#whether the writing impetus continues is a different matter

[private-bryan]

Ey up, it's a random WIP Wednesday winging its way out of the shadows.

It's been a while since I've put words to paper, but I've had a little inspiration to revise what I already had, and added a whole new little sidebar in

Her lips quirked as she took him in. Oddly, while her upper one was still mostly coloured a shimmering pink there was scant lipstick left on the bottom. “What the feck is that?” He knew what she was referring to.  One hand left her back and automatically came to press against his own upper lip. He was quite proud of his moustache, even if everyone from Michelle to Mary had taken the piss out of him over it; it had taken a few months to grow in thick, and he’d made sure to keep it neatly trimmed. “Don’t you like it?” She snorted, and he felt a comforting heat well in his chest at the sound; over the years he’d been the recipient of her friendly mocking as often as he’d seen it aimed at others. Oddly, he didn’t feel quite as defensive when she teased him about it. “It makes you look like my Da. It’s weird.” He grinned. “That’s not an insult. Your Da’s class.“ “Yeah, but he’s my Da. And you’re…” She trailed off, cheeks flushing just a bit, and tried to look anywhere but him “Well, you’re you. You’d look more like a ride without the face fuzz.”  That was almost enough to make him dig out his razor and shaving foam there and then.

[brooklyndadshow]

Today I attended National Black AI Literacy Day

Today for most of the day I attended National Black AI Literacy Day hosted by Black AI Think Tank. It was an awesome event, great speakers. Even as someone that spends a great deal of time using AI daily, I learned a lot and was completely inspired. Highlights was a talk on agentic AI - which I understand and use but it was great presentation to orient me to the space even better. Speaker was from BuildBiz - which looks like a cool platform that I'm definitely going to try out. Other platforms that are on my short list to check out are Sesame and Gamma. So full of inspiration at the end of the day here. I was filling out a application for a fellowship and got AI to refine my paragraph answer to the question - Why do I do what I do? Here's the answer crafted with some AI assistance

The true impetus for my work — what fuels it at the deepest level — is my brilliant daughter. As a Black father, I feel a deep responsibility to use every skill I have to help create a world where my daughter can thrive without limits. That responsibility shows up in everything I do — from Magical Negro Speaks, to the Black History GPT blog, to the AI tools I’m building today. My goal is to use media and technology not just to tell stories, but to shift narratives, open access, and build futures where Black children see themselves reflected, protected, and celebrated. I’ve always been a creative — acting, singing, writing — but when I studied engineering in college, I realized how powerful it could be to blend creativity with technology. For me, tech has never just been about innovation or efficiency. It’s a medium for storytelling, a way to democratize knowledge, and a tool for justice. I’m drawn to projects that bridge gaps — between people and power, between data and dignity, between what is and what could be. This drive is also rooted in legacy. My father, a civil rights lawyer who became a federal magistrate judge, modeled a life of purpose and public service. His example taught me that systems can be challenged, that justice is worth working for, and that integrity matters. While my tools are different — code, media, AI — the mission echoes his: build a better world, especially for those too often pushed to the margins. Throughout my career — whether working in startups, leading community-centered projects, or launching my own ventures — I’ve stayed focused on using technology in ways that amplify voices and center equity. Whether it’s creating AI toolkits for frontline communities, building platforms to share civic knowledge, or designing learning tools for my daughter, I’m always asking: Who benefits from this? Who is included? What future are we making possible? My work is about imagination grounded in responsibility — and I’m committed to continuing it with curiosity, care, and community at the core.

[x0401x]

Animate Times Interview with Centimillimental

Discussing his journey so far and his love for this series, saying that he “felt something like fate” upon coming across “Given”! Interviewing Centimillimental, who did the theme songs and sound production of the summer anime “Given”.

The artist Centimillimental composed the opening of the TV anime “Given”, which aired in Fuji TV’s Noitamina and gathered a great amount of attention. Garnering comments about the sound production of the show’s band, Given, he released the opening theme “Kizuato” as a single on September 11!!

This is the debuting work of the solo unit Centimillimental, in which Atsushi-san does the vocals, keyboard, guitar and programming. In this article, which is surprisingly his first-ever interview, we shall introduce plenty of his journey until reaching this point and his thoughts regarding “Given”!

His current style was earned through “wanting to express joy and sorrow with music” as much as possible.

——Thank you for your time today!

This is actually my first time being interviewed (laughs). I will be in your care.

——Your first interview?! Please let us ask all kinds of questions. Firstly, could you tell us about the origins of Centimillimental?

Although it has the name Centimillimental, this is a solo unit. Rather than a singer and songwriter, I am more of a solo artist with a band stance. But it was originally a band. The band name remained just the way it was... that is all.

——What sort of band was it?

A four-piece one, with myself in charge of the vocals and keyboard. The band had a style close to pop, with a lead guitar, bass and drums, but the members pulled out one after another... Ultimately, I was the only one left. For that reason, people from the live concert houses were quite uneasy. Like, “Does the vocalist have a nasty personality or something?” (laughs).

——(Laughs) That is so not true.

Each one quit for their own reasons. But I had an obsession with the band, so I was like, “I’ll do this even if it’s just out of stubbornness” (laughs). And so, the band name stayed.

——Atsushi-san, what are the roots of your admiration for bands?

My root is Remioromen. I actually used to play classic music. I was so much of a classics boy that I would... turn off the TV whenever a music program was starting, but when (an insert song) “Konayuki” started playing in the drama “1 Liter no Namida”, which I watched back in fifth grade, it had an impact on me. Like, “So a singing voice can be this cool when it accompanies a melody”. From then on, I began looking up to bands.

——How did you handle classics from that point onward?

I continued playing for a long time, until I was around 20 years old. But then I was charmed by pop music and could no longer dedicate myself to classics (strainer laugh). I used to dream of becoming a pianist, but I felt that the mindsets of classics and pop were different, and then chose the way of pop.

——When you think about it now, what do you believe to have been the reason that a classics boy had his heart stolen by pop?

I had the feeling... that something more essential for my inspiration was set on fire, so to say. I think this something also exists for people who like classic, but in my case, I personally felt joy at the fact that “their singing voice is cool”, “their words pierce me”. So I was like, “This is what I actually prefer”. Also, I was drawn to the freedom of pop. The world of classics is devoted to music sheets, so in concourses, for example, it is important whether or not you can play true to the sheets, but I end up playing the way I want to on my own accord. Which is why the judges’ votes became worse year after year (bitter laugh). During this, there were also people who told me, “This is an insult”... But if I were in a world of originals where I could give birth to my own songs, wouldn’t my beliefs be justice? So I started to think that I was “the kind of person who wants to express himself freely”. To begin with, I have liked creating things since the distant past. I used to write stories of my own and making picture books with them in preschool, and from first grade on, I would be writing song compositions and poems. At any rate, I like creating things, so wouldn’t making them freely suit me better?

——So, if it is on the topic of “wanting to create things freely”, the way you are now is best, in a sense?

That is right (laughs). My degree of freedom has increased ever since I went solo. One of the reasons the band did not work was that my ideals and the image of my unshakable, inertial nature were very strong. I believe that so-called bands are supposed to get together in a studio and consolidate and gather up arrangements, but right as we formed ours, I would take the stance of writing down everyone’s parts and saying, “I want you to play this”. So I think that the current Centimillimental is what turned out from me doing everything I could, the place that I was supposed to reach.

——Nowadays, you are in charge of all parts, right? Did you play instruments other than piano from the start?

That is not the case. When our guitarist left the band, I did not want the quality of our music to be reduced, so I thought about supplementing it somehow, then learned how to play guitar. Also, I had to put my heart into it, but I started studying bass and drums when the others left, wondering if I could cover for them. The fact that the members pulled out had an influence on it.

——How was it coming in contact with instruments besides the piano?

The structures are completely different. Bands are formed so that each person can compensate for the other. When it comes to the beauty of such arrangements, I came to feel them more keenly the more I delved into them. And then I started obsessing with the arrangements.

——After these twists and turns, did Centimillimental become in 2015 what it is now?

No, there were actually twists and turns from this point on too... There was once a time when the band became just the bassist and me. Back then, the band was not doing too well, so we decided to do a different unit. That was the band called “Nee, Wasurenaide Ne” (“Hey, Don’t Forget”). In the end, I mostly had to do it by myself, but doing things separately from the main activities gave me a high degree of freedom. And then people started finding us interesting and we gradually earned their praise. For me, that was extremely frustrating (laughs

——So it became a “sub”-like band.

That is right. And then I thought about quitting, so I applied for an audience as a commemoration for quitting, to make one last memory... but then the work I had applied won a Grand Prix. I was like, “No way!?”. This happened in summer 2015. And that was when the main and sub switched (laughs). And so, only the band’s original name remained. The label respects us in the sense that we “can make the music that we always wanted to”.

——What is the origin of the band name “Centimillimental”?

“Remioromen” is a coined word, so I looked up to a coined word in katakana. I personally like katakana. Plus, I like “sentimental” things. That sentimental feeling when you are going home after a fun day thinking, “Today was a good day” and it suddenly makes you feel lonely, or that sentimental mood from when you are purely sad... I believe that sentimental emotions regarding anything are something that we should nestle close to. I had this thinking that I want to express joy and sorrow with music, so while using “sentimental” as the pillar, I added the “milli” with the meaning of “not being too caught up with it”.

——Come to think of it, both “Given” and “Kizuato” are written in katakana.

I guess I have a connection with katakana (laughs). If the words are in kanji or in hiragana, doesn’t that change the appearance and interpretation of each? While katakana has a coldness to it, it doesn’t feel too sharp. I have the feeling that these kinds of words are interesting.

“Gender doesn’t matter when you’re in love with someone.” – He also has experience with composing music having a BL series as the impetus?!

——How did you feel when you received the proposal about “Given”?

It was the first tie-up of my life, so I turned into a mess of nervousness, uncertainty and expectations. But “Given” is a series about music and the theme is bands, which was something I looked up to. Moreover, rather than just the sparkle and shine of a band, it also focuses on sadness, the tremor from losing something... these delicate parts of it.

I think music has a close relationship with meetings and partings, so I felt happiness to be involved with a series that faces this directly. It was like something that was supposed to come at me had arrived, and at the same time, I felt something similar to destiny. That was my first impression.

——The sensible portrayal is one of the charms of this series, right? I read on the topic that this series was the first-ever BL comic that Noitamina has adapted into anime, and there is an indescribable appeal in the words “boys’ love”...

It allows you to smoothly immerse yourself into their worldview, right?

I have bought a BL manga in the past. In my middle school days, buying a book after looking at just the title was trending. At the time, what I took in my hands was a short story collection titled “Saigo no Sangatsu”. I thought at first, “I might’ve jumped into a terrible world!” but turns out it was a really good work...

Gender doesn’t matter when you love someone; it’s all the same. It was a really good work, so I was quick to wrote a song for it (laughs).

——That is a good story. By the way, did you use to watch anime back then?

I was not the type to watch anime in-depth. But what I thought to be odd was that, whenever you finish watching a series, doesn’t the way that you listen to the opening themes, ending themes and insert songs change?

Through the filter that is the series, the tone of the music changes, and the story stands out instead as the music overlaps with it... While watching, I would find myself thinking that this way of snuggling up to the music was interesting.

——What were your impressions when you read the original work of “Given”?

Kizu Natsuki-sensei’s focused viewpoint on pain is quite sharp. Her poetic depictions, which sometimes get you caught in them, are impactful and sensible. I thought it was a series that cherished words a lot. Since it is a manga, I think the art is the main point, of course, but I felt a literary beauty in it that resides not just in the drawings. It also felt close to the world of songs that I take part in, so I truly had the feeling that it was fate.

——So the image of the song came readily to you?

Right you are. That is where I arrived once I wrote down my own perspective of romantic love and the ways that people become involved with each other. The sense of suitability was incredible. That’s why I was able to write it so frankly, managed to say what I wanted to, and got close to the series. I feel that the compatibility was really good.

But of course, there were walls. I write even the arrangements by myself, so I had to make changes over and over, and I had never had any experiences with being the producer of a band before, so there were things I was not used to. Also, my main instrument is the piano, but there is no piano in the show. That’s why I had to delve into the guitar, so there I had a hard time sound-wise...

“I want it to be an important song for everyone from ‘Given’ too!”

——Can you tell us about your particularities regarding the sound of “Kizuato”?

For the anime size version, I purposely sealed away the piano and classic strings that I had been specializing in until now. For the whole song, in order to nestle closer to “Given”, I cherished the band’s scene, with a guitar, bass and drums.

——I felt a big meaning in the fact that it starts with a breath. Is it something that you gave importance to?

I like the sharpness of songs that start with the singing. That feeling of getting taken aback without thinking. Same goes for sighing - I feel that people’s emotions mount on their breathing. Through “the drawing of a breath”, you can sense a beauty and strength unique of vocal songs. For that reason, I cherished the breaths from the very start.

I also think that the breaths are very important in “Given”. For example, in the teaser trailer, the video ends with a breath, and in the PV, the scenes change with breaths too. That’s why I think it was good to be able to start the song like this.

——I felt that the lyrics portrayed the sensible feelings of all four, starting with Mafuyu, but how was it made?

They are human beings, so I think there is definitely a part of their emotions somewhere that they can share. The loneliness and agony of losing something, the conflicts of loving someone... anyone has that. I looked for keywords that would connect everyone from “Given”, including me. For me and for all the characters that appear in “Given”, it could not be a lie...

——The “four seasons” bit in the lyrics was also a good keyword.

I think that is one of the main points of the series, and that this part of it can connect even within me.

——The words “I can hear it and it’s still real, so I’ll carry your heart in your place” from the latter half are extremely painful, but at the same time, it conveys resolve and determination. Were you conscious of the machinations of their hearts or something like that within the song?

I think it is wonderful when emotions get into motion as the song goes on. Aren’t there moments in everyday life where wounds heal little by little and changes of heart where we try to get back on our feet even if they do not heal? I like story-songs that head towards hope in this fashion. I also want everyone in “Given” to be happy. I gave importance to how they should head towards hope while sharing those wounds.

——The song changes dramatically after the aforementioned verse.

I finished it with a classic orchestra sound. That is one of the strong points of my music, so I had the desire to approach “Given” through it. If I sealed away my music too much and made it into just a “Given” song, it would feel like I was standing on formality. I am a person who gets hurt and even so lives on crying and laughing, just like them. I pieced together that part of the song because I wanted to convey this message.

——So you let your uniqueness show in order to join hands with “Given”. Indeed, both with love and friendship, getting close to the other person is not all there is to it.

Right. That alone is not a connection, and you end up concluding that your own love is too deep... I believe there is a 50:50 beauty to it. Isn’t that what acknowledging one another and joining hands means?

“Kizuato” is my debut song and an important song for me. That’s why I also want it to be an important song for everyone from Given (the band). I thought about intersecting that. After thinking a lot, I managed to change the charm between the anime size and the full size.

At the beginning of the A-melody from the second chorus, I tried changing the rhythm, transforming it into an electro loop, and did all sorts of approaches. I hoped it would be wide-ranging as music.

——How did you feel when you watched the opening?

I was extremely moved. I had gathered with all the recording members to watch it, and everyone shared their joy too. It was a really good scene.

Having my own music playing in sync with an animation was my dream, so I was tremendously happy, and I felt like I had connected with the viewers who had the same feeling... I was truly overjoyed.

When I looked on Twitter, people had written up several opinions, making me go, “So there’s this many people enjoying my music”.

“It’s exactly because the desire to protect someone isn’t something simple that we feel uncertain.”

——Other than the OP, you also did the sound production of the band Given, so what impressions did you have from the production work?

I already liked production work to begin with. Until then, I had been doing producer-like things, such as arrangements for the musical compositions of artists around me, but this was my first time doing production as a job.

I mentioned Remioromen earlier, but I also looked up to Kobayashi Takeshi-san, who was Remioromen’s producer as well, so I had also wanted to work on production one day.

——Given’s debut single, “Maru Tsuke/Fuyu no Hanashi”, was released on September 18 2019. “Maru Tsuke” is also included in Centimillimeter’s single as a self-cover, but what kind of route did you take to complete this song?

To tell the truth, I had a song called “Maru Tsuke” for quite a long time. I already had its base form since 2015, so the song was in a state similar to an accompaniment material.

“Maru Tsuke” came into light during the meetings, and I didn’t think this song would have made it into the topic of discussions, so I was surprised. I was anxious at first, but when I tried facing it once again, there were so many fitting aspects to it that it even made me say, “So it can get this close to the series”. I felt like it connected with “Given” on a deep level, despite not having written that song for it.

——Holding someone dear, becoming a coward because of it, shouldering all sorts of feelings, and continuing to live in spite of that... What you talk about in “Maru Tsuke” might be things that everyone thinks.

The moment you start loving someone, you feel fear at the same time and become fragile. It’s exactly because the desire to protect someone isn’t something simple that we feel uncertain, and there is not only light to it, but I think loving someone is something beautiful. I get the sense that this swirling feeling itself is beautiful. That is what I threw into the song, and it was also one of the themes of “Given”. The fact that I managed to connect them goes without saying, but it’s like being told that I wasn’t mistaken about the things I gave importance to, which made me happy. In order to connect even better, I reconstructed the sound making and structure one more time, aiming for higher heights as a composition for “Given”.

——What were you conscious of for the direction?

Yano Shougo-san (the voice of Mafuyu) is a workaholic, so he sings all sorts of songs, but I thought there was a difference between songs sung by band vocalists and songs sung by voice actors. So I figured that it would be good if I could share with him the methods of band vocalists and band sounds in my own way, thus I have him that kind of direction.

I was also very conscious of “conveying words”. I believe that the author, Kizu Natsuki-sensei (who is also a producer of Given), also cherished words a lot. I think this also reflects on the songs.

——Was there anything you felt when you actually conducted the production?

First of all, I was extremely happy that a song I made was sung. It was expressed in a way that I myself couldn’t do, and even if the emotions are the same, the way people view it changes depending on who’s singing. Seeing it hand-in-hand with the series, spreading up just like that and growing bigger made me happy.

——The other song, “Fuyu no Hanashi”, played during the show in episode nine.

From the very beginning, there was already a song titled “Fuyu no Hanashi” in the drama CD, but this song began from me creating a new “Fuyu no Hanashi”. “Fuyu no Hanashi” already existed for the fans, so I saw plenty of everyone’s love for it on Twitter and such, and also how it comes close to their daily lives. I dreaded painting over it, but... I believed it was fate that I had received this proposal, so I thought, “I’m going to do all I can”. While there was pressure, there was also joy, so it was a strange feeling.

To tell the truth, when I received the proposal for “Given”, the offer for “Fuyu no Hanashi” came first-thing. That’s why I actually started the production from there. Afterward, I received proposals for the session track that plays in the middle of the show and for the theme songs... That is how it went.

——Was that so?! The seed, the piece that would give you most pressure came first, so to say.

That’s right. But for me, this was a comfortable wall. I worked on it while thinking that, if I could make many people happy with it, then it would be a big step for me.

——What kind of feelings did you put into it?

I figured it would probably be used for the live concert scene in the middle of the show, so I read the scene and imagined the concert over and over. In the drama CD, it could only be portrayed with sounds and voices, so I think they probably gave importance to how they would insert the monologues into the lyrics. In the anime’s case, there would be an animation accompanying the song, so I reflected on what the “Fuyu no Hanashi” that I could compose was. Like a shout for a person who has been lost... It’s a requiem, but also a follow-up of one’s true intentions... I wanted to treasure those messed-up feelings. Also, I thought it was a song that had been preciously loved until then, so I had a strong sense of duty not to ruin this.

Being involved with “Given” changed his life!!

——Could you also tell us about the track “Sessions” (The Seasons) that plays during the show?

I received the proposal for this one after “Fuyu no Hanashi”. “There’s a scene in the show that goes like this, so if you’d like, couldn’t you make a track for it,” they asked.

I had never made an actual instrumental band track. Counting the fact that three pieces had already been decided for the story, it was quite a pressure on me.

When I actually watched the scene where they are performing it in the anime, my spirits went right up. Like, “So this is how the band will go”. The sensation that oozed from my hands and spread into me felt truly good.

——Lastly, Atsushi-san, could you tell us... about the things you have realized and earned through the music production of “Given”?

It’s a series that has several places where everyone can join hands. I think that is exactly why so many fans love this work.

Being involved with “Given” has changed my notions of life, and I feel that it was a huge feat, if only for my musical life. I am filled to the brim with happy feelings for being part of it.

——Thank you very much for telling us so many things today.

[davidmann95]

holy fuck, four part grant morrison superman/authority mini (bonus points for DILF grey temples superman in the modern day), launching into a tom taylor jon title, pkj action comics, and tom king supergirl? i dunno' about you but this is the most excited i've been about the superman line in ages

Anonymous said: Hilarious that Taylor is finally writing Superman just as you’ve started to fall out of love with him. Also holy shit Morrison writing Superman IN-CONTINUITY AGAIN FUCK YES and he’s using Ultra-Humanite! I always thought it odd that his Golden Age inspired New 52 run left out Superman’s first supervillain. And oh man did you see that variant for Action in July? DC acknowledging Morrison’s t-shirt and jeans Superman again!

adudewholikescomicsandotherstuff said: So Tom Taylor on Superman?

Anonymous said: Taylor writing Jonathan Kent??? No main Superman title???

Anonymous said: Fuck it if ai’m Morrison and I’m writing an in-continuity Superbook I’d fold as much of my Action run back into canon as I could. If Jurgens got to, they do.

cheerfullynihilistic said: So, Jon's promotion is happening bizarrely soon (or bizarrely late, depending on how you want to look at it) after the soft-reboot. Thoughts on the Superman family titles in July?

Anonymous said: What's your take on today's newly announced BOLD NEW DIRECTION for the Superman line?

apocryphist said: so, how about that Jon Kent news that's trending on Twitter?

Anonymous said: With the new Tom Taylor Son of Superman announcement, I have to say that I'm really suprised that DC is really sticking to the new and interesting directions with Future State and the Superman characters. You think they would have backpedaled, especially with the reactions to the Bendis run. What do you think is the reason that DC's finally doing interesting things with Superman now ?

After years of “so they’re gonna make Jon Superman, right?” it comes at last...via Taylor, right after he's delivered his first couple books to really disappoint me. Still, between his enthusiasm, the presence and fanbase he brings with him, and that the pressure on him to give it his all here is surely entirely different from any project he’s taken before, he might just be the guy to put over Jon in the cape as a long-term prospect in a way some preferred choices of mine wouldn’t have been. A Fraction for instance would have done more to blow me away, but in doing a single brilliant run there might have been more of an impetus in the aftermath to go “well, we saw the idea done well, that’s nice, now back to normal”, while it solidly purring along for a good long time with continuous support might do more as a running start to actually put fandom and ultimately higher-ups behind the idea of this as a desirable semi-permanent state of affairs that could lead to way more good stuff later. Put another way, Morrison Batman got us two years of Dick in the cowl, while Ron Marz gave Kyle Rayner a decade of uncontested stature as Green Lantern. Time will tell, but I think Taylor’s often been at his best when writing Superman - the earnestness and awe tends to short-circuit some of his worst instincts, as opposed to how Nightwing is feeding them - so I don’t really doubt this’ll be fun. I enjoy Timms too, and that cover (which thankfully is apparently not necessarily an accurate representation of the page/price ratio) rules. Kinda odd though neither Taylor (nor Morrison for the below) had any quotes to go with these announcements.

As for the other books (other than Supergirl, which doesn’t really have anything to announce):

Good lord that Tedesco Action Comics variant, make a grown man wanna cry. T-shirt Superman getting some proper love! More importantly, glad to see Lois on the main cover and in the solicit apparently ready to throw down with some Warworlders; I got an ask I was going to get around to before today changed the landscape asking about my thoughts on her absence in PKJ’s run. I was going to say that given his space-focused focus that didn’t bother me too much - yes, Ignition would have solved that problem, but you can’t blame someone for not having a game-changing brainstorm and convincing DC to go through with it as the status quo - especially with her playing a big role in Checkmate starting in June, and that I was more put off that the Tales of Metropolis backup specifically intended to spotlight everybody who wouldn’t fit on the cosmic side wasn’t doing anything with her. But now it seems after his initial arc she’s coming into the fold properly, so happy about that.

And hilariously buried in the announcement because it was already leaked so I guess they figured there was no point hyping it up any harder than everybody already had, Morrison’s presumably no-I’m-serious-this-time-you-guys final DC book. Aside from what I had to say when this first leaked, my main two thoughts are:

* Four issues rather than two oversized ones, huh? I said at the time this was avoiding Superman Beyond-style segmentation; ah well. Wonder whether Janin’s doing 30 pages per issue or if there are backups, and if so what those will be (please god, PLEASE, let Morrison finally do the Superman Squad story they once talked about here so I can finally rest in peace). And given this being a little more spaced out, along with notes that elements from this will play into Son of Kal-El as well as Action, I suspect/hope we might end up seeing some of Morrison writing Jon as Superman in here after all.

* This seems...shockingly minor? Not only is it apparently not in the future the way I’d assumed (even if I think the themes I envisioned for it will still largely be the case), but rather than a relatively standalone epic that PKJ’s Action would then draw from it’s instead this that’s explicitly a spinoff of that. Even given Morrison might conceivably want to take a backseat to the new guard, it’s shocking DC would go with it; the only particularly Morrison-y aspect in the description is that, as their final DC project, this is pitting Superman against his first villain in Ultra-Humanite (notably a baldie genius who ended up supplanted, wink-wink nudge-nudge).

Between these, the aforementioned Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Superman: Red and Blue, Superman ‘78, Batman/Superman, Justice League, Justice League: Last Ride, RWBY/Justice League, and the newly announced as I write this Justice League Infinity, that’s a damn stacked lineup for everybody with the S, quantitatively and creatively (Superboy being relegated to Suicide Squad notwithstanding) - you can even throw Project Patron on top if you’re feeling greedy. As for why this push is suddenly happening as the last anon asked, I think it’s entirely a matter of the new ownership: it’s easy to picture a fresh suit sitting down with DC’s upper brass and shitting a diamond-hard brick on the spot when told that there was a time not that long ago where their #2 property was being regularly outsold by this guy. Mass-media moves may be expensive and risky (and even his prospects there have clearly changed), but they can throw a couple bucks at their print division to keep churning stuff out in bulk until something sticks to reboot the franchise around in a decade.

[sapphires-and-gold-fics]

Sense & Sensibility Braime AU Update!

Forget Me, Not

Chapter 17

Colonel Casterly came in while Brienne and Ser Brynden were finishing tea, and by his manner of looking round the room, Brienne immediately fancied that he neither expected, nor wished to see Sansa there, and in short, that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Ser Brynden was not struck by the same thought. He greeted Tyrion warmly enough, and then made up some errand to take him from the room, leaving Brienne and Tyrion with the housemaid clearing the service, but not before pausing before Brienne to say  “The Colonel looks grave as ever, Miss Stark. Do tell him the news. I leave it to your sense.”

Tyrion watched his host go, and then looked frankly at Brienne, almost causing her to laugh aloud at the Blackfish’s conspicuousness. He drew a chair close to her place on the sofa and, with a look that perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired, “Is there is more truth in what I’ve heard than I initially believed, Miss Stark?”

Brienne raised her eyebrows and then drew them together, concerned that Sansa’s name might be in the mouths of strangers. “Do you mean Mr. Snow’s marriage with Miss Poole?” Her friend nodded. “Yes, we know it too. Where did you hear it?”

“In a shop where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage by the door, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible not to hear all. The name of Snow might have been nothing, but the repeated assertion of Mr. Ramsay before it was undeniable. And one thing also served to identify the man still more - as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to remove to Harren Hall, the estate he acquired in the Vale. It would be impossible to describe what I felt and thought on hearing this news.” He considered her expression seriously. “Miss Stark, your sister - how did she receive it?”

Brienne sighed in semi-relief. “Till yesterday I did not think that she doubted his regard, but I have learned that she did question his past, and only hoped that she might --” She paused, careful not to tread on Tyrion’s feelings, “I think she thought to save him from himself somehow. But that does not matter now. She appears to have a hardness of heart where he is concerned now, but I know my sister. She thinks herself central in a fairy-tale at times. If she could acquit him of his deceit and ride on to his castle with him, she would. Thankfully, no evidence has been presented in his favor. I wish I could be more certain of the depths of his dishonesty, that I might help encourage her dismissal of him, but I am afraid we do not know much more of him than our short acquaintance permitted.”

Tyrion made no answer, only nodding to himself and looking toward the hearth which seemed to grow brighter as the sun faded from the windows. And throughout supper, Brienne imagined him more serious and thoughtful than usual.

From a night of more sleep than she or her sister had expected, Sansa awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes for here, still, was the unfamiliar bed, there the unfamiliar curtains, and beyond the door the omnipresence of Ser Brynden’s aggravating good cheer. She missed her mother, even her younger sister. She missed being anywhere but this cramped city with its too-close neighbors. She had the good grace to appear at breakfast, but she did not remain below stairs for long after.

With a letter in his outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling from the persuasion of bringing comfort, Ser Brynden addressed the girls from the door to their room. “Now, my dear Miss Sansa, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good.”

In one moment Sansa’s imagination placed before her a letter from Ramsay, full of tenderness and contrition, and without real thought, she was on her feet ready to snatch the letter away and, despite what Brienne might imagine her feelings to be, drop it into the fire, so far gone was her affection for him. But the work of one moment was destroyed by the next. The handwriting of her mother, never till then her heart’s desire, was before her, and the acuteness of the desperation which followed such virulent rage, she felt as if, till that instant, she had never suffered. All her impatience to be at home again now returned, though if she were honest with herself it was not to Riverrun she wished to go - not to that place that held the memory of the abbreviated life of her foolish romance, but to Winterfell where she had last been happy and surrounded by those she loved, without the cloud of artifice in his shape. Her mother was dearer to her than ever, dearer though the very impetus of her writing had been Brienne’s application to entreat from Sansa greater openness towards them both, this with such tenderness and conviction that Sansa wept with agony, wildly urgent to be gone.

Brienne, unable to determine if Sansa would be better off in King’s Landing or at Riverrun, or some other place where Catelyn might meet them, obtained her sister’s consent that they wait until her mother’s opinion on the matter to be known.

Ser Brynden left them earlier than usual, and Sansa, who had joined Brienne downstairs following her cousin’s departure remained fixed at the table where Brienne wrote to Catelyn, watching the advancement of her pen, grieving for the effect such a letter would have on her mother, allowing even for a small inward smile for Arya who, upon hearing the news, would very likely imagine Ramsay into irons and off the plank.

In this manner, they continued for about a quarter of an hour when they were startled by a rap at the door. Sansa went to the window and confirmed it with some resign to be Colonel Casterly, back as if he’d never left. “We are never safe from him,” she declared.“A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.” With this, she quit the room at least a little more in spirits than she had entered it. Brienne was thankful for Sansa’s improved mood but, when she saw Tyrion’s anxious and melancholy look, she could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly.

“I met Ser Brynden in the street,” said he after the first salutation, “and he suggested I come hither without him.” He gestured at her materials, “I hope I do not interrupt you.”

She folded her finished letter. “Not at all. I only need to see this into the footman’s hands, and I will be at my leisure.” She stood and rang for a servant, and after a moment was able to give Tyrion her full attention.

He sighed. “I would not intrude, I assure you, nothing but an earnest desire to be useful… I think I am justified - Brienne, I would like to… no, I must relay--”

Brienne startled. Friends they had been, but never before could she recall his using her given name, even privately. She recognized the seriousness of his countenance and tone, and at once understood that this must be a continuation of last evening’s distress.

He saw her alarm. “Miss Stark, forgive me.”

She stood and crossed to the sofa where he sat, placing herself beside him, “No! That is, there is nothing to forgive. I think I understand,” she said, “you have something to tell me of Mr. Snow, I think. Something that will open his character further, something from which we may only gain from hearing, please--” she was excited now, “please, Tyrion.”

He nodded, sighing, “You will find me an awkward narrator, Miss Stark; I hardly know where to begin.” He stopped a moment for recollection and then, with another sigh, went on, “No doubt... that is, I understand that you know something of my relationship with my father.”

She hesitated, thinking, “Ser Brynden did, I think, mention some difficulty in your family, yes.”

Tyrion looked a little surprised but continued. “There was a lady I once knew. She was a cousin, an orphan from her infancy, and my father's ward. We were of an age and were raised together in almost every way. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Tysha. We were both nine years old when my dear mother passed bringing my siblings into the world. And though I loved them, I was acutely aware that my love for her was different. And her’s for me was, I believe, as fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Snow has been, and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate.”

Tyrion rubbed his eyes distractedly.

“At seventeen she was lost to me forever. She was married - married against her inclination - to my father.”

Brienne must have made a sound of alarm for Tyrion looked up at her, his weary eyes worried, and clasped her hand, but whether that was to support her or lean on her for strength was unclear. “We were going to run away together. But my sister, her mind poisoned by my father from an early age, revealed our plans to him. He has blamed me all my life for weakening my mother, and when she died he hated me even more. He had no regard for Tysha but in doing this, he exacted his revenge on me. Her fortune was large and despite what people may think, despite current appearances, our family’s property was much encumbered at the time. His pleasures were not what they ought to have been."

Brienne cringed. She had heard of such arrangements. Silently she thanked the gods that her family had no fortune to part with, nothing to motivate undeserving men to commit her sisters to a life of despair.

"I hoped - foolishly - that her regard for me might support her under any difficulty, but the consequence of my father on a mind so young and so inexperienced as hers was but too natural. She resigned herself to her misery, as did I. To my eternal shame, I quit the country, removing from them in the interest of everyone's happiness, but perhaps especially, selfishly, my own. The shock of her marriage, though, was nothing to what I felt when I heard two years after that my father had quietly had said marriage annulled. I might not have heard it but my dear brother, who was but eleven at the time, defied our father’s wishes and wrote to me.” Tyrion paused and smiled softly at Brienne, lowering her hands, earnestly, “He has always been the most thoughtful--”

He rose hastily and began pacing the room. Brienne, affected by his story, could not speak. Eventually, he returned to his seat, no less melancholy. “It was another three years after this unhappy period before I was discharged and returned to Westeros. My first care when I arrived was to seek for her, but she could not be found. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and my father, when I confronted him, suggested that her extravagance had caused her to outlive her means, but that was a despicable excuse for his actions in all but robbing her of her inheritance. Some six months later, I found her.”

His voice broke, and now Brienne reached out to comfort him.

“She was, to all appearance, in the last stages of shaking sickness. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for better preparation for her death. To whatever credit I am allowed, that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, with the best maesters, and the best dreamwine. I visited with her every day during the rest of her short life. How could I do anything else?”

Brienne could see the tears forming in his eyes, and spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern at the fate of his unfortunate friend.

“Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended,” said he, “by the resemblance I have all this time fancied between her and my poor cousin. But their fates, their fortunes cannot be the same…Yet to what does this all lead? I promise I would not distress you for nothing. This is a subject I have broached with few in the last fourteen years, I promise I shall try to be more concise.

Brienne assured him that she was not under undue distress and urged him to continue.

“Tysha left to my care her only child, a little girl, offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about two years old. She had been very precious to her mother, and perhaps only that affection had protected the girl from the mother’s illness. I saw the girl into capable hands and eventually to school. I would have discharged this precious trust myself by watching over her and her education, but I had already parted ways with my father and had no home of my own as yet. I saw little Tysha whenever I could, and once I secured my own estate about five years ago, she visited me there often. I called her a distant relation, but I am well aware that I have generally been suspected of a much nearer connection with her - truly, Brienne, if you saw her I think you would know immediately that I am not so fortunate to be the true father of that beautiful girl. She has--”

He stopped as if catching himself in the midst of telling an unintended secret. Brienne looked away as if to not insist on whatever details he wished to conceal for now.

His expression turned sadder. “Three years ago I removed her from school and placed her with a very respectable woman who had charge of a handful of other similarly-aged girls. She had just had her sixteenth nameday when she suddenly disappeared. She had, with my permission, gone to Maidenpool with one of her friends who was attending her father there for his health and - I knew him to be a good sort of man but I did not realize that he had been generally confined to the house. I gave his daughter more credit than she deserved. The girls were ranging all over the town, making friends with the stranger himself. I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for seven long months, was left to conjecture.”

He chanced a glance at Brienne who was giving him every ounce of her attention. Catching his eye, she nearly lost all sense, “Good gods, Tyrion - do you mean…” Could Ramsay be even more despicable than Sansa had lead her to believe?

“The first news that reached me of her,” he continued, “came in a letter from herself, which was forwarded to me at Riverrun, arriving the morning of our picnic. Only Lord Edmure knew anything of the situation; I’m sure my sudden departure was strange to some and, I believe, gave offense to one. Little did Mr. Snow imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility, that I was called away to the relief of one, whom he had made poor and miserable. He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress with no help, no friends, and ignorant of his address. He left her in Flea Bottom to whence he had absconded with her, and left her with nothing.”

“This is beyond everything,” replied Brienne in a fierce whisper.

“His character is now before you, Brienne. Only imagine how helpless I felt when I was assured that your sister would marry this animal. Now you may comprehend my behavior. To suffer you all to be so deceived... but what could I do?

Brienne’s thanks followed with grateful earnestness; attended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage to Sansa, from the communication of what had passed. “At first she will suffer a little I think, to revisit her blindness where he is concerned, but I am sure she will soon become easier.”

“I need not say, perhaps, that none of this is public. You are now part of a very small circle of knowledge, but I hope that your family may trust my word in this and, should you have any doubt, you might of course apply to my brother, who will most assuredly support this information. He was my second at my only meeting with Mr. Snow since finding him out.”

Brienne startled at this and looked at him anxiously. “What, have you met him to…” Brienne could imagine just then holding the point of a sword against Ramsay’s neck herself.

“I could meet him no other way. She confessed the name of her lover quite reluctantly, but when he returned to town we met by appointment. We returned unwounded, and the meeting therefore never got abroad.”

“Would that I had been there with you,” quipped Brienne, “he might not have left the field.”

“I can only hope, Brienne, that you never have such cause.”

Brienne sighed. “Is she still in town?”

“No, as soon as she recovered from her lying in, I removed her and the child into the country. I had to be back in town on business right away, so I charged Jaime with overseeing things there until she was settled with the additional staff. I am determined that she and the babe will want for nothing.”

Brienne’s heart leapt into her throat and could not suppress itself, “Jaime?”

“My brother.” His eyes widened. “Gods, I was certain you knew!”

Her head swam as the pieces of his tale fell into place. Of course, Tyrion was the very brother Jaime had spoken of. And Robert’s wife - yes, the cruel sister who fell in line with her father’s wishes. Jaime had traveled east perhaps not just to see Mrs. Blackwood and his goddaughter, but to visit his brother, to aid him. And Jaime had been present - suffered another duel to--- All this time there had been something comforting and familiar about Tyrion, but… “But Casterly--” she blurted.

“--is an old family joke, just like me. I styled myself as such when I purchased my commission because I didn't want the shadow of my father's exploits over me. But I was born Tyrion Lannister. Lord Tywin Lannister is my father.”

[janisfm]

(   medalion rahimi  &  golshifteh  farahani   )   bopping  along  to what you know  by  two door cinema club  is  janis  najafi  ,  the  twenty-two year  old  cis female  thrown  back  to  their  premed  days  with  some  of  her  memories  .  voted  most  likely  to  break  a  limb  during  yoga  ,  janis  was  known  for  being  laborious  &  loquacious  ,  go  figures  you'd  always  find  them  cleansing her chakras  ,  but  grew  up  to  be  altruistic  &  quixotic  .

hello !!!  my name is barb , i’m 21 , and use she / they pronouns !  this is baby numero uno , janis. i wrote her up specifically for this group so i’m still figuring her out but yeah , i’m v excited to write and plot with y’all !  hmu if you wanna plot on here or on d/scord  @ crazy frog died of the swine flu#6238 !!!

stats

name: janis najafi 

birthday / zodiac: february 2nd , 1987. aquarius. 

age: twenty-two / thirty-two

gender: cis female ( she / her )

sexuality: bisexual

hometown: she was born in santa ana , california and continued living there until she was thirteen when she moved to northampton , massachusetts where she continued to live up until college. 

occupation: ob-gyn 

positive traits: scintillating , benevolent , loyal 

negative traits: verbose , finicky , impetuous

past

janis najafi was born to a community who loved and supported her before she was even born. seriously , she was born on a commune sjfdjgdf. full of hippies , just like her parents who named her janis after joplin , of course. 

there , she was taught and lived a very different lifestyle than most. she was taught anti-capitalistic values , free love , and political activism. she grew up with a vegetarian diet within an eco-friendly system where everyone worked to keep the community afloat. 

around the time she was thirteen , the commune died down until only her family and another were left. seeing no reason to keep it alive , the commune officially disbanded and the najafi family moved to massachusetts to be closer to her father’s side of the family. it was a HUGE culture shock for janis , going from a small community of hippies to the capitalistic world she was taught against. it definitely made her the odd one out at school , but she was able to navigate her way through life while keeping her morals and values intact. 

she never expected to get into rvu , her dream school , but it happened. her parents wanted her to stay behind and help run the small family bookshop , but janis had bigger plans. she wanted to be a midwife , and rvu offered her the classes she needed and the california sunshine she missed. 

college

so , plans changed. she still wanted to do something that required medical training but halfway through her second year , she switched to premed to become an ob-gyn. why ?  i don’t know , but she did. however , to get herself through the financial mess that is school , she did work as a doula for most of her college career. 

lots of people labeled her “ weird “ , but i don’t think she ever got the memo. she was definitely one of the free spirits on campus and was NOT afraid to show it.

very friendly to everyone , no matter which way they viewed her. lots of her professors thought she had done one too many psychedelic mushrooms which she did , but that was just how she was. would talk to anyone who would listen or , well , anyone who was standing near her. 

y’all knew she was around when the smell of incense was lingering.

had a rave girl phase but we don’t talk abt it 👀

present

she still worked as a doula as she searched for jobs. it took about a year , but she was hired to work in a big practice in one of the most expensive areas in town.

it was fine for the first few months , but she was noticing how exclusive it was to only people with money. it was always people with expensive purses and designed clothes coming in to the practice , their prices abnormally high. it annoyed janis to no end , so she quit.

she opened up her own practice ( with the help of a business major pal wc ???  ) and became her own boss in a small yet comfortable ob-gyn office. although her office is in a somewhat pricey area , she works with anyone with a vagina no matter their financial situation. is a hard darn believer that healthcare should be accessed by anyone and everyone , so she works hard to make her prices fair.

got married whaaat ???  she married the loml , nathaniel donovan. they adopted their first kid after many failed attempts in getting pregnant but as they were going through the adoption process , janis found out she was pregnant with twins so...crazy how that worked !

still very much in tune with her hippie lifestyle.

better fashion sense , thankfully. 

personality 

inspo taken from michelle burroughs ( dazed and confused ) , ilana wexler ( broad city )

is a very happy-go-lucky kind of person. always the optimistic , no matter the circumstance. 

will talk anyone’s ear off if you let her. whether its about something important or about nothing in particular , the bih talks too much !!!

unrealistic expectations when it comes to things that involve her. work , being a mom / wife , whatever it may be , she tries to achieve goals set for herself and scolds herself CONSTANTLY when she can’t reach them.

v emotional djndjgndfg. says i love you  to everyone and i love that  to everything that catches her eye. 

casual tm

has relaxed tremendously since college. not very in your face as she used to be

connections

i’m super relaxed with connections. as long as they’re cute or hurt my soul , i’m all for them !

[totobookblog-blog]

How to Acquire! Attitude Readjustments for the On the internet Gambler

Are you gambling on the Intenet and searching for on the web gambling approaches to give you an edge? You've come to the correct area to commence your journey, or double-verify your standard approach. The most crucial point to recognize, no matter whether you are gambling on-line just for fun, or for your personal authentic, difficult-acquired cash, is what constitutes a winning perspective.   If you liked this write-up and you would like to receive a lot more facts relating to 사설토토사이트 kindly check out our page. The main of a profitable mindset is this: Gambling nicely is not a match. To get continuously and get household dollars, there are specific techniques you require to choose prior to you strike the casinos. Let's search at the mind-set adjustments most suggested by the professionals in the subject of on the net gambling: one. Most gamblers engage in until finally they run out of money. Never. If you preserve this easy principle in thoughts, you are much additional likely to give up though you are forward. The extensive majority of gamblers in the planet notify them selves, "I'll just established apart this sum of income, that I can pay for to reduce, and then when it's gone, so am I." What comes about in most circumstances is the opposite. When the "pleasurable fund" is gone, the gambler, experience that it will have to be about time for him to acquire, proceeds to participate in. That's when you get started receiving into authentic hassle. It is been established around and over: the extended you engage in, the far more you reduce. If you can get a tackle on your greed, you will have a incredible benefit over the property! 2. If you want to make dollars gambling on the net, address it additional like a task than a game. True, you're participating in cards, rolling dice and so on. But to be profitable, you ought to make this slight mindset adjustment. Contemplating of the process as a "job" will give you the impetus you have to have to familiarize by yourself wholly with the procedures of just about every activity, and tactics the gurus have established around and over. This, in switch, offers you a profitable edge. And that is when you will begin to have a good deal a lot more exciting! 3. Get yourself some realistic targets, and adhere to them. Here's an case in point. You have $fifty and you are inclined to risk it gambling on the net. Are you looking to make 10 instances your financial investment? Then you will need to readjust your considering. A extra practical aim would be to double your cash. Then if you arrive at your intention, you must consider your greed by the throat, put it on a leash and quit the game for that session! Casinos rely on gamblers undertaking the opposite of individuals procedures outlined higher than. Have you noticed how they continue on to flourish, though most gamblers tumble by the wayside? You should not develop into casino roadkill! Get details. Get wise. Get really serious about the sport. The World-wide-web is a excellent area to discover on-line gambling methods. You will want to examine up as significantly as you can on each individual different video game you perform, considering that procedures change, according to the sport. Below are some strategies and tactics from the gurus for the most popular gambling game, blackjack. They illustrate the sort of beneficial information you can get by doing your research, either browsing the internet, or examining a great, instructive guide on gambling tactics. You would do effectively to carry on investigating your preferred sport just before you put your bets. Blackjack approach In blackjack--the most popular of all gambling online games--there is a appropriate way to wager, and a completely wrong way to wager. The genuine players, the kinds who consistently make revenue on this match, have all studied fundamental blackjack strategy, )from time to time called "great blackjack"). Why does it do the job? It has to do with knowledge when contacting for a strike is in your favor and when it is better to stand. The odds for successful over the dwelling are all very well proven for every single situation. The only way to acquire more generally at blackjack than by employing the basic blackjack tactic is to depend playing cards... and which is illegal! Your mind-set adjustment has now started, and you happen to be on your way to a new and additional profitable gambling working experience. Congratulations!  

[blccdlvne]

hey u absolute BABES i am UNPREPARED hah but i’m trying my best sdjfdkfk big sad face... anyway im saoirse (she/her, est) and id love to plot with all of you and ur babies , either through tumblr ims or d*scord im @ jiminie e-girl#2013 uh yah heres a shitty intro and also a link to his PINTEREST okay bye ily

𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠  here and do i  have the tea for  you . romeo  is  back  on campus  , which is  surprising considering  the threatening note i  left them . yes , i know  all about how he was to blame for the car accident that killed his brother  because  of their  gluttony  .  imagine  the tabloids  and how the choi  family  would feel  for such information  to come out , not to  mention the reputation of  gamma  because  of their  actions . at  this rate , he  is better off staying  put in brooklyn , new york  and  living  off that  $924m  family  net worth  . what’s the  point in studying  music production  with  plans to  make music for the biggest names in the industry  , is  it worth  it with what  i know ? anyways  , they may want to  continue to be ardent  &  affable  because  the impetuous  &  volatile  attributes  make me want  to spill . ( park jimin  , saoirse  , est ) .

my tropey spoiled lil rich boy who is just… chef’s kiss…. so disgusting (see: a mixture of chuck bass and joey tribbiani. h8 me for it.)

his father: owner of multi-million dollar hotel conglomerate. his mother: a well known defense attorney- they met when she almost sent him to jail uwu enemies to lovers uwu not that that matters besides the fact that, despite being married for almost 25 years now, its been a marriage of non stop pettiness, passive aggressiveness and arguing, as romeo and his 3 siblings have been privy too and are now all equally argumentative and volatile, romeo especially. :/

romeo is the second oldest of the choi kids, all of whom are at their core very similar, but beyond that very different; romeo is the Messy one. he grew up the favourite, his father seeing the most of himself in him as a loud, messy haired, muddy boy and brought him up as such;

his father decided that romeo would be the one who inevitably took over his business and bring the family pride; teaching his son all he thought he should know. it wasn’t until romeo was well into his volatile teen years that he’d realized his mistake, that it should’ve been romeo’s brother or sisters, all of whom then looked infinitely more promising than this boy who had been bailed out of jail by his own father too many times for a seventeen year old and had been kicked off the football team for getting in a fist fight with the team captain.

so romeo , with all his fathers’ refusal to bow to authority and anger and high head and love of expensive silk and jewels was suddenly aimless, after being told for all of his life that he didn’t need to worry about making decisions about his future because it had all been planned out for him.

so after graduating high school (a year late because not even his fathers’ bribes and threats could save his abysmal academic standing), he became a layabout, leaving the house to party and showing up at a gross hour of the morning, sleeping all day so he could do it again the next night.

regarding his secret; the night his brother died romeo had been out partying, being reckless and got stranded without his car and with a nearly dead cell phone, so he used his last 2% of charge to call his older brother, the new favourite, to have him pick him up (not the first time this had happened), and you can imagine what happened next- whether you’d consider the crash to be entirely romeo’s fault or not, he’s still dealing with that guilt, and his father knew how dangerous that information could be if the tabloids got a hold of it, so as far as the public was concerned romeo was with his parents that night, and his older brother had been alone in the car. romeo’s father even went to far to send him out of country briefly to deal with the minor injuries so no one could question them

basically his parents got sick of it, told him to find a job or let them ship him off to university SO HERE HE IS but he didnt wanna go into business or law or smthing that would make them PROUD (YUCK!) so instead he went and began to study his actual passion  uwuwu

but yes, music is absolutely his truest passion, kind of always has been, wanted to learn how to play violin and guitar and piano as a kid, which his dad fought against, but his mom convinced him, thinking it might do good in the long run. romeo loves the idea of being a music producer, making tracks for really talented people and doing what he really loves 

so now he’s here, guarded personality and decked out in the expensive fits he fell in love with- he likes the idea of being seen as the spoiled rich boy tho!!! bc it leaves NO room for people to know that hes actually a softie with very intense feelings and loves holding hands and cuddling and being the big spoon!!!! haha yeet? :(

i would write more but im already late to this party and i just wanna plot ok pls i love u all

[walriding]

     “I don’t believe it.”

     “Sam--”

     “I don’t.” Inhale. Shiver. Exhale. “Believe it.”

     Not the first time she’s thought those words, but the first time she’s spoken them aloud. Externalizing the sentiment doesn’t ease the feeling of pressure that’s been steadily building in her chest ever since they got the news. It’s only been about two weeks since her mother picked up the phone and the world froze before it shattered. The interim has felt endless and instant all at once, slow as molasses in each moment but barely a blink when she looks back at it in its totality. 

     Funeral planning isn’t easy, but there are plenty of resources out there, how-to and what-not-to-do guides alike. Making preparations was something of a family affair, divided among her and her sister and her parents. Well, mostly between her and her sister and her father. Sam’s mother, currently seated with slumped shoulders on the couch while Sam’s daughter holds steadfastly to her hand, hadn’t the heart to provide much input. Such a thing can’t be blamed -- you aren’t meant to bury your children. And for as much as the woman had remarked with a mix of anger and worry that her son’s stupidity was going to get him killed, she’d never actually expected the day to come.

     None of them had.

     “You don’t have to believe it.” Ana says beside her, sounding wearier and so much more exhausted than Sam has ever heard. The middle Upshur child is looking around the space before them, appraising the scenery and the faces all congregated in the family home to pay respects. Turnout has been about what was expected, given the sudden circumstances. Family and friends, people who knew the family or the deceased in particular. Even an ex boyfriend showed up, though Sam hasn’t said more than a few words to him. She’d always liked Jack, and some part of her privately wonders how things could have been different, if her brother hadn’t been so goddamn difficult. Flowers and candles dot most of the available horizontal surfaces, along with clusters of photos and mementos marking the passage of a life once lived. And at the center of it all, on a table overcrowded with all manner of tokens, sits an understated gray and bronze urn. “He’s dead. It doesn’t matter what you think or what you believe -- Miles is dead.”

     Ana’s always been blunt. That had been the impetus for many a childhood spat between her and the youngest of their trio. In that way, Ana and Miles were too alike. Sam has always been more measured, more thoughtful, more cautious. She’d be a poor excuse for a lawyer, if she had the temper or the mouth of either of her siblings. But when she chances a side glance at Ana, peeling her gaze away from that fucking urn, she sees that her sister’s eyes are wet with tears soon to be shed. Sam doesn’t reach out, but instead leans in until their arms are just brushing. Ana presses into the contact until she can tilt her head onto her older sister’s shoulder. 

     “He was such a fucking idiot,” Ana mutters. “All the stupid shit he did, all the grief he put Mom and Dad through every time he dropped off the face of the earth, and he went and let his apartment catch fire with him in it. Like a fucking idiot.”

     Sam chews her lip, lost in thought. They’re talking too lowly to draw anyone’s attention, and a sort of bubble has developed around the immediate members of the family. Death is hard -- tragic deaths are even harder. No one really knows what to say. But she’s grateful for the relative privacy, even when the house is just shy of being packed with people. Today still doesn’t feel real. She’s had over almost two weeks to process, almost two weeks to sort through every thought and emotion in her heart and head. She’s shed her fair share of tears and she knows that two days from now, when she’s throwing a handful of damp soil over her brother’s ashes, she’s going to cry again. But today feels like a dream, like something she’s observing rather than experiencing. 

     Everyone mourns differently. She tells herself it’s okay to feel numb.

     There’s a low buzz and Ana straightens, still bumping shoulders with Sam, and digs into her pocket to fish out her vibrating phone. Her husband’s name brightens the screen. “It’s Tom,” she says, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “He’s probably on his way with the kids.” She’s already heading for quiet of the kitchen and holding the phone up to her ear before Sam can ask if she wants company.

     Alone, now, Sam inhales. Shivers. Exhales. She looks around at the flowers -- she’d made sure there were sunflowers in at least one of the arrangements, Miles’ favorites -- and the photographs. Some are from their childhood and taken from dusty photo albums, while others are newer printouts that college friends brought along. Even Jack had supplied a number of picture-memories, things he hadn’t gotten around to throwing away after the breakup. It pains Sam to know there aren’t many current photographs, that Miles struggled to keep so many connections. The most recent family photo that includes him dates back to Christmas -- three years ago this December.

     Miles would hate this, she thinks as she continues taking it all in. He’d never really been one to revere tradition, and right now he’d be scoffing at how forced the whole thing is. Christ, Sam, this is just fucking depressing, he’d say, rolling those big brown eyes. Just bury me in the backyard and save money. And he’d smirk and laugh in that way of his when she would elbow him hard in the ribs.

     Wherever he is, Sam hopes he’s laughing, smiling, maybe even getting a little exasperated at the whole song and dance.

     I don’t believe it.

     Denial is a stage of grief. She knows this. Knows that pretending he’s still out there isn’t healthy, in the long run. It’s not coping. But it’s not the same as blind grief because it’s all too... convenient. Sam has always watched Miles’ career, always tried to keep tabs on where he’s been and what he’s been writing. And he’s always opened up to her more than he has to anyone else in the family. She’s heard about Murkoff -- had many a lengthy and largely one-sided phone conversation while he ranted about their latest money-grabbing capitalist fuckery. His words, not hers. She knows the sites to frequent, the sources that border on fringe conspiracy ramblings. The night after they’d gotten the news from the D.C. police, one of Sam’s first instincts had been to look online for more information. VIRALeaks was the last link she’d had open, and the page loaded before she could close it out. One of the featured stories, right there on the front page, was a video file. It was taken on a camcorder, shaky and grainy, the kind of thing that looked like an amateur found footage film. She wouldn’t have even clicked the link if the written caption hadn’t caught her eye.

     The footage was taken at the Mount Massive Asylum in Colorado.

     Mount Massive was owned by the Murkoff Corporation.

     She watched the whole thing, even the parts that made her want to throw up. Then she watched it again.

     Then she began piecing everything together.

     Miles’ Jeep was missing without a trace. His bank account showed a substantial withdrawal just days after the timestamp on the asylum recording. The records of his phone usage, bank account access, anything that would offer a geographic pinpoint were either inaccessible, or showed that he was somewhere closer to D.C. But Murkoff handled biometric security as their main priority -- they were a tech company, for fuck’s sake. And Miles had told her time and time again how adept they were at covering tracks, burying leads, making sure the truth of what they did never saw the light of day.

     Sam blinks. Without realizing, her hand had curled into such a tight fist her fingernails have left crescent moons in her palm. Ana is back at her side, eyes dry but still red and slightly puffy, asking if she’s alright. Sam nods, then shakes her head, nods again. Ana frowns.

     “You were zoned out. Are you--” But then their father is at Sam’s other side, touching a gentle hand to her shoulder. 

     There are tears streaming down Sam’s face in warm, wet rivulets, dripping onto the collar of her shirt. She hadn’t even noticed.

     “Let’s take a walk,” her father says, soft and sad and old. When had her parents gotten so old? He hands her a tissue, says nothing else.

     “No, no, I just-- I need a minute,” she wipes at her eyes, not much caring for how it makes her makeup streak. “I need air, I’ll... I’ll be right back.” Nodding, solemn and lost for words, he lets her go.

     The backyard is empty, at least. There’s no one to watch when Sam sits on a plastic chair and all but doubles over as she sobs. Whether she believes it or not, she’s at her parents’ house and there’s an urn in their living room and it’s filled with the ashes of her baby brother’s life. In two days, the urn will be buried, laid to rest beneath soil and a flat headstone bearing a bible verse Sam had selected because no one else could bring themselves to do it.

     Blessed those who do what is right, whose deeds are always just.

     Miles would probably hate it.

     But that verse sticks in Sam’s head after she’s cried herself dry for the time being. It can’t have been very long -- no one’s come looking -- and she pulls out her phone to check the time and her reflection. Might as well go back inside looking halfway presentable. Once the mascara is off of her cheeks, she hesitates, phone still in hand. 

     Blessed those who do what is right, whose deeds are always just. 

     There’s no way Miles didn’t know about the asylum, that his finger wasn’t on the pulse of that story from the get-go. Sam knows that right down to her core. He would have known.

     He would have tried to investigate.

     Having followed the pathway of his professional journey, she’s seen his collaborations with others. A handful of co-authored articles and a few podcasts he’d done with another investigative journalist. Newstomorrow.net -- entered into the address bar without a second thought. Still sniffling, she navigates through the site until she finds contact information. An email address.

     It’s desperate. It’s might be a little bit crazy. 

     It’s the kind of thing Miles would do.

     She copies the email address, opens up a new composition, and begins to type. 

     When she’s finished, she hits send.

     Balling the used tissue up and stuffing it into her pocket alongside her phone, she goes back inside the house.

[clarencenicholsonata]

7 Reusable Content Methods to Boost Small Business Marketing

When you audit your brand’s marketing efforts, you will find stacks of reusable content waiting to bring you more traffic.It’s important to reusable content because creating content every time you want to boost brand awareness takes time and energy. Marketers are busy people—they aren’t just creating content, they’re also analyzing, researching, and ideating new growth techniques.

But you still need to create content that keeps your audience engaged—that is where reusable content comes in.

If you have existing materials that can be reshaped without much effort, you can save yourself so much time, that you can then spend on other tasks.

Today we're going to show you seven reusable content methods to boost your business’s marketing effectiveness.

Reusable Content Method #1: Create Case Studies

You’ve already done a significant amount of research to create your content. Whether it’s a blog post, webinar, or a report you have the opportunity to reuse the content as a case study.

Case studies are a great marketing tool for reaching prospective customers—they showcase how your products or services can be used, and how your company benefits users. And that’s an important aspect of marketing right now—according to recent studies, 82% of consumers refer to reviews before trusting a business.

The testimonials from your clients that you include in blog posts can be added to case studies as social proof—they show customers that real people support your brand.

A case study like this example from Ingramer boldly highlights the goals and methodology of the company. Note how they include the original post link in the video description.

How to Adapt Reusable Content as a Case Study

The case study route is particularly powerful when your aim is to tell a story—choose the client, product, or service that best captures the story your audience wants to read.

When you’re a small business, displaying definitive proof of why your product or service works is necessary for gaining new audiences. Reusing content in a case study is the way to go. Here are some helpful tips:

Highlight the challenges your customers faced that gave them impetus to choose your product—and outline the goals set for your project.

While you do want to share the positive results of your study, spend some time outlining the strategy and methodology of your campaign.

Don’t be vague about your achievements—use numbers wherever possible.

A case study should include testimonials from the customers—this showcases how much your company positively impacted them and humanizes the brand.

You can use a tool like Venngage to create a marketing case study—choose from the library of templates and input your text and data.

Reusable Content Method #2: Design Infographics

At Venngage, creating infographics is what we do. Most of our blogs are distilled into shareable infographics.

Why? Because infographics combine the power of visuals like photos, illustrations, and icons with text and charts to tell a comprehensive story that is easy for users to absorb.

According to recent studies, online attention spans have dropped to 8 seconds—and they are continuing to dip. Holding users’ attention is challenging in an online environment that is packed with content. You can write a well-researched blog post but if nobody reads it, your efforts will be wasted. That is why infographics are such a useful tool—they are visually compelling enough to retain user attention. You can publish infographics on your blog, share it as social posts, for email newsletters, and for link building.

So, how do you reuse content for an infographic? Here’s a neat infographic we created using the Venngage design tool to explain the steps.

Let’s break it down further. For Earth Day this year, we researched the pandemic’s impact on the environment for a blog post—this was the natural topic to study considering the state of the world. We reduced our blog paragraphs to a few key takeaways and data points that we combined into an infographic.

We also segmented the graphic into different sections—carbon emissions, waste, wildlife, which you can see below, and energy—so users wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

For visuals, we chose appropriate icons and illustrations that underscored the themes of our story

Not only did the infographic get us more traffic but we further segmented it into smaller visuals to share on other channels—we turned the Earth Day infographic into this LinkedIn slide deck.

For users with limited time, an infographic is a great way to reuse long-form content while still reaching your audience.

Reusable Content Method #3: Update Older Pieces

Some pieces consistently attract views, no matter when they were written.

These could be listicles, tutorials, or how-to guides—you can find them using SEO tools like Ahrefs. What makes such posts stand out is that they are evergreen—these are topics that will also be relevant in your field.

But while the information and methodology you included in these evergreen pieces remain the same, some of the examples or technology may have changed.

Why not update that evergreen content to reflect the world as it is now? This will help make your content even more shareable. Keep in mind that you don’t have to update every piece of content—pick these to update:

Posts that are already ranking well

Posts that drive conversions regularly

Posts that are close to ranking well but need a push to reach the top SERP spot

Posts that have done well in the past but are slipping in rankings

Updating content has become a priority for bloggers—especially with more users being online this year.

Here are a few ways that you can update old content:

Elaborating on existing points

Inputting new data

Swapping out old examples for new ones

Adapting the keywords to reflect searcher intent

Tailoring it to a new audience When you finish updating the piece, add a note at the top of your content mentioning that it has been updated—you should include the date of first publication, as well. For instance, Shane Barker updated their case study and indicated so at the top of their page.

The great thing about updating old pieces is that you can reuse content that you already have, which saves you time that would otherwise be spent creating something from scratch.

Reusable Content Method #4: Create Gated Content

Do you focus on one subject for one piece of content? Or do you create several pieces around that subject?

Chances are that it’s the latter. Even if you aim to create a single piece of content, by the time you’re done researching and editing, you will have enough material for more.

So, it makes sense to elaborate on different areas in a series of blog posts or videos. And that is where you can find more reusable content—gated materials. Gated content has become an effective method for generating leads.

But creating such pieces takes a lot of time and effort. To get started check out our guide “The Complete Guide to Gating your Content”

Lead generation materials are long, in-depth, and layered—not something you can put together in a day. Unless you already have the content and just need to put it together.

If you have several content pieces around a single subject, you can easily put them together as any of the following.

Courses

Several how-to blog posts or videos can be combined into a workshop or course for audiences. This places your company as a thought leader aiming to share your knowledge of your industry. At Wishpond we created an email marketing course called “Wishpond's Email Marketing Master Class for Beginners”. This helped us to educate and attract our ideal target audience for lead generation. It took a lot of work but in the long run it paid off as evergreen content.

eBooks

Multiple blog posts and case studies around a subject can be easily combined into an engaging eBook—this also helps you build your email list. Include a call-to-action on a related post to encourage users to download the book, as SEM Rush have done in this post.

Venngage has numerous eBook templates that you can tailor to your subject matter.

Reports

If you’ve done in-depth research into an aspect of your industry, you don’t have to give it away to audiences for nothing. Consider sharing parts of the report with your users via email to give them a reason to download or purchase the complete document, like in this example from RescueTime.

Webinars

In the same vein as building courses out of content, you can also create webinars based on a series of videos on one subject. With more people online now, creating a webinar series is a good way to generate leads without having to design more content. Livestorm ranks high as the go-to webinar platform for marketers.

White Papers

Don’t have enough content to create an eBook? You can design a white paper using Venngage’s templates to combine posts and visuals. Netronic dipped into their gantt chart design posts to create a white paper.

Reusable Content Method #5: Write Guest Posts

Guest posting is a powerful tool to place your brand as an expert in your industry and to acquire new customers.

When you write posts for another website you showcase to your audience—and Google—that your content and voice are strong enough that other sites want to feature your writing.

Since most websites won’t allow you to repost content as is, guest posting becomes an opportunity to reuse existing content.

You’re essentially creating content from scratch except for the fact that you’re already familiar with the subject matter.

Here are some ways you can repurpose your content as a guest post:

Rewrite the post for the destination site

Elaborate on one point in your post

Tackle the subject from a different perspective

Highlight data not included in the original post

This is a strategy Adam Connell has used to increase traffic to his sites and grow his personal brand over years.

Guest posting on new topics takes time and energy—when you’ve already done the work with existing blogs, it’s prudent to reuse that content to reach new audiences.

Reusable Content Method #6: Expand Your Channels

There are several channels available now to boost your content marketing—and it’s the ideal form to reuse existing content. Here are a few ways to use a variety of channels to showcase your content.

Share Posts in Emails

You want your emails to reach your target audience—the best way to do that is to send your list great email content. Instead of designing content for your newsletters, dip into your stock of reusable content, as Wired did in this example. You don’t have to write any new content—add the first few paragraphs with a call-to-action to read more on your website.

Share Snippets on Social Media

Social media is where people go for short, sharp posts—you can’t share an entire blog post or long-form video without losing your audience partway through.

While you can set up your social sharing tools to share a blog the moment it’s published, that doesn’t make for exciting social content.

What you can do is share a snippet of your existing content—a few paragraphs or stats from your blog post, like in Hubspot’s tweets, a section of your video, or a part of your infographic.

Is your business practicing social listening? It's a term for monitoring your brand's social channels by "listening" to discussions and trending topics about both your brand and your larger industry. And if you haven't already, now is an especially good time to start.

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) October 20, 2020

Repost Content on Other Sites

We touched on this before—some websites allow you to publish your content on their blog. Ask the editor of a blog you’re interested in whether they would be interested in reposting your piece—but research them first so you don’t sour the relationship.

If you do post duplicated content on a site, add a link to the original post—that way you avoid unnecessary penalties.

Sites like Outbrain, Business2Community, and Medium syndicate pieces—some of them for free—like in this example below.

Syndicated content is a great way to reach new audiences without having to create more content.

Reusable Content Method #7: Transform Content for Other Media

We mentioned different ways to combine content into gated material but you can also transform existing content for other media.This requires a bit more effort but when you have reusable content and the right tools, this is an avenue you will want to explore.

Podcasts

Blogs or webinar content can be reused to create a podcast. Starting a podcast from scratch can be a lot of work—if you can use existing content, that makes your life easier. Pod Sound School not only creates podcasts, but they write blogs that they then reuse for podcast and video content.

Plus, in podcast transcripts or notes, you can add calls-to-action or website links that encourage listeners to continue engaging with your brand. There are numerous podcast hosting sites available but Buzzsprout comes highly-rated.

Presentations

Another way to reuse existing content is to create presentations or slides, which you can publish on SlideShare—you can use Google Slides or PowerPoint to design presentations.

CopyBlogger reused their blog on content to create a slide deck for SlideShare that currently has over 90K views. When creating presentations, it’s important to keep your text to a minimum—you don’t want users to face a wall of text as that may put them off your content altogether.

The 3-Step Journey of a Remarkable Piece of Content from Copyblogger.com

Screencast

Another transformation technique you can use for existing content is to screencast videos. This is a great technique for sharing tutorials or how-to guides. WebsiteToolTester created a post on starting a blog that they repurposed as screencasts for their YouTube channel.

If you have a written guide with a lot of screenshots of how to use a product or service, you already have an outline for your screencast. Now you need to record your screen using a tool like ScreenRec, as you take the audience through the steps.

Remember to disable sounds and notifications so they don’t interfere with the final video.

Videos

There are numerous ways you can transform content as videos:

Edit longer videos into several shorter ones using WonderShare Filmora to share across social networks

Longer webinars can be edited into short YouTube videos, with links back to the original webinar

Go live on social media to share a tutorial or how-to guide

Create explainer videos using YumYum Videos to share on YouTube

Key Takeaways: Reusable Content Helps You Reach New Audiences

A great piece of content doesn’t have to exist in a single, limited form. You can find new avenues to share reusable content and save yourself time and effort.

Here are the best ways to reuse content and reach new audiences:

Case studies

Infographics

Update old pieces

Gated content

Guest posts

Expanding your channels

Transforming content for other media

Don’t spend too much time creating multiple pieces of content—reuse what you have on new channels and in new mediums to boost brand awareness.

About the Author

Ronita Mohan is a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic maker and design platform. Ronita regularly writes about marketing, sales, and small businesses.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/2VWDueN via IFTTT

[bongaboi]

Joe Biden: 46th President of the United States

President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.

He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.

Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden — from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order — will be among the most startling in American history.

Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions.

Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

There has also been a recognition of those around him that he may have to lean more on executive actions than he had once hoped. He can reorient various federal agencies and regulations, and he can adopt a different posture on the world stage.

But pushing major legislation through Congress could prove to be a challenge.

Although the Democrats will hold a narrowed majority in the House, the final makeup of the Senate is not yet clear. That will be decided on Jan. 5, with two runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats would need to win both races to effectively have control of the Senate — with Vice President Kamala D. Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote — while Republicans would retain a narrow advantage by winning at least one.

“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”

A Republican-held Senate — or even one with a narrow Democratic majority — probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.

One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.

“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”

On Saturday afternoon, about two hours after networks called Biden the winner of the election, the president-elect had a brief call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called to congratulate Biden on a “tremendous victory,” according to two Democratic officials.

Schumer called while en route to a celebration in Brooklyn, holding his flip phone out the window so that Biden could hear the cheering crowd.

If Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden — one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022, and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”

It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.

A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration changes. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.

Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.

He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.

Biden has long pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accords by executive order, but he has also said that he would attempt to persuade other nations to adopt higher standards in an attempt to curb the impacts of climate change.

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a longtime Biden ally who holds the seat Biden had for 36 years, offered a broad overview of Biden’s initial agenda: “Get us out of this pandemic that’s been made far worse by Trump’s bungled mishandling of it, rebuild our economy in a way that’s more sustainable and more inclusive, and deal with division and inequality.”

He noted that Biden’s style will be quite different, saying that Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken in more than a year.

Coons suggested that Biden would promptly begin reaching out to leaders in both parties.

The coronavirus response has been foremost on Biden’s mind, and it is seen inside his campaign as a chief reason for his victory. He has previously said that even before the inauguration he would reach out to Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, asking him for advice.

Biden also wants to quickly appoint a supply commander to oversee production and distribution of testing — and, when ready, vaccines — as well as materials such as masks and gowns.

The coronavirus — and Biden’s response to it — could also significantly impact the traditional spectacle that surrounds the transfer of power. Inaugural balls could be altered. And while Biden has previously said he wouldn’t envision wearing a mask while being sworn in, he has said they could try to limit the traditional throngs that fill the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Much of Biden’s early agenda — including which pieces of legislation to prioritize — will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.

Biden’s transition effort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.

Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.

But one important next step is for the head of the General Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator — Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee — delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.

Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.

The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-1861, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-1933, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.

The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore (D) and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.

The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.

“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”

Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.

“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”

Making a clear break from the Trump administration's adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.

The Trump administration's suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.

The teams of campaign staffers and other aides that first embed themselves into government agencies after an election have historically been called “landing teams” and “beachhead teams,” summoning the memory of the storming of Normandy during World War II.

To avoid any associations with war, some Biden aides are sticking to soberingly bureaucratic terms, referring to landing teams as “ARTs” or Agency Review Teams, and beachhead team members as “temporary employees.”

So far, Trump administration officials have reviewed succession plans for department officials, planning for which civil servants would take on acting roles amid vacancies. Briefing materials are slated to be delivered over the next several days to Biden’s transition team.

Leavitt, who oversaw transition planning in 2012 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and has worked with Kaufman to change the law governing presidential transitions, said there are a range of moves the Biden team could make even without cooperation from Trump’s campaign. Cabinet members and other top White House staff could be picked, and key priorities for the start of the administration could be lined up.

“The current moment always seems like it’s the extreme, and often they are. But we get through them. The country survives,” he said. “The internal strength of the United States allows us to get through these things.”

John Hudson contributed to this report.

[anarchoncol]

IORT for breast cancer in the time of a pandemic

The current Covid-19 pandemic is posing questions and having huge repercussions in every aspect of life. Cancer care has naturally not been spared and in particular, this writing looks at the issues that have been raised in Radiation Oncology. To start this, let us start a "thought experiment":

Suppose a patient has had a cancer excised and, based on the clinico-pathological features the risk of the cancer recurring over the next ten years is estimated at 10%; then suppose that, on the basis of clinical trial evidence, a particular adjuvant therapy is expected to reduce that risk by approximately 60%. The risk of recurrence would now be estimated as approximately 4%. This means as a result of the treatment reducing the recurrence rate for 10% to 4% only six patients in every hundred treated would actually benefit, while all 100 will suffer toxicity, inconvenience and all the other problems that might result from undergoing the treatment. These days such problems might include an increased risk (real or perceived) of corona virus exposure through hospital attendance. Some patients might consider that the likelihood of benefit was so small that the associated price was too high, and would opt to not receive the treatment at all.

To continue the "thought experiment", take a similar situation but one where a second treatment option is available. Then suppose this second option is rather less well-established but, on the basis of strong scientific evidence can be said to be closely equivalent in respect to preventing recurrence, while definitely incurring fewer undesirable sequelae (be they side effects, or visits to hospital, etc.). The patient will probably firstly want to ask what is meant by "closely equivalent". A technical explanation of statistical methodology will usually not be appropriate as a response! But an explanation using hypothetical figures might be to say that "the new treatment can be said to be at least two-thirds as effective ("at least" because statistics on currently-available data cannot be more precise, but this is an "outside" estimate); then your risk of recurrence would be at most 6% rather than 4%; the likelihood of the first treatment being more effective than the new one is about two in a hundred. But the second treatment spares you in other respects..". If the features that were avoided by the second treatment were things whereby the patient set great store, the two in a hundred greater possibility of developing recurrence might be considered worth risking.

The corona virus pandemic has forced clinicians in all specialties to reflect on how their clinical practice should change in order to be more appropriate to new conditions. This has necessitated balancing "pros and cons" in the light of possible changes in how patients (and their physicians) value the outcomes of medical interventions in the light of a significantly-altered perception of the desirability of medical interactions and interventions, notably, during the pandemic, those that necessitate visits to hospital. When a hospital visit entails a real or perceived risk of acquiring corona infection, patients may well place less value on the "outcome improvement" that the visit offers. To take an extreme example, perhaps a patient considering some form of purely cosmetic surgery might be less keen to undergo it if the hospital where it is to be performed has a local reputation for being a virus "hot spot", but similar considerations, to a greater or lesser extent, will have an influence on patient preference where several different options are available, with different predicted outcomes. Shared decision-making (SDM) is, of course, essential when such issues are under consideration. (It might be stressed that the many of the considerations that influence changes of practice during the current pandemic are relevant in other circumstances and, even if they have not played as big a role as one might argue they should have before these times, there seems little doubt that current thinking will continue to influence clinical practice for the foreseeable future - and rightly so!)

Traditional radiotherapy involves daily visits to hospital over several weeks, so it is not surprising that Radiation Oncologists should have been "quick out of the blocks" in reviewing whether and how practice in the Covid-19 era could change, and a number of thoughtful reviews of these questions and recommendations for practice have already appeared. Perhaps, though, here a short historical review of some of the issues would be relevant before returning to current issues.

Towards the end of the last century, apart from a few bastions of alternative thought, the convention of treating with five fractions of 2Gy per week (usually delivered each day, Monday to Friday) had become very widely established (and it remains a matter of astonishment that this was applied to almost every patient regardless of tumour type!). This pattern of treatment is often referred to as being that of the "Fletcher School". The voices of other "schools" were heard less and less frequently, although the practice of using shorter fractionation schemes, as pioneered by Paterson in the 1940s (war time necessity was the origin) continued in Manchester and other places such as Edinburgh and Toronto that can fairly be described as offspring of the Manchester School. The one exception to the trend was in the area of post-operative breast radiotherapy, where two major randomised trials set out to compare schedules resembling those of the "Manchester School" with "conventional" fractionation. The shorter schedules were defined as "hypofractionated". Many years later, it is now widely accepted that the hypofractionated schedules are at least as good in terms of clinical outcomes (freedom from breast cancer recurrence and cosmesis) while being very much better for the convenience of the patient and the use of resources. Sadly, ways to reduce inconvenience to patients and wasteful use of resources had rarely attracted attention in earlier radiotherapy literature!

Now, twenty years into the twenty-first century, interest in shortening radiotherapy schedules has reached a new peak, with as already noted widespread adoption of "hypofractionated"[1]treatments to replace "conventional" treatments for many patients, and also the emergence of stereotactic treatments. This drive towards reducing the number of times the patient attends hospital has been given huge further impetus by the pandemic. While it has always been important to do so, it is now more than ever necessary for radiotherapy to be evaluated by weighing the benefits that one hopes to achieve against the potential harms and risks that could ensue. The (real or perceived) risk of contracting corona virus infection through hospital visits will weigh heavily in these scales, but there are, as there have always been and, as already noted, other issues relating to hospital visits that have not received as much attention as they might have. These issues are fairly easy to enumerate, if more difficult to measure, and affect both the patient and the health service provider. For the patient, on top of the physical side effects of radiotherapy itself, repeated hospital visits place a strain that can be both emotional and financial; travel is time consuming and expensive; many patients need to take long periods off work; the list is long. And now, the risk of hospital-acquired infection looms very large, in patients' perceptions. This makes it more important than ever that realistic estimates of the potential benefits that treatment can offer are clearly spelt out to patients in order to weigh these up against the list of potential negatives. (Given the complexity of these issues, and the differing values that different individuals place on different aspects, SDM is essential here).

Again, the potential benefits of radiotherapy will differ hugely from one patient to the next but, treatments given with purely palliative intent aside, the aim is usually to increase the patient's life expectancy ("improve overall survival (OS)"), and to do so at the lowest possible cost in all the above terms. (A "surrogate" endpoint of "recurrence-free survival" is actually often used; this is sometimes, but not always a good surrogate for overall survival, but note that it was used in the example at the beginning of this article, and is a point returned to later).

But the reality of the use of radiotherapy as a curative modality is complicated by the variety of clinical situations in which it can be used for cancer patients. In one case, an example might be for the patient with an early vocal cord cancer. While other options are available, and should always be discussed with the patient, here is a disease where cure by radiotherapy alone can be expected for the vast majority of treated patients. Much less clear-cut are decisions on where to use radiotherapy as an "adjuvant" therapy after surgical resection of the cancer. Unlike the case of primary treatment, where very few patients would consider declining treatment, the use of such adjuvant treatment really must be considered a "relative" indication. To take a clear example, encountered very frequently in clinical practice, in breast cancer after surgical removal of the primary tumour, post-operative radiotherapy is given to many patients: sometimes following mastectomy, very commonly after breast conserving surgery (BCS). But even today, 70 years since one of the very earliest randomised trials in the whole of oncology was set up to address this issue, no general consensus exists on when patients should or should not be advised to receive radiotherapy.

The problem, of course, is that with such treatment the aim is to reduce risk, and understanding "risk" is something that many people struggle with, and that doctors often find difficult to explain clearly to patients.  We know that for any group of patients selected on the basis of one or several characteristics, following breast cancer surgery and if left without any additional treatment, some will live the rest of their lives cancer-free, while others will suffer recurrences, and the majority, but not all, of these will eventually die of the cancer, and we also know that the number who will develop recurrences will be reduced if given radiotherapy post-operatively. Depending on which criteria are used to select the group, the numbers that do or do not develop recurrences will vary, and it is possible to give probable percentage likelihoods for each such outcome, but is impossible to predict for the individual.

So the dilemma for each patient is this: if I am given post-operative radiotherapy, I shall have a better chance of avoiding recurrence, but I have toaccept all the negative things that such treatment entails. Some patients are keen to take every possible measure to avoid recurrence, so for them the "price" to pay is acceptable. But for others, especially those who fall into "favourable" prognostic category, there idea that radiotherapy can be avoided by only accepting a very small risk of recurrence may be appealing, and similarly, a schedule of radiotherapy that entails fewer attendances at hospital also gains in appeal. Indeed, patients might even accept a treatment that has a marginally less impact on reduction of risk of recurrence if this can be done with fewer hospital attendances. These considerations hold true at all times, but especially so at the time of pandemic, so particular attention is being focused on them at the current time. The "thought experiments" at the start of this article illustrate them.

In these "thought experiments", it has been "recurrence" rather than "overall survival" that was discussed, despite the assertion that OS is really the most important outcome that we should look at. There are reasons why this seemingly contradictory approach has been taken. In the present day, the majority of patients diagnosed with breast cancer eventually die of other diseases, without the breast cancer ever recurring. This is especially true in the era of mammographic screening. If different treatment strategies offer the same probability of OS, other treatment-related aspects become more important. One of these, and the one that has attracted most attention, is the local recurrence rate (LRR). Yet, especially in the screen-detected population, the correlation between local recurrence and survival that is seen for more advanced disease has never to my knowledge been clearly established. Local recurrences can often be managed without an apparent deleterious impact on survival. Further, how LRR relates to "Patient Reported Outcome Measures" (PROMs) has never been well studied, yet clinicians, perhaps because it is an outcome readily measured, have set high importance to it (and, indeed, anecdotal evidence would suggest patients do too, but the evidence is weak).

Because of considerations such as this, post-operative radiotherapy schedules for breast cancer are being re-assessed radically in the Covid19 era. In the UK for example, a very shortened 5 fraction schedule ("FAST-FORWARD") has received a endorsement from the Royal College of Radiologists farsooner than this might have been expected in other times. But, for all these reasons, a treatment that confers an even more drastic reduction in the need for hospital visits exposure might be considered very attractive. In fact, such an option does exist, and it fits quite closely  the description of the "hypothetical" example given earlier: this is the use of intra-operative radiotherapy (IORT). Here, the patient is given a single dose of radiation actually during the surgical procedure to remove the cancer, and nothing else (in most cases). Published data show that the LRR outcome is barely different from what is achieved by giving a conventional form of radiotherapy as a subsequent out-patient procedure (with all that this entails). In an era of pandemic and SDM, it is unfortunate that the option of IORT for breast cancer is not more widely available.

[1]As a pupil, indirectly, of the Manchester School, I prefer to use inverted commas when using this term for schedules that I still regard as belonging to my "convention".

[gloriousgwendolinechristie]

Press: Gwendoline Christie on Playing the ‘Complete Opposite’ of Brienne of Tarth

NY TIMES – If Jane Campion’s first season of the crime drama “Top of the Lake” seemed remote and somber to some, the second season, “Top of the Lake: China Girl” has more of a sense of humor, even when delving into the darker recesses of life. (In this case, migrant sex workers, institutionalized misogyny, mental illness and more.) In the second season, which begins Sunday on Sundance, Elisabeth Moss’s detective Robin Griffin, who returns home to Australia after time in New Zealand, is assigned an overeager assistant, played by “Game of Thrones” star Gwendoline Christie.

  Over the phone earlier this month, Ms. Christie spoke about becoming Robin’s reluctant partner, her own reluctance to take a stand on the issues the show raises and her meltdown on set. Following are edited excerpts from that conversation.

  Jane Campion wrote the character of Miranda with you in mind?

  I really wanted to be in this series, so I wrote to Jane, and I was lucky enough to have her write this part for me. It touches on aspects that I don’t always feel particularly comfortable with, but I think it’s important to highlight, and so we see Miranda being marginalized at work, the victim of misogyny. It’s not always comfortable to play those things. Yes, you’re at work, and yes, you’re just playing a part, but it’s so personal.

  And yet at the same time, Miranda provides some of the comic relief.

  I think the series is quite hilarious! It has a very, very dark sense of humor, but it’s extremely funny. Miranda is like an enthusiastic puppy. Miranda desperately wants to be friends, and she’s really governed by emotion in a way that Brienne of Tarth from “Game of Thrones” is not. Miranda is the complete opposite of Brienne. Brienne has a reflective thought process, and works things through with sustained thought. She takes her time. She pauses. And Miranda is totally impetuous. She’s also incredibly gauche. She’s gawky. She’s awkward. She’s too much. That’s a note that Jane gave me to constantly remember: “You’re too much.”

  There’s a moment when Miranda tries to make someone laugh by pretending to be a space traveler, “Captain Miranda on Andromeda West.” Was that scene improv?

  Yeah. [Laughs] Jane told me that she likes to wear a space helmet that belongs to a friend of hers, to relax, and they pretend to be on a spaceship, so we included that. It seemed to be the only way to give that scene the life it deserves, to go about it with abandon, to try to be as impetuous as Miranda. That’s who Miranda is. She’s a loon. She’s bizarre. She’s a fairly illogical person.

  The case Robin and Miranda are investigating involves both prostitution and surrogacy – but it’s the prostitution that’s mostly legal, and the commercial surrogacy that’s illegal, which raises all sorts of interesting questions about the ownership of female bodies.

  Jane Campion is a provocateur, and she wants that conversation to take place. I think it’s no secret that we live in a patriarchal society, but as we are also apparently civilized human beings, we are, I hope, continuing to experience more equality between the sexes. So I think these sorts of conversations are incredibly worthwhile and fascinating, and necessary, too. Jane has this unique way of delivering a story that is just filled with these machinations of womanhood and femininity. She’s described it as being positively ovarian. And so the idea of the right to choose and whose right is it to choose what happens to a woman’s body is a discussion that is essential.

  So what’s your take on some of those issues? Do you have an opinion on whether or not prostitution should be legalized, from working on the series?

  What I find as I get older is that I don’t always have a definitive opinion, and I think the process of my life is going to be consumed with trying to consolidate what it is that I think. I don’t know how I feel about it as a whole. I really don’t. I think Jane’s reason for choosing this subject matter, and choosing Australia as the background, because it is different than other places in the world, is that when you’re presented with a different representation of the world as you know it, it causes you to question everything. What are the reasons, for any behavior?

  On a lighter note, how did you survive shooting for long stretches on Bondi Beach?

  I have very sensitive skin, which I obviously installed in the character of Miranda, that she has very sensitive skin. [Laughs] I was scuttling into the shade every single moment I could get and begging for SPF. Absolutely begging for it! My goodness, the heat was so intense. At one point, my eyes started burning really intensely and I couldn’t see. Elisabeth Moss said to me, “Are you O.K.? Are you having a stroke?” [Laughs] And I didn’t know! I didn’t know! I said, “Let’s just keep going! As long as I can feel your presence, I’ll be able to follow you.”

Press: Gwendoline Christie on Playing the ‘Complete Opposite’ of Brienne of Tarth was originally published on Glorious Gwendoline | Gwendoline Christie Fansite

[vishers]

Girls and Sex (2016) by Peggy Orenstein: A Pre-read

★★★★☆

Girls and Sex (2016) by Peggy Orenstein is an incredible and enthralling survey of the sexual landscape bequeathed to the women of the America (and perhaps the rest of the western world). It's written, quite self-consciously, by an outsider. Someone who stands roughly a generation removed from today's culture who nevertheless stridently believes in the progress made by feminism towards an egalitarian society, or at least the promise of said progress. What is so refreshing about the work, at least to me, is the honesty with which it questions the new dogmas surrounding sexual behavior and the so-called liberating effects that it's had. Orenstein is able to deftly ask the question of whether we're really making progress at all or whether we're running sideways as fast as we can towards somewhere with at least as many problems (novel though they may be) as the heavy-handed patriarcalism of the past we're running from. With chapter titles such as "Are We Having Fun Yet?" and "Matilda Oh Is Not an Object — Except When She Wants to Be", I found the book to be honest, direct, and insightful, regarding the paradoxes we've asked this generation of women to operate under.

The focus on first-hand accounts and interviews is also an important choice Orenstein makes. Rather than this being a book that is overly prescriptive or 'researchy', the author positions herself first as a listener, eager to understand how real girls think, feel, and experience sexual activity and expectations in all their forms.

Anyone who wishes to understand the pressures, fears, goals, and aspirations of our culture on women's sexuality should consider this book required reading. I'm even more excited than I was already to engage with Boys & Sex, Oreinstein's newer book aimed to listening to boys on the same subject.

Title, Subtitle, Preface, and Introduction

Girls & Sex: Navigating The Complicated New Landscape.

First: This is a book about girls and sex, not women and sex. That points necessarily at two things: 1. There's a generational gap hinted at here. The author is a listener and the speakers are primarily between the ages of 15 and 20, and 2. The subject being discussed is, unashamedly, unabashedly, and explicitly, sex. Not relationships write large or career aspirations or life goals but their experience of and thoughts towards sexual 'intimacy' (even if that word is almost laughable in the relation to how most sexual activity is describe herein).

Second: This book believes that the sexual landscape has changed. The world is different than it's been as the fallout of the sexual revolution continues to create seismic shifts in the fabric of our society. Furthermore this book is opinionated regarding the new landscape. While most of the public testimony regarding today's sexual culture is unwaveringly positive, speaking of it only in terms of liberation, empowerment, and self-expression while decrying only the vestiges of older misogynist culture like aggressive advances and double standards. But this book, right in the subtitle, calls the new landscape 'complicated', and its opinions of the landscape are just that: complicated.

There is no preface.

The introduction outlines where the impetus for this book came from. Orenstein is a mother of a rapidly aging daughter who was suddenly struck with the fact that while many others would consider her an expert on the matter, she herself felt woefully under-prepared and in the dark over how to help her daughter enter adulthood successfully and confidently.

It highlights the complexity of her own feelings regarding today's sexual culture. For instance: "Even as girls outnumbered boys in college, as they 'leaned in' to achieve their academic and professional dreams, I had to wonder: Were we moving forward or backward? Did today's young women have more freedom than their mothers to shape their sexual encounters, more influence and more control within them? Were they better able to resist stigma, better equipped to explore joy? And if not, why not?"

The author also talks about the inherent narrowness of the interviews conducted for the book, with most girls interviewed being in college or college bound, while at the same time referencing the breadth of the representation of the subjects.

Finally, and I think this is important, the introduction touches on the fact that how participants in this culture describe how they feel about the culture doesn't always line up with how they perceptively feel nor how those listening to them feel. "Even in consensual encounters, much of what the girls described was painful to hear." This book reflects my own feeling (though in a weaker form) that much of the so-called progress we've made is a sad mirage.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is quite poor and uninformative. One of the reasons this is a four-star book.

Index

Rape, Sexual Assault, Consent

Drinking

Relationships

Sexual Orientation and Identity

Colleges and Universities

Hookups, hookup culture

Sex Education

Virginity, Sexual Intercourse

Birth Control, Condoms, Contraception

Internet, Social Media

Cunnilingus, fellatio, oral sex

Orgasm

There's an extensive selected bibliography section.

Publisher's Blurb

Right at the top the book is emphatic that there's a wide generational gap between prior generations and today's generation of girls in terms of the sexual landscape they're faced with. That is a core theme of the book: Orenstein left grappling with a culture that she's simultaneously supportive of, baffled by, and concerned about.

This book is sourced from first-hand interviews with over 70 young women as well as a wide array of psychological, academic, and expert sources.

Topics covered include:

The effects the Porn industry is having on sexual expectations and understanding.

What it means to be "the perfect slut".

Why 'virginity' has become a pejorative.

What hookup culture is and what makes it complicated.

The prevalence of rape and assault on campus (and earlier).

While the book is opinionated, it nevertheless tries to hold back on being prescriptive, instead opting to open channels for dialog based on facts.

Notable Chapters and Statements

The book isn't organized around a progressive argument. Each chapter can more or less be read in isolation.

Chapter 1 covers self-objectification and whether that's empowering, belittling, or something else or in between. Chapter 2 covers the problematic reality that while sexual activity of one kind or another (mostly fellatio) has become quite common, it's also become emotionless. Pleasure and enjoyment are still largely a male privilege, despite the girls reporting a large degree of felt autonomy. Chapter 3 covers the complexity around the terminology used and also the lines that girls draw around appropriate, inappropriate, and intimate behavior. Chapter 4 covers hookup culture and the problem of assault and consent. Chapter 5 covers LGBTQI+ realities. Chapter 6 addresses rape and consent directly. Finally, Chapter 7 details problems and complexities around sex education and also the ever present specter of 'going Dutch', trying to bring some of that endlessly tempting culture in the Netherlands here.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults & Abusive Relationships

Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults & Abusive Relationships

2006

by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (Authors)

Bay Tree Publishing

_______________________________________

Cult victims and those who have experienced abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides insightful information for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track.

Written for victims, their families, and professionals, this book leads readers through the healing process.

_______________________________________

About the Authors

Janja Lalich, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Chico. She has been studying the cult phenomenon since the late 1980s and has coordinated local support groups for ex-cult members and for women who were sexually abused in a cult or abusive relationship. She is the author of Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, and co-author, with Margaret Singer, of Cults in Our Midst.

Madeleine Tobias, M.S., R.N., C.S., is the Clinical Coordinator and a psychotherapist at the Vet Center in White River Junction, Vermont, where she treats veterans who experienced combat and/or sexual trauma while in the military. Previously she had a private practice in Connecticut and was an exit counselor helping ex-members of cultic groups and relationships.

_______________________________________

Introduction

Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships gives former cult members, their families, and professionals an understanding of common cult practices and their aftereffects. This book also provides an array of specific aids that may help restore a sense of normalcy to former cult members’ lives.

About twelve years ago, we wrote our first book on this topic: Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships. Over the years, we received mounds of positive feedback about that book in the form of letters, phone calls, postcards, emails, faxes, and personal contact at conferences and in our professional lives. Former cult members, families, therapists, and exit counselors continually told us that Captive Hearts, Captive Minds was always their number-one book. That positive reception (and the need to provide up-to-date information) was the impetus for this new book. We are delighted to offer this new resource to people who want to evaluate, understand, and, in many cases, recover from the effects of a cult experience. We hope this book will help you take back your life.

Cults did not fade away (as some would like to believe) with the passing of the sixties and the disappearance of the flower children. In fact, cult groups and relationships are alive and thriving, though many groups have matured and “cleaned up their act.” If there is less street recruiting today, it is because many cults now use professional associations, campus organizations, self-help seminars, and the Internet as recruitment tools. Today we see people of all ages— even multigenerational families—being drawn into a wide variety of groups and movements focused on everything from therapy to business ventures, from New Age philosophies to Bible-based beliefs, and from martial arts to political change.

Most cults don’t stand up to be counted in a formal sense. Currently, the best estimates tell us that there are about 5,000 such groups in the United States, some large, some remarkably small. Noted cult expert and clinical psychologist Margaret Singer estimated “about 10 to 20 million people have at some point in recent years been in one or more of such groups.”(1) Before its enforced demise, the national Cult Awareness Network reported receiving about 20,000 inquiries a year.(2)

A cult experience is often a conflicted one, as those of you who are former members know. More often than not, leaving a cult environment requires an adjustment period so that you can put yourself and your life back together in a way that makes sense to you. When you first leave a cult situation, you may not recognize yourself. You may feel confused and lost; you may feel both sad and exhilarated. You may not know how to identify or tackle the problems you are facing. You may not have the slightest idea about who you want to be or what you want to believe. The question we often ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” takes on new meaning for adult ex-cult members.

Understanding what happened to you and getting your life back on track is a process that may or may not include professional therapy or pastoral counseling. The healing or recovery process varies for each of us, with ebbs and flows of progress, great insight, and profound confusion. Also, certain individual factors will affect your recovery process. One is the length and intensity of your cult experience. Another is the nature of the group or person you were involved with—or where your experience falls on a scale of benign to mildly harmful to extremely damaging. Recovering from a cult experience will not end the moment you leave the situation (whether you left on your own or with the help of others). Nor will it end after the first few weeks or months away from your group. On the contrary, depending on your circumstances, aspects of your cult involvement may require some attention for the rest of your life.

Given that, it is important to find a comfortable pace for your healing process. In the beginning, particularly, your mind and body may simply need a rest. Now that you are no longer on a mission to save the world or your soul, relaxation and rest are no longer sinful. In fact, they are absolutely necessary for a healthy, balanced, and productive life.

Reentering the non-cult world (or entering it for the first time if you were born or raised in a cult) can be painful and confusing. To some extent, time will help. Yet the passage of time and being physically out of the group are not enough. You must actively and of your own initiative face the issues of your involvement. Let time be your ally, but don’t expect time alone to heal you. We both know former cult members who have been out of their groups for many years but who have never had any counseling or education about cults or the power of social-psychological influence and control. These individuals live in considerable emotional pain and have significant difficulties due to unresolved conflicts about their group, their leader, or their own participation. Some are still under the subtle (or not so subtle) effects of the group’s systems of influence and control.

A cult experience is different for each person, even for members of the same group, family, or situation. Some former members may have primarily positive impressions and memories, while others may feel hurt, used, or angry. The actual experiences and the degree or type of harm suffered may vary considerably. Some people may leave cults with minimum distress, and adjust rather rapidly to the larger society, while others may suffer severe emotional trauma that requires psychiatric care. Still others may need medical attention or other care. The dilemmas can be overwhelming and may require thoughtful attention. Many have likened this period to being on an emotional roller coaster.

First of all, self-blame (for joining the cult or participating in it, or both) is a common reaction that tends to overshadow all positive feelings. Added to this is a feeling of identity loss and confusion over various aspects of daily life. If you were recruited at any time after your teens, you already had a distinct personality, which we call the “pre-cult personality.” While you were in the cult, you most likely developed a so-called new personality in order to adapt to the demands and ambiance of cult life. We call this the “cult personality.” Most cults engage in an array of social-psychological pressures aimed at indoctrinating and changing you. You may have been led to believe that your pre-cult personality was all bad and your adaptive cult personality all good. After you leave a cult, you don’t automatically switch back to your pre-cult self; in fact, you may often feel as if you have two personalities or two selves. Evaluating these emotions and confronting this dilemma—integrating the good and discarding the bad—is a primary task for most former cult members, and is a core focus of this book.

As you seek to redefine and reshape your identity, you will want to address the psychological, emotional, and physical consequences of living in or around a constrained, controlled, and possibly abusive environment. And as if all that weren’t enough, many basic life necessities and challenges will need to be met and overcome. These may include finding employment and a place to live, making friends, repairing old relationships, confronting belief issues, deciding on a career or going back to school, and most likely catching up with a social and cultural gap.

If you feel like “a stranger in a strange land,” it may be consoling to know that you are not the first person to have felt this way. In fact, the pervasive and awkward sense of alienation that both of us felt when we left our cults motivated us to write this book. We hope that the information here will not only help you get rid of any shame or embarrassment you might feel, but also ease your integration into a positive and productive life.

We were compelled to write this book because more often than not, people coming out of cults have tremendous difficulty finding practical information. We, too, experienced that obstacle. Both of us faced one roadblock after another as we searched for useful information and helping professionals who were knowledgeable about cults and post-cult trauma.

❖

A matter we hope to shed light on in this book is the damage wrought by the so-called cult apologists. These individuals (mostly academics) allege that cults do no harm, and that reports of emotional or psychological damage are exaggerations or even fabrications on the part of disgruntled former members. Naturally we disagree. It is unfortunate that there is still so little public understanding of the potential danger of some cults. Certainly there are risks and harmful consequences for individuals involved in these closed, authoritarian groups and abusive relationships. If there weren’t, there would be no need for cult research and information organizations, or for books such as this. Added to individual-level consequences, there are documented dangers to society as a whole from cults whose members carry out their beliefs in antisocial ways— sometimes random, sometimes planned—through fraud, terrorist acts, drug dealing, arms trading, enforced prostitution of members, sexual exploitation, and other violent or criminal behaviors.

From our perspective, a group or relationship earns the label “cult” on the basis of its methods and behaviors—not on the basis of its beliefs. Often those of us who criticize cults are accused of wanting to deny people their freedoms, religious or otherwise. But what we critique and oppose is precisely the repression and stripping away of individual freedoms that tends to occur in cults. It is not beliefs that we oppose, but the exploitative manipulation of people’s faith, commitment, and trust. Our society must not shy away from exposing and holding accountable those social systems (whether they be communities, organizations, families, or relationships) that use deception, manipulation, coercion, and persuasion to attract, recruit, convert, hold on to, and ultimately exploit people.

Also, it’s important to note that there are many non-cult organizations to which people can dedicate their lives and may experience personal transformation. Many religious and self-help institutions, as well as mainstream political parties and special-interest groups, are examples of such non-cult organizations. We do not call them cults because they are publicly known institutions that are usually accountable to some higher body or to society in general. When people join, they have a clear idea of these organizations’ structures and goals. Deceptive or coercive practices are not integral to the growth of these organizations or their ability to retain their members.

In contrast, cult membership is less than fully voluntary. Often it is the result of intense social-psychological influence and control, sometimes called coercive persuasion. Cults tend to assault and strip away a person’s independence, critical-thinking abilities, and personal relationships, and may have a less-than-positive effect on the person’s physical, spiritual, and psychological state of being.

We wrote this book for the many individuals who have experienced harm or trauma in a cult or an abusive relationship. Because it is awkward to continually repeat the phrase “cult or cultic relationship,” in many instances throughout this book we simply shortened it to “cult” or “group,” which are meant to be inclusive of all types of cultic involvements. In the same vein, while we recognize the existence of many one-on-one cultic relationships and family cults, we tend to use simply “cult leader” or “leader” rather than always specifying “leader or abusive partner.” Also, we tend to use masculine pronouns when referring to cult leaders in general. This is not to ignore the fact that there are many female cult leaders, but merely to acknowledge that most cult leaders tend to be men. However, whether male or female, most are equal-opportunity victimizers, drawing men, women, and children of all ages into their webs of influence.

We have included case examples and personal accounts throughout the chapters to illustrate the specifics of involvement, typical aftereffects, and the healing process. Some examples are composites based on interviews and our personal and professional experiences with many hundreds of former cult members. Some former members made specific contributions or allowed us to quote them and use their real names, while others asked for pseudonyms to protect their privacy. These latter, as well as the case examples, are indicated in the text by the use of first name and last initial on the first mention of that name.

If you are a former cult member, you may identify personally with some of the experiences, emotions, challenges, and difficulties discussed here. Other topics may appear quite foreign and unrelated to your experience. It may be helpful to look them over anyway, as there may be lessons or suggestions that could be useful for your situation.

The keys to recovery are balance and moderation, both of which were quite likely absent in the cult. Now you can create a program for recovery that addresses your needs and wants, and you can change it at will to adapt to any new circumstances or needs. The important thing is to do what feels right. Most cults teach you to squelch your gut instincts, but you can now let your self speak to you—and this time, you can listen and act. From now on, only you are responsible for setting and achieving your goals. Our hope is that this book will be useful to you in your recovery process, and we wish you well.

_______________________________________

Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

Part One – The Cult Experience  7

1. Defining a Cult  9

2. Recruitment  18

3. Indoctrination and Resocialization  36

4. The Cult Leader  52

5. Abusive Relationships and Family Cults  72

Part Two – The Healing Process  87

6. Leaving a Cult  89

7. Taking Back Your Mind  104

8. Dealing with the Aftereffects  116

9. Coping with Emotions  127

10. Building a Life  151

11. Facing the Challenges of the Future  166

12. Healing from Sexual Abuse and Violence  180

13. Making Progress by Taking Action  196

14. Success Is Sweet: Personal Accounts  212

Part Three – Families and Children in Cults  239

15. Born and Raised in a Cult  241

16. Our Lives to Live: Personal Accounts  259

17. Child Abuse in Cults  280 Nori J. Muster

Part Four – Therapeutic Concerns  287

18. Therapeutic Issues  289

19. The Therapist’s Role  305 Shelly Rosen

20. Former Cult Members and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  314

Appendixes

A. Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups  327 Janja Lalich and Michael Langone

B. On Being Savvy Spiritual Consumers  329 Rosanne Henry and Sharon Colvin

C. Resources  332

D. Recommended Reading  336

Notes  345

Author Index  359

Subject Index  363

_______________________________________

Repairing the Soul – Janja Lalich

VIDEO: Why do people join cults?  – Janja Lalich

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

Re-forming the Self: The Impact and Consequences of Institutional Abuse

Excellent podcast: Ford Greene, Attorney and former Moonie, on the Death of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Video: Paul Morantz on Cults, Confession and Mind Control

[rowdyprofessor]

Saat Soch: IPKKND3 Episode 22

Here there be spoilers!!

Previous

1. Why? Just ... why!!???

I’m tired of the shagun-ka-sikka games and tired of Chandni flirting with Advay, being scared when he makes advances and then switching instantly back to flirtation when he backs off. 

What are they trying to show here? How are we supposed to interpret it? There’s a difference, in my view, between showing a woman scared of intimacy and a woman scared of the entire man and his intentions.

And to be clear, this is still the same day that he set PP on fire. Everyone has changed clothes but it’s not actually another day!!! This day started in Episode 16 and has just dragged on and on and on.

In the flashback montage of salutes, they forgot the salute he did when he SET AN ENTIRE HUMAN BEING ON FIRE. This made me very angry because it seems the show is trying to convince the audience that Advay’s not really that bad. News flash: he is.

2. Chandni’s attachment

Chandni: “Sach mein jaa rahe hain? Hamesha ke liye?”    [Is he really going? For ever?]

Chandni becomes emotional when Ajeeb Singh Raizada starts to leave. As Advay noted, she’s fallen for him and just doesn’t know it yet. This is the closest she’s come to acknowledging that she’s formed an attachment to him.

I would speculate that her quick attachment can be attributed in part to her recognising, on some level, that he’s Dev, but it’s more likely a result of the show’s creative team not knowing what they want to show.

3. The family meet Rachna

Shikha: “Humne toh prank kiya tha, yeh toh frank ho gayi!”    [We played a prank, but she’s real!]

Chandni has no idea who she’s dealing with! She fabricated Rachna to get Advay out of the house, and Advay brought her to life. Meghna, Shikha, and Chandni knew exactly what was happening and I thought their reactions were hilarious. 

I’m impressed that Advay managed to get the exact same kameez for Rachna to wear -- apparently his audience wouldn’t have recognised her if she wasn’t dressed exactly the same as the video she made.

Rachna: “Advay se koi bhi ladki pyaar karne lagi gi. Advay hai hi aisa.”     [Any girl would fall in love with Advay, he’s just like that.] Kajal: “Yeh toh truth-wala-sach hai ji!”     [That’s true!]

Did Advay write those lines for the actor he’s hired? Full of ourselves, aren’t we bachcha?

Rachna says that she made the video in the hopes of winning Advay’s heart, but has now learnt that love is earnt, not stolen (what, in the two minutes since the video aired?)

Rachna: “Main apni do idiot behno ki baaton mein nahin aati, toh main woh video kabhi nahin banati!”     [I would have never made those videos if I hadn’t listened to my two idiot sisters.]

LOL!!

Indrani: “Iss ladki ke jhoot ke vaje se, humne Advay ko galat samjha.”   [I believed Advay was in the wrong because of this girl’s lie.]

And note that it’s Chandni who lied -- Chandni, the girl who runs around saying that she never lies and always owns up to her mistakes.

4. Punishment

Advay: "Yeh toh ek zidi, dhokebaaz ladki ki bachkani harkat hai. Isko itni importance mat dijiye.”    [This is the childish prank of an impetuous, dishonest girl. Don’t give it so much importance.]

Advay then discusses possible punishments for Chandni Rachna, to which Kajal eagerly suggests to handfuls of chilli. The Vashisth sisters experience a sudden and overwhelming urge to cough. Shakun suggests two slaps, which the girls seem to feel on their cheeks, and Rajit chimes in by mentioning police stations. Chandni imagines handcuffs on her wrists.

Advay thoroughly enjoyed this and smirked at Chandni as she shook her head to beg ‘no’. His decision to forgive her without punishment most likely seemed too good to be true.

And with this stroke of genius, Advay is reinstated in his bedroom.

5. Mosquito

Advay: "Raat ko mere kamre mein aa jana, katto gilehri banke.”    [Come into my room tonight, all made up.]

Even Chandni’s refusal had a hint of flirtation in it as she questioned his choice of language. Advay promptly threatened to reveal her prank to Indrani, PP, and PP-Mummy before commanding her into his bedroom again. Alone, Chandni had a moment where she shared her exasperation with the empty room.

I get it, she’s Cute™️. But the cuteness is overdone, to the point where it looks like she’s incapable of being serious. Tomar’s voice modulation, which was excellent when she was making fun of his sunglasses and perpetual dramatic entrances, has become stuck on Cute™️. It’s not, in my opinion, doing the character any favours, because it now seems that she swings between flirtation and terror with nothing in between.

Later that night (and boy am I glad that this day is almost over!), Chandni agonises over a decision:

Chandni: “Main kpi machar hoon kya, jo kisi ke bhi kamre mein chali jaoongi?”    [Am I a mosquito, that I’ll just go into anyone’s room?]

This hasn’t stopped her barging into his room on other occasions but it seems the issue is that he’s asked -- she’s much more comfortable sneaking in whenever she feels like it. Personal privacy, you see, only belongs to women.

Chandni: “How mean! Chow mein.”

WHO IS WRITING HER LINES? STAHHHHHP. 

6. Unique

Last night I felt I could forgive this episode most of its trespasses because of this scene. He’s finally playing his guitar.

Well, not playing it.

I think the idea was to insert random guitar notes and then they later decided to go with the ASR theme. But it’s overlaid on top: I don’t think it was intended to suggest that Advay was playing that tune. Firstly, I don’t even think the instruments match. The sound in this version of Arnav’s the ASR theme has always struck me as distinctly electrified. I feel it’s been produced by plucking the strings of an electric guitar, not an acoustic one like Advay has. Or perhaps the strings of a cello or similarly larger string instrument. It’s unlikely Advay would be able to produce that sound on the guitar in his hands, especially not with the piano notes underneath.

I feel the setup of the scene was a lot like the scene in Arnav’s bedroom after the guesthouse incident, where this instrumental played in full. It was an introspective, emotional scene, and I think that’s why the theme was used here.

But I could absolutely be wrong -- I guess we’ll have to see whether they do it again to know :)

Not related at all: If you have time, watch this amazing video of Rabba Ve being played on a piano.

Advay’s guitar says “Unique”, which is the English translation of his name.

I loved this scene. I loved the emotion, I really liked the music, and I loved that Advay was basically thinking of all he’d lost and Chandni arrived with:

Chandni: “Main aa gayi!”     [I’m here.] 

She’s the cure to the emptiness in his life.

7. Punishment

Ahh no. I respectfully disagree, Professor Raizada. Katto gilehri means sexy, and there’s generally nothing wholesome about it ... at least not in the way I’ve heard it used.

Advay: “Sharma rahi ho tum?”      [Are you shy?]

Yes. Yes, she is.

Advay makes Chandni hold her ears and squat, something that Dev used to make her do as well, and she mutters to herself, thoroughly unimpressed. The muttering reminds Advay of tiny!Chandni, and he moves on to the second part of the challenge -- write out a hundred lines.

Chandni: “Aap koi master-ji hai kya?”    [Are you some kind of teacher?] Advay: “As a matter of fact, yeah. Main ek professor hoon.”    [As a matter of fact, yeah. I’m a professor.]

LOL.

She eventually acquiesces to the punishment, giving him the evil eye while he happily (and messily) eats noodles. She’s so horrified when he picks up a noodle from his shirt and starts to pop it into his mouth, that she stops him.

Precap: Hahaha it looks like the three idiots were spying on Advay, and Chandni is caught when she falls over. She claims she’s practising for her wedding photos, so Advay decides to help out.

Theories:

I got nothing.

Will I continue watching?

Yup.

Next