#one day ill make a post w all my thoughts/analysis of them but for now i just have this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mimibtsghost7 · 3 years

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Fuck you and all your little brain washed rats sending people hate because you cant take responsibility for your actions!! But go on stay silent like you always do, pretend its nothing of your business, keep being a fetishizing racist delulu like you love to be while pretending to be the best blog on tumblr!!!

NOT like anyone will see this but YOU will so LET’S GOOO!!!~~

TW: mental health and more (if you feel like this can trigger you, pls don’t read this, breathe in and out and listen to this HERE and remember I love you), loads of tea and Mimi NOT being a friendly and kind ghost.

funny enough:

I never pretended of said I was the best blog. But I guess the fact that you say it might be because you heard it frequently? Thanks for thinking so^^

I sent hate to no one and u r the one sending it to me rn ^^ In my whole 4 year journey on Tumblr I received a lot of love but also worse hate that you can imagine. Yes you are saying now you are receiving hate ... funny how it’s bad when It’s addressed to you but when it’s at me and my dear followers it is not. Still, I never told anyone to go hate on you. You were the idiot that tagged my old blog and as soon as my blog was gone pple searched me and found out you were the reason behind this. But as you keep hating on me. Let me tell you I am kind but don’t mistake that for me being a coward.

I am not into insulting others and I don’t care much if you insult me. BUT don’t YOU DARE touch my dear followers. Insulting ain’t hard. Let me try: The only rat here is you hiding in your hole as an anon. I went and compared your writing with this ask and previous hate asks. And it was you~ Good for you~ the sewers smell just like your filthy mouth spilling sh*t left and right. So on brand. However, I know who you are @hobisbeautifulass Hi ^^

Me racist? HAHAHAHAH you truly know NOTHING about me nor my ex-blog’s message. It was a place when you were welcomed no matter your skin color, religion, gender ... proof? well it got deleted thanks to you. but ask around this time and search for who reblogged my posts as they were always the top of the tags (even if I don’t trust how bad you are at research). I supported the BLM movement and still do and will always do but I did so veeery early without anyone telling me. Not for the notes but because of my humanity. I wished my dear followers’ happy holidays no matter their religions. And never cared about those things. Why judge someone on something based on religion or how they were born. As for the LGBTQ+ community, I was always and will always be there for love being love. I talked about mental health and opened venting nights. I helped left and right and when I was receiving hate because of people like you spitting lies about me. What did I do? Did I go online and called people bad? No. I looked back at myself and asked myself if I did anything wrong. I tried to educate myself and apologized sincerely when I had to. I read books and watched documentaries to learn how to become a better human. AND never repeated a mistake twice. You tend to forget that our cultures are different and sometimes you grow up to see some things as normal when they are not. This is not an excuse tho, so I always believed that I was lacking and if someone had something to say against me, there is a chance they are right and just in case I should reflect on myself. But for your case it was pure nonsense. ME? a stalker? how can I stalk when I have social anxiety and at that time couldn’t even leave my room? I am even afraid of taking public transportations and just the other days I was crying from joy when I took a taxi alone. they said I was in Japan stalking Jimin and Jungkook and took a pic when I was NEVER EVER was on that land. You put me on the same list as people who bought info about BTS’ flights to be on the same plane as them? I was stalked before and let me tell you it ain’t cute and fun. I am even scared of the idea of being followed. that’s why I never shared openly my age, country, or anything about me on my blog. that’s why I have no personal social media to this day and that’s why making my ex-blog was some sort of miracle in my life.

Silent? yes I was silent when I received hate and didn’t even vent to my dear followers or pointed fingers. Why? because I thought as my day was hell I shouldn’t make anyone’s day worse. I was worried about my dear followers with mental illnesses being triggered. I tried to take my life so many times I lost count but I still came here and smiled. It was my safe place and you took it away. Yet, I should pity you? You hated on me first for no reason and you know it deep inside but right now you are trying to convince yourself that you are the angel and feel no guilt. Compared to you. I pointed fingers at no one and didn’t name you when my blog was gone. Why? because compared to you, I thought you will not be able to manage the hate and what was done .. I didn’t want you to suffer the same way I did when you are the one who made me suffer the most the past couple of days. But the kind Mimi is someone you will never remember because you dared touch the friends I love and calling them names. I don’t mind people insulting me but don’t you dare touch my people. I know myself best. My dear friends/followers know me best. I thought ... I could leave without this mess but you keep barking in my ask box and it’s annoying. I left this backup account just to talk to my friends and yet you are here to ruin things again? I should stop being kind to the ones who deserve non of it. I ignored you when I had so many followers and you went silent too because you were scared of me. But as soon as I lost my blog because of you, you went, edited and then reblogged that stalker post. How can I be a stalker? do you even know the definition of a stalker? do you even know shame? well .. I don’t think so.. you said it yourself. You are NOT ashamed (and you reblogged that so many time lol).

Death threats? this is no competition but thanks to people like you I have been there and wish no one to be there not even you. The only difference is that you almost killed me for real. You were not the sole reason? Great job walking away from you beloved word: RESPONSIBILITY. And I didn’t get just anon hate, I got literal tagging by people like you, DMs, and people pointing guns at me. That’s why I didn’t mention you. I was worried about the one who took away what I worked for for 4 YEARS. I was more sad and concerned about the ARMY fandom here. Do you know how many rely on my updates? do you know how many people said I helped them? do you know any of that? do you think 200k people were “rats”? Do you think if I did and say wrong thing I will not be questioned by those people. I always told my dear followers: “friends, if I do or say anything wrong or share anything that hurts anyone please tell me. I am willing to learn from everyone.” But what did you know? what did you do? Well .. guess you love notes? As the most notes you ever got and the most attention was when talking about me?

Love how you talk about fetishing when my blog was what people call “family friendly”. I also like BTS. I love them for their music, talent, personalities and the happiness they give me. I also enjoy BTS’ bond and love their interactions. I posted content of all kinds of interactions JM X JK, JK X V, V X JIN, JIN X SG, SG X JH, JH X RM, RM X JM ... If you are calling this fetishing asian men just because I scream over BTS as a fan and love their bonb. Then aren’t you against the idea of being an ARMY? I was a clear OT7 and you were told that you weren’t right:

Then you answered this without even explaining the nonsense about me:

idk .. I am trying to find sense in your nonsense so .. wait wait let me look at the definition of fetishism first.

Fetishism /ˈfɛtɪʃɪz(ə)m/ noun: a form of sexual behavior in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, activity, part of the body, etc.

Then .. judging from your URL alone hmmm ... cute. I won’t even talk about the SMUT you write that is full of kinks and fetishism. Well I have no problem with fan fiction but the irony you spit is out of this world.

Also, I made money out of mimibtsghost? HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH no lil one. I worked day and night for FREE. At some point when BT21 just came out and there were no products on AMAZON or anywhere but S.Korea, someone reached out to me to offer 20% off or something for my dear followers. When they asked what I wanted I said what about international giveaways for my dear followers. Basically, made gifs, found content, updates, analysis, edits, and so on for free. Again, w-wait .. Aren’t you the one asking for commissions? Well .. It’s not wrong. But again THE irony.

So, I went to see that post you made about me with “PROOF” and it was just another person who was salty as I got them blocked I can’t even recall who they were but oh well. Their arguments according to YOU and many should be taken as FACTS just because they said them? You said HERE that your first comeback was MOST:7 that came in just last year (2020) SO what the hell do YOU know about what happened years before you came when all the proof you pointed at where baseless without any backing?

Let’s see this so wise person you used to delete my blog and what I have done ^^

The gifs: There is a story to this. The first week I came to Tumblr, It was my first time on this site and the first time I share anything. I shared some content and my analysis had a lot of notes for a small creator that started just a week ago. But I made a mistake, I found a gif and posted it while crediting the gif maker. At the time I had NO idea it was wrong. I logged off and after 5 hours I log in and there was a WAR for that ONE gif. The big blog had me blocked and her friend was telling me to take it off. As soon as the person told me I did IMMEDIATELY and apologized againa and again and told them to tell the original gif maker to deblock me as I want to apologize directly and that they can block me after that. They did and I apologized but they just kept insulting me. Of course it was MY mistake and that’s why I apologized. But for them. for a mere gif (yes I say a mere gif because I made so many gifs and they were used on all platforms but I never thought it was necessary to hate that much on someone like they did to me). That blog was big and had big blog mutuals. Thanks to that, I became someone you do NOT become mutuals with but block and never reblog content from. Without any big mutuals. Without any shoutouts. Only my love for BTS, my dear followers’ support and my hard work.. My blog, became bigger and FAST (I got 10k in less than 6 months after I started) and that brought loads of jealousy and thus more rumors. Even if, I apologized and since then made my own gifs. And I made SO many gifsets that I can’t remember how many there were. What I can recall is at some point I made them daily and many times a day.

Ships Jikook? I posted content of ALL the members interactions. I was here at a time where Jikook stans and Taekook stans where always fighting. BUT I posted about both and even made so many posts to encourage loving all the members and all the interactions. I also used the tags solely used for shipping with other big tags to show that BTS’ interactions are all important and their bond is beutiful. That our fandom shouldn’t hate on a member just because they are not part of a ship we like. And wait .. even if I shipped Jikook? I got called ALL those names by someone who ship the members with readers and write sexual scenes? Like, wait ... I am truly confused. Like, write fanfic and do all you want as long as you hurt no one I guess but why am I getting hurt for doing non of it? Like according to you, the person you should be cancelling is yourself?! I am also not into cancel culture like you so hahah whatever.

Posted stalker pics: well wow the story changes each time. Next thing you will hear that I was the one holding a camera for a member in a Vlive lol. Let me teach you about this update thing I was doing. I follow accounts I trust and that’s how we get info circulating fast. I always do reasearch but sometimes mistakes are made. For example when lately people shared pictures of BTS leaving their virtual concerts and schedules. There was a watermark of a news outlet. Normally we trust those but only later we realized that those people stalked BTS. You clearly can’t know it all. But I still didn’t share many pics related to many events (I will not name those as pple can search them even now because some pple never deleted those). And all big accounts shared many pics then deleted later. This happens all the time but it happened like ONCE for me. However, I am called a stalker for that?

When Jonghyun passed away ... I don’t even wanna recall that night as the memories just ... when that happened I posted about it and send my condolescences. that post had over 10k notes and was at the top the tag. Why did I do that? I was devastated. Yes, many were but I will talk about me rn: I was suicidal the days before that and one of the songs that I listened to when I was broken where by him. I has been in the kpop world since 2006. And learned about his group since their debut with ‘Replay’. I was never a stan but I still knew of many groups and listened to all the songs I liked. I was very sad when he was gone and ANGRY mostly. Why is this angel leaving? Why is someone like me still here? Why did I not leave instead of him? How much did he suffer? And in the midst I posted a post from twitter that stated how agencies usually put down pple with mental illiness and hide it in the industry. Yes, that was important but NOT at that time. I shouldn’t have posted that and I realized after 5 min of doing so that it was WRONG. So I deleted it FAST but it kept being reblogged and I kept getting hate and people telling me: “Go kill yourself”... the sad part is that I almost did as my answer was “true ... why am I still here?” I apologized and logged off then to this day won’t forget crying at 3 AM while walking outside next to my dad. I was outside as I couldn’t breathe anymore and the idea of seeing the walls of my room was hell. I cried and cried and the teary eyes that my father looked at me with are something I am ashamed of to this day. To add one more thing while I am spilling the beans. I hate learning about someone dying. My grandma passed away sometime before that and it was so shocking to me. and some people came and told me when I was mourning her: Go follow that bitch of grandmother of yours. And for what? At that moment I didn’t think I would live to see the next year but I went to therapy and took medecine that was hurting and made me shake all day just to turn somewhat sane. No one knew tho ... I smiled all day and cried all night.. Even on the blog I fought no one of the ones who hated me. I just blocked them but even that was an insult to them?

Again, you said no one should defend me. Yet, you were ready to fight whoever touched anyone around you. What about changing your URL to beautifulassirony

Also THE hypocrisy. If you are sorry then why are you answering an ask of someone isulting someone you want to apologize to? Just make a post wher you apologize or ignore it from the start?

One more thing but surely not the last. You said you were good with research which you are NOT. So, let me show you what an OG detective ARMY can do. But first, as I was scrolling I saw some of your “work” (let’s not even talk about those gifs) and I am just giving my point of view here: I hate how you painted Namjoon as this horny-idiotic-make-dog. Like I get it it’s a fanfic or Namjoon as a dad but ... Namjoon is such a smart man who is very respectful and ofc he is a human with needs like many but what the hell is this way of portraying a character? Also a character is not cool, amazing, and a strong woman just because they curse and belittle their partner.

Oh well, only you kept reblogging that as it show 36 reblogs when only 33 as still there when I looked and out of those 13 reblogs are yours? (you might have reblogged it more) but again some people might have liked ... people have different taste ... so ... whatever.

Let’s continue, shall we ^^. You said you were the victim here when I was the one getting robbed right? How can I believe someone who reblogged the post below and was proud calling themselves an abomination or how the Oxford dictionary defines it: a thing that causes disgust or loathing. For once you weren’t wrong.

What can you expect from someone who has the “I am not like others” kinda mentality while stating relatable things that everyone goes through?

This is getting pretty long. So to sum this up. You are now telling others that hate is NOt ok and that they should be ashamed of themselves when you yourself is not ashamed of hating on me?

I am not the type that sends anon hate. I might ignore some barking but the past days you came and bite me hard. I face the ones I have to face without fear. I know I am not the bad guy here and I don’t care much what you think about me. Even BTS got haters. This says a lot. BUT do NOT dare talk badely of my dear friends/followers. You said you do research well? Start by deleting the post below that was originally by ME from your blog ... oh how meticulous you are. From your baseless receipts to your twisted logic. Indeed people on the internet can say anything and it will be FACTS. You painted me as the devil and painted yourself as this researcher? What’s next you receiving a Phd in ‘pity me’ after your MBA in lies and irony? Whatever~

Whaaatever~ Karma will have upcoming talks with you. No need for you to apologize. I never cared about you and you only got attention using me. But I am not here anymore how will you get that blog running now? Are you gonna add me in a fanfic next? No need for you to send me my appearance fee when you do so~ And no need for you to apologize to me just apologize to you conscience if you have any left. As for me @hobisbeautifulass you are just someone I will forget soon anyway~~

And because according to what you said HERE when you described the things you hate about people and I thought that was VERY close to how you treated me. Thus, you might really not stand yourself rn.

Do.Not.Worry. BTS are starting the Love Myself campaign again and just in time for you to jump in (you are good at jumping to conclusions about me so I won’t worry about you). I know you don’t like me or my friends but be sure to love yourself at least ^^

You are a Hobi stan? Then learn from Hobi to share some sunshine not bring the storm. Have a good day~

#Anonymous #hobisbeautifulass #don't mind the typos as I wrote this in one go #just because I am someone who do not punch back when someone hit me do not mean I will stand nicely when you touch my people #anyway~ bye~#mimibtsghost

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nathalie-sancoeur-assistant · 4 years

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Chat Blanc

I’m finally ready to post my Chat Blanc analysis now that I’ve my thoughts sorted out. Beware, there are going to be spoilers below and probably a lot of speculation on the Agreste family (and when I say “Agreste Family” that includes Nathalie and possibly Gorilla). I’m going to be using screenshots from youtube w/ english subs.

First off we have this

This further cements the idea that I’ve said before- that Gabriel doesn’t just want to bring Emilie back, but fix something that happened. Granted the mistake they made is likely the exact thing that sent Emilie comatose, but the fact still stands that he’s not just looking to wake her up. He’s looking to change the past so that she never fell ill to begin with.

Now we have that cute scene with the girls hyping up Marinette, Nathalie denying Marinette’s present, and Ladybug busting in. Which....idk that just seems really stupid. I get it, she’s 14 but she’s also proven she has critical thinking skills. She could have waited till the next day, or outside the Agreste gates until the car came up (Adrien would have rolled down his window for her), there were other solutions but I guess Marinette hasn’t always gotten an A+ for patience. But this girl, she takes it to far and all I can do is shake my head

The only reason you get a pass for this is cause you’re still learning what’s appropriate and not.

And I don’t think I have to explain why this is sad. He just wants his dad to be even a little proud, but he never gets to see his reaction or receive the praise he needs because his dad is “busy”. Can’t even spare a solid thirty seconds for Adrien to pop his head in and say “Father I won!” “That’s great son!”

Then cut to Marinette stuffing her face in Adrien’s pillow and I just I can’t. Sigh.

And props to Adrien for being smarter than we gave him credit for. And then we get to this scene...

Where we first see Chat Blanc and you can tell....he’s clearly unstable. You can just tell, from the moment he’s on screen singing to himself that there is something off and Adrien Agreste has left the building. I think that speaks numbers about the psychological trauma he’s been through regarding what went down in this episode. They displayed it perfectly in the most gut-wrenching way. You’re already fearful for Chat/Adrien just due to how he’s acting because you can tell by that alone, akuma or no, that something went terribly awry.

And now he wants her miraculous

Not because of his dad’s influence, though the initial goal of the akuma is probably terribly overwhelming. How long has he actually been there in this wasteland by himself? It’s practically clad in white and almost looks frozen. You can tell Chat Blanc brought on all of this from the beginning (obviously) but my point is that it even has a signature mark on it by the color scheme being off. It genuinely feels like an altered version of reality, or a separate universe (which it can’t be can it? Since Chat Blanc was going to destroy the whole universe, making Bunnyx panic. Does that mean there really is only one universe? Because I feel like in a world with multiple timelines that could occur that there would be more of a multiverse. Anyway...

This poor child...

He’s being torn between two different worlds in every way. And he doesn’t deserve it. We get to see glimpses of Adrien in between Chat Blanc. THIS is Adrien asking her to save him. But then Chat Blanc is back in the next scene.

I genuinely thought that perhaps Hawkmoth had sent his akuma into Chat/Adrien’s heart. But it was more symbolically than literally. Imagine how messed up that could be, if he could akumatize someone by the heart. How would they get the akuma out then? It would be a matter of actually being able to convince the person to let the akuma go. But Chat/Adrien has had so much happen that his emotions were already so high and intense, imagine how intense it must be now? It’s literally pushed him to the brink of insanity! Thinking about it though,.insanity at this point is likely the only survival tactic he has. How else could be handle being alone, completely and utterly alone? And for how long? How long would he had to have had to mull this over from where he started out as Chat Blanc, being able to fight against the akuma even a bit so that he didn’t directly harm Ladybug/Marinette. How long would he have needed to come up with “This is Chat Blanc. Chat Blanc did this, not me, Adrien, Chat Noir- it was Chat Blanc using my hands to destroy Paris” and develop this outlook so that he didn’t just completely give up. How long has he been fighting? The torture that came with that akuma likely isn’t going to go away once he forgets it. It’s just...this poor kid. He’s trying his best.

And here I think I appreciated Marinette’s hair being down just as much as the next person but I’m kinda curious as to why? It was in pigtails just moments before so why is it suddenly down- what prompted her to take it down and just keep it down? I feel like it represents the change in the timelines. Especially since we don’t see her with pigtails again in that universe.

“I finally understand that you’re not just a friend. I always felt that there was something more...” so in other words- he loves both sides of Ladybug completely. He would love Marinette without Ladybug. He has always had this underlying affection for Marinette that is completely unlike the feelings he has for his other friends but he’s suppressing it in order to not feel unfaithful or something in regards to his feelings for Ladybug. He wants to be genuine, and now that he knows that his feelings aren’t going to cause him any kind of discourse (when it comes to Marinette VS Ladybug) he can openly express and acknowledge his feelings for Marinette and Ladybug alike.

Please appriciate that Marinette has to stand on her tiptoes because her boyfriend is a tol smol.

And THAT is why Chat Blanc wants her miraculous. He isn’t thinking straight- he’s not able to think “if I give up the akuma Ladybug can use her Lucky Charm to fix everything” because he’s still swallowed up with the akuma, the command from his father to get her miraculous. And at this point he’s to tired to resist fighting her.

Yikes, someone’s getting jealous. Also, appriciate the fact that Marinette, in that scene, literally leaps into his arms. How long have they been dating at this point? This is likely only a few days after, once enough time has gone by for word to spread.

Luka says “Adrinette rights”.

I feel like some more time has been passing between these scenes. Not a ton, but a significant amount. After all, Adrien would hardly have enough to go on an icecream date and dance with his girlfriend at a friend’s place in the same week, wouldn’t he?

“It was so amazing, until Hawkmoth found out everything”- really. They seem euphoric. And Adrien finally has something that is making him genuinely happy and helping him get through everything he’s already had to go through. Then we get hit with this...

Side note- Nathalie is tol, Sabine is smol. Back on track- what the actual- are you actually serious? Gabriel is....he’s actually doing that? Perhaps it wouldn’t be QUITE so bad if it was him simply being an over protective dad, if Marinette weren’t a well-behaved aspiring fashion designer that could benefit both him and her in the future, you know, something bad was actually going on but no...Gabriel is just making her end the relationship....for an akuma. He is bullying and forcing a 14 year old girl totally head-over-heels and love-struck with his son m, someone who is actually giving Adrien a happy place....does he not already know what it’s like to be forcibly separated from the person you hold dear? He lost his wife so now Adrien has to lose his girlfriend because “it’ll save your mother” or some ish- no! There are other ways to get powerful akumas!!! You don’t have to be so selfish as to put your own son through something similar to your own heartbreak (I mean Marinette is up and healthy and everything but it’s still forcibly removing them from each other’s grasp and selfishly taking away his son’s love interest to revive his own). You want to manufacture an akuma? Fine. Get Lila. Or target literally anyone else besides your son’s girlfriend and her family. Your son has found a way to be happy and move on without his mother being by his side every day. Either you learn how to do that too or you don’t uproot the happiness he has found to “replace” it . Because you CAN’T replace what he’s found You can add to it, if his mother really can come back without harming him or someone else he loves. But not at the expense of what he’s made for himself. That is cruel, and I genuinely thought better of you. I’m deeply disappointed. Again, if this was because Adrien’s judgement was actually questionable and Marinette had a bad record, I could understand it more. But it isn’t because hes looking out for him, it’s purely for an akuma, no regard for Adrien. And I dunno exactly how willing Nathalie was in this situation but that’s a whole other post I made a day or so ago. We can’t judge her based on the few clips we’ve seen of the future, but we can judge Gabriel because there is no good excuse for it.

She sounds so heartbroken when he tells her to break up with him too. Because she really hasn’t done anything wrong. If this is the case, then she never actually had a real chance with Adrien because his father wouldn’t have allowed it regardless of how much they liked each other. And once again he used the threat of taking him out of school, something incredibly important to Adrien, to manipulate someone who genuinely cares about him to be selfless enough to comply with him. He’s counting on other people caring about Adrien more than him to get his way. This is not only emotionally abusing Adrien, but Marinette as well. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it outside of Gabriel himself.

And this heartbreak is so different from that act when Chat rejected her. That probably adds fuel to the fire with her parent’s. They can tell from her reaction that Chat was probably just a phase she was having but with Adrien, she genuinely loves and cares for him. She just wants to be with him and make him happy. You can tell that she already knows what she’s going to do simply because of how heartbroken and hopeless her cry sounds. There is NO justifiable reason for this.

And this is part of the reason why I want to know how long they’ve been together at this point. I can see current Gabriel doing this, but if he hadn’t done what he does later on (which feels very out of character as I’ve addressed in a previous post I believe) then something else would have happened to tell him that maybe perhaps he did go to far and needs to apologize. If only he hadn’t taken it to the extent further down, this could have all been resolved. (Also, you can’t tell me that the news reporting that Gabriel made Adrien and Marinette break up after having reported about how star-struck they were wouldn’t put more damage on the company than Marinette leaping into Adrien’s arms in public...)

Nathalie and the Gorilla aren’t much help in this scenario either. I mean, think about it.

They both very obviously care about Adrien, and they have both done things for Adrien to make his life easier, help him be happy. They both seem to see him as a son to themselves as well. But they both get to see how Adrien is treated day in and day out. There are cameras all over that house, I can only assume- so there would be plenty of evidence of the neglect going down.

So...why, pray tell, have neither of them done anything? Oh Nathalie we know why, but what’s stopping the Gorilla? Don’t tell me he actually thinks that Adrien is better off in this environment? He sees what happens every day- if he’s mute, does he not know sign language? Or how to write? If he actually can’t talk then he could still write out a letter to the authorities. Is it because he doesn’t want Adrien to go into some kind of foster care system, be taken away from him, or have to go live with Felix? Tell me there’s something more going on preventing the Gorilla/Nathalie from actually taking action and doing something besides their jobs and not wanting to separate Adrien and Gabriel.

She doesn’t even question her feelings for him even after finding out he’s Chat. And she probably knows that he knows that what she just said about not loving him was bogus, but I don’t think he ever figured out why she did it.

And look at this.

Here, Nathalie looks sad, heartbroken and almost shocked, while Gabriel is harshly calling for her from the phone.

And here her expression changes, only slightly. The first one, she saw Chat Noir and Adrien as one and was shocked that he that they were one in the same, and sad likely about the fact that he was fighting against his father. This one, is the moment of realization. Her eyes got wider, that look of dread really set in. This is where she realizes that not only is he fighting against his own father, but realizing what he’s fighting against, how many times he almost got killed because of it all (outside of the times Adrien has been the direct target of an akuma) and how she herself has fought against him in hand-to-hand combat and tried to hurt him. That is a look of pure regret. It’s all in her eyes.

And even here, her eyes shift ever so slightly, and she looks like she’s not even looking at anything anymore and trying to process that she has been actively hurting Adrien in her attempt to bring his family back together. Physically.

Then when she really tells Gabriel, she doesn’t seem quite hesitant per se, but she sounds like she has to actually say it to believe it and thinks that if Gabriel knows, something might change. I doubt she actually thinks he’ll totally stop trying to get the miraculous (because we don’t know how much time has passed here and it seems he gets more and more desperate and with each passing day and less likely to quit as time goes on) but I do definitely think that her intentions with telling Gabriel this, like all others, were good. She wasn’t trying to hurt Adrien further. She was doing what she thought was best because I think that she thought that if Gabriel knew he was fighting his own son he’d question himself again, stop fighting him and actively physically hurting him, just do something other than what he actually does. She sees good in Gabriel otherwise she wouldn’t be in love with him. Heck I’m not in love with him and I saw good in him. Never in my wildest dreams did I actually suspect he would have reacted the way he did- especially with how he acted in Gorizilla! Sure in that episode he was still pretty awful, I mean who tosses their son off a building, but at least he actually seemed to care, he seemed like he’d be emotionally torn if Adrien had actually transformed- which is why I think that Gabriel isn’t necessarily entirely there anymore. I mean...look at this. Really look at it.

There is a shock factor there, for a moment it actually seems as if Gabriel might be about to reconsider...

What the frick happened

I don’t recall seeing him smile quite like that previously. His reaction is “Chat is my son? Well then I’ll take his miraculous!” and it’s nothing like what we see in Gorizilla. Something here has changed- something changed in Gabriel, the household. It just doesn’t seem right. Where is the Gabriel from before? Where are the nose holes for his mask? Why does he not have any nose holes, does he mouth-breath? Man Hawkmoth really is evil if he mouth breaths. I’m getting off topic- but this is why I want to know how long Marinette and Adrien were together before this. Something had to have happened to make him unstable didn’t it? I just can’t see how that is Gabriel. I can’t see how that would be his true reaction. Perhaps my perception of him is just severely muddled. Maybe I had more faith in him than I should have.

...wow. He really did accidentally kill them. Two people he loves, obliterated because one doesn’t know when to stop.

Now here is an interesting scene. They fell directly from above, which tells me that Hawkmoth’s lair is directly above Emilie’s coffin room. Which must then mean that his office is above both on them? How very interesting. Now- how did they know where to find Hawkmoth. Watch that entire scene, you are given no hints....

Unless we are.

Mayura/Nathalie isn’t there. It’s very out of character for her to not help Gabriel, isn’t it? How much later is this from when Hawkmoth found Chat’s identity? I’ll say a week? A few days? I can’t see how Nathalie would be able to actively fight against Ladybug and Chat Noir knowing who Chat was. Her and Gabriel definitely spoke about it if it is a day or so after. After being told he was going to continue, I don’t think she reacted very happily. She isn’t fighting against Adrien.

That being said they’re also in the Agreste house. They already ruled Gabriel out of being Hawkmoth long ago, so why would they suspect him again? What could have given it away? Sure. she’s calling him Hawkmoth, but why would she respectfully call him “Mr. Agreste” or awkwardly call him “Gabriel”? Hawkmoth is much easier considering that’s who he is. If he wasn’t willing to stop or at least tone it all down for Adrien’s sake, then he was obviously doing all this for his own selfish purposes and was never out to help his family. No good could come of it, so I think it’s just barely possible that perhaps Nathalie decided it wasn’t worth it and found some way to contact Ladybug or tell Chat Noir/Adrien where Hawkmoth could be found. If it isn’t a few days after, then Nathalie hearing how Gabriel reacted, maybe she ran out through the front doors to tell them. All I know here is that there is a time skip of undetermined length and Mayura isn’t present in this episode at all.

This look of utter delight....if Nathalie did tell them where Hawkmoth was, she obviously said nothing about him knowing Chat’s identity or why Gabriel was doing it. Perhaps she knew that would make it harder to stop him for Adrien, if he knew what was going on? She can’t predict the future- But it comes as such a shock. I do believe they know that Gabriel is Hawkmoth and who they’re fighting against in this scene simply because how could you be inside the house of a world-famous fashion designer and not recognize that while you’re going in? How would they have found him otherwise? There has been no evidence to my knowledge that would have backed up them going after him and suspecting him again to the point they actually go inside his house. Why were we not told how they found out? Was the puzzle just to long or are we supposed to continue seeing a certain character in a grey light? We were NEVER told how they found out who he is or where his lair is! He’s able to use his knowledge of who Chat is though, to shock him long enough to press the “reveal my wife” button. When he says “Dear Adrien”, Chat doesn’t ask “Father?!” he asks “How did you know?!”. then he sees his mom

He doesn’t ask if Hawkmoth is Gabriel. He makes no move to seem to try to figure out “Why does Hawkmoth have my mom in his basement”. Sure, it’d be pretty obvious to anyone but he doesn’t even hardly have time to think “If my mom is here then this must be my father”. No, he just never suspected that his mother would be so close.

“I’m doing this all for her Adrien”

And Adrien then proceeds not to ask anything about his dad. He knows that’s him. He just asks “Why” over and over. He’s in so much emotional turmoil from this alone that he almost seems to cataclysm his dad, but I don’t think he even actually had that intention.

what

WHAT

WHAT THE HECK?!

HOW IS THAT ALLOWED IN A TV-Y7 SHOW?!

deep breaths, deep breaths, calm yourself, Self.

Then the next scene, Chat is fearfully crawling away from his own father. In actual fear. Gabriel is actually completely okay with what he’s doing, justifying it by saying “this is for us” but it isn’t. Not once he’s gone that far. If you have to beat your child into submission, it’s not for their own good. I hope it never actually goes that far, but let’s continue.

What he’s saying is basically telling Adrien that he’s been fighting against bringing his own mother back, he doesn’t want to hear that him and his lady are capable, have BEEN capable, of bringing his mother back to him. This goes to prove that IF Emilie is bad, Adrien wouldn’t be able to handle it. It would put a similar psychological torture on him as this did and idk about you but I don’t think Gabenath is worth Adrien’s mental health (I still very much ship Gabenath don’t get me wrong but if Adrien is going to suffer like that to make it happen then I’m not so sure it’s worth it.). The amount of emotional manipulation in these couple of minutes is too disgusting to put into words.

“If she loved you as much as she says she’d save your mother”- does that mean he’s now also aware that Marinette is Ladybug? Seriously, what happened during this time skip?? Did Ladybug and Chat Noir start openly dating so they could still be together as heroes even if they weren’t together as civilians?

It gets to the point where the boy can’t stand it. He needs to be left alone. He needs to process everything- how is he supposed to know what’s right and wrong when he has two people he loves dearly telling him to do two very different things? Does he save his mother and join his father? Does he listen to ladybug, spare someone else the price of Emilie and follow her into their future?

The delight on Gabriel’s face as he sends his akuma into Chat is just....it’s unthinkable. How can he be enjoying this when it seemed to hurt him so much to toss him from a roof? I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense! The only way I can make any sense of it would be if Gabriel had just completely lost his mind! He feels so OOC! Something had to have happened to make him go this far. He has to be severely emotionally unwell and distanced from Adrien if he’s actually okay with this- and if he doesn’t have the critical thinking skills to think “Hey, maybe someone who’s this traumatized shouldn’t have the power of unlimited destruction. Maybe just be able to use his power multiple times.” then idk he’s a complete fool. At least this version is anyway. I can’t believe him.

This is not okay.

How can he stand there and watch his own son, in pain, struggling because he doesn’t understand what he needs to do anymore and just grin??

“Obey me!”

I’ve had my parents tell me to listen to them, to do as they say, quote the 5th commandment at me and things like that, but obey? In such a harsh tone? To obey could almost be interpreted as having to listen because they are your master. Slaves obey.

How they do the facial expressions so well...is just artful, I must admit. Even if they do tear my heart out piece by piece.

And perhaps Chat Blanc taking the blow for himself did something to damage his psyche even more than it already was. Perhaps that helped to paint the unstable Chat Blanc we’re introduced to.

“It wasn’t my fault”

That’s right baby, it wasn’t. You’re a victim of cruel circumstance. You’re completely innocent and I hope you genuinely believe that.

But seriously, Hawkmoth’s lack of understanding of what emotional turmoil can do and giving a distressed child the power of total destruction...yeah. Imagine being single-handedly the reason the entire freaking universe got wiped out.

---

What makes everything even worse is that now Marinette thinks she can’t trust Adrien with her secret. She thinks he blabbed and Chat found out her identity (still not piecing together that Chat is Adrien). That must be a rather hard potential truth to take. When in reality, he never said anything and she could trust him completely. And her erasing the signature

means the Chat Blanc Timeline never happened. Which puts everything back at square one. All that abuse...it never actually happened. It was a potential outcome of the future and it never actually occurred because it was fixed. We got to see a potential result of the identity reveal, we got to see the way Future Hawkmoth would have reacted- but what about current Gabriel? It feels like all that happened a decent way into the future, at least long enough for something to happen for Gabriel to go further down his rabbit hole. How different are the potential versions of Gabriel and the current Gabriel? I still want to hold out hope that he can change for the better. Adrien has been through enough as it is, he doesn’t need his father to hit him, emotionally manipulate and traumatize him.

This episode i feel like simultaneously showed a worst case scenario, why a reveal would be dangerous, why Adrinette probably wouldn’t happen even if Adrien liked Marinette like that, and how far things could go downhill if the reveal happened in the wrong place, at the wrong time. In this case it just absolutely obliterated the chances of Adrien having a loving family again, unless part of Gabriel’s wish erased what he had just done to Adrien. With the erasure of the Chat Blanc future, there is potential for Gabriel, I think, since Chat Blanc never happened. Since he never actually did it, I don’t know how to feel. On one hand he never did it and therefore could have potential to turn around, but on the other, that timeline showed what he could be capable of in the right situation.

I’m walking a thin line on a lonely road when it comes to Gabriel Agreste. I’m skipping rope with the line. And one last thing...

Alix is going to do something to prove herself in the future. You can tell by this scene. I wonder what it is?

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traiqse-blog · 5 years

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[ ZENDAYA, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER, 21 ] // filed under: CLEOTILDE “CLEO” BENSON, student is a SECOND YEAR from FRANCE who specializes in FIELD OPS. we believe they will be an asset because they are METICULOUS & CONSCIENTIOUS. however, we are monitoring them due to their tendency to be CHOLERIC & CYNICAL. at their basic state, they remind one of GOLD JEWELRY, FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR THEME SONG, WATCHING THE SUN SET/RISE ON ROOFTOPS, COFFEE IN A WINE GLASS. our REDRUM has promise, but as we all know, brier isn’t for everyone. ✉

hello hello ! it’s ur neighborhood giant kylen ( or kylo ren ). i am currently twenty-one & i live in the pst timezone. a lil’ about me is that i work 40+ hours a week & i rp at work mainly ( bc my laptop at home is having major issues ). i also am an avid pokemon go player & i like to read a lot. below you can find out about my bby cleo & if you wanna talk on d!scord hmu at break up w ur girlfriend#6145

L I F E S T O R Y

so if you want the long-in depth version of cleo’s about click HERE ( just click the link at the end to move onto the next “chapter” - it should be a link that is black )

this is not finished bc i’ve been busy at work the past few days, ngl but ill make a post when its all completed <3

the biography will address the following triggers: abuse, alcoholism, mental illness (trichotillomania + autism), sexual-harassment & borderline rape.

the mini bio below will not dive into or feature any of the above triggers though

B I O G R A P H Y

cleo has three younger brothers ! matias, brandon, & zander & she is in no communication with either of her biological parents, nor with her brothers’ fathers.

she grew up loving her brothers & keeping them close to her side. she basically was their mother figure as well, making sure that they were always taken care of ?

she had managed to grow up arguing with her mom every chance she got due to her mom keeping her in all the time & giving her ridiculous rules when cleo did get a chance to hang out with friends

school was fine, cleo would rotate every year between getting straight a’s and then barely passing. she didn’t mind & thought it was funny & “ cool ”

once high school came to an end cleo didn’t know what to do with herself, she did really well in her few final years of highschool but didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life

so she went into briar !! & was placed in the analysis specialty. & cleo actually liked it a lot. she thought she was in her element & thought she was doing really good.

during her second year she even managed to find a s/o & fell in love !! she was really happy to be in her first real relationship ?? like was genuinely ecstatic

but that relationship didn’t last all that long at all which was really unfortunate for cleo because she thought that they were her soulmate ?? but turns out they weren’t thinking the same thing so it kinda crushed her

cleo kind of started spiraling down ? she didn’t care about her appearance or what she said to other people & became sort of toxic ? at that point she didn’t even want to be at briar anymore

she wanted to leave & go out into the world to do whatever she felt like doing. cleo honestly just wanted to get out and explore & experiment & she felt like a ticking time bomb

luckily, for her third year she was moved to field ops in hopes of helping her calm down a bit ? she’s hopeful that it’ll work but is also a bit cynical about it as well

she’s a bit closed off when meeting new people & even hanging out with others makes her a bit nervous due to what media says nowadays with scares ( especially for woman )

even though cleo is cynical & closed off she’s a big hopeless romantic. she really wants someone to make her fall in love all over again. she wants to feel warm in the pit of her stomach again & wants to be happy.

right about now she’s just content, so

W A N T E D C O N N E C T I O N S

the ex: this connection is currently up on the main & can be found here

fwb: i can def see cleo having a fwb ! she prolly rushed into it after her breakup hoping that she would fall in love with this person ??

close friends: someone she talks to about everything going on in her life. someone she can vent to & someone she prolly talks about her family & past with

study buddies: this specifically would have to be for someone who’s in field ops. since cleo joined her third year she has some catching up to do & would love some help

tutor-er: she was in analysis before she was in field ops & would 100% be okay with helping a first or second year with whatever they needed

#brierintro

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sawthefaeriequeen · 5 years

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Top Ten Books Read In 2018

1) The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

I picked this up at a book fair, read the summary, and figured I'd surprise myself with this author I'd never heard of before. It's about the friendship between DQ, a guy with terminal cancer dealing with his complicated feelings for his estranged-but-conciliatory family, and Pancho, a guy who's biding his time until he can get revenge on the person who's killed one of his family members. I like that both boys are raw and real and people—Pancho obviously has messed up emotions, but DQ can be plenty bitter and angry too: he's not an Inspirational Cancer Patient stereotype.

2) The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Girl moves into her uncle's old ancestral house sometime during the 18th century and gets immersed into the past lives and loves of the ghosts that thrived there during the days of the Revolutionary War, their paths often crossing each other's. I swear I have never seen more delightful ghost characters in my entire life.

3) The Unbound by V.E. Schwab

So by the time I'd picked this up, I was having mixed feelings about V.E. Schwab – on one hand, she'd always written worlds that engage me almost instantly with their creativity. On the other hand, I'd just recently been horribly disappointed by the ending to what's been her most popular series so far: I thought her final Shades of Magic book did a most spectacular job on dropping the balls on everything good about it. Up to reading it, I'd thought the author's hype was deserved. But after, well…

So when I picked this up, it was with much trepidation. I'd loved the previous book, The Archived: the big old house setting, the grim closed-off girl/sweet sunny boy dynamic the lonesome warrior setup, all were like catnip to my id. I didn't want it ruined by a bad sequel. Fortunately, this book took everything I loved about the book and turned it up to eleven. It upped the stakes, it intensified the relationships, and it also added a mental illness angle that I personally found very meaningful.

The author is still kiiinda on notice so I'm not sure I want a third book. If there is one, dear God, please be good. *crosses fingers*

4) Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

I remember thinking, as I was reading this: this is really, really working for me but will it work for someone neurotypical? 2018 was hell and I was just so desperate for the people in my life to get it, and so I kept hopping on trains of thought like this.

Anyway, this book was spot on in what goes on in the wirings of my anxious brain. Green's usual turns of phrase took an incredibly frenetic turn at times, which, I know, is exactly what it's like to have a mental illness. This is not a book about "this is what to do" it's about how it IS or how it can GET.

I'm still really grateful for that quote about the spiral – how it tightens, but also how it eternally widens. When I first saw the cover, I thought it was kind of blah; now I look at that spiral and see something different. I see the hope of creating a new 'normal'.

5) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This was so readable it surprised me. I thought I'd go slow on it because: war story where it's a foregone conclusion that it ends tragically for the leads? Yeah, I'm not in a rush to reach the end of that. But I blazed right through this book. There's something really addictive about Madeline Miller's storytelling and how she brings her characters together and follows their blossomings and downfalls through the years. And then, the course of the Iliad and the inevitable sadness for Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis was more like the slow turning of the tide rather than getting hit with a tidal wave. Anyway, not only was it readable but I'm finding myself eager to re-read it.

6 ) The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Part of my Read Everything Robin McKinley Writes mission that began last year. I'd liked the sheer escapism and the desert setting in The Blue Sword, but that whole white savior thing kinda put me off from enjoying Harry and the book more fully than I would've liked.

It was not so for this book, thankfully! Who knew that reading about the nitty-gritty of slaying big scaly beasts could be so satisfying? That's classic Robin McKinley, as I'm learning – you love what the protag loves. And then I really dug how the dead dragon's ghost haunting Aerin acts as a metaphor for mental illness.

(As I continue to wrestle with my diagnosis, I continually appreciate all the depression/anxiety metaphors I encounter in media. Maybe one day I'll make a post about it) AND ALSO: a love triangle that's actually well done and that serves our heroine's identity and character rather than taking away from it? Yes. Yes, thank you.

7) A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Yeah so, this book killed me. It's about two twenty-something ghosts with unfinished business who find themselves in the bodies of two teenagers whose souls appear to have completely vacated theirs. They find themselves falling for each other and trying to find out what happened to their 'hosts' and what went on in their past lives. They also find themselves battling to survive the hostile home lives that their 'hosts' left behind. It's all very beautiful and kind of twisted and also a love letter to words and probably my most unexpected book of the year. And I have NO idea to rec it to people. "Read this, it's kind of fucked up but gorgeous but also can get triggery so step warily?" Uh.

8) Deerskin by Robin McKinley

See warnings above. Oh God. But really, I totally respect Robin McKinley for going full-out faithful to how utterly fucked up fairy tales can be while still creating a survival story. I'm not just talking about Lissar surviving spoilers incestual rape and miscarriage (indeed, I'm not qualified to talk about it) but how hers is a story of healing: by surviving the elements, by nursing living things back into life, by building herself up into a legend without even knowing it.

9) Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

Just an incredibly satisfying ending to a duology that at the same time echoes that quote from Michael Ende's The Neverending Story: "but that is another story and shall be told another time." I love when something ends with that sense of: "there are even more stories and adventures for our beloved characters out there than you can possibly fathom, and you are now free to make up them yourself."

10) Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

I was intrigued by the premise: a half-Jewish guy and a Mormon guy fall for each other over the course of a writing class. And upon starting it, I could tell straight (heh, straight) away that it was going to be a favorite. It's an unabashedly kilig romance about falling for the wonderfulness in each other,and both mains are fucking adorable, and made me want to give them both a ton of hugs. Oh, and this book further reinforced my belief that the key to first-person writing is having a good voice.

Another thing is, I basically never see YA books that deal with growing up in a religion and actually-loving it and having it be an inextricable part of your identity… and then having to deal with the darker, prejudiced sides that you really wish would be excised from it altogether especially if they are opposed to who you are. To deal with it sensitively and touchingly, not only in a YA book but in an m/m romance? Well done.

honorable mention!

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I was reading this on the bus on the way home to the province for Christmas and I could not stop laughing and I had no idea to explain to my very curious sister that it was because half the protagonists were high as a kite at the funeral of the friend that they all killed and one of them had just very noisily killed a bee in the church vestibule and it made the loudest sound on the planet and they're all gonna have to ~aesthetically grieve and pallbear now even though THEY killed their friend and w o w it's like Nuwanda from Dead Poets Society was cloned five times.

Sometimes "pretentious people murder someone and somehow it is hilarious" is just exactly my cup of tea.

and a couple of series binges!

Almost 10 years ago (god, what the hell), I had a "YA Paranormal Romances I Might Actually Like" list, and the two trilogies below were on it. There's something gratifying about finally crossing off books on your TBR that have been there for ages:

-The Shade Trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, Shift, Shine) This series came out on the tail of the Great YA Paranormal Romance boom and I really wish I'd picked it up then (I also really wish some of the covers it got weren't so damn off-putting. It's like Animorphs all over again) because it's such cut above so many of the books that were being churned out in those days.

The premise is: what if there was a global paranormal event that left the portion of the population born after a certain year with the ability to see ghosts? I really like that the author thought this out thoroughly – it's not just a oooh spooky ghosties gimmick. Everything is affected: the educational system, the police force, politics, technology, travel, you name it.

The heroine was smart and truth-seeking and had nuancedrelationships with lots of female characters (bff, mentor, aunt who raised her, mom who died… ), the Betty love interest was a total sweetheart who also didn't seem too good to be true and who was capable of making major teenage fuck-ups, and the Veronica love interest was a rock-and-roll ghost who had the post-life character arc that I sadly wish Maggie Stiefvater had given Noah Czerny. I kind of loved them all a lot and one of the reasons I wish I'd read these books as they came out was so I could've been un-jaded just a little bit about Those Pesky Love Triangles.

(Someday I…really ought to make an analysis about why I dislike love triangles in general and what exactly was up with the ones that DID work for me.)

-Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater

I read the whole series toward the year's end. It was precisely the cold-weather binge I was craving. I may have my quarrels with some of her writing decision, but really few people can do atmospheric, poetic writing the way Maggie Stiefvater does. The romances were a bit too YA for me in this one, but I ended up really sympathizing with every single POV character anyway. And I mean, cold and poetry and family and books and wolves-as-family*.

(*One day, I'll have the emotional armor to watch Wolf's Rain again. )

#personal #text post #cross posted #the written word

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emypony · 6 years

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ARES HEADCANONS WITH THE BOYS, AFTER THE BREAK

Some ARES (more like ot2/ot3/ot4 headcanons with Haizaki, Asuto, Nosaka and Nishikage) headcanons for @ozrockbitway (if i remember right dfljkghfdg it’s been long ago since we talked about it, I think??) and @producktions @someatsu @blueberry-pastel @suzunofuusuke @kirinoisbestboy @sinfonylanglader @therealruney @calmystorm-saltycandy (hope u dont mind the tag ^^’’) @shawn-and-aiden-frost-9 i guess if u wanted to read as well @mimirk63 ITS NOT YUUICHI but ya kno ;w;’’

i literally dont even know who else would care about these (mostly joke) headcanons so iM SOWWY if i like, dont tag some ppl ;;

also im sorry that these are like all over the place tho jfldghkfk

ANYWAY with that out of the way

1. so I was discussing about Nishikage baking and. i got it. Nishikage works @ Tasty part time. He makes ambitious creations. Nosaka enjoys watching the behind the scenes. (Asuto will eat anything he makes)

2. Asuto starts hanging around Nosaka and Nishikage thought this would be bad and that Yuuma would stop hanging out with him but is thankfully proven wrong as Asuto pretty much always invites both of them to hang out with him. Nishikage starts to 'adopt' Asuto as Nosaka's friend and feels the need to PROTECC him as well. they also become great friends and this eases Nishikage because Nosaka finally has someone to spend time with that can somewhat get him out of his shell. Related to #1, Asuto will bother Nishikage and ask him if he's cooked something new yet. Nishi is afraid to cook more things at first but is prompted by Asuto because THAT BOY will literally eat anything, bad or good.

3. Nosaka actually likes dry jokes but no one knows since nobody really likes dry jokes and doesn't make them. Asuto ends up with a book EXACTLY about dry jokes and he finds them interesting and funny but not as much as Nosaka, so when he uses one of those jokes it makes Yuuma laugh and it takes everyone by surprise (especially Nishikage)

4. Nosaka snorts when he laughs.

5. I see Asuto and Nosaka becoming friends before Asuto and Haizaki (even if they're acquaintances) Haizaki comes on later along.

6. Asuto is claustrophobic and that's how the ot3 friendship starts. He, Haizaki and Nosaka somehow end up stranded in somewhat of a locker and he starts freaking out. Despite the issues between Nosaka and Haizaki they don't like seeing the cheerful Asuto being scared like that. Asuto asks them to hold his hand and they reluctantly did that even if they didn't like being next to each other. After that incident Asuto was a bit more open around them and uses his 'persuasive' powers to get them to hang out with him.

7. Haizaki is the tallest, followed by Asuto and then Nosaka. Nosaka is a bit conscious about his height and even if Haizaki makes fun of him, Asuto reassures him and tells him its okay.

8. Nosaka would be really bad at portraying his feelings even if it's something simple or complicated so he makes really weird comparisons and nobody understands except Nishikage even if sometimes even he's wondering what's going on in his mind.

9. I originally planned Nosaka to be a Vegan but I don't wanna do that he's just been taught to always eat healthy because there was no other alternative. he sometimes sees Asuto stuffing his face with unhealthy (fast food/other) stuff and it confuses him because he's still like perfect and fit and he doesn't get it. With time Asuto makes him try things he wouldn't normally eat by himself and even if he doesn't eat that regularly, he'll sometimes accept Asuto's invitation to get things he hasn't tried before. He's really big on trying foreign food but maybe once every few months.

This is a lot of Nosaka fdkjghd im sorry i love him a lot AND I DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT

10. One day Asuto's friends find him, Nosaka and Haizaki playing cards in his room (i think they'd keep the friendship hidden for a while don't ask me why). Norika would take a liking to Nosaka but not romantic. She ends up doing his nails or make up as a thing. He looks dashing with black polish. Haizaki has none of that and even if Nosaka is really :| and stoic he'll pretty much go with anything.

11. this was like, a multiple headcanon thingy with @suzunofuusuke and @producktions alike

Nosaka is a heavy sleeper and Nishikage is the opposite. #Nosaka and Nishikage share a bed, fight me. Due to his past Nosaka has nightmares and moves a lot in his sleep so frequently he'll fall from the bed which'll make Nishi wake up and freak tf out because dfljkgf where's Yuuma?? and hes just sleeping on the floor

12. Nishi and Nosaka sometimes both stare at Asuto and how pure he is dfljghfdg like "damn Asuto's a nice friend"

i'll uh, try some Haizaki too since I've basically neglected him holy shit

13. Things get better with Akane and after Asuto basically has him talk things out with Nosaka, he becomes a lot less stressed and angry and finally starts to open up to Asuto, at least. He's a bit awkward at interacting outside the soccer field so it takes a bit of time to be comfortable around both of them, but Asuto always made it easy. He's still a bit intimidated by Nishikage though, even if he has no ill intentions towards Haizaki and they've even successfully hang out together alongisde the other two a few times. They share a love for spicy food.

14. HAIZAKI NEEDS GLASSES and he doesnt like wearing them but he's really cute in them. Asuto would always tell him that he looks cute in them and he wouldn't like it. Men aren't cute. Haizaki isn't cute!! >;C Nosaka would just quietly tell him that they look good on him nonetheless and he'd blush and say 'thanks' and thats their interaction okay #stolen from @someatsu

15. Haizaki has his ears pierced but nobody knows cuz of his long hair and that it's not allowed @ school. He likes to try out diff earrings in his spare time. Asuto catches him one day and never lets him hear the end of it but when they sometimes go walking around shop districts he'd loudly proclaim "Those would look real good on you, Haizaki!" when he'd see any cute earrings and such. poor Hai chan will try to hide from view at that. Nosaka chuckles. also stolen from @soatsuko w permission dw

16. starring guest hiro again with headcanons he shoved into my arms: Haizaki doesn't use social media because he doesn't see the point of it. Had Twitter once but got bored. likes baggy hoodies. probably has a collection of berets (this one's on @araiguma-koon)

17. @arbegagordon gave me an idea so Haizaki and Akane used to play Toontown so now that Akane isn't playing anymore, Haizaki still logs in but gets sad. Through some kind of unconventional means Asuto starts playing Toontown with him because he wants to make him happy and even if Hai chan won't admit it he's pretty happy that Asuto does this for him Nishihkage plays cooking mama Nosaka tries a lot of games but he gets bored fast because he thinks he's not good at them. He REALLY likes the pet games though. EDIT: I FORGOT. NOSAKA PLAYS ALICIA ONLINE AND NONE OF Y’ALL CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE. he likes collecting pets and clothes. he would defs cosplay his AO character omg

18. this was a collaboration of my ideas and @producktions and her analysis post basically she said that no one usually cheers for Nosaka SOOOOOOO, after Asuto finds that out he goes to all his matches and screams like fucking crazy for him and even if Nosaka won't show it he'll smile sometimes to himself because Asuto does this for him and expects nothing in return and just wants to see him smile and it’s OOF so pure

19. Asuto has both Nosaka and Haizaki merch. (you know, for support! Asuto is big on making his friends feel loved) They're both embarrassed by it and whatever they say they can't make him NOT wear it in public, as he's hanging out with THEM.

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obciidian-archived · 6 years

Text

lim seunghwa: brief psychological analysis

in this post i will attempt to scrutinize lim seunnghwa’s psyche as of today with a retrospective on his past -- i will address seunghwa’s development as a teenager as i consider the attachment type he has and the environment he grows in, including his relationships with various significant characters in his life. i will be using theories i have learned during my classes, and use my university books are sources. all the information isn’t accurate (except for terms and their definitions) as it is my interpretation of the character.

tagging: @0308tr @crestmort @dvydrcm

attachment theory (bowlby) is a psychological model attempting to describe the dynamics of long-term and short-term interpersonal relationships between humans; how human beings respond within relationships when hurt, separated from loved ones, or perceiving a threat. provided any caregiver all infants become attached--however individual differences in the quality of the relationships remain significant. in infants, attachment as a motivational and behavioral system directs the child to seek proximity with a familiar caregiver when they are alarmed with expectation that they will receive protection and emotional support. the theory believes that the tendency for primate infants to develop attachments to familiar caregivers was the result of evolutionary pressures, since attachment behavior would facilitate the infant's survival in the face of dangers such as predation or exposure to the world, etc. (in researches on orphans, those who were not provided a main caregiver/caretaker figure who is fixated and provides all needs that are physical, emotional, and psychological the infants did not survive more than 6 months, in most cases). through the dynamics between the caregiver and the infant, the infant will develop an attachment type; secure, or anxious (ambivalent or avoidant).

as of my speculations his attachment model is anxious-ambivalent.

anxious-ambivalent attachment type: a child will typically explore little (in the strange situation) and is often wary of strangers, even when the parent is present. once the mother departs, the child is often highly distressed. the child is generally ambivalent when his mother returns.: the strategy is a response to unpredictably responsive caregiving, and the displays of anger (ambivalent resistant) or helplessness (ambivalent passive) towards the caregiver on reunion can be regarded as a conditional strategy for maintaining the availability of the caregiver by preemptively taking control of the interaction. that is what we can view during the ainsworth test at the end of the first year. to summarize: it is facilely the mixture of seeking and yet resisting contact and interaction has an unmistakably exasperated quality and indeed an angry tone may characterize behavior in the presoeparation episodes. the infant would ultimately learn that their caretaker (often the mother) is not always emotionally available and she possess unexpectable responses to their needs; she will not consistently be there to suffice emotional, physical, and physiological aid when requested. on other occasions she may “flood” the infant with excessive amount of these required aspects therefore, the infant cannot trust the mother to always be available for him and consequently cannot use her as a safe “homebase” to recharge emotional strength during the time they explore the world.

this type of attachment ultimately becomes a working model to adults. it is capable of alternating during the life of the individual, albeit, isn’t an easy task to do. people with secure attachment can in fact grow an anxious-ambivalent type or anxious-avoidant type as a result of a truma (i.g: terror attack, death, rape, etc.) in adults, this type of attachments (anxious-ambivalent) is often grown into a preoccupied type of attachment (determined via the aai interview). this type will result in an adult who feels overwhelmed when asked upon childhood memories and experiences them on a high level. the individual’s answers to the query would often result in long and informative answers and internal contradictions which ultimately results in a long and cumbersome interview. this type of person often views the worlds through a perspective where they are unworthy of all that the world must proffer; they cannot excel in all aspects which they would yearn to excel, the are unworthy of loving unconditionally, and are fearful of abandonment in situation where they need protection. the individual is not open with his relations to the environment and with not expect mutual relations but would rather sense as if the others are not attentive of him.

now as we take those two completing types of attachment into equation, let’s have a look at seunghwa.

during the first year of the boy’s life he was raised with intense proximity to his ailing mother. during the first year, as he is the third son, her treatment to him was slightly different than her first born son and her second son ; she was more mellow and patient, more experienced consequently, more attentive of his needs. she will have to attempt to provide all four critical aspects of deportment to ensure her son’s attachment style to be secure: a. vigilance to his signals in which during display of emotional availability. b. acceptance of the infant’s demeanor ( as in disregarding the mother’s own exhaustion or needs in favor of the infant’s ). c. cooperation with the baby as in allowing it to explore the world and not prevent or disturb an experiencing. d. psychological and physical availability during an understanding of the infant’s world (as oppose of ignorance and negligence). despite most steps which have been taken considering the mother’s side, the boy has grown into an attachment model that is not secure. that is for she had become ill during their early years and quite soon after seunghwa was born. she is often inexpressive, only meddles into matters when witnessing her songs misconducting and then would advice to remain nice in attitude. she would not often initiate physical contact (as oppose to his older brothers) as she is not only warned out by being a parent for the third time but, for being abandoned by her husband after the third pregnancy with vehement lack of interest on his part to take care of their children, and having to face an undefeatable illness in her body. she is often very strict and rigorous as she would overlook the details of a situation to do what she believes (perhaps isn’t remotely close to being right in most occasions) -- she is stubborn in a way (i.g: she hasn’t came back home for days after their father brought a new woman home and forsaken her sons temporarily). therefore, it would make sense that this is the type of attachment seunghwa has developed, considering the mother’s personality and treatment of him during his first year, altogether.

to determine which kind of attachment model the boy possess we would have needed to take the ainsworth’s test at the end of his first year albeit, as he is sixteen as of today, we can only determine his type of attachment via various interactions with his family members and the world around him, the way he perceives himself and his view of the world.

as of today, the boy has displayed a rather infantile type of demeanor; he is quite impulsive (rather excessively of his age group - displays in behaviors of impulse control issues as he refuses to wait for being gratified whether be it a materialistic yearning or emotional yearning.), he is quite selfish (again, excessively -- it is shown in the way that he cannot view other’s aspects on the world and their impacts or their stances until he is thoroughly scolded and exposed to those, often in situations which are rather unpleasant i.g: altercations/arguments).

behind his psyche we can often witness that he does not fully trust the person who is currently his main caretaker, his oldest brother, seungjae. it is displayed through the track of thoughts which prevents him to speaking to his brother about things which occupy his mind, perturb it, and emotions he needs to speak of. additionally, he lacks significant sense of self-worth as of for his unilateral love (however that romantic love may not be the best indicator in this case for it holds several problematic factors that may perhaps have been affected by other sources: the fact that in a heteronormative society he falls in love with a man, and the fact that this man is a famous person who is 10 years older than him). seunghwa also manifestly expresses his fear of abandonment: he doesn’t want his brother to hate him despite behaviors which he ultimately understands are wrong and/or hurtful and in fact attempts to reach out for him to grow closer (i.g a hug, warm words, kind gestures he asserts would make the brother happy) --- yet at the same time he is also very remote; he doesn’t want to speak to his brothers about emotional matters for the fear they would be uninterested. he does not want to develop a subject that bothers him into a conversation for he fears the confrontation with his brothers, despite evident signs that it in fact makes his anxious and worried.

all of these lead towards the two type of attachments that i’ve briefly explained earlier.

in piaget’s preoperational stage children for their egocentric feature tend to view things from their own perspective and when a tragedy of some sort occurs (such as divorce, loss of a family member, etc.) they tend to take blame for it since they cannot view the world in any other way other than their own eyes. that would explain how seunghwa must have perceived their mother’s illness and their father’s absence. during their youngest years (when he has just been born) their father would have evidently cheated on the ailing mother; he would bring a new woman home to be as some sort of a mother substance for the boys and although she had not been warmly welcomed into their household by the siblings themselves, seunghwa may have perceived these type of situations as something that perhaps he has done. relating these sentiments to the way he lacks belief that either of his brothers shall ever listen to him he has never voiced out these feelings -- it is quite important to tell a child that it is not their fault, otherwise they may carry that guilt for years with them even into adulthood. which seems to be the case here. he often times views the world in a way of a blaming finger pointed at him for things he is not at fault of. which brings me to a term linked to this: imaginary audience - the unjustified concern of adolescents that they are in the spotlight of others’ attention. with this, seunghwa may sense that his brothers are often looking at him through scrutinizing eyes and that their perspective of him is often negative to begin with… even to the extent of abhorring him.

identity crisis (erikson) amongst adolescents is the process when they struggle to establish their personal identity; they receive an onerous task to establish a sense of self (which is excruciatingly fragile at these ages) in two different systems -- their biological one which is in charge of physical and hormonal changes, and the social system where the teenager lives. being the youngest of three, seunghwa finds himself in a fragile state during the time where he attempts to establish some type of identity as of who is he -- still young and befuddled, the birth order may also harbor its impact on his psyche. [ the last born child is often characterized as manipulative, attention-seeker, self-centered, and indulging in fun/pleasure. they are excellent in getting their own way. a role that is designated to them by the birth hierarchy is as of a baby-like, which may result in fewer responsibilities whereas more opportunities of fun. they often find themselves taken with lack of seriousness, or being deprived from the independence which they crave. they will often do whatever it takes to distinguish themselves from the older siblings -- more likely to take risks, as well. ]

i have noticed recently that he has been going through some regression in his development (which would possibly explain his excessive and flamboyant behaviors of childishness and selfishness)

for that, i will briefly scrutinize the impact each significant character in his life harbors.

seungjae (oldest brother): during early years (around the ages of 5/6) their mother has gotten terminally ill so her functioning as a parental unit has decreased more than she usually possessed. seungjae has been a replacement of her since the middle of his teenage years (15/16) and inevitably has become the main caretaker figure of his younger siblings. his demeanor is quite similar to their mother’s in the sense of raising his brothers for that type of deportment is acquired upon behavioral learning [ operant behavior (skinner) operates on the environment and is maintained by its consequences; reinforcement and punishment are either positive meaning they are delivered following a response or negative meaning withdrawn following a response -- via that he must’ve been doctrined on what are the ‘proper’ ways of educating, providing, and raising his younger siblings ]. consequently, his emotional expressivism and care is less tended than the sufficion of his brother’s needs for survival (clothes, food, etc.) and despite the change of main caretaker figures there is no vehement change in the feeling of solicitude the boy experiences: he still operates on the same working model as he used to until that age, and it is only fortified furthermore as years pass. let’s not forget ages 6-7 are in a different developmental stage cognition wise: the children are at the intuitive thought substage in which children tend to become very inquisitive and ask many questions, beginning the use of primitive reasoning. centration (the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation meanwhile disregarding all others), conservation, irreversibility (a concept that is developed in this stage which is closely related to the ideas of centration and conservation - refers to when children are unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events), class inclusion, and transitive inference are all characteristics of pre-operative (piaget’s theory) thought. to comprehend how seunghwa must view the world we must understand the stage he is in, meaning he will not be able to focus on anything besides himself as it is the sole dimension his cognition might centralize on and whenever approached with other perspectives, his cognition fails to recognize them as so -- as if, the others must always view matters through his own eyes. to summarize: seungjae is not as differently viewed than their mother. seunghwa sees him as if some sort of a substitute to her existence and role in his life, as seungjae become the second main caretaker role in his life. these are mixed feelings which make it hard to determine whether the oldest brother’s influence is negative, positive, or absolutely necessary for his development towards being a healthy adult.

seungmin (older brother/middle child): middle kids could get lost in the mix and feel left out of special roles and privileges, or end up being especially emotionally savvy, because they’re always challenged to stay dialed in and navigate the goings-on of the people around them. the charismatic, leader-like caretaker roles are occupied by the oldest and the infantile, spoiled, carefree roles by the youngest --- leaving the middle child without any clear parts and roles to take in their family, often making them feel lost and uncertain of themselves. they’re people’s pleasers, always wanting to make everyone pleased as a result of that.

seungmin and seunghwa are in constant altercations and arguments which are incessant.behind the deportments, behaviors, and words seungmin elucidates it becomes clear often times that he perhaps tends to hold some sort of prejudice against his youngest brother; he may in fact blame him for their state (sick mother and estranged father, seungjae’s incessant hard work to provide, etc.) therefore, act upon it with hostility. after four years of being the youngest, seunghwa has ‘stolen’ this role away from him leaving seungmin confused and lost in their hierarchy. now, in the midst of the journey to search for his own identity that seems to be somewhat fragile and not completely established yet (despite passing adolescence) the young boy lacks clear guidance and often releases him frustrations and exasperation on his youngest brother, as he’s the easiest target. that affects seunghwa in a way which makes his view on people should not be trusted/everyone’s blaming him/etc grow stronger each time they find themselves fighting. even regarding mundane things. perhaps seungmin’s contrast (in both behavior and morals) to the boy may ultimately lead him towards the so desired salvation of the identity crisis and figuring a thing or two about life. whether positive or negative -- it is indeterminable.

ian: now, regarding ian it seems as if this regression in his behavior is mainly due to her affect and i’ll explain: as a part of her personality ian happens to be softer, warmer, kinder in comparison to both of his brothers, in all aspects. during most of his life he has learned that the main caretaker figure in his life will not assert security in senses of emotional solicitude. he has acquired that this figure will not provide him the psychological security which he requires as a human being, but rather, solely physical security (home, food, clothes, etc.) with this work model built to him he arrives into the relationship with ian charged with a negative point of view over relationships of any type -- as previously addressed he believes that people are not to be trusted and would not be capable of sufficing emotional support in times when needed albeit, is shown differently. it is displayed by the unconditional love which ian expresses to him: she constantly listens to whichever he has to say (redundant or not), provides him with affable physical proximity (hugs, gentle and fond touches), and offers her psychological help to overcome hurdles throughout his life (gives advice and tips, makes sure he knows how to approach different situations, etc.) all of these do compensate over the lack of these traits by his mother during the first years of his life. ian often views him as her own son consequently, treats him as such and their bond gradually becomes stronger than the bond seunghwa possess with his own mother. it is as if some sort of an amendment is made to his heart, and seunghwa now learns how to trust the world and the people in it with her. albeit, he has become more excessively stubborn, childish, and spoiled than ever before and there is going to be a time in the future when this type of regressions will be determined to have been necessary for him to grow into a healthier person once he reaches adulthood or was it unnecessary and perhaps ian’s role in his eyes only leaded him to furthermore confusion about the world and ambivalent feelings towards the people in it; whether to trust or not, or whether he should lay his heart bare only towards people who display similar behavioral attributes (such as warmth, softness, etc.) that could easily manage to manipulate him into thinking that he’s loved when he isn’t. only time will tell.

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worldofjonsa · 7 years

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Beyond theon's ptsd-y reasons for jumping ship... Ever since he met back up with her, yara has been, essentially, theon's rock. His strength. The irony of yara saying that theon would be her protector is very clear because HE views HER as HIS protector!and seeing her, someone much stronger (emotionally and physically) rendered completely vulnerable w no more confidence/strength meant that he too had no more strength bc he relied on her for that.... thoughts?

Yes! I agree with you on all of those points. Sorry if I was too focused on the Parallels between Jon/Theon in my previous post.

And I hope this posts answers most of your questions! I’m really sorry for leaving this in the inbox for so long, I wanted to make a proper reply to it. It’s sad that I can’t even answer notes on my cell.

Apparently, @staff can’t program a way for TUMBLR USERS TO REPLY TO NOTES ON THEIR INBOX ON THEIR FUCKING CELLPHONES THAT EVERYONE USES 25/8!!!!

But you know, more under the cut.

Theon has had a hard life ever since he came back to the Iron Islands. He was shamed into coming back as half of a person. And it’s very evident that he’s still very traumatized from what Ramsey did to him.

Undergoing that amount of torture in that long period of time can really put a number on you. So in an effort to regain his self-worth and identity, he clings on to Yara, his older sister.

She treats him brashly and a bit too blunt in my OP. But in the end, she does care for her little brother. I mean, she went against Ramsey and that takes a massive amount of courage to do that.

Yara has always been the person who wants to take charge and doesn’t like weakness from her brother or anyone for that matter (in the TV series that is). In the series, she does see Theon as her protector, in a way that they are siblings and they should stick together since it’s Us Against the World. Both of them running away from the Iron Islands sealed their faith as “traitors” to their people.

There’s no turning back for anything and they have to get D@ny support of they’ll ever get to the Iron Islands in one piece.

Theon knows more about the North and bits and pieces of its politics than she ever will. She relies on him for that as she navigates being a leader and learning more about Westeros politics by aligning herself with D@ny.

Sadly, since mental illness wasn’t a thing that was talked about or even acknowledged, much less treated Yara doesn’t know the signs of Theon being disassociating himself at times when he’s with her. It’s clear he’s trying to keep it together for both of their sakes, but when Euron finally attacks and takes Yara, that was when his PTSD came up full force.

It was either fight or flight and he chooses to flee for his life. I don’t blame him for doing that. From the outside looking in, for Theon to flee cowardly and to not save Yara when she needed him the most leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.

You always see heroic heroes/heroines doing the right thing like Jon and D@ny do. They’ll fight to the ends of the earth for what they believe in, but they haven’t gotten broken to the point of forgetting their own identity as Theon has.

I feel really badly for him. And for Yara as well. Who knows when she’s going to get saved if Jon and Co even get a chance at this point?

Thank you so much for the question ANON! I hope I answered it to the best of my ability! I’m not very good with writing down my thoughts about anything really so I tend to go off tangent when it comes to things like this.

Character analysis and deep meta about a character’s thoughts/feelings/future actions and all of that above can be difficult for me at times.

I mean, I know what I want to write down, but I do it in the simplistic forms that it doesn’t sound “intelligent” enough to be meta.

Ahh, well. For all of my followers, if you have any questions then please ask away! You might have to wait a few days or so for your question to be answered, BUT THEY WILL BE ANSWERED!

And don’t get me started on Sansa/Jon protecting each other to the fullest. My heart can’t take that shit right now.

#Theon Greyjoy #Yara Greyjoy #Anon Asks A Question #Anonymous

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/wisconsin-woman-died-after-ambulance-prevented-from-going-to-best-closest-hospital-journal-sentinel/

Wisconsin woman died after ambulance prevented from going to best, closest hospital | Journal Sentinel

Family rushes to hospital

Word about Tate was spreading quickly among family members.

Her mother, Daisy Tate, received a call from Tiffany’s supervisor, who told her Tiffany had a serious reaction to her medication and that she was going to Froedtert. The supervisor didn’t mention anything about a stroke.

Daisy Tate dialed Tiffany’s brother, David, who was at his factory job in Waukesha.

She told him to get to the hospital right away.

David and Tiffany were especially close.

The pair were two years apart, and nearly shared the same birthday. The family, including their two older sisters, lived near N. 24th and W. Burleigh streets. As kids, David and Tiffany went to Auer Avenue School and learned to swim at nearby Moody Pool.

Their love of swimming translated into frequent trips to Wisconsin Dells water parks with their own kids.

To friends and family, Tiffany was “Tipp,” a nickname she picked up as a girl when she would often stand on her “tippy toes.” It was on her license plate.

Now, Tipp was in trouble. And David Tate had to get to her.

Across town, Alvin Blalock also got word something was wrong. He and Tiffany, his longtime girlfriend, had known each other for more than 10 years and were together for five. The couple planned to get married someday.

Alvin and Tiffany lived in the downstairs unit of a bungalow on Milwaukee’s near north side, with their newborn son and her 15-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Tiffany’s mother lived upstairs.

Blalock was stunned by the news. Tiffany had seemed fine when she left for work. He didn’t have much time to think.

Blalock took 8-month-old Alex to stay with his mother and rushed out.

John Diedrich / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tiffany Tate’s brother, David Tate.

John Diedrich / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tiffany Tate’s brother, David Tate.

David Tate was already speeding to Froedtert, 10 anxious miles punctuated by calls to and from other family members.

As David ran through the front door and inquired at the information desk, he was shocked to learn his sister wasn’t there.

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” David Tate said in an interview. “Damn, she was at Froedtert. She works there. She was right there.”

David called one of his sister’s co-workers, who told him where Tiffany had been sent. David jumped back in his car and raced to West Allis.

He told his wife and father to meet him there.

Meanwhile, Daisy Tate got another call — this one from West Allis. A nurse said Tiffany had a stroke and was at the hospital.

The news hit Daisy like a bolt. She, herself, had suffered a mild stroke years earlier.

“I said, ‘Oh my God.’ I just broke down,” she said. “I knew what a stroke was like. I knew.”

Trying to get the attention of her granddaughter, who was downstairs, Daisy Tate frantically banged her cane on the wooden floor.

Octayvia Fountain ran up the stairs, but when she heard the news, she couldn’t process it. That morning her mom had come to give her kisses, like she did every morning. They were going to go together for school registration later that day. Octayvia would be a sophomore starting at a new high school in a few weeks.

To her, mom was “Superwoman.”

This can’t be happening, she thought. This can’t be happening.

John Diedrich / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tiffany Tate’s daughter, Octayvia Fountain (left), and mother, Daisy Tate.

Rare option becomes common

The practice of ambulance diversion has long been under fire.

A 2001 report from the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform found diversions were so widespread they represented a threat to emergency medical readiness, including in the event of a terrorist attack.

In 2004, a study on diversion in Houston attributed several deaths to the practice.

Two years later, a report from the non-profit Institute of Medicine — which provides advice on health and medical issues to Congress and the government — concluded diversion “should be eliminated except in the most extreme circumstances, such as a mass casualty in a community.”

A 2017 study found that African-American patients had an increased chance of dying from heart attacks and strokes as hospitals in largely minority neighborhoods were going on diversion more often than others.

“Diversion has been aggressively abused,” said Corey Slovis, chair of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University and the medical director for the Nashville Fire Department. “There is a diversion scandal, with too many hospitals going on diversion when they could be open.”

Study after study has found diversion does not even work.

The reason is simple: Ambulances account for only a fraction of patients arriving in emergency rooms. So, the front door is not really even closed.

Instead, experts say, the focus should be on the “back door” — getting patients already in the emergency room either discharged or admitted to the hospital.

“Picture pouring water into a cup that’s full,” said Howard Mell, an emergency room doctor and spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Once you start spilling, it doesn’t matter if you pour a little less or how much you pour, you still have a mess.

“You have to solve the back door, and diversion does not do that.”

So why not end it?

A 2008 study from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine found hospitals may actually make more money during times of diversion. That’s because there are often higher profits on scheduled surgeries. And those surgeries can wind up canceled when beds are filled by patients coming from the emergency room.

In a statement, the Wisconsin Hospital Association said “true diversion” is necessary at times for unanticipated, critical situations and in such cases, it is important that hospitals and ambulance crews quickly communicate to divert patients safely.

Hospitals might also turn away ambulances if equipment breaks down or if there is an unexpected problem, such as flooding or electricity being out. In a case several years ago, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin shut down for several hours because a man with a gun was in the building.

Still, the vast majority of diversions, experts say, are due to overcrowding.

Defenders describe diversion policies as “a necessary evil” intended to protect patients from long, dangerous waits at a crowded hospital. The key, they acknowledge, is to get the ambulance patient to another less-crowded hospital that has the same capabilities.

Rutgers University

Lewis Nelson

Rutgers University

Lewis Nelson

The problem: When one hospital closes its doors, it simply spills more water — and sends extra ambulances — onto the next hospital, which may then have to close its doors. Indeed, sometimes hospitals close simply in anticipation of getting more patients.

“You really don’t want to be brought to a hospital that doesn’t think they can do the job properly,” said Lewis Nelson, a doctor and chair of emergency medicine at Rutgers Medical School in New Jersey.

On the morning Tate fell ill at the Medical College, seven of the 12 hospitals in Milwaukee County were on diversion for at least part of the day — including Aurora West Allis Medical Center.

Taken together, the hospitals turned away ambulances for a total of 34 hours that day, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of state data. The data doesn’t show how many ambulances were diverted as a result.

Froedtert was on diversion for 690 hours in 2014, the equivalent of nearly 29 days. Yet that only ranked it sixth among Milwaukee hospitals that year. Aurora St. Luke’s was highest, with 1,319 diversion hours — the equivalent of nearly 55 days.

When half of the county’s hospitals were on diversion at the same time, the EMS director could force them all to open. Between 2014 and 2015, that happened on at least 97 days, state data shows.

It did not happen on Aug. 19. 2014.

Large clot leads to crisis

The ambulance carrying Tate arrived at the West Allis hospital emergency department at 9:23 a.m.

It had been a little more than an hour since Tate first began showing signs of a stroke.

Share your story

Have you or someone you know been affected by ambulance diversion? We want to hear from you.

Tell us more

Share your story

Have you or someone you know been affected by ambulance diversion? We want to hear from you.

Tell us more

Tate had a large clot that had broken off from somewhere in her body, perhaps one of her legs, her medical records show. The clot had moved through her body and become lodged in her carotid artery — a large and vital vessel carrying blood through the neck to the brain.

Tate had experienced problems with veins in her legs for years and she contended with other health problems. Like her mother, she had diabetes. The years on her feet cooking had taken its toll.

Nevertheless, cooking was what she loved.

She learned to cook on childhood trips to Mississippi to see aunts and uncles and cousins. She mastered fried chicken, Chinese rice and homemade egg rolls. She made southern catfish whenever her aunt came up from Alabama.

After graduating from Milwaukee Tech High School, she started as a cook at Whitefish Bay schools and Nicolet High School, then at Potawatomi casino restaurants and finally at Davians, which stationed her at the Medical College.

After a shift, she’d head home and cook more there — lately with a spatula in one hand, the newborn on the opposite hip.

Cooking was a way to keep the family together.

“She’d call and say, ‘Fatty, you gonna come over for some barbecue?’” David Tate said. “We’d drink some fruit drinks and listen to the blues.”

When he arrived at the West Allis hospital, Tate found his sister in an emergency room bed in a hospital gown. Her work uniform — a black polo shirt and khaki pants — was stuffed in a bag nearby.

David Tate, brother of Tiffany Tate, recalls the day of Tate’s stroke.

She was disoriented and tapping her hand against her right ear.

A nurse explained to her brother the tapping was because of the stroke and the pressure on her brain.

“She said, ‘There’s something in my ear. There’s something in my ear,’” David Tate said. “That’s the last thing I heard her say.”

One doctor ordered a clot-busting drug be administered through an IV in her arm, records show. But another doctor ordered that treatment stopped because possible bleeding was detected in her brain.

The policy at West Allis was to transfer all patients having a serious stroke to a hospital capable of a higher level of care, either Froedtert, Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center or St. Mary’s Hospital, said Matthew Braun, a spokesman for Aurora.

“We can’t change the fact that she was brought to West Allis,” Braun said. “The team did the best they could to get her to the highest level of care as quickly as possible. Time is of the essence in these cases.”

With Froedtert closed, the closest top-level care was at St. Luke’s — five miles away.

The problem: The fire department ambulance that had brought Tate to West Allis was gone. The crew’s job was to make the hand-off, then get back to Wauwatosa.

A private ambulance was summoned. It arrived 15 minutes later. By this point, Tate had lost consciousness.

As the ambulance was leaving, David Tate, his wife and father rushed to his car to follow. In those moments, the West Allis hospital went on diversion.

They were racing the clock to St. Luke’s.

youtube

This video by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine shows how a blood clot is removed during a stroke.

Paramedics had to follow orders

In Milwaukee County, ambulance diversions had been commonplace since at least the early 1990s.

Initially, there was little direction provided to paramedics on what to do when a hospital closed, sometimes leaving them to search willy-nilly for an open hospital, said Ronald Pirrallo, who was then the head of Milwaukee County’s Emergency Medical Services department.

Paramedics sometimes found ways around the diversions.

One veteran paramedic said they might drive a patient to the hospital, stop in the parking lot, have the patient sign out “against medical advice” and point them to the front door of the emergency room.

In other cases, 911 wouldn’t be called at all. Instead, patients would have someone drive them to the hospital to ensure treatment.

Pirrallo spearheaded creation of a new policy.

“It was designed to improve patient care and avoid overcrowding at any one individual hospital,” said Pirrallo, now a professor of emergency medicine at the University of South Carolina.

That policy meant the crew that transported Tate had no discretion.

Joe Schwark was the lead paramedic and commander on the call with Tate. For him, it was likely one of a half-dozen that day. In a year, he had hundreds.

He could not remember the specific call, but knew exactly how it would have played out once he was told that diversion was in effect.

For paramedics, Froedtert is the go-to facility, given its top-level designations in all areas. But unless Tate was bleeding uncontrollably or had a blocked airway, he had to follow orders.

“There were bigger players making the rules,” he said. “You just followed directions even if you didn’t generally agree with a lot of this stuff.”

Schwark said his most likely route that day would have been to take 87th Street south out of the medical center grounds.

That would have sent them right past the entrance to Froedtert’s emergency room — “close enough to spit on the driveway,” Schwark said.

Emergency departments nationwide have been quietly deploying a controversial tactic of turning ambulances away.

Grasping at straws

With possible bleeding in the brain, the next step for Tate was a technique in which doctors use a tiny catheter to try to physically remove the clot.

Froedtert had been able to do this since 2005 and became one of the first hospitals in the country to receive the advanced certification in 2013. St. Luke’s had received its designation as an Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center three months before Tate’s stroke.

The ambulance carrying Tiffany Tate, now unconscious, arrived shortly after noon. More than three-and-a-half hours had passed since she first showed signs of having a stroke.

Studies have found the best outcomes when patients receive the treatment inside of three hours, though it has been shown to work up until 24 hours later.

Using the catheter, doctors tried to reach the clot in Tate’s neck through an artery in her leg. The procedure didn’t work.

Family photo

Tiffany Tate, right, and her daughter, Octayvia Fountain.

Family photo

Tiffany Tate, right, and her daughter, Octayvia Fountain.

By now, Tate’s family had gathered at St. Luke’s. Blalock, her boyfriend, was in the waiting room. So was her brother and his wife, her older sisters, her parents and her daughter.

They tried to grasp how she had deteriorated so quickly. Family members were pacing, asking anyone who came by what was happening.

“It was really an emotional time,” David Tate said. “We just wanted answers, to know that she was going to be alright.”

Doctors emerged with bad news: Tate’s prospects were dim.

Pressure was building in Tate’s brain from the bleeding. Doctors wanted to try a radical step: Remove part of her skull to relieve the pressure.

Her family thought about the future, about how baby Alex and Octayvia would not have a mother if she died now. How Tiffany Tate had always dreamed of owning a home and had finally made that happen. And how much she loved family, how she held everyone together.

There was so much to live for.

They told the doctors to do whatever they could.

Plan to end diversion had been drafted

On the day Tiffany Tate suffered her stroke, a preliminary plan for ending ambulance diversion in Milwaukee County had already been drafted.

It ran two pages and was the brainchild of Riccardo Colella.

Office of Emergency Management

Riccardo Colella

Office of Emergency Management

Riccardo Colella

When Colella took over the county’s emergency medical services a year earlier, in 2013, he began examining how the diversion policy could be putting patients at risk. He set out to change it.

Colella, trained as an emergency medicine doctor and professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, didn’t have the authority to force the issue. Rather, he had to talk, one by one, with all the major health care players in the area, including Aurora, Froedtert, Ascension and Children’s Hospital.

What would it take to end diversion? Not curb it, but end it, he said.

The solution, studies had shown, was not even in the emergency department.

Rather, it came from addressing things that left the emergency room bottlenecked: slow paperwork, rooms not being cleaned quickly enough, the time it took to discharge patients.

For Aurora Health Care, which owns one-third of the hospitals in Milwaukee County, the changes that needed to be made were far-reaching, said Steve Francaviglia, who is in charge of the system’s Milwaukee hospitals.

It meant creating a new process where patients would receive their initial diagnosis over video monitors from doctors in another location. That would help get tests ordered quickly.

The X-ray Department was examined to make it move more quickly, as was patient transport. Housekeeping was studied and improvements made to better notify other departments when a room was ready for a new patient. Schedules were tweaked.

Other health care systems made similar changes.

The first thing phased out, in January 2015, was diversions for those who had the most severe cardiac issues, such as needing to be resuscitated. The end of diversions for other stroke and heart attack cases came in March — six months after the day Tiffany Tate suffered her stroke.

All diversions were ended in April 2016.

Milwaukee County hospitals were on diversion for nearly 4,800 hours during a six-month period in 2015. In the same time frame the following year, the figure plummeted to 13 hours, according to a county report.

Colella said there have been no reports of problems with patient care to his office since diversions were ended.

Advocate Aurora Health

Steve Francaviglia

Advocate Aurora Health

Steve Francaviglia

Nevertheless, ambulance diversion is still happening in other areas around the state including in Waukesha and Racine counties, according to state data. At least 65 hospitals in the state have diverted patients to some degree over the last two years.

That includes some Aurora hospitals outside Milwaukee County. Francaviglia said efforts are underway to end diversion throughout the health care system.

Colella said he was not aware of Tate’s case until the Journal Sentinel brought it to his attention. But, he said, it illustrated all the problems with the diversion system.

“Cases like this, where there are issues with access, was really one of the principles behind changing the policy,” he said, adding the aim was “to bring people with time-sensitive illness to the closest place that could take care of them.”

Bedside vigil kept

For weeks, Tate’s family and friends kept a vigil at St. Luke’s.

The diagnosis was grim. She was being fed through a tube. One of the doctors told David Tate his sister would never get up from the bed.

Still the family wasn’t ready to let her go. They directed that she be resuscitated if she had a heart attack or stopped breathing. When more intensive hospital care was not practical, they had her transferred to a long-term care facility and eventually to a nursing home in Glendale.

Frustrated by what happened, David Tate called lawyer after lawyer to see if the family had a case against Froedtert, against the Medical College, against anyone.

In Wisconsin, non-economic awards in any wrongful death cases are capped at $350,000. In medical malpractice cases, the cap is $750,000 for damages such as pain and suffering. The limits were established by the state Legislature and upheld by court decisions.

That means many lawyers are not interested in taking such cases, which are often expensive to prepare. David Tate said he was also told by some of the lawyers that he would never win against Froedtert. It was too big.

More importantly, there was a question of who to sue. It wasn’t as if the hospital gave her negligent treatment. Rather the system itself delayed his sister’s treatment.

What’s more, a 1993 federal appeals court decision made the prospects of winning a case less likely.

In Chicago, a newborn who lived five blocks from the University of Chicago hospital went into cardiac arrest. The hospital was on diversion and refused to take the child, who later died. The court ruled in favor of the hospital.

It is considered a bedrock case in the area of ambulance diversion and liability, cited by attorneys and judges who face the issue nationwide. It was decided in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Wisconsin.

At the Glendale nursing home, the weeks stretched to months. Every day, visitors came, but Tiffany Tate did not improve. Instead, she got worse.

She died shortly before midnight on Dec. 9 — two weeks before her son’s first birthday.

Experts say diversion was wrong

Maria Raven

Several health care experts who reviewed the case for the Journal Sentinel said Tiffany Tate should have been taken to Froedtert, regardless of any diversion policy.

“To me, if someone is on the grounds of your hospital, they are yours,” said Raven, the emergency room physician and professor in San Francisco. “It is really sad. There were so many failures.”

Michael Carome, a former top official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and now medical director of Public Citizen, a public policy group, said the delay in getting Tate to a top-level stroke center diminished her chances of survival.

“I would think there is a very high probability that the (delay) reasonably contributed to her adverse outcome given what we know about the golden window to quickly treat an ischemic stroke,” Carome said.

The experts said it is impossible to know if Tate would have survived if she had gone straight to Froedtert.

But they were unified in this: She would have had a better chance.

Alvin Blalock, longtime boyfriend of Tiffany Tate, recalls the day of Tate’s stroke.

Years of questions

Four years have passed since Tiffany Tate’s death.

The family has tried to make peace with the case, but frustration has simmered under the surface. When a reporter unearthed the case, David Tate initially did not want to participate. It was still too raw.

He has since decided sharing his sister’s story could help end ambulance diversions in other places around the country.

“Why are they turning away ambulance patients when people like my sister are having a stroke?” David Tate said. “Maybe that’s why I’m here doing this interview today so this doesn’t happen to anybody else in the future.”

Blalock, Tiffany Tate’s longtime boyfriend, remembers her cooking and her smile, trips they would take to Lambeau Field, all the good times.

“I miss her. I just miss her,” he said. “She was just gone too soon.”

Family photo

Tiffany Tate and boyfriend Alvin Blalock.

Their son, Alex, is now 5. He started kindergarten this year.

Alex has questions.

“Only thing I got are pictures,” Blalock said. “Everybody else’s mama is around. All I can teach him is with the pictures.”

It helps, he said, that “Little Al” is going to Sunday school now and learning about heaven.

That’s where his mama is, his father tells him.

He tells him that a lot.

Kevin Crowe and Cary Spivak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

We want to hear your story about ambulance diversion

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is investigating the issue of ambulance diversion including the consequences when people don’t get timely care from hospitals. We are looking for information from patients, paramedics and other health providers across the country.

This form requires JavaScript to complete.

How to file a complaint

To file a complaint about care by a hospital, doctor or other provider, go to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services webpage.

How we reported this story

For this article, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter reviewed more than 7,000 pages of medical records covering the care of Tiffany Tate on the day of her stroke and the months that followed. This was done with the consent of Tate’s family.

Also reviewed: Reports from the Wauwatosa Fire Department, Medical College of Wisconsin Public Safety Department and the Medical Examiner’s Office, court records and dozens of studies on ambulance diversion, hospital overcrowding, and stroke care.

The Journal Sentinel also analyzed five years of data from a state of Wisconsin system used by hospitals to alert each other of their status. The WI Trac system is voluntary. Not all hospitals participate; those that do sometimes do not send in data about closures. Thus, the findings reveal a minimum amount of time the hospitals are on diversion.

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#current health news usa #health news united states #health news usa today #Health News

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femslashrevolution · 7 years

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My Femslash Story - Mod Lulu

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Hey everyone! I am so excited to welcome you to the event I have spent the last couple of weeks organising. Most of you know me as Mod Lulu, and I’m the co-admin and creator of Femslash Revolution - one of the larger cogs in the well-oiled machine that runs this blog.

Many of our followers have heard this story before - way, way back in the fargone days of 2013, I did some statistical analysis on AO3 and became frustrated with the lack of F/F fic. I wanted to create a place that could support and connect the femslash community to enable them to learn and grow together, and three and a half years later, here we are.

Far fewer people know the next part, at least in much detail. Two and a half years ago, I became very suddenly and inexplicably ill. I was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness which causes chronic pain, insomnia, loss of stamina, trouble concentrating, and bouts of dizziness and fatigue. My life screeched to a halt as I suddenly tried to deal with specialists and blood tests and prescriptions and physiotherapy - all while finishing the last year of my university degree.

Becoming disabled changed a lot of things about my life, but the one constant throughout it all was femslash. Specifically, Femslash Revolution. Although many people in my real life thought it was strange I chose to keep my responsibility for this blog, I actually found it relaxing. When life got too much, I could lose myself in tag lists and queuing, beautiful art and haunting gifsets. I discovered new fandoms too - Jane the Virgin, Faking It, Person of Interest, and, of course, Carmilla.

Of course, I couldn’t have done it alone. My co-admin Jess has been a superhero, working tirelessly at this blog since only a few months after it was founded and taking over my duties whenever I had to take time out. This blog couldn’t have grown to the size it is today without her, or without the great mod team and all of the incredible followers who submit works to us that we might never find otherwise. In the tough times of my life, the femslash community has been a source of support, comfort and friendship.

In the last year or so, I’ve finally found a treatment that works for me, and with the help of therapy and physio my life is returning more to how it was - and femslash has been there to welcome me back. I’ve been writing more fics than ever - more than half of which are probably for events on this blog! - and I’ve discovered even more new fandoms - the latest being Wynonna Earp.

But there’s one part of my new life where femslash has let me down, and it’s also part that has been the toughest pill to swallow: as far as I remember, I have never seen, read or played any work with a major character who has a chronic illness. It’s rare enough to see a disabled character at all, and even rarer to see one whose storyline doesn’t end in cure or death - and, well, fibromyalgia has no cure. As a wlw, I thought I knew how bad lack of representation could sting, but this hit me much harder than I was expecting. It was chilling to realise that what had happened to me was considered by most people to be the Game Over screen. It was certainly never the happy ending.

I shouldn’t have to tell you all exactly how that feels.

So here’s my challenge to you: change that. Write me an F/F story where one - or both! - of the main characters has a chronic illness.

Of course, the usual caveats to writing minority groups you aren’t a part of apply. Avoid harmful stereotypes - please, please, don’t write a story about how tragic disability is, or how inspiring we are to keep living a normal life. We know it’s sad to get sick, but it’s really not in the way you imagine it to be. Leave those stories to the people who have lived it.

Please do research, where you need to. Chronic illness covers a lot of conditions, and you need to pick one and find out what the symptoms are if you want your fic to make sense. And as ever, please remain open to constructive criticism - if someone says you got something wrong, listen to them and try to learn from your mistakes.

Really, that’s all you need to do. So, are you willing to take on my challenge? Here are some prompts to get you started:

I got dizzy/fatigued/overwhelmed in a public place and had to go sit down. You volunteered to keep me company, and now you’re flirting with me to try and distract me.

We both have weekly appointments at the same clinic at the same time and you keep stealing the one good chair in the waiting room. Vengeance will be mine!

A coffeeshop AU except you work at the pharmacy and I keep being prescribed different medications.

We work upstairs in a two-storey building and everyone else takes the stairs while every day we share the world’s s-l-o-w-e-s-t elevator ride.

Our friends introduced us because “you have so much in common… you’re both disabled!” I’m determined to hate you to prove them wrong but it turns out you’re funny and cute and oh no, this plan isn’t going to work.

I look forward to seeing what you create, and to sharing many more years of femslash with you all in future!

About the Author:

centrumlumina is a writer and fandom statistician best known for her AO3 Ship Stats series. She can also be found as Mod Lulu of femslashrevolution and as centreoftheselights on AO3.

#centrumlumina #I Am Femslash #Type: Meta #Femslash February 2017 #Femslash February #submission

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makingscipub · 4 years

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Gene drives and societal narratives

Some days ago, I came across an interesting virtual conference (HT @Sarah_A_Hartley) about gene editing which includes a session on ‘societal narratives’. I have written quite a bit about societal narratives of gene editing, but more recently I became involved in the issue of ‘gene drive’, that is, “a system of biased inheritance in which the ability of a genetic element to pass from a parent to its offspring through sexual reproduction is enhanced”. This is a naturally occurring twist in the laws of inheritance that scientists can use (with the help of gene editing) “to develop [artificial] gene-drive modified organisms for public health, conservation, agriculture, and other societal purposes, for example, by suppressing populations of mosquito species that transmit human diseases such as malaria, dengue, Zika, and chikungunya among others” (Gene drives on the horizon, 2016).

I suddenly asked myself: Are there any societal narratives emerging around gene drives? Cloning has societal narratives, recombinant DNA has societal narratives, genetic engineering has societal narratives (I can’t wait for @matthewcobb’s book about this), genomics has societal narratives, genetic modification is buckling under its load of societal narratives. But gene drive? Not so much! Then I thought: but you have written some blog posts about gene drives and as a societal narratives aficionado, shouldn’t there be some societal narratives in there? So, I began to look at my old blog posts on gene drives.

In this post I want to review these posts and perhaps extract some societal narratives from them.

Promises and perils

If you want a really nice overview of gene drive theory and practice/applications and associated metaphors you should first read this guest post on the potential promises and potential perils of gene drives written by my colleague Aleksandra Stelmach. It lists some emerging metaphors societal narratives around governance, engineering and control, war and destruction. Framings are mostly negative, using for example the metaphor ‘Pandora’s Box’, which might have impacts on societal debates.

Eradication and war

Before I became seriously interested in gene drives, I was doing some research on ‘societal narratives’ around Zika, and when studying that I found there was one ubiquitous narrative that structured some talk of gene drive use in this context: the war metaphor. That was not surprising, as people wanted to ‘eradicate’ Zika, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes. I wrote about this in an old blog post co-authored with Carmen McLeod (Beware! the beginning is a spoof on the war narrative). But what about my gene drive blog posts proper, as part of a Wellcome Trust funded project on ‘talking about gene drive’ led by Sarah Hartley? Let’s now take a look.

Etymology and obscurity

My first post was about the metaphorical origins of ‘gene drive’. The etymology of this strange phrase is quite obscure and totally hidden from the public eye. It does not influence what people may think about gene drive in any way. What would it mean to public debate if we knew that gene drive is etymologically linked to trains (which it is)?. This does not mean that this is unimportant though. Phrases like gene editing, genetic engineering, genetic modification etc. are much more accessible in this way; they are etymologically transparent and motivated. People immediately get a handle on these concepts because they are built out of relatively well-known conceptual components, for good or for ill.

Having this immediate grasp does not mean understanding what genetic modification actually means or is. It might actually hinder rather than help achieving such an understanding. But with gene drive there isn’t any handle to grasp in order to achieve even a semblance of understanding. And this has implications for public understanding of science and also for translating this phrase into other languages, which, again, has implications for diversity of public participation in science and innovation.

Translation and confusion

I addressed some of these issues in a blog post on gene drive communication, its obstacles and opportunities. I looked at the French words for gene drive, “forçage génétique” or “guidage génétique” (which makes slightly more sense), and the German “Genantrieb” – all as confusing as gene drive! The situation is not helped by the fact that, as an article by Brossard et al. from November 2017 has pointed out (and that is even more true now): mainstream media coverage of ‘gene drives’ is still rather low, which means not a lot of people are exposed to the topic or the term.

In such a situation it will be difficult to engage in discussions about the ethics and impacts of ‘gene drives’ in any language, a common paradox for emerging technologies and responsible language use or responsible communication (see Nerlich and McLeod, 2016).

Even when you want to do media analysis of gene drive, you sometimes encounter technical obstacles and I explore some of them in my post on ‘the road to gene drive’… a long road indeed.

Some headlines in newspapers don’t help either, as for example “Wiping out the daughters: Burkina Faso’s controversial mosquito experiment”! That was rather chilling when I first read it. I have written about this in one blog post, explaining that the headline referred to the daughters of mosquitoes, not people. Confusion abounds.

Communication and confusion

Communicating gene drive really is not easy, especially since there is a lot of confusion regarding the difference between genetic modification and gene drive on the one hand and the use of microbes and gene drive on the other. I tried (and possibly failed) to explore these issues in two blog posts.

Most of the field trials currently happening or about to happen involve traditionally modified GM mosquitoes, not gene-drive modified mosquitoes. So most of the societal narratives around genetics and mosquitoes (not mammals, pests etc.) are dominated by stories about such endeavours, spearheaded by one company. This is quite confusing as there are also efforts to eradicate mosquitoes using gene drive funded by a charitable foundation, efforts that have not yet advanced as much.

One article recently (July 2020) told readers about a further step in the ongoing development of GM mosquitoes: “The federal Environmental Protection Agency has approved a plan by a British biotech company called Oxitec to release about 1 billion genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys and, next year, Texas. The mosquitoes (code-named OX5034) will only be male — the gender that does not bite humans — and will carry a new gene that will be passed on to their female offspring and cause them to die while they’re still larvae.” This is not gene drive, but easier to get a handle on, even metaphorically. A recent article about this development mentions “a Jurassic Park experiment”* and a “‘Robo-Frankenstein’ mosquito” – what Matthew Cobb rightly called ‘scare metaphors’.

The same article uses a metaphor that is quite widespread in discourses about GM and gene drive mosquitoes, namely that of the ‘Trojan horse’. It says: “Repeated releases of such ‘Trojan horse’ mosquitoes should kill, in theory, 90 percent of the local population of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is capable of transmitting the Zika and West Nile viruses, as well as dengue and yellow fever.”

Trojan Horses and multiple meanings

I had come across this metaphor before and written a blog post about it. It can be enlightening but also confusing, as it can be used in multiple ways — to explain the science but also to criticise the science and its corporate or charitable backers. But there is more. When I saw the latest use of Trojan horse metaphor used in the article cited above, I googled the metaphor again and found it’s also used, for example, as a metaphor for the workings of the Dengue virus itself, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Trojan horse is truly polysemous – it has multiple meanings; it’s a bit of a shapeshifter.

A Trojan horse is of course a mythical beast. What about real mammals? How do they fit into the gene drive narratives, mainly populated by insects and pests?

Mice and metaphors

Gene drive research has now moved from insects to mammals and when that happened I devoted one blog post to this feat. In this context, the scientists involved used a lot of really helpful metaphors which, however, don’t seem to have seeped through in any major way into the even most rudimentary public/media debate about gene drive, namely those of ‘loading dice’ and ‘flipping coins’…

One Press Association article/press release explained for example: “Under normal circumstances, genes come in pairs, one inherited from each parent. Gregor Mendel, the ‘Father of Genetics’, discovered this fundamental principle of heredity in the 19th century as he experimented with pea plants. It means an offspring has an equal chance of inheriting a particular genetic variation, or mutation, form either its mother or father. A gene drive loads the dice, making it more likely that the offspring will be born with a chosen trait, such as fur colour.” That explanatory metaphor works!

Squirrels and metaphors

In January 2020, when the world was still an innocent place compared to what it is now, I came across an article on gene drives and their potential use in eliminating non-native pests or ‘invasive species’ (something that is heavily discussed in the Australian press, for example).

When you read the article in The Biologist you’ll be hard pressed to find any interesting metaphors, apart from, perhaps, the title: ‘Accelerating Evolution’ – which is quite an accurate description of ‘super-Mendelian inheritance’ which characterises gene drive.

What about the news reporting on this article, also based on interviews with various stakeholders? I was not surprised to see that the articles all use the language of war and battle, of killing and of enemies, something that, it seems, the scientists in particular had tried to avoid in the original article and in the interviews. This is still the predominant framing of gene drive reporting and debate.

In contrast with the newspaper reporting, the scientists themselves not only avoided gory metaphors, they also wrote about the risks of their work and the need for community engagement, saying in their article: “Although gene drive technology still faces significant scientific, political and social hurdles, we are optimistic of its future potential and as such have chosen to highlight prospective applications of the technology in this article. However, it must be noted that before any of these proposed applications are deployed there is a requirement for in-depth analysis of the ecological implications, as well as the need for broad community engagement with those that may be affected by the release of a gene drive.”

This was, strangely, not really picked up in the press reporting. This type of media silence on discourses of responsibility rather than war is concerning, as it entrenches views about the relationship between animals and humans, as well as science and society, that might not help when thinking about the challenges posed by gene drives.

Gene drives and journalistic dilemmas

Some of the dilemmas of science journalism in this domain are meticulously explored in a guest post by Rebecca Hardesty which you should all read.

It ends by saying: “While the recent New York Times Magazine article is, in my opinion, fantastic and highlights the excellent work at the University of California, it is time to rethink science journalism’s preoccupation with the most abstract and extreme moral issues associated with scientific research. Not only are they not particularly urgent issues, focusing on them occludes the realities of genetics research. Two of which are: being able to do small modifications consistently in a controlled setting is different than doing large-scale modifications to a genetically diverse species in the wild – and biologists know this. Second, there needs to be a massive and coordinated effort between researchers, governments, and industry to pull off something like eradicating malaria by genetically modifying mosquitoes. This would be a possibly unprecedented act of international communication and coordination.”

And there are even more challenges. Rebecca points out: “With all this in mind, I’d like to see more on the following challenges of gene drives: a) the difficulties communicating between researchers in different sub-specialties; b) the challenges of industry/governmental/academic collaborations; and c) issues of recruitment for diverse human genetic material.”

Gene drive communication: Confusion and challenges

Communicating gene drive is fraught with difficulties. How to convey the complex science behind it – and that in various languages? Which metaphors to use that help and don’t hinder understanding of theory and potential applications? What issues to foreground or background?

In general, the little media coverage that gene drives have received, has stuck to a war framing endemic in reporting on science and medicine, as well as some ‘scare metaphors’ ubiquitous in reporting on advances in genetic and genomics, side-lining efforts by scientists to foreground responsibility, openness, transparency and caution. Metaphors too seem, on the whole, to have swerved round explanatory metaphors offered by scientists, such as ‘loading the dice’.

In the context where gene drives are used to eradicate disease carrying insects like mosquitoes that spread malaria or invasive species that threaten native biodiversity or pests that endanger farming, it is not surprising that many, journalists in particular, but also some scientists, fall back on metaphors of war and killing, as that’s what we are going to do and it’s really difficult to escape that metaphorical trap.

However, awareness should be raised about its dangers, as it obscures the context and purpose of such killing and some of the dilemmas associated with killing one creature rather than another. More importantly, it blends out other discourses of care, caution and responsibility that many scientists have engaged in from the start of research into gene drives. This, as well as the general complexity of the topic and the many confusions surrounding it, makes it potentially more difficult to foster public deliberations around the processes and products of gene drive research and its applications.

*Interestingly, the cloning of the dinosaurs “was accomplished by extracting dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber” (wiki).

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Nashville lies at the heart of a divided country: Trump got bubbas to the polls

As the president staged a rally attended largely by out-of-towners, Democratic-leaning denizens of Tennessees Brooklyn pondered an urban-rural rift

Men in stetsons, check shirts and jeans swing their partners around to the thrum of drums, fiddle, keyboard and steel guitar of Mike Oldham & The Tone Rangers. The walls at Roberts Western World in Nashville, Tennessee, are coated with beer logos spelled out in neon or on lampshades or mirrors, old concert posters, photos of country music greats and three rows of cowboy boots for sale. The tiled floor is barely visible under the heaving crowd.

At this and other honky tonk bars on Broadway, Nashvilles main tourist drag, the music is old country: songs about drink, divorce, hardscrabble heartbreak, the miserable struggle to make ends meet. It is a playlist that has taken on new resonance in the era of Donald Trump, like a requiem for white working class voters in small towns who, feeling left behind with nothing to lose, propelled him to the White House.

But Nashville is a booming city where southern civility, religion and conservatism collide with a young, creative and liberal population. Paradoxically, the heart of country music is increasingly at odds in class, culture and politics with the heartland that surrounds it. In this it mirrors the dislocation of other burgeoning American cities that are islands of Democratic blue in deep red Republican states.

There is a vast gulf in ideology and approach to the world, said Bruce Dobie, a Nashville-based media entrepreneur. Its just crazy right now. My street and city are overwhelmingly Democratic. Were astonished by everything we see at the moment.

Dobie estimated that when the US president rolled into Nashville on Wednesday for a campaign-style rally, around 80% of the crowd was from out of town. Trumps warm-up acts were country singers the Gatlin Brothers and Lee Greenwood, whose rendition of God bless the USA earned a cheer with the words to the hills of Tennessee. Trump joined him on stage, grinned, shook his hand and raised two thumbs up as the crowd chanted USA! USA!, some with fists raised, in a near-religious frenzy.

So Im thrilled to be here in Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music, southern hospitality and the great president Andrew Jackson, Trump said, referring to the 19th-century populist described by the state museum as champion of the common man and notorious for forcing Native Americans off their land.

The crowd waved signs including Promises made, promises kept, Lefty media lies and Women for Trump. Carma Williams, 63, a retired office manager who had travelled from 70 miles away, said: I love him because hes honest. Hes doing everything he said he would do during the campaign. I think hes the first president whos done that.

Inside Roberts Western World after Trumps rally in Nashville, Tennessee. Photograph: Jon Morgan for the Guardian

Outside the Nashville Municipal Auditorium there was a modest gathering of protesters. One stood out. James Walker was wearing a red Make America great again baseball cap, sunglasses, a beard, a black North Face jacket and khaki trousers. He held aloft a sign that said: Ive made a huge mistake.

The 31-year-old explained: I voted for Trump. I thought it would be a positive change, a change that Obama didnt come through on, and it would shake things up. It has shaken things up but in a bad way. I realise now that some of the things that were just campaign promises seemed to carry on beyond the election and become a reality.

Walker, who grew up in California and spent two years in the military, said he ordered the trademark Make America great again hat many weeks ago but it had only just arrived. So that was the spark: I know what Im going to do with this.

He expressed a desire for atonement. I dont know what thats going to be but this is the first step: showing up and being honest.

Walker now works as a wine broker and lives across the Cumberland river in east Nashville, dubbed the citys own Brooklyn with its embrace of beards, tattoos and artisanal foods, along with Jack Whites record label and an explosion of diverse guitar bands and songwriters. Walker added: Its mostly Democratic, blue territory. Only a few of my friends admitted to voting for Trump and did so in confidence. Today is the first day Ive gone public.

Beside him at Wednesdays demonstration was Lisa Kaas Boyle, an environmental attorney holding a bag that posed the question: What would Dolly do? a reference to country music hall-of-famer Dolly Parton, who supports gay rights but said of Trump and rival Hillary Clinton: I think theyre both nuts. Surveying the queue of thousands of Trump supporters that snaked up and around and down a grassy hill, she said: Im shocked by this huge turnout. It really feels like a gut punch for me. Im sure they came from far and wide. Its shocking to me that people have no regard for their fellow Americans.

Boyle has just returned to Nashville after 30 years, partly to be close to family and partly in response to Hillbilly Elegy, author JD Vances personal insight into problems of the white working class including alcoholism, divorce, domestic violence, drugs and hopelessness. As the Washington Post put it, elites in both parties are studying the book as a sort of Rosetta Stone to understand the conditions that enabled the rise of Trump.

The 52-year-old, said: After reading Hillbilly Elegy, I feel progressives have to be involved. I cant just hang out in California with my like-minded friends. I have to make a difference here.

In last years election, Trump trounced Hillary Clinton by 26% in Tennessee, a Bible belt state that was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and was last won by a Democrat when Bill Clinton, a southerner, carried it in 1996. Among the few counties he did not win were those containing Memphis and Nashville.

There are a lot of liberal artists

Now, Nashville is thriving with an influx of young professionals priced out of other cities. A record 13.9 million people visited the area in 2016, up 45% over the past decade. The music industry is worth $10bn to the region, according to a 2013 report commissioned by the Music City Music Council, and includes Americana, jazz and other genres as well as country.

It has come a long way since the Grand Ole Opry barn dance became a radio hit in the 1940s, leading to a recording industry and stars from Hank Williams then to Taylor Swift today. It has long been seen as music of the conservative heartland when Elton John denied a rumour that he would perform Trumps inauguration, he suggested, Why not ask … one of those fucking country stars? Theyd do it for you but its relationship with politics has always been more complex than often assumed.

Downtown Nashville. Visitors to the area, drawn by its famous music scene, are up 45% over the past decade. Photograph: Jon Morgan for the Guardian

Bob Dylan, the troubadour responsible for some of the 60s defining protest songs, spent the end of the decade in Nashville and collaborated with Johnny Cash, the man in black who performed for presidents and prisoners. Merle Haggards 1969 Okie from Muskogee was regarded as a conservative anthem but he later defended the Dixie Chicks after they condemned George W Bushs invasion of Iraq and recorded a song in support of Hillary Clinton.

During last years presidential election an informal survey conducted by the trade publication Country Aircheck found that 46% of industry professionals supported Trump while 41% favoured Clinton. But unlike Hollywood, most prefer to remain silent, perhaps fearing that any declaration of allegiance risks losing half their audience.

Earlier this month an analysis by BuzzFeed found that of the 87 artists currently on either Billboards Top Country Albums or Hot Country Songs charts, only five Sturgill Simpson, Justin Moore, Chris Janson, Maren Morris and the Brothers Osborne have gone on the record with clear pro or anti-Trump views.

Sitting at the bar at the Red Door Saloon in east Nashville, Clay Johnson, 29, a composer, said: Trump probably got a lot more support from country music artists than hip-hop artists. But there are a lot of liberal artists. It would be wrong to paint them all as conservatives.

Musing on the urban-rural divide, he added: In rural Tennessee youll see people whove lived there and grown up there. In Nashville people tend to come and go like in any city. Its population versus space. Its shitty how one side can dictate how the other side lives because they live different lives. Its the same anywhere. When you live in the city, its different from living on a farm.

At another table as the clock ticked past 1am was Zie Campbell, 25, a freelance illustrator and teacher. Tennessee is a red state, Nashville is not, she said. Its a melting pot, as much of a New York as its going to get down here. This has been very hard for our specific community because we are surrounded by ignorance and bigotry.

In the rural areas theres not a desire to experience anything else. My dad smokes Marlboro Reds, Ill smoke Marlboro Reds. My dad listens to Johnny Cash, Ill listen to Johnny Cash. In the city you dont have that option any more: whether or not you are seeking it, youre forced to see others.

Zie Campbell, an illustrator and teacher in Nashville: This has been very hard for our specific community. We are surrounded by ignorance. Photograph: Jon Morgan for the Guardian

Campbells parents live 220 miles away in Knoxville. Her father voted for Trump but she found Clintons defeat devastating. She continued: I am an example of the exact opposite of my dads opinions. When the sexual harassment allegations against Trump came out, my dad and I had a long conversation. I cried. We decided were not talking politics after that.

If the other side is willing to bomb Dresden, how do you fight that?

How can the rift between urban and rural, between blue and red, be healed? I dont know if there is something to be done, Campbell said. I dont think anyone is trying to sway anyone else. I dont think theres a whole lot of grey area.

Dobie, the media entrepreneur, said: Thats the $64m question. If youre a modern Democrat youre not in the mood to pussyfoot any more, having been subjected to what amounted to the bombing of Dresden in the last election. Trump committed Dresden. No one is in the mood be accommodating or easy.

Were now in a moment when I dont see much room for sitting around the campfire and holding hands. If the other side is willing to bomb Dresden, how do you fight that? You really have to take it to the streets.

Both parties are likely to compete fiercely for what might be described as the country music constituency. Dobie said: Struggling to meet bills, shooting a deer, breaking up with your girlfriend the lyrics of the country song speak the needs, desires and concerns of the conservative folk and thats why its been successful.

Thats the crowd were all talking about. Thats the demographic thats up for grabs in America and Clinton couldnt harness. Trump got the bubbas to the polls; Clinton did not. The bubbas are listening to country music.

Clay Johnson, a composer in Nashville: Its shitty how one side can dictate how the other side lives. Photograph: Jon Morgan for the Guardian

The divisions here are reflected across America, after an election that exposed brutal faultines and the education split among whites was said to be the critical factor.

Nadine Hubbs, a professor of music at the University of Michigan and author of Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, said: In the US, our cities are places where many of us go to prosper while small towns or exurbs or suburbs are often places where people are left behind.

Nashville and Austin [in Texas] are really good examples of this phenomenon. To bridge the gap there are economic inequalities we need to pay attention to. Often the most unbridgeable gaps are the ones created by contempt for another group: lack of respect and stripping of dignity.

The way people who are prospering look down on folks who are in rural spaces, often associated with country music, creates the kind of divisions that are really hard to bridge.

The elites talk about the need for education of people in rural spaces; well, we know almost nothing about them. The economic and social segregation of the classes is worse maybe than its ever been in our history.