#which is really cutting into my human behavior data collection time

[brinnanza]

the fact that the genetic lottery rolled sensory processing issues severe enough that just regular chilling hanging out existing in my physical human body can be so overwhelming I am too exhausted to do basic tasks is a real fuckin snake eyes situation there is a lot about autism that I truly love and am genuinely grateful for but ripping all the labels off the sensory knobs and givin em a random spin is not fucking one of them

[system-of-a-feather]

Informal Explanations of Behavioral Research Concepts; Concept Validity

So I'm internally monologuing to myself about animal behavior research and how it compares to human research and the number of difficulties between it and the bridge between these two fields honestly highlights a great issue of concept validity which is why human behavior, emotions, and research on self have not really been able to break into the field of animal research which for stuff like medical issues has RAPIDLY accelerated findings and insights to how humans work

One of which that I've read the most on during my time studying animal behavior in academics was the idea of researching the concept of fear in animals. It sounds relatively straight forward, illicit fear in animals, measure that fear, bing bang boom easy

But you first have to ask a few questions to build that.

What is fear? How do we measure fear in humans? Is that measurement actually a good depiction of fear? Is what we think fear is a good description to what we are actually trying to study for the purposes of long term research?

Fear is a very subjective concept to start with. Ask 40 different people to describe and define fear and you will get many many many different answers. Some would describe it based on the biological reactions - amygdala activation, cortisol, etc - some might describe it on its behavioral aspects - avoidance, arousal - some might describe it on self reports - psychometrics and surveys - and some might describe it in a very ethereal manner that can't really be measured - some might mix and match these. To research fear in humans, we have to understand what fear is and what we are researching and any differences in the definition of fear that the researcher takes on will inherently change how the data is collected and interpretted. Data that talks about fear (purely biological and measuring activation of the amygdala) will likely have wildly different results than data that talks about fear (psychometrics and self reports) and data that talks about fear (behavioral measures and tracking). Which is the most accurate and most valid description and understanding? Which works the best to address the larger question in hand that you are meaning to look into? There is no real clear cut objective right answer and thus talking about "research in fear" will result many conflicting results not only due to many other complications in research but ALSO just different approaches to the concept of fear.

This is questioning the researcher's concept validity of fear in human research.

Do animals feel fear? If some do and some don't what animals do? What would fear look like in different species considering the lack of ability to directly communicate (with most) species despite the many different forms, biological and neurological differences? For species that have notably different brain structures and development (birds vs primates; insects, etc) how can we know that fear is even a possible expression that their brain can generate and not simply a human inferrence and transference assuming that our experiences are the same with animals? Additionally, how would we measure fear in animals? Is that measurement reliable? Is it actually a measurement that matches our definition of fear? Is that definition of fear actually in line with what we are trying to study for the purposes of long term research?

While humans have a tendency to assume all animals experience the same things as us, it is proven to be a very disservice assumption that underlies a lot of animal welfare issues that - as researchers realized it is often not the case - have been remedied in some locations but not others (cough cough ARAs cough cough). The truth is, animals have wildly different biologies than humans from the way they take in sound, vision, feelings, to how they process food and even their brain structures. As a result, it is heavily presumptuous to assume that any subjective and more ethereal emotional concept like "fear" is not only present but also present in the same way as humans and that stages a huge difficulty in the research of animal emotions and welfare states. Currently, this field is pretty young and in its infancy so there is limited understanding and consensus on the best way to navigate this and so there is a lot of discourse on what the HELL we are considering "fear" in animals and if it is even fair to call it that. Fundamentally, we have to heavily consider the concept validity of "fear" and even its existence and how we approach it when researching animal behavior.

Additionally, even if we do assume that, we have a large communication barrier between animals and humans and thus we are not able to rely on self reports (even with some 'communicative animals' like apes and parrots as there is discourse as to if that is "genuine" communication or learned) so we are forced to rely on behavioral and biological measurements - which in itself pose an issue due to the different morphology across species.

Additionally, when researching fear across species (particularly human and animal) - are these measurements measuring the same thing? Are the definitions the same? Do they both address the same type of fear in concept, definition, and measurements? How do they differ? How do the inherent differences in morphology impact the results and how much do those differences need to be taken into account?

ASSUMING that we take the claim that animal fear and human fear are the same and comparable, if we were to compare one to another, we would need the data and concepts of fear to be matching otherwise direct comparisons are not going to be all that fair as one measurement may be biased due to it being defined differently or measured differently. Of course it can be hard to have this ideal perfect match up and so often people accept that there will be this difference, but that does come at a cost to the validity of the concept itself. A study that measures an animals fear based on behavior would have to justify that it is a valid comparison to say a human measurement of fear through a combination of behavior and self reports and what not.

As a result to the researcher interpretting all these questions differently than another, the results can vary drastically and many many different and opposing conclusions can be made.

In turn, to the complex topic of DID and syscourse where the concept of DID and "plurality" and what not are VERY VERY VERY ethereal and esoteric, we have to ask what exactly are we defining, how are we measuring them, and how does that definition and measurement compare to the practical phenomenon itself that we are interested in?

Every approach will have its strengths and weaknesses, its more valid corners and its less valid corners, and it largely depends on what the overall long term research interest is. Someone interested in the experience of people who live as multiple people will be researching and coming to conclusions wildly different than someone who is interested in the experience of people who have survived complex and repeated trauma by developing strong dissociative states. Neither interpretation is inherently wrong or better than one another and they are answering the questions of concept validity of their research target very differently from one another simply due to the fact that the overarching interest is different.

That said, the differences and background and interpretation of the phenomenon that we are discoursing about needs to be taken into consideration when discussing and understanding research literature on the topic. A sociologist will answer it different than a clinical psychologist who will answer it differently than a neurologist because each of them are interested in a slightly different long term research goal than the other and that is netiher wrong nor bad. It is the intersection of all these different long term research interests that help build a much larger image of a very very complex and intangible concept such as DID/plurality/multiplicity etc

[insaneasgardian]

Arachnid Enigma - Irondad and Spiderson

Inspired by a headcanon from @cassiecasyl

“I just had this thought... Tony suddenly gets hyperfixated on spiders and noone knows why. The first time the Avengers notice it's on a mission and it's not weird, he's a genius after all, they figure he just knows stuff. But then he begins rambling about spiders randomly. And sometimes he speaks about some issues like it's personal experience but he doesn't have a pet spider, Nat confirmed that?? What is going on???”

And an addition to it by @savvysass

“Lmao then spiderman walks in and they r like ah. Ok.”

............................................................................................

Also, this is an Irondad and Spiderson fic. I do NOT ship Starker for obvious reasons. If you do, I would like you to leave my blog.

🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️ 🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️ 🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️ 🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️ 🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️ 🦸‍♀️🦹‍♂️🦸‍♂️🦹‍♀️

There have been several times Tony Stark has displayed a fascination with arachnids. The first time Tony ever mentioned spiders was on a stealth mission in Bhutan where a HYDRA base had been spotted. It was supposed to be relatively easy, break in, grab intel, don’t be seen, and get out. It was a successful mission but not everything went according to plan.

“I’m in” Steve spoke into his comms as he looked around the HYDRA base he had just infiltrated. “No sign of any people, just a lot of spiders and dust”, he added, eyeing the critters that scuttled around the dark and grimy area.

“Of course there are,” Tony commented, “HYDRA isn’t exactly a stickler for cleanliness, and spiders love dirty, sooty, nasty areas to live in”. Steve proceeded to roll his eyes at the obvious remark. It was just Tony being Tony.

“Has everyone managed to locate the entrance?”, The Captain inquired, getting plenty of affirmative responses. Soon enough, everyone managed to enter the building and joined Steve in the large room he stood in.

There was no illumination except for the few rays sunlight that filtered in through the cathedral window. Just as Steve had said, there was an immense amount of dust settled all over the floor, window, and grand staircase that led to the second floor, along with a lot of arachnids. Clint stepped forward, accidentally crunching a couple of spiders under his foot. Tony clenched his jaw tightly, “Don’t. DO THAT!” he hissed extremely loudly, alarming everyone.

Clint gulped, “Geez, sorry”. Unfortunately for the team of heroes, Tony had not only surprised his colleagues but the occupants of the building too. Shuffling and a lot of movement was heard, and before the Avengers could retreat, the enemy confronted them.

“Great work Tony”, Natasha mumbled angrily under her breath when she saw several HYDRA agents rushing down the stairs. Earth’s mightiest heroes worked quickly and efficiently to take out the flocks and flocks of operatives running at them. Although it wasn’t a very hard job, it still took out the stealth element out of their job.

After the oncoming threat was wiped out and the data they needed had been collected, the team swiftly exited the base and entered the quinjet where Bruce was waiting for them. “What happened?” the scientist asked, inspecting his friends who were covered in gore.

Sam sighed, “Tony happened”, he stated simply.

Another time Tony spoke of the arachnids was when they had a day off, and decided to spend them with Clint’s family at their farm. It was around now that a few of the heroes began to suspect that Tony wasn’t just knowledgeable about the eight legged critters, but he was utterly fascinated by them.

“Thank you again for having us Laura” Wanda said, earning a kind smile from Clint’s wife.

“It was no problem at all!” she responded, putting together some quick snacks for the whole team.

The Avengers had a great time with the Bartons. Chatting and laughing, gossiping and giggling. It was fun. Just before they were about to leave and as Clint kissed his wife goodbye, a little shriek was heard. It was Nathaniel Barton.

Everybody was alarmed at first, thinking something terrible had happened to the boy, but when they saw the cause, they couldn’t help burst out laughing. A large house spider was crawling on Nathaniel’s show. Although spiders were the cause of a rational phobia, the team of heroes did not fear the hairy critter before them.

Tony stepped forward and picked up the spider, placing it somewhere it would be safe, and also where Nathaniel wouldn’t freak out over it. He then turned to the youngest Barton child, “Don’t worry kid,” he began “spiders are great creatures! Honestly, they’re really cute, and nice, and brave”. 

Thor snickered, “You speak of spiders as if they’re people”. Tony opened his mouth to say something, but then hurriedly shut it and looked away from the group. Tony was quiet. That was a first. What was happening to Tony? 

Meanwhile, Rhodey stood in the corner, looking at the confused glances his friends gave each other as they attempted to figure out what was causing Tony’s new behavior. He smiled, and this didn’t go unnoticed by Loki who narrowed his eyes slightly and chewed his lip in thought. What did Colonel James know?

To mention one more instance in which Tony displayed an unusual interest in spiders was just the day after the Avengers visit to the Bartons. Nick Fury had brought his pet tarantula to work and the team was crowded around it.

“What’s his name?” Sam curiously inquired.

“It’s Bert,” the director responded, sounding rather bored, “I got him from Agent Hill’s house,  she despises spiders”. 

Tony looked at Maria, who was standing quite far away from Bert, cautiously watching him. “Don’t be scared Maria!” he exclaimed, “They’re gentle, come closer”. The agent’s eyes widened in fear and she rapidly shook her head which made a few of the Avengers chuckle. “Come on”, Tony encouraged. 

Maria looked around the room for an escape, but seeing that everyone in the room had conveniently blocked the exits she sighed and walked closer. “Go on and pet him”, Fury remarked, clearly amused at the situation. Agent Hill desperately wanted to refuse but she didn’t want to chicken out so she carefully held out a finger and ran it over the tarantula’s hairy body.

She wanted to puke.

“See! It’s not so bad!” Steve said, smiling at her. Still, the agent quickly pulled away. Spiders were definitely not her thing. “Yes, spiders are just as scared of humans and some humans are of them,” Tony began, “they’re quite shy actually but very gentle! They won’t hurt anybody unless they feel provoked-”

“What is it with you and spiders?” Bruce cut him off with a playful grin. The genius billionaire playboy philanthropist froze and all the humor initially on his features disappeared. Everyone noticed this change in behavior and Bruce fidgeted uncomfortably, believing he had upset his lab buddy. “I mean... you just speak of them a lot, do you have like a pet spider or something?”

Tony remained quiet but Natasha answered, “No, he doesn’t have any pets”. The group turned to the redheaded assassin and she shrugged, “What? I’m a spy, I know stuff”. 

A silence fell over once again, and it was interrupted by Tony. “Oh! I got a business meeting soon, see you guys later”, and with that, he turned and trudged away just as Phil Coulson walked in. Tony bumped into him, “Sorry Agent” he mumbled quietly before proceeding to walk out.

Phil shot Nick and Maria a confused look, and both returned it. The Avengers on the other hand knew for sure something was up.

The last time the Avengers wondered about Tony’s obsession with spiders was also the time they found out its cause. The entire team was just about to enter Tony’s lab.

“Sleep well spidey boy” are exactly the words the Avengers heard Tony whisper before they could walk into his lab. They all heard it, and looked around at each other for confirmation that they were hearing the right thing. They then proceeded to have a conversation right outside Tony’s work space. A quick one, in which they decided it was time to confront Tony about his spider problem. There was nothing wrong with loving them, but talking to a spider? This was unhealthy.

So they opened the door to the lab and walked in on a very surprised Tony Stark, his face paled, but he regained his composure. “Heyyyy, what’s up guys?” he asked, casually leaning against a wall. 

His superhero friends looked at him sadly and Steve stepped forward, “Tony, I think it’s time we talked about-” he was interrupted by a snore. Captain America agitatedly glanced back, “Can you guys please be serious?”, he requested. However, everyone behind him was looking confused.

Then a cough was heard, then another, it then developed into a coughing fit. Then there was silence. Until there wasn’t. “Oh shoot! I am so sorry Mr Stark, did I disturb yo-... OH MY GOD IT’S THE AVENGERS!”, a voice came from the ceiling. The group collectively looked up and saw a boy, no older than 16 with wavy brown hair and adorable doe brown eyes gaping at them.

Tony tiredly rubbed his eyes, “Hope you had a nice nap Peter,” he said, “Come down now”. The boy, Peter, obliged and hopped down from the ceiling without injuring himself. 

“How did you do that? Stick to the ceiling I mean” Bucky asked.

Peter looked at the super soldier and smiled brightly, “I’m spiderman!”, he practically yelled, “It’s what I do!”. The Avengers all looked at this young boy in shock. 

“The kid from Queens?” Wanda asked.

“Yea, the kid from Queens,” Rhodey confirmed, “Tony kept Peter a secret this whole time as so not to endanger him”. 

The billionaire nodded and smiled sheepishly, “Secrets out now I guess...” he murmured.

There was silence, it wasn’t awkward or comfortable. It was the kind of silence that hung in the air after a huge revelation... It was astounded silence.

Tony broke it, he placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder and began guiding him out the room, “Come on kid, let’s go get some cheeseburgers”. With that, they stepped out the lab and left the rest of the people still standing there, completely appalled.

Steve turned back to the group he had led into the lab, “Well... that kind of explains the interest in spiders I guess...”

@emma-elsa-0000 @lost-lunar-wolf @joyful-soul-collector @teammightypen @blerghfish @incorrect-spiderson @only-love-can @badmcuposts @cassiecasyl @savvysass 

[restapesta]

Spencer Reid / One Shots (1) - Doctor, Agent, Professor

A Spencer Reid fan fiction (one shot) that takes place a couple of months after the series finale:

The BAU team was well aware of the fact that Spencer was teaching when he wasn't working the cases, and one of the things they had been dying to do was witness it themselves. So, one day, when they had no cases and a lot of free time, they decided to "sneak in" to one of his lectures.

A near-death experience made Spencer Reid rethink most of his life's choices, if not all of them. After two weeks of pondering over his life, both professional and social, while recovering from his injury, he had concluded that Maeve was absolutely right. Perhaps it wasn't Maeve exactly, but rather his subconscious mind just taking the form of his late girlfriend, but she - or it - was right nevertheless - he needed to do what made him happy.

Spencer wasn't ready to leave the team yet. It was his home, and he loved his job too much to just pack up and give it up for good. The thought made him cringe - being a profiler was something he loved, so it was only natural he continued to do it. The danger would probably never disappear, but at least he wouldn't feel empty inside.

But, being a part of the BAU wasn't the only thing that brought joy to his life. During the time he spent in the hospital, stuck with the nurses and his messed up brain, he realized his passions lay elsewhere, as well. It wasn't only being in the FBI that gave him purpose. He even said it himself - he loved many things - jello, books, fiddling with his pen, learning. And he most certainly, above all, loved teaching.

The reason he started working as a professor in the FBI academy was anything but a happy one - he was forced to do it. Barnes had placed him as a full-time professor, taking him off the team. Although he hated it at first - being stuck teaching instead of saving lives and helping his friends - he grew to love it. It was a thrill, being able to share his knowledge with young students who share the same passion for profiling, crime, and helping people like he did at that age. It was something he was meant to do, Spencer supposed. What would all this knowledge do him good if he didn't pass it on?

The decision to become a professor and a BAU's consultant was a tactical one, but it was also a decision that made Spencer happy. He enjoyed being able to teach, and with it have more time off, as well as being able to help with cases and stay an FBI agent. His time was split between classes and cases, and he tried to organize it as best as he could. He would join the team on as many cases as he could but would also attempt to hold as many classes as he was physically able to, all while attempting to keep his sanity. It was working out so far.

The team had a few rough cases in the past month and Spencer was itching to get away from it all, just for a little bit. It was just his luck that the BAU had some downtime this week and that he was able to spend some time away from the crime scenes and focus more on his social life and other jobs.

It was the first class Spencer had been able to hold in the past month, so he spent some time choosing the topic and preparing for it. He wanted to talk about behavioral analysis, a subject he had only slightly touched upon. He hadn't felt the class was ready for it yet, but, based on everything he had taught them so far, he was certain that it was only fitting for them to finally receive a lecture on how to take a deep dive into the minds of the most vicious killers through their victims. He was fairly excited about it.

The class was pouring in, filling up the seats of the auditorium, leaving only a few of them empty. At first, the classes had only a dozen or more students, but now, it was rare for the auditorium not to be full. And Spencer was extremely happy that only a handful of the students were auditing, unlike at the beginning of his teaching career.

He rarely surveyed the faces in the crowd - he felt uncomfortable doing so, mostly because of some of the looks he would receive from the female - and sometimes male - students. He felt it was just better to keep his eyes unfocused. He trusted his mind would be able to pinpoint unusual behavior.

For a few moments, he waited for the students to settle down. Then, checking his watch to make sure it was the right time, he took a deep breath and began.

The group of friends, colleagues, and teammates had been planning this for a very long time. It was only convenient for them to have very little work this week and be able to finally make their plans a reality.

The planning began a month after Reid had committed himself to teaching. He was still a bit loopy from his injury, but as always, the genius was ready to get back into the game. But, from what the team was able to deduce, he was gone almost as much as he was there. Everyone knew he was only a phone call away, but as an essential member of the BAU, and as the one who was there almost always, it was weird seeing him away.

What was even weirder was seeing that the awkward, antisocial doctor was spending his time away teaching in front of a group of very judgmental teenagers and students in their early twenties. They needed to witness it.

And so, the team piled up along with the other young men and women, seating themselves in the far back of the classroom. They wanted to remain inconspicuous, as not to put pressure on Reid, but, by the looks of it, he didn't even notice.

Tara turned in her seat to look at Emily who was getting something out of her bag. "What is that?" Her voice was muffled by the sounds of backpacks being placed on chairs and notebooks being taken out.

Emily smiled slightly. "Popcorn,"  

Luke cast a weird look towards his Unit chief and friend. "Popcorn?"

Emily pointed at a water bottle in her lap. "And water. You know, since I couldn't bring wine."

He gave a shake of his head, looking towards Tara and JJ who were sitting next to one another.

"I wish Penelope was here." JJ sighed. "She would love this."

Luke let out a chuckle. "You know she wanted to be here, but, her job's been keeping her away. She loves it, though - says she wouldn't change it for the world."

"Good for her." Rossi piped in, eyes glued to the whiteboard which was filled with Spencer's handwriting.

"Rossi? What are you staring at so intently? You look like you're at a shooting range, all you need is a gun." JJ questioned, making Dave smile. The others chuckled as they waited for a reply.

"You see that board right there?" He pointed at the board in the center of the room. "Judging by the things written on there, and knowing Spence, I have a feeling this is going to be good."

"Well, I'm excited." Luke shifted in his seat, making Emily nod, mouth filled with popcorn.

The room was starting to grow silent. Rossi took a lot at his watch - 9:58 AM. He knew Reid was a very punctual man, so he expected to class to start in no less than two minutes. He smiled to himself.

"Oh my God, I can't wait!" The girl sitting a row down from the team whisper-shouted loud in enough for the people surrounding her to hear. Emily raised her eyebrows, glancing towards Tara and JJ.

"Shh! He's an FBI agent. If you continue acting like that, he'll read you like a book." Her friend replied, all while applying lip gloss.

"I wish he did." The girl said in a sultry voice, making Tara and JJ exchange a look. Alvez made a snorting sound but quickly covered it up with his hand.

"Are they talking about --" he started, but JJ was quick to cut him off.

"Yup."

He let out a low chuckle, making Tara snicker. JJ's heart clenched slightly, but she pushed her thoughts away. The class was about to begin.

The room grew noticeably quieter. No whispering among classmates, no additional browsing through backpacks and notebooks - the attention of the entire auditorium was solely placed to the front. Rossi took another glance at his watch. It was exactly ten.

The moment Spencer walked into the room, all eyes went to him. Rossi knew he wasn't used to the attention, and he wondered how he reacted to it. He himself never had a problem with it, but he held a couple of seminars with Reid and there was a slight fear that he'd react in a way that would earn him zero respect as a professor. But Dave was also a profiler, and he knew, judging the way Spencer carried himself walking into the room, the fear was completely unnecessary.

"For the past month, we've been discussing all things criminology, but for today, I thought it would be nice for us to move on to a more challenging subject - a subject most of you are here for, I presume. Can anyone tell me what behavioral analysis is?"

Hands shot up across the entire room, and so did Luke's, before JJ elbowed him in the ribs, making him begrudgingly put it down. "You wouldn't have known the answer anyway." She answered his unasked question. Emily snickered, offering him his popcorn, which he gladly took.

"Yes?" He pointed at a girl in the front row.

"I guess it's what profilers use to detect certain anomalies in behavior and uncover secrets people may be hiding." It was obvious she was really nervous, but Spencer nodded while she answered, making her more confident with how she formulated her answer.

"Essentially, yes, that's the premise, but the actual definition slightly differs." His hands moved around him as he explained, "Behavior analysis is a natural science that seeks to understand the behavior of individuals. That is, behavior analysts study how biological, pharmacological, and experiential factors influence the behavior of humans and nonhuman animals."

"What do behavioral analysts do, actually?"

"Focused on teaching others how to collect data to create a therapeutic environment, behavior analysts write reports and implement plans to improve support programs. They teach support professionals, parents, and teachers different ways to implement behavior support plans, procedures, and skills."

"Dr. Reid, is this going to be on the exam?"

He released a sigh, slightly annoyed by the interruption. "As I've already said multiple times, everything we discuss in these classes is of importance, but to make this slightly interesting here's an assignment for all of you enrolled in the class - based on everything we'll be learning throughout the next couple of classes on the subject of behavioral analysis, I want you to attempt to profile what I'm going to put on the exam. You can write it down, remember it, share it with a friend - whatever you want. If you get it right, you'll get extra credit. And, because of that, unfortunately, asking me this type of question would be cheating. Should we continue now?"

"Wouldn't it be more fun if we tried to profile you?" The female student twirled her hair around her finger absentmindedly, gazing towards the doctor.

He smiled, "You can try, but only if you actually pay attention will you be able to get close to the truth." He shot her a pointed look, and the students chuckled as she started to blush. "Now, let's move on."

Tara leaned in and whispered to JJ, "He's really good at this,"

"Yeah," Luke nodded along with JJ.

Rossi just stared intently at Spencer who was now talking about the ways the behavioral analysis was used in FBI. He noticed how confident he was, and how passionately he talked about his job. There was only one way he could describe what he was feeling watching Spencer - he was immensely proud of him.

When the first hour passed, Spencer decided it was enough for the day. He knew that statistically, students could only go on for so long listening to what he had to say. "I think we've gone through enough today, we'll definitely continue off next time. Thank you, guys." He made his way towards his satchel, aware of the students packing up, and leaving the auditorium.

Suddenly, his phone went off. Max's name popped up on the screen, and his face lit up with joy. He didn't waste time answering the call. "Hey, you. What's up?"

Her voice was sweet on the other side, "Nothing much. Just calling in to check on my favorite doctor."

His smile grew. "I just finished a class. Want to meet up, get lunch?"

"Yeah, that'd be great. Let's meet at the park, in like, thirty minutes?"

"It's a date."

She chuckled on the other side, "Sure is. See you soon, bye."

"Bye."

"Was that Max?" Rossi's voice made Reid look up from his phone. A smile was plastered on his face.

"Yeah, it was." He noticed his team piling up around his desk which only made his mood better. "Why didn't you guys tell me you were coming? I would've given you VIP seats." He joked.

Tara shot him a quizzical look, "You don't seem surprised to see us."

"Oh, I just kind of guessed it was a matter of time before you showed up."

Luke raised an eyebrow, "Really?"

JJ intercepted before Spencer could answer. "When did you know we were here?"

His eyebrows knitted together as if she asked a weird question. "When you walked in?"

"We were trying to be inconspicuous!" Tara exclaimed.

"With Emily eating her popcorn, I think the whole room noticed you."

Emily chuckled. "Guilty as charged. But, I can make it up to you by taking you out for lunch. C'mon, let's go!"

"Yes, I'm starving," Tara added.

"Actually, I can't come with."

"Why, Spence? You got plans?" Rossi asked, poking a little fun at him.

Spencer smiled knowingly. "Actually, yes. I'm taking my wonderful girlfriend out for lunch. You guys wanna join?"

Emily shook her head no, "Nope, you go out and have some fun. Say hi to Max for us."

Spencer nodded, "I will."

"Well, I think we'll head out now. Great lecture, man." Luke tapped Spencer on the shoulder.

"It was amazing," Tara confirmed.

"Couldn't agree more," Emily added.

"Stop guys, you're making him blush." JJ joked, hugging him goodbye.

Rossi stayed back as the team made their way outside. "That was great, Spencer."

"Thank you, Dave."

"I think Gideon would be proud." He smiled at him one last time, before leaving along with the rest of the team.

Spencer took a deep breath, put his satchel around his torso, and smiled.

Thank you, Maeve.

[teenyfish]

Marine Biology Story of the Day #10

Hello all.  This post was kinda delayed because I spent all day cleaning out my pool (it’s an above ground pool—my COVID 19 impulse purchase) because a hurricane came through and it’s full of dead insects and leaves among other things.  The joys of living right on the coast 😊

Thanks for all of your interest and support on my shrimp research—it’s nice to know that people are interested in the little guys too.  So today, we are going to talk about how all of my interest in tiny fish got started—my master’s program and my thesis.  

SOoooo…originally I wasn’t planning on getting my masters because it sounded like a lot of work but then I changed my mind last minute when I started looking at job applications and saw that for many of them, you needed a masters—so I ended up becoming a master’s student at the same University that I did my undergrad at—called Christopher Newport University.  It’s a teeny public school in Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay. And the reason I chose to do this is because I would be working under Dr. Jessica Thompson, who in hindsight, was probably the best advisor I could have had.

Dr. Thompson is a wonderful human being with many beautiful tattoos, and can definitely drink me under the table, and raises chickens in the middle of a city, but she is also pure and wholly supportive—something that I really needed during that period of my life.  She also exclusively studied a wonderful teeny tiny fish:  Fundulus heteroclitus, or the Mummichog.

(The males are the ones with the stripes and bright shiny scales and the female is the drabber one)

Her research focuses on this little fish because it is one of the hardiest fish on the east coast.  It primarily lives in shallow water salt marsh habitats (intertidal marshes). These shallow water habitats often have very extreme temperature and salinity changes, as shallow water heats and cools up much faster than deep water.  So they can survive in a wide range of temperatures, salinities, and dissolved oxygen conditions—I call them the cockroaches of the sea (except they are much cuter).  They are also a very important food resources for a TON of marine and coastal predators.

They were also the first fish in space—and they were used in spatial orientation studies.  You see, in space, animals and plants can lose all sense of up and down because there is no gravity—however in a few days, this fish were able to figure out their spatial orientation (possibly due to orienting to the overhead light source?). Anyway, they are incredible little babies.

(NASA scientist John Boyd choosing the first two fish (and fish eggs) to leave planet earth)

Because they can move into the very shallow intertidal marsh area (the part where the grasses grow) they can avoid predators during high tide, and this area of the marsh is chock full of food for them, mostly in the form of small zooplankton and worms that live in the mud.  But during low tide, this part of the habitat dries up, and they are forced out into the deeper subtidal creeks of the marsh, where they get to be in cooler water, but they are at the mercy of predators, and there is less food.

(everything in the open water is subtidal, everything between tidal flat and low marsh is intertidal)

My aspect of this research involved looking at behavior choices made by these guys when presented with “intertidal marsh” habitat filled with food and marsh grass (their preferred habitat), however we cranked the temperature up to 34-40 oC (93—104 oF), OR a empty “subtidal creek” habitat with no food or structure, but at their optimum temperature for growth at 26 oC (79 oF). 34-40 oC is an EXTREMELY high temperature for fish to be able to function at—most fish begin shutting down their metabolism at these temperatures (aka dying).  But supposedly, Mummichog can deal with these temps.  There thermal maxima (upper temperature at which they can function) is reported to be 42 oC.

So I had to construct an experimental tank.  

These were some of the first iterations of the tank—we had to do a lot of practice runs before we got the design just right.  The concept is the same—we used this corrugated plastic (the same you use to make those political signs ppl stick in their front yard) to form two sections, one for warm, one for cold, and a box in the middle that we would remove a door and allow for the fish to swim out.  Once the fish chose a side (remained on a side for more than 10 seconds) we would close them off from the rest of the tank—they made a “choice”. In later iterations of the design, we covered the tank in more of the plastic to hide them from us (so they wouldn’t show fear behaviors) and put in fake salt marsh grass on the warm side to mimic an intertidal marsh habitat.  Fish were also fed pieces of cut up shrimp on the warm side.   We ran 3 trials at increasing temperatures for each run, and during each trial, the fish were run through the tank simulation once a day for three weeks.  

In order to get fish for this study, we had to catch wild fish. To catch them, we set minnow traps in the small channels leading into the intertidal marsh at low tide, and as the tide came in, and fish funneled into these channels, they became trapped in our minnow traps.

(examples of minnow traps, and our collection site in Norfolk) 

Problem was, in order to get out to these sites, we had to slog through some serious mud.  I’m talking about sink up to your thigh levels of mud y’all (and this really bothered me, I’m super claustrophobic).  So in order not to get trapped in the mud, we had to wear mudders, which are a little bit like snowshoes (in concept?) but also not like snowshoes at all.  They were like boxes you strapped onto your feet with plastic sticking out on the side which was meant to make your footprint bigger (and therefore give you more support on the mud).  They worked pretty well but they always gave me major bruises on my ankles as the plastic pressed up and into my ankles.  I had to buy some foam padding to wrap around my ankles it was so bad.

Once we got our sweet little babies, I would tag each of them individualy so I could keep track of individual fish.  I did this with a combination of Visible Implant Alpha Tags, which are florescent and have individual numbers on them, or Visible Implant Elastomer Tag, which are made of a non-toxic elastomer “paint” and come in 9 colors, so you can create an individual code for each individual by combining 2 colors. These tags are injected under the skin so that they are still visible (fish skin is pretty transparent) but are not very deep in the muscle tissue. These are really great tags to use on really small fish. We used MS-Tricane to anesthetize the fish and inject them, so basically I’ve done fish surgery. You can check out these tags at Northwest Marine Technology—I still use them now!  I’m using them on a current project.  

(left, a VI Alpha Tag on a trout, right, two different colors of VI elastomer tags on a flounder) 

And our fish did really well after tagging—we had no tagging mortalities!

Once we ran these fish through all three trials, it was time to analyze data. We calculated the fish’s dominant “choice” by calculating the proportion of days during the trial they chose the “warm side”—if their proportion was 90%, they had a high affinity for choosing the warm side, 30% they had a low affinity for choosing the warm side and instead more often chose the cool side for example.  Then we put this data into environmental models to see if temperature influenced their choices.

And the result?

You read it here first folks.  These little fish decided to swim into upwards of 104 o C water regularly to get food—they were so food motivated—and most fish chose the warm side over the cool side most often during every trial.  However there was a decent amount of variation—there was a contingent of fish that went into the cool side more often as temperature rose, and would forgo eating for comfort, but overall, the fish chose the warm side.  This shows that these fish may be able to adapt quickly as temperatures rise—and those that choose to move into warmer, shallower waters to access food will more likely survive to reproduce (since they choose to be in regions with less predators and more food).  This means they are more likely to pass on their warm water acclimating genes to their offspring, continuing their species ability to deal with extreme temperatures on to the next generations.  

My thesis defense obviously went well, and I got my masters, but I’ve kept my interest for the smaller fish and invertebrate species because they form one of the base levels of our ocean ecosystems and serve as a very important food resource to larger predators.  I’d like to credit Dr. Thompson for giving me this interested and giving me the appreciation for these little and underappreciated animals.  She and I have kept in touch—she was actually at my wedding last May, and when my dad got in a major accident (four days before I was supposed to defend my thesis) she came to the hospital and helped me through it, and also helped me push back my defense one semester so I could recuperate from the trauma a little.  I am extremely grateful for her tutelage, and I’m grateful for these sweet little babies.

Thanks for reading, and as always, if you have any questions about the field work or the research, PLEASE do not hesitate to ask or comment.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

I want to express an unpopular opinion. I hope for your understanding, because such things don't like to listen. Why does everyone think that Hawks is a bird? I couldn' fit my logical arguments into the askbox :( (about how he sits on a pole "like a bird", supposedly likes jewelry and so on). Even his quirk is called Fierce Wings, not a Hawk, not a Red Bird. Do you remember the names of the quirks of Hound Dog and Tsuyu-chan? We haven't evidence to believe that Hawks is behaves like a bird.

I do believe very much he’s a bird, and if you would let me friend, I would love to try and prove it to you because I think the evidence is overwhelming. I’ll make a TL;DR at the end but I’d really like to take the opportunity to perhaps teach others at least one method for literary analysis since it can be a really dry and boring subject to learn in school but is SO useful not only for getting good grades but getting into colleges as well as interpreting both entertainment and genuinely important information like the news, history, laws, and scientific papers. Using fiction - especially such a rich, engaging one like HeroAca - is a great way to try it out without the pressure of a grade. I don’t have the qualifications to teach in any formal capacity, but as a “peer” tutor I hope I can be helpful.

I’m going to put everything under the cut from here because this is going to get LONG, but I promise the TL;DR at the end will be very easy to read. If you liked this sort of unofficial tutorial please let me know. I’d love to help make “academic” skills like this more accessible for those who might benefit from it and enjoy it, but it doesn’t make sense to put in all that effort moving forward if I’m garbage at it.

Before we get too into things, I want to lay out a few notes to keep in mind as we go.

I will only be using the official translations from Viz’s Shonen Jump website when available. Fan translations are more than close enough to casually enjoy and follow the story, but professional translators are paid to know and get various nuances correct and some of the trickier cultural background behind certain phrases (for example, the phrase “where the rubber meets the road” might make zero sense in a foreign language if translated literally, so an equal cultural phrase should be used instead) that give more exact information. Rarely is this too important, but sometimes it helps, plus it supports the source material.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you might know I’m very fond of doing this kind of thing in my spare time and that I’m a huge fan of YouTube channels like Game/Film Theory, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Extra Credits, and Wisecrack that do this kind of thing with popular media as well. If you like this sort of content, may I encourage you to check them out after this to see how else you can apply these kinds of analytical skills to things that aren’t homework.

My writing style tends to meander, but I do my best to cut out the fat and only include relevant information so even though there’s a lot of information here, please know that I’m trying to be thorough and explain things to the best of my ability. If I seem to go off on a tangent, I’m trying to set up or contextualize information to explain why it’s relevant and then come back to the point. In other words, please be patient and bear with me as I go.

Now, to start, I want to explain at least my method for analyzing a text/piece of media. There is a set order and number of steps to take, and it’s as follows:

Read the material all the way through.

Come up with a hypothesis about something you’ve noticed when reading it. (In this case, it’s “Is Hawks actually supposed to be a bird?”)

Collect as much relevant information as possible and test the evidence to see if it supports the hypothesis we’ve made.

Step back and look at everything again with those points in mind.

Determine if we were right or wrong with the evidence we have.

If we were wrong, go back to step 3 to figure out what fell apart and see if we need to go back to step 2.

If that sequence sounds familiar it’s because it’s the scientific method! Aha, didn’t think we’d be pulling science into all this, did you? Don’t worry, we won’t be putting numbers or formulas anywhere near this discussion - the scientific method is just a way we can observe something and test if what we thought about it is actually true; and it applies to almost everything we as humans can observe - from the laws of the universe, to arts and crafts, to philosophy and religion, and so on! When you think about it that way, whole new possibilities can open up for you when it comes to understanding how the world works.

So with that set let’s (finally) begin!

Steps 1 and 2 are already done. We’ve read the manga and want to prove that Hawks is a bird. (We’re going to try and prove he IS a bird because in the context of the series there’s a lot that *isn’t* a bird and less stuff that *is* which will make our job easier.) So now, we’re onto: 

Step 3 - collect data and see what conclusions we can get just from our evidence.

Now, to pause again (I know, bear with me!) there’s a few different kinds of information and considerations we have to keep in mind as we collect. There are four kinds of information that are important to know about in order to determine if it’s good data that will help us with the testing phase in Step 4. The kinds of information to keep in mind are:

Explicit information - this is information that is directly spelled out for us. For example, Hawks says, “I like my coffee sweet.” and his character sheet says “Hawk’s favorite food is chicken.” That’s all there is to it, and it’s pretty hard to argue with. This is the easiest type of info to find.

Implicit information - this is info that isn’t directly spelled out but is noticeable either in the background or as actions, patterns, or behaviors that can be observed. For example, Hawks has mentioned in at least three very different places his concerns over people getting hurt while he tries to get in with the League:

Chapter 191 when confronting Dabi about the Nomu he says, “You said you’d release it in the factory on the coast, not in the middle of the damn city!”

Chapter 191 again in a flashback with the Hero Commission he asks, “What about the people who might be hurt while I’m infiltrating the League?”

Chapter 240 when discovering how much influence and power the League has gained, “If someone had taken down the League sooner, all those good citizens wouldn’t have had to die!”

Hawks never says in so many words, “I never want innocent people to get hurt under any circumstances!” but the pattern of behavior and concern is consistent enough to form a pattern and clue us in that this is a key part of his character to keep in mind.

Peripheral information - this is information that isn’t directly to do with Hawks or maybe even the series as a whole but is still relevant to keep in mind for his character and the questions we’re asking. This may include extra content that isn’t the “series” proper, but is still an official source like interviews with Horikoshi, etc. but it can go even further. For example, while we try to prove that he’s a bird, we should have some knowledge about what makes a bird a bird, some specific and notable birdlike habits/behaviors/features, etc. This is just to show how wide-ranging we need to cast our informational net.

Contextual information - this will be important when we get to Step 4, but it’s good to keep in mind now. This is when we compare evidence against the broader scope of the series and consider the circumstances under which we find the information. For example, if I told you, “Harry kicked a dog.” you might think “What a jerk! What decent person kicks a dog?”; but if I said, “Harry kicked a dog while trying to keep it from biting his kid.” suddenly it re-frames the story. “Is the kid ok? Why was that dog attacking? Harry put himself in danger to keep his kid safe - what a great dad!”

I’ll go chronologically to make it easier to follow my evidence as I gather and give references as to where I found that information. I’ll go through the manga first, and then any peripheral sources that are either direct informational companions to the series (like character books or bonus character information sheets) and interviews with Horikoshi. Please note the categories these details fall into may vary based on opinion/interpretation, but I did my best to list them out for reference.

Chapter 185 - Explicit Type: Feathered wings - regardless of the specifics of his quirk it’s undeniable his wings are made up of feathers which is a distinctly birdlike quality. There are many mythical creatures and even dinosaurs that also have feathered wings, but this is our first big piece of evidence.

Chapter 186 - Peripheral Type: Large appetite - birds have an incredibly fast metabolism because flying takes so much energy. They’re constantly eating. Plenty of young men are big eaters, but it was specifically pointed out and works towards our hypothesis so we’ll keep it in our back pocket for now.

Chapter 186 - Implicit/Peripheral Type: Fantastic vision - Hawks senses the Nomu coming before the audience even is able to make out what’s headed their way. It could be implied his wings caught it first, which might be the case, but he looks directly at the Nomu and brings Endeavor’s attention to it. Birds have fantastic long-range vision, especially birds of prey that mainly swoop in from high in the air to ambush highly perceptive prey. Also good to add to the pile.

Chapter 192 + Volume 20 Cover - Implicit/Peripheral type: Wears jewelry and bright colors - birds are well documented to be drawn to bright colors and are known for decorating their nests with trinkets. Scientists actually have to be careful when tagging birds with tracking bracelets because they can accidentally make him VASTLY more popular with the ladies by giving him a brightly colored band to the point they can’t resist him! Male birds are also known for having bright, colorful displays for attracting and wooing mates. While Hawks isn’t the only male character to wear jewelry in the series, he’s the only one (to my recollection) that wears as MUCH jewelry so often both during and outside of work. It may not be obvious, but the illustration on Volume 20 is actually an advertisement for his line of (presumably) luxury jewelry. In other words, Hawks on some level is synonymous with style and flair to the point he can make money by selling jewelry with his name on it.

Chapter 20 Volume Cover - Explicit Type: Hawk emblem on the watch face - If the name “Hawks” didn’t give it away, he’s very clearly trying to align himself with more avian qualities if his merch has bird motifs. In other words Hawk = “Hero Hawks” and “Hero Hawks” = bird.

Chapter 192, 244, clear file illustration - Peripheral Type: birdlike posture. Chapter 244 isn’t quite released yet on the official site as of writing this, but when Hawks swoops in and beats the kids to the punch apprehending the criminals trying to subdue Endeavor, his hands are clenched in a very talon-like manner similar to a swooping eagle. When walking with Endeavor in 192, he holds his resting hand in a similar fashion. On the clear file illustration he’s not only perched on his tippy toes in a pose that has been famously called “owling” (remember that trend/meme, y’all?) but his wings are slightly outstretched to catch the breeze to keep from falling over which a lot of birds can be seen doing when they don’t have great purchase on a surface in a place that’s a little windy. The fact that he seems to gravitate to high places like birds are often seen doing might also be a noteworthy indication.

Extra sources:

Hawks Shifuku: Horikoshi describes Hawks as a “bird person” and says that his initial design was based off of Takahiro from his old manga. 

Takahiro’s design:

Current character design: The banner image on my blog was commissioned from a friend of mine who doesn’t follow the series. When I showed her reference images of Hawks, you know what she said? “Oh! His hair is feathers!” Even his eyebrows have that fluffy/scruffy texture to them that his hair has. The markings on his eyes can also be seen on him as a young child in Chapter 191 which means it isn’t makeup meant to tie in a theme or look. He has those dark, pointed eye markings like many birds do. So on some genetic level he resembles a bird.

Step 4: Testing our hypothesis with the gathered evidence.

There’s already a lot of compelling evidence that already closely aligns him to birds which is promising. However, to really prove our point we should try to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt he is a bird. To do that this time around I’m going to see how the series treats people with animal-based quirks and see if it’s consistent with the way Hawks is portrayed.

You bring up Hound Dog and Tsuyu, and they’re fantastic examples. Let’s start with Hound.

He’s pretty straight forward - he’s like a dog. He has a dog face, has dog-like tendencies, and dog-like abilities. Superpower: dog.

And in Tsuyu’s case - quirk: frog, just frog. She’s stated explicitly to have frog-like features, frog-like tendencies, have frog-like abilities, and even comes from a “froggy family.”

So with these two very explicitly animal-like characters the common theme seems to be “If they’re considered to be like a specific animal, they have to physically resemble that animal, act like that animal at times, and have abilities like that animal.” Let’s see if another animal-quirk character matches up and then put Hawks to the test.

Spinner’s quirk is Gecko. Based on our criteria, is he a gecko?

Does he look like a gecko, even vaguely? 

Yes, he’s covered head to toe in scales, and his face is very lizard-like.

Does he occasionally act like a gecko? 

Unclear. We haven’t really seen any evidence of this, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t. For the sake of our argument, we’ll just say no and move on.

Does he have gecko-like abilities?

 Yes! Though most of his abilities are limited to things like being able to stick to walls, it’s still gecko-like in origin and qualifies.

Spinner hits clearly hits ⅔ criteria and our standards seem pretty consistent, so let’s see how Hawks stands up.

Does he look like a bird? 

Not all of his features may explicitly scream “avian” at first, but upon closer observation and with his clear previous inspiration this is a resounding yes.

Does he act like a bird? 

Many of the mannerisms and behaviors he displays can just be chalked up to him being a little eccentric, but with the sheer number of them that also parallel birds in some way this is also a pretty convincing yes.

Does he have bird-like abilities? 

While most of the emphasis is on his wings and what they can do, it does seem that he not only possesses things like heightened senses which could be attributed to avian abilities but he also very much possess high intelligence and incredibly fast reaction times which birds are also known for.

Even if we only gave Hawks a “maybe/half a point” for those last two, he still meets the 2⁄3 that Spinner did. So we have another question to ask: Does a character have to have an explicitly named “animal” quirk to be considered to be/resemble a specific animal? Let’s look at Ojirou and Tokoyami for reference.

Ojirou’s quirk is just “tail,” but he’s been described by his peers and classmates as a monkey and does seem to share some more monkey-like features. It isn’t lumped in with his quirk because the only notable monkey-like quality he possesses is a tail. He doesn’t have fangs or an opposable toe - he just has a tail. For quirk classification as far as hero work goes, that’s the only important thing to note.

Tokoyami, on the other hand has an entire literal bird head, but nothing else. He has a beak, feathers, and even in illustrations of him as a baby he had fluffier feathers on his head. Even with only those details, he just screams “bird!” However, his quirk is classified as “Dark Shadow” because that’s what sets him apart for hero work.

Back at Hawks we see his quirk classified as “fierce wings” but like Ojirou and especially like Tokoyami, the emphasis on his wings is what sets his abilities as a hero apart. Otherwise, he’s just a guy who looks and acts a LOT like a bird.

But astute observers may have noticed I’ve left out a detail that’s more or less a nail in the coffin on the whole matter, so let me ask a question: Tsuyu in particular has something else of note that solidifies in our minds that she is, indeed, a frog - she explicitly calls herself a frog. Could we say the same about Hawks?

Chapter 199 - Explicit Type

Bingo. Hawks has known himself for as long as he’s been alive. He knows his habits, his impulses, his family/genes, and so on. If he calls himself a bird, are we going to call him a liar? In fact, he calls himself a bird not once, but twice!

That’s pretty much it. With the evidence stacked to that degree, I’d be hard pressed to NOT believe he’s a bird.

That was a long amount of text to get through, so if you’re here at the end thank you for sticking out with me to this point. I really appreciate it. This is more or less the process I use when analyzing anything and everything whether it be HeroAca related or not. Maybe it’ll help you if you’ve struggled with literary analysis, or at the very least I hope you got some enjoyment out of it.

TL;DR If Hawks looks like a bird, walks (acts) like a bird, is based on a bird (character), and calls himself a bird, he’s probably a bird.

[doktorpeace]

🖊 please introduce us to Erato, I know they're in a masks campaign but I have no idea what else

Oh, gosh, I feel like I talk about them too much as is but I can’t say I’m not glad to have the excuse. This is gonna be really long cause tbh I’m just gonna dump like, a bunch of their lore lmao.

Erato is my Masks: A New Generation character in a campaign being played alongside @twerkyvulture (As Amanda ‘Megafauna’ Ghorbani, The Transformed) @draayder (as Josephine ‘Rattlesnake’ Short, The Reformed) @spitblaze (as Les ‘Void’ Hawking, The Doomed) @heedra (as Enid ‘Frag Beetle’ Day, The Scion) and @skarchomp (as Parker ‘Cobalt’ Andrews, The Legacy) with @dykeceratops as our GM. The current arc features @mechanicalriddle as Zoe, The Nova as a guest member. Here’s a group shot done by @tredlocity. Clockwise from the top left: Cobalt in blue, Erato in the track suit, Les in the cloak, Zoe with the mismatched eyes, Enid’s the big robot, Amanda’s got the scales and claws, and Josephine’s got the mask and tonfa.

To get back to Erato specifically though they’re an Anti Metahuman/Metahuman Suppression Weapon created by the in universe tech group Wright Industries, founded by Ingrid Day, Enid’s mom. They’re generally stronger, faster, and more durable than humans and can copy the superpowers of others for 5-10 minutes by touching them thanks to what is basically a meta-stem cell transplant interacting with other parts of their systems. (Also, I 100% swear to god that I did not consider ‘Robot Hero Who Copies The Powers Of Others’ is literally fucking Mega Man despite loving Mega Man a ton until after I had hashed out the concept with my GM’s assistance. Only once Abby said ‘oh like mega man’ I was like ‘wait, shit’.) I’ll tell you some about them as a person before unloading their history onto you, lol. Being an android built for combat and kept in an underground research lab, kept on a rigid schedule, constantly taking tests, physical, mental, written, oral, ethical, etc. etc. etc. and under constant supervision Erato lacked for real interactive experience before the campaign started only really ever getting to takl with authority figures and their sisters. They were very passive and observational, owing in part to their power set requiring a lot of adaptation to make the most of. They’re naive and very bad at exercising discretion in decision making, sometimes they overstep boundaries when talking with people without meaning to, and they’re really emotional! They have trouble dealing with strong emotions cause they haven’t managed to discover coping mechanisms that work well for them, they tend to get angry kind of easily and need time to blow off steam. But they’re also very genuine, honest, and well meaning. They are almost never mean, rude, or snippy, they do their best to do well by others, and have a strong sense of justice paired with a deep distrust and dislike of the current legal system in universe. This is in part due to the conditions of their creation (and in part because the intent behind it was kind of right!) and in part due to Enid’s life being threatened by a representative of the state while they and their teammates were in jail after being arrested following a huge brawl with an anti-methuman terrorist group. They’re also very willing to put forth the effort to improve as a person and to mend relationship wounds, almost always apologizing first to Enid when they fight and genuinely trying to work in advice and feedback they get from others, which they often get from Les and Parker. They’re also relatively educated, from the tests of their creators, from home and public schooling, from personal research, but that doesn’t undo their naivety. They also just straight up lack some very basic and/or common sense knowledge. Like, they don’t know what a bear is. Why would you teach a battle android working in a densely populated, extremely built up city about wild animals? All in all they’re kind of inexperienced and immature and make mistakes a lot but they’re (usually) very willing to admit their mistakes and to try and improve and get better. They genuinely and truly want what’s best for others and are learning to value them self as much as their teammates. They’ve also taken it upon them self to start doing humanitarian work in their free time over the summer. In a fight Erato is adaptive and quick witted but tends to put themself in more danger than is necessary. They also sometimes use more extreme force than the others believe is called for, but after the first time they did they and Parker had a real heart to heart about it, Les helped Erato learn and practice some coping, centering, behaviors they could do even under pressure and Erato did their best to adapt. That said they Fucking Hate The Keeper So God Damned Much Because Of How Much Suffering He’s Caused Their Friends And How Much Danger He Presents And Would Kill Him With No Remorse. So they don’t intend to apologize for ripping his arms off whatsoever. They and their sisters, collectively known as The Muse Units, were made to work as a group and as a proof of concept that atomized units could replace traditional police for use against metahuman criminals and to slowly phase out The Registry, the legal department which handles general metahuman based laws. If successful the units could be mass produced and improved upon, rapidly replacing current, error prone, law enforcement. At the time of their development, between late 1999 for blueprint drafting and until mid 2002 when the project was shut down, they were the cutting edge for AI development aided in no small part by Ingrid’s technokinetic powers allowing her to make advancements few others could. (As a note Erato’s body was finished being built in early 2001 but their unique personhood didn’t really come to fruition until February 18th, 2002, so that’s what I consider their ‘birthday’.) Ultimately, however, while a few of the Muses excelled some did not perform to expectations, the project fell behind schedule, investors lost interest, and a minor scandal involving a casualty happened, resulting in the project being shut down. The Muses were placed in indefinite storage, the data gained from their short existence used on other projects such and some of the tech advancements used to inform future decisions by the company. And it would have stayed that way, if not for the fact that in 2018 Ingrid Day was revealed to be The Locust in a conflict where Enid tried to defend her against a militia group who had been hired to take her down, being shot and presumably killed in the process. As The Locust she had been terrorizing Boston for over a decade trying to take it over and being involved in the deaths of over 70 people. (Which irl btw would make her like, the 8th most prolific confirmed serial killer of all time, Yikes!) Wright Industries, desperately needing to prove their hard stance against metahuman criminals and needing a PR stunt to deflect from their connection to their former CEO re-awakened Erato. They weren’t the most powerful or best performing of the Muses, but they were above average, obedient, and had an easy enough to monitor and control power set with little risk for property damage to boot, the perfect choice. Erato then took to the streets of Boston acting basically as a vigilante, following orders, stopping minor crimes, and sometimes working alongside the police. They attracted the attention of The Viceroy, a semi-retired 56 year old hero who never registered in spite of it being compulsory legally. They both have the ability to copy the powers of others, though he can just by sight, and he has body elasticity too. These make him durable and extremely adaptable, add to that his detective skills and he’s something of a local Boston legend. He took them in as his Protégé. Though they remained distant for quite some time with Erato still coming and going between his place and Wright Industries, having promised not to reveal his assistance to the doctors who Erato reported their work to. It was this way for about a year and a half before the campaign started and Erato began living with Viceroy full time, no longer wanting to go back to Wright Industries as they began to think more independently and consider what they wanted for them self more. During this time Erato had chance encounters with each of the other characters a few times as they also did minor vigilante work, peaking with a villain who is a member of Superhuman, an extremist pro-metahuman group, attacked the school that Josephine, Les, and Amanda all attend. After that incident Erato was prompted by Viceroy to contact each of these other young potential heroes to form a team, The Upstarts. Additionally during this time Viceroy took in Enid who had been abandoned by her biological father and had been getting bounced around foster care. Over time the three of them have become kind of a weird family, living in a warehouse full of cats with a couple of bedrooms grafted on and an ultra secret basement lair underneath full of advanced stuff Viceroy makes. Though Erato and Enid have definitely had their ups and down, more recently in the story (and we’ve been doing this campaign for well over a year now) they’ve been putting in serious effort to better their relationship and be good adoptive siblings to one another. I love their relationship a lot, they’re good kids.

That gets us up to the start of the campaign but hoo boy, I’ve been writing for like, an hour now. Since then Erato’s helped take down a nazi-aligned terrorist organization, they’ve got a boyfriend in their teammate, Les, and they’ve made friends outside of their core group of teammates. They’ve also enrolled in school doing well on some classes and poorly in others, namely learning how to Code and Woodworking. Currently they’re at a sleep away summer camp for superpowered kids called Camp Justice, about 10 miles outside of Boston. They really, really hate it there. Constant supervision, being made to do tests, things scheduled out against their will, inability to leave the area? Yeah that certainly reminds them of something. The difference between it and school, which does share these features, is they wanted to go to school. They very much Did Not want to go to camp. As a result they’re finally going to have to start facing the trauma they’ve got from their origin and also actually tell the others other than Les and Amanda about their sisters. Whiiiiich...Enid saw one of them disassembled and showed off in parts at a school science fair display set up by Wright Industries to gauge interest in students. And she hasn’t mentioned this to Erato...for 4 months Uh Oh! Lastly, here’s my tag I use mostly for art I make of them, it includes some texts posts and picrew dumps too though, lol. Feel free to look!

[thiscrimsonsoul]

Meta: Physical and Emotional Ramifications of Hydra’s Experimentation on the Maximoff Twins

INTRODUCTION:

Anyone who knows me as a writer knows that I enjoy writing these kinds of huge metas and really getting down to the details about my muses and their lives. Not only does this help me to come from an informed place when I write my muses, but I also genuinely enjoy over-analyzing things that probably no one should really be looking that closely at, haha. 

Narrowing this down to just MCU Wanda and Pietro, I am going to look at what might have happened to them during their time in the Hydra laboratory and what the short and long term consequences of that might have been for them. MCU has a habit of saying “hey this traumatic/terrible thing happened in a character’s past, and now we’re going to completely ignore it and said character’s reaction to it forevermore,” which can get annoying when trying to flesh out my muses’ emotional and psychological health. It feels incomplete to me, and so, even if I never specifically write any threads during this time in their lives or referring to these specific things, it helps me get into my characters’ heads to have a complete picture of what they’ve been through and where they’re coming from mentally as they react to new things that arise in rp threads.

DISCLAIMER:

Lots of triggering themes ahead! Things like doctors, needles, surgery, physical and emotional abuse, behavioral conditioning, and bad things happening to minors (depending on what ages you ascribe to the twins at the time of their experimentation). Please take care when reading!

(Under the cut because LONG. XD)

LOSS OF FREEDOM / VOLUNTARY IMPRISONMENT:

We see in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that the twins are kept in cells. Observational rooms, to be more accurate. Arguably, they are not being treated very well, for reasons I will get into as I continue this meta. So the question is... why do they stay? MCU gives us the reason that they wanted to strengthen themselves and gain a means to fight back against those who were making Sokovia a war zone, but once they volunteered for Strucker’s experiments and saw what they entailed, they probably realized they were in over their heads. Not that they weren’t capable of surviving, since they were the only ones who actually did survive, but just that this would require things of them that maybe they weren’t expecting... like a lot of invasive medical procedures, punishments for not doing as their told, and worst of all, separation. So again, why do they stay?

Once could argue that they aren’t free to leave, but this isn’t true. In the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron, we see that the twins are permitted (at least sometimes) to move about the facility freely. Strucker’s not an idiot, and neither are probably a majority of the soldiers and scientists employed at that facility, so they had to know that with Pietro’s and Wanda’s power combined, if the twins wanted to leave, they absolutely could. And yet, they stay. I don’t have a great answer as to why this is, but I can hazard some guesses.

First, maybe they really believed their cause that they were willing to sacrifice a lot to see it through to the end. I buy that mostly, except for the separation issue and the fact that they were each probably incredibly stressed out and upset by anything happening to the other. That had got to be one of the most central themes with the twins: don’t separate us, and don’t hurt my sibling. I feel like Pietro especially would not be cool with staying in a place that treated Wanda poorly, regardless of what happened to him. So there must be something else keeping them there.

I have sometimes thought that, as time went on, maybe there was a strange sort of psychology going on here, something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, where they might have come to psychologically see their captors as allies in some way. This is especially believable if you remember that the twins thought they were in good hands, namely being taken in by SHIELD. Hydra is likely well acquainted with the signs of this syndrome, and therefore probably felt comfortable letting the twins have some freedom, knowing they would always come back. Not that they would have necessarily befriended people who kept them in cells and treated them poorly, but they might have identified with them as far as feeling like everyone in the facility was working toward the same end for the same reasons. Of course that wasn’t true, but they had no way of knowing that.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AND MONITORING:

Alright, now we get really depressing. I was thinking the other day about what these experiments would have entailed, and I think most people assume that oh, we’re like touching the staff to the twins or aiming it at them and boom, magical powers. But as a scientist myself, I started to think about Hydra actually running real experiments... as in, not fly-by-night, haphazard, hey let’s try this, sorts of things... but true structured experiments with hypothesis, scientific methods, reps, sampling, data, results, and conclusions. Once you do that, things get pretty grim for the twins.

The actual experiments were never described in the movies, but just thinking about what they could have entailed is rather shocking. They could have involved transferring energy from the scepter to the twins, perhaps with wires or some other sort of delivery system. Restraining them would probably have been necessary, and I would guess that once wouldn’t have been enough. Once Hydra began seeing actual results with the twins, they most likely would have wanted to push further to see if greater enhancement could be achieved by repeating the process. 

So how could they tell if their experiments were doing anything, aside from the twins developing powers? In order to standardize their experiments and ensure that real changes arose in their test subjects, Hydra would need to not only monitor them visually, but medically and genetically. This would require a lot of samples of things... Blood, certainly, but also perhaps hair or cheek cells or maybe even skin. Blood is great for certain types of genetic makeups, but swabbing the inside of someone’s cheek for cells can provide detailed genetic information about them upon analysis of those cells. And hair is like a time capsule as far as showing when certain physiological changes might have occurred. For example, certain dietary changes, heavy metal exposure, or other types of poisoning can not only be detected in hair, but how close to the follicle it is found would determine how long ago it occurred. If the twins were there for several months or a year, this type of monitoring would have been ideal for data collection.

So not only were the twins probably subjected to needles and scalpels and other things that may have been used to collect biological samples from them, but they would have been subjected to this on a regular basis. The more data points you have, the more sound your data set is, and Hydra probably would have wanted to be very sure and thorough. They also have little regard for humane treatment of those they view as test subjects, so that would not have helped the twins. Which brings me to my next topic...

ASSURANCE OF THE TWINS’ COMPLIANCE:

Even if the twins did develop some sort of psychological rationalization for remaining in the laboratory voluntarily, they likely resisted things that hurt or scared them or their sibling. It is realistic to think that Hydra would have employed physical punishments such as withholding food, use of shocks or maybe even tasers, and goodness knows what else. Maybe even the threat of these things would have been enough to get them to submit to testing and sampling.

Depending on how long the twins were at the laboratory, these punishments and behavioral control mechanisms would gradually have changed the way the twins behaved toward the scientists and soldiers who either were administering these things or were doing the testing they were ordered to comply with. Especially if they were each threatened with the other’s pain, suffering, or deprivation in order to ensure that they obeyed, which I’ll come back to later.

PHYSICAL / HEALTH EFFECTS:

If we look closely at the twins’ appearance during their time in the laboratory, there are many signs that they were being neglected or outright abused. There is also a definite indicator that they may have been drugged at times. Let’s take these ideas one at a time.

(gif cred.)

Looking first at Wanda, she seems pale and gaunt, which may be an indication of malnutrition. Her eyes are red (aside from the red glow in them) and there are dark bags under them, which might indicate that she’s not sleeping well. Her hair looks stringy, greasy, and not brushed, an indicator of poor hygiene. She’s also wearing a glorified smock, so... not much dignity or care taken there with her clothing.

(gif cred.)

Pietro isn’t much better in his loose sleeveless shirt, although he might have needed a cooler outfit due to his high metabolism. His hair also looks a bit greasy and is overgrown compared to what it looks like later in Ultron. Notice the tremors in his right hand? I’ll come back to that in the emotional/psychological section.

Now... all of these things might have just been the result of intense scientific experimentation and the fact that they were often confined to cells, the time and space afforded them just not enough for proper bathing or conducive to good sleep. Maybe Hydra monitored their sleep or woke them up for testing. Maybe they have them on a very strict or limited diet for some reason. Or... Hydra may have been attempting to control them by not letting them sleep a lot, withholding food, and otherwise depriving the twins of basic human comforts and needs. Given the nature of Hydra, I tend to go with the latter when writing their backgrounds.

The last thing I noticed was that Wanda and Pietro have matching hand wraps. Both of their right hands are wrapped up in similar ways. At first I thought this was just meant to make them look injured or otherwise poorly treated, or that it was meant to imply that something had happened to Wanda’s hand while using her powers and to Pietro’s while repeatedly running into the wall, but now I don’t think this is true. I think the bandage is securing something that’s not only on their hands, but in them.

You see the little white piece of plastic near the little blue round piece of plastic on the centers of the backs of their hands? It’s most visible in Wanda’s gif. To me, that looks like an intravenous injection port. In other words, it’s a little port inserted into their hands, into a vein, and it’s left there for convenience sake. Anytime Hydra would need to administer medication or maybe a sedative of some kind or even a test drug, they could open the port, insert a needle and inject the liquid directly into their veins with a syringe. I won’t paste the picture here in case anyone is triggered by images like this, but this is what an I.V. injection port looks like here.

This pretty much confirms that the twins were being injected with something. The most likely thing to be would be a sedative, although I doubt this would have lasted very long or worked very well on Pietro with his increased metabolism. Maybe they just upped the dosage for him and did what they needed to do quickly before he woke up. The use of sedatives may have been necessary while procuring blood or other tissue samples from them if they were frightened, panicking, angry, or just plain unwilling to comply. Also, while something was being done with one twin, they may have drugged the other so they wouldn’t have to put up with one trying to come to the other’s defense.

Of course it might not have all been completely nefarious (although it’s likely, given that it’s Hydra). Maybe they were injected with antihistamines to prevent allergic responses, anti-inflammatory agents to prevent tissue swelling, antibiotics or antivirals to prevent infection, things like that. It opens up a lot of possibilities for development as far as what the experiments might have entailed and what sorts of things were done to the twins during the course of them. It also makes the idea that Wanda was drugged at the end of Captain America: Civil War all the more traumatizing for her if she had lasting psychological effects from having this done to her by Hydra previously, which takes me to the next section...

EMOTIONAL / PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES:

The stress and trauma of the experiments themselves, the monitoring and sampling, the restraining and the confinement, the separation from each other, and being deprived of their basic needs has got to have had some emotional and psychological effects on the twins, both in the moment and long-term, right? Let’s take the twins one at a time and look at what their experiences might have meant for their mental health.

Wanda’s experience would have been one of both fear and frustration. She might have seen her brother treated poorly, been drugged against her will, felt pain as a result of the effects of the scepter on her or from being treated roughly by Hydra scientists and soldiers, and she would have most likely been restrained in some way to ensure the safety of those working in the lab. Maybe Hydra had some kind of high frequency device or collar or something similar to prevent her from using her powers. So... what might the effects of this type of experience be?

While at the lab, Wanda might have started out afraid and later grown rebellious and angry. Definitely, she would have developed a general distrust for people, and may even have some fear of being accosted by people or approached too quickly. Anytime someone approached her in the lab, she learned she was going to feel pain or have something frightening done to her, so through this type of conditioning she might develop fears of strangers getting too close, of needles and medical equipment, and of being grabbed. Even certain seemingly insignificant things like the sound of a syringe being flicked to void the air from it, the smell of latex gloves, or the sight of a white lab coat might make her panicky or even send her into a flashback. PTSD is a reality for Wanda, and for Pietro as well.

And just like Pietro, Wanda’s sense of solidarity and the psychology of “us against the world” with her sibling would be greatly intensified. If Hydra thought that separating them and subjecting them to all these terrible things would break their bond, they were wrong. If anything, their bond would have been strengthened even more by these experiences. Even if Hydra sought to employ behavioral modification tactics (such as hurting one twin until the other complies), I feel like this wouldn’t drive a wedge between the twins, but would only cement their dedication to one another and desire of each to protect the other.

Which brings me to the effects on Pietro. Pietro... I feel had the worse time here, and I’ll explain why. He would have had the same experiences as Wanda as far as everything else I’ve mentioned in this section so far, but then on top of that would have some problems, fears, and side effects unique to him. So let’s go into what some of Pietro’s unique issues with the experimentation might be.

Some believe that Pietro is so protective of his sister because he loves her and is the older twin and therefore feels a great responsibility to watch over her, and that is certainly true. But for those of you that draw from the comics, as I do, and incorporate that Wanda was the victim of a sexual assault as a child and therefore believe that Pietro felt a lot of guilt over not protecting her then, her treatment in the Hydra laboratory might have really hit upon Pietro’s protective instincts and brought all that guilt from their childhood back up to the surface for him. Especially if the scientists used Wanda to get Pietro to obey, such as hurting or threatening to hurt her if he didn’t do as they said, he would once again be responsible, however indirectly, for Wanda being hurt. That would have had a big and traumatic effect on him, and once they were freed from the lab, he would have been even more protective of her because of this.

That’s how his sibling’s treatment would have effected him, but how would he be dealing with things on his own? Aside from probably developing all the same fears of scientists, doctors, needles, medical equipment, etc. that his sister would, Pietro would also have felt confined, maybe even claustrophobic in that tiny observation room.

Look at the impact here with the wall. My goodness. Yes, he was learning to use his powers here, so he wouldn’t have had the kind of control he had in Ultron, but he’s also not stupid. After a couple attempts, he would have realized that launching himself inside a tiny room like that would have painful consequences. Continuing to slam himself into the walls would have resulted in all sorts of bruises, maybe even torn muscles or broken bones, and maybe things like dislocated shoulders. He heals very fast, but even so, he would feel the initial pain of these injuries, which is in itself traumatic. The reason I didn’t include this in the “physical effects” section is because I feel like there is a psychological component to him doing this as well...

Have you ever been to a zoo, especially one that isn’t handled all that well and has really small enclosures for the animals, and they’re behaving really funny? Walking in circles, making repetitive motions, walking around in the same pattern over and over again within their enclosure, sitting facing a wall or corner, or even walking into the walls? This is because they are actually suffering from psychological trauma (that could result in physical trauma depending on what they’re doing exactly) from not being free to move, run, or just exist as they wish to. Not just wish to... need to. Well, Pietro needs to move.

I headcanon that even before the experiments, he was a high-energy guy, and if you go with the comics and say the twins are mutants, then their powers are also genetic/hereditary. So Pietro is, by nature, someone who is high energy and needs to keep moving and to move fast. Being confined to a tiny room would have had an immense effect on him psychologically, and he might have developed the same strange behavioral patterns as mistreated animals at a zoo. He might have rationally known that attempting to use his speed within his cell would harm him or at least be really painful, but emotionally and physiologically he is driven to move and simply cannot resist doing this, even if it harms him.

Which brings me to the tremors in his right hand in that first gif of him. If you look closely enough, you can actually see the muscles all up his arm spasming as well. They could be an indicator of many things. It could be a sign of neurological damage. Whether the result of the experiments or from the impact of hitting his head or back against the walls of his cell, Pietro might have injured himself, resulting in nerve damage. It likely healed, given his body’s fast healing capabilities, but that’s what it could be.

However, it could also be entirely psychological, and if so, there are three potential reasons for it. First, Pietro may be so full of energy and filled to the brim with a desire to use it, that running for one second inside a cell isn’t cutting it. Kindof like if you have a lot of caffeine and get jitters, he’s literally shaking from being so high-strung and not having a sufficient or positive outlet for his energy. Second, and this is kindof sad, but it may simply be a sign of psychological stress. Like when someone shakes during an anxiety or panic attack, his nerves might be shot from all the stress he’s experiencing in the laboratory. And third, it may be another behavioral tic resulting from feeling like a caged animal in a zoo, a sign that he is not emotionally or psychologically stable that is manifesting as a physical tic.

CONCLUSION:

All of this amounts to either 1) it’s a wonder they were as normal and stable in Ultron as they were (and beyond for Wanda), or 2) they should not have been this stable but MCU didn’t want to deal with all the physical, emotional, and psychological impacts that being treated this way would have had on the twins. I tend to incorporate a lot more of the potential damage they have suffered into writing them because it lets me write what I feel are more realistic and rounded characters. I’m not cherry-picking the easy or happy bits, avoiding mentioning when things would upset them, or sugar-coating their reactions to triggering things, but instead I’m letting them express it as I feel befits their personalities. Wanda and Pietro don’t deal with things in the same way or express their emotional traumas the same way, and part of fleshing out these characters and taking them through arcs of healing and recovery is acknowledging that they are damaged people. MCU glosses over so much with them that either the twins would not have been able to ignore or would have come back to haunt them at a later date. I instead want to present them as they are, two people who have been through many different kinds of hell, and see what they can do with it, how other muses can help and guide them, and what they can become through the process of recovery. That is what is most fun and fulfilling for me as a writer, when I can realistically flesh out a character and take them to places the canon never dared or bothered to tread. =)

Alright I’ve rambled enough! I hope you have enjoyed this, and if you’ve gotten to this point I just want to say thank you for reading! Feel free to comment through replies, asks, or messages if you wish. As with all metas I write on any of my blogs, I love to get feedback and hear other people’s takes on what I’ve mentioned. 

[messinwitheddie]

In the 18-years-later AU, which of Tallest is still living, and how did the other die? What are irken state and personal mourning practices like?

Morbid questions for a human. Zim will engage you...

Tallest Red died a few years ago. I know what you're thinking, but I wasn't ANYWHERE NEAR the Massive when they found him, I swear!

It hasn't been exposed to public knowledge yet how Tallest Red died. Rumors spread, you know. It's all stories whispering around the armada; resisty assisination; they poisoned his food or something, disgruntled servant pulled his hoverbelt one notch too tight, he overdosed on pep pills or drowned himself in cyder, foulplay in the chambers after a quarrel, suicide... I didn't know what to believe, and I don't really care. The empire doesn't care. Our rulers never change from tallest to tallest. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, is that how the song goes?

Anyway, the empire took a moment of silence out of respect as we always do. He was a pompous, spoiled giant smeet, but he was still our ruler.

Tallest Purple is probably the only Irken alive who genuinely mourns his loss. Shmillions of servants and not one if them shed a real tear. That is profoundly sad, but fitting. *chuckles*

There is no "state" morning practices for the death of common Irkens. After a lengthy battle we honor our fallen with a passionate dirge and a missile salute. Beyond that, we're expected to move on. It's curtious to grieve in private on your own time.

I've never really mourned another Irken's death, come to think of it. Hm...

When an Irken dies, our bodies are retrieved and sent to the nearest death factory if able. Whatever useful organic matter that remains is salvaged and sent to the control brains to be converted to sustinence. The paks are safely removed by professionals and sent to the control brains so all the data stored may be collected and passed onto future generations in the smeeteries.

I am encoded as a defective. When I die my PAK will be destroyed before downloading my memories and dna. My information will never be passed on. There will never be a legacy for Zim... And that's fine! There was only MEANT to be one ZIM...

Almightly tallest are bound by a different set of traditions. After a tallest is declared dead and their PAK removed to added to the collective, their body is sent back to Irk for their emperial funeral.

They are prepped for cremation and dressed in a white gown--I noticed you humans wear black to mourn. We Irkens were nocturnal once. We find solice in darkness. It's the sun that fills our primal subconscious with dread. White is the color we associate with death and loss.

After the body is properly dressed the deceased Tallest is placed in the magnificent right hand of the Collosus. She caresses them while they burn to ash.

The event of his funeral wasn't televised, but I listened when they announced Tallest Purple had delivered Red to the Colossus himself. He placed his partner in her palm, he lit the flames and read the parting rites... The transmission was cut, but I imagine he weapt; to this day, he hasn't taken off his funeral gown. He won't eat, he barely speaks or looks at anyone. He's a ghost haunting the Massive as the Dib might put it.

Were he any shorter than tallest stature his behavior would be considered defective, but he is a Tallest, so...he's allowed to mope for the rest of his life, I guess.

I was indifferent to Tallest Purple's grief at first. Those two spent much of their lives making a fool of me... It was fun watching Purple fall apart without his better half to think for him at firsr, but... after watching him wither away to husk the past few years... I dunno.

He is completely alone now; no one in the entire empire will ever connect with him on the level Red had. I really do feel pity for him.

We believe our Almighty Tallest to be the most fortunate Irkens, but I'm starting to think they're victims of the system too...just in different ways...

[movieexpert1978]

Upgrade Pt. 3

Another chapter for the story. I’ve been typing away all weekend as I got off of work. Hope you guys enjoy it and please leave some feedback. I’d love to know what you guys think!!!

Pt 3: Elisa learns to be a hunter warrior with Ido. 

Alita battle angle and it’s characters are not my characters. 

The first night Ido and Elisa went out it, they didn’t catch any marks. After a few hours of travelling down dark alleys they went home.

“So are you a doctor or not?” Elisa asks confused as they walk.

“Yes I am a doctor, but when night falls and the insomnia hits I go out as a hunter warrior.” He explains.

“A hunter warrior?”

“Yes or a bounty hunter. We kill marks and collect bounties.” He says. He brings her up to a monitor that shows the data on the current marks.

“Oh…you kill for money.” She says.

“I take the money and use it to make sure the clinic stays open, otherwise it would have closed long ago.” He adds with a sigh.

“Are there others like you…hunter warriors?” She asks.

“Yes, plenty more. Most of them are not as…how should I put it…morally pleasing as I am.” He smirks.

“You mean some just do it for the money?”

“Exactly.”

“What’s in your case?” He kneels down and opens it, showing her all sorts of parts. She watches as he connects some pieces one by one and it forms a giant hammers. “This is my weapon of choice. It’s a rocket hammer.” He says proudly. She stares at him puzzled as he holds a trigger down and blue flame bursts out of one end. He swings it to the ground and makes a decent size hole. “It adds more power so I can take care of marks faster.” He explains. He releases the trigger and the flame disappears before he takes it apart and puts it back in the case.

“Why not use a gun?” She asks. He can’t help but burst out laughing.

“Oh my dear girl, guns are out-lawed in Iron city, punishable by death. They don’t want any weapons made that could challenge Zalem in any way. I would have thought you knew that.” He says.

“I never trained with guns.” She says.

“Well that explains it.” He mutters. They go back home and go their separate ways for the night. The next morning Elisa goes out and studies all the marks carefully before she goes around the city to try and find their trail. She has a few leads by the time she comes back before dinner. That night she leads him along and they come up on a team of marks. The three of them are armed and dangerous as they glare at Elisa and Ido.

“You better back away old man and take your little girlfriend here with one.” One of them says flashing a knife. Elisa doesn’t flinch and her eyes change color. The men looked spooked as no cyborg has ever done that before. Before Ido can make a swing Elisa snarls, baring her fangs. The mark with the knife charges at her. Ido watches with both curiosity and fright as he wonders what she will do. He tries to swing the knife at her, but she catches his wrist and breaks it easily making him shout in pain. She grabs the top of his head and her fingertips have turned into claws, which are glow blue, as she swipes his throat. His head cut clean off from his body. She drops the head as the second mark charges. He is more cyborg with mechanical arms as he tries to swing at Elisa. He’s stopped when she grabs his throat, crushing it instantly, before he punches him in the face and send him smashing into a wall. His body cracks and crumbles as he falls over lifeless. The last mark is almost right at Elisa when she catches him. She shoves one arm away as she manages a punch to his face. It doesn’t do the damage she expected as he bleeds blue cyborg. She frowns before she grabs him and shoves him into the stone wall head first, knocking his head clean off.

The fight is over in under three minutes.

“My god.” Ido whispers to himself. She glances over at him.

“Did I do good?” She asks him. He just stares at her for a moment trying to figure out why she said that when it was quite obvious she did.

“You did…amazing.” He says sincerely as he walks up to her.

“Really?” She gasps.

“Yes.” He chuckles.

“Thank you!” She says giving him a smile before she collects herself. Judging by her behavior, he’s sure she wasn’t praised often and probably sent back to her room or something when her training routine was over. They go to the factory to collect the money and go home.

“Here.” Ido says handing her a few credits. She stares at them as if he’s just put a bomb in her hand.

“Why are you giving these to me? Don’t you need them for the clinic?” She says holding them back up to him.

“Yes but you took them down. You earned it.” He says.

“What do I do with it?”

“Whatever you want. You could buy something for yourself or save them. It’s up to you.” He explains gently.

“Oh…ok…thank you Doctor.” She nods.

“You don’t have to keep calling me that.” He smiles. She only nods as she puts the credits on the table and goes to the couch to sleep.

Xxxxxxxx

Another pattern emerges as Elisa goes out in the day time to look for marks and when she finally catches a trail she and Ido go hunting. One night he reluctantly brings Alita along. Even then Elisa is too fast for even Alita to catch up with.

“Now that was cool!” Alita grins when the fight is over.

“Uuhh…thank you.” Elisa says to her as Alita gives her a thumbs up. Not to mention that she was glad Elisa did most of the fighting and Ido didn’t come home all battered and bloody any more. They soon had enough money for things to be comfortable for a little while, but Elisa still went out to walk Iron city anyway. She was just leaving the clinic when a woman with dark hair and elegant clothing walked up to her and she had the mark of Zalem.

“You’re from Zalem!” She gasps coming right up to the woman.

“Who are you!?” She snaps at Elisa in disgust.

“Subject Ten E a.k.a Elisa Prime, humble servant to Nova and Zalem.” Elisa repeats. The woman blinks in surprise as Elisa shows her tattooed 10 E. She stares at it for a moment before she looks up at Elisa studying her.

Ido glances out the window and sees Chiren talking to Elisa. That was not a good sign and he hurries out.

“Chiren.” He calls out as he hurries over to them.

“Let me guess you found her in the scrap yard too?” Chiren says unamused.

“Yes, but Elisa is human. She’s not a cyborg.” He says.

“I know.” Chiren says looking at Ido.

“Elisa this is my ex-wife Chiren.” He says, introducing them.

“Can you get me Zalem?” Elisa asks.

“If I could get back to Zalem I wouldn’t be here.” Chiren states unamused. He can tell her words sting Elisa a little bit, but then she looks back and forth between her and Ido.

“Ex-wife…wait you were on Zalem too?” Elisa asks.

“Have fun.” Chiren smirks before she walks away. Ido suspects she was going to talk to him again about returning to the motorball games, but now that she’s seen Elisa something obviously changed. Chiren knows a lot more about Nova’s activities thanks to Vector. Who knows what kind of things they were making in that lab scientist laboratory they had. Ido guides Elisa back inside.

“Yes I was on Zalem too. Chiren and I were exiled many years ago.” He says.

“Why?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.” He says.

“You displeased Nova.” She frowns.

“So did you.” He nearly snaps at her as he collects himself.

“Hey what’s going on?” Alita says sensing tension.

“Chiren was here.” Ido mutters.

“Oh…you don’t want to be around her. You can’t trust her…or did you not feel that in her energy.” Alita teases waving her hands and making Elisa frown.

“Actually…she felt a little cold now that mention it.” Elisa says.

“I’m not surprised.” Ido sighs. “Look, please just stay away from her. The people she works with…they’re not good people. They’re selfish and only do what’s best for them no matter who they hurt.” He says gravely. Elisa isn’t sure about what to make with his words, so she only nods.

“Hey I see you got some credits. Why don’t I take you to the market to get something?” Alita suggests, happily changing the subject.

“Ok.” She nods and follows Alita out. She’s not really sure what to get for a while as Alita makes suggestions.

“Oooh! Why don’t you get this bag?” She says holding it up. It was a simple black over the shoulder strap back, but it was nice and big and had a lot of pockets. Elisa looks it over. “You have to have something to put your credits in for starters.” She adds encouragingly. Elisa nods in understanding and purchases it.

“Thank you.” Elisa says to her.

“You’re welcome.” She says giving her a big smile.

Xxxxxxxxx

“We have a situation.” Chiren says to Vector.

“And what’s that?” He asks very much uninterested.

“I need to talk to Nova.” She says.

“What…oh come on!” He protests before his eyes turn blue. “And how can I be of assistance Doctor?” Nova says even though it’s Vector’s voice.

“Subject Ten E a.k.a Elisa Prime.”

“Ooh, I see.” He nods.

“Who is she?” Chiren asks. Nova sits at Vector’s computer and starts typing a few things. He puts in a flash drive and after a few minutes he takes it out and hands it to her.

“She was the most promising subject we had. She had spectacular results. She was responding so well to all the training and stresses we subjected her to, but when we started the next stage things went haywire.” Nova says leaning on the desk.

“What did you do? Give her steroids or something?” Chiren smirks, that’s so primitive even for Nova.

“No, we were on the verge of a breakthrough in genetic mutation. We had only altered her DNA in small ways, but this…this was going to change it all completely.” He says.

“I take it she didn’t react to it well.”

“It’s on that drive. All of her files on are that drive.” He explains.

“Do you want me to do anything with her?”

“No, not yet. I want to see what else she does.” He says.

“Anything else?”

“Don’t help her. She’ll come looking for you, but don’t help her. I want to see her out in the wild.” He says before he leaves Vector stumbling around and clutching his head.

“This better be good.” He mutters to Chiren.

Xxxxxxxxxxx

To try and distract her from trying to find Chiren, Ido helped Elisa register as a hunter warrior. When she came out she showed in her ID card and he gave her a proud smile.

“Is it ok I still go out with you?” She asked nervously.

“Of course!” He says wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “You’re always welcome to come with me.” He says as they walk down the steps. “You don’t have to be nervous when you ask me a question. I’m not going to get mad at you. I know you have a lot to learn here.” He says sincerely.

“Thank you.” She says gently.

“Come on, let me show you a place where all the hunter warriors go.” He says. They go to the Kansas bar where some of the other hunter warriors smirk at them, but otherwise leave them be. ‘Oh great…Zapan is here,’ Ido thinks to himself. He does his best to ignore the big shot and orders a drink for the two of them.

“What is this?” She asks looking at the glass.

“It’s whisky…try it.” He says taking a small sip. Elisa copies him and she grimaces at the taste as it burns her throat. Ido can’t help but chuckle. After a moment her throat feels warm and her body seems to tingle a little bit.

“What’s this feeling?”

“It’s called a buzz. People like it a lot and that’s why they drink alcohol, which is what whisky is. You have to be careful though because if you drink too much you’ll get drunk and feel lousy the next morning.” Ido smirks as he’s done that all too often after Chiren left.

“Who says that’s a bad thing doc?” Zapan says coming up behind Elisa. She turns and glares at him.

“Uhhh…Zapan you might want to give her some space.” Ido warns her.

“Got another one from the scrap yard did you?” He smirks with his accent. Elisa looks him over quickly. He’s a total replacement cyborg for starters, wearing black leather pants and boots and not much else. He has a sword on his belt as well. A normal woman might think him rugged and handsome as he spent a lot of money on his face to look so. A piece of metal was on the center of his chin and he had a Mohawk. His metal looked good too and she hadn’t even seen the skull pattern on his back yet, but she didn’t care anyway. “You on a date with the doc here?” He teases.

“No.” She says even though she doesn’t know what a date is, so she show’s her badge.

“Oooh how cute.” He laughs as she tucks it back into her pocket. “And uhhhh…how many people you killed deary?” He mocks getting closer. Ido just frowns, knowing Zapan is going to get it sooner or later.

“I killed three marks on my first hunt with Ido.” She says.

“Wait…oh no!” He laughs. “So you’re the one people are talking about. Is it true that you can grow fangs and smash people into walls?” He jokes waving his arms.

“I don’t know…maybe.” She growls. Her eyes change color and she snarls at him with her fangs bared making Zapan yelp and jump back, falling flat on his ass.

“What the hell?” He gasps.

“Now go away.” She says flashing her claws that are glowing blue. His jaw nearly unhinges as he gets up. Some of the other patrons look at her in shock.

“You sure know how to pick the freaks doc.” Zapan says before he gets up and walks out. Her eyes return to normal and she recognizes the fear in their eyes. She turns away quickly and downs her drink, ignoring the burn it gives her.

“I’m sorry…but can we go now please?” Elisa asks Ido quietly. He nods in understanding. He finishes his drink and tips the bartender before the go home.

“Are you alright?” Ido asks before he goes to his room.

“I’m fine.” She nods quietly. She keeps her back to him as she curls up on the couch. When she hears his bedroom door close she finally allows a few tears to roll down her face.

[ccphotomedia]

You’ve probably seen reports in the media about obesity and overweight statistics, and it’s true – the numbers and prevalence of these conditions are definitely increasing. And, we can see the effects in real life… Have you noticed, for instance, when walking down the street, taking the subway/bus, shopping in a store, working at the office, attending public events, or eating at a restaurant, that more and more people seem to be larger and larger and taking up more and more space? I know I definitely have.

The numbers are startling. According to the CDC, about 70% of adults 20 or older are considered overweight or obese… that’s more than 2 out of every 3 people who are facing a higher risk for a variety of diseases and early death. And, even worse, about 1 in 5 teens, about 1 in 6 kids aged 6-11, and about 1 in ten toddlers and kids up to 5 years old are considered obese. What was that old adage how about how our kids are our future? If that’s true, what do these statistics tell us about our future?

Here’s the thing, there are a lot of people that say that it’s totally fine to be overweight. That it’s “normal” and to quit the “fat shaming”… but… to deny that this is a problem is to not live in reality.

This issue of obesity and overweight is certainly complex, and not attributable to one simple cause, and, yes, I agree, people still deserve dignity, but this issue definitively has a huge impact on us, both on an individual level and society at large.

Again, to deny the health impacts on individuals who are overweight is to deny reality. For instance, overweight and obese people pay, on average, $1,429 more per year in health care costs, according to a 2009 study by Finkelstein, Trogdon, Cohen and Dietz published on Health Affairs. And this is not institutional/systemic bias against “people with larger bodies,” it is a sign that there is a clear correlation between weight and impacts on health, regardless of whether you believe any data from the CDC or scientific studies on the correlations of overweight/obesity on the risk for diabetes, heart disease and other conditions, for instance.

“But, I’m healthy, why should I care,” you might think? Well, because, as I mentioned above, it’s not just about the individual, his/her costs and his/her increased risks of pre-mature death. There is a cost to society as a whole, both financially and progress-wise.

The Finkelstein study above estimated that total annual costs of health care related to obesity came in at about $147 billion dollars for 2008. (Yes, I realize this is 10 years ago… so imagine what that number is now.) If you divvied that up among our current population, to reduce the impact, that works out to be about $451 per person per year.

Don’t think that you foot the bill for any of this? Do you pay taxes?

According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2016, health programs including Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program and Affordable Care Act made up about 26% of the annual budget. And, according to an article on financial expert Dave Ramsey’s website, a “sample 2011 tax receipt provided by whitehouse.gov shows the total tax bill for a married couple with two kids making $80,000 was just over $9,000″ total, and of that, about 21% was designated to health care related programs. And, in that Finkelstein study, they determined that 8.5% and 11.5% of Medicare and Medicaid spending, respectively, are directly related to obesity/overweight. That means, about $1,800 (or more) of this sample family’s income taxes are going to medical programs in general, and about $360 obesity related care directly. How much of your money do you want to spend on obesity care for society, or on yourself, for that matter?

And, to top it off, this isn’t even taking into account the cost of lost productivity… based on time out of work due to health issues connected to obesity, obesity-related disabilities, and so on, which I don’t have numbers for at the moment.

So, why am I so passionate about this? It’s not really about the money, for me. I personally grew up over weight and out of shape, and not for a lack of exercise, as I was pretty active doing soccer and dance throughout my childhood. I later realized that the food I was eating, and I don’t blame my parents, but the food I was eating was not properly fueling my body. In addition to eating too much processed food and sugary foods, I also ate a lot of refined carbs and not a lot of nutritious veggies/etc. I am partially to blame/responsible for this, having been a picky eater for most of my youth, and busy/on the go a lot… And it wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I decided I would do something about it. So, I set about to learning about food, nutrition and going down the rabbit hole of attempting to figure out “the truth” about healthy eating.

I got so passionate about this area that I decided to devote some of my professional work in photography to this area – particularly through food photography – but also started a podcast exploring topics around food, health, food systems, food entrepreneurship, nutrition and more with entrepreneurs, game changers and experts.

This all, ultimately, led to my attending the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference, this past February, where I met a woman named Sophie who works in the Culinary Institute of America’s strategic department. When I mentioned my podcast, Put a Fork In It, and how I’m on a mission to create a healthier, wealthier and happier world, she told me about a conference she was working on through the CIA – the Menus of Change.

I didn’t know what it was at that time, but she mentioned to follow up and she could connect me with the right people to get a press pass, on behalf of the podcast and my blogging.

Being the diligent person I am, I did just that, and with that deal of networking, a few weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to attend this 2.5 day leadership summit at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY (not too far from where I live).

This conference was founded several years back as a way to include the food service and food consumer packaged goods industries in the good fight: helping to shape these industries to influence healthier options/choices for consumers and adapting our current food system to a healthier and more sustainable version that prioritizes personal and environmental health and, ultimately, delicious food.

It was truly a great opportunity to be among the CEOs of large food companies, chefs and culinary/nutrition directors, scientists, and more who are all on the cutting edge of this work.

My eyes were opened to the fact that the food industry and agriculture are one of the leadings contributors of climate change. Something I realized while at the conference, since I really try to be apolitical and not polarizing, and try to find the middle ground on these types of things, is that whether you believe in human caused climate change or not, there are definitely measurable and important impacts on the environment from our current behaviors in the food/ag industries, and we can always improve. In retrospect, that should of been pretty obvious, considering that we use land to grow our food, both plants and animals, which certainly has impacts on the soil, and, how about erosion of soil from replanting crops annually, or methane coming from livestock, or waste and pollutants of all sorts from shipping materials, or pollutants from herbicides, or decreasing bee populations, or getting rid of “sub par” produce, or packaging from processed goods (or otherwise), and so on.

If you want more specific information, here are a few resources to get you started:

Environmental Effects of the US Food System, a report on the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s website, and

Environmental Impacts of Food Production and Consumption, a report from the UNESCO- Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, which catalogs “state-of-the-art, high quality, peer reviewed, thematically organized archival content in many traditional disciplines and interdisciplinary subjects with including the coverage of transdisciplinary pathways”.

Or, if you prefer something a little simpler to follow, check out the this Vice piece about the impacts of Climate Change on the wine industry.

Another interesting show is Rotten, on Netflix.

So, similar to above, regarding denial of health impacts of obesity, to deny that our actions in the food/ag industry has an environmental impact, is to deny reality. So, again, whether we believe in climate change or if we do believe it exists, but aren’t sure that we could really do anything about it, the fact is that we are currently doing things that impact the environment and, again, if we believe in our kids being our future, it’s really in our best interests to take care of the environment, to do a better job, and create a sustainable world where our kids can grow up and raise kids of their own.

This event, the Menus of Change, really opened my eyes to this. And while, at first, I did have some resistance and skepticism to what was being said, since environmental issues are often a politicized and therefore polarizing and propagandized issues with a lot of buzz words designed to make us feel guilty and shameful (from both sides of the spectrum), I’ve opened my mind back up to this topic and it’s true importance, because it’s critical to recognize that our actions, individually, as as people and businesses, as well as in the collective industry and society at large do really matter for the long term success of our species and life on earth. And, if we don’t take care of our environment and resources, we all lose out in the end regardless of whether you’re on the left, on the right, believe that humans have caused climate change, or that we can’t do anything to prevent or reverse climate change.

So, as you might expect, the conference included presentations from industry leaders in various sectors of the culinary and food system, entrepreneurs, scientists, chefs and so on, as well as networking opportunities. But, what was unique was really how deeply the concepts and values were actually applied. What I mean is… they actually practiced what they were preaching about plant-forward menus, the “protein flip” and the “Mediterranean diet”/using unique ingredients and local sourcing. It wasn’t just a load of preaching or trying to “inspire” or “educate” or propagandize to make change, there was actually a full-reaching application of the principles during their own meal times. They sampled some of the dishes that were discussed or shown during cooking demos, and even provided the recipes for the foods that were served, through the conference app. It was certainly a refreshing change to be at an event that actually served delicious AND nutritious foods – a pet-peeve and big weakness for me.

This really is exciting and makes me grateful to have been a part of it and to meet so many people that also want to improve the food system and public health. It’s very encouraging and, even if there are certain things that may be polarizing or pique my skepticism or critical side, it really comes back to one of my favorite guiding principles, from Ghandi himself, to the CIA: “Be the change you wish to see in the world” and, therefore, lead by example.

It was really wonderful to be a part of that experience and be able to be a part of something that embodies this philosophy – it’s one of the reasons that I do what I do and pursue the goals that I pursue, in spite of challenges and naysayers. I really believe that if you want to change the world, you have to start with your self and act in accordance with your values, first, and if you do that in your own life, the more people around you will see that it’s possible and be inspired to try it too. And to me, this is the greatest approach we can take to create the positive changes we wish to see. One small act and one person or organization at a time.

  Here are some of my photos:

Pork Tsukune and Shishito Skewer, tare glaze over warm lentil salad

Kozy Shack Rice Pudding with slow roasted strawberries and crispy citrus pistachios

Kozy Shack Rice Pudding with slow roasted strawberries and crispy citrus pistachios

Illy coffee rubbed blended mushroom and beef slider with coffee barbecue sauce

Improved Nature Mini Bites Creamy Pistachio Pesto Pizza

Wonderful Pistachio and Almond Orange Energy Bite

Wonderful Pistachio and Almond Orange Energy Bite

Menus of Change: a summit aimed at making a healthier world through the food industry You've probably seen reports in the media about obesity and overweight statistics, and it's true - the numbers and prevalence of these conditions are definitely increasing.

[cannibalisticshadows]

Ease (1/?)

Summary: She was beautiful, she was kind, and she seemed to like him. But she was also an omega, so he could never be able to satisfy her needs. A/B/O Dynamics.  Rating: E (Ao3 Link)

~.~

His first impression of the new librarian was that she was just another face.

Mr. Gold overheard her before anything, one midsummer day when the sun was too hot for the solemn Scot to be strolling outside in his three-piece suit. Nothing seemed to so much as make him frown involuntarily, but even he disliked sweltering in all his layers. It’s what made him stand out in the town diner, and not just his reputation, but his immaculate dark clothing and piercing sable eyes, set in his worn, uninviting face. He’s a hard man, difficult to know and easy to dislike. Which was the collected opinion on him. He didn’t care. His reputation made it so no one dare cross him. No one so much as sent him a raised eyebrow, when he comes in looking like Death in Armani, seconds away from either ordering someone’s execution or something ridiculously priced and served in small portions. The execution would be more available in this establishment, considering Granny’s was the last place he’d choose to socialize.

He was entertaining the thought of purchasing a drink on this scorched day, when he heard the loud intake of breath behind him. Light, feminine, and he inwardly both smirked, and cursed at the expected dainty girl who no doubt felt faint in the presence of the town beast. Passively, he glances to the side, listening to the pair of young women that had been dawdling near the front of the diner, most of them loud and carefree, exposed flesh and teeth. He recognizes young Miss Lucus in the lead, her hand gestures grand and her words sharp and sure. She commanded her group of friends like a choir conductor, effortlessly at first glance, but after a moment of discrete observation, he can see her need to possess the ongoing conversation as plain as day. The girl kept her anxious eyes on each of her friends, nostrils flaring as she scented the air, her smile wide and forced. Yet she had stopped, as did the other members of her little gang, for one of them had broken the easy atmosphere amongst them.

“Who’s that?” A girl asks. Forign. Newcomer, he muses. Despite her interesting accent, the fact she had to ask after him was sign enough.

Ruby frowns at her new groupie. “Belle, that’s him.” She leans into the new lass’s ear, whispering something, to which Dr. Victor Whale, who was sitting at the bar, snorts aloud before realizing that Gold himself stood a few feet away.

Victor was on the other side of the room, having heard quite well. Gold, who was closer, had not, and his hearing was perfectly normal. For the average human.

He regards the doctor with a cool glower, and Victor backs his head away and looks ready to apologize, but Gold beats him to it. “How are those gambling debts coming along, Dr. Whale?”

Victor does not laugh again. Ruby, who he knew had watched and listened to him speak to the doctor, shuts her mouth and avoids his eyes for the rest of the day. And as for the newcomer, Belle, he doesn’t so much as look at, assuming after years of experience that she was already well embedded into Storybrooke’s views of the infamous Mr. Gold.

~.~.~.~

Belle French, he later learns, is a twenty-five year old librarian from Melbourn who loves tea and classical romance novels. He learns this not from gossip, but from the lass herself.

She came into his shop a few days following the incident from the diner, coming in with a gust of wind at her back that blew and batted at her long brunette hair and bright yellow sundress that tied at her waist in a girlish ribbon, and it made her look younger and more carefree than she truly seemed. Giving a squeak of dismay at her ruffled appearance, but laughing and commenting offhandedly about the weather, the door closes behind her with a ring as she enters the store. He, in the soft lighting of his antique store with the late day sun rays gleaming through his windows and yet, the shadows in his dark corner more than forbidding, gives her a tepid smile.

“Hello!” She greets him with such good humor that he almost takes a step back to analyze her in suspicion. As it were, the poor thing must not know who he was to the full extent, and seemed like the kind of girl that was friendly with everyone upon first meetings. He would go easy on her. For now.

“Hello,” Gold responses calmly. “What can I do for you, dearie?”

Her eyes are bright blue, he cannot help but see, as she comes right up to the counter. “Oh, I just finally had the time to come out of the library, see. I’ve been trying to set everything up before Monday.”

“The library? Beneath the clock tower?”

“The one and the same.”

“Well, you certainly have your work cut out for you,” he comments airily, looking down as he fiddles with an old pocket watch. He’d been working on it for a good twenty minutes now, but the bloody little parts inside had been banged up beyond repair.

“Yep, I certainly do,” the lass chirps as thought he hadn’t tried to brush her off. “My name’s Belle. Belle French. I moved here last week—studied up in Boston, originally from Malbourn.” She extends her hand up, seeking to take his own.

He glances up now, still wondering when she’s going to state why she was here. Clients and tenants have done a similar dance, but none quite this good. Yet to his surprise he raises his own hand and grasps hers. Her fragile, pale hand is so small in his, yet it carried a sure strength that he admires. He wonders why she had chosen to come to Storybrooke, that, despite the charming name, was yet another typical small town in the middle of nowhere. A girl coming from such big towns, why would she ever want to come here? No, not girl—woman, he noted with some respect to her friendly bravery.

“Mr. Gold,” he introduced himself. “Antique broker, landlord, and defense lawyer. What can I do for you today?”

“My, quite the accomplishments! You must have made your parents proud.

Gold frowns, keeping back from saying there had been no pleasing parents who were never there in the first place, save a cheap motel bed nearly forty-six years ago. “Of course. Is there something specific you‘re looking for?.”

Miss French blinks rapidly, but shakes her head with a smile. “No, I mean—I just wanted to come meet you finally. Unless you have some classic romances. I’m a sucker for those. Anywho, I’ve heard a lot about you. Though, I’ve come to make my own opinion.”

This, he hesitated over. So she was aware of him. Had heard his reputation. Yet, wished to see the beast in person. He gives her a sardonic smirk. “And what is that?”

“Well, I can’t be sure yet,” she says boldly, clasping her hands together. “So I believe I need more date—data, I mean... Or date. Do you like tea?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tea? Or are you more of a coffee fellow? I can make either. Come to the library sometime tomorrow, I should be done setting up by then.”

He has no idea how to respond at first, staring at her incredulously. She wanted to have tea. With him. In the library, on a Sunday, the day before it had its grand reopening, so it would just be her and him. Alone. Having tea. It sounded like something fabricated out of a lonely dream, and he wonders if he’ll wake up any moment to find himself hungover in his parlor at home.

“Only if you want to, of course,” Miss French reassures somewhat nervously, and he decides that this behavior is not the norm for her. To his equal displeasure he speaks up.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five. Why?”

“You’re awfully young to be trying to proposition someone like me.”

“Proposition—no! Just. Maybe a little date, yeah. Do you want to?”

A girl more than twenty years his junior was trying to get sappy with him? He must be dreaming. But he shames himself by accepting. “Ah… sure, dear. Whatever you want.” Whatever you want, the sun, the moon, the stars.

And the girl, the woman, who had made it clear exactly what she wanted, gives him a blinding smile before sweeping out of the store. He stares after her, baffled and still wondering if that had really happened. Belatedly, he realizes the sun had set. Gold muses she must have taken it along with her leaving. Surely she must have, as the whole shop suddenly felt more enclosed in shadows, cold and empty. He must see where she had taken the warmth he didn’t know he was missing.

[drsohinisastri]

What is Astrology? Does It Really Help or It’s Just Some Fake Belief?

Today we have picked the most controversial debate related to astrology; does it really help by predicting future events or is it totally fake, bound by some ancient beliefs? For enlighten us on the above topic, today we have the best astrologer in Delhi, Dr. Sohini Sastri.

Before discussing further we need a little knowledge about astrology.

What is Astrology and how does astrology works?

Astrology is an ancient science which can tell us about the influence of celestial, distant cosmic object on human. By celestial object we mean stars and planets. Astrology also helps to predict events by studying the movements and positions of celestial objects. Astrology is so ancient, it has been dated to 2nd millennium BC.

Most of us think about just 12 zodiac signs or sun-signs by the word astrology. But it is so much more than that. The sun-signs are determined according to native’s birth date. Probably this is the simplest form of astrology. According to the best astrologer in Delhi, such analysis provide limited data and it can be wrong time to time. She personally believes in Vedic astrology, more specifically KP method of astrology. KP System or Krishnamurti Paddhati is considered to be one of the most precise astrological systems in India. This is an excellent system of astrological predictions, conceived and created by the great astrologer Late Prof. K.S. Krishnamurti. KP System is based on finer points of Indian and Western astrology and borrows important concepts from many branches of astrology. Regarded as the most accurate system of present time, KP System of astrology is systematic and very well defined.

Scientist will tell you not to believe in astrology. Astrologer will provide facts in support of astrology. The fact is both of them are true. Astrology is not proven ‘controlled science’ yet, but you cannot ignore it either.

The season change, tidal flow etc. are managed and controlled by celestial objects like sun or moon. Human body is also formed with substance like water, carbon etc. So in the same way that outer objects effect earth, it also effect on living objects. Various celestial phenomena effects on our life differently. It effects on individual’s mood, behavior, education, career, married life, financial status etc.

As per the best astrologer in Delhi, there is a simple linear manner of explaining astrology. Such as, you collect the birth details of a native, calculate the Natal diagram. Analyse the diagram and predict based on that. This is the most linear explanation.

But the real strength of astrology is, it works in non-linear manner at the same time. It is this nature of astrology that has set it under assault, since a non-linear capacity has been taken to infer that it doesn't have a control system and hence it isn't subject to scientific, logical scrutiny or approval.

 In school, we were instructed that light carries on as though it were molecule or a wave. Truth be told everything acts as though it were molecule or wave.

Particles connect in a straight manner. Two particles crashing, for instance, have unsurprising coming about directions. There are logical laws that decide the conduct of both individual particles, and complex structures of particles. This method of these practices formed a particular mechanism. At the point when researchers are not furnished with such a mechanism, the process or it's understanding, is questioned.

Astrology doesn't work with perfect mechanism. It works with relationships, patterns, tendencies, and interpretations. It doesn't always offer a yes or no answer. You can say the same about quantum computing which is a cutting edge technology. Not having 100% clear set of rules does not make anything fake.

In a nutshell, there will be long debate on astrology and its truthfulness. We will not achieve anything from such debate. As per my understanding, astrology does not always provide accurate prediction as it is a complex probabilistic calculation. But it certainly provides the best choices or chances according to our chart. And I can say it’s fair enough to have suggestion in the ‘Exam of Life’.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ashton Applewhite: Let's end ageism

What's one thing that every person in this room is going to become? Older. And most of us are scared stiff at the prospect. How does that word make you feel? I used to feel the same way. What was I most worried about? Ending up drooling in some grim institutional hallway. And then I learned that only four percent of older Americans are living in nursing homes, and the percentage is dropping.What else was I worried about? Dementia. Turns out that most of us can think just fine to the end. Dementia rates are dropping, too.The real epidemic is anxiety over memory loss.

00:49

(Laughter)

00:51

I also figured that old people were depressed because they were old and they were going to die soon.

00:57

(Laughter)

00:59

It turns out that the longer people live, the less they fear dying, and that people are happiest at the beginnings and the end of their lives. It's called the U-curve of happiness, and it's been borne out by dozens of studies around the world. You don't have to be a Buddhist or a billionaire. The curve is a function of the way aging itself affects the brain.

01:18

So I started feeling a lot better about getting older, and I started obsessing about why so few people know these things. The reason is ageism: discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age. We experience it anytime someone assumes we're too old for something,instead of finding out who we are and what we're capable of, or too young. Ageism cuts both ways. All -isms are socially constructed ideas -- racism, sexism, homophobia -- and that means we make them up, and they can change over time. All these prejudices pit us against each other to maintain the status quo, like auto workers in the US competing against auto workers in Mexico instead of organizing for better wages.

02:05

(Applause)

02:07

We know it's not OK to allocate resources by race or by sex. Why should it be OK to weigh the needs of the young against the old? All prejudice relies on "othering" -- seeing a group of people as other than ourselves: other race, other religion, other nationality. The strange thing about ageism: that other is us. Ageism feeds on denial -- our reluctance to acknowledge that we are going to become that older person. It's denial when we try to pass for younger or when we believe in anti-aging products, or when we feel like our bodies are betraying us, simply because they are changing. Why on earth do we stop celebrating the ability to adapt and grow as we move through life? Why should aging well mean struggling to look and move like younger versions of ourselves? It's embarrassing to be called out as older until we quit being embarrassed about it, and it's not healthy to go through life dreading our futures. The sooner we get off this hamster wheel of age denial, the better off we are.

03:13

Stereotypes are always a mistake, of course, but especially when it comes to age, because the longer we live, the more different from one another we become. Right? Think about it. And yet, we tend to think of everyone in a retirement home as the same age: old --

03:26

(Laughter)

03:28

when they can span four decades. Can you imagine thinking that way about a group of people between the ages of 20 and 60?

03:36

When you get to a party, do you head for people your own age? Have you ever grumbled about entitled millennials? Have you ever rejected a haircut or a relationship or an outing because it's not age-appropriate? For adults, there's no such thing. All these behaviors are ageist. We all do them, and we can't challenge bias unless we're aware of it. Nobody's born ageist, but it starts at early childhood,around the same time attitudes towards race and gender start to form, because negative messages about late life bombard us from the media and popular culture at every turn. Right? Wrinkles are ugly. Old people are pathetic. It's sad to be old.

04:16

Look at Hollywood. A survey of recent Best Picture nominations found that only 12 percent of speaking or named characters were age 60 and up, and many of them were portrayed as impaired. Older people can be the most ageist of all, because we've had a lifetime to internalize these messages and we've never thought to challenge them. I had to acknowledge it and stop colluding. "Senior moment" quips, for example: I stopped making them when it dawned on me that when I lost the car keys in high school, I didn't call it a "junior moment."

04:48

(Laughter)

04:50

I stopped blaming my sore knee on being 64. My other knee doesn't hurt, and it's just as old.

04:56

(Laughter)

04:58

(Applause)

05:00

We are all worried about some aspect of getting older, whether running out of money, getting sick, ending up alone, and those fears are legitimate and real. But what never dawns on most of us is that the experience of reaching old age can be better or worse depending on the culture in which it takes place. It is not having a vagina that makes life harder for women. It's sexism.

05:23

(Applause)

05:25

It's not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys. It's homophobia. And it is not the passage of time that makes getting olderso much harder than it has to be. It is ageism. When labels are hard to read or there's no handrail or we can't open the damn jar, we blame ourselves, our failure to age successfully, instead of the ageism that makes those natural transitions shameful and the discrimination that makes those barriers acceptable. You can't make money off satisfaction, but shame and fear create markets, and capitalism always needs new markets. Who says wrinkles are ugly? The multi-billion-dollar skin care industry. Who says perimenopause and low T and mild cognitive impairment are medical conditions? The trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry.

06:12

(Cheers)

06:13

The more clearly we see these forces at work, the easier it is to come up with alternative, more positive and more accurate narratives.Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured. It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all.

06:32

Changing the culture is a tall order, I know that, but culture is fluid. Look at how much the position of women has changed in my lifetime or the incredible strides that the gay rights movement has made in just a few decades, right?

06:44

(Applause)

06:45

Look at gender. We used to think of it as a binary, male or female, and now we understand it's a spectrum. It is high time to ditch the old-young binary, too. There is no line in the sand between old and young, after which it's all downhill. And the longer we wait to challenge that idea, the more damage it does to ourselves and our place in the world, like in the workforce, where age discrimination is rampant. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botoxed and hair-plugged before key interviews -- and these are skilled white men in their 30s, so imagine the effects further down the food chain.

07:20

(Laughter)

07:22

The personal and economic consequences are devastating. Not one stereotype about older workers holds up under scrutiny.Companies aren't adaptable and creative because their employees are young; they're adaptable and creative despite it. Companies --

07:38

(Laughter)

07:39

(Applause)

07:41

We know that diverse companies aren't just better places to work; they work better. And just like race and sex, age is a criterion for diversity.

07:50

A growing body of fascinating research shows that attitudes towards aging affect how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level. When we talk to older people like this (Speaks more loudly) or call them "sweetie" or "young lady" -- it's called elderspeak --they appear to instantly age, walking and talking less competently. People with more positive feelings towards aging walk faster, they do better on memory tests, they heal quicker, and they live longer. Even with brains full of plaques and tangles, some people stayed sharp to the end. What did they have in common? A sense of purpose. And what's the biggest obstacle to having a sense of purpose in late life? A culture that tells us that getting older means shuffling offstage. That's why the World Health Organization is developing a global anti-ageism initiative to extend not just life span but health span.

08:41

Women experience the double whammy of ageism and sexism, so we experience aging differently. There's a double standard at work here -- shocker --

08:50

(Laughter)

08:52

the notion that aging enhances men and devalues women. Women reinforce this double standard when we compete to stay young,another punishing and losing proposition. Does any woman in this room really believe that she is a lesser version -- less interesting, less fun in bed, less valuable -- than the woman she once was? This discrimination affects our health, our well-being and our income,and the effects add up over time. They are further compounded by race and by class, which is why, everywhere in the world, the poorest of the poor are old women of color.

09:29

What's the takeaway from that map? By 2050, one out of five of us, almost two billion people, will be age 60 and up. Longevity is a fundamental hallmark of human progress. All these older people represent a vast unprecedented and untapped market. And yet, capitalism and urbanization have propelled age bias into every corner of the globe, from Switzerland, where elders fare the best, to Afghanistan, which sits at the bottom of the Global AgeWatch Index. Half of the world's countries aren't mentioned on that listbecause we don't bother to collect data on millions of people because they're no longer young. Almost two-thirds of people over 60 around the world say they have trouble accessing healthcare. Almost three-quarters say their income doesn't cover basic services like food, water, electricity, and decent housing. Is this the world we want our children, who may well live to be a hundred, to inherit?Everyone -- all ages, all genders, all nationalities -- is old or future-old, and unless we put an end to it, ageism will oppress us all. And that makes it a perfect target for collective advocacy.

10:43

Why add another -ism to the list when so many, racism in particular, call out for action? Here's the thing: we don't have to choose.When we make the world a better place to grow old in, we make it a better place in which to be from somewhere else, to have a disability, to be queer, to be non-rich, to be non-white. And when we show up at all ages for whatever cause matters most to us --save the whales, save the democracy -- we not only make that effort more effective, we dismantle ageism in the process.

11:15

Longevity is here to stay. A movement to end ageism is underway. I'm in it, and I hope you will join me.

11:24

(Applause and cheers)

11:28

Thank you. Let's do it! Let's do it!

https://www.ted.com/talks/ashton_applewhite_let_s_end_ageism

[realalphaworks]

360 Finance’s “capital light” model skyrocketed 10 times and the new trends in the fintech industry

On August 23, 360 Finance (NASDAQ: QFIN) released its unaudited second quarter 2019 earnings report.

In addition to doubled revenue and net income, the number that really caught my eyes is the loan generated by 360 Finance’s financial technology service segment, the so-called capital light model, which surged 10 times quarter on quarter. This indicates that China's financial technology industry, or fintech, has entered a period of rapid growth.

Coincidentally, on August 22, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released a heavyweight plan, the “Fintech Development Plan (2019-2021)”, which outlines the priorities and development targets for the fintech sector. It is the first time that China formally makes clear the role of the fintech industry as technology service provider, rather than a financial service provider.

With the enhanced technological capacity of fintech companies, the prominent value of their platforms, together with the supportive policy from the central bank, it creates a new opportunity for the accelerated development of the Chinese fintech sector. Meanwhile, there is a realistic problem for investors: how should we value fintech companies in this emerging industry?

I will discuss the valuation of 360 Finance as an example.

01

The new trends in the fintech industry from 360 Finance’s quarterly report

The second quarter earnings show that 360 Finance realized revenue of 2.227 billion RMB during the quarter, an increase of 128% from 979 million RMB from the same period last year. Non-GAAP net profit was 692 million yuan, an increase of 114% from 324 million year over year.

Behind the rapid growth of revenue is the growing loan origination volume.

Loan origination volume was RMB48,378 million during the quarter, an increase of 127% from RMB21,277 million in the same period of 2018.

When it comes to the factors behind the rapid growth of 360 Finance, we find that there are three that matter: first, it is the transition of 360 Finance to a capital light model; second, it is the efficiency improvement brought by AI-powered precision marketing; and third, it is the market leading risk management.

[1] Transition of income structure to a capital light model

In the second quarter, 360 financial technology service’s, the capital light model, contribution to transaction volume increased significantly, with a single quarter transaction amounting to 3.8 billion RMB, accounting to 8% of all loan generated, and astonishingly, an increase of more than 10 times over the previous quarter.

According to 360 Finance’s IPO prospectus, the financial technology service is a service whereby 360 Finance provide technology support and expertise to funding partners for a fixed or floating fee based on loan origination volumes, without retaining credit risk exposure associated with the loans.

In fact, apart from 360 Finance, other Chinese fintech companies also showed their increased emphasis on their technology service segment growth.

For example, JD Finance achieved full-year profit in 2018, and their income structure has also changed where the portion of technology services revenue to total revenue tripled in 2018 year over year.

These examples have proved the effectiveness and high growth potential of the technology service model, and also in line with the new plan of the fintech industry issued by PBOC as mentioned above.

Technology service is the next growth hub for 360 finance. It is expected that the company's share of technology services revenue will gradually increase in the future.

360 Finance have made significant progress in enhancing technology and research capabilities this year as well as data mining and risk modelling. Technology-oriented employees now accounted for approximately 48% of total workforce which reflects just how critical the cutting-edge technologies are to our business. As of June 30, 2019, 360 Finance submitted 139 patent applications for proprietary financial technologies.

Also, in the second quarter of 2019, the number of 360 Finance’s institutional financial partners increased to 60 from 30 in the last quarter. Among the total amount of borrowing business, the financial institutions accounted for 85% of the total amount of funds, which was significantly higher than 79% in the first quarter. It is second to none among listed financial technology companies.

[2] Precision marketing solves pain points in traditional finance

We can see from the earnings report, 360 Finance’s accumulative registrations were 109 million in the second quarter, an increase of 96% over the same period last year of 55.6 million; the number of credit users was 19.23 million, an increase of 166% over the same period last year.

360 Finance achieved high growth in the number of customers because it has solved pain points in traditional finance.

In order to reduced reliance on manual marketing in traditional finance, 360 Finance came up with a unique DSP (Demand-Side Platform) system, which minimizes the use of labour in the marketing process and achieves precision marketing with AI technology.

The DSP system brings together inventory of various advertising exchanges, ads networks, supplier platforms and even media, which help agents manage one or more ad exchange market accounts with a single interface, improving the efficiency.

It is worth mentioning that the DSP system can target the audience to individuals rather than to a certain group as in traditional media. Even better, the big data calculus mechanism has the capacity to model the portrait of different groups, which helps find users with high ARPU (average revenue per user).

This solves the dilemma in traditional marketing where low click cost comes with high customer acquisition cost, or low customer cost comes with poor follow-up effect.

In addition to AI risk management and precision marketing, 360 Finance has also established an AI-powered system for underwriting and post-loan collections, which I will not go into details here.

[3] AI-powered risk management solves pain points in traditional finance

The earnings show that 360 Finance’s 90 day+ delinquency ratio was 1.02% for the quarter as of June 30, 2019. When it comes to risk management, 360 Finance has a comparative advantage over most of its peers.

Benefit from 360 Group's 1 billion devices and 515 million monthly users, more than 30 third-party data providers, financial partners, and user behavior data, 360 Finance has accumulated rich risk management capabilities and anti-fraud practices.

The AI-powered risk management independently developed by 360 Finance is named Argus. The name is taken from the giant eye of the Greek mythology, describing   strict scrutiny in one's actions to an invasive, distressing degree.

This risk management system is based on artificial intelligence technology, including machine learning, which can automatically make decisions throughout the loan transaction process. It is definitely an evolution of risk control performed by humans under the traditional financial model.

Its main functions include fraud detection, initial credit evaluation, continuous adjustment of credit assessment and credit collection strategies. The realization of each function is based on the use of big data collected from thousands of samples, and the personalized labels generated by a score system.

For a featured function “continuous adjustment of credit evaluation”, after the first transaction is completed for three months, the Argus engine will capture and analyze the user's financing behavior, click behavior, recommendation behavior, etc., and generate a behavior score called B Score. B Score will be re-evaluated at the time of user transaction as well as at the end of each month; afterwards it will be sent to a subsequent pricing engine for evaluation whether to adjust the user's credit limit and pricing.

The AI-powered technology has substantially enhanced the risk management capacity of the traditional financial institutions where it only takes 39 seconds to make a loan decision.

02

The dual logic of fintech company valuation

As an emerging industry, the fintech sector does not have a time-tested valuation methodology. However, under different valuation systems, the discrepancy between valuations could be huge.

Even the most commonly used P/S (Price-sales ratio) method in the industry has the problem of not being able to objectively reflect the business situation of a fintech company: where the ratio only examines the company’s revenue and can barely reflect the company's cost control ability. In the case of rising costs and declining profits, as long as the income remains the same, the valuation is unchanged.

In fact, for fintech firms, their profitability should be the key when it comes to valuation. At the same time, based on the premier value of their platforms, the valuation model should also include factors including business models and user scale.

From the business model perspective, the major categories of current fintech firms including financing firms, asset management firms, payment processors, technology service providers, and platforms.

For example, 360 Finance is a typical platform-type fintech company. 360 Finance has subdivided the scenarios for big data application, and developed a variety of scenarios by working with Di Da, Future Market, Pulse, E-bag Washing, and Haro bicycle, where it has empowered multiple industries.

To be fair, we could adopt the the Sum-of-the-Parts valuation model (SOTP) together with its valuation premium. The specific models are as follows:

(1) Sum-of-the-Parts valuation

Payment segment: market value / transaction size, reference interval of 0.05-0.2X; price-earnings ratio of 25X-30X

Financing business: market value / loan scale, reference interval of 0.2X-0.4X

Asset management business: market value / AUM (asset management scale), reference interval of 0.02X-0.18X

(2) Valuation premium

Customer premium: customer-scenario-product-profit

Technology premium: technology - product - profit

Collaborative premium: customer-cross product-profit

Using Sum-of-the-Parts valuation method, 360 Finance generated a total of 48.378 billion RMB in the second quarter. With reference to the market value/loan generation scale of 0.2X-0.4X, the market value is between $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion.

Under the framework of this valuation, with reference to 360 Finance's current market value of $1.4 billion, it is at the lower end of the valuation range.

Using the second valuation method, for the customer premium, 360 Finance has access to the 1 billion mobile devices of 360 Group and the 515 million active monthly users.

This scale is equivalent to the number of Alibaba mobile MAU, to which Ant Financial has access.

In terms of technology premium, Ant Financial and 360 Finance both introduced artificial intelligence as a major technology tool, which enables the provision of AI-powered risk management, customer service, underwriting and post-loan management and collections.

In terms of collaborative premium, similar to Ant Financial's most profitable products Hua Bei (spend it) and Jie Bei (borrow it), the core product of 360 Finance is 360 Jietiao, which is a institutional provided loan rather than a P2P loan. The fund mainly come from large financial institutions such as ICBC and China Everbright Bank, where the funds are guaranteed.

As of June 30, 2019, 360 Finance accumulated borrowers reached 12.54 million, an increase of 167% over the same period last year of 4.69 million. From the numbers we can tell that 12.54 million borrowers has a lot of room to grow given a pool of 109 million registered users.

So it is easy to conclude that from the three aspects of customer, technology and collaborative premium, 360 Finance and Ant Financial have a similar business logic.

This also means that despite of the differences in business segments and user values, 360 Finance is still unable to achieve the valuation of tens of billions level of Ant Financial; but from the valuation premium perspective, it has the potential to become the next billion dollars valuation unicorn.

To conclude, 360 Finance, currently only valued around $1.4 billion, has not been tapped by the market for its valuation premium. This creates a good opportunity for savvy investors.

[analiecious]

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