of reporting this story, at least to me, is there is absolutely no mystery about it. Everyone knows exactly why the post office is rife with workplace conflict. It's even right there in the JSOV: "making the numbers."

Until recently, Josh Sponsler was a letter carrier in Ohio. He decided to quit the post office despite being a "career" employee with solid pay, good benefits, and a decent pension waiting for him at the end of the road. But he quit because the mounting stress and tension in the workplace took a toll on his mental health. When I asked what it was about the workplace that made it so stressful, Sponsler brought up "the 96."

The 96, officially known as Form 3996, is the form carriers have to fill out if they expect they will have to work overtime to deliver the mail that day. In the morning, when carriers show up for work, they will look over the various types of mail they have to deliver: the pre-sorted mail, the magazines and other "flats," and the packages. If they think work that day will take longer than eight hours and therefore trigger overtime, they reach for the 96. 

But supervisors also have their own opinion about how many hours each route should take. The machines that pre-sort the mail automatically generate statistics about how much mail is going to each route. Those stats are then sent to supervisors each morning. Then, supervisors literally measure each route's unsorted mail with a yardstick. After plugging that number into the same software, the computer generates a final estimate for how long the mail should take to deliver.

Often, Sponsler says, the carrier's estimate will be very different from the computer's. For one, neither the computer programs nor measuring mail by the yard captures the most important factors about how long it takes to deliver mail. For example, what's the weather like? Are there mailers going to every business along the route? Every residential address? Is there road construction along the route?

And the computer's estimate is based on the regular inspection every route gets, where a postal supervisor will literally time with a stopwatch every move the carrier makes to determine how long that route "should" take. This estimate then becomes the baseline for that carrier's route estimates until the next inspection is done. But, for various reasons, that inspection may not be representative of the route year-round.

These two estimates for how long the day's mail will take to deliver is, as Sponsler put it, "the first thing that would cause tension" every day.

The tension is heightened because these estimates, multiplied by the thousands upon thousands of mail routes around the country are, in many ways, the main metric for how the modern post office functions. Supervisors are not given budgets in terms of dollars but in terms of work-hours. The more hours carriers say they'll need to finish their routes, the harder it gets for supervisors to meet their work-hour budgets, which will get them in trouble with their bosses.

The same goes for supervisors overseeing workers who don't deliver mail, such as mail handlers and other workers in processing facilities. In fact, for them it can be even worse, because they never leave the facility and are therefore constantly watched by their bosses. Throughout the JSOV grievances reviewed by Motherboard, workers report supervisors timing their bathroom breaks with stopwatches, looming over them so the workers can "feel their presence" while they work, or filing official warnings if they're too slow on a machine by a matter of seconds.  

When carriers, union stewards, and post office managers talk about "making the numbers," they're talking about these numbers, the work-hour budgets. And they're also talking about the increasingly unreasonable requirements postal management puts on supervisors and postal workers alike, bringing mail to more and more delivery points every year with fewer and fewer workers, relying more and more on overtime that management consistently wants to slash. Talking to postal workers, an analogy that often comes up is that working for the post office feels like working in a pressure cooker. Everyone is being squeezed.

Reaching for the 96 has become an increasingly common occurrence. In August, the USPS Inspector General reported on the agency's soaring overtime costs which it largely attributed to "staffing challenges." Because the post office has consistently cut the number of people it employs even as it delivers to more locations, it relies on overtime to deliver all the mail every day. But, in many ways, keeping employees from filing their 96's is the most important thing a supervisor does from USPS management's perspective, because it saves the post office money. 

Source: USPS OIG

There are, of course, good ways and bad ways for managers to handle this dynamic. Most postal workers I've spoken to said they've had at least one good boss who was reasonable and treated workers with respect. But, they are the exception, not the rule, because doing so requires actively ignoring or competing with the incentives put forward by their bosses. 

For the not so great bosses, they have every incentive to bully workers that take longer to do the job, have routes with the greatest discrepancy between the computerized stats and the carrier's own work pace, or, as is all too often the case, just pick on someone they don't like for whatever reason. And they often do it under the guise of achieving operational efficiency, of hitting the numbers.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, this conflict by design can easily devolve into being about anything other than delivering mail. Mail carriers get frustrated and feel like they're being gaslit into doing a job that cannot be done. They get frustrated being told to do a job in a way they think will be slower while also being told to work faster. Their bosses think they're a liar for saying the work can't be done in eight hours. Supervisors tag carriers who they perceive as constantly asking for unjustified overtime as problem workers who need discipline. 

This dynamic was represented in an extreme but not anomalous way in the Gaithersburg case. The supervisor testified to the arbitrator on the record that he "thinks that Carriers that apply for overtime are 'thieves.'" This view, he added, was the reason he felt empowered to harass carriers who said they would need overtime to finish their rounds. It was also backed up by his postmaster, who expressed similar sentiments.

"You just know there's a very good chance that, by filling this sheet out, you're getting into an argument about time," Sponsler said. And sometimes those arguments get out of hand.

If things haven't gotten any better at the post office, it's fair to wonder: why don't we hear about "going postal" anymore? 

I put this question to Northeastern University Professor James Alan Fox, who has studied mass shootings and workplace violence since the early 1980s. He said shooting trends are more like a "general contagion," in that once they get publicized, a small group of people identify with the shooters and replicate their actions. For example, once the Edmond shooting was covered by the media in 1986, other postal workers started to think that might be a way for them to address their grievances, too. In a situation where these shooters likely saw no way out of their problems, they now had one.

But these trends pass just like any other. "There are fads in crime as there are in other aspects of life," Fox said. "Back in the 80s, the way that postal workers expressed their anger and grievance was with a gun…but that is not part of the culture now."

There is, however, a cohort of postal workers who report regularly higher job satisfaction than everyone else. They're called rural mail carriers. They do the same job as the so-called "city" carriers, even many times out of the same offices with the same supervisors, but for complex historical reasons, they fall under different salary structures. Whereas city carriers are hourly employees that get overtime for working more than eight hours in a day, rural carriers are given an annual salary to deliver the mail however long it takes. As a 1994 Government Accountability Office report put it:

"Rural carriers do not have to negotiate daily with supervisors regarding the time it will take to complete mail sorting or delivery, and their performance is not closely supervised. Rural carriers generally control their own workdays as long as all the mail is delivered on time each day."

I asked Sponsler if he thought putting everyone under the rural carrier structure would solve the workplace issue. He said he had never thought about it before, but he doubted it could ever happen because the entire organization, workers and management alike, have become too addicted to overtime. Many of the workers like the extra money and management won't hire enough people to avoid it. 

Instead, he proposed different solutions, ones I had heard many times before. Abandon the autocratic management structure. Get rid of the computer metrics, or at least drastically curtail how they're used. Empower supervisors to run their post office the best way they see fit, not just follow orders from on high that apply to all the post offices in the area. They're big ideas, but not impossible ones. 

Sponsler ended our interview by saying he didn't really want to quit the post office, but he had to. He liked most of the people he worked with. The carriers really do care about delivering the mail in that cheesy way you always hoped was true but never wanted to ask. It really is true, he said. 

"Even with my experience, it can be a very good place to work," he assured me. But it's a far cry from making sure that experience applies to more than just a select few lucky ones with a good supervisor. "The service needs to work on a lot of stuff to get there."

The High Price of ‘Making the Numbers’ at the USPS syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[theragnarokd]

either way, there is a light on [POI x Fallout 4 fusion, reese + finch gen, rinch if you squint]

[fusion crossover with @maculategiraffe‘s fantastic “How Life Goes On, The Way It Does” series. self harm TW, contains physical & psychological torture, canon-typical violence, internalized & external dehumanization, caretaking]

R3-53 was just back from tracking down a rogue unit: he'd only finished washing the blood off when the order came to go down into the laboratories.

He passed through the places where humans in white lab coats worked, his head bowed respectfully, and onward through four locked doors. Finally, he found Dr. Snow, unit K4-74, and a human R3-53 didn't recognize.

"Unit R3-53," Dr. Snow said, "this is Dr. Finch. You are not to obey his orders. You are to keep him from escaping. And you are to obey K4-74 in everything."

"I told you," Finch said, his voice reedy. "I'm quitting. If you want to exile me, get it over with."

Dr. Snow nodded at K4-74 and left without a word. K4-74 pulled out a sharp blade.

"Unit R3-53," K4-74 said, "cut across your stomach. Avoid any long term damage. Do not hide your response."

Dr. Finch's breathing and heart rate sped up. An adrenaline reaction, surely, to seeing someone so similar to a human threatened.

R3-53 exposed his abdomen and took the knife from K4-74. The cut was only two milimeters long when Dr. Finch said, "Fine! I'll do it. I'll do it. Please tell him to stop." Sweat beaded on his forehead and he blinked a little too rapidly.

K4-74 gave the command, and R3-53 obeyed.

~~

"This is what they gave me," Kitty says, and hands a piece of paper over to Nora.

Nora frowns. It's a rudimentary map, with a few nearby settlements marked on it, and an X marked with the legend, "the least of what father owed you."

"There were supplies there," Kitty says, "and this." She takes out a simple device with a tiny LED. "The instructions said to wait until it turned green, then get going. That's what I did."

Kitty's chosen name suits her: she's tiny and adorable. Nora asks, "And you didn't face any danger on your way here?"

Kitty shakes her head. Her ponytail bounces. "None. I saw a mirelurk once, but someone I couldn't see blasted it off."

That's four synths now with variations on the same story: a map left, tossed through an open window or hidden in their clothes, a trail of supplies ultimately leading to Fort Independence.

"Thanks, Kitty," Nora says. The kid, shyly, offers her a hug which Nora gladly accepts. "I'm glad they brought you here, and kept you safe."

"Me, too," Kitty says, and wrinkles her nose. "Would it kill them to hang out long enough to let me thank them in person?"

"Here's hoping not," Hancock says quietly behind Nora.

~~

The only time R3-53 saw Dr. Finch show emotion were when he was being punished, up till now.

"I'll let you think about it," Dr. Snow had said, before leaving the room. "Unit R3-53, you know what to do if Dr. Finch refuses."

K4-74 lay on the table before them, motionless. Her relay chip had become damaged. Dr. Finch was ordered to fix it, without any other scientist's help.

"This is stupid!" Dr. Finch finally snapped. "I'm no doctor, I'm not even advanced systems! They're ordering me to kill her for no reason but to watch me squirm!"

2593 milliseconds pass, and R3-53 said, "Was I mislaid about your name, then?"

For a longer span of time, Dr. Finch stared at R3-53. Then he said, voice high, "Did you just make a joke?"

R3-53 didn't flinch, of course. He'd been trained out of such responses. Instead he said, "I am capable of field surgery, Dr. Finch. I can take out the chip for you."

"Can you?" The sudden interest in Dr. Finch's eye is... oddly gratifying. Perhaps R3-53 had learned to connect Dr. Finch's relief with the cessation of his own pain: the link between the two was plain enough, and frequently reestablished.

"I'm no scientist," R3-53 said. That much was clear enough.

"You're certainly smarter than some I've known, and more capable," Dr. Finch muttered. "Although that might be considered damning with faint praise."

~~

Getting access to PAM was kind of a bitch, given that Desdemona is still pissed at Nora. At the same time, Desdemona isn't stupid, so access Nora got.

Not that it helped her a whole lot. "Data set invalid," PAM says, after taking forever chewing the data.

"Oh come on!" Nora does not thump her fist on any nearby surfaces. She's too classy for that. "This is the data we have, are you telling me it's impossible?"

"Data set invalid," PAM says again, with a hint of reproach. How dare Nora fault her logic.

Nora looks at her maps and timelines. Okay, yeah, it doesn't seem likely that just one person could manage to run around escorting four synths to her, each more than a few hours' walk from the others. An operation of that size would take at least six or more people, unless they could teleport, and then the support those people would need - you'd end up with an operation that Nora would hear about, one way or another.

She frowns and rewinds that thought. Unless. Unless they could teleport...

~~

"You have to go," Dr. Finch told them, his face ashen. Above them, the explosions were louder and louder, coming close.

K4-74 only waited for long enough to ask R3-53, "Coming?" When he shook his head, she shrugged, said, "Suit yourself," and took off.

"I am not required to obey you," R3-53 told Dr. Finch. "My orders are to prevent your escape."

"From what?" Dr. Finch demanded. "The Institute is literally getting blown up! You have to go, unit R3-53, or you'll die here!"

"The same applies to you." Distantly, R3-53 noted that his voice was rising. "These were not my command parameters. I cannot let you escape."

The next explosion hits one of the armored doors, shaking the room. R3-53 caught himself, but Dr. Finch fell to his knees.

He looked up at R3-53, blinking. Hesitantly, he said, "What if I left with you?"

Before Dr. Finch finishes his sentence, R3-53 says, "These parameters are acceptable." He hoists a squawking Dr. Finch on his shoulder in a firefighter carry and hastens away.

~~

The problem with tracking down someone who can teleport... well, it's right there in the question.

The first place Nora considers is the Institute's old location, but there's barely anything left of that. Michael would have been able to teleport there if the pad had still been active, probably.

So there's another teleporting device somewhere in her commonwealth. Isn't that dandy.

PAM did end up helping, unexpectedly, when she flagged up several exchange sites.

What these were, Nora had no idea until she got there to see a pile of broken technology and a tiny hill of glittering caps. "Doesn't anybody steal those?" Nora says, gesturing at the caps.

"Not if they like their kneecaps," says the settler who showed her the place. He seems a bit too cheerful about the idea. "You leave any piece of tech, plus caps, and it comes back fixed. That's how it works."

If Nora's mystery guy - or gal - turns up around here with regularity, there should be a pad close by. All Nora would have to do is find it and wait.

~~

They had not escaped unscathed; R3-53 had only shallow injuries which, although numerous, healed quickly, but Dr. Finch took shrapnel to the back. R3-53 did his best to stabilize Dr. Finch, and it seemed he'd heal, but he would probably never have full range of motion again.

The first thing R3-53 told Finch when he woke up was, "I'm sorry."

Finch croaked, "You saved my life." Then, more alarmed, "Why can't I move my legs?"

Even after R3-53 explained Finch's injuries and how R3-53 was responsible for them indirectly, through failing to better protect Finch, Finch refused to cast any blame on R3-53. "You saved my life," he repeated, stubbornly.

Caring for Finch was repetitive and weirdly soothing, not unlike caring for his weapons, except that Finch was alive. Finch was oddly courteous about his care; he always thanked R3-53 for even the smallest action, and asked for assistance in the most polite terms. Probably this was due to Finch's embarrassment. R3-53 paid it little mind.

He did appreciate that Finch no longer tried to deter R3-53 from following his mission parameters. One time, when Finch asked, "What's on your mind?" R3-53 admitted that.

"The Institute is gone," Finch said, quiet. "Nobody is going to order you to hurt yourself, now."

That was undeniably true. It was a relief to hear - less because R3-53 was afraid of damage to himself, and more because R3-53 never enjoyed the evidence of fear in Finch's heart beat.

"Nobody will order me to hurt myself," R3-53 agreed, just for the vicarious pleasure of Finch's relief. That, too, was part of what made caring for him soothing: Finch's lessened pain felt better than using a stimpak.

Finch looked at R3-53 thoughtfully. "Do you miss having orders?" he asked.

R3-53 considered. "It was good to have a purpose," he said, slowly. Even if, bit by bit, he'd come to wonder if that purpose was real or worthwhile after all. Finch's scathing lectures about morality and wastefulness had crept into R3-53's mind.

This, too, made caring for Finch soothing: that it was like the opposite of all of R3-53's other missions. A mission to save, not to destroy.

Sometimes, it was as though Finch could read R3-53's mind. "I have an idea," Finch said. "Supposing that I could ascertain the location of synths in danger. Supposing that I sent you to escort them to safety."

R3-53's heartrate and breathing were elevated, despite his best efforts to the contrary. "What safety is there, with the Institute gone?" he asked.

Finch grimaced. "Please don't play stupid, R3-53. We've both heard the radio announcements."

"How?" R3-53 demanded. Unthinkable, to take this tone with a human, even if he'd expressly been told not to obey Dr. Finch. "My mission parameters prohibit leaving you for so long." R3-53's mission parameters were a thin sham, now with the Institute gone, but so far Finch had not called him out on it.

Finch's answering expression is unbearably smug. "R3-53, do you need to be reminded that I build relay interfaces?"

~~

Nora's mystery person turns out to be a tall guy in a courser uniform. He has a gun aimed at Nora before she can say anything.

She raises her hands high. "Do you know who I am?" she tries not to smile, or look too much like she wants to tackle-hug him.

"Director Nora Bowman," the courser says. He has a weird sort of tone, like he's stage-whispering, a little sing-song. "Father's heir, protector of the Commonwealth."

Nora nods fast. "So you know I have absolutely no intention of hurting you?"

He looks at her. He's more expressive than most coursers she's met, but that's true of stone statues, too. "That might be a mistake on your behalf."

That... doesn't make a lot of sense. "If you think I'd hurt synths, why did you send all these guys my way? Not that I'm not grateful. I am, a lot." Something moves in the courser's face. Nora seizes on it. "They're all doing great. Kitty is really great at doing laundry, which is a skill I didn't know how much we needed until someone picked it up, and Mikey--"

She stops when he tenses. The most minute movement, as obvious as a full body seizure to someone who's gotten used to speaking courser. "You think we're human." His voice is flat. It sounds like an accusation.

Nora spreads her hands. "Well... duh. Did you think I'd be doing what I've done otherwise?"

He comes a little closer. His gun is still trained on her, but now she can tell his eyes are very blue. "Then tell me, Nora Bowman. Are we responsible for the things we've done? If we're not machines, how can we say we were just following orders?"

"Oh," Nora says, full of understanding, and an, "Oh, honey," slips out.

It was the wrong thing to say. As soon as the word comes out, the courser flinches away, then runs back to the pad; a flash, and he's gone.

"Shit," Nora says, to nobody in particular. She knew she should have brought Michael along for this.

~~

He paces their little hideaway, aware that Finch is watching him.

"It's hardly in my best interest to suggest that you hear her out," Finch says at last. "And yet, the encounter seems to be weighing on you considerably."

He feels like he's going to burst, like something deep and nameless will crawl out of his chest if he's still for too long. "She was just curious," he says harshly. "Now she'll be satisfied."

"Amazing," Finch says, quietly. "All this work the Institute did on you, and you retain just as much capacity for self deception as an ordinary human."

He turns around sharply. "Am I human, Finch? There's a name, isn't it, for the kind of human who did the things I've done." Murder, if the synths were as human as Finch and Bowman. Worse than murder.

Finch opens his mouth, then visibly rethinks his words. "People can do bad things and be forgiven."

"If she can forgive me," he growls, "after the things I've done, I don't want her forgiveness."

"R3," Finch begins, then stops, looking at his face. "Do you want another name?"

"I don't see why that matters," he says harshly.

Momentarily, there's silence. Then Finch says, idly, "You know, I used to think of your former colleague as Kara. Her designation nearly spelled that. You could be... Rese? Reese. If you found that a name you could connect to."

He freezes. Then he turns around and walks out. Part of his mind ticks items off a list: their hideaway is secure, Finch has abundant food and water and caps. Finch abhorred venturing outside, but in an emergency he could.

Reese. The name flickers and flashes in his mind like a meteorite, too far and hot to touch.

He dresses as a human, sometimes, to buy food food in nearby settlements, spending the caps Finch earned repairing equipment. He's learned to speak similarly to the locals, so as not to draw attention. Nobody has ever asked his name; he assumed he would say it's John. It's a common name.

John Reese. It's as good a name for a killer as anything else.

~~

Nora doesn't drown her sorrows in drink anymore: instead, she cuddles her kids, at least those of them amenable to cuddling. That's pretty much just Emily and Shaun, although the others have really come along on the hugging front.

"I was stupid," Nora says. "I knew he was skittish, but I had to open my big mouth."

"He'll come around," Emily says firmly.

Nora has to admit that experience is on Emily's side. She lays her head over Emily's shoulder. "He better. Or we'll all hunt him down and cuddle him into submission."

Emily hugs her, then stiffens. "Is somebody calling for you?"

~~

At his side, a frantic beeping sounds. Reese jerks upright and starts running.

~~

"I'm the General," Nora says. "Somebody's always calling me." But she gets up: part of being the General means being available when you're needed.

She leaves the family room to find Kitty, her freckled face pale. "There's someone at the gate," Kitty says. "He's all bloody, and he's carrying someone."

~~

The raiders are still there when Reese makes it to their hideout, but not for long. It takes him only a few seconds to get rid of them, and then he wishes he could have made their deaths last longer.

Because the alternative is to look at Finch, lying twisted and broken on the floor: alive for now, but beyond Reese's ability to keep him that way.

He kneels next to Finch. "What did they want?" He doesn't care about the answer, just wants to hear Finch's voice.

"I told them they could have the caps," Finch says. "They wanted my maps."

That the raiders knew about the maps Finch and Reese kept, the ones detailing the locations of synths who might need their help, is troubling. That they wanted the maps and ignored caps and supplies to search for them is worse. But Reese can't think about that right now.

"You need medical assistance," he says.

Finch's hand finds his and grabs for a moment. "Go to Bowman," Finch says. "She can utilize your skills better than I ever could. Bring her the maps."

Reese meets Finch's eyes. "I thought you knew that's not in my mission parameters," he says.

Finch is shaking. He must be in agony. But his voice betrayed no sign of it as he said, "Your mission is going to be over soon, anyway. You'll need a new one."

Something spasms in Reese's chest. He flings himself up and rummages around. He doesn't have materials to make a travois and there's no time, anyway.

He can still do better than last time: he stabilizes Finch's wounds to the best of his abilities before picking Finch up in his arms.

At that, Finch makes a futile attempt at struggle. "What are you doing?"

"If I'm going to Nora Bowman," Reese says, determined, "you're coming with me."

Finch huffs softly. "I think," he says, "I might find less of a welcome there than you will. I'm not one of those she regards as her children - I'm one of the people who oppressed them."

"If she can't forgive you," Reese says, with a slight feeling of - what's it called? Deja vu. "Then I don't want her forgiveness."

~~

"Are you okay?" Nora asks the guy in the blood-soaked courser uniform.

He tracks her gaze. "Hardly of the blood is mine," he says.

"Yeah, that's not what I asked," Nora says. "Look, I'm sorry I spooked you. I said the wrong thing, I do that a lot. Please let me make it up to you."

He looks at her, blank as only a courser can be. "You will continue to give him medical care?"

"Absolutely."

He stands at even stiffer attention, which she would have thought impossible. "Why?"

Nora considers. "Well, usually I'd do that for anyone showing up injured at my door, unless I have reasons to suspect they're a danger to me and mine."

Suddenly he's looming over her, coming further into her personal space than any courser she hasn't taught to hug. "What if they are a danger?"

Unfortunately for him, that just means she wants to hug him, bloody clothes and all. Still, she restrains herself. "I don't think he's going to do anything horrible while under general anesthesia," she says. "But is it him you're worried about?"

For a minute she worries he'll storm out again, but he looks into the clinic again.

"Do you want a chair?" Nora says suddenly. "You could come inside and sit next to him." She eyes him, tries to think of a tactful way to say it, then just opts for, "Maybe grab a shower first. I'm pretty sure I have a clean courser's uniform around here somewhere."

"What I wear doesn't matter," he says. Of course it doesn't.

It suddenly strikes Nora that she's being a dumbass. "Hey, what's your name? Designation. Whatever you call yourself."

For a long time he's quiet, long enough that she worries she offended him again. Then he says, quietly, "John Reese."

Well. Nora doesn't think she can be blamed for hugging Reese then, even if it is an absolutely terrible idea. "That's a great name," she tells him, wholeheartedly. "It suits you."

"It was Finch's idea." Is it her imagination, or is he softening a bit under the contact? Whatever. She'll take it.

[leadlovelearn]

Brain Basics

I went to college for Child Development, so my formal background is in kids under 5. When I was going back and forth about whether or not I would pursue elementary ed or dig deeper into child development, something I noticed — and even reflected on here — was that everything changes between preschool and kindergarten. In preschool, play is important, developmental domains are thoughtfully considered, and social-emotional learning is the key ingredient for success. I challenge anyone to go into a preschool classroom for an hour and not have a single conversation or teachable moment that points back to social-emotional learning (SEL). In preschool, SEL is embedded and creatively intertwined into activities, learning experiences, and lessons. It’s the cornerstone. Suddenly, in kindergarten and beyond, SEL stops being a thoughtfully targeted goal and starts being a series of blown off, punishable expectations. But why? Are we focusing too much on academics in K-12? Are we assuming that early ed covered it all and it would be obsolete in our K-12 settings? Where in the world did we come up with the idea that we must focus exclusively on academics at the expense of social, emotional, and problem-solving abilities of our future? That’s right: our future. Every kid is the future teacher, police officer, lawyer, doctor, president, mail deliverer, coach, businessperson, banker, and so on! OUR future is in THEIR hands, hearts, and minds. So why don’t we act like it? Why aren’t we investing in them as people instead of test scores or numbers or data?

Maybe it’s because we move from abstract, authentic learning goals to concrete, government mandated learning standards. Maybe it’s because we aren’t training our K-12 educators well to deeply consider the whole child the way that we do in early ed. To be honest, I’m not totally sure.  I could go on and on about this, but I digress…

Let’s look at this from another perspective.

Instead of thinking about your kid’s feelings or their ability to share, think about their brain. That’s not so abstract, right? It’s a living, growing organ in your kid’s head! In the first few years of life, children with supportive, nurturing relationships and environments are making 1 million neural connections per second. That’s a lot! A LOT! While the rate of neural connections tapers off as they grow and get older, connections are still forming — even for you and me! Your brain is constantly wiring and rewiring, making connections and literally growing. This is called neuroplasticity. The more you exercise your brain throughout your life, the stronger it gets! How cool, right?!

Brain Basics

Cerebrum — The biggest part of your brain. It’s in charge of thinking, muscle control, and memory.

Cerebellum — The back of your brain. It’s in charge of movement and coordination.

Brainstem — The connector between your brain and your spinal cord. It’s in charge of the functions you can’t control, like breathing, heartbeat, and digestion.

Neurons — Tiny cells that communicate and create pathways in your brain as you learn. The first few times you do something, the cells are still communicating. If you complete the task enough times, your neurons create a pathway because they’ve figured it out what’s coming and how to get the job done without all the chit-chat.

Because of neuroplasticity, we are able to learn throughout our life. Mistakes and repetition help us to learn, and help our brain to grow. If something doesn’t go the way you planned the first few times you explore or learn something new, your brain remembers the challenges and helps you to problem-solve for future attempts. This is the same for all ages, but will vary based on age and ability. For example, as an adult, I know that if I put my car in reverse and slam on the gas pedal without looking or turning the wheel, I’ll probably hit something. But, if I’ve made that mistake, my brain will remember that I need to look, check for cars and people, ease onto the gas, and turn the wheel. For a child, if they’re up to bat and they swing too high, their brain will remember — but may need explicit feedback from a grown-up — and they may swing lower on the next pitch. Sometimes this can take many attempts and extra support, but with persistence and an understanding that mistakes are the groundwork of accomplishment, the brain will learn and the child will too.

But what about teens?

Ah, teens. They’re not quite kids but definitely not adults. How does this impact their brains?

Well, during the teen years, the brain gets a makeover.  Hormones are raging, emotions are high, impulses are out of control, and lines are crossed. Boundaries pushed. For tweens and teens, there’s a shift between concrete thinking and abstract thinking. Before, their brains focused on facts. Now, their brains can entertain the “what if’s” and creative problem-solving in new ways. As we know, teens are experiencing all kind of changes: body changes, social changes, changes as they begin to differentiate themselves from their parents. Differentiating just means that your tween/teen is creating an identity and pushing for opportunities to demonstrate their autonomy, or independence. Because of the flood of changes and emotions that are running through them like wildfire, their brain can be sort of “out of wack.” As teens begin to discover their identity, they start subconsciously prioritizing their feelings over their biology. I’ve never met a teen who said, “I have a hard time learning math, but I know I’ll get it because my brain is still establishing neural connections and I’m capable of lifelong learning.” However, I’ve heard plenty of teens say, “I can’t do this, I suck at math.” First of all, that simply is not true. And secondly, those statements are dangerous during this time because, as you now know, tweens/teens are developing their identities at this time. If a teen says “I can’t do this, I suck at math” enough times, not only will they completely give up and believe it, but now it’s part of their identity. “Hi, I’m Suzie, and I suck at a math.” Um, not exactly the kind of happy and healthy kid we’re trying to teach or raise, right?!

What I’m finding is that…

if you can educate yourself about brain development and how it relates to your child’s development — regardless of context, of age, of academic subject, of developmental domain — and thoughtfully embed your understanding into conversations, experiences, activities, and so on, brain development and social-emotional learning sort of become one and the same.

Hear me out, I promise I’m going to tie this all together!

Consider Conscious Discipline’s Brain State Model. In this model, there are three main areas of the brain:

The Executive State,

The Emotional State, and

The Survival State

Take what we’ve learned about brain basics and neuroplasticity as the toolbox, and the Brain State Model as the compartments inside. In the Executive State, the individual is calm, ready to learn, seeking out opportunities to problem-solve and learn from experiences (yes, even mistakes!). In the Emotional State, the individual is unable to effectively problem-solve or learn because there’s some kind of roadblock. In order to make their way back to the Executive State, they need to know — and believe — that they are loved and supported no matter what. In the Survival State, not only is the individual not able to problem-solve or seek out opportunities to learn, but they’re lacking connection and positive feelings of support and love, and they’ve gone into fight/flight/surrender mode.

If your emotions were through the roof — you were anxious or angry or hurt — and you felt isolated, humiliated, or singled-out, would you be able to learn from mistakes or effectively problem-solve? I don’t think I would. I’d like to say I could, but I know that my emotional state absolutely impacts my ability to get things done. If my emotions skyrocketed to worrying about my physical or emotional safety and someone handed me an important email to read and respond to, I would definitely need time to recuperate and reset before I could do that effectively.

Kids are no different. Actually, kids experience this far more deeply than we do as adults. Thanks to neuroplasticity, we have learned to compartmentalize and cope through challenging emotions and experiences in order to get the job done. But kids? They haven’t learned this yet! How can we possibly expect an immature brain to respond maturely to every challenging task or experience that they face?! It’s bonkers to me! We must educate ourselves and reshape our craft — with a great deal of patience and mindfulness — to recognize that KIDS are not capable of the same things that ADULTS can do. They just can’t. Not yet. Not even on their very best, most “executive state” kind of day with the sun shining. It’s not developmentally or biologically possible.

We cannot teach children who are scared and feel unsafe. We cannot teach children who feel disconnected, unsupported, or unloved. We must tackle these things first. Let them know that they are safe with you and supported by you. Then, we can teach. Then, they can learn. When safety and connection have been established, then we can address and teach our children that they are capable of learning. That change is okay. How to treat themselves and how to treat others. What kinds of boundaries are important. Thoughtfully and explicitly addressing, as much as academics and life skills, their social-emotional learning and development.

But…

What is developmentally and biologically possible — and appropriate — is to acknowledge that it could take one attempt or one hundred attempts to teach a new skill, change a behavior, or complete a task. It could take one moment of support or one hundred moments of hands-on, patient, and thoughtful help to get the child to achieve what they’ve set out to do.

And that’s okay.

What’s the rush?! Learning takes time. It just does. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be putting our kids in early education, elementary school, middle school, high school, and hoping they go onto college and even grad school if they knew everything. We wouldn’t put them in sports or faith communities or travel or do anything, really. If we could know and do everything absolutely perfect from birth, what would be the point of learning? Not to be totally dramatic or anything, but what would be the purpose of living? We’re here to learn, to share, and to contribute. Contribution is meaningless if we don’t have shared learned experiences that have gotten us there. Neuroplasticity requires learned experiences to keep our brain growing and active.

So where do we go from here?

Educate yourself about brain development, neuroplasticity, and the brain state model

Consider ways to give your teaching or parenting craft a makeover to support your understanding

This can be challenging because many of us default to the way we were taught or raised, or the ways that we’ve taught or parented for years and years. Our brains have established neural connections in favor of these established practices. BUT. With neuroplasticity, we can rewire and rebuild. We are capable of lifelong learning, too.

Lead by example,

Love your tiny humans, and

Learn so that you can foster and facilitate learning.

You’ve got this!

[thesellamasaintloyal]

In defense of Rey

Alternatively titled, “There’s a shit ton of things wrong with the Star Wars Sequel trilogy but Rey being a so-called Mary Sue isn’t one of them, Jesus Christ guys it’s been four years can we not-“

((This was born thanks to a post which compared The Child aka Baby Yoda’s innate abilities to use the force despite being a literal toddler to Rey’s force abilities despite her ‘lack of training’, and the hypocrisy of the fandom in accepting one at face value and not the other. Obviously, I agreed, but when the fuck boys come out to play so do my twelve paragraphs lol fight me))

———

People love to compare Rey to Luke and Anakin, and claim that she’s a Mary Sue because she naturally awoke to some of her Jedi abilities, such as her ability to fight, fly with expert ease, as well as her innate understanding of the force. What people love to forget is that the circumstances of their lifestyles naturally led to different development rates toward their innate abilities while using the force. I’d like to include Leia in this as well.

On the bottom rung of the “I can use my force powers right off the bat” we have Luke. Luke grew up as a farm boy in middle-of-nowhere Tatooine, who had little to no reason to use any of his force abilities beyond flying, where he developed his famed capacity to be a pilot. He was raised in a relatively safe environment, protected from the war and conflict that was happening throughout much of the galaxy, and his greatest grievances were simply not being allowed to join the rest of his friends at the academy because he had to keep farming. Out of all four characters he had the most ‘normal’ day to day upbringing, and thus many of a Jedi’s abilities were not developed in the slightest- meaning he had the most to train and the most to learn.

Not too far ahead on the rung is Leia. I’d like to examine her as well, because she had a similarly ‘protected’ upbringing as Luke (in some ways even more so, being a princess and all) and thus did not have the chance to develop many of her innate force skills until later in life. However, Leia was not any spoiled princess laying around in riches. Leia was exposed to politics and warfare and the rebel cause her ENTIRE life, watching her (adoptive) parents not only actively participate in the rebel alliance but practically lead it.

She clearly had some training with weapons, knowing enough to be able to handle several firearms throughout the series, and most importantly- she learned strategy, she learned tactical knowledge and leadership skills, she learned patience and focus, self-awareness, and most importantly the ability to think calmly in a desperate situation. The latter of these skills are all absolutely essential to a Jedi and absolutely form part of the training they undergo, which means all she needed to complete her training was the more physical aspect, and which is why historically in the original trilogy she had far more patience and resilience than Luke when things (invariably) went wrong.

Higher up on the rung is Anakin. Anakin was also raised on Tatooine, but his experience of the planet was far different from Luke’s. His Tatooine was a bustling trade center and full of crime- and he was born a slave in these conditions. Exposed to both mechanical knowledge and more hard labor (carrying parts, repairing parts and ships, and so forth) Anakin had the opportunity to build up some more core strength, and his infamous flying abilities (which honed his reflexes) were also given the opportunity to grow thanks to his exposure and participation in pod racing.

For all intents and purposes Anakin is the saga’s Jesus figure, the “one”, canonically conceived by Midichlorians and a singular entity in his strength and potential regarding the force. However, we don’t see his innate fighting abilities as a child because there is simply no reason to within the scope of the storytelling in the films, and no opportunity either. It also makes sense that Anakin would not NEED to worry too much about fighting or defending himself- as a slave he is property, and would not be touched unless the aggressor was ready to pay Watto for his loss of property, or be penalized for “breaking” what was not theirs.

The little we DO understand of Anakin’s personality is that as a slave, he was raised with an understandable self-constraint (in order to perform his duties well and not have himself or his mother punished) which may have also delayed some of his development; once the constraints of a slave were removed, we are shot forward 10 years and we met a nineteen year who is vastly changed and light years ahead in his use of the force and understanding of his own abilities, the same age his children were when coming into contact with the Force.

Obviously, Anakin is the most developed in terms of formal training by this point in time, as Luke, Leia and Rey were only just introduced to the concept of the Force, and had to, as Yoda said, “Unlearn what [they] have learned.” Nevertheless, narratively we are not given much of an opportunity to see his innate force abilities so much as we are told that they are singular and unique- enough to allow him to be trained at what was already considered an ‘old’ age for a Jedi.

Finally, Rey.

Rey is abandoned and orphaned at about the same age as Anakin was when found by Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Unfortunately for her, there was no salvation waiting- we are shown and told that she lived alone, practically enslaved in order to survive. This is a girl who learns to climb massive wrecks of spaceships and learns to not only identify the various complicated components but how to take them apart, clean them, repair them, and reassemble them- because doing so means a better meal and future opportunities to keep eating. This is a girl who is forced to learn how to defend herself, who actively fights for her life- because if she allows others to steal the parts she already risked her life to collect, then she risks starvation. Not to mention the obvious implications of young, attractive woman living by herself in a deserted, practically lawless land. Unlike the other three- Luke, Leía, and Anakin- Rey had no protections and no guarantees when it came to her safety, and thus had to learn to fight and defend herself; honing those natural force abilities from an early age in order to keep herself safe.

Furthermore, Rey is isolated. We see that she has no viable “friends” on Jakku, and keeps a pleasant but safe distance from others. That sort of solitude invites introspection- which can only help train the meditative aspects that form part of that famed Jedi calmness and mindfulness. I don’t find it hard to believe whatsoever that Rey may have been able to identify something within herself that was ‘different’ - just as Anakin, Leia, and Luke all claimed to have understood at various parts of their respective journeys.

What is also but briefly seen and not explored in the films, but IS explained in the supplementary novels is that Rey possessed an old flight simulator, as shown here:

“She’d jury-rigged a computer using pieces scavenged from several crashed fighters over the years, including a cracked but still-usable display from an old BTL-A4 Y-wing. There were no radio communications to speak of—no way to transmit or receive and, frankly, nobody she wanted to talk to anyway. On the wreckage of a Zephra-series hauler, though, she’d once found a stash of data chips, and after painstakingly going through each and every one of them, she’d discovered three with their programs intact; one of them, to her delight, had been a flight simulator.

So when she wasn’t sleeping or just sitting and listening to the storm or tinkering at her workbench, she flew. It was a good program, or at least she imagined it was. She could select any number of ships to fly, from small repulsor-driven atmospheric craft to a wide variety of fighters, all the way up to an array of stock freighters. She could set destinations, worlds she’d never visited and never imagined she would, and scenarios, from speed runs to obsta“cle courses to system failures.

At first, she’d been truly horrible at it, quite literally crashing a few seconds after takeoff every time. With nothing else to do, and with a perverse sense of determination that she would not allow herself to be beaten by a machine that she herself had put together with her own hands, she learned. She learned so much that there was little the program could throw her way that would challenge her now. She’d gotten to the point where she would, quite deliberately, do everything she could think of to make things hard on herself, just to see if she could get out of it. Full-throttle atmospheric reentry with repulsor-engine failure? No sweat. Multiple hull breach deep-space engine flameout? A walk in the park.”

Far beyond a nine year old instinctively knowing how to pilot a Jet Engine Chariot AND a space fighter (I’m looking at you, Anakin), we see that Rey has indeed received some training in flying, and that she has been diligently training all her youth to be as damn good as she is when we finally catch up to her in TFA. This, in addition to her fighting skills honed from a need to survive, and a meditative self-awareness from growing up practically isolated, means that Rey is uniquely prepared in a way not unlike the younglings were prepared to fully embrace and use her force abilities- once she becomes aware of what they actually are.

Rey is not a Mary Sue. Her abilities did not come out of the blue, but were honed during her entire childhood in order to survive in the ruthless circumstances in which she found herself. Her skills at fighting, flying, and understanding of the force all have a precedent- and once the final piece of the puzzle in the form of recognition that what she’s felt her whole life is The Force, combined with the legacy and legend that comes from knowing the exploits of Luke, Leia and Han, then there is no reason to doubt why she takes to it so naturally. Ultimately, We know that the force not only enhances abilities, but guides their users in how to access them and use them.

[aspiestvmusings]

The other side of the Hollywood TV/Film industry...that stays BTS from viewers:

The Unglamorous, Punishing Hours of Working on a Hollywood Set

Written by: Gavin Polone 

THIS IS A MUST-READ. FOR PEOPLE ON THE INDUSTRY. FOR TV/FILM FANS. FOR...EVERYONE. 

READ THE FULL TEXT UNDER CUT OR CLICK THE SOURCE LINK 

A week and a half ago we had an unusually long shooting day on the show I’m currently producing, Jane by Design. The crew call time was at 7 a.m. and we wrapped at 10:46 p.m. — fourteen hours and 45 minutes after subtracting our one-hour lunch break. And some had an even longer day: Our actors, including guest star Teri Hatcher, showed up for hair and makeup at 5 am, which meant that hairstylists and makeup artists, as well as someone from the transportation department and the set production assistant, also showed up to meet them and were there until wrap, giving them a total of sixteen hours and 45 minutes. Many of you who are less familiar with the culture of filmmaking may find these hours to be pretty crazy, but those of us who regularly work on sets know there was nothing out of the ordinary about this day — and it wasn't even that extreme compared to other movies and TV series, which often go beyond the standard schedule of a twelve-hour day.  

These hours can be a bit grinding for me, but as a producer I have the latitude to show up later or leave earlier. Actors can have brutal days, but they also usually get days off, as most shows are ensembles and they’re rarely in every scene. And let’s face it, producers and actors are highly compensated for their work. However, the average below-the-line worker (the budgetary classification for those who aren’t producers, directors, actors, or writers) has to be there every day and make a middle-class wage. And, from my perspective, they are also the people who whine the least about this extreme schedule. It has always been difficult for me to understand how so many in this business put up with such a punishing routine. So, as our work week wore on, I decided to interview some of the people around me about their feelings on the hours they work and how this regimen affects their lives.

Kirsten Robinson is our script supervisor, which means she helps the director keep track of continuity and makes notes for the editor on how he should put together the pieces of the scenes. Kirsten considered our show as a relief compared to a recent show she worked on where she “worked sixteen to eighteen hours every day and the worst day was twenty hours." And at the end of all that, she had to spend another hour putting together the data she collected and distributing it to others on the production. "At the lunch break, it’s like you have another regular person’s day ahead of you. What was the worst for me was the short turnarounds [the term used to mean the amount of time you have before having to be back at work].  We would work sixteen hours and then only get ten hours off and then be back for another long day. That was the real killer. Physically, you’re just exhausted. For me, it is very difficult because my job is mental. I never felt the money was worth it. I want to put my best effort forward: Fighting through and drinking as much coffee as possible doesn’t yield the best work.”

Steve D’Amato is our first assistant director, who is in charge of running the set. He recalls, "The worst day I ever worked on a show was 27 hours. It was the very last day of the very last episode of the series. We shot for 24 hours and I was there two hours before and an hour after." I asked him how this kind of schedule affects his marriage to a woman who isn’t in the business, a dermatologist: “At first, she said it might not work out, but now she uses the time when she’s alone. She’s gotten used to it. I used to be happy when a production would go over and I would make more money. But now that I’m older, it is more important to me to be able to get home and do stuff with my wife. What bothers me most is you don’t have time to do anything else. It’s hard. It seems like it’s unnecessary: You could just add one or two more days [to the schedule] and spread it out over more time. We’re the only industry that is fighting for a twelve-hour day: That is what I find amazing.”

Our transportation captain Ali Yeganhe — who dispatches drivers, manages the fleet of vehicles, including those used on-camera, and drives as well — was the most sanguine about the nature of his job, even though his department has the worst hours. When a show is on location, the drivers are the ones responsible for ferrying all the equipment back to the studio at the end of the day and making sure it's all set to go for the next one. “We’re talking about a fourteen-hour day if we’re local and as much as eighteen hours if we’re farther out. We have an eight-hour turnaround that is mandated by the department of transportation. It does take a toll on you as far as aging you. There is a high divorce rate in this business. Truthfully, I haven’t slept a whole night in three years. My wife and I were together before we got in this business. She was in wardrobe, so she knew.”

I asked him why his union, the Teamsters, was resistant to the idea of productions hiring more drivers so you could have two shifts, each working eight hours. This would save the production high overtime rates and allow a more humane schedule for the drivers, while giving more people jobs. Ali explained that “there are two ways to look at it; there are some in it for the money, and some who work four months of the year and leave once they reach their hours for their medical. A lot of guys are accustomed to making what they make. If it changed, it would bring in a whole new element of drivers who might not get the job done. Eight-hour guys don’t care about what they do. They take no pride in it.” I asked Ali if he thought the hours he worked were strange in comparison to those outside of the film and television business; he disagreed, telling me that he thought many people work long hours to support their families: “When I had a rental car company I was in the office fourteen hours a day. My cousin owns two restaurants and he works sixteen hours a day.”

Farah Bunch is the head of our makeup department and was probably the most critical of all about the system: “I’ve been doing this for eighteen years. The hours have always been the same. I started out in soap operas, which have great hours; then I went into multi-cams, which have even better hours; but once I entered the world of single-camera [meaning one-hour shows and feature films], I was in shock. I thought only in third-world countries people worked hours like this — a fourteen-hour day is the norm for the makeup department. You’re making more money, but it is blood money, 'cause you’re trading your life. It affects me in the sense that I give up all of my personal life. When I’m in season, I don’t see my friends or family. The weekends I spend recovering. I think it has contributed to me not being able to meet people because I’m not out there in the world mingling. I dated someone in the military and he was in shock that we were working all of these hours and he was out there saving lives and he’d be home by 4 p.m.: He was in Afghanistan and his hours were better than mine. You feel trapped with the hours, because you know that if you don’t do them, someone else will. And another thing, you’re given a ten-hour turnaround, which is just enough time to drive home, sleep seven hours like a normal human being, and go back to work. But production can force your call [meaning give you less than a ten-hour turnaround] for a $20 penalty. You can reject it, but you’ll be looked upon as uncooperative. My most defining moment was when I was working on In Time, the Justin Timberlake movie, and I had a 4 a.m. call in downtown L.A. underneath the freeway in the pouring rain and I thought, Is this it? … Is this going to be my life? Right now the [Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is the organization that negotiates on behalf of the studios] are fighting with our union, local 706 IATSE, to change our double time [the point in the day where their rate changes from time and a half to double the starting rate] from twelve hours to fourteen hours, so that they can hold us longer without paying a penalty, which will only encourage them to keep shooting. It makes me feel like they’re inhumane.”

Nobody in production wants to go over twelve hours, if for no other reason than it is costly because of all the overtime. But it regularly happens when overly optimistic scheduling falls prey to bad luck, like cameras breaking, incompetence, and director egomania (though that is usually reserved for big-budget feature films). You may think, "Well, as producer, can't you just shorten the days?" but the studio sets the budget and the schedule, and you can only meet that with these long hours. I have no power to pull the plug on a day unless the studio tells me to do so, and that has happened maybe three times that I can remember in my career. Really, the only way to keep hours in check would be a firm work rule, unlike anything currently in place. In 2004, esteemed cinematographer and documentarian Haskell Wexler started an organization with the purpose of advocating for a "twelve and twelve rule": an inviolable twelve-hour maximum day with a mandated twelve-hour turnaround period for all industry workers. Wexler’s advocacy on this issue was catalyzed by the death in 1997 of cameraman Brent Hershman, who died when he fell asleep while driving home after a nineteen-hour day on the film ”Pleasantville”.

I’m as libertarian as they come and usually believe in the individual’s right to make their own decisions on what they want to do — except when those decisions may endanger others, like driving drunk. After a long day on a film set, people drive home, often long distances, and drivers who take the wheel after a seventeen- to nineteen-hour day function worse than those with blood alcohol levels of .05 percent, according to a study by the British Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

I think the unions haven’t been fighting this issue hard enough, probably because many of their members want the extra money that comes with super-long days. If some people want to kill themselves with overwork, that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be allowed to take out another person either on the set or the road as they do it. And the AMPTP should get behind the twelve-and-twelve rule as well, since little money is saved by overworking people and not giving them sufficient downtime to recover: Productivity lessens later in the day and the costs are significantly more after twelve hours. At hour sixteen, you’re paying people double, and sometimes more, and probably getting 75 percent effectiveness. There are many complex issues involved with managing the process of filmmaking, and there are usually two reasonable sides to those arguments. But when it comes to excessive hours on film sets, I don’t really see the side that advocates for unrestricted work time. It is time to change this: Twelve hours of work and a twelve-hour turnaround should be mandated and instituted immediately on all film and television productions, period.

Source: LINK (Vulture)  

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How Violent Video Games Might Be Screwing With Your Brain

I’ve been committing war crimes in video games since the goddamned Carter era. In a game last night, I used a combination of a flamethrower and a trained bear to kill a man who I think was just trying to change a tire on his car. I’m typing this on a solid gold computer I bought with money made from distributing violent media. I’m not here to take anyone’s fun away.

But, to boil my point down to Tweet length:

I don’t think violent video games make kids do violence in real life. The evidence for that is weak to nonexistent. I do think violent video games can make some people into raging, intolerant jerks via a process that is rarely talked about. I think that assertion is supported by both data and common sense. Let’s see if you agree!

6

Moral Crusaders Get It Wrong

The always-weird experiments that “prove” a connection between violent video games and aggression seem to all involve having some kids kill shit on a screen, then testing them to see if they’ll harm somebody in real life, like playing a loud noise to punish another kid. Sure enough, the ones playing violent games were (immediately after) harsher on their peers.

Even if you’re not a trained Mad Scientist, you know why that’s a weak-ass connection. At best, that seems to happen for the same reason pro athletes get into shoving matches after a play, even though they wouldn’t do the same while, say, in line at a breakfast buffet. They’re keyed up, on edge. Let them calm down, and they’re fine.

Now, in the above-linked study, the scientists seemed surprised to find that they got the same reaction from cartoonish games and more “realistic” ones (I put the sarcasm quotes there because Street Fighter was one of their “realistic” games). Sure enough, a later study found no change in subjects based on how realistic a game’s violence was.

That right there is crucial to my theory: Games simulating violence don’t translate to real-world violence because they’re not actually simulating that at all. The sensations of real-world violence — genuine physical fear, shaking, cold sweat — just aren’t there. Games train you for that about as well as watching IT trains you fight sewer clowns.

I think lots of you would prefer to just stop reading here. Games are healthy and harmless and that’s that, goddammit. But …

5

Game Defenders Get It Wrong Too

The knee-jerk response to critics has always been, “Of course games don’t train you to be violent, or sexist, or anything else. It’s just a game, it’s imaginary!” But those exact same people will applaud articles about how games teach kids problem-solving, improve hand-eye coordination, and even help them learn social skills. Which makes sense. If you spend several hours a day doing something, it’s going to change you. Your brain is built to adapt to whatever it’s repeatedly asked to do — “They’re just games” is therefore a nonsense defense.

And obviously software can train you to do things in the real world — that’s how we teach pilots how to fly (at first). And we know that storytelling media can change your attitudes and worldview. You learned in elementary school about how Uncle Tom’s Cabin took the abolitionist movement mainstream, and how The Jungle caused such widespread outrage that the public demanded companies put fewer severed human fingers in their hamburgers.

Movies, shows, and songs invent catchphrases and fashion trends, and set beauty standards. They also make us think we understand subjects we don’t. To this day, parents teach kids to be terrified of strangers when it’s friends, family, and acquaintances who are most likely to harm them because on TV, the danger is always some predator snatching them off the street. And as I pointed out years ago, the Jaws franchise had horrific consequences for real sharks.

In fact, if somebody else wants to argue that war-based games make players more willing to support war in an abstract way (more willing to vote for it, root for it on TV, whatever), they’re free to make that case. If they want to point out that these games feed our weird gun fetish and make assault rifles seem like super cool toys, others have already made that point in a very eloquent way. But I’m talking about something different …

4

They Don’t Teach Violence — They Teach Us That Obstacles Should Be Easy To Eliminate

One key finding in studies is that video games (violent or otherwise) reduce impulse control in some kids, and lower their ability to tolerate frustration. You can read more about that here, or here, or here, or in any number of other articles if you just Google those terms. It seems to be worse for kids who play tons of games, and it may be worse when those games are violent. Please note that it’s really hard to study this — a human life is full of variables.

Since I am not a professional scienceman, I am going to use my own experiences as a lifelong gamer and rage monster to explain what I think is going on. The addictive loop that makes video games so appealing — and so much more appealing to people with a certain personality type — can be summed up thusly:

A) Here is a thing that is blocking your progress

B) Click a series of buttons to make it disappear

C) Here is a satisfying animation to celebrate your success

Over and over again, for hours at a time, across days, months and years. Hundreds of thousands of repetitions etched into the brain. Problems, button presses, solutions. This is training the brain, altering it. It has to be. It would be weird if it wasn’t.

So if “violent” video games are worse for us, it isn’t because of the violence. It’s because they’re all based around that incredibly satisfying mechanic of quickly eliminating obstacles, one after another (as opposed to games based around complex puzzle-solving, teamwork, memorization, etc). It’s not about tapping into our natural urge to kill; it’s about tapping into our natural urge to fix problems by eliminating them.

It’s a power fantasy, but not in the way moral crusaders insist. It doesn’t train us to want to slit the throat of anyone opposing us. It trains us to want and expect anything opposing us to vanish if we simply apply enough effort to the task. That’s what happened to me, anyway.

3

The Real World Does Not Work That Way

My patience with shitty people is so thin that it can no longer be considered to exist in three dimensions. My world is full of people expressing horrible, wrong opinions on various social media channels I apparently can’t quit, customer service workers who seem annoyed that I’m doing business with them, fellow drivers who seem to worship some kind of dark god of chaos, and voters who apparently just want to see the world burn. I do not handle it well.

When something doesn’t function — whether it’s a system, a human being, or my air conditioner — I lose my shit. I want the obstacles to go away. I don’t want to shoot them with a railgun or attack them with my Far Cry 5 bear. I haven’t been in a fight since I was eight — real violence would make me sick. I just want them gone. Not managed, not ameliorated, but gone. And I want to be told what simple sequence of actions I need to take to make that happen.

My ability to remain calm and analyze problems, or to patiently wait for long-term solutions to take their course, is dogshit. If those circuits even exist in me, they’re fried. The stress of unresolved problems is unbearable. It doesn’t make me violent, but it does make me irritable, rash, and impulsive. When I’m in those moods, that’s when I want most to retreat into games — a world in which nothing can oppose me for long. I think it’s been like that for as long as I’ve been playing.

“But wait,” you say, “why would this translate from the game world to the real world if violence doesn’t? Ha! I have defeated your entire point by noticing this inconsistency, even though you wrote this question and put it into the mouth of an imaginary interlocutor.”

Thanks for asking. The reason is …

2

Everyday Interaction Has Been Gamified

The entire appeal of social media is that it turns interaction with your social circle into a game. Your baby photos get a score in the form of likes, and the restaurant that screws up your order can get hit with a bad Yelp review, lowering their score. People who piss you off can be blocked, vanishing from your field of view as neatly as the victims of my Far Cry murder bear (his name is Cheeseburger, and he’s diabetic). When I order something on Amazon, I can watch the delivery progress on a little graphic meter, observing them failing me one step at a time. If I’m unhappy with the product, the one-star review feels as good as a headshot.

Read Next

13 Myths About Society Too Many People Believe

There is virtually no difference between eliminating an annoying person in a video game and doing it via social media, email, or text. A series of button presses makes them go away. Now compare this to the “game violence becomes real violence” argument: I’ve fired an AR-15 in many games and I’ve fired one in real life. There’s no connection whatsoever between the two experiences — the input from all five senses is completely different. The noise, the smell, the recoil, the muscle control of trying to keep the sights on the target — firing one in combat would be exactly as alien an experience for someone with 10,000 hours in Call Of Duty as it would be for someone who’d only seen that gun in a photo.

You can see this in action when watching harassment campaigns by gamers. I am far from the first person to notice this. The reason attacks from gamers tend to be so much more fierce and sustained than those from other groups (comics fans or whatever) isn’t that video games trained them to be violent or hateful — it’s that they applied gaming logic to the harassment. The annoying voices, the female critics, the evil opposing army must be eliminated, and doing so is just a matter of finding the correct combination of buttons to make them disappear. If typing “WE KNOW WHERE YOUR FAMILY LIVES, WHORE” makes the target delete their Twitter, well, target eliminated. It’s all just shit occurring on a screen.

Now look around and watch the way people gamify political discussions online. Think about all the scorekeeping — posting a meme to trigger the libs, counting the retweets, celebrating that your favorite pundit has more subscribers than the guy he trash-talks, driving up the Patreon dollar amounts for somebody the other side hates. Then there’s the broader, eliminationist tendency that now seems baked into the culture. The goal is not to change minds or make incremental progress toward improvement, it’s to make the bad people vanish. Get them banned, get them fired, shut down their speaking engagement, declare victory.

After all, in a game, you’re not trying to convert the enemy, or integrate them, or live with them, or compromise with them, even though virtually all problems in the real world are solved this way. You can sit there on your phone and play that biggest, dumbest game known as Reality 2018. Hey, I wonder if a study has found that heavy smartphone users also have lower tolerance for negative emotions in real life? It sure did.

1

Certain People Are More Vulnerable To This

Long before reading this part, someone has already linked to this article using the headline, “Writer Blames Video Games For Turning Him Into An Asshole.”

This is a knee-jerk reflex to criticism in 2018, to boil it down to an exaggerated, wrong version that can be easily dismissed. You know, so we don’t have to think about it anymore, so we can make the uncomfortable thing vanish from our world. This is, in fact, the biggest change to my industry in the Trump era: Now, people share content almost entirely based on whether it helps their side win. Controlling the flow of information is another way to gamify the world — Reddit would be boring if it was just a list of links, it’s those scores that keep people addicted. Downvote the bullshit, upvote the comments debunking the bullshit.

Of course I don’t think video games invented short tempers or intolerance, and who knows what kind of person I’d be if I was born into a different era. My belief is only that game mechanics make these traits worse in people who are already susceptible … which I now believe is a huge fucking chunk of the population.

Look at it like gambling. Some people’s brains react strongly to risk-taking, and those people are the ones who get addicted to gambling, which makes them even more addicted to risk-taking. They’re only a minority, but we still study the effects and warn people.

For someone like me, who had anger management problems as a kid (and is from a family of males who all have them), games hit me in a different way from the start — that’s why they’ve always been a soothing retreat. In a game, an enemy that takes two hours to beat is considered brutally difficult. An enemy that takes 20 hours to beat is borderline glitched. Now you turn off the game and step out into the real world, where you can pour your whole being into fighting problems that won’t even show a scratch after 50,000 hours. Bad people show up in your life, and 60 years later, they’re being obnoxious at your funeral.

My fear, then, is that games and the gamification of social interaction hurt our overall level of tolerance. That as a society, this trains us to be so impatient with problems that instead of seeing them through to a resolution, we are satisfied with solutions that make them merely disappear from our screens.

“Hey, we got the bad guy banned from Twitter! We win! On to the next target.”

“But he just switched platforms, and his fans are still brainwashed-“

“On to the next target.“

Games are great at giving you novelty to create an artificial sense of progression, showing you something new and different to fight down every hallway. We try to force real life to conform. Here’s a new outrage, here’s our response, here’s the somewhat satisfying resolution (the perpetrator of said outrage has been suitably dragged, maybe some headlines about lost sponsors or something), and then on to the next one. Last year’s controversies are boring. Do we still have troops in Afghanistan? Is Flint’s water safe to drink? Did the DACA thing get resolved? What happened with all of those refugees that used to be in the news every day?

It doesn’t matter. We’ve moved on to the next level, because many of us aren’t doing this to save the world — we’re doing it to keep ourselves entertained. Up-vote the stuff we disagree with, snark at the stuff we don’t, watch the Likes accumulate, and convince ourselves we won. It’s all game, something to kill time.

Aside from the data linked at the top about how heavy gamers lose impulse control and frustration tolerance, it is likely impossible to test my theory about the wider implications on culture. What I’d like to do is at least talk about it, rather than let the conversation be dominated by confused old men who think video game mass shootings train kids for real ones. We know that’s not true. My thing might still be.

David Wong is the Executive Editor at Cracked, follow him on Twitter or on Facebook or on YouTube or on Instagram.

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out The Truth About Guns And Video Games and 5 Ridiculous Things The Media Blamed Video Games For.

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How to Screw Up Your Bankruptcy Discharge

In the vast majority of cases, the bankruptcy discharge is the primary reason debtors enter the Bankruptcy Court. After all, people file bankruptcy to get rid of debt, and a federal court order is certainly an effective way of making this happen. However, receiving a bankruptcy discharge is not guaranteed, debtors are required to follow the rules and act in good faith if they expect to have their case go smoothly.

Grounds for Objecting to the Bankruptcy Discharge

Bankruptcy offers protection to those who are honest and punishes those who try to game the system. Section 727 of the Bankruptcy Code sets out a number of reasons a creditor or trustee can object to a debtor’s discharge and most center around lack of transparency.

If you’re planning on filing for bankruptcy, be prepared to lay all your cards on the table. Section 727 allows for the challenge of a discharge under the following circumstances:

Trying to defraud a creditor, the debtor concealed or transferred property within one year before filing (this includes transferring property that is part of the bankruptcy estate once your case has been filed);

The debtor has destroyed records or failed to keep adequate records;

The debtor has lied under oath;

The debtor can’t explain a loss of assets, in other words they can’t give a good reason why property they previously owned is missing or unaccounted for.

Be Honest with the Bankruptcy Court

When you walk into your first bankruptcy consultation, the focus is mainly on debt. You have debt, don’t see a way out, and are looking to a professional for guidance. The bankruptcy attorney sitting on the other side of the desk is certainly going to give you guidance on how best to deal with that underwater mortgage or high credit card balances, but they’ll be equally concerned with what’s in your garage, on your wife’s finger, and whether you’ve transferred assets to family members recently.

In other words, bankruptcy is about assets as much as it is about debts. When you file bankruptcy, you swear under oath that you have told the Bankruptcy Court about everything you own. Similarly, your attorney represents that, to the best of his or her knowledge, your filed papers are accurate. These promises have meaning and there are consequences if they are broken.

Tough financial times cause stress and people aren’t always at their best when they’re stressed out. No matter how bad of shape you might be in, don’t try to game the system — make sure you tell your bankruptcy attorney everything. Failing to disclose an asset can result in a creditor or bankruptcy trustee objecting to your discharge and they have their ways of finding property. Similarly, giving away or concealing property before filing puts your discharge in jeopardy.

Bankruptcy Trustees Will Investigate

Remember, bankruptcy trustees essentially work for your creditors and make money by keeping 25% of all the property they’re able to sell. If the trustee suspects that you might have left assets out of your bankruptcy papers, they will schedule a 2004 exam and ask you questions under oath. It’s not a pleasant experience.

If evidence confirms that you might have concealed or intentionally transferred property before your bankruptcy case, you’ll be sued. If your discharge is denied for fraud your case will still be administered, meaning you’ll lose all non-exempt assets without any debt relief. The property you tried to hide will be sold and you’ll leave Bankruptcy Court owing all your old creditors.

In severe cases, omissions on bankruptcy schedules can rise to the level of criminal activity and result in prosecution. People do go to jail for bankruptcy fraud.

If you’re thinking of filing for bankruptcy, be sure to obtain the services of a qualified bankruptcy attorney in your state. It could mean the difference of having your bankruptcy denied or getting a discharge.

Free Consultation with a Bankruptcy Lawyer

If you have a bankruptcy question, or need to file a bankruptcy case, call Ascent Law now at (801) 676-5506. Attorneys in our office have filed over a thousand cases. We can help you now. Come in or call in for your free initial consultation.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/how-to-screw-up-your-bankruptcy-discharge/

from Utah Bankruptcy Law https://utahbankruptcylaw.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/how-to-screw-up-your-bankruptcy-discharge/

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How to Screw Up Your Bankruptcy Discharge

In the vast majority of cases, the bankruptcy discharge is the primary reason debtors enter the Bankruptcy Court. After all, people file bankruptcy to get rid of debt, and a federal court order is certainly an effective way of making this happen. However, receiving a bankruptcy discharge is not guaranteed, debtors are required to follow the rules and act in good faith if they expect to have their case go smoothly.

Grounds for Objecting to the Bankruptcy Discharge

Bankruptcy offers protection to those who are honest and punishes those who try to game the system. Section 727 of the Bankruptcy Code sets out a number of reasons a creditor or trustee can object to a debtor’s discharge and most center around lack of transparency.

If you’re planning on filing for bankruptcy, be prepared to lay all your cards on the table. Section 727 allows for the challenge of a discharge under the following circumstances:

Trying to defraud a creditor, the debtor concealed or transferred property within one year before filing (this includes transferring property that is part of the bankruptcy estate once your case has been filed);

The debtor has destroyed records or failed to keep adequate records;

The debtor has lied under oath;

The debtor can’t explain a loss of assets, in other words they can’t give a good reason why property they previously owned is missing or unaccounted for.

Be Honest with the Bankruptcy Court

When you walk into your first bankruptcy consultation, the focus is mainly on debt. You have debt, don’t see a way out, and are looking to a professional for guidance. The bankruptcy attorney sitting on the other side of the desk is certainly going to give you guidance on how best to deal with that underwater mortgage or high credit card balances, but they’ll be equally concerned with what’s in your garage, on your wife’s finger, and whether you’ve transferred assets to family members recently.

In other words, bankruptcy is about assets as much as it is about debts. When you file bankruptcy, you swear under oath that you have told the Bankruptcy Court about everything you own. Similarly, your attorney represents that, to the best of his or her knowledge, your filed papers are accurate. These promises have meaning and there are consequences if they are broken.

Tough financial times cause stress and people aren’t always at their best when they’re stressed out. No matter how bad of shape you might be in, don’t try to game the system — make sure you tell your bankruptcy attorney everything. Failing to disclose an asset can result in a creditor or bankruptcy trustee objecting to your discharge and they have their ways of finding property. Similarly, giving away or concealing property before filing puts your discharge in jeopardy.

Bankruptcy Trustees Will Investigate

Remember, bankruptcy trustees essentially work for your creditors and make money by keeping 25% of all the property they’re able to sell. If the trustee suspects that you might have left assets out of your bankruptcy papers, they will schedule a 2004 exam and ask you questions under oath. It’s not a pleasant experience.

If evidence confirms that you might have concealed or intentionally transferred property before your bankruptcy case, you’ll be sued. If your discharge is denied for fraud your case will still be administered, meaning you’ll lose all non-exempt assets without any debt relief. The property you tried to hide will be sold and you’ll leave Bankruptcy Court owing all your old creditors.

In severe cases, omissions on bankruptcy schedules can rise to the level of criminal activity and result in prosecution. People do go to jail for bankruptcy fraud.

If you’re thinking of filing for bankruptcy, be sure to obtain the services of a qualified bankruptcy attorney in your state. It could mean the difference of having your bankruptcy denied or getting a discharge.

Free Consultation with a Bankruptcy Lawyer

If you have a bankruptcy question, or need to file a bankruptcy case, call Ascent Law now at (801) 676-5506. Attorneys in our office have filed over a thousand cases. We can help you now. Come in or call in for your free initial consultation.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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I love both covers – so I posted both 🙂 Its no secret that Nalini is my Favourite Author, and I am happy to say I wasn’t disappointed with the new Arc in the Psy-Changling world, The Trinity storyline has gotten off to a great start with Silver Silence, check out my review below.

Blurb

New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh returns to herextraordinary Psy-Changeling world with a story of wild passion and darkest betrayal…

Control. Precision. Family. These are the principles that drive Silver Mercant. At a time when the fledgling Trinity Accord seeks to unite a divided world, with Silver playing a crucial role as director of a worldwide emergency response network, wildness and chaos are the last things she needs in her life. But that’s exactly what Valentin Nikolaev, alpha of the StoneWater bears, brings with him.

Valentin has never met a more fascinating woman. Though Silver is ruled by Silence–her mind clear of all emotion–Valentin senses a whisper of fire around her. That’s what keeps him climbing apartment buildings to be near her. But when a shadow assassin almost succeeds in poisoning Silver, the stakes become deadly serious…and Silver finds herself in the heart of a powerful bear clan.

Her would-be assassin has no idea what their poison has unleashed…

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Review

Silver Silence by Nalini Singh

Kat’s rating: 5 of 5 stars

Valentin…

I didn’t think someone could knock the Cats off my top Changling group but the bears are gaining ground!

Nalini will have your heart on stop go mode as you read, I had a brief breakdown in the middle of the office break room (trying not to outwardly cry while my heart was breaking at the situation Silver and Valentin end up in) and then had to wait 3 more excruciating hours till I could get home and continue to read, and I did last night, finishing up at about 1 am.

No spoilers here guys and gals – just a recommendation that this book goes to prove that Nalini Singh deserves my top Author spot on my bookshelf.

I will be re-reading before the next book is published. The first 15 books have been my go-to re-read series, followed closely by a binge of Guild hunters.

If I had to pick a series to be a castaway on a desert island for 10 years It would be the whole Nalini Paranormal Back Catalogue.

Nalini’s writing and world building are deep, her characters multi-faceted and they delve deep into your heart, This world astounds me as I read and read again and pick up new nuances of information each time.

I know she has a system to keep track of who what where and why, as we got to hear about it when I had the pleasure of meeting Nalini in Auckland at the release of Allegiance of Honour, (going gaga in her presence) I know that once a reader finds Nalini, they become lifelong fans.

I was so pleased that there is this new series as I would be heartbroken if this world stopped evolving… Long may Psy-Changling world continue to the next century!!

And I can’t wait for the next book in this new Trinity ARC.

PS Nalini thanks for not breaking my heart!

View all Kat’s reviews

Favourite Silver Silence Quotes

“This time, his bear stayed quiet, finally getting with the “sneaky like a cat” program. Today” ― Nalini Singh, Silver Silence

“Raw pain scored his insides, but the bear was in agreement with the man: as long as Silver lived, he could take the pain, take the loss that would haunt him always. He had this big body for a reason. It could take a lot of punishment. As long as she breathed, he’d survive. He’d watch over her from afar, and he’d survive because his mate was alive.” ― Nalini Singh, Silver Silence

  Excerpt

Chapter 1

To be a Mercant is to be a shadow that moves with will, with intelligence, with pitiless precision.

—Ena Mercant (circa 2057)

Silver Mercant believed in control. It was what made her so good at what she did—she was never caught by surprise. She prepared for everything. Unfortunately, it was impossible to prepare for the heavily muscled man standing at her apartment door.

“How did you get in?” she asked in Russian, making sure to stand front and center in the doorway so he wouldn’t forget this was her territory.

Bears had a habit of just pushing everything out of their way.

This bear shrugged his broad shoulders where he leaned up against the side of her doorjamb. “I asked nicely,” he replied in the same language.

“I live in the most secure building in central Moscow.” Silver stared at that square-jawed face with its honey-dark skin. It wasn’t a tan. Valentin Nikolaev retained the shade in winter, got darker in summer. “And,” she added, “building security is made up of former soldiers who don’t understand the word ‘nice.’” One of those soldiers was a Mercant. No one talked his way past a Mercant.

Except for this man. This wasn’t the first time he’d appeared on her doorstep on the thirty-fourth floor of this building.

“I have a special charm,” Valentin responded, his big body blocking out the light and his deep smile settling into familiar grooves in his cheeks, his hair an inky black that was so messy she wondered if he even owned a comb. That hair appeared as if it might have a silken texture, in stark contrast to the harsh angles of his face.

No part of him was tense, his body as lazy-limbed as a cat’s.

She knew he was trying to appear harmless, but she wasn’t an idiot. Despite her offensive and defensive training, the alpha of the StoneWater clan could crush her like a bug, physically speaking. He had too much brawn, too much strength for her to beat him without a weapon. So it was as well that Silver’s mind was a ruthless weapon.

“Why did you need to see me at seven in the morning?” she asked, because it was clear he wasn’t going to tell her how he kept getting past her security.

He extended a hand on which sat a data crystal. “The clan promised EmNet a breakdown of the small incidents we’ve handled over the past three months.”

Those “small incidents” were times when Psy, humans, or non-clan changelings needed assistance in the area controlled by StoneWater—or elsewhere, when members of the bear clan were close enough to help. As the director of the worldwide Emergency Response Network run under the aegis of the Trinity Accord, Silver was the one who coordinated all available resources—and in this part of the world, that included the StoneWater bears.

Of course, she had no ability to order them to do anything—trying that on a predatory changeling was an exercise in abject failure. But she could ask. So far, the bears had always come through. The data crystal would tell her how many clan members and/or other resources had been required to manage each instance; it would help her fine-tune her requests in the future.

She took the crystal, not bothering to ask why the alpha of the clan had turned up to personally deliver the data.

Valentin liked to do things his way.

“Why does Selenka let you get away with breaching her territory?” The BlackEdge wolves had control over this part of Moscow when it came to changeling access. The city was split evenly between the wolf pack and the bear clan, with the rest of their respective territories heading outward from that central dividing line.

This apartment building fell in the wolf half.

Valentin smiled, night-dark eyes alight in a way she couldn’t describe. “StoneWater and BlackEdge are friends now.”

If Silver had felt emotion, she may have made a face of sheer disbelief. The two most powerful packs in Russia had a working relationship and no longer clashed in violent confrontations, but they were not friends. “I see,” she said, refusing to look away from those onyx eyes.

Predatory changelings sometimes took a lack of eye contact as submissive behavior, even when interacting with non-changelings. Bears definitely took it as submissive behavior. They weren’t exactly subtle about it either. In fact, bears were the least subtle of the changelings she’d met through her work as Kaleb Krychek’s senior aide, and as the head of EmNet.

“What do you see, Starlight?” Valentin asked in his deep rumble of a voice that spoke of the animal that lived under his skin.

Silver refused to react to the name he insisted on calling her. When she’d pointed out he was being discourteous by not using her actual name, he’d told her to call him her medvezhonok, her teddy bear, that he wouldn’t mind. It was difficult to have a rational conversation with a man who seemed impossible to insult or freeze out.

Bears.

She’d heard Selenka Durev say that through tightly clenched teeth on more than one occasion. While Silver’s conditioning under the Silence Protocol remained pristine, her mind clear of all emotion, in the time she’d known Valentin, she’d come to understand the wolf alpha’s reaction. “Thank you for the data,” she said to him now. “Next time, you might wish to consider an invention we in the civilized world call e-mail.”

His laugh was so big it filled the air, filled the entire space of her apartment.

The thought made no sense, yet it appeared like clockwork when Valentin laughed in her vicinity. She’d told herself multiple times that she worked for the most powerful man in the world; Valentin was only a changeling alpha. Unfortunately, it appeared changeling alphas had their own potent brand of charisma. And this bear alpha had a surfeit of it.

“Have you thought about my offer?” he asked, the laughter still in his eyes.

“The answer remains the same,” Silver said as a burn spread through her chest. “I do not wish to go have ice cream with you.”

“It’s really good ice cream.” Smile disappearing, Valentin suddenly shifted fully upright from his leaning position against the doorjamb, the size and muscle of him dangerously apparent. “You doing okay?”

“Quite fine,” Silver said, even as the burn morphed into a jagged spike. Something was wrong. She had to contact—

Author Bio

I was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. I spent three years living and working in Japan, where I took the chance to travel around Asia. I’m back in New Zealand now, but I’m always plotting new trips. If you’d like to see some of my travel snapshots, have a look at the Travel Diary page.

I’ve worked as a lawyer, a librarian, a candy factory general hand, a bank temp and an English teacher, but not necessarily in that order. Some might call that inconsistency, but I call it grist for the writer’s mill.

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Review: Silver Silence By Nalini Singh @Nalinisingh I love both covers - so I posted both 🙂 Its no secret that Nalini is my Favourite Author, and I am happy to say I wasn't disappointed with the new Arc in the Psy-Changling world, The Trinity storyline has gotten off to a great start with Silver Silence, check out my review below.