#drugging but like its medicine it makes more sense in context

[nqmonarch]

hello......... we meet again...........clown to clown communication............... youve infected me so bad with your yandere blade thoughts please i have to be euthanizeddd.......... please i need to know more of your thoughts on the matter so bad /nf

Hello again :) So I ended up turning a bunch of mini thoughts into a mini story, if you don't mind. If you want more just brainrot thoughts lmk and I can get those out of my brain as well

Originally I was going to publish it in one part however, it's getting a bit too long (6775 words) and I don't like having such long posts.

This is a lot of the leadup portion Part 2 will probably focus more on the Yandere although it starts to lean on that a bit in the end.

TW: Yandere, violence, manipulation, drugging all that kind of stuff.

Also spoilers for Blade and High Cloud Quintet's identity (I don't know exactly which quests I spoiled)

I think the big question first off is how do you even get Blade interested in you?

It could be the classic, knowing Blade in the past, being his lover or friend before he became mara struck. Maybe even being his rival, someone that loved to challenge him, and ended advocating for him to be allowed to die an honorable death out of admiration for your opponent. Either way he'd have lingering feelings for you.

But I like to think you met him by chance on the Xianzhou Luofu when he returned as Blade. Maybe you were a healer, that not only helped but put people out of their misery, peacefully. You were someone who specialized in working with mara struck, finding ways to suppress and calm it, staying by your patients side as they slowly lost their mind, and making sure they didn't hurt anyone. You were trained well in the ways of combat, after all you had to be in order to deal with mara.

Your goal was to help them come to terms with their death and once they had you would hand them off to the Ten Lords Commission. If they weren't ready, that was okay they could stick around. Either way when they'd fully transformed into a mara struck, you killed them. Only once they'd fully transformed would you be able to, otherwise they'd regenerate.

One day, you'd been wandering about when you found a curious person. Someone you knew well because their face was on countless wanted posters. You'd never done much research into the Stellaron Hunters but were surprised to see one of their members was afflicted with mara.

You weren't cruel. Instead you grabbed some medication and approached him, cautiously like how one would approach a stray cat. A few seconds after you'd begun walking toward him, he reached you. Tip of a blade pointed at your neck, grazing it, cool metal pressed against warm skin, it shook ever so slightly each movement threatening to draw blood. He was barely restraining himself, you weren't sure why he was even trying. But you did know that your head would be on the floor if he really wanted it there.

"Let me help?" Your tone was friendly, and you held up the bag of medicine in your hand. Your words didn't register with him, you doubted he could even see your lips moving. But the most important thing was to have a nonthreatening presence.

For mara struck you could strangely talk your way out of it. You were surrounded by mara while working, to the point you stunk of it. For some reason mara struck soldiers never attacked you unprovoked, it was a strange phenomena and that was the only reason you could think of.

Unfortunately, it didn't work for you this time, and you quickly found yourself trying to outrun one of the most dangerous men alive. Oopsie? At least it was kind of fun! This exhilaration was really nice, you should get in near death experiences more often! You felt the wind whip around you as the hunter was hot on your trail.

You wouldn't be able to outrun him much longer, the only reason you'd gotten this far was because he'd been in the middle of swinging his sword at you. So your only option was to unconsensually drug him. That sounded really bad. But your life was at risk! You slipped one of the pills into your hand, it was one of the heavier ones that would cause the patient to pass out. There were some cases where even your medicine couldn't comfort, then the best thing would be sleep.

With a minor turn of your ankle you swung around and placed your hand in his mouth, opening it, and getting the medicine in. He bit your hand near immediately, but you kept it still, even though his teeth would sharp as fuck you could feel them even inside your hand clenching down. You felt the warmth of blood, and waited a moment looking into his eyes.

You wouldn't hold it against him, he was mara struck. This was how they acted toward most people, not normally you, but it felt good to be treated like most people for once. You were normal. It was nice. Then he fell off your hand, tumbling straight backwards, and hitting the ground with a painful thud.

"Oooh, that's gotta hurt," You muttered, not entirely sympathetic to the man that just tried to kill you. But he was an interesting person. A Stellaron Hunter with mara, huh?

Maybe you didn't know as much about them as you thought. You slipped off the cloth bag around your shoulder and fixed it over his face. Then you grabbed him by the arms and began to drag him, his clothes dirtying upon the street floor, back to your little apothecary. Heavy.

You managed to lift him for a few moments to put him on a cot, before placing your hands on your knees, and taking a moment to catch your breath. You prepared some medicine in case if he was still mara struck and a glass of water. He woke up in only an hour, you were lucky to have enough time to finish bandaging your hand. Normally, it'd keep people out for six hours. The farther along they were the less productive it was. By all accounts he shouldn't be able to have a single moment of sanity.

Yet when he got up from the bed he seemed normal. Eerily so. You remained poise in a seat near his bed which he hadn't noticed. His eyes rested on the pills before looking around the rest of the room and reaching you. He reached for his blade, moving his hand next to his side and grabbing at empty air. Thankfully, you'd already removed the blade from this room, he was probably more deadly when he had his wits about him.

You chuckled at his response, feeling your nerves heighten as you resisted the urge to run away. Maybe this was a bad idea. "Hello there, good sir!" You greeted chipperly, "I saw you passed out on the side walk and dragged you back to my humble abode! Is there anything I can do for you?" You kept on your 'being yelled at by a 500 year old Xianzhou long life mother whose kid had just been told they couldn't throw stuff at people' smile.

He remained quiet for a moment, assessing to see whether or not you were a threat moving his eyes up and down, "...My sword?"

"What sword?" You replied back innocently. No way were you giving that back.

He let out a sigh, getting up from the bed, and heading to the door. The good news was he didn't try to attack you, the bad news was that the most fascinating mara struck victim was leaving. You couldn't let that happen.

You raced in front of him, putting your hands and waving them defenselessly. He looked down at you, red eye glaring down at you as if you were obsolete. You laughed again, "Well, uh, good sir, as someone that helped you can I at least know the name of uh--"

"Get out of my way -- knowing me won't do any good." He was definitely going to kill you if you didn't move. But you couldn't just let him leave!

Your smile grew even further, holding your cheeks up painfully, "Well-- you see-- you're so beautiful!" You said desperately, "I was taken by you-- love at first sight, you see? Right? You're just-- so wonderful!" You stammered out, voice shaking, "Can I at least know the name of the breath taking soul who stole my heart!"

The long blue haired man froze in his path, hair swaying to a halt behind him. No fucking way that got him. He seemed befuddled, glancing further away from you, eyes focused on a small portion of the floor. "Blade." IT WORKED?!

Blade remained quiet for a moment longer before turning his head back to you, "Now move." Of course it didn't work, if it worked you would've been in a relationship by now.

He side stepped you easily, leaving you to stare at his broad back, clothes tight around his muscles. Now wasn't the time to think about that. "You have mara right? I can cure it." It was a bold claim. You'd never done anything like that before, and his case was more severe than others.

He stopped in his steps, "What?" One deadly word made you almost want to take back everything you said but you couldn't. Blade experienced mara differently than others, that was clear. If you had the chance to work alongside him then maybe... you could figure something out?

Even though you portrayed yourself as undisturbed by your job getting to know so many people and then watching them turn into monsters was horrifying. Blade was interesting, you'd hate to call him a test subject but, if he consented he'd likely end up helping your understanding of mara. You just needed a reason for him to stay.

"I work with mara stricken citizens and soldiers. I've researched it for my whole life and I use this knowledge to aid others, helping alleviate their pain, calm themselves, or sleep when mara takes them," That was convincing enough, right?

He appeared skeptical, still poised to attack even without his sword. But as you continued smiling, a hopeful yet scared look in your eyes he let out a sigh.

"Can you kill them?"

You paused a bit, understanding his intention, "Only when they're fully taken by the mara." Otherwise they'd only heal, "I can alleviate your pain until then." You were shocked at how self assured you sounded, as if you could genuinely help him rather than just use him for discoveries.

Blade remained quiet and unmoving, a statue with the first rays of sunlight hitting it and breaking it free from darkness, "Okay." His voice was quieter than it'd been this entire time, you thought you'd misheard him.

"Okay?" You repeated, as if what you'd heard was a dream.

"Keep your distance." He stepped out of the sun and toward your door frame before pausing glancing back for such a short time you thought you'd imagined it, "I will return, if it's what you want."

It was strange, Blade had a peaceful sleep unplagued by dreams of dying and pain. If there was a chance it was because of you and you really wanted to meet him again, then he shouldn't resist too hard, right?

You felt a smile grow on your face lifting up its corners as the swordsman continued to walk away, "Yes! That's wonderful!" Then you paused realization sinking in, "Oh, Blade!" You called out, hoping he wouldn't kill you for this, "Your sword's by the door!"

You saw him glare at you and instinctively shut your eyes preparing for a sword to be lodged between your eyes. But when you opened them neither he or his sword were to be found.

Part of you expected him to never return and he didn't tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow he didn't come back. You wanted to give up hope. It made sense and was likely better for your safety but, Blade was the breakthrough you were looking for.

You smiled at the elderly Xianzhou long life that you were walking with through one of the fake gardens on the ship. They continued to rattle on about their great granddaughter and how hard she'd been training to be a cloud knight. To care about someone's progress, such that the smallest milestones mean as much to you as they do to them-- that must be love right? You were a bit envious. You wanted to love like this old soul. Someone who had nearly lost their mind the other day to mara but could continue going on, loving, and hoping.

That day was the day they left, agreeing to be taken away by the Ten Lords Commission. It was bittersweet, as it always was and you were alone, again. That was alright though.

What wasn't alright was being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps. Someone had broken in. They weren't well, they sounded limp, as if they were dragging one leg. But since you hadn't heard the door being broken down, they'd likely come in through the window you tended to leave open. Look-- people on the Luofu don't normally resort to these matters and if they did then they wouldn't go after you.

It meant whoever came was both highly skilled and injured. With careful steps, putting your feet down gently and slowly one in front of the other, you approached the trespasser.

You smelled the blood first, the faint irony scent that made your noise scrunch up momentarily as your mouth imitated the taste of blood. Then you saw it. The small dark red trail that gleamed in the moonlight. Then him.

You felt rather satisfied, even in a state where he was taken over by mara Blade had somehow made it back here, "I knew you'd come back," You spoke playfully.

At the sight of agony in his eyes, a pang of guilt struck your heart. It really wasn't the time to be joking around. Perhaps there was some sanity still left in him, as his whole body shook, shaking even more as you approached closer and closer. Part of him must want to attack you, to kill you, to rip you apart until you were nothing, but he wasn't.

"Good," You commended him, as you stood in front of him and knelt down, aside from the shaking Blade remained still. He looked like he wanted to scream, hurt himself, kill himself, rip himself apart until nothing remained. Did he want to die more than he wanted to hurt you? Was experiencing mara that painful? You'd never know.

"I just need you to do one small thing for me okay," You spoke gently, even though you knew he likely couldn't hear your voice at all.

You thumbed through the few medications you always kept handy in your pouch, and picked one for pain relief. Last time you'd needed him to sleep or you'd die, this time you could see the effect of what they did. You moved the pill into his mouth and saw him struggle to swallow, you weren't moving your hands close to his face though for some reason you had a feeling he might bite them off-- like a dog would.

He was a lot more like a dog than you expected. The medicine had been able to work, body instantly relaxing, to your surprise. The more surprising thing was what happened after. Blade visited you, more often out of his own free will, not just when he was mara struck.

Blade was an awkward companion, terrible at small talk, and you couldn't take care of patients when he was near for fear they might see the Stellaron Hunter. Sometimes he would mumble under his breath about a price, or bring you small things, little trinkets, food, a severed hand-- A SEVERED HAND?!

"Why are you giving me this?" You looked down at the bloody hand he was holding onto, your eyebrow twitching slightly. You were used to blood and all but this was unnecessary.

He looked up at you, partially confused and disgruntled at your obvious disapproval, "He bothered you?" His statement came out more as a question.

Oh. It was him-- You let out an aggravated sigh, "You didn't get caught right?"

You noticed Blade perk up ever so slightly as if he thought what he did was right, "No."

That was good at least. "Don't do that again." What was he a dog? Or maybe a cat was better, bringing you pieces of their hunt. Now that you think about it, where did he get those trinkets from? It was probably best not to think about. "Go put that away," You said dismissively, moving your hand up to touch your forehead lightly.

You were going to regret this weren't you? Well, that was a problem for future you. You weren't sure exactly where Blade put the severed hand but as long as it was away from you it didn't matter. For a moment you considered asking him for help, to maybe capture a mara struck so you could test to see if anything would work on it. But that was too far, wasn't it?

The days carried on and so did Blade visiting you. He'd come to you for medications that alleviated his pain or helped him sleep without his memories tormenting them and you obliged monitoring him all the while. Then one day he started to request it.

"Kill me," He'd spoke suddenly, as you were leaning over some finely grounded herbs trying to come up with something new to keep stronger pain at bay. Your medicine's effectiveness was starting to wear off on Blade.

You flinched spilling the small specks to the ground and staring at him in the eyes, "Excuse me?"

You didn't think he'd hated spending time with you that much! Sure, you were kind of using him, and you got upset at him whenever he brought you something drenched in blood but who wouldn't?! You thought the two of you were getting along just fine! You'd even consider him a friend... A strong word for a Stellaron Hunter. You knew he'd have to leave the Xianzhou Luofu eventually too.

"You can do it," There was a slimmer of affection in his voice it made you almost think you misheard the part about you killing him, "If anyone can, you can." It was oddly affectionate. You kind of despised how he spoke, as if he would never speak to you again.

You let out a small laugh, "Shut up Blade." Drop the conversation topic.

But he kept pushing, "Find a way to kill me." Blade took a step closer to you, and for the first time since you met him, you felt in danger.

"And what if I said no? Remember, I'm uh... head over heels for you," You said lightheartedly referencing to your excuse when you'd first met him. "I wouldn't be able to bare it if you died!" You smiled up at him, squinting your eyes.

Normally, you'd be a bit peeved that your sample had been knocked over but right now you were unnerved, and much worse, worried.

It looked like he was more in pain from your words with the way he grimaced at them. "Please." It was wholly desperate and vulnerable, a statue split open to reveal a bleeding heart which begged to be free from its misery. If you stabbed it the statue and everything around it would crumble. Not that there was much around it to begin with but-- there was you.

But Blade was your friend, in a very odd way you'd started to care for the strange man, "I'll try." He was in pain, it'd be wrong to let him just suffer, right?

Plus, you'd already collected enough data... You knew when medicines would stop being effective on the normal mara struck Xianzhou long lives and what to swap to. You hadn't found a solution but you'd found something that could better keep their sanity while they were in that state, even if it required the rare, Vidyhara bone marrow. You'd begun to find something that could supplement that as well, although you'd only heard of it in books you had to find Scalegorge Water Scape.

It was okay. You had all the information from Blade you needed. This was fine. This friendship always had an expiration date. His smile made it all worth it anyway. It was really the first time you'd seen him smile and for once he looked relieved, completely relaxed.

"Thank you," Foreign words from him, "When the mara strikes... It's no longer me." But what if you could fix that?

If you helped him keep his sanity then you couldn't use the pills to keep away the pain, or the ones to sleep. They couldn't clash. Maybe you had to figure out how to make it so multiple could be taken? Your mind raced for a different solution but in the end all you could do is smile back. Blade smiling was a beautiful sight. One you thought you'd never be able to see.

That night you cried. You hadn't seen Blade happy before. So why was he only happy at the idea of death? But you were a doctor you would remain stony cold and do the best you could.

It didn't work. Of course, it didn't. Why would it? You could've sworn his heart stopped for a bit, a few minutes after passing out after swallowing your "medicine." Was it really medicine if it killed someone? But he lived and he woke up coughing blood.

Blade wasn't happy but at the same time he seemed rather relieved..? You hated it. Someone too used to dying by the hands of a sword, by the strokes they were used to performing, that poison was a soothing way to die. You absolutely despised Blade. But you smiled and told him you'd try harder. You just didn't know what to do.

A few days after your promise Blade came back with a strange gift for you, a book titled Views of the Universe From a Starskiff. At the time he brought it, he'd been in pain, grunting, and making too much noise for you to have any patients over. You'd stopped taking patients recently anyway. Instead only selling medicine promising you'd been on the edge of a break through and needed more time.

His memory had been scattered and he didn't recognize you. He'd swung his sword at you only to stop a moment before it hit you. You were right. When you'd originally met him, if he wanted you dead he could've killed you. You could still feel the air sweep by your head, and the cool blade on your skin. He didn't remember why he brought the book to you and when he returned to a better state of mind, you decided not to ask.

Instead you did some research on your own, and it lead you to an interesting person. Someone you really didn't want to talk to.

You shifted uncomfortably under the amber gaze of the general, "Do what do I owe the pleasure General?" Your voice was stiff, and shoulders tense as he only smiled in response.

"General is a temporary title, you can just call me Jing Yuan." You smiled in response, corner of your lip twitching a bit.

"Right, so what do I owe the pleasure, Jing Yuan?" Your smile strained further but all he did was laugh causing your smile to shift into a scowl.

Jing Yuan smiled down at you, not the least imposing, "Relax, I was just curious about some activity around this area." Did Blade kill someone without you knowing?

Throughout the whole conversation you remained tense as the general idly brought up his younger days as part of the High-Cloud Quintet. He was clearly just talking about this sort of stuff to get you to let down your guard! You looked at him warily, paying special attention to every individual word looking for hidden meaning. Eventually you found the hidden meaning. He was helping you.

The author of the book you'd been researching, Views of the Universe From a Starskiff was named Baiheng. "You knew this whole time," You muttered, a bit peeved, you'd thought you'd done a good job hiding Blade's presence and yet this old man somehow managed to figure it out.

The General simply smiled in response as you tried to clarify the situation further, "So Yingxing is--"

He stood up from his seat, "It matters not. The past is the past." Yeah, you probably shouldn't talk about this. You stood up as well.

"I'll walk you out," You spoke, still wary of the man but if he wanted to hurt or expose you, he would've done so already. "...Is it really your place to tell me this though?"

Jing Yuan paused as if in contemplation, still smiling, it was eerie how he could smile after everything. He was an unbreakable monument dedicated to the Xianzhou Luofu, "Who else could?" No one else would remember nor be able to share, so was that why he decided to step forward?

You opened the door for him, feeling the sun greet you again. "I hope it brings you peace." Your voice was sudden, as you looked at the man with new found appreciation. Even the hardiest statues still had bleeding hearts.

You would kill Blade. If it was the last thing you did.

You grinned rushing over to the blue haired man, the scent of iron around him. You told him that if he made anyone bleed before coming to visit you that he should bathe. You'd have to check if he was bleeding. "Blade!" You greeted him cheerfully, rushing over, and grabbing onto his arm. He stiffened.

You dragged him over to your work station moving your hand gradually down his forearm and to his wrist to be able to pull him better. His hand reached out for yours, and latched onto your wrist instead. The two of you were friends. Killing him was the right thing to do. But if he didn't want to die, you wouldn't mind Blade sticking around. You would take care of him as you would a patient.

"Do you still want to die?" You might as well check, there was no harm in it, maybe he'd stay after all.

To your dismay, he nodded, it was cold and steady. Your smile stiffened but remained on your face, this was fine. It was what you expected.

"I'll still do my best to help you," You promised him, truly meaning your words. It was just, you didn't have any idea of how to proceed. Maybe, the mara struck would have an answer but even you weren't foolish enough to wander into their hordes. Sure, you were lucky that the mara struck seemed not to attack you normally but luck couldn't be all you relied on. "But, in order to do so I need to observe mara stricken more up close," You admitted, that was your best bet, "Could you help me with that?"

Blade was strong. You'd seen the way his muscles flexed and tensed under his shirt whenever he made a swing with his blade. This would be easy work for him. The selfish part of you was happy you could spend more time with him too.

That started the third phase of your friendship with Blade. The first being the initial visits, the second being your attempt to kill him, and the third being yielding him as if he was a blade. It made you feel kind of guilty. Speaking commands beneath your voice of who you needed restrained, looking down at abominations as you tested new pills on them to see the effects. They'd writhe as Blade held them on and you watched onward apathetically. They were monsters, you shouldn't care about their pain.

Then you'd try to kill Blade. Again and again. Seeing him cough up blood and lay motionless on one of your cots. Or seeing wounds reopen over his body, blooming as if they were flowers. It was sickening. You didn't know how many times you did it nor how many times you could continue trying to do it. He would bare his teeth, biting down on cloths, letting out whimpers, blood slowly covering everything close to him.

"I can't do it." Maybe if you were competent it would be okay, you could give Blade the freedom he deserved away from the pain and mara and biting harsh memories. But you weren't a competent enough doctor. Nor were you a good enough friend to tell Blade to the face.

It had been a cold night on the Xianzhou Luofu when you decided to leave. There'd been a lot of commotion recently, the Ambrosial Arbor had risen and fallen again. Blade had been more distant, visiting less often, as if there was something he was keeping from you. How he made your heart ache.

You loved him. That was why you had to do this. You stopped by the divination commission on your way out, a letter from Jing Yuan in your hand. You'd never met Master Diviner Fu Xuan before nor were you looking forward to doing so. If she could see your memories that would mean Blade would be at risk. But you had to know if this would lead you down the path where Blade died.

But you didn't end up meeting Master Diviner Fu Xuan at all. Instead you met a much taller, purple haired woman, with hazy eyes. She greeted you as if you were a friend, and you approached her with caution smiling in response. "I know you," your voice was laced in excitement, "Kafka, the Stellaron Hunter! A bounty of 10 billion, right?" Why did she have to show up now?

You held your hand out with a smile, "I've heard wonderful things about you, you're even more beautiful in real life than on the poster!" Your heart raced trapped in your ribcage, thrumming against it nervously. This certainly complicated your plan.

"Hi, Y/N. I've been meaning to meet you," Her voice was sultry yet teasing, which was more menacing than if it'd been cold and harsh like Blade's. She knew your name too, that must not be a good sign.

She remained back against a wall, small smile on her face as if she was toying with you. You dropped your hand back down to your side. "Is there anything I can do for the esteemed Stellaron Hunter?" You really just wanted this to be over with.

"Not for me," She pushed herself off the door frame and you could see into the battered room. Blade was slouched over, eyes stapled shut, the small shakes his tense body let out were barely noticeable.

You were by his side in an instant, kneeling before him before you could even think, hand resting gently on his chin. Since when had you begun to care so much for him? Was it when he'd gotten slashed in the arm by a mara stricken soldier due to your negligence? Or had you cared for him before you ever met him?

You had half the medicine on you, half back at your place in case he ever returned in search of relief. The half on you was for research but it would be better used for something like this wouldn't it? You glanced behind you feeling eyes stare into your back, and Kafka simply smiled as her eyes met yours.

"Well, Bladie's never been so obedient," She replied simply at your questioning look, causing your shoulders to tense.

You turned your attention back to the patient in question only to be met with a red eye gazing into yours, his face much closer than you remembered it being. You stood your ground looking into his eyes with a harsh look, did he really have to always go and get himself hurt? You could smell the blood on him.

"Who... are you?" Sometimes symptoms of mara included memory loss so you weren't surprised by the question but it still hurt. But it surely didn't hurt as much as Blade was hurting right now, you could see his wince as he accidentally glanced at the light behind you.

You slipped a pill between your fingers, "It doesn't matter, I'm here to help you," You replied simply, lifting your hand up to his mouth, "Now open."

Once Blade became more docile around you during his mara episodes you'd started to deliver his medicine this way. Originally, you hadn't done so since you valued your fingers. He opened his mouth without a second thought, albeit he looked rather confused as to why he complied.

You glanced down at his faint pink lips a sheen covering them, he really was beautiful. If only he could experience the beauty of the world at full. The pill was placed between two of your fingers and you brought it up to his lips, pushing past them, and his teeth leaving the pill in a good place for him to swallow. This was how it always was.

You felt his tongue move as he swallowed it without a second thought and you removed your fingers like normal, except. You glared at him, keeping your hand still. Apparently you still had to worry about him biting your fingers off. "Blade," You spoke warningly feeling the teeth pressed threateningly into your index finger, the other finger escaping freely.

He didn't respond and you swore you heard a laugh behind you which only further irked you. He wasn't biting down hard enough to hurt or draw blood but you knew the second you tried to move it he would. Instead of responding by letting go Blade only looked up at you like a dejected puppy. His bandaged hand reached up and grabbed yours, you could see faint blood stains near the edge of where it reached his wrist and disappeared beneath his sleeves.

"Don't bite me," Your voice was stern as you looked down at the blue haired man, only growing more remorseful by the moment. It was strange behavior, a kind he hadn't exhibited before, but he hadn't forgotten you before either.

This time his teeth let go of your finger, leaving it slightly warm and wet in his hand's hold as he clutched onto desperately as if he was afraid you'd disappear before his eyes. It should only take ten minutes for the medicine to leave him vulnerable and helpless, yet he was already so docile. You had to wonder if he knew you were planning on leaving.

You let out a quiet sigh, keeping your voice low as these words were only for Blade and you. Your hand reached to brush his hair off to the side, resting along his jawline near his ear. You moved close enough so that he could feel even the slightest inhale and exhale against his ear, "I'm doing this because I love you."

It was a shitty excuse but it was closest to the truth wasn't it? Maybe if Jing Yuan hadn't told you the truth then you wouldn't be so determined to help Blade. Maybe you would've cried to Blade that you couldn't keep failing to kill him because you didn't even want him dead in the first place. You wanted Blade by your side.

"I'll figure it all out, I promise." It was the most loving your voice had ever been yet when you met his eyes again you didn't see a subdued look instead a more panicked one took its place. It didn't take long for you to be entrapped completely, arms holding and rooting you in place, leaving you unable to move.

It was as if he was trying to merge your bodies into one. So you'd never be apart again. Your nose resting above his shoulder as the rest of you was pressed into him, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, his arms wrapped around your waist pulling you closer and tightening. It hurt a bit. They continued to squeeze you, hands pressed against your sides gripping onto them.

"Gentle," You reminded him, voice tickling his ear, and as he eased his hold, Blade's head collapsed against your shoulder, hot breath hitting your neck. It took you a few moments to realize he was crying. That the sudden small burn against your skin was tears.

He spoke in a broken voice, "Who are you?" You began to cry too, wrapping your arms around him with equal need.

"It doesn't matter, I'm going to help you." Your voice must've sounded ugly as well, off pitch from emotion.

"You... can't leave." They weren't words you expected, but you noticed his grip loosen on you anymore as time continued onward.

You couldn't reply. You had to leave right now, the answers you were searching for weren't here. They lay with Yaoshi and the lands Yaoshi had touched. If you could journey to those and research the people and mara there... you would be able to kill Blade. You didn't want to kill him. But to leave him in this agony was more painful for the both of you.

"You..." Blade looked up at you, head tilted, agony in his eyes, "don't... ...leave." You smiled down at him, unable to find the words and instead moved your lips to press against his tearstained cheek.

At your lack of response you felt his head tilt and his breath hit your shoulder. Then he bit. It didn't hurt as much as you thought it would. You thought his aim would be to tear through your skin and take your flesh with him, leaving a bloody hole in his wake. But instead it was a persistent gentle movement, desperate to leave an imprint, to keep you here, to convince you. The both of you knew he'd pass out in a minute or two, the decision would be up to you after that. So he pressed his teeth into your skin, removing them for a second and pressing again, hot tongue licking your skin in between the pattern. You really shouldn't be feeling these sorts of things at a time like this but you couldn't help the heat rising to your face.

There... wasn't any harm in this right? "...You're beautiful," You muttered, only able to see his long hair you rested a hand on it. You moved your hand through it slowly, untangling any knots you came across. "Really," His body collapsed into yours, completely devoid of any strength, "I love you," You couldn't help but smile despite the tears.

It was hard to hold his body up by yourself. You were strong but Blade with all his muscle mass was heavy, either way you placed him back down on the seat without aggravating any injuries further.

Then you stood up and turned your back, ignoring the minor twitching and hand reaching out for your warmth that came from his subdued body. Kafka, had turned her back to the two of you, instead looking outside as if she was searching for someone.

"All done?" She asked, voice playful when you joined her outside. Yet you felt some type of understanding from her.

You nodded and handed her the pouch of medicine, "I am, instructions are in the bag," you said you'd brought it along for research but hadn't that just been an excuse? If you'd seen Blade again you could've given it to him. "There's some more at where I stayed."

She looked back at Blade, lying motionlessly, "Well, you have made my job a lot easier."

"Take good care of him," You replied, beginning to walk off.

"Bladie will be awfully sad to hear you left," Kafka called out, her voice carried its usual lilt but you sensed a strange seriousness to it.

If anyone had ever told you you'd fall in love with a Stellaron Hunter you probably would've believed them. If they told you, you'd be trying to kill the person you were in love with, you would've hated yourself. "I know, but this is the way I show my love." But... wasn't this the best solution?

You decided to not go see Master Diviner Fu Xuan, having run into the Stellaron Hunters so recently probably would make it easier for her to see them in her divination. At least you assumed so, you didn't know much about divination. The night was quiet and dark aside from one gray haired individual walking toward where you'd just been, looking around anxiously with each step. When you reached the starskiff you didn't look back.

Kafka played with the small pouch in her fingers, letting out a slight sigh. Everything was going as planned, albeit she couldn't help but feel a bit bad for Bladie. Her eyes darted to the source of sudden footsteps, finally, the Trailblazer was here. She couldn't interfere with what happened anyway it was best not to dwell on it.

You were part of the script. The ending Elio had promised, the one where Blade died.

Lots of notes here:

OKAY GUYS IDEA SO LIKE BLADE X READER BUT ALSO YAOSHI X READER (why do I simp for Yaoshi so much)

Like dude Yaoshi would love the way that reader treats the life they've curated and grown. While Yaoshi lets it grow without regard and only cares for the abundance they have to admit the life you cater to comes out more beautifully.

SCREAMS

Also sorry for the wait but I wasn't doing super okay mentally past week so I didn't write much, thank you guys for your patience! I had a lot of fun writing this, I know it really isn't thoughts or anything but I like having a story play out :D

And I also wanted the romance to seem organic and more natural even though it's yandere I wanted it to make sense. So I hope I managed to accomplish that even though I feel like it considerably lengthened this (especially nonyandere portion)

Was originally going to edit this but it turned out way too fucking long.

#hsr #hsr x reader #blade #blade x reader #yandere blade #soft yandere #long read #drugging but like its medicine it makes more sense in context #desperate blade #jing yuan is too good for us honestly i love that man he deserves so much better #unedited

[bakerstreetbabble]

NY Post article: Elementary vs. Sherlock

[The following article is from the New York Post's website a couple days ago.  You can read the original here: http://nypost.com/2014/01/16/elementary-vs-sherlock-whos-the-better-holmes/.]

Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary) & Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)

Michael Starr makes the case for ‘Elementary’:

I was initially skeptical (so what else is new?) prior to watching “Elementary” on CBS. A show in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic British detective, Sherlock Holmes — the one we all know and love — never existed?

Please.

Oh, and we’re supposed to believe the Sherlock Holmes who exists in “Elementary” (Jonny Lee Miller) is, like Conan Doyle’s creation, a British-born recovering drug addict — only here he’s been transplanted to New York, where his brilliant deductive reasoning (and OCD) makes him an invaluable asset as a consultant to the NYPD?

Well . . . yes. I quickly bought into the premise lock, stock and barrel — and the series is terrific.

What makes “Elementary” so good — at least in the context of its suspending-belief TV universe — are the performances of its stars, both Miller and Lucy Liu, who plays Holmes’ sidekick, Dr. Joan Watson. She’s an ex-surgeon who abandoned medicine after an unfortunate incident and has morphed from Sherlock’s “sober companion” to his salaried crime-solving partner.

Their on-screen chemistry (no romantic overtones — yet) is palpable. Miller somehow imbues Holmes — arrogant and condescending — with just the slightest bit of vulnerability, making us like and admire him in spite of ourselves while Miller fires off his elaborate, florid dialogue effortlessly (or seemingly so).

Watson herself is no shrinking violet, softening Sherlock’s verbal blows with an “are you kidding me?” stance while, in her own sly way, getting all up into her partner’s grill — while respecting his ethereal brilliance.

The show is fun and fast-paced, in spite of its over-the-top plots, and features a winning supporting cast (Aidan Quinn as world weary NYPD Capt. Tommy Gregson and Jon Michael Hill as top-notch, slightly cynical Det. Marcus Bell).

Kudos to series creator Robert Doherty for adding a new wrinkle to a familiar pop-culture mainstay.

Sara Stewart makes the case for ‘Sherlock’:

I cringe at the term “Cumberbitch,” but I’m not going to lie — the impending arrival of the third season of “Sherlock” on Sunday does make me a bit teenage-girl-shrieky inside. As the BBC’s version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quirky detective, Benedict Cumberbatch is so right for the part it’s almost painful to watch anyone else try (apologies to RDJ and Johnny Lee Miller).

It’s not (just) his aristocratic, weirdly reptilian good looks or the Alan Rickman-lite voice — Cumberbatch just exudes effortless, amused intelligence. He’s the embodiment of the high I.Q. of the show, whose banter is so quick a non-Brit would be well advised to watch with closed captioning on (I’m still not sure I got every word from the last two seasons).

In a world oversaturated with reboots, sequels and updates, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ creation is the rare worthwhile revisit: a contemporary rendition of the world’s greatest detective, meshing the utility of modern technology (texting often figures prominently) with a deliciously Victorian sense of leisure (Sherlock spends off hours at 221B Baker St. not on the Internet but playing the violin, doing questionable science experiments or just staring off into space).

And the rest of the cast is equally impeccable. Has there ever been a part more well-suited to the twitchy, double-takey Martin Freeman? (Well, other than “The Office”?) Marvel as his John Watson discovers Sherlock’s back from the dead; the scene is a thing of comic beauty. Then there’s his brother Mycroft, played to simpering perfection by Gatiss himself, who very nearly walks off with Sunday’s episode.

Plus, you have to respect a show that so clearly adores its obsessive audience right back: Sherlock’s return features not one but two fan-fictiony kisses between characters — which I’m not going to spoil for you, don’t worry. The episode’s title, “The Empty Hearse,” is the name of a group of Sherlock admirers (in the show) piecing together their hypotheses about how he pulled off his fake suicide, just like we’ve all been doing here in the real world.

This show is for full-on nerds, my friends. And as Sherlock siren Irene Adler put it last season, “Brainy is the new sexy.”

#BBC Sherlock #CBS Elementary

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 9

This post was originally going to be about vocabulary, and instead has become a mini essay about the word/not word ‘apothecarist’. Let me explain…

When I wrote the response prompt about the youth potion/poison, I actually had a bit of trouble using Google to find the proper spelling. This is because, while in fantasy writing we use the word ‘apothecary’ to denote a shop that sells medicine, the truth is, the word for the person who makes the medicine is ‘apothecary’. 

It doesn’t mean the fantasy usage is wrong, because the ever famous Merriam-Webster dictionary does recognize that ‘apothecary’ is another word for ‘pharmacy’. So you could have a sentence that says, “The apothecary, works in the apothecary.” The most fascinating thing about the word ‘apothecarist’, is that it does not exist in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (which focuses on current/active use words). I don’t know if the word exists in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which looks at words from a historic perspective because that is a paid service and I am not paying a subscription to satisfy my weird curiosity. 

But it is important to note that ‘apothecarist’ is a word that is in use. Often used either in a fantasy setting or aesthetic, or it’s used to denote herbalism or natural cures in a commercial sense. So it’s probably not a word that is used very actively except in very specific cases, and even then, technically the word ‘apothecary’ should be used instead. This maybe is the reason why it hasn’t popped up in Merriam-Webster, because if you look up the word, you’ll find the word ‘apothecary’ far more than ‘apothecarist’. And because I can’t access the OED without a subscription, I actually don’t know if this word actually exists in a historic sense.

Now before people point out that ‘apothecarist’ does exist on Wiktionary and WordSense, they’re both open source dictionaries. Wiktionary doesn’t even have any other information on ‘apothecarist’ other than it means ‘apothecary’. Meanwhile, WordSense’s oldest reference to the word is from a book review of “Our Savage Art” by Mark Ford of the New York Times on April 24, 2009. (By the way, the original WordSense says April 26, but looking up the article says it was published April 24.)

The historic information that does exist on WordSense, is actually for the word apothecary. In fact, trying to look up the historic context of ‘apothecarist’ and its use, ends up bringing up the historic context and past use of ‘apothecary’. 

It’s very possible this word was made up, possibly born out of the fantasy genre. After all, how that word is put together ‘apothecarist’ makes sense to an English speaker. We have the word 'pharmacist’ which is a person who dispenses drugs in a ‘pharmacy’. So the logic that an ‘apothecarist’ which is a person who makes drugs in an ‘apothecary’ is not far fetched. Especially since from a comprehension standpoint it would have been very confusing for a reader if the fantasy shop the medicine came from was the same word for the shopkeeper, though I could have used herbalist instead, or even chemist or, if I wanted to go very fantasy like, call them an alchemist. 

Still, this had been an interesting rabbit hole to dive into. Into a word, that is probably, not officially a word. 

#word rabbit hole #apothecarist is not a word #probably not a word #technically with how English works it is technically a word #unofficial word

[stxleslyds]

MY TOUGHTS ON PART TWO OF RED HOOD BY CHIP ZDARSKY :)

A DC BOOK THAT TASTES LIKE MARVEL.

You know when you are reading a book and you feel like the story you are reading seems familiar but not really within the context you are reading it at the moment? If you can’t shake the wrong sense of familiarity you search for what it probably the biggest give away, the author.

Here it’s something like that; I have read other pieces of Chip Zdarsky’s work, namely Daredevil. While I could tell you the familiarity is there, in the subject of guilt after taking the life of another person, the reality is that this book doesn’t taste like Daredevil, it tastes like Marvel.

That can be either an excellent thing (because Marvel has amazing books) or something terrible (because DC isn’t Marvel and they don’t work the same way).

As of now I can’t really tell if this Red Hood story is going to be one or the other, but I can tell you that it feels out of place in the DC universe, or at least that’s how I see it. I will explore this particular thought later, I just thought this was a nice way to open this post.

If you would like to read the first post I made about this book I will leave the link here!

Now…let’s begin.

Part two picks up exactly where part one left off, we see Jason calling Oracle so she can bring the police to the place where Jason killed Andy a.ka. that gigantic piece of shit.

Jason is having some thoughts, ones that I think are important.

“I have taken lives before, a lot of them. I have killed guys knowing nothing about them except that they had guns and murder in their hearts. Those ones are easy; I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...”

Jason is troubled. He is now in front of a reality that he never truly thought about but to be honest with you I strongly believe that nobody in the DC universe thinks beyond what happens in front of them, that’s just how fictional comic worlds are designed.

Anyway, there is a little something that bothers me in this inner monologue of his, like since when have “murderers” been Jason’s actual target? Like Joker was his target but he didn’t kill him, the base of Jason’s morals when it comes to killing has always been drugs, most importantly if you sell drugs to kids. So unless he is saying “murderers” because they were selling drugs that caused people (especially kids) to overdose then I don’t really get what is going on.

Another thing that I also talked about in the first post is that Jason hasn’t killed in a very long time, this man has been sticking to the Bats rule for so long that it’s actually unreal. Even when he shot the penguin and Batman proceeded to almost beat Jason to death the penguin hadn’t died. So once again I am thinking that Zdarsky has some info that he is not sharing right now or maybe he just didn’t read Lobdell's run (in which case, can you really blame him?)

Now let me talk about the other part of his monologue “…I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...” This is something that I haven’t seen in DC, direct consequences after a hero/vigilante does something, and let me tell you it feels out of place. Is it a good or bad thing? I don’t really know but I have some thoughts on the subject.

I think it's unfair to put a comic character in that situation or dilemma. Jason has basically three reactions to the same situation and they are all valid, but can this situation be handled by a fictional person in a fictional world? Because to be fair I could also ask about the criminals that are put in hospitals after they are beat up by heroes, what if they die in the hospital? Is the hero a killer or does it fall on the hospital? If a criminal cannot pay for the attention given to them in hospitals and they immediately go back to criminal activity to pay for those things, are heroes a good thing? If the Joker bombs a hospital for the third time in four months and Batman does the same thing (take joker to Arkham) only for Joker to escape and do it again, is Batman as guilty as the Joker for the deaths of innocent people or not?

As I wrote it and as I read it again I see that it is a crazy thought because you can simply add more depth to the characters decisions and the consequences that would ensue because of them, but Gotham is a fictional city created to establish that crime is off the charts and that they need Batman because no amount of resources will be able to fix this city’s problems. So putting Jason in this position is new to me…but only in DC (more of this particular thought below).

Going back to the comic in question, I feel like Jason had the answers and the ideas all in his head. In this issue alone he basically says that if the mother does not pull through the boy will be alone, but alone means going into the system (a horrible system that Jason does not trust and needs improvement), but also, Jason recognizes that if the mother died and the father was left alive then that man would have done horrendous stuff. I just simply wouldn't believe that a man that gave drugs to both his wife and son so they wouldn't bother him is just going to change after realizing that his wife died because of him. Even less believable is him becoming an amazing father.

In the big scheme of things, Jason has killed people who fitted very certain characteristics, never innocents (bye, Morrison). What happens after the killing is done? We don’t know because past stories have never focused on that (criminals in comics are by default one dimensional, villains are not)

But here is the thing, Zdarsky is a Marvel writer and Marvel has gone in depth within those situations (like what happens after heroes commit mistakes or kill someone) mostly with Civil War by Mark Millar and more recently in Daredevil written by Chip Zdarsky, but DC hasn't and DC has been plain for a long time, DC doesn't really explain how batman hurts people severely and nothing happens beyond that.

What I am trying to say is that Zdarsky is going for a different and unique route for Jason here but I think the story is out of place in the DC universe.

I promise I am done with those thoughts, they were really difficult to put on paper and to make them make sense, so I apologize if I only confused you, sorry!

Anyway! After the monologue is done we have a flashback where little Jason is being told by his mother to go buy bread (the only thing they can afford) but she is also making him leave so he doesn’t have to be present when Robby (a friend if you ask Jason’s mom, a drug dealer if you ask Jason) comes to the apartment to help her.

Sadly as Jason is leaving Robby is walking up the stairs, now not to copy little Jason but fuck Robby. Jason’s issues with drugs, drug dealing and overdosing is once again shown here but what is also shown is the violence that comes with it. Jason being terrified for himself (and his mother) as Robby pulls a knife on him broke my heart and as he is left there in the corridor to his apartment all we can see is a defeated little boy and that shit hurts a lot.

After that we jump back to the future with none other than Batgod…I mean Batman. Batman is following a man called Sydney and apparently he disappointed Batman because B told him to stop being a criminal, like come on man if I ask nicely or if I break both of your arms you will surely stop, right? Yeah, no.

I feel like I mentioned something about this while my brain decided that DC never usually explains what happens with criminals after they get caught or killed and now here we are. Consequences. Batman scares a man off of working for Scarecrow but the man still needs to work (does he have a family to provide for? We don’t know. Does he do it because it’s the only job he can get? We don’t know.)

This Batman intermission ends up with Oracle telling him that Jason might be in trouble.

So we find ourselves back with Jason and Tyler in his safe house, Zdarsky does not hesitate and first thing he does is give us a couple of very angsty panels.

I love the way it hurts.

Jason honey, my sweet chonky boy…what are you doing?

Well at least I am not the only one asking that because Jason is having a moment to reflect about what has happened, what is happening and what could happen in the future. In this monologue he says the following:

“Dammit, Jason, what the hell are you doing? You can’t take care of this kid! But you can’t put him in the system either! Just waiting for some obsessed militaristic billionaire to adopt him? Dammit. His dad was scum, he hurt Tyler, he hurt his mom. But if Tyler’s mom doesn’t pull through…I just made this kid an orphan. He is my responsibility, he is too young to really see what he’s gone through, he can still be saved…unlike…”

Yeah that’s some really angsty thoughts, he is really going through it and I understand it. He lost his cool after what that horrible human being said he did and killed him and now he has to face the consequences of his actions, he recognizes that if the boy is left truly alone he will have to step up…but here is the thing, does Jason really want that? It seems to me like Jason is deeply against the idea of children working as heroes, and here he is as an adult that is a vigilante with an impressionable child that sees the Red Hood as his hero, I don’t know, it looks like the perfect recipe for a disaster.

But we don’t get to see what Jason does right away because its flashback time.

Jason only moved from his spot in the corridor of his apartment door to get the bread but as Robby comes out of said door Jason is there waiting. Robby teases that he and Jason’s mom ended up sharing the “medicine” and that she will be sleeping for a long time, and that seems to be it for Jason because next thing you know Robby is falling down the stairs.

Aw, shit.

Jason from the future continues his monologue while he remembers what happened on those stairs.

“I never had a chance, not for one second. But he does, Tyler has a chance. I can help him, help him be okay. This doesn’t…what I did…what his parents did, it doesn’t have to define him.”

So Jason wants to make things right for Tyler so he doesn’t become like Jason. Now I don’t truly know what Zdarsky is going for but I will go for the unconscious route, little Jason pushed Robby (that fucker) down the stairs and he was left unconscious there.

In Jason’s eyes Tyler is still a good kid that deserves only the best (like you Jason, please don’t think so low about yourself) and that can be saved from a life of vengeance, justice and trauma. But whatever Jason was going to actually say to Tyler we don’t know because Tyler informs Jason that through the Red Hood mask there is someone telling him that Batman is coming.

Batman appears out of nowhere as he does and starts talking shit.

Honestly Batman what is with that “not my town” bullshit? Baby this isn’t the medieval times, you are not a king and as far as I know not only is Lucius Fox richer than you but so is Dick so sit your ass down and shut the fuck up.

Luckily Jason is giving the outstanding amount of zero fucks and tells Batman exactly what he needs to be told, sadly Jason’s big brain time doesn’t last long because he absolutely loses his cool and starts a fight. So you know what that means, monologue time!

“This was a mistake, but I can’t help myself, he gets under my skin. His sanctimony, he acts like he’s God, all knowing, all seeing when really…he’s just another failed parent.”

Amen. Jason knows many languages but he chose to speak facts.

As the monologue ends Batman is standing over Jason like he is about to murder him but no such thing happens because Tyler, who was quietly watching them fight, jumps in to protect Jason. Yep, there goes my heart, goodbye.

And this is it. The issue ends with Tyler putting an end to the fight and telling batman that he has to leave the Red Hood alone because he is a good guy. Jason of course is thankful and promises that everything is fine.

 I don’t know about you guys but so far I can’t say if I like the book or not. Both parts left me with mixed feelings. I obviously want to see how it ends but I honestly think that there is only one way this story can end with a happy ending, which I think it would be Tyler going back to his mom and Jason somehow working to help her with her drug addiction, maybe even have Dick involved so he can help them economically.

Things that I surely do not want to see are Jason backing down again and limiting himself to the Bats rules. I also absolutely don’t want Zdarsky to go all Geoff Johns on us and make Jason think that he should give up the Red Hood mantle.

Jason really needs to gain his confidence back, he was smart, calculated and strategic and now they have taken those things away to accentuate his “daddy issues” and “inferiority complex”. Why the quotation marks you ask? Oh, because those things are bullshit and there is no room for those things in Jason’s characterization other than to add more angst to the plot.

Let me know how you felt about the issue and my review! Are you excited about what the four next issues are going to bring to the story?

Also if you read Marvel, did this issue taste like Marvel to you too or am I going crazy?

#Jason Todd #red hood #red hood outlaw #batman: urban legends #batman urban legends #infinite frontier #DC comics #robin

[thegreatobsesso]

A longer bit feat.: Callie and Simon angst. :)

Talking with @drippingmoon got me thinking of some cornerstone scenes in the enemies-to-friends slow-burn I do with these two idiots and this one, I think, stands out as the dead-center point, so I’m gonna not second-guess myself and just post it. 🥴

Tagging @thelaughingstag too! (I remembered!)

Context: Callie broke into Delaney to steal an ancient magical artifact and, believing she meant nothing but harm, Simon stopped her. But while waiting for the cops to come and drag her back to prison, Simon asks her to just tell him the truth, once and for all. Callie agrees to let him read her mind all the way back to the beginning, thinking she’s got nothing left to live for. Simon gets hit with a truckload of tragic backstory he wasn’t prepared for and is asked to follow them back to Downing Bay, the prison she’s being held in.

They’re still mentally connected, even after Simon has let go. He can hear her, and she can hear him too, which definitely isn’t normal.

Word count: 3,200

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

failure. failure. failure

She wasn’t even doing this on purpose and it wasn’t just the word reverberating through his skull.

More like a full-bodied feeling flooding his consciousness as he left Delaney, a steady stream of self-hatred punctuated only by expletives.

Stop, he begged her.

i can’t, you stop listening

I can’t.

She laughed, out loud in her cell. He heard it and felt it, over the miles that separated them, the ocean and metal and glass.

He’d overextended; that’s what caused this. It took him awhile to put it together because he’d been so upset - maybe even been in a mild state of shock, in retrospect - and he spent a lifetime being so careful with his powers that he’d never done it before to know what it was like.

And so that was bad, yes, but come on. How much longer could it last?

He was stepping onto the boat to Downing Bay when the pain started - hers, and not the torrent of existential agony he was struggling to adjust to but pain, physical and substantial.

What’s happening? he tried to ask, but it got lost - she could barely think, suddenly, let alone focus on sending him mental telegrams.

The cluster of metal buildings hovered threateningly on the horizon, and as they got closer, minds inside got louder, almost drowning Callie out. He wanted to tell them to turn around and take him away; the claustrophobia was overwhelming, the collective sense of being trapped.

The boat brought them underneath the smallest building; a scorched sign read Diagnostics in block letters with an arrow pointing up. What might’ve once been a loading dock was sectioned off with caution tape and hanging sadly down into the water, barely still attached to the rest of the infrastructure. They laid a make-shift bridge between the boat and platform to walk across.

Once inside, they asked him to empty his pockets and leave all his belongings in a small box.

“This stays with me,” he said, holding his Headmaster’s key, bronze and solid, in the palm of his hand.

“No, sir,” said the tired corrections officer, unaware of who he was. “All belongings.” She shook the plastic container for emphasis, rattling the rest of his stuff around.

“I’m the headmaster of Delaney of School for Magicians,” he said. “This is a master key and it doesn’t leave my neck. If you need to call your superiors about it, please do it, but I won’t leave it here.”

A few minutes later, he put the chain back around his neck, dropped the key down inside his shirt, and was escorted inside.

“No one’s suppressed me yet,” he said to one of prison officers. He waited until the last second; surely they knew their own duties better than he did. He didn’t wanna insult anyone, but they hadn’t done it and they were bringing him though thick, reinforced doors to the warden’s office and if not now, when?

“We’ve not been asked to, sir. This way.”

The warden smiled when Simon entered his office, waved everyone else away. He introduced himself as Warden Prescott and extended his hand - it was thin and cold when Simon shook it, despite the muggy warmth.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he said. “How fares your school?”

“It’s seen worse. It looks like she hit this place harder, to be honest.”

The warden smiled, and Simon caught an image of a collection, varying people with differing characteristics on display in tiny boxes, one of them out of place. “Yes, she put on quite a show on her way out. Destroyed all our boats and did a significant amount of superficial damage, but nothing structural, thankfully.”

Of course not - living her memories alongside her showed him she made sure she didn’t hurt anyone, only crippled their ability to pursue her.

It was too warm in here and he wondered how the warden could be so buttoned up in thick polyester when he had to unbutton his own light jacket.

“A hearing will take place tomorrow morning and your presence will be required,” he began. “I suspect I know at least  part of the reason why. News reached my ears that you behaved quite badly.” He made a tsk-tsk sound and shook his head at Simon like he was a naughty child.

“I did what I did,” he said flatly. “I shouldn’t have read her mind, and I accept the consequences for it, whatever they’ll be.”

“Oh, I meant absolutely no disrespect,” the warden said. “The opposite, in fact. I daresay if I had your powers, I’d like nothing more than to take a stroll through that mind of hers. She’s an interesting one. The fact that you did so might work to our advantage, in fact. You see, we’re in a bit of a bind with all this. May I speak plainly?”

“I wish you would,” he said. The warden was carrying his collection of dolls in his mind, all unique and valuable and distinctly dehumanized, and Callie’s thoughts were still flowing like a steady IV drip, making him feel irritable and short.

“Well, Mister Bennett, the facts are as such: we’ve got a limited testimony from you that the authorities will need expanded upon, that says you’ve seen the original crime in the first person, and your account differs wildly from the one she’s given. There are additional crimes stacked up past that - her escape from prison and attempted theft of an undisclosed item from your school. And the world wants to know how an infamous killer managed to become the first person in history to escape Downing Bay.”

“It’s a valid question for them to ask.”

“With an undesirable answer. But I think you’re in pain, Mister Bennett. Do you need a doctor?”

He was, but it wasn’t his own injuries that made wince.

“It’s her,” he groaned. “You’re hurting her, what are you doing?”

The warden sighed. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

He took Simon down the hall, into a sterile room filled with recording equipment and a solid wall of glass. On the other side of the it, Callie. She sat a bare table in prison scrubs, hands cuffed to its surface. IVs were inserted in both her arms, the needles taped down, liquid flowing from bags hanging behind her. The metal collar around her neck flashed blips of red, yellow and green, reminding him absurdly of a Christmas tree.

She bit her lip and shuffled restlessly, an involuntary response to the pain she was trying to ignore.

“You’ve got to stop this,” he said.

“To be fair, this isn’t what diagnostics usually looks like,” the warden said while he swallowed down a wave of sickness. “Typically, we focus on finding a long-term suppressive solution that both nullifies abilities and has minimal side effects for the prisoner. We are, unfortunately, in disaster minimization mode rather than long-term maintenance with your friend here.”

This was the strain being put on her body - the combination of every drug known to medicine that could hold back the expression of magic for any amount of time at all. “She’s not my friend,” he muttered. “Isn’t this unethical?”

“Should we allow all her power to rush back in so she can kill my people and escape again?”

“She’s not killing anyone,” Simon said with certainty.

“That’s not what she said a few hours ago,” the warden recalled. “We had no less than five guards trying to process her and she threatened their lives.”

Dammit. “What we you doing to her?”

“Attempting to place her segregation.”

He resisted the urge to groan in frustration, to punch the glass in front of him. “She didn’t mean it,” he muttered, not relishing the job of being her translator. “She’s terrified of solitary confinement, she just didn’t wanna go.”

“That’s unfortunate, given that we can’t very well place her back into general population. This is all that’s left, a quarantine unit, meant for contagious disease.”

On the other side of the glass, Callie squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her head. A fresh wave of pain ran over him too.

how much longer, how much more?

“How long can you keep this up, these stop-gap measures? Surely they won’t work forever.”

Warden Prescott raised his eyebrows. “These measures aren’t even working very well, Mister Bennett. I daresay if she wanted to, she could be gone before nightfall. I’m afraid she’s only here at her pleasure.”

Pleasure? He looked back at her in the next room, her face contorted. “You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I was,” Warden Prescott said, with a small smile. “We’re in the dark here, fumbling through uncharted territory without a map. She’s got my best techs feeling like children when they try to interpret the results of all this treatment. She’s a thing that isn’t supposed to exist: a hybrid. Focused magic and Eclectic, all at once.”

The implications of the warden’s words began to stack up in his already overtaxed mind and part of him thought, ridiculously, of a vacation. Of sitting on a beach with a book getting a suntan, drinking something with a slice of pineapple on the rim, smoking a cigarette or two or fifty - of not having a care in the world, for just a little while.

A hybrid, then. Focused and Eclectic.

He’d walked through her life with her and even she didn’t understand that, not really, not in such terms. She, and everyone else who knew what she’d done to Peter, had thought of it like an acquisition of new powers; not a fundamental genetic change.

Did Riley know this? Riley, who gathered Callie’s DNA and did extensive testing on it, who still had it?

“Has anybody been in touch with the family?” he asked, unwilling to explain why he was asking.

“I know someone’s reached out,” the warden said. “I don’t believe there was any reply.”

No, he supposed not. Riley would want nothing to do with any of this. Still, she had to be sweating, didn’t she? How could she know Callie still held up her end of their deal?

“I wonder,” Warden Prescott drawled, “if your trip through her mind was quite so extensive that if she were back inside your school, right now, you’d trust her not to hurt anyone.”

“It was,” he said. “And I would.”

He couldn’t imagine this would be easy for anyone else to swallow. He certainly wouldn’t believe it himself without first-hand insight. “I want to talk to her.”

The warden nodded his assent at the guards lining the wall.

“As I said, everyone wants to know how she managed to escape,” he said, walking Simon around to the entrance of the adjacent room that held Callie. “The thing I’m most curious about it why she even waited so long to do it. Is that something you know, from your jaunt through her mind?”

“Yes.”

“Are you inclined to share?”

He decided earlier, definitively, that he didn’t like the warden: the way he looked at his inmates like specimens, pinned inside a case. “No,” he said.

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “Although you might be asked tomorrow, by someone more powerful than me, in a much more formal capacity. We’ll be leaning on your expertise considerably to entangle that mind of hers.” He shook his head in admiration. “The unsuppressable Callie Ray.”

“I wouldn’t toss that around,” he muttered.

“Why not?”

The guard undid a stack of locks on the quarantine room door. “I don’t want her hearing it,” he said as they pushed the door open. “She’ll like it too much.”

—

Little black cameras dotted the corners of the room; he knew the warden would be listening on the other side of the glass where’d they’d just come from, and he was certain they were being recorded too.

She lifted her head, smirked at the sight of him. “I’d say hello,” she said, her voice scratchy. “But it’s like I never left you, isn’t it?”

She looked awful. Her red-rimmed eyes matched her hair; one was still swollen, decorated in bruises. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean for this.” He gestured between his head and hers.

he just says it, just like that

“Did you get a good spanking for it? I’m sure nobody expected that from their golden boy.”

Her words were hollow to him now; they washed over him uselessly and left him thoroughly unimpressed. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her at the steel table, mirroring her position with his hands folded in front of him, except for the absence of cuffs, obviously.

We could talk like this, he said, if you don’t want them to listen.

A jumbled negative reply came across their connection. He nodded.

“There’s a whole team of people on the other side of the door, trying to figure out the best ways to keep your magic suppressed on a minute-to-minute basis,” he said.

“Can you believe it?” She tried for a smile, but it was poorly constructed. “All this for little old me.”

“Well, you’ve convinced the world you’re a dangerous monster and now you’re being treated like one. You did this to yourself.”

“Did you hear me complaining?”

Another wave of gnawing pain; she was sweating, her jumpsuit damp in the armpits. It hit him too, surely just a fraction of what it felt like for her, and he’d already had enough.

“Just tell them,” he said. “Tell them what I know, that it was an accident from the start and you don’t wanna hurt anyone else, and they might let up.”

“I don’t want them to,” she said, voice strained, hanging onto composure by a thread. “I like the pain.”

if I’m in pain I’m getting what I deserve I don’t have to feel guilty

He’d never felt a mind twisted up into knots like this, how did it get this way?

“Is that why you’re still here?” he asked. He looked toward the glass where he knew Warden Prescott was still standing, watching and listening. “They know you’re letting this happen. That if you wanted to, you could stop it.”

She blinked; a powerful emptiness surged up inside her. “Where else am I supposed to go?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question - she was interested in an answer if he had one, but he didn’t. He lived her life alongside her in a compressed whirlwind of tightly-packed failures and she had no family to take her in, Delaney certainly wouldn’t have her, there were no relationships, no friends…

He pulled back; it hurt to be near.

“Just because you say you’re not gonna try to escape again…” He fumbled, trying to lay out the mess. “They still can’t hold you on your word, Callie. You’ve got the public frightened that Downing Bay can’t hold you and the authorities are scared you’re gonna prove it.”

She nodded and winced; something crossed her mind too quickly for him to get a good look. “What are they gonna do to me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think they do either.”

“Why don’t they just kill me?”

The way she said these things - it was infuriating. “They can’t just execute someone because they don’t know what else to do with them.” He narrowed his eyes like it might help him see her clearer. “Is that what you want? To die?”

She rolled it around in her head. “Not really,” she shrugged. “But I don’t really wanna live either.”

Hopelessness emanated from her; he felt her future the way she saw it, a vast, meaningless chasm of nothing. It made him want to scream.

“Don’t,” she snarled, her awareness of their connection snapping to life. “Don’t you feel sorry for me, you jackass. I don’t want your pity, I’d rather you spit in my eye.”

“I can’t help it,” he groaned. “You sit there acting like this while… it’s, it’s like two different radio stations blasting into each of my ears, I can’t think.”

She swallowed thickly, like she was nauseous. “Do you wanna know exactly how much sympathy I have for you right now?”

“No.”

“Zero,” she said anyway. “Nobody made you drill yourself your own personal pipeline into my brain.”

“That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“Oh, so sad,” she pouted, turning her bottom lip out. “You made your first mistake. Feels like shit, doesn’t it?”

he’ll tell everybody, then everyone will know how stupid, how useless, how embarrassing, and he’s listening to you RIGHT NOW, he knows it all, i wish i WAS dead so i didn’t have to, would be easier than this-

“You let me think you did it on purpose,” he bit out, too overwhelmed to hold it back. “You let me think the absolute worst of you.”

“The worst of me is the truth, the shit you know now.”

“No, it’s not. What you are is not worse than a cold-blooded killer, a, a liar, somebody I could spend the rest of my life feeling like a fool for letting in, how do you justify doing that to me?”

She shrugged, blinked slowly, helplessly, like she couldn’t believe she had to put words to something so simple. “I… the damage was done.”

He scoffed - he couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t. There was a lot more damage left to do, and you did it. You did it all.”

Anger, fresh and bitter, burned through their connection.

i was trying to fix it if you would’ve just walked away none of this would be happening i could have made it go away-

“At what cost?” he asked. It would sound like a non sequitur to everyone listening but he didn’t care. “Even if the orblex could do what you were planning, you can’t possibly predict how it would’ve worked. Did you think it would just drop you off on Christmas twelve years ago and let you start again? No one knows how Time magic works and you wanted to just unleash it. For all you know you could have ripped the world apart.”

Disbelief. how could he say something like that?

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked. A crack in her voice - a tear springing from her eye that hadn’t been there a moment before, rolling down her cheek. “You wouldn’t take that risk, Bennett? To bring him back?”

He wanted to say no, but it got stuck in his throat. She still grieved for him, as hard as he ever did, and it annihilated the space between them, blurred the final lines.

He pushed his chair back and got up - he needed a second. Not to be looking at her, not to be sharing feelings.

“Where are you going?”

are you leaving? don’t leave

He clasped his hands behind his head, breathed in and out, shut his eyes.

say something say something say something say something-

“There’s gonna be a hearing tomorrow,” he said, cutting off the flood of her thoughts she couldn’t control. “Or, not a hearing. A discussion, I guess.”

He turned to face her again; she was listening with rapt attention. She hadn’t been told yet.

“They’re gonna talk about whether there’s any kind of precedent they can fall back on for this, anything at all. I don’t know if they want me there as a witness or a human lie detector, but they asked me to stay for it and I’m staying. After that, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see you again, maybe I won’t. I have to think this-”

He gestured to the space between their heads again, at a loss for what to call it. “This’ll fade with time and distance. It’ll have to. It can’t stay forever.”

It couldn’t, could it?

#tw: suicidal ideation #tw: swears #tw: prison #writing #writing snippet #writing excerpt #original novel #my wip #oc: callie #oc: simon

[spanishskulduggery]

hi! i read a lot of psychology articles and was wondering if you could make a list of vocab related to that, or direct me to a list like that. words for the brain, nervous system, etc.

So this might not be everything you’d want but I’ll try and include some of the words I know that might help as far as psychology and some of the more common parts of the brain.

The good thing is that many of the parts of the brain are pretty much the same words with a different accent. Wikipedia is a great source for this, just search “brain” in Wikipedia and change the language to Spanish

There are also words that make more sense if you understand the Latin or Greek behind them. For example la barrera hematoencefálica is the “blood-brain-barrier”… it’s made up of the word barrera which is “barrier” and then “hemo” which refers to “blood” [as in hemophilia], and then the other word is connected to the idea of “encephalus” which is “brain” [as in “encephalitis”]

In some contexts you’ll see the brain as el encéfalo or in some (usually older) contexts you might see it as los sesos where el seso does mean “brain”, but los sesos is used euphemistically as “brains” or “smarts”, and you usually only see seso today in a figurative sense.

So I’ll do basic physical brain vocab and then more psychology and theoretical psychology words:

el cerebro = brain

la cabeza = head

el cráneo = skullla calavera = skull

la columna = spine / backbone [lit. “column”]la columna vertebral = spine, spinal column

la médula espinal = spinal cord

la célula = cell

la glándula = glandla glándula pituitaria = pituitary gland

el nervio = nerve

la hormona = hormone

el músculo = muscle

la neurona = brain cell / neuron, nerve cell

el neurotransmisor = neurotransmitter

el bulbo raquídeo / la médula oblongata = medula oblongata

la sustancia gris = grey/gray matter

el lóbulo = lobe

el tálamo = thalamus

el cuerpo calloso = corpus callosum

la corteza cerebral = cerebral cortex

el cerebelo = cerebellum

el sistema nervioso (central) = (central) nervous system

el sistema digestivo = digestive system

el sistema endocrino = endocrine system

el sistema circulatorio = circulatory system

el sistema límbico = limbic system

el sistema inmunológico = immune systemel sistema inmune = immune system

la barrera hematoencefálica [BHE] = blood-brain-barrier [BBB]

el hipocampo = hippocampus

el hipotálamo = hypothalamus

la amígdala = amygdala [also means “tonsil” when talking about the throat, since it just kind of means “almond” in its etymology]

la sangre = blood

el oxígeno = oxygen

la enfermedad = disease

la salud = health

So now onto psychology as far as like Freud or Jung or things like that. 

Some things to note:

First the field of psychology is almost always la psicología but in some older things you might see it done as sicología. Similar to any other word that involves “psych-”, Spanish at one point saw the P as optional because it didn’t really add anything to the pronunciation. But for the most part, modern Spanish almost always has the P in these words.

Also el trastorno is “disorder” in the medical sense and it extends to physical disorders and mental disorders, so whenever you see this word used it’s typically in a medical terminology.

There are also different words that have been taken from English psychological terms or translated directly that may be translated differently depending on what you read. A common one is “trigger” which as a verb is usually desatar [lit. “to untie/unleash”] or desencadenar [lit. “to unchain/unleash”]… but in a psychological context, it’s sometimes el trigger or you’ll see the approximation el gatillo. The word el gatillo is a literal “trigger” of a gun or a bomb, directly translated from English. There are some contexts where you’d see it as something like el desencadenante which is “the event that triggered something” or el catalizador “catalyst”. Just like English, the context is important and typically el trigger/gatillo is more psychological, while the other words are sometimes more figurative.

Another one that sometimes shows up in certain psychological contexts is “bullying”. A lot of Spanish uses hacer bullying for “to bully”, and el bullying as the noun. In other places you might see el abuso “abuse” or el acoso “harassment”; but they sometimes have different meanings, where abusar might be “to abuse” rather than the connotation that “bullying” sometimes suggests, and el acoso or acosar is also the verb used for “stalking”, “harassment”, and the idea of “creeping on (someone)”. In legal situations, “bullying” is often translated as abuso probably to get across what a serious legal issue it is.

There’s also a difference in Spanish translation of “psyche” which I can’t totally make a good note for in the list, so I’ll just explain here. Part of the issue is just the theoretical language of it.

The idea of a “psyche” as far as meaning human emotions and your personality is normally understood as la psique which is the direct translation of “Psyche” where it came from Greek and Greek mythology. When you use la psique you typically are using it as a synonym for “soul”.

People also use the words la psiquis and el psiquismo which you’d normally see in some kind of Freudian literature. The idea is that la psiquis is (more or less) the “psyche” as in your conscious and unconscious. And el psiquismo is a concept around the way a person - and their mind - interacts and learns. So these two words do mean “psyche”, but usually in theoretical concepts of the brain and psychology.

Typically you’ll only see la psique for “psyche” and it usually refers to either your basic personality, temperament, and morals, but also how those things are created in the brain or changed. Also more frequently than la psique you might see la mente “mind” for this.

In other words, el cerebro is usually the physical structure, and la psique or la mente are usually used in contexts with intangible things, emotions, sensations, morals, desires, feelings, thought, and perception.

Anyway, onto the new vocab:

la psicología = psychology

el psicólogo, la psicóloga = psychologist

la psiquiatría = psychiatry

el/la psiquiatra = psychiatrist

pensar = to think

creer = to believe

asumir / suponer = to assume / to suppose

averiguar = to find out, to ascertain

saber = to know (facts)

conocer = to know (people/places), to become familiar with

oler = to smell [an irregular verb in present tense]

ver = to see

oír = to hear

tocar = to touch [also “to play (instruments)” or “to play (music)”]

saber / probar = to taste[usually the act of tasting is probar, the use of saber is like sabe a algo “it tastes like something”]

sonar = to sound (like something) / to ring (bell), to go off (alarm/siren)[as in me suena familiar “it sounds familiar to me”]

soñar (con algo/alguien) = to dream (of something/someone)desvelar = to stay awake, to keep awake

percibir = to perceive

sentir = to sense [often used as “to hear” or “to notice”]

sentirse = to feel (emotions)

sufrir = to suffersufrir de (algo) = to suffer from (something), “to have (an illness)”

malentender = to misunderstand

malinterpretar = to misinterpret, to misunderstand

la medicina = medicine

la ciencia = science

la droga = drug

la dopamina = dopamine

la oxitocina = oxytocin

la serotonina = serotonin

la depresión = depression

el bienestar = well-being, welfare

el trastorno = disorder

la enfermedad = illness, sickness

enfermo/a = ill, sick

el humor = mood

la teoría = theory

el pensamiento = thought

la creencia = belief

la hipótesis = hypothesishipotético/a = hypothetical

el sesgo = bias [especially in statistics]el sesgo de confirmación = confirmation bias

el prejuicio = bias / prejudice, discrimination

el olfato = (sense of) smell

la vista = (sense of) sight, eyesight

el oído = (sense of) hearing / ear, inner-ear

el tacto = (sense of) touch

el gusto = (sense of) taste

el conocimiento = awareness / understanding

desconocido/a = unknown

la sabiduría = knowledge, wisdom

el sueño = dream / sleepiness, sleeptener sueño = to be sleepy

el desvelo = sleeplessness, wakefulness

el insomnio = insomnia, sleeplessness

la percepción = perception, understanding

la comprensión = understanding, comprehension

el sentido = a sense

el sentimiento = feeling

la sobrecarga = overload, short-circuitla sobrecarga sensorial = sensory overload

el dolor de cabeza = headachela migraña = migraine, headachela jaqueca = migraine [a jaqueca is always understood as very severe, so it’s usually “migraine” or “throbbing headache”; particularly understood as being chronic or happening a lot]

la memoria = memory [also used as “memory” in the case of “ability to remember”]el recuerdo = memory [often used as individual “memories” or things someone remembers; unrelated, it also means “souvenir”]

el análisis = analysis [plural is los análisis]

la prueba = test / sample

la muestra (estadística) = sample [as in “sampling of people” for tests]la muestra aleatoria = random sampling / randomized sampling

el grupo de control = control group

el dolor = pain

la pena = sorrow [sometimes la pesadumbre in older works]

el duelo = grief, mourning, loss

el luto = mourning(estar) de luto = (to be) in mourning

el sufrimiento = suffering

el tratamiento = treatment [can be used as “medical treatment/care”, or also the way someone “treats” someone else]

la motivación = motivation

el motivo = motive, reason

la razón = reason

el método = method

el incentivo = incentive, motivation

el impulso = impulse / drive, impetus

el estímulo = stimulus

la investigación = research [or “investigation”, but in science it’s usually “research”]

el resultado = result

el expediente = document, record, file

el archivo = file / archive

el dato, los datos = data

el mecanismo de defensa = defense mechanismel retraimiento = withdrawal, pulling away, isolationla negación = denialla proyección = projectionla disociación = dissociationla represión = repressionla regresión = regressionla racionalización = rationalizationla compartimentalización = compartmentalizingla sublimación = sublimation

las cinco etapas del duelo = the 5 stages of griefla negación = denialla ira = angerla negociación = bargaining / negotiationla depresión = sadness, depressionla aceptación = acceptance

las emociones (básicas) = (basic) emotionsla alegría = happinessla tristeza = sadnessel miedo = fearel asco = disgustla ira = anger

alegre = happy

triste = sad

enojado/a = angry

la fobia = phobia, irrational fear

tener miedo a (algo/alguien) = to be afraid of (something/someone)

la interpretación de sueños = dream analysis, dream interpretation

la pesadilla = nightmare

la jerarquía de las necesidades humanas = hierarchy of (human) needs

la autorrealización = self-realization

la autoestima = self-esteem

la personalidad = personality

el temperamento = temperament

la actitud = attitude

el carácter = (a person’s) character, the way a person is, nature

la naturaleza = nature

el rasgo = trait, characteristic

¿Se nace o se hace? = “Nature vs. Nurture”[lit. “is one born (with it) or does one become (it)”]

#asks #Spanish #language #languages #vocabulario #learning Spanish

[addictedtostorytelling]

i forget what episode, but in an early season Nick & Warrick are bothering Greg in his lab and make a joke/crack at his expense that mentions Greg's medication? Harmless fun, or could Greg potentially need/be on meds (ADHD maybe?)? its only mentioned once so it caught me off guard as to how much weight the audience should put into one line

hi, anon!

in my view, while the line itself is a throwaway (in the sense that i don't believe that warrick is speaking knowledgeably about greg taking medication), the fact that it is doesn't preclude the possibility that greg might be on medication nonetheless.

the episode in question is 03x10 "high and low."

in the scene you mention, nick and warrick are hanging out in the dna lab, getting in greg's way, bickering with each other, and generally being obnoxious; fed up with their knucklehead antics, greg tries to push them out the door—literally, in nick's case, as greg unseats him off a chair he's sitting on to force him to move his feet.

both nick and warrick are surprised by greg's brusqueness.

as a parting jab, just before greg hustles him into the hall, warrick quips, "have you taken your medication today?"

greg doesn't answer, and the scene ends there.

now.

because of the tone and context of this exchange, i'm 100% certain that warrick isn't asking his question in a genuine way—i.e., this is not a case where warrick knows that greg is neurodivergent or mentally ill and takes medicine to stabilize his moods and/or control his behaviors and so is asking him about it in a "hey, buddy, are you okay? did you maybe miss a dose?" concerned kind of way.

rather, this is warrick making fun of greg.

essentially, he's insinuating that greg's attitude is getting out of hand, so he needs to "take a chill pill" to settle down.

it's an "are you crazy, sanders?" type of dig.

honestly, it's just the kind of mean-spirited crack that warrick wouldn't make if he knew that greg did take medication of that sort—because then it would be too low a blow; too much of a "punching down" deal—so to me the fact that he does make it tells us that he has no reason to believe that greg is actually on medication.

of course, just because warrick most likely doesn't have any knowledge of greg being on medication doesn't necessarily mean that greg isn't.

this case may be one where warrick says something jokingly (and in ignorance) that actually ends up having more truth to it than he realizes.

greg very well could have adhd—and i know that a lot of fans, particularly including those who have adhd themselves, headcanon that he does.

certainly, if he did, it might explain some of his tendency to flit from activity to activity, his chronic boredom in the lab, his excellent multitasking abilities, etc.

of course, since greg has no diagnosis that we're told of in show canon, we never actually see him taking any medication, and the topic of him even potentially doing so is never revisited again at any point throughout the series, it's really up to the individual viewer to decide if they think he does have adhd (or any other neurodivergence or mental illness) and take medication or not.

if one does think he's on medication or even that he used to be*, then this scene takes on new significance, as what warrick means as an offhanded joke probably ends up hitting a bit close to home for greg, potentially hurting his feelings.

* if greg did have adhd, he would have most likely been among the first wave of gen xers who got diagnosed with the disorder under its new name (changed from hyperkinetic impulse disorder to attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, as per the dsm-iii) during the early 1980s. most probably, he would have been prescribed ritalin, which was the most common drug used to treat the disorder at that time, when he was in grade school. since back then, and even up through the 90s, adhd was considered solely a childhood condition, he, like many other adhd people his age, may have been taken off of his medication around the time that he went to high school, or at least by the time he went to college. it is therefore possible that even if he does have adhd, he is not actively taking medication for it in 2002, when the episode in question takes place, even if he could still potentially benefit from taking it.

of course, it's also 100% possible to read this scene as warrick making a jab that has no basis in truth, if one believes that greg isn't actually on medication and never has been.

it just depends on one's druthers.

anyway.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #** #my meta #meta: csi #meta: greg #03x10 #csi #greg sanders #let's talk shop #csiverse

[kinetic-elaboration]

September 1: 3x06 Spectre of the Gun

Okay so, it might be a little early to declare myself a S3 apologist, since there are still a lot of eps I’ve never seen, but I feel like I’m pretty close..

This ep was so good!! Honestly I think it’s one of my faves. And perfect to usher in Spooky Season.

Honestly, this show really is my happy place. Just all the characters together on the bridge, on some kinda adventure, looking at weird space buoys and investigating stuff.

Again, this buoy looks like a Windows 98 screensaver.

Kirk keeps referring to Spock as “Science Officer.” Is he mad at him? Full of some particularly intense longing that requires him to put extra distance between them?

Excuse me, you address US as aliens? YOU’RE the aliens.

Hmmm, so it seems they’re not friendly.

It’s addressing them in different languages!!! I love it. Love the reminder that Uhura’s first language is not English,also.

“True telepaths are dangerous.” As opposed to fake telepaths like Vulcans lol?

The Melkotians withdrew immediately. They invented space travel, they saw space, and they said “not for us” and they turned around and left. McCoy would like them; they’d have a lot to gripe about together.

The welcome mat is NOT out.

“Unlike Mr. Scott’s transporter, this unit is not functioning.”

It legit looked like Spock put his hand on Kirk’s back there. Like he clearly raises it, but not far enough to be seen above Kirk, so like.. what was the point? Where did it go?

LEE CRONIN--oh no, flashbacks lol.

“We come in peace”--immediately pulls out gun.

I should have watched this when writing my Western fic.

Just bits and pieces of a Western town... and a completely red sky...

The guns are “crude but dangerous.” If only Sulu were here; he’d love this.

An announcement with a specific time and place on it--that’s a very precise detail to just pull from their minds. Must have come from Kirk’s, that nerd. Maybe Spock. But probably Kirk.

“Because my ancestors pioneered the American frontier.” I mean did they really get to the frontier? Or just... the Midwest?

Maybe it’s actually because he’s a cowboy at heart?

Aliens using his own ancestral sins as the pattern for his own death for breaking their law IS a great (possibly partially unintended) idea. Oh also, if they think that Kirk and co. are here to ‘tame’ or colonize them, then the Western setting makes even more sense--you’re no different from your ancestors, you came somewhere new and brought lawlessness and violence and death, but not this time!

Can you believe Kirk knows all of these details about the OK Corral? NERD.

Spock is so proud of himself for knowing the phrase “had it out.” Look, I used slang correctly!

These are some creative aliens.

“We know death is real here.” Or is it? They’re literally telepaths guys.

Hmmm, this building doesn’t need a roof I think. - The aliens probably

Can’t believe Scotty thinks his usual is his actual usual lol. You’re going to drink bourbon and like it!

Kirk and Spock look so good together.

They’re obviously Chekov’s disapproving parents.

“The day is still young, Ensign.” I don’t remember the exact context of this but Spock is SO judgmental.

What is Kirk doing? This guy is a hallucination; he won’t be convinced by touching some cloth. There’s nothing to convince! He’s only a Concept.

“Have you seen clothes like this?” / “Yes.” / “Where?” / “On the Claytons!” Comedy gold.

Kirk really thinks he can charm his way out of anything. Hmmm, maybe if I just talk nicely to the Earps, they won’t kill us.

“In small amounts, it [bourbon] was considered medicinal.” Lol.

Scotty is becoming a bourbon guy!

“Mr. Chekov is inVOLVed” lol. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

“A lot of people and things have tried to kill me.” No need to brag.

THAT’S how you make a city limits sign. Put a dead animal skull on top. I live quite close to a city limits sign and I think it could use a cow skull.

Western Cossacks!!

Poisonous snakes and cactus plants. That really distills the Aesthetic down to its core.

This is a good Kirk episode. He’s really being a good Captain: coming up with different ideas, being creative, pushing his crew to brainstorm.

Bones and his tranqs again.

Bones meets his old nemesis: Old Timey Medicine.

Why was Doc Holiday just...chilling in his own dentist chair? (My mom suggested: power nap. Let’s go with that. Power nap + ability for optimally dramatic entrance.)

Also I can’t believe McCoy just goes into this guy’s practice and starts helping himself to all the serious drugs.

Chekov definitely isn’t the marrying kind.

RIP Chekov.

Bones does not sound very sympathetic here. Jim, get over it, he just died, whatever.

And then two seconds later he turns around and tells Spock he’s not sad enough! You can’t win.

“We all knew the risk when we joined the service.”

“My feelings are not a subject for discussion.” !!!!!!! This line!!

“You worked closely with him.” Yes! Chekov is his protege!

“Bones, Scotty, stop bullying Spock.” <-- not an actual quote but it might as well be.

If this were AOS, Spock would already be choking Bones out.

Whoops, no one told Chekov he wasn’t supposed to die!

“Let’s organize! Let’s form an anti-Earp union!”

“I can’t kill them!” he says in a mad rage.

I mean, it is important, though. That’s not what he does.

Kirk is /disgusted/ by lawlessness and frontier justice. What a Rebel TM.

I feel like Bones was waiting for the gotcha moment when Spock compliments him. “Saying nice things about me? That’s not how this relationship works!”

“Nothing can go wrong.” / “Up to now, everything has gone wrong.” He has a point.

That pause before Spock admitted it hasn’t been tested lol--they don’t want to admit it.

“[The bourbon’s] for the pain.” / “But this is painless.” / “You should have told me that before.” The unexpected comedy stylings of Scotty and Spock.

It doesn’t work--guess Spock’s got to take back that compliment now.

“Captain, you don’t understand--they’ve been telepaths the whole time which we already knew!”

“We’re not going to move from the spot.” * is immediately in a different spot * Well I mean at least he’s trying. He’s doing his best!

Love the OK Corral sign also. Weirdly creepy. With its accompanying horse.

Spock doesn’t have any hips for the holster to rest on.

“What did Chekov die of?” / “A piece of lead in his body.” That would do it.

If the tranquilizer should have been effective, does that mean Scotty is actually passed out right now?

Honestly, this is all so spooky. TRUE Western Horror Ghost Vibes.

Also very trippy. If you don’t believe it... it’s not real... some kinda weird chicken and the egg argument regarding our belief in the truth of physical laws idk but it sounds good. Spock brings it home.

Even with the wind whipping around him, Kirk is SO in love. His absolutely adoring expression... So soft...

“Very well, Sir, I’ll meld with you again. Not that I particularly want to. It will be a sacrifice. But I’ll manage. Even though you’re such a dynamic individual haha ha I’m fine I’m cool.”

I feel like Scotty is NOT into the mind meld. He looks terrified. Maybe he should have saved the bourbon for this occasion.

I know the mind meld is supposed to be a replacement for on screen hypnotism...but is this not hypnotism? Like even more than past uses? In this case, Spock is leaving them with suggestions that he wants to continue AFTER the meld, as opposed to, like, efficiently sharing information or giving immediate suggestions. And the scenes themselves are very creepy and...hypnotic.

Kirk’s patented move: WHOLE BODY ATTACK.

Well, we wrapped that up right quick.

Did they... never actually leave the bridge? Or even navigate past the buoy? This actually brings up a lot of questions as to when the aliens started the hallucinations, what their bodies looked like to the rest of the crew, and how they woke up--since there’s obviously been a bit of a time skip, as Bones is already examining Chekov.

Lol at Chekov, saved by horniness. “Nothing but the girl was real to him.”

“A vast alliance of fellow creatures who all believe in the same thing...”

Kirk’s vision of the utopian future is so powerful, he’s effectively gotten the welcome mat put back out.

A personal question? Kirk is intrigued.

Ah, but it’s just another excuse for Spock to be a hypocrite--how did humans survive? How did VULCANS survive? And for the show to remind us of its utopian vision of the future... we will move past violence, we will prove ourselves attractive to and worth of new alien friends.

Then McCoy walks out so Kirk and Spock can have their Moment. He undoubtedly knows what’s up.

So this ep was shown one day before the anniversary of the shootout at the OK Corral AND on Halloween week. It is very much a spooky season episode. So surreal and strange. Ghostly.

I know using sets rather than on location shoots, and not even building whole sets, was a budgetary issue but tbqh I think it worked in the ep’s favor. It added to the alien feeling of it and was an accidentally creative way of showing that these images were pulled from Kirk’s mind.

This felt like a very Classic S1-ish ep to me. I think it’s because Kirk was foregrounded as the Captain/hero and we get to see not just his intelligence and creativity and leadership but also his compassion and his moral core. He IS the values of the series, personified, and that was clear here.

But we also got to see lots of him and Spock, casually working as a pair, and the use of the rest of the landing party crew was very deft also. I loved that there was time to mock Chekov’s horniness, to talk about Spock and Chekov’s professional relationship, to joke around with Scotty, to show more of the Spock and Bones dynamic.

Again, great sci fi concept. I think this would have been another possible inspo for my Pirate AU if I’d seen it in time (although I think I picked a good mission-concept ultimately). I’m fascinated by the Melkotians: who are they? What do they really look like? Do they communicate any other way but telepathically? Are they corporeal? What is their planet like? And most importantly, what experience lead them to be so isolationist? They specifically refer to the aliens as “disease” coming into their home. And it’s when Kirk shows himself to be fundamentally nonviolent even in the face of his own death, they let the Enterprise through.

Basically, I always enjoy hints of alien societies that bring up more questions for me than answers. I love speculating about it.

The next two eps I’ve seen and remember well and I know they’re classics. I’m really looking forward to them!

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts #2021: star trek #star trek tos

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 8 of 26

Title: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (2020)

Author: Merlin Sheldrake

Genre/Tags: Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, Science, Biology, Mycology, Botany, Anthropology, History, (I’m probably missing some), First-Person, Illustrated

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 3/03/2021

Date Finished: 3/11/2021

Fungi are some of life's most essential, yet least understood organisms. In Entangled Life, PhD Merlin Sheldrake discusses the mysterious and largely unexplored world of fungi. 

How do truffles lure creatures to them? How do vast mycelial networks communicate and make "decisions"? How can some fungal species permanently alter the mind? How do fungi make life on Earth possible? How can fungi potentially replace our furniture and architecture? Entangled Life is an accessible primer to what we know about fungi, its effects on human life, and its potential role averting climatic and ecological disaster.  

Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave. Yet they live their lives largely hidden from view, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. 

Full review and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Recreational drug use, mention of animal neglect, mild sexual content. 

I've always been fascinated by--and a little terrified of-- fungi. They're essential to life on Earth, yet often seem strange and alien. I didn't get the chance to study them much in college, so I wanted to read a nonfiction work about them that wasn't necessarily just a textbook. Entangled Life caught my eye (or maybe lured me in?), and I'm glad it did.

Entangled Life is probably the best nonfiction book I've read in years. While it's definitely a scientific work (with a vast catalogue of citations to prove it), it's very approachable to a layman. Basic scientific knowledge is helpful going in, but Sheldrake makes sure to explain even simple concepts as they apply to various subjects in the text. While I wouldn't call this book a light read, it's certainly easier to grasp than a standard textbook or academic research paper. I was also pleased to see he cites and defers to a multitude of female scientists, which was refreshing after reading Bill Bryson's otherwise great A Short History of Nearly Everything. Is "including women" a low bar? Yes, but it's not one people consistently meet, so props.

What's interesting about Entangled Life is it's neither strictly scientific nor strictly about mycology, the study of fungi. It DOES go into our basic knowledge of fungi and recent discoveries and studies. But Sheldrake also adopts a holistic approach, acknowledging various disciplines and how they all relate to fungi as we know them. Sometimes this means botany, like how plants and fungi interact via symbiosis. Sometimes this means anthropology, and how fungi have shaped human culture and history. Sheldrake even talks about the notable contributions of amateur enthusiasts and how they have shaped our understanding of fungi. A big component of the work is speculation; philosophical tangents on what fungi mean to us, what certain discoveries could mean for the future, and so on.

There's definitely a creative component to the work as well, something that really tickled the former English major in me. I labelled this book Creative Nonfiction because Sheldrake often goes into his personal experiences with fungi; these sections read like a memoir. There's some illustrations originally drawn with inkcap ink, which is a nice, thematically appropriate touch. I also loved the section of gorgeous color photography and illustrations inserted into the middle; I felt this added some much needed visual context.

Also, my guy managed to use a Lord of the Rings quote to analyze mycelial networks, which I have to assume was a dare/personal challenge, but... damn dude. (AND an Ursula K Le Guin quote? Bro?)

If I have a criticism it's that sometimes Sheldrake's biases show a little. Probably the most noteworthy is the section on LSD and magic mushrooms. Sheldrake seems downright giddy about the positive effects of these mind altering drugs. And said positives are certainly interesting, like experiments that indicate a long term recovery from anxiety and depression as a result of ingestion. I also found the human history element of this chapter interesting; indigenous cultural uses, anthropological evidence, and modern usage and legal issues. But it's a little disingenuous to imply there are zero negative effects to drugs that can fundamentally change one's long-term personality after a single trip. Regardless of Sheldrake's own positive experiences.

Interestingly, Sheldrake DOES discuss how biases affect all scientific disciplines. He talks about how we naturally gravitate toward metaphor in order to contextualize nonhuman phenomena. For example, we might view symbiosis from a capitalist or socialist perspective, despite neither have anything to do with biological function. However, he doesn't delve into his own biases at all. But this is a nitpick. Biases are difficult to overcome even in a strictly academic work, which this isn't. For what it's worth, I think Sheldrake does a good job with this everywhere else. 

Overall, Entangled Life was a treat to read. I rarely venture out of speculative fiction but I found this whole book approachable and fascinating. I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know previously, so I'd consider this a good introduction for an amateur mycologist. I hope Sheldrake plans to publish similar works in the future.  

#taylor reads #2021 reading challenge #9/10 #trypophobia

[didanawisgi]

Medicine’s Fundamentalists

The randomized control trial controversy: Why one size doesn’t fit all and why we need observational studies, case histories, and even anecdotes if we are to have personalized medicine

BY NORMAN DOIDGE

AUGUST 14, 2020

If the study was not randomized, we would suggest that you stop reading it and go on to the next article. —Quote from Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM

Why is it we increasingly hear that we can only know that a new treatment is useful if we have a large randomized control trial, or “RCT,” that has positive results? Why is it so commonly said that individual case histories are “mere anecdotes” and count for nothing, even if a patient, who has had a chronic disease, suddenly gets better with a new treatment after all others failed for years—an assertion that seems, to many people, to run counter to common sense?

Indeed, some version of the statement, “only randomized control trials are useful” has become boilerplate during the COVID-19 crisis. It is uttered as though it is self-evidently the mainstream medical position. When other kinds of studies come out, we are told they are “flawed,” or “fatally flawed,” if not RCTs (especially if the commentator doesn’t like the result; if they like the result, not so often). The implication is that the RCT is the sole reliable methodological machine that can uncover truths in medicine, or expose untruths. But if this is so self-evident, why then, do major medical journals continue to publish other study designs, and often praise them as good studies, and why do medical schools teach other methods?

They do because, as extraordinary an invention as the RCT is, RCTs are not superior in all situations, and are inferior in many. The assertion that “only the RCTs matter” is not the mainstream position in practice, and if it ever was, it is fading fast, because, increasingly, the limits of RCTs are being more clearly understood. Here is Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., former head of the CDC, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2017, in an article on the kind of thinking about evidence that normally goes into public health policy now:

Although randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) have long been presumed to be the ideal source for data on the effects of treatment, other methods of obtaining evidence for decisive action are receiving increased interest, prompting new approaches to leverage the strengths and overcome the limitations of different data sources. In this article, I describe the use of RCTs and alternative (and sometimes superior) data sources from the vantage point of public health, illustrate key limitations of RCTs, and suggest ways to improve the use of multiple data sources for health decision making. … Despite their strengths, RCTs have substantial limitations.

That, in fact, is the “mainstream” position now, and it is a case where the mainstream position makes very good sense. The head of the CDC is about as “mainstream” as it gets.

The idea that “only RCTs can decide,” is still the defining attitude, though, of what I shall describe as the RCT fundamentalist. By fundamentalist I here mean someone evincing an unwavering attachment to a set of beliefs and a kind of literal mindedness that lacks nuance—and that, in this case, sees the RCT as the sole source of objective truth in medicine (as fundamentalists often see their own core belief). Like many a fundamentalist, this often involves posing as a purveyor of the authoritative position, but in fact their position may not be. As well, the core belief is repeated, like a catechism, at times ad nauseum, and contrasting beliefs are treated like heresies. What the RCT fundamentalist is peddling is not a scientific attitude, but rather forcing a tool, the RCT, which was designed for a particular kind of problem to become the only tool we use. In this case, RCT is best understood as standing not for Randomized Control Trials, but rather “Rigidly Constrained Thinking” (a phrase coined by the statistician David Streiner in the 1990s).

Studies ask questions. Understanding the question, and its context, is always essential in determining what kind of study, or tool, to use to answer those questions. In the “RCT controversy,” to coin a phrase, neither side is dismissive of the virtues of the RCT; but one side, the fundamentalists, are dismissive of the virtues of other studies, for reasons to be explained. The RCT fundamentalist is the classic case of the person who has a hammer, and thinks that everything must therefore be a nail. The nonfundamentalist position is that RCTs are a precious addition to the researcher’s toolkit, but just because you have a wonderful new hammer doesn’t mean you should throw out your electric drill, screwdriver, or saw.

So let’s begin with a quick review of the rationale for the “randomized” control trial, and their very real strengths, as originally understood. It’s best illustrated by what happens without randomization.

Say you want to assess the impact of a drug or other treatment on an illness. Before the invention of RCTs, scientists might take a group of people with the illness, and give them the drug, and then find another group of people, with the same illness, say, at another hospital, who didn’t get the drug, and then compare the outcome, and observe which group did better. These are called “observational studies,” and they come in different versions.

But scientists soon realized that these results would only be meaningful if those two groups were well matched in terms of illness severity and on a number of other factors that affect the unfolding of the illness.

If the two groups were different, it would be impossible to tell if the group that did better did so because of the medication, or perhaps because of something about that group that gave it an advantage and better outcome. For instance, we know that age is a huge risk factor for COVID-19 death, probably because the immune system declines as we age, and the elderly often already have other illnesses to contend with, even before COVID-19 afflicts them. Say one group was, on average, 60 years old, and all the members got the drug, and the other group was on average 75 years old, and they were the ones that didn’t get the drug. Say that when results were analyzed and compared, they showed the younger group had a higher survival rate.

A naive researcher might think that he or she was measuring “the power of the medication to protect patients from COVID-19 death” but may actually have also been measuring the relative role of youth, in protecting the patients. Scientists soon concluded there was a flaw in that design, because we do not know, with any reasonable degree of confidence, whether the better outcomes were due to age or the medication.

Age, here, is considered a “confounding factor.” It is called a confounding factor, because it causes confusion, because age can also influence the outcome of the study in the group as a whole. Other confounding factors we know about in COVID-19 now include how advanced the illness is at the time of the study, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and probably the person’s vitamin D levels. But there could easily be, and probably are, many other confounding factors we don’t know, as of yet. There are even potential confounding factors that we suspect play a role, but are not quite certain about: the person’s general physical fitness, the ventilation in their home, and so on.

This is where randomization is helpful. In a randomized control trial, one takes a sufficiently large group of patients and randomly assigns them to either the treatment group, or the nontreatment (“placebo” or sugar pill) control group, for instance. Efforts are made to make sure that apart from the treatment, everything else remains the same in the lives of the two groups. It is hoped that by randomly assigning this large number of patients to either the treatment or nontreatment condition, that each of the confounding factors will have an equal chance of appearing in both groups—the factors we know, such as age, but also mysterious ones we don’t yet understand. While observational studies can, with some effort, match at least some confounding factors we do understand in a “group matched design” (and, for instance, make sure both groups are the same age, or disease severity), what they can’t do is match confounding factors we don’t understand. It is here, that RCTs are generally thought to have an advantage.

With such a good technique as RCTs, one might wonder, why do we ever bother with observational studies?

There are a number of situations in medicine in which observational studies are obviously superior to randomized control trials (RCTs), such as when we want to identify the risk factors for an illness. If we suspected that using crack cocaine was bad for the developing brains of children, it would not be acceptable to do an RCT (which would take a large group of kids, and randomly prescribe half of them crack cocaine and the other half a placebo and then see which group did better on tests of brain function). We would instead follow kids who had previously taken crack, and those who never had, in an observational study, and see which group did better. All studies ask questions, and exist in a context, and the moral context is relevant to the choice of the tool you use to answer the question. That is Hippocrates 101: Do no harm.

Now, you might say that a study of risk factors is very different from the study of a treatment. But it is not that different. There can be very similar moral and even methodological issues.

In the 1980s, quite suddenly, clinicians became aware that infants were dying, in large numbers, in their cribs, for reasons that couldn’t be explained, and a new disorder was discovered, sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, or “crib death.” Some people wondered if parents were murdering their children, or if it was infectious, and many theories abounded. A large observational study was done in New Zealand that observed and compared factors in the lives of the infants who died and those who didn’t. The study showed that the infants who died were frequently put to sleep on their tummies. It was “just” an observation. But on that basis alone, it was suggested that having infants sleep on their backs might be helpful, and that parents should avoid putting their infants on their fronts in their cribs. Lo and behold, the rates of infant death radically diminished—not completely, but radically. No sane caring person said: “We should really do an RCT, rule out confounding factors, and settle this with greater certainty, once and for all: All we have to do is randomly assign half the kids to be put to bed on their tummies and the other half on their backs.” That would have been unconscionable. The evidence provided by the observational study was good enough.

Again, all studies have a context and are a means to answering questions. The pressing question with SIDS was not: How can we have absolute certainty about all the causes of SIDS? It was: How can we save infant lives, as soon as possible? In this case, the observational study answered it well.

The SIDS story is a case where we can see how close, in moral terms, a study of risk factors and a study of a new treatment can be in a case where the treatment might be lifesaving. Putting children on their tummies is a risk factorfor SIDS. Putting them on their backs is a treatment for it. The moral issue of not harming research subjects by subjecting them to a likely risk is clear.

Similarly, withholding the most promising treatment we have for a lethal illness is also a moral matter. That is precisely the position taken by the French researchers who thought that hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was the most promising treatment known for seriously ill COVID-19 patients, and who argued that doing an RCT (which meant withholding the drug from half the patients) was unconscionable. RCT fundamentalists called their study “flawed” and “sloppy,” implying it had a weak methodology. The French researchers responded, in effect saying, we are physicians first; these people are coming to us to help them survive a lethal illness, not to be research subjects. We can’t randomize them and say to half, sorry, this isn’t your lucky day today, you are in the nontreatment group.

There are other advantages to observational studies in assessing new treatments. They are generally lower in cost than RCTs, and can often be started more quickly, and published more rapidly, which helps when information is needed urgently, as in a novel pandemic when little is understood about the illness. (RCTs, in part because of the moral issues, take longer to get ethics approval.) Observational studies are also easier to conduct at a time when patients are dying in high numbers, and hospital staff is overwhelmed, trying to keep people alive. They can involve looking back in time, to make use of observations in the medical chart. In such cases, it is crucial that the initial observations about how patients responded to the medications and treatments that the staff had on hand is documented, in as systematic as way as is possible, because there might be clues and nuggets as to what worked.

Exclusion Criteria: Do RCTs Study Real-World Patients?

But there are also problems at the conceptual heart of the RCT. Often the RCT design sees “confounding factors” not simply as something that has to be balanced between the treatment and no-treatment groups by randomization, but eliminated at the outset. For a variety of reasons, includinga wish to make interpretation of final results more certain, they aggressively eliminate known confounding factors before the study starts, by not letting patients with certain confounding factors get into the study in the first place. They do this by often having a lot of what are called “exclusion criteria,” i.e., reasons to exclude or disqualify people from entering the study.

Thus, RCTs for depression typically study patients who only have depression and no other mental disorders, which might be confounding factors. So, they usually study people who are depressed but who are not also alcoholic, not on illicit drugs, and who don’t have personality disorders. They also tend to exclude people who are actively suicidal (because if they are, they might not complete the expensive study, and some people think it is unethical to give a placebo to a person in acute risk of killing themselves). There are many other reasons given for different exclusions, such as a known allergy to a medication in the study.

But here’s the problem. These exclusions often add up until many, maybe even most, real-world depressives get excluded from such a study. So, the study sample is not representative of real-world patients. Yet this undermines the whole purpose of a research study “sample” in the first place, which is to test a small number of people (which is economical to do), and then extrapolate from them on to the rest of the population. As well, many studies of depression and drugs end up looking at people who are about as depressed as a college student who just got a B+ and not an A on a term paper. This is why many medications (or short-term therapies) end up doing well in short-term studies, but the patients relapse.

If you are a drug company (which pay for most of these studies) and you’re testing your new drug, exclusion criteria can be made to work in favor of making your drug appear more powerful than it really is, if sicker patients are eliminated. (This is a good trick, especially if your goal of making money from the drug is your first priority.)

This isn’t a matter of conjecture. This question of whether RCTs, in general, are made up of representative samples has been studied. An important review of RCTs found that 71.2% were not representative of what patients are actually like in real-world clinical practice, and many of the patients studied were less sick than real-world patients. That, combined with the fact that many of the so-called finest RCTs, in the most respected and cited journals, can’t be replicated 35% of the time when their raw data is turned over to another group that is asked to reconfirm the findings, shows that in practice they are far from perfect. That finding—that something as simple as the reanalysis of the numbers and measurements in the study can’t be replicated—doesn’t even begin to deal with other potential problems in the studies: Did the author ask the right questions, collect appropriate data, have reliable tests, diagnose patients properly, use the proper medication dose, for long enough, and were their enough patients in it? And did they, as do so many RCTs, exclude the most typical and the sickest patients?

Note, other study designs also have exclusion criteria, but they often are less problematic than in RCTs for reasons to be explained below.

The Gold Standard and the Hierarchy of Evidence

So, why is it we also hear that “RCTs are the gold standard,” and the highest form of evidence in the “hierarchy of evidence,” with observational studies beneath them, and case histories, at the bottom, and anecdotes beneath contempt?

There are several main reasons.

The first you just learned. It had been believed that RCTs were a completely reliable way to study a treatment given to a small sample of people in a population, see how they did, and then one could extrapolate those findings to the larger population. But that was just an assumption, and now that we have learned the patients studied are too often atypical, we have to be very careful about generalizing from an RCT. This embarrassment is a fairly recent finding that has yet to be taken fully into account by those who say RCTs are the gold standard.

The second reason has to do with the fundamentalists relying on outdated science, which argued that RCTs are more reliable in their quantitative estimates of how effective treatments are because they randomize and rule out confounding factors.

But a scientist who wanted to know if RCTs, as a group, were universally better and more reliable than observational studies at truth-finding would actually study the question scientifically, and not just assert it. And, in the 1980s, Chalmers and others did just that, examining studies from the 1960s and 1970s. They found that in the cases where both RCTs and observational studies had been done on the same treatment, the observational studies yielded positive results 56% of the time, whereas blinded RCTs did so only 30% of the time. It thus seemed that observational studies probably exaggerated how effective new treatments were.

Three other reviews of comparisons of observational and RCT study outcomes showed this same difference, and so researchers concluded that RCTs really were likely better at detecting an investigator’s bias for the treatment being studied, and hence more reliable. Since many scientific studies of drugs were paid for by drug companies that manufactured those drugs, it was not a surprise that the studies would have biases. These reviews formed much of the basis for RCT fundamentalism.

Just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

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But here’s the problem: These were reviews of studies that were done in the 1960s and 1970s. Once the observational study researchers became aware of the problem, they upped their game, and improved safeguards.

In 2000, new reviews comparing the results from hundreds of RCTs and observational studies in medicine that had been conducted in the 1990s were conducted by scientists from Yale and Iowa College of Medicine. They found that the tendency of observational studies to suggest better results in treatments had now disappeared. They now got similar results to RCTs. This was an important finding, but it has not been sufficiently integrated into the medical curriculum.

There is another reason we hear about RCTs. As RCTs became the type of study favored by regulatory bodies to test new drugs, they rose to prominence, and drug companies upped their game and learned many ingenious ways to make RCTs exaggerate the effectiveness of the drugs they are testing.

Entire books have been written on this subject, an excellent one being Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients.Since, to bring a drug to market requires only two RCTs showing the drug works, these techniques include doing many studies but not publishing the ones that don’t show good results. But there are sneakier techniques than making whole studies with negative outcomes go missing. There are ways to publish studies but hide embarrassing data; publish the good data in well-known journals and the negative findings in obscure journals; not study short-term side effects; almost never study, or ask about, long-term side effects; or play with measuring scales, so that patients appear to achieve statistically meaningful benefits which make no clinical difference. If you do a study that gives you a bad outcome on your key measure, don’t report that, just find some small outcome that was in your favor and retroactively change the goal of the study, to report that benefit and that alone. Make researchers and subjects sign gag clauses and nondisclosures. Have the drug companies ghostwrite the papers, make up the tables, and get academics, who never see the raw data sign them. This is routine.

The list goes on, and those tricks have often been used, successfully, to gain approval for drugs. Becoming very familiar with these ruses can save lives, because in a pandemic, new drugs will earn Big Pharma billions because the illness is so widespread, and they have a large playbook to draw from. Once two RCTs are selected from the many done to take the drug forward, the propaganda campaign begins, and as Goldacre shows, drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research. So, to repeat, just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

One group of studies, though, that don’t often play by these corrupt rules are RCTs done on already generic drugs, because they are off-patent, and there is really very little money to be made in them. In these cases, when a drug company has a generic rival to what might be a big money maker, there are ways of making that generic look bad. If the generic takes four weeks to work, test your drug against it, in a three-week study (the placebo effect for your drug won’t have worn off yet). If a vitamin is threatening your drug, test your drug against it, but use the cheapest version, in a dose that is too low. It’s an RCT, that’s all that matters.

Despite all this, advocates of RCTs still teach that, all else being equal, RCTs are always more reliable, and teach this by cherry-picking well-known cases where RCTs were superior to observational studies, and ignore cases where observational studies have been superior, or at least the better tool for the situation. They take the blunt position that “RCTs are better than observational studies,” and not, the more reasonable, accurate, and moderate, “All else being equal, in many, but not all situations, RCTs are better than observational studies.”

The phrase, “all else being equal,” is crucial, because so often all else is not equal. Simply repeating “RCTs are the gold standard of evidence-based medicine” implies to the naive listener that if it is an RCT then it must be a good study, and reliable, and replicable. It leaves out that most studies have many steps in them, and even if they have a randomization component, they can be badly designed in a step or two, and then lead to misinformation. Then there is the very uncomfortable fact that, so often, RCTs can’t even be replicated, and so often contradict each other, as anyone who has followed RCTs done on their own medical condition often sadly finds out. A lot of this turns out to be because they have many steps, and because Big Pharma is so adept now at gaming the system. Like gold, they turn out to be valuable but also malleable. A lot of the problem is that patients differ far more than these studies concede, and these complexities are not well addressed in the study design.

The Hierarchy-of-Evidence Notion Does Harm, Even to RCTs

One of the peculiar things about current evidence-based medicine’s love affair with its “hierarchy of evidence” is that it is still proceeding along, ignoring the implications of the scientifically documented replication crisis. True, the fact there is a replication crisis is now widely taught, and known about, but to the fundamentalists, it is as though that “crisis” doesn’t require that they reexamine basic assumptions. The replication crisis is compartmentalized off from business as usual and replaced with RCT hubris.

The irony is that the beauty of the RCT is that it’s a technique designed to neutralize the effects of confounding factors that we don’t understand on a study’s outcome, and thus it begins in epistemological humility. The RCT, as a discovery, is one of humanity’s wonderful epistemological achievements, a kind of statistical Socrates, which finds that wisdom begins with the idea, “whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know” (Apology, 21d).

But that beautiful idea, captured by a fundamentalist movement, has been turned on its head. The way the RCT fundamentalist demeans other study designs is to judge all those designs by the very real strengths of RCTs. This exaggeration is implicit in the tiresome language they use to discuss them: The RCTs are the “gold standard,” i.e., against which all else is measured, and the true source of value. Can these other designs equal the RCT in eliminating confounders? No. So, they are inferior. This works, as long as one pretends there are no epistemological limitations on RCTs. The problem with that attitude is, it virtually guarantees that the RCT design will not be improved, alas, because improved RCTs would benefit everyone. In fact, RCTs would be most quickly improved if the fundamentalists thought more carefully about the benefits of other studies, and tried to incorporate them, or work alongside them in a more sophisticated way. That is another way of saying we need the “all available evidence” approach.

The Case History and Anecdotes

Also disturbing, and, odd, actually, is the belittling of the case history as a mode of making discoveries, or what it has to offer science as a form of evidence. In neurology, for instance, it was the individual cases, such as the case of Phineas Gage, that taught us about the frontal lobes, and the case of H.M., that taught us about the role of memory, two of the most important discoveries ever made in brain science.

Here’s how the belittlement goes. “Case histories are anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data, it is just lots of anecdotes.”

First of all, case histories are not anecdotes. An anecdote, in a medical text, is usually several sentences, at most a paragraph, stripped of many essential details, usually to make a single point, such as “a 50-year-old woman presented with X disease, and was treated with Y medication, for 10 days, and Figure 7 shows her before and after X-rays, and the dramatic improvement.” In that sense, an anecdote is actually the opposite of a case history, which depends on a multiplicity of concrete, vivid details.

A case history (particularly in classic neurology or psychiatry) can run for many pages. It is so elaborated because it understands, as the Canadian physician William Osler pointed out: “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” And who that patient is—their strengths, weaknesses, their other illnesses, other medications, emotional supports, diet, exercise habits, bad habits, genetics, previous treatment histories, all factor into the result. To practice good medicine, you must take it all into account, understanding that the patient is not any one of these details, but a whole who is more than the sum of the parts. Thus, true patient-centered medicine necessarily aspires toward a holistic approach. So, a case history is a concrete portrait of a real person, not an anecdote; and it is vivid, and the furthest thing possible from an abstract data set.

A typical RCT describes several data points about hundreds of patients. A typical case history describes perhaps hundreds of data points about a single patient. It’s not inferior, it’s different. The case history is, in fact, a technology, albeit an old one, set in language (another invention, we forget) and its structure (what is included in the case history, such as descriptions of the patient’s symptoms, objective signs, their subjective experiences, detailed life history, what makes the illness better, what worse, etc.) was developed over centuries.

Even anecdotes have their place. We often hear methodologists say, when a physician claims he or she gave a patient a particular medication, or supplement, or treatments, and they got better, “that that proves nothing. It is just an anecdote.” The problem is in the word “just.” Something doesn’t become meaningless, or a nonevent because a scientist adds the word “just” before it. That word really says nothing about the anecdote and a lot about the speaker’s preference for large number sets.

But anecdotes are very meaningful, too, and not just when lives are changed by a new treatment for the first time. This dismissive indifference to anecdotes turns out to be very convenient, for instance, for drug companies. If you are a physician, and you give a patient who had perfectly good balance an antibiotic, like gentamicin, and she suddenly loses all sense of balance because it injured her balance apparatus, the drug maker can say that is “just” an anecdote. It doesn’t count. And in fact, it is a fairly rare event. But it is by just such anecdotes that we learn of side effects, in part because (as I said above) most RCTs for new drugs don’t ask about those kinds of things, because they don’t want to hear the answer.

If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal.

That’s why the approach I take—and I think most trained physicians with any amount of experience and investment in their patients’ well-being also take—might be called the all-available-evidence approach. This means, one has to get to know each of the study designs, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and then put it all together with what one is seeing, with one’s own eyes, and hearing from the particular patient who is seeking your care. There are no shortcuts.

One of the implications of this approach in the current COVID-19 situation is that we cannot simply, as so many are insisting, rely only on the long-awaited RCTs to decide how to treat COVID-19. That is because physicians in the end don’t treat illnesses, they treat patients with illnesses, and these patients differ.

The RCTs that are on the way may recommend, in the end, one medication as “best” for COVID-19. What does that mean? That it is best for everyone? No, just that in a large group, it helped more people than other approaches.

That information—which medication is best for most people, is very useful if you are in charge of public health for a poor country and can only afford one medication. Then you want the one that will help most people.

But if you are ordering for a community that has sufficient funds for a variety of medications, you are interested in a different question: What do I need on hand to cover as many sick people as possible, and not just those who benefit from medication X which helps most, but not all people? Even if a medication helps, say, only 10% of people, those will be lives saved, and it should be on hand. A medication that helped so few might not even have been studied, but if the others failed, it should be tried.

A physician on the frontline wants, and needs, access to those medications. He or she asks, “What if my patient is allergic to the medication that helps most people? Then, what others might I try?” Or, “What if the recommended medication is one that interacts negatively with a medication that my patient needs to stay alive for their non-COVID-19 condition?”

There are so many different combinations and permutations of such problems—and hardly any of them are ever studied—that only the physician who knows the patient has even a chance of making an informed decision. They are the kinds of things that arise on physician chat lines, that ask questions to 1,000 online peers like, “I have a patient with heart disease, on A, B, and C meds, and kidney disease on D, who was allergic to the COVID-19 med E. Has anyone tried med F, and if so, given their kidney function, should I halve the dose?”

Evidence-based medicine hasn’t studied some of the most basic treatments with RCTs or observational studies, never mind these kinds of individual complexities. So, the most prudent option is to allow the professional who knows the patient to have as much flexibility as possible and access to as many medications as possible. If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal. Clinicians need latitude, and patients assume they have it. But now the RCT fundamentalists are using the absence of RCTs for some drugs to restrict access to them. They have gone too far. This is epistemological hubris, at the expense of lives, and brings to mind the old adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” As long as we’ve not got the best studies for all conceivable permutations, medicine will remain both an art and a science.

So, does conceding as much and giving the clinician latitude mean I don’t believe in science?

“Believe,” you say?

That is not a scientific word. Science is a tool. I don’t worship tools. Rather, I try to find the right one for the job. Or, for a complex task, which is usually the case in medicine—especially since we are all different, and all complex—the right ones, plural.

#medicine #fav #print this off later #family medicine #internal medicine #philosophy #science #covid-19 #sars-cov-2 #covid-19 vaccine

[arcticdementor]

In the past I had often fervently wished that one day everyone would be passionate and excited about scientific research. I should have been more careful about what I had wished for. The crisis caused by the lethal COVID-19 pandemic and by the responses to the crisis have made billions of people worldwide acutely interested and overexcited about science. Decisions pronounced in the name of science have become arbitrators of life, death, and fundamental freedoms. Everything that mattered was affected by science, by scientists interpreting science, and by those who impose measures based on their interpretations of science in the context of political warfare.

One problem with this new mass engagement with science is that most people, including most people in the West, had never been seriously exposed to the fundamental norms of the scientific method. The Mertonian norms of communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism have unfortunately never been mainstream in education, media, or even in science museums and TV documentaries on scientific topics.

Before the pandemic, the sharing of data, protocols, and discoveries for free was limited, compromising the communalism on which the scientific method is based. It was already widely tolerated that science was not universal, but the realm of an ever-more hierarchical elite, a minority of experts. Gargantuan financial and other interests and conflicts thrived in the neighborhood of science—and the norm of disinterestedness was left forlorn.

As for organized skepticism, it did not sell very well within academic sanctuaries. Even the best peer-reviewed journals often presented results with bias and spin. Broader public and media dissemination of scientific discoveries was largely focused on what could be exaggerated about the research, rather than the rigor of its methods and the inherent uncertainty of the results.  

Nevertheless, despite the cynical realization that the methodological norms of science had been neglected (or perhaps because of this realization), voices struggling for more communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism had been multiplying among scientific circles prior to the pandemic. Reformers were often seen as holding some sort of a moral higher ground, despite being outnumbered in occupancy of powerful positions. Reproducibility crises in many scientific fields, ranging from biomedicine to psychology, caused soul-searching and efforts to enhance transparency, including the sharing of raw data, protocols, and code. Inequalities within the academy were increasingly recognized with calls to remedy them. Many were receptive to pleas for reform.

Opinion-based experts (while still dominant in influential committees, professional societies, major conferences, funding bodies, and other power nodes of the system) were often challenged by evidence-based criticism. There were efforts to make conflicts of interest more transparent and to minimize their impact, even if most science leaders remained conflicted, especially in medicine. A thriving community of scientists focused on rigorous methods, understanding biases, and minimizing their impact. The field of metaresearch, i.e., research on research, had become widely respected. One might therefore have hoped that the pandemic crisis could have fostered change. Indeed, change did happen—but perhaps mostly for the worst.

…

Personally, I don’t want to consider the lab leak theory—a major blow to scientific investigation—as the dominant explanation yet. However, if full public data-sharing cannot happen even for a question relevant to the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions, what hope is there for scientific transparency and a sharing culture? Whatever the origins of the virus, the refusal to abide by formerly accepted norms has done its own enormous damage.

…

Many amazing scientists have worked on COVID-19. I admire their work. Their contributions have taught us so much. My gratitude extends to the many extremely talented and well-trained young investigators who rejuvenate our aging scientific workforce. However, alongside thousands of solid scientists came freshly minted experts with questionable, irrelevant, or nonexistent credentials and questionable, irrelevant, or nonexistent data.

Social and mainstream media have helped to manufacture this new breed of experts. Anyone who was not an epidemiologist or health policy specialist could suddenly be cited as an epidemiologist or health policy specialist by reporters who often knew little about those fields but knew immediately which opinions were true. Conversely, some of the best epidemiologists and health policy specialists in America were smeared as clueless and dangerous by people who believed themselves fit to summarily arbitrate differences of scientific opinion without understanding the methodology or data at issue.

Disinterestedness suffered gravely. In the past, conflicted entities mostly tried to hide their agendas. During the pandemic, these same conflicted entities were raised to the status of heroes. For example, Big Pharma companies clearly produced useful drugs, vaccines, and other interventions that saved lives, though it was also known that profit was and is their main motive. Big Tobacco was known to kill many millions of people every year and to continuously mislead when promoting its old and new, equally harmful, products. Yet during the pandemic, requesting better evidence on effectiveness and adverse events was often considered anathema. This dismissive, authoritarian approach “in defense of science” may sadly have enhanced vaccine hesitancy and the anti-vax movement, wasting a unique opportunity that was created by the fantastic rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines. Even the tobacco industry upgraded its reputation: Philip Morris donated ventilators to propel a profile of corporate responsibility and saving lives, a tiny fraction of which were put at risk of death from COVID-19 because of background diseases caused by tobacco products.

Other potentially conflicted entities became the new societal regulators, rather than the ones being regulated. Big Tech companies, which gained trillions of dollars in cumulative market value from the virtual transformation of human life during lockdown, developed powerful censorship machineries that skewed the information available to users on their platforms. Consultants who made millions of dollars from corporate and government consultation were given prestigious positions, power, and public praise, while unconflicted scientists who worked pro bono but dared to question dominant narratives were smeared as being conflicted. Organized skepticism was seen as a threat to public health. There was a clash between two schools of thought, authoritarian public health versus science—and science lost.

…

Honest, continuous questioning and exploration of alternative paths are indispensable for good science. In the authoritarian (as opposed to participatory) version of public health, these activities were seen as treason and desertion. The dominant narrative became that “we are at war.” When at war, everyone has to follow orders. If a platoon is ordered to go right and some soldiers explore maneuvering to the left, they are shot as deserters. Scientific skepticism had to be shot, no questions asked. The orders were clear. 

…

Heated but healthy scientific debates are welcome. Serious critics are our greatest benefactors. John Tukey once said that the collective noun for a group of statisticians is a quarrel. This applies to other scientists, too. But “we are at war” led to a step beyond: This is a dirty war, one without dignity. Opponents were threatened, abused, and bullied by cancel culture campaigns in social media, hit stories in mainstream media, and bestsellers written by zealots. Statements were distorted, turned into straw men, and ridiculed. Wikipedia pages were vandalized. Reputations were systematically devastated and destroyed. Many brilliant scientists were abused and received threats during the pandemic, intended to make them and their families miserable.

Anonymous and pseudonymous abuse has a chilling effect; it is worse when the people doing the abusing are eponymous and respectable. The only viable responses to bigotry and hypocrisy are kindness, civility, empathy, and dignity. However, barring in-person communication, virtual living and social media in social isolation are poor conveyors of these virtues.

Politics had a deleterious influence on pandemic science. Anything any apolitical scientist said or wrote could be weaponized for political agendas. Tying public health interventions like masks and vaccines to a faction, political or otherwise, satisfies those devoted to that faction, but infuriates the opposing faction. This process undermines the wider adoption required for such interventions to be effective. Politics dressed up as public health not only injured science. It also shot down participatory public health where people are empowered, rather than obligated and humiliated.

A scientist cannot and should not try to change his or her data and inferences based on the current doctrine of political parties or the reading du jour of the social media thermometer. In an environment where traditional political divisions between left and right no longer seem to make much sense, data, sentences, and interpretations are taken out of context and weaponized. The same apolitical scientist could be attacked by left-wing commentators in one place and by alt-right commentators in another. Many excellent scientists have had to silence themselves in this chaos. Their self-censorship has been a major loss for scientific investigation and the public health effort. My heroes are the many well-intentioned scientists who were abused, smeared, and threatened during the pandemic. I respect all of them and suffer for what they went through, regardless of whether their scientific positions agreed or disagreed with mine. I suffer for and cherish even more those whose positions disagreed with mine.

There was absolutely no conspiracy or preplanning behind this hypercharged evolution. Simply, in times of crisis, the powerful thrive and the weak become more disadvantaged. Amid pandemic confusion, the powerful and the conflicted became more powerful and more conflicted, while millions of disadvantaged people have died and billions suffered.

I worry that science and its norms have shared the fate of the disadvantaged. It is a pity, because science can still help everyone. Science remains the best thing that can happen to humans, provided it can be both tolerant and tolerated.

#tablet magazine #john p a ioannidis #science #read the whole thing

[bang-to-the-tan]

Moth to Flame

Chapter 12

Reader x OT7

► Vampire!AU

Smut/Porn With Some Plot

Warnings: Reference to Sexual Scenes, Slight Stockholm Syndrome?, Vampires (Biting, Blood-Sucking, Reference to Death), Language

↳ Summary: Robbed of your memories and intended as a birthday present for a deadly creature of the night, you unwittingly become the center of a territorial dispute between two covens of vampires. Tensions are rising and the brothers are getting hungry…

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You find it impossible to mark the passage of time.

Namjoon is gracious enough to allow you a shower before bed (the first time you can recall bathing alone), and by the time you return, staggering and stumbling for the beating you’ve taken, the sheets are clean and the vampire is gone. When you wake up, tangled in blankets that smell too much like him and still wearing the towel, you have no idea whether its daytime, nighttime, early or late. Not that it really matters. Namjoon’s bathrobe swallows you whole in deep navy fluff when you tug it over your naked body, snatching it off a nearby hat rack. Even so, it’s more than nothing, and you are in no way going to put on that jizz-crusted hoodie ever again. You simply pull the ties extra-tight around your waist, pushing the sleeves up as much as you can, wandering out to the main living room. There’s coffee on the bar and the house is seemingly empty, traffic outside occasionally lending itself to a faint, ambient roar.

In a daze, wincing every time you move your legs a certain way, you reach for a nearby mug and pour yourself a cup of what tastes like jet fuel, doing your best to massage the encroaching headache out of your temples. A slip of paper on the counter, written in a lanky, heavy script, tells you that Yoongi is still technically, probably, home—but busy, so try not to ‘bother him’ unless you ‘need him’—in the spare room. Hoseok is at his yoga class. You scowl even at just the sight of his name. You hope he trips over a mat and chokes on his own tongue. Dick.

Namjoon is ‘out’, whatever that means, as shady as that sounds. But he’ll be back by 12, says the note. You glance up to squint at the gritty, green analog clock built into the tiny stove, and it reads 11:37. Great. You slept through most of the potential alone time you could have had…although, do you really want alone time?

You aren’t sure what you want. Could try to run for it. With no idea where you are, clad in an oversized robe, by all accounts smelling like the bloodsucker equivalent of a watering hole in a desert, fighting a monster of a headache. Right.

The couch sags invitingly when you throw yourself at it, and the tv crackles a little when you flick it on with the remote sitting on the end table. Huh. The vampires have Netflix. Who would have guessed. You take another sip of the nastiest, strongest, almost-cold cup of joe you’re pretty sure you’ve ever tasted, sifting through channels and shows before finally settling on some cop drama. Nothing cerebral, just a time killer. The beginnings of that headache has, over just the time you’ve spent meandering, multiplied into something searing, pounding through your eye sockets and straight for the back of your skull. It would make sense for you to be hungry, and you almost consider it, but at this point, you’re hurting so badly that the thought of food has your stomach doing backflips. You end up sprawled on the sofa, pressing a pillow to your face, ignoring the light scent of Hoseok’s body wash and wishing ill on anyone who’s ever so much as looked at you.

“Migraine?”

You stiffen, clutching the pillow closer. It’s difficult to resist the urge to clamp your aching legs shut, but you resist anyway, filled with violent promises at the thought of the owner of that gravelly tone even so much as hinting at doing anything funny.

You can hear Yoongi shuffling about towards the kitchen, the clank of glass as he fishes through a cupboard for a clean mug, the tsk when he can’t find one and the rush of the water when he finally decides to simply rinse one out. It takes a full beat before what he said even registers.

“Migraine.” You repeat, sour and muffled. “Yeah.”

“Sucks.”

“It does.”

The pour of what could probably be classed as chemical warfare, a sniff before you can hear him take a criminally deep swig. He smacks obnoxiously at the taste and you are more appalled at his apparent enjoyment than his manners. He’s making an awful lot of fucking noise as he drags his feet back towards the hallway and you aren’t sure whether you appreciate it or not.

“Ice pack in freezer.” He croaks. “Put it back when it’s warm.”

You follow the sound of his feet—slippers? It sounds like slippers—down towards the spare room, and then the click of the door as he trudges through it and pulls it shut behind him.

You wait.

But there’s no indication that it’s a trap. A game. Just the quiet resuming; the occasional scream of a car going too fast, honking in the distance. The pillow slides off your face slowly so you can properly glare in the direction of the front door, still not fully convinced. Eventually, motivated by the pain rattling your bones, you drag yourself off the sofa and towards the half-sized freezer. True enough, there’s a pack situated next to the ice, filled with some kind of bean and delightfully cold. It’s shaped like a turtle, complete with googly eyes, vaguely t-shirt material dyed green and faded from use. Vampires get migraines…? Very little in the universe matters when you press it to your eyes curiously and immediately feel a rush of relief. You turn the volume on the tv way down and resume your position, but now with your new best friend laid across your brow and cheeks. God, if only vampires also had medication. Maybe Yoongi knows if there’s aspirin in this house. Hmm…on second thought, asking him sounds like a bad idea. Who knows what kind of mood he’s actually in. And god knows you are in no shape to deal with the ramifications if he can’t control himself. Or yourself. You grimace, and then wince when even just the pulling of your facial muscles lends itself to pain.

The world spins above you, but somehow you drift off, despite feeling your heartbeat in your teeth. You slip into something between dream and reality, your sense of self dissolving into nothing. There’s only one thing that remains constant between half-dreams and thoughts that slip through your fingers like sand: Jin. His voice, dragging on into forever. He’s talking constantly, but not to you. There’s no affection in his voice, but it still sounds important. You can’t be bothered to understand any of it. Something about clocks? Protests?

The only way you can tell that you’ve fallen asleep is that suddenly you’re awake, and aware of a warm palm slipping beneath the turtle to feel at your forehead. You don’t bother panicking. It’s Namjoon. You can smell him. You hate that you can fucking smell him, and you hate the comfort that curls in your stomach the second you recognize his scent. Bastard. You aren’t glad he’s home. You aren’t. You will the universe to stop revolving around the feeling of the pads of his hand brushing your hairline, and fail.

“It’ll be cold, dumbass,” you seethe, unable to move your mouth too much, eyes still closed. “On account of the cold pack.”

“Feeling if you’re clammy, dumbass,” Namjoon returns smoothly. “You look sweaty.”

“Fuck you.”

He chuckles above you, his wide hand retreating from your skin, allowing cool bean heaven back onto your eyeballs where it belongs. “You look sick, are you feeling okay?”

That warrants you moving the turtle just enough to glare at him through your lashes, the light smearing his outline like a rushed painting.

“Do I look like I’m feeling okay?”

“No, you look sick,” he reiterates, eyes defensive. He hesitates with a huff, mouth quirking. You slide the ice pack back over just so you won’t have to admire his plump lips anymore. “Did…did you feel sick at Jin’s? Maybe it’s…I mean…”

“It probably is your fault,” you grumble.

“You think so? I don’t know. We’ve never…”

“Pretty fuckin’ likely.”  

“I looked it up, and sometimes women get migraines after their periods.” God, he’s still talking. You groan, turning, curling further into the couch, pressing your forearm to the cold pack to convince it even closer. If you could get it under your skin, you would without hesitation. “So maybe it’s the blood loss?”

“Apology accepted.”

“I haven’t—“

“Joon, seriously, please.”

He’s quiet for a blissful second.

“Was it last night?”

“Namjoon.”

“Sorry.”

You feel a nudge at your hand. On reflex, you relax your fingers, feeling something press into your palm. You roll it discerningly with your fingertips, uninterested in moving to look at it. A pill?

“There’s water on the stand.” His voice returns, this time hushed. “Yoongi said you had a migraine so I got you some medicine on my way home.”

A decent man, a good man. God bless Yoongi. You take it without hesitation, feeling upwards for the promised drink and finding it easily. It’s a task to press it to your lips without moving the turtle, but you manage, and by the time you’ve set it back on the side and sunk back into the cushions, you feel as though you’ve done enough moving for the year.

“Can I sit here?”

You aren’t thrilled by his continued insistence on saying things, but he’s brought drugs and lowered his volume enough that you offer him a begrudging grunt. The sofa creaks when he settles into it by your feet, his thigh pressing into the pads of your feet comfortably. He’s warm where denim meets your skin and you immediately pull away, twitching. There’s no point, there’s nowhere to go, and eventually you have to allow it.

In the quiet, you realize that the low noise in the background is actually Jin, still talking. He’s holding a conversation with a woman whose voice you don’t recognize. They’re discussing something political—you don’t have any context but it sounds like an ongoing issue of grave importance. Confused, you peek up at the tv and sure enough, there he is, seated in an uncomfortable-looking chair, set against a mock-up of a city skyline. He makes that suit look good, smart and casual, hair styled perfectly. You forget how perfect his skin is, the softness of his pink lips, the way his eyes glitter underneath dark brows. But there’s something vacant about him that you don’t like. When he looks to his cohost, it lacks the tenderness you remember. Your heart twinges, and you could swear the emotion that you feel is longing. Disgusting.

It suddenly occurs to you that just as long as you’ve been watching Jin speak, so has Namjoon. You hazard a glance at him from under the ice pack.

He’s leaning back into the couch, one arm slung over in your direction, the other settled against his thigh. The light of the tv plays over the planes of his face, glints off his hair with unnatural blues and reds. There’s something odd in his expression. His eyes are proud, soft, gentle. But his lips are taut, annoyed, and he’s obviously deep in thought. His jaw ticks when the camera pans back over to Jin, brow creasing.

“What happened?” you mumble. You know he can hear you but he pretends like he can’t. You nudge his thigh with your foot, frowning. “Come on, Namjoon, you owe me. For last night.”

“I apologized for that.” His voice is quiet. He doesn’t look at you.

“Then for everything else. Just until the meds kick in. Tell me a story.”

“I wanted to take you out today,” he diverts. “But if you still aren’t feeling alright in like a half hour, we’ll go tomorrow—“

“I want to know what happened between you and Jin.”

He falls silent. You aren’t sure whether you should push it, but surely there has to be some sway to the way he’s been treating you. You’re considering the best ways to coerce it out of him when he speaks up again.

“I don’t remember who gave it to me. Being like this.”

You squash the excitement, the victory, that rises in your chest in favor of a curious noise. “No?”

“No. It was a long time ago. But I tried…” he clears his throat and shifts. “I tried to keep going to school for a while after. College; just community, but something.”

“And Jin?”

“I found him by accident. There was a bus I used to take to campus. He rode on it every day. Never saw him get off. He had this stare…” He shrugs. You watch him raise his hand to rub at his lips, eyes distant. “One day I just…didn’t get off at the school. Just followed him. I dunno what I was thinking, but I swear I could sense it in him. We got to talking, and…”

Namjoon’s chuckle reverberates through the sofa, warms your bones. “I mean, fuck, what do you do when you feel like the only person on the planet and suddenly you’re meeting someone just like you? Of course we teamed up. Tried to figure it all out. Realized we could haze people. Moved in together. Shared everything.”

You scoot more comfortably into the couch, allowing your eyes to dip closed.

“Met Yoongi and Hobi after that. Jin had…a thing for being in control of a situation. I was always the ‘leader’ once we realized there was such a thing as covens. Groups of people like us with territories and shit. I’d meet with them sometimes, talk about those things in alleyways and bowling alleys, diners—diplomatic. But he was always keeping things tied down at home. He was always trying to make sure we were all okay. I guess it comes with being the oldest.”

He pauses.

“I have no idea when he was changed, actually. He never talked about it and I never pushed. I know he’s older, though. I always looked to him for answers. But after Jimin and Taehyung—it got complicated. Tae was a decision we made together, and Jimin…Jimin was my fault. I went behind Jin’s back for Jimin. He wasn’t happy. Finding victims who the haze worked on, avoiding police—it was rough back then and we couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. Could barely keep a handle on Taehyung, once he woke up. I shouldn’t have done it.”

His hand alights on your knee, rubbing absently. There’s nothing sexual in it; you aren’t even sure whether he’s aware he’s doing it. It feels nice. It feels really nice. You choke back whatever emotion that’s trying to bring forth in you.

“I don’t regret it,” he adds hastily. “I don’t regret it. We were a family. But it only got worse. Jin was upset that I didn’t ask him and I upset that I apparently had to. Who said he was my keeper anyway? We were supposed to be partners...A lot of stuff came out. Differences in opinion. We argued constantly. There were rumors of cops getting too close, and we were so scared of being found out. In the end, Yoongi and Hobi and I decided to leave. Jin decided to stay.” He snorts. “And we all know how that ended up.”

“How did that ended up?” you murmur.

“Jungkook.” He says his name like it’s the punchline to a joke. “It ended up with Jungkook. After all that shit about scarcity and keeping a low profile.”

You mull over what he’s saying.

“Jungkook said you hate him.”

“I don’t hate him.” Namjoon replies quickly, pulling a sigh through his nose, like he’s had this conversation countless times already. “I don’t like what he represents. That Jin can just do whatever he wants to do. That he doesn’t have to listen to anyone else. That earth and heaven can and should orbit around Jin, and everyone else just falls in line. Jin, the martyr.”

“He works hard.”

“He does. We all do.”

“He misses you.”

“That’s a step.”

You try again. “Jimin misses you.”

His chuckle catches even him by surprise, becoming a snort. “Now that I believe.” There’s a beat of quiet. His voice goes soft. “Jimin always was happiest when we were all together.”

“What about you?”

Another moment of silence passes. His hand on your knee tightens, thumb rubbing gently, as if afraid to let go.

“I don’t know. I’m happy sometimes.”

“When?”

“How are you feeling, by the way?” Your leg feels cold when he moves his hand to brush his palm beneath the turtle again. You peer at him through the cracks in your eyelashes, and for a moment you could almost believe you can see how long he’s been alive. It’s written in the slope of his eyes, his brow, the tight line of his lips pursed in what nearly passes for a smile. He looks tired. Unbelievably tired. “Good enough to go shopping?”

“Shopping?”

“For clothes. You can’t wear my bathrobe forever.”

“Who’s bathrobe? This one’s mine.”

He snorts again, turning away to pat your ankle. “Good enough to sass me back means good enough to go. I’ll ask Yoongi if you can borrow his sweats.”

The couch squeaks in protest when he gets up, and you turn away into the cushion. It’s a lot to think on. You aren’t sure a sad story mostly made of being needlessly catty to each other makes up for kidnapping and…well, probably murder (you’re not gonna think on that one too heavily) but it’s definitely a rough situation. You almost feel bad. You almost feel…sympathetic. What’s the word? Stockholm. It takes a lot of self-control not to roll your eyes at yourself.

The turtle begins to levitate off your eyes independent of your will and you whine, clutching at it, casting a glance upwards. It’s Namjoon leaning over the couch at you, tugging at the turtle with a pinch of fabric.

“Yoongi said he’d trade sweatpants for the turtle.”

You frown up at him, hands falling to your sides, relinquishing the item in question. “Would he rather I didn’t wash the sweatpants either when I return them?” you ask dryly.

“He didn’t say as much, but probably.” He’s straightening, already on his way to make the trade, tossing the pack up and catching it deftly with long fingers as he goes.

Hold on a second.

“You didn’t give him back the dirty vibrator, did you, Namjoon?” you ask, suddenly horrified.

No reply. The door to the spare room clicks open and you sit up just in time to watch him disappear behind it.

“You didn’t, right, Namjoon??” You raise your voice, but flinch back, fingers flying to rub at your temples again. The headache’s better, but it isn’t gone. You’re no longer on the brink of dying, at least, but you’ll be tender for a while yet, you suspect. Long enough to get clothes.

What even is the point?

You throw another look at the far door.

Who would bother buying clothes for you if you weren’t going to be around for much longer? There’s the thought that turns your blood icy.

Are you going to be around for much longer? How does this all end? Fuck, you miss being hazed, you miss not thinking about these things, you miss not having to care. Your head pounds.

For a moment, in the stillness, the tiny apartment with the tv on quietly and the traffic outside, you are the only human being on the planet.

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#bts smut #bts vampire au #bts fanfic #bts x reader #moth to flame #reader x namjoon #i KNOW I KNOW #bad spex putting exposition in dialogue #listen having joon even vague about the past made me realize how much i put in there #and oops #i made more #SIGH

[freddyfreebat]

Luca Guadagnino on Creating His HBO Series, Trump’s America, and Why He’s Remaking ‘Scarface’

by Brent Lang

Luca Guadagnino, the Oscar-nominated auteur behind “Call Me By Your Name,” is taking his swooning, lyrical style to the small-screen with “We Are Who We Are,” an immersive and deeply moving coming-of-age story.

The HBO-Sky series, which debuts this September, follow two teenagers, Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) and Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamón), who live on a military base in Italy. It explores their burgeoning friendship — Fraser is artistic, shy, and volatile, while Caitlin is more outgoing, but also dealing with her own nagging insecurities. The series, Guadagnino’s first for TV, also grapples with issues of sexuality and gender identity. He directed all eight episodes of “We Are Who We Are,” and says he purposely set the show in the midst of the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a way to comment on the political tumult unleashed by Donald Trump’s victory.

Guadagnino spoke to Variety shortly after the first trailer for “We Are Who We Are” was released.

How would you describe “We Are Who We Are”? Is it a TV series, a longer narrative feature, a miniseries?

I feel like on the one hand that this is a new film of mine. It feels like a movie to me, but I enjoyed the episodic-ness of the story. This is a series and it depends on how it clicks with an audience if we will see these people again. I have sort of a penchant for bringing back to life characters that I love. I truly love all the characters in this show. The greatness of doing TV is that if there’s a good outcome, this can come back, which would be beautiful to me.

What inspired the project?

Lorenzo Mieli [ed. note: who produced the show for The Apartment along with Mario Gianani for Wildside, both Fremantle companies] and Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri had developed a concept about the life of teenagers today vis-à-vis gender fluidity in American suburbia. When they talked to me about it, the first thing I said was I’m less interested in the topic as a sort of starting point. I’m more interested in the behavior of these people. I think in order not to be generic why don’t we set this in a micro-America, a place that can work as the part for the whole. I proposed the military world. I had a very wonderful conversation once many, many years ago with Amy Adams — you get to have these meetings with these great actors as one of the privileges of this work — and she told me that she spent part of her upbringing in Vicenza, in a military base in Italy. From synapses connecting to each other, I had this image in my mind.

Because this is a series, I said to Lorenzo, “If this goes well, next time they can move to another base. They can be in Japan or Africa or anywhere.”

In the show, the characters refer to the military base as ‘America’ despite the fact that it is in the middle of Italy. That geographic dichotomy seems to mirror the way that many of the characters feel a kind of emotional displacement or discomfort. Did you view the setting as a larger metaphor?

I always feel displaced. I never feel in the right place as a person. I do believe that despite every action we can take to claim the nature of our identity, eventually the human condition is that we are always trying to reclaim an emotional state of belonging. This show is about the kids not knowing who they are, not knowing what they are, and feeling displaced. Of course, there’s a transitional element of being a teenager that is specific to that age. It’s said that when you’re grown up, you know more about yourself, but truthfully all of these characters feel lost.

Fraser and Caitlin are both 14. That strikes me as an interesting age, because you’re definitely developing a stronger sense of identity, and yet you’re still wholly dependent on your parents.  Why did you want to focus on characters at that particular age?

If I remember when I was 14, I was deeply, deeply unsatisfied by my incapacity to understand how to put in action the big plan I had for myself in my mind. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know how to get it. Eventually I even realized that I didn’t completely know what I wanted. I love this age, because you have grand ambitions and at the same time you have no means to fulfill those ambitions. You have only curiosity, only craving, only the capacity for experimentation. Every day seems to be a fight between life and death. That’s something beautiful about that age.

When the trailer for “We Are Who We Are” dropped, there were a lot of comparisons online to “Call Me By Your Name.” Both works are set in Italy and involve younger men. Do you see a commonality?

I will never complain about people’s laziness, but that sounds very lazy. “Call Me By Your Name” is about the past seen through the prism of a cinematic narrative and this is about the here and now. This is about the bodies and souls of now. I think they are so different.

Why did you decide to set the show during the 2016 presidential election?

The effects of the 2016 election are still being felt right here, right now. The seismic shift throughout America and the world of what it meant that Obama’s presidency was followed by Trump’s presidency and how people did not see it coming, are still being grappled with. It has to be said, that just as [Silvio] Berlusconi was the autobiography of Italy, Trump can also be seen as a sad chapter in the autobiography of the United States.

We are dealing with a kind of populism that springs from the plutocrats. It is shaping the world while at the same time a phalanx of youth is shaking the world as well and not taking that bitter medicine.

“We Are Who We Are” has a fair amount of full-frontal male nudity. That’s rare in American films and television shows. Why do you think that’s the case?

I always felt embarrassed when I saw in films the camera strategically not showing something. I also think that to show nudity — male, female — if it’s in the context of something that makes sense, is a way to liberate the eye. HBO has been wonderful in endorsing my choices. They could have felt provocative or radical, but I saw them as organic. By the way, there is nudity in general in my movies. That’s part of living. We are naked part of the day and part of the day we are dressed up. I always think I should pay respect to that condition of being human. Sometimes we’re naked, so why not?

You have about a half-dozen projects listed as in development on your IMDB. What’s behind that?

I am a relentless workaholic. I’m someone who has never tried any drugs, because I’m too scared for my own health. But I feel like when I was born, I fell on a “Scarface” mountain of cocaine, because I work 13 hours a day.

Are you working on a sequel to “Call Me By Your Name”?

I call it a second chapter, a new chapter, a part two or something like that. I love those characters. I love those actors. The legacy of the movie and its reception made me feel I should continue walking the path with everybody. I’ve come up with a story and hopefully we will be able to put it on the page soon.

You’re also attached to a remake of “Scarface.” What attracted you to that project?

People claim that I do only remakes [ed. note: Guadagnino previously remade “Suspiria” and his film “A Bigger Splash” was inspired by “La Piscine”] , but the truth of the matter is cinema has been remaking itself throughout its existence. It’s not because it’s a lazy way of not being able to find original stories. It’s alway about looking at what certain stories say about our times. The first “Scarface” from Howard Hawks was all about the prohibition era. Fifty years later, Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma make their version, which is so different from the Hawks film. Both can stand on the shelf as two wonderful pieces of sculpture. Hopefully ours, forty-plus years later, will be another worthy reflection on a character who is a paradigm for our own compulsions for excess and ambition. I think my version will be very timely.

What have you been watching during lockdown?

I watched again “Comizi d’amore” (Love Meetings) by Pasolini. I saw a great movie called “The Vast of Night,” and I watched for the second or third time “Doctor Sleep,” which is a movie I admire greatly.

#jack dylan grazer #fraser wilson #we are who we are #wawwa #luca guadagnino #chloe sevigny #alice braga #jordan kristine seamon #spence moore ii #kid cudi #faith alabi #francesca scorsese #ben taylor #corey knight #tom mercier #sebastiano pigazzi

[sal2724]

NATURE

         “Remember nature before nature forgets us! ~Saloni (Me)”

Before starting I want to say that I feel like I am back in school in some junior class where I have to write an essay on nature. But I promise, this blog will be nothing like that school essay!!!

So, Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature can refer to the general realm of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects—the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness—wild animals, rocks, forest, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things that can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural.

Nature is actually everything around us. If we are not able to respect nature. Nature won’t respect us. Nature gives us everything we have.

The rise of technology and industry may have distanced us superficially from nature, but it has not changed our reliance on the natural world: most of what we use and consume on a daily basis remains the product of multitudes of interactions within nature, and many of those interactions are imperiled.

There is no question that Earth has been a giving planet. Everything humans have needed to survive, and thrive, was provided by the natural world around us: food, water, medicine, materials for shelter, and even natural cycles such as climate and nutrients. Scientists have come to term such gifts ‘ecosystem services’, however the recognition of such services goes back thousands of years, and perhaps even farther if one accepts the caves paintings at Lascaux as evidence. Yet we have so disconnected ourselves from the natural world that it is easy—and often convenient—to forget that nature remains as giving as ever, even as it vanishes bit-by-bit. The rise of technology and industry may have distanced us superficially from nature, but it has not changed our reliance on the natural world: most of what we use and consume on a daily basis remains the product of multitudes of interactions within nature, and many of those interactions are imperiled. Beyond such physical goods, the natural world provides less tangible, but just as important, gifts in terms of beauty, art, and spirituality.

To make you believe, I have some great examples:

Fresh water: There is no physical substance humans require more than freshwater: without water we can only survive a few hellish days. While pollution and overuse has threatened many of the world’s drinking water sources, nature has an old-fashioned solution, at least, to pollution. Healthy freshwater ecosystems—watersheds, wetlands, and forests—naturally clean pollution and toxins from water. Soils, microorganisms, and plant roots all play a role in filtering and recycling out pollutants with a price far cheaper than building a water filtration plant. According to research, the more biodiverse the ecosystem, the faster and more efficiently water is purified.

Pollination: Imagine trying to pollinate every apple blossom in an orchard: this is what nature does for us. Insects, birds, and even some mammals, pollinate the world’s plants, including much of human agriculture. Around 80% of the world’s plants require a different species to act as pollinator.

In agriculture, pollinators are required for everything from tomatoes to cocoa, and almonds to buckwheat, among hundreds of other crops. Globally, agricultural pollination has been estimated to be worth around $216 billion a year. However large such monetary estimates don’t include pollination for crops consumed by livestock, biofuels, ornamental flowers, or the massive importance of wild plant pollination.

Seed dispersal: Much like pollination, many of the world’s plants require other species to move their seeds from the parent plant to new sprouting ground. Seeds are dispersed by an incredibly wide-variety of players: birds, bats, rodents, megafauna like elephants and tapir, and even, researchers have recently discovered, fish. Seed dispersal is especially important for tropical forests where a majority of plants depend on animals to move.

Pest control: A recent study found that bats save US agriculture billions of dollars a year simply by doing what they do naturally: eating insects, many of which are potentially harmful to US crops.

Almost all agricultural pests have natural enemies, along with bats, these include birds, spiders, parasitic wasps and flies, fungi, and viral diseases. The loss, or even decline, of such pest-eating predators can have massive impacts on agriculture and ecosystems.

Soil health: The ground under our feet matters more than we often admit. Healthy fertile soil provides optimal homes for plants, while participating in a number of natural cycles: from recycling nutrients to purifying water. Although soil is renewable, it is also sensitive to overuse and degradation often due to industrial agriculture, pollution, and fertilizers. Natural vegetation and quality soil also mitigates excessive erosion, which can have dramatic impacts from loss of agricultural land to coastlines simply disappearing into the sea.

Medicine: Nature is our greatest medicine cabinet: to date it has provided humankind with a multitude of life-saving medicines from quinine to aspirin, and from morphine to numerous cancer and HIV-fighting drugs. There is no question that additionally important medications—perhaps even miracle cures—lie untapped in the world’s ecosystems. In fact, researchers estimate that less than 1% of the world’s known species have been fully examined for their medicinal value. However the ecosystems that have yielded some of the world’s most important and promising drugs—such as rainforests, peat swamps, and coral reefs—are also among the most endangered. Preserving ecosystems and species today may benefit, or even save, millions of lives tomorrow.

Fisheries: Humankind has turned to the rivers and seas for food for at least 40,000 years but probably even longer. Today, amid concern of a global fishery collapse, more than a billion people depend on fish as their primary source of protein, many of them among the global poor. Fisheries also provide livelihoods, both directly and indirectly, for around half a billion. Coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass ecosystems provide nurseries for the world’s fisheries, while the open ocean is used for migrating routes and hunting.

Even with the direct importance of the world’s fisheries for food, stewardship has been lacking, allowing many populations to drop precipitously and still permitting ecologically destructive fishing. While the world’s fisheries are primarily threatened by overfishing, including bycatch, marine pollution is also a major problem.

     Biodiversity and wildlife abundance: The argument to save the world’s wildlife has often come from an aesthetic point of view. Many conservationists have fought to save species simply because they like a particular species. This is often why more popularly known animals—tigers, elephants, rhinos—receive far more attention than less popular (although just as endangered) wildlife—for example, the redbelly egg frog, the smokey bat, or the bastard quiver tree. But beyond making the world a less lonely, less boring, and less beautiful place—admirable reasons in themselves—many of the services provided by biodiversity are similar to those provided by all of nature. Biodiversity produces food, fibers, wood products; it cleans water, controls agricultural pests, pollinates and dispersers the world plants; and provides recreation, such as birdwatching, gardening, diving, and ecotourism.

In the discussion of biodiversity, however, bioabundance is often ignored. A loss in bioabundance means that species are not just important for their diversity, but for their numbers. While Asian elephants may not go extinct any time soon, their depletion in forests means that the ecosystems lose the elephants’ special ecological talents such as spreading seeds and engineering micro-habitats. The drop in salmon populations in the US has caused the entire freshwater ecosystem to receive less nutrients every year (researchers estimate a nutrient-drop of over 90 percent); this means less food for people, less salmon for predators, and a less rich river overall. Declining nutrients also makes it impossible for the salmon to rebound to optimal populations, creating a vicious circle of bio-decline.

Climate regulation: The natural world helps regulate the Earth’s climate. Ecosystems such as rainforests, peatlands, and mangroves store significant amounts of carbon, while the ocean captures massive amounts of carbon through phytoplankton. While regulating greenhouse gases are imperative in the age of climate change, new research is showing that the world’s ecosystems may also play a role in weather. A recent study found that the Amazon rainforest acted as its own ‘bioreactor’, producing clouds and precipitation through the abundance of plant materials in the forest.

Economy: In the common tension viewed between the economy and the environment—e.g. do we clear-cut a forest or conserve it?—one fact is often neglected: the environment underpins the entire global economy. Without fertile soils, clean drinking water, healthy forests, and a stable climate, the world’s economy would face disaster. By imperiling our environment, we imperil the economy. According to research published in Science, the global worth of total ecosystem services could run between $40-60 trillion a year.

Health: Recent research has found what nature-lovers have long expected: spending time in a green space, such as a park, provides benefits for one’s mental and physical health. Exercising in a park, instead of inside a gym, has shown to provide mental health benefits as a greater sense of well-being. Walking for 20 minutes in a green space has been proven to help children with ADHD improve their concentration, even working as well, or better, than medication. People who live in more natural settings have better overall health, even when research has taken into account economic differences.

Art: Imagine poetry without flowers, painting without landscapes, or film without scenery. Imagine if Shakespeare had no rose to compare Juliet to, or if William Blake had no Tyger to set alight. Imagine if Van Gogh lacked crows to paint or Durer a rhinoceros to cut. What would the Jungle Book be without Baloo or the Wind in the Willows without Mr. Badger? Imagine My Antonia without the red grass of the American prairie or Wuthering Heights without the bleak moors. How would The Lord of the Rings film series appear without the stunning mountain ranges of New Zealand, or Lawrence of Arabia without the desert of North Africa? There is no question that the natural world has provided global arts with some of its greatest subjects. What we lose in nature, we also lose in art.

Spiritual: While some of what nature provides us is measurable, most of what nature gives us is simply beyond measure. Economic measurements are useful; but as with most of what happens in the world, economics is simply incapable of capturing true worth. Science is also a useful measurement regarding the importance of nature, but once again cannot measure what nature means—practically and aesthetically—to each individual.

Perhaps the most difficult gift of nature’s to measure is its ingrained connection to human spirituality. In most of the world’s religions the natural world is rightly revered. In Christianity, Earthly paradise existed in a garden, while Noah, the original conservationist, is commanded by God to save every species. Buddhists believe all life—from the smallest fly to the blue whale—is sacred and worthy of compassion. For Hindus every bit of the natural world is infused with divinity. Muslims believe the natural world was created by Allah and only given to humans as gift to be held in trust. Indigenous cultures worldwide celebrate the natural world as their ‘mother’.

But one need not be religious to understand the importance of nature to the human spirit: one only need spend time alone in a shadowy forest, sit on a forgotten beach, touch the spine of a living frog, or watch the quarter moon swing behind mountain silhouettes.

 ð Tbh, I was not in mood to write today. So they are not exactly my words. But I tried to gather as much information as I can from different places so that you guys can really feel the importance of nature by just reading this one blog.

#nature #nature lovers #environment #love #blog #writers #black lives matter #nwsl #hazbin hotel #shinee

[doorpatio38]

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Provided what is currently understood, this Phase IIa research study would certainly produce beneficial results. The medicine would certainly consequently be continued into routine Phase I safety studies in healthy volunteers. Right here a variety of dosages would be examined and also the optimum tolerated dose developed. All of this job would be routine and performed in the sensible expectation that tadalafil would certainly verify to be a secure medication.

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Can a tan be permanent? A tan is never permanent because skin naturally exfoliates itself over time. This causes the tanned skin to flake off. Anyone who you see who seems “permanently” tan either has darker skin naturally, uses a sunless tanning lotion or spray tans, or goes in the sun regularly.

Considering that water retention as well as loss of muscle mass meaning prevail with higher dosages of testosterone, this medicine is usually taken into consideration a poor selection for weight loss orcuttingphases of training. Elevated oestrogen levels can cause adverse effects such as enhanced water retention, body fat gain, andgynaecomastia. Boldenone is thought about a slightly oestrogenic steroid.Aromatisationstudies suggest that its rate of conversion to oestradiol is about half that of testosterone.

Lots of suggest you use the product before the night to ensure that you will not feel any kind of pain throughout the day. But not all people experience the discomfort, it all depends on your body.

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The tendency to establish visible oestrogenic side effects with boldenone must be slightly more than nandrolone, but much less than with testosterone. Estrogenic side effects are generally not pronounced unless this medicine is taken in dosages over mg per week. Ananti-oestrogensuch asclomiphene citrateortamoxifen citratemight be made use of to aid alleviate these side effects, ought to they end up being existing. One may alternately utilize an aromatase inhibitor like Arimidex ®, although it is substantially a lot more expensive, as well as may negatively impact blood lipids. Testosterone is the key male androgen, as well as offers solid adverse feedback on endogenous testosterone production. Estrogenic negative effects will occur in a dose-dependent fashion, with higher doses of testosterone propionate more probable to call for the concurrent use an anti-oestrogen or aromatase prevention.

It proceeds that this unanticipated observation has actually enabled the development of a device dose including about 1 to 5mg of Compound which, when by mouth carried out, reduces undesirable negative effects previously believed unavoidable. It says that these adverse effects consist of face flushing, vision problems and also a substantial reduction in blood pressure. It ends that the very little result of Compound, administered in regarding 1 to about 5mg device dose kinds, on PDE6 allows the management of a selective PDE5 inhibitor to clients struggling with retinal disease. As for dosing, it was known that sildenafil was marketed in dosages of 25mg, 50mg and 100mg which extensively efficacy boosted with dose, as did negative effects. The judge found that those 3 dosages were the dosages upon which a skilled group would certainly focus although it was also recognized that a 10mg dose of sildenafil had been explored in tests and revealed to be effective.

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That brings me to the 2nd issue in between the events, specifically the meaning of words "as much as an optimum overall dose of 5mg daily" in claims 7 and 10. It is necessary, not the very least since the allegation of infringement of these cases depends on it. The complaintants said at test that these words put on the population as a whole and so the claims omit the situation in which a doctor could recommend tadalafil for some people at a daily dosage of 5mg as well as others at, say, 20mg. Below, so the argument went, the maximum everyday dose would be 20mg per day.

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He went on to consider what the knowledgeable group's reasoning would be in development of such notional studies. He concluded that the proficient individual would relate to a 25 mg dosage of tadalafil as a marketable dosage. The experienced group will have specified a minimum scientifically appropriate impact for their own objectives. They would have no assumption that the minimal reliable dosage was significantly less than 25 mg. The most that could be stated was that the group would certainly expect that someplace listed below 25 mg there would certainly be a dose of tadalafil which did not work. They would certainly wish to see a dosage action but even if they anticipated to see any kind of statistically significant effect at 10 mg, they would have no practical expectation that 10 mg tadalafil would produce a scientifically pertinent effect as they had specified it. In regards to assumptions, a totally possible end result would be that the minimum reliable dose would to be discovered to be in between 10 and 25mg.

It was started upon Daugan, an application which was published on 6 February 1997, that is to state prior to the earliest feasible top priority day of the 181 license. Daugan instructs using PDE5 preventions for the treatment of ED. Tadalafil is specifically disclosed, its IC50 against PDE5 is given and instances of a tablet computer including a 50mg dose are described. It describes that dosages of tadalafil will usually remain in the variety of from 0.5 to 800mg daily for the typical adult individual. Lastly, sends Mr Fleck, the court should certainly have actually discovered that the priority file does not make it probable that tadalafil will certainly be efficacious in treating ED when provided at an optimum overall dose of 5mg per day. It is claimed that there is no disclosure of the effectiveness of tadalafil when carried out at a maximum dosage of 5mg each day, and also still less is there any type of disclosure of the efficiency of tadalafil when provided at any kind of dosage at or listed below 5mg per day.

Upon this appeal Mr Fleck contends, as he did at trial, that the judge has actually here come under mistake and that the optimum dose described in these claims is certainly the maximum for the individual population as a whole. He points out that the Recap of Product Characteristics (the "SmPC") for each of the complaintants' formulas provides prescribing and dosing info for 2.5, 5, 10 and 20mg tablets. He continues that the SmPCs take place to attend to advisable doses and make reference to 10 and also 20mg for on demand use and also 5 and 2.5 mg for everyday usage.

Exemestane is FDA authorized for adjunctive treatment of postmenopausal females with oestrogen-receptor positive early breast cancer with illness progression followingtamoxifen. Therapy is initiated 2-3 years after tamoxifen has failed to elicit a desirable feedback, at which point tamoxifen is ceased.

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When utilized for physique-or performance-enhancing functions, somatropin is normally administered at a dose between 1 IU and also 6 IU each day (2-4 IU being most usual). The medicine is commonly cycled in a comparable way toanabolic/androgenic steroids, with the length of intake normally being in between 6 weeks and 24 weeks. Theanaboliceffects of this medication are less obvious than itslipolytic buildings, as well as typically take longer amount of times as well as higher dosages to materialize themselves. Oestrogenic side effects will take place in a dose-dependent fashion, with higher dosages of testosterone propionate more probable to call for the concurrent use an anti-oestrogen or aromatase inhibitor.

Prolonged visual disturbances have been reported after the discontinuation of clomiphene citrate treatment, nonetheless, and also in many cases might be irreversible. Those taking clomiphene citrate need to be warned that these signs and symptoms might make tasks like driving an automobile or operating heavy machinery more unsafe than common. While the specific cause of these visual symptoms is not yet recognized, it is a good idea to discontinue treatment as well as have a complete medical/opthalmological examination needs to they take place. When used by guys (off-label) to mitigate theoestrogenicside results ofanabolic/androgenic steroid usage, a daily dose of mg (1-2 tablet computers) is normally provided while any angering steroids are taken. Note, nonetheless, thattamoxifenis normally offered preference over clomiphene citrate for this objective.

Therapy with exemestane is proceeded for 2-3 additional years, and also is completed after 5 years of advancing adjunctive medicine treatment. The dosage recommended in all instances is one 25 mg tablet per day, taken after a meal. Some patients using clomiphene citrate notification blurring or other aesthetic disturbances such as spots or flashes. view full pricing take place a lot more frequently at higher doses or longer durations of treatment, and also typically go away within a few days or weeks of use.

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As for adverse effects, the competent team would certainly anticipate efficacy and also PDE5 related adverse effects to go together. At [343], the court considered the sources required for the program and the attitude of the knowledgeable team as it proceeds. Mr Fleck does not test the judge's finding that the programme would involve really substantial resources in terms of time, cash and scientists. He proceeds that the motivation would certainly remain due to the fact that the group would certainly know that the scientific reaction to every one of the tested doses had been the same. However in analyzing the relevance of these options to the issue of obviousness it is important to have a variety of issues well in mind. First, the choice about daily and also as needed application would certainly be taken after Stage I as well as with the expertise of the numerous matters I have laid out at above, including half-life. The judge located that at this point the skilled team would choose to pursue both of them (see, particularly, the judge's findings at ).

In my judgment this passage shows, in its first sentence, the administration of various possible dosage forms as required up to a maximum dose of 20mg per day. The second sentence after that explains alternatives to that maximum total dosage. Hence, ideally the optimum dose administered daily is between 5 and also 20mg; more preferably between 5 and also 15mg; and also most ideally 10mg administered in a 10mg dose type. I am therefore satisfied that the court comprehended this passage properly which he was right to locate that it discloses not simply the administration of a total dosage daily of 20mg yet likewise an overall dose daily of 5mg. This facet of insurance claim 1 of the license is for that reason revealed in the priority file.

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It is a case to an item which makes up 1 to 5mg of tadalafil as well as which appropriates for oral management as much as an optimum total amount dose of 5mg each day. But it is not restricted to a tablet computer intended for usage or in fact utilized because way. There can be no doubt that the accusation that the claimed development was obvious was, in the scenarios of this case, an effective one.

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He discovered that the assumptions of the team at this phase would be no various from those they had earlier. In addition, in the judge's words, "a disagreement which needs 3 rounds of dose ranging to arrive at the creation is starting to appear like hindsight". The next action would certainly be regular Stage IIb dose varying studies in larger groups of individuals. For this the experienced group would need to select a range of dosages. As for adverse effects, they would believe that any type of decrease in these results would be gone along with by a decrease in efficiency, their understanding being that effectiveness and adverse effects have the very same source. The group would be most likely to pick a dosage of 50mg and also would certainly launch the research with an affordable assumption that, at this dosage, the drug would certainly be secure, bearable and also efficient.

Oestrogenic negative effects will happen in a dose-dependent manner, with higher dosages of testosterone cypionate most likely to require concurrent use of an anti-oestrogen oraromatase inhibitor. Because water retention and loss of muscle meaning typical with greater dosages of testosterone cypionate, this medication is normally thought about a poor option for weight loss cutting stages of training. To deal with androgen lack, mesterolone is normally given up a dose of 1 tablet 3 times daily at the initiation of therapy. The medicine is later continued at a lower maintenance dosage, which generally consists of taking 1 tablet computer one to two times per day. Comparable dosages are made use of to support male fertility, normally together with various other fertility drugs like injectable FSH. The common dose amongst male athletes is between 50 mg and 150 mg of mesterolone per day, or 2 to 6 25 mg tablet computers. The medicine is normally absorbed cycles of 6-12 weeks in length, which is usually an adequate time period to notice the benefits of medicine treatment.

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Elite S2 - Worth It

Hola, hola, hola, ¿cómo están? 

Netflix España’s hit teenage drama, Eilte, is back with its second season and surprisingly, is worth it. In only 8 episodes, the writers managed to reveal who Marina’s killer is to the Elite squad while introducing 3 new characters that serve as catalysts for some of the main characters. - spoilers ahead, just a heads up.-

The Good

The writers found a new way to keep Marina’s storyline alive with a different point of view. The communication between the teens and how open they are talking about sex, drugs, problems, etc... is nice to see that. 

The Bad 

The temporary write off of both Nano and Christian was unnecessary. To some point, I understand why Nano would leave, but Christian’s case, that was some real  class bullshit right there. You have the one main character that knows the truth and you decide to get rid of him in the first episode? The fuck? Oh yeah, you know why? Cause, that’s how you set up the whole Samuel x Carla bullshit... 🙄

The show is still 8 episodes long. I personally believe that at this point the show could afford to at least hit the double digits. 

The Ugly 

Cayetana - Talk about a fucking unnecessary character. Her arc is so bland that  the best the writers could do was turn her into a modern age con-artist, cause mind you that’s what she is, until her purpose was finally exposed a.k.a Polo. Also, Cayetana is the one character that is used to give in house bitch, Lucrecia a redemption arc and humanize her again, she is still a bitch tho. 

Breakdown 

Samuel goes missing. Okay. Christian gets run over by Carla’s dad hit squad. Okay. Let’s stop. As mentioned above Christian gets written off by a car “accident” that paralyzes him and hey, the in laws are willing to pay for his recovery in Sweden....so  off to Sweden and just like that the one character that could have ratted out both Carla and Polo is taken care off. The only reason that shit had to happen is cause Carla had to fall for Samuel. I personally think is bullshit, that Christian didn’t asked for a moment by himself and Samuel and just spilled the beans. Por que puñetaaaa, if your bestfriend’s brother who is also your other bestfriend is in jail, you would think some he would try to do something, realistically speaking that’s what teenagers would do. However, that shit doesn’t happen. So Bye bye Christian. 

Samuel and Carla, talk about, de el odio al amor hay solo un paso, bullshit. Fans are going crazy over this ship but is an excellent example of the writers doing a good job at setting this bullshit up and getting away with it. Let me remind you that Carla not once looked at Samuel, like oh yeah I wanna fuck him in season one. She was swayed by Christian and that was the introduction to the Polo x Carla x Christian dynamic. So in season  2, it took Samuel giving her a little attention when her boytoy, Christian is not around, and she just gives in. Literally that’s all it took, like one episode. It took Christian more effort than Samuel, just  throwing that in there. However, this happened because, in order for Samuel to be found, Carla had to “break” and confess and expose Polo. That is the plan that both Samuel and Guzman come up with and it works. She “out of love” breaks and exposes Polo. 🙄To be honest with you, i was waiting for the moment that she would also deal with legal consequences for helping him out but you know, una puta con corazon de oro. Let’s be real Carla’s character has no purpose except for sex appeal and the Polo expose, that’s it, that’s the character. Cool thing that came out of it is Samuel and Guzman’s friendship. 

Nadia and Guzman, let’s be real, their  appeal is the whole Romeo and Juliet trope in a modern society. Guzman goes through a lot of emotions due to Marina, Lu, and Nadia. Eventually he breaks, it was bound to happen but he also finally,  leaves Lucrecia. Now, it is  Nadia that is getting all the backlash from the fans. Nadia in the eyes of many has been reduced from a badass proud Muslim girl to I’ll do anything to get Guzman, which is bullshit. Nadia’s transformation is 2 seasons long. One she finally breaks free on her own accords and 2, she takes control of her own actions without being forced by outside forces. Example, Lucrecia and the hijab bullshit at school. People have to realize that Nadia is the character that will defend her right to do what she wants, when she wants to, not because someone is forcing her to do so. It takes two seasons of context for her character to come alive.

She also gains a new female bestie, Rebeca. Rebeca is one of the catalysts of this season. She is one of Nadia’s biggest cheerleaders and confidants. A teenage girl usually needs a female bestie, and Rebeca is that for Nadia. Rebeca is also kinda used by Samuel, but Samuel is also used by her mom. The point is that Rebeca’s biggest purpose in the show is to be Nadia’s girl. I’m okay with that. 

Lucrecia and Valerio, the Cruel Intentions + Flowers on the Attic dynamic, just doesn’t cut it. So here is my theory and the more I think about it and analyze it, it makes sense. The writers needed someone to beat Lucrecia with her own tactics, and who better than her half brother former lover Valerio? This is the perfect example of taste your own medicine. Nadia went head to head with Lu and won and lost. Guzman, lord knows it took too damn long for him to call it off and be honest about his lack of love for her, so here comes Valerio and does what needed to be done, he breaks her but in the process he breaks himself as well. I am not a fan of the incest, but Valerio is by far the best introduction this season. He, for the wrong seasons, wanted Nadia and Guzman together; however in the process he becomes friends with Nadia, which I personally appreciated. He also, makes the selfish stupid decision in recording her and Guzman having sex and sending the video to Lu, hoping that Lu would wake up from Luland and see that Guzman, just doesn’t love you anymore and it works. The backlash is that she spreads the video, to which he tells Nadia that he is the one who took it, and there goes their friendship. Mind you, all of this is after, he tells Nadia the whole incest thing. Eventually Lucrecia snaps in a fake gala by truly yours, Cayetana, exposes Cayetana, Guzman’s relationship, and has her emotional bullshit breakdown after she fucks her brother, then she fucks him again. So Valerio done with her bullshit, in the family dinner text’s daddy to look underneath the table y puta madre, quedo cabron!!!! Daddy gets to see how close his 2 kids really are. Now my only complaint is that at the end of season 2 Valerio is nowhere to be found while Rebe and Cayetana are still there, which makes sense. I personally would have liked to see the del amor al odio es solo un paso, cause let’s be real, Lucrecia will always be the greedy bitch of my way or my way and the only one that can beat her at it is her own fucking brother. I needed that. I need that. 

Ander and Omar,  the growth, their communication, the trust, the love, the love, fucking amazing. Omar, gets kicked out for finally standing up to his father, so he goes to Ander’s. He gains freedom and a non-toxic home that he, himself, said he is not going back to. He gets a job, he gets to dress up, and just be himself, fucking shit, HE DESERVES IT, PUÑETA! Ander on the other hand, has to deal with the hey my bestfriend killed my other bestfriend’s sister, cause Polo actually tells him. Ander’s emotional and mental state, did get the best of him to some point, his relationship with Omar gets affected, his relationship to Guzman eventually goes to shit, and Polo, well you know. However, Omar and Ander do figure things out, cause somehow, they are a mature couple that do loves each other. 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Cayetana and Polo, let’s be real, I don’t like the bitch. She gets introduced as another high class snob and immediately becomes friends with Lu. In the process she falls for Polo. Cayetana is ashamed of her poor life background and literally lies and fakes her way through life. It gets to the point that to pay off a debt of a dress she stole, she makes up this fundraiser gala that Lu eventually makes it a reality for her, in order for her to get the money to pay off the debt and keep the rest for her school, family, etc... that’s a con-artist, period. This bitch has no purpose except that she becomes Polo’s new partner in crime.  She hides  the trophy, y’all. That’s it, that’s the character.  She’s so bland. She is so useless. In all honesty, she is not needed, Polo could had turned on Carla and bring her down too, but deep down he is still in love with her and  his anxiety gets the best of him, and that I understand. Cayetana is now the worst character in the series. Con artist and partner in crime with a killer. 

Also, Polo is technically a killer but not really. He killed Marina, in what it looks like as a pre-anxiety breakdown and a fit of rage trying to protect Carla. Keep in mind he didn’t wanted to kill her, he actually asked  multiple times for the fucking watch , is not premeditated murder, he was trying to get the watch back and his worry over Carla pushed him to a breaking point. On top of that Marina coming at him made him snap. In season 2 his anxiety is in an all time high, due to the secret. He and Ander do bail out  Nano, but he never confesses. In a way I  do blame the writers in not wanting to bring Carla down, by not having Polo confess and point her as the one to suggest to cover up and shit, cause she was trying to protect daddy, who needs no fucking protection. This would have been completely different season, if Polo and Christian would had teamed up against Carla. That right there would have been fucking fantastic. In reality the culprit and catalyst of this are Marina and the watch, but the main problem is Carla’s dad. If Polo and Christian would had teamed up with Samuel and Guzman, it would have been a total different season, granted that also meant that Polo had to confess his act to Guzman, but it would have been a total different season. In reality Elite needs a villain and right now Polo is the easier choice. Is clear that if season 3 comes through, it will be a them vs  Polo + Cayetana, which is fine I guess, but it steers away from the actual reason it happened, the fucking watch. I’m not saying Carla’s dad is corrupt, but Carla’s dad is corrupt. 

Tl;dr: Season 2, exposes Polo by making Carla fall in love with Samuel. Lucrecia breaks cause she can’t have everything she wants, from Guzman to her brother, so she spreads a video of Nadia and Guzman having sex, real classy. Omander is still alive. Rebeca is a true friend. Guzman and Samuel are a good combo. Cayetana is a con artist that helps Polo to walk free by retrieving the trophy from the lake and hiding it. That’s it that’s the season. 

I do believe that Elite’s downfall is not wanting  to finish the murder storyline. Ideally they would wrap up the Marina murder storyline and shift the focus onto Carla’s dad and the  watch, but that shit  is not  going to  happen let’s be real. 

Overall score : Is a solid 4/5. 

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