#I told you it would be irregular and infrequent

[angsty-nerd]

Angsty Nerd’s Angsty Song of the Day

On a winter's Sunday I go

To clear away the snow

And green the ground below

April all an ocean away

Is this a better way to spend the day?

Keeping the winter at bay

What were the words I meant to say before you left

When I could see your breath lead where you were going to

Maybe I should just let it be

And maybe it will all come back to me

Sing, oh, January, oh

#angsty song of the day #music of my soul #I told you it would be irregular and infrequent #Spotify

[star-wars-scribbles-ff]

Where I Belong | Chapter 3

Story Summary: The only family she’d ever known gave her a name; back when she belonged to something. But when that family is lost, she leaves it all behind. When destiny drops her in the last place she ever wanted to be, she has to earn back the trust and respect of the Republic that left her to die. Caught between the Jedi and the Grand Army of the Republic, she’ll discover where she belongs.

Fandom: Star Wars | Galaxy Far Far Away

Rating: T+

Story Genre/Warnings: action/adventure/found family | war violence, death, torture, discrimination, alcohol consumption, angst, fluff, found family, lots of clone boys, eventual Order 66 and rise of the Empire

Words: 5,078

Disclaimer: Majority of properties within this fanfic are owned by Lucasfilm/Disney. My OCs, as well as a few other things within this fanfic are of my own creation. Republic Cog header/chapter divider made by me 😊

CHAPTER NOTE: Here is the next chapter! No new arts this week but I do have a few people who wanted to be tagged so here we go 😬: @thisistheendtimes​ @tallyquark​ @divergent-llamas-03​ If you’d like a tag on future chapters just let me know (or if you’d like to be removed). 

Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter | Arwen Corcer Mercenary Visuals

Coruscant. Edge of the newly established Military District. 0500 hours.

From her position, Arwen could see most of the base covered in a haze that had been slowly dissipating as time passed. She sat on the top level of an apartment complex which was under construction. The work crew had leave for the next few days and she found it relatively easy to climb the structure without issue or worry of being punished for trespassing. 

The air was relatively crisp, for the upper levels of Coruscant at least; which wasn’t saying much. The further down you went the more toxic and polluted the air got. The sky was a range of blue and greys, the horizon lightening in color as the minutes went by. It was early; much of the planet hadn’t risen yet, however that meant very little with a population of over a trillion. 

Due to her being so close to the Military bases, traffic in the skies was few and far between, since the bases had begun development, traffic lanes had been rerouted around those locations for security reasons. 

She’d been staring at the base for almost thirty minutes now. It was pretty quiet. She’d see troopers on the wall walking about as well as troopers within the base now and again, however movement was infrequent and slow. Military life started early, especially during wartime; whatever battalions were stationed at this base might be on a leave of sorts. These guys were probably on a much deserved break… great. The thought almost made her stomach flip as she pressed two fingers to her temples and squeezed for a time.

She was torn. She felt the guilt eating away at her, gnawing at her like an open wound. It shouldn’t be a problem. This was the life- what she signed up for; they would’ve killed her if she hadn’t taken the job, and something told her there was a daunting and formidable force backing the client.

… She needed the money; it made her sick acknowledging it. It wasn’t for personal gain- just self preservation. She needed to get off Coruscant and as far from the Republic, the Jedi… the Army... as she could. 

This job would hurt people; people who didn’t deserve to be hurt. There was no getting around it. The primary personnel within that base would be troopers, and while she hadn’t developed a personal connection to these specific individuals, her past with them overall just… muddled the waters. What would her team think-.... 

She shook her head quickly and suddenly; pushing that thought out of her mind as far as it would go before breathing in deeply. Resting her head back against the wall of a ventilation unit she had been leaning against, she let her eyes close.

Time to think about the mechanics. She had to do something. If she did nothing there would be no payout. Her knowledge regarding the GAR was probably outdated at this point, but she had a rough enough idea of the best locations to hit. Probably the courtyard where the large scale vehicles were kept. There seemed to be at least nine AT-Tes, twelve LAAT/is, and nine AT-RTs. It was easy to see from a watch point, and if she timed it right, she could do considerable damage without critically hurting anyone. She’d need to watch the base for at least forty-eight hours to log shift rotations and other movements; she’d have to find a good building nearby where she could watch the interior of the base during that time if this complex didn’t work out. 

“What are you doing.” The thoughts dissipated like smoke quickly from her mind as she opened her eyes, shaking her head at her own words. 

A soft whine caught her attention and she looked to the side, seeing Bek eyeing her. He had found her some time in the night. She was never sure how he did it, but he’d find her one way or another. She always made sure that wherever she was held up for the night, it was a spot he could get to just in case. The anooba’s brow moved subtly before his lower jaw dropped and his tongue rolled out as he began to pant. The action made Arwen give a small smile, although it faded as quickly as it appeared, and her gaze shifted towards the sky. She reached a hand out and rustled the creature’s fur, bringing her hand under to scratch the anooba’s chin before letting her hand fall away. 

… She can’t do this. She can’t. What would her team think of her if she resorted to this; it was inexcusable. 

The tension in her posture was causing a subtle ache to begin creeping up her neck and to the crown of her head as she forced her eyes shut, her brow knit. Gently forcing a breath out through her lips she blew the air from her lungs until she was forced to suck in another steady breath.

“What are you doing,” She uttered, sitting up suddenly to adjust her posture before pulling a bent leg up, hugging it closer to her chest. Beads of cold sweet dappled at her palms as she hastily rubbed them along her leg cradled close to her chest. 

Sniffling in a breath, Arwen took a moment to ease her somewhat irregular breathing before glancing towards the anooba still staring at her. A small issue she had recently developed when overthinking was holding her breath or irregularly breathing, which was a terrible habit, especially on a job. 

“What’d you think, bud?” Arwen questioned quietly, eyeing the messy-haired animal before raising her left hand to swipe some of the mohawk-like fur that stopped at the top of his head. “Should be able to find somewhere to sell this ordnance. If not- the underground market should take it without question.” She used her nails to scratch lightly over the creature's scalp, quick to notice how one of his rear legs began twitching in a scratching-like motion, and she smiled. 

She could get quick money for the explosives. Not nearly enough for a one way trip to Saleucami, but she might be able to work off the rest as part of a flight crew on the way to the outer rim.

Arwen found herself nodding lightly. This could work. It wouldn’t be easy, but then again that job wouldn’t have been either. 

With her right hand, she grasped at the satchel sitting on her right before steadily getting to her feet. Her gaze circled back around to where Bek sat patiently. 

“You ready?” She couldn’t bring herself to lighten her voice very much, but all the same, the anooba perked up at her words and got to his feet. Throwing the satchel over her shoulder, along with her other satchel holding the parts to her rifle, Arwen began her descent from the roost. 

Bek went ahead of her towards where a construction step-ladder resided. She followed, maneuvering her way through some of the materials which had been abandoned for the day.

She came to a stop in front of the ladder that led down to the lower levels of the building, her brow twitched slightly as she blinked her eyes before her gaze fell to the ground.

You don’t need to look. Why do I need to look? 

Something gripped her chest and poked and pulled at her back; a nagging feeling. It happened sometimes at random. She needed to learn how to ignore it. 

Turning around, Arwen reluctantly eyed the military base, shrouded in what little darkness was left as the sun would fully rise within the hour. The thick layer of fog and cloud still remained a ways above her, however it was starting to dissipate as the clock turned. 

Her eyes dotted around the structure, jaw hardly set and gaze almost grudging. Sometimes it felt like that little nagging-... force inside her was just trying to make her life difficult and guilt ridden. 

The slightest movement on the far side of the structure drew her attention and her head shifted to the side as she spotted someone walking towards the closest wall on the far left side. Attention grabbed, Arwen watched quietly as the person stopped at the foot of the wall and looked around for a beat. 

They didn’t belong. Something’s wrong. 

Her hand already busy scrambling inside her bag, Arwen snatched her detached rifle scope and quickly knelt down on the ledge of the building, raising the attachment. A small bark of impatience from Bek did little to tear her attention away as Arwen watched the being through the scope.

Female. Possibly human. What almost caught her attention almost immediately was the identical satchel hung over the individuals back. They had sent someone else in.

“No no no,” Arwen grumbled. This wasn’t happening. Continuing to watch through her scope, the individual took one last look around before suddenly shooting a rappelling line up towards the top of the wall. Securing it, the person began to scale the face. 

Why hadn’t cameras picked them up? 

Turning her attention to the towers not far away from the wall the individual was scaling, Arwen adjusted her scope, adjusting the lens before focusing on one of the cameras. Small sparks coming from the device wasn’t a good sign. They were good. They were also about to blow this base sky high with everyone in it. 

That familiar feeling was already starting to course through her veins; the adrenaline was starting to spread through her body. 

Cursing under her breath, Arwen finally throws the scope back into her bag. “Rangir- (to hell with it) I’ll be back, Bek!” Arwen called before running down past the anooba, sprinting towards the lift. 

It felt like an eternity before Arwen finally found herself at the foot of the wall, about to scale the same spot the other mercenary had. She did a quick once over of the surrounding area, making sure it was clear before she shot her rappelling line up to the top of the wall. Her training had covered various methods of barrier traversal; this was something she was prepared for. In fact her training covered various raids of simulated republic bases as well. That just now came back to her. Not that it would help her now. It had been a long time.

She still had the satchel full of explosives on her; probably not the best thing. 

Getting to the top of the wall, Arwen looked up and down both ways, seeing a Trooper farther down as he walked away. Maybe a shift change. This other merc would have had to make her move at the proper time so Arwen might be able to operate in the window she’d created. 

Looking around the base below, Arwen quickly saw the other woman sneaking her way around the AT-Tes. Arwen cursed under her breath before waiting quietly for a moment. 

“What are you doing,” She mumbled. Looking around again, Arwen considered her options while she had the briefest time to do so, and began assembling her rifle. 

Maybe she could just take them out before they did any damage. It would alert the entire base to her presence too, but she couldn’t stand by while this happened, and she could get away…. Probably. 

Doing another check, Arwen scanned either side of the wall. No one. She'd have to be quick if it was a shift change. Whoever this woman was, they had to study the shifts and when they changed. She might have another minute. 

Finishing the rifle, Arwen quickly set it to her shoulder and found the woman again before looking through the scope. 

Identify. Breathe in. Breathe ou-

"Hey!" Her head snapped up, seeing a trooper had rounded the corner and saw her.

Arwen cursed before quickly resetting the rifle to her shoulder. The woman had noticed and quickly hid behind an AT-Te for cover as Arwen fired several shots.

"Blast-" Arwen cursed again before looking to see the trooper running towards her, blaster raised. Looking back to the woman who still had the explosives, Arwen clenched her jaw before throwing the rifle down into the base.

“What are you doing-” Arwen grits her teeth before blowing air out quickly, jumping down after the rifle. It was a long way down, longer than she’d like, and she didn’t have her armor to soften that blow. She landed with a somewhat abrupt grunt of pain as she rolled a few times to soften the blow to her legs as best she could. Scrambling to her feet she snatched the rifle from the ground and went after the mercenary. 

"Intruders! We have a perimeter breach!" She heard the trooper's words fading away but she knew the problem wasn't going to. Things were about to blow up, figuratively but possibly literally if she didn't stop this woman. 

Weaving through the large walkers, Arwen ran around the legs of one, only to stumble into a series of blaster fire. Scurrying backwards, she pulled her pistol and shot a look around the walker leg, seeing the woman standing near another walker, holding a small blaster pistol as well, firing off shots.

Arwen hid behind the walker leg for a brief time to get her breathing under control, the throbbing in her leg now screaming, pushing other more prevalent thoughts aside. 

“Haar’chak- k'atini (Damn it- suck it up/its only pain),” She seethed before knocking her head back into the walker leg. Tightening her grip on the blaster, Arwen swung around quickly, firing off several shots, blaster pistol grasped in both hands as she forced the assailant back to cover.

Glancing to the side, Arwen saw troopers organizing near the weapons depot. They were about to have some problems.

"We could just handle this together you know," A voice called. Arwen looked back seeing the woman peeking around a walker leg. "Split the coin and go our separate ways. I could use a hand- someone needs to distract the canon fodder."

"So you can set the explosives then jump ship when I'm gunned down? No thank you." Arwen responded, still holding her pistol up and ready. 

"Worth a shot," She chuckled before turning, shooting off her blaster again before tossing something small and round. Arwen's eyes widened as she quickly held up her arms to protect herself as the presumed grenade went off, spewing out thick smoke. 

Arwen coughed, waving the substance away from her face before walking through, the pistol held up in one hand as she held her sleeved arm to her mouth. Coming to the other side, Arwen noticed the merc was gone and a siren began blaring. 

"Great." Arwen muttered before looking towards the largest structure, seeing her run inside. 

She walked for a time before shaking her head. No turning back now. Huffing Arwen removed her finger from the trigger guard, keeping it outside as she picked up a run. "What are you doing- What are you doing- What the hell are you doing?" She cursed herself over and over. 

Running after the woman, Arwen held up her blaster ready in one hand, finger still outside the trigger guard as she took off into the base doors. Seeing the merc disappear just around the corner down the right corridor, Arwen takes off after her. 

Rounding the corner, she saw the merc take a left further down the hall. Something told Arwen this woman had no idea where she was going as they continued down halls. She'd made a giant circle. 

Slowing to a stop down one hall, Arwen caught her breath before looking up and down the corridors. There weren't any troopers which was concerning. They'd been spotted outside the base, and the thick layer of fumes from the smoke grenade had allowed them to sneak inside undetected, but that wouldn't last. 

Looking down one hall that branched adjacent to the one she was standing in, Arwen began jogging down it. If the merc kept running in a similar pattern, she should be able to cut the woman off.

Turning a corner, Arwen came to a hard stop at seeing a trooper with yellow orange accented armor walking away from her, talking on comms. He didn’t have a helmet.

"What do you mean the perimeter was breached?”

The responses the trooper was getting were too muffled for her to hear.

“Yeah I hear the siren- Where were they reported?"

Arwen went to back up when the woman ran around the corner on the other side of the hall.

"No, I haven't-... hey!"

Arwen made eye contact with the woman past the trooper, who appeared to be an officer of some kind.

"Rex I've got eyes on an intruder, south end of t-"

Arwen ran down the hall as the woman raised her blaster and began firing in the general vicinity of where they were. She practically tackled the Officer, who wasn't armed with a blaster, firing off her own pistol until the woman ran away. The string of curses the Officer let out made Arwen scramble off of him before stumbling to her feet.

"I- sorry- Sorry, sir!" She yelled back to him before taking off after the woman. 

Running around the corner, Arwen continued and ended up pushing past a bunch of troopers who were heading the same direction before continuing on. It was all going by too fast. She needed to slow down and consider her own position. 

She finally saw the open blast doors around fifty feet away, and picked up the pace. She saw the woman running for a secluded wall, and continued out of the door. She isn't at all prepared as she collides with something. Her head smacks into something hard, the air pushed from her lungs as she tumbled to the ground along with whatever hit her.

She was on her stomach, slowly pushing herself up, a hand coming to her head. She felt warmth, but also something cool covering her left brow, and woozily lifted a hand to her face, feeling her glove become wet.

Suddenly a hard pressure was put into her back, and she grunted before proceeding to struggle.

"Don't move-" That voice. A trooper. 

An iron grip suddenly snapped the wrist of the hand she had to her head and they were both craned behind her back.

"Rex what-"

"Got her, it's under control." The one who had tackled her, called Rex, who currently had his knee dug into her back just below her chest plate responded.

Arwen craned to see the Officer she'd tackled had jogged up and came to a stop, his eyes on her. "It's not her."

"What do you mean its not her?" The Rex trooper's tone quickly turned tense.

"All due respect-" Arwen grunted, trying to get up only to have the trooper above her dig his knee further into her back as she hissed. "She's getting away," Arwen growled, just able to see the woman disappear over the wall. 

Arwen wasn't prepared for the pressure on her back to suddenly disappear before she was hauled to her feet, hands now cuffed behind her back. 

"Sir, someone just scaled the wall," Another trooper had joined the scene and several others were also coming over.

"Cody?" The trooper, Rex, who still had a hard grip on her, one hand on her shoulder, between her neck and shoulder plate, looked to the Officer she'd tackled inside.

Arwen met his eyes, her brow knit and one twitching from the throbbing that was now becoming prominent. She'd really hit her face hard when that Rex fellow ran into her. 

The officer, called Cody, noticeable scarring over his left eye, dressed in white infantry armor painted with yellow-orange accents, seemed to consider her for a moment before looking towards a small squad of troopers that had shown up. 

"Get another squad and check the outer perimeter. I want to know where they got in."

"South wall, near the west Tower." Arwen muttered, catching the attention of a few of them. "She-"

"Shut it," The Rex trooper snapped, giving her a small jolt before pulling her backwards, directing her away. "I'll put this one in containment."

The Officer, Cody, walked up to them and Arwen leaned back a fraction, only to remember she had another trooper behind her when Cody went to remove her rifle, unclipping the strap, sliding it away from her before nodding for the white and blue armored trooper. He was somewhat rough as he turned her around and began walking her inside. 

Wait- where did the satchel full of explosives go… She didn’t have it with her.

As she was being led back into the base, none of it was registering. There was no replay button. What had she done. 

As Anakin walked down the halls of the Republic base, his thoughts dwelled on his wife. Since they’d gotten back from Tibrin, he’d been given a short leave, along with the battalions that had been present for the wretched Campaign. He’d been looking forward to breakfast with Padmé before he got a transmission from Marshal Commander Cody of the 212th Attack Battalion. It was Obi-Wan’s battalion, but Cody had informed him that his former master was unreachable. Whatever that meant. He might be in a meditative session with Master Yoda.

Anakin had reluctantly taken himself from bed, and from the arms of his love, and dragged himself out to the base on the account of intruders that had scaled the outer perimeter wall. He had requested Cody hold off on giving him details; he needed the time to collect his composure and thoughts. 

Arriving at the detention area of the base, Skywalker was met by Commander Cody and Captain Rex of the 501st Legion. He’d temporarily led the 501st on Tibrin. He didn’t have a battle group of his own yet, but whenever the 501st was free, he’d usually lead them on Campaigns and assignments as the legion was part of the 7th Sky Corps, also under the command of his old master. 

“Alright, I’m here.” Anakin breathed, crossing his arms as he came to a stop near the two Clone Officers who were standing over a computer against the wall down the hall of the interrogation block. “Tell me what happened.”

“Sir,” Captain Rex was the first to turn and acknowledge him. His blond hair was trimmed finely and as neat as always. The scar on his chin that he got at Arantara was now light in color and relatively faded. 

Anakin took a step forward as the Captain gestured to the computer screen. His eyes find the recorded footage of two suspects running down the halls of the base. 

“We believe it is now a foiled attempt to bomb this base in some capacity.”

“Separatist?” Anakin inquired.

"Hard to tell, sir. One of the accomplices got away; the other we have in custody." Commander Cody responded and gestured with his thumb over his shoulder towards the interrogation block. 

"Has she said anything?"

"No, sir." Rex jumped back in, looking down the hall where he knew the cell was. "We thought it best to wait for you, sir."

Anakin nodded and glanced down the hall as well before returning his gaze to the footage. He watched as one assailant ran around the corner of a corridor, followed by another at the other end, Cody in the middle. Both appeared to be female. He watched as the one began firing before the other jumped on Cody, then proceeded to get up and say something to the Commander before the chase continued. 

"Which one do we have in custody?" Anakin asks.

"This one," Cody responded, pointing to the screen at the one that had tackled him. 

Anakin nodded before sighing quietly.

"Alright, I'll talk to her." The Jedi nodded to himself before glancing between the two officers. "Anything else I should know?"

"We found this," Rex spoke up, gesturing to a table on the other side of the room with an open satchel full of explosives. "This belongs to that one," Rex gestured down the hall. "The one that got away had one similar in size and shape, so we assume they both came in here with the same intentions."

Anakin processed this before departing to talk with the criminal. He headed to the cell, and the troopers guarding the door stood at attention before the shield disengaged and he entered. She didn't look at him as he walked in, hands clasped behind his back. 

He watched her for a moment, evaluating her posture, and her overall aura. She was difficult to read. The outer shell of her emotional state was disconnected, somewhat cold but also anxious; feelings of guilt surrounded her, although his intuition told him that was something she was struggling to repress. 

He notices the blood covering the side of her head; there was a large wound over her brow, dried as well as fresh blood painted the side of her face. Her eyes had yet to meet his.

"So," He began, continuing to look her over for a time before letting his eyes settle on her face. "You had enough explosive on you to blow this base into the upper atmosphere… Do you have anything to say?"

She didn't say anything, but her gaze shifted to the side, posture also shifting, cuffed hands in her lap. After some time passed he spoke again.

"You don't look like a Separatist... look more mercenary material," He considered. "You getting a big payout?" 

She clenched her jaw but remained quiet, looking to the side, her brow knit gently. Despite the tightness to her brow, she didn’t seem bothered by the obvious injury to her head. She was good at controlling her external presentation.

Anakin finally took a couple steps closer, resting his hands on the edge of the table that was between them. 

"Did you get sold out by our other uninvited guest?"

She remained quiet and Anakin's brow knit after some time passed. He could feel the presence of the clone officers on the other side of the shield, but didn't bother looking. 

“Were you at all concerned with the damage you might do to this installation? Or the lives you might have taken?” The question was an odd one, especially for this individual. They looked mercenary material, and those types didn’t care who they hurt as long as the price was high enough. It was an odd question, but something told him to ask it. 

He knew she was about to look at him before she proceeded to, and his own head tilted slightly to the side as she lifted her head to meet his gaze for the first time. Almost immediately flickers of recognition sparked his expression and his brow knit tightly as he eyed her.

"...Who are you?" He finally asked. The question was vague, and the merc seemed to understand that as she didn’t back down from his gaze. The seconds passed and she gave no indication that she’d respond before she noticeably began to react under his gaze. Her own brow twitched, expression snapping away before returning as he continued to eye her with an almost surprised and confused expression.

She looked familiar. His head wasn’t telling him criminal; he knew her from somewhere else. He had to get his nunas in a row. 

The Jedi eventually excused himself and exited the cell. The energy shield quickly closed behind him as he walked back down the hall and out of earshot. 

“Sir?” Anakin turned and saw Rex standing a few feet away, expression indicating his uncertainty.

"Has the criminal database picked anything up?" Skywalker finally asked, crossing his arms. 

"No sir," Rex responded. "In fact we haven't gotten a hit anywhere. On any civilian system at least."

Anakin considered this for a moment before breathing out quietly. There was something he could try. But if he was wrong...

"Keep searching," Anakin nodded to Rex, causing the trooper to do the same in return before Anakin headed back to the cell.

Cody walked past him towards where Rex was and Anakin entered the cell, nodding for the troopers guarding the door to leave as well. He entered and the shield closed behind him. 

She looked up, watching as he stepped inside and crossed his arms across his chest. 

Silence followed his entry, and after a few moments of processing his next words, Anakin cleared his throat.

“If my suspicions are correct… I think I remember you. We’ve met.” He stated. “Well- We’ve spoken briefly.” He nodded to the side as he corrected his words before taking a beat to consider her reaction.

Her brow knit and it seemed he’d caught her attention, and in a good way. She seemed concerned. Good. That was a good sign. 

“This was around six months ago,” Anakin began, leaning against the wall to the right of the interrogation room, her left. “The Garos system… Someone sent a distress signal to the battle group I was stationed with near Sundari; the distress signal came from Garo IV. Mission details consisted of a clone team with highly sensitive intel that needed an extraction, from what they told me.” He watched her quietly for a few seconds. Her expression seemed to widen as he spoke and she had slowly leaned back into her chair, brow knit with alarm.

"I was the Jedi you spoke to. We sent gunships to extract you but..." He trailed off, his thoughts dwelling on that day. It had stuck with him for weeks before he was finally able move on. 

She stared at him, the silence was deafening and he felt like he was making headway by the look that had overtaken her expression.

"That was you.... wasn't it." He finally stated, the questioning tone from his voice was gone. There was no doubt in his mind. This was her. It was a female voice and he briefly saw the file of who he was speaking with that day when she had identified herself.

She clenched her jaw before looking down to her lap.

A mixed array of emotions were swirling in the small space of the interrogation room, and Anakin felt a sudden need to explain what had happened that day. 

"We thought you were dead." It caught him somewhat off guard when she spoke up. 

"Do I look dead, sir?" 

Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter | Arwen Corcer Mercenary Visuals

Chapter Note: How many times did Arwen ask herself what she was doing? 😂 Not sure but I apologize if it annoyed you. Hope it was enjoyed! Comments/reblogs and/or feedback are appreciated 🥰 

#my fic #my writing #clone wars fanfiction #star wars fanfiction #clones #star wars ocs #anakin skywalker #captain rex #commander cody #grand army of the republic #clone wars ocs #jedi #republic military #coruscant #galaxy far far away

[rachelanne2018writes]

Vignettes of Love: The Turner Family; An Unexpected African Souvenir

Summary: A Modern Take on Shelagh finding out that she is pregnant with the child we now know as Edward Patrick "Teddy" Turner.

Two weeks. Shelagh and Patrick had been home for two weeks from their mission in Central Africa.

Their mission, alongside the Sisters of Saint Raymond Nonatus, and the nurses had successfully improved conditions at Dr. Mayra Fitzgerald’s Hope Clinic- even when the doctor herself fell ill. The nights that she and Patrick had spent in Port Elizabeth had been blissful. The childless and colleague-less nights had prompted not only several necessary discussions but also marital relations for the first few times since Anglea Julienne came home.

Two weeks. Shelagh’s monthly cycle should have come two weeks ago, but it didn’t alarm her because of previous infrequencies. Although in the last year and a half it was more regular, Shelagh passed it off as a return to irregularity from flying across the equator and being away from their standard diet in Poplar. If Shelagh was honest with herself, she hadn’t noticed her lack of a cycle until her stomach troubles began.

Three weeks after they arrived home, Shelagh’s stomach began causing trouble. When Shelagh woke, almost instantly, the need to rid her stomach of its contents arose and won more mornings than not. At first, it seemed as though it was a simple stomach bug- but after an off-handed comment from Sister Ursula, Shelagh wasn’t so sure.

The next day, after her weekly food shop, Shelagh stole away to the chemist and picked up something she hadn’t thought about for nearly three years- a pregnancy test.

Nearly three years ago, an ultrasound from a fertility specialist had revealed scarring of the endometrium, the inner lining of the uterus. The doctor was sure that it was unlikely that Shelagh would conceive and carry a child to full term. It nearly broke Shelagh to hear the news.

Now her Shelagh was sitting on the floor of the flat’s bathroom waiting for the test result. Now it was time to determine whether Sister Ursula’s comment meant something more, or whether she was reading too far into a possible meaning.

“No. No.” Shelagh whispered as tears began to fall. There it was, printed in bold lettering, the word PREGNANT.

Although Shelagh had been a nurse and midwife for nearly a decade and knew the accuracy statistics of at-home pregnancy tests, she wasn’t sure that they would be the same for her troublesome body.

At that moment, Shelagh wanted to get back to bed, be next to her husband, and forget what worried her. That feeling brought her to a dangerous, split-second decision. She’d wait one more week and, if the symptoms persist, take another test or visit Julienne after work one day. For now, sleep called her name, and Shelagh was more than happy to indulge. Suddenly, Shelagh awoke to her cellphone ringing and several missed calls and texts from Patrick.

“Shelagh? Where are you, are you alright?” Patrick Turner nearly yelled into his cellphone “Patrick? What time is it?” Shelagh managed to squeak out before suddenly running to the and once again spiling horrible tasting bile into the toilet. “Shelagh? Shelagh, are you alright?” “I’m fine, Patrick; I’ll see you at the Surgery in a few minutes.” “Shelagh, no. I’m going to have Julienne come and visit you.”

Shelagh could tell from Patrick’s tone of voice that he wouldn’t put up with an argument, and so she agreed before falling back asleep.

(Patrick) Could I trouble you to stop by the flat and check on Shelagh? (Julienne) Is something wrong, is she ill? (Patrick) I feel as though she’s either ill or telling me something that she cannot put into words for some reason. (Julienne) I see I’ll pop over after midday prayers and take a look. (Patrick) Thank you, I appreciate it.

The next time Shelagh awoke, she slowly became aware of someone pressing on her abdomen. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but the sensation was quite strange, and as she became more aware of who was pressing on her abdomen.

“Sister Julienne?” “My dear Shelagh, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

That moment cemented the reality in her mind. Shelagh Turner was pregnant with a miracle child. A child that science deemed she’d never have, but faith told her otherwise.

“I just took a test this morning,” Shelagh whispered, “I didn’t believe it when it came up positive.” “Oh, my dear Shelagh. You’re nearly two months pregnant.”

Later that night, when Shelagh felt better and had eaten some soup successfully, she told Patrick the news. The news shocked him at first, but Patrick’s smile reassured Shelagh that everything would eventually be okay.

Even when Shelagh was admitted to the hospital suddenly a month or so later, their love and affection remained a strong force, overcoming and persevering over everything. Thankfully, technology allowed Shelagh to see Timothy and Angela while she was in the hospital. Without those FaceTime sessions in the Late Afternoons and Early Evenings, Shelagh wasn’t sure that she couldn’t have kept her sanity.

#shelagh turner #shelagh mannion #Patrick Turner #sister julienne #Timothy Turner #season 6 #Call The Midwife #call the midwife fanfic #angela turner #teddy turner #unexpected pregnancy #so much love

[doctorfiction]

Are there certain injuries that are more commonly seen in young women abused by their boyfriends?

You will notice that this posting consists of a single entry. I had already chosen 3 questions for this week’s posting when this appeared in my inbox. As you know, my answers are generally infused with a fair dose of whimsy.

I felt this question deserved a forum of its own undiluted by humor. Fear not, the 3 previously chosen questions will appear next week.

It is my fervent hope that the inspiration for this question is purely literary.

One of the most common misconceptions is to limit the concept of abuse to physical violence. Abuse springs from a desire to control. The perpetrator accomplishes this task through a combination of physical, emotional, social and financial gambits.

 I will answer the question with a most disheartening fictional  Emergency Room encounter.

As I am a writer, talking to other writers, I have exercised poetic license. The patient presented here is a fictitious amalgam of partner abuse injuries I have treated in the Emergency Department. My hope is that this will both answer the question and further raise awareness of this epidemic.

The post is quite long but please bear with me and read it all. I hope it will both educate and aid in the literary treatment of this epidemic issue.

Abbreviations: CC/chief complaint, HPI/ History of Present Illness, ROS/Review of Systems, PMHx/Past Medical History, CM/ current medications, PSHx/Past Surgical History, Imaging/ (X-ray, CT, MRI, Ultrasound), Dx: Diagnosis, and TX. If you are “getting all medical” in your story, the format shown below adds great credibility, allowing you to present information for discussion without appearing as an “info-dump.”

Physical examination was as follows: Pertinent POSITIVES are in bold

23 NOV 20XX

CC: L leg pain, headache and chest wall pain.

HPI: A 22-year-old female sits on the exam table. She is accompanied by her 25-year-old boyfriend. The boyfriend is bent over and whispering in her ear. She is nodding. They separate and he half smiles when I enter the room with a nurse.

The patient has swelling and yellow-brown bruising about the left eye. Although it is a hot summer evening, she is wearing a long-sleeve blouse, jeans, and socks. Her partner is wearing cut-offs, short-sleeve T-shirt and steel-toe work boots with gray socks.

She c/o Left lower leg pain, left upper arm pain, right rib pain made worse with deep breathing, abdominal pain without nausea and headache with blurred vision on left. She states that she sustained the injuries when she tripped over a rug and fell onto a “coffee table.” She denies LOC. (loss of consciousness) She also complains of left lower leg pain, worsened by weight-bearing. She c/o low abdominal pain associated with fall. Her partner interjects, stating that she can be clumsy and fell off the front porch 2 months prior sustaining arm, chest head injury. She denies ETOH (alcohol.) The nurse tells her she looks familiar. The patient responds that she was in the E.D. a couple of months ago after “falling off the front porch.” Her partner laughs and volunteers that she’s a bit clumsy. The patient is crying, appears deferential and stares at the floor during history.

 ROS: Positive for Head trauma with pain and swelling about R eye. Blurred vision R eye. A headache. Right side chest pain worse with deep breathing, and pain mid-portion L upper arm. Abdominal pain. Increased frequency of urination. Fatigue. Irregular infrequent menses. (LMP 4 months prior)

PMHx: Depression with Anxious Mood

            Second Trimester Abortion secondary to fall

            Abdominal Pain/chronic of unknown etiology

            Fracture Right Wrist after fall

 OB-GYN: G2/P0/Spontaneous AB2 (2 pregnancies, no births, 2 non-medically induced abortions)

CM: Prozac 20mg daily

PSHx:

D&C after traumatic abortion

Open Reduction and Internal Fixation Right Wrist Fracture

Social: Patient states she feels safe at home when queried.

Negative ETOH or illicit drug usage. 3 cigarettes per day

The nurse gives the patient a gown for the examination and asks the boyfriend and me to step out. He is reluctant but complies.

In the hall, the E.R. clerk hands me an EDie. report on the patient.

An EDie report is a computer-generated list of every emergency department visit to any E.R. for a given patient in a given time period.

The patient’s Edie reveals she has had nine visits in the past 12 months. Five visits have been for musculoskeletal “fall” trauma, two for abdominal pain, and one for anxiety. The clerk pulls me aside and states that the patient’s partner has had two E.D. visits in the past year, one for injuries sustained in a fight at work and another for evaluation after an arrest for driving while intoxicated.

When I question the partner regarding the patient’s repeated fall injuries, he states again that she falls a lot, becomes visibly agitated and says he has to go outside for a smoke.

Exam:

General: Patient alert and oriented x 3. No acute physical distress.

Head: Scaring of eardrums, L>R consistent with childhood ear infections vs healed traumatic rupture from blunt trauma. Questionable Left hemotympanum (blood behind the eardrum.) Obvious dental caries (tooth decay) in upper and lower molars. Chipped teeth: Right upper central incisor upper and Left lower canine.

Neck: Trachea midline, neck veins flat, Tenderness with Range of Motion. Generalized tenderness with palpation, no spinous tenderness. Blue-green fingertip bruising noted, one left, three right at the level of the trachea. (strangulation injury either “throttling or near strangulation to establish control)

Heart: Rate 102 and regular, without murmur.

Chest/Back: Lungs clear to auscultation without quiet areas. Black-blue fingertip bruising left breast. Multiple areas of bruising. Bright erythema (redness) with underlying edema noted of anterolateral aspect R ribs 5-7. Significant tenderness and crepitus (grating or crackling) over the affected area with inspiration. No tenderness or crepitus or step-off noted on spinal exam. Numerous bruises L/R chest and back. These cover the spectrum, ranging from Black-Blue-Green-Yellow and Brown.

Abdomen: Non-distended, non-tympanic with positive bowel sounds. The uterus is non -palpable. There is a large area of erythema noted in the suprapubic area with associated tenderness. A single circular 4mm burn with eschar is noted 7.5cmm inferior to the umbilicus.

Genital/Pelvic: Deferred at patient request (follow-up ob-gyn exam to be scheduled) Upper Extremities: No gross deformity. Warm and well perfused with good bilateral peripheral pulses. Fingertip erythema noted over mid-portion Left Humerus. Numerous areas of fingertip bruising. As with back and chest, these range from black to brown. Right extremity and balance of left extremity have a similar appearance. In addition, there are a total of 9 (4 right arm and 5 left arm) 5mm circular scars (cigarette burns) consistent with old healed 2nd-degree burn.

Lower Extremities: Warm and well perfused with good bilateral peripheral pulses. No gross deformity, no shortening or external rotation of leg when supine. SLR (Straight-Leg-Raise) negative left and right. Again, numerous bruises of various colors left and right over the Anterior Tibia. Abrasion and erythema with underlying edema (swelling) and tenderness left mid anterior tibia. No crepitus.

Neurological: Cranial and Spinal Nerves intact by exam. Gait not tested until post-X-ray due to painful weight-bearing.

Psyche: Cooperative, minimally conversational with direct query. Flat affect with overt signs of Depression with Anxious Mood

Labs:

1)Urine HCG (pregnancy test) negative

 2) Urinalysis 2+blood and numerous WBC (white blood cells), with numerous motile trichomonads (trichomoniasis)

3) CBC, CMP WNL (Within Normal Limits)

 Imaging:

1) Head CT w/o contrast: small 2 mm LEFT tempo-parietal subdural hematoma. No other acute pathology but there is scattered parenchymal (brain tissue) scarring consistent with old microbleeds. No facial/nasal/orbital fractures seen.

 2)Left Tibia/Fibula X-ray: No acute bony or soft tissue abnormality seen. Evidence of old, healed nondisplaced fracture anterior tibia.

 3)Left Humerus X-ray: spiral fracture mid humeral shaft with no angulation and good apposition.

 4)Chest X-ray with Right Rib detail: Acute nondisplaced fractures right ribs 3-5. Old rib fractures noted in various states of healing R ribs 3,5,6 and L ribs 4-7. No pneumothorax, no acute cardiopulmonary process.

 DX: 1) Traumatic Subdural Hematoma

       2)Abdominal Contusion

       3)Contusion Left Tibia

       4) Spiral Fracture

       5) Nondisplaced fractures R ribs 3-5

       6) Trichomoniasis

       7) Amenorrhea

       8) Acute on Chronic Depression

 *****Symptom Cluster suggestive of Domestic Abuse*****

 Consult: Social Services

              Hospital Administration on Call

              Hospital Security

 Additional History: Patient is presented with diagnosis and informed of concerns regarding potential abuse scenario. Patient denies abuse and asks to see her partner. Security is sent to the parking area to retrieve partner. When security approaches partner’s vehicle, he speeds from the parking lot.

 When the patient is informed of partner’s departure, she becomes tearful and agrees to update history.

 Patient and partner were introduced at a local bar and began dating three years prior. Both shared a common bond of having dropped out of high school. Her partner was a laborer at a local scrapyard. Patient clerked at a local department store while taking night courses to finish high school. She admits to social drinking while her partner was a moderate to heavy drinker given to occasional binging. They moved in together and shared rent until he told her he would leave unless she quit her job and high school completion courses. When the patient’s family complained, he forbid her to have personal or telephone contact with her family. Her partner was involved in a physical altercation at work and was taken to the E.R. for treatment of injuries. Employer mandated testing was positive for alcohol and cannabis, at which point he was discharged from his job. At this point, he increased his alcohol intake and began an escalating pattern of abuse. He forced her to sell her car to pay rent, utilities, and grocery expense but placed the proceeds in his checking account. At this point, the patient informed her partner that she was pregnant and he beat her violently for the first time. Punching her repeatedly in the abdomen until she passed out from pain. The patient subsequently miscarried. Patient packed clothes and was leaving with a friend. Partner blocked driveway and tearfully apologized. Over the protests of her friend, she agreed to remain with him. Partner encouraged her to take a cleaning job at a local business but confiscated her checks forcing her to bring peanut butter sandwiches to work for her lunch. He refuses to allow dental visits due to cost and forbids the use of oral contraceptives because it will encourage her to be promiscuous at work. When she returns home from work and finds him in bed with a female neighbor, he states that he did it to show her what would happen if she were unfaithful. Shortly thereafter, the patient developed a frothy malodorous vaginal discharge, itching and pain with intercourse.

 Emergency Department TX:

I.V. of normal saline @ 100ml/hr

Flagyl 500mg PO (by mouth) for Trichomonal Vaginitis

Splinting, sling left arm for Humeral Fracture

Consults: Presented patient history and physical to Hospitalist at a tertiary medical center. Documented acceptance of patient and arranged transport.

Disposition: Patient is transferred by ALS Ground (Advanced Life Support Ambulance) to tertiary care medical center where she was admitted to Neuro-Surgery for observation of her brain bleed with consults to Orthopedics, Ob-Gyn, and Social Services.

 Notification of local law enforcement regarding high index suspicion of domestic assault

The fictitious chart above is NOT an exaggeration:

 Physical Injuries:

 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that domestic violence is the cause of more injuries in women ages 15 to 44 than all other injuries combined with more than 1 million women per year seeking care in the E.D. One fourth of these women will require admission, and greater than one in ten will require major medical treatment. Nearly 4 million women are beaten in their homes every year. ONE IN FOUR women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.

 The above patient has evidence of significant physical abuse.

 Bruises: direct trauma to the skin appears first as a bright red area and over the course of a 10- day period the color of the injury progresses from black to brown as noted above. This allows the injury to be aged. Numerous bruises of different colors indicate a pattern of continuing abuse.

Fingertip bruises are a result of the very common grasp injuries used to control the abused woman.

 Burns: numerous 4mm circular injuries/scars in various states of healing indicate cigarette burns. These are commonly inflicted as punishment. Arm burns are common. Burns near the genitalia establish complete dominance and maximum humiliation.

 Head Trauma: You will recognize the epidural hematoma from a previous posting. The patient’s Head CT also showed evidence of scaring indicating a pattern of repeated blows to the head over time. The eardrum scars revealed blows forceful enough to cause rupture of the eardrum. The patient has several chipped teeth indicating repeated blows to the mouth over time.

 Fractures: The X-rays Physical exam revealed an old nasal bone and septal fracture. Multiple rib fractures both new and in various states of healing support ongoing abuse. The spiral fracture of the Humerus (upper arm bone) is a result of grasping and rotational stress and is a classic abuse fracture. The fingertip erythema (fresh injury) combined with this fracture is considered abuse until proven otherwise. The healing/healed fractures on the patient’s tibia (shin) suggest she has been struck repeatedly with a hard object (steel toe boots or a club of some kind.)

 Abdominal Injury: The blows to the abdomen represent the abuser’s attempt to terminate a perceived pregnancy due to the patient’s lack of menstrual cycle.

 Emotional Abuse:

 The effects of emotional abuse, while invisible, are no less devastating. Abused women have a markedly increased incidence of substance abuse including smoking. Low self-esteem and a feeling of hopelessness lead to loss of educational, relationship, and educational opportunities. Abused women have a fivefold increased risk of anxiety and depression.

Financial Abuse:

 The abuser generally denies the woman access to finances which restricts access to dental/health care, work-appropriate clothing and personal care items necessary to secure quality employment.

Social Abuse:

 The abuser generally restricts access to family, friends, social outings and even media information to limit the possibility of abuse exposure.

General Health Abuse:

 Abusers generally engage in behavior which can have profound negative effects on the abused woman. A preponderance of abusers lack even a high school diploma and consider an educated or trained female a threat. Even the educated abuser fears the empowerment of a woman with a marketable skill. Generally speaking, domestic abusers are substance abusers exposing the woman to the hazards of their impaired driving, the violence of their drug suppliers, and the ramifications of their frequent brushes with law enforcement. The “risk-taking” behavior of the abuser will also frequently put the woman at risk for both minor and serious sexually transmitted disease.

Women at greatest risk for injury from domestic violence include those with male partners who abuse alcohol or use drugs, are unemployed or intermittently employed, have less than a high-school education, and are former husbands, estranged husbands, or former boyfriends of the women. 

Having said this, there are lawyers who beat their Ph.D. wives, physicians who manipulate their girlfriends, college professors who take advantage of their students, and politicians, actors and director/producers who use their power to exploit women.

 I hope this response will further heighten awareness of this epidemic and as a positive side effect provide some insight in depicting these characters in your writing.

 Thank you for your indulgence. I promise next week’s trio of postings will be a return to Doctor Fiction’s usual mixture of banter, brilliance, and bullshit.

The Doctor is In. Want to ask a question? Read the guidelines first.

[mojoflower]

Like you, when I met my boyfriend I was a very sexual being, but suddenly something just went poof, probably from meds I’m not going to stop taking, and I lost any desire to do anything sexual. I try to avoid it but he has such a high libido. I’ve told him to see other women but he only wants me. The problem is when I decline sex so much he sees it as me not wanting to be with him instead of just not wanting sex and he gets upset. I was wondering if you had any advice. We want to stay together

Hey sweetie, sorry to leave you hanging for so long.  (This is in response to this post on being married and asexual.)

This is a tough one, because, yeah, antidepressants (or if you’re on some other med) really very often do suppress sexual desire and/or response, and then you have to consider what’s more valuable to you, being sexual or not being depressed (or whatever else your condition may be).  For what it’s worth, I always always support taking care of your mind and body first, because sex is such a minor component of life and such a small part of meaningful relationships (think about friends and family, for example).

I am, of course, biased ;)

It sounds like you and your boyfriend need to have a long, difficult talk, and set boundaries.  In my own life, I found it was easier to set rigid ones:  no sex, at all, until further notice (which, I emphasized over and over, probably will never happen).

Have you heard of a thing called intermittent reinforcement?  I remember my husband studying it in school.  It means that if a reward comes some times, but not all the time and not in a predictable manner, that it will positively reinforce a behavior.  Actually, intermittent reinforcement is one of the strongest types of behavioral conditioning out there (think of a gambling addiction).  This is why I think it’s easier to just stop sex altogether, so as not to ‘train’ your partner to keep pushing you for it because every once in a while you’ll give in.

Let me say again, I am biased.  This is just what I would do, and indeed, it’s what I did.  I do not actually have any good advice for when you may want sex, but on a very infrequent and irregular basis, except to say that you’ve got to talk to your boyfriend.

And in the long run, if he can’t accept that, then it won’t work out.  Especially if it hurts his feelings (in a very real way) to be turned down.  (As my husband pointed out to me when we went through this:  How can I not take it personally?  You’re talking about sex with me!)  And that won’t be the fault of either one of you, okay, it really won’t.  We come into the world wired in certain ways, (or a life-saving medication may make us that way) and you can’t go against it just because someone else wants you to.  You can only make that choice for yourself.  (And sometimes, your body might be stronger than your brain, and it will choose for you.)

I’m assuming you’re young (although now I read back over your note, I have no clues one way or another).  Either way, it’s a big world out there, and there are many people in it.  Nothing feels right if you aren’t true to yourself, so don’t tangle yourself up in a web of lies and grudging favors and discomfort:  the resentment accumulated over years of this will slowly poison you both.  Figure out what you want and what you need, make that clear to your partner;  encourage him to do the same.  And then see if there’s any overlap.

#mojo muses #Auntie Mojo #doling out advice #straight outta her ass #no but really #everyone is so different #it's hard to say #but lordy please my loves #DON'T HAVE SEX AS A FAVOR TO YOUR PARTNER #that way lie dragons #it is so bad for you #don't do it #Anonymous

[davenpitts]

Some Things Never Change

In which Jean concludes that while people change, love, as well as past insecurities, never do. Written for Jeankasa Canon Weekend 2018.

Words: 3,716

AO3 link

“Please, stop! Don’t shoot!”

Not the last words Jean Kirstein particularly wants to hear, but they’ll do.

Although, to be fair, they aren’t the last words he hears, per se, but rather, the last words he hears before the ruckus of the events that were transpiring amongst him, the ruckus that rang in his ears so clamorously just a second ago, is replaced with another ringing in his ears, one that only arises during very specific circumstances, which, in this case, involved Jean being shot through the chest, and by Gabi Braun, no less.

Not that whoever had shot him made any of a difference, anyway, made the agony that overwhelmed just as instantly any less, well, agonizing.

In fact, he wasn’t the least bit dumbstruck that the quick-tempered girl had shot him. He had always suspected she would anyway; it was only a matter of time before he exasperated her so irreversibly that she injured Jean just as irrevocably. She was unsettlingly analogous to Eren, after all, and, although he and Eren had formed something akin to an acquaintanceship over the years, it had been four years since the two boys--the two men--had spoken, and even longer since they had conferred about anything that didn’t involve overthrowing the government or slaying titans.

He doubted Eren was still the gregarious, impetuous adolescent who had quarreled with him amid their initial encounter. If anything, he reckoned Eren would be uncharacteristically reticent towards everyone, even those with which he was inseparable, like Armin and Mikasa--

Shit. Mikasa.

“I never got to tell her how I feel.”

He had uttered these words what seemed like a lifetime ago, during the interminable day in which the Titans wreaked havoc on his hometown, pulverizing anything, and anyone, in their paths. Untold lives were lost that day, one of which, he presumed, was Mikasa’s, and for moments he was fleetingly (although, at the time, it had been anything but fleeting) under the inaccurate assumption that her lustrous, obsidian locks had lost all their luster and were now matted with blood that wouldn’t cease spilling, that her plush mouth was agape in perpetual horror, that her enchantingly ebony eyes were also open, staring at everything and nothing all at once, that all these features along with the rest of her were submerged in a Titan’s belly, never to reemerge or reassemble.

“Y-you’re alive,” He had stammered when she had reappeared, unscathed save for the psychological trauma he was certain she was experiencing, and he would’ve told her how he felt right then and there had the circumstances been different, had those monsters (monsters, he would eventually discover, that had once been humans) not been squashing his former neighbors beneath their feet as if they were no more than insects outside the impermanent protection headquarters provided. It simply wasn’t the right time.

Nor was it the right time afterwards, when he had nearly stumbled over the half-eaten corpse of his best friend, and Jean swallowed the bile that rose in his throat.

Nor was it the right time that evening, while the bodies and, occasionally, gnawed-off limbs of their not as fortunate comrades were reduced to ashes as the surviving cadets officially became soldiers.

From that moment forward, their lives increased in uncertainty, as well as the urgency to admit his endearment. But the longer he waited, the more titans they had to slay, the more political figures they had to reprimand, and the more unforeseeable their lives became, the greater the urge to avow his affections intensified, along with his irresoluteness towards attempting such a thing; and although they had defeated the titans after over a century of them terrorizing what were essentially their kin, there was a new threat to face, one that was equally merciless and insensible.

Well, some of them, anyway.

Jean had been informed that all those who inhabited Marley were just as inconsiderate as their ancestors, but he knew better. The instant Jean had lost his best friend five years ago was the exact instant he gained his humanity, which hadn’t wavered once, not when he learned of all the lives Kenny Ackerman had concluded with a swift swish of a knife, not even when he learned of what the trio of human traffickers had done to Mikasa’s parents, what they would’ve done to her if it weren’t for Eren and his bloodthirsty tendencies.

Speaking of whom, the emerald-eyed man gracelessly landed alongside Jean, his right arm extended across the broad, but not unduly so, shoulders of none other than Mikasa; and in turn Jean ascertained that now was as good a time as any to tell her how he felt, even with Eren standing inches away and a crimson sea spurting from the aperture in his--Jean’s, not Eren’s--chest.

No, especially with Eren standing inches away and a crimson sea spurting from the aperture in his--Jean’s, not Eren’s--chest.

But alas, before he could enunciate a single syllable, Gabi was weeping against his chest and apologizing ceaselessly, all the while disregarding the blood that besmirched her hair, the irregularity of Jean’s heartbeat, the string of steam arising mere meters away that signified the Cart Titan’s reversion to its human form. Falco’s incapability to leave Gabi’s side ensured that he was standing beside her, speechless save for the whimpers he emitted every now and then.

“Shhh, it’s not your fault,” Assured Jean as he pat the top of Gabi’s head, an action that ultimately eventuated in besmirching her hair even further, “You acted on instinct.”

“Acted on instinct my ass,” Eren grumbled, and while ordinarily Mikasa would’ve elbowed him in the ribs for such an utterance, there was no hissed cuss word, no yelp of impermanent agony, or any other indication that she had done anything of the sort.

Instead, tears spilled from her eyes in a stream that was as equally incessant as Gabi’s, and although it disheartened Jean tremendously to see her like this, he was relieved that she was exuding such a reaction, despite everything he had said to her just this morning.

Even Eren, as illogical as it sounded, was weeping. He had changed pronouncedly since Jean had last seen him, both in personality and appearance, but then again, so had he. He was no longer the spiky-haired, irascible adolescent who couldn’t speak to a certain ravennette without stammering at least a dozen times. Okay, maybe he still stuttered whilst conversing with her, but in spite of that, he had evolved into the man he was today, the man who lay dying as gunshots and the telltale roar of the Colossal Titan reverberated amongst him, the man who always thought of others first and of himself second, the man who could not, for the life of him, kill a child. Two of them, to be exact.

If this is the price I must pay for maintaining my humanity until the very end, He thought, so be it.

“M-Mikasa?” He asked, or, more accurately, croaked, “I l--”

“I know,” She interjected, “I’m sorry, too.”

And with that she leaned down and kissed him so that the agony he was experiencing would be replaced with the ever-familiar feeling of her lips against his, if only impermanently.

…

She may not have loved him as long as he had loved her, but she loved him all the same.

More specifically, she had become enamored of him in the midst of the most peculiar of circumstances, the likes of which anyone would be the literal opposite of infatuated.

In simpler terms, she had fallen in love with him while the bottom half of his head was submerged in a wastebasket and not within close proximity to hers, while a sludge of miscellaneous solids and liquids spewed from his lips as opposed to blandishment, while his torso was unclad and slick with perspiration, and not because she had made it that way.

In even simpler terms, she had fallen in love with him while he vomited saltwater he had previously, and, not to mention, inanely, ingested.

Of course, she hadn’t fallen in love with him because he was vomiting; who would? Rather, she had fallen in love with him because of what his impermanent enfeeblement attested: that even the boy who had single handedly leapt in front of a titan, and to save her, no less, wasn’t as invulnerable as Mikasa imagined, and what he incessantly insisted, he was. Which could only mean one thing: neither was she.

All her life, well, the preponderance of it, anyway, Mikasa had believed, albeit ignorantly, that when one exhibited feebleness, they were in turn preparing themselves for their own slaughter, gorging themselves allegorically on empathy and other such weaknesses until they were ten feet beneath the ground.

It was hard to believe that the boy who lay before her, the boy who was so ill he couldn’t even sit upright, had been so exuberant an hour ago. The Survey Corps had no particular tasks to accomplish that day, and, in consequence, they were relishing the infrequent, but much appreciated, day off by wading and, occasionally, diving, into the crystalline water. All was going swimmingly (pun fully intended) until Connie challenged Jean to a competition that accordingly consisted of swallowing an inordinate amount of sea water. If it weren’t for his vying nature, Jean might’ve refused. But he hadn’t, and so he had knelt in the sand that stretched endlessly across the ocean floor until the waves wet his lips, drinking the briny water as if he was parched.

In the end, neither participant was triumphant, for long before a victor could be declared, Connie began retching into the water. Jean just as instantly followed suit, his breakfast splashing into the water and landing amongst the ocean life, which ingested the reguitartaed chunks just as instantly as they had appeared, an aspect that only succeeded in making him even sicker.

As expected, Sasha came to Connie’s aid, dragging him out of the ocean and depositing him on the sand, which soon became speckled with the yellowish amalgam of eggs, toast, tea, and, most predominantly, saltwater, that would perhaps spew from his and Jean’s mouths for perpetuity. Mikasa had acted on instinct, abandoning the threadbare blanket she sat upon to plunge into the frigid water. She swam towards Jean and dragged him to shore at an unprecedented speed, and, at Hange’s insistence, carried him--yes, carried--inside, which is how he became bedridden, and how Mikasa’s admiration for him had evolved like a caterpillar evolves into a butterfly: unexpectedly, and from something aggressively ordinary into something uncommonly exquisite.

Once he had recuperated enough to converse, he then proceeded to say more to Mikasa within the duration of the succeeding hour than he ever did within the three years they had known each other. Not that she minded, of course; prior to joining the military, and even after, she had preferred the company of no more than one (Eren), or oftentimes two (Eren and Armin) people at a time, but since being a soldier guaranteed that underappreciated things such as privacy were scarce, instances in which two warriors were alone together were few and far between, hence Jean and Mikasa took advantage of the infrequent opportunity.

Although they had been eating meals, formulating plans, and implementing missions alongside one another for years, the two felt unconversant with each other. That is, until Jean recounted to her details she suspected even Marco wasn’t cognizant of while he was alive: that he was a bastard, born out of wedlock to a father who fled the instant he ascertained his unborn son’s existence and to a mother who pampered him so particularly that he became plump as a result, only to slim down after years of enduring countless kicks to the face and another area he was careful not to mention aloud to Mikasa.

What he did mention, however, was that he and his mother’s once infrangible relationship was now the very opposite of the word, although despite this, he regretted regarding his mother no differently than he did the dirt upon which he walked and yearned to rectify their relationship in any way he could. Mikasa, ever the strategist, had convinced him to write her a letter assuring her that he was safe (as safe as anyone in a world tyrannized by titans could be, at least) and that he loved her in his own outlandish way.

And their friendship only strengthened from there.

She was there for him when his mother mentioned to him in a letter that she had fallen ill. She was there for him while his mother’s health increasingly deteriorated, when her letters became less and less recurrent. And above all, she was there for him when the letters discontinued altogether. And similarly, he was there for her during the seemingly ceaseless days that succeeded after Eren departed for Marley.

She had stupefied herself, and therefore him, too, when she kissed him for the first time. He had reciprocated promptly, as she knew he would; his hand was pendulous at his side for almost an entire minute before it inched upwards to cradle her cheek as gingerly as one cradles an infant in their arms.

The kiss itself was far from elegant; their teeth collided as often as one would imagine any pair that possessed their inexperience would, and every now and then their lips would land upon the other’s chin, or nose, or anything else that wasn’t their mouth, but it was otherwise lovely and, in addition, unlike anything they had ever undergone before.

They perfected the craft over time, as most couples do. They weren’t quite a couple, but rather, something more consequential than that, whichever that was. They had been discreet about their courtship, or so they thought, until one night Sasha, inebriated on the moonshine she had smuggled from Levi earlier that evening, stumbled into Mikasa’s bedroom to discover the duo in a rather, say, amorous situation.

No one had betrayed even the most infinitesimal indication of incredulity, admitting that their relationship was bound to arise, anyway, and, for reasons unbeknownst to both of them, shortly after Jean was appointed Commanding officer, Levi had allowed them to share a bedroom, but not without advising them to “have fun” and “use protection” first, the latter of which left the couple’s cheeks tinged scarlet.

They had their first, and thankfully last, disagreement mere moments before Gabi shot Jean and thus thwarted the feasibility of them having a future together. Their quarrel regarded something Jean had been contemplating for months but was too dubious to broach: why Mikasa had really kissed him that day.

She had kissed him the same day Eren had departed for Marley. Perhaps it was ineludible, or maybe it was merely a misadventure, and although Jean had deviated from his spiteful propensities, although he had ascertained that Eren and Mikasa’s bond was exclusively familial and nothing further like he had feared, his enviousness hadn’t evaporated entirely. A part of him, as infinitesimal and insignificant as it was, suspected that it was feasible Mikasa harbored feelings for her adoptive brother that were far from familial, regardless of how frequently she assured him otherwise. Consequently, Jean conjectured that Mikasa’s life was ephemerally intertwined with his, that the instant they rescued Eren their lives would dissever, never to reunite.

Furthermore, she would wear her scarf less frequently, and oftentimes it would remain draped across her dresser for days, disregarded and gathering dust, until at last, in an act of sentimentality, or sometimes even sheer boredom, she wound it around her neck with a proficiency that only one who has applied the same motion day after day can possess. But eventually she ceased wearing it altogether, for sporting that scarf was no longer second nature to her: loving Jean Kirstein was.

She didn’t love him for one particular reason, but rather, multitudinous of them, the most prominent of which was perhaps how, in spite of all the evils they had encountered, his humanity had yet to oscillate.

Little did she know, however, that his mercifulness would quite literally be the death of him.

Their relationship was more psychological than it was physical, and truthfully, they preferred it that way. In fact, they were infrequently intimate, and whenever they were, they reserved their more venereal interactions for the night before or the morning of their most unpropitious missions. Needless to say, they had been intimate that fateful morning, and so much so that afterwards Mikasa nearly whispered a particular three-letter phrase, the likes of which Jean had never imagined she’d ever utter.

“I love you.”

Although these three words appear innocuous on the surface, there is an astronomical meaning behind them that no soul can fathom straightaway. Jean was no exception to this precept, ergo he was profoundly nonplussed by her unexpected pronouncement, and to such an extent that instead of reiterating what she had previously almost said he became instantly overwrought; the aftereffect of which involved him saying things that he otherwise would’ve never said if it weren’t for the insecurities that still lingered within him all these years later.

In truth, she had only uttered two out of the three words. She indubitably would’ve finished the phrase had it not been for Jean.

“No, you don’t.”

While this response is also comprised of three words that, when combined, create something that not even a million words can elucidate, these three words, when said aloud, that is, elicit emotions one either overanalyzes until they’re blue in the face or disregards completely, on account of being too perplexed to possibly comprehend them.

Fortuitously, Mikasa was the latter. Well, for the moment, at least.

She withdrew her neck, the paleness of which was partially discolored red from when his teeth had tenderly attacked it the previous night, from where it nestled against his chest, which she proceeded to pepper kisses across.

“Then why am I doing this?” She whispered, her warm breath like flames on his otherwise goose fleshed skin. Her lips inched upwards, settling atop his neck this time, her tongue encircling his Adam’s apple in a way that enticed him so immensely mere moments ago but now only augmented his indignation. “Or this?” Her mouth now hovered above his own, inchmeal descending towards their destination; however, Jean tipped his head downwards a millisecond before their mouths could meet, and her lips brushed the bridge of his nose instead.

“Because I’m a distraction,” He finally said, his eyes shut in an attempt to repress the tears that threatened to spill as ceaselessly as blood from a wound, “That’s all I am to you.”

“Is this about Eren?” She suddenly snapped, and at this Jean opened his eyes to discover that she too was on the verge of tears. “Because if so, how many times do I have to tell you: I love him, and have always loved him, like a brother. Besides, I thought you outgrew your envious personality.”

With a huff, she crawled off him and hurriedly redressed herself. Her tears landed atop her feet one by one, and all the while Jean tried to assure himself that he was doing the right thing by letting her go, that he never should’ve allowed their friendship to blossom further beyond that, for he was, by no means, an angel; he had enough blood on his hands to overfill the ocean that separated their homeland from that of their enemy, after all, and although he only took the lives of those who surely would’ve taken those of his comrades if given the chance, that didn’t mean he was accustomed to it.

“What’s this really about, Jean?” She asked, now fully dressed, her silver eyes narrowed to slits as she scowled at him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” He answered, hoping she failed to notice the way his voice broke.

And with that she stormed out of their bedroom and very nearly collided into Floch in the hallway, who, for all she knew, overheard everything.

“Whoa. Lover’s quarrel?” He asked.

Mikasa merely shoved him aside. “Fuck off, Floch.”

Meanwhile, while Sasha practically forced insipid porridge down Mikasa’s throat, Jean remained in bed, his pillow muffling his sobs.

…

“Looks like a lot happened while I was in Marley,” Remarked Eren, and at this Mikasa and Jean erupted in laughter. It was short-lived, though, on account of the excruciation in Jean’s chest, the agony that now overwhelmed his entire body.

“You’re not mad, Yaeger?” Jean asked complacently as he arched an eyebrow at the brunette, an action that was once effortless but now required as much exertion as slaying a titan, back when there were still titans to slay.

“Oh, on the contrary. You’re a better man than any of us combined, Jean. If anyone deserves love, it’s you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jean said weakly, “I’m no better than the titans, or Kenny Ackerman, or any of the other enemies we’ve had the misfortune of facing. Just say it: I’m a murderer.”

“You have blood on your hands,” Interjected Mikasa, “But don’t we all? You may have killed others, but you always did so for the right reason, whether it was to save our friends or even total strangers.” She then ruffled Gabi’s hair. “Hell, you even spared these kids, and you don’t even know their names!”

“It’s Gabi, by the way,” The girl acknowledged.

“F-Falco,” The boy stammered.

“Is this why you pushed me away this morning?” Inquired Mikasa. “Because you thought you weren’t worthy of me?”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“Then what’s the other part?”

“I—” He began, but not before coughing up what must’ve been pints of blood first, “I believed, albeit stupidly, that you were with me because Yaeger was in Marley.”

“All this time and you still think Mikasa has the hots for me?” Exclaimed Eren. “Some things just never change, do they?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jean said, clasping Mikasa’s hand and squeezing it with what little strength he had left, “Here’s another thing that hasn’t changed: I still love her.”

“Oh, Jean,” She murmured, leaning down to kiss him one last time, “I love you, too.”

But by then it was too late.

#jeankasa canon weekend 2018 #jeankasa #Jean x Mikasa #jeanmika #jean kirstein #mikasa ackerman #shingeki no kyojin #snk #attack on titan #aot

[yasbxxgie]

When the former NFL cheerleader Natalie Nirchi stopped menstruating at age 17, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormone disorder affecting up to 10 percent of women of reproductive age. She didn’t initially show any of the physical symptoms, like excess hair growth, cystic acne, or obesity, but a blood test revealed that she had high levels of testosterone and an ultrasound showed cysts on her ovaries.

“My doctor mentioned that one day I might have trouble getting pregnant, but didn’t offer any other information about the disorder,” Nirichi said. Other than the absence of her period, PCOS did not significantly impact her life until college, when she began experiencing shooting pains in her pelvis, mood swings, and rapid weight gain despite a rigorous exercise routine.

“It wasn’t like I turned 21 and started partying, it was like I turned 21 and all of a sudden, I was extremely depressed. No matter what I did, I just kept building this layer of extra weight around my midsection,” she said.

PCOS is genetic and presents differently in each woman of childbearing age. For some women, symptoms emerge shortly after they begin menstruating. Others may not show signs of the disorder until later in life, or after substantial weight gain, and many don’t receive a diagnosis until they are struggling to get pregnant. A community-based prevalence study published in 2010 found that approximately 70 percent of the 728 women in the cohort had PCOS, but had no pre-existing diagnosis.  

Contrary to the implication of “polycystic,” some women with the condition don’t have any cysts. A diagnosis requires only two of the following three criteria to be met: elevated levels of male sex hormones (which can cause excess hair growth, acne, and baldness), irregular or absent periods, and/or at least 12 follicular cysts on one or both ovaries.

“If a woman has fewer than eight menstrual periods a year on a chronic basis, she probably has a 50 to 80 percent chance of having polycystic ovary syndrome based on that single observation,” said John Nestler, the chair of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. “But if she has infrequent menstruation and she has elevated levels of androgens such as testosterone in the blood, than she has a greater than 90 percent chance of having the condition.”

When the syndrome was first described in 1935 by American gynecologists Irving Stein, and Michael Leventhal, it was considered a rare disorder. Today as many as five million women in the United States may be affected, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, but researchers are still just beginning to uncover the disorder’s full impact.

“Classically, we thought of PCOS primarily as an infertility disorder or a cosmetic annoyance, but we now know that it’s also a metabolic disorder and a serious long-term health concern,” Nestler said.

According to a recent study published in the Endocrine Society’s March 2015 issue of Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, women diagnosed with PCOS are twice as likely to be hospitalized for heart disease, diabetes, mental-health conditions, reproductive disorders, and cancer of the uterine lining. The cost of evaluating and providing care to women with PCOS is approximately $4.36 billion per year.

The definitive cause of PCOS is unknown, but researchers have found a strong link to insulin resistance, a genetic condition often associated with diabetes, in which the muscle, fat, and liver cells do not respond properly to insulin and thus cannot easily absorb glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream. As a result, the body produces higher and higher levels of insulin to help glucose enter the cells.

“The excess insulin that's being produced stimulates the ovary to make testosterone, which can interfere with ovulation, rendering many women infertile,” said Nestler. PCOS is the most common cause of infertility in industrialized nations. “The exact cellular and molecular mechanisms are still being explored and are not completely understood.”

In one study, insulin resistance was found in 95 percent of overweight women with PCOS and 75 percent of lean women with PCOS. Perhaps relatedly, women with PCOS have a more than 50 percent risk of getting Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes before age 40.

“We are seeing an explosion in polycystic ovary syndrome in adolescent girls, and I think it’s due to the fact that we are also seeing an explosion in obesity in adolescent girls,” Nestler said. “It’s quite possible that if those girls had remained a healthy weight, that they would still carry the genes that predispose them, but they wouldn’t be expressing the disorder.”

Healthy diet and exercise is the first line of intervention most doctors recommend for overweight women with PCOS. Research shows that a 5 to 7 percent reductionof body weight over a six-month period can lower insulin and androgen levels, restoring ovulation and fertility in more than 75 percent of patients.

Angela Grassi, a registered dietitian who also has PCOS, says that because women who are overweight are likely to experience more insulin resistance than those who are not, they can get locked into a cycle of weight gain. “The more weight you gain, the more corresponding insulin your body produces, and the more you continue to gain weight,” she said.

But this underlying metabolic dysfunction is at work even in women of a healthy weight, according to Daniel Dumesic, a reproductive endocrinologist at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

“Research shows that unlike most women, lean women with PCOS tend to burn protein instead of fat while they’re sleeping. This might explain one of the reasons why despite their best efforts, it’s much harder for women with PCOS to lose weight,” he said.

Many doctors prescribe the drug metformin to help regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. The medication is traditionally used to treat Type 2 diabetes, as it makes the body more sensitive to insulin, and decreases the amount of glucose the liver releases. A meta-analysis published online in June in the journal Human Reproductive Update demonstrated that when metformin is combined with lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise, it has been shown to help women with PCOS lose more body fat, achieve lower blood sugar, and improve menstruation better than lifestyle modification alone.

Regular menstruation is important for the prevention of endometrial cancer. Women with PCOS are three times more likely to have endometrial cancer than women without. When a woman isn’t menstruating on a frequent basis, the lining of the uterus (endometrium) can begin to grow excessively and undergo atypical cell changes resulting in a precancerous condition called endometrial hyperplasia. If left untreated, this can develop into full endometrial cancer. Hormonal birth-control pills are often prescribed to help women with PCOS shed their endometrium more regularly, an important measure for preventing the overgrowth of cells in the uterus.

“If a woman knows from a young age that she may have a more difficult time than her peers maintaining a healthy body weight and reproductive system, than she can make sustainable lifestyle changes early on,” said Dumesic.

Unfortunately, awareness of the condition is not widespread and many physicians do not perform the necessary diagnostic tests or recognize that PCOS has broad and potentially devastating consequences. According to the non-profit support organization, PCOS Challenge, Inc., PCOS awareness and support organizations receive less than 0.1 percent of the government, corporate, foundation, and community funding that other health conditions receive.

Only a small number of researchers receive funding to study PCOS and most of the money goes toward studying the infertility side of the disorder. Nestler says women would benefit if more of the funding went toward researching the metabolic mechanisms of PCOS that underlie the development of diabetes and heart disease.

Dumesic believes the complex metabolic, hypothalamic, pituitary, ovarian, and adrenal interactions that characterize the condition may be to blame for the deficit in PCOS specialists and researchers.

“When any condition crosses disciplines and doesn’t have a full investment in [one of them], it often falls through the cracks. There are elements of reproduction in PCOS, but most reproductive endocrinologists mostly do in-vitro fertilization and are not necessarily interested in metabolism. Medical endocrinologists, who are mostly interested in metabolism, aren’t usually interested in reproduction and ovarian function,” Dumesic said.

For women who don’t receive timely, appropriate care for PCOS in early adolescence, the development of symptoms such as facial-hair growth can become more challenging to treat. Brandy Cramer, 33, a program officer at The Cameron Foundation, from Midlothian, Virginia says her doctors told her she just wasn’t trying hard enough to lose weight and dismissed her when she requested they run blood tests or suggest alternatives to the birth-control pills that gave her intense migraines. Cramer grew facial hair and has only been able to remove 50 percent of it, even after expensive laser hair-removal treatment.

“I had no support or resources to learn how to manage my PCOS. It wasn’t until I was able to connect with other women who had it that I started to feel less isolated and learned how to advocate for myself,” said Cramer.

Gretchen Kubacky, a health psychologist who also has PCOS, says the condition has a significant impact on the mental health of her clients on both a situational and chemical level.

“Often times the cosmetic issues are huge, depending on the severity. When you summarize the typical PCOS patient as someone who is fat, has acne, and male-pattern baldness, that is definitely depressing, but that in and of itself is not enough to cause depression,” she said. “It’s the hormonal imbalances that have a real neurobiological affect on the brain and we have evidence that the excess of androgens in women is definitely linked to depression.”

Sara Eaton, a 30-year-old ballroom dance teacher based in Augusta, Georgia, says PCOS has had a significant impact on her health, body image, and self-confidence since she was diagnosed at age 15.

“It’s a frustrating, difficult, and sometimes heartbreaking thing to deal with,” Eaton said. Eaton’s PCOS has given her male-pattern baldness, acne, obesity, and skin tags. In spite of her challenging symptoms, she dances and works out several times a week. “There aren't many women who look like me who can get on the floor and move like I do, who are comfortable enough in their skin to step into the spotlight and demand that people look at them,” she said.

Until PCOS is better-understood, Eaton says women need to look out for themselves and their fellow “cysters.”

“Don't just trust what the first doctor you see says without doing some research,” she says. “Find another woman with PCOS, go online to some of these support groups. Find a reproductive endocrinologist who knows what they're doing. Talk to other cysters, read the articles, look for doctor recommendations. We have a syndrome that is so complicated and confusing, one of the best ways we can help ourselves is to be proactive and make sure we find the best and most knowledgeable caregivers available to us.”

#pcos #polycystic ovary syndrome #stbm #the atlantic #hormone disorder #testosterone #cysts #polycystic #follicular cysts #ovaries #gynecology #health #endometrial cancer #reproductive endocrinologist #endocrinology #long reads

[postmodern-sleaze]

Alex Chilton sings, deep in Kentucky where you’ll never find me. I didn’t want Charlie to find me. When I moved to California, though I plied Charlie with virtual postcards of my new life — the trembling palm trees, my tortoiseshell Ray-Bans that I had originally given to Sam, a coffee cup set on white marble — I made a point of not giving him my address. I don’t know if he even had my phone number. I valiantly defended him against my mother, who was fully invested in making uncharitable assessments of Charlie’s character and grim predictions about our future, like a cruel clairvoyant. I did genuinely appreciate that California was much closer to Texas; I felt that it would give Charlie some comfort. But already, consciously or not, I was setting myself up to leave without a trace. One day, like a dog on a missing poster, I would just no longer be there to greet him. At long last, I found myself too old to be irresolute about my decisions, and finally accepted the simple premise that I could have duties towards myself.

I visited Texas three times in total. By the third time, I was already sleeping with someone new. I didn’t love this person, but the bare fact he wasn’t Charlie was enough to impart a grim triumph that boosted my self-regard. Arturo was more like a steaming bath designed for women to dive tragically into, yet not deep enough to actually drown in. I met him at a friend’s birthday party in San Francisco. It is no exaggeration that, after clocking him in the corner of the bar, I sensed that I should probably avoid him at all costs. But he waited for me meaningfully by the bannister as I wended my way upstairs, and I was taken back to something Andrei had said exactly four years before: Sure, you have a boyfriend, but leave him for me. Both men were endowed with the same brash confidence, but while Andrei had wild emotional impulses, Arturo was unconcerned with matters of love. Maybe he had given up on them entirely, and I was unsure as to whether he had suffered a past wound or been the one to inflict it. Away from the crowd, he leaned in close and spoke huskily in my ear about going to Los Angeles, where he had a good cocaine hookup. It didn’t matter that there was really only one thing on his mind — after all, weren’t we in agreement?

Arturo was ten years older, which excited me at the time. He looked like a walking composite of all the men I had ever wanted to fuck, including Charlie, with the strikingly dark hair and eyes. I sensed something hollow about him, but it was the kind of emptiness I needed to uncover for myself. In a bid to impress me, he’d claimed that he was German, and that he had grown up in Valencia, when he was actually Ecuadorian. His father was allegedly a semi-famous footballer. The next time we met, he picked me up in a BMW station wagon, presumably the one he used to drive his wife and son. With his hand on my thigh, we sipped cocktails in a Thai karaoke bar. It radiated psychedelic blue and purple, thrumming with the plaintive voices of other customers whose faces we never saw. In the back of his car, agitated into a frenzy, I undid his belt and trousers and climbed astride him. We maintained eye contact as I gripped his neck between my ice-cold hands. Afterwards, he dropped me off for tapas on a rooftop with my colleagues, as if my legs weren’t wobbly and I had not just broken my fidelity to Charlie. Charlie would never know it, but his worst fear had come true.

My subsequent encounters with Arturo were in a hotel, and his apartment. The hotel was much easier. I wanted Arturo, but I didn’t want to know more about him than I had to. It did not feel right for us to lie side-by-side on the floor, playing his record collection and thumbing through his Weimar memorabilia, or to hear him brushing his teeth fastidiously in the next room. I preferred it when we sat in silence in our Uber, already drunk on red wine, and saturated with anticipation of what was about to transpire between us. I checked in at reception with my British identification card, as if it were part of a clever ruse. The modest room was on the second floor, and if you opened the window, you could hear the roar from the train tracks nearby. The sun had just begun to set, and Arturo methodically drew all the curtains before he lifted my dress and kissed a forceful trail down my stomach, although he never did like to kiss on the mouth. He wore a memorably smoky cologne that lingered on my clothes, and for that moment, it was my goal to possess him completely.

Arturo told me that he was besieged with night terrors. He sometimes felt a clammy hand reaching out to clutch his shoulder and march him on his way to death, which he simulated on me without warning. A person with less empathy and reserve would have yelled out in fright, but I felt sorry for him. We listened to Julio Jaramillo in bed with me curled up tight against his spine. I was thoroughly moved by Jaramillo’s pensive delivery, but Arturo informed me matter-of-factly that he was no longer able to cry, not even if he tried. Later on, in the shower together, he dutifully shampooed my hair, which was cut like a boy’s, and remarked with amazement that it was shorter than his own. I still feel his hot skin against mine, the warm water coursing over our shoulders and trickling down to our toes in tepid rivulets. The dusty train tracks and jam-packed highways and jagged mountains and concrete sprawl wrapping around us, the stillness and pollution of the air we breathed, how the smoke from our cigarette faded into the night. We clung to each other as strangers who would depart in separate taxis, ultimately feeling nothing at all, even if I had once traced every surface on his body.

When I left for Texas — the very last time I saw Charlie — I temporarily deleted Arturo from my phonebook. He had been warned not to contact me, and I knew he would not care enough to disregard my wishes. Up to that point, his messages were infrequent, irregular, and the clear products of acute intoxication. He liked to mutter about marrying me or taking me on his business trips to Seattle or screwing without a condom. I took none of this seriously, of course, but I could never be too careful if Charlie were involved.

[weepingstar]

Irregular Lovers - Chapter One

[ hey everyone! so this is my new AU i’m excited/NERVOUS about - please check the tags! let me KNOW if you’d like me to tag anything more, or if you appreciate it, or if you’re confused lol - i’ve been thinking about this AU for a long time, so if i make any assumptions/leave things out let me know. missed you all <3 ] 

Read on AO3 

Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

Graves saw the word, let his thumb rest against the thin paper of the book Unused and Useless Terms for Those with Nothing Else To Do and felt that he himself knew its effects. His heart, a place which was once filled by one very specific person who ambled around happily - leaving her things here and there, sleeping in warm corners - was empty. The occupier had flown away unhappily to the other side of the world, keeping busy with charity dinners and balls, whilst the two of them remained miserable and separated.

Graves flicks the pages for a while longer until he happens across another.

Apricity: the warmth of the sun in the Winter.

He thinks again of Credence

Percival Graves had been irritable for days. Celestia had noted that from the moment her fiance had received the telegram informing him that his sister wanted to meet, he’d been insufferable and moody, irritable to the extreme. He glimpsed at the clock much more than she thought necessary, tapped his quill in an incredibly annoying manner and snapped at the slightest thing. She didn’t quite understand the dynamic between the two siblings and Percival didn’t welcome questions about the two of them either.

The facts that Celestia knew were these:

Miss Credence Graves had been adopted by Graves’ father - her mother an attractive dancer named Caroline who performed at a gentleman’s club he frequented, her biological father unknown, and absent. The fact of Graves’ recently deceased wife did not however serve as a deterrent for the young Caroline, but spurred her on that much more. The marriage between the eldest Graves and his dancer had lasted, their quick love hadn’t.

As to how Credence had come to live with her brother - it was some kind of taboo to speak of it or ask any questions, so she didn’t. All she could understand was that something must have happened in the home of the eldest Graves for Percival to finally be able to move his sister in with him. Celestia vividly remembers the one occasion Percival had invited her in for a late night drink and Credence had been stood silently at the stairs in her white nightgown, staring with large, dark eyes. Percival had quickly ushered Celestia out again, while soothing Credence for some unknown reason.

From what Celestia could gather, the two had been inseparable until the short period of time before her and Percival’s engagement had been announced. Aurors in Graves’ department had shared their stories of Graves coming into work with a sulky younger Credence, holding her hand and using the other to practice his wandwork. From her own experience, she could tell that the pair were utterly devoted to one another, at first something she had found rather sweet. She could imagine Percival caring just as much for their own children, could see how patient and attentive he was and found it to be a surprising but very agreeable trait. Her meetings with Credence always left her knocked off centre - just old enough now to be married herself, but still acting like a little girl with her doting brother - she was quiet and cautious. Her large eyes tracked people about the room, she often kept closely to Percival and could be found under his arm at whatever society event they were attending. Celestia would quite like to have disliked her, hated her even, just to make the situation a little easier when she’d run away and Percival had all but ignored his wife to be. However, the truth was that she couldn’t quite find anything to hate the girl for, she didn’t talk very much, and she was rather shy and nervous. Hating her would be an unpleasant and unnecessary thing.

Celestia knew they must have had quite a disagreement about something or other during the brief time her and Percival courted because she remembers his desperation to see Credence before she suddenly ran away, and then his intense silence once he’d gotten back having not caught her, holding a letter in his hand that he crumpled in one moment and smoothed over the next.

The two rarely fought, in fact, Celestia couldn’t think of only one occasion she’d witnessed even a tiff - Percival certainly spoke to her sternly at times, and the girl might pout a little, but otherwise they lived in absolute harmony it seemed. So when on one balmy evening in June, Grave returned with a defeated slump to his shoulders and a hard set to his jaw. Celestia was quite worried. As for the letter, Celestia hadn’t asked to read it because she knew it was bad news, knew it wasn’t her place. She eventually asked him where Credence was, said that she was looking forward to seeing her at the wedding, surely, Percival had looked straight through her and simply said, “She’s gone.”

Graves and Celestia were meant to be joined in matrimony in July, but Credence having run away just short of their ceremony halted all the proceedings. Graves was loathe to even speak of marriage and shut himself away in his study or busied himself at work. No matter how gently Celestia tried to coax him he wouldn’t be moved on the subject, refused to marry until Credence returned and things were made right. Guests were disinvited, dresses left half completed, flower orders turned up on their front doorstep when no one had thought to cancel them. Celestia felt terribly about it, held her tongue when it came to Credence and decided she’d act coldly towards the girl on her return. She didn’t quite understand why it was that her going away so suddenly delayed her and Percival’s marriage, or why it affected him so, all she knew was that there was no point in pushing Graves, because nothing good had ever come of that. Time passed slowly, and what first looked to be only a few weeks of delay turned into months, and then half a year had passed with Credence still gone and no ring on Celestia’s finger.

The extended period of Credence’s travels hadn’t gone by unnoticed, Celestia sometimes felt she knew more about her (soon to be) sister in law’s plans than Credence herself did. Percival mapped them out, had his underlings keeping track of her and his own privately employed spies following her around. Celestia told him that he might be going overboard, that he should give her a little space, don’t suffocate her she said, she’s a young woman, a little independence will surely be appreciated by her. Graves had looked down at a memo from his office, stating that his sister was in Belgium and said, “She’s no good at looking after herself, you don’t understand-” Celestia had kissed his mouth to hush him in what she thought was an endearing way, Percival tensed up and didn’t return the affection. He wasn’t ever particularly amorous, but that was just what Celestia was used to from him.

~

Several months into his sister’s departure from the USA and the halting of their… whatever it was, Graves receives the telegram. Puzzled at first with such a no-maj form of communication, it suddenly dawns on him and he rips the envelope open. It’s from her. She wants to meet.

Graves strokes the ‘X’ at the end of the message, something that makes him happier than he’d been in months, and gives him hope, makes him smile at the fact his little sister told the telegram office in her soft, sweet accent to please put a kiss on the end.

Unfortunately for Graves, his sister specifies a day a week from now, being impatient already he begins pacing daily, growling at anyone stupid enough to enter his office at MACUSA, a giant angry dog barely caged.

When the day finally comes, Celestia barely has the chance to ask where he’s going before he’s out of the door, coat tails whipping around him, door slamming shut. Celestia was very aware when she agreed to marry Percival that he was ultimately devoted to his sister, however strange that might be, and that she mustn’t become jealous, as it wasn’t any use to her. This in mind, it doesn’t help the sting she feels when he up and leaves without a moment’s notice for her, without a kiss, without a goodbye. She’d overheard hushed telephone conversations between the two of them - infrequent as they were - and she burned with envy at his sweet voice to his sister, his careful enquiries.

Graves is early, of course. He stands in Berlin train station, watches people in their trench coats pass by, burdened with luggage. Doesn’t see a slight figure with a mink stole and no luggage in hand, a trolley following her with monogrammed cases. Not yet. The long windows of the building let in columns of light that illuminate passing figures, but none that he has any interest in.

He taps out a slim cigarette from a gold case, lights it and takes a deep drag to calm his nerves, his limbs feel looser now, more so than they had for months, his face feels relaxed and lacks his now signature frown. He sees a flash of white, fur, black glossy hair and is suddenly overcome with an armful of his little sister.

As usual, she was late.

To anyone else in the station, they would look like two lovers meeting again after a long time had passed, the small girl wrapped up tightly and the two embracing like the world was about to end, she was on tiptoes to reach up farther in her enthusiasm, when the older man picked her up and held her close, a kiss pressed carefully to her lips.

#Irregular Lovers #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fbwtft #fbawtft #Fic #series #writing #credence barebone #percival graves #credence as a girl #fluff #alternative universe #graves is married #cheating #UTTER DEVOTION #angst #star cross'd lovers #pseudo-incest #gravebone #gradence #graves and credence are adopted siblings

[loganspace]

How long contain you been the use of your present smartphone? The answer for an increasing selection of potentialities is years,plural. In any case, why purple meat up as soon as a year when next year’s mannequin is nearly exactly the an analogous because the gadget you’re maintaining in your hand?

Dutch social projectFairphonesees this asa possibility to promote sustainability. Of project to flip a dialog about ‘stalled smartphone innovation’ on its head by encouraging patrons to evaluate more seriously about the costs enthusiastic about pumping out the following shiny factor. And promote them on the financial savings — particular person and collective — of maintaining their staple gadget regular.

Its newest smartphone, the Fairphone 3 — honest released this week in Europe — represents the startup’s easiest likelihood but of afraid the comfort hole between the following hotly anticipated touchscreen gizmo and a fairer proposition that requires an altogether cooler head to appreciate.

On the ground Fairphone 3 looks appreciate a slightly usual, if a dinky bit thick (1cm),Androidsmartphone. But that’s unquestionably the level. This 4G phone could perchance perhaps perchance be your smartphone, is the intended message.

Specs vivid, you’re getting largely middling, slightly than stand out stuff. There’s a 5.7in stout HD trace, aQualcommSnapdragon 632 chipset, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (expandable by microSD), a 12MP rear lens and 8MP front-facing digicam. There’s moreover NFC on board, a fingerprint reader, dual nano-SIM slots and a 3,000mAh battery that can even be removed for straightforward replacement when it wears out.

There’s moreover a 3.5mm headphone jack: The helpful port that’s being erased on the head rate smartphone tier,  killing off a bunch of wired accessories with it. So ‘sluggish replacement’ smartphone hardware demonstrably encourages much less waste across the gadget ecosystem too.

However the exact distinction lies under the ground. Fairer here technique offer chain innovation to offer warfare-free minerals that walk into making the devices; social incentive programs that high up the minimal wages of meeting workers who build the phones together; and repairable, modular handset originate that’s intended to minimize environmental affect by supporting a longer lifespan. Repair, don’t substitute is the mantra.

The whole further effort that goes into making a smartphone much less ethically tense to absorb is pointless to sigh invisible to the bare gape. So the Fairphone 3 buyer largely has to hold the firm’s note on believe.

Doubtlessly the most intriguing visual evidence is repairability. Flip the phone over and a semi-opaque plastic backing offers a gaze of modular guts. A itsy-bitsy screwdriver integrated within the sphere enables you hold the phone to objects so you want to perchance perhaps perchance perchance also swap out particular person modules (such because the trace) in case they atomize or fail. Fairphone sells replacements by aspare parts partof its web pages.

Despite this radically modular and recent originate vs this present day’s hermetically sealed top rate mobiles the Fairphone 3 feels extremely solid to carry.

It’s no longer designed to pop apart with out concern. Certainly, there’s a stout thirteen screws maintaining the trace module in attach. Deconstruction takes work (and care now to no longer lose any of the teeny screws). So this is modularity purely as occasional utility, no longer flashy celebration trick — as withGoogle’s doomed Ara Mission.

For some that will doubtless be disappointing. Exactly because this modular phone feels so, properly, boringly recurring.

Visually basically the most stand out feature at a stumble on is the Fairphone logo picked out in metal white lettering on the wait on. Those taking a 2nd stumble on will moreover location a moralizing memo printed on the battery so it’s legible by the matte plastic — which reads: “Trade is in your fingers”. It’s going to be a dinky bit cringeworthy but whenever you happen to’ve paid for an ethical top rate you want to perchance perhaps perchance as properly flaunt it.

It’s honest to sigh originate followers won’t be going wild over the Fairphone 3. But it certainly feels nearly intentionally tiring. As if — as properly as to afraid manufacturing costs — the level is to provoke on shoppers that ethical internals are bigger than sufficient of a hipster model divulge.

It’s moreover honest that the bulk smartphones are if fact be told unparalleled the an analogous, hardware, facets and efficiency vivid. So — at this elevated mid-tier designate-level (€450/~$500) — why no longer flip the user smartphone sales pitch on its head to originate it about afraid slightly than maximizing affect, by a tiring but unparalleled usual?

That then pushes other folks to rely on how sustainable is an pricey butworthless— and so, philosophically talking, pointless — top rate? That’s the rely on Fairphone 3 appears to be like designed to pose.

Or, to put it every other manner, if recurring can even be ethical then shouldn’t ethical electronics be the norm?

Current is what you catch in other places with Fairphone 3. Purely judged as a smartphone its efficiency isn’t one thing to write home about. It exams your whole frequent boxes of messaging, images, apps and Web browsing. You would also inform it will get the job carried out.

Obvious, it’s no longer buttery serene at every display conceal conceal and app transition. And it could well if fact be told feel a dinky bit sluggish on the uptake infrequently. Severely the digicam, whereas slightly responsive, isn’t lightning instant. Photo quality is no longer ugly — but no longer supreme either.

Testing the digicam I chanced on images inclined to high acutance and over saturated colours. The gadget moreover struggles to tackle mixed mild and shade — meaning you want to perchance perhaps perchance perchance also catch a darker and much less balanced shot that you just hoped for. Low mild efficiency isn’t enormous either.

That talked about, in factual mild the Fairphone 3 can hold a beautifully acceptable selfie. Which is what most other folks will search files from so that you just can make use of the phone for.

Fairphone has talked about it’s carried out loads of labor to purple meat up the digicam vs the predecessor mannequin. And it has succeeded in bringing checklist efficiency up to workable usual — which is a enormous achievement at what’s moreover a a dinky bit reduced handset designate-level. Even though, naturally, there’s mild a tall hole in checklist quality vs the head rate discontinue of the smartphone market.

On the OS front, the phone runs a vanilla implementation of Android 9 out of the sphere — preloaded with the frequent bundle of Google products and companies and no added muddle so Android followers ought to if fact be told feel honest at home. (For folk who desire a Google-free more than just a few Fairphone says a future update will allow users to whole a wipe and simple install of Android Inaugurate Provide Mission.)

Briefly, purely as a smartphone, the Fairphone 3 affords dinky or no to explain about — so no screaming lack either. But again, if the level is to shrink the scale of the compromise Fairphone is asking patrons to originate in portray to elevate an ethically superior label of electronics they are slowly succeeding in closing the outlet.

It’s a project that’s clearly benefiting from the maturity of the smartphone market. While, on the cellular front, the transformative claims being made for 5G areclearly decades out— so there’s no predicament with asking shoppers to follow a 4G phone for years but to come wait on.

Given where the market has now marched to, a ‘fairer’ smartphone that affords benchmark basics at a beautifully acceptable median but with the promise of reduced costs over the longer time length — particular person, societal and environmental — does seem appreciate a proposition that will perchance perhaps magnify from what has to this level been an great enviornment of interest into one thing slightly elevated and more mainstream.

Zooming out for a 2nd, the Fairphone certainly makes an intriguing contrast with just some of the pricey chimeras struggling to be unfolded on the head discontinue of the smartphone market honest now.

Foldables appreciate theSamsung Galaxy Fold— which clocks in at round 4x the price of a Fairphone and affords ~2x the display conceal conceal exact estate (when unfolded), plus a energy bump. Whether the Fold’s lux bundle translates into mobile utility squared is a whole other rely on, even though.

And where foldables will want to present a compelling use-case that goes above and previous the Swiss Military utility of a recurring smartphone to account for this sort of whopping designate bump, Fairphone need easiest gash the user ethical sense — as it asks you pay a dinky bit more and go for a dinky bit much less.

Neither of these sales pitches is insist free, pointless to sigh. And, for now, every foldables and fairer electronics remain irregular niches.

But with the Fairphone 3 demonstrating that ethical can if fact be told feel so recurring it doesn’t seem previous the pale to factor in build a question to for electronics that are sensible in efficiency but pack an ethical punch scaling up to insist the mainstream parade of copycat items.

[NEWS] Fairphone 3 is a normal smartphone with ethical shine – Loganspace How long contain you been the use of your present smartphone? The answer for an increasing selection of potentialities is years,

#Cool #News

[fairyprincess13]

Wishing...And Thinking...And Hoping...

And we’re just wishing...and thinking...and hoping....Insert music notes here, haha.

But on a serious note, (haha no pun intended) have you ever had something that you wanted more than anything, something that meant the absolute world to you? That one special thing that you’d do anything and I mean ANYTHING to get? Yeah? Well then you know exactly what I mean!! It’s extremely frustrating. 

For me my thing that I want more than anything is a family. I wanted a family as long as I could remember. I did like most people, found a suitable mate, we dated, got engaged and then finally got married. Like most other couples once you get married usually the discussion of kids enter into the picture. We had talked about it but at the time never could get on the same page. I wanted kids but he wasn’t ready to have them or he didn’t feel that we were financially stable enough. There was always a reason in the way, that is up until January 2015. On that date we came to an agreement that we would FINALLY start trying to have our very own baby. We didn’t tell anyone at the time. Some people thought we shouldn’t have our own kids at the time and we didn’t want to hear lectures and negativity. After 6 months we told a few friends that we had started trying, but so far hadn’t had any luck. 6 months turned into a year and one year turned into two. Still no luck. We finally saw the OB/GYN. All she could tell me at the time was, “Your a1c levels are not where I would like them to be, I want them below 7 and you’re currently at an 8.5, so I’m not prescribing any fertility medications, but I want you to go see a reproductive endocrinologist.” I was not happy with this answer but I agreed to give it a shot.

Shortly after that visit the ob/gyn office called with a diagnosis of Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, also known as PCOS. (” Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age. Women with PCOS may have infrequent or prolonged menstrual periods or excess male hormone (androgen) levels. The ovaries may develop numerous small collections of fluid (follicles) and fail to regularly release eggs. Complications of PCOS can include: Infertility, Gestational diabetes or pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, Miscarriage or premature birth, Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis — a severe liver inflammation caused by fat accumulation in the liverMetabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels that significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, Sleep apnea, Depression, anxiety and eating disorders, Abnormal uterine bleeding, Cancer of the uterine lining (endometrial cancer). Symptoms may include:Menstrual problems. These can include few or no menstrual periods or heavy, irregular bleeding.Hair loss from the scalp and hair growth (hirsutism) on the face, chest, back, stomach, thumbs, or toes.Acne and oily skin, Fertility problems, such as not releasing an egg (not ovulating) or repeat miscarriages.Insulin resistance and too much insulin (hyperinsulinemia), which can cause things like upper body obesity and skin tags.Depression or mood swings. For more information, see the topic Depression or Depression in Children and Teens.Breathing problems while sleeping (obstructive sleep apnea). This is linked to both obesity and insulin resistance.”)

We went to see the reproductive endocrinologist and I got the same answer from him as I did the ob/gyn, except he wanted my a1c level to be at 5, he also stated that pregnancy would not be possible without fertility medication. My diabetes endocrinologist said, “Absolutely not!! That is too dangerous for you and that would mean you would have too many cases of your blood glucose levels bottoming out. 7.5-7.0 is perfectly fine!”

So nearly 3 years later, still no baby and doctor’s will not get on the same page. Talk about super frustrating. It also makes it very hard when people ask, just being curious and trying to be friendly, “Do you have kids?”, “When are you and your husband going to have kids?”, “Do you want kids?”, “Why haven’t you had any yet?”, “Don’t you think you should get on that?”. I mean how do you answer that? How do you even begin to explain the torture, pain, frustrations and nightmares you’ve had over the issue? So when people ask, I just shrug and say I don’t know. I try to put on a blank face and act like I don’t care, even though inside I am screaming and wanting to know why. Many nights I have and still do cry myself to sleep wondering why am I not good enough to be a mom when so many other shitty parents out there have kids. Every time you see it on the news that a mother had a baby and threw it in the trash to die. Or every time there’s a child abuse case and you think, I could definitely do a better job. Every time you see a friend or family member announce that they’re expecting and you want to be happy for them, on some level you are happy for them but at the same time the pain and hurt and depression kicks in and you can’t help but think, “when is it going to be my turn?” 

If all of that isn’t enough, some of the side effects that go with the PCOS, Diabetes and Hypothyroidism are also extremely frustrating. The main one being weight gain with the extremely difficult, almost impossible time trying to lose the weight. It is beyond frustrating when you try everything you know, talk to doctor after doctor after doctor and nothing works and they all just want to tell you the same thing over and over, “Eat right and exercise.” What do you do when you’re already doing that but it truly isn’t working?

I refuse to give up though, I will keep trying. One day I will be successful. One day, every thing will fall into place. One day, my dream will come true. 

[rubedo-pills-blog]

Pasakojimas apie du naratyvus. Kas vyksta Sirijoje? #6

Savo kalbos pabaigoje Eva Bartlett gavo klausimą: „Kodėl žiniasklaidai reikia meluoti ir iškraipyti faktus?“ Žurnalistė atsakė, kad rytų Alepe nėra jokių veikiančių tarptautinių organizacijų ir visa gaunama informacija yra iš Sirijos žmogaus teisių organizacijos, įsikūrusios Didžiojoje Britanijoje ir įvairių susikompromitavusių vietinių organizacijų, iš kurių garsiausia yra „Baltieji šalmai“.

„Baltieji šalmai“ yra humanitarinę pagalbą Sirijoje teikianti organizacija, kurią 2013 įkūrė buvęs britų karininkas. Organizacija surinko per 100 milijonų JAV dolerių iš Europos Sąjungos, JAV ir kelių kitų valstybių. Jie tvirtina padedantys vietos gyventojams karo zonose, bet niekas rytų Alepe (vietoje, kurioje baltieji šalmai dedasi veikiantys) nėra apie juos girdėjęs. Eva Bartlett teigia, kad „Baltieji šalmai“ nors ir teigia esą neutralūs, yra užfiksuoti nešantis ginklus ar stovintys prie Sirijos karių kūnų. Taip pat jie įvairiuose žinių pranešimuose naudoja tuos pačius vaikus. Tai reiškia, kad jie fiksuodami „karo nusikaltimus“ rytų Alepe ir tarkime Idlibe, naudoja tuos pačius vaikus skirtingose vietose. Jie nėra patikimi, visai kaip įvairūs neįvardinti aktyvistai. Žurnalistė užbaigia klausimą teigdama, kad dauguma vietinių gyventojų nemato Assado valdžios kaip problemos (ji remiasi 2014 metų prezidento rinkimais ir savo pokalbiais su Sirijos gyventojais). Problema yra islamistai maištininkai.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_presidential_election,_2014

Apgaulingas Vakarų žiniasklaidos pobūdis yra plačiai žinomas artimuosiuose Rytuose.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/15/terrorists-isis

2015 metais theguardian parašė straipsnį apie Islamo valstybės strategijų žinyną. Jo pavadinimas yra „ The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass“ (žodis Umma reiškia visą musulmonų bendruomenę), o jį 2006 metais parašė Abu Bakr Naji, kuris vėliau buvo nužudytas per JAV oro ataką. 

https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf

Šis žinynas veikia kaip taisyklių rinkinys džihadistams ir sudarytas iš strategijų kaip išstumti JAV viešpatiją Artimuosiuose Rytuose, naudojant JAV galią prieš juos pačius. Pacituosiu knygos ištrauką, kalbančią apie Vakarų žiniasklaidą:

The illusion of power: The centrality of the superpowers as a function of their overwhelming military power and deceptive media halo The two superpowers which used to dominate the global order controlled it through their centralized power. The meaning of Xcentralized powerY here is: The overwhelming military power which extends from the center in order to control the areas of land that submit to each superpower, beginning from the center and reaching the utmost extremity of these lands. Submission, in its primary, simplest form, means that these lands owe the center loyalty, submission to its judgment, and responsibility for its interests. There is no doubt that the power which God gave to the two superpowers (America and Russia) was overwhelming in the estimation of humans. However, in reality and after careful reflection using pure, human reason, (one comes to understand that this power) is not able to impose its authority from the country of the center e from America, for example, or Russia e upon lands in Egypt and Yemen, for example, unless these (latter) countries submit to those powers entirely of their own accord. It is correct that this power is overwhelming and that it seeks help from the power of local regimes controlled by proxies [al-wukalĆf] who rule the Islamic world. Yet all of that is not enough (to completely control the satellite states). 

Therefore, the two superpowers must resort to using a deceptive media halo which portrays these powers as non-coercive and world-encompassing, able to reach into every earth and heaven as if they possess the power of the Creator of creation.

Melagingos žiniasklaidos aureolė yra labai įdomus išsireiškimas ir parodo mums kaip mes atrodome iš išorės. Jie žino, kad mūsų žiniasklaida yra efektyvi valstybės propaganda. Jie žino, kad mūsų žiniasklaida nelabai informuota ir turi polinkį tikėti savo pačios melu.

2013 metų sausį, konspiracijos teorijų portalas inforwars tvirtino gavęs nutekėjusį elektroninį laišką, kad JAV planuoja surengti cheminio ginklo ataką Sirijoje, o kaltę suversti Assado rėžimui.

http://americanfreepress.net/hackers-expose-u-s-false-flag-to-frame-syria/

Žinau ką galvojate. Aš pats nelaikau inforwars kokybišku šaltiniu (su visa meile tau, Alex Jones), bet šis elektroninis laiškas visiškai atitinka JAV elgesio modelį Artimuosiuose Rytuose ir jos norus nuversti šio regiono rėžimus. Toks buvo el. laiško tekstas:

Phil, we’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved in Washington. We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell [sic] from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record. Frankly, I don’t think it is a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards,

David

Nesiūlau priimti šio el. laiško kaip universalios tiesos, bet nesiūlau jo atmesti, nes, kaip ir sakiau, jis puikiai atitinka JAV elgesio modelį.

Labai plačiai cituojama 2013 metų žmogaus teisių tarnybos ataskaita apie 2013-08-21 cheminio ginklo panaudojimą Damasko priemiestyje Ghouta, kuris galimai buvo įvykdytas Assado rėžimo.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria

Our investigation finds that the August 21 attacks were likely chemical weapons attacks using a surface-to-surface rocket system of approximately 330mm in diameter—likely Syrian-produced—and a Soviet-era 140mm surface-to-surface rocket system to deliver a nerve agent. Evidence suggests the agent was most likely Sarin or a similar weapons-grade nerve agent. Three local doctors told Human Rights Watch that victims of the attacks showed symptoms which are consistent with exposure to nerve gas, including suffocation; constricted, irregular, and infrequent breathing; involuntary muscle spasms; nausea; frothing at the mouth; fluid coming out of noses and eyes; convulsing; dizziness; blurred vision; and red and irritated eyes, and pin-point pupils.

Neabejoju, kad žmogaus teisių tarnyba šią ataskaitą parašė rimtai ir sąžiningai, bet jei el. laiškas iš infowars yra tiesa (tik primenu, jog laiškas buvo paskelbtas likus aštuoniems mėnesiams iki cheminio ginklo atakos) tai jie buvo apgauti taip kaip planavo el. laiško autorius.

O Jungtinių Tautų tyrimas padarė išvadą, kad yra didelė galimybė, jog sukilėliai panaudojo cheminį ginklą, o ne Assado rėžimas:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/syrian-rebels-used-sarin-nerve-gas-not-assads-regi/

Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.

Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

Tai buvo patvirtinta per 2013 metų birželio interviu su „Laisvosios Sirijos armijos“ generolu, kuris atrodo grasina žvalgybos tarnyboms, kad šios turi vieną mėnesį suteikti jam prieštankinių ir priešlėktuvinių ginklų:

https://www.memri.org/tv/fsa-general-gives-intl-community-one-month-provide-anti-tank-anti-aircraft-weapons/transcript (interviu tekstas)

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=53a_1371637813 (pats interviu)

Interviewer: There is a lot of talk about advanced weapons, and about the fact that countries are supplying the Free Syrian Army with advanced weapons like anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: That's right. In my opinion, if we were provided with such weapons, we would shorten the timetable set for this country.

Interviewer: Who set this timetable?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: The superpowers.

Interviewer: They set a timetable for the revolution?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Yes.

Interviewer: So what you are saying is that these countries want to control the timing of the victory of the revolution or the toppling of the regime?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Yes.

Interviewer: What is their aim?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Various agendas and schemes. I do not know all the details of these schemes, but I can tell you that it is difficult for us to overcome the timetable set for the revolution. Let me give you some evidence. The weapons and ammunition that the FSA receives do not include anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapons. We are unable to confront these [tanks and aircraft] here.

[...]

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: In all candidness, I would like to see a civilized state, with Islamic law. Let me give you an example. We would like our army, in the future, to have a clear Islamic nature.

[...]

I give the international community one month to provide the rebels and the FSA with weapons and ammunition, so that we can defeat this criminal regime. We give them one month. If we see that the international community continues to desert our revolution, we will reveal all the evidence we have about use of chemical weapons. I think you know full well that I mean what I say.

Dėka wikileaks paviešinto el. laiško Hillary Clinton nuo Jake Sullivan, mes žinome, kad iki 2012 metų al-Qaeda Sirijoje buvo jų pusėje:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23225

See last item - AQ is on our side in Syria. Otherwise, things have basically turned out as expected.

O kitas elektroninis laiškas, 2014 metais Johno Podestos nusiųstas Hillary Clinton, parodo, kad JAV sąjungininkai Saudo Arabija ir Kataras teikia karinę ir logistinę paramą Islamo valstybei, kuri tuo metu buvo al-Nusros sukilėlių sąjungininkė:

>> temporary solutions. While this military/para-military operation is moving >> forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence >> assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, >> which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and >> other radical Sunni groups in the region. This effort will be enhanced by >> the stepped up commitment in the KRG. The Qataris and Saudis will be put >> in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to >> dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure. By >> the same token, the threat of similar, realistic U.S. operations will serve >> to assist moderate forces in Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, where >> insurgents are increasingly fascinated by the ISIL success in Iraq. 

https://archive.is/r6YM5

[heliosfinance]

Investing Lesson from How Doctors (Don’t) Think

It was a summer afternoon. Sunnybrook Hospital in Canada received an accident case. A young woman driver had a head-on collision with another car. She had suffered broken bones everywhere.

The doctors found multiple fractures in her ankles, feet, hips, and face. Initially, they missed the fracture in her ribs that they later found out.

During her diagnosis, the doctors found something else that was not right with the woman. Her heart was beating unusually. The rhythm of her heartbeat had become wildly irregular. It was either skipping beats or adding extra beats.

The emergency room staff soon diagnosed the heart problem – or thought they had. The woman told them that she had a history of an overactive thyroid. An overactive thyroid can cause an irregular heartbeat. So the staff no longer needed any further investigations for the source of the irregular heartbeat but to treat it.

By this time, they had invited an intern named Don Redelmeier, whose job at the hospital was, in part, to check the understanding of the specialists for mental errors. In other words, Redelmeier’s job was to serve a check on other people’s, especially doctors’, thinking.

As the emergency room staff was about to administer the drugs for hyperthyroidism to the woman patient, Redelmeier asked them to slow down. To wait. Just a moment. Just to check their thinking – and to make sure they were not trying to force the facts into an easy, coherent, but ultimately false story.

Something bothered him. As he later said, “Hyperthyroidism is a classic cause of an irregular heart rhythm, but hyperthyroidism is an infrequent cause of an irregular heart rhythm.”

So the emergency room staff had quickly jumped to the conclusion that the woman’s excess thyroid hormone production was the cause of the dangerous beating of the heart. They did not bother to consider what were statistically far more likely causes of an irregular heartbeat.

But then, doctors, like most of us, do not think statistically. That would involve the reflective part of the brain, which would require incremental effort, and be time-consuming.

Just like 95% of drunk drivers don’t think the statistics that show that you are more likely to be killed if you are driving drunk than if you are driving sober, applies to them. Just like 100% of lottery buyers don’t think the statistics that show that your chance of winning the bumper prize is around one in 14 million, or 0.00001%, applies to them. Just like 99% of people who borrow to trade in stocks during bull markets don’t think the statistics that show that you are more likely to be ruined financially if you are trading with borrowed money than if you are with your own, applies to them.

Anyways, coming back to what was happening in the emergency room of Sunnybrook Hospital, Redelmeier asked the staff to search for other, more statistically likely causes of the woman’s irregular heartbeat. That’s when they found her collapsed lung.

So, like her fractured ribs, her collapsed lung had failed to turn up on the X-ray. But unlike her fractured ribs, her collapsed lung would have killed her in some time.

It is then that the staff ignored the woman’s thyroid and treated her lung. And it is then that the woman’s heartbeat returned to normal.

She was tested for the functioning of her thyroid gland the very next day, and the results were anything but shocking for Redelmeier and his team. The woman’s thyroid hormone production was perfectly normal.

“It was a classic case of the representativeness heuristic,” said Redelmeier. “You need to be so careful when there is one simple diagnosis that instantly pops into your mind that beautifully explains everything all at once. That’s when you need to stop and check your thinking.”

From Emergency Room to Stock Market I read this above story in Michael Lewis’ wonderful book titled The Undoing Project, which is the story of noted psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and how their friendship and work has helped us think better.

The representativeness heuristic that Redelmeier talks about above is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty – like the probability of irregular heartbeat caused by hyperthyroid versus collapsed lung.

When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not actually make it more likely.

We use representativeness because it is easy on our brains (this looks like that, this goes with that). The problem is that people overestimate its ability to accurately predict the likelihood of an event, like the emergency room staff did in the case of the woman patient in the above story and jumped to the easiest conclusion that her irregular heartbeat was caused by hyperthyroidism.

Medical professionals often jump to conclusions. Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think, says that “most incorrect diagnoses are due to physicians’ misconceptions of their patients, not technical mistakes like a faulty lab test.”

Groopman explains that many doctors jump to conclusions in the following ways –

They assume the patient will state all relevant symptoms (or are forced to make an assumption due to thinking that seeking further personal information may lead to embarrassment),

They assume the patient will not want to undergo any unpleasant (albeit effective) treatment,

They assume the patient is a hypochondriac and therefore do not take their complaints seriously, or

They make a diagnosis even though they have not heard or understood all of the complaint and for whatever reason do not ask for clarification.

Anyways, let’s move away from doctors and the hospital emergency room and get into the stock market. Even here, representativeness and first conclusions rule the roost. This is because even the stock market involves making judgments under uncertainty.

In fact, ‘jumping to conclusion’ is one of the favourite sports of most people participating in the stock market. And this is what hurts them gravely. Like it hurt me big time when I bought the stock of Hotel Leela just after visiting its beautiful and fully-booked property a few years back, and quickly jumped to the conclusion that it automatically meant a great business. Truth be told, it was gruesome. And I sold out after a 45% loss.

Now, it isn’t that what first comes to our mind (the first conclusion), whether while treating a patient or in stock investing, is always wrong. In fact, we all jump to conclusions by making inferences and assumptions in most things we do in life, and it often helps us.

But what hurts us is that the existence of what first comes to our mind leads us to feel more certain than we should be that it is correct. In fact, mistakes are much more likely when people are unaware that they have jumped to conclusions, and instead think that their assumptions are actually facts.

Consider what Prof. Sanjay Bakshi told me when I interviewed him first in August 2012 –

Our minds jump to conclusions. Humans tend to solve problems by using the first solution that comes to mind. Charlie Munger often says that “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Let me give you an example of this from my own experience, as to why first conclusions are often wrong.

Let’s go back to the year 2003. This was the time when the steel industry was down in the dumps, and it was about to take off for a very big bull run. At that time, some of my value investor friends and I came to the conclusion that steel prices are going to go up. This was a time when most steel companies in the world were losing money. In fact, there were just a handful of companies that were making any money.

The steel cycle had been down for a very long time. We felt that here was a tipping point coming and things would get better, and steel prices will go up because steel capacity is getting tight and world economy, and in particular, Chinese economy, is growing.

Therefore, we thought there was going to be a shortage of steel, and it would take a long time for the shortage to go away because steel is a long gestation period industry.

We concluded that steel companies would benefit because of the huge rise in steel prices, which was a great insight. So far so good! But apart from concluding that rising steel prices must be good news for steel stocks, we also concluded that the same would be horrible news for auto stocks.

This kept us away from auto stocks based on the pure automatic first conclusion that high steel prices were bad news for auto stocks. That first conclusion turned out to be wrong.

Think about why it went wrong. The value of an auto stock (or any stock) is based on present value of its future cash flows. And rising steel prices may or may not be bad news so far as those cash flows are concerned. A rising input price may be passed on to the customer without suffering any volume decline. Or the rise in volumes caused the industry growth, may more than offset the shrinkage in margins because of a rise in input prices which the company is unable or unwilling to pass on to customers.

So the key factor to think about is not the impact on margins but the impact on cash flows. But the mind doesn’t always do this automatically. It jumps! It jumps to first conclusions, which are often wrong.

So you really have to train yourself out of first conclusion bias. You have to avoid seeking easily available answers to questions that begin with “why”.

Let me explain this with the help of an example.

Let’s look at this hypothetical stock. It has substantial cash on its balance sheet. It has no debt or other liabilities which have a prior claim on that cash. It also has an operating business. But the market value of the company is less than cash assets alone. This is a “cash bargain”.

Many of my students when they look at this thing, they say, “My God, this is not possible! How is it possible that in a market that is supposed to be efficient, you are seeing a stock selling below cash?” They want to buy it based on their first conclusions.

But under what circumstances would that first conclusion be wrong?

You see, the mind does not automatically think in those terms. The mind, instead, latches on to the first conclusion, which, in this case, is that the stock is ridiculously cheap, so it must be bought.

Now, I tell my students, “Let’s force us to think of three reasons why buying such a stock would be a mistake.”

They have to come up with three reasons. Why three? Why not one? Why not four? Well, three is good enough! The idea is to force yourself to come up with multiple reasons that go contrary to your first conclusion and only when you force your mind to come up with three, will it generate three very good reasons.

So what are the three reasons for “not” buying that cash bargain based on your first conclusion that it’s cheap?

Reason 1: Cash burn: Maybe the operating business is losing money and cash will be dissipated away in just a few quarters.

This is what happened to dotcoms after that bubble burst. Many companies had raised cash in the IPO bubble and now that the bubble had burst they were selling below cash. There wasn’t any debt because no sane banker would lend such start-ups any money.

But the operating businesses were burning cash at a rapid pace and it was only a matter of time when the cash would disappear.

Buying such “cash bargains” when they became available in the stock market, would have been a mistake.

Reason 2: Corporate mis-governance: What if the promoters of the company are well-entrenched because they have a 70% stake, and they have no intention of sharing the wealth of the company with the minority investors?

They pay no dividends, and will never liquidate the company. What’s such a company worth?

This company is what Graham once called the “frozen corporation” which will never be liquidated and will never pay a dividend.

Then what the company owns is irrelevant for minority investors, isn’t it? So just because the stock is selling below cash assets alone doesn’t necessarily make it an attractive investment.

Reason 3: Bubble market: When the markets are frothy, people desperately looking for value gravitate towards “cash bargains” because they are evidently cheap.

Well they are almost certainly making a mistake because history shows that when the markets decline, these stocks will also decline, often by much more than the market.

So, now we have three very good reasons for not buying the stock and we can now have a much more balanced debate about whether or not we should buy it.

We have trained ourselves out of first conclusion bias. And you have to do this automatically, like breathing.

To question your first conclusions by thinking forcefully about why they could be wrong – by doing this over and over again – you will become a better thinker, decision maker, and investor.

First Conclusions and Base Rates While we are indulging in forming quick conclusions, we forget the concept of ‘base rate’, also known as prior probability or the averaged-out experience from the past.

I have already written about the subject of base rate earlier, so I won’t take your time to explain it again here.

But the thought I want to leave you today with is that of being careful when things look too certain in the stock market. When jumping to conclusions come easy. When making money looks very easy. Like now.

Remember that the base rate or prior probability of sustainably doing well in the stock market by –

Buying expensive stocks, is low;

Buying bad businesses, is low;

Buying bad managements, is low;

Buying businesses you don’t know much about, is low

Buying into IPOs, is low;

Acting on tips, is low;

Borrowing to trade or invest, is low.

But most people in the stock market ignore base rates completely. They jump to quick conclusions hearing stories like that of an investor who did a few or most of everything mentioned above and still did well.

Such an investor – and you will find a lot of these shouting a lot on television and social media these days – will force many other investors to ignore base rates, and to focus on his story, to fool themselves into believing that such actions can’t be all that bad for them.

Luck, surprise, and uncertainty are the three physical forces that govern the stock market. And investors who deny the existence of these three forces, especially uncertainty, often destroy their savings in the long run.

Our hero of the above story, Don Redelmeier, was never completely certain about anything, and he didn’t see why anybody else should be, either.

In fact, when you are investing in the stock market, uncertainty and not certainty is your best friend.

As Seth Klarman wrote in his letter titled The Value of Not Being Sure –

Uncertainty breeds doubt, which can be paralyzing. But uncertainty also motivates diligence, as one pursues the unattainable goal of eliminating all doubt. Unlike premature or false certainty, which induces flawed analysis and failed judgments, a healthy uncertainty drives the quest for justifiable conviction.

Investing is a marathon, not a sprint. And people often get into a great deal of trouble when they are in a rush. When they start to believe in certainties, and when they start to jump to easy conclusions, completely ignoring base rates.

I hope you are not one them too. Check. Check.

The post Investing Lesson from How Doctors (Don’t) Think appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Investing Lesson from How Doctors (Don’t) Think published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[ittechit-blog]

Audit: When it comes to Android tablets, $149 is the new $199 Asus' Memo Pad HD 7 is the most recent volley in the Android tablet value war.

If you know the historical backdrop of the main Nexus 7, you'll realize that it didn't start life as a joint effort amongst Asus and Google. Google clearly observed Asus' Eee Pad Memo ME370T finally year's CES and was sufficiently awed to utilize it as the reason for the main Nexus-marked tablet. The Memo Pad HD 7 imparts a lot in like manner to its far off cousin, yet there's one critical distinction: it costs $149. That is $50 not as much as the first Nexus tablet and $80 not as much as its successor.

Despite everything we surmise that the new Nexus 7 is the best little Android tablet accessible at any cost, yet in the event that $229 is more than you need to pay, there are many things to like (and a couple of things to disdain) about the new Memo Pad.

Body, fabricate quality, and screen

From the front, the Memo Pad and the 2012 Nexus 7 look pretty much indistinguishable. They each have a front-confronting camera mounted in the focal point of the bezel over a seven-inch, 1280×800 show. The bezel width is the same on both tablets—somewhat smaller on the sides than on the top and base—and an Asus logo installed into the bezel beneath the screen is the greatest distinctive between the two. Both screens are encompassed by fundamentally the same as plastic edges, matte silver on the 2012 Nexus 7 however polished dark on the Memo Pad.

Flip the two tablets over and you'll discover more evident contrasts. The more seasoned Nexus 7 has a delicate touch plastic back with an alluring and pleasant to-hold surface, while the Memo Pad utilizes hard, level plastic in one of a few hues (our own is a close dark dim blue, yet pink, white, dim, and green are additionally accessible). The tablet has the 5MP back confronting camera that the 2012 Nexus 7 needs and furthermore incorporates a SD card opening for extending the capacity, however the catch and speaker situation is the same as a year ago's Google tablet. The Memo Pad is somewhat lighter than the Nexus (0.75 pounds contrasted with 0.67) yet generally the two are tantamount in stature, width, and thickness.

The most exceedingly awful thing about the tablet is that it feels unmistakably creaky and plasticky all through—it doesn't feel appalling in the hand, however you can tell the amount it costs by holding it in a way that is not valid for the old (or new) Nexus 7. It's not very unique in relation to how the Hisense Sero 7 Pro feels. Actually, while I for one couldn't care less as much for that tablet's dark colored and-just darker shading, the Sero feels like the sturdier tablet, however it's somewhat bigger and heavier subsequently. The Sero likewise has a LED glimmer to run with its back confronting camera, while the Memo Pad has none.

With respect to the screen, it's again like a year ago's Nexus 7. It's a 1280×800, 216 PPI IPS show with great survey edges and great (if marginally washed-out, contrasted with the new Nexus 7) hues. Tragically, it seems to experience the ill effects of a similar issue we saw in the Sero 7 Pro. There's somewhat more space between the front glass, which makes the board "pop" somewhat less (for absence of a superior, more logical word). Differentiate, shading immersion, and dark levels experience the ill effects of this change—it's not something you'll most likely notice in the event that you don't have the two tablets sitting alongside each other, yet it's unquestionably noticeable.The camera is certainly not incredible—it's fine for brisk, unglamorous, utilitarian things like taking pictures of names or QR codes. However, taking genuine photos that you would need to impart to other people is a shakier suggestion. It makes do a superior showing with regards to with hues and white adjust than the 2013 Nexus 7 though.Software

The Memo Pad ships with Android 4.2.1 (not 4.3 or even 4.2.2), and it's closer to stock Android than most notwithstanding a modest bunch of for the most part forgettable pre-stacked applications and some corrective changes. Truth be told, two of the biggest deviations from stock Android (the product console and notices pull-down) can be returned to stock in the settings on the off chance that you need, in spite of the fact that we do even now suggest downloading Google Keyboard from the Play store in the event that you need the most forward rendition of the default console.

There are three major deviations from stock Android that we can discuss here—one valuable, one that is quite recently irritating, and one that is pretty bad.The great change is gotten to by tapping that product catch to one side of the standard back, home, and multitasking catches. It will fly up a little plate of applets that you can drag onto the screen and keep running over top of the right now running application. We've seen not-exactly applications, not-exactly gadgets like this from organizations like Samsung, and for specific sorts of errands (the adding machine and unit converters strike us as especially valuable) they're a helpful option to the working framework.

The irritating change is what things look like, as opposed to how they work. Asus has put a light skin over the run of the mill seven-inch Android tablet interface—the settings menu is dark on-white rather than the a different way, and the status bar is infrequently straightforward rather than continually being dark (which can bring about issues with light-shaded foundations). There are likewise a few menus (like the framework refresh screen) where the stock white-on-dark Android UI is as yet prowling. One reason I favor stock Android to outsider skins is particularly a result of visual bugs and irregularities like these, regardless of the possibility that Asus' form of Android works precisely like Google's.Finally, the awful change: as we'll find in a minute, the tablet's execution in benchmarks isn't entirely different from a year ago's Nexus 7, however execution certainly doesn't feel as smooth more often than not. It's not unusable, but rather looking over and smoothness (those old Android execution bugaboos) manifest frequently enough to be worth saying. At long last, in spite of being a tablet that runs Android 4.2, multi-client support is prominently missing. It's typical for Android 4.2 and 4.3-running telephones to do not have the component, however tablets specifically will probably be shared by a few clients, so it's frustrating to see the element stripped over here.

Internals and execution

$149 gets you significantly more than it used to on both within and the outside, yet you shouldn't expect beat end execution from a tablet at this value point. Still, the Memo Pad HD 7 figures out how to give you pretty much as much crude execution as a year ago's tablet. It additionally incorporates (2.4GHz-just) 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of inherent stockpiling, however NFC is truant.

While the old Nexus 7 utilized Nvidia's Tegra 3 framework on-a-chip (SoC), the Memo Pad utilizes a quad-center chip from a lesser-known substance called MediaTek, in particular a 1.2GHz MT8125 (MediaTek is a greater player in developing markets, however in the US its chips have a tendency to show up for the most part in deal container equipment). This SoC joins four centers in light of ARM's Cortex A7 CPU engineering with an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544. The execution and engineering of the GPU is fundamentally the same as the PowerVR SGX543MP2 in Apple's iPad 2 and iPad smaller than expected, yet the Memo Pad incorporates just a single GPU center while Apple's tablets incorporate two.

Concerning Cortex A7, we experienced it quickly in the worldwide adaptation of Samsung's Galaxy S 4, yet there it was joined with four significantly quicker Cortex A15 centers that were doing the majority of the truly difficult work. All alone, Cortex A7 centers are intended to perform also to the more seasoned Cortex A9 engineering while at the same time devouring less power. Our Geekbench and program tests pretty much bear this out.Battery Life

The Memo Pad incorporates a 3950mAh battery, an indistinguishable limit from the 2013 Nexus 7. The slower, less eager for power internals enable it to keep going for somewhat longer on a solitary charge than that tablet, however—it played this calming waterfall video with the screen set to 50 percent splendor for seven hours and 24 minutes, a change over the 2013 model's six hours even. Nothing else about the tablet is top of the line, yet accordingly none of the segments are especially hard on the battery.

Caught between a stone and a shabby place

As we explore these yearly equipment cycles, it's anything but difficult to focus on the items that give you more stuff—a higher-determination screen, a speedier processor, more up to date programming—at a similar cost. These gadgets demonstrate to you where things are going and exactly what is conceivable with the most recent and most noteworthy innovation.

Similarly as intriguing to watch (and more commonsense, perhaps, for standard buyers) is the procedure by which that bleeding edge innovation streams down throughout the years, improving and better stuff accessible to an ever increasing number of individuals: that $50 Celeron processor that runs hovers around a Pentium 4 that cost $1,000 in its day; the free-with-contract telephone that is superior to anything as well as could be expected purchase only three or four years back; the Memo Pad HD 7 is of a piece with these. It conveys a not-immaculate but rather entirely great experience for $50 not as much as a comparative affair would have taken a toll six months or a year back.

There are two major reasons you might not have any desire to purchase the Memo Pad: one is the Sero 7 Pro, which includes NFC and 5GHz Wi-Fi to generally comparable execution for just $129. The other is, obviously, the 2013 Nexus 7, which is at present our most loved Android tablet without exception and retails for a not-absurd $229. The Memo Pad is amazing for what it costs, however it's not exactly sufficiently modest to be the spending alternative and not exactly adequate to be justified regardless of the additional money.