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wisteria-lodge · 3 years

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bird primary (system in progress) + burnt badger secondary (really loud bird model)

Howdy! I’m still trying to figure out my own houses and was wondering if you could provide some insight. I haven’t exactly mastered the system so I don’t know how accurate/inaccurate my claims are, so bear with me.

The “why”/Primary: I am extremely motivated by knowledge. I want to know things, not just out of intrinsic curiosity (though that does play a role), but because knowing why things work helps me protect myself more effectively.

One of the trickiest things about this system is separating motivation from method. Because yeah, they are related, but they're also really different. Like this example: "I protect myself by learning things." That's a how, that's secondary stuff. (Bird secondary of course.)

A recent example is this— a group of my former friends all ditched me because I discussed a heavily stigmatized mental disorder that I show symptoms of. And my first response (other than bawling) was to ask them why. And when I got the answer, I was hurt, but I understood. I don’t say this for you to show me pity, but rather because it illustrates this model in action.

This is a really interesting example. Your friends acted in a way that emotionally hurt you. First you processed your feelings (which you talk about in a dismissive, lighthearted, jokey way) then you asked them for more information... which hurt you, but also made you more secure. This is very Bird primary. You feel feelings, but they're whatever. What actually bothers you is not having the data.

(I suspect you're going to end up being a Double Bird. And Double Birds are unique in that their morality and problem-solving are SO interconnected, that they think I'm crazy for saying that for most people, they are in fact two very different things.)

When I got the why and processed my emotions, I cut off ties and realized that their severe judgy-ness had hindered my life for 2 years. And now that I know the “why”, I won’t bring up said disorder again until I know it’s safe. It might never be, but I still have hope.

You updated your system, and you cut away the parts that aren't serving you anymore. Bird primary.

Morally-speaking, I am very sensitive to the views of others around me.

External primary.

I’m not proud of this. In fact, it’s a detriment.

A lot of Birds feel this way. It's a big part of why they tend to like Lion primaries. Lions are much more able to dismiss things with "sounds like that's a them problem."

I won’t go into details, but my parents are… bad. Not wholly, but they are bad. I’ve tried for years, and still do, to escape their opinions because I know it’ll influence mine.

Parents are sticky. They do that. I've been a happily UnBurnt Lion primary for a while now... but I still sometimes hear that voice in my head that sounds like my mother.

And, much like them, I tend to get over-passionate in what I stand for. Unlike them, I’m willing to change if evidence supports this change. I always, however, carry the burden of my former hatred. I always feel guilt over my old beliefs. Even if I’ve changed, the pain I’ve done can never be reversed. And this guilt eats me alive, this shame of being fundamentally wrong.

Okay. You got really emotional on me really quickly here. This could mean a couple things. Your parents sound like fairly toxic Idealists, either Exploded Lions or Exploded Birds (I'm sort of leaning Lion due to the more emotion-heavy words like "passion" and "hatred.") Birds can feel bad, feel guilt, feel shame when looking back at an older version of themselves that they now consider morally repugnant. (Birds are human.) Idealists struggle with the angst of worrying that they are fundamentally wrong about the world. So you could be a guilty Bird, especially if your emotions feel wrong or unhelpful somehow. But you could also be a very Burnt Lion modeling Bird - because Bird seems safer, and you don't want to be a Lion the way your parents are.

When the friend-event happened, I thought that I was in the wrong, and that I had once again fucked myself over because of my passion and sureness in what I have.

"I thought I was wrong because I was acting like an Exploded Lion primary." Yeah, I'm thinking there's some sort of outside influence here that needs to be unpacked.

It took a lot of convincing and evidence for me to see that they were the assholes (albeit I wasn’t pure either— I was their friend, after all).

I'm definitely leaning Bird for you. A bird surrounded by Lions maybe, who sometimes uses Lion terminology. But Bird.

I am a planner and system-lover at heart. I’m not proud of it, but it’s just part of me.

What's with all this negative language? Being a planner and a system-lover is a wonderful thing to be. There's some Burning here.

The caveat— I have autism, so I’m not sure if it’s due to that or not. Hence the shortness of this section. Take it as you will, regardless of if it’s evidence or not.

I have autism and I'm a Lion Badger. People are different. The only real pattern I've observed is the way nerodivergent people disproportionately build Bird secondaries as coping strategies.

Honesty is maybe not the best policy, it’s still an admirable one. I wish, frankly, that my moral system was more honest. I feel like I have no set morals. That it all comes from elsewhere. Lion primaries have this set, intrinsic morality that I envy. My friend is a lion primary, and while my views have radically changed, hers haven’t inched. She’s always been honest about herself and what she holds true.

I'm doubling down on Bird primary for you. This is the perspective of a Bird looking in on a Lion. Lion morality isn't set or intrinsic - it's built, and it changes, but it builds and changes differently than a Bird's does (more slowly, usually). But there really is a pattern of Birds seeing it as more moral/easier/better.

And I’m still trying to figure out what “truth” means to me. I mean, yes, I’m a dry and blunt asshole, but that’s not really the same as gut morality. Internal honesty is what I want, and external honesty is what I have to some extent.

It sounds that you are going though a lot of very intense shifts in your life right now. You've got a diagnosis that has you questioning your place in the world. You've followed your parent's system all you life, and are now deciding that you don't want that. But now comes deciding what you do want, and that's a lot harder (especially for a Bird, who has to build it from the ground up.) You like the way Lions do things, but Lion primaries do not feel accessible.

I’m very clear with who I like. I can admit their faults, and even get annoyed or angry at them, but not even betrayal can stop me from loving them. I’d compare myself to the Twelfth Doctor from “Doctor Who” and Ponyboy Curtis from The Outsiders in that regard.

So maybe you are building a system with very Snake values.

Loyalty is one of my weaknesses. I get overly-attached to people, and so if/when they leave me, it shatters my world. But my brand of loyalty is mostly to people, not philosophical ideas.

... but you're not *really* comfortable with Snake either, if you consider it to be a "weakness."

I would consider myself somewhat philosophical (well, as much as a fucking teenager can be)

Teenagers are *extremely* philosophical, stop being so down on yourself.

but I can be somewhat vague in my beliefs.

Because you're still building them, give yourself a *second.*

If I were to rate the likelihood of what primary I think I am, it’s something like this:

Bird: 9/10 probability (maybe burned)

Snake: 7/10 probability

Badger: 6/10 probability (maybe burned)

Lion: 2/10 probability

What is it with Birds and numbered lists?

The “how”: I feel like I change in order to fit in. I mean, to some extent, we all do, but it’s far more drastic for me. With the lion primary friend, I act as a “Jason Todd” to their Batman. I challenge them, egg them on, crack jokes and become violently passionate and act like a nerd, and she simply watches, usually adding her own comments but mostly sitting on the sidelines by choice. We also joke that I’m the Ferris Bueller to their Cameron Frye. But, with another friend, I’m a parent figure. I listen most of the time, and sometimes jump in with creative ideas and we talk for hours about it.

I'm guessing Actor Bird, both because you can specifically list out the qualities that you "act" out. And because you're invoking and basing your performance off specific [fictional] characters. Which is a HUGE Actor Bird thing.

I go with the flow of a given situation as best as I can (with the added caveat of being autistic, because that does affect how well I can read a room). However, that’s where the adaptation ends.

Huh. I'm hearing Burnt secondary language here. "I'd like to go with the flow and read the room - but I can't, because I'm autistic." You can definitely *learn* how to read a room. Why do you think I'm so interested in (and good at :) personality systems? This is how I learned to use my Courtier Badger. I used to model Bird secondary like crazy, and I kind of don't bother anymore. I don't need the training wheels.

Planning: like I stated before, I’m a planner. I try to learn the most about a situation before jumping in. Sometimes, however, I stall the inevitable and miss my chance, so I jump in and wind up nearly drowning. And this dichotomy repeats. I overcompensate for a lack of knowledge in a situation by micromanaging, or I wind up sitting bored when I’ve already done everything I need to do. And yes, stress and boredom are equally as destructive for me. I try so hard to plan to avoid both of these outcomes, but it only works half the time. So, I guess I’m a bit of a “planster” overall.

I want to learn about a situation... but sometimes I "stall" or "drown" (Burnt language.) But planning also leads to "micromanaging" and "getting bored" (model language.) I think you've got a really loud Bird secondary model... but there might be something else underneath.

Collecting things is fun. Postcards, candles, lighters, crystals, rocks, 1940s hats, knowledge, stories, music, (original) characters, the list goes on. I’m a collector of whatever I can get my hands on. Hell, by this point, I can’t tell what’s my special interest and what I just enjoy (again, autism).

Oh my goodness gracious 'my special interest' and 'what I enjoy' are not two different categories!

But my systems and collections are my coping.

Figured.

I can’t say, though, that they hold any weight outside of emotional release. There’s nothing practical about knowing how they shot The Outsiders movie, or how crows have a flat tail and ravens have two main sections on theirs. All of this knowledge almost feels useless to me. I mean, sure, I’m great at school, but what else? Nothing, it seems like. And being good at school and nothing else makes a person go crazy when they can’t achieve their academic goals. But that’s a bit besides the point— I’m a collector, but I’m unsure how well this really fits into a secondary beyond a model.

Bird secondary model.

I invest in others more than I care to admit.

Oh man, are you a Badger secondary like me?

I genuinely believe in the goodness in humans, no matter how impossible it becomes. Even those who I don’t see any good in aren’t wholly evil. My perception isn’t law.

^ That's primary stuff. Maybe a more Badger-flavored system is going to work better for you than a Snake-flavored one.

But some people trust me: with their secrets, with homework, with relationship issues, with their religious struggles. And I try to help. I might not be good with it, but I do try to help as best I can.

Kinda sounds like a Badger secondary.

I use my planning and my categorizing skills and my knowledge to benefit others. I show up, I do what I need to do, and I don’t usually expect much to come of it. It’s nice when something does, but it’s not expected. And sometimes, these investments into others' lives and grades and relationships do pay off. I make friends. Those friends stick by me, and I trust them. I continue to invest in others, because I am a lover even though I’m cynical.

I think you're a Badger secondary.

And when that trust is broken, like the example in the beginning, I go to people who won’t abandon me to get a second opinion. When I say that I love someone, I mean it. So it hurts when they leave. It always does.

Oh that's your friends leaving hit you so hard. It's not an abstract morality thing at all, it's practical. You're a Badger secondary, and they were your base of support.

I’ll be frank on this— I’m almost entirely sure that I’m not a lion secondary. I’m fiercely efficient and some people see me as a good leader, but that’s it.

Lion and Badger are the two Inspirational secondaries. They're the one who sort of manage to collect armies or families as a side effect of existing.

Even with the leader example, I prefer interpersonal relations or to be alone. I’m not a big fan of group settings.

That's fair. I am also a Badger who really, really likes my own company. Or small groups of interesting people.

If I were to rate the likelihood of what secondary I am, it’s like this:

Bird: 7/10 probability

Badger: 6/10 probability

Snake: 5/10 probability

Lion: 0/10 probability

Other systems for comparison: I’m aware that MBTI and enneagram are, at worst, pseudo-science, but I still enjoy them regardless. At best, they’re fun self-help tools, and that’s how I try to use them.

MBTI: INTJ (Ni-Te-Fi-Se)

Enneagram: 5w4, tritype 514

Sagittarius sun libra moon cancer rising in astrology

FLEV or LFEV in attitudinal psyche

sx/sp (sexual and self-preservation) in instinctual variants

MBTI, Enneagram, and astrology are all fun in their own ways. (I don't actually know the last two!) And I can talk about them on their own terms. But this system was the best, and the most useful, when I went looking for words to describe myself.

I hope this is enough information, and thank you again if you do happen to do this! If you don’t, that’s totally okay. Have a good day!

Thank you for writing in. That was a journey! Thanks @thesketchykid for the submission.

#sortinghatchats #sortme #wisteria sorts #bird badger #birdpri #badgersec #bird secondary model #badger secondary vs bird secondary #autism stuff

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disgruntledspacedad · 4 years

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in defense of Din’s subdued reaction to losing the kid...

gif by @quantam-widow

I know we were all thinking it. We got a 2 second reaction shot to the destruction of the Razor Crest (may she forever rest in peace), but then, Grogu gets taken, and... nothing?

What the fuck, Din? we all protest. That’s your baby on that ship! Don’t you care? Scream, curse, kick a rock, cry, make a fist, something!!

I will acknowledge that so far, the show has been excellent with giving us emotional payoff, am I right? I mean, just today we got Din laughing, twice. Twice in a row. I honestly never thought we’d see that. There have been so many excellent, precious soft!Din moments this season, and they all feel deliciously earned.

So, from a meta POV, I guess I’m saying that I have faith in the writers to get it right, and in Pedro to deliver. Duh.

In universe, though, I think it’s fair to point out the obvious - that Din is a pretty reserved guy. He’s much more of a thinker than a feeler. He’s used to keeping things bottled up, and I would even argue that his life often depends on his ability to dissociate from his emotions. Din’s entire journey so far has been about how one little baby yodito shakes his worldview to its very foundations. He’s getting there, but it’s a slow process.

And also, consider this - we haven’t seen Din alone yet, not since Grogu was taken. For a guy who lives a guarded life literally encased in fucking armor, any display of emotion is going to be carefully protected until he’s in private.

But anyway, Din is detached, rational, a little emotionally constipated, and definitely comfortable in a stressful situation. A true ISTP if you ask me (yeah, I know you didn’t, but whatever). Often, it seems that these cool headed, logical types who have never ruffled a feather over anything in their lives are the least adept at handling genuine fear. In other words, when panic does strike, it strikes them hard.

And guys, Din was definitely panicking during this episode.

He’s clearly unsettled from the jump - that outburst of “dank farrik!” in the cockpit sells it, and his distress only becomes more obvious from there. Talking out loud, trying to convince himself that the best thing for Grogu is for him to be trained as a Jedi. Reminding himself of the creed. His overt caution as they approach the seeing stone. His impatience, “Are you seeing anything??”

Then there’s the effects of long term stress. Sure, a bounty hunter in the outer rim doesn’t exactly live an easy life, but Din is definitely used to the drama being on his terms. Compare Din’s body language in the opening scene of season one to when Boba confronts him in chapter fourteen. You can just feel the anxiety, the weariness, the frustration. Din has been on the run for months now, constantly looking over his shoulder, sleeping with one eye open. Notice how he even startles at Fennec’s voice? Season one Din would never have given that much away, regardless of the situation. Long term stress has clearly taken a toll on him.

So we have unsettled, stressed out Din in an emotionally charged situation. He’s exhausted, he’s scared, he’s desperate. This scenario is a recipe for even the most level-headed of adrenaline junkies to loose their cool, and that’s exactly what happens to Din. He panics, and he makes some pretty big fuckups because of it. Leaving Grogu unprotected, twice. Trying three different times to break through that “force field,” even when he knew he couldn’t. Dropping that jetpack and then just forgetting about it (I know we were all screaming about that one, or at least, I was).

So, fear is a positive feedback loop. Those neurotransmitters that do us good in a bad situation - raising heart rate, narrowing focus, shunting blood to the muscles - can also be detrimental if we get too high of a dose - tachypnea and tachycardia, inability to think critically and see the big picture, lack of blood and oxygen to the brain. Epinephrine, in particular, even inhibits the laying down of new memory pathways. In other words, stress leads to poor performance, and poor performance leads to more stress, which leads to... you get the idea.

Then, in the middle of all this chaos, they fucking blast the Razor Crest.

More epinephrine, more cortisol, more stress.

By the end of it all, Din is a fucking shitstorm of stress hormones and pent up emotions. Notice how he seems to be on autopilot in the immediate aftermath, robotically scanning the ashes of the Crest for anything that might be left intact. Notice how empty his voice is when he says, “the child is gone.” This is a dead man walking. Din has nothing left. His whole life has just gone up in smoke, and he can do nothing about it.

Guys, Din is holding onto his sanity by a fucking thread in this scene. “The child is gone,” he says, like he’s reminding himself, grounding himself in his shitty reality. He’s stunned.

And helpless. There’s literally nothing he can do for Grogu. He has no ship, no credits, no resources, nothing to bargain with, nothing to offer. Din literally cannot allow himself the luxury of feelings right now. He’s just got to focus on surviving this very shitty day.

Then, Boba Fett upholds his end of the deal, and suddenly, Din has something to hold onto. An ally, a badass friend, some hope. I don’t think Boba shows Din that chain code in order to verify his claim on the armor - he’s already wearing it, for godssake. I think Boba shows him the code in order to catch Din’s attention - hey friend, I know you’re hurting, but I’m a man of my word. When I make a vow, I keep it. Let’s regroup and go find your kid.

And Din would totally latch onto that. A fighting chance? Din fucking leaps at it. There’s a job to do. A kid to save. All of those stress hormones are going to keep on stewing, because Din has never really come down from his adrenaline high.

It’s like this in real life, too. There isn’t time to be afraid. There isn’t time to be sad, or second-guess, or say, oh how terrible, or wonder what if it doesn’t work? There’s just you and the job, and if you are the only thing standing between life and death, you will put everything else aside and do what you have to do, for as long as you have to do it.

And that’s where Din is at this moment. He’s running on the fumes of his adrenaline, all tempered focus, all strategy and no bullshit.

Emotional shock, my therapist buddy calls it. Apparently, it’s normal. Expected, even.

But guys, the fallout of this kind of crazy ass adrenaline high is insanely intense. I’m talking collapse to the floor, legs won't hold you, trembling, crying so hard you sling snot, shuddering breaths, stare dead-eyed and spent at the ceiling because you’re just too wiped out to even sleep kind of intense.

And then, after the breakdown comes the angst. The detailed thinking. The oh god, what if this had happened, or, should I have done that instead? It seems like every emotion that gets put on the back burner in the moment comes back to bite you with twofold intensity when all is said and done.

In other words, Din is definitely going to feels some things .A lot of very intense things. A reckoning is coming, my dudes. Trust me. It’s just not quite here yet.

That being said, here’s what I can expect from Din going forward:

Just like he’s is slow to acknowledge his growing parental feelings for Grogu, I think Din’s going to be slow at processing his grief at Grogu’s loss. In the next episode, he’s got plenty to distract him - getting together his hit team to take back the kid and coordinating an attack on the empire.

However, I do think we’ll get a slow moment with Din, probably sometime at the beginning of next week’s episode if the pattern holds. I doubt it’s the full-blown breakdown that we’re all needing, but I’m willing to bet money that we’ll see Din grappling with the fact that his kid is gone. I also think that badass beskar murder machine Din from chapter three will resurface. Stress and desperation make us do irrational things, and anger is one of the stages of grief that Din will inevitably have to work through (I think he’s flickering between denial and bargaining for now).

But then, after Din gets Grogu back? I think that’s we’ll have our big, dearly earned emotional payoff.

For one thing, Din won’t be able to deny his feelings anymore. He wants to keep this kid, it’s so very obvious. Losing him just forces it all to the forefront.

And then the relief/joy/regret/guilt that Din is going to feel once he’s got Grogu back? Not to mention the physical exhaustion? All of the fear/terror/angst/grief that he ignored in favor of just going pedal to the metal, guns blazing, get the kid or die trying? That shit’s going to crash into him with all the subtly of a fucking tsunami. I guarantee you, we’re going to get some sort of confession, or adoption vow, or face revel, or other sort of profound softness from Dad!Din in the falling action of this season (At least, I hope we get it at the end this season but I wouldn’t put it past them to kick it into the premier of season three, just for pacing reasons, but then again, I obviously have trust issues).

Personally, I would love to see Din grappling with the long-term fallout of losing Grogu - night terrors, guilt, paranoia, etc. That’s probably the stuff of fanfiction - mandalorians don't have nightmares on screen, surely - but still, some lingering effects Grogu’s kidnapping would be realistic, and I would absolutely live for it.

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3ternalslumber · 3 years

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Orange Side Theory - Ignorance

I’ve seen orange side theories on guilt and anger — but those are emotions and generally fall underneath Patton’s area. Ignorance, however, has much more evidence to back it up including colour theory, suspiciously coincidental timing and even breaking down a side to it’s basic functions. In this literal essay I will—

First, there have been lots of theories ranging from guilt to anger. However, these are emotions, falling under Morality’s area. So I thought, what makes a side a side? The answer was thinking. Every side is a way of thinking. Logic and Anxiety deal with the thoughts and processes: the problem solving, if you will. The more realistic views, even if some are a little far fetched. The Creativity twins deal with the thinking of the soul. They grasp ideas and concepts through passion and imagination. Morality and Deceit deal with more morality based decisions — whether or not something is wrong before making a choice. So the Orange side must deal with thought processing of some sort. Due to guilt and anger falling under Patton's management, they are unable to be the Orange side; Patton had said, in Moving On: Exploring Nostalgia, that he’s “at the core of a lot of [c!Thomas’] feelings” (7:14-7:18). I've done some research and I've come to the conclusion that the Orange side must be, or relating to, ignorance because the side has only shown up through little hints, not quite being shown, almost daring people to ignore his presence. Furthermore, willful ignorance is a choice we make and can be detrimental to one’s life. For example, in Putting Others First: Selfishness vs Selflessness Redux, Logan is providing information and Patton presses the ‘skip all’ option, showcasing an act of willful ignorance despite the possibility of the information being able to help with the situation at hand (23:18).

Second, the dark sides and former dark sides each have noticeable abilities. Janus can silence sides from speaking or having influence on others, like in Can Lying Be Good when he stopped Logan from speaking his name (19:09-19:13). Remus can make c!Thomas focus solely on him by drowning out the other sides’ voices and making c!Thomas be able to only hear him, like in Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts (5:35-5:48). Virgil can duplicate his voice and make c!Thomas physically do things — possibly on instinct or due to the panic induced Fight or Flight reflex — as seen in Moving On: Exploring Nostalgia when he makes c!Thomas throw his phone at the ground due to c!Thomas’ ex calling him back (5:00-5:05). The proverb “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is displayed in the ever changing picture frame above the couch in Patton’s room, in the episode Moving On: Dealing With a Breakup (1:25-1:41). Their abilities could reference this proverb. For example, Janus’ ability and domain could be a reference to ‘speak no evil’, being able to silence other’s voices alongside being the embodiment of ‘evil thinking’, or lies. Remus relates to ‘hear no evil’, given his power to drown out the others. The intrusive thoughts add to this, c!Thomas ‘hearing evil’ or bad thoughts because of the Creative side. Virgil is a strange case, as he doesn’t exactly match up with the ‘see no evil’. He does, however, match up with the less commonly known fourth part of the saying: ‘do no evil’. Virgil’s voice becomes louder than others to be heard, to become authoritative — he doesn’t use it often, usually when he’s panicked, but when he does, c!Thomas listens and often does what he says. Perhaps he wasn’t in the metaphorical — and literal — picture due to not being a Dark Side anymore, or maybe it’s because the proverb is more common without the fourth monkey. The only one left is ‘see no evil’ but who could fill in the gap? Sure, anger makes people not see properly — “blind rage” and all — but anger is an emotion that fades. Ignorance is, by definition, the lack of knowledge or information: willful or not. In law, willful blindness is synonymous to ignorance; the act of keeping oneself unaware as an attempt to get out of breaking the law due to their lack of knowledge of why it’s a criminal act (2, 3). In addition, when Logan, during Putting Others First: SvS Redux, presents two options: informed or ignorant, Roman presses the ignorant button without hesitation (14:13-14:18). Roughly three minutes after Patton, also in Putting Others First: SvS Redux, presses the “skip all” option instead of reading the information Logan had presented (23:18), “01134” is seen in orange at the top right corner of the screen (26:32). When typed in a calculator and shown upside down, the text says ‘hello’. Furthermore, the top right side of the screen also says “Thomas=8”, showing that Thomas has eight lives; one for each of his six sides and himself. Or perhaps it’s more than that and there’s eight sides that make up Thomas, it would make sense for him to be balanced (that might be an essay written at a much later time).

Finally, the Orange side only shows up after moments of intense ignorance. For example, at the beginning of Moving On: Dealing With a Breakup, Roman gets angry about nobody wanting to talk about the fifth season of Lost with him. c!Thomas asks Patton about Roman’s emotions as it wouldn’t be unwise to say Patton’s room would have an effect on the others like Virgil’s did. Patton responds that it was nothing, that he just acts “a little bit silly! That’s all!” and tries to distract the others with pictures, unsuccessfully repressing the emotions (1:25-1:35). This time frame is simultaneous as the picture of the monkey proverb — “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” — appearance (1:25-1:41). The picture changes, however, when c!Thomas refuses the option to turn a blind eye and asks for clarification. Furthermore, in Putting Others First: SvS Redux, if Logan did not verbally speak, c!Thomas, Roman and Patton ignored him. They carried on as if he wasn’t there, choosing to not read his possibly important information. In one specific instance, Patton asks Logan what a real philosopher would think about what he’s saying — when Logan gives an answer Patton doesn’t like, a button pops up in yellow and black (Deceit’s way of ‘shutting Logan up’ without being there, albeit technically being Patton who did so — side note: this is where Deceit took Logan’s spot). Patton presses the button and Logan — Logic — is silenced (23:18). It is soon after this that the orange side makes his presence known as the earlier mentioned “01134”. Later on, Janus (disguised as Logan) tells us that knowing or having been told certain information “does not give you the license to ignore it in the future, especially when the consequences of forgetting are so perilous” (27:35-27:46). Basically, information repetition is not an excuse for ignorance. Less than three minutes after this, Janus asks Patton to expand on his contradictory statements to which Patton responds with frustration of his own lack of knowledge, turning into a giant frog — a beast, if you will (30:20-30:30).

Ignorance is complicated, being quite the broad topic, but this seems like it’s too coincidental to be anything else: the way of thinking, the abilities, and the little hints.

Sources

Episodes mentioned (in chronological order)

Moving On: Exploring Nostalgia (https://youtu.be/ihCqpkPNtNM)

Putting Others First: Selfishness vs Selflessness Redux (https://youtu.be/KCr3SN6vWFQ)

Can Lying Be Good (https://youtu.be/N2d4oti_eBo)

Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts (https://youtu.be/Tn0pKxShY8Q)

Moving On: Dealing With a Breakup (https://youtu.be/m-PMR1TDMQk)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys (the proverb)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness (willful blindness/willful ignorance)

https://freemanlaw.com/willful-blindness-and-corporate-liability/ (willful blindness/willful ignorance)

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elyvorg · 4 years

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Kaito Momota: How ADHD Can Be

It’s about time I properly shared a take of mine that I never really talk about in my usual analysis posts, which is my very firm headcanon that Kaito has ADHD. While this is partly thanks to me having ADHD myself, self-indulgence is far from the only thing making me think this. There are so many reasons why this makes every single bit of sense, and this post is going to talk about all of them.

And, see, I don’t want to alienate anyone by having them think I’m about to present an interpretation of Kaito that looks nothing like the Kaito we know, because that’s not it at all. I’m here to talk about how so many of the things that were already abundantly true about him also happen to fit perfectly with ADHD. Really, you could think of it more as me talking about how ADHD actually looks a lot more like Kaito than most people might have realised.

After all, ADHD is a frustratingly misrepresented disorder that’s way more complex and interesting than most people are aware. So not only does it make a huge amount of sense to see Kaito as ADHD, it’s also just genuinely fascinating to think that this could be influencing how his mind works and the way he reacts to things throughout the story. Imagining that Kaito has ADHD could never make him any less Kaito, but I do think it makes him yet another layer of interesting on top of everything else he already has going on.

So even if you don’t have any personal investment in ADHD yourself, I hope you can follow along with me for this. There’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about here.

(Since ADHD is so horribly misrepresented that I can’t expect the average person to know what it really involves, this post is also going to include something of a whirlwind explanation of ADHD itself, in order to help people better appreciate why all these things about Kaito are potentially ADHD things. With that said, obvious disclaimer: I am not remotely a mental health professional, just someone with self-diagnosed ADHD who’s read up a lot about it. Some of this will be from things I’ve read, and some of this will be from my own experiences that I’m now pretty sure are an ADHD thing. My descriptions of these symptoms are likely to be somewhat oversimplified because I’m focusing on explaining this headcanon rather than explaining ADHD itself, so please don’t take this as a definitely-100%-accurate ADHD resource. I’m happy if this can raise awareness of what ADHD is really like, but you should look elsewhere to learn more.)

Hyperfixations

One major thing that ought to be more commonly known about ADHD is that it’s really not a lack of attention; it’s an inability to properly control where our attention goes. It’s been described as an “interest-based nervous system” – we’ll involuntarily focus on whatever seems most interesting to us in any given moment, regardless of its objective importance.

This plus a reduced amount of dopamine receptors means that when we manage to find something that gives us a lot of dopamine, ie, is fun and engaging to think about, we cannot stop thinking about it even if we wanted to. Our entire lives will begin to revolve around this Thing that we enjoy, thinking about it, doing things related to it and consuming more information on it to get as much of that sweet dopamine as possible. This can often be to the detriment of everything else, including more objectively important matters, because who cares about that stuff when Thing is the best thing ever!?

As an example: as you might imagine, I have been hyperfixated on DRV3 and especially on Kaito for over two years now. I have not been able to stop thinking about Kaito even when I’m supposed to be doing other things, and there’s literally nothing that’s more fun for me right now than sharing all these thoughts of mine with other people. We also love to infodump about our hyperfixations to anyone who’ll listen, after all. That’s precisely why this post exists, along with many more like it on both my blogs.

SPACE

So, this is perhaps one of the most easy-to-spot signs that Kaito might be ADHD. Because, man, he really loves space. Sure, any astronaut would have at least some level of interest in it, but Kaito is so obsessed with space that he introduces himself with a grandiose space-themed title, wears a galaxy print on his slippers and the inside of his jacket, and simply couldn’t wait for a college degree and had to make sure he got up there as fast as possible.

Granted, it’s not like Kaito talks about space 100% of the time. He is stuck in a killing game, after all, which is also kind of important to pay attention to. But, still, no matter what more-objectively-important things they can push themselves to focus on when necessary, there’s always a part of an ADHDer’s brain that’s near-constantly thinking about their hyperfixation anyway and will take any opportunity to bring it up and make things about that if they possibly can. And, well, Kaito still talks about space quite a lot considering that he’s in a life-or-death situation that doesn’t have anything to do with space at all (at least, as far as he knows for most of the story).

There’s one delightful bit of white noise I absolutely love in a debate in trial 4 where Gonta is suggesting a vehicle could have crossed the river. Someone responds to this with “Like a rocket?”, despite the fact that, A, there were obviously none of those in the Virtual World, and B, you don’t use those to cross rivers. Kaito, you dork, now is not the time. But of course now’s the time, there is always time to be thinking about space-related things, no matter how impractical and irrelevant it might be. Someone has been murdered, everyone else’s lives are on the line – not to mention his illness and the huge pile of inferiority issues he’s struggling with at this point in the story – yet amongst all that, Kaito’s brain still found time to go, “hey, speaking of vehicles, aren’t rockets the coolest!?” And… yeah, that’s genuinely what hyperfixations are like.

Then there’s the time Kaito asked Maki what her favourite spaceship was, like this is just an obvious go-to conversation starter in his mind, because of course he has a favourite spaceship. He has thought a lot about his favourite spaceship (or spaceships; let’s be real, there’s probably several that he thinks are SO COOL and might call his favourite depending on the circumstances) and could fill ages talking about nothing but that. Even though he knows this conversation ought to be making its way towards helping Maki open up about her past – this is one of his training sessions, after all! – there is still a part of Kaito that really just wants to talk about space, because a part of him always wants to talk about space.

We can see this as well in multiple FTE invitation dialogues (those brief lines describing how they hung out before the actual event starts) in which Kaito apparently spends it talking to Kaede or Shuichi about space, just because he can. There’s also several of his hangouts in the Salmon Team bonus mode where Shuichi’s suggestion of what to do doesn’t really have anything to do with space, but Kaito finds a way to make it about space anyway. ADHD minds are hyper-associative and make connections between concepts very easily – and, naturally, they’re particularly liable to make connections to the thing that the mind is already spending the majority of its time thinking about. So it’s really not so surprising or remarkable at all that Kaito can find ways to make even seemingly-totally-unrelated topics about space somehow, not if he’s ADHD.

(…To be fair, a particular fixation on a certain topic to the point of repeatedly bringing it up when it’s not called for isn’t necessarily that uncommon among Danganronpa characters, what with their talents. But hey, that doesn’t have to make Kaito any less likely to be ADHD. Rather, it would actually make sense for Ultimate students to have a higher than average proportion of ADHDers among them, since an ADHD-fuelled level of intense interest in a thing is more likely to make someone become hugely talented at it out of accumulated knowledge and practice. I’ve been increasingly thinking that Kaede could perhaps be ADHD, too, for example. But that’s not for this post; we’re talking about Kaito here.)

The longevity of space

ADHDers will generally go through many different hyperfixations throughout their life, sometimes one at a time, sometimes somehow managing to juggle more than one. An individual hyperfixation tends to last anywhere between a few weeks to a few years depending on its intensity and the longevity of the topic, but it’s rare for it to be more than that. Usually, sooner or later, the overwhelming passion for the thing will wear itself out.

And admittedly, Kaito’s passion for space has been there since he was a kid and never faded – and never will, of course! – which is far more persistent than most hyperfixations tend to be. But then again, there’s so many different things related to space for him to get excited about! Hyperfixations fade either when something else comes along that’s more exciting because it’s new and fresh, or when you’ve squeezed every last possible drop of dopamine out of it such that it no longer holds quite the same thrill. But with a topic as vast as space, there’s always more to learn to keep the excitement fresh, especially now that Kaito’s an astronaut trainee and is really on the front line of new space knowledge and technologies and is actually going to get there himself one day!

Besides, it’s not like ADHDers’ hyperfixations are completely outside of their control. My own hyperfixation on V3 and Kaito would probably have faded ages ago if I hadn’t kept it going by constantly making more content about it such as this. And similarly, there’s no way Kaito would have wanted to let go of his passion for space, not if he had any say in it himself, so he’d have done whatever he could to keep it burning during the times when the spark maybe wasn’t quite there as much. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable that Kaito could have remained hyperfixated on space for so unusually long and still be showing no signs of stopping. We all know how stubborn he is.

(House plants)

Kaito has probably had a few other, lesser hyperfixations alongside his lifelong passion for space. For example, I like to think that his fondness for house plants, according to his report card, is to such an extent that he was once hyperfixated on them. (This would have been for reasons that totally don’t bear a suspicious resemblance to other things he cares about.) I doubt he’s currently hyperfixating on them at the moment – at no point does he ever try to shift the conversation to being about house plants unprompted – but that wouldn’t stop him from still being generally fond of them and retaining all of the “useless” information he learned about them back when he was obsessed. One very rarely ever stops caring about a hyperfixation topic entirely; rather, the fixation just fades and the topic becomes no longer constantly on someone’s mind. I’m sure Kaito still could and would talk your ear off about house plants just as much as he would about space if you happened to get him started.

People

More importantly, though, I think that another of Kaito’s less obvious and intense hyperfixations – but still a very long-lasting one that’s active right now – could be, simply, people. Just, people in general: their flaws and complexities and differences, all the many ways in which they can communicate and work together, and the amazing potential they have to achieve great things if they do so. Kaito is so passionate about this stuff and has so many fully-formed opinions on things of this nature that make it seem like he’s spent a lot of his free time thinking about this, just because he can. Maybe he began to get interested in it after realising that communication and teamwork is important for an astronaut – but it also reads to me like Kaito is into this kind of stuff not because he needs to be for the sake of getting into space, but simply because he finds it genuinely fascinating and couldn’t stop thinking about it even if he had to. (Which would also help keep him interested in space, because it’s intrinsically linked to this other topic that Kaito finds fascinating!)

And within this, Kaito definitely hyperfixates in particular on his sidekicks. Once he’s made someone into his sidekick, which functionally means that he’s going to devote himself to supporting them through their issues and helping them reach their potential, he really devotes himself. It’s his hyperfixation on people in general, but concentrated on a specific person(s) that he can have a direct and tangible impact on, which means even more to him than just his feelings about how awesome and fascinating humanity is as a whole.

Kaito is really, really good at supporting his sidekicks, after all. He spends so much time, even when he’s not around them, thinking about what their problems are and the best ways he can help them. He was clearly eyeing up both Shuichi and Maki as potential sidekicks at least a day or two before actually acting on it and inviting them to training, as if he was trying to gauge exactly what their struggles were and how best to help before jumping right in. He approaches helping each of them in very different ways, making it clear that he’s specifically thought about who they are and the best tactics to help them individually instead of just carelessly using the same old script each time. On more than one occasion, he drops something on them one morning – the nickname “Maki Roll”, and the “bonus” training that becomes the katana scene – that he hadn’t mentioned at all the previous night, meaning that he’d been thinking further about how to keep helping them while on his own overnight.

So it seems to me like maybe it’s not just his selflessness, or his somewhat unhealthy co-dependency (more on that later, actually) that makes Kaito so good at this. I don’t think he could even stop thinking about helping his sidekicks if he tried. Figuring out how to help another human being grow and change and reach their full potential is so fascinating and engaging and rewarding to him that how could he ever not be compelled to do that as much as he possibly can?

The price of caring

This does, however, come with a downside. Because Kaito is fixating so strongly and uncontrollably on supporting his sidekicks, because doing that matters so much to him, it’s only going to hurt him more when he begins to feel like he’s failing at it. He can’t just brush something like that off as not really a big deal, because of course it’s a big deal. It’s everything to him, and it’s literally not possible for him to make himself feel like it isn’t.

It’s just as bad as if space suddenly twisted and became painful to think about somehow. Which… I guess that actually kind of happens too, when Kaito starts to realise that he’s never going to make it up there. And he can’t deal with that by trying to tell himself it was never that important, either, because space is always important to him. Even if he wanted to switch that part of his brain off or ignore it to help himself cope, he just couldn’t.

Caring so intensely about things feels amazing and makes a person wonderfully passionate, but it can also be a double-edged sword.

(Executive dysfunction?)

One big negative side to ADHD is that it tends to cause executive dysfunction, which, to massively oversimplify it, more or less means the profound inability to get yourself to do things that you know you’re supposed to be perfectly able to do. That interest-based nervous system does not do well with motivating us to do tasks that are objectively important but aren’t interesting or fun to actually carry out, resulting in a mental block that can appear to the outside observer like wilful laziness, even though it really, really isn’t.

This appears to be one part of ADHD that Kaito manages to avoid having to deal with. (He may superficially seem “lazy” during training, but that has nothing to do with his brain and everything to do with his body and the fact that he’s sick and doesn’t want anyone to know.) But I think that’s mostly because none of the reasons that ADHD causes executive dysfunction actually apply in the killing game.

One of the few things other than interest that motivates an ADHD brain is urgency – suddenly they can do that boring essay they’ve been putting off when the deadline is tonight, showing remarkable speed and focus in a fit of nervous anxiety over the potential consequences of turning it in late. And there’s plenty of literal do-or-die urgency to motivate Kaito during the killing game, so there’s no way he’d ever not be motivated to do what he feels he needs to do to help everyone there. Plus, the things he’s trying to do involve helping people, something he inherently finds interesting, so he’d be motivated for those reasons anyway even if it wasn’t quite so life-threateningly vital that he does so.

(Kaito is a bit flakier and liable to miss important details during the investigations and trials, mind you. This might be because, while the urgency of “if we don’t solve the case we die” is looming over him, the actual details of the case aren’t something that instinctively feels urgent or that he inherently finds interesting, so it’s harder for him to pay proper attention and take it all in even when he’s trying to. Kaito has plenty of intelligence in a lot of ways, but his brain is evidently not wired for investigations and deductions like Shuichi’s is – he’s perfectly capable of following Shuichi’s logic and understanding it, but not of figuring any of that stuff out himself in the first place. This could partly be down to Kaito having ADHD and just not being interested enough in these particular kinds of mental exercises to be able to get his brain to focus on them as much as he’d need to in order to solve them.)

I also don’t think executive dysfunction would have got in Kaito’s way much during his regular life before the killing game. (You know, if he’d actually had one, but let’s pretend for now that he did.) Motivation issues can be helped a lot by an externally-imposed structure telling you what you need to do and when, which is why a lot of ADHD people don’t even notice any problems while they’re in a school system and only fall apart once they’re adults and are suddenly expected to structure their own life. Kaito’s astronaut training would definitely give him plenty of structure to work from so that he always knew what he needed to do and never had this issue. It’s also really challenging, which is another thing that helps keep ADHD people interested and motivated. And while the actual end goal of getting to space is far-off enough that it wouldn’t be able to work as a direct motivator to an ADHD brain (we are bad at things with delayed gratification), everything Kaito’s learning would still be related to space and communication and teamwork, so he’d be interested in learning all of it simply for its own sake.

Emotional hyperarousal

Another big defining feature of ADHD that isn’t nearly as well-known as it ought to be is that it amplifies emotions to a far greater intensity than those of neurotypical people. ADHDers’ feelings and reactions are naturally bigger and louder and just more than most people’s – which sounds a lot like Kaito, doesn’t it? He’s always larger than life, energetic and passionate about everything, not just his specific hyperfixations. Look at how excited he gets about just seeing snow! And he has so much enthusiasm for so much else, too – as he puts it: “there’s nothing unnecessary in this world!” When Kaito feels things, he feels them full-throttle, with no half-measures, which is just how Kaito would always want things to be!

…But, whether he likes it or not, that also applies to the painful feelings just as much as the good ones.

Emotional dysregulation

Kaito can often be very reactionary and get unnecessarily riled up over minor things that don’t really warrant such a dramatic response. If you think about it, this isn’t really something he’d want to do, because he’s always trying to stay positive and keep people on his side. So apparently it’s something he simply can’t help, as if his brain is just wired to make him more liable to do that.

If even minor slights can cause an overreaction like that from an ADHD brain, then imagine how much worse it is when the stimulus is something genuinely worth being upset over. That already-painful emotion gets amplified to even greater levels, to the point that it can be almost unbearable. People with ADHD can often have a more difficult time dealing with things, not necessarily because they’re emotionally weaker, but because they simply feel things harder than most other people do.

Kaito goes through a lot of emotional pain throughout the story – and he’s really pretty bad at dealing with it all. He basically has only two not-very-healthy methods for doing so. One is to try to ignore it entirely by focusing on something more positive, which on its own could be put down to his desire to come across as an invincible hero who can inspire people. So this particular unhealthy tactic doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to properly deal with these emotions if he actually stopped being an idiot and tried to.

However, Kaito’s second unhealthy coping mechanism is to turn the pain into anger – sometimes to the point of lashing out in ways he doesn’t mean to. Punching Shuichi at the end of the first trial is very much caused by Kaito being unable to contain his pain over Kaede’s death rather than any controlled attempt to push Shuichi forward, since he regrets it and apologises for it the next morning. And then the agonising truth that Gonta killed someone is even harder for Kaito to bear, leading to him lashing out at Shuichi again in what was very much desperate pain-fuelled anger with no rational basis for it. Unlike with simply hiding his pain, lashing out like this is not something Kaito would ever want to do; it’s not exactly very heroic of him, after all. So this suggests that there’s more to Kaito’s bad coping mechanisms than just him trying to appear strong and not worry people – that sometimes the pain gets so unbearably intense that ignoring it isn’t possible and he just can’t deal with it and loses control of himself.

Uncontrollable bouts of rage can be a common problem that comes with ADHD because of the amplified emotions and difficulty properly regulating them – and it’s definitely a problem Kaito suffers from, too. That part of Kaito that lets him get so wonderfully passionate in helping everyone around him might well be exactly the same part of him that simply cannot handle it when he realises Gonta murdered someone and leads to him lashing out at his best friend.

Moping (…not a technical term)

…Okay, I just said Kaito has only two unhealthy coping mechanisms for painful emotions, but maybe there’s also kind of a third: unconstructively moping about it. This doesn’t sound like Kaito at all – he frequently gives others advice about not doing exactly that – but he can actually be seen falling into doing so a couple of times if you look closely.

In chapter 2, when Ryoma’s behaviour bothers him for all the wrong reasons and he has no intent of actually doing something about it, Kaito really should be just trying not to think about it at all and focusing on something more constructive like helping Shuichi. However, the places he hangs out in for his chapter 2 FTEs and his invitation dialogues indicate that he spends a whole three FTE slots just brooding unhelpfully about the state Ryoma’s in. This is definitely not something he wants to be doing, since he hastily changes the subject if Shuichi hangs out with him.

And in case 4’s investigation, after Shuichi’s cell phone experiment makes Kaito feel useless and unneeded (he thought Shuichi needed his help! – but, no, turns out he actually really didn’t), the pain of that feeling noticeably lingers with him for most of the rest of the investigation. He’s in enough of a bad mood about it afterwards that Maki notices it through his less-expressive virtual avatar, and he doesn’t even come with her to call Shuichi back from the rooftop and just logs out on his own in a sulk. Then he also ends up explicitly unaware in the trial of some of the information Monotaro shared with the whole group once they’d logged out, meaning he was apparently still too wrapped up in feeling useless to be paying proper attention.

(And these are the two examples of Kaito doing this that are noticeable thanks to subtle clues in his behaviour – but since Kaito would obviously never draw attention to it, maybe he actually does this a lot more than those two times and we just can’t normally see it.)

See, another thing about emotional dysregulation – plus the difficulty in controlling the focus of your attention that comes with ADHD – is that it can be hard to stop yourself from thinking endlessly about painful things, even when you very much don’t want to be thinking about them. I once saw a tumblr post describing ADHD as Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder, and I can confirm that, yes, this is very frustratingly accurate, for the bad things as well as the good. It’s possible that Kaito’s advice about not moping when you could be doing something to make a difference might have originated for himself, to try and mitigate his brain’s tendency to do this. But while I imagine this helped quite a bit in letting him control his thoughts and stay focused on the positives, it appears that, despite his best efforts, it still doesn’t always work.

Impulsiveness

The Primarily-Hyperactive subtype of ADHD (aka the one that’s definitely the subtype Kaito has, for obvious reasons) is sometimes called Hyperactive-Impulsive type, because impulsiveness tends to be a big part of it, too. I think this is kind of a combination of emotional hyperarousal and inability to control attention – the impulse to Do A Thing gets amplified to the point that it floods the entire brain, and it becomes nigh-impossible to ignore it and consider the potential negative consequences before acting on it. It’s like that Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder gets concentrated into a single instant of frequently-terrible decision-making.

It’s no secret that Kaito is impulsively reckless – and if you think about it, it’s to an extent that’s honestly kind of pathological. Cheating his way into the astronaut exam early, for example, could very well have permanently ruined his chances of ever being allowed in and making it to space. He should never have considered that a risk worth taking. So apparently he just wasn’t properly considering the risk at all – not even for the most important decision of his life.

A lot of the time, these kinds of bad decisions can be fuelled by those amplified painful emotions that get turned into anger like I talked about before. The stress of the killing game causes Kaito to very nearly get himself killed on two occasions early in chapter 1, almost lashing out in a way that would have broken school regulations. Kaito is perfectly aware of the consequences for doing that – but in the heat of the moment, it just doesn’t matter to him. His overwhelming desire to express his pain-fuelled rage simply blocks out everything else from his mind. A similar thing happens in chapter 5 when Kaito’s attempt to punch Kokichi after the supposed mastermind reveal only results in him getting knocked out and captured by the Exisals that were very obviously there and under Kokichi’s control. It’s summed up pretty well by the fact that Kokichi outright tells Kaito that punching him won’t fix any of the things he’s angry about, and Kaito’s response is, “Even if that is the case… I can’t get over it if I don’t punch you!” To Kaito, in these moments, it’s never about the consequences; it’s about needing to let out his too-strong emotions right now and to hell with everything else, even if that “everything else” literally might include his life.

Then there’s everything that happens with Kaito at the casino. The consequences for him here aren’t exactly dire, since all he loses out on is the chance to buy a prize, but still – that uncontrollable fixation on the anticipated thrill of winning and the inability to consider the really-very-high possibility that he’ll lose is exactly the type of reckless thrill-seeking that people with this type of ADHD often have.

In fact, the bonus scene at the casino is literally titled “Kaito’s Gambling Problem” – and as you might imagine, impulsive-type ADHDers are at a higher risk of developing harmful addictions to things such as gambling. While this isn’t an actual gambling problem here because no real money is involved and it does seem that he never gets tempted by the casino again after the second time, the scene’s title apparently wants us to consider that Kaito has the potential to develop a legitimate gambling problem should he ever get old enough to legally gamble in the real world. Which is a weirdly specific thing for the writers to make a point of when it has no bearing on the plot… so it makes me wonder if they could have actually been trying to tell us something here.

This kind of impulsiveness can also cause people to blurt out their thoughts without thinking about the consequences, potentially resulting in upsetting someone or embarrassing themselves. At first glance, considering that he has a lot of thoughts he’s determined to hide from the surface, Kaito doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this kind of impulsiveness. If he did, you’d think he’d find himself muttering stuff like “I feel like crap”, or “I hate this place” all the time and then having to hastily paper over it and insist that no that’s definitely not how he’s really feeling at all. So apparently, he’s fairly good at thinking before he speaks when it matters to him?

Except, when he’s in the Virtual World, Kaito makes multiple unthinking comments to the effect of “I like this avatar body”, which he has to awkwardly brush off when Shuichi questions him, since it rather hints that something’s up with his real body. He’s suddenly really bad at this, even though he was pretty good at it the rest of the time.

So maybe what’s going on is this: in an effort to stay positive at all times because he’s Kaito, Kaito trained himself to have a constant, unshakeable mental filter that prevents himself from impulsively blurting out how he’s feeling if it’s something negative. However, he can’t stop himself from still randomly blurting out whatever positive things are on his mind. This usually isn’t a problem, but it can sometimes include things – it feels so great to not be dying for once! – that he really doesn’t want to be voicing either, if he only gave it a moment more thought.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria

Often shortened to RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria is a specific and especially nasty kind of emotional hyperarousal / dysregulation that almost all ADHDers suffer from. (At least, I feel like it should probably be classified as a subtype of that, though I’m not sure if that’s the official take, so don’t quote me on this.) The ADHD researcher who coined the term defines it as: “extreme emotional pain triggered by the perception – not necessarily the reality – that a person has been rejected or criticised by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short and failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.” That second sentence is important and frequently overlooked, because it indicates that, despite the name, this isn’t only about perceived rejection by others; it can also be about an entirely personal sense of failure.

I first read about this concept while I happened to be hyperfixating on Kaito’s mindset specifically in early chapter 5, aka that time he avoids Shuichi out of shame over feeling like he failed him in the previous trial, due to his own unreasonably high standards for being a “hero”. (If you didn’t realise that this is what’s going on with Kaito in early chapter 5, go read this other post of mine and get caught up, because you’re going to need to be for the rest of this section.) And, naturally, though I was supposed to be reading that article about RSD to help me figure out if I had ADHD, my brain made some connections. That was the moment I began to have this headcanon; everything else in this post blossomed from that as I thought about it more and realised a lot of other things about Kaito also fit this incredibly well.

The null hypothesis

So, let��s consider early chapter 5. In fact, let’s assume for a moment that Kaito doesn’t have ADHD and his emotions function like a regular person’s. He would still, of course, feel like he’s utterly failed Shuichi by showing himself to be weaker than him and doing the opposite of supporting him during trial 4. That part’s not specifically based in anything ADHD and is just a product of Kaito’s psychological issues about heroes, which I’ve already talked about plenty in that post I just linked. (I don’t want anyone to think that my ADHD headcanon is getting in the way of or diminishing any of that; this is just another layer on top of it.)

Kaito really wants to make things right and apologise for his mistakes in the trial (and for his really-not-actually-mistakes too, for that matter). He really wants to fix the rift between him and Shuichi and not leave the two of them painfully torn apart like this. He knows the responsibility to do so is on him and not Shuichi. But… he doesn’t do it. Why not?

The only possible reason would be that he’s just being a coward and running away from the guilt and shame he’s feeling rather than facing up to it. Except… Kaito’s not a coward. He may arguably seem like one in some ways given how he refuses to acknowledge his weaknesses to his sidekicks – but that’s not to protect himself and his own emotions; it’s because he’s idiotically convinced that it’s better for them that way. Here, now that he believes he’s already failed Shuichi as badly as he ever could, he should feel like he has nothing more to lose on that front (and Shuichi never even needed him anyway, right?), so there should be no harm in owning up to it and at least apologising for what he’s done wrong.

Granted, Kaito is busy trying to make up for his failure through his totally-great escape plan – but that’s still no reason why he can’t also apologise first and then keep trying to make up for things with the plan anyway. And it’s not at all like it was in the trial itself, when he was too wound-up in the heat of the moment to be thinking clearly. He’s had plenty of time to process what happened and regain control of himself and become consciously aware of what he knows is the right thing to do here.

The guilt and shame Kaito would be feeling from his belief that he’s failed Shuichi would still hurt pretty bad, sure – but I don’t think, if it really is a proportionate emotional response to what he feels like he’s done, that it’d be something he couldn’t face up to. He’s incredibly resilient and knows that sometimes you’ve just gotta face painful things head-on, and he should be more than willing to do so for the sake of making things at least slightly better between him and Shuichi.

So, I argue this: Kaito avoiding Shuichi the way he does in early chapter 5 doesn’t quite make sense unless he has ADHD. (Or perhaps some other neurological disorder that would have a similar effect on his emotions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to be sure what other possibilities could fit.)

Too much pain

I can confirm from experience: RSD freaking sucks. Any feeling of “I should be able to do this, but I messed it up”, or any seemingly innocuous comment from someone you care about where they either point out a mistake you made or that could possibly be interpreted to mean they don’t really care about you that much – these things can hurt like hell, so much more than they have any right to. It’s as if that insignificant twinge of disappointment that most people would feel just gets multiplied by like a thousand until it practically feels like you’ve been stabbed in the chest. And I should note: the rejection version tends to be triggered by people important to you, but I find it’s especially bad if it’s someone I not only care about but also look up to. You know, like Kaito very definitely does to Shuichi.

Case 4 has plenty of things that would trigger RSD for Kaito before even getting into the worst parts of the trial. That cell phone incident in the investigation I mentioned earlier, where Kaito thought Shuichi needed his help for a second and then ended up feeling like he really never did at all? And all the times Shuichi shoots down one of Kaito’s arguments in the trial and tells him he’s wrong (which happens seven times, by the way)? Every single one of those seemingly-minor moments would have hurt Kaito not just a little, but one hell of a lot. It’s honestly really impressive and a testament to Kaito’s resilience that he managed to keep himself together and show barely any signs of how he was feeling for as long as he did.

It’s also very relevant that RSD is known to potentially trigger an externalised response of instantaneous rage, exactly like the outbursts of anger I mentioned in the previous section. I’ve already talked plenty elsewhere about how a lot of the pain that’s causing Kaito to lash out in trial 4 isn’t just over Gonta’s guilt but is also over how he’s being made to feel like a horribly inferior failure compared to Shuichi – and, yep, that’s still a perfect match to Kaito having ADHD.

By the end of the trial, Kaito’s issues and irrationalities have rendered him convinced that he’s utterly failed to be the hero he’s supposed to be, and that Shuichi obviously doesn’t need him or care about him any more (if he ever even did in the first place). That’s giving Kaito plenty of genuine conscious reason to be hurting pretty damn hard to begin with, before his ADHD brain-wiring even sinks its claws into it. Now try to imagine that pain getting disproportionately multiplied by like a thousand – fucking ouch, and then some. Nobody, not even someone as brave and resilient as Kaito, should ever be expected to be able to face up to that, to actively make it even worse by talking about it and bringing those feelings to the forefront, especially not when doing so would just be showing even more weakness to the person it hurts so much to show weakness to. I don’t believe it’d be fair to call anyone a coward for that.

Kaito’s not a coward; he avoids Shuichi in early chapter 5 because he is genuinely in too much pain to bear. The only way he can deal with it at all (now that he’s not in the heat of trial 4 and is very determined to at least not make things even worse by lashing out in anger again) is by simply trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. If he manages to prove himself as a hero, maybe it’ll stop hurting quite as much and he’ll be able to face up to it, but until then, avoiding the pain is all he can do.

(Obligatory Harmonious Heart mention)

Since I relish the opportunity to bring this scene up whenever I can, I might as well add that Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event is another instance in which he’d be feeling some pretty rough RSD – at least, in every outcome except the best one in which Shuichi reassures him that they’re friends and it’s okay to open up to your friend. It’d be especially bad in the worst outcome where Kaito realises Shuichi has seen his “weakness” and feels like he’s failed him. Probably not quite as bad as in canon, but still, ouch.

In fact, an interesting thing about that worst outcome is that Kaito specifically says he feels “so embarrassed”, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing anyone would expect Kaito to ever describe himself as feeling, even at a time like this. However, I know from my own experience that “embarrassment” is in fact something that it’s easy to mistake RSD for when you don’t know what it is – just an embarrassment that’s somehow agonisingly painful, because that’s totally how embarrassment usually works for most people, right. So, A, this fits perfectly yet again, and B, since you’d usually not think to have Kaito ever use that word… it makes me wonder if the writer for this scene knew.

Coping methods (and why Kaito doesn’t have them)

Of course, it’s not like there aren’t methods to try to combat and mitigate the incredible pain that RSD can bring. One that I’ve found works really well (thanks to Kaito himself!) is exercising. It really helps to burn off that excessive emotional energy – and not necessarily just RSD, but any of the disproportionately painful emotions ADHD brings – by translating it into physical energy. “Let your sweat wash away all your sadness, fear, worry and hardships; just start moving your body and your pain will become memories before you know it,” actually sums up how this feels pretty well! It’s quite possible that this advice – heck, maybe his entire exercise-to-help-the-mind thing in general – is something else that Kaito first came up with for himself, after he found that it helped him calm down and feel better whenever he’d get too upset about something.

…So it’s really rather cruel that Kaito’s worsening illness also happens to lock him out of one of his only genuinely-healthy coping mechanisms for what he’s going through emotionally in chapters 4 and 5, isn’t it.

Another thing that’s really helped me in dealing with my own RSD is simply understanding it. When you know that it’s a disproportionate emotional response, you can remind yourself that things aren’t truly as bad as the pain is making them feel like they are, which makes it easier to take steps to stop it hurting, such as talking to the friend who unintentionally triggered it and having them reassure you that of course they care about you. Without that understanding of it, it’s all too easy to think, “if it hurts this much, I must deserve to be hurting this much,” which, yeah, that’s a bad path to go down.

One pretty important part of my headcanon that Kaito has ADHD, then, is that he definitely has no idea he has it. If he’d been diagnosed with it at some point in his life, he’d understand these problems of his better. Even if the doctors never told him all these things I’ve been mentioning here about how ADHD actually works (which is way too disappointingly common, so I gather), Kaito would have researched this stuff himself at some point, in order to better understand himself and know his limits so that he can work around them to be the best person he can be. He wouldn’t want to let anything get in the way of him helping others as much as he can and achieving his dream of going to space, not even the idiosyncrasies of his own brain. And, heck, he’d probably find it interesting if only he had a reason to look into it in the first place! Many ADHDers hyperfixate on ADHD, and Kaito definitely seems like someone who would have if he’d known.

So, if Kaito was aware of his ADHD, he’d be able to recognise what he’s going through in early chapter 5 as RSD and handle it better. He’d know that, no matter how much it hurts, things aren’t actually quite as bad as it feels like, and that apologising to Shuichi sooner rather than later is almost certainly the best way forward even if the prospect of doing so seems terrifying as all hell. For that matter, if Kaito knew about his ADHD and what it really involved, he’d almost certainly have trained himself to be able to deal with a lot of his more troublesome symptoms better than he ever does in canon.

Friendship difficulties

Because of their differently-wired brains, ADHDers can often struggle to connect with the rest of the world that doesn’t think the same way as them. And here’s a fun subtle thing about Kaito that ought to get talked about more: he’s not actually very skilled or experienced at making friends. Having sidekicks that he can inspire and support, and being a general encouraging influence on a wider group of people to keep them working together – sure, that stuff comes naturally to him. But regular, everyday friendship? Not so much.

This isn’t that easy to spot, because most of the time we see Kaito, he’s deliberately focusing on motivating people, which he’s great at. But there are a few instances here and there where Kaito interacts with people in a not-specifically-motivational way: his attempts to befriend Kaede (who doesn’t need his support), his earlier FTEs with Shuichi (which should be happening before training starts), and the conversation with Shuichi and Maki in chapter 4’s second training scene (before Maki begins talking about her past).

In all of these, Kaito turns out to actually be a huge awkward goof who doesn’t seem to have the first clue how to do regular interpersonal interactions. And basically everything about him being this way can potentially be explained by ADHD.

Too many thoughts

It’s never quiet and organised in an ADHD brain; whenever we’re not hyperfocusing on one specific thing, our minds always have like five different thoughts rattling around in them at once. So, consider the conversation with Shuichi and Maki, which Kaito was attempting to treat like a Regular Conversation (rather than the chance to help Maki open up that it definitely actually was in his head). Perhaps, in his efforts to do small talk, not one but several different possible small talk questions popped into his head at once and clamoured for his attention, such that a couple of them – “what blood type are you?” and “what [something] do you like?” – got accidentally merged together when he opened his mouth to speak. That plus his impulsive lack-of-filter meant that out came “What blood type do you like?” and Kaito sounding like a doofus.

(When Maki points out that this is a strange question, Kaito awkwardly laughs it off. It almost seems like he’s used to accidentally saying things people consider weird during his attempts at normal conversation and has learned to try and act like it’s nothing so he doesn’t push anyone away.)

This disorganisation in ADHD minds also tends to make them get too caught up on unnecessary details they find interesting and wander off down random mental tangents rather than whatever they’re supposed to be talking or thinking about. I once saw a tumblr post that said ADHDers are likely to tell “stories that start sooner than they need to and end somewhere other than the point” – and this happens to be a literally perfect description of the story Kaito tells Shuichi in his second and third FTEs. He was supposed to be telling Shuichi how he became interested in space. He began by talking about finding a treasure map and conquering the seas, and he finished with how he was busy conquering the land when his summer vacation ended. At no point did he mention space; he’d got so wrapped up in the story itself that he’d completely forgotten that was meant to be the point.

Kaito also has a bit of a tendency to make strange statements that appear to make perfect sense to him even though they kind of don’t to anybody else. He wants to learn to play the piano for when he goes to space? Well, of course; he might meet an alien! You can’t ever know how malicious other people’s secrets are? Sure, but that’s why you just gotta believe in… yourself! These really do make perfect sense in Kaito’s head (the first is about communication; the second is about people-reading skills). But it seems, perhaps, that his overly-active mind made connections too fast and jumped several tracks at once, to the point that he didn’t realise he was skipping a few steps of his explanation and that it wouldn’t make so much sense to the people listening. Which is also a thing that ADHD people are liable to do.

Too loud and excitable

A less immediately obvious thing that’s strange about Kaito’s behaviour in the chapter 4 training chat is that, when Shuichi essentially just straight-up asks Maki to start talking about her issues, Kaito admonishes him for being too direct and claims he can’t just do that. This seems odd coming from Kaito, who’s usually nothing but direct in his approaches to encouraging people, and who definitely also intended to prompt Maki into talking about her issues here.

But, apparently because he’s trying to present this as a Regular Normal Friend Conversation, Kaito didn’t think he was meant to be so direct in this context. Which suggests he’s learned through experience that his usual kind of directness that works great for encouragement apparently just kind of puts people off when it’s used in a regular conversation. So instead, he was trying to work his way towards hopefully maybe getting Maki to open up through awkward small talk that he must know he’s terrible at – no wonder he was miffed when Shuichi casually went and committed the exact social “faux-pas” he’d been trying to avoid, with complete confidence that it’d actually be fine, and it turned out it was. (Whoops, there goes Shuichi effortlessly being better than him at everything Kaito finds difficult, like always.)

Nonetheless, Kaito probably has good reason to be worried about coming across as too direct (outside of sidekick contexts, where that’s just the best way to get through to someone and help). Because, when he’s not actively trying to avoid it, he does have a tendency to get a bit carried away with things and put people off as a result. Remember the time he asked Kaede for a hug? There’s absolutely no reason to assume this was romantic or sexual in nature, because it already makes more than enough sense to think that Kaito was just so excited at meeting someone so similar to him and thought she was Super Cool and just really wanted to be her friend!!! So he impulsively expressed that sentiment in a rather-too-forward way that he was too caught up in his excitement to realise was going to come across as rather inappropriate.

Not that being too overly excitable and direct about things necessarily has to lead to behaviour that’s outright inappropriate in order to cause problems. (Though please never forget that Kaito asked for the hug and respected Kaede’s boundaries when she said no.) Even if he’s not doing anything wrong, Kaito being his usual larger-than-life self all the time might just come across as a bit Much and be kind of weird and off-putting for a lot of people. It’s that emotional hyperarousal again, which I mostly talked about the negative side of in the earlier section – but the positive side of it, amplifying the good emotions to make someone more enthusiastic and passionate, can still (completely undeservedly) be a negative thing in a social context with others who just aren’t wired the same way.

In Kaito’s second FTE, wrapped up among his ridiculous overblown childish fiction, he appears to potentially be talking about an actual playmate he had at the time who joined in his game of pretending to be a sea captain. Then they had a fight and Kaito never saw him again – and he presents that like it was just part of his game, too, but this can likely be taken to mean that they had a falling out that never got resolved and stopped being friends. If so, I can’t help but assume that this was probably because tiny Kaito was a little bit too boisterous and excessive in his playing – while still not necessarily doing anything wrong – that it overwhelmed this other kid to the point that he didn’t really want to join in any more.

There’s also one bit of FTE invitation dialogue where Kaito claims he’s about to teach Kaede how to have peace of mind… and then he tells stories that make her question his definition of that. Which makes a lot of sense considering that ADHD minds, particularly hyperactive-type ones, are never relaxed for even a moment. Kaito doesn’t know how not to be energetic and over-the-top even when the people he’s with just want to wind down and relax, which also wouldn’t really do him any favours in terms of making friends.

But none of that is Kaito’s fault; he’s not trying to be selfish or drive these people away. It’s simply the way his mind is, always going full-throttle when most other people’s usually aren’t. He just gets so excited about so many things and has a hard time toning that down. Besides, why would Kaito even want to tone it down and be boringly down-to-earth when his mind could be up in space instead!? That’s much better! …except that most other people don’t see it that way.

Too much infodumping

In the training chat, after embarrassing himself with a bungled small talk question and being shown up by Shuichi making it look like it’s actually somehow not a problem to be too direct after all, Kaito attempts to bring things back around to small talk with the, uh, “safe” option of asking Maki what her favourite spaceship is. Which isn’t really small talk at all, of course – but then, actual small talk is hard for ADHD people, because it’s not interesting enough to care about paying proper attention to. They’d much rather be acting on that constant desire to talk about something they’re interested in, such as one of their hyperfixations, which is not always the best way to connect with others who don’t happen to be interested in the same thing.

(Fortunately, since another of his hyperfixations is Maki and her issues, Kaito is perfectly happy to listen once she starts talking about her past, and the conversation shifts back to a comfortable hero-and-sidekick situation again rather than an awkward and confusing how-do-I-friends???)

There’s another of those FTE invitation dialogues in chapter 1 where Kaito tells Kaede he’s a good listener… and then apparently Kaede spends the entire time listening to him instead. Except, obviously Kaito really is a good listener when it’s in his hero-and-sidekick context and he’s helping someone with their problems, because he’s invested in supporting them and so it’d be easy for him to pay attention. But perhaps, when it’s in a regular friendship context and the person he’s talking to doesn’t need his help (like Kaede doesn’t), Kaito’s not quite so good at listening because he’s not necessarily as interested in what they have to say. So he might be liable to just impulsively act on the desire to talk about the things he wants to (such as SPACE; there is always time for space) and then get so focused on it that he overlooks the other person’s feelings and genuinely doesn’t realise he’s coming across as kind of brash and self-absorbed.

Kaito’s second and third FTEs with Shuichi are an even better illustration of this. Upon Shuichi choosing to hang out with him for a second time, Kaito apparently realises Shuichi is interested enough in him to possibly want to be his friend. So he responds to this by… launching into a huge ridiculous story about his (completely make-believe) heroic adventures as a kid. This kind of one-sided conversation and bizarre topic choice is not, in fact, a great way to make friends with someone, but Kaito doesn’t seem to realise this. He finds his story so cool and exciting that he impulsively assumes Shuichi would too and jumps into it without actually confirming whether Shuichi wants to hear it or not. And, honestly, it seems like Shuichi doesn’t, at least not particularly, and is only listening out of politeness and an inability to get a word in edgeways. His less-than-enthusiastic response to Kaito’s story suggests that these FTEs are canonically meant to happen before training begins and Shuichi comes to properly consider Kaito a friend – and therefore that Kaito’s not really doing the best job here of making Shuichi begin to consider him a friend.

Still himself despite it all!

All of these potentially-ADHD-fuelled idiosyncrasies of Kaito’s make it a lot harder for him to make friends in the normal way – and he seems to be somewhat aware of this. Some of the things from the chapter 4 chat hint that he’s slightly insecure and afraid he’s going to put Shuichi and Maki off by being so dorkily himself. There’s also a little more of this in the Salmon Team bonus mode, in which friendship is the entire point, and yet a few lines when he’s inviting Shuichi to hang out hint that Kaito isn’t completely convinced that Shuichi would want to hang out with him as a friend rather than as a sidekick who needs his advice and support. If he was more used to having friends, he probably wouldn’t still be so insecure about this – so this honestly kind of suggests that Shuichi and Maki could be the first real friends Kaito’s ever managed to make.

Because of these kinds of issues in connecting with people, a lot of ADHD kids grow up unconsciously learning to suppress their true selves, hiding their boundless enthusiasm and unusual interests to seem more “normal” so that they can fit in. I know this because I was one such kid, and I’m still struggling to unlearn this as an adult. So I have huge admiration for Kaito having managed to not do this, refusing to let anything stop him from being himself at all times. His convictions about staying true to himself are even more impressive when you realise that he would have felt so pressured to break them and pretend to be someone he’s not in order to more easily make friends.

As strong-willed as Kaito is, I doubt he’d have been able to do this as a kid without help. His parents and grandparents must have been really, really good in validating his passion and energy and never making him feel ashamed for being the way he is, assuring him that if other kids can’t see how great he is then that’s their problem and not because he’s doing anything wrong. He wants to go to space more than anything else in the world? Awesome; he should chase that dream with everything he has and not care how ridiculous and childish and impossible everyone else seems to think it is! Not all parents would do that.

After all, there are a lot of occasions in which Kaito does just brazenly present his larger-than-life self to someone in a clumsily overbearing attempt to make friends, without showing even the subtlest sign of being worried it might put them off. For that matter, Kaito is generally very willing to just throw himself into things he’s unfamiliar with and possibly end up failing spectacularly and making a fool of himself – something that’s likely to be pretty painful for him, given how RSD is. While some of this is probably down to his impulsiveness and not even considering that he might fail, I’m sure sometimes he’s got to be aware of it, and if so, that’s some impressive resilience and determination. People with ADHD can become unconsciously inclined to never try at anything out of a fear of that painful failure, but of course Kaito would refuse to let that happen to him – which is really quite admirable.

Interestingly, all of the times Kaito is subtly insecure about his social skills – the chapter 4 scene, the Salmon Team bits, and maybe that time with the former friend in his FTE if you assume that him wrapping it up in a fiction means he’s still uncomfortable about what happened – involve someone he’s already friends with. After all, it’s probably easier for him to fearlessly dive in with someone new, because it’s less of a blow if he messes up in that context – not everyone’s going to click with him and that’s just how things go. But once Kaito’s already built a strong connection with someone, he becomes more afraid of messing up, because being rejected by someone important to him would be agonising. You might think that he ought to feel more comfortable around people he’s already friends with because he should trust them and know they’re not going anywhere no matter how much of a dork he is – but when RSD is a factor, it makes perfect sense for it to be the opposite.

Sidekicks can be friends, too!

Perhaps part of why Kaito is able to remain so confident in himself most of the time is because he nonetheless hasn’t grown up alone and lacking meaningful connections to other people. Despite his difficulty in making regular friends, he’s compensated for this by having sidekicks, which are a very different matter that his eccentricities conversely make him very good with. Being enthusiastic and energetic and over-the-top like Kaito can never not be is helpful when he’s being an inspiring hero, not weird or off-putting at all!

Still, while Kaito has a far easier time forging that initial connection with someone through the sidekick approach rather than the friend approach, that doesn’t make him worse at actually being someone’s friend (and not just their “hero”) once he’s got his foot in the door. If Kaito had told the story from his FTEs to Shuichi after they’d started training and properly bonded, Shuichi’s reaction would have been completely different: still probably exasperated, but in an affectionate kind of way, because he knows that’s just part of what makes Kaito who he is, and it’s actually pretty fun to be around. He has a lot of this sort of response to Kaito once they’re friends, and it’s adorable. It’s the same in the chapter 4 training chat – neither Maki nor Shuichi are at all put off by Kaito’s awkwardness, partly because they’re not exactly great at social skills themselves, but also because they know how much Kaito cares about them, and no amount of arbitrary social missteps could ever change that.

When someone becomes Kaito’s sidekick, meaning they’ve accepted his support and understand how much he wants to help them, they can see everything else about him that they might have found weird before in a new light. They learn that his eccentric behaviour isn’t him being deliberately rude or self-absorbed at all. It’s just genuinely how he is, and it’s part of how he can support them so well like he does, but that’s not all it’s good for. They come to appreciate Kaito not just for his incredible supportiveness, but for everything else about him, too. He’s not just their hero, but also their friend.

However… Kaito apparently can’t see that. Since he’s never been that good at forming regular friendships with people who don’t explicitly need him, he’s all too liable to assume that the people who do need him are only sticking around because of that, and no other reason. That co-dependency of Kaito’s I mentioned earlier, aka his rather unhealthy need to be needed? While the stressful context of the killing game definitely made it way worse throughout the story, it seems it was already slightly a thing in the first place – and if so, Kaito having ADHD could very well be the root cause.

Kaito is Good

Being realistic about how sadly uncommon well-represented neurodivergency is in fiction (and how misunderstood ADHD tends to be), I don’t know if I should try to assert that Kaito being ADHD was definitely the writers’ intent. However, almost every major facet of his character and personality fits with it so damn well that I want to think it’s at least possible that someone on the writing team could have had it in mind. Especially with the couple of bits I mentioned that seem like they could have been deliberately included by someone who Knows.

Still, even if it wasn’t intended, it’s amazing how good of a fit this is. Maybe it’s just that, in creating a character as intensely passionate as Kaito, the writers naturally wrote into him all the downsides of being that way as well, without even realising they were near-perfectly modelling the highs and lows of ADHD. After all, the human mind’s ability to simulate other human minds even when they’re not real is freaking magical. Kaito is such an incredibly well-written character with so much thought put into him whether or not he was meant to be as extremely ADHD-coded as he is.

I’ve always believed that Kaito is a fantastic example of how the best way to write realistic and interesting flaws into a character is to have them organically draw from traits that, in other situations, can be that character’s greatest strengths. And in my opinion, this is also kind of true about ADHD. When I figured out I had it and what it really meant, it was hugely validating for me, because I learned that almost everything I’d been struggling with was basically just the logically-inevitable downside of some of the things I’d always liked about myself, such as my ability to get so ridiculously analytical about stories I love like this. I wouldn’t trade those parts of myself away for anything – and I can’t imagine Kaito would, either.

I’ve seen a few posts and articles focusing on the bright side of having ADHD by listing some of the positive traits ADHDers often have because of it, and, delightfully, so many of them – fun to be around! compassionate! persistent! to name just a few – are things that Kaito has in spades. So, well, if ADHD can look so much like Kaito… then surely it can’t be all bad.

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(P.S.: High-five to anyone who headcanons Kaito as autistic! There’s a lot of overlap between that and ADHD. Many of the symptoms I’ve talked about here can also be symptoms of autism, and even with the non-overlapping bits, a lot of Kaito’s idiosyncrasies that I linked to ADHD could be interpreted slightly differently to link them to autism instead. I believe ADHD fits him somewhat better than autism does, but then I’m more knowledgeable about ADHD so my data is skewed, plus I’m pretty obviously biased since I’m personally invested in the idea of Kaito being like me. Taking a step back from my more specific headcanon here, though, there’s still every reason to assume that Kaito is at least some flavour of neurodivergent, and I think that’s pretty awesome.)

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #kaito momota #character analysis #kaito's hero issues #ramble #adhd #adhd headcanons #creating that tag because i can already tell kaito won't be the only adhd headcanon i make #oh my god this ended up *longer* than the hero ramble how did this happen #and yes i will link to the hero ramble in every single other kaito ramble because it is always important #i also talked about myself in this more than i ever usually do on here so uh #personal?

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swtorpadawan · 4 years

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Awakenings - Chapter 7 : Weaknesses

Author’s Notes: Just a short one this time.

Shortly after Kira Carsen had joined the Eternal Alliance, Vette met up with her. The two young women become friends, with similar backgrounds – both having grown up on the streets of Nar Shaddaa – and with surprisingly similar personalities, most notably with respect to their sense of humor. Literally within hours, it became the norm on Odessen to see the duo side by side, whispering to each other and giggling and laughing about one thing or another.

It was on that first day, however, that Vette had taken it upon herself to take Kira on a tour of the base, introducing her to everyone she needed to know.

It proved to be a qualified success. After her performance that morning in the sparring circle with the Commander – a story for another day – she’d built up a solid amount of credibility to go along with the natural intrigue people had for the ‘new girl’, people were far more willing to accept her given her relationship with Corellan Halcyon.

People were fast warming to the idea that the Alliance Commander, their fearless leader and invincible champion, had someone special in his life. It made somehow made him seem more like everyone else.

But Kira’s tour of the Alliance base nevertheless went very well… albeit with two minor incidents of note.

One of these took place in the cantina, and – perhaps unsurprisingly – involved Kaliyo.

More on that one another time.

The second of these minor ‘incidents’ took place in the Force enclave.

Overall, it went quite smoothly. Kira knew several of the Jedi present, including Master Ranos, Leeha Narezz and Jomar Chul. None pressed the matter of her relationship with Corellan Halcyon; it was not their place to challenge whether Kira should continue to call herself Jedi. Sana-Rae, the enclave’s leader, and the other Voss had heard stories of Kira fighting at the Commander’s side in the defense of her home world years before, and Kira soon warmed to her. She was more reserved with the Sith, but even these encounters went surprisingly well.

This with the exception of her first experience meeting Xalek.

Xalek had been a valued member of the Alliance since his recruitment on Ilum months before. He had proven himself reliable on several missions and had fought heroically – if brutally – during the Battle of Odessen, when Vaylin’s forces had sought to annihilate the Alliance.

Having said that, the Kaleesh was something of a loner. Even the other Sith seemed to think of him as a blunt instrument, too focused on his own martial prowess to the detriment of everything else.

Xalek had sparred with the Commander at least half a dozen times since their initial encounter on Ilum. While he had given a good accounting of himself on each occasion, the simple truth was he felt hopelessly outclassed. Arcann (through personal power), Senya Tirall (through her experience and skill) and Lana Beniko (through sheer guile) were the only three members of the Alliance who had seemed able to challenge Corellan Halcyon in the sparring ring, and even they had proven unable to actually defeat him. Indeed, the Commander’s edge over his competition seemed to have only increased over time as he adapted to their tactics. Xalek had studied the Commander’s form (or forms) for hours on end, attempting to diving some weakness that could be exploited. He had been met by failure.

But that morning, Xalek – and most of the Alliance personnel on base – had witnessed Kira Carsen press Corellan Halcyon in an incredibly intense display of lightsaber dueling, with the Commander barely emerging victorious.

So it came to pass that Xalek, lacking any subterfuge or diplomacy whatsoever, boldly greeted Kira Carsen with a probing question.

“As the Commander’s mate, you must surely know something of his weaknesses.”

A moment of stunned silence fell upon the gathered Force-users. A few do gasp quietly while Darth Hexid clucks her tongue reproachingly. Vette – who had committed herself to making sure Kira’s ‘introduction’ ran smoothly – was horrified and started yelling at the tactless Kaleesh.

“Xalek! What are you even thinking saying something like that! Do you even – “

Before the Twi’lek can continue, Kira gently put her hand on Vette’s shoulder, then turned back to Xalek with a scrutinizing look and a raised eyebrow.

“Are you honestly asking me where he’s ticklish?”

Vette blushed at the remark, turning a lovely shade of purple. Xalek, for his own part, blinked.

Kira’s first day as a member of the Eternal Alliance went well. She had learned about the Alliance, and the members of the Alliance had learned about her.

But to this day, Xalek is still trying to chew over exactly what she was trying to tell him.

Author’s Notes: Many of us know what its like to be the ‘new kid’ at school, and the challenges someone faces in that sort of situation. Most of us probably were just trying to keep our heads down while we tried to get our bearings. I was fascinated by the challenge of someone coming to a new school, being ‘known’ to everyone, but all anyone knows about us is that we are dating the star quarterback of the football team. Or the prom queen. Or whomever.

I think Kira and Vette are a natural fit. 😊

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #swtor writing #writing #tales from the eternal alliance #awakenings #kira carsen #vette #vette swtor #xalek #oc: corellan halcyon #eternal alliance #the eternal alliance

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southern-belle-outcasts · 4 years

Text

@brooklynislandgirl sent for The next 10 asks my muse must answer truthfully (Also tagging @mynameisanakin because obviously this is...relevant.):

Keni lingers in the shadows of the Senator's bed chamber, face as impassive as the edifice of the Temple that spawned her. Beneath it, fires rage and flicker in her penetrating gaze.

"He loves you. You believe you love him. So why is it ~Your Highness~ that when he speaks you silence him. When he needs support you are absent. Why is it that your precious democracy and Senate means more to you than the man you claim is your everything? What makes you think you are so special that you can treat him like a dog and expect him not to eventually bite?"

The quiet that fell after the questions were posed- one after the other, each more pointed than the last, was exceedingly heavy, the tension palpable. Padmé’s brown eyes, which usually held a congeniality no matter who she was addressing, had turned cold and dark as the vacuum of space in a nearly dead system. There was no laughter, but neither was there outrage. Not just yet anyways...

“It seems that either I am dull witted, and Anakin a liar, or it is not the Jedi practice to use formal address both improperly, and in such a back handed manner. It certainly wouldn’t be a practice that would be befitting of keepers of the peace if that was their true intent.” The words were matter of fact, measured and even. And yet their quiet tone somehow failed to add any softness to them, if anything it added to the sharpness held within each syllable.

She did not rise. This was not the senate floor. There was no obligation to pay this interrogation the courtesy of standing. Leaning further back, she regarded the woman with the calm of someone masking their desire to allow anger to overtake them. A practiced, calculated masking, rather than the huffing, or shaking one might see in an individual used to expressing every emotion. That privilege had not been hers for many long years.

“For someone to question my love for him...I would think, given his past, that even in simile they would not be so uncouth as to liken him to an animal.” If there was a bite to be had, it was in the emphasis she placed on the word, which was paired by a fractional narrowing of her eyes. “I also find it quite interesting that for a Jedi, you claim no ownership of or participation in the Republic. It is suddenly solely mine. When was it decided that I ruled over the entire galaxy? Is Master Yoda of such an extended age that he now teaches the younglings that a democratic republic has a ruler?” The slight head tilt was about as close to a taunt as she was going to offer, but the intent was clear. Maybe she should not bring him into this, but she was allowing herself the slightest degree of pettiness. Maybe it was her exhaustion, maybe the irritation of having her care questioned, she was not entirely certain of it herself, and the concern she had right now was responding, not introspection.

“Were duties thrown to the side all around, and thusly democracy in turn discarded, the galaxy would then fall into the unchecked, lawless savagery the Outer Rim enjoyed long before talk of separation and war. Hunger, lack of medical, slavery, drug trade, mercenaries and assassins. That is what you would rather see, instead of someone fulfilling their assigned duty that serves all? You seem to have this wide encompassing opinion of all senators based on the ones here only for personal gain that care nothing of democracy, or their people. My entire political career has never been for personal gain. Who, if they are so bent on being self serving, turns down the opportunity to have continued rule of an entire planet? My people love me, I have sway. If I wanted to take advantage of that, I could have.”

There had been much talk of why she hadn’t allowed an amending of the constitution to allow her another term, but she had never understood that confusion people had. In order for democracy to remain intact, for there to be a balance and power check, the position needed to change hands. She had been happy to see it done, and happier still to continue to serve her people at request of the Queen. The echos of criticism- ‘If you’re going to no longer be queen, at least have a life living your desires’- never truly leaving her mind. She kept the more selfish indulgence of agreeing with her sister far back in the recesses that Should Not Be Touched more often than not. Not only that, but she hadn’t even brought up the attempts on her life, both as queen and senator. It was not without its own dangers. Although it would not be to seek sympathy or an excuse, she chose to overlook that inconvenient fact in favor of focusing on more directly addressing the questions.

She tapped her lips as though she were searching for words. She was not. There was no need to search for words, but patience, of that which she was running dangerously low on. If she were not careful, she would fall out of the shell of senator and merely be the offended lover justifying what she perceived as both obvious and guilt-free.

“If I ever silence anyone--” the pause spoke of the fact that she hadn’t just silenced Keni the moment the first question left her mouth “--it is because I have a certainty of what they are saying, and a better knowledge and authority on the matter. Please, since you are such an authority on my every conversation and interaction in the greatest of detail, point out to me where I silence him. Would you, and forgive me if I’m erring in this recollection, be hard pressed to find a time it had not been on a matter in which I was more experienced, more in my element, and in a situation where throwing ideas around was at minimum needless, and at worst, detrimental to entertain unless we wished to risk lives?”

There was a much needed brief still as she re-centered herself, forcing her face to relax while inhaling the cool air. There was no stilling her elevated heart rate until she actually took a few moments to breathe and attempt to not simply snap. Isn’t that what everyone sought of her? A loss of composition as a sign they had won? A push into actual anger, to immediately discredit any words that may come from her mouth- no matter how true they were.

“I have been there many times for him. There have often been times I could not be because it was my duty- serving my queen and the countless beings in the galaxy, not just myself, and not just him, and not just you. I thought shirking duty was frowned upon by the order? Or did it form a new opinion, of which you are now the voice?” Forget the fact she could not always request his presence if she wanted it, no, that would be bringing up the inverse and why would one do that?

She now leaned forward, calm, but putting forth far more intensity than she had the entire conversation. If a quiet battling of words could even be graced with as dull a label as conversation, that is. “Were I to consider myself special, and above others, I would not be so quick to correct others when they attempt to put me on a pedestal, nor would I refute them when they try to be self deprecating- most especially if put in contrast with myself. Is it not...hypocritical at best for a jedi to accuse someone of seeing themselves as special?”

#brooklynislandgirl #v; undetermined #//WELP #that happened #it could be trash as it's 4am and i'm writing with caffeine mania #or maybe it's just her internally losing her shit #yeah #go with that #silent cussing out in every foreign language she's every learned

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crazed-rambling · 3 years

Text

KR-4872

Sometimes you just got to spend seven hours writing oc star wars fanfic because you have strong feelings about what happens to the stormtroopers after The Rise of Skywalker.

________________________________________________________________

KR-4872 hated this pillow. They supposed it was their pillow now but it wasn’t. Every night their head would sink into it then fall and fall and fall and the hull was breached and it was cold. So cold. They tried to breath tried to think. Think back to training, let the commander’s voice echo in their head. What is your directive trooper? But this wasn’t like the sims. The sims were always outside. Missions were outside. Not the ship, the ship was tasks and orders and training and rest cycles. And the grav had given out they were spinning, screams and shots reverberating inside their helmet. And they couldn’t breathe.

They slept without the pillow, kicked it down the bunk every night. They hadn’t slipped on their programming, even here even now, they still woke up well before their warden came for them, and each morning they returned the pillow to its usual place. There was no telling what was a test here and KR-4872 had not been informed of the consequences of failure. They had not witnessed a failure here yet, but it always came eventually and they would not be an example. Settling into the familiar at ease stance they waited.

“Kid? You all ready to go?” A woman’s voice sounded through the doors; their warden had arrived. Originally their warden would not come in without a verbal response, another example of these rebels’ weakness, but KR-4872 was a good trooper and would starve before giving in to rebel scum not matter their pitiful attempts at coaxing. Three silent days later they stopped waiting for a response, but the question allowed them chance to switch from them at ease to at attention stance before the warden opened the doors. KR-4872 refused to salute them each morning as though they were their unit leader, but they wouldn’t let anyone, even rebels, think they were a defective trooper.

Their warden was a slight woman, seemingly unarmed, but they didn’t like their chances against her. For all KR-4872’s training they had significantly less reach which would be detrimental in a close quarters fight, and once they’d seen the warden working on the rebel ships they’d given all hope of a physical assault. With her dark skin and coiled hair and her smile, the warden looked somewhat like YS-8251 had under their helmet, after two weeks, sometimes it still hurt to look at her. YS-8251 was dead.

It was just as well, since the warden seemingly took pleasure in laying out little tests for them, telling them they didn’t need to stand at attention, that they could ask her questions, to call her ‘Amakt’. She’d clearly been ordered to make them break programming; the rebels were far behind on their interrogation techniques, and KR-4872 had been trained to resist even First Order techniques. It was both dangerous and deviant to allow any feelings other than suspicion towards this woman to develop, no matter what she tried. KR-4872 was a good trooper.

She still tried to make conversation, to get them to open up, ready to spill the First Order’s secrets as they were led through the corridors towards the mess. KR-4872 wasn’t used to answering questions about how well they’d slept, it was not important to the quality of their work, still this woman asked each morning.

“I slept well ma’am.” KR-4872 lied each morning. Yet these unnecessary questions acted as some form of distraction from the disorder of the hallways. No pattern or order to the speed or direction they walked, droids of all makes dodging around the slower moving species. Sometimes they even stopped to have meaningless conversations with people they saw. In the hallway! And everyone else was just supposed to walk around them as though they weren’t showing off their own lack of discipline. The worst thing was that sometimes the rebels’ eyes followed them as they passed. They weren’t used to being looked at, stormtrooper armour made them all look the same, perfect order. Perfect troopers did not stand out. The rebels had been looking at them ever since they’d forced the helmet from their head. One of the rebels had even teared up after they’d wrenched KR-4872’s helmet off, back when they’d found them among the wreckage of their base. ‘They’re so young,’ they’d whispered, turning away to hide the tears that only a truly defective troopers let show. As though they weren’t the ones who brought disorder and death to the entire galaxy, as though they hadn’t prolonged this war for so long that the order was forced to use cadets just finished basic programming on the front lines. They cried as though they hadn’t just hours before cheered as her unit burned. They’re so young hadn’t mattered then. It must have mattered enough that now. They must thought it would make them easier to break, that their unfinished training would cause them to spill The Order’s secrets. As if they were too young to have gone through programming. These rebels were naïve in that way. It was why they weren’t suited for bringing order to the galaxy. It was why The Order would rise up again someday.

If KR-4872 found the corridors distracting, they found the mess hall both overwhelming and more familiar than anything else in this place. The layout an inferior echo of the perfect regimented rows of tables where their unit had eaten their rations, but this place lacked any of the calm order of those meals. It was as though the chaos of the hallways intensified hundreds of times over as they stepped through the doorway; walking into the wall of chatter that spilled out from this place. Words, voices, accents all spilled over each other, combining into the sort of cacophony which left them scrambling to keep track of every sound. Combined with the sight of rebels sitting around tables, donning all sorts of colours, with seemingly no pattern in position, role or species. The first moments in this room always made KR-4872 feel as though the connections in their brain were all firing at once, in entirely the wrong directions, as they attempted to catalogue the scene.

Two weeks of visits had done little to relive the intensity but the routine their warden seemed to have set for them both brought a comforting predictability to the situation. They hadn’t had time to cover authorised improvisation in their training before they were needed at the front. Their warden did not trust them to collect their food, walking them over to sit at the same table under supervision of more rebels eating their rations until she returned with theirs. It was clear the rebels were trying to bribe them, letting a prisoner eat the same food as they did and such a variety at that. It had taken time to get used to how much flavour the rebels seemed to put in their meals, so much brighter and less efficient than the Order’s nutritional rations, an obvious ploy to win them over. But they would enjoy the benefits of their attempts while they lasted.

KR-4872 wasn’t sure who the rebels they sat with were meant to be, they were not the warden’s unit-mates as she seemed to be the only mechanic among them, they had none of the markings of squadron-mates, they weren’t of the same species which meant they couldn’t have been produced together. Besides the two other humans both being from Coruscant they had seemingly no connection between these rebels or reason that they should gather like this for meals. Still they liked the rodian best, he was quiet, nodding to them once as they arrived then leaving them to their meal in peace, occasionally giving them some of the sweet stuff the rebels called ‘dessert’. KR-4872 had not figured out what he was aiming for by doing this but he currently seemed harmless.

“So kid any progress on your name?” They liked the male human ‘Ko’ least; he always asked the same question trying to trip them up. Talking during meals wasn’t allowed but he always wanted an answer. They hated the question as well, it always seemed to be some kind of test but they could never work out how to pass. When they were first asked for their name KR-4872 had given their designation, but the rebels did not seem to accept that answer, asking them what they’d like to be called. KR-4872 still didn’t understand what the purpose of the question was, but at least there seemed to be no repercussions of giving a wrong answer. Although they had been assigned the temporary designation ‘kid’ until they claimed KR-4872 was able to come up with their name. They shook their head in answer and the attention slid off of them back onto the pale female human who he’d interrupted.

“So like as I was saying Ko.” They liked when the attention was not on them, the rebels were content to talk among themselves so long as KR-4872 ate their food at a reasonable pace. The first meal they’d eaten too slowly and had been asked if they ‘didn’t like the food’ or ‘if they wanted something else’, an obvious trap and obvious warning. They made sure never to give the rebels any reason to believe they were ungrateful; they had no intention of letting the rebels reprogram them.

“….overheard Conn saying he heard that the generals said that we might be getting more leave soon, ya’know since we almost finished cleaning out this sector.” These conversations didn’t really mean much to them but they never knew when these rebels would let something slip. “I can’t wait to go home; I just want my leave now. Two weeks in the city. My own bed, dad’s cooking and none of these kriffing massive jungle bugs everywhere.” So far they’d learnt far more about these rebels’ lives than about the resistance’s plans or any remains of the First Order but they listened anyway. They’d mention things KR-4872 had never heard of before, music and foods and cities and parties. They still hadn’t figured out the purpose of a party, or even what it was, but they were too smart to draw attention to themselves by asking a question unprompted.

“Forget home. I just want my own kriffing room to myself again; there’s no way I’m getting laid with Lin snoring three feet away.”

“Ko! The kid!” Their warden’s scandalised yell of their temporary designation was enough to snap them back to attention, orders should never have to be repeated twice. But from she simply raised on hand in their direction, a gesture they’d come to realise as some sort of apology for calling their designation, she’d said it was an apology for ‘startling’ them. But troopers were always ready to respond to direct orders, so they didn’t understand the need for any sort of apology, they also didn’t understand why she was so scandalised. KR-4872 had long since learnt the mechanics of reproduction and understood that one day they’d fulfil their duty to the Order and reproduce with a trooper of the opposite sex. The rebels overreacted to many things though. They had started to get used to that as well.

“Ready to go kid?” Their food was gone, their warden was standing up, smiling down at them. Their warden smiled at them a lot. Troopers didn’t get much opportunity to observe expressions but they couldn’t help but feel that when she smiled at them she was always a little sad. They weren’t sure how to feel about that. Not that it made a difference if a rebel was sad, KR-4872 was a good trooper and it was time for the next part of their routine. Return the plates to the dirty pile, then to work. Not that it was really work - they got the feeling that the rebels did not quite know what to do with a prisoner, at least they seemed to be the only prisoner like them, so they just left them under the supervision of their warden as she went about her day. KR-4872 mainly sat reading whatever manual or book someone had found lying around, watching their warden repair the rebel transport ships.

The hanger was never quiet, too many pilots and ships and mechanics all in one place, but in their corner when their warden was focused on her work KR-4872 could almost believe that they might wake up back in their real bunk surrounded by their unit. It was their favourite part of the day. But feelings are a weakness and troopers should know anticipation leads to mistakes. They should have known better. So caught up in their next task they lost track of their surroundings, asking for death on a mission. Something, someone brushed against their shoulder. Close. Too close. They walked into someone; they weren’t meant to walk into people. They weren’t meant to be in the way. The punishment for obstruction was three cycles of reduced rations. They jerked away, metal plate slipping between their grip. They could only watch it fall.

The echoing sound of metal on metal. The loudest sound.

Their warden was looking at them. The rebels were looking at them. The hall hadn’t gone silent but the kitchen and the line for food and enough of it had. They’d all seen. They’d all seen the mess they’d made. They’d all watched them fail. They would tell everyone. The officers would know, their unit leader would know. They’d know KR-4872 was a defective trooper. They were going to reprogram them again.

They were going to be reprogrammed.

With every beat of their heart, with every breath becoming louder and louder, the knowledge reverberated in their head. And between each repeat was nothing but a deafening silence like the moments after a bomb drops.

The silence shattered, “Kid-“ they ran.

Out of the mess hall, right then left then left again. Which way to the room? No they’d find them there. They had to hide, had to get away. Couldn’t let them catch them. Wouldn’t let them reprogram them. They wouldn’t let themselves be emptied out again just to become a rebel puppet. They wouldn’t go back to that dark cold room. They’d been good, they’d been a good trooper. They’d passed their basic programming. They didn’t want to go back. They just have to keep running. Keep running until they couldn’t hear the footsteps behind them. They just needed to find somewhere to hide then regroup with their unit when the danger passed. That’s what they said in training. Just follow the training.

There! The next room on the right! An empty storage room filled with crates and rebel supplies. No one would think they hid here; they’d think they was trying to escape. It was perfect. They slid themselves between the gaps in the crates, into the small shadowed space behind. Too small for any of the rebels to pass, perfect for them. For the moment they were safe and KR-4872 buried their face in their knees.

Here in their hiding place it was dark and the sounds of outside were muffled just enough, like the inside of their helmet. KR-4872 missed their helmet, they missed the comforting feeling around their ears, how it protected them from the seemingly endless variety smells which just seemed to be everywhere, most of all they missed when nobody could tell if they let a few tears slip. They didn’t have that here, they let all those rebels see their weakness, how defective they were. Incapable of handling a single task, incapable of facing their punishment like a real trooper, incapable of even breathing. As though they were back, trapped in that helmet stuck endlessly spinning in zero grav as their unit was crushed and burnt around them. If they’d been a proper trooper they would have died with the unit, would have died before letting themselves be caught by rebel scum. KR-4872 was nothing but a defective trooper.

A shadow fell over the entrance to their hiding space, they froze still frantically trying to quiet their breathing. Look away. Look away. Look away. KR-4872 didn’t want to be reprogrammed again.

“I found her! Get Amakt!” They’d never heard the rodian shout before, he sounded almost frantic. They must not want to get punished either, they’re all going to be mad. There were more rebels now, they could hear them outside. They were all going to drag KR-4872 to reprogramming, scrape them raw from the insides until even their tears dried up. They didn’t even try to hold back the sob that escaped at the thought.

“Don’t crowd her!” Their warden. Amakt. Their warden. She sounded mad, yelling loud enough to drown out the crowd waiting to see them punished. They were going to be in so much trouble, they were going to get punished and she was going to get punished because of them and then they’d never get to eat that food again, and they’d never hear about the city or music and the rodian would never give them the sweet food. They’d ruined it all.

“Kid? You ok?” Her voice was quieter, closer now too. The shadows above her had moved away and through their teary eyes they saw her face at the entrance to their hiding place. An expression KR-4872 couldn’t quite understand on her face. Something like fear and sadness, not the type they felt when they got punished but the type they felt as they watched YS-8251 being taken for reprogramming.

“It’s me, Amakt. You can come out.” She was talking to them as though they were one of those wild weasel-like creatures that wondered in the from the jungle. Something weak and afraid. Maybe that’s what they were. It wasn’t like they were a proper trooper. Even the rebels could tell.

“You’re not in trouble. No one’s mad at you. It’s all been cleaned up, it’s all fixed.” Lies! They saw, they all know KR-4872 is defective now, the rebels knew they were weak. They were going to drag them off into one of those cold dark room to take all their secrets then wipe them clean after. If they didn’t just dispose of them once their use was up.

“Please come out. I just want to know you’re ok.” They were defective! How could they be ok? What did it matter if a defective trooper was ok? They could still feel snot and tears dripping onto their knees, they weren’t a proper trooper. Proper troopers didn’t hide away and cry like children.

“Everyone else has gone, it’s just us.” The shadows were gone, they couldn’t hear them either. The base was quiet for once in a way it never seemed to be, no chatter echoing off the walls. For a moment maybe it was just the two of them. Maybe they could leave, they might be able to get past her, find a new hiding place. But that wouldn’t work. They know that wouldn’t work. She’s taller and stronger and she has them trapped.

“We can go back to your room if you want kid. Or I could show you some of the X-wings in the hanger? We can do what you want today, ok?” It was clearly a trap. She’d noticed them looking at the X-wings across the hanger, they’d been too obvious, too childish. They should have kept their eyes front and centre. Trooper’s eyes didn’t wander. They didn’t get distracted by ships they’d never seen up close, decked in colourful paints so unlike the uniform TIE fighters they were used to. She’d noticed them and now she was using it against them, trying to lure them out with false promises only to spring the trap the moment they left their safe place.

“Whatever you want today kid. Just say the word.” But she sounded almost desperate, she’d never spoken to them like that before. No one had begged KR-4872 to do anything before, they were a trooper, they followed orders. But it didn’t matter because it was clearly a trap. They’d got too comfortable around these rebels, let their guard down. And now it was all crashing down.

But what if she was telling the truth? What if she was worried about them? Maybe they wouldn’t get reprogrammed. That was stupid, KR-4872 shouldn’t be so stupid and naïve, it was obviously a test. But they were already trapped, the rebels had them, the only way out was toward her. There was no need to lie to them. And if there was no need to lie then it was the truth? No! This was all a tactic to get them to come out so they could reprogramme them. But they were surrounded anyway, they could drag them out at anytime and they didn’t. Idiot! It’s to make reprogramming easier. They wanted them to spill all the Order’s secrets! But…. But if….

But if they were going to be reprogrammed either way….

…maybe it didn’t matter if they failed one more test.

“Amakt? You promise?”

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

Link

You have lived in the U.S. for 30 years. You’re speeding a little to get to work when you’re pulled over. First they realize you have no license. Then they realize you have no papers. You get thrown in jail. You need your wife, a U.S. citizen, to gather documents for you. But she is undergoing chemotherapy and her memory isn’t working right. After a few weeks, her phone number goes dead. Is she in intensive care? Was she evicted? You don’t know. You are trapped in prison and have no one else to call. You explain the situation to the judge and he gives you a few extensions. Then, finally, he says his hands are tied. You’ve presented him with no evidence. You are deported back to a country you haven’t seen since you were 10. You still don’t know if your wife is alive or dead.

You work in a factory where the boss won’t turn on the heat in the wintertime, where you aren’t allowed to use the bathroom, where you get paid less than the documented workers for the same labor. You and your colleagues take a list of complaints to your boss’s office one day. He greets you with a loaded gun. You are afraid to complain again after that. Then a SWAT team raids the factory and rounds you all up. You have young U.S. citizen children, so they don’t want to deport you immediately, because your children would become burdens on the state. But every day from now on, immigration is watching you. When they call you on the phone, you must answer. When they summon you to see them, you must go. Every few years, they slap an ankle monitor on you, and then take it off again, and then put it back on you, without explanation. Every so often, they threaten to make you buy plane tickets. They tell you they can deport you whenever they want. They have already deported several of your former coworkers who are in the same situation. You are always one slip-up away from being ripped away from your family. You can’t sleep at night. When you try to picture your future, all you see is a blind fog.

When we talk about enforcing immigration laws, it’s important to be quite specific about what we mean. Immigration enforcement is not words on paper. It is a constant, daily sequence of concrete acts. It is kicking down people’s doors, it is putting people in handcuffs, it is taking people’s photographs and fingerprints, it is locking people in cages, it is forcing people into cars and buses and planes. Some of these acts happen at the border, when the government tries to block people from entering. Some of them happen inside the country, when the government hunts down those with irregular status. Sometimes, this immigration enforcement is explicitly violent, like when Border Patrol officials unleash teargas (a chemical weapon banned in warfare) on toddlers, when they rip children from their mothers’ arms, when they kick women huddled on the concrete floors of border cells and scream at them that they are animals. Other times it’s something humdrum and largely invisible: the border guard who calmly tells an asylum seeker at a port of entry that there is “no more room” in the U.S., the judge who silently decides that the terrified person in front of them hasn’t done quite enough to deserve a favorable exercise of discretion, the police officer who has a funny habit of always stopping cars with Hispanic-looking drivers, the countless bureaucrats who review immigration applications and deny them without explanation. All of these acts, from the monstrous to the mundane, have real-world effects on individual people. They mean families separated, whether by deportation or by the hard border that keeps an undocumented breadwinner from ever again visiting the children he had to leave behind. They mean people dying horribly, because they are forced to return to life-threatening danger, or because they become ill in the U.S. and are scared to go the hospital for fear their lack of status will be discovered. They mean workers exploited, because the threat of deportation keeps them under the thumb of their boss, or because arbitrary territorial lines prevent them from seeking better employment conditions in another place.

Immigration policy in the United States cannot be discussed in the abstract. Unless we talk about what our immigration laws actually mean for people’s lives, we’ll have no way to sensibly evaluate them. There are about 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, and several hundred thousand arrested and deported annually. Beneath the statistics, there is fear and pain. Every choice of what laws to have and how to enforce them produces consequences: workplaces raided, kids pulled out of school, women being turned back to face domestic violence.

This context is important when we turn to Angela Nagle’s “The Left Case Against Open Borders,” recently published in American Affairs (formerly the explicitly pro-Trump Journal of American Greatness). Nagle confidently informs us that all mass migration is inherently tragic, and that incentivizing it with overly liberal immigration policies, although it seems kind, is actually cruel. The “open borders left,” Nagle declares, by embracing unrestricted immigration, is hurting the very people they are trying to help, and undermining the prospects for successful labor organizing and a restructuring of the global economic system. She goes so far as to argue that advocates of unrestricted free movement are the “useful idiots of big business,” because they are sanctioning the exploitation of imported laborers. Instead of addressing the root causes of economic migration, they have allied with the Koch Brothers in advocating “open borders.” This “open borders left” has a radically ignorant set of priorities, reacting to Trumpism by embracing Koch-ism, and ignoring the way that unrestricted migration serves the interests of the capitalist class by dividing workers and depressing wages.

ABOVE PHOTO: A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrols along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence on July 16, 2018 in San Diego, California. Getty Images/Mario Tama MAIN PHOTO: Government agents apprehend a landscaper during an immigration sting at Corso’s Flower and Garden Center, Tuesday, June 5, 2018, in Castalia, Ohio. Associated Press/John Minchillo

Now, because Nagle (supposedly) cares about immigrants, she doesn’t want to see them teargassed at the border or hunted down by immigration police. What she doeswant to see is employers who employ undocumented workers being punished by the state, so that they don’t hire undocumented workers anymore. This is the only concrete policy proposal in Nagle’s entire piece, and at no point does she discuss what its enforcement would actually look like. That’s because the enforcement of this policy proposal would look pretty fucking monstrous. In fact, the “E-Verify” system Nagle touts as a humane alternative to ICE is a system that people like Ann Coulterand Kris Kobach have long been putting forward as the ideal immigration restrictionist policy. (Given such political bedfellows, by Angela Nagle’s logic we might accuse her of being the useful idiot of white nationalism. Then again, Angela Nagle’s logic is terrible.) E-Verify is the central piece of a slate of an anti-immigrant policies designed to encourage “self-deportation”: that is, making life so miserable for undocumented people in the U.S., making them so poor and desperate and demoralized and afraid, that they decide to leave the country of their own accord. As the anti-immigrant Center for Immigrant Studies describes, the goal of self-deportation is to “create ‘virtual choke points’—events that are necessary for life in a modern society but are infrequent enough not to bog down everyone’s daily business. Another analogy for this concept to firewalls in computer systems, that people could pass through only if their legal status is verified. The objective is not mainly to identify illegal aliens for arrest (though that will always be a possibility) but rather to make it as difficult as possible for illegal aliens to live a normal life here.”

The fact that a self-described leftist like Nagle would openly support E-Verify shows that she is, at best, so grossly uninformed about immigration policy that it was irresponsible for her to commentate on it. At worst, it might be that she genuinely does not give a shit about the suffering of immigrants and is perfectly happy to sacrifice them to political expediency. Either way, she is not a credible exponent of what “the left” ought to think about anything.

However, ideas like Nagle’s have proven persuasive to a number of people over the years, so it’s worth going through her essay and dissecting each of her claims. First, Nagle argues that “the left” has historically (and wisely) opposed mass immigration as detrimental to worker interests. Secondly, she argues that there are no compelling arguments in favor of open borders or free movement other than those put forward by “big business,” whose only desire to exploit cheap labor. Thirdly, she argues that using the E-verify system to target employers of undocumented workers, rather than the workers themselves, is a humane way to keep undocumented people out of the workforce. Finally, she argues that immigrants don’t truly want to migrate anyway, so we should block them from doing so, and in the meantime just go about fixing all the problems that caused them to feel they needed to migrate in the first place.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #current affairs #immigration #immigrant rights #immigration reform #progressive #progressive movement

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klcthebookworm · 6 years

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Reproduction in the GFFA Part Three: Using it in Fanfic

Nobody has given me a better name for artificial wombs based off cloning tanks for the GFFA as discussed in Reproduction in the GFFA, so I'm using gestational chambers. And since I can't sew up a Free Ryloth Twi'lek costume right now, I decided to give you guys some summary fic as to how I would introduce the concept of gestational chambers to the GFFA. It probably won't become a more polished story because of other writing projects, unless someone else wants to take it as a plot bunny and go.

Setting is post-Luke/Callista break-up and after Mara Jade acquires Jade's Fire. I'm a little fuzzy on that time period in Legends continuity. I own Children of the Jedi and Darksaber, but I don't remember reading the second one. And I don't remember if I had read Planet of Twilight and never bothered to buy it either. But this is set before the Hand of Thrawn duology and probably the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy too.

Best Laid Plans

Mara delivers some supplies to the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4 and arranges for a few days stay, sparring practice, catching up with the Jedi she knows, uses showing off the Fire's flight capabilities as a pretense to get to talk to Luke alone. Luke is excited by her improvements to the ship, and doesn't ruin the outing by being morose about his break-up or by nagging Mara to finish her training. So she jumps into what she wants to tell him. "I've been saving my credits to buy my own ship, but I got the Fire without spending the bulk of it. So I decided to spend it on a baby instead."

Luke is a little shocked. "You and Lando need funds for a baby?"

"I'm not having a baby with Lando. We're not involved like that any more." (Keeping the relationship cover story intact.) Before Luke can derail the conversation into unnecessary condolences, she continues. "There's a clinic on Coruscant, very private and discreet, that uses gestational chambers. That's what I have to pay for, but I can keep working without any danger to the baby."

"That's not how it's done on Tatooine," Luke teases. "I never thought about them."

"Most people don't unless there's fertility or genetic compatibility issues. But since I don't want a clone, I need donor sperm. I can use sperm the clinic has or supply my own donor. Would you want to have a child with me?"

Luke never saw that request coming, but Mara defends her choice. Out of all the men she knows, Luke has the qualities she wants for the father of her child. And she's seen him with his niece and nephews and knows he wants a child of his own. But no pressure, think about it and meditate on it. Luke tells her regardless of his choice, she will make a wonderful mother.

Luke does meditate on it and they talk about what type of parenting partner does Mara desire (whatever he is comfortable with). Luke has a vision of a boy and girl with Mara's hair, and that's what sways him over to saying yes. Mara leaves Yavin 4 with Luke's deposit in a specimen jar.

Time lapse because I'm undecided at what stage of fetal development the future baby boy is at. Luke makes a trip to Coruscant to see what's happening and Cilghal has a list of questions/observations she wants answers to about fetal development of a Force Sensitive baby. He catches up with Mara. She's planning out the Fire's new cabin configuration to house a baby on board. He wants to know when they plan on telling everyone and has an offer for later. Cilghal, Kam, Tionne, Leia, and Han have all told him he needs a break from the Academy, so what if he traveled with her after the baby is born. No interference with her business, just two adults bonding with their infant.

Mara likes the idea, but before she has an answer, the HoloNet blows up with the story that Luke Skywalker is having a baby with far too many accurate details. Mara is livid and goes to the clinic. Luke heads to Leia and Han.

Han questions Luke on why when Luke confirms the story is true. Luke is bitter in front of him and Leia. "None of my relationships have lasted long enough for children and the children's services considers my lifestyle and lack of co-parent detrimental to me adopting a child. Are you really that surprised?"

Mara arrives at Leia and Han's quarters with news that Fey'lya was behind it at the same time Leia's aides figure it out. His motivations is apparently to spoil any political ambitions Luke has. "But I don't have any political ambitions," Luke protests. More importantly, Mara doesn't want to prevent Luke from seeing/raising his son because of all this. She knew about his notoriety before asking him.

Another time lapse fill in with whatever you want between Luke and Mara. Everything is going quiet again media-wise and then the clinic alerts them both: the gestational chamber with their baby has been stolen. The evidence at the clinic points to a Force user with a lightwhip, Lumiya. You can substitute another villain if you'd like; I thought she'd be fun for the previous history she's had with Luke and Mara separately.

So they're off in the Fire to rescue their son. They briefly stop at Yavin 4 for supplies, namely Luke's shoto and materials to make one for Mara. The perfect opportunity to nag Mara about training, but Luke doesn't take it, which is almost as upsetting as her plan to keep her son safe was ruined by Lumiya of all people. On Luke's part, I think he's finally learned futility in asking for what he wants. It has never worked with Mara and it didn't work with Callista.

Close quarters on a ship, intense training sessions demanded by Mara so she can get her shoto technique up to par with her other skills, and it doesn't take long for one spar to devolve into a make-out session. Spurred on because as the first kiss happened, Luke picked up on Mara's mental demand Don't pull away; you always pull away. Challenge accepted and it escalates quickly after than.

Luke wakes up from his post-coitus doze in Mara's cabin alone in the bed. And he has enough alone time to get deep into what the hell just happened thoughts before she returns from the galley with two mugs and wearing his tunic.

"Regrets already?" Mara passes him a mug of hot chocolate and perches on the edge of the bunk.

"I don't regret this, but I am confused. You never gave me any sign you were interested in more than just friendship."

"I never? I all but poured myself into that silver flight suit at the opening of the Academy for you and you never noticed!"

"I noticed you never wanted to stay with me. You always ran back to Karrde."

"You never wanted me to stay, just my talent in the Force. Karrde cares about all of me."

That observation from Mara deflates all of Luke's defensive huffiness. "I never meant it like that. All everyone has wanted out of me was being a Jedi; what else do I have to offer? I am sorry, Mara. You deserved more consideration from me and I failed you." While Mara's still processing that unexpected apology, he continues. "That explains Lando. He cared about the whole woman and expressed that. Smarter man than me."

"Wait, you've been jealous of Lando all this time? But you've had relationships. You ran to other women."

"Jealous of you with Lando, yes. Ashamed of myself for feeling that over your happiness when I should have felt nothing but joy for you both, yes. Of course I tried to move on. I know what to do when I'm not the wanted one."

Mara explains how the whole thing with her and Lando was just a cover story. "I never intended to make you jealous. I thought you didn't want me."

"I want you. Wanted you for so long. Do you want me? Do you want to continue?"

Mara puts down her mug, straddles his lap, and gives him a chocolate-flavored kiss. "Yes."

So after they've reached this level of understanding, they defeat Lumiya and return their son to the clinic. He's fine, and his parents are officially a couple.

The end I came up with is Luke comes back from meetings or something and finds Mara hovering over the sani. "We should have never had sex," she growls at him.

"But we're good at the sex." Luke starts to comfort her and gets down on the floor with her. "Why do you want to stop?"

She glares at him. "That's not what I said." She presses his hand against her stomach. "I'm pregnant. You got me pregnant."

She's not really angry under her morning sickness grumpiness, but her plans! She used to be GOOD at planning things. Luke is ecstatic and declares it must be a girl based on his earlier vision. The end.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. I learned a bit about my inspiration process. Dialogue comes first with the situation that creates the dialogue. Action sequences come later and that includes fight and sex scenes, which probably explains why I gloss over them in first drafts and have to make a concentrated effort to expand and explain them. And if anyone wants to flesh this scenario out to a full story, you've have my blessing.

#star wars legends #my fic #plot bunny for a good home #reproduction

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mimmerr · 3 years

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Open doors, silver linings and missed opportunities: NQT experiences in 2020/2021.

If I find myself exhausted at the end of a day of remote learning, I will often reassure myself, Well, at least I’m not an NQT. For many, the phrase ‘Baptism of fire’ is synonymous with your first year, where you are seemingly spinning a different set of plates every day. And the plates are on fire. And there’s someone watching you spin the plates every six weeks. And then you have extra training on said plate spinning. Oh God, the plates are on the floor - Mum, can you please cook my dinner and iron my clothes? Yes, I know I’m a 21 year old graduate.

Though some may say 2020 levelled the playing field. Most 21 year old graduates know how to use Powerpoints but perhaps that teacher with forty years classroom experience can just about access their email. We all had to learn how to teach remotely alongside each other. And we’re still learning - all of us.

Yet in many ways, NQTs have been dealt a poor hand this year. They haven’t been allowed to gain instrumental class experience or feel that exhilaration after a great lesson observation. Or have they? I spoke to five NQTs (three anon, two named) and one NQT mentor to see if the flames of the ‘Baptism of fire’ are still burning strong or whether this year has dampened them.

Wellbeing is shaping experience

There was no general, constant feeling of positivity or negativity amongst the participants. Many accepted that everyone, including school leaders and mentors, were working in unforeseen and difficult circumstances. However, strongly positive or negative experiences came down to school support. Being checked on regularly both professionally and personally resulted in more positive experiences:

They are constantly sending out information on support numbers or free therapy sessions we could use. Our principal has an open door policy so we can talk to them. It feels that our well being is more important than the teaching - Anon

I am getting vast support from my school. Having a NQT mentor meeting every week - @MissBindingNQT

Whereas a lack of support and tunnel-visioned leadership, focused on remote learning (or in some cases displays) with scarce for staff welfare had detrimental effects:

You’re given generic well-being training that comes across pretty insincere. A box-ticking exercise, almost. It’s like everyone is so busy that no one really cares to check in on you. You’re just expected to do everything by the deadline, and when you don’t, you’re culpable - Anon

Like the participants, I accept that we are all human beings working in difficult circumstances. However, I would challenge leaders who are not prioritising the wellbeing of their staff, especially NQTs who are entitled to extra support and care. These circumstances are difficult but they are certainly not new. We know the mental health of the nation has suffered and is still suffering. Those leading in any sector have a duty to safeguard their staff or face the consequences: departure.

By ‘safeguard [ing]’, this does not mean therapizing in the space of a professional, it is being there, checking in and giving staff the tools and resources to seek further help if necessary as shown above. Essentially and obviously, a kind, open school atmosphere is more helpful than a wellbeing seminar.

Trainees are being observed but the same practices aren’t being used to allow them to observe experienced teachers

All of the participants commented that they were being observed, usually half termly. Trainees in school were observed informally more often by senior leaders situated in corridors, which some found to be pragmatic and reassuring than formal observations. One participant noted how they found this style useful to their practice:

I am being observed but the teacher keeps their distance from my class. There’s an understanding that if my teaching is not clear to them from the outside of the classroom, it’s not clear to the children. - Anon

Due to the constraints of ‘bubble teaching’, it does seem schools are trying to fulfill the roles of mentors all the while adhering to risk assessments. Interestingly, none of the same participants said they were observing practice of others using the same strategy:

I found myself to be extremely busy with not a lot of time for observations, which is a massive shame - @raddiemakic

I’ve been encouraged to do it but I just haven’t had the time - Anon

We are missing an opportunity here. Using technology, we are able to observe any member of staff in any year group at nearly any given time. There are limits to what practice could be observed and embedded but during live lessons or recorded content, trainees could note use of questioning, voice and delivery. One participant specifies:

Schools are using IRIS Connect to share observation examples with their NQTs. - @MrTs_NQTs

Nonetheless, as shown above, many NQTs are too busy to observe or collaborate. As @MrTs_NQTs notes in his TES article (see Footnotes), offering a reduced timetable can help build teaching stamina and allow more opportunities to plan and assess. I believe that freeing NQTs up to observe more often should be prioritised in order to improve practice both remotely and in school.

Although trainees are having less classroom experience, they have felt their practice improve in other areas

Contrary to recruitment adverts, we all know that teaching isn’t a job that starts and stops when the children enter and exit the classroom. Remote learning may mean trainees are unable to teach in the traditional sense but many of the cogs and wheels of teaching have remained in motion:

I still have to be polite and professional, manage the needs of around 30 pupils every hour and I have done 2 parents’ evenings this term [...] I’ve gotten to know my students more during lockdown - @raddiemakic

I feel that my planning has become far more meticulous, far more detailed [...] I have loads more resources - Anon

For some, ‘bubble teaching’ has allowed them to work with different children in different stages, which they wouldn’t encounter in a normal NQT year:

Teaching bubbles, not just in my year group so [that means I’m] getting whole school experience and I’m delivering home learning. I’m getting a wide range of experience and skills which are highly transferable - Anon

Obviously, it is important to build classroom experience. The more mistakes you make, the better prepared you are for future ones and so on, that’s for any job or any skill. However, I am sure many of us veteran teachers will reflect on our NQT year (or maybe even more recent ones) and think, I wish I had more time to… Plan? Talk to students 1:1? Find effective, time saving resources? This cohort is being given that time. That is not to say that the time spent on these tasks is more important, or valuable, but the time certainly is not being wasted. It will be interesting to see what strengths these NQTs bring with them to their schools over the coming years in regards to curriculum design, lesson structure and relationships with pupils. Maybe schools will change for the better as a result.

Like with all education policy, how a school enacts a policy will dictate its effects. NQT support is no exception. It is clear some are using the pandemic as a cloak for insufficient or wrongheaded strategy, which I would presume existed long before COVID 19. Whereas others are acknowledging the difficulties that intensive risk assessments bring, all the while offering their NQTs outstanding professional and personal support. There is still scope to go further, especially in regards to observing other staff and the use of (albeit different) accomplishments of our NQT cohorts to improve whole school practice.

Footnotes

@MrTs_NQTs article for TES ‘7 ways you can better support September's NQTs’

#education

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themodernvedic · 6 years

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Spirituality Behind Kissing– A Spiritual Perspective of Kiss as a Greeting

Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express various sentiments which

include love, passion, affection, respect, greeting, friendship,romance, sexual attraction, sexual activity, sexual arousal, peace and good luck, among many others. Also dependent on the culture,

relationship and context, a person may kiss another person on their lips, cheek, head, hand and each of these gestures carry a different social significance. In today’s world, especially in western culture, kissing on the cheeks is recognized as a common form of greeting. In some situations, a kiss is a ritual, formal or symbolic gesture indicating devotion, respect, or sacrament.

Through spiritual research, it has been found that most people are affected to some

extent by negative energies. As a result, it is very likely that the exchange of subtle-energies between two people touching or kissing each other is spiritually detrimental. Most of us cannot perceive this detrimental effect, as we do not have the sixth sense ability to do so. When a greeting involves touch, the transfer of spiritual or subtle-energies gets enhanced up to 100%, when compared to a greeting that does not involve touch. (Staring into each other’s eyes can also instigate a transfer of subtle-energies, depending on the types of negative energies involved.) Type of Contact Between Two People Greeting Each Other Ease of Energy Transfer between the People Greeting Each Other Examples of Greeting Skin to Skin Energy Transfer Easier Handshake, Hug Skin to Mouth More Energy Transfer than Skin to Skin Kissing of Hand or the Cheek Mouth to Mouth Most Energy Transfer Kissing Mouth to Mouth RELATED LINKS SPIRITUALITY BEHIND BOWING SPIRITUALITY BEHIND HUGGING WHY DO WE PROSTRATE BEFORE PARENTS,ELDERS AND NOBLE SOULS? SPIRITUALITY BEHIND NAMASKARA SPIRITUALITY BEHIND GREETING SOMEONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRANAMA AND NAMASKARA WHY DO WE DO NAMASTE STRIKING PARALLELISM BETWEEN DARVIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION AND DASHAVATARA WHY DO WE LIGHT A LAMP ? IS IT OM OR AUM ? SCIENCE BEHIND OM WHY IS IT FORBIDDEN TO EAT ONION,GARLIC AND NON VEG DURING NAVARATRI WHY DO INDIAN WOMEN WEAR BANGLES

Type of Kissing and What they Mean

(1) Quick Kiss on the Lips – I’m busy and/or stressed, but I still want to connect with you (or I feel obligated to kiss you since it’s a habit we do). (2) Kiss on the 3rd Eye (mid-forehead) – I revere you spiritually and want to protect or take care you. (3) Eskimo Kisses (rubbing the tip of your noses) – I want to be playful with you (4) Trail of Sweet Little Body Kisses – I love your body (when done slowly North to South, it’s a great tease…). (5) Basic French Kiss (mouths open tongues exploring together) – I want more of you, let’s take this further. (6) Suck on One Lip Kiss – I want to orally pleasure you not just here, but everywhere. (7) Yummy Kiss (where you kiss your partner with candy or fruit or something else yummy in your mouth, and give them half) – I want to share everything with you. (8) Sucking Partner’s Tongue Gently Kiss – I’m very comfortable with you and I want to be the submissive one. (9) Tongue down the throat Kiss – I want to own/dominate you and be the dominant one (10) Kiss on the Hand – I respect you and want to move slowly sexually. (11) Kiss on the cheek - transmits affection, support and complicity, regardless of physical attraction. (12) Kiss on the collarbone - implies intimacy and manifests a certain degree of erotic intention in the giver. It is a very effective seductive gesture. (13) Kiss on the ears - this gesture is charged with passionate sexual intention and power. It may be taken not too seriously, depending on the intensity with which the kiss is given. This kiss is imbued with the energy of play and mischief.

Spiritual Research on Kissing

As stated in the table above, kissing mouth to mouth instigates the easiest and greatest transfer of subtle-energies. Negative energies generally enter a person through one of the orifices such as the mouth, nose, ears etc. In fact, the intake of food is one of the easiest ways that negative energies affect a person. From a spiritual perspective, the mouth is considered as an impure void. There are two reasons for this: One is due to the predominance of the Absolute Cosmic Water Principle (Āpatattva) in

the mouth. One of the qualities of the Absolute Cosmic Water Principle is that it has the capacity to retain negative energy as well as positive energy. (Most people do not do regular spiritual practice and are more attracted to worldly things. Attraction to worldly things without any spiritual focus generates and attracts negative vibrations to a person. This makes him more susceptible to be affected by negative energies.) The mouth is one such orifice where negative energies can accumulate especially due to the predominance of the Absolute Cosmic Water Principle. As a result, when a person’s mouth comes in contact with the skin or another person’s mouth, there is invariably an exchange of negative energies between both. The other reason why the mouth is considered as an impure void is that the mouth is a

conduit to the respiratory and digestive systems. Due to this, the entry and expulsion of negative energies from these body systems, all pass through the mouth. When in transit from one person to another, the negative energy from these systems accumulates in the mouth, before being transmitted.

Kissing another person mouth to mouth, as opposed to touching another person by means of a handshake, generates a far deeper level of sexual intimacy. This generally invokes an emotional response towards the other person which in turn can potentially destabilize the mind. Destabilization of the mind can be taken advantage of, by negative energies as they have the capacity to exaggerate one’s emotions.

The drawing based on subtle-knowledge below shows the exchange of subtle-energies when one person kisses another on the cheek. In this particular case, one of the people involved is possessed while the other is affected by negative energies. According to spiritual research undertaken by SSRF, approximately 30% of the world’s population is possessed by negative energies. In almost all cases, the possessed person is oblivious to the fact that he or she is being controlled by negative energies.

This drawing based on subtle-knowledge has been drawn by Mrs. Yoya Vallee through an

advanced sixth sense of vision. It has been verified and authenticated by His Holiness Dr. Athavale. When checked through advanced sixth sense, the drawing based on subtle-knowledge was found to be 80% accurate. The table below provides the details about each of the aspects in the above drawing based on subtle-knowledge. No. Explanation 1 Due to the lady being possessed, there is a thick black covering of negative energy around her body. However, the person kissing her cannot perceive the negative vibrations due to a lack of sixth sense ability. 1A There is a creation and an activation of a ring of negative energy at the heart chakra (Anāhat-chakra) 1B A flow of dense negative energy from the lady’s heart chakra gets absorbed through the heart chakra of the average person. 1C This in turn creates a dense ring of negative energy at the heart chakra of the average person. 1D Particles of negative energy were seen flowing from the lady’s mouth across to the person whose cheek she has kissed. 1E All this results in the creation of a negative energy covering around the body of the average person. 1F A circular ring of negative energy is created around the lady’s mind. 2 The thick black covering of negative energy flares out and is emitted into the surrounding environment. 2A There are waves of black energy emitted out of the lady who is possessed by negative energies. 2B A black energy covering is created around the body of the average person. 2C A cloud of black energy engulfs the average person’s mind. 3 Creation and activation of a ring of alluring (mohini) energy around the mind of the person possessed. This makes the lady look more attractive than she is. 4 There is emission and expansion of a ring of illusory (māyāvi) energy that engulfs the two people. Illusory energy is created by negative energies to make things appear what they are not. So even though kissing a possessed person is spiritually detrimental for the man, he feels good after kissing the lady. The act of kissing another person generally gives rise to negative vibrations which

attracts all the negative energies from the environment. Out of all the greetings, kissing is actually the one that is most likely to give rise to Tama predominant vibrations. The negative effect of kissing a person who is possessed can last for many days, resulting in depression, negative thoughts, too many thoughts, etc. The person affected, due to a lack of understanding of the spiritual realm, will not comprehend that these are due to his inability to perceive the spiritual dimension. There are exceptions to this rule: Depending on the type of love: Some positive vibrations can be generated in the

act of kissing family members, one’s spouse and a mother kissing one’s child. The positivity will depend on the type of love displayed in the act, whether it is love without expectation (prīti) as opposed to love with expectation. It is for this reason that when a mother kisses a child, positive vibrations are most likely to be generated due to her love and goodwill for the child. Conversely, if the mother has a strained relationship with the child then it will not have the same positive effect.

Depending on spiritual level: In addition to the above example, if a person who is possessed kisses someone who is beyond the 60% spiritual level then there would be a healing effect on the possessed person. This is because people beyond the 60% spiritual level exude positive Sattva dominant vibrations which have a spiritual healing effect.

If we kiss people who are friends and acquaintances with

goodwill, then the goodwill hardly counts as the kiss is generally in lieu of a regular handshake. In such situations, the feelings are too superficial to generate any positive vibrations and the net result is most likely to be negative vibrations. Avoiding the Spiritual Ill-effects of a Kiss

The following points can be kept in mind: The safest spiritual option is to avoid greeting people with a kiss or any form of touch and instead greet others with namaskār.

If one cannot avoid kissing someone then there are a few things one can do : Continuously chanting the Name of God generates a subtle protective sheath around you, which minimizes the effect of negative energy attacks on and around you. Saying a prayer for protection also helps in re-enforcing the subtle protective sheath around you. Read the full article

#black_energy #energy #greeting #negativity #positivity #science #spiritual #spirituality

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Fantastic Beasts Missed the Boat on Embracing Gay Representation

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

There’s no fixing the first two Fantastic Beasts movies in the Harry Potter prequel franchise. They’re narratively muddled, lack inspiring central characters, have concerning things to say about the rise of fascism, and notably refuse to make Dumbledore explicitly gay. However, with the third film in the franchise looking to recast Grindelwald, and with Hannibal star Mads Mikkelsen rumored to be in talks for the role, the franchise has a chance to right itself when it comes to at least that last issue. But, with noted TERF Rowling reprising her role as both screenwriter and executive producer for the as-of-yet untitled film, a question presents itself: should it? Or, in other words: at this point, is poor representation better than no representation when it comes to a situation like Fantastic Beasts?

It’s hard to debate this sort of thing before the fact. We don’t know what Fantastic Beasts‘ attempts at queer representation might look like because the franchise has never given us any. Despite Rowling’s post-Potter books announcement that she has always considered the character of Albus Dumbledore to be gay and the Fantastic Beasts‘ centering of the generally presumed to be queer relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, the Fantastic Beasts franchise has avoided representing Dumbledore’s sexual identity or the specific nature of is relationship with Grindelwald—to the detriment of the story.

Before the release of The Crimes of Grindelwald, director David Yates confirmed that the film would “not explicitly” represent Dumbledore’s sexual identity, adding: “But I think all the fans are aware of that. He had a very intense relationship with Grindelwald when they were young men. They fell in love with each other’s ideas and ideology and each other.” In other words, this isn’t an example of filmmakers maintaining plausible deniability when it comes to a character’s queer-coding or of a fandom’s reading of a character as queer. This is an example of the filmmakers (both Yates and Rowling) actively recognizing the character as queer in interviews and then bending over backwards in the film to avoid depicting it.

This is all years-old discourse, but I bring it up to say that perhaps Yates and Rowling are not the best filmmakers to tell a queer story—especially as Grindelwald specifically could so easily fall into the Hollywood tradition of queer-coded villainy. We might not know what Fantastic Beasts’ queer representation might look like before the fact, but we can certainly guess based on what we have seen before from these creators, which is to say: on both their parts, an apparent aversion to telling stories with queer characters and dynamics and, in Rowling’s case, a harmful history of transphobia.

To be clear: This isn’t to say that the franchise made the right choice in choosing not to make Dumbledore explicitly gay in the films thus far. Warner Bros. had the glorious opportunity to be a pioneer of meaningful queer representation in the big-budget blockbuster. In the books, we learn that Dumbledore once thought similarly to Grindelwald. During their summer together in Godric’s Hollow as young men, they dreamed of ruling over Muggles together using the Deathly Hallows. The accidental death of Albus’ younger sister at the end of the summer changed all of that, putting Dumbledore and Grindelwald on different paths that would eventually lead them to a high-stakes duel for the future of wizardry and the world. The tragic queer love story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald was right there for the taking. Drop or diminish the role of Newt and the Fantastic Beasts, lean into the Charles-and-Erik of it all, and you’ve got yourself a solid blockbuster franchise—albeit one that doesn’t come with an easily marketable set of children’s toys.

There are a lot of possible reasons for why a queer version of the Fantastic Beasts franchise hasn’t happened, though the frustratingly opaque nature of Hollywood executive decision-making makes it hard to pinpoint exactly what they might be: Perhaps writer and executive producer Rowling didn’t want to tell an explicitly queer story. Perhaps the studio, like most studios, didn’t want to risk alienating homophobic audiences, in the U.S., the U.K., and in global markets. Perhaps there was so little diversity in the room that the question was never even raised. Probably, it was a combination of all three. The choice to avoid meaningful representation is rarely an outwardly malicious process. The relative homogeneity of our cultural system perpetuates itself through horrifically mundane methods that are no less damaging for how ordinary and calm they can appear on the surface.

We are in an era of big-budget queer representation that involves a blink-and-you-miss-it kiss in the background of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker or a 30-second, throwaway queer cameo in Avengers: Endgame, and it sucks even while it is technically progress. So, yes, having a big-budget Hollywood movie franchise that centers queer characters and a queer dynamic (even if it is apparently too much to also ask for a depiction of queer community) would be a big deal, especially in a fan universe as prevalent as Harry Potter. But Rowling avoided incorporating explicit queerness into seven Potter books that featured over 700 named characters and over one million words. She’s not the person I want telling a complicated queer love story on the big screen and, in that sense, maybe it was always too late to make Fantastic Beasts gay, given the reality that she was always going to be the person steering this ship.

At this point, even if the Fantastic Beasts franchise were to narratively course correct when it comes to its queer representation, the fact remains that to support anything in the official Harry Potter universe means financially and culturally supporting Rowling, who has shown herself to be anti-trans. Being a supportive member of the queer community and/or being an ally to the queer community means showing up for all of the queer community. It means showing up for trans rights and considering that “cancel culture,” as Aja Romano suggested, “is best treated like a collective decision to minimize the cultural influence a person and their work have moving forward.”

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shardclan · 7 years

Photo

Thunder's March was a relief to the eyes of travelers on Trader's Walk.

Impressive, given it suffered from the same deficit in humor or warmth that marked the Stormcatcher's spires. While the spires and rods out on the mesa stood tall and had obvious purpose, Thunder's march was a squat and ugly building that roughly resembled an enormous molar cast in copper and left out in the rain to tarnish on the cliff edge. The bridge it guarded was far older, but had the grace to have clear signs of upkeep and fortification to keep it structurally sound. Only the gates and the way-markers matched the visions of sleek machinery some dragons imagined when they thought of spark technology--all polished silver-black tungsten with lightning-white circuit marks that buzzed with the indifference of yet-undisturbed wasps.

It wasn't as though the inside of the building was any better. Inside the building was shelter, but there was also Margravine Maka, a woman with the face and temper of a hacksaw. Anyone else might have buckled under the intensity of a dozen caravans screaming and threatening in response to the news that entry to Noon Point had been banned for unfamiliar faces, but Maka couldn't even be bothered to spit at them. She didn't much care that her title technically made her Aphaster nobility, but she took it seriously the she was the final word in who could and could not pass into Aphaster territory.

So it understandably raised every spine on her body when shadow magic flowed over the sealed doors to the mainland and undid all the complicated locking mechanisms. They swung gently on their hinges with a gentle hiss of released pressure, and in came a very short pearlcatcher dressed mostly in black. She had a moon-pale complexion and carried the mild scent of sizzling ozone and crisp air typically associated with the Starfall Isles. Her eyes were covered, but she honed in on the head knight who stood in a half-ready, half-nervous stance with arcane magic rapidly fading from her claws.

"Paradise?" the strange pearlcatcher guessed. "Is that you? I'm having a shade of a time with these humanoid glamours. Get all these people across the bridge."

Even as the merchants rose up like a tide ready to flood Noon Point, Maka heaved the doors shut again and shouted through the hall. "No one goes anywhere!" She pointed aggressively at her uninvited guest. "Except you. Use of non-mundane magics are outlawed in public areas. You can spend a night in the icebox with Penitence."

Paradise stepped in frantically, her eyes wide and she tried her most disarming but clearly nervous smile. "Hold it, hold it, I think we've just got off on the wrong foot here! Omen, this is Maka, she's our border control. Maka this is Omen." She leaned in and stressed pleadingly: "From the coven."

"A witch..." Omen smiled, which only irritated Maka more. "That's well and good, but nobody here enters Noon Point. Queen's orders."

"Loyalty is commendable trait in a border noble," Omen said politely, with just the right tone of voice to avoid sounding sarcastic. "But you mustn't be blind. Telos gave those orders because of the recent..." Her lip curled. "Issue with the Hewn City, is that not so?"

Maka's expression cooled. She crossed her arms, but her expression was attentive, if grave. "Go on."

"The coven has reason to believe the wretched thing in Hewn City will move soon, and it will move violently. My primary duty is to defend the new spirit, but I cannot do that and defend these caravans." The shadows in the room moved on the edge of both their fields of vision, and there was the gentle hiss of the pressure locks on the door releasing again. "I ask once more: Get as many people as you can to the mainland."

Maka glanced over Omen's head at the faces beyond. A few of the ones at the front had heard the talk, or half-heard it, and she could see the seeds of panic taking root. Even if she closed the door and adhered to the letter of Telos' word, she would have a riot on her hand within the hour. With a gruff rub at her chin, she gently pushed Omen aside and barked out orders.

"Anyone seen pushing or trampling goes to the back! Get across the bridge quickly, quietly, and efficiently! DO NOT initiate trade or leave Noon Point until you have been cleared or your belongings will be confiscated! You're not getting out of a border check, you're only getting out of doing it here and now! Get moving!” She hiked one extensive thumbclaw toward the Hewn City. “Paradise, fly to the top of Hewn Step and get everyone back down the plateau. Anyone past the half-way mark needs to go back too, and you’ve got a wife I intend for you to get home to safely, so if they mouth off, leave ‘em!"

"We had a deal."

Hitth kept walking, not even bothering to turn an ear back to the nocturne. "Your words are as piss. There is no reason mine should be binding."

"You haven't even taken anyone," Ilkilides snarled. "You tempted so many yet ate none but merchants and outlanders!"

"You know the manner of creature I am, and you have asked me to act in secret." Hitth bared its teeth. "To my own detriment. Many a meal might already be digested if you had not insisted I should not trap them within."

"Did you want to be discovered with a bunch of comatose bodies laying around you? What might have happened to you, I wonder, if Arcanus had found Carnelian in such a state? He was ready to behead you even though Ashes was perfectly fine," Ilkilides reminded. "It was in your best interest to heed me."

"That has changed," the pearlsnatcher hissed. "The Choasen skulks near, and unless you intend to defend me, one godsborn against another, I will quit this place. I will quit it anyway. I have no care for the squabblings of the Sister-Gods, and this place leaves me hungrier than not. The children of the All-Seeing Locust lack the curiosity to go seeking in dark places. The Calamitous Star’s kin are better fare and easier prey."

"I'm sure going back to the Isles will go well for you."

Hitth paused. So many eons of hunger and now these pitiful sips of magic to sate its never-ending appetites. The Isles were ideal. But the whelp was right. It need a boost. It needed a special meal, the likes of which it might not come across for eons...

It opened its wings and the facets struck Ilkilides' surprised eyes before he could avert them, causing him to fall from the sky. The godsborn nocturne knew what Hitth was. Its names, its powers, the rules, but not the traps it could lay. It dragged his body into a crumbled shelter and waited. It might be hours or days, but Ilkilides’ one desire would eventually be to escape.

Of all its tricks, none worked half so well as a false exit presented to a desperate dragon.

Ashes might have resented the insinuation that he was desperate for anything other than magical pursuits. He had Stellaria and Arcanus and his entire job was to study the wonderful, outstanding magics that seemed to follow their clan around. There wasn't anything he thought he longed for. Every time he had gone to Hitth, the vision had never been able to stabilize. Willow would be alive, but Stellaria wouldn't come into his life. He could have them both, but Lutia still lost Horizon and drove them out of the Isles. Horizon didn't die, Lutia didn't erupt, but something else would go awfully wrong and the vision would gray and shatter at the edges until only an infinite gray remained and he was returned to his own body. It was never right. It was never his heart's desire.

How could he be desperate if he kept going over and over and over and over and the reflection presented to him was never enough?

Stir craziness, he thought.

It had never really occurred to him just how much how much freedom he had until he was restricted to his home and his lab. And having Lutia be his warden both grated on his nerves and shamed him intensely. He felt he had fallen behind her in self-control somehow, and his patience with her constant lurking was strained for it. That was the honest truth of it, but it brought him only more guilt.

Lutia was was the only one who was actually sympathetic to him. Arcanus was speaking to him but with the sort of terse, business-only gruffness he had previously only used on others. Stellaria was wounded by the knowledge that her beloved uncle Arcanus had lied to her, and was speaking to him with similar stiffness, though it was slowly warming.

She wasn't speaking to Ashes at all.

His eyes watered remembering what a frigid look she had given him when Arcanus explained the house arrest to her. The whiteness of her tightly clenched fists. She would have punched him if he wasn't her grandfather.

Then came the matter of Chosen Renat...

It was bad enough that with him came the proof that Ashes had been putting his life on the line--over curiosity, not desperation--but Arcanus had apparently been quite shaken by the news and had run out of the Hall of Five Lights in a panic. Telos had let him go, assuming he was running to Ashes’ side.

Ashes found that out two days after the fact. While Arcanus refused to say, it was obvious to Ashes who his brother had run off searching for.

How it burned. Aside from his charge, nothing had ever come before family to Arcanus, yet that suddenly seemed to have changed. Ashes was second to something. To someone. Old feelings welled up in him that should have been laid to rest long ago. Again, he turned out to be secondary to someone he adored. But it was his fault this time.

A rift had formed between him and his family, and over what? What had happened? Only a handful of eons ago he had refused to do anything that might put him at risk. He didn’t want Stellaria or Arcanus to be sad. Yet he had allowed a stupid dream that was never right anyway to blind him.

"Damn it..." he whimpered. Tears dropped down his cheeks, and he quickly wiped them away with the edge of his robes. He couldn’t have named what he wanted in that moment. To have the love of his family back? To feel he was still special in their eyes? To feel he hadn’t failed them?

All he knew was that his heart ached so deeply he would have done anything to make it stop.

#Flight Rising #Voices from the Eclipse #C: Omen #C: Maka #C: Ashes #In which Ashes has to face the reality that Arcanus has other important people in his life now #Also in which Omen gets her witch flex on for the first time ever

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

Text

The Reach of a Root: An Interview with Laura Tansley and Micaela Maftei

Cover illustration: Naghmeh Sharifi ~ Author photo by Stewart Ennis (@StewartEnnis)

“Life isn’t threads, it’s actions. Deeds. Childhood is when you get everything wrong and nothing makes sense.” She shuddered theatrically. “Can you imagine if that extended into…today?”

(‘The Reach of a Root’)

> The Reach of the Root is a collection of short stories with a transatlantic twist. Co-written by Canada-based Micaela Maftei and UK-based Laura Tansley, the collection features an entirely interwoven voice, whose stories tell of everyday life, secrets, sexuality, gender, work, place and displacement. Many of the stories focus on characters at the point of change, rupture or transition, women at various stages of their lives. Drama is provided from scenes of flat-sharing, dinner dates, office politics and daily commutes. Maftei and Tansley flirt with the dark and gothic, Joyce Carol Oates style, while maintaining a satisfying crispness and existential friction that puts you in mind of Lorrie Moore or Lydia Davis. Still, there’s a Scottish humour in there that feels generous and warm, if often delivered through wry or slightly absurd situations – a little Alan Warner even, although unlike with much of Warner’s fiction, it might be tricky to call any of Maftei and Tansley’s characters heroines. But even as their protagonists are often held at an ironic distance, the wit of the prose makes every situation seem recognisable, relatable, even as the narrative then dashes your expectations.

> Craftily, the authorial power duo handle objects, arguments, moments of being, sex and a general contrariness. Title story ‘The Reach of a Root’ begins: ‘Clare got caught looking at her cunt’. The book depicts desire and dislocation with the cool directness and menace of Mary Gaitskill updated for the age of Facebook, ‘wellness’ and Fjällräven backpacks. Many of the stories bear a surreal quality, held in the turn of a sentence. You think you know where things are going, this seems a familiar scenario…but then the twist. Somehow, even the weirdest parts are delivered with a smarting matter-of-factness: ‘Christy often found herself thinking, What would Caroline do? She’d throw pieces of popcorn chicken at boys she liked the look of’ (‘The Woods from the Trees’). Whole stages of life are condensed in a sentence, with the ease of your wittiest aunt telling tales of divorce down the pub: ‘She also left behind Tim, the latest example of why independence trumped headaches and someone else’s post filling the hallway and dark curling hairs left in the drying bottom of the bathtub’ (‘The Reach of a Root’). In many ways, most of these stories are about characters on the edge. Sometimes we fear for their lives, other times we laugh at them or question their poor judgment. Sometimes the characters are on the edge because they’re the dangerous ones, as in ‘What Lies Ahead’, where the narrator torments unsuspecting coffee shop customers with incongruous questions of identity.

> What the collection captures is the strangeness of contemporary life through these mundane situations, staged askew. It feels like everybody is plotting something – maybe there’s a dash of Muriel Spark in there. Maybe it’s something in the capacity of collaboration that allows for this containment of surprise or distortion with economy. Sharp and addictive, these stories are earthy, rich and tactile to the highest detail: ‘From then it was wild mushrooms, vibrant broccoli, a fat heirloom tomato that lasted two days, and then eventually on to a final graduation of avocado, goat’s cheese and fresh blueberries that she burst against her palate with a slender finger that she then drew out of her mouth, sucking the purple skins from between her teeth’ (‘Blind Spots’). For all this talk of the New Weird in fiction, what The Reach of a Root is doing, perhaps, is a twisted realism where the clarities of familiar mise en scene are knotted, crooked and contorted with the existential intensities that grow out of contemporary confusions around identity, cohabitation and hospitality, intimacy, precarious labour, leisure and general urban living. Twisted realism is a distorted sociology of the present moment that nonetheless carries us through timeless dramas of human relations; its woven voices reach towards that space, a something else, a desire in excess of what we see.

> After attending a workshop Maftei and Tansley hosted at the University of Glasgow on the topic of Collaborative Short Fiction, Maria Sledmere interviewed the pair over email to find out more about their writing process, friendship and the book itself.

I believe you both met on the Creative Writing PhD at the University of Glasgow. What got you starting to write together?

We were doing everything else but! Shortly after we met we realised our lives and interests overlapped tremendously – in terms of work, research, friends, writing, everything. Writing fiction together was the last in a long list of co-‘s – we organised a conference, led postgraduate skills workshops, worked together in Glasgow-area secondary schools, became flatmates… we figured if everything else was working out, why not try this too. Initially we responded to a call for submissions for a short story collection, Tip Tap Flat, and because that process was fun and was accepted into the anthology, we kept writing.

How did the idea for the book come about?

We pretty much just had enough stories to start thinking ‘we can definitely get enough for a collection’. That and our conviction that the work needed and could find an audience. It began to feel like readers would benefit from having a longer engagement with the work, and how the stories were informing each other by building themes.

Did you take inspiration from any previous examples of co-writing?

Not really. If anything, we took inspiration from the lack of co-written stories we saw around us. In other fields, working together is necessary/the norm, but we didn’t see anyone else co-writing short fiction.

In the co-writing fiction workshop you hosted at the University of Glasgow back in June, you spoke of how many publishers you initially approached were suspicious of your process. Although interdisciplinarity and collaborative practice are becoming more popular across the arts, often there’s still this material or institutional resistance to having your work recognised and supported. Why do you think this is?

Maybe a few reasons, or a mix of a few. I think there’s still a sense of fiction writing as the product of a unique, inner voice. We hear a lot about ‘writing what you know’ or your advantage as a writer being your own unique worldview. Which isn’t wrong, but does underscore this idea that good and/or true and/or authentic writing can only come through one person’s life or voice. I think in writing programs, which we were both part of and trained in, there’s encouragement to find that voice, to control it, access it, etc.

MM aside: I also frankly think that a lot of people don’t want to co-write. For a lot of people writing is deeply personal, and that’s one of the things that’s important about it. I have a lot of interests that I like to pursue by myself and wouldn’t want to do in a pair. I think for many people writing is something they don’t want to share. Which I completely get.

LT aside: Perhaps our experience with specific publishers was also framed by their particular need to invest in projects that are commercially viable. We’re maybe a little risky. Luckily for us we found a publisher who thought that could be exciting.

How did you manage the writing process in practical terms, given your busy lives and geographic distance?

We use email, sending the work back and forth as an attachment. We don’t have any schedule or timeframe in place when we write; I think doing so would really be detrimental to the process, in fact. We don’t push it – we’ve had stories that were more or less done within a week, and stories that have taken months. But the process is so energising that we often really want to get to it and work on it and send it back for more.

Did anything happen that surprised you? Were there any significant comprises made?

No. Together we made a choice to drop one of the stories from the collection because we thought the collection as a whole would be stronger without a story that explored a similar experience to “The Reach of a Root”. We love the story though, and it was recently published by Mechanics Institute Review.

MM aside: I wonder if the fact that we both write other material has helped offer another space in which we don’t have to feel any sense of compromise. If I have some idea, or bit of characterization or whatever, that I feel absolutely hasto exist in writing, I can just go ahead and make it come to life exactly on my terms in another piece of writing.

So far as surprises go – it wasn’t much of a surprise, but I’m always grateful to get a hit of ‘being seen’; I find often between Laura and I there’s a really deep level of understanding. We are quite different people, I’d say, and we move in the world differently and seem to want and need quite different things, but in some way, in some particular slice of life, we’ve just had so many interactions or conversations or exchanges where I feel like she absolutely knows what I mean, what I’m after, what I’m saying – I just feel convinced of it.

LT aside: I genuinely can’t think of a reason or a situation in which a compromise would be needed; that’s been my experience of co-writing with Micaela. Would a compromise have to occur because of a singular vision? Or an idea that one person is convinced of and the other isn’t? If so, that experience or practice just hasn’t been part of our process. I wonder if that’s because we have always been interested in the co- part of the writing. When I begin a project I don’t think, ‘this is an idea I want to explore’; I think, ‘this is an idea Micaela and I could explore’. That mindset is imperative. It also helps that by some piece of fantastic fortune, combined with our own work and development as people, we have a deep understanding of each other. It’s sickening really.

So much of the collection is about the movement between private and public, the space of conversation and inner monologue, motivation versus social performance. How does collaborative writing challenge your sense of ‘privacy’ as writers?

Great question. The privacy of early drafts and experiments had to go straight away, but we do write separately and always have done – even when we lived in the same city. So we do retain a sense of privacy in that the act of writing doesn’t happen in front of each other.

LT aside: I’m not sure that I would describe that process as something ring-fenced, personal, or something I feel a right to, however. But I think it’s a really interesting idea to consider writing as an act, and I wonder how I perform it differently as a co-writer, especially when everything we write is a gift intended for the other. I suppose I need to be observed but then we’d be getting in to Physics…

MM aside: We’re like married people where one’s brushing their teeth while the other has a pee. There’s no privacy and I don’t really miss it. But again – I think this is tempered by the fact that I have my own writing where I can go away and be secretive and tentative and private if I want or need to.

Is fiction especially poised to explore the relationship between public and private? Why?

Not sure we understand fully….the relationship, within one person, between their public and private self? Or the more general concept of that which is public and that which is private, and how we might understand both? We don’t think that fiction is especially poised to explore such a relationship.

MM aside: I do think that fiction is working at its best when a ‘made-up story’ manages to access profound truths about selfhood or the human condition – the great messes we make, as bumbling humans, trying to move around each other and in this world, continually fucking up. When it gets it right, and has something to say about that, I think readers can get a deep, inner, ‘private’ sense of understanding.

You both co-edited the anthology Writing Creative Non-fiction: Determining the Form (2015). In the book’s introduction you write, ‘Unclear boundaries between fact and fiction can be freeing, allowing authors to tell stories using the structures, techniques and language of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, creating unique and personal testimony. In this way creative non-fiction can become a highly individual truth’. How do you experience writing fiction versus creative non-fiction, if we are to cautiously permit that binary of forms? Is there something particular about one’s ‘individual truth’ that is paradoxically revealed through co-writing?

Our process – an email exchange, a back and forth – has been the same for all the writing we have done together so far, although our intention is what drives us in different directions and produces those different forms.

As for an individual truth, we don’t think so, although that’s an interesting idea. For these stories, we’re committed to serving the story, and letting the story guide us. Which is such a fuzzy and ambiguous way to describe writing, but there you have it. For example, one of us might change something about a plot, or a character, which moves the story in a direction that the other may not have anticipated. And if that’s the right thing to do, and if that takes the story to the right place, then that’s where we go. If we were using this writing to give voice to our individual truth, then that would be a fundamental conflict of interest. We wouldn’t be able to permit that. Without the openness to let the other change tack suddenly and build something that is truthful for both of us I think the co- experience would be compromised (this links back to your question on compromising, above).

Would you say collaboration is a particularly feminist act? I’m thinking of how Sara Ahmed describes citation practices as a ‘rather successful reproductive technology, a way of reproducing the world around certain bodies’. Although The Reach of a Rootis clearly fiction, not academic writing, I wonder if there is something ‘citational’ about the way your collaboration works, the way you take each other’s voices and make a thicker weave around gendered scenes.

MM aside: I’m not sure I understand – a thicker weave, i.e. using two (women’s) voices to produce gendered scenes (i.e. scenes about women and women’s lives?) such that the two voices amplify each other?

LT aside: I’m curious about the idea of citationality (is it possible to make this a noun?). There’s something apt about describing co-writing as citational if it foregrounds the conversation that occurs. But it also might suggest a reference to something previous, something created separately and then brought in to the conversation, which would seek to diminish the concurrent way we co-write – always with the project in mind, with each other in mind, always simultaneous in the sense that although we might write alone, we are both always present.

You said something about your process in the workshop which really struck me: ‘Every sentence is an offer’. I was thinking about the word ‘offer’ and then ‘tend’, as in tender: an offering, a caring or compassion, a proposition but also a kind of bid, an estimate, a submission. There’s this thing Hélène Cixous says in Stigmata where she’s like, ‘Extend the hand, write, and it’s all over with the end. Writing is the movement to return to where we haven’t been “in person” but only in wounded flesh, in frightened animal, movement to go farther than far, and also, effort to go too far, to where I’m afraid to go’. I love thinking about that quote in the context of the title, The Reach of a Root and the idea that co-writing is inherently a deictic gesture that reaches between text and world, invites the reader as writer, the writer as reader. In what ways do you think fiction can reach towards this ‘movement to go farther than far’, and is fear the affect you experience when attaining a writerly intimacy with this vulnerable beyond?

MM aside: I’m going to approach this sideways, because frankly there’s a lot here, and touch on the idea of fear. I think it’s an important one, and I think very often writing can serve as a way to go to scary places. Writing itself can be scary, and/or a way to remember/explore/understand frightening things, either things that have actually happened to you, or things you are frightened of happening, or both. For me, writing with Laura always carries with it the sense that someone’s there. I don’t feel that these stories are in any way triggering for me, nor do I feel our writing is getting close to any areas where I’m scared to go, but I do feel comforted by the fact that someone else is there. I suppose again this somewhat returns to the privacy question – whatever privacy I may have given up (which is negligible, in my view) is amply compensated for by the good feeling that someone else is there, that whatever the writing needs to figure out will be done together, that wherever it leads, I won’t be alone. And again, I’m stressing that never in these stories have I come close to feeling like I’m anxious or scared about the process or the topics.

LT: There was certainly a sense of trepidation and exposure when we first co-wrote fiction together. First words, first drafts occupy vulnerable spaces I guess. I responded to that with typical self-deprecation, and a lot of our email exchanges at this time offer the other a caveat of recusal, ‘if you think this is shit please delete’ etc. I was conscious that I respected Micaela and her writing a great deal, and I wanted to meet her in that place. I was never fearful or scared, but we did care for each other in these early moments by being sensitive, and in my case, diminishing, in case what I offered Micaela wasn’t worthy of her time.

I love this line from ‘Wednesdays’: ‘Once when Monica was checking Facebook, which she always does at the end of the day, she said, “Oh jeez, look, Urban Outfitters are selling Walkmans”’. There’s this whole irony about the commodification of nostalgia, but also the fact of putting words like ‘Facebook’ within narrative prose. Does it instantly become static, a relic of ‘era’ or a code-word that activates from wherever the reader exists in time?

It’s doing some work to fix the stories in a time and a place but allows it to travel too, to meet the reader wherever they’re at. Readers will respond to those ‘era-specific’ words based on where they are, and that time and place will carry different connotations as time passes, as they move deeper and deeper into the past. That’s fine. That’s normal.

I’m interested in what we mean when we call a work ‘contemporary’. How do you see the interface between material detail in fiction and this thing called ‘the present’? The Reach of a Root feels relatable now, but somehow I reckon it’s immune to the kinds of instant-datedness found in a lot of contemporary fiction which references brands, social media and so on. Consumption, in its various forms, is a big theme of the book. Was the decision to include product names and other concrete details deliberate/critical, or was it more about establishing ‘local colour’ as such?

Ultimately it’s about being true to how the characters see the world and what’s important to them. There’s also a lot of fixedness that deliberately isn’t included – many stories lack a clearly stated setting, for example. We’re excited when writers manage to get a location or an image in my mind without explicitly stating it.

Your publisher is Glasgow-based ‘Vagabond Voices’, who describe themselves as ‘both Scottish and fervently European in [their] aims’. A lot of your characters, while seemingly tied to specific situations, are yearning for something else or somehow cast adrift – ‘vagabond voices’ might be a nice way to describe the way your own voices ‘float’ into another space within the movement of collaborative fiction. How important is this openness, this traversal of borders or spaces, to your practice and creative outlook? What was your experience of working with Vagabond Voices?

This traversal of borders and spaces is key. And as you say, it’s maybe balanced by the way a lot of the people in the stories are ‘locked in’ to certain situations or problems or places. Writing has been a way to cross time and space, to hold on to some things longer than might otherwise have been possible, to propel ourselves into new spaces. Writing is time travel, is space travel.

MM aside: It’s so, so important to me to feel that my writing can help me go places, and take me to new places, and for this project specifically, writing has been nothing less than the thing that has tied us together (but not the only thing).

LT: The funding our practice receives has allowed us to travel, to spend time together, so it has been worth the investment both professionally and personally.

You hosted several workshops on co-writing fiction around the book’s launch in June. Did you find audiences were enthusiastic or curious about collaborative practice or was there some resistance? How are you finding the book’s reception more generally?

The people that signed up were already curious, thankfully. It takes a very specific kind of person to sign up to a co-writing workshop to critique and resist co-writing; those people have been few and far between in our experience. Participants were interested in the practicalities of the process more than expected. We love to engage with the more theoretical, shall we say, parts of it – who do you become when you blend your voice with someone else’s??, stuff like that. In the workshops we felt people were really curious whether we used email or Google docs. No resistance, though – that would have been very depressing.

Anyone exciting you’ve been reading, viewing or listening to lately?

We’ve read and talked a lot about the article “Mother Writer Monster Maid”. We also just read “The Crane Wife” in The Paris Reviewand marvelled at how sometimes good writing just feels like it fell out of someone’s pocket, so easy and deceptively simple. Actually, we talked about that loads with an excerpt from Normal Peoplethat was in Granta, trying to figure out how Sally Rooney did it, before she totally exploded. (Though I suppose she does it the same way now.)

MM aside: I read Rachel Cusk’s memoirs recently. Aftermath felt more brutal than A Life’s Work (which in fact didn’t feel brutal at all),and I think I was expecting the reverse. I’ve been listening to a selection of old Rihanna songs while answering these questions, toggling back and forth between videos. What a fucking goddess. I’ve got Three Women on hold at the library.

LT aside: I’m reading A God in Ruinsby Kate Atkinson and it’s unlike anything I’ve read before. The way it moves between characters and in time, it’s really fun and compelling. I’m watching Documentary Now! which manages to achieve parody without being smug. It’s just really funny. Right now I’m listening to Steve Lacy. I like the Prince vibe and all the sex.

Anything more you’d like to say about The Reach of a Root or what you’re working on now?

We’re cracking the Canadian market with ROAR of course. And slowly building towards another co-project which we really ought to just dive into, but it’s going to be quite different again for us so we have no idea how it will turn out.

MM aside: I’m trying to get a new project. I want to start a new personal novel project. There, I said it. Now I have to do it. I’m at the stage where bits are coming to me, snippets of dialogue or description or setting. I just need to wait until I’ve got enough of them that a frame starts to emerge.

LT aside: I’m always trying to write funny, sexy, odd poems. 1 in 10 of them achieve this maybe. I’ve written a couple of scripts I like; I hope they reach an audience one day.

The Reach of a Root is out in September 2019 via Vagabond Voices. You can order your copy here.

Published 23/8/19

#The Reach of a Root #Laura Tansley #Michaela Maftei #fiction #co-writing #interview #literary #literary interview #Vagabond Voices #Glasgow #features #Stewart Ennis

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