#Void treatment just became fashionable

[breadmecoshy]

I swear, the Pale King just organized a conveyor belt for the production of minions from the void and delegated his duties to them

In my understanding, Lurien and the Collector were the two most reasonable specimens, so the King made them work. For free, of course, only out of a sense of love for its creator. And less autonomous samples became his kingsmoulds

Lurien was obviously entrusted with overseeing the City of Tears, but I think the situation is more interesting with the Collector

I think the King originally appointed him as a scientist who was supposed to study the effects and consequences of contact of living beings with the void. Is it possible to defeat the infection in this way or reduce its impact? It would be easy for him, since he himself is from the void

After all, he has his own tower with a study. But to be honest, the Tower of Love reminds me of one big room with soft walls for a madman, and it stands literally on the very edge of the city, isolated from it. I think the king initially saw that the Collector was not quite adequate, but he needed research, so he simply provided him with a tower with access to the Edge of the Kingdom so that he could catch unreasonable beetles there for research, and not cause problems in the city

The bug with the void flowing out of its eyes, in which we find the key to the tower, thinks that they have been together with someone for too long, and have become one. I think it was one of the assistants or workers in the tower who escaped when the influence of the void on the inhabitants of the tower became obviously detrimental. He locked the Collector up and took the key with him so that he could no longer "protect" everything he could reach

#And Lurien at the same time #“Why do I have to deal with the crazy scientists in this city” #Between loyal but obviously autistic creatures and normal living workers the King chose the former #Probably because their work is free #By the way #in the city and beyond you can find many portraits and beetles with void flowing out of their eyes #I think it's because there were rumors about research on this topic in the city #and many citizens were really sure that contact with the void would protect them from the plague #Well they really don't look infected #Just painfully dead #or maybe it's like with lead whitewash in the Middle Ages #Void treatment just became fashionable #Fashionable black eyeliner and pale mask #hollow knight #hk #hk pale king #hk collector #hk lurien #hollow knight pk #hk pk #lurien the watcher #hollow knight collector

[yagamisdiary]

Amara, your ability to evoke emotions within your readers is truly impeccable. It takes a lot more talent and skill to do so than many might think. Your work and prowess as an author is one to be commended for sure.

One particularly tragic character is Ambrose. I’ve caught up on the story a while ago and ever since I simply just cannot stop thinking about the complexity of his character. Throughout the story, he came across as simply a womanizer who was too consumed by himself. However, his death gave me much to reflect on.

The tragedy of his character comes from the fact that he spent both his life and his death in internal suffering; he simply could not catch a break! As he was growing up he never stood out at all, he was never particularly good at many things and on top of that his siblings outshined him in many fashions. Elijah had his incredible intelligence and likeness as the future king, Kai had his humour and talent to succeed at practically everything and yn had her exceeding kindheartedness and healing abilities. Then there was Ambrose, who was always in a gray area. He was never anyone’s first thought. What he truly wanted deep down was acceptance from his family. He wanted to be seen, acknowledged, and to feel useful. This never came easy as he realized his parents would always be occupied with another one of his more prominent siblings. The realization that he would not get what he yearned for from his family caused him to develop a character that grabbed everyone’s attention in order to compensate for the attention he so badly both wanted and needed from his family. He found comfort in the temporary affectionate moments he shared with various princesses but the feelings were fleeting as it could just never quite fill that gap in his heart left by his treatment by his loved ones. It was like a leaking bucket.

That’s why he became so close to yn, out of everyone, she was the only one who could relate to his feelings of uselessness and being overlooked. When she was younger, yn’s method of bonding with Ambrose was through praise. When I first heard that I thought to myself how conceited he must have been. But now it signifies so much more— not only was she the only one who understood how he felt, but she actively worked to better his confidence and fill the void. She was an extension of himself, which is why he loved her the most out of all. This is why he made sure to incorporate her into his plan of redeeming himself. Just like he promised when they were kids, he would never leave her behind. He had his own twisted ways but in hindsight he actually did try to make her dream of healing the world and becoming a queen come true. The love he had for her was very profound and may slip past someone who doesn’t pay attention to the smaller details. Which is why his death just hurts so much more.

He spent the entirety of his life suffering internally. He finally executed a plan to redeem himself which ultimately failed in the long run, which is very sorrowful. But what’s more is that his death was spent suffering too. Yn occupied a very special place in his heart and he worked hard to get them both better opportunities. His last moments were spent coming to the realization that the one person who he truly loved above all else and sacrificed many things for stabbed him in the back, literally and figuratively. Furthermore he was scared. His mature external body had fooled people into thinking he was an adult, but deep down his severe conflicting emotions prevented him from developing past being a child. That’s what he was, a scared, hurt child trapped in the body of an adult. He spent his last moments feeling betrayal and fear. Now that I think about it, the reason he feared death was likely because he felt that if he died, he would no longer be able to attract attention and that eventually people would forget about him completely. :(

As I read on I can’t help but feel occasional guilt for the fate of Ambrose. He was mentally gone but part of me wonders what could’ve been if he hasn’t been killed, instead he was brought into therapy and treated. Ambrose lived and died in suffering, and spent his last efforts trying to obtain a better life for him and yn, which is why guilt arises whenever yn is enjoying herself, knowing that Ambrose should’ve been right by her side enjoying himself just as much.

wow wow wow let me just start off by saying I LOVEEEE WHEN PPL SEND ME CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF ONE OF MY CHARACTERS LIKE IM OBSESSED

you read him so well i’m honestly speechless! ambrose is one of my favorite characters in the book and in general. people sorta raise their eyebrow at me when i say that because well… you know

the truth is that ambrose’s faith was sealed from the very first chapter, i knew his path from the very start and knew how i wanted everything to go

as i continue to write his character, i found myself getting attached to him and dreading his impending doom that i knew was coming…

ppl either hate him or love him which i think is a truly undeniable sign of a complex character! he had such kind moments where you couldn’t help but love him, you almost hated loving him

and then there were moments where you would stop yourself and say, “why is he doing this? i just started to like him”

i have no additional comments or corrections to your post because honestly you READ TF OUTTA HIM LOL i mean everything was spot on it’s unreal

thank you so much for even taking the time out of ur day to not only read the story but to create and write out this analysis! i don’t think ppl see it from my pov but when i get simple messages about my stories or characters it’s definitely gives me motivation to continue & lets me know that my effort does not go unnoticed !! so again thank u so much 🫶🏼

also i’m so down to read ur character analysis for the other characters!

#eldia #ambrose apologist #please please please send me more analysis of characters i’m so invested now

[help-im-a-gay-fish]

It's A Long Road to Recovery.

(post Dark-Cream story)

"How's the water my Love? " Cross asked, dipping the tips of his fingers into the bath.

"perfect" Dream replied sinking slightly deeper into the water. The warmth wrapped around his bones and felt amazing on all the aches and pains.

"you got it just perfect"

The guard smiled wide "I'm glad to hear that, soak as long as you want, you deserve it"

The two had returned to the place they called home and Cross had drawn his beloved a bath. If Cross had it his way, he would have attempted to create a full spar treatment to pamper the bruised guardian. However, Dream had been more then happy to have something simple and the way he sighed as he relaxed in the water filled Cross with warmth.

It was so good to be home, even if it was mostly just a void with some rooms and things, it felt like home now. Though Cross wondered, with no anti sanses did that mean that him and Dream could settle down? They were engaged after all.

That thought make him smile wider. it had definitely been a long journey, but now that it was over him and Dream could finally be together. A family.

The gloopy mass had mostly washed off him now, though his joints where not completely free of it. Sadly, the lack of gloop now revealed just how damaged Dreams body was. There where huge cracks running across many of his bones and many bruised and stained areas. Then there was his eye.

Cross was trying hard not to look at it, but he didn't want Dream to know he was. Of course Dream was still beautiful, he always would be, but that didn't make it easy.

The wound was large and caused Cross to think about how it must have felt for him during the transformation. He hadn't seen the whole thing, but the sounds of Dreams bones splitting and his cries of agony became present in his mind whenever he looked at the eye.

It made him shudder to think of the pain he must have, and still was in.

"how's the" he started glancing away "the.... Eye?"

Dream sat up a bit.

"it's fine.... Mostly numb really"

He could sense his partners concern and didn't want to tell him the whole truth. It was painful and throbbed slowly, especially when touched. It threaten to hurt for a long time, not that it was a punishment he didn't deserve.

As soon as he was done in the bath he'd have to bind it.

Dream felt no shame in Cross being there while he bathed. He knew he wanted to stay in the water for a few hours, and those where hours that he wanted to spend with Cross. So therefore he'd asked Cross to join him.

The guardian stretched, wincing slightly as his back bones slid together. It ached and probably would for quite a while.

He pressed his fingers into the crook of his elbow joint, sighing in relief as more of the gloop stuck there gave way. The slime had dried and jammed up most of his joints, making him feel stiff and useless. It would take hours to clean, but it seemed like the warm water was helping it give way.

Taking a breath, he ducked his whole head and body under the water. Laying there under it for a few moments to soak, before resurfacing for air.

There was a trickle as Cross continued to flick the surface of the water with his fingers. Dream lent forward to shake the water from his skull and felt a sharp pain in his back. It didn't last very long but it was quite a surprise so it caused him to suck in air quickly through his teeth. Cross looked up straight away.

"Dream!?"

Dream took a breath and slowly moved his body back so he was lent against the bath again. The pain stopped.

"j-just moved to fast.... It will be fine, Nightmare said the first day was the most painful"

"right" Cross said, still concerned but with a slightly harder tone. "Rest...."

"I will Crossy, if Night was able to run, I'll be able to take care of myself" Dream replied, trying to sound reassuring.

He scooped up some of the bubbly foam from the waters surface in his hand and blew it in Cross' direction. Cross batted it with his hand in a playful cat-like fashion.

Dream smiled, seeing Cross acting playfully with him, it had been a long time since they'd been able to just exist as a couple. He would have continued to blow bubbles at him, but an intrusive thought ruined the momentary joy and it made him freeze.

" ¿Estaba él en este dolor?" he asked quietly. Cross glance sideways at him.

"hm?"

"Nightmare..." Dream clarified "......was he....is he in this pain?" Cross sighed.

"Dreamboat, you need to focus on your own recovery" he said, once again flicking the bath water with his fingers, though slightly more aggressively.

His tone was firm and slightly bitter "I know you worry, but he has Killer"

Shifting his legs around a bit, Dream sighed. He knew his partner was right, he shouldn't let himself worry about Nightmare to much, they would be in contact in a few days.

Yet he just couldn't help it. If he was in this bad of shape after a few months, then how bad would it be for Night after hundreds of years.

"but what if he-

-just drop it!"

Startled at Cross' tone, Dream flinched slightly. He wasn't used to Cross speaking to him like that and he didn't like it.

He narrowed his good eye at him and the soldier sheepishly looked away. Dream sensed shame from him, but also anger. His emotions were a mess.

"sorry i just meant-

-You're still thinking about what he did to you....."

Cross' shoulders tensing confirmed to Dream that he was right. His expression softened.

"Cross..."

"it's not just what he put me through" he said, still avoiding Dreams gaze "it's what he did to you... And heaven....." his voice trailed off and his eyes watered slightly.

Dream felt his soul twist as the memories flooded in. Feeling suddenly very cold, he lowered his legs deeper in the water.

Cross squeezed his eyes shut and shook the tears away. Before opening his mouth to keep speaking, but closing it again.

"oh.. Cross" Dream said, reaching forward in an effort to comfort him. But he soon lowered his arm when Cross continued to speak.

"I know he's your brother... And I know you want to reconnect with him...." he swallowed and turned back to his lover. "I'm not gonna stop you... And I'm not going to hold a grudge, I just need.....

".... time" Dream said finishing Cross' sentence. Cross nodded in response.

He felt selfish just saying it

Even if Dream seemed to understand he still felt bad.

The reality of everything was still catching up with him and it was a slightly rough reality.

He'd been on happy to see his beloved gloop free and happy, that he'd completely pushed aside any kind of confrontation he'd had in mind for Killer or Nightmare.

Both had serious partaking in his pain and he hadn't realised how much he resented them until now.

But the reality that had just hit him was that Dream was going to reconnect with with his brother and if Cross was going to be Dreams husband then Nightmare was going to be a part of his.... Family.

"........"

That thought hurt.

Dream stared at his partner for a long time, as Cross watched the water flicking under his fingers. Cross' emotions were very negative, Dream knew he needed to say something.

"it's ok Mi Soldado, you aren't the only one. .."

Cross looked up at him again.

"I may have forgiven him in my head, but I still need to forgive him in my heart". He struggled to keep his voice steady.

"I-it's been so many years"

he bent over his knees and hugged his legs tightly.

"just like my face, there are a lot of cracks to heal..." he'd sighed "it's not just you"

Cross' emotions calmed slightly and he relaxed at Dream's reassurance.

"Its going to be a long road to recovery Crossy, for all of us"

Cross gave him a soft smile, and reached forward to cup his soapy cheek.

"I'll be here every step of the way" he said in a gentle tone.

Dream melted.

He leaned over to catch Cross in a kiss and the soldier happy obliged. It was a soft and affectionate kiss. Something that they had both been needing in that moment.

After pulling away Dream sank back into the water with a sigh. For the first time in a long time, he felt that things were going to be OK.

So here I am was another little bonus Dark-Cream scene. I came up with this recently and sketched it out. I wasn't originally gonna finish it but @zu-is-here asked me to so I did. I'm not really 100% satisfied with it you know? The bubbles was horrible to draw, I'm proud of the water and the bones though. The writing was just a cute Scene I came up with. Because it can't just be all fine and dandy can it? Nightmare put them both through hell and everyone needs time to heal. Idk if that makes sense? But I hope you enjoyed.

Original cross and dream belong to jakei95 and jokublog

Original shattered dream belongs to @galacii-gallery

Based off the Dark-Cream ship by @zu-is-here and the comic by @zu-is-here

#undertale au #my art #undertale multiverse #So please enjoy some post dark cream #Originally I came up with the idea of dream asking cross to get into the bath with him #While being playful #Cross is embarrassed but decides to #But he does it fully clothed #Both of them share a laugh about that #And then a kiss #It's a PG bath scene people #Keep it cleab #shipping #sansest #cross x dream #dream x cross #dark cream #Post Dark-Cream #cross x shattered dream #Hope you enjoyed

[sxveme-2]

Strawberry Pancakes // Bucky Barnes

MASTERLIST

SEQUEL TO BLUEBERRY PANCAKES

DESCRIPTION: Lily Osborne and Bucky Barnes were never blessed with an easy relationship. Whether it be emotional trauma, or Lily's parents trying to be evil scientists. But they somehow made it work, after coming together once again after the birth of Lily's nephew. They were smooth sailing for a while. He proposed, they got engaged, but have yet to marry. While also juggling raising a teenager together as Hunter reaches the age of 16 now. All the while struggling with adjusting to their new lives in Long Island, balancing careers. Meanwhile, Lily struggles with the new found fame of being the fiancé of The White Wolf; and handling the tabloids critiques on her life and gossip columns digging up any information they can on her. While trying to maintain a low profile; and handle her life as it is. And becoming parents. Lily for the second time, while Bucky, well, this is his first attempt at a biological child. All the while a new threat from their past rises up once again, blind siding the family. Bringing forward old hatchets that had been buried, and putting their relationship at risk once more.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any original Marvel characters! All canon plots and canon characters belong to Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. This is an original work. You may not publish it anywhere else

STATUS: Unedited

NOTES: Takes place after endgame. I have elected to ignore Tony's death and Steve's leaving. Did not happen. Quick Reminder! My works are only published here, AO3 and on Wattpad, thank you.

Chapter Five: The One With Her Uncle

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 2286

    Carter Evanson was the one constant in Lily's life outside of her family. He was with her from the moment she filed for divorce with Scott, to when she wanted primary custody, all the way to when she wanted full custody. Then she utilized him once again with Hunter's adoption paperwork. Finally, however, she needed him to work those magic family law skills and get the adoption paperwork filed now more than ever.

"Did you know Scott was moving?" Lily asked, glancing behind her at Hunter from the front seat.

"I hadn't spoken with him since Christmas last year," Hunter sighed, sliding his phone into his pocket, "I'm just as shocked as you are, mom."

"That's alright, buddy," Bucky replied, sending a wary look towards Lily, "Mom and I just need all of the information."

The rest of the car ride to Carter's office in upper Manhattan was silent. No one knew what to say. The entire day had been a complete blur for all of them. Then, finally, this morning, Lily woke up and was excited to pick out a wedding dress to marry her fiance wearing. Now she was on her way to her lawyer's office so that she and Bucky could finally make it legal that Hunter was his son.

"Don't tell anyone about what is going on," Lily reminded as the three stepped into the foyer of the law firm, "The last thing I need is this spreading through the PTA right to Priya."

Hunter nodded and gripped his mom's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Lily knew this was tough on Hunter. Scott has done nothing but make the boy's life a living hell with a new bomb being dropped every other day. It didn't help that Scott seemed to have some sort of vendetta against his ex-wife, despite him being the reason they separated in the first place. It wasn't Lily's fault that Hunter resented his father. It was Scotts.

Lily always tried to be the firm front of her family. She wanted to show everyone that despite the hell they've been through, they were able to come out the other end happy. But it was hard sometimes, especially when Scott got involved in her life again. He always seemed to barge in whenever everything was finally going smoothly. Then, in classic Scott fashion, he threw Lily for a loop anytime he spoke.

Lily slid her other hand into Bucky's as the three stood in the elevator, waiting to get to Carter's floor. She remembered the nights when she and Bucky would camp out in the living room with Hunter when he was thirteen. She was pregnant and preferred sleeping in the living room since it was cooler than their room. Joey would curl up at their feet and snore softly as the three fell asleep to some cheesy rom-com movie.

Those were the times Lily found she was the happiest, when it was just her tiny family away from the outside world. She would watch Bucky and Hunter curl into one another, Bucky's flesh hand stroking the boy's blonde hair as they fell asleep. She would always get up before everyone and make pancakes and wake them up with the scent. When she was pregnant, she had an aversion to blueberries, so she'd make herself oatmeal and watch her boys devour an entire stack of pancakes.

"We're sleeping in the living room tonight," Lily whispered, glancing up at the two boys she loved more than anything, "You two, me, and Stella. We can watch movies and relax. Just like the three of us did at the old house."

"That sounds nice, mom," Hunter whispered, pursing his lips into a smile as the elevator door opened, "Now. Shall we?"

"Let's go make you a Barnes," Bucky smiled, wrapping his arm around Lily's waist and walking forward towards the office.

-----

Three hours. After three hours of Hunter explaining to Carter why there was no chance in hell he wants to be Scott's son anymore legally, the paperwork was filed. Meaning that Hunter was officially Bucky Barnes's son in the eyes of the law. Carter also took the liberty of officially changing Lily's last name in the eyes of the law to Barnes. So when the three left the office, all of them were truly a part of the Barnes family.

Lily no longer had the name Osborne attached to her name. Hunter was free of the Harvey surname. And Bucky had the family he longed for since he was a young kid in the '40s. There was nothing that Scott could do to change what was done. He was no longer Hunter's father, which meant Lily had plans to make sure everyone knew just who the Barnes family was.

"So I guess it's not weird that I call you dad anymore," Hunter weakly smiled as he slid into the car, "Oh my god does this mean I'm Stella's full brother now? Can we take it back?"

"Oh, do not start that," Lily laughed as she buckled herself into the passenger seat, "You love her."

"She's five. She's gross," Hunter grinned, sliding his phone from his pocket, "Why would I ever want to be fully related to a child."

"You weren't an angel at five either, mister," Lily chuckled, shaking her head and sending a text to Rose saying they were on their way, "I distinctly remembering you wetting the bed almost every other day."

Both Bucky and Hunter let out identical laughs as the former started the car. Lily let out a relaxed sigh as she leaned back in her seat, sniffling slightly. She hadn't stopped crying the entire three hours they were with Carter, and she was optimistic that her eyes looked huge. Bucky had barely kept it together as Hunter pleaded with Carter to get everything in immediately, and how he couldn't bear another second of having the name Harvey attached to him. Despite the trauma Hunter has faced, he was a well-spoken and driven person, especially when it came to his father.

"How do you think he'll react when he finds out?" Hunter blurted out as the three sat at a traffic light.

Lily pursed her lips and glanced over her shoulder back at her son. He was fiddling with the hem of his shirt, a tall-tell sign that something was on his mind. Lily and Bucky compiled a list of both Stella and Hunter's ticks and how they acted when something bothered them. Along with that, they worked out strategies that worked best for each reaction to help their children the best that they could.

"He has no choice," Bucky stated, "He signed the papers. He agreed. You're my son, Hunter. If he contacts you in any way, shape or form, you tell me. Your mother may be scary, but as far as I'm concerned, that's my fight."

Lily watched Bucky intently as he spoke. Beside her sat the man who went up against a titan while being calm, cool, and collected. He fought against an entire army of aliens and didn't break his composure. Bucky was the man who was brainwashed and used as a weapon but managed to keep his calm exterior while in hiding. But whenever it involved Scott, or any harm towards Lily, Hunter, or Stella, he became frustrated and outwardly ticked off. She only ever really heard him raise his voice when Hunter did something completely offside or Scott spoke with Lily.

"He's right," Lily nodded, reaching her hand over and squeezing Bucky's shoulder, "Scott isn't your father. He never really was, you know this. If he contacts you, we'll let Carter know."

The car fell silent once again as the family drove towards Rose's apartment building. The only noise that filled the void of noise was metal gripping leather. Lily knew that Bucky was on edge. He knew that Scott would try to contact Hunter before anyone else. Especially after pulling a stunt like moving in down the street and attempting to be a father in a way.

Over the years, Bucky grew angrier and angrier at the way Scott was. Especially with his treatment of Hunter. At night, he would cry to Lily about how he would have given anything in his life to have a biological son like Hunter, how he longed to have a child like him. He would tell Lily stories of how back in the '40s, Bucky would babysit the young boys in his neighbourhood with his sisters. Or how he dreamed of having a large "all-American" family.

So, when Lily told him that she was pregnant, she swore his head would explode.

-----

Lily nibbled on her bottom lip as she stared at the two lines on the five sticks laid in front of her. Each was positive. There was no questioning it; Lily was pregnant. She and Bucky were going to have a child. Hunter was going to have another sibling other than Laila. One that he'd get to see every day, not just at scheduled times with Mary. He was going to have a little brother or a little sister or a sibling in between.

Lily was going to have a child with the love of her life. She was going to give him the family that he wanted so badly. It would be difficult for them to figure out, being two working adults already with a pre-teen son, but Lily knew the child would be loved beyond words. She was going to have a baby.

"Hey, doll, what're you doing in here so long?" Bucky chuckled as he pushed open their shared bathroom door.

Lily pursed her lips as tears brimmed her eyes. Doubt shadowed her mind as she thought of the worst-case scenarios. What if he didn't want a kid with her? What if he thought it was too soon? What if he left her? Lily felt her stomach churn and face go pale as thoughts raced through her head. Her fingers gripped the surface of the counter before she decided to rip the bandaid off and tell him.

"I'm pregnant," Lily whispered, turning around to face the man that joined her, "I'm...I'm pregnant."

Lily waited for his outburst. She half expected him to turn and walk out of the bathroom altogether. She figured he would completely disappear from her life or just ignore her. But that wasn't the reaction she got. Instead, Lily found herself being held so tightly she thought her spine might crack.

"We're having a baby," Bucky whispered into the girl's shoulder, peppering it with kisses after each word, "We're gonna have a baby."

Lily felt the tears fall from her hazel eyes as she wrapped her arms around Bucky's neck. He wasn't mad. He wasn't upset. He was happy. The blonde let out a choked sob as she buried her face in his hair, inhaling the intoxicating scent of him. She was having his baby. They were going to have a baby, the two of them. After everything they had faced, Lily never thought she would see the day she'd tell him that she was going to be having his child. She never even thought she'd have another child after Hunter. But there she stood.

-----

"Stella," Lily whispered into the girl's ear, "Guess what we did today?"

"Leave me," the five-year-old pouted as she looked down at her mother, squirming in her arms, "All alone!"

"That's a bit dramatic, Stell," Bucky chuckled as he locked his arm around his fiance's waist, "We made Hunter your full brother. You're both Barnes."

"Bleh!" Stella gagged, rolling her head back dramatically.

Lily laughed and shook her head, dropping her daughter down onto the floor before turning her attention towards Sam and her sister. The four stood for a few beats in silence, appreciating the relaxing feeling that fell over them. There was nothing that Scott could do to mess up what was done. Lily and Bucky were Hunter's legal parents. Scott had signed the papers, and it was a done deal. Hunter was a Barnes, no questions asked.

"Hopefully, they grow out of this phase," Lily chuckled as she turned to look at Hunter and Stella teasing each other, "Not sure I'll be able to handle it."

"I still hate that I'm your full sister so. Not sure if they will." Rose teased before embracing her sister.

"Congrats, cyborg," Sam chuckled as he and Bucky hugged, "You've got two kids now."

"I've always had two kids, Sam. Now it's just in paper."

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #Bucky Barnes X female OC #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fluff #original female character #female oc #OC #oc x canon #oc tag #marvel #marvel fanfiction #tfatws #the winter soldier #The Avengers #fanfiction #single mom #Sebastian Stan #romance #fluffy #comedy #james bucky barnes

[amethystpath-writes]

A Gentle Blade Part 28

Part 27 here.

@tears-and-lilies

******

"You tried to make me hate you so that you could protect me."

Kastion hummed and glanced over at Leera.

They weren't very far from Thharewood now. Only a few more hours and they'd arrive at the front gate of the prince's home. Actually, he and Leera were already in Thharewood, just not in the palace, not in the core of the kingdom.

Leera had been on edge the last couple of days, but it'd gotten much worse in the very last day, when they crossed into friendly territory. Kastion assumed it was because she didn't believe it to be friendly quite yet. Not because she thought Rennera was secretly after them, nor Crooked the Devious Guard, but because Kastion asked her to be queen and she was so used to being known as an assassin. The prince reminded her time and time again that that very fact was the reason Thharewood would love her and welcome her.

Thharewood wasn't full of murderers, but the people did believe in striking back. If a nearby kingdom was making threats- or worse, intruding- they wanted to attack a kingdom before Thharewood was attacked itself. The king did things differently, though.

"Something like that, I suppose." Kastion shrugged, looking at his lap instead of Leera. He didn't like how a pleading look from her could make him feel so many emotions. No, that was a lie. He loved it, but it unsettled him in some fashion. He had no regrets falling for an assassin, but it did irk him a bit. A part of him always remembered Leera telling him she only killed the bad guys. Kastion still considered himself one.

If it weren't for Leera sitting beside him, the prince would have heaved a sigh. Kastion nearly hated himself for feeling any amount of hesitance in loving Leera.

"Something like that? That first day I tried talking to you- when you became my guard- you tried to make yourself seem uninterested, but in the woods-"

Kastion smirked at her, any uneasiness melting away. "Are you trying to tell me you had me figured out from the beginning?"

The ex-assassin's mouth gathered to one side in a pinched cheek. "Well, you made it kinda obvious. Made it clear you didn't want to do what you did."

"Hm." Kastion crossed his arms and squinted. "I wonder why it took you so long to realize I was a prince then?"

They both knew the real answer; Leera didn't want Kastion to be a prince. She would have felt fooled and betrayed. But Kastion proved himself to be much better than the prince Leera knew, hadn't he?

She scoffed. "Don't you remember when I directly asked you if you were the prince in the story? You denied it."

"For good reason."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that I guessed it."

"But then I told you the next day what I was." Kastion laughed. "And then you denied it."

Leera tried to stop the smile playing at her lips, but she couldn't. What was she supposed to say to that? It had been a back and forth game. Her smile fell shortly after. "When did I realize you were a prince?" After all the recent events, it was hard for Leera to recall that particular moment of realization.

Kastion shrugged and bumped her shoulder with his arm. "I told you- for a second time. It was after- uh..." He licked his lips. "It- it doesn't matter when you realized, really. It just matters that you accepted it, right?" As if on cue, the carriage they rode in came to a stop.

Leera put a hand on Kastion's shoulder before he could open their ride and step out. "It still bothers you, doesn't it?"

"Nothing's bothering me. I'm fine." He shrugged her arm away, proceeding with his task.

"Kas, it's allowed to bother you, what happened in Mesenian."

"I never said I was bothered," he told Leera, finally managing to climb out. He kept his head down as he rounded the cart to Leera's side and opened the door there. "I mean, it does bother me, but I don't actively think about it all the time."

The ex-assassin took Kastion's hand, letting him pull her out. "Alright. Well if it doesn't bother you then remind me when it was that you told me- for a second time- that you are who you are." Since very few people knew Leera's face, she kept hers held at a normal angle. If both she and Kastion cloaked their eyes and noses and mouths with shadows, they'd look awfully suspicious. And right now, with the Prince of Thharewood supposedly being dead, it was best that he not be recognized until he got to the palace.

"Can we just drop it, Leer-" He caught himself before he could finish her name, just barely, but it was better than not catching it at all. "Can we drop it?"

"Well if it doesn't bother you that much, and it doesn't bother me that much, then I don't see why we can't talk about it now. It's not like-"

Kastion grabbed her arm and spun her back to face him, grabbing the other arm when he did. "I don't like to think about you getting hurt, okay? It does bother me. I think about it nearly every moment. And when I'm not thinking about you being in pain, I'm thinking about how I caused it. You should want to kill me, you understand? I'm the reason you were there to begin with."

Leera's arms remained stiffened at her sides as Kastion held them. His grip was tight in his stress, but not tight enough that it hurt her. "I don't know how I can help, Kas," she said softly.

Her eyes and nose stung.

"I've told you," Leera continued, "none of it was your fault." She began whispering. "You utilized an assassin because you needed one. I never told you not to give others my name. If anything, it was my fault. And really, it wasn't either of our faults at all." The prince's grip loosened as he tried to reason out what she was about to say. "The queen would have searched for me whether she had a name or not."

The prince let go of her, running a hand down his face. "We can talk about this more later if you want. I have other things to focus on." Kastion walked passed Leera.

Raising a brow, she huffed. "That sounded awful soldier-istic of you."

He stopped, turned his head over his shoulder. "What?" His voice was empty, void of any emotion. On the inside, he was hurt, but on the outside his princely demeanor continued to shine through.

"'I have other things to focus on'?" Leera ran her tongue against the front of her top teeth. She was pissed. "You're not allowed to destroy yourself like them."

Angling his body fully towards the ex-assassin again, Kastion lazily threw his hands out. "What does that even mean?"

She took several steps towards him before poking him in the chest and look up into his eyes. "You've said over and over again that you're terrified of becoming the assholes who trained you. I know what they did to you. My father was in the army and went through similar treatment. They make you shove everything down. They make you swallow your problems, but that doesn't fix them, Kas; it makes them worse. I'm not letting you destroy yourself by pretending-"

"Leera?" The assassin froze, her gaze falling to Kastion's chest, though her vision was unfocused as her jaw fell and stayed open. "Is that you?"

It wasn't Leera who spoke up, but Kastion instead. Recognition be damned. This was someone who knew Leera, which meant they might be trouble. "Who are you?" It was an older man the prince spoke to. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties or early-forties. Black hair. A thin beard, one that crossed in a bridge above the lip and below the nose.

"Is that Leera?" the man asked. He must not have recognized Kastion. Maybe it was because he'd grown a little facial hair himself. Or maybe the man had never been close enough to the prince before to ever recognize him in the future.

Leera's breaths picked up, and her eyes stung more badly than before when she'd grown soft with Kastion. "I should go," she said very quietly and briskly brushed by the prince into the tavern in front of her. It was the last stop before the two went to the palace. She didn't expect this to happen at the last stop.

The black-haired man stepped forward to follow, but Kastion held up a hand, tossing his head back real fast to see where Leera was headed. "I don't know who you are," he said turning to the man again, "but you need to stay out here. Better yet, leave."

Squinting his eyes and smiling, the man said, "I'm usually the peaceful intervention in fights, but you have no reason to be stopping me, so I think I'll be following."

"You're acting an awful lot like a predator, I say that's reason enough. But if you don't think so, then let me say this. As your prince, I am demanding you stand down, and leave without another word spoken to that girl. Am I understood?" Before the man could try to be smart and say something like 'Any man can call themselves a prince', Kastion pulled his royal seal ring out, waving it in front of the man's eyes. "Go."

The man gave a quick 'Oh' before hurriedly taking a bow and muttering again. "Your Highness, forgive me, but the rest of the kingdom thought you to be a runaway, or otherwise dead."

"Great statement, but as you can see, I'm very much alive. The runaway part I'm sure is debatable." The prince had never been as cold as this, but the man in front of him still never gave a claim as to who he was. It was obvious he was after Leera, and Kastion wasn't going to let that happen.

"For-forgive me again, but Leera..."

Kastion raised a brow, clenched his jaw. "I don't know who you think you saw just a moment ago, but the assassin, Leera, was taken by the Queen of Mesenian, as I'm sure you know- as I'm sure everyone knows."

"Leera is my niece."

The prince's eyes widened to the size of two full moons. "You- You are her uncle."

******

Part 29 (to be continued)

#part 28 #leera and rennera #medieval whump #my ability to tag has gone to poo #self blame #angst #fluff #cliff hanger #:) #okay i'm done tagging #I am doing bad at this haha

[frostbittenstar]

Within the Bowels of Tumblr - An Autobiographical Essay

It must have been 2013 when I first joined Tumblr due to it's large pro-ana community and the surplus of thinspo available to its users. After a while, I branched out, looking for LGBTQ resources. The blogs I had wound up following would provide ample news, support, and guidance for the LGBTQ community. I got deep into LGBTQ politics, considering myself an egalitarian, and even hopping on the promising Bernie train. With my newfound interest in politics, it was not long before I encountered authoritarian-left activists who had dubbed themselves social justice warriors (SJWs).

On the surface, the SJWs appeared to have been fighting for a just cause, but their censorship-centered campaign was off putting, leading me to question where to draw the line when it came to egalitarianism. My opinion of LGBTQ rights has, and always will be, "as long as it doesn't impede on the rights of others," thus, censorship looked a lot like muddy water. The deeper I went, the uglier the SJWs got. Despite their proclamations of equality, the message they gave was everything but. When they weren't campaigning for questionable guidelines, they would spew an overwhelming amount of toxic hatred towards white, straight and cisgendered people, men, and closeted/stealth LGBTQ members. They overgeneralized these demographics as evil, racist, rapists while claiming that bigotry towards these groups was non-existent, however their behavior alone had proved them wrong. When the SJWs weren't busy educating the general population that the mijority populose is in some way depraved and it was impossible for them to be at the receiving end of discrimination, they would announce their wishes of injury, rape, or death upon such individuals.

Upon examination of their blogs, I noticed a trend of common themes: candy-colored with chibi anime characters, cutesy things, like clouds and butterflies, and the overuse of emojis which suggested innocently blissful ignorance, such as "oWo", and "uwu". The image of cuteness and frailty was starkly antithetical of their appalling behavior. Their summary section usually contained their age, gender-identity, pronouns, sexual orientation, a list of self-diagnosed mental disorders, and a request that people belonging to their detested demographic not follow their blogs, saying it would trigger them. They would often laugh at anybody who was brave enough to point out their bigotry and hypocrisy. Once they began to lose and argument, they would start to spout out posts crying and complaining about being triggered, which was then followed by a chain of their ass-kissing followers and fans trying to cheer them up by validating and reinforcing the bigoted behavior.

Ultimately, they refused to apologize, using their self-diagnosed mental condition as an excuse for any and all of their bad behavior. Used as a badge of honor, rather than incentive to seek psychiatric help, they would misrepresent those individuals who had a professional diagnosis and perpetuate the stigma against mental illness. Any sort of feedback related to getting treatment or professionally diagnosed would lead to arguments and, once again, complaints of being triggered.

Aside from riding off the backs of the mentally ill, they treat the LGBTQ community like a fashion trend. This is done so by claiming psudopronouns, imaginary genders, or bizzare sexual identities. They lack the ability to differentiate gender divergence from gender dysphoria. Their lack of gender dysphoria precludes transgenderism, however they believe that their quirks are somehow integrated with their gender.

One example would be a man who likes to wear floral wreaths, calls himself a fairy, and asks that you call him fae/faer/faers, as opposed to he/him/his. Likewise, a women who dresses in a button-down, slacks, a bowtie, while donning a pixie-cut would call herself a "gender-confusion", defining it as "a gender that makes people confused," and request that you use the psudopronouns "voi/void/voids" when referring to her. In both examples, the individual is comfortable with their genitals. They fail to recognize that the taste and interests that they have in opposition to their sex is a common phenomenon and have deluded themselves into the belief that their personal preferences somehow define their gender. Not only do their theatrics make the LGBTQ community look like a bunch of clowns, but their baseless claims of transgenderism sustain and reinforce the belief that medical transition is superfluous.

As an SMI and FTM rape survivor, it was only natural for me to be irritated by the spread of misinformation and the outlandish portrayals exemplified by fools claiming to be something they're not, however, it was witnessing the barbaric demeanor which came with it that shook me to the bones. I was boiling with anger, and the only way I could let off steam was to assume active opposition against the SJWs. That was the start of my anti-SJW regime.

For some time, I had taken the role as a moderator for a blog once known as lgbtagainstsjws, where I was affectionately dubbed "The Hermit," a tarot card which I can identify with. I tried my best to present myself in a civil manner and not succumb to habitual trolling. The blog had a balance of personnel from across the political spectrum. Strength was the most conservative of us, however his delivery was on the abrasive side of things. After his disappearance, the balance shifted, and the blog began turning into that which it opposed.

Witnessing the tilt had me walking on eggshells. I became less active, only responding to inquiries of which could be answered without causing tension. I'd become more like my name implied, a hermit. Eventually, I woke up to a surprise in the Skype room. The oldest, wisest, and most respectable moderator, Justice had been expelled from the blog, on the grounds that her viewpoints were misaligned from their own. Since my stance was on par with that of Justice's, I quietly severed ties with the blog and it's moderators, leaving it with all but teenagers in charge.

#sjw #anti sjw #truscum #essay #lgbt #autobiography #ftm #hypocrisy #bigotry #transtrender #clowns #smi #self diagnosis #two genders

[trans-taiga]

Cyrus's Universe(s)

This is gonna be a huge lore post that talks about literally every possible aspect of Cyrus's existence and the universes he exists in, as well as some small headcanons on the operation of minecraft universes. Strap in and get ready.

(warning for one possibly graphic image of a scar as well as written mentions of death, suffering, and a good old fashioned existential crisis near the end)

At the physical age of 18, Cyrus spawned in the middle of a decently sized town, a common occurrence in this section of the world, but widely unusual as a whole. Townships such as this one had multiple new spawnings in a day, and each spawnee was met with celebration and joy as a first sight. Now, when players spawn, the universe’s code makes a series of random choices to create a new player. This process is 100 percent random and can often lead to slight errors in a players creation. For Cyrus, it happened to be an error in gender. 

As was tradition for his spawn town, he was given a name by the town head minutes after his spawning. This name was Rose. 

Luckily, Rose was not aware anything was “wrong.” At least, not at first. After all, there was such a high positive energy in the town square! Many new players were spawning and it was cause for celebration. Seeing as Rose wasn’t the only New-Spawn, the festivities were quickly moved along and Rose was handed over to the New-Spawn guides. A lot of information was relayed in a matter of minutes about life and what was to be expected for new spawns. After, Rose was put in a New-Spawn’s Care house, separated by spawn-gender, of course.

Here, Rose was taught the basics of existence in a little more detail than the initial briefing and was given the chance to learn valuable life skills. After a year of learning and spending time almost exclusively around women, it was time to become an individual player! Rose was intrigued by the concepts of science, which is deeply ingrained in the study of magic, and wished to learn about these topics more deeply. Luckily, there were many an apprenticeship to learn about such things, so Rose snagged an apprenticeship at a local hospital. 

Medical treatment is done mainly though the use of potions and the like, but other basic, non-magical medical procedures are explored as well. With such a broad field of study and work comes a broad assortment of people. For the first time, Rose was able to see more than just the New-Spawns of the women's dorm and it was fascinating. Of course, Rose knew that men existed but they hadn’t really mattered until now. Seeing how they looked and hearing how they sounded, Rose was in awe. Upset and confusion set in. Something wasn’t quite right anymore. Existence had been fine up until now, what happened?

An answer came a little while later when Rose was tasked with learning about transition plans. Someone new had moved to town and would be needing to continue his transition where he had left off. You can do that? You’re allowed to change like that? After learning about this patients transition plan and transitioning in general, Rose realized that he was indeed a He. 

After his apprenticeship ended, he was a skilled brew-master with knowledge on all things medical. He was ready for a new lease on life. Rose, now calling himself Cyrus, decided to take off into the world to live like many players do. With his extensive potion knowledge and just a vague understanding on how to truly survive, he began to live his real life, however difficult it was. Surviving was much more difficult than he expected and he died many times. However, as he changed and grew, he was able to adapt to living life alone in the outdoors. He developed a basic understanding of everything necessary for survival. Cyrus became a jack of all trades in the matter of a few years. His expertise still lies with brewing, but he prefers to keep that information a secret.

Cyrus had traveled all over, gaining piercings, tattoos, and knowledge. He had seen many parts of the world, but he permanently settled at the intersection of a flower forest, a taiga, and a birch forest. After building his home, he began to explore the surrounding area. While sailing at night, he saw a bright glow coming from under the water around a small island. As he got closer, he stopped his boat and plunged into the water. His vision was warped, but he could see there was a structure jutting out from the side of the island. Cyrus took a breath and dove down. He swam towards the light that was pouring from the windows of the structure and broke through the iron bars that barred the little windows. Inside was a broken portal suspended over a pit of lava.

Cyrus had seen this before. Of course, he hadn’t seen it in person, but he had read about it before. Supposedly it would take him to another dimension, much like a nether portal, but it was a dimension far more foreign. There were several of these portals around the world, but they had all been deactivated centuries ago, likely by the civilizations that built them in the first place. 

Legend has it that this dimension is where Endermen originated from and they are ruled by a mother dragon. Ancient people were banished to this realm as punishment for major crimes, but others would go in hope of challenging the dragon queen.

Cyrus left the portal room and made his way back home, ready to learn just what it would take to survive the world beyond the portal.

Months of preparation. Cyrus spent these months preparing for his journey. Gathering materials, crafting gear, enchanting everything he would be taking with him. He even delved back into brewing regularly to rebuild he stock he maintained in his apprentice days. Cyrus had obtained most of what he needed, but he was hesitant. Exactly what would happen to him once he entered that repaired portal wasn’t certain. He wanted to cherish his life as is just a little bit longer.

About a year later, Cyrus finally decided to take the leap. The thought of a whole new world to explore had been sitting at the back of his mind and he gave into the desire to go. Cyrus gathered his tools and started the trek to the ocean. Down in the portal room, he replaced the missing Eyes of Ender and watched as an inky, star-filled magic appeared in the frame.

At this point, Cyrus’s timeline splits in two due to a fatal mistake. In the first, true timeline, Cyrus remembered he had forgotten to bring one of the most vital tools. He was equipped with every possible weapon and piece of armor... but no pickaxe. Luckily, the solitary portal room intersected with a little cave system, so Cyrus was able to craft a quick pick and travel to meet the Dragon Queen herself. His battle, though rough, was successful and he continues to live out his days prosperous and happy.

Doomed timeline Cyrus was not so lucky. Overzealous and full of nerves, he plunged into the starry darkness of the End Portal without second thought. Without his pickaxe, he was left to claw his way out of the central island with his bare hands. He thought he had everything. He knew what he was getting into, he had read all of the legends and old texts, he knew he had to fight. He knew he needed to keep safe from an ancient and powerful dragon. He thought he had everything, but he did not know he would end up trapped like this. He could have never imagined he would be stuck in a prison of yellow stone with only one option of getting out. All because he forgot one of the most simple tools he owned.

Digging his way out to the foreign world above took hours. As he punched and clawed at the endstone, on the other side was a dragon who was very, very angry her home had been invaded, and the perpetrator wasn’t even showing himself. 

Coward.

Once Cyrus finally broke through, his hands were broken and bloody, but his fight had only just begun. Accidental glances at the native enderman made his task so much more difficult. As he was surrounded, the dragon had the perfect chance to toss Cyrus around the island. He suffered broken bones, cuts, and bruises, but he didn’t spend all of this time and work to not try his hardest to win. He drank the regeneration potions he brought along to fix his broken body, but its can only do so much to heal the deep pain. His bones still ached and he was getting weaker and weaker with each bit of damage he took. He was stressed and felt absolutely sick. He was a fool for ever trying to come here.

After a long, grueling battle and constant pain, Cyrus finally lost. 

Caught by the dragons claws, he was sliced up the front and tossed down into the void. He had lost. He would lose everything he’s worked so hard for, but he would wake back up in his bed and he would start over again.

But he wasn’t dying. He just kept falling, faster and faster. His form began to fracture and reshape. It was more than falling now. Cyrus felt he was being pulled-- dragged even-- through the inky black void. He squeezed his eyes shut and he felt his body slam into the ground.

Cyrus sat up with a shout, light momentarily blinding him. His front stung from the sudden movement and he clutched at his chest. Looking down, he saw a deep pink scar poking from the collar of his shirt. Cyrus lifted his shirt up and ran his fingers along the scar which ran from his neck to past his navel. Or, at least where his navel used to be. He snapped his head up and looked around. He was sitting on a small island completely surrounded by ocean. There was no other land in sight and the whole scene was completely unfamiliar.

Everything he had was gone and... what happened? He knew something was wrong, he knew he was out of place, but... he didn’t know why.

While falling down into the void, Cyrus became vulnerable. The universal barrier is weak in the void, and he was snagged by the desperate arms of a failing world. The universe he had been dragged into was one where respawn didn’t exist, and it has been missing its player for while. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t quite alive either. With a player still stuck in the world, it can’t destroy itself like it would normally, but he wasn’t truly alive anymore.

Much like Cyrus, the original player met his fate after fighting the Ender Dragon, though he did not lose to her. He was dying from his injuries as he hobbled towards to newly opened portal. If he could just get back home, he would be able to heal up and be okay.

But he was not so lucky.

As he fell between dimensions, the last bit of his life left him, and he was left floating in a sort of purgatory. He thought he had heard voices speaking kind words to him before his demise, and he was correct.

The two deities that preside over the many universes had wished to congratulate him on his success of surviving this long, but he could not survive long enough to hear all they had to say. They took pity on this poor player. A kind and determined man, he had proven himself worthy many times over the course of his existence and seeing him lose so soon after success was horrible.

They weren’t supposed to take pity on players in this way. After all, it was only fair. There were rules that had to be followed. If he wasn’t able to make it, the death he received was earned. But they just couldn’t turn a blind eye after he had come so far.

They infused the body of the fallen player with a small amount of their own light, creating an entity known as Herobrine. Herobrine is an occurrence that takes many forms across many worlds. Not all of them are the work of higher deities, but that is one reason they occur. The nature of Herobrine exists outside of the norm in many ways, and this occurrence was no different.

He spawned back into his world with most of his memories. Given the state of his existence, all knowledge of his life as a living player was removed, lest he be driven to insanity over his own death and his new immortality. He retained all of his knowledge of the world and its inhabitants, but as far as he knows, he has always been Herobrine.

With the player transformed into something he was never meant to be, the world was in a panic trying to find its mortal player. Throughout the infinite world, no mortal player existed, but each deletion attempt made by the world was met with failure, as the player was still there.

Desperate to right this wrong, the world snatched a dying mortal from a world that would not notice his absence, designating him the new player. 

Upon Cyrus’s unexpected spawning, Herobrine felt a shift. His existence was now deeply connected to his world, and he had an approximate knowledge of its happenings. He felt intrigued by what he had sensed and was determined to find who had spawned into his world.

As Herobrine searched for this new player, Cyrus managed to get his life together, however pathetically. He had no memory of his previous prosperous life, but he still felt... empty. Many of his nights were plagued with nightmares of what had happened to him but they weren’t real. They felt awfully real. He was deeply paranoid. He hardly strayed from his little hovel for a good few months. He didn’t know he used to be able to respawn after death, but he knew here that one wrong move, one simple accident, would lead to his all too permanent end. Everything terrified him because of this. The scar that nearly bisected him was always an embarassing reminder that he truly had no idea who he was or why he was here. All of this was too familiar. He wasn’t new to this at all, but my god why did it all feel so familiar? Where did he come from and why was he here? 

#cyrus #herobrine #my art #minecraft #mineblr #long post #very long post #uuuuuh idk what to tag this as #but please i beg of you ask me things #you can ask me or you can talk to my characters themselves #i assure you i have more to talk about than whats written here #adrian dulcine and obsidian are involved in this too but there wasn't really a place to mention them since this is mostly about cyrus #theyre more a part of herobrines story than cyrus's #they overlap later down the road but i have a big ass comic planned for that because that story will be much better in image form #also can u tell i drew all these images late at night? theyre all just sliiightly off in little ways #tired me gets wild with anatomy lol #also sorry if it kind of ends abruptly thats all i had dsajkvgsf #ya boy dont know who to end things #lore post

[elly-bird]

Dear loyal and foolish followers,

It’s been a while since I did a really deeply personal post, and I used to do them all the time.  Granted, back then, they were mostly venting, or trying to somehow work out my feelings on really deep and painful things.  Whether or not you realize this, dear tumblr audience - friends and strangers alike - you actually helped me a great deal learn about who I am and what I’m doing.

So let’s do a recap.  Once more for the sake of closure, for anyone who still cares, or anyone who did care back then, when I needed it most.

It’s taken me literally all my life to shake off the urge to turn inward.  I’m (almost) twenty four years old and still have trouble even vocalizing the idea that I’ve had a bad day, let alone that I’m suffering from a disability, or struggling to consider myself as a real person.  Yes, my dysfunction was so bad at a point (not especially far back, even) that I literally could not convince myself I was real.  I spent so many days floating place to place, just conducting the bare minimum to survive and not be noticed as some parasitic little ghostial entity.

So it was that I fell into not just hateful, twisted spirals that consumed my entire being, but friendships and relationships that did me equally as many unhealthy favors.  This is when I was the most vocal, because I realized how dire and awful things were getting.  It was speak now, or forever hold my silence, and at that point forever didn’t seem like it was going to last very long.

Coming to terms with the fact that I’ve been conducting self-harm and sabotage all my life - not necessarily physically, but mentally, and spiritually - was one of the biggest hurdles to leap over.  You can’t possibly treat yourself correctly when you’re utterly convinced the world hates you and would be better off without you, even if you’re not willing to nail the coffin yourself.

I never let myself have respect, or love, or care, or even basic decency.  It was always thrown with weighted chains, ones I applied myself and used to justify my shitty mindset.  I validated my attitude by saying the world was a spiteful place, and I was its target.  I got angry a lot, because anger was easier to feel than any other emotion, and I genuinely think that was my first attempt at pulling myself out of a very dark pit of depression.

I started to try and identify all these flaws and issues, but I could only see them in other people, not myself.  I started a blog, one where I offered positivity and support to every single person who so much as touched it.  I put all my time and energy into offering other people consolations for their sorrows, and trying my best to find them help, and support, in what I viewed as a meaningless, dead void of a world.  This actually became kind of popular; six thousand followers kind of popular.  It wasn’t long before I was putting almost every waking hour of my life into trying to guide people towards the light in life that I’d clearly shut the curtains on.

And then came my biggest shame; I couldn’t do it anymore.

I deleted it.  I packed up.  I went home.  I isolated.

It’s a funny feeling, realizing that you’re no longer strong enough to help anyone.  I was hardly equipped to in the first place, but having to get rid of that last little thing I could hold onto - that self-imposed job that I pointed at so often to say “look, look, things are good, I swear!” - honestly almost killed me.  The pain I felt made me realize I needed help.

And I’d like to say I got it, but...  I didn’t.  Something I’d so seriously recommended to everyone around me seemed entirely out of reach for myself.

You may have noticed I dipped my toes back into the positivity, though, even on this lonely little blog where only my close friends and some very lovable but potentially naive strangers visit.  That’s sort of where this all went.

Realizations that I’d been making progress came incredibly slow.  I tried my best to invert my views.  I wasn’t “wasting so much time I lost my childhood,” I was surviving and getting past the worst years of my life.  I wasn’t “worthless,” I just hadn’t even started to try.  Certainly, finding my own little self-diagnosises helped put a center to my storm, but I was still struggling.

Sparing you the details on my situation, I did the math and realized it would be quite a few more years before I was in any situation to get help, or live independently, or so forth.

And it was nihilism that hit me the hardest.  What the fuck?  How could it possibly be fair that I’d be rapidly approaching my 30s before I ever even saw a doctor?  What the hell is wrong with me that I’d rather live a stagnant, stale existence than even try to live?!

Thus I bring you very close to the present.

Where I decided I wasn’t going to accept that.

I got angry again, but this time it was at these unspoken rules, and restrictions that I’d lived under all my life - some imposed by my own shitty brain and some by the culture and pressures surrounding me.  I stopped giving a god damn shit what would be okay, what would be acceptable, what would be the least offensive and quietest way to live my life.

I dyed my fucking hair.  I wore bright colours.  I flirted with boys.  I fought, very literally, for my trans and non-binary friends.  I got loud, and proud, and anyone who didn’t accept the kind of love and understanding I wanted to spread got called a god damn idiot, because you know what, you are a god damn idiot if you think living, breathing, thinking, feeling humans whose only urge is to live in harmony with one another aren’t worth care.

And I started making more decisions.

Decisions like the one to welcome friends I’d constantly left on the outside into my reality.  Decisions like accepting that it was okay to openly identify as something that would be disagreeable in my town/state/family.   Decisions to accept the love, and care, and wholesome understanding that came with meeting someone whose world rhymed with mine.

Decisions to fight back.  Against the cruel side of my brain, and against the cruel side of the world.

Because it wasn’t a matter of never having a family that would accept me.  In actuality, I had a family that was willing to walk to the ends of the earth for me the whole time.  I’d stood so separate, and so far apart for them all my life out of fear for my own treatment that I’d forgotten that we’re all blessed with the very real, and very honest opportunity to make the world just a little, tiny bit better for everyone.

I lost track of who I was because I was so concerned with standing up on my own two feet, I never realized that so many beautiful people were all around me waiting to help me up if only I just accepted that.

I know now what I wish I’d known then; that in order to experience love and understanding, you have to open yourself to it.  Sometimes it’s easy, like leaving the door unlocked, but other times you’ve got to rip through scar tissue in an agonizing fashion.

Because most important of all these things, of all this journey, of all this ramble that I cannot truly tell whether or not is helpful or interesting to anyone-

I’m in love.  Not solely, not simply; but the fact I can put myself in that state means my world must be improving.

We all have the power to make this place kind and beautiful.

Dear loyal and foolish followers,

friends and strangers alike;

I’m doing okay.

#personal

[shawnpyfrom]

SOME MORE TO SHARE...

I just read the news about Anthony Bourdain. And since this seems to be a fashion of mine, off I go…

First, I’ll acknowledge the impact Mr. Bourdain has had on my life. His show, No Reservations, was not only a favorite of mine growing up; but it’s among the few things that has inspired my love for travel. I’ve been to a number of places, I never would have traveled to, at the result of his intelligent and mellifluously articulated recommendations. Many of those words have compelled my movements. And I owe a prodigious amount of credit and gratitude to him for helping to shape something that has, now, become so much a part of me. His influence reached beyond my television screen. If not for my travels, I would not be the person that I am. 

When I was stuck in one of the worst cycles of depression I had ever experienced, I found myself moving to Paris at the end of 2016. Something I wouldn’t have done without the impetus for travel - that Mr. Bourdain helped provide me. 

I had found myself sucked backwards into the pull of my depression. And the anxiety of being without an outlet to express myself. After my open letter about addiction, I found it tougher to get people to meet with me. It seemed my openness about being an addict had left people to question my reliability, when it came to work. At the same time, I was in a relationship that held physical distance - she lived in New York, while I lived in LA. I felt incredibly alone, unwanted and misunderstood.

At the same time, I wasn’t working a program - I didn’t set up a failsafe. I only knew one way to quell my darkest feelings. So, consequently, I relapsed. That put incredible strain on my relationship. I put her, and my family and friends, through incredible strain. Something that I now consider to be unbelievably unfair to them. When my, then, girlfriend had attempted every last measure with me; she decided she had to walk away. Which left me with a grief I had no tools to deal with. My proceeding actions were nothing short of appalling. 

I put a belt around my neck. I swallowed most of my pills. If it weren’t for my roommate, mother, father, and the girl who had decided to leave; I wouldn’t be here. They all rushed to save me - and did. I’m ashamed of my actions, and where they lead. I still carry an unimaginable guilt, for the way I inflicted pain on all of them - and so many others who became aware, after the fact. There was no reason for my response. But it was lead by my illness - and not me. Something I only know, now, with clarity.

After several months of grief and hard work, I found myself getting back on my feet again - with a new understanding of myself. And with much more caution. My ex-girlfriend continued to speak with me, despite her own grief and blame over the situation, and after a while she gave me a second chance. That, along with the help of my friends and family - the support I received over several months - is what kept me going. They continued to save my life. Through my toughest moments, they were there. I had made my issues glaringly (and unnecessarily) obvious, after staying quiet for far too long. 

After being together with my ex, for months, she decided to leave again. Despite my being back to healthy, she had decided that knowing me was far too much for her. I was devastated and confused. I didn’t understand at the time… but I do now. With even more time, and clarity, I recognize the immeasurable pain I must have put her through. And I don’t blame her for leaving again. She had to take care of herself. But, with that… I moved to Paris.

There, I met several people who surrounded and supported me - while staying in contact with several others back home. I told people my story, and they listened. They were there for me. They understood me. And as time has gone on, I have stayed open. I have told people, as I started to feel my depression creep in. Staying open, has helped people understand where I’m at and how to help me. It has helped people to know when I need help, and validate me when I’m doing well. I continue to build people around me who know me - always. And I now have a program. I am constantly working on myself - and will for the rest of my life. I’m doing better than I ever have before - but I’m one of the lucky ones. I know I will never be “safe”, but at least I’m protected. And I have a failsafe if I want it. And I do, now.

So I find myself feeling even more identified with Mr. Bourdain after his “apparent suicide”. And let me preface by saying that this is no assumption about Mr. Bourdain… But I have suffered from anxiety and depression for almost as long as I can remember. I started having panic attacks at five years old. My parents have recalled moments where I would gasp for breath and tell them I couldn’t breathe. I recall those moments too. I can remember moments where it felt like I was being sucked backwards into a dark and endless void. I can remember feeling the weight of gravity on my body, and trying to fling it away. At five, six, seven years old. There’s no real reason for why a child should be feeling those things, aside from the explanation that there was something, chemically, imbalanced. An imbalance that lived in my mind. An illness that is mental. 

My addictions stem from that. They are an extension of my anxiety and depression. Something I didn’t discuss in my first open letter. I have felt the impact of those words, I shared in the past - along with the condition itself. I have been judged, criticized and given less opportunity for sharing about my personal afflictions. But I wouldn’t take it back if I could. That letter didn’t just help thousands of people - that I heard from and, perhaps, didn’t - but it also helped me. I took ownership. And it helped me as much it helped anyone else. This letter is no different. Because the better we understand one another, the easier our lives become. So I must make it clear that this letter is just as much for the people who don’t suffer from mental illness and addiction, as it is for the ones who do. 

I don’t blame anyone for the way I’ve been judged. They are not at fault. No one is. We are still ignorant to the reality of mental illness, despite our present attempts at awareness. We are only now beginning to wake up to that reality. We are starting to take interest, and show compassion - display empathy. But we are still unaware. So I can’t blame anyone for a stigma I, and many others, still carry. Because how can we know what we don’t know? How can we understand what is still so complicated? 

On a personal note (as this is, obviously, very personal), I appreciate the attempts of all that try to understand - whether it pertains to me, or not. When I read articles and posts from, and about people who have overcome their mental illness or share about their suffering; I feel encouraged. I feel understood. I applaud and cheer for those who have the courage to discuss and elucidate the reality they live in - when their minds have been overwhelmed by the fear of it’s darkest corners. My friend, Colton Haines, has done this beautifully. As has Zelda Williams and many others. They are some of the many who have influenced my decision to open up this conversation further. And whether this letter reaches many or just a few; the message I’m attempting to convey is important. Because it’s about openness and understanding; that which is misunderstood.

Mental illnesses, like anxiety and depression, are incredibly complicated issues that I don’t have the words to fix. My words can only help others understand mine, and compel a conversation that points to support. Support is one of the more important treatments for anxiety and depression, in my opinion. Without it, those afflicted will only fall deeper into it’s void. 

That said, I recognize the complications those face who aren’t afflicted by it’s immediate pain. It’s tough. I’ve experienced it firsthand with friends who suffer from mental illness. And I’ve witnessed the suffering of those, that are closest to me, at the hands of mine. I can’t stress enough how complicated I know this issue to be. But if you have the strength; deal with it. Because, at the end of the day, it’s tougher to deal with the impact of someone who has decided to take their own life. 

I’ve been lucky enough to have the support I need, at times. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have friends and family who have picked me up, when I could no longer carry myself further. But I have pushed many out of my life, at the result of my illnesses. People I am, now, in the process of apologizing to. My illnesses have hurt more people than I can count. People I still love so deeply, despite their moving away from me. Because I see how hard they tried before they couldn’t anymore. I have the clarity now to see that. It is the source of great pain for me, knowing how many incredible people I have lost. But almost more-so, because they’ve been hurt by something that isn’t me. I am not my mental illness, and I am not my addiction. Knowing that, has helped me live with this. But I am fortunate enough to gain strength and understanding through all of that, while many are not. And to let my past guide my decisions now. 

However, I know how difficult it is to say something when you’re living in and alongside it. It’s a challenge that I don’t consider light. But suffering in silence is what lead to my destruction. So I encourage you all to help and be helped. To find the strength to say something. Talk about it. I understand all of you. I understand the ones who suffer from the imbalances, and I understand the ones who don’t. This shit is complicated. And I know it. 

And I know that my letters have a tendency to ramble. To jump and move around to topics that are directly related to me, and then address the broader extent of those issues - as they relate to others. But it is only compelled by my desire to understand, and be understood. Something, I know, we all yearn for. I just have the propensity to explain more, sometimes, as a precautionary measure. As a way to prevent misinterpretation. To over-explain, rather than not explain enough. I write in stream-of-mind - with a stream that is a bit cluttered. I hope you stay with me here… And especially since this letter points to understanding; I want nothing left short.

This is something we can all do something about. We can all say something. We can all speak to that friend who’s beginning to withdraw. We can tell them how much they mean to us. We can acknowledge how special they are. And we can validate and acknowledge one another, and all of our singularities. We can speak up. We can seek help. We can try to understand each other. And we can start to understand that there’s an awful lot that we don’t understand - and give space for that. We can go a bit easier on ourselves and others. And understand that we’re all human. This is a human condition, that requires some humanity - but it also requires action…

I’ll end with this… we live in an age of social connection, where our friends and others live in our pockets. We have the ability to reach one another more than we ever have before. So perhaps the next time we reach down to check on our friends (and the people we follow), why don’t we take a moment to think about the one who hasn’t posted in a while. Or the one who is posting that photo, which seems a bit off. Or the one we haven’t talked to in a long time. The one who is showing signs. And send them a friendly message. Let’s keep starting a conversation.

With so much love and understanding,

Shawn Pyfrom

#open letter #openness #anxiety #depression #mental illness #addiction #honesty #sharing #support

[apocvlypsed]

( wiz khalifa vc )  yeah... uh huh, u know what it is -- linc is addicted 2 bringing new muses !

hello hello my loves, i present to you my socal sweetheart, shiloh correia! tap the clickity click to read more about this chill dude !!

reece king. — oh, have you met shiloh correia? he is a twenty two year old cis male that is feeling phlegmatic about the planet’s imminent doom. a gym receptionist, this leo is known around town as the viscerotonic, because he is bona fide & mellow, as well as distrait & extemporaneous. hopefully, loh will survive. 

alright here we go: a very rushed, disorganized draft of his background because i have to leave for a doc’s appointment soon!! ( tw for illness, mentions of possible death, mentions of hospitals, mentions of homophobia )

backstory:

his name is shiloh, he's 22, and he works as a receptionist at the local boujee gym!! he moved to hawley when he was 19ish because he was in pittsburgh for testing and like... decided he might as well stay in the area a while to escape his smothering family? 

born & raised in los angeles, so he's got one of those very chill, relaxed personalities. like... someone spills coffee on him? 'it's cool, man, really. good fashion statement.' survive a 5-year battle with leukemia? 'awesome, great, thanks doc.' just... very easy-breezy, chill vibes. he can often be misinterpreted as caring too little, but he’s just a very serene soul.

he kinda didn't have much of a real childhood after he got diagnosed with leukemia when he was 13. he was in and out of the hospital for a couple years before things got to be too taxing on his parents, and they sent him to a live-in treatment center shortly after his 15th birthday. they couldn’t handle Seeing Him Like That when things took a turn, but they said the real reason was the transit bills. going back and forth added up so much, and with not a lot of money to spare, it was too much for them to shoulder. shiloh didn’t question it because like... he knew how hard this was on his parents and younger sisters, he could see it. it saddened him to go to this treatment center though, because every shred of normalcy was ripped away. he could no longer go to school when he felt up for it -- his parents suggested getting lessons at the center, but shiloh insisted on staying enrolled at his high school. he learned mainly through emails and work brought to him by his friend elijah.

his younger sisters ( twins, sara & mackenzie, about 8 at the time ) would visit him in the center because they missed him? shiloh was very ill, but his siblings would take the bus across thecity and bring books for him to read to them like how he did at home. so this 15-16 y/o kid would be hooked up to chemo, literally reading harry potter quietly to his little sisters, making sure to do every single silly character voice, and look at them to gasp at the scary parts. admittedly he was quite low energy, but he put considerable effort into seeming 100% for them, so they wouldn’t worry. ( one time sarah asked him if he was going to come home sometime soon, and saying he didn’t know literally broke shiloh’s heart. after they left, he cried a lot. )

that’s kind of shiloh in a nutshell too. going above and beyond for others, not quite at what he would call his expense because it doesn’t bother him... but it kind of is at his expense in instances where he was ill and he pushed himself to extremes to quell peoples’ worries. he’s always been a charitable soul. 

he returned home when he was 17, successfully in remission, and he would spend every waking moment with his sisters when he wasn’t at school. but remission was short-lived. he was at a party with his best friend elijah when the nausea and nosebleeds hit, and his classmate delayed calling an ambulance until all the alcohol was hidden. during that delay, shiloh lost consciousness. elijah fought his way into the ambulance. he held shiloh’s hand all the way there, right until the moment he woke up.

treatment gradually picked up again. some chemo visits turned into constant returns to the hospital. shiloh picked up pneumonia at one point, and school was just out of the question. elijah visited him on weekdays and his parents on weekends, so it worked for a bit, keeping their relationship masked. linking fingers in the stupid hospital hallway, taking slow walks along the terrace. but then shiloh’s family surprised him on his birthday. so did elijah. and it was a mess.

after elijah left, his parents were basically like, ‘we love you, but no. no. you can’t be This and That. you can’t be both.’ meaning sick and gay. his mother spent an extra hour there lecturing shiloh and crying about how the doctors said his prognosis wasn’t looking good, why would he do this to himself if he knew he could be passing soon? why would her boy purposefully deny himself entry to heaven? shiloh should have been angry, livid. but he... wasn’t. his natural disposition wasn’t conducive to getting defensive and he just didn’t have that kind of energy in him. so he just sat in his hospital bed and listened to his mother crying and cursing him, cursing their situation, praying to god for forgiveness on his behalf. when she finished, he offered her a tiny, tired smile. he squeezed her hand and murmured, “thanks ma.”  after she left, shiloh had to sit with that. all of what she’d said. and it kind of changed his attitude about the leukemia. his test results came back worse, and things took another, more drastic hit. things really got bad for the subsequent six months. it was a rapid decline, probably the worst he’d ever experienced over the course of his illness. he couldn’t be as sociable, or as vibrant. smiles of ease became grimaces because no amount of painkillers could keep him comfortable. one time, when his sisters came to visit, he stood up to bring them to the cafeteria for ice cream and fainted in front of them. he slept for days, but the bags under his eyes never ceased. he got thinner. his hands shook when he held elijah’s hand. and for the first time in all of this, shiloh realized he truly might not make it.

elijah kept things normal. well. as normal as they could be. aside from a quiet “how’s it going?” and a couple minutes of leukemia-talk, they’d indulge in other things. watching netflix curled up in shiloh’s bed. sneaking peanut m&ms in for shiloh. bringing homework because shiloh insisted he was going to graduate that year, with elijah, with their friends. sometimes elijah’s visits consisted of watching shiloh sleep. and that was fine. every time that happened, he’d leave a note, so shiloh knew he’d stopped by.

if asked now, shiloh wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the day when things stopped getting worse and started getting better. maybe it had something to do with elijah asking him to their own prom and getting the nursing staff in on it. maybe it had something to do with being able to leave the care center, just for the night, and forget that his own body was the enemy.

on his 18th birthday, shiloh no longer looked like a shadow of himself. he looked healthier -- not 100%, but certainly not as terrible as before. “you look hot,” was elijah’s response when he came in after a week of not visiting -- training for soccer, he’d said -- and shiloh greeted him with a smile that was, for the last few months, unusually void of pain. 

on a warm, golden march day, shiloh got results of his blood test saying he was officially in remission for a second time. and god, it felt so good. so freeing. he pushed through the last of his graduation requirement and was able to walk with his class to receive an honorary diploma -- his real one came two months later, after completing some online courses.)

naturally, he and elijah broke up so they could venture off and do their own things. shiloh didn’t want to be a burden. elijah went to school abroad. they still talk sometimes.

the correia’s, however, are worriers. they weren’t convinced that shiloh was alright, that he could go off somewhere far away and come back in one piece. so they spoke to his aunt and uncle in pittsburgh, pa and worked out a deal -- he could go stay with them for the summer working for their law firm. the east coast had better treatment if he ever needed it during that timeframe. but at the end of the summer, they expected shiloh back in la with them.

there were a few scares in pittsburgh, but the bloodwork never showed any dangerous levels that couldn’t be fixed by some isolated treatment, or rest. by his 19th birthday, shiloh had been steadily in remission for half a year. aside from some long-term side effects from treatments, he experienced no lingering discomfort. 

while browsing the welcome center at the airport, waiting for his flight home, shiloh stumbled upon a brochure for a small town called hawley and just... fell in love with the way snow dusted the small streets in the cover photo? the freshness of the air, or how the pamphlet described it, at least. so he called his parents and spoke through their protests. “ma, dad... i’m gonna stay out here a while.” and then when his mother attempted to power scold her way into getting her son home, he hung up the phone. 

he moved into a small studio apartment and landed a job as the receptionist at the local upscale gym! he honestly adores his job. sometimes dealing with stella from yoga is a bit much, but the contact and the stories he hears... it’s worth it. plus, the gym is super awesome and there might be a cute boy there he’s kinda into, on the down-low. ;)

shiloh’s just very easygoing and can converse with anyone. he’s agreeable and it takes a lot for him to get offended because honestly, everything kind of pales in comparison when you’ve barely survived your own body attacking itself.

he lives paycheck to paycheck most of the time. gladly. he’s enjoying his simple life, his normal life, existing without being tethered to wires and tubes and hospital cleaning smells. he probably always burns sweet-smelling candles because the scent of those hospital rooms is kind of ingrained in his memory. he just... he loves absorbing it all. the mid-afternoon sun, the silly coffee shop people, the way the panels of hawley sidewalks don’t always align just right. he’s thriving here, just breathing minute to minute.

headcanons

all in all, he’s very unbothered by the asteroid because he just... feels so lucky to be here? and he can’t change anything about a big rock careening toward the planet. so he’ll enjoy his time and not worry about it. because worrying is forfeiting valuable time he can just be spending having a laugh or enjoying the fresh air.

he’ll say he doesn’t care about snapchat streaks but then bombard you if your streak is in danger.

he sings! he’ll like, loop piano chords and a mellow beat and make up some r&b song about the pasta he’s making for dinner. he sounds like... a mix between daniel caesar and kevin garrett. just v chill and like warm honey. he can also lowkey rap really well but... shh... it’s a secret.

he kinda dresses very stereotypically la despite being in pennsylvania now? a lot of basics with loud details. he also really likes painting his nails in those cool holographic colors? yee

the first thing he did when he moved to pittsburgh was teach himself how to cook super well because he needed to make up for all the Shit he ate while in treatment. so get ready... ya boy’s gonna make you a masterpiece for dinner !

definitely doesn’t mention his illness a lot. his parents are constantly calling worried about the status of his remission so like... if someone acts really worried he’ll be like, “i’m fine, no symptoms, chill” and not even realize he didn’t tell them about his past. he’s just... all about living in the moment so things get lost in the shuffle.

he shamelessly plays words with friends while at the reception desk. pls tell him a good 4-letter word he can make with Z, K, I, and N bc he is struggling.

his footsteps are straight up silent. he moves so gracefully like.... he could sneak up on even the most alert people, and it’s mostly always by accident. he’s just got that calm air about him where he commands attention but in a subtle way. so people won’t notice him enter the room, but they will be locked in by his intrigue once he’s inside.

“pls remember to hydrate today xo” -- an actual text from shiloh correia.

he wears a LOT of hoodies layered with denim jackets. don’t judge him, it’s COLD here !!! (he says when it’s like... literally 60 degrees out... yikessss.

refuses to buy snow boots. his combats will suffice. and tbh buying snow boots feels like admitting defeat? even tho he chose to live here? he doesn’t want to seem like that wimp cali boy that can’t handle the northeast. *cue shiloh buying yet another heated blanket*

never learned how to drive?? so that’s super fun ! someone try to teach him, i’ll cry

as for connections, like.. anything? he’s been here for a solid 3 years, so there’s def potential for lots of stuff! aight i gotta run but i will be on mobile/discord !!  pls come love me, i love u xoxo

#hawley:intro #҉ greetings & salutations ! intro. #҉ tell me pretty lies ! shiloh. #illness tw #homophobia tw

[cecilspeaks]

112 - Citizen Spotlight

If you see something crawling across your floor in the dark, don’t worry. It’s probably just a tarantula. Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners, in this fast-paced world of community radio and local news, I think we’ve lost sight of the truly important thing: the individuals who make up our diverse community.

So today, I want to try out a new segment I've put together called Citizen Spotlight, in which we will profile a randomly selected citizen, diving deep into who they are, and maybe discovering some things about ourselves along the way.

Oh, here’s an intro I’m working on for it.

[very deep, menacing voice] Spotlights, roving in the night. Hunting. Closing in. But everything is backwards. The night is hot and bright. The spotlights are deep and black. Everything they touch turns to darkness. They are searching for the light. They consume it.

[chipper voice] That’s a rough draft. I’m open to notes. Anyway, today’s inaugural spotlight was curated by closing my eyes and pointing in the phone book. And so today, we will talk about Sigrid Borg. She’s a brand new citizen who has just arrived in Night Vale. I have hear this classified dossier, we had a team of heist experts – thanks, Janice – steal from the Hall of Public Records. The dossier says that Sigrid was relocated to Night Vale as part of a witness protection program, and that Sigrid is not her real name. Nor is she of the Scandinavian origin her name might suggest. Thus all of the information we managed to obtain on Sigrid for this segment is fictional, created by a government software program to ensure her total anonymity, and in no way represents who she really is as a person. In all probability, it is in most ways the opposite of her true identity, but for safety, it’s important that we all believe this made-up biography is absolute fact. It is extremely, extremely important. She would be in great danger if anyone from the outside world started to doubt who she claimed to be.

We’ll get to our Citizen Spotlight momentarily, but first, as a way to make Sigrid feel more at home, I’ve asked other Night Vale citizens to reveal a dark secret that they’ve never shared. I will be reading those throughout today’s broadcast. The first comes from Susan Escobar, second grade teacher at Night Vale elementary school. She writes: “One night, I was at school late grading homework, and I heard strange sounds coming from the cafeteria. When I looked inside, I saw a giant mandala on the floor made entirely of frozen fish sticks. It seemed to be undulating and alive. When I blinked, it vanished. But every night I dream of flying toward a cloudless sky, and in the center of that sky is that fish stick mandala. And I wake before I reach it, but each dream a little closer. And the night that I reach that mandala in my dream is the night I will die.” Thanks Susan! Sounds fun.

Now let’s talk about Sigrid. Though new to town, Sigrid Borg was born in Night Vale and has lived here her entire life. Her parents were immigrants from the picturesque Swedish port city of Halmstad. She tries to go back at least once a year to visit her grandparents, a retired grade school teacher and a retired timber farmer, who have a lovely cottage overlooking at the mouth of the Nissan river, where it meets the North Sea. Sigrid has always been close with her grandparents, though in recent visits, has become distressed at her grandmother’s increased mental confusion and grandfather’s drinking habits. She doesn’t call them as often she used to and feels guilty about that. She’s torn between the desire to take more responsibility for their health and well being and the desire to block the situation out of her mind completely, as it has become a signifier of the irrevocable loss of her own childhood, and a direct confrontation with morality itself.  

Sigrid’s favorite food is smorgåstårta, a Scandinavian layer cake that is made of sandwiches and fish paste. Ask her to make it for your next big event. She’s been carefully drilled by her witness protection handlers on the foods of her childhood, and has almost got the hang of making them, although she has failed to acquire a taste for fish paste.

Some fun facts that you may not know about Sigrid, despite having lived in the same town with her all your lives. She has a degree in marine hauntology from an online university. She has a disorder that makes it impossible for her to sweat or cry. She has served on the board of the Sand Wastes Conservation Fund for six and a half years. She is deeply embedded into our community and way of life.

And now, another confession from a local resident about a dark secret. This one from my dear friend Earl Harlan. It reads: “On a Boy Scout training maneuver near the old dirt road, I witnessed the apparition of my 10-year-old self wearing the scout uniform of my youth. He trained with us all afternoon, and I tried not to give him any preferential treatment. As the afternoon passed, new memories appeared in my mind of training at 10 years old with a group of strangers, one of whom seemed familiar and stared at me constantly in horror.” That’s adorable! Thanks, Earl!

Back to Citizen Spotlight. Sigrid spent her childhood in the Hefty Sycamore Trailer Park near downtown. She didn’t have many friends; she was shy in school. One year, she tried out for a solo in the school holiday pageant. For the audition, she sang a Flakey-O’s jingle that was very popular at the time, but no one took her seriously. They all thought she was making a joke. She apologized and faded back into the bleachers. She truly loved that jingle. It spoke to her soul, it made her feel something. She recorded it off the radio and listened to it often, rewinding and replaying it out at the picnic table on summer nights, when the rest of her family was asleep. But she never listened to it again after the solo tryouts, because it only brought back the sound of the other kids laughing, of her teacher’s scolding voice lecturing the class to take themselves seriously, or no one else would. And it made her feel ashamed. She eventually recorded over the tape with audio from a TV special about orphaned lion cubs. But sometimes, under the hungry sucking sounds of giant kittens drinking from baby bottles, she thought she could still hear the song.

In 7th grade, she finally made some friends during the unknown creature dissection unit in science class. She wasn’t squeamish, and her ability to identify and extract misshapen internal organs without flinching made her an attractive lab partner. Everyone thought she was new in town because they had never noticed her before. She still has that effect on people. In the spring of that year, someone asked her to to the junior high dance. The team was “heat death of the universe”. The boys spent a lot of time licking the crepe paper decorations to dye their tongues bright colors and impress the girls. The girls were not impressed, but laughed anyway. Sigrid’s date tried to lick her hand to see if the dye would come off on her skin. This caused Sigrid to feel a surge of strange tingling panic, and she fled to the bathroom for 30 minutes. Her friends eventually found her and dragged her back into the gym. She danced with them for the rest of the night, hiding from the boys with the blue tongues.

There were bountiful crops that year. Some say this was not a coincidence. Some say the junior high dance is a secret crop fertility ritual outlined in the town charter, but kept secret from the children who participate. When the dance was cancelled in the following years, due to the crepe paper dye related poisoning incident, Night Vale experienced extreme drought and locust plagues. Some say this, too, was not a coincidence.

A quick bulletin board reminder: the reinstated junior high dance is coming up! May all you young citizen make lush and plentiful memories, and have a cornucopia of fun.

More Citizen Spotlight soon, but first, The weather. 

["Try Try Try" by Rachael Sage]

Another secret confession. Ah, what a treat! This one comes from iconic local celebrity and recent donut food truck entrepreneur, Lee Marvin. It says: “There is a void. Within that void a light. Within that light, a hand. Within that hand, a movement. Within that movement, a potential. Within that potential, everything that ever was.” Thank you Lee, and of course, a happy 30th birthday to you today!

Citizen Spotlight time. In high school, Sigrid’s left hand started to itch below the pinky finger. A small lump appeared which grew slowly over time. She became self-conscious about this and wore bulky sweatshirts with long sleeves pulled over her hands, which was luckily a fashionable look then. The nurse at the health clinic assured her that it was nothing to be concerned about, but it kept growing. Eventually, it took the shape of what appeared to be a second, smaller pinky finger. She was even able to wiggle it if she concentrated very hard. As you may know, the Hefty Sycamore Trailer Park was built on the dried-up shores of the old pesticide waste river, and Sigrid’s father felt there might be some connection between this and the extra finger. They decided to relocate.

They moved into a two-story house by the train tracks, a fixer-upper that shook on its foundation twice a day when the train came through, and once or twice erratically every night when the secret night trains passed, with their nameless and unspeakable cargos. Sigrid’s parents began to fight often, never having the money to fix up the fixer-upper, and they both spent as much time as possible away from home. Sigrid had a complicated relationship with her extra finger at this point, partially blaming it for the rift in her parents’ relationship. Once, when Sigrid was alone in the house, she heard something creeping up the stairs. She hummed the Flakey-O’s jingle til she couldn’t hear it anymore, and then she started spending a lot more time away from home also.

There was a small group of kids who hung out around the train tracks at night, so she started hanging out with them to avoid going home. They liked to smoke cigarettes and light off fireworks and dare each other to look at the secret night trains, although none of them ever did, as they all knew that to look at one of those trains meant an instant and painful death. They would talk and gossip about kids and teachers she’d never heard of before, and she began to wonder if they even went to her school. When she was hanging out with them, she would often glance up at the dark windows of her own empty house just down the tracks and see movement behind the glass. Or soft white eyes staring out.

During one of these movements, while she looked at the house, all her friends disappeared and she found herself alone on the tracks. No sign of the teenagers that had been there mere seconds before. She never saw those kids again, but she often heard their voices in portable radios on the wind, and she spent her evenings wandering up and down the tracks, looking for them.

At the end of senior year, the high school yearbook featured fun awards for each student, voted on by the class. Smartest girl and tallest boy and most likely to survive a mass extinction event, and best smile. Every single student received a commemorative award, except for Sigrid. It wasn’t intentional or out of spite. Everyone forgot that she existed. She was inexplicably absent during every school picture day throughout the years. Never participated in any extracurricular activities, didn’t speak up in class, got average grades, and ate lunch alone. Which some say contributed to her lack of memorability. But she was there, and is here, and always has been. She belongs here. It’s totally normal to forget someone you know, but you do in fact know her. Some of you know her very well.

One time you went thrift store shopping together, and she picked out a jacket for you that was too big, but she said it looked great on you. It was fuzzy and resembled furniture upholstery. Royal blue with gold stripes. The lining was ripped. She bought it for you. You found that old jacket recently, royal blue with gold stripes, you put it on. It almost fits now. You felt something that you hadn’t felt before, sticking against your ribs, tucked into the ripped lining. You reached inside and you pulled out a piece of notebook paper, folded into a hard little square. It was from Sigrid. It described a thing that she shouldn’t have seen, and couldn’t speak about. It instructed you to burn the note immediately, and you did. It instructed you to never acknowledge to her that you even received it. You can never tell anyone what the note said.

If you do run into Sigrid, remember that she is a real person filled with blood and misshapen internal organs, just like you and me. Everything I have told you about her is completely true. Well, none of it is technically true, but it was crafted by state of the art technology to evoke a range of 1-4 feelings in the listener. And as we all know, feelings are real, and truth is in the mind of the beholder. And the beholder lives out in the scorched orchard under the floorboards of the old cherry-picking stack.

Stay tuned next for a mysterious distress signal that requires urgent action, but is impossible to locate.

On behalf of everyone here at Night Vale Community Radio, welcome to your new town, Sigrid – the town where you have lived your entire life.

And to everyone else: Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Be yourself. As if you had any choice in the matter.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv transcripts #episode 112 #citizen spotlight

[illogicalshockwave]

Something i’ve been thinking about after updating myself with @mnemoiisms backstory for their Trepan.

Trepan’s recovery after being shot.

Blackness.

They say that when your spark finally extinguishes that an afterlife lies beyond it with the god who gave you shape in the waking world which you once roamed but it had been a lie. Primus... 

He was dead. He had finally been offlined; the thought occurred to him dully, like looking at the rippling surface of water from the underneath and not being able to quite grasp the image it reflected back. He was dead, greyed out and a mass of vaporised plastics and metal from the canon of a leader he should of finished the job of back on Messentine. 

Trepan couldn't even muster the energy to feel anything in response, this was a world of nothingness now. He couldn't understand even if he wanted to.

Only he wasn't quite done yet.

White hot agony made the surgeon scream out into the nothingness he knew but there was no sound- no frame to contort and so he endured as this feeling persisted until that too vanished into the void again. Trepan was alone again, and still he dwelled in the infinite reaches of a realm that had no explanation nor comprehension. His thoughts however were clearer now,  both echoing around for miles and yet silent in nature. Wherever that pain had gone, it had left behind a sense of clarity. He could think and understand, but not the blackness. He could think about his last moments but that made the pain flash so he chose to remember Messentine.

The clinic, the strict schedule and rules so tight nobody else but himself and a few others could navigate with ease. The institute, and with a vague sense of dread, what had lead to this. Overlord. The name was repulsive and bitter, nearly as bitter as the other one but this he could tolerate.

Then the pain returned- blistering and he was screaming again only the white hotness invaded his vision and suddenly Trepan wasn't suspended in darkness anymore and he was writhing, vocals glitching and heaving as at last he could hear again. He could only scream, but from the lack of moving he was restrained, this much the surgeon knew. 

Whatever had happened, he had been revived from the certainty of death somehow and his frame was not complying to his wishes. He must of been screaming for hours, tugging and snarling at restrains as the sudden snap back to reality came to take its toll. Somewhere in the background a lab full of scientists worked stoically, restructuring the small mnemosurgeons frame and injecting lines, IV dripping with essential fluids which kept him from dipping back into the oblivion. 

A conversation continued unaffected between a purple warframe and a scientist turned medic. "The cost does not matter. I am doing this to see if I can."

Trepan wasn't sure what he preferred, eternal nothingness or this noisy chaotic hell he had been thrust into but frag if it made him focus on what mattered. Living. Surviving, by any method possible.

Eventually despite his fight he did fall back, but only through being forced and even then through the tears and the choked sobs of demands for help (not cries, he was not that weak) he held the unfocused gaze of the doctors as he slipped away again. For once, he welcomed oblivion. The next trip into consciousness was still painful but not enough to scream. He became aware someone was speaking directly to him, asking questions over and over until finally he responded.

"De-sig... Nation... Trep-an. Occupa-ti-on. Mne-e-emosurg-ge...on." Whoever asked seemed pleased, shifting in their seat by the sound of it. Trepan didn't dare look up, he was already shaking from the physical exertion not to break his vocalizer from use again. His voice was glitching and strained, and thank primus they didn't ask more questions but whoever it was talking was no longer speaking to him. Instead his frame entered a state of complete and utter numbness, a stasis without the recharge making his antennae slump on the medical berth he was still restrained against and the tense bowing arch of his spinal strut follow in a similar fashion. His vision wavered but the sudden best of both worlds had him unknowingly giggly, smiling to himself as the world continued to progress around him.

It was a constant after that, answer things right and he would receive treatment to numb his pain, and when that progressed he was told to move now unrestrained limbs while lying on his back. Bit by bit Trepan focused, understanding that this was physical and mental therapy for someone who had sustained damage thought unrepairable. 

He was easing his frame into moving, but not his spinal cord and he wasn't oblivious as to why. He had done this for others before, and he now knew what the blackness was from before. After the blast it had somehow not hit his spark directly and instead his casing and armour took the brunt. Whoever had found him had severed the connection of his brain module and spark and relocated them in an artificial chamber until his frame was mostly repaired-

Mostly.

His armour had melted together, tubing and chevron unsightly and horribly marred for all to see, once spectacular and immaculate white now scorched a permanent tar colour. Articulation had to be completely redone and even now his joints still grinded against one another, and his back was still completely immobile but his fragile spark was stable. The sudden burst into reality and the screaming had been from the first reconnection of his mind and essence, doctors needing him awake and able to feel to confirm the operation was a success.

Moving his back was the next challenge, accepting the support of doctors despite his ego and holding on for dear life as they lifted the berth upright with himself still strapped down on it. He was standing- actually standing, but still pressed firmly in place. He let them handle him like a doll, did what he was told because despite internal hatred brewing all directed at his useless state someone had saw fit to give him a second chance. He didn't plan on wasting it, not when there was a helm marked for surgery that had yet to heed its call.

Many months later, Trepan walked with ease again. He had been released on medical leave, the institute more than happy to give their top mnemosurgeon time to recover after their unending loyalty to them, but it had all been with the unnerving knowledge that he was on a timer. His spark lacked the innermost energon that once surrounded it and had grown weaker with its absence than it already had before- he needed material for his spark too but those kinds of things even the institute had no hand in. Frames were plentiful but the energon and spark needed to remain untouched. And so he was faced with a timer, and the ever growing hunger for revenge.

Revenge against life, revenge against the hand he had been dealt. Revenge against him.

So as Trepan sat up from his berth, blinds letting slats of artificial daylight in to slant across his once mangled now less so frame, he steepled his digits together and for the first time since the incident let the needles in each digit tip pressurise and extend. Each one was menacing and could pierce through armour inches thick after he invested in an upgrade. Most of his sick pay had gone towards it and the new set of plating to cover his melted protoform but it had been worth it. A terrible idea most foul entered his mind and a slow sinister smile stretched out across his faceplates.

If the world was going to rip out his spark and innermost, and leave him with nothing...

He was just going to take someone else's.

#aka #trepan's cannable origin story #trepan #mnemoiisms #synopsis of the past (fiction) #maccadam #transformers #au where trepan lives #mtmte #fan fiction #idw #tw #disassociation #intense pain #all that good stuff

[dinosaurjam]

Let me tell you a story about stories.

When I was in my junior year of college, I took a scriptwriting class with my favorite professor. He was a hardass but very very smart and honestly quite warm, just with unflinching standards, and by the time I was his student he’d been teaching so long that the hardass-ery had softened a fair bit. He also always, always knew what he was talking about, so his opinion was of very high value to me.

We did a bunch of projects over the semester, but in the last third or quarter or so we had individual script projects on whatever we wanted. I developed a film concept about two young people in not-quite-rural New England in the late 40s or early 50s (I forget exactly when, though I remember finangling dates to figure out when to set it so the male character would’ve been just too young to have gotten drafted into WWII). Noah was a bike messenger who was hopelessly in love with Maddie, who worked alongside her father running his general store. They were not-quite-childhood-friends, and they became closer over the course of the story. I drew a lot of symbolism and imagery from the poems of Theodore Roethke; the wind, the sea, and birds were all pretty important, especially the wind, which was directly tied, imagery-wise, to Noah’s emotional arc.

I really wanted it to be this quiet little story of two people falling in love and learning to be vulnerable with each other, and that’s all. But I felt self-conscious about it; I felt like it was too boring and too void of conflict. I mean, for me, for my tastes, it was just right. But American storytelling, at least in the mainstream at present, leans heavily toward overt, outward conflict.

So in my plot treatment, I threw in some issue in the third act about like... I think Maddie’s father getting ill and dying? Or Maddie getting ill? Something like that. Something totally unnecessary that I didn’t want there and didn’t care about.

And when the class read my plot treatment, every single bit of feedback, including from the professor, pointed out that this bit of conflict felt forced and out of place with the tone of the rest of the piece.

I remember sitting there, feeling self-conscious and embarrassed and stupid. I didn’t want that in there in the first place; I only added it because I thought it had to be there; I felt dumb, like everyone thought I was bad at storytelling. I managed, in some fashion, to communicate to the professor that I didn’t want this conflict there but felt I had to add it or the story wouldn’t be interesting. And what he told me has always stayed with me:

“There doesn’t always have to be a big dramatic plot. A quiet little story about two people falling in love is perfectly lovely all on its own. You can let it be what it wants to be.”

And yes, this was something I already felt. But being told that - being given that permission by someone who, frankly, represents the demographic who’s so in charge of controlling storytelling in the bigger picture - it was incredibly reassuring to me. Everyone in the class agreed that letting the story be simple and quiet made them like it so much more. They liked the story, they thought it was honest and sweet and had heart to it, and they didn’t want to see it overcomplicated.

I realize this is nothing novel to a lot of us. But I also remember how I felt, twenty years old and painfully heartsick and wanting nothing more than to tell a soft little story, and being validated in that, being reassured that it’s enough just as it is. So if anyone feels that way, this is me telling you that you can let it be what it wants to be, and that’s perfectly wonderful just as it is.

#op #personal #ish

[glopratchet]

govenment

WATER TREATMENT PLANTS ARE FOUND IN ALL IMPORTANT TOWNS AND CITIES These plants take the contents of a river or water way and redirect it through a series of cleansing systems First off any large objects are taken out, then a large grate with extremely fine wiring filters the water This is to let the water flow but catch any potential diseases or contaminants and to flag them for disposal later SOMETIMES IT IS JUST BEST TO GET WATER THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, TRUSTING IN YOUR HANDS AND MOUTH IF YOU HURT YOUR ANKLE SO YOU CAN'T GET STARTED, YOUR SHOES ARE Full OF BLISTER, THEN YOU WILL BE THIRSTY COME NIGHT FALL There isn't that much water in the jamais vu terre- very few large bodies of water, even though it as an entire planet of which three quarters is inhabitable- how this came to be no one knows No ice caps exist, and little fresh water variety exists other than sinkhole wells and catchment basins underground where rainwater is stored everywhere , warlords and military dictators are the norm, however in the larger governments there is civil order and civilians can live normal lives without having to fend for themselves Ranking military play a huge part in society and battle tactics are still a matter to study in schools Technology exists but with very limited natural resources, only the richest nations can afford higher tech weaponry and machinery and when could they not? Who was more prosperous between the two nations? Was trade always fair and equal or did one nation have more powerful bargaining tools? they both have contained super weapons, but the Yellow Devil and Aftermath make even high tech weaponry available to the highest bidders Aftermath alone was worth keeping around because it ensured that no other nation would attack; however, Yellow Devil upset the natural order resource wise It allowed for miners and drillers to find more ores than they could have without it Because of this, trade routes were highly sought after For resource reasons (natural resources of food and water are scarce on the terrain and often have to be brought in), civilians are not taxed but a protective force is obviously necessary These costs sometimes make Jamais Vu Terre have to trade resources for technology or cash in a deal that is mutually beneficial Jamais Vu Terre does tribute for protection occasionally but it is by no means a viceroyalty of the Republic of Rust Due to Aftermath being in RUST territory however, why the Yellow Devil hasn't been used against them is anyone's guess Perhaps they're toying with the idea what Yellow Devil and Aftermath did, a solution to every problem occurred The solution? Find ways to null and void their powers or make them noncompetitive in a resourceful way But that would also mean having Aftermath as the big gun to point at whomever was causing mischief in the world Nature abhors a vacuum; emptiness is something that will be filled understood that and released a statement to the world of their plan but said they will not release when the world will torment; whether it be in a few weeks, days, months or years Noting that if anyone attacks them first with what abilities they do have then the clock starts then How the citizens react to this news will vary, some rushing to stockpile of ammo and food, others continuing their lives as it isn't going to start right this minute a heavy heated game of chess You know what the other side is planning to do and they know what you're planning to do, do you make one big risky push to try to checkmate immediately or do you set it up so that you can slowly accomplish your goals over time? They knew the big guns were Aftermath and the Yellow Devil, but with enough preparedness they could be fought off just like any other foe At least that's the hope a grandfather who has long since left this world but his curiosity in other matters yet remains and a three-year-old who had recently discovered how to ask "why?" Jamais Vu was distrustful of the Republic at first They seemed too sure of themselves if they thought bringing Yellow Devil or Aftermath in would just cause endless war Those experiments back then yielded results that practically broke the mind, made men go mad with fear and cause them to see enemies everywhere alcohol mainly Sometimes they imported whole alligators, but robotic farming for melee weaponry was also a newer and growing institution of theirs for some time, so it wasn't unthinkable to receive shipments of tanks as well alcohol mainly Sometimes they imported whole alligators, but robotic farming for melee weaponry was also a newer and growing institution of theirs for some time, so it wasn't unthinkable to receive shipments of tanks as well when could the importance of alligator meat to Jamais Vu Terre when compare the same variety under the control of the Republic of Rust authorities the leader of the new "settlers" in the area when it began growing again immediately upon the release of Aftermath and the appearance of the mutants Since then what was Illinois was renamed to the Republic of Iron , the capital of which is Canberra which was completely taken over upon the appearance of super mutants The leader's original name was Jakeason Namzoka Then it became Leader Namzoka Eventually Emperor Namzoka how long Everyone does agree on it starting out with just a small group of shacks set up in Illinois, but since it was isolated from the hustle and bustle of trade-route, and reports said that mutants were sighted roaming around there they weren't bother As long as they sent in the needed supplies at the right time they could do whatever they wanted within their reclaimed boundaries Naturally this didn't mean they kept to themselves, far from it actually To this end five-man teams were sent in yearly to fight off mutants The republic probably was attacked too, but as usual made themselves out as the good Samaritan in these skirmishes (and the only chance for safe refuge, with generous servings of fear) to regroup and recoup there was still the matter that they couldn't abandon the idea of attacking mutants to conserve ammo and other resources though not much Three square meals, twenty hours of light, and no mutants seem to be a welcome change over Aftermath chaos You're sister and brother are both with families of their own now and your parents seem proud (and older) Your family seems to be enjoying the results of your father's negotiating skills as well The respect that everyone has for you is truly remarkable but what does it matter? There's no more war just as much of an improvement in conditions as there was when the Healing Commission took effective control of Galto quarters While your old friends continue fighting for their now-forgotten ideals, you choose to stay and preserve your family's new-found standard of living as well as letting your barren womb rest for a little longer Perhaps forever You wonder sometimes if this is just a temporary lull or just the calm before the storm as a whole While the necessity for constant war are over, there is an increase in security on all trade caravans that travel through their lands Caravans don't get harassed, but they do have to submit monthly reports on what exactly they are trading The republic, believing strongly in fair trade, finds this acceptable since their numerous mines and other resource projects need raw materials from outside of their growing and somewhat closed community stick even closer together and those transacting business away from the trusty and well travelled roads is rare nowadays, something that's unheard of in hub that was New Denver (former Republican soldiers that have new taken up a different kind of mantle) inspect all goods and chattels to make sure no unlawful material (eg drugs, unlicensed media, proscribed technology, etc) is being imported to their community Any citizens on the border (and even those from New Denver if they suspect criminal intent) are subject to search at any time in their homes without a warrant

[brentrogers]

[Podcast] How Cleveland Clinic Helps Employers Create a Safer Workplace During COVID-19

Dr. Jim Merlino, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer, Cleveland Clinic

Despite having entered the US eight months ago, COVID-19 remains a topic enshrouded in confusion, conflicting information, hyperbole, and even conspiracy theories. Everyone, informed or not, seems to have an opinion about the coronavirus pandemic.

Fortunately, health systems, hospitals, and medical providers are  uniquely qualified to fill the educational void and assert a leadership position within their communities. 

In this week’s podcast, my friend and frequent guest, Dr. Jim Merlino shares how Cleveland Clinic’s free advisory service, COVID-19: Creating a Safe Workplace, helps employers and employees, “return to work, safely and confidently during the coronavirus pandemic.” 

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript to discover:

Why educating the public is such a vital responsibility for providers to embrace

How Cleveland Clinic was able to leverage its expertise and preparation for COVID-19 into an effective educational program for employers

Why executive leadership is essential for larger missions like these

Surprising new insights about how the coronavirus spreads

How large and small institutions can take similar leadership positions within their communities

Finally, please help educate the public by sharing COVID-19: Creating a Safe Workplace website with employers, patients, coworkers, colleagues, friends, family, and social media. 

Other streaming services: This and other episodes of the Healthcare Success podcast are also available… iTunes | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Google Play | Pod Bean | Tunein | Radio Public | Stitcher

Podcast Transcript

Note: The following ‘How Cleveland Clinic Helps Employers Create a Safer Workplace During COVID-19′ podcast transcript is computer generated and edited for clarity.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Hi everybody, Stewart Gandolf here with another podcast featuring absolutely one of my favorite guests and personal friend, Dr. Jim Merlino. He is Chief Clinical Transformation Officer with Cleveland Clinic, now back at the Clinic after some excellent time with Press Ganey. Welcome Jim, first of all.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Thanks Stewart. Always great to talk with you.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: In preparation for this meeting, we spent some time talking about, catching up how the world is very different than the last time Jim and I spoke. Last time we talked was pre COVID, pre Jim moving over to Cleveland Clinic. Things have changed quite a bit since then, obviously. And I think today we’re going to talk about a topic that I think is really, really important, which is getting the word out, leveraging the pulpit of healthcare providers. As the most trusted people in America, doctors, hospitals, health systems have a unique opportunity to educate the public. And I was talking offline with Jim prior to doing this, how during the very, very early days of the pandemic, some of our blog posts were about this topic. Back when everything was absolutely uncertain, and the world was going crazy. Our firm went virtual about a week or two ahead of everybody else, right about the same time that Stanford went virtual, before it became mandatory.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: I was telling Jim, we have some friends that sent us predictions on what this pandemic was going to look like. So we went virtual really mostly for public good at that stage, even though some of my employees thought I was crazy, and we spent a lot of time writing in our blogs of how you can, as a provider, be part of the solution, get the word out. Can you post on social media? Can you talk to your patients? Can you send emails? How can you be a voice? And that was before any of this stuff had widely happened within our surrounding communities. We just had a sense there’d be a need for authoritative information to supplement what’s happening in the more official channels.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: So anyway, Jim and I were talking about this and in true fashion with Cleveland Clinic, with the leadership role that the clinic takes in terms of public health, began an advisory service. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And Jim, I’d love to hear from you, how this all began, the mission. This is your format. Let’s just talk. Tell me about the advisory service and maybe the history of it to start.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Sure Stewart. Well, again, it’s really great to be doing a podcast with you again, and I really always enjoy our conversations and the insights that you bring to the industry through your work as well. It’s interesting. Healthcare obviously is on the front lines with the pandemic response and taking care of people who are affected by COVID. But we actually, I think, have a bigger responsibility and that is to help society reactivate and also function safely in the era of COVID because we clearly are in an environment now where COVID is with us. Whether you believe it or not, it’s here. It’s not going away until there’s a treatment or an effective vaccine. It’s just going to be a part of what we do.

Dr. Jim Merlino: I think one of the things that we’ve learned in healthcare, and it’s not just true for Cleveland Clinic, it’s true for healthcare across the world, is that we understand how to keep people safe. And for the most part, I think healthcare has done that and you see different statistics on healthcare worker infectivity, but there are a lot of organizations across the country that have kept their workers safe. We had over 1100 caregivers infected with COVID. We’re confident, because of the contact tracing that we’ve put in place, that we can say we don’t believe any of those caregivers received COVID from taking care of a COVID positive patient, but that’s not without effort. It’s because of the safety measures that we’ve put in place, the teams of people that we’ve had together since the beginning of this pandemic that have really studied these issues and really debated about what are the best things that we need to do, or the safest things that we need to do.

Dr. Jim Merlino: So with all of that in mind and understanding that the tsunami was coming towards us very quickly, we did a lot of preparation. We were very fortunate, in Northeast Ohio, that the tsunami didn’t hit us like it did in other parts of the country like New York or Washington. But nevertheless, we did see COVID, we did take care of a lot of patients, we’re still taking care of a lot of patients, but we learned a lot.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And as we saw that the tsunami wasn’t going to hit us as hard as we thought it was going to, we were able to now take the information that we’d prepared for our organization and actually retune it or reformat it so that we could push it out to the public; to businesses, to churches, to educational institutions, so that others could use it. We started getting a lot of incoming early from different businesses and other organizations that needed help, and we wanted to be helpful. Cleveland Clinic has four cares, care for community, care for organization, care for caregivers and care for patients, and we very much see this as part of our responsibility to help care for the community.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And I’ll just add one more thing, and that is that it’s interesting that if you think about managing diseases, for most diseases, we’ve had decades to study them. For COVID, everything we know about this disease has really come in the last six months or less, and we’re learning new things every day. We’re clarifying things every day. And so the most important resource that we’ve been able to provide to partners outside of healthcare is really interpreting what’s going on and translating that information to what they do every day so they can keep their employees, their customers safe. It’s been interesting work. It’s been fascinating to be a part of, it’s been an honor to be a part of it, to help others. We think it’s really meaningful and impactful.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: The Cleveland Clinic, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of being in your community, a thought leader, a healthcare thought leader, and Cleveland Clinic clearly does that not just in its community, but from a world scope. Is that part of the clinic’s DNA? How has that evolved, this idea of we’re trying to be something more than just the provider? We want to really be a thought leader. How did that evolve and how does that sustain?

Dr. Jim Merlino: Cleveland Clinic has always prided itself on being an organization that’s innovative and trying to do things that benefit others, and that’s just part of our DNA. We’re actually coming up on a 100 year anniversary this year. It’s interesting the last pandemic was 100 years ago. We’re 100 years old, but it is really in our DNA, and it’s also part of the focus of our CEO, Dr. Tom Mihaljevic. He believes that we should be doing things as much as we can to really push hard and trying to figure out ways to evolve healthcare. And I think the work we’re doing with COVID response is part of that. And again, we don’t have the license on best practices. I think one of the benefits of COVID, if there’s any benefit, because there aren’t many for sure, is how people have worked together across the country. Other healthcare organizations across the world have come together to share information. And what we’ve been able to do is really just help package that so that we can help others understand what to do and be safe.

Dr. Jim Merlino: It is interesting, one thing about the Cleveland Clinic, one of the things I think that makes the Cleveland Clinic unique, there’s a lot, I’m certainly biased, is that we have a network of hospitals and healthcare institutions across the world. And what was striking about COVID … And we were meeting every day. During the heart of the pandemic, we were meeting twice a day, and all of our sites were dialed in. It was the ability to learn from each other. So a truly integrated network where you’re getting information from Abu Dhabi, you’re getting information from London, from Florida, from Las Vegas, from Toronto, and all of that’s feeding into your decision making. And what was most fascinating is everybody was experiencing this a little differently. So for instance, our operations overseas was able to give us some early warning into some of the things that they were seeing and also how they were responding to it, and that directly impacted our responses in the States, both in Cleveland and Florida. So it was a very interesting time to be a part of such an important integrated delivery system.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Jim that totally makes sense. I feel like obviously Cleveland Clinic has some amazing resources with multiple locations and a hundred year history and an incredible medical team and support teams. At the level of maybe a community hospital or a group practice or any level, but let’s maybe take a step, just one step down, a single hospital or a couple of hospitals, or just a large group, what would be important if they too feel like, “Okay, we’re not Cleveland Clinic. We can’t be, but we want to be that kind of a thought leader here in Topeka or Poughkeepsie or wherever.” What kind of recommendations, before we get into the specifics of your advisory service, but what have you learned they can use to … What would be the couple of things that you’d really want to have in place so that yes, raise your hand, be a colleague with us, help us get the word out. What kinds of things do you think would be important for that?

Dr. Jim Merlino: I don’t think you have to be Cleveland Clinic to be helpful to your community. I think if you likely look across the nation and talk to healthcare providers in other systems, I’ve certainly talked to many of my colleagues around the country. For the most part, we’re all coordinating. We’re all driving the same things. When we think about changing a policy, for instance, around visitors, we reach out to our colleagues, my friends. I reach out to my colleagues, reach out to their friends. We really are trying to bring information together. I think that’s probably true for a lot of providers.

Dr. Jim Merlino: But what I would say to smaller organizations, regardless of where they are and whether they’re a hospital or a practice, or a couple doc or a provider group that’s providing care, you know what to do. Likely you’ve been delivering care in COVID, and the information that you have available to you, how you think about this, the clarity that you bring to that process will be helpful to partners that are in your community, because this is complicated and it really requires a thoughtful approach to keep people safe, but an approach we know we can do.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And I think that what I would say to anybody that’s listening that may be practicing in a smaller environment is talk to people in your community and ask them how you can be helpful, ask them how you can translate what’s going on around COVID to impact how they can keep themselves, their employees and their customers safe. They need us. They don’t just need us to take care of sick people. They need us to provide guidance. And this is such an opportunity for healthcare in the United States and across the world to really step into a role, to do much more than we’ve probably done in the past, relative to things going on in the community.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: You mentioned your CEO, and that’s so often the case, the idea of … Because I could see how you’re a busy hospital located in whichever town you are and you may not have the resources, but I think it’s more than just resources. It’s more of your vision of how you fit in the community because it’d be really easy and certainly forgivable. We’re just treating patients here. We don’t have time to do this high fluid and visionary stuff. We just have to take care of patients and I totally get it. But I guess it comes down to maybe the vision of the CEO and the leadership of what role, maybe a larger role than just treating patients. Does that makes sense Jim?

Dr. Jim Merlino: Absolutely, and it also comes to getting back to the role of your hospital. If you think about the history of healthcare in the United States and how it evolved, a big part of it was community centric and most hospitals are community hospitals. And they were formed by municipalities coming together, putting money in to build a hospital to take care of people in the community. So it really is getting back to the roots. I remember one of my first roles in healthcare, I was a board member in a community hospital in the city that I grew up in, actually where I was born. And it was a hospital that was built in early sixties by seven communities coming together. One donated the land, everybody threw in some money and before you know it, you had a hospital. And today, that’s part of a big healthcare system in Cleveland. It’s doing amazing stuff, but that’s what we’re about in healthcare. So taking care of our neighbors, caring for the sick, but also providing information to the community on how to stay healthy, which is just, when you think about it, that’s noble.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: We’ve talked about in some of the other relevant webinars and podcasts I’ve been doing surrounding this topic. If you haven’t, first of all, it’s for the good, to get the word out, but also that’s the primary reason. We’re in this for healthcare. We’re in this to serve our community. But from a business standpoint too, it’s to take the leadership because if there’s a void in the marketplace to be a positive force, we’re not doing it for that, but that’s a good thing too. We want to be more than just that big building that people fear or may have had … Everybody has their own relationship with the community hospital. They’ve typically been part of the community for years, but to be that kind of thought leader, I think is important. And all the things we’ve talked about in the past like, and I’m going to dive into the advisory service in a moment here, but the social media, the emails, and talking to patients, the safety videos, showing them how you care, showing them how the heroes, the everyday stories, showing them how they’re going to be safe are all important.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: So from there, I’d love to segue to more about the advisor service. Tell me about how do you deliver it and what is it? How much does it cost, if anything? How do they deliver it? What the purpose is, all that. I’m fascinated.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Thanks for asking. We are too in terms of how quickly it’s really grown into something. And first of all, it’s free so that makes it easy for people to consider it.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: You did it!

Dr. Jim Merlino: Exactly.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: All of our listeners need to write this down, they can just write this down. Free is good. So yeah.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Free is good. Well sometimes free is not good. You always wonder what the intent is or if there is something behind the curtain, but no, this is free. And it hasn’t costed us much because we really just take in what we do every day for our caregivers and repackaged it so it’s a little easier for people who are not in medicine to understand. So we have a website that on that website, we have multiple industry playbooks that we’ve assembled that break down in simple terms how to think about keeping people safe. So there’s one for restaurants, for instance, manufacturing, office environment. They’re on the website. They’re all free. They’re all downloadable. They’re all easy to read. They all have a basic template that talks about the basics of COVID and safety, and then that portion that deals with the specific environment. They’re not that long.

Dr. Jim Merlino: We built a playbook around how to better communicate with people, your employees, customers during this time, how to communicate with empathy because certainly, healthcare workers aren’t the only ones that are being stressed. Everybody’s being stressed on something so we thought that would be important. We do weekly webinars with our experts. So infectious disease, epidemiology, testing, HR to provide insight, to help employers, organizations keep their employees mentally fit and exercising their minds and healthy at home. We have a long running list of frequently asked questions that are posted as new information becomes available. Again, translated into simple terms, what do you do if somebody in your office tests positive for COVID? What do you do if somebody has symptoms? What do you do if somebody has a family member? What do you do if somebody gets exposed? Again, it’s just breaking down on all the things that people worry about. And all of that’s on the website, which I’ll share with you. It’s clevelandclinic.org/covid19atwork. Once again, clevelandclinic.org/covid19atwork.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And what’s interesting about the material and the reaction to it, as I said earlier, is that it’s been a service because people just want to know what is going on, what the information they need to be concerned about really is. Cutting through the media, the conflicting news reports, the things they read, and then translating it into what to do. And that’s been very rewarding because I think that’s the clarity that we’ve been able to bring in. And frankly Stewart, as you would suspect, in some cases we just don’t know and we say it, but everything is guided by CDC guidance, what the scientific evidence is demonstrating. And then if there’s no gold standard to go to, it’s the best clinical judgment based on a pool of experts. I’ll give you one example that’s very public, which is our relationship with United Airlines.

Dr. Jim Merlino: So Cleveland Clinic’s had a long relationship with United and it’s been our corporate partner. And during the worst part of the pandemic, the darkest days of the pandemic when New York City was being clobbered, we sent a team of physicians and nurses to help out, and United was kind enough to fly them there and fly them back. And we got into a discussion about what they needed because they were asking, “We’re trying to figure out how to keep people safe while flying, how to keep our people safe. Would you be able to provide some input to us?” And then we said, “Absolutely. We’re here. Let’s talk about it.”

Dr. Jim Merlino: And so, and again, sharing with permission and we started going through the material and they were very sophisticated. As you would expect, it’s a big company, the airlines. When it comes to safety, they all talk to each other. They think about this all the time. They’re very sophisticated and they had a lot of great material and we provided input based on what we saw as the science around what they were doing. They adapted some things that we suggested that they didn’t think about. They changed some things that they probably didn’t need to do. But that, I think, has probably made flying safer.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And what’s interesting about flying right now is so certainly airline travel has significantly decreased, but planes never stopped flying and they didn’t put in the safety precautions. And yet, we don’t yet think we have a confirmed case of, there may be one we don’t know of, but we haven’t traced the case of COVID through airline transmissions. It’s probably coming as community spread increases and flying increases. But I think right now, we feel comfortable that we haven’t seen it. But the interesting thing is that, relative to United, is they were the first airline to mandate masks, and that was one piece of advice that we had given them, and they were very, very aggressive about it. They said, “Okay. If you tell us that that’s important, we will do it and we will enforce it.” And as you know now, all the airlines are doing it.

Dr. Jim Merlino: So I think that’s a good partnership because the last thing I would say, and then I’ll shut up, is that it’s not just what the businesses or the hospitals need to be doing to keep us safe. This is a social contract. We have to be doing things to keep ourselves safe. If we go onto an airplane, we should need to wear a mask. We shouldn’t refuse to do that. We shouldn’t protest like, “We don’t have to do that.” No, you need to do that. That’s your responsibility. When you go to an environment where you’re working, like a hospital, where we know we can keep you safe. When you go home, you have to think about how to continue to keep you safe.

Dr. Jim Merlino: I have a colleague, Dr. Steve Gordon, he’s our chair of infectious disease. He’s internationally renowned. He says, “Listen, COVID gets in healthcare, for healthcare workers, COVID gets into the back door, which is they come to work, they have all the precautions, they’re safe. They go home, they do something they shouldn’t have done. They drop their guard, they get infected.” That’s the backdoor and that’s the thing we have to close by being very mindful. We all have a role. COVID doesn’t discriminate and everybody in the world right now, everyone, and think about that. Everyone in the world is susceptible to it. So we all have a responsibility in this. We’re all in it together.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: It’s fascinating when I think about that and it’s interesting too, because the idea of airplanes, and I didn’t know that. I didn’t know there’s no documented cases for airlines having COVID. So there’s so much fear out there, misinformation and what I really like about the idea that you guys are doing this is beyond it’s helping me us all safer, but curating it, helping people understand what’s real, what’s not, how do you do that? Is there any secret to that? Because that’s very … Just that one little anecdote I think is really important.

Dr. Jim Merlino: We have a big team and we talk about things, and so I’ll give you an example. During the heart of the pandemic, one of the biggest concerns … Well, during the start of the pandemic. We’re in the heart of the pandemic. There was a big concern about PPE, personal protective equipment. One of the top concerns was we’re going to run out. The tsunami is coming, we’re going to run out and what are we going to do? But yet you can’t ration it because you can’t cut corners. You can’t say to people, “You don’t need it there,” or, “Don’t use it this way.” It just wasn’t an option. So we had a team of people, of about 10 people, probably a little more, that really were meeting every day to talk about how do you manage PPE? What’s the best way to do it? How do you account for supply chain issues? How do you model out how much you have, and what’s your run rate on PPE?

Dr. Jim Merlino: But it’s a statement of how experts come together to really tackle the smallest of problems that are really huge problems. That’s been our approach for everything, is we’ve had teams of professionals that are really experts in this space that have worked on these issues.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Is my dog barking?

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: That’s part of COVID. It’s perfectly OK to have dogs barking!

Dr. Jim Merlino: Einstein my labradoodle.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Oh my gosh. When we go offline, I’ll put my camera so you can see my dog. I have a labradoodle too. He’s enormous.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Oh, I have a miniature. Oh yeah! We got to do it!

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Going back to the curation and United in that, again, thought leadership, I fly on a different airline. I have about three million miles. As you know, I travel a lot as you do too. And at the beginning of the pandemic, there was news reports about them being very spotty with requiring masks. So they lost me for a long time because I’m not getting on a plane if this has become a political statement with the person sitting next to me. I want to be safe and that whole idea of we’re all responsible, I think is really important. And it’s great that you guys are doing that. I think also, I want to ask about this. You mentioned restaurants and I don’t know if you guys do bars, but even offices. So this is very real to me today.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: So literally last night, I mentioned we went virtual earlier and I’ve just been very conservative about this. And people who know me know I’m not doing this from a fear standpoint, I’m doing it from a public health standpoint. So we shut down early, not because I was paranoid about getting COVID, but more you don’t know who you’re impacting. And I have a bunch of a team and it turned out actually we could have had a near miss with COVID had we stayed open very much longer, which I won’t go into.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: What kind of response have you gotten? Because I know from our standpoint, that’s going to be fantastically helpful to have an authority because again, we’re not experts at this. Yeah, I market healthcare, doesn’t mean I’m a doctor. It doesn’t mean I don’t have any expertise in COVID. I read a lot, but I don’t feel comfortable with my employees safety and their relatives’ safety by making these decisions. So by guiding, having a sense of trusted authority to go to makes me feel a whole lot better. I don’t know if you have anything to add to that, and certainly what kind of reaction have you gotten from doing this?

Dr. Jim Merlino: A good reaction. I think one of the biggest concerns of patients is coming back to healthcare for elective procedures or not urgent procedures is will they be safe? And the answer is yes, they will be. And I think that that’s the same thing that employees want to know coming back to work or staying working. Will they be safe? And the answer is, yes, you will. However, and it’s a but, and that is you have to follow the rules. You have to be thoughtful. When your employer executes on a mask policy, you should follow the rules and wear the mask. When you have the ability to sanitize your hands, you should sanitize your hands.

Dr. Jim Merlino: Look, the way we talk about these protections, these layers of protection, is that there’s something called the Swiss cheese model. In safety science for the military, for the airlines or healthcare, we assume that events are trying to hurt people and we enact barriers, and each barrier is like a piece of Swiss cheese. It blocks some things, but it has holes and it lets some things through. But the more pieces of Swiss cheese, the more barriers you line up, the better protective screen you can build to prevent those things from hurting people. And so when we think about precautions that employers put together; masking, social distancing, hand-washing, disinfecting commonly touched surfaces, education about how to keep yourself safe at home. None of those are perfect. Some are better than others, but collectively, they create a pretty strong barrier.

Dr. Jim Merlino: And again, going back to healthcare experience, we know that we can keep people safe if they follow the rules and they have to be mindful about it. Again, I think the message is that if we do the right thing and we execute on what we know works, we can keep people safe and that should be the message. But again, part of that message needs to be that you have a responsibility as well. So when you leave the workplace, you want to be concerned about what you’re doing, who you’re interacting with, how you’re behaving, because you want to keep yourself safe at home as equally as much as you want to keep yourself safe at work.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: My wife went through a procedure right when things started to open up again and I told her, “Hey, this is a window. It’s probably going to bad again pretty quickly. Jump on now.” So she got her elective procedure done whenever that was. And so she went through it and it was amazing. They really had thought it through the whole, from the start to finish, how they greeted her in the parking lot, how they did all the way through. And then my wife said, “But the one thing is one nurse looked down and said, “This mask is just stupid. We don’t really need this.” And so that one, and fortunately, she kept her mask on, but obviously, didn’t have total buy in at an individual level. And that’s really what this requires, is a bunch of individuals doing stuff right, and even it’s … Maybe I’ll just argue, okay, you don’t believe it, but just suspend disbelief for me. Would you please? Because at the end of the day, that’s what we need.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: And I think the other point that you bring up is the importance of responsibility because, okay, great. This is so insightful to me, the idea of, okay, we have all this PPE. Who thought that your most dangerous experiences are not at the hospital, it’s when you go home? If you’re not being careful? Is that what you’re saying essentially, that the most dangerous part of your day, if you were treating COVID patients, is if you’re going home and being irresponsible?

Dr. Jim Merlino: Well, I think that the biggest opening for risk is that. I wouldn’t say it’s the most dangerous. If you’re an ICU physician or a nurse taking care of COVID positive patients, that’s dangerous work. But I think if you’re following the precautions and you’re using them, you can keep yourself safe. So you have to be very mindful about that. It’s no different than any other environment where the risk of getting hurt is real if you’re not following safety precautions.

Dr. Jim Merlino: But the need to be paying attention to safety doesn’t stop when you leave. And you don’t need to wear an N95 mask and gown at home, but you do need to be thinking about potential exposure opportunities, who you’re communicating with, making sure you’re avoiding large groups, quarantining yourself if you’re exposed to somebody. So that continuum of safety really stretches everywhere, not just where you’re working, regardless of what you do for a living.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: As we come into the home stretch here, I’d love to get any final comments you have, but I guess maybe starting with that would be to give you a place to start is what is the advice you would give to pastor of a church or the owner of a bar, or an office? All of us say to you with exasperation, “Dr. Merlino, I’m a pastor. I don’t know anything about this stuff.” What would you tell them? Obviously go to your side, but what’s maybe the philosophy or?

Dr. Jim Merlino: I think the philosophy is to be cautiously optimistic. Number one, we will get through this. It’s not going to be without costs and it’s not going to be easy, but we will get through this. And I think it’s really important that as my boss, Dr. Tom Mihaljevic says, you have to keep perspective because we will get through this. The second thing I would say is to educate yourself and learn as much as you can. Pay attention to sites that are reputable. Don’t make your decisions based on what you’re hearing or what you’re reading on news outlets. Pay attention to medical sites and use that as your guidance. And stay up to date because the information changes. We’ve evolved a lot of our thinking on COVID. When the pandemic first started here in the United States, my wife and I were wiping down our groceries. You don’t need to do that.

Dr. Jim Merlino: So pay attention to what’s changing and use common sense and be diligent about the procedures. A mask needs to cover your nose and mouth. It can’t just cover your mouth. It can’t be worn at your neck. It has to be worn the right way. You have to have precautions in place, or I’m sorry, protocols in place to think about what you do if somebody gets COVID in the workplace. Don’t wait for it to happen. Plan ahead. So those are the things that I would tell businesses. Those are the things that I tell businesses.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: There’s been times where I’ve been in situations here in California, which was at the beginning, was in the leadership position. Now, not so much, where nobody’s wearing a mask and it’s even me knowing what I know, there’s that social pressure to not wear a mask and I wear it anyway. And so I think that’s important to recognize there’ll be times that are probably challenging and do what the experts telling you. Not just because everybody else is not wearing it does not mean, “Well, they’re doing it.” It’s not safe.

Dr. Jim Merlino: That’s right.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Because that’s really what I think happens. They just said, “Well, nobody’s doing it. I guess it’s okay. It’s a sunny day and nobody’s sick.” And on the other hand, to not freak out and not be paralyzed because we have to go through life. And it sounds like, which is very heartening to hear the optimism in there that there are ways to get through this. And if we’re following the basics and I love, again, the Swiss cheese model, because that’s where I think … Maybe my last comment and then if you have anything else you can add up is perfection is the enemy of good. So in this case, if you’re thinking it’s just overwhelming. If I want to be 100% safe, I’d be lying in the sun, by myself with an N95 mask on, with the wind blowing at 100 miles an hour. It’s like, well, so then if you’re paralyzed and you’re afraid to do anything.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: But maybe the odds are, and maybe you can tell me this clinically, all right, if you’re having dinner outside, you’re six feet away or 10 feet away, it becomes like you overreact and just don’t have life and it becomes undoable. Do you have any comments on that? Because it feels like that’s where people get into trouble. They either, well, this is just too hard, they do nothing, or they end up with no health issues because they’re trying to do absolute perfection, which is maybe not as necessary. Any comment on that?

Dr. Jim Merlino: Yeah. It’s like people who have obsessive compulsive disorder. People who suffer from that, they have to do specifically sometimes over and over again. That’s not what this is about. This is about really just understanding what are the few things that are capable of keeping you safe when they’re done together and just being vigilant about it. You can go to a restaurant that’s appropriately set up for social distancing and where people are wearing masks. You can sit at the table with your spouse and take your masks off if servers are masked. Those things are safe. I’ve done it. I’ve flown. My wife and I flew to Florida the first two weeks of July and we wore our masks. Everybody on the plane had a mask on. We went out to eat but we went out to eat in restaurants that we knew were following the precautions. And we were very, very careful about observing our environment because we weren’t going to walk into a situation that would put us at risk.

Dr. Jim Merlino: But the point is you can do things. You don’t have to live in a bubble. You just have to be vigilant. And I would add, one of my closing comments would be the biggest thing we worry about in healthcare with any safety precaution or process is fatigue. People forgetting it, or people getting comfortable with it. We have to be mindful. We have to stay vigilant because that’s how we’ll keep ourselves safe. So we can’t relax our guard, so to speak, as we’re continuing to live with this pandemic.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: That totally makes sense, and for obviously the vast majority of our audience here is in health care. They live this every day and hopefully, some of those insights will help you communicate with your patients or your constituents and your employees too. We haven’t talked about this, and maybe just a second before we close here, your own employees at the hospital, they’re still people too and there probably is still some fear there. So any comments to the providers that are listening here or one final comments of how to get the word out to employees or to your patients?

Dr. Jim Merlino: Well, to the providers, thank you, because I know that everyone in the provider space is working very hard to do the right thing, to keep themselves safe, to take care of patients, and it’s hard, so thank you. Again, I think it just comes back to emphasizing safety. We have to keep talking about it. We have to remind people about it. We have to reinforce it. That’s the message.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA: Very good. Jim, as always, it’s been fun and fantastic talking to you, insightful. Love your thought leadership, love what you and your team are doing. Thank you.

Dr. Jim Merlino: My pleasure. Thank you, Stewart. It’s always great to talk with you about these issues.

The post [Podcast] How Cleveland Clinic Helps Employers Create a Safer Workplace During COVID-19 appeared first on Healthcare Success.

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TV's first Queer hijab wearing woman, Nikohl Boosheri, reveals what it was like going down on another woman on the small screen

http://fashion-trendin.com/tvs-first-queer-hijab-wearing-woman-nikohl-boosheri-reveals-what-it-was-like-going-down-on-another-woman-on-the-small-screen/

TV's first Queer hijab wearing woman, Nikohl Boosheri, reveals what it was like going down on another woman on the small screen

There is probably no better way to ignite your career by not only playing the first Queer hijab wearing woman on American TV – Adena El-Amin in The Bold Type – but filming one of the most liberating sex scenes in years.

In a controversial move (for some), the show, which is based around the relationships and inter-workings of a fictional fashion magazine, showcased Adena, played by Nikohl Boosheri, performing oral sex with her on-screen lesbian lover.

Thanks to her tactful treatment of the character, the scene has quickly led to her becoming one of the break-out young actresses of the moment. As she calls me, the day before jetting off to South Africa for a month of filming, Nikohl is staring at “three massive suitcases on my floor right. I am just trying to figure out this packing jigsaw puzzle. It’s giving me massive anxiety!” There can be no better illustration of just how thirsty Hollywood is for this thirty-year-old RN.

Here, we talk about treading new water in television and why sometimes the trickiest roles can be the most liberating…

Being a Middle Eastern person myself – I’m Persian and have a Muslim family – I didn’t want Adena to feel like a stereotype in any way…

If we were going to use pansexually and Islam and merge them together, it needed to feel real. There is definitely a pressure in being the first – you really want to do right by everyone. With a character like this, you are going to offend some people, you are going to ruffle some feathers and I can only do my best to tell this one story. You just hope that it encourages other creators that there is a market and that people want to see characters that don’t fit in a certain box and are considered untraditional. I just hope that she doesn’t remain the only exception to the rule.

We don’t have enough sex scenes on TV about the needs of a woman…

When we were filming, I didn’t even think about the reaction the sex scene would have. I really just focused on my own vain concerns. As an actor, you have your own reservations, you are bashful, you are shy, and you ask, ‘are we really gonna go there?’. When I was reading the script, I just found it really refreshing to hear women talking about their needs and desires – period! There has been a huge void there as well and we don’t often see women in media discussing our needs and desires. They are often considered shameful or made to think it is something to be embarrassed about and something we can’t talk openly about – they are so taboo. The joyous reaction and the shock over a woman going down on another woman was insane. How crazy that we are doing it on Freeform, on ABC, on Disney and I think ‘bravo’ to Freeform for not being afraid to go there.

Instagram became a source of inspiration for my character:

Instagram is such a great resource. I was able to find so many great people. There was a real community of queer Muslim women who really helped feed and encourage me to go there with Adena. They showed me that it’s OK to make her a very bold, unapologetic character and know that that was based in truth and there are people like that. The first film I did was a film called Circumstance, which was a film about queer love in Iran so I met a lot of people shooting that film, a lot of artists, a lot of people in Beirut, Lebanon, where we shot it. But I was actually shocked. We went to a gay club in Beirut and I was absolutely shocked that it even existed and was allowed. These underground places were a huge learning experience for me, I was very young at the time and the world was still quite small to me. So, when I read for the role of Adena, I did have a picture someone in my mind – she made sense to me – it wasn’t so out of left field for me personally because of the people I have come into contact with.

“I can’t speak my mind because I’m a black transgender woman,” says Munroe Bergdorf in her most candid interview ever

I hear actresses say all the time that they very rarely get to be in a scene with a woman where both women get to converse…

I have been so lucky in my career in that I have actually more often than not worked with female directors on sets and on stories that are centred around female friendships and female love. It isn’t necessarily a unique experience for me being on a female dominated set and I think that I have a nice balance of both. I don’t think it makes a major difference at the end of the day as making a television show and making a movie is very time consuming – it’s a machine. You can either get on, keep up or you can’t and there shouldn’t be anything remarkable about the fact that, yeah, women can do it too and they can do it really well. I don’t think in terms of equal opportunities that women can always do it better, either. Of course, when you are telling stories about women, it’s great to have a female perspective in the writing room and in directing but I think we have fantastic male writers on the show, too, and fantastic male directors. I think that’s really unique, but it shouldn’t even be an issue. Everyone has something to bring to the table and I think that’s how it should be.

This is exactly what it means to be a millennial feminist

Adena uses the things that traditionally marginalise her to empower her and it’s so inspiring… Adena is so calm and very unapologetic about who she is. I think my favourite part about her is that the things about her that could lead to her being marginalised: the fact she is a lesbian, she’s Muslim, she wears a hijab, she’s a feminist, are the things that she uses to empower her. I think that is so inspiring and I hope that whatever happens with Adena, I hope that I can take some of that with me.

The format of drama is evolving so much… When I was growing up, aside from The OC, which I watched obsessively, there wasn’t anything specifically catering to the millennial generation. The Bold Type shows that you can be really entertaining, have fun and add some fashion whilst dealing with hard-hitting issues and the current issues today that feel very real. You don’t have to pick one or the other, you can have both working at the same time. There is so much bad news right now, so it’s nice to have a show which isn’t necessarily escapist, but you show and deal with the realities of the world in a really optimistic way.

The Bold Type is on Amazon Prime now

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