#Them giving my brain certain neuron activation

[petrichorade]

Two gorgeous scientists save me...save me two gorgeous scientists 😭😭😭

#honkai star rail #hsr #ruan mei #dr ratio #hsr fanart #dr ratio x ruan mei #ratiomei #idk people call them this but I like ruantio/meitio more for some reason #anywaysss my silly ass is weak for them and WHAT'S NEW #Them giving my brain certain neuron activation #second hsr ships ever to rot in my brain after danmarch they deserve some candies each #my art #artists on tumblr

[monstrifex-art]

During your art challenge stuff like Vivid Shadows, how do you typically keep up motivation to continue doing it every single day? Because it’s been a struggle to keep writing stuff every single day. Granted this is my first time doing this, but I was wondering if you had any way you prevent creative burnout from doing these.

I have thoughts on this lol. There's a few ways. First a disclaimer, I started working on these Vivid Shadows pieces about a month ago. I have up through day 19 done right now (cough see them early on patreon cough). So I've been spacing these out a bit more than one every other day. I have done the challenge day by day before, and it's doable. But I'm a busy adult that needs to pay bills, and I like to give myself some cushion. But with that established, here are some thoughts I have. 1. Collaborators and Witnesses I doubt I could find the motivation to do these kinds of big projects if I didn't have friends and collaborators doing them with me. This is different for everyone, but I find I'm much more productive when I have someone else to bounce ideas off of, send WIPs to, and honestly to judge me when I don't meet my goals. This can be a friend you're working with, or a discord server where you share updates, or any other online community that you're a part of. 2. Effort Budgeting For big series like Vivid Shadows or longer comics with a lot of panels, I do not put all my effort into every piece. There's just no way. I consciously choose to half ass some things, and tell myself "eh, good enough" even if I know I can spend more time polishing. It is infinitely better to finish a piece at 60% of your full power than to pour all your heart into a project that never sees the light of day. If you feel up to it, you can spend more effort on some select parts that really make you happy. But those should be the exception, not the rule. And the more projects you finish, the better your half-assed work will become. 3. Creative Limitations You have to define some bounding rules for your project, or you'll get stuck with decision paralysis and scope creep. For Vivid Shadows, the rules I use are pretty simple. Each day has a prompt, one color to use, set dimensions and a hard deadline. I mostly use a limited palette (3 colors + black or white) because I know I can spend hours and hours shading and coloring otherwise. Limitations foster creativity. If you have a tight frame around what you can do, your brain comes up with way more ideas. 4. Keep an eye on the clock Part of what I like about projects like Vivid Shadows is that they have built in deadlines. I know I have to wrap things up by a certain day and time, and if it isn't perfect then so be it. I've done enough creative work to know roughly how much I can get done in a certain amount of time, which is very helpful for planning. The program I use for drawing has a built-in clock that tracks time spent on each document, which is a godsend. 5. Find your own methods This is all just stuff that helps me, but everyone's brain works in different ways. It absolutely takes practice to enter creative mode at will, rather than when the stars align and you feel inspired. Start with small projects, and as you train yourself you can eventually finish larger ones. Remember, something small and finished is always better than something grand that never gets done. Also worth mentioning, find the things that light up your brain. Personally, I've found that making my art horny is a powerful motivator for my creativity. In addition to the obvious neuron activation, I find it very satisfying to explore the boundaries of what I find attractive, like a mad scientist or detective. 6. Keep it fun! None of this will work if you don't enjoy the project. There may be parts you don't enjoy, but overall the project should bring you joy. If the project isn't fun, change it or drop it and start one that is. You don't owe your past self anything. Even if you abandon a project, the work you put into it is good practice for your next thing. Make work you like, and move on. Hope this helps! Good luck on your project 🙌

#ask

[sweatertheman]

neuron activation in my brain considering the way ralsei is treated like a child by other darkners

"Go Play With Your Friends Peachboy"

"The little prince has something to show you in his castle."

the way the darkners who bother to acknowledge him think he's super cute but don't really seem to treat him as another person, and more of just an object.

thing is, i don't blame them for treating him in this manner.

ralsei likes being treated like an object, for one. or at the very least, he considers it fine for others to treat him as such. this is a bad thing, but i don't blame the other darkners for it when ralsei invites this kind of attention. "It's nice being dressed up..." "I'm a cute little corkboard!"

and both intellectually and emotionally, ralsei IS a child. he has the emotional development of a child, he has a child's black and white view of right and wrong, he's been locked away in a closet and doesn't understand how the world works. he's been denied a chance to develop into a full person. and, personally, i believe ralsei plays up his childishness. he doesn't really WANT to develop into a full person. he likes being cute and innocent, and being treated like a thing. he doesn't know how to cope with fear, sadness, or anger, so he likes to distract himself with happy thoughts.

thoughts incoherent. ralsei ralsei ralsei.

im fairly certain that ralsei isn't as cutesy inside as he acts outwardly, he's very scared and alone, feels guilty, doesn't like himself, believes he's less than a person. but he is still very much a child inside. his ideas of right and wrong are just what he's been told are right and wrong, and he doesn't question them beyond that, or see nuance there. if he does something he thinks is "wrong" he feels intensely guilty, and i assume that he thinks he is "bad" when he does something "bad." he's very small inside, very helpless.

thoughts still incoherent.

anyway uh, yeah. ralsei is treated like a child by everyone around him, and it makes sense because ralsei has the emotional development of a child, the morality of a child, and acts like a child, and deliberately plays up his kid-like qualities as a method of aquiring much-needed affection, coping with things that make him unhappy, and affirming his belief that he is less than a person. he's just a goofy little guy, he doesn't think any bad things! except he does think bad things and he's very scared and he doesn't want to be alone, and he wants to be loved so badly because he has nothing and he can't be alone again, and he needs to be told who he is and what his purpose is because he feels empty and meaningless, and he NEEDS the lightners to give him purpose, because nothing else will make him feel fulfilled, and rh4vrk5xcyoyiuldtupsp4usi56o

this has been incoherent ralsei thoughts with sweaterman

#deltarune #ralsei

[luxe-pauvre]

So, what’s left of the self? How can it be that what I am most certain about, my own existence, is generated by something as unstable and malleable as my memory? The notion of self is perhaps one of the most elusive and controversial concepts in philosophy. To Hume it is nothing more than a bunch of sensations, but to others, the self, the feeling of being a person, is undeniable. In my view, the self exists and it is the most elaborate construction of the brain, giving entity and identity to that bunch of sensations. (Moreover, we saw that there is a representation of the self in the brain, when we found neurons in patients that responded to pictures of themselves.) By concluding that the construction of the self is based on our memory, and knowing that memory is, in turn, triggered by the activity of neurons and their connections, we then wonder if we could preserve our identity — in a clone or supercomputer — and somehow become immortal. That’s twenty-first-century philosophy. Therein lies the revolution where the most challenging topics in philosophy — identity, consciousness, free will, and animal and machine intelligence among them—now seem approachable, and we can even face something as elusive as immortality as a biological and not just a metaphysical problem. To defeat death is perhaps our most compelling challenge; however, we saw that even if we could make an exact copy of our brain, we wouldn’t be what was generated. We would create a person with our same memories, our same feeling of identity — of having a self—but that person wouldn’t be us. For a third person, the difference between us and our clone would be unrecognisable, but we wouldn’t see through the clone’s eyes or feel what he or she feels. When conceiving the possibility of cloning or teleportation, like in science fiction, we then realise that the self doesn’t necessarily have to be unique.

Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Neuroscience Fiction

#Rodrigo Quian Quiroga #Neuroscience Fiction

[hollypies]

I beg of you please tell me the RW lore I am oh so curious

Ok so RW lore us super uhm!! Its a lot. So. Uhm

Short!! Version

The basics is that there was a race called the Ancients that really wanted to die permanently! Death in RW is like sleep. You die and wake back up again, over and over. A cycle.

One day they found the Void, a way to die or ascend permanently. So they started jumping in . Then it had some. Some bad affects on certain ppl. So they made giant living calculators called iterators to figure out how to die permanently. They built a lot of them.

Another point is that the Ancients didn't build things like we do. They made purposed organisms, so the iterators are alive beings. Not just robots.

Anyway there was a GREAT ASCENSION and all the Ancients ascended . So. Now there's a bunch of.. Basically teenage gods with discord. Literally. The communications are like discord lol.

One day an iterator named Sliver a Straw sent out a triple affirmative, basically saying that the Great Problem (ascending permanently and safely) had been found, could be reproduced, and was portable. The Sliver judt straight up fucking died.

Iterators don't really die, so Sliver dying was ljke a big yikes moment. Basically illegal. Not Basically actually, it was literally illegal.

Cue shenanigans, and enter Five Pebbles and Looks To The Moon.

Pebbles is really craving that death right about now, and starts making something to kill him. This is extremely taxing, and Iterators take a massive amount of water for their cooling systems. Unfortunately, Pebbles was built right next to his sister Moon, and so he started chugging her water. Thus slowly killing her of dehydration.

Moon uses her big sibling privilege to yell at Pebbles, making him lose control of his experiment and releasing robot cancer into his systems. While this would kill him like he wanted, he instead decides to keep chugging all of Moons water to fight it off.

Cue slugcat campaigns.

Each slugcat can have their own encounters with Moon and Pebbles. By the time the slugcats are around Moon is almost nonfunctional, her entire structure submerged and damaged. Pebbles is slowly being overtaken by the Rot, which is the name for the cancer. You can help Moon as a slugcat, either by bringing her neurons (literally stealing Pebbles brain cells and then bringing it back to Moon, or by a specific campaign.

Eventually Pebbles gives up, and asks a slugcat to bring Moon a power core to help her. And so she's restored to some power and can begin repairing while he dies of the Rot. Weeee!!

Tbh there's a lot of shit I've missed, but I dont wanna spoil like. All of it all of it. It's. Houghghh.

Also as someone with siblings I cant ever imagine almost killing one for my own personal gain. I know Five Pebbles is a fan favorite and that at the time he made the decision to steal Moons water he was in a dark place, but that just doesn't stand by me. He made the ACTIVE decision to steal Moons water, knowing what it would do to her, and kept doing it even after he unleashed the Rot on himself. I get he's sympathetic to a lot of ppl but I just. I just can't understand it.

#holly answers #cozones beloved hellhole #rw lore #rainworld spoilers #hggghg five pebbbles is a bastard to me. and not an affectionate type. #i love going to his structyre and eating his neurons. #im gonna get some ppl mad at me about this but i just. i cannot understand or sympathize what he did. #i get death is very different in rain world and that he wanted to ascend. but like. you lil shit! you dont kill the #you dont kill someone you care about slowly for your own selfish gain. idk. probably controversial but it was selfish of him #i dont think he deserved to die of rot or anything! i just fukin hate him #also like to clarifythat it was selfish to take all of Moons water that she needed to live . not him wanting to ascend. just so we clear!

[thisworldisablackhole]

This week in listening 02/23/24

Okay, wow. Today was a massive day for new releases, so let's get a few of those out of the way first. Starting with...

Job For A Cowboy was like... not on my radar AT ALL this year. I listened to this band a bit around 2010, but they were always a little too extreme for me. I'll be honest, the album cover is what sold me on this. The art is giving me huge Born of Osiris vibes, which is another band I used to listen to in the 2010s and have actually been getting back into lately (The Discovery is a fucking incredible record). So, inspired by amazing psychedelic alien artwork, vague nostalgia, and a healthy dose of morbid curiosity, I decided to jump in to this as soon as I woke up. I am actually blown away by how good this is. I'm not a huge metalhead, so I struggle to describe the intricacies of this type of music, but I know for certain it's activating some disgusting primal neurons in my brain. It's heavy, technical, colourful, thoughtful. The guitars whip around with the sharpness of wire torture devices as the bass paints terrifying rhythms into the background of every song. The drums don't just keep up, they hold the leash to maintain control over the chaos and do so flawlessly. The vocals? They add a nice flavouring to the sound but I'm honestly so intrigued by what's going on underneath the surface of these songs that I keep forgetting to listen to him. It's not really a bad thing.

When I was just starting to get back into metalcore a few years ago, I spent a night swapping the aux and drinking beers with my best friend, and he threw on Darkest Hour's song DEMON(S). I was blown away by their ability to inject melody into their sound in a very subtle and nuanced way. They had a much heavier melodeath influence and didn't rely on huge soaring pop choruses like every other -core band of the 2000s. A lot of the melody in their songs comes from the riffs themselves and I love that about them. Even when clean vocals are present, they are mellow in pitch and are used almost more like a texture to enrich the riffing instead of being the main show. When Darkest Hour started dropping singles for this new album my ears perked up right away. Societal Bile showcased a more straight forward thrash influence and I was a little worried that this album would be lacking in melody, but I'm relieved to find that isn't the case. This song in particular is a perfect showcase of the band ability to be heavy and also execute insanely beautiful choruses without being corny about it. Another absolute standout track from this album is Mausoleum, which sounds almost like if Elliot Smith wrote a melodeath song. Trust me, check it out and you’ll know what I mean. I also want to take a second to appreciate that the artwork for this is clearly a nod to The Black Dahlia Murder (rest in peace Trevor Strnad).

Okay, massive diversion away from metal for a second. MGMT is a band that I have always reserved a spot in my heart for despite not being interested in... well... anything they've put out since their debut. Like many other people my age, Electric Feel is more than just a song, it's a core memory. I've listened to few tracks here and there from their other albums out of curiosity but nothing clicked. Not because they weren't good, but because I just wasn't at a place in my life where I was willing to let the magic of MGMT back into my heart. Loss Of Life may very well be the album to change that. When Bubblegum Dog dropped in 2023 I was immediately captivated by the strange, off kilter folkiness of it. Weird, and catchy? Wait a minute, that's the same reason I fell in love with Oracular Spectacular! I haven't listened to this full album yet so we'll see how much of it delivers on those qualities, but I have been jamming this single a lot over the past few days so I had to include it in the list.

I posted a full review for this album here, but I'll do a quick summary. I've racked up about 270 scrobbles out of this album over the past week since it was released, that's like listening to it about 24 times in full (or 3.4 times a day). I absolutely adore this album because it brings back to life everything I loved about music growing up. It's passionate, catchy, emotional, and heavy. Seriously, if you are a fan of My Chemical Romance, early Escape the Fate, AFI, The Used etc etc.. I can not beg you enough to give this album a chance. It's a very well written love letter to that era of 2000s post hardcore and emo bands and you will find it immediately familiar and comforting.

Okay, we are moving away from new releases now. I mentioned in a previous post how I was getting back into prog by listening to bands like TesseracT, Aviations and Artificial Language. The Contortionist is the newest addition to that roster and they bring something very unique to the table. Their instrumentals are heavy but methodical and hypnotic, much like the image on the album art. The thing that stuck out to about this band the most is their singer. I can't get over how much I love his mellow, folky approach to singing on a metal album. I've never heard anything like it. Seriously, take out the metal instrumentation and replace them with Nick Drake's Pink Moon and his voice wouldn't feel out of place at all. The result is a progressive metal album that feels extremely down to earth. If this album had a scent it would be of bark and dirt. Again, somehow the album art has done an immaculate job at representing the sound of the record. I'm obsessed. This is their last album (released in 2017) and is far from their most popular, but I'm curious to go backward and see how their sound progressed to this point.

Thursday is probably going to keep popping up on these roundups because they are my favourite fucking band right now and I never want to stop listening to them. I initially glossed over WATT as a “good but stagnant” entry to their discog, but after hearing lots of people say this is their favourite Thursday album, I knew there had to be something about it that I was missing. Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoyed it, but I felt it lacked the hooks and the gut wrenching punches of Full Collapse, and it also did nothing to push their sound forward like ACBTLD did. Well, I’ve spent the last two weeks listening to it non stop in honour of their WATT tour, and I have to say it’s grown on me so much to the point where it’s become my go to choice when I need a kick in the teeth. I think this album has some of Thursday's heaviest material both sonically and thematically, and it's also a bit more nuanced in the way it shows it's colours. It has a tough shell that takes multiple listens to crack, but it's so worth the time. “Signals Over the Air” was always my fav song from this, but recently “Steps Ascending” and the closer “Tomorrow I’ll Be You” have started to stand out as serious highlights to me. The ending of this song when Geoff yells “I’M CALLING FROM YOUR HOUSE, IN YOUR ROOM, IN YOUR NAME. LAYING IN YOUR BED, FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS” sends chills up my spine.

Last but not least, I’ve been jamming this album again for pure nostalgia purposes. This album came out when I was 11 and was one of the first/most life changing CD's I ever owned. I was actually inspired to spin this again because of The Requiem’s song “Less Than Zero” has riffs that remind me soo much of some of the songs here. This album just never gets old though, despite it turning 20 next years (I want to cry thinking about that). In fact, I think the older I get, the better these songs sound. I was listening to this while on a long walk the other day and kept finding myself being wildly impressed by the songwriting and guitar riffing. There are so many subtle switch ups happening underneath the surface, and the way the two guitars play around each other is just incredible. The closer you listen the more depth there seems to be. "Under The Knife" and "Injection" are straight up two of the best melodic punk songs ever written. Pure genius.

#Spotify #rise against #thursday #the contortionist #the requiem #mgmt #darkest hour #job for a cowboy #progressive metal #death metal #post hardcore #hardcore punk #alternative music #melodeath #music

[whatudottu]

I’ve been thinking about how if you compress quartz you get electrical current and thinking about its inverse - how if you give a quartz an electric current it compresses - and because y’all know me, it made me think about petrosapiens.

But with lingering thoughts from a previous post of mine, I have combined these thoughts with another, older and collaborative idea of the past-

Let’s get started.

Alright, when you have aliens sci-fi sometimes you get off the wall creations that thanks to the whole ‘fiction’ side of the science, probably aren’t possible as is explained? From aliens made entirely out of sound insulated with silicone to walking talking fire pits from the sun, Ben 10 is by far taking science by its reigns and going full speed into that fantasy and petrosapiens - the example of the ‘material based aliens’ you see in lots of media - is well within that cool factor you can’t fully logic.

Well, since it’s been stated a few times, petrosapiens (and the similarly crystalline crystalsapiens) are silicon - no e - based beings, and guess the fuck what my dear readers? Silicon-based crystals happen to include the beloved electric conducting quartz that this following headcanon is reliant on.

What if a petrosapien’s crystal structure down to its very molecular construction acts not only as their nervous system, but also as the root of their crystallokinesis?

Silicon itself does not provide its own current of course, but what is a nervous system without organs and most significantly of all, the CENTRAL nervous system; the brain - of course - alongside the spinal cord (read: not the spine that protects it). Simply put just like our own nervous system the central nervous system and the (conversely) peripheral nervous system communicate back and forth with one another using electrical currents.

Unlike our own human nervous system, the petrosapien nervous system is either mostly or near entirely electrical signals rather than electrochemical messages along neurons. Instead, through at least the crystal part of their bodies (which comprise most of their body and in fact translates more into extremely thick skin rather than natural armour) conveys sensory and neural responses and activities - either autonomic or somatic - along the crystalline structures like natural geometric circuitry.

Most of the nervous system in the crystal of a petrosapien is somatic, many of the autonomic nervous system being the soft squishy bits inside sitting like the centre of a fruit gusher, but it’s not without its own autonomic systems even if they are more towards the core. These autonomic functions are of course the organs responsible for recycling and reusing the digested minerals (a responsibility of the stomach) to act as materials for new crystal growth.

And with new crystal growth, along comes with it the inherent (but trained) crystallokinesis of petrosapiens. Though so long as a petrosapien eats their daily crystals they are engaging with crystallokinesis post digestion, the external act of crystal manipulation is in a sense literally letting your nervous system interact with other quartz-like or silicon-based crystals in order to jumpstart the manipulation of its structure as an extension of yourself.

Because having a network of circuits means that petrosapiens can literally feel more things than you expect of them, being able to detect sensory information beyond the simple presumed sensation of pressure, crystallokinesis of far more ancient literal planet made crystal is a process young petrosapiens need to practice, adapt, and get used to. It’s less about feeling pain and more about feeling more of yourself exposed to the air, to the water, to the ground beneath your feet and the ceiling above your head. To manipulate the crystals of Petropia you must become a part of Petropia.

Rather a religious experience wouldn’t you think?

Now what happens when a certain specific cult arrives in search of (literal) power?

That’s right baby welcome to classic reboot crossover time where I introduce a fundamental player into the headcanon history of my version of Petropia, the very reason that petrosapiens were introduced suddenly into the galactic sphere and how because of the materials of Petropia and the interference of extraterrestrials, the rapid rise of interplanetary level tech grew to the point where a certain criminal found himself staring at the shattered remains of his own home planet!

Say hello to the fulmini and the High Override himself, cult leader of the Global Mind and a literal representation of a nervous system, who’s invasion of Petropia was under the assumption of it being a barren uninhabited planet full of electrical current sustaining crystal for use in energy sources.

Check out this post by @sxilor-1010 and me for a more in-depth discussion on both the biology and more relevantly sociology of the fulmini and the High Override’s cult (which in today’s post I just made a name for that may or may not stick) so check that out-!

For the longest time I marked this period as The Surface Craze, the benefits of the English terminology being that it has multiple means beyond the direct Petropian translation of ‘the day the sky broke open’. As the many petrosapien people were introduced for the first time in thousands of years, spanning multiple generations perhaps equivalent to old English to modern (as it is today) English, the sky was crazed (rock term for scraped), the people were going crazy, and the upper rungs (aka the poor and the slums that couldn’t afford the protection of the holy core) sought this new horizon and caused a drastic shift in the political and societal landscape. All the while the energy hungry Override, with his energy desperate limbs of conquered colonies, studied and contemplated the usefulness of disciples (and batteries) of this new species.

Another meaning of craze was introduced to petrosapiens when the High Override grew interest in the regenerative abilities of petrosapiens, his arms and legs reaching out and spreading across the newly cracked open planet, singing his own praises as their one and only truth through the teeth and mouths of his subjects. Though many of the religiously scorned people of the shallows were far too burnt to be swayed, those that clung to religion in hope saw that these strangers were far more accomodating than the leaders of their own faith, the Override perhaps not able to fully take control of them as he could as those that serve as his fingers, but he did not come this far without his own manipulative ways.

A proposition was made, that these beings of crystalline stone can offer their patronage by contributing to the flow of energy, to welcome their arms into the embrace of the High Override and provide a tithe to his service. Their arms, which compress with the electricity of their central nervous system, that can be compressed and crushed and chewed up by the machines that the Global Mind and the High Override’s many fulmini limbs are hungry for, are desperate for, are past the point of begging for.

And those with the faith and the belief and the desperation, they take up arms and feed the machine.

Funny, it seems, that the High Override’s act has created one of the largest surviving community of petrosapiens yet.

#petrosapien #xenobiology #fulmini #high override #xenosociology #cult #ben 10 #headcanon #/me trying and perhaps even hopefully succeeding in making crystallokinesis biologically possible #the pieces: they are all fitting together #i love it when i can use concepts to diagetically explain other concepts #if the fulmini are in classic i think because there’s already 2 warfaring species (tetramands and incurceans) #that they fill the ecological niche of ‘interstellar cult’ #not an ecological niche that perhaps you’d want filled but the high override has competition for warlord stuff #wanted to include my own fucked up petropia backstory with fulmini history- sxilor did it first admittedly haha #but i hope this version is nice and different enough to go ‘hey that’s neat’ even if the idea literally uses a collab as a base lmao #also just giving petrosapiens the ability to physically feel shit even if the regrowing crystal adaptation cuts off a lot of pain sensing #petrosapien overstimulation aka becoming one with the planet 😔 #funny how my sugilite is physically part of petropia even if he’s just sitting there acting as a memory chip for the planet #not in any meaningful ‘revive the planet’ way but ‘petropia has memories of everything on its skin i must redocument petropian culture’ #ask to tag

[duck-kmt]

For the rentan ask game: 🍠🔥 and I can't find the bomb emoji but that one too if you don't mind!!❤️❤️❤️

Thank you!

🍠 - what are your opinions on the Rengoku family, and how Kyojuro was raised?

I think it's no wonder the Rengoku family got so popular because their issues feel, on a certain level (i mean my family isn't in the demon slaying business personally) relatable to a lot of people and the way the story handles it all feels Real - in that they deeply love each other, and they mean good, but they inflict so much hurt on each other it's unreal lol. Kyoujurou's expected responsabilities as the oldest son, the Demon Slaying Family Business, the moral responsabilities entrusted by his mother, on top of compensating for his father's neglect… he's constantly under pressure and his mental fortitude despite it all is what makes him so cool right???

Shinjurou's abuse (bc neglect is abuse) has been discussed at length already but as amazing and well meaning Ruka is I find it fascinating the brain damage she gave Kyoujurou lol, and how much it hurt Senjurou too in the process, but it probably comes from her own experience and hurt too, and I like stories of Generational Trauma where the parents aren't antagonized. It's easier to villainize Shinjurou due to his role in the story but tbh, I find him very similar to Sen in that he's put in a position where he allows himself to show his vulnerable side, something Kyoujurou and Ruka never allowed themselves to do- and that makes him just extremely Pathetic and relatable right? even good people take bad decisions and hurt others when in despair @_@....

Sooo yeah these 4 are introduced as Marginal and Weird but they feel, extremely human in the end… they symbolize well the human drama kimetsu is so good at😤

🔥- What first drew you to Kyojuro/Tanjiro?

When I watched the movie the first time I wasn't really into KNY so I didn't expect to fall so hard for them lol. But obviously when tanjirou fell asleep on kyoujurou's shoulder the Fujo Neuron in my brain activated immediately. 'so cute, i see what they did here' I thought. Then they stayed at the back of my mind for a while, so I ended up reading the manga and. yeah. i cried like a bitch at Tanjirou defending Kyoujurou from Shinjurou and my interest in the ship only grew stronger the more I read 😂

Then I rewatched the movie, being aware of the Implications…The Parallels …. The Connections………. and I fell deep into rentan LMAO. it's funny how much bargaining I did with kimetsu. "i don't like kimetsu > fine, I only like rentan > I Would Fucking Die For Rentan > I Would Fucking Die For Rentan And The Entire Cast Actually 😭

💣 - share your most controversial RenTan take. Set your thoughts ablaze!!

Idk what would be controversial or not about them really. Well the ship itself is perceived as controversial by a big chunk of english speaking fans but uh I don't get why.

They are baited to the very end of the series, got ton of merch, Thematically Make So Much Sense, etc etc. it's not really a spicy ship, not only it makes Sense, it has a lot of themes pertaining to Classic BL (and even. gay literature in general) while giving us a Fresh relationship in terms of JUMP slash. They're good and I'm glad they are so popular.

#replies

[4week-manifestation-review]

4 Week Manifestation Review - Does It Really Work, legit or A Scam?

4 Week Manifestation Review – Read This Before You Buy

Hi guys! We are very glad to be here for the 4-week manifestation review. Certainly; this manifestation program is much useful and effective for everyone who really wants to bring their life to a certain level where they could achieve everything easily like wealth, health, good relationship, and peace of mind.

However, it mostly works to improve your focus and preparing your mind which plays a huge role in reaching at your dreams. Thoroughly focus on certain thing makes quite easier to achieve your dreams so you should have stay more focus on the right direction.

Basically, it works on the human brain that is fully responsible for every action you usually take every day. While boosting your brain, it will reset your subconscious mind to attracting anything.

The human brain is one of the most complex organs of the human body; it is usually connected with the 100 billion neurons that help the body to perform anything.

Therefore, now you don’t need to worry about your body functioning and how strong you are. As everything has been thoroughly described in this 4-Weeks Manifestation program, it does not just give the most useful information instead it would also teach you how you can efficiently perform them.

Table of Contents

1 4 Week Manifestation Review – Does it work?

2 About 4 Week Manifestation:

3 Who is the Author of 4 Week Manifestation PDF?

4 How does 4 Week Manifestation work?

5 Features of 4-Week Manifestation:

6 4 Week Manifestation Review – The pros And Cons:

6.1  Pros:

7 Is 4 Week Manifestation Scam or legit?

7.1 4 Week Manifestation Bonuses:

8 Price & Plans Of 4 Week Manifestation PDF:

9 Conclusion:

4 Week Manifestation Review – Does it work?

According to my personal experiences and knowledge, I got to know that human brain is one of the major reasons why you often feel deep sorrow.

Nothing good is happening with you such kind of feeling makes you usually let down which creates low self-confidence.

Perhaps, it is a kind of mental problem and mental barrier as the human mind control every activity of the body and it is one of an emotional center of the system. That is why sadness, lonely and happiness are the most connected emotions for every person, and the brain is the major center for all of them.

 Click Here To Get Instant Access

What I most like about this program is that it guides you on how to cure all of your psychological problems by just using simple steps. Through this program, it would heal you from the inside out.

By changing your vibes you may relax your brain so this 4-week manifestation PDF and audio will do the same result for you. To learn more about the 4-week manifestation program review, you should read this whole article.

Related Articles:

Alexander Wilson Manifestation Magic Review

Eddie Sergey 15 Minute Manifestation Review

Manifestation Hero Review

The Medici Code Review

Human Design Manifesting Generator

About 4 Week Manifestation:

One of the worst feelings is that if someone left you alone or put you into such kind of situation that often hurts your mind and body. However, when your mind feels distraction a lots, it’s very hard to configure the solution of your problem that always comes in your life.

Sometimes, when you see people over there doing wonders in their lives then you immediately start feeling useless and your spirit make you let down every day. At that moment, your brain could not able to perform well and will take you toward the worst situation of your life.

In such kinds of circumstances, you need to deal with two types of problems that hang over your head, the first one lies in your conscious and the second one in your subconscious. While healing your inner is not only clear your mind, it will also generate the willpower that would certainly support you to manifest the multiple ideas growing in your mental state.

After using this 4-week manifestation review, you will deeply get to know that what the program is. The major component of this program is a book that efficiently describes and also works as a guide means it usually controls the state of your subconscious mind.

Therefore, the second part is based on some specific recorded audio tracks which contains of brain intervening waves.

Being the best in the market, it is one of the confirmed solutions for setting harmony among your conscious and subconscious brain. The specialty of this 4-week manifestation book is that it usually triggers your brain’s inner regions to explore the answer to what actually your life is.

What are the ways you can make it realistic and worthwhile? Is there anything that drives your passion away from you? How have you been unable to achieve your dreams? And much more.

In this 4-Week Manifestation Review, you would thoroughly learn how you can wake up your positive vibration in your life that may provide you unlimited wealth, happiness, relationship, abundance, and wishes.

Who is the Author of 4 Week Manifestation PDF?

The two big-name behind this program are Andrew and Dr. Abigail, they have collectively discovered this 4-week manifestation book. Both have done many years of experiment and study to ensure that it provides most accurate and excellent result or not.

They both have massively experienced and trained, and already had worked with the other program of the same type that helped many people to lead their lives to the next level. They did an open challenge and also claimed that this program will take only 28 days to achieve the desired result.

Moreover, they have highlighted certain skills and ways that you really need to obtain the maximum benefits. One of the great aspects to achieving anything is the strong believes that shows without having believe you cannot take your life towards the success.

That is why authors have strongly believed on this 4-week manifestation review and also knew well what they are offering to their customers.

How does 4 Week Manifestation work?

This program efficiently acts by affecting subconscious thought techniques. However, it has contained the specific MP3 audio tracks that have been divided into four steps and also aimed to control your current action, beliefs, and faith. Let’s dive into detail.

Week 1- The first entire week helps to decrease all the negative thoughts like anger, sorrow, disappointment, hostility, jealousy, etc. all these factors work as obstacles in your way toward success. In the very first week, you would be able to fix the stage for success and pave the way for everything in your life.

Week 2- The second audio will help to instruct your neurons current in your mind to motivate good-thought processes, information and awareness.

Week 3- The third week usually gives the tips to write your destiny and drive the current situation in the accurate way that helps you to obtain a better future. In short, it controls your mind to ”write” happen.

Week 4- The last week helps to complete control of your brain thoughts process that shows you could easily drive your life whether it is about achieving the better health, wealth, success or good relationship.

FIVE FAMOUS SCIENTISTS DIFFERENT KINDS OF BRAINWAVES.

The Alpha brain waves: It makes you feel deep relaxation and more peaceful.

The Beta brain waves: In the Beta brain waves, it helps to regain the ability of your reasoning and consciousness.

The Theta brain waves: It helps you to get the lights sleep and deep meditation.

The Delta brain waves: The Delta brain waves truly make you feel dreamless sleep deeply.

The Gamma brain waves: It allows you to get the high-level of awareness processing and intelligence.

 Click Here To Get Instant Access

All these five mind waves usually help to raise stability in your life. Once you will go through this program, you would feel very relax and free from all of your problems. Moreover, it efficiently improves your body’s metabolism rate and performance which means you could generate excellent results.

Features of 4-Week Manifestation:

This program has been contained with 8 various soundtracks and the length of each track is around 30 minutes. However, you can listen to these audio tracks at any time, and every time you can listen according to your choice.

All these tones have good brainwaves that usually re-calibrate your mind to make it even more excellent. Many people have become more helpful in their relationships after using this program.

It helps the user to thoroughly understand how to perform the complete 4-week session that make them to feel amazing transformations.

4-week manifestation program also presents a comprehensive handbook where everything has been described in proper detail. You usually need something that could make you relax in your daily routine

This program is designed for everybody doesn’t matter you are a kid or an elder, sometimes they also need to re-calibrate their mind because they got worsen over time.

The human mind always works too much means it is appreciable that the rejuvenation program works great when they are in their lives every day. After listening to 28 days of these tracks, you could enable to get a magnificent result which would be durable and also last you for a longtime.

This is an absolutely most trustable program as it is based in Click Bank which is one of the most reliable platforms to pay for such kinds of internet programs. However, it often provides everything on time on the digital platform.

It also provides 60-day money-back guarantee to its respected customers who usually not satisfied with this program.

Nowadays, the company is also offering bonuses material along with the original program. They just want to provide their user with more awareness about their mental state and help them in such kinds of things like sleep or someone coming into your life.

4 Week Manifestation Review – The pros And Cons:

PROS

 Pros:

The 4-week manifestation program will enable you to produce the best result in your life, not just that it guides you to reach the best desires in your life even it also helps to make feel happy, calm, focused, and optimistic.

This is a simple and easy-to-understand program means there are no kinds of complications you would face to handle this program and not even need an experience to use it.

It often gives an extra boost to reprogram your subconscious mind that is really useful to reach your dreams.

It promises to give the unlimited and abundance that you could deeply feel whenever you start to achieve the goal that you always wanted.

It is quite easy to follow the guidance that helps you to transform you and your dreams life.

It provides 60-day money-back guarantee that is one of the most satisfying aspect of this program.

Cons

For getting an excellent result, you will have to strictly follow every step of this program; in case of missing any steps, you may get an unpredictable result.

It won’t change your life overnight which means it will take at least 28 days to get the desired result.

Is 4 Week Manifestation Scam or legit?

The very first thing I need to say is that this is one of the finest programs that you have explored. However, there is no doubt this is one of the best-selling programs in the market so far. Many people have already used it and certainly got them positive result from it.

When it comes to this is a legitimate program or not, absolutely no doubt this is a completely legitimate program that ensures to provide the magnificent result as you apply it. Apart from that it promises to give the 60-day money-back guarantee that means you will have nothing to lose so don’t worry about it is legit or not.

 Click Here To Get Instant Access

4 Week Manifestation Bonuses:

There will be two specific bonuses you will get along with the 4-week manifestation program. These are the following bonuses.

Digital Caffeine

Digital Sleeping pill

Price & Plans Of 4 Week Manifestation PDF:

A price is one of the most significant factors for any product that plays a huge role in attracting anyone that is why this 4-week manifestation program has more focused on it.

And this program comes at quite a reasonable price range which is only $47 with the complete package of its book, 8 audio soundtracks, and bonuses. Therefore, this is completely affordable for everyone.

Conclusion:

To be honest, this program is really suited for everyone especially those who have aimed and are willing to transform their lives for the better. However, it has been counted as one of the best-selling programs in the market so far means people getting the benefits from it that are why it is one of the top-selling products.

The major aim of this program is to teach you on how to achieve everything in your life through the positive power of manifestation. Overall this is an exceptional and effective program.

While using every step of this guide, you would appear everything positively in your life that would enable you to attract unlimited wealth, better health, happiness, good relationship, and many more. This program has been completely verified and tested several time on many people so this is a real legitimate guide.

Learn more: https://manifestationmagicalexanderwilson.com/4weekmanifestation

[techwritesposts]

“Learning How to Learn”: Techniques to Help You Learn with Dr Barbara Oakley (CLASSIC)

Dr. Barbara Oakley

Barbara Ann Oakley (Grim, November 24, 1955) is an American professor of engineering at Oakland University and McMaster University whose online courses on learning are some of the most popular MOOC classes in the world. She is involved in multiple areas of research, ranging from STEM education, to learning practices.

Oakley has authored op-ed articles about learning in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

1. Dr. Barbara Oakley. “How We Should Be Teaching Math”https://www.wsj.com/articles/barbara-oakley-repetitive-work-in-math-thats-good-1411426037

2. Oakley, Barbara (2014).   A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780399165245

3.   Dr. Barbara Oakley.  https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

·       Introduction

This topic is a part of my subject called Research Method in Griffith college. I had disability learning in my childhood (Dyslexia) and with time I improved my learning skills and I am yet to determine what improved my learning skills. This is the reason why I choose this topic because it will give me insights of what techniques are recommended to enhance learning skills.

·       What is this discussion about?

This discussion more about how a brain works with neurons and fundamental working of mind which are subdivided into conscious and long term memory. The connection of practices and learning to build a memory in brain.

·       What are at least three / four points that you learn from this discussion?

1.     The working memory is an active memory which improves with practice with time. For example; When we start driving a car we have a conscious mind to respond proactively and once we get used to it we know how to deals in certain instances.

2.     “Metaphor” helps learners to understand the ideas in a better way. Once you get the central idea of how and what happens in the background on a certain task it gets easier for a learner to know building block of the study. The Metaphoric technique is used by many professors to help students understand the concept of many ideas.

3.     The negative network or default mode network is resting state of neurons that connects when we are not doing anything in particular. This includes our daily activities like taking a shower, driving, running etc. This is the part where ideas are originated from and brain has enough time to discover ideas and solutions for complex or simple tasks.

4.     The Pomodoro technique is a best way to tackle your difficulty learning and focusing. This technique involves rule 25 wherein a learner can focus on the task for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minutes break. This helps learner to stay focused on the project or the tasks assigned to them. “In future we might be able to implant information and knowledge into human brains since ages the miracles have happened maybe in near future we might be in position to do so”

[frenchly-anxious]

Here’s why you (and I) have been studying the wrong way all this time - part 1

Have you ever studied hard for a test, spending all your evenings on it, feeling prepared, just to fail it spectacularly?

Have you ever been told to re-read your lessons to learn it better?

Have you ever been told after a failed test that you obviously didn’t learn despite you knowing you definitely did?

If so, I’m very sorry, it means school has failed you on something it was supposed to teach you: how to learn. And really, the fault isn’t yours.

Fasten your seatbelts my friends, we’re going on an adventure to explain why school sucks at its own fucking job!

First of all, a little experiment by Tulving. We have 2 groups and we ask them to simply read 6 times a list of 22 words. Then, we give Group 1 the same list and ask them this time to remember as many words as possible. With Group 2, same task but it’s not the same list as before.

Question time: which group will do better? Group 1 with the list they have already read 6 times, or Group 2 with a totally new list?

I can guess you’re probably telling me Group 1, right?

Well. Actually, there is no difference at all between the groups. Nothing, nada. Reading the words 6 times before didn’t give any advantage to Group 1.

What is this witchcraft, I hear you say?

Let me introduce you to the biggest misconception of our school life: reading your lesson over and over won’t help you at all.

How is that possible? Well, there’s a concept we all heard countless time, but that was never explained correctly: effort. To learn something, you need to make efforts. I’m not saying you’re not being serious when reading your lesson, not at all.

The thing is, reading is by now is a reflex for you, it doesn’t require a lot of efforts. Do you remember how hard it was to read when you were a child, or have you seen a young child trying to read? Every word is a battle, to the point that sometimes, they have finished reading but can’t remember what they read: all of their attention was on how to pronounce this group of letters, not on what they were saying.

For us, adults, reading is not something very complicated. It became a reflex, so now our attention isn’t on how to read, but on what we read. It sounds like a good thing, right? It is, but not when it comes to learning.

The action of reading isn’t complicated, and so you don’t have to be involved that much. You’re reading it, you’re understanding it; but when are you making the effort to memorize it? That’s where the problem is: reading is mostly passive, whereas learning is active.

You probably already encountered this paradox, though: the more you read your lesson, the more familiar it feels. You’re reading it and you’re like “Yeah, I remember that, and that too, and this after too”. But once in front of your exam: nothing. Or at least, not enough. This familiar feeling is just that: a feeling. Your brain is only telling you “Yeah, I already read that”, but we mistake it for “I already learned that”.

The difference is quite important, but we aren’t necessarily aware of it. So when teachers are telling us “You didn’t study”, we’re offended because we’re certain we did. Yes, we did work; but we didn’t in the right way.

Another study to prove my point (Roedinger & Karpicke, 2006):

Once again, 2 groups. My question would be: when asked to remember as much info as possible in a text, who would win?

Group 1, with 4 sessions of 5 minutes to read the text?

Or Group 2, with 5 minutes to read it and then without the text, 3 separate sessions of 5 minutes to write down as many things they can remember (without any correction from the examiners of course)?

This time, you already know where I’m going. But our instinct tells us “Obviously Group 1, they had more time!”. Which is technically true. 5 minutes after the end of that experiment, when we ask each group what they remember, Group 1 takes the lead. They get around 85% of the notions from the text, while Group 2 gets 70%. It isn’t much but it’s indeed better.

Which is great. But that’s 5 minutes after learning.

If we meet with them again 1 week later, and ask again what they do remember, Group 1 falls at barely 40% of the notions, not even half of what they learned. What about Group 2, you ask? They’re at 60%, which is very good!

The funny thing is, if asked, Group 1 will tell you how confident they feel about what they remember and that they will nail the test, while Group 2 will be saying they don’t remember a lot. Because once again, Group 1 has this feeling of familiarity about the text.

But then why is Group 2 so much better after a week?

It’s about effort.

The 5 minutes they spent reading didn’t require a lot of efforts. They understood what was written, maybe had enough time to read it a few times. Then they didn’t have the text anymore, but we asked them to write down what they remember. Once. Twice. Thrice.

During those 3 sessions, they had to make efforts. Efforts to search in their memory for what they had read. And this, contrary to reading, isn’t really easy and definitely isn’t passive.

“What did I read?” they asked themselves in front of this blank page, the text long gone. “Wait, I almost forgot this! And didn’t they talk about something else? Wait, what was it?... Oh!”

By doing so, they re-activated neurons, creating paths, reinforcing them. They did that 3 times. So their brain was like “Wait, we searched for that info multiple times, it must be important!”

Then what about Group 1, you wonder? They had 4 sessions to read it! Didn’t their brain also realize it was important?

Your brain’s goal is to automate things you need. Because if those things are automated, you don’t have to focus on them anymore, you don’t have to spend all your energy on it.

Do you remember when you learned how to ride a bike? It was hard, you fell often, but now you don’t have to think about; that’s because your brain was like “Shit, this is giving us a hard time. This is a problem, because if it takes all of our attention to just stay on the bike, we won’t be able to avoid obstacle or anything.” The solution to that is making ‘staying on the bike’ a reflex, something you know so much you don’t have to reinforce it anymore.

With Group 1, reading that text wasn’t hard. Their brain was like “meh, no problem, it doesn’t require more of my help”. If it isn’t problematic, no need for trying to automate it or make it easier.

But for Group 2, it was harder. Making the effort to try to remember what they read was very consuming in time, attention and energy. Their brain HAD to do something so it would become easier: it learned, and it learned for a longer time. Because of the repetition of that effort, because this difficulty kept appearing and being annoying in a way, their brain realized they needed to know that. Just like how you learned your phone number, your address,... You searched for it multiple times, you used it multiple times; now you don’t need to re-learn it, it’s there to stay.

So Group 1 spent 20 minutes reading a text, just to remember it for a day or two.

Group 2 also spent 20 minutes, but 5 for reading, and 15 to test themselves, and it lasted way more than a week.

Both groups did work. But one of them is obviously more efficient.

You want to learn efficiently? Leave your notes aside, and make the effort to try to remember it, even if it’s imperfect. No: especially if it’s imperfect.

Yes, I know, it seems counterintuitive. However it works incredibly well!

But that will be for a part 2...

#I am OBSESSED with that knowledge #I can and I will ramble about it #you can't stop me #learning #school #studying #studyblr #college #university #how to learn #learning tips #school tips #college tips #it's during time like this I love my studies #learning to learn #pedagogy #didactic #come yell with me about it #langblr

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a sequel.

chapter four: advent

word count: 8.7k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: naughty language, brief mentions of what could-be prenatal depression. elliot considers the logistics of murder. nothing new.

notes: i am so sorry that this chapter took so long to come around, but i hope it's worth the wait! we're finally getting somewhere with these two dummies, as well as a few little things starting to develop along the way. i'm really pleased with how this chapter finally came out, because it was giving me some trouble to start with, but thankfully i have some wonderful people around to help keep me motivated and not letting me get discouraged!

special thank you to my beta reader, @starcrier, for helping me with the barebones skeleton of this chapter and not letting me get too in my head about it. and a thank you to my loves, @shallow-gravy and @baeogorath, for lending me their eyes as well as i tried to muddle through the parts of this that felt so, so difficult. i adore you all so much!!

Isolde fucking hated Montana.

Maybe “hated” was a bit strong of a term, but all she could feel as she cinched her coat tighter around her and waded through crowds of milling, purposeless passersby in the airport was that she could not wait to leave—and she had only touched down minutes ago.

That she was even here at all was a miracle in and of itself: she didn’t owe John Seed anything. Not a favor, not the time of day, not the firing of her neurons to process her furious disdain for him. If anything, John owed her for up and fucking off for no good reason. If anything, he should be the one doing her a favor. Strapping him to a bed of nails on the hood of a car and watching him suffer while she drove over speed bumps in a mall parking lot during an earthquake would have been a good start.

I need your help, Sol, he’d said, like he didn’t have two fucking hands and eyes and a mediocre brain of his own to get things done.

“Fucker,” Isolde gritted out between her teeth. “Fucking—stupid—fuckface. Fuck I hate him. I hate him.”

But that wasn’t really true, was it? She didn’t hate John, not in the same capacity that she actually hated people, like the ex-husband that so rarely registered in her brain nowadays. For all of his posturing and Napoleon syndrome, John had been her only friend, the only person that she trusted, for a very long time.

Fuck me, she thought, I’m in a bad spot if that’s the case.

It was.

Isolde stepped out of the airport and into the frigid air of the outside pick-up area. Her eyes scanned the area, and while she thought for certain she saw a familiar redhead right away, he was leaned up against a beat-up, mud-splattered truck and surely Jacob Seed did not think he was going to put her in a metal death trap that looked like it wasn’t going to make it five minutes on the highway.

He waved to catch her attention. Isolde stayed firmly put, and she saw—with a little lick of amusement whispering inside of her—Jacob’s teeth flash in a grin.

“Sol,” he called, beginning to saunter over, “I know you can see me.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” she asked tartly. “I was supposed to be getting picked up by an actual vehicle, not...” She leaned around Jacob’s broad-shouldered figure to peer pointedly at the beater truck, which had not miraculously become better in the last thirty seconds. “...three pieces of metal loosely held together by a shit welding job.”

Jacob’s wolfish smile did not dim. “Good to see you, too.”

“Hello, my darling.” She beckoned him with one hand, giving him a one-armed hug once he was within range. “I suppose you are the transportation John promised, then.”

“None other,” Jacob replied.

“Surely, no expense was spared.”

“Surely.”

Jacob relinquished her of the weight of her suitcase, lifting it with ease and beckoning with a tilt of his head for her to follow. She did, even though her reservations about getting into a fucked up Toyota had not abated; as the eldest Seed brother loaded the suitcase into the back “seat” (being used loosely in this context), Isolde hoisted herself up into the passenger seat.

“Hm,” was what came out of her once she was buckled in, a singular expression of her displeasure, and the redhead settled into the driver’s seat next to her.

He glanced over, his smile having relaxed into something more ambivalent. He said, “I love that you haven’t changed a bit,” and began to pull out of the pick-up lane.

“It is one of my most charming qualities, I think.”

“How did Johnny convince you to come all this way?” he asked, and Isolde stifled a long-suffering sigh that tried to worm its way out of her.

“He told me what helpless idiots you are without him,” she replied. Shrugging out of her jacket, she pushed it into the back seat and turned the heat in the truck down. “Did a whole bit. You would have found it entertaining, I think. It was all Sol, you’re so tall and threatening, please help me. I hate that he knows exactly how I like to be complimented.”

“Well, he’d have to really pull out the stops to get you to come back and help Joseph,” Jacob acquiesced, with the same kind of visceral, gut-punch perception he had always operated and which Soli had expected and still hoped he wouldn’t apply.

Isolde’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Fuck you, she thought, but there was no venom, because he wasn’t wrong. She wouldn’t have come back if John hadn’t really tried, if he hadn’t made it obvious that he was desperate. It did bother her, a little, to see John like that—haphazard and urgent, scrabbling for a foothold wherever he could get one. She just hoped he wasn’t overshooting his shot with the mother of his unborn child.

“Yeah,” Sol said after a moment, “I guess he did.”

Jacob gave her a look. It was a look that said, come on now, Sol, because if there was one unfortunate thing about having dated Joseph Seed and worked with the baby brother for years on end, it was that Jacob—arguably the most perceptive and intelligent of the whole brood—had come to understand her quite well. So annoying.

“I’m glad you’re here,” is what he said after a minute. “Be nice to have a fresh face around, all things considered.”

“You mean all the killing.” Her words came out clipped, but if Jacob felt any particular way about it, it didn’t show on his face.

“Well,” he acquiesced, and that was all that came out of his mouth for at least two heartbeats.

Isolde narrowed her eyes, watching the redhead move methodically as he hit cruise control and settled back against his seat a bit.

She prompted, tightly, “Well?”

“Don’t give me that, Sol,” he cautioned her. “You can use that tone on Johnny and Joseph, but you can’t use it on me. We neither fuck nor run a business together.”

“I remember now why you’re unbearable. How silly of me, to have forgotten.”

“I was going to say,” Jacob continued, as though she had not spoken at all, “that the killing really shouldn’t be a point of contention for you.”

And then, with the kind of spiteful accuracy that she truly detested: “Of all people.”

Shut up. The words sat there, on the tip of her tongue, threatening. Only Jacob would get away speaking to her like this. She supposed that made them hearty exceptions for each other, didn’t it? All the same, the things that she had done—or rather, the things that Joseph had done, for her —were in the past, and long-since buried. Literally and figuratively.

“Here I was, thinking you were my favorite,” she replied primly, and this elicited a laugh out of Jacob, short and barked out but nonetheless genuine. “Tell me you didn’t volunteer to pick me up just so you could start a fight with me. Is it that boring, out there in God’s Country?”

“I never said I volunteered.”

“But you did,” she countered, “didn’t you?”

Jacob glanced at her, then focused his gaze back on the road. “God’s Country is pretty boring, right about now. But there’s been a bit of excitement.”

“Ah, yes,” she replied, foregoing her irritation with his little jab. “Why don’t we compare what John told me with the truth, then?”

“Sounds like a fun game to pass the time.”

Isolde had the feeling they’d at least have a lot to fill the time, at any rate.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Eden’s Gate was not what she had anticipated.

The cult aspect—that was one thing. She could deal with a cult. She could deal with two cults, even, which if what Jacob told her was accurate—and she assumed that it was, because he had no motive to lie to her—sounded like it was actively happening, or had just finished happening.

The compound’s yard looked like a graveyard. As the truck, guided by Jacob’s hands on the steering wheel, rolled in, Isolde took a moment to sweep her eyes over everything as meticulously as possible. Small, meek buildings, the white wiring of a long trellis stretching over the yard, and—blood. Splattered across some of the buildings. Sins in their most classical names, graffitied here and there.

It was dirty. Nothing looked well-insulated. The media would absolutely have had a fucking field day with this. What few people she saw out and about, milling around and regarding the truck’s arrival with quiet, venomous curiosity, might as well have been plucked straight out of the homeless shelter.

When Joseph had told her what his plans were, when he had started dropping tiny scraps of information—because he wanted her to ask for more, wanted to pique her interest—he had never told her it would be...Well.

This.

“This is a fucking joke,” Isolde said, without thinking, turning to look at Jacob. The redhead regarded her with an even-keel gaze, putting the truck in park and tilting his chin, almost defiantly.

“What is?” he asked, and it was sort of there—a tiny, tiny little threat. A demand. What’s funny, Isolde? What do you think is a joke? Surely, the eldest Seed had regarded many defectors and insurgents with the same kind of look. Surely, she knew, he was waiting for her to say something that would make her regret having voiced her opinion.

Purposefully, Isolde replied, “This place.” When Jacob exhaled out of his nose, sharp and impatient, she watched the muscle of his jaw flex, his teeth clenching; before he could open his mouth, she plunged on, “Jacob, you’re not a fucking idiot.”

“Thank you,” Jacob snipped, not sounding very grateful at all.

“The media would lose their fucking shit over this place. It would be a madhouse .”

The redhead sucked his teeth. “You really aren’t getting it, aren’t you?” he asked after a moment of silence had lapsed between them. “There won’t be any fuckin’ media, Isolde. Not if Joseph’s right. And he’s been right about everything else. There won’t be fuck all left to care about beyond your own life.”

“Yeah, except I have to care about them like they’re going to be here!” Isolde snapped. “That’s the whole reason I’m here, you know. In case. John sent me to do damage control because he knows you and Joseph are so tunnel-vision you don’t have any kind of back-up plan.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s funny. A back-up plan, for the collapse of the world as we know it.”

“Finally,” she bit out, “you get my sense of humor.” She grabbed the handle of the door, but before she opened it, she said, “ If Joseph’s right.”

Jacob stilled beside her, head cocked as though he were really listening to her, taking in her words. “What?”

“You said,” Isolde replied tartly, “ if Joseph’s right.”

She turned her head to look at him, trying to discern anything in his expression that might have let her glean some insight on where it was that Jacob really stood. Of all of the Seed children, he had always struck her as the least fanatical—devoted, surely. Structured and disciplined and rigorous and devoted, yes. But not in the way that John had been about Joseph, and maybe was still.

Of course, she saw nothing that indicated Jacob was going to bite the bait.

“Just remember,” Isolde told him, pushing the passenger door open and feeling the bite of winter dig straight into her bones, “ you said that, not me.”

She slid out of the passenger seat, grabbing her suitcase from the back seat and hauling it out. Jacob sighed from the front seat, passing a hand over his face before he climbed out of the driver’s seat and came around the front, stilling her hands over the handle of her suitcase.

“Joseph doesn’t know you’re here,” he told her, glossing over her little barb as though it had never happened. He disengaged her suitcase from the back of the truck with ease, lifting it over her head and keeping it out of the snow. “Just as a heads up.”

“He doesn’t—?” She felt the incredulous spike in her voice. “Bloody fucking hell, did you not tell him?”

“Why would I?” the redhead replied idly, beginning to walk toward the chapel without waiting for her. The implication lay there— why would I, when it’s so much more interesting to have not? —reminding Isolde that in many ways, Jacob Seed was still a Big Brother that did not so often enjoy bending to the will and request of his younger sibling.

She picked her way across the yard, stomping the snow off of her shoes before she stepped into the chapel that Jacob had disappeared into. It was empty, and dark; a heater ran, fruitless and futile, in the far corner. That’s going to change, she thought tiredly. I won’t be losing my fingers for this shithole.

“Look who I found at the airport,” Jacob announced to the figure standing at the front of the church. Isolde felt her insides twist with a strange kind of dreadful anticipation, because the second the figure turned around, she recognized him immediately. Even dimly backlit by the cold winter light filtering through the symbol carved out of the front of the chapel, even after so much time apart. Of course, she thought, she would have recognized him anywhere.

Joseph said, “Isolde,” like he wasn’t at all surprised to find her there.

“Hello, Joseph,” she greeted, managing to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “I’ve only just learned John did not choose to inform you of my impending arrival.” And apparently, neither did God.

“No,” the man agreed. He was bundled up in a dark-colored sweater, high-necked, the hair pulled back from his face. “But I haven’t spoken to John recently. And what did he send you for?”

Isolde blinked at him, brows lifting on her face. “Pardon?”

“What purpose?” he reiterated. “To what end?”

It was so completely and utterly dismissive that Isolde thought she had hallucinated Joseph’s blatant disrespect. The Joseph she had known had, at least, more grace and tact when it came to being a thoughtless bastard.

“To what—?” Fuck you fuck you fuck you, that vicious, still-wounded thing inside of her whispered, furious. Fuck you, you stupid smug fucker, fuck you so fucking hard. To what end? He couldn’t have possibly descended into sheer stupidity as well as delusional grandeur, could he have?

Jacob said, almost in an effort to mediate, “Johnny thought we could use the support.”

“To what end?” Soli demanded, incredulous. “You’ve got half of Montana’s homeless population dragging their emaciated corpses through the snow outside, Joseph. What ‘purpose’ do you think I’m here for?”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed. His expression remained serene otherwise, no flex of irritated muscle that she could see. He’d always been nearly impossible for her to read—plenty of times she’d said things just to push his buttons, just to see him flinch, just to see what he’d do. It had both pleased and infuriated him, then.

Now, she hoped only for the latter.

“You’re here for PR, then,” is what he said, at last. “A fall-back. Because John has doubts.”

“Taking one quick look at your congregation, I can see why.”

“Faith and devotion are not always the easiest routes,” Joseph replied, lifting his chin in a tiny spark of defiance. “And they are. Devoted.”

“They are,” Isolde said tightly, “ filthy, Joseph.”

There was a tiny, almost imperceptible click, and she realized with a sense of satisfaction that it was Joseph’s molars, setting and grinding together. The moment stretched between the two of them like that, drawn tight and tense by her blatant disdain and Joseph’s refusal to acknowledge that they probably needed her, and finally Jacob cleared his throat.

“So glad,” he said lightly, rubbing his hands together. “So glad to have you back around, Sol. Why don’t I show you where you’ll be staying?”

Isolde sucked her teeth. “Fine,” she replied tartly. “And it ought to have a better fucking heater than this.”

“Whatever you want, princess.”

As Jacob swung her suitcase over his shoulder, heading for the door that led out through the back of the chapel, Isolde cinched her coat tight around her waist and followed.

“Soli,” Joseph said, the utterance of a nickname so few had ever been allowed to use for her grinding her movements to a halt. She took in a short, sharp breath through her nose, turning to look at the man over her shoulder.

He was regarding her curiously, his eyes taking a relaxed, leisurely sweep over her despite the unpleasant interaction they had just endured.

“What, Joseph?” she asked, her words coming out short and biting.

“You haven’t changed a bit.” The corner of his mouth ticked upward. “I’m glad you’re here.”

It wasn’t what she had expected or anticipated. Even in a perfect world where they were absolutely cordial with each other, she would haven’t expected this. The whole thing had to be some kind of game: already, the mental chess game had begun, and she had been caught lagging unpleasantly behind on the first move.

So she said, “Good,” and turned back around, marching devoutly after Jacob.

“You should be.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He had been this close.

John hadn’t intended on being as loud as he was, when he got out of his car. But the sight of Elliot wandering out of her front door, barefoot and in nothing but shorts and t-shirt, had inspired quite a bit of concern; he’d still waited, watching her. Watching her walk out to the fence that he knew led out to the pastures and eventually the woods, and then stood there.

Much like the other night, she only stood. He couldn’t see her do anything except be there—standing, watching the woods, her face relaxed and serene.

It filled him with the same kind of dread it had when he’d seen her do it through the windows, standing at the top of the stairs with her face lax and her eyes open. Seeing it again, he was now more certain than ever it was a recent development, and that she had not been sleep-walking back in Hope County; at the very least, not when he had been around her.

And red. Her hair was so red—the same kind of coppery-ginger that he’d seen the man in their family photos sporting, the man who had been entirely absent from any other photos past what seemed to be the age of eight. Her hair was so red, and so long, sprawling down to her shoulder blades and sweeping across the thin white cotton of her sleep shirt. 

When ten minutes passed and he saw no change, he thought, that just won’t fucking do, and opened the car door, shutting it behind him with a new sense of urgency. He hadn’t wanted to get her like this when something was so clearly unsettling her, but if that’s what it had to be, then—

But the front door of her house opened, and he heard the woman that he thought had to be Elliot’s mother calling for her, and he’d stopped himself. It would have been worse if he’d been halfway down the drive to her, but this far away he could duck behind the Honda he’d been calling his home and act like he hadn’t gotten out at all.

Somewhere down the street—down in the far end of the widely-spaced row of old money houses—the sound of a car starting and pulling away echoed.

It could have been nothing, he thought. It could have been, but what if it wasn’t?

What if it wasn’t nothing?

John listened to the sound of Elliot muddle through a response to her mother, words slurring tiredly as she stepped through the snow. It wasn’t until he heard the front door of the house close and the voices fade out of existence that he finally allowed himself to climb back into his car, turning the key in the ignition and cranking the heat up.

He had been this close to her. As he sat in his car, listening to the heat tick against the cold metal of the engine, John thought that maybe he would not be able to be as careful as he would have liked with this whole thing. Time was rapidly running out, and things were only going to get worse the longer he spent dallying.

Besides—if memory served him correctly, Elliot had always slept better with him there. Even if it wasn’t the most ideal reunion he could have pictured, he thought it was as close as he was going to get.

It certainly wasn’t how he anticipated meeting his mother-in-law, at any rate.

In the console, the rattling vibration of plastic on plastic broke him out of his thoughts. John fished around absently, eyes burning with exhaustion, until he could pull the cell phone out and regard the unregistered number for a moment. It had to be either Jacob or Joseph, given they were the only ones who had access to this phone number, but that thought was oddly uncomfortable.

He hit the green accept button, clearing his throat. “Hello?”

“John. How are you doing?”

It was Joseph’s voice, familiar but altogether strange, too. They hadn’t spoken before he’d left the compound, and Hope County—in part because Joseph had been deep in his singular loneliness, convening with God, and in part because John had not wanted to think about the conversation they would have had regarding bringing Elliot back. There was too much there to unpack, really; Joseph’s dislike (hatred?) of what she had done was abundantly clear, but his elder brother couldn’t find it in himself to deny, either, the importance of returning her back to the fold.

“I’m alright,” John replied, cautiously. He thought about whether or not to mention Elliot’s sleepwalking, and then decided against it. “How are things at the compound?”

“They’re good.” There was a pause. “You sent Isolde here.”

It was a statement, not a question. John pressed his mouth into a thin line. He wondered if Isolde had been polite—and then reminded himself that it was Isolde, and no amount of bad blood or past history would ever get her to shut up.

So he said, “She’s the next best thing, after me.”

“I see.” Joseph seemed to want to say something else, his voice lingering absently on the other end of their phone call: but if he was going to say what it was, he didn’t make any move to, and John felt that nervous, anxious energy pushing up high in his throat.

“It’s important to me,” John managed out after a minute, “that you and the others are well taken care of while I’m here dealing with…”

“Our wayward lamb.”

The tightness in Joseph’s voice was not lost on John, and he cleared his throat.

“Right. But I’m going to be—touching base with her soon, and we’ll be back on the road in no time.”

Touching base didn’t sound quite right. It didn’t feel quite as momentous as it was going to feel, he thought—but making contact also didn’t hit the same. It was going to be near-disastrous, he was sure, no matter how he went about it.

At first, anyway. And then she would understand, of course, that everything he had done had been for them; everything had been done for her sake, for her future with him, and she would finally, finally be fucking grateful.

“See that you do, and are,” Joseph said after a minute. “We need our brother here, John. You, and our sister and nephew.”

Our sister, Joseph said. Something about that didn’t feel good at all, John thought, but he swallowed back the uneasy bile in his throat.

“Of course,” he replied after a moment. “I understand completely.”

“Goodnight, John.”

The call clicked off before John could even open his mouth to reply, leaving him with only the dead air and the stifling silence of steady snowfall around him.

Good night indeed.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Elliot awoke that morning, it was to the sound of conversation downstairs and Boomer’s frantic barking.

She struggled out of bed, eyes blurry from exhaustion. Her body ached, dull and faintly reminiscent of her late-night jaunt out into the snow; she pushed the door open, only for Boomer to instantly race down the stairs.

“Elliot,” her mother called, her voice pitching high with frustration, “ please come control your beast.”

Boomer was barking mad. He was barking angry, the kind of vicious alert noise he made when he saw someone he did not like. Elliot barely managed to collect herself to get down the stairs to apologize profusely to whoever it was her hound was currently yelling at when she stopped short at the end of the stairs.

It was John. John, sitting on her couch. John, coming to a stand when she came down the stairs. John, hair tousled out from its normally perfectly-gelled slick-back style, John in street clothes, John John John existing in her space and breathing her air and flashing her a stupid smile that she wanted to immediately punch in.

Her brain fizzed and sputtered to a stop. She had thought, should this moment ever come, that she would feel scared. Panicked. But she didn’t feel any of those things. She only felt—

Furious.

The kind of strange, quiet fury that arrived like death, sudden and violent and crashing over her in waves until all she could think about was getting her hands around John’s throat.

She was vividly, ferociously reminded of the drag of John’s finger along her sternum. Yours must surely be the sin of Wrath.

It felt something close to nirvana, though, in a strange, intoxicating way. All this time she had spent being worried that someone was hunting her, someone like Burke—desperate to Do Right by the law—or maybe even the Seeds themselves, because some kind of cosmic force had been on their side for reasons even she couldn’t formulate. But now?

Now, the man who had been the apex predator, the man who had dragged her through a drug-riddled nightmare, the man who had lied and lied and lied endlessly, ceaselessly, who had

(I love you, Elliot)

pretended to give a shit about the things that she wanted, was here.

Within reach.

It was a different kind of adrenaline rush, one that she hadn’t realized she had missed until her attention had zeroed in directly on John and the imminent threat that he posed. The things he could tell her mother, the things she had worked so hard to keep at bay and far behind her—John was the manifestation of all of those things, and she was fucking mad.

“Elliot,” her mother said, breaking her from the strange, dreamlike haze her fury had plunged her into, “John tells me that he’s your...”

And then Scarlet’s voice trailed off.

“What?” Elliot bit out, crushing the bones of the words between her teeth. “ John says he’s my what, mother?”

John exhaled through his mouth. There was an infuriatingly charming smile planted on his face, but if she looked close enough, she could see lines of tension there, too; she wondered if he’d really thought her mother would be a safer bet than her. “Ell,” he began, the nickname grinding Elliot’s good nature to a halt, “I think it’s important that we—”

But before he could finish his thought, Elliot interjected, “Shut. The. Fuck. Up. ”

Boomer’s barking had dwindled into low, threatening growls, his hackles fully raised like little pin needles along his spine. He was laser-focused on John, with one ear cocked in her direction, waiting. On the couch, John shifted uncomfortably.

“Bunny,” her mother said, her voice tight and her mouth set in a prim line at the expletive she’d just barked out, “tell the hound to be quiet.”

“Sit,” Elliot ordered, which did not equate to quiet, but which Boomer obeyed anyway. She thought maybe she would have been more stressed about it if she were not fully confident in her ability to heel him, should the need arise.

“I only wanted,” John tried again, raising his hands like he was trying not to spook a wild bronco, “for us to have a moment—”

“It’s nice to want things,” she bit out viciously. “There are a lot of things I want, too.”

Her mother came to a stand, clearing her throat and instantly drawing their eyes.

“Mr. Seed,” Scarlet said, her voice mild, “please take a seat. You’re raising my blood pressure, looming in my vision like that.”

John took in a breath and then re-seated himself, planting a smile on his face. “John is fine, Mrs. Honeysett.”

Her mother gave him a scathing once-over before she said, very pointedly, “Mr. Seed tells me he is your husband.”

It might as well have been a slap to the face. Elliot was viciously reminded of their last interaction—the threat of murder, the oh-so-satisfying sting of her palm connecting with his face. The last well-and-true violation John had committed against their wobbly, new-born trust.

Her stomach lurched. The kind of nausea that came with rage welled up inside of her, and she blinked furiously, wishing for once that the adrenaline did not make her so very focused and hyper-aware and instead that she could actively choose to check-out of reality.

“He’s a fucking liar,” was what ended up coming out of her mouth, because it wasn’t incriminating either way. John Seed was a liar. A deceiver. And while they might —maybe, tenuously, questionably—be married in the eyes of the law (something which Elliot could, unfortunately, not prove one way or the other), that didn’t mean fuck all.

“At the very least, you won’t be having a baby out of wedlock,” her mother continued, her voice tight with some unreadable emotion that implied she was not pleased by this development at all. She was eyeing Elliot, studying her, and for once a scolding for her poor language did not ensue. “I imagine you’ll want a moment to discuss in private what our next steps are.”

There are no next steps, Elliot thought viciously, loosening the vice-clench of her hands and feeling the blood come rushing, stinging back into her palms. She watched the corner of John’s mouth tick upward, amused; infuriatingly handsome, per usual, so much so that she wanted to just punch his fucking teeth in. There are no next steps for John Seed, not with me.

“Yeah,” she said finally, eyes narrowing, gritting the words out between her teeth. “I would love to have a moment alone with John.”

The casual smile on John’s face downturned, just a little. It was the kind of uneasy expression that came with getting what he wanted so easily, too easily, that he didn’t know if it was really what he wanted anymore. Good. She wanted him to squirm.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Scarlet replied, sweeping past her. “And you just call if you need me, bunny.”

Elliot made a small noise of agreement. The tense, drawn line of her mother’s shoulders implied a distinct dislike, and she could already feel the judgments welling up—things that John would certainly deserve. Things that her mother would wait to slip into idle, polite conversation, if it ever got to that point. Which she would do her fucking damnedest to make sure that it didn’t.

As soon as her mother had drifted wraithlike up the stairs, a moment of silence stretched between them. John came to a stand, keeping his hands up and in plain view as he took a few steps forward, inspiring in Boomer a few short, vicious barks that reminded him their friendship had been temporary and fleeting.

“Ell,” John began, “I know that you’re—”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

He exhaled, once, out of his nose. “ Elliot,” he tried again, “a lot of things were said—”

Elliot felt the anger spike in her violently. “Oh, were there?”

“My God, are you going to let me finish a sentence?”

“I should rip your fucking tongue out of your mouth, you lying rat,” Elliot snapped viciously. “What are you doing here? Why are you here? How did you fucking—how are the police not—the government —”

John flashed her a half-cocked smile that she was sure had inspired homicidal tendencies before, and would do so again. “Are you really that surprised they weren’t able to keep us?”

“This is not the fucking time,” she hissed, pitching her voice low, “to be playing games with me, John Seed.”

“No game,” he promised as he mimicked her volume. “We found a way out. I’m presuming, not unlike the same strategy with which you found a way out, isn’t that right?”

She felt her teeth clench. Of course he fucking knows, something inside of her whispered viciously. Of course he knows, he’s not stupid about things like that. Just everything else.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally. “You have no way of knowing that Burke didn’t send me off to a therapist and let me go.”

“Sure, Elliot,” John murmured, his voice slick, “Cameron Burke, U.S. Federal Marshal, shipped you off to a therapist who found out you were perfectly well-adjusted after caving a man’s face in with a blunt object and now you’re here, living in bumfuck nowhere Georgia. How’s mama Honeysett feel about that, anyway?” He tilted his chin, eyes sly. “About all the killing—”

She swung without thinking. It was a knee-jerk reaction, no thought and no pre-meditation, only pure and unadulterated gut-instinct to impact her fist with his face. Unfortunately, John seemed to have been prepared for it, and stepped back just in time, catching her wrist.

“I’m a quick study,” John murmured, his voice pitching low into a threat, “and I’m not interested in losing any teeth.”

“Brave of you to put your hand so close to my face,” Elliot snapped in a hiss. She jerked her wrist out of his grip like it had burned her, and it might as well have—the contact of skin, not unlike the ways John had touched and grabbed her before, when he’d had a right to.

Regarding her warily, he dropped his hand to his side. “You ran away with our baby.”

“I would hardly call leaving you to your own devices as I made a leisurely departure with government officials ‘running away’.”

“You ran away with our baby,” he repeated, cocking his head to the side. “I think the exact words were ‘you should have considered that before you fucking came inside me, you cunt’.”

Elliot’s mouth twisted. She was trying not to smile, because despite the absolute absurdity of the situation—the punch of those words still felt satisfying, in a strange, twisted way. Even though it was for that exact reason that she found herself in this situation now: pregnant, and struggling to feel like she was really that, like she was anything more than a temporary vessel for the baby who didn’t quite feel real to her yet.

John’s eyes flickered. “Find that amusing?”

“Yeah,” she replied sharply, “I think it’s some of my best work. Short of slapping you in the face. I do wish I’d made it a closed-fist punch, if I’m being honest.”

He seemed pleased at that, as though the reminder of her Wrath was a comforting familiarity, and she wished she hadn’t fallen so easily back into their old cadence. Steeling herself, she said, “You need to leave.”

“I think I’m exactly where I need to be,” John assured her. “With my unborn child, and my wife —”

“Don’t you fucking—”

“—and my mother-in-law,” he finished demurely, “who surely knows everything about what we’ve been up to these last few weeks. Doesn’t she?”

Elliot stared at him. No was the correct and truthful answer. No, her mother did not know what had been happening these last few weeks, was blissfully unaware of the extent of Eden’s Gate and their evil as well as the things that Elliot herself had done. If her mother had known what she’d done—if her mother had known the things John had done—she would have been horrified. Disgusted. Repulsed.

I’m it for you, John had said, and

(maybe that was true, maybe he was the only person who would ever be able to get her, accept her, love her)

fuck him for saying so.

“The irony of you threatening me with pure honesty isn’t lost on me. And I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish,” Elliot said sourly, after a moment. “Blackmail isn’t exactly the way to a girl’s heart, and certainly doesn’t convince me of your qualifications as a father.”

“Desperate times,” John allowed, tilting his chin up playfully, “desperate measures. And it isn’t blackmailing, per se. You could have just as easily told your mother everything that had happened and I’d have nothing working in my favor.”

But of course, he had known her better than that. John had seen the way killing Kian had affected her, the way it affected her when she was faced with the mountain of bodies she had left behind her, the shame and disconcertion at finding something wretched and wrathful inside of herself and liking it.

So he hadn’t gambled at all, really, and she supposed that she wasn’t that surprised.

He paused, studying her for a moment, before he added, “Not to mention, you are carrying my baby.”

My baby, something hissed inside of Elliot, wretched and protective, something that had otherwise been dormant inside of her up until now; not your baby, my baby.

“All I want,” he continued as he kept his voice low, sauntering closer, trying to do that thing that he did where he crowded up against her and made her brain go fuzzy, “is a chance.”

“Fuck you,” Elliot snapped. “I should have throttled you the second you walked through my fucking door.”

“But you didn’t,” he pointed out. The arrogance bled through and into his voice, bright and sharp. “And you haven’t. And that’s because you lo—”

This time, Elliot’s swing wasn’t anticipated at all, and she landed a sharp, open-palm slap to the side of John’s face. He reached up, working his jaw, his eyes narrowed as that tell-tale anger colored his expression. Good, she thought venomously, watching the red bloom just under his skin, good, I hope it fucking hurts, you stupid fucker.

“Next time you presume to tell me how I feel about you,” she warned, “it will be closed-fist. And I won’t fucking miss.”

John’s eyes flashed with something dangerous and angry. But he said, “I’m glad I didn’t break that wrathful streak out of you,” with no absence of affection-tipped venom.

“Elliot?”

It was Scarlet’s voice, drifting down from the stairs. Elliot gave John one hard, vicious look before she turned to see her mother standing at the landing where the two stairways converged at the top of the main staircase, regarding them with a critical eye.

“Have you sorted it all out?” she asked after a moment. “All of this…business?”

“I’m going to be in town for a while longer,” John said, before Elliot could formulate a response, inspiring in her yet another bout of homicidal rage that she had to quickly reel in. “I’m determined to make this work, no matter how long it takes.” And then, in what he surely thought was a very charming gesture: “I’m very pleased to get to know my mother-in-law a little better, as well.”

“Ah,” Scarlet replied. She then refused to elaborate. 

“I hope,” John continued after a moment, “that’s alright with you, Mrs. Honeysett.”

Her brow arched upward, looking between Elliot and John expectantly, making it clear that was all she had to say on that. It was satisfying, to watch her mother operate as she always did without even knowing the true nature of John Seed. It was the least he deserved

“I really think you should just go,” Elliot said tightly as she turned her attention to him. “Back to Hope County, I mean. Your brothers probably need your help.”

“They’re fine,” John said, feigning sweetness despite the red sting of her slap still fresh on his skin and her mother's very apparent disdain, “and nothing is more important to me than you and the baby, Elliot.”

Saccharine and venomous. Fuck, I hate him.

“I’ll get a room in the motel here,” he continued, brightly. “That way we’ll have plenty of time to spend together. Catch up. Has Elliot told you much about Hope County these last few weeks, Mrs. Honeysett?”

"Fine," Elliot bit out, just as her mother cut in, "That won't do at all," and they looked at each other with the same amount of wounded incredulity.

"He'll stay with us." Her mother's voice was decisive. "Not in that run-down motel."

"Mother," Elliot bit out.

"I won't have a man traipsing in and out of my house at all hours of the night, living like some vagabond," Scarlet asserted. "Especially not the father of my grandchild. And you certainly don’t expect me to explain that to people."

Elliot could feel the headache blistering behind her eyes. She didn't even need to look at John to know he was grinning, ear to ear, like a fucking Cheshire Cat. It was the blatant and unimpressive downside to her mother remaining completely in the dark about what had happened in Hope County—and if John had thought he had leverage over her before, he certainly thought so now. There was no way Scarlet would have insisted he stay if she really knew.

This was bad. Devastatingly, infuriatingly, chop-her-hair-off-and-run-away bad. The kind of bad that only happened in horror comedies. Suddenly, she thought that dyeing her hair had been the most reasonable thing to do, and that her margin for acting out had increased exponentially.

"That's so kind of you," John said pleasantly from behind her. "Thank you."

"It is kind of me," was her mother's clipped agreement. "Make sure you move your…" Scarlet gestured vaguely with one elegant hand. "Vehicle behind the garage, Mr. Seed. I do not need my driveway looking like a scrapyard." Her head tilted, eyes narrowed. "Bunny, help me prepare the guest room."

She resisted the urge to sigh, knowing that if there was one thing her mother would not tolerate, it was an insolent child. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Her mother gave the two of them one more leisurely, scathing sweep-over with her eyes, making a noise that bordered skillfully between discontent and acquiescence before she departed up the stairs to leave them alone once again.

“Do we really need separate rooms?” John mused, as though he had not hunted her down five states away and showed up unannounced at her home after systematically lying to her. “I mean—you are carrying my child.”

There it was, that little spark again, pure defiance: my baby, I’m carrying them, you’ve done nothing, like all of a sudden this baby had become more hers than it had ever felt before the second John tried to stake his claim on it. “I’m going to punch your fucking teeth in,” she hissed, “if you don’t get the fuck out of swinging range.”

“I did so miss our rapport.”

“Final warning.”

He flashed her a grin that was all teeth, and she regretted, in fact, having given him a warning at all; it seemed that even though their time together had been short, old habits did die hard.

The brunette swung around on his heel, pulling the keys out of his pocket and sauntering toward the door. He truly did embody the cat that had caught the canary, more so than Elliot would have liked to admit, turning to look at her through playfully narrowed eyes. “In case you were wondering—”

“I’m not.”

“I like the red,” he finished, voice bleeding with self-satisfaction, “bunny.”

It was good, for his sake, that he had waited until he was out of reach to say so.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“ That one, Elliot?”

“Mama,” she gritted out, her fingers digging viciously into the fabric of the sheets, “please, I do not want to have this conversation.”

“I just think,” her mother amended curtly as she passed a scathing look over the brunette Elliot was currently considering shoving through the stained glass of the front door, “you could have at least picked the tall one.”

Elliot stared at her mother from across the king-sized guest bed, blinking rapidly. “You mean...Jacob?” Ugh, she thought, remembering the way John’s eldest brother had grinned at her when she’d threatened to kill him and said, yeah, you think you can, little girl? Fucker.

“Is that the redhead?”

“Yes.”

Scarlet nodded sagely. “You have to be mindful of who you pick to build a life with,” her mother intoned dutifully. “Genes, and the like. Both your daddy and I are tall, and you’re so short, honey. You want to set the baby up for success, don’t you?”

“I’m not—” Absurd. Absolutely absurd, this conversation she was having, not only that her mother thought she would just have her fucking pick of Seed brothers to be impregnated by, let alone that she would ever fucking want Jacob Seed that close to her. “I’m not discussing whether or not I’d let Jacob Seed into my bed, mother.”

“Well,” Scarlet replied primly, smoothing out the comforter meticulously with her hand, “John’s quite...alternative, anyway. I just never knew you liked...” Her voice trailed off again, and she gestured vaguely.

Elliot arched a brow at her. “Liked?”

“That,” her mother finished after a moment, and then sighed, like it had been excruciating for her to say so. It wasn’t as though they’d had many heart-to-hearts about what kind of boy Elliot liked, anyway. “You know, the—tattoos. And whatnot.”

“They don’t bother me one way or another, mama.”

“I find your taste in men quite eclectic. What happened to that nice young man you went to high school with? And all of those school dances? He was nice. Didn’t you two work together at the sheriff’s office?”

The last person that Elliot wanted to discuss in terms of a romantic relationship was the one man she’d dated in high school. Staci Pratt had been evacuated with the others, and was hopefully living his life with a steadfast therapist somewhere far from Hope County, just like the rest of the Resistance. She cleared her throat.

“I’m not having a baby with Staci Pratt.”

“I know that.”

“Can we please,” she started, “can we please stop talking about this? I really don’t even want John staying here, but you insisted, and—”

Scarlet crossed her arms over her chest, frowning. “Well, why not? Don’t you like him? Enough to marry him and have a baby with him, anyway.”

I don’t, that vicious little voice inside of Elliot hissed, I didn’t say yes, I didn’t want to marry him, I don’t think I even want to marry anyone, stop talking about it, please.

It made her sick to her stomach, to think about John being her husband, to think about the fact that she was having his baby, and maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to feel quite so much like herself as of late; maybe that was why she had been feeling so disconnected from the baby, because she hadn’t quite reconciled how they had come to be in the first place.

She hadn’t reconciled that she had been so, so, incredibly, wretchedly stupid.

“Is there something you aren’t telling me?” Scarlet asked after a moment, watching her from across the bed, her mouth turning into a firmer, more deep-set frown. “You seemed awfully unhappy to have him here.”

“We didn’t leave on good terms,” Elliot muttered, clearing her throat and busying herself with pulling pillowcases onto the pillows. Fuck, she couldn’t believe she was doing this. Making up a bed in her guest room for John fucking Seed.

Her mother moved around to the foot of the bed, stepping carefully over Boomer so as not to disturb him where he lay. She paused at the door, just long enough without saying anything to draw Elliot’s attention back to her, before she exhaled softly.

“It’s Christmas next week,” her mother said after moment, completely ruining the illusion she’d had of her mother actually asking her something meaningful. “The perfect time to practice patience.”

Elliot felt her mouth twist viciously, turning away and dropping the pillows on the bed so that her mother wouldn’t see. The last thing she needed to give John Seed was patience. Least of all Christmas-spirit-induced patience. He deserved far, far less, and much worse, than that.

“Don’t forget about your doctor’s appointment,” her mother called as she departed the room, “and hurry down to eat something before you run your beast.”

It was better this way, anyway. To have John here. If he wasn’t in the custody of Federal agents, the next best place he could be was where she could see him—keep tabs on him, keep aware of what kinds of shit he was up to. And maybe he’d get so tired with her mother’s particular brand of vitriol that he’d fucking leave.

I should be so lucky.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“What is this?”

Kajsa’s voice broke her out of her reverie. She had been watching the snowfall, flecking against the window in crystalline geometrics, methodical and variable all at the same time—but the surprise peaking in her harbinger’s voice was enough to draw her eyes away.

The heater in the car rattled, straining against the cold temperatures. Kajsa’s dark eyes had narrowed, and when Helmi followed her gaze, it was to the front of the mother’s house. Their little interloper was heading up the front steps, having apparently come from behind the two-story shop and garage to head back inside.

And then he let himself in.

“He is moving quickly, this little snake of ours,” Kajsa murmured, her voice flecked with amusement. “I thought he’d be exercising more caution.”

Helmi made a low noise. This was...displeasing, to say the least. They had been counting on John’s interference being minimal, given that he was away from home and all of his little pets. Apparently, it had only made him more bold.

And that just wouldn’t do at all.

“You will go back,” the black-haired woman beside her announced, decisively.

“What?” Helmi asked, brows furrowing together at the center of her forehead. “Back to Hope County? But—I should be here, with you. My place is—I belong with you. What about...”

Kajsa leaned back against her seat, her eyes never once having left the house. As Helmi’s voice trailed off, unused to presenting distress or dislike of a decision made by her superior, the woman’s jaw worked absently, the brush of her dark, sooty lashes caressing the top of her cheekbones. Singularly devastating and beautiful, as always, though in moments like this Helmi wished it weren’t so distracting.

“I can open our mother to the influence on my own,” she said at last, and finally turned her slate-gray gaze to Helmi. “I want you to return to our family back in Montana. Do whatever you would like, but make sure you are making them sweat. ”

She turned in her seat now, so that they were facing each other, taking Hel’s face in her hands. The pads of Kajsa’s thumbs swept across her cheeks, affectionate.

“Strangle them,” Kajsa murmured. “I want you to be my tourniquet. Stop the bleeding where you can. Tighten so ferociously around those apostates that John Seed will have no choice but to abandon our mother and leave her to me.”

I don’t want to leave, Helmi thought, watching the woman’s dark eyes—so dark, so dark, faded and distant while her pupils ate away at her irises. I don’t want to leave you.

“It is best.” Her voice pitched, soft and low, almost lulling. “For the end. For our winter, Helmi. I do not want you to go, and I will grieve, just like you will.” She tilted her head, drawing Helmi’s eyes to the wisps of dark hair spilling like black moonlight against the porcelain of her throat. “And what do we say to our grief?”

“Sorrow shared,” Helmi whispered, “sorrow halved.”

“That is exactly right.” Kajsa leaned back, the curve of her dark mouth, feline and sharp, wrenching right on Helmi’s resolve. “You will go for me, won’t you?”

I don’t want to, she thought again, the idea of leaving Kajsa alone to sit in the dark, to peel apart the mother’s layers one by one, unthread her, a distressing one. They had never been so far apart. I don’t want to be away from you.

“Helmi.”

“I will,” she managed out at last. “For you.” I would do anything, for you.

Kajsa’s smile widened, razor-sharp.

“And that is why," the woman murmured, "you are perfect to me."

#my writing #fic: witching hour #ch: elliot honeysett #ch: john seed #otp: death keep off; i am your enemy #john's impending death is near on the horizon #i can feel it in my bones #far cry 5 fic #fc5 fic #john seed/deputy #fc5 oc #john seed x deputy #poor mans about to get eviscerated by scarlet honeysett #jskjdaskjd

[infinites-chaser]

Hey~ It’s been so long since your last post. How are you doing nowadays? I miss reading your writings so much (T-T). Take care ~

heLLO 🥺 this is the sweetest pLs reading this made my heart warm and that's dangerous hey. it's summer.

i swear im still alive i've been. extremely uninspired for a while now and i uh got a research internship for the summer so I have been practically living in my lab brains brains brains and haven't done much writing but pst pst pst for u bc this message made my day 💌

this was started and given up on ages ago but. however. neuroscience! and why wouldn't you want to know that (1) that kiss neurons. are real and (2) yes a subset of them are called KNDY neurons and (3) yEs they release a protein called kisspeptin which drives our sex organs

also treating this as a lowkey WIP(? more like. work in abandoned) Wednesday friday technicaLLy Saturday (many thanks for the tag @sunshinejihyun I LOVE YOU)

excerpt from KNDY and Kiss neurons: a short lesson in neuroanatomy

he's certain there's a familiar constellation of neurons that blazes bright with activity whenever he sees her. whenever she looks at him like that-- expressive eyes downcast, as if she could hide the way she keeps peeking up at him, gaze fluttering up to his, then back down, teeth worrying her bottom lip.

three thoughts crystalize and shatter against his vocal cords in the space between breaths.

first, the scientific: kiss1 neurons release kisspeptin onto GnRH neurons in the hypothalamus which drives the release of hormones from the pituitary gland, the professor in him dutifully recites. this pathway, the hypothalamic-pituitary-gondal axis, is essential for the function of our reproductive organs.

second, the philosophical: he can't describe what he's feeling with objective science alone. if any science is objective at all. if it possibly can be, when it comes to humans. when it comes to him and her, him, and her eyes on his, a world of emotion swirling in them that one could never hope to quantify, to pick apart with careful analysis-- there's only her, him and her and this moment, this moment and the meaning they bring to it. isn't that how it always is, in moments that end up mattering the most?

what meaning a moment holds, what moments become memory, what neurons he needs active to best preserve them-- he can't say. can't tell if this moment is meaningful. can't tell if he'll remember this later: his heart pounding so fast it's near painful, her lips near parted, her eyes dark. (still on his.)

finally, the impulsive: he wants her. he wants to kiss her.

the urge wins out. he does.

her lips part under his in a gentle 'o' of surprise, and she half-stiffens, but then one of his hands is cupping her cheek, his other cushioning the back of her head as he leans in further and further and she gives. he follows her until she's backed up against the board, her fingers curling tight around reachable muscles of his back, and he doesn't want to let go, he wants to know if they never broke apart if they'd keep breathing somehow, because all his careful theories, every hypothesis, every experiment gone right or wrong-- all the laws of nature and the world are nothing in this moment, his lips on hers, her body against his.

#val rambles #val writes #hello i live #idk if i rly want to write anything officially for mlqc anymore so uh. this can be ur psychologist/neuroscientist of choice. but yes. #this was originally written with lucien in mind

[thisworldisablackhole]

Underneath - From the Gut of Gaia

FFO: DEATH METAL, HARDCORE, BLACKENED GRIND / LISTEN

Underneath are a perplexing band. Starting out as a bedroom deathcore project with multi-instrumentalist and kid genius Joey Philips at the helm, they released a debut EP that could have easily fooled me into thinking they have been around the block for decades. Somehow, despite being super hyped on their EP and subsequent singles, their debut LP From the Gut of Gaia slid completely under my radar for almost three months. I wouldn't usually blame a band for my inability to be hip and in-the-know, but Underneath didn't exactly do themselves any publicity favours with this album either. It was released through an obscure independent tape label based in Canada, and then the band completely wiped their Instagram account only to come back about a month later with a post claiming that the band has undergone some changes, all prior music is "dead in the water" and to be regarded as demos, and that their first official release is yet to come. Strange, but okay.

If From the Gut of Gaia is a demo, then everybody else needs to step up their fucking game immediately. Not only does this album feature some masterful punchy songwriting and a thoughtful, engaging track flow, but it has some seriously pro sounding production to back it all up. Guitars and bass are loud and coated in a layer of filth, while the drums are nice and crisp to offer a sense of precision and clarity to the rhythm section that keeps the dirt from bleeding over the edge of the chalice. Joey's vocals sound straight up demented in their anger, and I really appreciate the tasteful variations in range and delivery on display here. Joey treats us to everything from low, to lower, to even lower, some highs for balance, and then those hilariously disgusting slam gutturals on the aptly titled "Disguster" are just icing on the cake. There are also these quick little back and forth pick scrapes all over this album that sound like the crack of a metallic whip (or a burst fire from a laser gun?) and I absolutely love them, even if they are abused in certain songs. There is a laborious attention to detail here that is honestly impressive for such a young band. They have implemented an easter egg hunt of ear candy so that you always hear something new when you smash the replay button.

Catchy isn't usually the first word that comes to mind when I think of blistering deathcore bands, but the way Underneath jumps from these grinding double kick tremolo assaults into insanely groovy mid tempo death metal riffage just activates the neurons in my dopamine deficient brain in a way that keeps me coming back over and over again to engage in the spiraling pursuit of madness. Nasty riffs and quick left hook transitions are a recipe for instantly memorable and addictive moments. The length of these tracks definitely lend themselves to the replay value of this album as well, with an average length of one to three minutes long. There is no fat on these tracks. They are concise, and nothing gets lost in excess, but that doesn't mean the band doesn't indulge in a little ambiance as a treat when they want to. Mid album interlude "-epoch-", for instance, features some somber reverberated plucking and distorted voice samples that transition nicely into the atmospheric black metal intro of "The Second Great Dying", but it doesn't last long before Underneath comes back to remind you that they are here to beat ass first and foremost.

The mammoth fifteen minute title track closer is the only song where the band fully gives in to the experimental blackened death fantasy and strings the listener along with a series of blast beats and slow atmospheric doom passages. The track is technically only 10 minutes long if you discount the spooky 5 minutes of tape decay and an acapella performance of the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace" that sounds like it was damaged by nuclear waste. This part of the track honestly gives me Fallout Radio vibes and I never feel like skipping it. It's quite a fitting way to go out, as a lot of the lyrics on this album center around the theme of religion and the man made destruction of earth.

Again, if this was just a demo, then this band has a very bright future ahead of them. I have absolutely no doubt that they will continue to top themselves as they evolve and grow into their newly fleshed out lineup. I just hope that future Underneath fans will give From the Gut of Gaia the credit it deserves, as I am inclined to believe this album is more than just a shot in the dark, nor is it dead in the water.

#underneath #deathcore #death metal #metalcore #black metal #music

[gleefulcreatorperspective]

RETICULAR ACTIVATING SYSTEM / RAS EXPLAINED

Hi again Divine beings, Nam Yogi here back with more quantum physics with the aim to empower a million people to learn how to actively use our SUPERPOWERS as Divine Beings. We are more miraculous than most of us even realize. The book that single handedly changed the trajectory of my life and the thousands of people I influence is Dr. Wayne Dyer's Power Of Intention. Fitting because nueroscientist say, " The RAS programs itself to work in your favor without you actively doing anything. Pretty awesome, right?"

Your brain's Reticular Activating System (RAS) which is a network of neurons in your brainstem. It is a sophisticated filter system that allows certain information to your brain and filters out other information. Guess who programmed that filter? You did and so did the people from your past. The RAS seeks data that validates your beliefs. It screens the world through the parameters you give it and your beliefs form those parameters.  Everything in your life is a reflection of your inner state. You can train your RAS by taking your subconscious thoughts and marrying them to your conscious thoughts. They call it “setting your intent.” This basically means that if you focus hard on your goals, your RAS will reveal the people, information and opportunities that help you achieve them.

Setting your RAS is of the most importance to live your best life or to Cocreate Heaven on Earth.

 Their are a number of ways to set your ras but the most effective that I have found is through affirmations, imagination/ visualization and intentions.

 The most practical way that I have found was the one below.

First, think of the goal or situation you want to influence.

Now think about the experience or result you want to reach in regards to that goal/situation.

Create a mental movie of how you picture that goal/situation ideally turning out in the future. Notice the sounds, conversations, visuals and details of that mental movie. Replay it often in your head.

The real Key here is to incorporate as many senses as possible because the DIVINITY within Each of us is only activated thru imagination, which is most effectively done thru the senses!!!

Ps have fun creating and more importantly set your RAS to where it helps & doesn't hinder You..  

#CoCreate #HeavenOnEarth #Loa #RASKnowledge #DivinityWithin #Alchemist #ManifestYourReality #NAMYOGI #ESOTERIC #KEMETIC #LAWOFATTRACTION #DIVINTYISWITHIN #ABUNDANCEBIRTHRIGHT #ENERGYHEALER #TRANSFORMATIVEHEALING #NUEROSCIENTIST #ALCHATRAP #QUANTUM/METAPHYSICS

[marcmaccoy]

”LA DIVERSIÓN EN IDIOMAS”

The title above is translated as, “The fun in languages”, something that I never really felt and had at the beginning. Ever since the quarantine started, I really did not plan to do anything nor to improve myself in any of my hobbies at all. Maybe it’s because I expected that all these crisis will be over in a week or two, which obviously and sadly, did not happen. Before, I just like to play my musical instruments, paint, and I got into Korean Dramas as well because of my friends. Sometimes, I bond with my pets and do cooking experiments too. All of these are done in order for me to avoid boredom. However, as time goes by, those things became a bit dull to me and I felt the need to discover something new.

Let me share a bit of my journey first.

As I watch Korean Dramas, I got this tendency to copy what they say and it became a habit of mine whenever I want to express something. So instead of saying, “Salamat” or “Thank you”, I often say, “감사”(gam-sa) which is an informal way of saying “Thank you” in Korean. Also, “안녕”(an-nyeong) which means “Hi”, “네”(ne) which means “Yes”, “아니”(ah-ni) which means “No” and many more. At that time, I didn’t know how to read their alphabet yet but because of my curiosity, I’ve thought of studying it. Surprisingly, I learned “한글”(han-geul) or the Korean Alphabet in just a day! Nine total hours to be exact. I was dumbfounded by how I was able to understand that in just a short manner of time. This inspired me to continue moving forward until I decided to finally learn the Korean language.

In the middle of my journey learning the said language, I began to encounter a lot of interesting facts about it. Such as it wasn’t the writing system of Korea before and how it only existed at about 578 years ago during King Sejong’s reign. It is said that “한글”(han-geul) was created in order for people with little to no education could learn how to read and write. Because before, many Koreans are illiterate due to their very complex Chinese-based writing system called Hanja (漢字) which is difficult to understand. Meaning to say, it was created by the King for the purpose of literacy. Also, the shapes of the letters in 한글 was based on the surroundings and how you say it. These are among the facts that I knew while I became deeply interested in Korea’s traditions, history, and cultures. I was so excited to be fluent that time. I even made flashcards to enhance my vocabularies, watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube, surfed many websites on the Internet, and proceeds to watch Korean series. Little did I know, I was going to unexpectedly give up studying this language. Why? Well, when I got into its grammar, I was surprised by how complicated it is. I also saw videos on YouTube about Filipino learners of the Korean Language that aren’t still fluent after years of studying. So I got a bit down and frankly, I lost my motivation.

Even so, my language learning journey did not stop there. I still want to learn a foreign language that interests me other than the ones I already know which is Filipino, my native mother-tongue and English, my second language. I tried Japanese because of Animes but it was a bit complicated too. They have three kinds of writing systems and the grammar is similar to Korean. French because I have a French uncle and a Filipino cousin and aunt which speaks fluent French but when I knew how it sounded and how the words were pronounced, I already lost hope. French pronunciation is too complicated for me. I also dig up about German because my main to-go-to country in the future is Switzerland and of course, I would want to communicate with people there. However, German is laborious too! The words, the combinations of letters, and the grammar is too confusing. Until I finally encountered the language that’s spoken by the first colonizer of my motherland and it is no other than Spanish.

I started by memorizing basic phrases such as, “Gracias”, “De nada”, “Hola”, and a lot more. I was, once again, amazed by how easy this language is spoken. It is because Spanish is a phonetic language. Meaning, the words are pronounced exactly the way they are spelled. Also since Spain colonized my country for about 333 years, we adopted a lot of words from them which are now considered as loan words. It is estimated that about 4,000+ Tagalog and 6,000 Visayan words came from Spain. Some of the examples include baso(vaso), lamesa(la mesa), tinidor(tenidor), kutsara(cuchara), bumbilya(bombilla), and banyo(baño). As well as the number system, the names of the months, days, expressions, greetings, and many more. For this reason, I was determined to continue learning it because unlike in the other languages, there is no need for me to struggle in memorizing new vocabularies.

I did the same things I did to Korean and just added some new tactics. While my school is on a term break after the first semester, I enrolled at a Spanish Beginner course online where we are taught by a Filipino teacher who is fluent in 5 languages: English, Tagalog, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. My cousin from France, who’s also fluent in Spanish, gave me books like Spanish dictionaries and grammar textbooks for writing and reading purposes. I was also able to use my Netflix binge-watching skills and started to watch a lot of Spanish series for listening purposes. And on YouTube, I began to discover facts about Spain. Their rich culture, history, and traditions, and how their language was influenced by Arabic as well. Additionally, Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language in the world, surpassing the English language, having over 460 million native speakers located in Spain and in Latin American countries. It is also the 3rd most used language on the internet. That’s a lot of people to talk to!

Furthermore, did you know that being multilingual gives your brain several remarkable advantages? Some of it can be seen such as higher density of the grey matter that contains most your brain’s neurons and synapses. It also helps our brain engage in more activities in certain regions where that language is spoken. And although not yet definitively proven, learning many languages decreases the rate of having dementia by 5 years! In addition, more businesses nowadays are seeking applicants who can navigate the modern global economy. It can be seen that in the 21st Century, knowing a second language is not only beneficial, but necessary for success in life. The continual globalization of the world’s economy is bringing diverse cultures and communities into more frequent contact with each other.

Looking back in time, I was nothing like this way before the quarantine started. Learning languages was never really included in my interests. But now, it is! In fact, I am even determined to shift my college course to something related to languages and pursue a master’s degree about linguistics. Indeed, it changed my life. It changed how I see things from a monolingual perspective and it opened a new horizon for me. Gladly, I was even able to have Spanish speaking friends! I have this one friend from Peru who speaks fluent Spanish and I happily encountered Spanish native people here in Facebook who are trying to learn a different language as well.

Overall, my experience was a blast! There are times that I became tired and almost lose my motivation because of how slow my progress is. But even so, I will not give up. I am not fluent yet and I still have a lot to know but I will keep on practicing until I become one. I believe that in the near future, it will open new opportunities that will be helpful for me too. Moreover, It has always been my dream to travel and I truly think that language learning will be an aid to that. Hoping that I’ll be able to talk to that nearing 500 million people soon!

Before I end my blog, I just want to share this quote from Charlemagne, also known as Karl and Charles the Great, a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe during 768-814, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”

Bueno. Eso es todo. Gracias por su tiempo leyendo mi blog. Espero que encuentres algo interesante. Además, a aquellos que están aprendiendo otro idioma, nunca perder la esperanza! Pronto seremos fluidos.

Truly, there is fun in languages.

#languages #languagelearning #spanish #korean #french #german #learninglanguages #studying #culture #idiomas #linguistics #fun #writing #reading #listening #speaking #journey