#but the downside is that I end up in scenarios where I’m forced to eat slimy chicken 🤢

[fruit-teeth]

I feel like I need to start being 100% crystal clear with people that I CANNOT eat chicken. The texture of chicken really bothers me, like to the point where I can’t even swallow it because it grosses me out so badly, and yet EVERY TIME I GO TO SOMEONE’s HOUSE they ALWAYS want to serve me chicken. And I feel bad for refusing it so I eat it anyway (or what I’m able to) and I feel really gross afterwards. Like I’m about to send out a mass email to all my family members/friends that just says “STOP GIVING ME CHICKEN I DONT WANT IT”

#always try to be super polite to everyone #but the downside is that I end up in scenarios where I’m forced to eat slimy chicken 🤢 #and everyone thinks I’m crazy for not enjoying chicken #‘oh but you’ll like it prepared this very specific way!’ NO. I WONT #text post #just me things #food #picky eater problems

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 130 Review

For the first time, thanks to this chapter, SNK is more popular than Domestic Na Kanojo, a manga about a love triangle between a dude and his step-sisters, one of whom is his teacher.

We did it fam. Mission accomplished.

I feel like the scenario where the outside world and Paradis are kept apart with Paradis threatening to rumble the world if there’s any interference is something of an equilibrium point.

They say that nature has a balance to it. A natural rhythm that it follows on its own.

Predators hunt prey, so naturally there are less predators than prey, lest the prey population be wiped out. When predators are too many and prey is too few, the lack of food causes predators to leave the area or die off, which prompts the prey population to rebound.

So there’s a certain point at which things balance out. This is an equilibrium.

Social situations are like that too.  

People have desires and preferences, and in a social situation, a dynamic will form that satisfies as much of those desires as possible.

Because the equilibrium point is the state of affairs at which as many people as possible are satisfied, in the long term any disruption to that equilibrium will be corrected.

Not because of magic or anything, but just because it’s the scenario that most people prefer, so the state of affairs will trend towards it over time.

This is a really long way of saying that I think that some variation on the King Fritz scenario is the best outcome everyone can hope for.

Everyone gets to live and go about their lives.

The downside is that there’ll always be an undercurrent of resentment. And, oh yeah, becoming titans and eating children is necessary to make the wall titans work as a threat. That’s bad, but a natural balance isn’t a utopia.

It’s a testament to how much the SNK world sucks that *this* is the outcome that allows the most people to be happy.

Rape, parents eating children, all of it indefinitely.

That’s one of the most frustrating things about this chapter.

Just…what even is the message of this story anymore?

Attack on Titan is a series about freedom and striving for freedom. Eren has embodied that struggle the whole time.

But now?

Eren is a lunatic who’s about to crush the whole world.

The Cringevengers are fighting for freedom, but not their own. Stopping Eren will only open a pathway for the world to retaliate against Paradis for the failed rumbling. Their mission is one of self-destruction.

That’s noble, but it’s looking more and more like the cringevengers are going to lose. They’re physically and mentally exhausted, and they don’t really have much personal stake in this anymore.

So I guess we’re heading for an ending where Eren destroys the world.

If that’s the case, then…what’s the message?

Is this a tragedy?

Tragedies are about characters failing to rise above their flaws, but they’re also supposed to be constructive.

Tragedies work when they show the audience that a happy ending could have happened but for the character’s flaws.

Romeo and Juliet could have lived if it weren’t for their feuding families, for example. The story ended sadly, but there was a clear path to a happy ending.

What is the path forward in Attack on Titan?

The Marleyans are shit. They’re racist colonialists out to dominate the world. They coral Eldians into camps, use them as weapons, and want to build a global empire. Their long term motivation is to preserve their global dominance.

Eren is a lunatic. ‘Nuff said.

The Cringevengers have the moral high ground, but…if they win, the Eldians still die. So…go Cringevengers?

Who is the hero of this story right now?

Which path is the right one?

What is even the message anymore?

The answer is that there is none.

The situation is clearly designed to make this outcome inevitable.

The world is going down this bad path because almost everyone has the same flaw: they are willing to kill people for the sake of their own prejudices.

If only a couple of characters had that flaw, this would be fine, but making this flaw so widespread makes it seem that humans in general are like this, and that’s wrong.

Most people are not like this.

I think the fact that humanity has not self-immolated yet speaks for itself.

I don’t know what’s going on in Isayama’s mind, but I wonder if maybe he’s a bit paranoid about tensions between Japan, and China, and the Koreas.

The possible social commentary in SNK is always interesting to think about, but I’m just going to skip over that here.

…

Ugh, I guess I have to talk about the pregnancy now.

So first off, my starting point when thinking about the pregnancy is that whatever happened, it didn’t involve rape.

That’s maybe something we shouldn’t assume, but I don’t think Isayama will cross that line. Having Historia go through that trauma for basically no reason is viscerally disgusting and I trust that Isayama knows that.

Attack on Titan is ostensibly about freedom; being forced to carry a child to term is not that.

Clearly.

So I take it as a given that there was no rape.

Once you do that, thinking about the pregnancy becomes much simpler.

There are really only two possible explanations:

1. That Historia fell in love with a man, decided to have a family…and that Isayama is playing up the possibility of rape for shock value.

Or.

2. The pregnancy is somehow fake.

So which is more believable?

Honestly, I lean towards (1), though I’d prefer it be fake.

Before this chapter came out, I never felt it was likely the pregnancy was fake. There was an aura of suspicion around it, but that doesn’t prove much.

We know the pregnancy was inexplicably advantageous to Zeke, and we know that Eren and Historia were up to something right before Eren disappeared.

Isayama is clearly hiding something, but a fake pregnancy specifically?

I see no reason why it would be that and not, say, a secret romance.

That’s what really scares me though.

Most people can explain why callous depictions of rape are bad. The number of people who can explain why callous depictions of queer people are bad is much smaller.

I ship yumikuri. In fact, it’s one of the few pairs I ship.

So call me biased if you want, but the bottom line is that Ymir explicitly loved Historia, and most people would at least say Historia might have reciprocated. I personally would say she definitely did.

Ymir loved Historia.

She loved her enough to reach out to her and try to save her from her own fate.

Enough to jump from the tower and fight off the titans.

Enough to make Bertolt and Reiner turn back to get her.

Ymir did all this because she loved Historia.

But Isayama, it seems, wrote it into his story that Ymir loved Historia just to move the plot forward.

And once Ymir’s purpose as a character was fulfilled, she was removed from the story and killed off screen.

That’s a really shitty thing to do.

Establishing a queer romance just so the characters have motivation to go from Point A to B and nothing more is fucking low.

It’s cheap as hell.

It’s offensive.

But, I have to point out, not as offensive as a rape victim carrying their child to term.

I think that’s important to keep in mind.

People have written about women’s rights for centuries. Those principles are well established, if not always followed.

Gay rights just aren’t.

Most people can tell you why reducing rape to cheap drama is bad; most people cannot tell you why reducing lesbian romance to a plot device is bad.

(The answer is that they both trivialize their subjects, albeit in slightly different ways.)

I bring this up because I think people underestimate the chances that in-universe Historia is pregnant because she wants to be pregnant.

We can infer from what we know that Historia is pregnant because it’s part of a plan to help Zeke or Paradis, but we can also infer that this is not exactly the case.

It’s not directly established that Historia is pregnant because of Paradis’ or Zeke’s machinations. All we know is that these people were plotting to use her to make babies. We haven’t seen the point where she was roped into those schemes.

So I don’t think it can be discounted that Isayama plans to pair Historia up with a guy, most likely either Eren or Farm boy. Unfortunately.

Gay people don’t have many allies in this world. Unfortunately, that means Isayama is likely to *not* be one of those allies.

SNK’s record of depicting gay relationships speaks for itself.

That was all what I thought before this chapter came out.

I still think that.

So.

Now I guess I have to talk about Historia in this chapter now.

So Historia’s scene opens with her having resigned herself to a future of rape and Eren telling her she’s a human being who has rights.

…

……

I almost can’t bring myself to talk about this.

You know, back when Attack on Titan first become popular, it got a lot of praise for how feminist it was.

It was a post-apocalyptic survival horror show, and it really stood out how many prominent women there were.

Hange, Annie, Mikasa, Sasha, Historia, Rico. These people saw real action and had real characters, and a lot of people appreciated that.

Yep.

Good times. Good times.

How did we get here?

What happened?

Historia’s character is all about agency.

She wanted to end her life because she thought she was a burden. In the cavern she was prepared to take on the same burden she’s taking on right now, but she chose to live for herself.

She saved herself from that fate.

She rejected her family’s burden and chose to forge her own path.

Now it’s like that never happened.

She’s back to killing herself for everyone else’s sake, except now she’s also a damsel who needs Eren to save her.

So Eren reveals his plan to her, and she’s totally distraught over it. She tries to reason with him, and Eren just glares at her like she’s Reiner or something.

Finally we get to the most eyebrow raising moment in this exchange: when Historia invokes Ymir to justify opposing Eren.

I think Ymir is supposed to be seen as a tragic figure in Attack on Titan.

She didn’t have to take the fall for those Eldian cultists. They plucked her out of nowhere and randomly decided to worship her. She didn’t ask for any of this trouble.

But regardless, she took the fall for them.

When she got a new lease on life, she chose to live for herself. She’d put herself before everyone else for a change. She’d let no one else’s fate decide her’s.

But it never turned out that way.

I think Ymir’s tragic flaw is that she cares too much for her own good.

She was always going out of her way for others and doing more than she needed to. Helping Connie, helping Historia, helping Reiner and Bertolt.

Her enemies.

Ymir is a good person at heart, and that’s not bad, but according to Attack on Titan’s morality, being “good” to the point of self-sacrifice is bad.

I think one of the morals of Attack on Titan is that if you sacrifice yourself for other people’s sake……you end up sacrificing yourself.

Ymir could have left Reiner and Bertolt to their fates and returned to the walls. She could have lived a happy life with her friends and the girl she loved.

But she didn’t.

She knew that returning to Marley would mean death for her, and guessed what happened?

She did the thing that would likely kill her and she was killed.

Ymir couldn’t help but be a “good girl” and for that she was punished.

Thus endeth the tragedy of Ymir.

Now we come to Historia.

“If I don’t do everything in my power to stop you, I can’t live with my head held high!”

Historia is using Ymir’s words, but she’s actually betraying Ymir right now.

Ymir meant those words in the sense of living for yourself and not others. In the sense of not being self-sacrificial.

As far as Historia is concerned, in her current situation, she only has two options.

Let them rape her for the sake of her people, or let Eren destroy the world.

That’s it.

As far as Historia is concerned, to oppose Eren is to tacitly support the rape option.

So Historia is using Ymir’s words, but really it’s an insult because she’s using them to defend what Ymir would have hated.

Her self-sacrifice.

One thing that’s interesting about Attack on Titan is what it says about standing up for yourself.

In the story, not being self-sacrificial ironically requires you to make sacrifices.

If Ymir had not helped Reiner and Bertolt, they would have been in a lot more trouble with Marley. In a way, if she had not gone with them, she would have been sacrificing them, in the sense that she would have been throwing them under the bus.

When Historia chooses to live for herself in the cavern, she screams about how she’ll happily throw humanity under the bus if it means saving herself.

That’s why she calls herself “the worst girl in history.”

As opposed to Krista, who is a “good girl.”

I think that’s what Isayama is going for here.

Krista is the “good girl” who’ll gladly take a bullet for you.

Historia is the “bad girl” who’ll gladly throw you overboard if it meant she didn’t have to debase herself.

Yeah, Historia later claimed she was in the moment when she said that, but that doesn’t mean much.

When you’re in the heat of the moment, and you’re acting on pure instinct, you’re likelier to reveal parts of yourself you wouldn’t otherwise.

Being in the moment doesn’t mean Historia doesn’t identify with what she said, it means she was speaking her mind with no filter.

In 130, Historia and Eren are superficially at odds with each other, but deep down Historia thinks Eren is right.

She doesn’t want to sacrifice herself, and I’m sure she feels she shouldn’t have to, just on principle.

The only reason she accepts this fate is because she feels she has to.

So when Eren asks Historia to not oppose him, and she refuses, he tells her she has it in her to do it because she’s “the worst girl in history.”

I think Historia is the kind of person who’d throw you under the bus if she knew it’d save what she values most: her friends, yes, but also herself.

But Historia is acting more like Krista, someone who’d throw their life away to save yours.

Eren is saying she needs to start acting like herself again.

He’s trying to remind Historia of who she is and what she used to think was most important to her.

(This scene is *so* misogynistic. I’m going to puke.)

The flashbacks in this chapter were presented as vignettes, so it’s hard to say how Eren’s scene with Historia ended.

One thing that stood out to me though was the clear through line that connected all the various scenes.

The first one is Eren talking to Yelena about Zeke’s plan.

Next scene is Eren and Floch talking about the real plan.

Then it’s Eren and Historia talking about the plan.

Then back to Eren and Floch for Eren’s reveal of what he’s really doing.

Back to Historia as Eren tries to win her over.

Then we cut to Zeke and Eren talking about Mikasa.

Finally, we go back to Historia.

This flow is important because we don’t know much about Eren’s talk with Historia, but I think we can tease out some clues based on what scenes we see when.

Historia is put on the spot. Eren has revealed his plan, and she opposes it. They argue back and forth, and we reach a point where Historia is at a loss for words, and doesn’t seem to know what to do.

Then we inexplicably cut to a conversation between Zeke and Eren.

A conversation about loyalty, affection, and standing by your friends.

The implications for what this hints at are huge.

Eren asks Zeke if Mikasa cares about him so much because of some Ackermann genetics.

Zeke replies there’s no proof of that, and Mikasa probably just loves him.

Finally, Historia speaks, and she asks Eren about getting pregnant.

She doesn’t go to such great lengths for Eren because she’s a slave!

She doesn’t subject herself to this because she’s being coerced!!

It’s because she  L O V E S  him ! ! !

Fuck this! Fuck me! Fuck everything!

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk 130 #snk spoilers #snk chapter 130 #eren jeager #Historia Reiss

[thedunesea]

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Summary:

The only thing I can say for sure is that Anakin talks so much I barely have time to think. Which is something I’m terribly grateful for.

Excerpts from the journal of a newly minted Jedi Knight.

I have smiled so much these past few days my facial muscles hurt. Smile for the Queen, smile for the Chancellor, smile for the cameras. Smile for Yoda and the Council.

Above all, smile for the boy.

I’ve never felt less like smiling.

I am still on Naboo. It has been three days.

I wish I could spar.

*

I am finally back at the Temple; I suppose an entry is in order.

I would never have thought

It began When we It happened

I find I am at loss.

With all my belief in the power of words, I’m beginning to think that some things just cannot be conveyed. Perhaps it’s for the better: let memories, sensations and emotions fade into the Force. Maybe, if never put into words, they will one day hurt less.

Who am I trying to fool?

Stick to the facts, one could say, but it’s an exercise in futility. Naboo Security has provided the Archives with footing of the whole incident; there is no need for me to write down what happened. By the way, I have not seen the footage; I think I never will. At any rate, its testimony is certainly more reliable than mine: my memories are but a red blur.

The only thing I can say for sure is that Anakin talks so much I barely have time to think. Which is something I’m terribly grateful for.

Oh, here he comes.

*

And so it began: today we had our meeting with the Council of First Knowledge to devise a course plan for Anakin. I feel for him: coursework was hard enough for me, his schedule is going to be a nightmare. I suppose Dex will get more than his usual share of Jedi founds over the next few months: the least I can do is give the boy some treats.

Another thing that came out of the meeting was that, apparently, slaying a Sith Lord in mortal combat makes you qualify not only for Knighthood but for lightsaber classes too. Master Drallig’s schedule is full, so he will just teach Anakin the basic drills. The rest falls upon me.

When I brought the outcome of the meeting before the High Council for approval, Master Windu proposed to have Anakin join the Initiates classes, and I found myself forced to take exception. Just imagine, me going against the Master of the Order.

I said I wouldn’t subject the boy to what he will inevitably perceive as humiliating, being taught with children half his age. A Jedi shall know no pride, I know, but Anakin is not a Jedi yet. In time he will learn. I am glad that Master Gallia and Master Koon sided with me; in the end, even Yoda agreed.

It looks like I’m taking up the mantle of maverick, doesn’t it? Wherever you are, Master, I hoper you’re having a good laugh.

Ah. I was almost forgetting. Satine sent condolences. It’s hard to tell from a hologram, but she looked well. I do hope she is happy.

*

I already spoke of the perks of slaying a Sith Lord in mortal combat. Today I discovered the downside.

Sparring triggers memories. In hindsight it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was, and a most unwelcome one.

I would never have thought I would say this, but thank the Force I was sparring with Vos, and not with Garen or Tachi. Apparently, Quin’s line of work has somehow managed to put some tact in him; this is something I can’t say for either Garen or Siri.

Of course Quin’s first thought was the Mind Healers, but he agreed with me that some people on the Council would jump at the excuse to reassess my suitability as a Master, and this is something I can’t allow to happen.

Still, I need to fix this issue before I start one-on-one training with Anakin: he needs a Master in control. So in control I will be.

It is somewhat contrary to the point, but I wish I could just go out and get drunk.

Actually I could - Vos thinks I should, and who else is surprised? - but with all the coursework Anakin has we barely see each other during the day. I am not going to leave him alone in the evenings too. Besides, only the Force knows what kind of mechanical devilry I might find upon my return. No, better stay home and keep an eye on the boy.

*

Garen tells me I look better; Siri Tachi – and I’m quoting here – says I look like shit. Bant just sighs. Reeft, of course, just eats.

It seems my mirror agrees with Tachi: I can’t say I liked what I saw when I shaved this morning. Maybe I should eat more.

I certainly should sleep more. Incidentally, Anakin and I make for a fine pair of insomniacs. When I woke up tonight - I don’t even need to say what I was dreaming of - I found him tampering with a droid on the couch. I can’t fathom how he managed to turn our living room into a dumpster in less than a week. I suppose he’s not used to having this many things around. Anyway, it comes out he has trouble sleeping: he says he has always had, for as long as he remembers. It doesn’t surprise me: his connection to the Force is impressive. Overwhelming, even, and dreams are an obvious outlet for the abilities he repressed for so long. In time, as he learns control, they will pass.

One of my suspicions turned out to be true: indeed, Anakin seems to find his peace of mind in tinkering with mechanical objects. Peculiar, to say the least. He showed me how to reprogram a vocabulator to make it compatible with non-droid units. The result is that our fridge now starts speaking every time we open the fruit compartment. For some reason, it only speaks Shyriiwook. It’s quite entertaining, to be honest. I hope our laughing fits didn’t wake our neighbours in the middle of the night.

Even after all this, though, Anakin didn’t want to tell me what he dreamed of. I believe it was his mother.

I wish I could say I don’t know how it feels to miss a parental figure.

*

Today I lost my Padawan. We lasted together little more than three weeks.

I blame the debacle on astronavigation, my archenemy of old. It was clear from the start that Anakin doesn’t share my belief that flying is for droids, so asking Garen to tutor him seemed the natural choice. What I gained for my troubles was that Garen put the boy in a starfighter, and now they’ve been gone for hours.

Thit is the reason why I write this journal in the first place: I learn from my own history so I’m not doomed to repeat it. I will introduce Anakin to Vos when I’m dead.

On the other hand, I’m looking forward to introducing him to Tachi. Garen says Anakin is cute, and I must admit he is endearing: I’m sure he will manage to thaw even Siri’s icy heart, and I will enjoy every second of it.

The nightmares don’t stop, neither for me nor for Anakin. I’m getting sick of all that red.

*

I really wished Qui-Gon was here.

I’m not sure I’m ready for this Padawan business, and I have no idea how to deal with Anakin’s nightmares. He won’t tell me what they are about, he won’t meditate. We just spend our nights tinkering. It’s not how it should be done. I am afraid I’ll soon start spoiling him rotten. Look at me, Jedi Knight of the Republic, fussing over a child like a mother hen.

I should ask for help, I know I should, but I can’t risk the Council taking Anakin away from me. I promised I would train him, and I will.

I even tried searching the HoloNet for “Force-sensitives nightmares”. Well, the results certainly made for an entertaining read; apparently, there is a Corellian Heavy-Isotop band named Force Nightmare. I had to laugh at my own folly, but self-pity will get me nowhere. Neither will all this caf, and I even hate the stuff, but I barely sleep and what else am I supposed to do?

All in all, today is not a good day.

I can’t even spar, and no amount of meditation seems to change that.

I lost control again in the Halls. Quin said I scared him.

All I see when I ignite my saber is red.

*

Shall I start from the good news or the bad?

Let’s start with the good news, laced with a little optimism. I spoke to Master Drallig: I had to. Anakin can’t be taught by a Master who goes on a murderous spree every time he lays his hand on a weapon. Master Drallig believes it will pass; according to him, it is a common occurrence in such a scenario. I don’t know how “common” applies to the scenario “Master killed by a Sith Lord”, but I will defer to Master Drallig’s wisdom, of course.

The bad news is, he told me he believes that what triggers my memories is my using the same moves Master Qui-Gon and I used during the duel. He believes that switching to another saber form could provide a solution, at least for the moment.

Needless to say, I’m not particularly happy with the idea. Ataru in our lineage goes back to Yoda himself, and almost everything I know on lightsaber combat I owe to Qui-Gon’s training. Switching to another form tastes like betrayal.

Well, a Jedi’s lot is to learn how to let go. For the moment, I will settle on “learn how to pretend to have let go”.

I am summoned to the Halls of Training next week to see what form will suit me best.

*

First day out with my Padawan.

I never thought about what visiting Coruscant for the first time could feel like; Anakin was in awe.

Unfortunately, the awe soon morphed into a crazed frenzy.

Where he stores all that energy - or the ice-cream, the candies and the two cheeseburgers he ate, for that matters - is beyond me.

Dex loved him. I am exhausted.

I think I’m going to sleep twelve hours straight.

Maybe tonight we won’t dream.

*

A Jedi shall know no pride. A Jedi, though, still knows humiliation, and going through katas weaponless because I’m afraid of myself was the epitome of humiliating.

Shii-Cho we didn’t even try. Soresu is not my style: too static and, I must say, a form focused on defence becomes boring soon enough. Juyo, the style of aggression, is out of the question. Shien is off the table too: I’d sooner be dead than use the revers grip all its practitioners seem to favor. It’s ugly. Master Drallig says I am vain; I suppose no one is perfect.

As for Djem-So, I don’t have the brute force it requires.

Unexpectedly, I found Nieman much to my liking: double wielding is perhaps a little flamboyant but, if done right, Form VI is well-balanced, physically challenging and aesthetically pleasing. I think I will give it a try: I could even use Qui-Gon’s crystal for the shoto.

What surprised me most, though, is Master Drallig’s verdict: he believes I would be proficient in Makashi, no less. It’s a pity Master Dooku left the Order; I am not party to the specifics, but I seem to understand Qui-Gon’s death played a role in his decision. Be it as it may, Master Drallig himself offered to tutor me as soon as the Initiate term is over: I was speechless for a good ten seconds. I like Makashi fine, but I must admit I’m not looking forward to specialize in a form meant for saber-to-saber combat. I’ve had my share of duels with Force-wielders for a lifetime. Besides, if the Sith are really never more than two, what odds are there I will have to confront the other too?

We shall see what form the Force has in store for me.

In the meantime, I promised Anakin I would take him to the theater tonight. I must go get ready.

*

Now that I know, I wish I didn’t.

Anakin’s shields are not yet strong enough and our morning meditation betrayed him.

Apparently, the Naboo Security didn’t think a child was out of place in their headquarters, especially not the child who had blown up the mother ship. They didn’t pay him any mind, and he slipped in as they watched the security recordings: he saw it all.

I saw his dreams. It was him behind the ray shield, and me in the generator core.

It was the first time in my life I had to comfort a crying child. By the end of it, I was more distressed than he was. When at last he stopped crying he hugged me and thanked me and sauntered away towards the next droid adventure. Children.

Me, on the contrary, he left behind with words that will haunt me for a long time.

Master, will you leave me alone too?

*

I can’t stop thinking about Anakin’s nightmares. Too focused on my own grief, on my own loss, I never fully grasped the extent of his loneliness. True, I lost Qui-Gon, and before him I lost Tahl. But I still have Quinlan, Luminara, Bant, Reeft, Garen, Siri. I have Master Yoda, Master Windu, Master Drallig. Master Koon and Master Gallia. Ali-Alann.

The whole Order.

And then I have Dex and Guerra Derida and many more friends across the Galaxy.

I have Satine.

Anakin has only me. I can’t imagine how the fear of being left alone in the world must be eating at him.

I will not let him go through what happened to me.

I will not fail him.

His fate will not be the same as mine.

*

In the end the choice wasn’t even a choice. Soresu it is.

My survival has just become of the utmost importance - not that it wasn’t before, of course, I like life well enough, but now is paramount.

A Jedi wields is lightsaber in defence, and in defending me I’m defending my Padawan as well.

Perhaps Soresu is the most Jedi-like form of all.

*

I spent so much time in the Training Halls I didn’t even realize I haven’t been writing for two weeks.

It was worth it.

Today my defeat was my triumph.

Predictably, Vos wiped the floor with me, but I managed to see the duel to its end without lashing out at my opponent. On second thought, I should have: he isn’t taking my commitment to Soresu seriously. He says I’m too flashy for it. I’ll show him flashy in a year, and that’s a promise. Oh, and don’t even get me started on his uncivilized innuendos - or, well, straight out crudities - on the Way of the Mynock.

Of course my form was appalling; I wasn’t defeated before the minute’s mark only because I threw in the mix a great deal of Shii-Cho and, to my utmost delight, some Ataru as well. There is much room for improvement, but I’m getting the feel of it.

I must say that Form III looks versatile. Perhaps I’ll manage turning it into something actually entertaining: I am not going to let my Padawan see lightsaber training as a boring endeavour. Soresu itself will have to adapt to our recreational needs.

I’m looking forward to teach Anakin all I know and all I will learn over the next years. I want him to see how much delight is to be found in the Force - and in sparring, of course.

Master Drallig is right: I sound vain and arrogant, but today I just can’t find it in myself to indulge in self-flagellation: it just feels so good to be able to spar again.

It feels good to be looking forward to something again.

#obi-wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #my wriitng #star wars fanfiction

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Vol. 5 Rest and Resolutions + Alone Together

This is a re-posting from December 8th, 2017 in an effort to get all my recaps fully on tumblr. Thanks!

Hello, everyone! I apologize for the two week gap between reviews. Academia caught up with me in the worst way possible, but that is behind us now, hallelujah. There's a lot to cover in our last two episodes, so let's dive straight in.

First off, Ozpin is the Wizard theory confirmed.

We all knew it was coming, but it's still nice to finally have validation for that idea. Often times writers will deliberately askew what the viewers expect to happen in a failed attempt at originality (see Sherlock's season 3 premiere), but if you've planted the hints there's every reason to follow through with them. In true RWBY fashion though, this information leads to even more questions. I'm particularly interested in this balance between history and storytelling. That is, the version of Ozpin-as-Wizard that we hear about is explicitly a fairy tale and we all know that time has a tendency to twist events, especially when people begin to view them as just old wive's tales, rather than actual truth. All we really know is that Ozpin indeed gave much of his power to four girls, creating the original Maidens. However:

Did he really isolate himself like the story says? Honestly, if I'd been dealing with all Ozpin's shit I'd probably hide in the woods too.

How soon after receiving the curse did all this go down?

Depending on that timing, did Ozpin have reincarnations before he was the Wizard? Or is that his original form? A lot of fans still assume that he was also the King of Vale, though where that fits into the timeline is a little unclear.

Did Ozpin know at the time that his magic was finite? Or was this the event that clued him in?

Did he give the four women magic in a deliberate attempt to stop Salem? Or, like the story implies, was there a broader reason, the desire to give these women the power to continue spreading hope? That would certainly fit with the show's "honest soul" theme (and perhaps an indicator that characters like Ruby have something to teach Ozpin even as he teaches them, just as the original Maidens did).

Are the Maidens' powers connected to their original gifts? Winter is the Maiden of creation and encouraged Ozpin to meditate and reflect. Summer is destruction and, interestingly, told Ozpin to "step outside and embrace the world." Spring brought food and flowers to revitalize his garden and is the Maiden of knowledge, while Fall is choice and reminded Ozpin to be thankful for what he has. I can see some similarities among all that...

We might not ever get answers to questions like these. Unlike other fantasy series, RWBY is rather restricted by its medium--you can't spend page after page explaining nuanced world building as you would in a novel; we've only got about fifteen minutes max each episode and plenty of more important issues to tackle first. Still, it's something.

Besides that confirmation, "Rest and Resolutions" really lives up to its name. We have all the kids enjoying a happy meal together, with only Oscar noticeably absent. (I know, I know, he's housing Ozpin's soul and Ozpin needs to have Important Conversations with Qrow about the missing huntsmen, but let the kid hang out a bit with people closer to his age, yeah?) Much of this volume has been recap of one form or another, so as to make sure that each character is caught up on what everyone else has been doing and are aware of the information that others/the viewer already knows about. Ruby and co.'s conversation works similarly, only these callbacks are meant to induce a sense of nostalgia rather than act as firm plot foundation.

Jaune recounts "loosing" the map on their travels. Jaune. You literally threw it away when you realized that an entire town had been besieged by grimm. Like, I get that losing their map isn't great, but at least the guy is really invested in the welfare of others?

(cough--comforting Pyrrha instead of watching the door--cough)

(It's actually a personality "flaw" that, as we've seen twice now, can cause some serious consequences.)

The kids take turn complimenting one another (aww) and Ruby says that Ren was "out of control" during the fight against the Nuckelavee. I've seen a few autistic!Ren headcanons over the years and this perhaps can be read as evidence to support that. Ren drastically misreads the tone and intention of Ruby's comment, apologizing quite sincerely for his behavior and personal investment in that fight. It's only when Ruby clarifies that she meant it as a compliment that Ren understands... and thanks her. There's a lot of acceptance and support in this moment.

Weiss alludes to summoning her boar during the party (Ruby: "You did not!") and when Nora doesn't believe her Weiss summons the boar right next to her, startling the hell out of poor Nora. This really shows how much Weiss has improved. There's no hesitation, no need to concentrate--she just summons it up with pure ease right in the middle of a conversation.

I was actually rather surprised by Nora's reaction. Yeah, the jump scare was played for humor, but that combined with her horror at Yang detaching her arm... Nora seems a little... skittish to me?  I might be reading too much into things (I almost certainly am), but between these two moments, the joke about her eating, watching her sneak food last episode... they all read as not so subtle indicators of stress to me. And who can blame the girl.

Other nostalgic moments include our Vol. 1-3 nicknames: Ice Queen and Vomit Boy. The group has a long-overdue acknowledgement of how much they've grown since they were at school, with Ruby in particular delivering the iconic line that she tried to "1v1 a Nevermore on our second day of school." And the Death Stalker, Ruby. God bless this trigger-happy child.

There's also talk of Yang's arm. It did my heart good to see Ruby ooo-ing over the mechanics and Yang looking damn proud of it for once. The arm wrestling contest between her and Nora was, of course, fantastic. Yang's not just embracing this new part of her but actively using it to her advantage... that's exactly where we all knew she'd end up. Can't hold this girl down for long.

Yang: "It's no replacement for the real thing, but I'll make good use of it."

There's a radical tone change once dinner is over and Ozpin rejoins the conversation. Yang is clearly distrustful of him after her talk with Raven (despite the fact that Yang has no reason to trust Raven...) and in true Ozpin style he tries to console her with wisdom and compliments: "Your mother must trust you a great deal" if she told you all that.

Yeah. Sorry, Oz. You know as well as the audience that Raven told those secrets to manipulate her, not because she trusts her. That little strategy fell flat.

Ozpin confirms most of what Raven said though, including that he turned her and Qrow into birds. What Raven of course failed to mention was that they both agreed to the transformation. Whether that agreement was a strong and enthusiastic "Yes!" or the kind of consent that Pyrrha gave--a very complicated scenario with no good choices on the table--is hard to say. My own assumption is that Raven was probably thrilled to be given such a useful power, especially when she intended to turn it against the very community who gave it to her. She only regrets it now that her life hasn't turned out quite as planned. She, like others, is looking to use Ozpin as her scapegoat. 

In fact, we're given no explanation for Raven or Yang's anger here. Raven I can conceptualize--she's the type to blame others for her problems--but Yang? What exactly is so horrific about being turned into a kick-ass bird? As Ozpin describes it, this magic allows Qrow and Raven to "see more" and to be "unburdened" in ways that the normal huntsmen or huntress is not. This ability allows them to spy on Salem rather inconspicuously and, as we've seen in the case of Qrow, is useful in terms of keeping track of other people--like your wayward niece who goes off to try and take on the forces of darkness alone. As far as we've been told there's no downside to this ability beyond the fact that Ozpin's magic is finite, but that hardly effects Qrow. He transforms when he chooses, it doesn't seem to cause him any pain, it grants him an ability outside of his bad luck semblance, he already lives in a world where half the population has animal traits... seriously, where's this anger coming from? Just the fact that magic is an unknown to Yang and therefore scary? It's really unclear and frankly worrying considering how much Yang is basing her accusations and demands around that anger. 

Because the irony is that Yang demands no more secrets from Ozpin. He insists he doesn't keep secrets from them, just plays certain pieces of information close to the chest, but Yang says 'tomato tomahto’ even though, as we’ve just established, that wasn’t Ozpin’s secret to tell. And it has no repercussions that impact the rest of the group. Certainly not the girl who just showed up. I mean, maybe there is still a downside? They’ll definitely be a real backlash if the kids discover there is some horrific consequence to Qrow and Raven's ability and Ozpin didn’t say anything... but again, that’s not fair to Ozpin. Isn’t anyone going to ask Qrow why he kept this from his family? Or ask Yang why she’s suddenly on the side of the mother who abandoned her and is a known killer? Putting all this on Ozpin is, again, pretty worrying. 

Perhaps the most moving moment of the episode though is when Ozpin tells the kids that they can still leave. (Except Oscar of course. This poor kid. He got dragged into this fast and is the only one who's truly stuck with it.) He emphasizes that abstaining from battle is not the same thing as retreat and reminds us that these are just kids and they can't be expected to shoulder it all. No one stands except for Yang... but she's not leaving, just making it clear that whatever Ruby decides to do she'll follow her lead. It re-emphasizes that Ruby isn't just a strategic leader like Jaune is. She's the moral compass of the group. Once Ruby decides to keep fighting--and we know she always will--the rest of her family follows. That’s... not always a good thing though. Everyone needs a reason for fighting this kind of war and I don’t think ‘because Ruby is fighting it too’ is powerful enough to carry them through whatever new hardships they’ll face. 

Because you can’t keep the peace for long. We're left with one hell of a cliff-hanger as Emerald, Mercury, Cinder, and Watts approach Raven's camp, the whole gang demanding an audience--or more likely a Maiden. Every fan who cried over the fact that Emerald isn't in the opening finally got to see their fave prepping for a fight and I for one am looking forward to a real battle this Volume. None of the measly stuff we've seen with Blake or in training. For the first time this will, presumably, be Maiden vs. Maiden and I expect something epic.

Luckily the episode airs soon!

Before that though we have the heart-wrenching episode "Alone Together," wherein three fourths of Team RWBY finally get some downtime together. Ruby is up very early due to difficulty sleeping (who can blame her) and she soon realizes that Weiss and Yang are in the same boat. Loved Yang's sisterly "Boop" with her hair (pick that up from Nora, did you?) and Weiss knows her friends well, dumping an unholy amount of sugar into Ruby's coffee to make sure she likes it. "Nice Weiss strikes again!"

I'm quite liking Nice Weiss this Volume. What a step up from Ice Queen.

There's a bit more recapping--Ruby is called out on her priorities. That fact that they're all together at Haven Academy; that's what she can't believe?--before the conversation quickly turns to when they'll see Blake again. We've watched Yang deal rather well with the loss of her arm this past Volume and she kept a comparatively cool head around her mother. This though... this is what's really been festering.

Yang says that Blake "made her choice" and expresses very little interest in seeing her again. Weiss and Ruby are, understandably, shocked. With shaking hands and a flash of red eyes, Yang finally reveals what's truly been holding her back. Not her arm, not Raven, not any anger at Ruby, but the fact that Blake ran from them. Again.  

It's an understandable flaw on Blake's part, and it's equally understandable that this would nevertheless frustrate and upset Yang. I love that it's Weiss who helps her see Blake's perspective in all this: that after finally opening up to them, everything she'd feared actually did come to pass. The family she'd found was torn apart. Beacon fell. Adam hurt Yang in the worst possible way. She brought down the metaphorical walls around her heart and the literal walls of Beacon crumbled. As far as Blake is concerned, getting close to others really did bring nothing but misery. It's not logical, but emotions rarely are. Of course she's going to try and get as far away from them as possible after that, as well as return to her parents. It was a move born equally from a desire to protect herself as well as others.

It says a great deal about Yang's maturity that she does understand Blake's perspective rather quickly (even if, interestingly, she can’t understand Ozpin’s. A difference in who she actually cares for). Notably this is done through Weiss' own experiences, her admission that they've all experienced their own versions of loneliness. Yang says she doesn't blame Blake for the decision any longer; she's just upset that Blake hasn't realized yet (as Yang herself has) that things are easier when you stick together. That she, Ruby, and Weiss could have supported Blake through this... and that they need her support too. Yang resolves to be there for Blake just as soon as she's ready. The girl has a wealth of love within her. And yes, a lot of that stems from adopting the role of caretaker early, looking after Ruby as a big sister, but the fact that Yang can separate her current desire to protect her friends from that difficult childhood is huge. She knows how trauma has shaped her and she's prepared to make the best of it.

Ruby finally does check up on them and lets out a heartfelt sigh. Everything's okay.

Now, I'll be real interested to see if Yang's shaking lessens after she's reconciled with Blake...

Meanwhile, there's Ilia. And you all know what I'm going to discuss here.

There's a lot to say about her meeting with Blake--the well-played betrayal; our look at how Blake might end up in Mistral; the introduction of a very cool spider faunus; Ilia's speech about how there's no right or wrong, no innocents, just doing "what's best for us" that reminded me strongly of Roman's own speech--but for now, especially given how long this review already is, I want to focus in on her sexuality.

(FYI what I have below was originally written as a separate post, so apologies for the repetition.)

In the past week I've seen numerous complaints about how the fandom is “whining” about finally getting what they want. I’m one of the “whiners,” and this, to be frank, is not what I asked for.

Let’s start with the acknowledgment that yes, no matter who Rooster Teeth chose as their first LBGTQIA character, some people were going to be disappointed. Either because the choice doesn’t fit their ship or because of the dichotomy we’re seeing now: the Good vs. Evil gay character divide. It’s a simple disagreement on the surface that nevertheless houses a lot of important questions and concerns: should you make your gay character one of the Good Guys in order provide positive representation, or should you make them one of the Bad Guys in order to provide diverse representation? Do you send the message that being gay is wonderful by associating it with the heroes, or something that’s natural by associating it with the villains--making a statement that anyone can be LGBTQIA, not just the ones you’re rooting for?

The answer to this dilemma is that you do both. You provide variety in order to likewise provide true, diverse representation. However, the reality is that we haven’t reached a point in most media where you get lots and lots of gay characters to provide lots and lots of diversity… so therefore I feel rather strongly that the first character should be a positive portrayal.

Why? Because we’re not living in a positive world. Because we’re still a part of societies where LGBTQIA people are ridiculed, discriminated, and murdered. Because the idea that it’s not just okay, but fantastic to be gay is FAR from universal.

Because we have a very long, awful history of villains associated with gay stereotypes. Because there’s literally a Psycho Lesbian trope with plenty of examples to choose from. Because we don’t live in a culture where you can casually throw out ‘gay’ + ‘bad guy’ and expect your audience to separate the two critically.

Which brings me back to Ilia.

For all these reasons I was truly disappointed to see that she was our first LBGTQIA character. Out of a wealth of women in this show who love each other in healthy and nuanced ways, they were all bypassed for a character who is currently one of the Bad Guys.

Is Ilia pure evil? Of course not. I’ve mentioned previously about how much we see her struggling with her choices, but she’s currently not on a good path either. More importantly, the way her sexuality is revealed does nothing but position it badly. Let’s break that scene down just a bit. The first LGBTQIA content we’re given is:

A woman who is working for an extremist group that in turn is working for the Big Bad

Ilia reveals her sexuality after having her henchmen abuse Blake, attacking her, forcing her onto her knees, and announcing that they’re currently attempting to murder her parents

Ilia says that she wanted Blake to look at her like she once looked at Adam, intentionally or not drawing parallels between her love and Blake’s abuse

She positions her sexuality as at least partly a justification for her actions. Illia is subtly blaming Blake: if you’d paid more attention to me, maybe none of this would have happened. It actively positions all this horror as at least partly a consequence of same sex attraction

Does all of this craft a rather complex, LGBTQIA character? Absolutely, but it’s also one that left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Overt, same-sex attraction is still so rare in our media and frankly I’m sick of it. I’m sick of vague comments, queer baiting, or promises of something “coming later.” I’m equally sick of burying our gays and having same-sex attraction presented as something that only those who are otherwise sick in their morals would experience. Is it so much to ask for something reaffirming in a series that keeps growing in popularity and influence?

Will there be more LGBTQIA characters in RWBY? I assume so, I hope so, but for now all we have is Ilia. A character who, I’d also like to point out, we barely know. I’m sure she’s lots of fans’ fave, but I for one have little interest in this side character… and her position as a side character makes me nervous for her survival. Her sexuality only compounds that.

Rooster Teeth had a huge opportunity here. LGBTQIA viewers have waited five years to see someone like them in this series and it could have been a really magnificent reveal. It could have been Yang realizing her feelings as she worked through her anger at Blake. Or Weiss realizing hers for Yang as they get closer this Volume. Or Ruby for Weiss. Or Weiss for Blake. Hell, give us a throwaway line about Port and Oobleck being happy husbands, or let Ren be pan, or let Oz admit to same-sex attraction after having lived thousands of years…. I don’t care. I’ll take any ship wars that develop as a consequence. All I wanted was to see a character I know and love embracing their sexuality in a way that reaffirmed how proud I am of my own.

Instead it’s Ilia, admitting feelings for Blake while she plots to kill her parents. While she hurts her and betrays her. Sorry if I find that a little difficult to watch. Sorry if I need to “whine” about it just a bit.

So yes. Needless to say I'm disappointed. After that I couldn't really appreciate Ghira's transformation and concern for his wife, or Kali's badass, "Get out of my house!" As said, the whole scene with Ilia left a bad taste in my mouth. I know Rooster Teeth can do better.

Hopefully we do get better. Preferably soon. This is the perfect, filler kind of Volume to set up more characterization, including queer sexualities, and we've got four more episodes until the hiatus.

Tick, tock, RT.

Other Details of Note

Nora, what exactly happened with you and that punch?

I liked the gears on the wall clock. Which begs the question: where did this house come from? Is it a safe place that Ozpin had set up long before Beacon's fall?

They ate ALL that food. Everything they'd prepared while expecting who knows how many huntsmen/huntresses. Never underestimate the appetites of a group of teenagers.

James and Glynda get mentioned this volume! Everyone rejoice! Now if only we got to see them on screen...

Nora exclaiming about how Qrow and Raven are named after birds was pretty hilarious. It's not like we weren't already thinking it. Despite all the jokes on tumblr though, there's no way Ozpin chose those forms specifically because of the Branwens' names. If anything, this seems to act as evidence that a person's semblance/abilities draws on their personality, rather than the other way around.

There are a number of bird motifs throughout "Alone Together," including our opening shot of Ruby watching them fly overhead and a pair of carved ducks on display in the bedroom where Yang and Weiss chat. It's a nice nod to one of this Volume's major themes. (Or, if we buy into this headcanon that this place is a safe house purchased specifically for Qrow, then Ozpin needs to get called out on his on-the-nose decorating lol).

Yang staring at the team photo hurt in so many ways. Excellent touch there.

We have that acknowledged parallel between Weiss and Ruby, in which Yang (and the audience) expects it to be Ruby knocking on the door, trying to talk. The difference is that now, months later, Yang is actually in a position to open up to someone and that someone is Weiss, now just as much a sister to Yang as Ruby is.  

Confirmation that Weiss' mom is an alcoholic. We knew that was coming too...but still. Yikes.

Yang cries! Let all the children keep crying! It's good and natural!

There's a "nocturnal section" of Menagerie. Of course there is. God I can't believe I didn't think of that.

Ilia can completely blend in with the shadows. It's official now: all Volume 1-3's shadow people are just really, really shy chameleon faunuses. Spread the word.

That blow Blake took seemed to hit her pretty hard. Kind of like how Oscar staggered when he got hit without his aura... could Blake really trust Ilia enough to attend this meeting without proper protection? She might, which makes Ilia's betrayal all the worse. In the episode where Yang talks of letting Blake support and be supported by others, she was finally willing to do that with an old friend. Obviously having that backfire won't help Blake to open up any further.

GIF credit: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/841077-rwby

#rwby #mymetas #RWBY Recaps

[clairekatswritingcorner]

Stutter

Word Count: 1,530

Summary: They’ve both struggled to connect with people for a majority of their lives, but when it comes to each other, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

*Author’s Note*: Another sweet confession fic for @bad-blue-moon-rising! I’ll never stop loving getting to write these kinds of scenarios T^T I hope you enjoy!

It’d been a rough week, but at least they’d managed to survive. That was a good sign in and of itself, the fact that they were still alive and relatively unscathed. Well, physically they were doing alright. Mentally, it was going to take months, years, maybe even a lifetime for everyone to process and accept the experiences they’d shared over the past few days. How does one go about understanding and making peace with the nightmare of facing aliens who’ve come to use Earth as a hunting ground? Alexys didn’t know, and none of the men seemed to have any idea of where to start, either.

The timid young woman had something else to come to terms with alongside all of that, something that was equally confusing and frustrating and scary; sometimes it felt even worse. Such a mindset may not have made sense to others, but she knew her way of thinking wasn’t always sensible. Mysteries of the universe and mysteries of the heart were equally complex, cryptic, and elusive in her eyes.

Part of her wished she could dedicate all of her time and attention to such a problem, but part of her was also relieved she didn’t have to. Sometimes her thoughts were just as overbearing and intense as the fear of knowing her life was on the line. Her feelings were in jeopardy, too, although she knew not in any literal sense. When facing the alien threat, she and the men understood that they could lose their lives at any moment; all it would take was one mistake. But when it came to confronting her budding affections, she also felt like she couldn’t make any mistakes, that one wrong move would leave her with a shattered heart.

Luckily, she wasn’t alone in her internal struggle. The downside was that she wasn’t exactly aware of this fact, and the person who was sharing her struggle was stalemated with the same concerns about her. It had been an interesting development, but they’d been inexplicably drawn to one another from the moment they’d been introduced.

That wasn’t such a bad thing, since the solace they’d been able to find in each other had undoubtedly helped them make it through this trying time. It was also obvious to those around them that something inexplicably existed between them, binding them together, linking both their minds and their hearts. It was invisible, but it was powerful, and that only made the prospect of facing the truth of their feelings more terrifying. But if things continued the way they were now, inevitably there’d come a time when everything spiraled out of control.

That was the conclusion Baxley came to, and it was starting to drive him up the wall. He was already so conflicted, so on edge, so troubled by his past and his own insecurities that he’d talked himself out of admitting how he felt more than once. Each time he did it just made him feel worse, turning into a session where he’d berate and demean the cowardice that he couldn’t seem to overcome no matter how hard he tried. It was just like the many ticks and phrases he had little to no influence on, that would take over him in times of both stress and excitement as if to remind him and those around him just how broken he was.

Alexys had never seen him that way, though, and she understood exactly what it was like. Being plagued by her own form of mental disparity, she struggled to manage the parts of life that many people found completely natural. Being stuck in large crowds, interacting with a lot of people at once, keeping a grip on her emotions despite the whirlwind of thoughts and feelings that could be stirred up in one’s mind in such settings…she’d couldn’t remember the last time she’d known the luxury of such ease and control, but Baxley had never belittled her for any of that.

On the contrary, they seemed to be each other’s biggest supporters. When Alexys was feeling anxious, overwhelmed by her thoughts or reactions or the sensation of suffocating in both her body and mind, Baxley was there for her. The first time he’d done it out of reflex, having recognized the signs that something was wrong, and that she needed some form of comfort. He still needed that kind of reassurance, too, but he hated to ask for it. He hated that he needed it at all. He knew it made him weak, made him useless…that’d been proven to him enough times throughout his life.

But when he was with Alexys, he never felt that way. When he blurted something out or started shaking due to stress, she’d simply give him a warm smile, hold his hand, or even pull him into a comforting embrace. She did it all without having to be asked, and she never had to ask him for that kind of support, either. It was so natural, so calming, so pleasant to share each other’s company; they’d formed an orbit around one another without even realizing such sentiments were mutual.

The two were currently taking the afternoon to recover at Emily’s house. They’d been granted temporary leave, a day off to regroup and recharge while their strategists outlined a new plan of action. It’d been a long, wild week, and they were both relieved to be able to walk around a normal house, eat normal food, and just be normal for at least a few hours before they were forced to leave it all behind again.

Baxley had been showing signs of anxiety all afternoon. Alexys figured it was to be expected; she was worried herself, unsure if she’d ever be able to completely shake the anxieties that’d been plaguing her ever since she got wrapped up in this mess. Spending time around one another seemed to help a little, but Alexys still noticed when Baxley hid his unmistakably shaky hands in his pockets, or let more expletives slip than usual for the kind of conversations they had.

“Here you go,” Alexys offered as she sat next to him on the couch, passing him a fresh, warm cup of tea. They’d determined that said beverage helped them relax even during the tensest of times, but it didn’t seem to help them shake the uneasy feeling lingering in the air around them now.

“Thank you…” Baxley took the cup carefully, setting it down before any could spill out as a result of his trembling. He cursed under his breath, this time on purpose, and reminded himself that this was the perfect time to bite the bullet. They could settle this now, and whatever the fall out was, they’d be back to their hazardous work tomorrow. They could focus on that disaster and forget all about whatever catastrophe took place today, if that was how things ended up playing out.

“Alexys…thank you,” he said it again, and the girl looked up, opening her mouth to ask him what he was referring to. He continued before she had the chance. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me. It may not seem significant to you, but…I’ve been living with this condition my whole life. And I’ve suffered plenty of consequences for it. But those consequences seem so small when I’m with you.”

His hands were trembling even more severely now, and he spit out another expletive, taking a breath to try and pull himself together enough to deliver his confession coherently. “I feel better when I’m with you. In every way. It’s like everything feels lighter and looks brighter when you’re around. I don’t know how we all got wrapped up in this godforsaken shitshow, but meeting you was worth it.”

Alexys was frozen, teacup still pressed to her lips as she listened to his words in stunned silence. “I love you, Alexys. I really love you, and not just because you’ve done a lot for me. I mean, I’m grateful for that, but I’ve always felt connected to you, ever since the day we met. I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but just sitting beside you that first day…I wanted to protect you, I just wanted to be near you. And I’ve felt that way ever since—”

His eyes became blurry with tears, and he cursed again. Letting himself fall apart over something like this, letting his worries get the best of him…how stupid. But Alexys didn’t think it was. Snapping out of her astonished daze just enough that she could move, she set her teacup down and scooted against him. He glanced at her and she wiped his eyes, waiting for them to close due before she kissed him. It was gentle, and wonderful, and it made them both feel whole. Alexys caressed his cheeks and rested her forehead against his, happy tears rolling down her own cheeks as she did so.

“Bax…” she murmured, voice cracking a bit. “I want you to know that I love you. I really love you, too. And I’ll never stop loving you, all of you, because I know you’re perfect just the way you are.”

#self insert #selfinsert #self ship #selfship #oc x canon #self insert fic #self insert fanfiction #selfship fic #selfship fanfiction #my writing #claire writes #one shot #bad-blue-moon-rising #commission

[nightstareternal]

DL Character Meme Tag

I was tagged by @littleladysuzanne. I always look forward to your tags <3

Rules: List your top 10 favorite DL characters (it doesn’t just have to be the dateable guys, any characters are fair game) in order. And the answer the questions. Blank questions at the end.

1. Shin

2. Carla

3. Azusa

4. Kanato

5. Kou

6. Ruki

7. Shu

8. Ayato

9. Subaru

10. Laito

1. Number 5 (Kou) has decided they want to completely change up their wardrobe and they take you shopping with them so you can give your opinions on what new outfits they should buy. What sort of clothes are you going to recommend?

I'm just going to be blunt when I say I have no fashion sense. I would seriously be no help in this matter 😅

2. You walk into your room one day to find number 2 (Carla) standing on your bed, dancing to your favourite song while wearing nothing but your favourite underwear. How do you react?

Omg I can just imagine the horror on Carla's face when he is caught! XD I would honestly probably be too shocked and dumbfounded for several moments until most likely Carla snaps me back into reality to quickly leave the room.

3. Number 7 (Shu) has to go to the dentist but they’re adamantly refusing. How would you persuade them to go?

The best but unsafe bet is to take his music away. He wouldn't be able to get it back unless he went.

4. You lose a bet with number 6 (Ruki) and now have to be their personal maid for a day. Do you go through with it or do you try to get out of it?

Why do I feel this would be fitting for Ruki? Knowing Ruki, this could either go smoothly enough or horribly wrong. >_<

5. Number 4 (Kanato) takes you to see a horror movie however they end up getting absolutely terrified halfway through and bury their head into your shoulder. How do you react?

I could see Kanato reacting in anger and throw a tantrum every time he is scared. The only way to help him calm down is by giving him his favorite sweets. He would also insist that I get some for Teddy too.

6. Number 9 (Subaru) surprises you with a cake they’ve baked especially for you. Are you going to eat it?

I would be genuinely surprised by the gesture. As long as I feel it's ok to eat, I wouldn't mind to take a slice and then share the cake with Subaru too ^_^

7. Number 8 (Ayato) accidentally manages to completely trash their room, to the point where it’s uninhabitable. They don’t have anywhere to stay while it’s being repaired and so they ask if they can room with you for the next couple of weeks. How do you respond?

If it's Ayato, I would feel a little weary about it but I doubt he would give me the option to refuse. As long as he doesn't trash my room as well, I suppose he could stay over.

8. Number 1 (Shin) has decided to learn how to play the trumpet. The downside to this is that, for some reason, they’ve taken to practicing right outside your room around the time you normally go to sleep. What are you going to do?

Shin, I love you but a girl has got to sleep. If I don't sleep, I can probably be just as stubborn and grumpy as he can be at times.

9. Number 10 (Laito) recently purchased a cat onesie and they’ve insisted on wearing it everywhere over the past few days. They’ve now purchased a matching onesie for you and they’re being very insistent that you wear it and go out in public together. What do you do?

Why can I see this scenario happening with Laito? It seems like something he would do and he would have to force it on me to wear it in public.

10. Number 4 (Kanato) is still scared after watching that horror film with you. It’s now late at night and they’re demanding that you let them sleep in your bed with you. What do you do?

I would do my best to make room on my bed and let him sleep next to me. We would then fall asleep as we cuddle with our precious teddy bears <3 (and yes, I still sleep with stuffed animals at night)

11. Number 3 (Azusa) confesses to you that they want to be an Olympic gymnast but struggle to even touch their toes. What sort of advice do you give to them?

Since he struggles with even touching his toes, I would recommend practicing Yoga to strengthen both his flexibility and core strength. Then it would be a matter of building some muscles but most of this could be built as he takes gymnastics lessons.

12. Number 7 (Shu) decides they want to paint a picture of you. They make you sit still for hours while they work on it, only when they finally reveal it to you, the image bears absolutely no resemblance to you. They ask you for your opinion, what do you say?

This could go different ways. If the painting still has artistic qualities to it, I would probably like it. If it doesn't, I probably wouldn't be too happy with the end result.

13. Number 5 (Kou) buys a large pet python and they try to talk you into keeping it in your room. How do you respond?

Kou... it's not going to happen.

14. You go on a Ferris wheel with number 6 (Ruki) but when you reach the top, it stops moving and stays still for a long time. There seems to be some kind of fault, which means you’re trapped with number 6 till someone can get it working again. What do you do?

Depending on certain circumstances, I could be calm or worried. If it's only for a short while and the seat doesn't rock a lot, then I would probably be fine. Though if it's a old carnival Ferris wheel, Ruki would have to sit through and listen to my panicked self. 😅

15. Number 2 (Carla) proposes you play a game of twister. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you get dragged into it. As you’re playing, you notice number 2 seems to be touching you a lot more than necessary. Do you call them out on it, or take some other course of action?

I would probably make a casual mention of it but Carla would most likely dismiss it as a foolish thought.

16. You’re getting changed in your room when you suddenly hear a noise from your wardrobe. You open the wardrobe to find number 3 (Azusa) standing in it. How do you react?

I would be pretty confused to why he would be in there but knowing Azusa, I can see him just showing up in random places at random times.

17. Number 1 (Shin) manages to accidentally handcuff themselves to you. They don’t have a key and for some reason, no matter what either of you do, you can’t seem to get them off. What are you going to do?

Considering I'm someone who needs their own perosnal space, I can't see this going well for long even if it's with Shin.

18. Number 10 (Laito) presents you with a bouquet of roses and declares that they have feelings for you. How do you react?

I would have to politely turn him down. Hopefully he wouldn't try to seduce me after the rejection. >.>;

19. You go swimming with number 8 (Ayato). You’re having a great time until they pull you aside and tell you that they’ve somehow lost their swimwear. Are you going to help them and if so how?

When no one is looking, I would quickly toss him a towel to cover himself with. If there's no luck finding his swimwear, I would go buy a new pair to replace the one he lost.

20. Number 5 (Kou) wrote a love letter to you and slipped it into what they believed to be your locker, however the locker actually belongs to number 8 (Ayato) and they didn’t bother writing your name on the letter. How does number 8 react when they find it?

I feel like Ayato would get a good laugh from reading it depending on how much is confessed in the letter.

21. Number 7 (Shu) gets very very drunk and tries to give number 3 (Azusa) a strip tease. What happens?

I could only see this going wrong in the long end...

22. Number 6 (Ruki) and number 2 (Carla) get into a rap battle and they want you to be the judge. Who do you think is going to win and why?

I can honestly only see this ending in a tie. Carla would probably through a fit knowing he tied with a vampire XD

23. Number 1 (Shin) accidentally ruins number 9’s (Subaru) most prized possession and begs for your help in covering it up. What do you do?

I seriously would not want to get involved in this. I'm sure Shin could hold his own just fine against Subaru but I wouldn't want to face his wrath >_<

24. You wake up in between number 4 (Kanato) and number 10 (Laito) with absolutely no memory of how you got there. Do you have any idea about what might have occurred and what are you going to do now?

If I have no reason to feel like anything more went on, I would most likely just lie there confused and wouldn't move until I remembered how I got there.

25. You go on a camping trip with number 9 (Subaru), number 6 (Ruki) and number 3 (Azusa). What sort of stuff do the four of you do together?

If the weather is nice, going on a walk through the woods would be nice. Then as soon as it gets dark, it's campfire time. ^^

26. Number 9 (Subaru) and number 4 (Kanato) have somehow swapped bodies. How do they react and are you going to try to help them get back to normal?

I could see Kanato throwing a fit because of the situation and want to get back to his own body while Subaru would be moody with some furniture meeting their untimely end. R.I.P.

27. You’re playing a game of Monopoly with number 5 (Kou), number 7 (Shu), and number 10 (Laito). Who wins and who goes bankrupt and storms off in a rage?

I can just imagine Laito's face as he wins the game, Shu could care less he went bankrupt, while Kou would forever remember this loss and will plan his revenge. Gotta keep the wins and losses even for him ;)

28. You go on a hike with number 8 (Ayato) and number 2 (Carla). Number 8 is in charge of the map and they manage to get you completely lost in the middle of nowhere. What are you going to do?

Despite not liking the situation, the only choice would be to keep on walking until we find our way back or until someone comes find us. Hopefully the former would happen first OAO

29. Number 1 (Shin) has given up on learning the trumpet and has taken up the banjo instead. They write a song and play it for you but it sounds beyond terrible. How do you react?

I would be touched by the gesture and probably couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth. I've never been good in situations like this 😅

30. Number 1 (Shin) and number 2 (Carla) get in a fight over you. Number 2 manages to win and asks you for your hand in marriage. How do you respond?

Talk about a battle for the pride and future of the Founders. I feel even if I turned down Carla's proposal, I would probably be left with no choice but to marry him. I'm so sorry Shin ;A;

[lauramalchowblog]

14 Scenarios When Fasting Might Be Your Best Approach

There’s a ton of talk about intermittent fasting in the ancestral heath sphere for general health and wellness as well as weight loss, but little indication of specific applications for the practice. Anytime you attempt a “radical” health practice like not eating, it helps to have a good reason to do it. That will not only give you something to aim for, but it will ensure you actually have a physiological justification for your experiment. Never go in blind.

What are some of the specific scenarios and conditions where fasting makes the most sense?

1. You Are Intractably, Morbidly Obese

It used to be that an accepted and well-tested fix for morbid obesity that was unresponsive to other methods was long term fasting.

One experiment was very long term: over a year of not eating anything except for multivitamins. (Disclaimer: I’m not recommending this approach, but it is interesting.)

Back in 1965, an obese Scotsman of 27 years and 456 pounds came to the Department of Medicine in Dundee, Scotland, with a problem. He needed to lose weight. A (1/8 of a) ton of it. The doctors suggested maybe not eating for a few days could help. It was just an offhand recommendation, but the Scotsman really took to it. He stayed at the hospital for several days, taking only water and vitamin pills while undergoing observation to ensure nothing went wrong. When his time was up, he continued the fast back at home, returning to the hospital only for regular monitoring. After a week, he was down five pounds and feeling good. His vitals checked out, blood pressure was normal, and though he had lower blood sugar than most men, he didn’t seem particularly impaired by it. The experiment continued… for 382 days.

Yes, AB fasted for 382 days, drinking only water and taking vitamin, potassium, and sodium supplements. All told, he lost 276 pounds, reaching his target weight of 180 pounds and maintaining the bulk of his weight loss. Over the five following years of observation, AB regained just sixteen pounds, putting him in excellent, but underpopulated territory (at least 80% of dieters eventually regain all the lost weight).

2. You Want the Benefits Of Ketosis Without Having To “Go Keto”

One thing a fast of sufficient length will do is throw you straight into ketosis. Humans are so wired to go into ketosis that a simple overnight “fast,” aka sleeping, will do it.

Then, when you do eat, you have more wiggle room on carbs because you’ve just spent plenty of time in ketosis during the fast. This isn’t the same thing as going keto, but then again, not everyone wants to be in ketosis all the time. Many benefits come from “dipping in and out of ketosis” on a regular basis, and regular intermittent fasting certainly qualifies.

3. You’re Otherwise Quite Lean, Active, and Low-Stress and Just Have a Little Bit To Lose

Fasting can be a stressor. Going without food tends to do that in organisms that rely on food for sustenance. It’s just that in the context of an overall low-stress lifestyle and low-oxidative stress physiology, it can be a positive stressor—a stressor that promotes strength and adaptation.

This is why women, in general, tend to have a tougher time with long term fasting. They are inherently more vulnerable to nutritional stressors since they have to be prepared to carry children to term and nurse them, two functions that require a steady source of calories. Biologically speaking, that is.

4. You Want a Buffer Against Degenerative Diseases

Now, this is mostly speculative. This isn’t medical advice or a guarantee of any kind.  There’s good reason to believe that regular extended fasting (or at least skipping meals/multiple meals on a regular basis) can reduce the risk of degenerative diseases and perhaps even extend life by triggering the autophagy pathway that cleans up damaged cells and keeps pre-cancerous cells suppressed.

Will this ensure you don’t get cancer down the line or die earlier than is your potential? No, not at all. But it’s a relatively easy thing to try with no downside, and it just might help.

5. You Want To Lean Out and Gain Muscle At the Same Time

The classic Leangains-style intermittent fasting with regular strength training is one of the best ways I’ve ever found to gain muscle and lose body fat concurrently. You follow a shortened eating window every day—usually 16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating—and on workout days end the fast with a strength training workout, then eat. Classic Leangains has you eating lower fat, higher carb on workout days and higher fat, lower carb on rest days, with protein kept high throughout. But it should work on whatever macro combination you prefer.

You won’t gain as much muscle as quickly as if you ate enormous meals all the time, but the gains you make will generally be leaner.

6. You’re Recovering From Major Gut Issues

A friend of mine just did a 5-day water fast to reset his gut biome after SIBO and/or a parasitic invasion. It fixed him right up. And whenever my dogs have ever had digestive upset, like diarrhea or something, I’ll throw them on a two-day fast and they bounce right back.

I think the gut needs periodic “resets” to stay in top shape. Give it a rest, have nothing go through demanding its attention for a couple days, and allow things to balance out. Just like someone who trains all the time can really benefit from a deload week, a digestive system that’s constantly digesting and processing food can benefit from a day or two of rest.

7. You Want To Control Blood Glucose Levels

In men with an elevated risk of getting type 2 diabetes, intermittent fasting without consciously changing what or how much they ate improved blood glucose levels. They either ate from noon to 9 PM or from 8 AM to 5 PM, so a solid nine hour eating window was enough to trigger improvements. That they didn’t change what they ate suggests that irrespective of the quality or quantity of the diet, simply not eating for 15 hours a day will improve your metabolic health.

Dr. Jason Fung consistently uses intermittent fasting in his patients with type 2 diabetes, so the potential for powerfully therapeutic effects for even full blown type 2 diabetes is quite high.

8. You Only Have Access To Terrible Food

When I travel for business, which is quite often, I tend to fast. Airports are getting better, but it’s still a sad state of culinary affairs. I usually have a few choices: I can pick at a wilted Caesar salad with flaccid chicken breast. I can eat some congealed beef patties from whatever fast food joint has set up shop in the terminal. I can drop $30 for a mediocre steak. Or I can just fast.

I usually choose the last option. At this point in my life, I refuse to put substandard food into my body, especially if it isn’t even very delicious. I’d rather just skip the food entirely and have a great meal when I arrive.

9. You Can’t Stop Snacking

Total freedom is hard for some people to manage. Even if the food is high quality and Primal or keto or whatever, constant access to eternal amounts of it is hard to turn down. Snacking happens. Again and again. Sometimes, we need to put up barriers to manage that freedom, to make it work. After all, paradise is a walled garden, and erecting the artificial eating barrier of a full-on fasting day (or two) or a compressed eating window will allow you to overcome this. If this describes you, a fasting regimen just might be the trick to work.

Plus, many people find that forcing yourself to not eat for an extended amount of time on a regular basis upregulates fat burning machinery and allows better eating habits and reduced snacking when you do go back to normal eating.

10. You’re Willing To Try an Unconventional Recovery Technique

When Dude Spellings was on the podcast, he relayed a wild story about racing 50 miles through the Grand Canyon in a (mostly) fasted state, being greeted at the finish line with a stack of pizzas, and instead of wolfing down with all the other competitors, continuing the fast through till the next day—theorizing that in his exhausted, inflamed state he could use the benefits of cell repair and anti-inflammatory processes enhanced by fasting. He woke feeling less stiff and sore than his previous crossing 13 years prior.

11. You’re Trying To Avoid Jet Lag

Another reason I often fast when traveling is to establish a new circadian rhythm aligned with my destination. By waiting until the morning after my arrival to eat, I take advantage of one of the most powerful stimuli, or zeitgebers, for establishing a new circadian rhythm: food. Eat a big meal in the morning, and your body “knows” it’s morning—biologically speaking.

How this looks:

I arrive at noon in the new location, which feels like nighttime for me. Instead of eating a big “lunch” and collapsing into bed, I spend all day staying active and fasting. I skip dinner. I walk everywhere. Then, in the morning, I get a workout in, preferably outdoors to get natural light exposure, and follow up with a big breakfast. That combo—the light, the workout, and the breakfast eaten at my desired breakfast time in the new place—sets my internal clock and minimizes jet lag.

12. You’re a Shift Worker

Shift workers are at an increased risk of many diseases, like diabetes and breast cancer, and a lot of this comes down to the disordered eating they’re often forced to engage in. They eat in the middle of the night, when their body wants to be sleeping, and in doing so throw their circadian rhythm out of wack more than it already is going to be.

If you’re primarily awake in the middle of the night but want to maintain a semblance of circadian rhythm, it makes sense to eat at normal dinner time and at the end of your shift, but not during. Fasting during your shift might just be the big breakthrough.

13. You’re Undergoing Chemotherapy

It’s common knowledge that calorie restriction can improve the response to chemotherapy while reducing the negatives. Fasting is just a more reliable, arguably easier version of calorie restriction. There’s even evidence that fasting can improve your healthy cells’ resistance to chemotherapy while reducing the cancer cells’ resistance while reducing negative symptoms like nausea and vomiting.

Don’t consider this medical advice, but do discuss it with your doctor. This info is resonating across the oncology world; it’s getting harder to deny that many patients can benefit from intermittent fasting.

14. You’ve Got a Massive Feast Coming Up

If you have a history of eating disorders, this is probably unwise. The feast/fast method can be taken to unhealthy levels, especially if it’s couched in feelings of body dissatisfaction or deep childhood trauma. But if these aren’t an issue and you have a one-off feast (like a holiday dinner) you simply want to really dig into, fasting for a day before the big feast can enhance the effects of the feast.

Whenever I hit the Brazilian all-you-can-eat BBQ joint, I’ll fast for at least a day—just to get my money’s worth and really develop that insatiable, salivating, Primal urge to eat meat. Hunger is the best spice.

These aren’t even all the scenarios where fasting helps or makes sense. There are others, which is where you come in. What have been your reasons for fasting? Has it worked?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

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[jesseneufeld]

14 Scenarios When Fasting Might Be Your Best Approach

There’s a ton of talk about intermittent fasting in the ancestral heath sphere for general health and wellness as well as weight loss, but little indication of specific applications for the practice. Anytime you attempt a “radical” health practice like not eating, it helps to have a good reason to do it. That will not only give you something to aim for, but it will ensure you actually have a physiological justification for your experiment. Never go in blind.

What are some of the specific scenarios and conditions where fasting makes the most sense?

1. You Are Intractably, Morbidly Obese

It used to be that an accepted and well-tested fix for morbid obesity that was unresponsive to other methods was long term fasting.

One experiment was very long term: over a year of not eating anything except for multivitamins. (Disclaimer: I’m not recommending this approach, but it is interesting.)

Back in 1965, an obese Scotsman of 27 years and 456 pounds came to the Department of Medicine in Dundee, Scotland, with a problem. He needed to lose weight. A (1/8 of a) ton of it. The doctors suggested maybe not eating for a few days could help. It was just an offhand recommendation, but the Scotsman really took to it. He stayed at the hospital for several days, taking only water and vitamin pills while undergoing observation to ensure nothing went wrong. When his time was up, he continued the fast back at home, returning to the hospital only for regular monitoring. After a week, he was down five pounds and feeling good. His vitals checked out, blood pressure was normal, and though he had lower blood sugar than most men, he didn’t seem particularly impaired by it. The experiment continued… for 382 days.

Yes, AB fasted for 382 days, drinking only water and taking vitamin, potassium, and sodium supplements. All told, he lost 276 pounds, reaching his target weight of 180 pounds and maintaining the bulk of his weight loss. Over the five following years of observation, AB regained just sixteen pounds, putting him in excellent, but underpopulated territory (at least 80% of dieters eventually regain all the lost weight).

2. You Want the Benefits Of Ketosis Without Having To “Go Keto”

One thing a fast of sufficient length will do is throw you straight into ketosis. Humans are so wired to go into ketosis that a simple overnight “fast,” aka sleeping, will do it.

Then, when you do eat, you have more wiggle room on carbs because you’ve just spent plenty of time in ketosis during the fast. This isn’t the same thing as going keto, but then again, not everyone wants to be in ketosis all the time. Many benefits come from “dipping in and out of ketosis” on a regular basis, and regular intermittent fasting certainly qualifies.

3. You’re Otherwise Quite Lean, Active, and Low-Stress and Just Have a Little Bit To Lose

Fasting can be a stressor. Going without food tends to do that in organisms that rely on food for sustenance. It’s just that in the context of an overall low-stress lifestyle and low-oxidative stress physiology, it can be a positive stressor—a stressor that promotes strength and adaptation.

This is why women, in general, tend to have a tougher time with long term fasting. They are inherently more vulnerable to nutritional stressors since they have to be prepared to carry children to term and nurse them, two functions that require a steady source of calories. Biologically speaking, that is.

4. You Want a Buffer Against Degenerative Diseases

Now, this is mostly speculative. This isn’t medical advice or a guarantee of any kind.  There’s good reason to believe that regular extended fasting (or at least skipping meals/multiple meals on a regular basis) can reduce the risk of degenerative diseases and perhaps even extend life by triggering the autophagy pathway that cleans up damaged cells and keeps pre-cancerous cells suppressed.

Will this ensure you don’t get cancer down the line or die earlier than is your potential? No, not at all. But it’s a relatively easy thing to try with no downside, and it just might help.

5. You Want To Lean Out and Gain Muscle At the Same Time

The classic Leangains-style intermittent fasting with regular strength training is one of the best ways I’ve ever found to gain muscle and lose body fat concurrently. You follow a shortened eating window every day—usually 16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating—and on workout days end the fast with a strength training workout, then eat. Classic Leangains has you eating lower fat, higher carb on workout days and higher fat, lower carb on rest days, with protein kept high throughout. But it should work on whatever macro combination you prefer.

You won’t gain as much muscle as quickly as if you ate enormous meals all the time, but the gains you make will generally be leaner.

6. You’re Recovering From Major Gut Issues

A friend of mine just did a 5-day water fast to reset his gut biome after SIBO and/or a parasitic invasion. It fixed him right up. And whenever my dogs have ever had digestive upset, like diarrhea or something, I’ll throw them on a two-day fast and they bounce right back.

I think the gut needs periodic “resets” to stay in top shape. Give it a rest, have nothing go through demanding its attention for a couple days, and allow things to balance out. Just like someone who trains all the time can really benefit from a deload week, a digestive system that’s constantly digesting and processing food can benefit from a day or two of rest.

7. You Want To Control Blood Glucose Levels

In men with an elevated risk of getting type 2 diabetes, intermittent fasting without consciously changing what or how much they ate improved blood glucose levels. They either ate from noon to 9 PM or from 8 AM to 5 PM, so a solid nine hour eating window was enough to trigger improvements. That they didn’t change what they ate suggests that irrespective of the quality or quantity of the diet, simply not eating for 15 hours a day will improve your metabolic health.

Dr. Jason Fung consistently uses intermittent fasting in his patients with type 2 diabetes, so the potential for powerfully therapeutic effects for even full blown type 2 diabetes is quite high.

8. You Only Have Access To Terrible Food

When I travel for business, which is quite often, I tend to fast. Airports are getting better, but it’s still a sad state of culinary affairs. I usually have a few choices: I can pick at a wilted Caesar salad with flaccid chicken breast. I can eat some congealed beef patties from whatever fast food joint has set up shop in the terminal. I can drop $30 for a mediocre steak. Or I can just fast.

I usually choose the last option. At this point in my life, I refuse to put substandard food into my body, especially if it isn’t even very delicious. I’d rather just skip the food entirely and have a great meal when I arrive.

9. You Can’t Stop Snacking

Total freedom is hard for some people to manage. Even if the food is high quality and Primal or keto or whatever, constant access to eternal amounts of it is hard to turn down. Snacking happens. Again and again. Sometimes, we need to put up barriers to manage that freedom, to make it work. After all, paradise is a walled garden, and erecting the artificial eating barrier of a full-on fasting day (or two) or a compressed eating window will allow you to overcome this. If this describes you, a fasting regimen just might be the trick to work.

Plus, many people find that forcing yourself to not eat for an extended amount of time on a regular basis upregulates fat burning machinery and allows better eating habits and reduced snacking when you do go back to normal eating.

10. You’re Willing To Try an Unconventional Recovery Technique

When Dude Spellings was on the podcast, he relayed a wild story about racing 50 miles through the Grand Canyon in a (mostly) fasted state, being greeted at the finish line with a stack of pizzas, and instead of wolfing down with all the other competitors, continuing the fast through till the next day—theorizing that in his exhausted, inflamed state he could use the benefits of cell repair and anti-inflammatory processes enhanced by fasting. He woke feeling less stiff and sore than his previous crossing 13 years prior.

11. You’re Trying To Avoid Jet Lag

Another reason I often fast when traveling is to establish a new circadian rhythm aligned with my destination. By waiting until the morning after my arrival to eat, I take advantage of one of the most powerful stimuli, or zeitgebers, for establishing a new circadian rhythm: food. Eat a big meal in the morning, and your body “knows” it’s morning—biologically speaking.

How this looks:

I arrive at noon in the new location, which feels like nighttime for me. Instead of eating a big “lunch” and collapsing into bed, I spend all day staying active and fasting. I skip dinner. I walk everywhere. Then, in the morning, I get a workout in, preferably outdoors to get natural light exposure, and follow up with a big breakfast. That combo—the light, the workout, and the breakfast eaten at my desired breakfast time in the new place—sets my internal clock and minimizes jet lag.

12. You’re a Shift Worker

Shift workers are at an increased risk of many diseases, like diabetes and breast cancer, and a lot of this comes down to the disordered eating they’re often forced to engage in. They eat in the middle of the night, when their body wants to be sleeping, and in doing so throw their circadian rhythm out of wack more than it already is going to be.

If you’re primarily awake in the middle of the night but want to maintain a semblance of circadian rhythm, it makes sense to eat at normal dinner time and at the end of your shift, but not during. Fasting during your shift might just be the big breakthrough.

13. You’re Undergoing Chemotherapy

It’s common knowledge that calorie restriction can improve the response to chemotherapy while reducing the negatives. Fasting is just a more reliable, arguably easier version of calorie restriction. There’s even evidence that fasting can improve your healthy cells’ resistance to chemotherapy while reducing the cancer cells’ resistance while reducing negative symptoms like nausea and vomiting.

Don’t consider this medical advice, but do discuss it with your doctor. This info is resonating across the oncology world; it’s getting harder to deny that many patients can benefit from intermittent fasting.

14. You’ve Got a Massive Feast Coming Up

If you have a history of eating disorders, this is probably unwise. The feast/fast method can be taken to unhealthy levels, especially if it’s couched in feelings of body dissatisfaction or deep childhood trauma. But if these aren’t an issue and you have a one-off feast (like a holiday dinner) you simply want to really dig into, fasting for a day before the big feast can enhance the effects of the feast.

Whenever I hit the Brazilian all-you-can-eat BBQ joint, I’ll fast for at least a day—just to get my money’s worth and really develop that insatiable, salivating, Primal urge to eat meat. Hunger is the best spice.

These aren’t even all the scenarios where fasting helps or makes sense. There are others, which is where you come in. What have been your reasons for fasting? Has it worked?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

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[anneedmonds]

These Aren’t Just Gel Nails…

I get questioned about my gel nails constantly (what shade of polish, where do I get them done, how much do they cost) and so I thought that I would put all of the information into one permanent post. Because my nails are gel nails but not – possibly – as you know them.

I’m going to adopt the voice of the woman from the Marks and Spencer’s adverts here, if you don’t mind, so please do play along and read this in a similar tone.

“These aren’t just gel nails, these are virtually indestructible, always-perfect, non-discolouring gel nails that form a new layer over your natural nail.”

This isn’t Shellac, or base-coat-colour-coat-top-coat gel, this system uses a builder gel (from Young Nails) that forms an entirely new base – hence why it’s used to correct broken or partially missing nails if they look unsightly. Marathon runners who lose all or part of their toenails, for example. The builder gel gives a huge amount of strength and allows whoever’s applying it (someone well-trained, hopefully!) to contour and correct the nail surface by basically creating a whole new nail above the natural nail.

Admittedly it’s not the lowest maintenance routine in existence; I have to go to the salon every four weeks to have the old layers buffed off with a drill and then new stuff applied – but in between visits, there is absolutely no upkeep and I rock up to my appointments with nails that are as perfect as the day I left the last time. No chips, no splits, no lifting – only the regrowth gives the game away.

But that’s another little twist in the tale; rather than choosing an outlandish colour each time, I go for exactly the same shade. Beige 102. (Again, from Young Nails.) Now some might think this is boring, to go for the same neutral shade each time, but I say: clever. It’s almost a match to my natural nail colour (“my nails but better”) and so when my nails grow and I have the band of regrowth it’s honestly barely noticeable. I just can’t rave about my particular little gel formula/perfect nail shade-combo enough – I feel pretty smug about it, truth be told, so something will probably go wrong soon. Dems de rules.

The only downside of this gel nails method is 1) you HAVE to make your appointments because the builder gel can’t be soaked off and filing it off yourself would be a crazy endeavour and 2) the nails stay so perfect-looking that it’s tempting to stretch out the time between appointments, and then you get nails that turn you into Edward Scissorhands. It becomes impossible to type, open tin cans or wipe yourself after the toilet without causing serious injury to your lady garden. Blinding yourself whilst itching your eyes becomes a very real scenario. Small children run away in fear lest you accidentally maim them with your diamond-strength talons.

The other great thing about the shade I have (Beige 102) is that you can get away with just one coat, whereas many shades need to be fully opaque. It means that I can keep my nails relatively low-profile and they don’t have to look like big bulbous jelly beans stuck to the end of my fingers – they stay chic and natural-looking. Hurrah.

Now the biggest question is: where you can get these miraculous nails done? I go to Martha at The Suite in Bath (website here) but it seems that there aren’t that many places that do them. Most salons seem to do your standard gel nails that last 1-2 weeks maximum. (And reports seem to be that they can be quite damaging to the natural nail, which I did find on the occasions I’ve had them but wouldn’t like to generalise!)

So finding a place to do them – and do them properly – isn’t that easy. I tried Googling “synergy gel nails near me” but that brought up quite a few places that turned out to not do them and also – weirdly – didn’t mention The Suite in Bath, which is where I go.. It may be a case of just phoning around until you find one, unfortunately, although I am going to try and list a few places in the comments. (Note that these are not tried and tested and I’m not recommending them, I simply thought it would be a good starting point. If anyone has any recommendations or info then please do add!)

I pay £33 each time for my nails and although sometimes I begrudge traipsing into Bath when I could be at home eating my secret chocolate stash, wearing a tracksuit, it’s quite good that I’m forced to get out and about. I do some chores, admin, sometimes meet someone for lunch or pick up a bit of shopping and then it’s all worthwhile. And – most importantly, from a beauty perspective, my nails always look impeccable. It has made it an absolute joy to plonk my hands and nails into every video close-up and still-life photo, whereas before I was always working out how to hide my chipped polish.

If you’d like to see Martha from The Suite in action then I filmed my gel nail session and put it into a vlog. Just press play on the screen below, or you can view in Youtube here.

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These Aren’t Just Gel Nails… was first posted on March 20, 2019 at 5:46 pm. ©2018 "A Model Recommends". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at [email protected] These Aren’t Just Gel Nails… published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley

[restoftheowl]

Becoming undoomed

This is the second follow up on Does Culture Need Humans, originally published as an addendum to the book Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena. In that paper I argued that memes control genes, and since culture is the main force driving the evolution of homo sapiens, it is a quasi-living entity that is also the pinnacle of evolution. Here I am looking at a scenario in which culture changes due to external factors.

I remember being perplexed finding out futurology was actually about determining possible futures. For me all of science and technology seemed to be pretty occupied with the future, so I expected futurology to be about why there are no masses of chimney pot hat wearing bearded men flying around on planes that seem to be made out of sticks and bed linen, since once that was supposed to be the future, or maybe find out what it was those people did who were better than most at foretelling what was to come.

Anyway, here’s an attempt that goes both ways: determine a possible future and a suggest a more efficient approach to determining it. The original thesis is that life creates the reality in which culture created humans, to carry on the project of expansion and taking over the universe, thus the following is also an attempt at cultural futurology. Our thought experiment is a doom scenario with a twist, and it will be presented with a twirl. The premise is the following:

A cosmic event in the Solar System will render the Earth inhabitable. (An asteroid is about to or has already hit a planet or a moon, causing a cascading effect, changing the orbit of planets, maybe a planet was outright blown to pieces for a shower of megaton asteroids, or maybe it’s a black hole moving in at great speed.)

We find out that we have some 10 to 20 years to make an escape.

Aren’t we lucky?

Midday

All we have to do is move all of humanity into space except those who cannot or will not move. Fortunately we have about ten thousand nuclear warheads lying around, which are no longer useful for their original purpose - that is blowing each other up -, but could be excellent for propulsion, putting really huge vessels into orbit. Background radiation and environmental concerns don’t matter as much at this point. There is some time to manufacture some more nuclear bombs, develop more efficient ways of using them, so we could eventually launch tens of thousands of ships into space. We would like to bring some things with us too, not as much as we could though, since people are priority, so no elephants or sculptures.

At the same time we can set up some serious operation on the Moon, build a few mass drivers, start constructing space habitats of the O’Neill cylinder variety - they are spacious tubular constructions that spin to create comfortable artificial gravity inside. Alternatively we could colonize the Moon and somehow move it out of the endangered region. Also we could do both the space habitat and Moon colony.

A planetary evacuation is costly, but then again a couple of decades worth of military spending, infrastructure building and maintenance, carbon dioxide credits have just become available for funding the great project. People need to be informed, prepared and moved into place in en masse. It’s the greatest undertaking of human history and we can cope all of it with our present technical capabilities.

Day One

Well, nobody expected the whole remaining humanity to fly by Voyager 1, but here we are. The new place is small but cosy. We watched the last spaceships leave and the big farewell party. Now we are on our own in space, gravely depressed for the loss we suffered. Most people lost loved ones on Earth, our planet is gone, our home, our country, history, art, and all the holy places too.

It’s a new life, with new rules. No fire outdoors, no shooting, absolutely no wars (unless we wish to go medieval), no cars. No rich or poor, no growth. Asteroid mining for profit, wiring money through light years, megacorporations, colonialist logic make no sense. Return on investment can wait a couple of centuries. It’s not a sci-fi social commentary metaphor with light makeups, it’s a lifeboat, where you don’t want eat one another.

Most aspects of society needs to be balanced and controlled. A number of things that we considered basic until now are no longer accessible in reality, however we can have them in virtual world. In fact we will probably need to matrix ourselves in an organized way to avoid a total mental breakdown of society. Some mercyful artificial intelligence may help us during and after the evacuation, supervising the efficient dissemination of knowledge, keeping up individual psychological composure.

We have now centuries before reaching another star system and with so much time on our hands and for lack of better things to do, humanity may turn to total spiritual rebuilding. Old religions were tied to our planet in so many ways, most of it had to be left behind, now we need to start anew, incorporate actual Earth-shattering events that went down, the human effort and emotions, integrate our new virtual life, and the holy reality our fleet is drags with itself into the cosmos.

Day Zero

In our cultural futurology thought experiment we now return to the day we find out about the impending doom. Are we better than dinosaurs?

As the news breaks, people realize they don’t really need to keep saving for their pension or pay mortgage. Shortly all stores of value go to zero, stocks, gold, money. General loss of focus and motivation follows. Some panic, some say they were right all along and then panic. Kingdoms fall, all power is lost. Now we are trying to save ourselves, while the whole society is racing down the slope of regression towards disintegration. Some systems, disciplined factions manage keep their act together and evacuate, losing a lot of time and life in the process, for a fraction of effect, meaning serious risk to their actual survival.

Even though societies may have various contingency plans, everyday operation includes the repression of the thoughts of doom and rightly so. Liberal democratic capitalism too is based on the repression of the fact that all turns to dust within an undefined period of time - emphasis on undefined. We need to distort our view of the future in order to be operational.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

What do we do now? You are a leader of your country in live video conference with your colleagues. The news is not out yet and you have two choices. One we call Suppression, the other Unity.

In the Suppression scenario we apparently decide on not letting the news of impending doom go public. The population is kept in ignorance, all available resources are channeled to the evacuation project, all work done behind the veil, until everything is prepared for a full disclosure. Benefits of this approach are: disorder avoided, stress delayed, with tolerable level of efficiency. Downsides are: depriving people of the knowledge is depriving them of pride of being part of the effort, resulting in tension, and the possible burden of those who could have been saved while mankind was kept asleep. The single biggest obstacle to overcome is suppression itself, not only because it eats into your resources, but because what you do involves masses of workers, heavy lifting and numerous nuclear detonations.

How about Unification? You decide to go ahead with the full disclosure. Tell people something like this: “Look, we have a hundred and fifteen months to leave the Earth. It’s terrible news but we can make it. We will work together and try to save every single person. The worst we can do is panic. So we need to carry on with life as if nothing happened. Which will be hard since everything is lost and nothing has value anymore. Only survival has real value, so right now we introduce a new global currency: evacuation karma coin or spacebuck (any odd name will suffice) which will be backed by the effort that goes into saving humanity. You might turn out to be too old, dead or otherwise unfit to leave when the time comes, but with the evacuation karma coin you will be able to save your family or anyone you choose. Learn something that will be useful off the planet, help and encourage your fellow men.”

Quite a sound bite there. We hope we didn’t misjudge mass psychology and the efficiency we gained by openness will not be negated by the insanity and anarchy induced by stress. Also we expect our newly invented emergency currency to soak up fleeing capital preventing total financial meltdown, even better: we use the momentum to turn from growth to post-scarcity.

Now, whether Suppression or Unity would produce better results is up for discussion. As a closure, for such an event I’m offering an opinion and a slogan. Whatever the decision will be, we should choose wisely what we try preserve from the Old World, lest we end up holding on to something in vain. And then our slogan shall be: We are no dinosaurs!

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