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aion-rsa · 4 years

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How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

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Ebb Software’s long-awaited horror shooter Scorn is designed to make you squirm in your seat from the second you lay eyes on it. Set in a gruesome world of bone, flesh, and sharp steel, the game is meant to be repulsive, but it’s also absolutely entrancing. The imagery is visceral and gory — from tendrils of meat hanging down from big, grotesque statues to the bloody creatures crawling all over the walls to the webby, diseased-looking membrane covering the skinless protagonist’s head — but you also can’t look away.

According to game director Ljubomir Peklar, the game’s visual style is meant to challenge what we generally consider to be beautiful.

“Human beings are conditioned to like the external beauty of their bodies and see the internal organs, bones, and tissue as something repulsive. It’s a reflex,” Peklar said of the game’s art direction in an interview with Rock.Paper.Shotgun in 2016. “Our existence as a living organism is at the core of the game and human anatomy is the primary subject. Therefore we referenced many different parts of it as a starting point, then we morph, combine, and exaggerate them, change the shapes until we get something visually appealing. It’s not always about functionality but interesting forms that make sense for what we are trying to express.”

It’s clear the team at Ebb is trying to express a deep fascination with the organic while also making sometimes literal connections between living things and machines. Take the game’s main weapons, the pistol and shotgun, which are living organisms with mouths where you’re meant to insert the bullets. There are ribbed cables that run through structures resembling organs, while leaking phallic-shaped mouths protrude from the metal walls.

Scorn‘s challenging and disorienting art style could make it a defining work of horror gaming, but even if it’s not, it’ll certainly be one of the most visually interesting games on the Xbox Series X when it launches later this year. You can see what I mean in this trailer of the game running on the next-gen console:

It’s no secret that this Gothic hell is heavily inspired by the work of two of the greatest surrealists to ever touch a canvas, the Swedish artist H.R. Giger, who you may know best for his designs for the sci-fi horror movie Alien, and the Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, whose grim creations are particularly responsible for all of the gore in the game’s environments. This isn’t the first time their work has shown up in some form in a video game, but Scorn could very well be the most faithful of the bunch.

Giger most famously collaborated with developer Cyberdreams in the early ’90s, providing access to his artwork for the psychological horror point-and-click adventure game Dark Seed and its sequel Dark Seed II. But the use of Giger’s work in that game can only be described as “quaint” when compared to what Scorn is doing. After all, the technological limitations of the time prevented Cyberdreams from truly building something out of Giger’s art, forcing the team to instead use his airbrushed paintings as backgrounds in the game to set the mood of the somewhat peculiar plot.

“Actually I think no one really did it the right way,” Peklar says of past adaptations of Giger’s work in an email to Den of Geek. “I don’t remember too much of Dark Seed, I played it a very long time ago. I do know that the artwork was just H.R Giger’s already established work collaged into the background. It was not designed from the ground up to be a setting in a game.”

Peklar asserts that no one has done what Scorn has set out to do. Peklar is not only interested in capturing the look and feel of Giger’s twisted work but also the meaning behind the pieces.

“Giger’s visual influence can be seen in many forms, from movies to games, but only superficially, to represent aliens, monsters maybe some strange planet, etc. Nobody truly dealt and realized Giger’s work thematically,” Peklar says. “His work is the most fascinating part but always sidelined, never the focus.”

Director Ridley Scott might take issue with Peklar’s comments, especially since so much of Alien‘s world is based on Giger’s unique vision, but even those movies don’t quite delve into the full breadth of the artist’s work, which often portrayed human beings in a physical, often erotic, relationship with machines, a style the artist called the “biomechanical.”

Indeed, you can see Giger’s “biomechanical” style in the way Scorn‘s protagonist “plugs into” an exoskeleton made of bone in the XSX trailer or how he sticks his arm inside of a terminal, veins like spaghetti running through the “computer’s” circuits to activate a machine in gameplay footage from 2017.

“It’s not about alien worlds, no matter how many people think that’s what his art is about,” Peklar explains. “There is a much more important subtext to it. It’s about the interweaving of human beings and technology. The organism as a structure that defined our existence up to this point, fused with our own mechanical creations in a ridiculous dance of libido and death. Freudian concepts that both move and terrify us.”

If Giger’s work emphasized the symbiosis between the living and the mechanical, the less well-known Beksiński was more interested in man’s connection to death. Many of his pieces, which often depicted dystopian settings riddled with skeletons and corpses presided over by red, bleeding skies, seem to have a singular focus: the apocalypse and what comes after.

Beksiński loved to paint decaying bodies and skeletal figures stripped of the features that once made them human, like faces and skin. One particularly haunting painting depicts a man’s eyeballs spilling — or perhaps growing out like roots — from their sockets in messy ropes of red. Beksiński’s work is likely the most responsible for Scorn‘s faceless protagonist, whose body is mostly made up of skinless muscle tissue and nerves, with the bones of a naked ribcage protruding from his chest.

Peklar tapped concept designer Filip Acovic to create the look of Scorn, from the levels to the protagonist to the weapons, but the goal wasn’t to just produce a “mere homage to Giger” or Beksiński, as the director told Shacknews in May.

“[Giger and Beksinski] are certainly the two main visual influences but their work was not chosen because it looks cool but because different aspects of their work relate to various themes and ideas in Scorn. We also tried to create our own style,” Peklar told Rock.Paper.Shotgun.

Peklar tells Den of Geek that he believes “the art style should always be in service of the themes and the ideas of the game.” But what is Scorn actually about? Peklar is more secretive about the game’s plot, which will unfold through environmental storytelling as opposed to cinematics. In fact, the director wishes he could have kept the game’s whole existence a secret for much longer than he did.

Since Scorn was announced in 2014 for PC, it has gone through two Kickstarter crowd funding campaigns and was initially set to be released as a two-part experience before announcing a full release on Xbox Series X and Xbox Game Pass in May.

“The reason you heard about the game in 2014, 2016, and 2017 was because we were running out of resources so we had to show it and gather interest so we could convince people to invest in the studio. I said it quite a few times, if I had the all the resources needed to develop the game without public knowing about it I most certainly would. You would be probably hearing about the game for the first time now and thinking it’s a new game.”

Yet, six years of cryptic trailers haven’t betrayed the secrets of a game that was “designed around the idea of being thrown into the world.” Like the Giger and Beksiński pieces that inspired him, Scorn‘s macabre dreamscapes may defy explanation, according to Peklar.

“Like the best of nightmares, that surreal imagery will start playing with your psyche the more you play the game,” Peklar told Shacknews. “When you wake up from a nightmare it’s really hard to define what you dreamt, only snippets remain, and the feeling of anxiety. That is something we are trying to recreate.”

In the Shacknews interview, Peklar compared the feeling of traversing through Scorn‘s work to the hectic opening Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece Suspiria: “It’s a montage of sights and sounds that creates the uneasy feeling. Nothing is set up story-wise and nothing truly graphic is happening. It just is.”

While Peklar looked to horror classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill for the environmental storytelling that ties Scorn together, Peklar told PC Gamer in 2017 that he wasn’t interested in a scripted story for the game:

“We are not trying to push traditional plot-driven narrative. That is where these games fail for me. Writing an interesting story requires a good writer, and game developers or writers that specialize in games writing are not very good. If they were, they would write a book or a screenplay. That’s the right medium for the job. Games for me are about interactivity and telling you a story through it.”

Ultimately, what Scorn‘s story is about may not be as important as what players take away from it. Peklar says that he’s ultimately happy to let “players to give their interpretation of the game.”

Giger and Beksiński aren’t the only influences on Scorn, according to the director, who says filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Dario Argento, and John Carpenter are also major inspirations.

“Cronenberg’s main concept that puts our organism at the center of human existence and Giger’s bio structures intersect in many ways,” Peklar says. “Lynch’s surrealness captures the strangeness of the world we inhabit and an oneiric sense of our own being.”

Peklar also cites surrealist writers Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges, whom he says “mostly dealt with the absurdity and weirdness of human existence in this mysterious universe.” Then there’s horror writer Thomas Ligotti, “who deals with all the horrors that come with it,” and the dystopian J.G. Ballard, who “bounds it all together in technological nightmares of sex, violence, and decay.”

What we’ve seen and heard of Scorn so far points to this year’s most twisted game, perhaps even the most uncomfortable visual experience ever released on a console. As I rewatched the footage of the game in preparation for this article, I wondered whether Peklar was worried that gamers would find the finished product too revolting to complete or even play at all. Then I was hit with an even darker thought: was there anything in Scorn that was too fucked up for even Peklar?

When I ask Peklar whether there’s been anything he decided to cut from the game because it went too far, the director simply answers, “I’m hoping for that day to come. Either my imagination is too limited or I have become too numb.”

Scorn is out later this year for Xbox Series X and PC.

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laniakeabooks · 5 years

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February Wrap-Up

I technically read 12 books this month, four of which were novellas, and since said novellas have been compiled into one collection I’ll count all four of them as one (even though I did read them all individually). So, that said, I read 8 books this month!

Gasp by Lisa McMann - ⭐⭐⭐

After narrowly surviving two harrowing tragedies, Jules now fully understands the importance of the visions that she and people around her are experiencing. She’s convinced that if the visions passed from her to Sawyer after she saved him, then they must now have passed from Sawyer to one of the people he saved.

That means it’s up to Jules to figure out which of the school shooting survivors is now suffering from visions of another crisis. And once she realizes who it is, she has to convince that survivor that this isn't all crazy—that the images are of something real. Something imminent.

As the danger escalates more than ever before in the conclusion to the Visions series, Jules wonders if she'll finally find out why and how this is happening—before it's too late to prevent disaster.

Good conclusion to the Visions series. I really didn’t like how Jules was so hell-bent on saving perfect strangers but then essentially hated her dad for being mentally ill (namely depressed). If anything, it was her dad who needed saving the most, and unfortunately, she didn’t make the character arc to that realization.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver – ⭐⭐⭐

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistake.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the "Wilds" who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?

I remember DNFing this book a few years ago, but it was mostly because I wasn’t into reading as much back then. But I finally got to this OG YA book and finally understand the hype that surrounded it back in the times of The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. This is a much less gruesome dystopia, but a scary concept non the less. I can’t imagine not being allowed to love my family or my friends.

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr - ⭐⭐⭐

Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day, and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Flora’s brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend’s boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora’s fractured mind, and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again. So when an encouraging email from Drake suggests she meet him on the other side of the world, Flora knows with certainty that this is the first step toward reclaiming her life.

With little more than the words “be brave” inked into her skin, and written reminders of who she is and why her memory is so limited, Flora sets off on an impossible journey to Svalbard, Norway—the land of the midnight sun—determined to find Drake. But from the moment she arrives in the Arctic, nothing is quite as it seems, and Flora must “be brave” if she is ever to learn the truth about herself, and to make it safely home.

I... what...? This book went in so many different directions very quickly. I don't know of I like how it went, but it did evoke some emotions which is a sign that the book did something right, especially since I rarely get emotional over books.

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver - ⭐⭐⭐

The old life is dead. But the old Lena is dead too. I buried her. I left her beyond a fence, behind a wall of smoke and ﬂame. In this electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller Delirium, Lauren Oliver sets Lena on a dangerous course that hurtles through the unregulated Wilds and into the heart of a growing resistance movement. This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.

I decided I’m just going to marathon this entire series, novellas included, and I’ll just write a review on the entire series as opposed to writing a little blurb for every book.

Annabel by Lauren Oliver – ⭐⭐⭐

Lena Halloway's mother, Annabel, supposedly committed suicide when Lena was only six years old. That's the lie that Lena grew up believing, but the truth is very different. As a rebellious teenager, Annabel ran away from home and straight into the man she knew she was destined to marry. The world was different then—the regulations not as stringent, the cure only a decade old. Fast forward to the present, and Annabel is consigned to a dirty prison cell, where she nurtures her hope of escape and scratches one word over and over into the walls: Love.

But Annabel, like Lena, is a fighter. Through chapters that alternate between her past and present, Annabel reveals the story behind her failed cures, her marriage, the births of her children, her imprisonment, and, ultimately, her daring escape.

“Delirium book 0.5”, I will include my thoughts on this novella in my series wrap up.

Alex by Lauren Oliver - ⭐⭐⭐

When Alex sacrificed himself to save Lena, he thought he was committing himself to certain death, but what he got was almost worse. Imprisoned and tortured by the guards, his mind forces him to relive a past he would rather forget. But in the dark he grows stronger. Both hopeful and terrified, he fights to find his way back to her and the love he still clings to.

In this digital story that will appeal to fans of Delirium and welcome new admirers to its world, readers will learn of Alex's time after the events of Delirium, as well as the dark past that he has tried to forget.

“Delirium book 1.1”, I will include my thoughts on this novella in my series wrap up.

Hana by Lauren Oliver - ⭐⭐⭐

The summer before they're supposed to be cured of the ability to love, best friends Lena and Hana begin to drift apart. While Lena shies away from underground music and parties with boys, Hana jumps at her last chance to experience the forbidden. For her, the summer is full of wild music, dancing—and even her first kiss.

But on the surface, Hana must be a model of perfect behavior. She meets her approved match, Fred Hargrove, and glimpses the safe, comfortable life she’ll have with him once they marry. As the date for her cure draws ever closer, Hana desperately misses Lena, wonders how it feels to truly be in love, and is simultaneously terrified of rebelling and of falling into line.

“Delirium Book 1.5”, I will include my thoughts on this novella in my series wrap up.

Raven by Lauren Oliver - ⭐⭐⭐

As a teenager, Raven made the split-second decision to flee across the border to the Wilds, compelled to save an abandoned newborn—a baby girl left for dead and already blue from the cold. When she and the baby are taken in by a band of rebels, Raven finds herself an outsider within a tight-knit group. The only other newcomer is an untrustworthy boy known as the Thief until he finally earns himself a new name: Tack.

Now she and Tack are inseparable, committed to each other, the fledgling rebellion, and a future together. But as they both take center stage in the fight, Raven must decide whether the dangers of the revolution are worth risking her dreams of a peaceful life with Tack.

As her story hurtles back and forth between past and present, Raven transforms from a scared girl newly arrived in the Wilds to the tough leader who helps Lena save former Deliria-Free poster boy Julian Fineman from a death sentence. Whatever the original mission may have been, Raven abides by a conviction that she believes to her core: You always return for the people you love.

“Delirium Book 2.5”, I will include my thoughts on this novella in my series wrap up.

Requiem by Lauren Oliver - ⭐⭐⭐

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has transformed. The nascent rebellion that was underway in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight. After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven. Pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels.

As Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain of the Wilds, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor. Requiem is told from the perspectives of both Lena and her friend Hana. They live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

I’ll really get into it in my series review but, wHAT KIND OF A FUCKING ENDING WAS THAT???

Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender - ⭐⭐⭐

Colette Iselin is excited to go to Paris on a class trip. She’ll get to soak up the beauty and culture, and maybe even learn something about her family’s French roots.

But gruesome murders are taking place across the city, putting everyone on edge. And Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks suspiciously like Marie Antoinette.

Colette knows her popular, status-obsessed friends won’t believe her, so she seeks out the help of a charming French boy. Together, they uncover a shocking secret involving a dark, hidden history. When Colette realizes she herself may hold the key to the mystery, her own life is in danger…

I read these books purely for shits and giggles, and I think if you go into this expecting just that, you won’t be disappointed.

Archangel’s Storm by Nalini Singh - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

With wings of midnight and an affinity for shadows, Jason courts darkness. But now, with the Archangel Neha’s consort lying murdered in the jewel-studded palace that was his prison and her rage threatening cataclysmic devastation, Jason steps into the light, knowing he must unearth the murderer before it is too late.

Earning Neha’s trust comes at a price—Jason must tie himself to her bloodline through the Princess Mahiya, a woman with secrets so dangerous, she trusts no one. Least of all an enemy spymaster.

With only their relentless hunt for a violent, intelligent killer to unite them, Jason and Mahiya embark on a quest that leads to a centuries-old nightmare… and to the dark storm of an unexpected passion that threatens to drench them both in blood.

I just love this whole series. I was missing my fave Illium but you know what, this book gave me a whole new appreciation for Jason. Also, I discovered I love Mahiya so yeah, all in all, me happy!

Number of books read: 8

Number of pages read: 2647 Average rating: 3.2

Favourite book this month: Archangel’s Storm. As I said, I adore this series and will continue on with the… billions of other books Nalini pumps out.

Least favourite book this mouth: Requiem. I was just so disappointed in the end to that entire series…

See a book you’d like a review for in depth? Let me know!

Keep up with me on Goodreads! (https://www.goodreads.com/LaniakeaBooks)

#books #book #booklr #bookstagram #ya books #young adult #young adult lit #goodreads

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rilenerocks · 4 years

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LABOR DAY PARADE – September, 2015 – an annual parade that goes right down our block every year. Our family unit of four, enjoying the festivities in front of our daughter’s house which is across the street and slightly south of ours.

A dictionary definition of remission is “a diminution of the seriousness or intensity of disease or pain; a temporary recovery.” This is where we were in September, 2015. What we also knew was this fact: There’s no current cure for stage 4 cancer. Still, it can be treated and managed. Most people with stage 4 cancer live with alternating periods of stable disease and disease progression. … For most, stage 4 cancer is likely to return, even if a person enters remission. Living within the bounds of these concepts was our task. The truth is, Michael’s initial diagnosis in 2012 placed him at stage 3A cancer which definitely left us with hope for a possible cure. Until November of 2013, while his cancer was following its insidious silent path through his bones, he was asymptomatic. Early that month, he had his first scan in a year – follow-up scans after a clear one subsequent to treatment were not in the protocols for his stage of disease. The shocking discovery of widespread bony metastatic disease and the stunning prognosis of 2-3 months survival, absent further treatment that we received on that fall day was shattering. We managed to pull ourselves together to push through the months of a powerful chemo cocktail, his only option, which again, as with his 30 rounds of head and neck radiation, was not as dreadful as what we’d anticipated. Except for fatigue, Michael was surprisingly robust. He was rapidly hairless, but never nauseous, actually gaining 26 pounds. That may have been due to a supportive steroid supplement. After those 18 treatments, from May of 2014 to August 2014, life mostly went back to normal. Even after the cancer reappeared on his August scan, we got all the way to February, 2015 before the terrifying downward spiral of Merkel cell really began. In the previous chapter of this book, I described the rapid devolution of Michael’s fitness from February to June, when we felt certain that he was just this side of death. Then along came the last ditch treatment, Keytruda one of the new immunological drugs, given off-trial, outside the bounds of established protocols. Although experiencing profound fatigue as his immune system was freed by the drug and ramped up to attack his cancer, Michael’s conditioning came roaring back. Dr. Zhang was stunned by the recovery, referring to Michael as an exceptional responder. When he was scanned in June, his body was riddled with cancer. When he was scanned in September following only 4 treatments, 80% of his disease load had disappeared. The plan was to move ahead with treatments every three weeks. In the interim we needed to figure out how to live.

Michael was still struggling with poor appetite and sleep issues but trying hard to improve. All of us in our family are trying to appreciate the remarkable gift of time and trying to find balance. We wonder about what an average good day will be like. A day when Michael will wake up and just be ok. Do a chore, ride his bike, whatever. Maybe take a little trip. It’s hard to go there mentally. We are all living hour by hour. I sign up for a creative writing class to get into the world again and do something besides caregiving. I also find myself a therapist. I’m trying to attend to some of the emotional erosion of my internal core over the past few years. I can’t believe all the deaths, threats of death and personal losses of family members and friends in such a compressed time. I find myself worrying about my own health almost as much as Michael’s. I’m aware of what happens to people like me and decide to take advantage of this little respite space to work on improving myself. I’m keenly aware of the fine line I’m walking between hope and terror. Living from blood test to blood test, scan to scan, minute to minute. A headache, a sneeze, a random pain and insomnia for both of us is no picnic. Even sex and massage don’t relieve the stress. Any little thing portends disaster when you have an incurable disease in your body. We both try not to think about it every second. But it’s hard to avoid.

October brings a sudden resurgence of Michael’s appetite and more recovery of strength. We decide to take a short trip to Turkey Run in Indiana which isn’t too far from home. Getting away is a good thing. The weather is beautiful as are the fall colors. Neither of us is in shape to do intense hiking but we manage enough to feel accomplished. All the natural beauty has this edgy brightness to it as we are so keenly aware of how precious and amazing it is to still be anywhere together. If Michael’s health stays stable, we decide to plan more trips between treatment infusions and scans. I worry a lot about going broke but in the end, I believe that I won’t ever regret anything we do in this unexpected space, no matter what the economic consequences may be.Michael’s energy has returned enough so that he can ride his bike again. An unexpected gift. Right now that really resonates as we’ve just lost a friend to brain cancer. Her journey was considerably shorter than Michael’s which is still endlessly surprising. Only 11% of Stage 4 Merkel cell patients are still alive two years from diagnosis. We try to stay positive, but privately I remain on edge. My journal entries remind me of the fear.

November 4th, 2015

Right now I’m very worried about Michael’s cough. It isn’t all day and night but his lungs are a weak spot and pneumonitis at Grade 2 disqualifies him from Keytruda and requires steroids. If it doesn’t improve, treatment ends. Next week is another infusion. I guess there will be xrays then. The model we have to choose is that Merkel cell will kill Michael. No matter what the scan shows, the cancer is still there and will come back. The question is how long can we hold it off? What will come next if Keytruda stops? Endless anxiety.

We took a quick trip to Chicago before the next scheduled infusion. Michael really wanted to go to Lincoln Park Zoo, a place he always loved. We realized it was where we had our first real date, after months of friendship that ultimately transitioned to lovers and life partners. Going there felt very sweet. We went to the Shedd Aquarium and ate Michael’s favorite Uno’s Pizza and at a deli which we’d always loved. So many exquisitely sharp memories, always accompanied by the unspoken question of whether or not we’d ever experience a time like this again. November 14th, 2015 was Michael’s 8th Keytruda infusion. Dr. Zhang was brimming with optimism that Michael would get a few years out of this treatment. I let myself enjoy that thought for awhile before swiftly moving back to neutral. I’m worrying because Michael’s had two toothaches in two months. Dental interventions are tough during cancer treatments. Anything invasive carries the threat of infection. I don’t like so many antibiotics in such a short time. I worry that they’ll wipe out his gut and I’ve read that immunological drugs need the right gut microbes to work properly. Of course I really know nothing but too much information feeds my anxiety.

Suddenly it seems, our third Thanksgiving since the diagnosis from hell is upon us. As I prepare all the family favorites, I find myself wondering who will eat the turkey legs. My mom always loved those best and started eating before everyone else as she usually took her insulin too early. It’s my first Thanksgiving without her. I decide that even though it’s Michael’s favorite holiday, I don’t want to host it again. It’s too much and I feel sad as the crowds get thinner.

November 29th, 2015

This Thanksgiving was very hard for me and is the last one I intend to do, whether Michael is alive or dead. It’s too much work and too sad as the crowd thins out. I had a really hard time keeping it together. No mom, only one sibling left and Michael, swinging in the breeze. I can feel the loneliness of the years ahead. I’d rather be gone. Now he has gout. What will the scans show?The December scan is on the first of the month. The next day we meet with Dr. Zhang for results and the decision about whether to proceed with treatment number 9. Zhang is practically euphoric. The scan is clear with no evidence of disease except a spot which appears to be Michael’s aching tooth. We’ve seen this before for the three months following chemo in 2014. That remission lasted a little over three months. But the infusion will happen. Dr. Zhang said his plan was to keep Michael on Keytruda for two years or until disease progression, whichever came first. So kind of stunned, we trotted off to the infusion suite, feeling basically elated. Michael got his IV and was soon sound asleep. I went out to the reception area to schedule the next appointments and to get copies of Michael’s labs which I’d been saving and comparing to each other since the beginning of his systemic treatments. When I got them I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All three of his liver enzymes were extremely elevated to the point where treatment should have been withheld and steroids started. The Keytruda was already dripping into his arm. I quickly went to the nurse’s station and showed them the numbers. Within minutes, Zhang and his nurse cane running into the room – Zhang said he was upset and scared. He was so excited about the scan that he forgot to check the labs. He said we’d need to return the next day to rerun the liver enzyme test. I was hoping that perhaps all the Extra Strength Tylenol Michael was taking for his tooth pain was the culprit for the abnormal test results. Years earlier, while being treated for a herniated disk with lots of acetaminophen-based drugs, Michael’s liver enzymes had skyrocketed. His body didn’t like that drug. If the Keytruda turned out to be the issue, treatment would be halted, at least for awhile. From elation to the bottom of the tank again. We just can’t seem to get a break. Michael looked so well and his physical state was immeasurably improved. But you gotta have a liver. The next day, he was re-tested and the enzymes went down. The Tylenol was the problem. Technically we now believe Michael is truly in remission. We don’t know how long we get it but we’re so grateful.The rest of the month we swing on the pendulum of life. Michael sneaks out to jog which makes me crazy because of what his bones have been through this year. The doctors aren’t thrilled with this new exercise regimen and caution him to go slowly and for only a short distance. I am nagging him about this and his fluid consumption as his kidney function is a little off. I’m trying hard to remember that he is thrilled to be able to resume what he loves and that he’s always been less cautious than me. Also not as deep into the science as I am. I try keeping my thoughts to myself some of the time, never an easy task. Meanwhile we attend our grandkids’ end of the school year celebrations and prepare for our annual trek to Starved Rock. The woods and the canyons, the bald eagles and the rustic inn, topped off by a big indoor pool and a hot tub are balm for our exhausted selves.

When we return from that respite, December 23rd arrives – time for Keytruda infusion 10. At this appointment Dr. Zhang informs us that he’s leaving our health care facility in February. That means we’ll have had 3 oncologists in ten months. An unnerving situation, to say the least. I am still in contact with our very first second opinion doctor at the University of Michigan, Chris Bichakjian. I keep him updated on Michael’s situation and he is a steady resource for the latest developments in Merkel cell treatment. It’s still scary to go through so many local changes. Dr. Zhang suggests his friend, Dr. Zhou as our new oncologist. The thread of trust between Dr. Luyun and Dr. Zhang is now stretching even thinner and I’m prepared to keep doing my own research to help keep Michael alive. I know Dr. Zhou has never treated a Merkel cell patient. I have no idea how long we have in this remission space so the time to be working is now. On it goes. On Christmas we see the new Star Wars film with family in our usual tradition and go out for Chinese food afterwards. I am worrying incessantly about Michael’s tooth which he’s coping with, but we both know trouble is looming. He surprises me with a Roger Federer hat as my holiday gift. I’m busy dreaming of making more memories by traveling. We got Chicago, Turkey Run and Starved Rock when we’d thought Michael would already have been dead and gone. Hardly the stuff of fantasy but so much more than we thought we’d have. I’m hoping we can slip in one more trip before things go south. I doubt we’ll ever get our dream of traveling to Greece, but I’d settle for one more chance to dip our toes into our beloved Gulf of Mexico. We spend New Year’s Eve with our family and friends at our usual Italian restaurant. What a kaleidoscopic year. One I’ll never forget. Heading into year 4 since our life was changed by one phone call. What’s next?

The Realities of Remission – Part 1 – Chapter 11 – Be 278 LABOR DAY PARADE - September, 2015 - an annual parade that goes right down our block every year.

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vegas-glitz · 4 years

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The Spectrum of Death: Perspective on News Coverage

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Tragedy and the News

Tragedy, fittingly but unfortunately, makes news.

When a terrorist attack slays innocent victims, the horror hits the headlines. When a random street shooting takes down unsuspecting bystanders, the killings elicit on-the-scene local news reports. When soldiers die in a combat raid, the casualties and bravery receive high mention and praise.

Not just these, but a wide, and horrific, range of similar tragedies draw essentially assured and often immediate media coverage -- for sure the just mentioned terrorist attacks, street murders, and armed forces casualities, but also the calamities and heartbreaks of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, serial killings, mass shootings, explosions, plane crashes, disease plagues, famines, genocides, fatalities of first responders -- we could go on. Almost without exception all segments of the media report, extensively, on these type incidents. Death cuts to the core of the human spirit. The media, both as a conduit and a reflection of the human condition, rightfully and respectfully report on these tragedies. We would and should expect no less.

But not all tragedy makes news; media reporting of fatalities does not encompass the larger, more extensive range of deaths. A million people in our country die annually of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, year in and year out. Daily, by the hundreds, the unlucky or in too many cases imprudent die in auto accidents, the despairing at their own hands in suicide, the elderly in falls, and the young of prenatal complications and birth defects.

This larger, wider group of casualties does receive, at times, media coverage, as well as periodic and in-depth special reports, and we react to these casualties with the same empathy, concern and sorrow as the more often reported types of tragedy. But clearly, media reporting of deaths from this latter group of causes, deaths from cancer, or strokes, or elderly falls, or suicides, that reporting runs lower overall, and much lower on a per death basis, than the reporting garnered by the headline incidents mentioned earlier -- the killings by terrorists, the murders from street violence, the deaths in combat, the fatalities of a mass shooting, the victims of plane crashes.

This does not seek to assail or denigrate or criticize the important and critical reporting of the tragic and deadly incidents the media does cover, nor does this argue for any less coverage of terrorist attacks, or natural disasters, or casualties among our armed forces and first responders. This coverage pays respect and reverence to the unfortunate and in too many cases innocent and unsuspecting victims. And the coverage stirs us to action -- to strengthen our defense against terror, to donate, to volunteer, to improve safety, to hold our government accountable, to demand better actions of our corporations, to improve our disaster preparations, to change our habits, or to simply learn and understand.

And if we find ourselves overloaded by this coverage, we can turn away for a respite. But if we lacked coverage, we couldn't fill the void.

So why raise this strong concern about the differing levels, dare say drastically differing levels, of coverage of the diverse segments of the spectrum of deaths?

Why? Because if we truly desire to prevents deaths and preserve life, we must check. We must check whether differing levels of reporting on different causes of death and fatalities, whether those differing levels lead us to miss, possibly unintentionally, critical and important lifesaving efforts. Do we neglect or overlook actions and programs that could be taken to forestall and reduce casualties?

The Attributes of Newsworthy

Let's start by examining what about an incident makes it newsworthy, what raises a story to the threshold warranting reporting.

To start, as a fairly obvious point, being newsworthy implies just that, being new, sometimes absolutely new, like a new discovery, but more often new, different, unusual, referenced against the normal course of events. The incident must rise above the immense background of innumerable events occurring normally, every day, multiple times a day, in multiple locations.

Consider, for example, trees. Lumber companies harvest, hopefully in an environmentally sound way, millions of trees a year -- nothing special, not often reported. However, when one of those harvested trees will serve as the centerpiece of the holiday display say in Washington DC's Ellipse, that singular tree will, very likely, merit media attention. Thus, similarly, in terms of the tragic, reporting goes not to the millions of acres of forests where trees grow, uneventfully, a bit each day, but rather to those several thousand acres that erupt into deadly and destructive forest fires.

Think of our commutes and travel for work and business. Thousands and thousands of planes, trains, buses and subways complete their journey each day successfully, though more often than desired subjecting the passengers to annoying, but minor, inconveniences. Reporting though centers on those few journeys which do not reach their destination, through a crash, or derailment, or need for emergency evacuation.

What other key attribute elicits strong reporting? Human poignancy. The upstanding cab driver who works tirelessly to return a priceless violin left in the taxi, such an incident draws news attention. The beauty of the Cherry Blossoms, again in Washington, DC, and again to use another example involving trees, strikes us with charm and grandeur, and as such can become a photo or video feature in the media.

On the tragic side, the poignancy runs darker -- incidents of appalling injustice, or terrifying vulnerability, or mystifying origin. Terrorism rivets us on all these dimensions. We cringe at unfairness heaped upon the innocent victims and the barbaric psyche of the slayer; we find ourselves feeling no place lies outside the reach of such acts; and we can not relate or understand how or why a person could justify their killing actions.

News also seeks to prepare us, and to inform us, of events with major impacts. We receive daily weather and traffic reports, in tight snippets when conditions run about normal, but when the traffic or weather hits the extreme -- a truck explosion shuts down the entire expressway, or a winter snowstorm threatens deep snow, heavy drifts and high winds -- the coverage expands, both to prepare us and to report the impact.

We can now, at a broad level, comprehend the differing level of coverage across the spectrum of tragedies and death. We can do so since, at a broad level, we see a subtle, or maybe not so subtle, distinction in media news coverage. That coverage focuses not just on events within certain categories. Rather, in a good measure, news reporting picks out events, across any and all categories, with the high profile characteristics detailed above.

Consider politics and government. Much about these items, say the innumerable pages of the Federal Register or the multiple and daily speeches in the halls of Congress, goes by with little reporting.

But if a scandal emerges, reporting often follows. Scandal rivets us, with its confluence of deceit and privilege and special influence. That poignancy triggers news attention. Thus, the media details and exposes the private plane junkets of a Congressional representative, or the expensive luxury upgrades of the office of a public administrator, or secret meetings of a campaign official with foreign operatives.

But by-and-large the media will bypass stories of less human interest and emotional content. Consider the last time we might have come across a news feature on whether alternate algorithms for distributing medical research grants would improve post-surgical life expectancy for heart operations.

Let me not overstate the slant in media focus in death reporting. We certainly can find investigative reports on low profile incidents and causes. The media attention to the flamboyant, or extraordinary, or devastating, does not rule as an absolute. But certainly the tendency runs strong.

This strong tendency aligns with our hypothesis here, that news provides only a partial perspective on the spectrum of death. The news captures the extraordinary, the moving, the enraging, the highly impactful, the directly related to immediate preparedness, but misses to a large extent the typical, the recurring, the individually insignificant.

And from a pragmatic standpoint, many deaths fall into this later group, and thus in turn fall below the media's radar. The deaths from strokes, and suicides, and cancer, and falls, and a whole group of similar daily, recurring, typical causes, these deaths sum collectively to an enormous toll. However, each death, taken individually, lacks, in the vast percentage of cases, the visibility, drama or uniqueness to break into the news cycle.

Do the data on fatalities support this observation, that the lightly and under-reported fatalities represent frequent and recurring actual causes of death? Let's look at the data to check.

The Spectrum of Death

We will start with six causes of fatalities receiving extensive and heavy reporting across essentially all levels and types of media, and look at fatality data for each. The six consist of the following, and will be referenced as "the first group":

Weather

Mass Shootings

Police Fatalities

Armed Forces Casualties

Airplane Crashes

Assaults

The fatality data below refer to the United States.

Weather - The National Weather Service reports a total of 9,714 deaths from weather causes for the 17 years of 2000 to 2016. The weather events include a comprehensive range, including hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, heat waves, wind and so on. This covers directly attributed deaths. We can project an equal, or even greater, number of ancillary deaths, for example heart attacks from the physical or psychological stress of the severe weather, but not directly attributed to the weather.

Mass Shootings - A compilation by the group Violence Against Guns lists 1,086 deaths in mass shootings, including terrorist, from 2014 to 2016. Mass shootings, for their compilation, include incidents with 4 or more injuries or deaths.

Police Fatalities - Violence Against Guns also identifies that 259 police officers have died from gun attacks for the same three years. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund identifies a higher number, 416, for the three years. The later includes traffic-related and other causes, while the former focuses on gun related.

Armed Forces - In the major combat operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the armed forces, all branches, have suffered 6,918 casualties from 2000 through mid-2017. The figures include all causes, both those suffered in combat and those due to non-hostile incidents.

Air Plane Crashes - Crashes of all air vehicles, including helicopters and private planes, as well as commercial jets, have taken 9,925 lives in the U.S. from 2000 to mid-2017. Of the total, 1,264 involved six or more casualties in the incident. The NTSB report excludes casualties on the ground, so the totals here exclude the deaths of individuals in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon, but do include the passengers on the planes.

Assaults - Tragically, assaults took the lives of 15,872 individuals, in just one year, 2014, as reported by the Center for Disease Control, based on the data in the comprehensive compilation of all deaths in the universal reporting system. More than two-thirds of these fatalities resulted from firearms, and the victims averaged the too young age of 35.

This first group of causes of death did and do take a heavy toll of lives lost. And as exemplified by the young average age of assault victims, the causes cut off many years from the future of these victims.

Our goal, though, remains to gain perspective. Six other causes of death also impacted individuals in their early or middle life, with the average age of infliction shown following the name of the cause. We will call this collection of six the "second group".

Pre-natal Issues - Average age less than one year old

Birth Defects - Average age less than 30, with half or more less than 15

Suicides - Average less than 50, with half done with firearms

Auto Accidents - Average less than 45

Drug-Related - Average less than 45

Drowning - Average less than 40

The six causes of fatalities produced their own toll of victims, as follows, for one year, again 2014, as reported by the CDC.

Pre-natal Issues - 11,897

Birth Defects - 9,609

Suicides - 42,826

Auto Accidents - 35,398

Drug-Related - 42,032

Drowning - 3,406

We do not want to venture into judgments of the value of one life verses another, or whether one cause of death stands more noble or tragic than another. However, we can -- and must -- observe that the loss of life from the second group of causes produces deaths with noticeably more frequency than the first group. The second group kills order-of-magnitude 100 thousand individuals a year, more than the first five of items in the first group killed since 2000, and well more on a yearly basis that the sixth item, assaults, of the first group.

In contrast to the greater number of fatalities, media coverage of the second group runs significantly lower that the first group. The second group accounts for hundreds of fatalities a day. But accounts of individual deaths in the second group break through into national coverage only sporadically, a couple dozen times a year, mainly related to noted individuals or celebrities. Even at the local level, five of the six categories, all except auto accidents, receive only occasional reporting of individual incidents. Now, auto accidents do garner significant local news coverage of singular deaths; however, that coverage, if one watches for a period days, runs lower and with less priority that murders and even non-fatal crimes.

As noted before, this levels no criticism at reporting on airplane crashes, or mass shootings, or the heroism of first responders and armed forces personnel. And issues...such as drunk driving, and birth defects, and gun-related suicide, and pain killer deaths, do receive periodic reports.

Consider, though, that a mass shooting can trigger hours of continuous coverage, and a commercial airplane crash can merit mention for days, weeks and even months. In contrast, we may have not seen a news spot or special report on non-celebrity drowning or suicide in the last month or year, and if so, a relatively brief mention. We may remember a sporadic in-depth report on pre-natal deaths or birth defects, but likely never a current news spot reporting the deaths of that day on those causes. Rarely if ever does a reporter go to a hospital and interview doctors for items in the second group, while dozen of news reporters will seek same-day comments from medical personnel for terror attacks and mass shootings.

A third group covers the largest count of deaths, a group consisting essentially of medical causes. While the first group totaled 10 to 20 thousand deaths a year, and the second group 100 plus thousand deaths a year, this third group causes, currently, two million U.S. deaths a year. This group consists of six major groupings of medical conditions, with the numbers below showing the 2014 death toll:

Cancer (all organs) - 591,000

Heart (including circulatory conditions) - 807,000

Lung (including influenza) - 258,000

Brain (including stroke) - 120,000

Other Organs (liver, kidney, prostate, digestive) - 96,000

Other Conditions (diabetes, other infections, anemia) - 172,000

The average age for these causes generally exceeds 65, to the degree that offers a perspective. Notably, the 2014 data show 50 thousand deaths from these causes for individuals between 15 and 45, and 400 thousand deaths for individuals between 45 and 64.

In terms of media coverage, on a per death basis, and a gross basis, the causes of death in this third group receive very little coverage. Again, this does not imply those incidents in the first group should receive any less coverage. But the qualitative observations in the earlier sections of the discussion, and the quantitative discussion here, shown an almost inverse relationship between the amount of media coverage, and the numbers of deaths for a given cause.

Does this influence our actions? To that we now we turn.

The Efforts for Preservation

Everyday conscientious individuals work to preserve life, forestall death and extend our years. And no doubt these efforts extend across all causes of death.

But, some efforts receive more attention than others.

Our candidates for office focus, rightfully, on funding for first responders, on the safety of our neighborhoods, and on the readiness and actions of our armed forces to thwart terrorist threats. Similarly, the elected officials in our legislative bodies debate, unfortunately not always reaching consensus, on laws and steps to prevent horrific mass shootings, or possession of fire arms by criminals, gang members and mentally unstable.

We do not see the same intense political focus on preventing the mentally distraught, as distinct from the mentally unstable or morally wicked, from use of firearms for suicide.

The media provide a service by highlighting what we can do and to whom we can contribute to provide relief from all range of natural disasters. And of course natural disasters not only bring casualties, but enormous and wrenching physical and economic damage.

The media do not highlight extensively or as assuredly what we can do or to whom we can contribute when heart attacks, or industrial accidents, or auto accidents, take the life of a family breadwinner, leaving children and spouses not only in grief but in financial distress.

Our corporations generously contribute to charitable causes, in great amounts, and run, occasionally, ads supporting life-savings efforts and organizations. But by-and-large the advertising and marketing of those organizations goes to their products and services, to the improved formulation of laundry detergent, or the upcoming season's fashion accessory, or the added feature on the newest electronic device.

Our own actions likely reflect the media emphasis. We may have written our mayor in support of bullet-proof vests for our police officers. We may have stocked food for disaster preparedness. We may sit in certain seats in a plane in case of a crash. We may have prayed for the lives of our fallen soldiers. We have likely contributed food, or clothes, or money, for disaster victims. We may even have purchased a gun for protection from an armed robbery.

But I must say I have rarely thought about, and likely many of us have similarly not thought extensively about, the adequacy of the suicide prevention programs in the local schools. Nor have we likely considered the trade-offs in giving heart defibrillators to high risk individuals and associated training to relatives. Nor do most of us know whether a Congressional committee has studied if other nations have better cancer prevention. We likely have done none of these in part because doing so involves complexity but also because media reporting does not mention such steps.

Similarly, we likely face the miasma (aka impenetrable fog) of government budgets, and the counterpart budgets of corporations for development, and of universities for research. What do we know about them? How effective are they? What and who determines their content and sets their funding? But these efforts are critical to life saving. Auto safety programs, cancer cures, heart attack preventions, drug rehab programs, and dozens of other efforts depend on and are run by government, corporations and universities. But we know, in the general public, little about them, and thus about their efficiency and effectiveness.

Media focus on terrorism provides insights into police effectiveness for security; lack of media focus on routine deaths results in minimal, if any, insight into budgets for important life saving programs in government, corporations and universities.

I do not criticize here. Candidates should discuss funding for police; media should publicize agencies accepting donations for hurricane relief; corporations can be allowed to advertize their product. And certainly our personal actions are legal and sufficiently reasonable.

But we do see a relation, or at least a correlation, between the media reporting on the causes of fatalities, and the attention given to prevention. The attention tends to follow, at time strongly, the level of reporting. This supports our concern, that media reporting, and likely other factors, skews actions against deaths, at least slanted enough that an equalizing becomes warranted. And equalizing not through lessening current actions against causes receiving emphasis, but through more action on those causes not receiving as much emphasis.

Equalizing the Balance

Almost all of us, at some time, have experienced a tragic incident, a local, individual one, an incident beneath the radar of media reporting. The incident occurred to a family member, or neighbor, or worker, or friend, or just in our neighborhood. And the incident involved a heart attack, or an auto accident, or a miscarriage, or a cancer. And we wonder why it had to happen, and question what could have been done, and how those impacted will carry on.

Similarly, we each face risks of death, from similar, individual, less-reported causes, again below the media radar. Thus, our greatest risks lie not in plane crashes, or storms, or even shootings, but rather in the typical causes. For the ages of 45 through 64, medical conditions -- cancer, heart disease, kidney issues, diabetes -- lead by far the causes of death. Even in the younger ages of 25 through 44, medical conditions continue as a leading cause of death, but joined by auto accidents, suicide and drug overdoses.

Thus, both as we look backward at deaths we know personally, and forward at the most likely causes of our death (and maybe more pointedly the likely causes for our family and loved ones), those causes lie not in the highly reported or unique incidents, but in typical, recurring conditions.

This personal perspective gives us a basis from which to adjust our balance. As we absorb the daily media reporting of armed murders, or become captured by the continuous coverage of a terrorist attack, or hear ongoing segments on the investigation of a mass shooting, we can balance that perspective with our own personal experience of how those around us passed, and how we most likely might die, which will, with high certainty, not be through those causes that draw heavy media coverage.

With an adjusted perspective we can adjust our actions, not to care or do less but to add to the concerns and actions we take to forestall fatalities.

Thus, we may hold on to that solicitation from a charity doing heart research and send back a check for several dollars. We may ask an election candidate about their proposals for preventing suicides among our high school and college students, or improving first responder technology for heart attack victims. We may check off yes at the checkout of the grocery store on a request to give a few dollars to child cancer prevention. We may write an email to the local TV station asking for broader coverage of drunk driving deaths. We may download a report on government cancer research or search a medical condition on the internet.

Similarly, we may develop a more nuanced assessment of government and corporations. If we just take a cursory approach, maybe we view the first of these as inefficient and bureaucratic, and the second of these as greedy and uncaring. But government and corporations, with their size, resources, expertise and scope, can accomplish goals beyond our reach as individual citizens.

Consider, for example, that government can sponsor development of original equipment interlocks (i.e. not one that waits until a drunken driver is convicted, or worse injures or kills someone) to prevent drunken individuals from operating a car, and then issue recommendations and rules stimulating their introduction. Such technology now lies increasingly within reach, and, behind the scenes, work on this progresses. But no ground swell exists, no urgency has arisen, no Congressional hearings have made headlines, essentially no awareness exists.

Similarly, while you and I can not individually find cures for major diseases, corporations and universities can effectively work towards that goal. Media makes us aware when corporations produce a tainted product, or when universities become caught in a free speech dilemma surrounding a controversial speaker. But only minimal reporting occurs, and no ground swell has arisen, over whether corporate and university research on disease cures has progressed most efficiently or effectively.

Heart attacks stem from multiple causes -- heredity, personal habits, daily stress, diet, environmental factors. Sixty thousand individuals between the age of 25 and 54 die annually from heart attacks and related circulatory conditions, and over a half million across all ages. The varied and complex causes of heart attacks, and the distinctions of the causes for the 25 through 54 group, mandate that varied and sophisticated measures are needed to reduce these deaths.

We do not, however, have extensive or detailed debate on stemming the toll of deaths from these medical conditions. Do we need more research? Would public efforts to change personal habits and diet prove effective? Should we regulate suspect components of food, and how critical a role does control of environment contaminants play? Does our current medical system properly diagnose heart (and cancer) conditions and effectively deliver preventive and reactive cures?

Given the current media slant to the unique and emotionally compelling (and the overwhelming, but understandable, emphasis of corporate advertising on their products), such a debate has not readily broken through to be a regular feature of media news reporting. But through our collective individual awareness, we hopefully could move the debate up a few notches. We can contribute, we can write, we can question, we can when watching the news simply interject that like everyone we abhor and detest terrorists and mass killers, but also have sympathy for those who die too young of heart conditions, or from suicide, or drunk driving. And that we have concern whether enough is being done to prevent such deaths.

Consider a final scenario. Imagine we received, each day, or maybe each week, a short personal news briefing, five to ten minutes, on deaths of people our age, or in our occupation, or in our neighborhood, or the ages of our spouse, or children, or siblings, or parents. We might see fatalities from weather, or terrorism, or mass shootings. Overwhelmingly, though, these briefings would show deaths from heart attacks, cancer, auto accidents, lung disease, suicides, drowning, elderly falls, and the like and only rarely deaths caused by mass shootings, air crashes, weather and terrorism.

Imagine every adult received such a briefing, across the country, in all the towns and cities and states. Maybe individuals would begin to ignore the briefing, but maybe, and I would judge very likely, the national discussion would shift, as would our individual actions. We would be no less concerned about terrorism, but become much more concerned about actions, public, corporate, academic and individual, to reduce and survive from heart attacks, or to uncover the hidden, complex indicators of an individual ready to commit suicide, or to understand whether and what items trigger cancer, and eliminate or forestall them.

Death stalks us all. The media reports for us the doors through which many horrific causes of death enter our world. But we should be mindful of all the doors, all the causes, through which death can come, and for our sake, and the sake of our family, friends, neighbors and people in general, look to be vigilante, and to take actions, to close them all.

______________________________________________________________________

Source by David Mascone

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tomatofishcake · 6 years

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Perpetuity

Isn’t the thought of being able to live forever thrilling? After all, being able to fully grasp this world’s laws grants you immeasurable strength. Moreover, humanity’s greatest enemy was and will always be death.

‘We are nothing but a speck of dust dancing in the outskirts of a whirlwind.’

As for Junho? He was never interested in this power; he merely wanted to see the world as it is. When he was a mere child, he wished every single day to get away from this life of poverty, death and endless despair. He had been forced to get through situations a normal human being wouldn’t even dream of.

(He was glad for that. This world was slowly, but surely evolving. Gone were the days when people died from unknown diseases. Sure, humanity had a long road ahead. There were still so many things that had to be changed; old, outdated ‘values’ that were in desperate need of rethinking. Nevertheless, it was common sense that taking steady steps towards improvement was always so much better than rushing ahead, mindlessly chasing after progress and prosperity. )

And it had been then, when he was young and thought he owned the world that the worst enemy he has faced so far, came to claim his life. It started with an innocent cold, which didn't worry him. But when the cold wouldn't go away, when fevers and coughing kept him up for many nights in a row, when herbs and his wife’s sweet remedies didn’t help, he knew that something was wrong.

It was not until one beautiful spring morning that his suspicions were confirmed; when he woke up drenched in cold sweat and started coughing up blood. He endured, he held on for as long as he could. It was too soon to leave his children unprotected and make his wife prey to those pretentious officials and their unquenchable thirst for alcohol and, well, sex.

When one chance of staying alive appeared . . .he grabbed it. He made a deal with the ‘devil’. At that point he was too scared, the pain was insufferable and he was too much of a coward to allow mother nature take its’ course.

Did he regret it?

Quite honestly, if the person who had turned him into this creature of darkness was someone else then yes, he would have instantly regretted it. He has seen the ‘Others’. After years of abandonment by their creator they turned into shadows. Their survival instincts drove them to insanity.

It was. . .terrifying. Not being able to control your own body, mindlessly killing everything and everyone that happened to stand on your path.

But his mentor was one of the greatest 'people' he had ever had the chance to come across. Up to this day he had no idea why that man decided to save him and take care of his family until they were able to do so on their own (even then, he granted Junho the freedom he needed to protect them and be with them as much as the laws allowed him to).

Grateful was a small word to describe his feelings and appreciation for him.

For he allowed Junho to watch his daughter get married to their neighbor’s son, one of her most beloved childhood friends. He was there when she gave birth to a set of identical twins; a boy and a girl. Little rascals is what they were, the glint in their wondrous eyes was the same he had when he was a mere child! He watched his son taking his own son for fishing, telling him tales about a grandfather he never had the chance to meet and a grandmother who used to constantly smile as she sat on the porch of their small, wooden house and watched her husband roll with their children on the grass.

Most importantly . . . He was there when his wife fell ill. She had grown old, her skin was wrinkled, the corners of her beautiful eyes had a constant crease and her once long, dark-brown hair was shorter and turned into a mix of silver and white. In her last moments she saw him. He tenderly held her bony, frail hand and apologized over a million times. In return she left this world with a merry smile playing on her pale lips.

With his wife’s last breath, Junho left everything behind in hopes of forgetting. But memory is a tricky thing.

The memory of pain that is deeply etched into one’s very core never disappears.

Years passed since then. Decades slowly turned into centuries. . .

‘The passing of time is . . .truly a beautiful spectacle.’

Someone tapped the back of Junho’s head, snapping him out of his self induced reverie. Junho let out a quiet groan and tipped his head backwards.

As expected, Chansung was standing there in all his glory, hands on waist and brow arched. ‘’Are you thinking again? Because this room smells of smoke.’’

‘’Yeah, fuck you too Hwang Chansung.’’ Junho frowned lightly in mock offense and turned around just to kick the other’s leg and smirk in triumph at the painful gasp that escaped his lips.

‘’As much as I’d love seeing you two jump at each others throats-‘’ Junho blinked and turned his gaze to the door, where a man seemingly in his early twenties stood leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest and watching them both through dark, filled with amusement eyes. The corners of Junho’s lips twitched lightly upwards creating a faint ghost of smile; Wooyoung was wearing the white, loose button down shirt Junho had brought him the week before as a gift from Italy.

And as expected, it was a perfect fit.

Then those same dark eyes left Chansung and focused on Junho. ‘’-we’ve all had enough with this, Junho.’’ Wooyoung said quietly, but loud enough for Junho to hear the disappointment behind that soft voice.

‘’Go to him. He’s been asking for you continuously these past few days.’’ Added Chansung and. . .that was the finishing blow. Junho lowered his head and stared at the carpeted floor. His heart was crushed underneath the sensation of excruciating shame and his mind screamed at him to leave everything behind and save whatever ounce of dignity he was left with.

‘’Oh, I know that look.’’ Soft fingers grabbed his chin and forced his head up, making him flinch as he was met with Wooyoung’s fierce eyes and Chansung’s arched brow and pursed lips (that brat always had that look when he wanted to tell him ‘You are boring, you can do better than that’).

‘’You either go to him now or I’ll drag your ass there myself and trust me on this, Nichkhun won’t be enough to save you this time. You hear me Lee Junho?’’ The grip he had on Junho’s chin tightened considerably and Junho was pretty sure that if he was still human, it would have cracked under the pressure.

‘’I-I got it.’’ He muttered softly. There were no excuses or running away this time. He had to face his fears. It had to be done.

Junho bit his lower lip and brought his hand up, gripping Wooyoung’s pale wrist and nodding. ‘’But give me some time?’’

The other male narrowed his eyes and finally let go of Junho’s chin. ‘’Five minutes. No more than that.’’ With those last words, he turned around, grabbed Chansung’s arm and stalked out of the dimly lit room leaving Junho in shambles.

‘How can I fix this? I should have- I should have-‘

He groaned pitifully and gripped his hair in utter frustration. For an immortal, supposedly wise creature he was so foolish. So arrogant. So. . .human.

#randomoneshot #2pm #promptvampires? whoknooooooooows

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