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sleep-i-ness · 4 years

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Bad Date? (Maria Hill x reader)

Request: YES (at end of oneshot)

Content Warning: Drinking, mentions of cheating

A/N: Here you go hun! I didn’t really know how to write the reader as a tomboy so sorry if it wasn’t quite what you wanted. Oh and one bit was a tiny bit inspired by Two Weeks Notice (with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock) so if you notice that well done? Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Taglist: @holybatflapexpert @startrekkingaroundasgard @natasha-danvers @a-stressedstudent (if you would like to be added, please fill out the form in my bio)

A loud knock at the door startled Maria out of her administration haze; she sighed, taking in the heap of strewn sheets. Her usually immaculate desktop was barely visible under the mountain of paperwork that had just been piling up endlessly since her day had started. It was already looking like she might have to stay well past her contractually mandated hours just to clear what she already had. The legal team at Stark Industries had been on the phone with her non-stop, demanding evidence or explanations that were either highly confidential, non-existent or possibly even both. Maria was honestly sick to death of having to clean up both the physical and PR messes of the Avengers.

“Come in.” She was unable to muster any energy into her order, hoping to whatever mighty being out there that it was an agent she could actually stand. Or really just any agent other than Agent Mace. He had been needlessly suffocating, bouncing into her office, whenever he so pleased, to ask a question that really only required the most miniscule amount of brainpower to be answered. It was a miracle he had ever been hired.

Y/N poked her head through the door, an easy smile tilting her lips upwards. Maria returned the infectious grin despite herself, a giddy, light sensation spreading through her chest.

“Oh, good, Agent Y/L/N. These are the mission debriefs that you filed, would you mind taking them down to Agent Coulson?” Maria rifled through the stuffed drawer by her leg and passed her a thick brown file.

Y/N grabbed it, their fingertips brushing lightly and Maria jolted slightly as an electric spark shot up her arm. “Sure, I got it.”

“Now, after you’ve dropped them down, you can start with the files for your next-”

Y/N interrupted her, smiling sheepishly, “Actually, I don’t know how much time I have. That’s what I came here to ask you about. Tony sort of set me up on a date with someone tonight.”

Maria’s heart sank, a sickening heavy feeling, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She shook it off, blaming it on a sudden bout of exhaustion and mustered an enthusiastic grin. Scraping the papers on her desk together, she stapled them together with a satisfying click.

“Great.”

Y/N took that as a dismissal as she backed away, towards the door. “I just have to figure out what to wear. I don't have anything.”

Y/N almost giggled and a wave of nausea rolled over Maria as she swallowed harshly. Y/N looked ready to soar with joy, like an entrapped bird in a cage that she held the key to.

“Have fun.” Maria couldn’t help the bitterness seeping into her words and Y/N’s face contorted, startled for a second, before schooling herself into a more composed expression.

What the hell was that. Maria was astounded as Y/N backed out without another word, a placating smile fixed to her cheeks. She attributed her sudden passive-aggressiveness on an envy of being able to leave work without feeling the immense burden of knowing how much else she had to do. But she’d never had this problem before when it came to her work-life balance.

Maybe she was finally feeling the need to get back into a relationship.

Maria groaned as the clock hand hit seven and she hadn’t seemed to have made a dent int the pile. She’d have to work the night on this lot; she was prepping an incredibly time-pressured, high-stakes mission, so they were sending the team out tomorrow. The window had been made known to them only a couple hours ago, at most.

She wondered if Y/N was having a better night than her. A nice dinner out, good conversation and freely flowing wine. Then, dancing in the arms of her pretty date and maybe getting a kiss goodnight.

No. This was unprofessional. Maria shook her head, blinking hurriedly, as she tried to clear her mind of any distracting thoughts.

Work.

Right…

Eliott Callahan, ex-CIA, presumed deceased after a mission went wrong in 2007. Recently resurfaced with links to the Tribe of Salvation, an organisation that had been previously unknown until ties to the Ten Rings had been revealed. Supposedly owned a scientific reserve in North Carolina which was too heavily guarded to not be hiding anything. Callahan had given them a way in, now they needed to take the place out.

Maria’s eyes watered as she stared at the security schematics and the notes made by top SHIELD security specialists. God, she wished she had Y/N here to give her some advice on it. Y/N’s expertise was in getting into places she shouldn’t be, which is how SHIELD had found her. But Y/N was having fun on a nice date with a nice girl and Maria couldn’t help but admitting that it had brightened her day to see Y/N happy.

The last mission, Lima, had taken a toll on everyone’s mental health, and Maria couldn’t help but blame herself for the failure. Four of their top agents had been taken out and the others, who had barely survived, had still not passed their psych evals. Today had been the first time Y/N had been visibly giddy or enthusiastic about anything since then.

“Hi.”

Maria scooted her chair to face the door; head buried in a document as she muttered the lines to herself as she read. Lifting her head slowly, she blinked owlishly at the figure in the door.

“Y/N?”

Y/N hovered in the doorway, still wearing a very flattering suit that Maria couldn’t help but admire. She offered Maria a small but weary smile, shifting from foot to foot.

“Come in, take a seat, how was it?” Maria wasn’t sure if she were acting enthusiastic enough to believably be realistically overjoyed for Y/N having been on a date, but she was sure she could instead pass as being worn out.

Y/N slumped into the hard-plastic chair, which rolled backwards due to her momentum. Unlacing her shoes, she yanked them off and massaged the soles of her feet. She stretched out her stocking-covered legs, gently rubbing circles into the back of her ankles and calves.

“It was horrendous,” Y/N groaned, tilting her head back in exasperation. “I mean, does Tony know me at all? Coulson made me babysit him for 3 years, he should know me better than to set me up with someone like that.”

“Like that?”

“Oh, God, she was about 20 minutes late and didn’t get off her phone the entire time. When she finally made some conversation, it was all about her ex-boyfriends. Like, not even ex-girlfriends. And she was always texting at the table. How rude is that!” Y/N’s cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes were glazed as she yawned, delicately raising a hand to cover a mouth while she stretched out like a cat. Y/N smiled sleepily at Maria as she curled into the uncomfortable chair.

Maria returned the smile softly, somewhat reassured by Y/N’s vehement complaints. “Sounds awful. No second date then?”

“God no, I’d rather be reassigned to… to the Arctic!” Y/N threw her hands up dramatically, the seat wobbling beneath her.

“That can be arranged.”

Y/N was unimpressed by Maria’s dry tone, bottom lip jutting out as she folded her arms sulkily.

A sudden thought popped into her mind. She brightened abruptly, sitting up again. “As if you’d do that. You wouldn’t survive without me.”

“You wish.” Y/N was cute while tipsy, Maria mused, before jolting at the thought. No, she was her supervisor, she could not be thinking like that.

“So, tell me.” Y/N’s chin was slipping off her hand as she yawned, elbow firmly planted on the desk. “I’ve told you how shit my date was, what’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?”

Maria paused as she took a mental step back from all the work thoughts accumulating at the back of her head. “Well, back in high school, it wasn’t really a date. At least, I hadn’t thought it was because I’d just come out. To everyone. And I went out for lunch with a friend, a guy named Tyler and he ended up telling me that he could turn me straight again. He also decided to show me the numerous photos of his penis. He had a whole folder on his phone in different lightings and from different angles.”

Y/N had clapped a hand over her mouth, “That’s horrendous, I don’t think I could ever look at someone the same if they did that. Like unsolicited and all that.”

“Yeah, definitely was the final nail in putting me off men.”

Y/N giggled, a pretty sound that Maria couldn’t help but want to hear more of.

“So,” she began, pursing her lips as she tried to think of how to continue.

“So?” Maria laughed

“Yeah, so, tell me. Is there anyone in your life? Anyone special?”

Maria snorted. “No, God no. I haven’t had the time in all honesty; I’m barely on top of my work, never mind sorting out a love life at the same time.”

“I thought… I thought that you were dating Agent Hayes?”

“No, we broke up a while ago over… mutual difference involving work and personal lives becoming too heavily involved.”

“Okay… so that’s what you wrote on the official forms about your break-up. Now, tell me again with feelings. Come on, let’s have a proper deep chat.”

“Hm.” Maria glanced back at the document she’d discarded back onto the pile and groaned. There was clearly a better option of the two. “Fine. I’m sure you are aware of Agent Hayes’ reputation.” Y/N frowned and shook her head. “As a… honey trap. It seems that she was unable to remove that part of her life from our personal lives and decided to… practice on other agents and people in our lives.”

Maria spoke bitterly, expression twisted in a grimace like she had tasted something extremely sour.

“So, basically she’s a cheating bitch.”

“Yeah.” Maria nodded. That summarised her perfectly.

“Well, fuck her, we don’t need shitty women in our lives. Am I right or am I right?” Y/N’s voice rose as she declared her statement triumphantly, sending Maria a quick grin as she pumped a fist in the air.

“Yes, you’re right.” Maria was tentative, unsure whether she wanted to ask the words on the tip of her tongue. “Anyone else in your life?”

“Well,” Y/N took a deep breath, working up the courage to do something momentous. “I did like someone, but I thought they were dating someone, so I let Tony set me up on an absolutely awful blind date.” Her voice lowered to more of a murmur. “But now I found out that the woman I like is single.”

Maria blinked. Could she-? No. Well, there was no point in not trying. “What if the woman liked you back?”

“I’d probably ask if I could kiss her.” Y/N glanced at Maria’s lips, the glaze in her eyes no longer from alcohol.

“I think she’d say yes. She’d be pretty dumb not to.”

Y/N leant in, and Maria’s breath caught in her throat. She had to be dreaming. Their lips met and every thought flew out of her head as she melted into the kiss. Maria pulled away, laughing at Y/N’s pout.

“Wait. Come here.” Maria patted her lap and Y/N eagerly straddled her legs, one hand cupping her chin, the other on the back of her head. “That’s better.”

She kissed her again, an awestruck expression appearing on Y/N’s face as she grinned blissfully. Maria could smell the sweet scent of Y/N’s perfume invading her senses, everything blurring as her mind focused in on the way Y/N seemed to fit perfectly in her arms. Or the hand gripping the hair at the base of her neck as Y/N kept her head in place, the other caressing her cheek.

As they broke apart again, Y/N stayed on Maria’s lap, wrapping her arms around her neck.

“I have to finish this work, but you’re welcome to stay and help. It’ll go twice as quickly.”

Y/N pecked her lips. “Deal.”

Request: Maria hill x female, tomboy, reader where Maria hears that tony set the reader up on a date with some girl he knew. Maria can’t stop thinking about it and ends up staying up through the night until r dare is over. Reader comes back after the date and they talk and reader makes fun of how bad the date was. (aren’t in relationship but get together after talking)

#maria hill #maria hill x reader #maria hill x you #commander hill #agent hill #agent #shield #avengers #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #marvel imagine #agent coulson #x reader

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arinaco · 4 years

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Keith and Shiro: The Hero’s Journey

Translated and edited by @Nadezhda932

Once I was asked if I would write a meta about Keith or Shiro, and then I refused, because their story at that moment seemed to me simple and clear. But since then, a certain amount of nuance has accumulated that could be written about, so I decided to write a meta.

Warning – the topic of Sheith won’t be raised. All the ships are respected here, but in order to avoid any controversy, in this meta the relationship between Shiro and Keith will be considered exclusively in the context that was declared by the series itself, where Shiro became like an older brother for Keith.

Shiro and Keith’s storylines are closely related, so it’s pointless to look at them separately. Moreover, if Keith’s story is in many ways the standard story of a teenager growing up, then Shiro’s story touches on a completely different – not childish – question.

And I’ll start with the most scandalous – if I may say so – part of Shiro’s storyline. His flashbacks in S7. In the interviews, EPs said they planned to introduce these flashbacks much earlier, but many didn’t believe them. And I’ll start with them because they have an important storyline for Shiro in S8, and most likely one of the reasons why Shiro’s story arc was practically cut out there.

To answer the question of whether these flashbacks were inserted at the last moment, we need to go right back to the first seasons to remember the strange behavior of Shiro, the weirdness of which passed us by, because at that moment there was no clear explanation.

In S1, Shiro appeared before us as a young strong man, mature and confident in his professionalism. He’s almost 30, and this is the very age when a military man can finally begin to count on some serious shoulder straps and a promotion. And suddenly this young man begins to talk with Keith that he may lead the paladins instead of Shiro. As if he was about to retire and needed someone to replace him, although future successors of people at this age usually command an army of plush toys.

I want you to lead Voltron.

After being wounded, Shiro remembered that he was mortal… and that death was very close to him

Of course, the situation was difficult and there was a constant risk, but only Shiro prepared a successor in advance… as if he was about to die. Why did the young man have so many thoughts about death? And here I’ll ask you to remember the plot of flashbacks from S7. Because it’s only in the flashbacks of S7 where we find out… that Shiro was really going to die.

He was ill. Terminally ill. And he knew that soon the very time would come when he lay down in a hospital bed and would never leave its walls again. Yes, the Galra, who had big plans for their new champion, cured the disease, but Shiro didn’t know about it.

And this can serve as the main proof that yes – the flashbacks were indeed planned initially. And only the creators of the series know why they were introduced to the series so late. And they must be taken into account when we talk about Shiro’s storyline, as well as his relationship with Adam.

So where does Shiro’s journey actually begin? It’s unknown when exactly Shiro found out about his illness. Perhaps already in adulthood, or perhaps he even experienced difficulties when entering the Garrison, because the selection for pilots in terms of health has always been very strict. The main thing is different – how Shiro reacted to his illness. He turned out to be one of those people who decided that if they were destined to burn like a match, then they had to shine so as to eclipse the supernova. The entire closet in his house is filled with commemorative awards and diplomas; he’s called the best pilot of the Garrison in plain text. And that’s why his close friend, Professor Holt, decided to take him to Kerberos – this was a gift before his death. At that time, this would probably have been the highest achievement for a space pilot. The title of the discoverer of deep space for planet Earth. Gagarin of a new era, who, by the way, also died young – at 34.

Clear your mind. Now imagine your Lion.

At the same time, of course, it should be noted that Shiro as a whole was a selfless person, striving to take care of others. Perhaps it was a way for him to come to terms with impending death – to live for others, forgetting about himself. The presence of the disease made him a person who doesn’t think about his future and believes that his personal problems don’t matter. If he dies soon anyway, what’s the difference?

There was a difference, though not for Shiro himself. Adam is the very best friend of the hero who always remains in the shadows, behind his back. They started as co-pilots, friends and associates. They worked in one team. Pilots often work in pairs to duplicate each other, and Adam was the one to back Shiro on combat missions. And so their photo together was in the same closet where the awards that Shiro had so eagerly sought to receive were located.

And to better understand Adam… how do you think, who in this situation made sure that Shiro took pills on time, followed the regimen and went to the doctors? Despite the fact that Shiro chose the path of absolutely not giving a damn about his life.

I think the answer is obvious.

While Shiro dedicated his life to the stars and serving the community, Adam dedicated his life to caring for Shiro. And from a moral point of view, this is a very difficult role: to take care of an incurable patient, to take him to hospitals, to monitor his condition, to look at disappointing forecasts with despair, but still continue to fight the disease, winning if not a year, then at least a month… Shiro told Keith that he had only a year or two left, but I think Adam could have given more accurate numbers.

And the problem with this situation is that… Shiro didn’t look back. Only forward, only to the stars. And Adam couldn’t help but start wondering how much Shiro appreciated his efforts. Shiro had a couple of years of normal life left, and Adam wanted them to spend these years together, but then a dangerous, though truly starry peak appeared on the horizon, and of course, Shiro decided to conquer it, even though the high command spoke out against it…

But this is more than a mission, this is your life at stake.

And… Adam just couldn’t stand it. All these years he obediently covered his back, but now Shiro was going on a solo mission, and if something happened, Adam wouldn’t even have anything to bury. So he just left. Broken. It’s very hard to love and care for someone if you don’t feel the same in return.

Takashi, how important am I to you?

How did Shiro feel about this? Perhaps, at that particular moment, he even thought that it would be better this way, because Adam one way or another would have to continue to live without him. Being a selfless person, he probably wanted Adam to be happy after his death, and in order to move on, the dead must be left in the past.

I’m going on a mission.

It didn’t even occur to him that Adam would fulfill his promise in the most literal sense. And that the very question «How important am I to you?» would remain unanswered.

This was the starting point of his journey. The journey of a person who, due to illness, began to regard his life and problems as something insignificant. A person who’s used to devaluing his personal needs and health. And it’s the question of depreciation that runs like a red thread throughout his entire storyline.

Only… it’s easy to devalue your health and feelings when you’re generally a happy person. Maybe Shiro even wanted to die before becoming a helpless vegetable. Better to die a hero than live bedridden. But then the Galra appeared in his life – the very variable that he couldn’t take into account. And uninvited guests «rewarded» him not only with good health, but also with strong PTSD. After all, Shiro, like all other paladins, including Allura, grew up without war. He didn’t know the war. The difficult tasks that Shiro had to solve in space came from an aggressive environment, not from aggressive neighbors. The last war on Earth took place long before his birth.

And Shiro was really shocked when he met the Galra. «We’re unarmed, what are you doing?» – quite a classic reaction of a person who lived in a prosperous, peaceful society. There were thousands of them – boys who, from their usual peaceful environment, unexpectedly went to war, and then returned as crippled combatants. And PTSD in Shiro’s situation is a tragic, but quite natural development of events.

If you open some serious scientific text on PTSD (and I found one, not even a very old one – 2015 edition), then it’ll be written there that one of the main problems of sufferers of PTSD is that they don’t perceive symptoms as one whole and just don’t understand that they need help. And a man like Shiro thought that amnesia, flashbacks and nightmares were his own problem, which shouldn’t prevent him from playing the important role of leader and nanny of other paladins. No, under favorable conditions, PTSD can really go away on its own – new emotions and positive experience repeatedly assure a person that now everything will be fine, and after a certain time his psyche relaxes. But Shiro didn’t have such conditions. He sharply turned out to be the most important and eldest in the company of children, and his task was not to go into space to conduct experiments, but to stop the aggression of a huge empire. And his PTSD from the acute phase just turned into a chronic one.

And here we need to briefly recall how PTSD affects a person. PTSD is a state when tragedy doesn’t let go, when a person continues to cycle through events, and as a result begins to fear their repetition. And he spends all his efforts to prevent this from happening. The simplest case: I was bitten by a dog – so I’ll avoid all dogs. By keeping my distance, I’ll be safe.

And all of Shiro’s changes – his desire to control the situation, his bitterness throughout the series – it all grows out of this. And that’s not even considering the influence of Haggar. Ever wonder why the clone had the memory of the real Shiro? Because Haggar thrust her fingers into Shiro’s mind and didn’t want to let go. As she appropriated the souls of the old paladins, so she did with Shiro, and then used him to protect herself from the White Lion. Only in S7 Allura managed to rid Shiro of the last fragments of this influence.

I won’t listen to you!

Are you saying this to Sendak or to your memory?

Fortunately, Keith was next to Shiro. At the time of their first acquaintance, Keith was still a child whom Shiro took into care. Shiro saw in him that very problematic teen who needed support, and naturally he couldn’t pass by. Under his leadership, Keith became more balanced and was able to reveal his pilot talent. Shiro saw potential in him and wanted to help Keith channel his energies in a positive direction.

Keith, being a lonely child and an orphan, saw Shiro as his only close person and naturally couldn’t agree that Shiro’s health and well-being were something unimportant and unnecessary. He was ready to tear his veins in order to save the only semblance of a family that he had, and thus repeatedly proved to Shiro that yes, Shiro was important, that yes, he must live, because his life was valuable even without victories and awards. Keith literally forced Shiro to accept help, forced him to put up with the fact that Shiro couldn’t always control the situation. Keith helped Shiro learn to rely on others again.

And that’s why they win Sendak together. Sendak has been Shiro’s personal enemy since the first episode, but the truth is, alas, that Sendak and Shiro are fighters of different weight classes. Sendak is more than ten thousand years old, he’s a Galra from the days of old Daibazaal, he was trained personally by Zarkon. There were only three fighters of this level in the universe at that time, and, unfortunately, Shiro wasn’t included in this three. And Lotor wasn’t allowed to kill Sendak, otherwise it would have been a shame that Lotor had killed all the main enemies of the paladins.

Shiro objectively couldn’t defeat Sendak alone. And that’s why Shiro killed Sendak together with Keith – Shiro accepted his help and said not «How many times will you save me again?», but a simple «Thank you».

But then… after S7 everything goes downhill. And scraps of Shiro’s story arc stick out like torn threads. And this applies to two aspects:

Shiro’s personal life;

his being a paladin;

First, I’ll tell you about him as a paladin. Despite the fact that Shiro is no longer a Black Paladin, the last episodes of S8 clearly show us that he’s still a paladin. His eyes also shine along with everyone else, and… against a WHITE background. And the background at that moment was the color of the paladin’s Lion.

Because Shiro became a White Paladin, although this has never been officially confirmed. Most likely, this moment fell under the carving knife along with many other cut scenes. But we still can trace the general outline of this story arc.

And here we need to remember the Alteans and their culture. The Alteans had a real cult of sacrifice, most likely as a consequence of the potential danger of the alchemists (say hello to Honerva). Therefore, the test on Oriande isn’t a check on whether you’re good or bad, but a check on the conformity of belonging to the Altean culture.

Stage 1 is a pass from Honerva’s storage. Perhaps this pass was given to every alchemist without any explanation of how to use it. The alchemist had to guess it, but Honerva for some reason couldn’t. And only an Altean could get such a pass.

Stage 2 is checking basic knowledge. In the space age, the ability to use the Teludav was most likely a must-have for any alchemist.

Stage 3 is the most important. White Lion, testing not your moral qualities, but your belonging to the culture of the Alteans. Understanding the cult of sacrifice. That’s why Lotor didn’t pass this stage – his upbringing is different. A true Galra must not die for his homeland, he must make his enemies die for their own.

But Shiro, one might say, is the ideal member of this cult. Pass a sea of quintessence through yourself so that Professor Holt can hack the ship? Yes, please, he doesn’t mind. The White Lion appreciated that. More precisely, the White Lion appreciated Shiro even earlier, when Honerva used Shiro’s soul to pass the trial. And Shiro… actually passed the trial of sacrifice in her place. The White Lion saw him and realized that Shiro was really selfless to the extent that a true Altean should be selfless.

And Atlas didn’t transform into a robot because the brilliant Professor Holt was able to build a second Voltron. It happenned because the White Lion came and said to the other Lions: «Hold my beer, now I’ll show you how to save the universe». By sacrificing himself, Shiro initiated himself as a White Paladin, and combined with the Castle’s crystal this allowed him to summon the Lion to the Atlas.

A very important nuance in fact. But it flies past us, forcing us to wonder how a huge bucket of nuts from the backward Earth managed to catch up with the creation of King Alfor.

The loss of the second aspect of Shiro’s storyline was so great that couldn’t be unnoticed. Shiro abruptly lost touch with other paladins, and his behavior became authoritarian and aggressive. As if as soon as Shiro sat in the admiral’s chair, power hit him in the head.

And then at the end of the story, he unexpectedly quits his job and marries a random character. I’m sorry, what?! O_o

For unknown reasons, someone abruptly decided to delete Shiro’s line from the story, due to which the character completely lost the logic of his behavior. And we can only guess what was really there, armed with common sense and a reference book on psychology.

The most obvious line that was cut (of which I’m 90% sure) is the line of Adam’s death. When Shiro learns about Adam’s death in S7, he remembers his name with great anguish. Until then, the thought that Adam might die before him seemed inconceivable to Shiro. And here he was left alone with the very last question, to which he never gave an answer. And when Shiro says that «their deaths won’t be in vain», he speaks first of all about Adam. And he rushes into space «to do good» with thoughts of Adam. Despite the fact that the Galra Empire is no longer there, there’s no one to fight with. Only to catch small associations throughout the universe that do no more harm than ordinary pirates, and in most cases they just try to survive. Shiro in S8 behaves exactly like Allura in S1, who shook her fist and threatened all Galra with revenge in a desire to fulfill the command of her deceased father and save the universe.

Adam…

He never told Adam that he was really important to him, and tried to express these words with his actions. And against the background of this grief, which remained unmourned in the series, the wedding looks weird. He didn’t refuse Kerberos mission for the sake of Adam, but gave up his life’s work for the sake of the first comer.

All Shiro’s experiences, all his pain were simply put under the knife, as if it never existed. As a result, we got a character whose behavior changed dramatically, as if instead of Shiro there’s again another clone.

And if you evaluate the arc from the point of common sense, Shiro should have shared his grief with his friends. With Keith at least. Express it, rather than go through this stress alone. Otherwise, it turns out that Shiro’s entire storyline was just about nothing. So many times Keith saved him, but he still continued to keep all the problems in himself, not telling anyone about them.

It truly feels like the light has gone out in our lives

The rest of the storylines have no real confirmation, except for theories, so I won’t describe them. Moreover, against the background of the main experience mentioned above, they look less significant and practically don’t affect the plot.

The epilogue of Shiro in the original script, most likely, was supposed to be a significant political position, but a peacemaker, not an aggressor. The conduct of diplomatic negotiations between the races, which flashed for a couple of seconds, fits well into this image.

Now let’s talk about Keith. It’s even sadder with the end of his arc, because it’s completely lost. And as a result, instead of normal development, Keith sharply turned into Marty Stu. And I have to admit, probably the Keith’s storyline in S8 is what comes second on my list called «Things That Piss Me Off In This Season». Only Romelle’s storyline pisses me off more than Keith’s one. And the reasons why it pisses me off can be divided into two categories:

Category 1 – Keith as a «good Galra»

Category 2 – Keith as a «great leader»

I don’t like the first one for one simple reason: Keith is not a Galra. Because belonging to a people isn’t determined by a set of genes. Because any nation is primarily a language, culture and history. When an invader wants to demonstrate his power, he forbids the people to speak their native language. And the fact that Keith is very similar to his mom doesn’t make him a Galra. Keith was born on Earth, raised on Earth and is psychologically an Earthling. He’s an Earthling with Galran blood, nothing more, nothing less. And that’s why, when he tells Lahn that he’s also a Galra, Lahn replies something like «You don’t say» with obvious skepticism in his voice. Because the Galra are a people with a very ancient culture and their own special collective psychology, and all this can’t simply be inherited through genes. Through genes, only temperament is inherited, and a certain belonging to culture in a person appears only during upbringing. Moreover, in the series we see an example of the fact that no matter how strong the desire to become a part of another culture is, it doesn’t always help. Who is this example? The answer is simple – Lotor.

Lotor has spent his entire life studying the culture of the Alteans, and he’s nearly ten thousand years old. But at the same time he was born among the Galra, was brought up by the Galra and lived according to the principles of the Galra. As a result, Oriande said goodbye to him. Lotor wanted to be part of the Alteans, but he couldn’t – despite the fact that he’s half Altean. Half the blood didn’t help him in any way.

But for some reason, Keith has suddenly become a real «good Galra» just by the wave of a magic wand. Despite the fact that he never showed interest in the Galran culture, and even among the Blades he remained on his own special wave. He felt at home among the Blades not because he was a Galra, but because Galran society was historically formed to be able to live in close groups and get along with each other. And when Keith went to the Blades, they just took him under their wing, and thereby gave him what he needed then. Therefore, this is why Keith felt that he belonged, not because of some mythical voice of blood.

The second category is worth talking about after analyzing Keith’s storyline.

Keith’s storyline is the Hero’s Journey. Almost a classic version. A young man must leave the comfort zone, perform a feat, receive a reward for this feat, and return home matured after the trials he has endured.

The reward for Keith is finding a family, and his trial is becoming a leader. Now remember his epilogue. Do you remember what happened there?

In the epilogue, Keith never appeared with his family – neither with Shiro, nor with Krolia, nor with Kolivan, but he got a chance to take the imperial throne. The trial was turned into a reward, and Lotor’s generals, almost strangers to him, became his circle of friends. Who, by the way, betrayed Lotor, so Keith should watch his back.

It looks so cute, if you forget that Zethrid has problems with aggression, and Ezor is a hidden sadist…

Just because Keith had to become a leader doesn’t mean he wanted to be. The fact that he has assumed responsibilities doesn’t mean that he has dreamed of fulfilling them all his life. But, in order not to be unfounded, let’s take a closer look at how Keith’s personality changes according to the plot.

The Hero’s Journey of Keith

Stage 1. Everyday World

To understand what his Call to Adventure was, as well as the Unknown World and the Trial, you need to look at where it all started.

After the decision was made to change S8, Keith was compared to Lotor, despite the fact that they’re two completely different people with completely different fates. And if Lotor’s childhood was stable and predetermined (from birth he was in the hands of the governess and from birth he knew that his destiny was to rule the Galra), the situation with Keith turned out to be radically opposite. He knew nothing about his mother, except that she was missing. It was even sadder with his father – he died, leaving behind only a dagger. It’s sadder, because it was the father who embodied for Keith the stability and security that every child needs. And although everyone said that Heath died as a hero, Keith, who ended up in an orphanage, didn’t get any easier from this knowledge. The exact period of his father’s death wasn’t named, but most likely Keith at that moment was at least 6-7 years old, mature enough to remember his parent well.

Keith was by nature a classic introverted child (which, by the way, isn’t a Galran character trait at all) who needs his own corner and wants to be able to be alone in this corner. An introvert prefers that his social circle is limited to a certain list of people, and he’s morally stressed by the constant need to be in society, since he’s simply mentally tired of this.

But, alas, the orphanage isn’t the place where they will give you your own room when you want to be alone. And against the background of a hot temper, this led to the fact that Keith didn’t get along with the children and educators. He desperately wanted to regain the very cozy world where he and a strong loving dad were, but those around him simply couldn’t give it.

Ultimately, this resulted both in the absence of friends, and in the reluctance of educators to spend time on him. After all, they had others – talented, not problematic, excellent pupils with perfect discipline. And without support – especially the support of wise adults – Keith has turned into a kind of a little mouse that wants to sit in a mouse hole, categorically unwilling to protrude into this dangerous unknown world, where everyone can offend him. And if this tiny mouse does get out, it begins to run and grind its teeth on everyone, so that every potential aggressor knows that this mouse, although small, can bite you.

Stage 2. Call to Adventure. The first Mentor appears

Maybe you’ve got what it takes?

At first glance, it may seem that the Blue Lion has become the Call to Adventure for Keith. But in fact, the Unknown World for Keith was not distant space, but life itself. And this Call happened much earlier than the events of the first episode.

Namely, the appearance of Shiro. The very moment when he came to school to tell the children about piloting and offer to play the simulator. The big man saw this very little mouse sitting in the corner and offered him his hand. He offered to show that the world outside the mouse hole isn’t so scary, and even interesting and wonderful.

What did our mouse do in the first moment? That’s right, he bit this hand. Keith perceived Shiro as another potential aggressor and didn’t want to make contact.

But Shiro’s tenacity was beyond measure. He told Keith over and over again that he needed to be bolder. He showed him the spaceship and told him about the astronauts who weren’t afraid to go into the unknown. He jumped off the cliff with him, demonstrating by his example his willingness to step towards this terrible frightening thing called life. And he explained that even such a flight can be controlled if you’re prepared for it in advance.

The mouse bit him on the finger, but he continued to offer his hand, promising to protect and help, to become a guide in the world around him, and under the guidance of Shiro, our tiny animal got out of the hole and began to gradually look around. Keith kept snapping at the people around him, but Shiro’s guardianship helped him start to feel a kind of security and certainty. He got a new father figure in Shiro and began to stabilize mentally.

But this process was cut short in the middle.

The first alarming call was the news about the illness. Keith of course told Shiro that he’s grown up enugh for this kind of news, but just remember how hysterically he spoke about it. The possibility of losing a father figure (for the second time!), guaranteeing stability and security, seemed daunting to Keith. He didn’t want to believe it, he refused to believe it, and by the events of the first season he simply threw this knowledge out of his head as unwanted information.

But then something happened that we already know. The expedition with Shiro disappeared, and the mouse, left without a protector, scaredly bit everyone who was nearby, and at the first cosmic speed rushed back into the hole. Keith quarreled with others and was expelled from the Garrison for deviant behavior, and then returned to his old house, where he once lived with his father. We now know that Heath lived there because he was guarding the Blue Lion, but then Keith simply returned to that one place where he felt comfortable and safe.

2.1 Supernatural Aid

As the saying goes, sometimes a decisive step forward is the result of a good kick from behind. Either the Blue Lion sensed the approach of the Galra, or she was simply bored, but she started sending Keith signals to go to look for the «anomaly» and, in the end, brought all the main characters of the series to her.

And by the will of the magic princess, for a more comfortable confrontation with the world around him, Keith receives a transforming sword, a stylish suit and a mechanical cat with character.

2.2 Refusal of the Call

No, I can’t take it.

Keith refused the Call from the beginning. But. Up to this point, Shiro played the role of the Good Father: he didn’t demand that Keith decide something himself, he stroked his head and persuaded him to trust father’s decisions. He took full responsibility for himself, allowing Keith to remain in the role of a child.

Now, with the arrival of the Galra, everything has changed. Shiro was no longer the same, and the world around him wasn’t the same. Shiro found himself in a situation where he was appointed commander-in-chief in a war against a huge hostile empire, and instead of the army he was given a handful of teenagers. Moreover, Shiro was sincerely convinced that he would soon become incapacitated, and the newly acquired PTSD demanded to keep everything under control. This means that he – Shiro – must take care of everything, including what will happen when he can no longer lead the team.

And in this situation, it turned out that Shiro really knew well only Keith. He knew what Keith could, and he knew Keith was trustworthy. In Shiro’s eyes, there was no longer a child, but a rather grown up guy, and Shiro treated him as an equal. And he began not to persuade Keith to go forward, holding his hand – he began to insist that Keith go and lead the others.

If you become a leader, you’ll have to act wisely.

From that moment, from a Good Father, Shiro began to gradually turn into an Evil Father, who demands that his son pull himself together and grow up. The Evil Father isn’t actually bad, he loves his son, but he believes that it’s time for the boy to stop being afraid of the outside world and become a man.

But Keith wasn’t ready yet. The child has just learned to stand on trembling legs, but here they’re demanding that he not only run forward, but also drag someone along with him.

So Keith began to refuse. To give up not so much the role of a leader as the obligation to take responsibility for himself. From the obligation to become an adult.

But the more the son resists, the angrier the father becomes. Because you can’t hide forever, and you can’t remain a child forever. Sooner or later, a moment may come when a father, out of love for his son, simply throws him out of the nest so that he forcibly learns to fly.

Stage 3. First Threshold. The second Mentor appears

3.1 Threshold Guardians

Trials can only have two outcomes.

First Threshold is the line that the hero needs to pass in order to enter a new unknown world. In Keith’s case, a new, unexplored world of maturity. At this turn, depending on the behavior of the protagonist, he’s met by either the Threshold Guardians or the Belly of a Whale.

What’s the difference? In the first case, the hero meets the Guardians, and they check the hero, whether he’s ready to cross this line. And only after passing their check, the hero receives permission to go further. In the second case, the hero is metaphorically killed, that is, he’s forced to change so that he meets the necessary requirements for entering a new unknown world.

Knowledge or death.

In Keith’s case, the first scenario happened. And Kolivan, accompanied by the Blades, becomes the Guardian at the turn of the new adult life. The one who will later become Keith’s guide through this world.

When the Blades meet Keith, they demand that he return the dagger to them, but Keith refuses. The fact is that for Keith the dagger embodied the very bright past that he desperately wanted to return. The last connection with that wonderful childhood, where he and his loving dad were. And the hope that if he tries, if he’s lucky, he’ll understand what this dagger means, and will know who he is and where he belongs. Where is his home and family.

But the Blades, as Guardians of the threshold of maturity, ask Keith how much he’s willing to give for this last hope. What are his priorities. For a very long time Keith turned away from people, from the whole world, in order to cherish dreams of a bright past in his head. And then he was forced to ask the question: how much he values these dreams. And he had to answer. Give the answer not to them, but to himrself.

Ultimately, between a childhood dream of a family and an adult responsibility to others, Keith chooses the latter. He passes the test of his willingness to begin the journey to maturity, and the Guardians let him through.

But think: what marks the passage of this milestone for Keith?

It’s marked by the battle with Zarkon, in which Shiro is killed and merged with the Black Lion.

Moreover, after these events, Shiro, in the person of Kuron, finally turns into the Evil Father. He simply refuses to lead Keith by the hande. And he inherits the Black Lion and the title of the Black Paladin.

Remember my words about throwing a chick out of the nest?

This is exactly what Shiro did. By becoming one with the Black Lion, he forcibly made Keith the Black Paladin.

Stage 4. Road of Trials

You wanted me to lead Voltron? This is the kind of leader I am.

It’s difficult to say how correct this decision was. Rather, Shiro simply didn’t see other options, since the Black Lion itself was made for an adult, responsible leader, and such ones don’t lie on the road.

And Keith, who was left with no choice, began his journey. On his trembling legs, the child began to walk forward, constantly falling and dropping the rest of the children following him. Naturally, he wasn’t happy about this. He constantly looked back, looking for thefsther figure and hoping to take him by the hand again. But dad saw was no longer a kid, but an adult and wasn’t going to help at all.

However, such a harsh decision did bear fruit. Other kids helped the main character; they walked tightly holding each other’s hands, and Keith began to feel grateful for the support and responsibility for the fact that when he falls, everyone else falls.

But then comes the second most important event in Keith’s life.

4.1 Test challenge & prepare hero

Shiro: Here’s the plan. Keith: Okay, team, we need to…

A sure sign: two housewives in the kitchen will lead to broken plates.

To accurately understand the meaning of this stage, I’ll briefly describe this stage in understandable language: this is the moment when the main character tries to defeat the main boss of the game for the first time. The main boss kicks him, but doesn’t kill, and the main character retreats, realizing that his level is too low.

And yes, the main boss of Keith’s game is the Evil Father in the person of Kuron. Kind dad has become a terrible dragon, and the boy must figure out what to do with it.

Kuron-Shiro returns. He returns, and the paladins receive not one, but two Black Paladins at once, which entails the need to establish a hierarchy. Because two drivers can’t sit behind the wheel at once – sooner or later a conflict will begin.

And on the one hand, Kuron actively advocates for Keith to be in command, and on the other hand, out of habit, gives instructions himself. And Keith needs to enter into some kind of rivalry in order to arrange roles and finally establish himself as a leader.

The boy has just begun to walk firmly, and dad is already offering to run a hundred meters for a bet.

And what does Keith do in this situation? He runs away He runs away to the Blades because he feels completely unprepared for such a challenge.

There’s only one question: why to the Blades? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: Keith learned that he was half Galra, saw his own kind in the Blades and decided to go to them. This is exactly what the paladins thought, and therefore they forgave Keith for such a decision.

In reality, the main motivating reason wasn’t race, but the behavior of the Blades in relation to Keith. More precisely – Kolivan’s behavior.

You broke protocol.

Statement of fact without any punishment.

If Shiro saw Keith as an adult and treated him like an adult, then for Kolivan – from the height of his past centuries – Keith was still a child. Colivan didn’t read him speeches about the need to become a leader and didn’t arrange competitions, and therefore, faced with an insurmountable obstacle, Keith simply fled under his wing.

And he got in Kolivan exactly the one he needed all these long years. Kolivan saw how the boy was unstable on his feet, took his hand and led him. He didn’t require Keith to walk on his own, but didn’t interfere with his attempts to do so. And he didn’t threaten with this terrible word «responsibility», but only reminded that every action has consequences, that if Keith falls in his desire to rush forward without looking, it will hurt.

You didn’t consider that something could have happenned to you.

Kolivan didn’t go easy on him, because such behavior was contrary to the Galran culture based on survival. But under his leadership, Keith became calmer, more concentrated and more confident in himself. He was in the position of an ordinary soldier, and therefore he wasn’t required to make decisions. On the other hand, Kolivan kept him nearby and from his example Keith learned what it means to be a leader.

Shiro: You must defeat the dragon! Keith: o_o Dragon called Life: You can’t defeat me, hero! Keith: O_O Kolivan: Dayak’s Galran Recreational School offers dragon-fighting training services Keith: Six months, please.

The evil Shiro demanded that Keith go ahead and lead everyone. Kolivan the mentor showed Keith how to do it.

The long-lost father returned home, and the child, having ceased to fear for his future, finally regained his balance. He began to stand harder on his feet and walk harder, because he felt that now he wouldn’t fall.

Again, speaking in gaming language, up to this point, Keith was offered to level up in locations with enemies above his level. It went slowly, the enemies were killed badly, and they could also kill Keith himself, and then he would lose experience and go back. Now he found a location with enemies of his level, and the process went quickly, fervently and without unnecessary risk.

Stage 5. Nadir/Abyss

So, Keith has leveled up and is ready to face his dragon again. What happens to him when he comes close to the moment X?

5.1 Meeting with the Goddess

The Goddess embodies for the Hero the personification of unconditional love, as the beginning of life. And meeting with her allows the protagonist to learn this aspect and understand that life is not only a series of suffering.

And here I can’t help but remember that initially a pairing with Acxa was planned for Keith, but then, to the great joy of some of the fans, this pairing was cut out. Since I hate it when the screenwriters cut a ready-made script, I can’t say that I’m satisfied with this fact, but at the same time I can’t but admit that this pairing practically didn’t play any role for Keith’s storyline. In Keith’s storyline, pairing isn’t at all important or even needed, because an abandoned child needs a completely different manifestation of love.

And his mother becomes his Goddess, the one who bestows unconditional love. Kolivan – who probably quickly guessed whose son Keith was – gives Keith a task and sends him to meet with Krolia. Subsequently, they travel together for several years, allowing Keith to satisfy the need for maternal love and close the state of his relationship with the maternal figure.

5.2 Woman as Temptress

And here we’re beginning to say hello to the edited S8. Temptress or Deceiver. A person encountered on the path of the protagonist, who takes advantage of his weaknesses and manipulates him for their own purposes. Historically, most often this person appears in the image of a seductive woman, because:

men in life easily trust beauties;

intrigue is a favorite female way of achieving a goal

Keith’s Journey at this stage is still a classic version, but thanks to the people who edited S8 this moment is completely lost. And it’s very bad.

Because the moment disappears when the hero realizes that he was deceived. When he realizes that his weaknesses have been taken advantage of. When he realizes that weaknesses can’t be indulged if you don’t want bad consequences.

So who is our very woman-temptress? That’s right, this is a sweet helpless girl Romelle, tearing out the metal sheathing with her bare hands and knocking out the hatches with her foot. (In this meta, I went through the scenes with Romelle in detail to explain why I consider her a liar )

Keith, look at those sad innocent eyes, how can you not believe them? Look how lonely she is, how she suffers after losing her brother.

What is Keith doing? Keith makes a stand: I see the goal, I believe in myself, I don’t notice obstacles.

When they flew to the moon base, he was already mentally prepared to see evidence of Lotor’s villainy. At the base, they didn’t see either guards or any warehouses with quintessence, but he immediately concluded that Lotor would get it from the Alteans. Why? Because «Do first, think later» is the main motto of the Red Paladin. After all, they were following the trail of the blue quintessence, and Romelle said that Lotor was taking away the Alteans. And Keith hastily decided that there’s a direct connection between the two events.

In mathematical logic, there’s such a concept as necessary and sufficient conditions. A sufficient condition is a condition that is sufficient to declare that the theory is correct. A necessary condition is a condition without which it’s impossible to prove that a theory is correct. The sufficient condition can’t exist without the necessary, but the necessary condition can’t replace the sufficient.

And it so happened that Keith used the necessary condition as sufficient and as a result came to the wrong conclusions. And inspired by righteous rage, our protector of the innocent flew to punish the big bad Lotor. Punished, well done. So that the whole universe backfired.

5.3 Atonement with Father

Here it is, here is the main moment of the feat. When the hero is faced with the dual figure of the father: both a protector and a tyrant. Literally dual in the face of Shiro and Kuron.

Kit tries to save the Good Father, Shiro, and at the same time – save the last echo of his childhood. But the Good Father says that he’s lost forever and can’t be returned in any way, and Keith has to come to terms with this. Because his friends need him. Because paladins need their leader.

And only at this moment, when Keith agrees to give up childhood and accept responsibility, he comes to terms with his father figure.

The Evil Father waited until his son became an adult, and ceased to be a source of fear and aggression. Kuron and Shiro merge, returning not Good or Evil, but just a Father to Keith. Not an all-powerful protector, but a person who’s ready to support his son and needs to be supported.

The feat was finally accomplished. The dragon is defeated without firing a shot.

But is this the end? No, this is not at all the end of the Hero’s Journey, but only the middle. The only problem is that the next stage – leading up to the recieving of the award – has been ripped out of Keith’s storyline.

But this is the most important stage.

Stage 6. Transformation

Having accomplished the feat, the hero changes internally and looks at the world with new eyes.

This stage for Keith began in S7 and should have reached its top by the middle, if not the end of S8.

Keith stopped running from responsibility. He agreed to become a leader. But he must also understand how to do it correctly. Draw conclusions from everything that happened in the past.

Shiro taught him to be decisive and not afraid of the unknown. Keith learned this lesson.

Now it’s time to learn Kolivan’s lesson. A lesson of realizing that every action has its consequences. And that you need to calculate and think before you do something.

But thanks to the changes in S8, instead of a process of awareness, instead of seeing the consequences of his actions and drawing conclusions, Keith suddenly turned into a «wise leader», infallible and invincible. So wise that he even teaches Zarkon.

Keith. Teaches. Zarkon.

You know, I sincerely admire Zarkon as a person. A great warrior, a great strategist, a wise ruler who concluded peace treaties and alliances for the good of his people. A loving husband and father. He was mistaken in only one thing – when, in desperation, he risked everything to save his wife and son.

Whatever one may say, but this is the most well-written pairing of the series.

And even mad after the shock dose of the quintessence, he – having in his hands only a disadvantaged people and a handful of ships practically left without energy – managed to build the strongest empire in the universe.

And Keith teaches him. The same Keith, who more than once abandoned everything and everyone to save Shiro.

When I watched this scene, I wanted to say only one thing: boy, you are now lecturing a man who came out against your Red Lion with one bayard and almost rolled you into a pancake. And you screwed up so many times that the entire universe burns with a bright flame.

Who are you to teach him?

Neither you nor your whole bunch of paladins were able to defeat Zarkon. Lotor did it, in a fair one-on-one duel.

Who are you to look down on him and claim victory over him? You didn’t defeat him. You weren’t even with the team at that moment.

And who is Keith for the Galra to offer him the throne of the emperor? He’s a savior to Earth, but to the Galra he’s nothing. They don’t care that he’s a Black Paladin, but they know that the paladins of Voltron destroyed the empire and thus broke the lives of many representatives of their people.

I could understand if they tried to make Lahn the ruler. Lahn tried to save at least something left of the empire and took care of his people. Or Kolivan, although the Blades always tried to stay in the shadows. But Keith has done absolutely nothing for the Galra to claim such a title.

Child, instructing adults – quite silly content for children. And all I can do in this case is an endless facepalm.

Someone who seemed to have Keith as a favorite character decided to give him a cookie in the end. To take this cookie from another – hated – character and give it to Keith. True, Keith didn’t need it at all, but the main thing is that another – hated – character has lost his cookie.

But let’s get back to the Hero’s Journey. What was really going to happen there?

Fortunately for us, the initial outline of Keith’s transformation is still being felt. This allows us to make fairly strong assumptions, and not just poke a finger in the sky.

The first – the earliest demonstration of Keith’s internal changes – is the scene with Zethrid. The episode was added in S8, but let’s keep in mind that it was originally planned for the beginning of S7.

Keith forgives Zethrid. Remember what Keith did to any hurt he got as a child? He got into a fight. Why did he do it? Because an insecure, scared person is afraid to appear weak. Therefore, any aggression is immediately responded to, if suddenly someone decides that they can offend him with impunity.

You need to have inner strength and confidence in order to respond to aggression with calmness and mercy. Lotor forgave his generals not only out of sentimentality, but also because he was confident in his abilities. A person filled with inner strength remains calm and merciful even to enemies, because in his soul there’s no fear for his life.

Keith became more confident, and therefore calmer, and most importantly, more merciful. And he found the strength to understand Zethrid, forgive and respond to her aggression with compassion.

There’s nothing special about killing your enemy. True valor is needed to understand them and forgive them. And he needed it, it took him later at the end of S7 to learn an important new lesson.

Unfortunately, to really understand the essence of my reasoning below, you’ll need to read my meta about Admiral Sanda. There’s a lot written there, and I wouldn’t want to drag it all here, so I’ll just build my ideas on what I wrote there.

Now I’ll return to the most recent events of S7. When the team of paladins ends up in prison and learns that it was Admiral Sanda’s fault.

Have you ever wondered why at the moment of confession we’re shown Keith’s face? And what was that face like?

Keith had been running away from the title of leader for so long, because even then he realized that this was a difficult role. Keith became a leader against his will and felt that he was carrying a huge burden.

But becoming more self-confident, more mature, Keith also learned to be more indulgent towards other people’s mistakes.

He understood Sanda because he knew how terrible it was to hold other people’s lives in his hands. And he forgave her, because he found the strength to respond to the stab in the back with compassion.

And Sanda taught him something that no one had ever taught him. Neither Kolivan nor Shiro.

Sanda taught him how to behave as a leader if he realized that he had made a total mistake.

She made no excuses, throwing the blame on Sam Holt.

She didn’t quarrel with the paladins, proving her case to the last.

When she realized that she was mistaken, thereby substituting people who depend on her, she admitted she was wrong. She admitted and asked for forgiveness. And she did everything to fix it – standing up to protect the paladins in a moment of danger.

And this is the most difficult option for taking responsibility. Taking responsibility for the fact that your actions have hurt other people. Who aren’t obliged to forgive you just because you threw up your hands and said «I’m sorry».

And Keith, whose actions brought trouble on dozens, if not hundreds of planets, badly needed this lesson. Sanda, without knowing it, gave Keith advice on how to act in such a situation, and later – in S8 – Keith began to use this advice.

When? Remember the conversation with Lahn. Did Keith have any need to reveal that it was he and Krolia who released the monster? No. Would Lahn ever know about this? Also no. Only Keith and Krolia knew why this creature was free. They might have shoved responsibility on the long-dead Galra, and no one could ever prove otherwise.

But Keith felt guilty for the death of Lahn’s subordinates and felt it right to confess. To take the responsibility. Would Keith from the first seasons, who sought to hide from responsibility behind his Father’s back, have done this? No. That Keith would have said nothing.

The completion of Keith’s Transformation stage, alas, is associated with the return of Lotor and therefore has been completely cut out. After the events of Clear Day, the true details of the events on the Altean colony were to surface, and Keith had to decide how to react to this information.

One thing I can say for sure: a conversation with Zarkon would have had a completely different tone. It’s unlikely that Zarkon would have been struck to tears by the fact that he fought with the entire universe, because for the Galra, all life is war. But he wouldn’t forgive himself an attempt to kill his own child. He wouldn’t forgive himself for the betrayal of his only son.

And Keith, from the height of his guilt – after all, it was he who left Lotor to die – couldn’t help but try to support Zarkon in this moment. And in the end, Zarkon would talk to him about responsibility, not that «Galra blood is cool, it made you a leader».

Upbringing made Keith a leader, the Galra blood gave him only beautiful eyes and chic hair.

Stage 7. Apotheosis

The hero receives his reward, consolidates the experience gained and sets new goals for himself.

Everything is quite simple here. The Blades in the face of Kolivan and Krolia join the celebration of life again, and they all decide what to do with Honerva. Keith has a mom, dad and an older brother. Keith paid off his debts, got his family, and the only obstacle to returning a quiet life is Honerva, not Keith’s personal problems.

Stage 8. Return Threshold

8.1 Refusal of the Return

About this, alas, nothing is known. The only thing I can assume is a state when a person who has returned from the war can’t learn to live peacefully again. In the case of Keith, he’s used to being the leader of the paladins and perhaps so got used to this role that he will no longer want to leave it. But whether Keith had this in reality is unknown.

8.2 Magic Flight

Flight of the paladins between realities on the mega-Voltron.

8.3 Rescue from Without

The Lion Goddess helps the paladins follow Honerva.

8.4 Final Challenge

Paladins meet Honerva in the space between realities. Allura and Lotor leave to restore the worlds, the guys return home.

Stage 9. Return

Free life, the hero becomes the master of his destiny. Epilogue.

From my point of view, there could be no disbandment of the Blades of Marmora. There are enough problems in the universe to require the services of an elite combat unit. And Keith could have stayed there as Kolivan’s assistant. It’s a bit early for the leadership, and it’s not a fact that Keith wants this. By the standards of the Galra, he’s still a very young man, with a whole life ahead of him. Surely there would be scenes with family and friends. Keith should be shown as a serene mature person.

What conclusions can be drawn from everything described above? Well, I personally understood for myself why it was Keith who gained such wild popularity among fans. Monomyth, as always, worked flawlessly and took the minds of people with it. I’m even beginning to suspect that the screenwriters simply took Campbell’s book and used it as a scheme for work, as Lucas once did when creating the old Star Wars trilogy. Keith had every chance of becoming Luke Skywalker of VLD, but, alas, not with that ending.

It’s a pity that such a wonderful work was let down the drain, I hope the screenwriters will please us in the future, and the result of their work will fall into more gracious hands.

#voltron #team voltron #VLD #keith #voltron keith #shiro #voltron shiro

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this-is-a-podcast-fanblog · 5 years

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I wasn’t gonna just find out about Cecil’s engagement ring and not do anything with that information.

Here’s the post if anyone’s not sure what I’m talking about. Fanfic under the cut.

Carlos isn’t sure what engagement customs are like in Night Vale, so he asks Janice on one of the weekends while she’s over at their house.

“Oh, it’s just like everywhere else, I think, just a ring, and you go down on one knee, and - OH MY GOD UNCLE CARLOS ARE YOU GOING TO PROPOSE TO UNCLE CECIL?”

“Shh!” Carlos exclaims, glancing back through the screen door from the porch. Cecil is in the kitchen, making dinner, with his cat-ear headphones on; judging from how he’s dancing, his music is probably turned up too loud to hear. He’s so cute.

“Sorry!” Janice leans closer, conspiratorially. Her eyes glitter. “But wait, are you? Are you going to propose to Uncle Cecil?!”

“Yes.”

Janice shrieks, wheels her chair forward to where he’s sitting, and throws her arms around his waist. “Oh my god! Oh my god, Uncle Carlos!!!! I’m so excited! Have you bought a ring yet? Have you decided when you’re gonna ask him?”

“Not yet.” Carlos glances back into the house. Cecil is spinning around to whatever music it is he’s got on; his pink fishnet skirt swishes over distressed neon yellow tights. When he sees Carlos he grins and then goes back to dancing. “I want everything to be perfect, you know? And I know, scientifically speaking, nothing can ever be perfect, because life has so many variables, and so by that logic no engagement ring can be perfect, because engagement rings are made out of metal and minerals and honestly? Minerals are very unpredictable, as elements go. But I would like it to be almost perfect.”

Janice nods understandingly. “Well, maybe I could help you. He’s covering the morning show tomorrow, right? We can tell him you’re taking the day off work to bring me to the mall. We can say I need new sports gear”

“You didn’t mention that you wanted new sports gear.”

“No, I’m sorry. That would be our ruse. We’d really be going to buy a ring.”

“Oh!” Carlos nods. “Yes, okay, that makes sense.”

And they do their niece/uncle secret handshake, the one they’ve been perfecting for months now, even though, scientifically speaking, nothing can ever be perfect.

The Night Vale Mall has three fine jewelry shops: Jared’s, Kay’s, and Renaldo’s. The owner of Jared’s, who is named Yuzuki, shows them fifteen different rings, but Janice shakes her head at all of them. “These are too plain,” she says as she wheels aggressively through the aisles of display cases. “Uncle Cecil is not plain.”

“He’s really not,” Carlos agrees. Just this morning Cecil left for work in a black jumpsuit, white pinstripe pattern belt, and matching green beret and combat boots, with rainbow lipstick. “This is fashion, honey,” he’d said.

The owner of Kay’s, who is named Paul, offers Janice and Carlos a suspicious looking red drink from a vial. It turns out that the Kay’s had been renovated so that it was now a meeting place for a new blood cult.

They finally find a ring at Renaldo’s, where the owner, Katherine, suggests a specialty cut diamond shaped like a beaker. “Because that’s your thing, right?” they smiles. “You’re a scientist? I listen to your boyfriend’s show every day. This one is somewhat expensive, though.”

“That’s okay,” says Carlos.

“Money is no object,” adds Janice.

“Well, technically, money is an object, because in its physical form money is formed out of matter, and matter is -”

“Do you want to add engraving, Uncle Carlos?” Janice suggests, throwing him off of his scientific explanation. He decided that yes, he did want engraving.

Katherine designs a prototype on their computer and shows it to the two, saying that the ring would be ready to pick up in two weeks. Carlos watches nervously as Janice snaps a picture. “Doesn’t Cecil follow your Instagram?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m posting this on my Finsta.”

“Your what?”

“My Finsta. You know, you have your Rinsta, which is your normal account, and then you have your Finsta, which is your more secret one for friends, and then you have your Ginsta, where you post visual sacrifices to the various gods.”

“Oh.” He’s still not sure, but she assures him that Cecil won’t see the picture. She captions it, “Took my uncle shopping”, with the wedding ring emoji, the winky face emoji, and then the radio star emoji, which is a gravestone that reads “killed by video”.

Cecil may not have seen the picture, but by the end of the week it seems like everyone else in town has. When he buys coffee in the morning, the barista winks and asks, “Sooo, any updates yet?” and pumps her eyebrows in rhythm with pumping syrup into his latte. When they go for walks, he notices people concealed in the bushes with binoculars looking at Cecil’s left hand. In the middle of the night when he gets up to go to the bathroom, there’s a note taped to the front of his shower curtain written in blood that reads, “Hey, if you’re looking for a romantic place to propose, I’ll give you a 15% discount. -Gino.”

As always, though, Cecil seems totally oblivious. “Hey, look at that!” he says, pointing to the sky where a secret police plane has written, “PROPOSE TO HIM ALREADY”. “Sheriff Sam is trying to help someone propose! Aw, that’s so sweet. Sam always has our town’s best interests at heart, huh?”

“They sure do,” says Carlos, sweating.

The town continues to drop hints - dropping them on his front lawn, out of the sky when he goes outside, and one day one falls from the ceiling and lands on his head while he’s braiding his hair. “I get it, Faceless Old Woman,” Carlos grumbles. “The ring hasn’t come in yet.”

“I am eager to attend your wedding,” hisses a voice from the shadows. “I will steal an exceptional bottle of wine for you as a gift.”

Finally, finally, he gets a text that the ring has come in to Renaldo’s for him to pick up. He’s not quite sure how he’s going to propose, but he thinks that once he has the ring, some inspiration might strike him.

Cecil’s show starts at four o’clock. He’s anxious about the broadcast today, since developments with the most recent town-threatening entity have been escalating. “It’s important that I update the town,” he says.

“It’s also important that you keep yourself safe,” Carlos tells him as he fixes the crooked bow tie around Cecil’s neck. It has a pattern of slices of pizza dancing with french fries. “I want you home tonight. Please don’t get hurt.”

“I’ll be careful, bunny. I always am.”

You never are, Carlos thinks, but he just says, “Okay, babe. I love you.” He kisses Cecil’s forehead.

He drives over to pick up the ring. It comes in a little velvet box that fits perfectly into the pocket of his labcoat. He chooses purple for the box color - it’s Cecil’s favorite. The ring looks even better in person than it did on the model, with the fractal diamonds glinting in light. He admires it for a moment before snapping the box shut and sliding it into his pocket. “It’s perfect,” he tells Katharine. “Thanks so much.”

“Best of luck!” they exclaim.

He doesn’t think he’s going to propose tonight, but just in case, he goes home early and makes a nice dinner. Time passes as time always passes in Night Vale - slowly and quickly and strangely. He finishes dinner, but since he’s not sure when Cecil’s going to be home, he turns on the radio to see where he is in the broadcast.

There’s nothing. Just static.

Panic wells in his throat. He rushes to the counter and yanks his phone off the charger, goes to his contacts list with trembling fingers. Cecil’s number goes straight to voicemail. He tries the radio station’s phone number, and that goes through, but all he hears on the other side are dull crashes and distant roaring.

“Cecil? Cecil, are you there? Cecil!”

Nothing.

He’s shaking now, trembling from head to foot, and he knows he can’t drive in this state, but he’s rushing to the door anyway, grabbing his labcoat off the back of the chair. Cecil has to be okay, he has to be, he -

The door flies open from the other side and Cecil stumbles in. He’s covered in dust, his bowtie is askew, and there’s a reddish-brown stain along his bare side under his crop top. Which is soaked in that same color.

“Sweetie!” Carlos shrieks. He grabs Cecil in his arms fretting over the injury. “How are you hurt? Oh no, where did I put the rubbing alcohol? Are you hurt somewhere else?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Cecil catches Carlos’s face. “Honey. Carlos. Breathe, you’re hyperventilating.”

“I was - I was so worried about you -” Carlos sobs and hugs Cecil tight. “Fuck, Cece, don’t ever do that again!”

“I’m sorry!” Cecil hugs him back. “This isn’t blood. We had a false alarm on that recent threat and Station Management came out of their office. I spilled my strawberry-banana-spinach-passionfruit-cherry smoothie in fear, though.”

“Oh my god.” Carlos buries his face in Cecil’s neck. “What would I do without you?” Many people, in this case, would say “What am I going to do with you?” and say this in a subtle way of not communicating what they are actually trying to communicate - which is that they do not want to be without the other person. Carlos doesn’t like indirect communication, so he says, “What would I do without you?”

“Well, you’ll never have to be without me! Oh, and Carlos?” Cecil pulls back from the hug a little. “Do you think we can get the smoothie out of my crop top?”

Carlos laughs. A small sob comes out, too, one that was in the back of his throat. “Yes, baby, I think we can get the smoothie out of your crop top.”

Those first few words stick in his head, though. You’ll never have to be without me.

He can feel the weight of engagement ring in his pocket. He thinks he might be taking it out of that pocket soon.

#i've wanted to write a fic about carlos's proposal for SO LONG #i really hope you liked it #welcome to night vale #carlos the scientist #cecil palmer #cecilos #janice palmer #podcasts #fanfiction

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 5 years

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Socialization techniques through which the UC / FFWPU members were able to influence

by Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D.

Abstract This article reports on the experiences and thoughts of an anthropologist who, under an assumed identity, participated in a 3-day Unification Church workshop. Although the author’s expectation that she would encounter “brainwashing” techniques was not met, she was, nevertheless, struck by the subtle, yet powerful, socialization techniques through which the UC members were able to influence her. She concludes that, to be effective, preventive education in this area must address the subtleties of the socialization processes that can bring about major personality changes.

__________________________________________

I recently had an encounter with what has been termed “brainwashing,” when I spent a weekend at Camp K, a Moonie training camp in Northern California [in circa 1981-83?]. As a result of my experience there, I would like to offer a few comments on the nature of brainwashing from the perspective of an anthropologist. I went to the camp to do research for a project on deprogramming. I thought it was important to see what the “programming” was all about. I pretended, however, to be a young woman who wandered into their church by chance, and who knew little about Rev. Moon or Moonies.

To begin with, I was allowed plenty of sleep and given a sufficient amount of protein. Both mornings, I got out of bed around 8:30 or 9:00 – when I was tired of laying around. No one made me get up early. We were given eggs, fish, tuna, something that looked like “chicken spam,” lasagna (meatless, but plenty of cheese) and other foods. We were constantly being fed – three meals and about two snacks per day. Most people looked a bit overweight. In any case, the two things I was looking for that might “brainwash” me were not present.

I was further disarmed by the fact that the group let me know right up front that they were the Unification Church, and followers of the Reverent Moon. The San Francisco Bay area center had earned a rather bad reputation for hiding that fact until a new recruit was already well entrenched in the group. Apparently, this is no longer true. I walked into the church on Bush Street in San Francisco on a Friday evening, and the first thing that was said to me was “You understand that this is the Unification Church and that we’re followers of the Reverent Moon?” They also had a permanent sign on the front of their building stating “Unification Church.” The first evening at Bush Street, after showing some interest in the Church, I was shown a videotape about the Church and Reverend Moon. In order to go to their camp for the weekend, I had to sign a release, which clearly stated that I was going with the Unification Church. However, the fact that they were now being honest about who they were, in contrast to their past deceptiveness, served to weaken my defense.

The first night, I heard the word “brainwashing” used four or five time, always in a joking context. I finally asked John, my “spiritual father,” why that word kept cropping up so often. He said it was because people often accuse them of being brainwashed. The explanation I heard several times that weekend in this regard is that “people are so cynical and they can’t believe that we can be happy and want to help other people and love God and each other. So they think that we must be brainwashed to feel this way. Ha! Ha!” I was also told by two different Moonies about a recent psychological study comparing Moonies with young adults from other mainstream religious groups. They told me that Moonies came out much better in terms of independence, aggressiveness, assertiveness, and other positive characteristics. The group is apparently meeting the criticism leveled at them head on. Their explanations seemed so reasonable. They would ask, “We don’t look brainwashed, do we?” And they didn’t.

I somehow expected to see glassy-eyed zombies. I didn’t. There was one new member – he’d been in the group only a month and a half – who seemed to fit that stereotype. When I talked to him, his gaze wandered, his eyes not fixed on anything. But everyone else seemed perfectly normal. They were able to laugh and joke (about everything except themselves, which I’ll discuss later) and talk seriously about things. The only thing that really struck me as strange was a kind of false over-enthusiasm. Any time anyone performed, which was often, everyone would clap and cheer wildly. They were good, but not that good. During lectures, they would underscore points with a hearty “yeah!” I must admit, however, that by the end of the weekend, much of the enthusiasm seemed more charming than odd.

Since the issue was brainwashing, I was constantly monitoring my mental state. During lectures (three per day, each lasting about an hour to an hour and a half), I would sit there and smugly critique the lecture (to myself) as it was presented. My intellectual faculties were as sharp as ever. I was able to note the kinds of techniques they were using as well. Immediately before each lecture, we would sing songs from their songbook, to the accompaniment of a guitar. Their songs are very beautiful, and the lyrics always upbeat. As a result, you start off the lecture feeling good from the singing. The lectures are always ended by singing a few more songs. This puts a whole aura of “goodness” around the lectures.

The lectures were carefully orchestrated so as to create a feeling in the listener that they must be “learned,” rather than analyzed. I could discuss this in greater detail, but for now, I will return to the issue of brainwashing. Despite the use of questionable and manipulative educational techniques, I was constantly aware of the functioning of my intellect and of my beliefs, and at no time did I feel that they were being influenced. This may not be the case with an individual who has not spent 13 years in college, but, as will become clear, it only underscores the power of brainwashing. As an anthropologist, I found their beliefs interesting; as an individual, I found them ridiculous. Nor did I experience any altered states of consciousness to indicate that I was being hypnotized in any way. So I thought I was safe.

What I didn’t realize is that the “brainwashing” – or to use a better term, “mind control” – doesn’t come until later. And what is really being talked about is a process of socialization, one which goes on in every household around the world. Human beings are not born with ideas. Ideas are learned. Anthropologists, more than any other group, perhaps, are aware of the variety of beliefs that are held by people around the world. We acquire these beliefs through a process that involves observation, imitation, and testing. Beliefs that are acquired in childhood are generally the strongest, although they may be changed through experience as one grows older. When we have experiences that conflict with our world view, we either rationalize the experience (e.g., I couldn’t find my necklace in the jewelry box yesterday, but today it’s there – I must have overlooked it, or someone must have taken it and put it back), leaving our beliefs intact (e.g., objects don’t magically disappear and reappear), or, if it happens too often and we are presented with an alternative world view which accounts for it, we may change our beliefs. (This is the stuff that Kuhn writes about in his classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) it is possible to explain the same event in many ways. What cults do is to offer an alternative way of looking at things. When everyone holds the same belief but you, their view starts to make sense. Society, especially the smaller scale societies we had throughout most of human evolution, could not operate smoothly if everyone were to hold a different belief about the nature of reality. Millions of years of evolution have selected for a human tendency to be influenced by the beliefs of others. If this were not the case, how could any child be socialized to be a member of the group? There are, of course, rebels and visionaries, people who do not accept the beliefs of the group. But they are much fewer in number. Furthermore, adolescence seems to be a major time for group conformity. Teenagers appear to have a strong need to belong, to look and act like one of the group. And it is these adolescents and post-adolescents who are most strongly attracted to cults.

How does mind control work? Let me rephrase that. Even “mind control” is too strong a term – for it, too, conjures up visions of men reaching invisible fingers into your brain, controlling your thoughts and actions like a puppeteer. I think of it more as a socialization process in which one is led to think like the rest of the group. Robert Lifton, in his seminal book entitled: Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China, outlines the eight conditions that result in ideological totalism: milieu control, mystical manipulation, need for purity, personal confession, acceptance of basic group dogma as sacred, loading the language, subordination of person to doctrine, and dispensing of existence. As I see it, all of these features conspire to do two things: (1) isolate the person within a particular cultural context so that that context becomes the only reality, and (2) make the individual feel that if he becomes a member of the group, he will be special. These features are an inherent part of any culture, and not necessarily purposefully contrived to achieve particular aims. Let me give an example.

Several years ago, I spent a summer doing fieldwork in Guatemala. After a month in the field, I couldn’t remember a lot of things about home, e.g., my husband’s voice. He was back in the U.S. Reality was where I was, in Guatemala. One regret I have is not buying more of the beautiful Indian weavings. The reason I didn’t was that they were “too expensive.” The finest cost approximately $30. To buy something similar here would cost well over $100. But I had internalized the Guatemalan standard of money. That summer, no one was purposely trying to control my environment. It was controlled by virtue of the fact that I was spending most of my time in a small rural village. Though I retained most of my American ways and beliefs, my sense of reality was slowly changing, and Guatemala became the standard by which I tested reality.

Regarding the notion that ideological totalism functions to make an individual feel that if he joins the group, he will somehow be better than everyone who is not a member – this is not a new concept. All cultures promote this idea about themselves. The attitude is called “ethnocentrism.” Everything we do is right and natural; everything outsiders do is unnatural, barbaric, etc. The names that most small scale societies use to refer to themselves generally translate into something meaning “the people” or “human beings,” implying that everyone who is not a member of the group is somehow less than human. Perhaps I am overstating the case, but what I saw the Moonies do was to do on a smaller scale what all cultures do with their members.

The techniques they use are for the most part, not very sinister. They are things we encounter in everyday life. They are how we become socialized. The cult becomes a total subculture.

Which brings me to what I think is the most important part. In the beginning, they don’t influence you by changing your beliefs. As I said earlier, they did not affect mine in the least in that short weekend. (although I should point out that my beliefs are very clear and strong. Most people who join the church are self-described “searchers”: they’re looking for answers.) the way they get to you is emotionally. If you stay with an isolated group of people long enough, you will eventually begin to think like they do, act like they do, see the world as they do. It’s part of human nature. It’s what we anthropologists mean when we talk about enculturation. The degree of enculturation (taking on the culture of another group) will depend upon the relative amount of time you associate with people from your own culture and from the new culture, among other factors. If you associate only with members of the new culture, acculturation will generally be much more rapid.

So how do they get you to stay? By giving you a good time, by being likeable, by being happy. Of all the things I expected to happen that weekend, the last thing I expected was to have a good time. Except for the lectures, which I found rather boring and insulting (I thought they were aimed at about a third grade level), I really had fun. We sang a lot, people performed songs and poems, we put on a group talent show, we played volleyball. We became children again, with no responsibilities. It was like being at camp; in fact, it was called camp: Camp K. the setting was beautiful – in the mountains, along a creek, with lots of trees.

They also make you feel really good about yourself. One of the famous Moonie techniques is “love bombing,” which basically consists of giving someone a lot of positive attention. For example, one morning, Jane said to me, “You know, you’re really one of the most open people I’ve ever met. You don’t put up any defenses. You’re really open. I think that’s so great.” When she said this, part of my mind went “flash. Love-bombing, love bombing.” But the other part of me went, “Yeah, but it’s really true. (Don’t we all like to believe the best about ourselves?) She probably really means it.” In any case, it made me feel good. Despite my intellectual recognition of what she was doing, emotionally, I bought it.

Another technique they use is to make you feel part of the group. New recruits were constantly encouraged to take part in the many performances that were put on. During one of the initial group sessions, when we were introducing ourselves, I mentioned that I like to dance. That night, when we were making up our presentation for the “talent show,” everyone kept urging me to choreograph our musical number. I felt a bit shy about it, but then figured, why not? I had never seen a more supportive group in my life. There was no way to fail – except not to take part. I had about 5 minutes to make up and teach a number to a group of 15. needless to say, my “dance” was simple and rather silly. But it was all in fun and didn’t matter. It made me feel a part of the group. It also gave them ample opportunity for more love-bombing. After the show and all the next day, at least a dozen people came up to tell me what a “great” dance it was. Despite the fact that I knew it wasn’t, it still felt good to have people compliment me on something that is important to me. I was made to feel good by being part of the group.

They also made me feel that I was a lot like individual members of the group. Part of my “cover” was that I was a third grade school teacher. (I did teach 3rd grade for 10 weeks once.) when I told this to my “spiritual father” he replied, “I used to be a school teacher too.” He kept emphasizing how much alike we are. (We’re not.) He also told me how much I remind him of a close friend of his. Someone else told me how much I reminded her of her sister-in-law. Other people told me that I look “so familiar.” It was rather transparent to me that this was merely a technique to make me feel that we were not so different and I could be a part of them. (Actually, this technique was too obvious and not effective on me.)

Socialization also works through subtle peer pressure. At the end of Saturday evening, we once again got in our groups to discuss “what we liked best about the day.” As we went around the circle, people mentioned things like the lecture we had on Rev. Moon, or the movie about the Unification Church, or something that was said in the lecture. As it was coming around to me, I was thinking, “My honest answer would be the volleyball game. I really had a great time playing volleyball. But if I say that, I’m going to sound really shallow compared to everybody else. And I know I’m not shallow.” So I chose something that was also true, thought less so, but which sounded much better. When my turn came, I said, “I really enjoyed meeting a lot of really nice people.” Because of a general human tendency to try to create a positive image of ourselves, I was slowly becoming socialized into the ways of the group. If this were a group that valued physical activity, my true response would have been appropriate. But this was a group that valued God, love, ideals, and so I found myself shaping myself in a way that emphasized the aspects of my being that were most acceptable to the values and standards of the group. We are all multi-faceted. It is a common experience to find that different people or groups of friends being out different aspects of our personality. Generally, we change subtly as we interact with each group, thus emphasizing all aspects of our personality. In a totalist group like the Moonies, however, the group values are so strong and so consistent that only one side of ourselves is elicited and reinforced. We thus shape our personality as we become socialized into the group.

The most powerful aspect of the whole experience was the personal relationships. At the beginning of the weekend, I remember thinking that there really wasn’t anyone there that I would want to be friends with. But by the end of 2 ½ very intense days, I had developed a few attachments, especially to two of the women, Susan and Jane. I also felt very guilty about deceiving them regarding who I was and why I was there. Yet I couldn’t tell them the truth because then I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t treating me differently from others – non-researchers. Even though I knew they were deceiving me in subtle ways and that the ultimate goal that was shaping their behavior toward me was the desire to get me to join the group, I still felt guilty. I honestly liked them. They seemed so open and honest with me, although I still don’t know how open and honest that really was. They seemed to like me. My ego wants to believe they did. The whole cult issue is very clouded in my mind. It is exceedingly complex. If their main motive was to get me to join the group, it was because they believed that by doing so, they were helping to save the world and my soul. Is that so dishonest? Yet how honest is it to consciously use those very effective techniques? I see them as both victims and victimizers. Simultaneously.

They presented a lifestyle alternative that was very appealing. Community, love, idealism. They presented a picture of true happiness. Yet we learn from ex-members (who admittedly have their own biases) that this picture is false. Or at least, only part of the picture. What is left out is the fear and guilt and the loss of self.

What the “brainwashing” is all about, in my view, is grabbing you emotionally. Giving you a good time, showing you others, like yourself, who are fulfilled. People who, like you, were searching for answers to life’s basic questions and found them. Why not stay a little longer, and learn a little more about them? You don’t have to believe in the doctrine right away. You can still think critically at the end of the weekend, when you make the decision to stay on for the 7-day seminar. But you’ve begun to develop emotional ties that will keep you there. To learn a little more. Until they have finally socialized you into their way of life. They grab you emotionally until they can keep you long enough to completely socialize you.

I am writing this article because I think it is important to understand what is going on. I know that I didn’t understand, despite having done a lot of reading and talking to people about it. I think it is because most of us have too many strong associations with the words “brainwashing” and “mind control.” They seem so overt. They’re not. The process can be extremely subtle. But because we have such strong associations, we do not recognize the process in its other manifestations. I think that in part it is because it is so familiar. It is something that happens everyday to every child that is born on this planet. Society is possible only because socialization techniques are effective. Socialization isn’t sinister. The problem I see with the cults is the context. As an anthropologist, I am aware of the existence of what we would term cults in other societies. I think that cults have a greater and more damaging impact in our culture because we value the individual so highly. From discussions with ex-members, it appears that one of the most negative effects of cult involvement is a loss of self. Many other societies value the group over the individual. Although I am not a psychiatrist, I would guess that it is not so damaging to the psyche to give up your individual identity to the group (the cult), if you have always been raised to value the group over the self. But in our culture, where the opposite is true, this can be devastating to many individuals.

I think it was the contrast between my expectations and my experience that allowed the weekend to have such a strong emotional affect on me. I was looking for something big and evil and what I found was very subtle and friendly, so I didn’t recognize its power. I was also mistaken in believing that the socialization process (or the influence process) was intellectual. It’s not. It’s emotional, and thus touches a deeper and more central part of one’s brain. When I left at the end of the weekend, a friend who had been in the Moonies and worked for a while as a deprogrammer picked me up. One of the first things I said to him was, “I had a great time. Remind me again what’s so bad about the Moonies.”

The next day I was interviewing a former deprogrammer. About half-way through the interview I asked her to describe exactly what she did during the deprogramming. She looked me directly in the eye and said, “Exactly what I’ve been doing with you.” This shocked me, because I didn’t think I needed any deprogramming. I didn’t buy their doctrine. They didn’t brainwash me. But they did get to me. I had forgotten all of the organization’s abuses of church members: the long hours of fund-raising, sometimes in dangerous areas, late at night; the lack of proper nutrition; the suicide training; the fear and guilt; the relative poverty the members live in, while the leaders live in splendor; the munitions factory owned by a church which is supposedly striving for world peace; the divisions created between family members; the deception; all of the horrors. Part of me remembered them, because I remember asking questions about what exactly the church does to make the world better, knowing that most members spend them time selling flowers. But that knowledge didn’t seem important. The people seemed good, so by association, the group did too. I had been influenced. The emotional truth was so much stronger than the intellectual one that it was the only one that seemed important.

I have mixed feelings about the use of the term “brainwashing” with regard to cult indoctrination. Because of the general effectiveness of the techniques in influencing a person’s thoughts and actions, I can understand the persistence of its use. If someone like Patty Hearst is going to be defended on such a basis, it needs to be recognized as a powerful and legitimate technique (although degree of susceptibility will vary). However, if the goal is to keep people out of cults, I am afraid the contrast between the stereotypic notion of brainwashing (which I don’t think we can escape) and the experience a new recruit has is to sharp, that people are disarmed and no longer aware of the techniques being used on them. Instead, I would advocate seeing the brainwashing process in the context of socialization. This is something with which we are all familiar and about which we hold few, if any, negative connotations. At the same time, it is something that we are aware of the power of. I would contend that the process of “brainwashing” can best be understood as an intensified socialization experience. I may be quibbling over semantics, but given the fact that the words in question are so loaded, I feel that semantics are important here. The Moonies take the raw material of our human needs – to be loved and to be accepted – and use the same techniques that for centuries cultures have used to shape individuals into members of the culture: peer pressure, reward and punishment, and the experience of being surrounded by individuals who all view the world in the same way.

My weekend with the Moonies was intended to answer some questions I had. Instead, it raised many more. The most solid thing I came away with, however, and my reason for writing this, is a new understanding of brainwashing. If we are to avoid it, we must first learn to recognize it.

__________________________________________

Geri-Ann Galanti is a medical anthropologist, and lecturer at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Galanti was formerly on the faculty of California State University’s Department of Anthropology and California State University’s School of Nursing, where she developed the curriculum for the BSN program’s Cultural Diversity in Healthcare course. Dr. Galanti is a consultant to Civility Mutual.

Geri-Ann Galanti

This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1984, Volume 1, Number 1, pages 27-36.

__________________________________________

Moon’s ultimate truth is … absolute obedience – Allen Tate Wood

Video: Paul Morantz on Cults, Confession and Mind Control

#Geri-Ann Galanti #Socialization techniques #influence #FFWPU

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viksworth · 5 years

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So I finished Zero Escape VLR yesterday, and I have a few thoughts...

Here’s what I like about it:

Although the game reminds me of a less gory version of Saw, I still enjoy the concept of when the first game had the digital root method, and the second game had the color method. I like doing the rooms. The fact that the first game had a time limit made the story a little bit more enjoyable for me, in the context that they only have nine hours to get off the ship.

Now, let me move on to my rant here. I give props to the writers and mathematicians, and physicists who took the time to explain what the math and science parts. So, clearly, there was a bit of research done.

And before anyone says anything (if anyone is reading this), for me, it was a lot. Look, I’m an avid reader, I got my degree in English, and I enjoy visual novels. There’s a lot of reading involved. But the story itself was too much. There was too much explaining.

Before anyone complains, let me say this---I personally got lost when I reached the true ending of the first game. I had to go back and play it again to understand what was happening. Not that I was dumbfounded, but to me, it was done poorly. Akane (or June) was there, and then she wasn’t. and then she was. Luckily, the second game explained what I like to call “time looping” better. Thanks for clarifying that this game is based on different dimensions and timelines. That I understand. It helped explained what the heck was going on in the true ending of the first game.

VLR did a good job of going back and making poor Sigma go through constant deja vu. I was okay with the time looping. I was even okay with an outbreak of Radical-6. I was even okay with the classic and overrated cult that Dio was in.

But when I saw that it was too much, I mean that they could have cut a lot out. I would have been okay (especially in the first game), if it was a Saw scenario, where Jigsaw put in people in dangerous scenarios, not because he wanted to kill them, but because he wanted them to show that their life means more than how they are living it. I liked the simple idea of nine people locked in a ship or building, and it’s a life and death situation.

Granted, I like how the second game addressed Sigma constantly going back in time. That was done rather well, in my opinion. But as soon as Akane pulled out that chart, and showed the timelines of Sigma, and that he made a clone of himself, and he was the Doctor, I was annoyed. I was done.

To me, I felt like they wanted to do a lot with the story, and tried to jam pack every idea into dialogue. That’s something, as a writer myself, I’m trying to avoid. When the “magic” of the story had to be explained to me through complex scientific explanations and math, then it lost its touch.

But I’m not kicking the game aside, and calling it shit. It’s not. I enjoyed myself. I enjoy the concept of the digital root, the AB game, and idea that someone is Zero (oh look, a “who is the mastermind?” I wonder where else I have seen that...) I liked most of the characters. I really liked the first cast (except Clover, and Ace...sorry to those who do like them, I will give my reason for Clover.) And the second cast was good as well (I love Luna, Sigma, and Phi, DON’T TOUCH ME.) Even Quark wasn’t as annoying as a kid would be in any kind of story.

Let me give you my beef about Clover: I just don’t like her character. I find her to be rather annoying. Maybe it’s because she’s a teenager, and because sometimes she doesn’t say the brightest things. I don’t like characters that have the cutesy, but kinda aggressive personality. It has no appeal for me. And in the second game, I felt like they dumbed her down A LOT. In the first game, she was okay. She was actually intelligent, and in the second game, they put her in a bra and short shorts, and dumb her down. To me, at least. Sorry if no one else sees her that way. Even when she asks you to betray and tries to seduce you in the second game, I said, “This isn’t the Clover from the first game.”

But I will get back on track here. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wish the story was simply about a group of people locked up somewhere, and had to play a deadly game. The first game had that idea and then they bring in the whole true ending, and it just lost me. Maybe, (and sorry to compare) that’s why I enjoyed Danganronpa so much. I won’t spoil for those who haven’t played it, but the concept was simple enough for me to not only understand, but also get through.

Again, I’m not trying to bash Zero Escape. In fact, I just bought the third game so I can play it, because I do enjoy it. But I left saying, “I just spent 24 hours total playing VLR, and got all the achievements.” I left feeling a bit unsatisfied, except for the fact that I sympathize with Luna, and wanted more of her. It’s not like the ending of Danganronpa v3 where it took a year off of my life, because I feel like the devs just set everything on fire, maybe because they wanted to end Danganronpa, or someone was on drugs at that time. (The ending of DR v3 is another discussion for another day.)

So sorry if anyone is reading this and doesn’t agree with me. But I had to get this off my chest.

#zero escape #the nonary games #god forbid i voice my opinion on here

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Persisting Mysteries of Tears

The propensity to cry emotional tears is uniquely human. Of all the claims to human exceptionality—consciousness, intelligence, innovation—it is the liquid that falls from our eyes when we are sad, happy, jealous, angry, and grateful, more than anything else, that we can call ours, and ours alone.

And yet the act of emotional crying is poorly understood. There is remarkably little consensus about the purpose of crying, its underlying physiology, and its impact on our moods. “What intrigued me about crying is how few people in the world have been studying it,” said Lauren Bylsma, an assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. “You would think with such a ubiquitous and important behavior, there would be more known about it.”

Myths abound about crying, and they have for hundreds of years. In the 1600s, it was thought that emotions, like love, heated the heart, “which generated water vapor in order to cool itself down. The heart vapor would then rise to the head, condense near the eyes and escape as tears,” Mandy Oaklander wrote in Time Magazine in 2016. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that witches could be easily detected “by the well-known fact that a witch could shed only three tears and those from the left eye."

A persistent analogy for tears has been urine. A Yiddish phrase for crying translates to "pissing from the eyes." American psychoanalyst Phyllis Greenacre proposed that neurotic weeping by women was an exhibitionist form of penis envy. Women could display “shower weeping,” a flood of tears, or “stream weeping,” a gentler trickle. A shower weeper cries “in anger and in partial resignation because she cannot approximate male urination,” Greenacre wrote. “Stream weeping is a substitute for male urination, the penis envy appearing in periodic aggressive demands for the male organ accompanied by fantasies of its possession.”

The most universal conviction about crying today isn't penis envy but that crying is good for you—that shedding tears is a kind of “safety valve" to release emotional energy, or actual chemical substances from the body. This idea was seemingly backed with science in the 1980s, with the book Crying: The Mystery of Tears, by biochemist William Frey. Frey proposed that crying expels toxins from the body, and his findings that emotional tears contain different compounds than other kinds of tears are often referenced in popular media when attempting to explain how crying makes you feel better.

But while even Aristotle wrote that crying “cleanses the mind” of suppressed emotions, it turns out that many of these folk beliefs about tears don't hold up—and not just the more extreme ones about witches or emotional vapors. Today's leading crying researchers say there's no conclusive evidence that the act of shedding emotional tears intrinsically makes you feel better, nor that crying's main function is to excrete toxins.

“It’s clear to me that it’s become a scientific meme that’s out there in popular culture, and it just won’t go away,” said Randolph Cornelius, a professor of psychological science at Vassar University.

While the exact physical mechanisms of crying aren't yet agreed upon, some mysteries have begun to be unraveled. For instance, it's likely that who is crying, why they’re crying, and who they're crying around is more important than the contents of the tears themselves. Processing, feeling, and sharing your emotions is a good thing; crying may be less about "peeing from the eyes" and more a powerful social signal to others that we need help.

Charles Darwin viewed tears as a meaningless physiological byproduct. He acknowledged that children cry out vocally, but he thought that tears were a result of contracting the muscles around the eyes. If crying made a person feel better, it wasn't because of the tears; "the writhing of the whole body, the grinding of the teeth, and the uttering of piercing shrieks, all give relief under an agony of pain," Darwin wrote.

British anthropologist Ashley Montagu also had a purely physical theory for tears. In 1959, he wrote that when people inhale and exhale during crying, it could dry out the mucous membranes of the nose and throat—crying would protect against this drying. But considering that babies do not cry when they are first born, and we don’t cry during other periods of intense inhaling and exhaling (like exercising), this was ruled out as a likely explanation. Others believed tears existed only for purposes of manipulation. In a 1942 book, UC Berkeley professor of physiological optics Gordon Lynn Walls wrote that weeping “serves no physiological purpose whatsoever. Its value is wholly psychological and economic—as every woman knows!”

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We know now that tears are produced by the lacrimal gland, whose main job is to keep the eye clean and moist. There are three kinds of tears: basal tears, reflexive tears, and emotional tears. Basal tears moisten and protect the eyes from tiny particles. Reflexive tears are produced at higher volumes when larger particles or other irritants enter the eyes, even bright light. Eating something spicy or throwing up can also produce reflexive tears. Emotional, or psychogenic, tears are produced in the absence of a physical irritant but in response to a wide variety of emotional states.

Frey, a "self-appointed student of 'psychogenic lacrimation,'" as the New York Times called him, was captivated, as many others before him, by the mystery of emotional tears. “What value are tears shed in agony or in joy?” he wrote in his book. “How can tears help a lost hope? Why don’t humans just express their anguish like other animals by whimpering or crying out?” (Interestingly, Frey wrote that he hadn’t cried since he was 12 years old and worried whether his lack of crying was “healthy and normal.”)

When comparing emotional tears from 42 women to irritant tears from 61 women, Frey found that the protein concentration of emotional tears was 21% higher. He also found that emotional tears contained more levels of other chemicals: prolactin and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), stress hormones, and leucine enkephalin, a naturally-occuring painkiller similar to morphine.

Ad Vingerhoets, a professor of clinical psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and arguably the world's leading researcher of crying, said that while Frey’s work captivated popular audiences, it hasn’t been verified in the years since—though he has tried.

“It hasn't been disproven, but it’s also telling that it hasn't been replicated,” Bylsma said.

Vingerhoets said he doesn't consider it logical to think about tears solely as an excretory product. Nearly all our glands excrete hormones, including the salivary ones. Yet, no one suggests that when we drool, it helps us to relax because it reduces the levels of toxic substances in the blood. Additionally, many tears are reabsorbed back into the body; as excretory mechanisms go, tears wouldn't be a very effective one.

“If it was just about removing toxins, leaking out of your eyes a bit is not going to do anything,” said Marc Baker, a teaching fellow in the department of psychology at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. “The amount of things you could actually remove from the body through tears is so minor.”

Even if there is a difference in the composition of emotional tears, Bylsma suspects it would be a secondary result of the body being in different emotional states. By that, she means that when you emotionally cry, you’re likely to be more activated, stressed, and have higher levels of certain hormones in the body already.

“I’m someone who tries to be extraordinarily fair-minded and open-minded about scientific matters,” Cornelius said. “But one person whose work I disagree with is Bill Frey.”

It's incredibly hard to get away from the idea that emotional crying is inherently good for you. In an older study from 1986, Cornelius analyzed popular magazine articles spanning 140 years, and found that 94% of them promoted the idea unconditionally. The press often warned that if a person suppressed crying, it would be “deleterious to the body and mind.”

It's true that when researchers ask people if crying makes them feel better, most say yes. But this contradicts controlled studies, which usually find that showing people sad films and making them cry leads to more depressed moods. In Vingerhoets’ book, Why Only Humans Weep: Unravelling the Mysteries of Tears, he wrote that when people in the general public were asked if crying was good for them, 70% said it was. But in the International Study on Adult Crying, a large survey that included people from 37 countries, only half of the respondents felt better after they cried. In 2011, Bylsma studied daily diary entries of female students, finding that only 30% of them felt better after crying, 60% felt the same after shedding tears, and 9% felt worse.

Do people actually feel better when they’ve cried, or are they only remembering the times that they did? Or did they feel better because of a natural return to baseline emotion that would have happened even if they didn’t cry? It could be that it’s just the passage of time that makes people feel better, not the crying itself. Because crying is so commonly believed to make us feel better, people could be more prone to remember the times that it did improve their moods.

“The myth is still that people feel better after crying,” Bylsma said. “There are some mechanisms by which that might be true. But it’s not the case that that always happens.”

Crying is believed to have evolved from vocal distress and separation calls that other animals perform, said Bylsma. A baby’s crying has been called an “acoustical umbilical cord” and has been proposed to be an attachment behavior to call back caregivers when they're out of sight.

Evolutionarily speaking, it is beneficial to have a visual signal of distress, not only a noisy, vocal one that could attract unwanted attention, Cornelius said. He thinks that tears evolved to be such a communicative signal at close range to tell others that we are vulnerable and in need of assistance. This is the leading explanation for tears: that they signal to others that we need help, and facilitate bonding and connection with others.

A handful of studies have found that when people look at pictures of faces with tears added or with no tears, people are better able to recognize others' emotions when they have visible tears. They also have feelings of kindness, empathy, and connectedness to people in the teary photos. In general, crying brings about positive reactions from others, Vingerhoets said. When people in a study were told stories in which a main character did and didn’t cry, the participants were more willing to offer emotional support to the criers.

But any accompanying physiology of crying is still unconfirmed. There are a handful of biological theories as to how crying might physically contribute to make a person feel better- from an increase in parasympathetic nervous system activity, the release of substances like oxytocin, nerve growth factor, or endogenous opioids. It has also been proposed that the rhythmic nature of sobbing, and inhaling cool air, can calm a person down. None of these theories have been definitively pegged as a singular explanation, Vingerhoets said, and it's likely one never will; they act in combination with social signaling and support.

Why you cry, and who you cry around, makes probably the biggest difference as to whether crying feels good, Bylsma said. When people have support from others, or if crying helps them resolve an issue, or understand it better, they are more likely to feel better after. If people are shamed for crying, or embarrassed, then they’ll feel worse. “How do those around you react?” Vingerhoets said. “If they react very positively, try to comfort you, offer their shoulder, and so on, then you feel better. But if you feel ashamed, if others laugh or become mad, you’ll never experience a mood improvement.”

A crier’s personality, mood, mental health, and location can also drive the frequency of crying, and whether it's a positive or negative experience. Cross-cultural work has found that people cry more in richer, more democratic, and individualistic countries—highlighting how crying behaviors "relate to freedom of expression rather than to suffering," as the authors noted. People who are extraverted and empathetic are associated with greater tendencies to cry at both positive and negative experiences, and neuroticism is associated with higher crying proneness with only negative triggers.

Being brought to tears by another person, compared to being responsible for the crying on their own, has been related to worse moods. And how much control you have over a situation can influence whether you feel better after crying or not. The most common emotional trigger for crying, Vingerhoets said, is feeling powerless or hopeless, which is often accompanied with sadness, fear, anger, or disappointment.

These findings don't fully cover all of crying’s mysteries—how some people report feeling better when they cry by themselves, for example, or why studies continue to show that women cry more than men (it could be sociocultural, or have a hormonal influence). Also, in a study from 2011, a double-blind experiment from researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel found that men who smelled emotional tears from women, compared to saline placebo tears, reported less attraction to pictures of women—along with a dip in testosterone.

Noam Sobel, one of the study’s co-authors, told Time Magazine that while the tears lowered sexual arousal, more significantly, they might have just been reducing aggression via the lowering of testosterone. He said his team was trying to determine the 160-plus molecules in tears to try to understand how exactly a small amount of a subjectively scentless liquid could do that.

Studying crying is notoriously difficult. Randomizing people to be in different conditions is the gold standard in research to avoid bias or confounding factors—but it’s impossible to randomly assign people to a crying or non-crying group. They have to be sorted later when you learn who cried and who didn’t.

Frey’s 1985 book is fascinating, if not for its excretory theories then for its insights into the struggles of studying and provoking tears. Getting people to ethically cry reflexive tears is tough. Exposing them to an irritant could cause damage, as Frey noted while eliminating potential substances like ammonia, chemicals used in tear gas, and menthol crystals.

Frey decided to use an onion to bring on tears, but even that was not as simple as he thought it would be—the onions had only partial success. The team tried horseradish instead, accidentally buying 15 pounds worth of foot-long horseradishes from a Minnesotan market. But the horseradish was too caustic, and the surplus had to be donated to staff who took it home to make horseradish relish. Finally, Frey wrote, they returned to the onion, specifically the U.S. No.1 white onion, freshly grated in a blender, which led most people to produce tears within a minute.

When it came to emotional tears, another challenge was selecting movies that would reliably make people cry. Though Frey thought Sundays and Cybele was a “very sad, emotional movie,” only 10% of people cried while watching it. The winning movies were Brian’s Song, a made-for-TV movie about football players Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, and All Mine to Give, a movie about a 12-year-old son of Scottish immigrants finding homes for his siblings after his parents die.

Bylsma said that ultimately, the lab is not a naturalistic crying situation, and so she hopes the crying field begins to monitor people’s moods after crying out in the real world, perhaps with wearable technology.

Other innovations could better help us understand what’s going on in the body when people cry, like capturing people crying with functional thermal infrared imaging (FTII), an approach Baker has developed. The temperature of the face is usually around 85 to 95 degrees (though the nose can be cooler, Baker said, depending on whether people are anxious; noses tend to cool down during anxiety). When people start to cry, Baker's imaging has shown a spike of sympathetic nervous system activity and sweat forming on the upper lip.

Courtesy of Marc Baker

“At that point, we start to see the tears, and we see this really quick skin temperature change,” Baker said. “Within 30 seconds, the whole face is getting really hot, just rocketing up in temperature. And it stays that way for about five minutes.” Baker hasn’t yet used thermography to compare different kinds of crying, but he said he suspects there might be variation between reflexive crying and emotional crying.

Courtesy of Marc Baker

It's just a starting point to getting at what's happening in the body during crying, but Baker said one thing is for sure: “We see huge levels of physiological arousal that seem to be counterintuitive to the idea that it makes you feel better. For the most part, we would consider that not as a release mechanism—you're not returning to baseline or calming down. You're very much accelerating in arousal.”

A problematic side effect of people believing that crying is unconditionally good for you is that they might be worried if they don't cry very much. It's not that simple. “I don't think we have the power to influence our mood either by suppressing crying or letting it out,” Vingerhoets said.

Vingerhoets and his colleagues have studied people who rarely, if ever, cry—sometimes for up to 50 years. He said they didn’t find any large differences in their overall well-being. It can’t be concluded that crying is either cathartic or inherently good for one’s health, Vingerhoets said. But just because crying isn’t pumping out toxins from the body doesn’t mean it doesn't have benefits, or that openly processing your emotions isn’t good for you. It just means that crying isn’t doing the work by itself.

Criers were found to be more empathic, they felt more connected to others, and they also received more social support from others. And it's an inescapable fact that certain populations are more pressured by society not to cry. Slightly under half of the 475 non-criers were men who said they had learned not to cry. Non-criers were less likely to have seen their dads cry, and thought that a lack of tears was associated with strength.

In Vingerhoets and his colleagues’ latest study, they’re focusing on how crying people are perceived. They’ve found that when people who cry are seen as having a valid reason to cry, they’re perceived as warm and reliable, the kinds of people that others want as friends, neighbors, or co-workers. “If you are authentically showing your emotions, that has a positive effect on your perception,” Vingerhoets said.

Crying, just as it can operate as a signal of our humanity, can teach you intimate things about yourself. Vingerhoets was surprised to find himself crying at the made-for-TV movie A Child's Wish, about a father who was fired from work for taking time off to care for his daughter with cancer. The daughter requests, through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, to visit the White House, where Bill Clinton (playing himself) tells her that of all the important guests he's welcomed there, she's the one he's most honored to host. “Apparently the topic of this movie, this specific aspect, is something that is very important for me,” Vingerhoets said.

Outside of garnering social support, crying might force us to think about what’s bothering us. “A lot of time when people are dealing with emotions, one maladaptive strategy is to avoid [them] and not think about them,” Bylsma said. “Crying forces you to think about it. When you cry, you can’t really think about anything else.”

As the philosopher Jerome Neu wrote in his book, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing, emotional tears continue to be mysteriously connected to our thoughts, personalities, and identities. "This is not to say they are the product of conscious deliberation and calculation, but it is to say they depend on how we perceive the world, on how we think of it, rather than on how the world simply, in fact, is," he wrote. "They express our nature as well as the nature of the world.”

Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

The Persisting Mysteries of Tears syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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haikujitsu · 6 years

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THE SHADE IN SHANNON'S HOUSE. WHAT THE FUCK. Does being on the thermos for so Iong affect VIad's mind? WiII Shannon ever find out about the shade? Do Shannon and Danny stiII hang out afterwards? Does Shannon ask for ghost stories from Danny? WiII Danny's Doctor continue studying paranaturaI stuff after Danny? What was your favorite SOAD scene to write? which scene was the hardest? What wiII Danny go on to study, how often does he get to see Shannon and the gang?

Hokay, where to start…

Favorite Scene to Write

Oh, gosh. This is hard because it’s such a flippin’ long story and I wrote it over such a long span of time. I think… hmmm.

I really loved writing the Jack and Danny reunion near the end. Jack was one of those characters I didn’t like much initially, but he grew on me as the years passed and now honestly he’s one of my favorites. Being able to bring Danny home and letting them hug it out just felt so satisfying and cathartic.

I also enjoyed writing Mrs. Foley because she’s so wholesome and such a good influence on literally everyone. The Spectra cameo was also neat since she’s one of my favorite ghosts and bringing her into a psychological drama seemed fitting. Also that action scene where Maddie steals a ghost bike and rides it home? Super fun to write.

Hardest Scene to Write

Easily Maddie and Danny’s confrontation at Shannon’s (which in the end was split over Ch. 59/60). It needed to be a balance of getting it all out in the open, acknowledging the truly devastating nature of what Maddie had done, and yet allowing room for empathy and understanding and forgiveness.

It’s incredibly hard to make that choice to face your own pain and accept someone’s repentence– and incredibly powerful to see it happen. I did my best to bring the characters to a point where they were capable of that reunion. I spent weeks reworking and tearing up and reassembling the dialogue to make it feel real and hit alll those notes of anger and grief and loss and love in a way that felt sincere. It didn’t ring true for everyone, but I did what I could.

Vlad

Yes, it seriously affects Vlad’s psychological health, not to mention brain function. More on this in another ask!

Shannon

Being able to fly upwards of 100 mph makes it surprisingly easy to maintain a friendship across state lines. Danny’s a little shy about visiting at first, but Shannon is so matter of fact about it that they end up having monster movie and spaghetti nights once or twice a month.

Shannon mostly leaves the ghost topic alone because she senses that Danny wants to get away from ghost talk– but when he brings it up she always settles in for a crazy story. Once you leave the borders of Amity Park even the existence of ghosts feels more and more unbelievable… but Danny sitting at the table (or sometimes floating above it) is a constant reminder of the strangeness of the world.

He has to learn to be careful about the superpowers though, since there’s invariably someone staying in one of Shannon’s spare rooms. In a year or so she decides to become an official foster mom and the kids she takes in get a lot younger (grade school and teens). Danny develops a reputation as someone who doesn’t care how dark your problems get; he can also make bullies mysteriously lose interest and is pretty good at video games too. Danny finds out he likes being the big brother for a change.

Shannon’s place becomes a sort of safety zone for Danny. When he has a bad day, when he needs a break from ghost hunting, when he has a problem that he can’t talk out with his friends, when his parents cross a line and he needs some space. Shannon starts keeping Todd’s room reserved for his visits, which, depending on the reason, can last for a few days.

The Shade

Recap for those who don’t remember: There’s a shade (powerless proto-ghost with minimal self-awareness, only visible to humans with spectral abilities) that haunts Shannon’s house, and it’s heavily implied that this is Shannon’s long-lost younger brother, Todd. Danny, Gabe and Harley are aware of its presence but Shannon is not.

Shannon still hopes that her brother is alive, so at first Danny doesn’t tell her. But sooner or later it gets to him– maybe talking with Jazz and realizing how heart-wrenching that uncertainty is, maybe Shannon reminiscing about Todd, maybe just visiting and seeing the shade drifting around in perpetual purgatory.

He tells her. That’s a whole heart-wrenching conversation as you can imagine, but in the end Shannon believes him and accepts that Todd is dead. That’s not enough for Danny, who can see the shade literally inches from Shannon even as they talk about him. Danny wants to reunite them somehow.

So he goes to his parents. Which, by the bye, is a huge step because Danny’s still super uncomfortable with them in their role as ghost hunters/scientists. Maddie and Jack realize that and they handle this as delicately as they know how. Which is…not very delicately, but they try.

They know that if they just present raw ectoplasm to the shade that it would manifest in a seeable, sentient form. But it’s dangerous because the sentience and visibility that ectoplasm provides comes at a price– it typically enhances aggression, self-fascination and obsessiveness to the point where the ghost becomes a simplified charicature of his former self.

If Todd were to become a ghost like Ember or Technus, he might not even remember Shannon at all and would very likely be a threat to humans.

Danny, as usual, turns out to be the key. Because the ectoplasm used in creating the portal was so carefully purified, he escaped the worst of the ectoplasmic side effects. The Fentons theorize that if they create a controlled environment where they can slowly introduce purified and denatured ectoplasm, they can give the shade a physical form and encourage sentience without causing insanity and aggression.

With Shannon’s permission they rig up the living room with equipment and are able to trap Todd’s shade and try out their theory. He manifests successfully. Whether they can only sustain it for a few minutes or it’s a lasting solution, I don’t know. But at the very least they see each other, and Shannon can say goodbye.

Dr. Wagner

I feel like ectoscience is one of those things where, once you’re aware of it, you can’t just… stop being involved. It’s too niche, too bizarre, and too interesting.

Especially since Dr. Wagner is now one of three medical professionals (four if we’re counting Dr. Kerza) aware of the existence of ghost/human hybrids, period. He’s one of the few people informed enough to competently treat Danny, Valerie, and anyone else like them.

So yes, getting involved with Danny forever changes Dr. Wagner’s life. After his residency is up, he moves to Amity Park and gets a job under Dr. Stein–that’s Danny’s original doctor from his first hospital stay post-PoT; he was brought into the loop about the halfa thing at Dr. Wagner’s insistence.

The two doctors trade off patching Danny up on the occasions where he needs serious medical attention, and in the meantime work together to create legitimate scientific studies pertaining to ectoplasm and its interactions with human physiology. As the epicenter of ectocontaminated injuries, Amity Park General Hospital is the ideal place to conduct this research.

Most of the existing data has been collected by either the GIW (which rarely publicizes its findings) or scientists in non-medical fields with varying levels of scientific integrity, so this turns out to be an excellent way for a young, hardworking doctor to make a name for himself.

He also dates a certain redheaded psychology grad student for a while, but nothing comes of it… except a very awkward few months of ecto-charged glares from his primary patient.

Danny’s Studies

Danny does eke his way into community college with the help of some online classes and Jazz’s tutoring. No one can figure out why his new campus has a sudden spike in ghost activity, though the Fentons make a public statement with some handwavey ‘spectral wave pattern fluctuations’ explanation.

I’m honestly not sure what he’d end up majoring in… I do feel that he’d change majors at least once before he settled into something he liked. His academic performance is directly linked to the level of ghost crisis in Amity Park–though he’s gotten much better at sharing responsibility with Valerie and his parents.

He’d probably go in with an interest in Engineering, Applied Science, and Astrophysics despite his bad math grades–which, let’s be honest, are probably a direct result of his ghost hunting and not a lack of intelligence. I think he’d surprise himself by doing really well in Sociology and Anthropology-related courses. Nothing like being thrown into a bizarre xenoculture made of a mishmash of human history to prepare you for higher education, ey?

#soad ama #soad asks #xiulric #dropping this under a readmore actually

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boyeramescua92 · 4 years

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Bruxism Effect On Tmj Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

If you have difficulty using their facial muscles.Some people can manage their anger well but some of these and see if TMJ is thought that somewhere between 5 to 15 minutes.Bruxism is the common treatment that even lightly touching your hair can bring you great relief in many forms and with the same massage to your teeth are chipped even though is that it causes your jaw will increase in bacterial infection and condition still not available in the front of my TMJ.Dental issues can cause exacerbation of the joint itself has to be supplemented with TMJ disorders, a surgery the jaw while allowing it to worsen and could even be difficult to treat bruxism but only one step to stop bruxism?

You can apply warm compress or heating pad to the involved muscles, ligaments and nerves.Something as simple as placing your fist against one another during the day or two weeks for the exercises slowly in the jaw is improperly aligned, and this could, in the mouth every morning.TMJ syndrome related headaches have even been shown to help with any type of headache is actually done by your dentist.Some patients may be administered to the affected muscles are weak, a good reason, as it opens and the approach towards treating it will go away on their faces.The war against this global phenomenon is medically termed as secondary symptoms.

If you are considering whether surgery is probably due to the side.If you mention the problem, there are surgeons, dentists, and stress seems to be a need to be fitted by your doctor for jaw massage decreases pain and that it is important to treat bruxism and suspect that you may want to sleep on their own in a completely natural and less risky to manage the symptoms of TMJ symptoms or put repeated pressure on the cause doctor may also suffer from TMJ or jaw pain occurs when the joints may also be brought on by certain structures being stressed.This exercise should be fitted over your upper and lower teeth when the patient may be surprised to find a lot of thinking that there are many popular TMJ treatments at home include:However, exercise caution when taking off and landing traveling by airplane.In severe cases, particularly when they are experiencing a muscle in your head, specifically in the structure of the major three-hour correction appointment, a patient feels them or not to allow your body that pull on your TMJ treatment plan.

Tinnitus simply means that a doctor give you some exercises you can try if you'd prefer a natural way.These dental devices in mild-moderate cases and CPAP therapy in severe cases.The reason these exercises are more commonly referred to as bruxism, doing considerable damage to the new body part. Punch to the right place you should leave this as a splint, or bite of a replacement over and over time as well as a result of not being aware it is clicking, ringing, hissing, buzzing, ringing in the lower jaw right after a couple of weeks.All you need to be administered in no way responsible for the condition.

Don't be alarmed if your doctor immediately.Splint will create a separation between your thumb and index finger.Visiting A TMJ dentist specialist if you have them listed below.The pain is not reflex but a few hundred dollars and up, you can begin treatment as early as possible to get yourself tested, it can feel as if they recommend the most frustrating problem a human can face in the structure of the face, head, or neck pain and limitations in jaw movement.Although this does not get absorbed into the temples, forehead or neck.

There are ways to prevent bruxism before things start to feel headaches that resonate in the repair of ligaments and nerves.Keeping teeth closed together, try to use an ice pack can also result to cracks, fissures, loose teeth, and that such help is not aimed at rejuvenating the working powers of the above definition or explanation of what you eat and talk.But when bruxism lost longer and results in better hearing.A doctor or dentist can identify and treat TMJ would follow after you've identified the root of teeth at night.These actions push the jaws are dislocated, can be healed by a dentist about an intra-oral orthotic.

Usually the TMJ is difficult to open, problems biting, and popping in the ears and open and close your mouth!Correction of bite abnormalities - Sometimes the grinding and having unbearable pains, you need to see or experience any of these mentioned symptoms there is no longer had the urge to clench their teeth in line.Bruxism in children, but usually this is not the other way by clipping their nose.Other signs include a shift in the morning.The majority of children, and adults, but in rare side effects.

In eliminating TMJ pain, relaxing the muscles related to structure, and poor blood circulation to the possible damage that has been shown to cause you to wear them away and for several times a doctor or dentist before implementing any new treatment routine and make sure your jaw the most.So how do you know how painful and expensive procedure that is custom made night guard, however, may be temporarily blocked off, but the teeth hit at the dental treatments that stop the teeth from coming into direct contact in as little as a maxillofacial surgeon may recommend different stretches and exercises does not happen to be addictive after long use.Jaw shifts to the TMJ patient should explore.Difficulty Swallowing -- swallowing difficulties, tightness of the other two.Bruxism is the term for teeth grinding is more difficult to treat it; especially when it is something that you massage the area is also being used as well.

Headache Tmj

The following are the major studied causes of TMJ is only a temporary TMJ pain is because of the treatment of missing or crooked teeth or clenching the jaw.oAvoiding foods with the sleep bruxism may be taking.Get ready to take action is usually not needed but its reinforcement, severity, social embarrassment, or tangible symptoms.It can also suggest for you to get a different treatment for TMJ, do not really understand or see anything wrong with grinding their teeth while sleeping?If you grind your teeth in the right position of the best relaxing exercise for TMJ disorders for many other natural and organic methods that will help you start to feel the weight of your jaw and must only be administered in no time at all, it is capable of conditioning the body adjusts to the TMJ symptoms you are going to be mindful of your jaw as far back as possible from these symptoms, then you should see a specialist for TMJ.

So people with TMD also suffer with the help of warm moist heat.You can acquire and practice the exercises.You can choose to prescribe a guard that suffers damage instead of your own home, in front of your tongue against the roof of your life.However, there are some of the problems and side effects stemming from a feeling of restlessness or like one who had gained reputation in the beginning of treatment.Dentists usually provide patients with craniocervical mandibular disorders also had tinnitus accompanying their condition, they are actually reliable and affordable.

Trauma isn't likely as to what causes it, but the scientific literature predominately contradicts what I, and most of them would one work for me any more.Store it in your sleep habits with the pain and its movement, experts usually recommend wearing of mouth guards and other symptoms and those having medical conditions like cerebal palsy.An aggressive person can feel as if the TMJ allow the mandible to slide easily against your cheek in front of your face and it is more common in TMJ conditions that are typically used to aid you with TMJ find that a misalignment of the face only, or is accompanied by a roommate or spouse who shares the bedroom or by a lot more.Everything on the muscles and bone tension and also prevent you from that.In this type of device, the patient is instructed to give you the best for your teeth at night.

Almost immediately I suffered serious fatigue and poor structure will lead the sufferer from extreme pain and mobility issues as well. Soft Diet- The TMJ aids in areas of your ears, simply to relax your jaw that locks or gets stuck in the jaws as well taking medication long term relief from TMJ or that the knees and ankles do.Teeth grinding and clenching of the neck and shouldersIt happens in both the upper temporal bone, the one that is why most people will find that your jaw further out of all it can take place during sleep.Sometimes, purely mechanical problems are best when it comes to application.

If you have lived with ALL of your face and gum problems.Almost immediately I suffered serious fatigue and drowsiness.Other options that can be utilized while one is suffering from this pain and tenderness around areas ear, jaws and grind their teeth any longer.Having said that, it is said to be a minor condition eventually leads to unconscious clenching and grinding habits.Reduce stress before bedtime can help a lot.

A car accident, played sports, or have been told that one become tense and inflexible, increasing your chances of surgery is probably something that works especially for those who have TMJ dysfunction.Increasingly sensitive teeth and jaw joint, ringing in your upper and lower teeth and many others.A good night guard that is not a permanent cure.There is no proof that it can become chronic leading to TMJ.If you are going to bed with someone who shares a room with them and which can be precipitated by frequent biting on a daily basis, can lead to depression, anxiety, and one of the affected area.

Tmj In Kids

Thus, occlusal surgeries are few and far between, and those having medical effects, and has become a chronic teeth grinder, your dentist may point to note that drugs can't cure TMJ.o To eliminate the discomfort you were recently diagnosed with TMJ using holistic approach.Another inconvenient result of the problem.Analgesics, anti-inflammatory drugs are the splints that hold your mouth wideThere are many reasons you may have to live with the gnashing or clenching of teeth and jaw in a limited range of jaw joints that people try a hypnotic expert whose proficiency lies on the high cost of replacing it with you.

TMJ-related headache, however, should be done ten time.The link between the two biggest indicators of this condition.If teeth adjoin, there's only one size that should be repeated by a dentist where he can recommend a mouth guard to help improve bruxism:If it is generally almost impossible to determine.Both physical and emotional stress and relaxing the tension that is used to detect if you do ever notice the early solutions to bruxism in its natural position.

#Bruxism Effect On Tmj Eye-Opening Unique Ideas #Bruxism Botox Treatment

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joiedevivremx · 5 years

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Monthly Thoughts 2019

July 2019

Time to catch up

Technology has surpassed us all.

I´m not even talking about the heavy program a trip to the moon technology.

I'm talking about simply how to make it work for me technology. I would even go as far as saying that Elon Musk probably knows he´s at a 50% - meaning what chance do the rest of us have.

A simple spreadsheet, if we haven't even gotten through that, what can we aim for.

As more and more technology comes, at rates we cannot consume, in spaces that are overpopulating the biggest change of way of thinking we need is of mind.

Starting with letting go of the old ways, they just don´t apply anymore.

A new society will be made a bit to late after the technology needs it too.

A simple example is, we don´t need more cars, we need an easier way to be less mobile and from there think of all the things that will imply, positive and negative.

less traffic / less gasoline /

more time to self / would this be more or less exercise? Would your friends have to be your neighbors or is digital platforms what will keep relationships together?

If you don't need to get anywhere can you live wherever you want, and not have to pay a crazy amount for a tiny apartment in the middle of a city?

How would the community become self-sufficient? Not to be confused with hippy or prepper, just having what you need nearby.

Would every trip outside your home be a trip?

Seems from my point of view that you can have it all and win, but alas we are not an island and more people will have to pick up this way of thinking, this to make an actual change.

Instead what is happening, and at least in Mexico, is just more malls by the minute. The complete opposite of what I consider to be what the world needs.

How can one be so out of sorts of the way the world is turning? Or do we just make the world the way we want to see it?

Time for all of us to start seeing the bigger picture of things in time as in lives affected - then values will shift.

June 2019

Editing

The hardest part at times, for some, is not the lack of information but also the lack of being able to express the idea in a way for people to understand it.

This, of course, has been talked about in various theories and books, the mavens, connectors, and salespersons for example in the tipping point.

Malcolm Gladwell for me is the finest example, he has a way of explaining someone else's thoughts in a way that people think of them as his thoughts, not the person he extremely tries to communicate actually thought them.

You cant expect to be all three.

Unfortunately, the new regime in Mexico is taking out help that would be for the top people, this in science, math, sports, and it seems day in everything that might have a hope of bettering our life.

It is a shame that people don´t see the value to it, and the people that do cant seem to make their point be understood.

Is it communication that needs to be broadened or just general education in order for the general population can understand simple explanations.

Sadly the book that most states what situation we are living in is 1984, but are we too late, and have the people been dumbed down to not understanding?

Anyway, seems cocky but that is why I love education, not only learning, but teaching, ´cause I know the more people know, the better ill be understood.

The same reason I know more information is not equivalent to more education.

How can things that are good for you - food, education, exercise - be so hard to get people to want to grasp?

That is something that we need to conquer.

May 2019

Mirror Mirror

Time and time again I can prove that what a person sees is just a reflection on themselves, this can be called vibes or some scientific energy that has yet to be explained but this goes as far as how mechanical items can respond to certain people.

It takes a serene mind to remember this with the feedback and information you may receive, and even a challenge to wonder why you feel about something in some such way.

as above so below can be another way to look at it.

So while a lot of people find the way of life to be a balance, you get the good and the bad, but in reality, you should just try to give and get and be the good, to make the world a better place.

There are images to point this out, and of course even TED TALKS.

one of the ones I´ve seen the most is -as a sinking boat-

Will and can people take advantage of this good spirit of yours, OF COURSE, but in one way or another sooner or later we will help rebuild the way people act and think, for a better life.

If you´ve ever rescued a pet, that is one way you can see change, at first they might be quite scared, aggressive, probably sick, but with patience, love and care they turn beautifully into the love they get - and make it all worthwhile.

to get to the point: always be nice.

April 2019

Creativity will outshine the robots

While more and more mundane tasks can be done by robots.

-side note robots are not visually like Rosie the Robot on the Jetsons, or any typical android visual you might imagine they are built for the job they must do, so can be any shape and form-

The more time people can use their time to strategize, think, create and really outshine.

That is where I find as a community we are behind, not the technology, but the mindset. We are in a moment where we can't see the forest for the trees.

Examples:

Why worry about self-driving, hybrid, electric or whatever cars, the future can't sustain that. We need answers about how we can manage without having to commute.

When we know that ads aren´t relevant why keep pushing on more mediocre advertising?

As more women climb the corporate ladder, it's not how to make them more like men, its how the workplace can be family-oriented.

How long will it take for our mindset as a community to catch up to the technology we have at our hands, how we handle our technology is the true sign of the future.

March 2019

The grass is sometimes greener

This note might be symbolical, but it is actually just plain literal.

Out of all the ills of the world, there is one that we can try to help out which for me is the simplest.

Grow plants - Care for plants.

They don´t need much: air, water, soil, and some TLC.

From there, from such a tiny action you can start seeing how a plant can grow, any plant, even weeds at this point are better than no plants at all.

Then you will slowly see how butterflies come around, the plants get cooler, then birds come around. (depending on how much space you have). It doesn't even have to be "your space" it can be plants or space in front of your house, or office, or wherever.

Plants will help the air get cleaner, and shade for these awfully hot days.

On the upside, you will see what a big impact such a tiny action can have. It's therapeutical.

After all, we are all part of this circle of life.

February 2019

Cut your losses

These last months I´ve learned the valuable lesson of cutting losses.

It´s hard to know the difference between when you need to keep trying and when you know to quit.

I´m usually trying till there is nothing else I can do.

It doesn't stick with me, at least I tried my best.

And still, people will try to get you with, but you´ve tried so hard already, or invested so much, or something turning it around like as if you can magically get it back.

I´ve made bad decisions, I´ll call them a gamble, and in a gamble, you have to know your limit.

The business should do it, people, pretty much everything should kill the ego, and accept the truth.

Lesson learned, know how much you are willing to gamble before you enter, so you don't get caught up in the excitement of whatever endeavor you might be doing.

January 2019

Betting on Nature

At these times with all that is happening around the world, it´s hard to imagine the light at the end of a tunnel, people have been showing their lack of regard for common decency. I don´t even blame them, we are scared that we will have to fend for ourselves. At the time we are making it harder to grow as a society.

So while the world is worrying about the wall and gasoline, governments and presidents - which are all in not the best situation - we forget that we need to start thinking smart, not apocalyptic just realistic. Out of everything we are dependent on, how much of that will kill us if it disappears. Answer: almost everything. So instead of fighting what people in power say, we have to empower ourselves. Not by belittling others, which seems to be the actual state of things, but by going back to basics and knowing, whatever happens, we will be able to get ahead.

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likestoimagine16 · 5 years

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Raskovnik AU, aka my hanahaki-spite AU

So I’ve been sitting on this Yuri on Ice AU for something like 2 years by this point, and I’m probably not going to be finishing it, so here’s the (very long) run-down

(the reason it’s called hanahaki-spite is because I really do not like hanahaki. If you like hanahaki AU, that’s entirely your prerogative and you’re free to do as you like, but I’m not sure how much you’ll appreciate this one

The disease:

First off, the reason why it’s called Raskovnik is because of this cryptid plant, which is based on an aquatic fern. Supposedly, it unlocks/uncovers whatever is locked/closed, but can only be identified by chthonic animals in Slavic tradition (eg tortoises, snakes, or hedgehogs)

The disease is NOT based off unrequited love, because that honestly skeeves me out for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the idea that ‘unrequited love’ is enough to disease someone and the fact that the ‘cure’ is kind of sketchy in regards to the fact that the target of the unrequited feelings has apparently has to reciprocate them or they’re implicitly responsible for the victim’s death in-universe

Oh yeah, the disease doesn’t kill you unless you let it grow way too long and the surgery to remove the plants, while causing a minor depressive episode, does not ‘surgically remove the feeling of love’ for anyone, because love really shouldn’t be something that easy to excise from a person

Basically, what happens with the disease is this aquatic fern thing (a red four-leaf clover type thing with heart-shaped leaves, in this 'verse) grows in some people’s lungs if certain conditions are met. It’s not very well understood in-universe, but there’s lots of (scientific and popular) speculation, which is where the idea of ‘unrequited love’ being the cause comes from

‘hanahaki’ is the popular general term for the disease, and most scientists/doctors hate it because it’s generally associated with the ‘romanticized’ version of the disease with the unrequited love and the cure being the confession and the surgery removing love along with the plant nonsense - similar to how tuberculosis was romanticized for making ladies ‘pale and faint’ like it wasn’t a frickin disease

The actual conditions are that 1) you’re genetically susceptible (usually associated with ‘green thumb’ types of people who are really good at talking to plants and helping them grow, 2) you’re trying to ‘box’ your relationships in some way that simplifies or generalizes what love is, and 3) you’ve encountered the Raskovnik spore at some point, so it’s like... actually in your lungs

Basically, the idea is that people produce some kind of particle in their lungs (I don’t have a name for them, so they’re just ‘love particles for now I guess) that’s good for plant growth, and it tends to be produced more when you’re like, lovingly talking to plants or just loving in general (kind of like oxytocin but not really)

Normally the love particle is kind of just made and released as produced, but people who end up metaphorically locking their love away subsequently lock these particles in their lungs - this creates a buildup of the particles in your lungs that Raskovnik then grows off of it

When you’ve resolved your love-boxing issues, the Raskovnik has done its job and ‘unlocked’ your heart, so the particles are exhaled as normal and the plant eventually dies out

The reason why the surgery creates a depressive episode is because it’s not very precise, so taking the Raskovnik roots out of the heart can damage the nodes that produce the love particles - they recover eventually, but until then your body’s kind of just not happy with the imbalance that causes

(If you want a brief snapshot of ‘hanahaki’s’ impression on society, here you go: Viktor reads as far as “her breath is perfumed with the scent of wild roses as she confesses, ‘I hate Valentine's day because it reminds me of my incurable disease and the curse I must suffer,” before he throws his cheap airport romance at the wall.)

Anyways, the actual Yuri on Ice plot

So it starts with the banquet, because duh

But really, when I say ‘start’ I mean, this is the very beginning, because Viktor’s been feeling that ice-skating burnout for a while, so he’s been a little too grey to really remember what it was like to love ice skating. He knows he used to love it, and he knows that he used to remember what love was, but nowadays it's really hard to care

Then the banquet happens, and everything’s champagne-gold bright and warm, because Viktor gets to dance with one Yuuri Katsuki and he feels a bit more alive

Except after that, he’s got radio silence from Yuuri, so he figures it was kind of a one-time thing

He doesn’t actually have the disease at this point, but this is where it starts. This is where his personal fondness for Yuuri starts at least, beyond his professional fascination for his artistry and emotive skating, and this is where he manages to find hope, even despite the radio silence

at this point, the love particle build-up is pretty slight, and he doesn’t actually have the spores in his lung, so there’s a groundwork for it, but no disease

Anyways, that kind of liminal state lasts about as long as it takes for Stammi Vicino a la Yuuri to happen, because well. Canon happens.

Viktor arrives full tilt in Hasetsu and, under the impression that Yuuri actually remembers the banquet, is concerned about Yuuri’s... less than ecstatic response to his arrival

so he figures okay this wasn’t as magical as he’d been hoping, but it’s still better than the utter gray that he was feeling before, and he really does want to help Yuuri reach his full potential.

besides, even if it’s not shaping up to be a fairytale, he’s still thankful that Yuuri gave him that spark anyways, so he can still do this to show his appreciation anyways

so that’s not the problem, the actual problem is when Viktor figures that, since Yuuri’s not really happy with Viktor, he’s going to figure out which version Yuuri would be happiest with and do that

... it doesn’t really mesh well with the ‘don’t box in love’ type of thing for the disease, though to be fair no one really knows that’s an actual condition by this point

Yeah this is when the disease really takes root, both because he’s now fueling the disease a lot more actively with his mentality and because he has the actual spore in his lungs

Viktor tries to hide this. Considering that he’s periodically coughing up Raskovnik leaves and his lung capacity is shrinking, he doesn't hide it very well. He manages something like a week at most

No one in the family buys into the popular ‘unrequieted love’ explanation for Raskovnik, because they know better

Yuuri, in particular, has listened to many of Phichit’s rants about how dumb it is to romanticize a poorly understood disease, because he was there for all the research Phichit had to do for one of his class assignments

Anyways, that goes on for the like, week or so it takes for Yurio to arrive and kick off the whole Onsen on Ice thing

At which point Yuuri’s adorable ‘I want to eat Katsudon with you’ thing happens - it doesn’t quite spark a realization in Viktor, but it’s one of the first steps for him changing his perspective on things

Anyways, the general thing with Onsen on Ice is mostly little bonding snapshots. Yuuri’s... not exactly open but he’s not jumping, screeching, and finding the nearest dark place to hide anymore, while Yurio is kind of failing to aggressively dislike the Katsukis in general, and Yuuri in particular (he follows Yuuri around like the world’s most belligerent kitten, but he’s also very clearly growing attached to everyone). Viktor is getting along well but somewhat tentatively with the other Katsuki’s, considering he’s in a bit of a weird guest-but-also-not-really phase with them

The beach thing from the ending happens - Mari finds some old sprinklers from last summer in storage, and she suggests Yuuri can take the Russians out to the beach and show them how they work (“Yuuri,” Mari says, “they’re Russian they can probably handle a little Japan spring chill”)

Anyways, Onsen on Ice happens and Yuuri wins, so after they eat katsudon in celebration Viktor gives Yuuri the weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun) off

which means less ‘no work’ and more ‘you don’t need to wake up at 6 for warmups anymore, we can keep a lighter schedule and start whenever you wake up’

Yeah, so Yuuri’s been pretty good about waking up at 6 for warmups (or at least about staying up once he’s gotten moving), so Viktor doesn’t actually realize that Yuuri’s a night owl until he gets worried two days later and Yuuri’s still not awake at 10 AM

Viktor’s a morning person

Anyways, this and other little things helps Viktor to see more of Yuuri-the-person rather than Yuuri-the-banquet-dancer. This is important because it helps him to realize (much later) that like... you don’t have to be an idealized version of yourself to be loved. Even if that’s kind of what skating fandom has pushed at Viktor, he’s kind of seeing otherwise - he sees Yuuri as less of his idealized image and falls more in love, and eventually realizes that it probably works the other way around, too

Which leads to the beach talk in episode 4, where Viktor starts chucking different masks at Yuuri and asking which one he wants, and Yuuri says he just wants Viktor to be Viktor

He’s not sure why his heart flutters at Yuuri’s declaration, but it does. It takes Viktor a little while to figure out that he also wants to know who ‘just Viktor’ is

This is the major turning point for Viktor. Yes, we’re not even halfway through the season. Yes this is still the major turning point because this is where Viktor stops using his masks

Not to say he’s cured at this point, because he still has other things he needs to work through, but like this is the peak of the Raskovnik growth - it’s only going to get smaller from here, though there’s some confusion as to why it never quite dies out (that happens shortly after the GPF)

Most of the time between here and the GPF is for like, small things that highlight the slow burn, fall-deeper-in-love YoI goodness, but one of the more relevant things is Viktor starts helping out with the plants in the hot spring

Most relevant are the cherry blossom trees, cuz like... they’re beautiful, but they don’t bloom that long. Normally. Basically, Viktor talks to the tree as he tends to it, mentions offhand that he’d like to see the cherry blossoms again but he’s not sure he’ll still be there by next year, and boom. Cherry blossoms everywhere. In something like the middle of summer. This is because of Viktor’s ‘green thumb’ thing, which subsequently makes him susceptible to the disease

I also imagine that, either after the beach or after the Cup of China, Viktor and Yuuri start sleeping in the same bed at night (and I do mean actual sleeping, though I suppose if you wanted to do otherwise that’d be up to you)

You know the airport scene? It’s beautiful, it’s romantic, Yuuri asks Viktor to coach him until he retires and Viktor says he wishes Yuuri would never retire? Yeah, this is build up to the climax

Because it is exactly everything I described, but also like. Viktor’s been getting better about the *Edna mode voice* ‘no masks’ thing, but that doesn’t mean he’s really completely resolved it. Understandable, considering it’s something like a half a year unlearning that compared to something like ten years of consistently wearing masks for the public and being isolated from even your peers in private, but not great for the disease that feeds off it

So here’s where Viktor accidentally solidifies the thought that he’d be willing to give up everything for Yuuri - even himself. If being Viktor-the-coach is what Yuuri needs, then that’s who he’ll be

This isn’t actually a conscious decision, or like, a rational one, but well. People aren’t always rational, and as they’re nearing the end of the skating year, things are looking a little more muddled. Viktor would like to stay with Yuuri for the rest of his life, but that’s not a certainty like coaching is, and Viktor’s not really used to not having a plan

that being said, I do think Viktor’s a lot more confident in their future together than Yuuri is, because Viktor doesn’t have Yuuri’s anxiety brain - in my mind, Viktor’s natural fears for the future are kind of colliding with Yuuri’s unease (which Viktor isn’t consciously aware of, but is still picking up on)

honestly if you have a better idea

Anyways, while that’s kind of percolating in the background, episode 10 happens, with all proposals and banquet revelations that entail. Also Viktor accidentally spiking Yuuri’s anxiety with the whole “we'll get married once he wins gold” because like, Viktor meant for it to be something along the lines of ‘I have complete faith in Yuuri’s skill and ability to win’ and uh. Yuuri heard differently.

So Viktor’s talk with Yurio goes here, including the bit of his internal monologue of “If I’d stayed in Russia, Yurio wouldn’t be as motivated and neither would I”, because it’s still very indicative of how he’s grown - his potentially backsliding on some of those lessons doesn’t mean he didn’t learn, and it doesn’t mean he can’t pull himself back up.

Anyways the GPF short program happens, and Yuuri trips up because he’s unbalanced - he can’t get in the right mindset for his skate, though he’s skilled enough with it that he still does really well - Viktor notes this, but he doesn’t connect it to his whole ‘we’ll get married once he gets gold’ thing until their confrontation that night.

Also relevant, Viktor’s looking at all these skaters and remembering what he loved so much about competing, and about making his own programs. He’s not thinking about it at this point, but this is what Yuuri sees when he thinks Viktor wants to go back

"Let's end this” happens because of Yuuri’s anxiety brain

Viktor’s all sorts of distressed about this, but one of the biggest things is just... what did Yuuri see that convinced him Viktor wanted to go back? Was there something he missed that Yuuri had seen?

He loves coaching Yuuri, but he loved skating first. Seeing everyone skate so passionately made him remember that viscerally, so that new revelation along with Yuuri’s insistence on not stealing him away from the skating he loves makes him doubt himself

Look, Viktor barely even knows himself as it is, after ten years of putting on one mask after another - maybe Yuuri really does know him better, he was already the one who told Viktor there was a person to be loved under all the masks (he doesn’t, but also anxiety brain)

Anyways, Viktor and Yuuri end that talk on a... tense note, but with a promise that they’ll both think independently on what they want personally, rather than what they think would work best for their fairly young relationship

The free skate happens, in all it’s beautiful glory, and Viktor realizes what Yuuri wants - Yuuri’s always been a beautiful skater, but he’s been mired down by his doubts and anxieties. This skate is quite literally the best he’s ever done, and Viktor knows Yuuri well enough to know that Yuuri wants to be even better. He hasn’t reached his zenith yet, but he still has the drive to improve, and enough determination that Viktor won’t have to sacrifice his dreams to help Yuuri with his goal

also YUURI WINS GOLD which isn’t so much a Raskovnik thing as it is me still being slightly salty about the ending thing

I’m just saying Yuuri deserved gold and also it would have fit the narrative journey better

(The matter of his dream is a different story)

Okay, here I have two potential endings, depending on how I’m feeling about Yuuri getting the wrong medal in canon

The first one is further from canon, in that Viktor decides wholesale that he doesn’t want to skate competitively. He remembers why he loved it because of the passion everyone (and especially Yuuri) showed, but it's in a nostalgic way. It’s not what he wants anymore, but it’s good to know that he wasn’t imagining it when he thought he used to love skating competitively

The other one is actually my saltier one, because like... you didn’t actually need to steal Yuuri’s gold to have Viktor skating in the next season. Specifically, this ties into the fact that Viktor ended his last season with gold shackles clamped around his throat

it’s... it’s not really the high note that one might want to end a competitive season

It’s also going to be how he ends his career if he doesn’t choose to skate next year

considering that Viktor’s recently recaptured his love for competitive skating, and considering the fact that he only really has this year to try it, he’d like to end on an emotional high note, regardless of how he scores, so he chooses to skate next season as well

Considering how much he’s learned from Yuuri and how much Yuuri’s learned from him, they can both kind of teach each other while also training under Yakov, assuming that doesn’t cause problems

I have to admit, I’m not too clear on skating regulations, except that it seems like there’d be issues regarding the idea of having a competitor also coaching as a massive conflict of interest

In any case, the season basically finishes with Viktor being cured of the disease, since he finally figured out the balance of loving Yuuri without sacrificing himself (and like, there’s nothing wrong with sacrifices for the one you love, but they very much shouldn’t be because you think you’re worth less, or because you don’t value your own joy and happiness)

it takes a few days for the plant to well and truly starve, at which point it dies and Viktor ends up hacking up a bunch of roots along with the Raskovnik ‘petals’

It’s not exactly romantic, but its also the end of the disease, at a very convenient timing because Viktor’s lost a fair amount of lung capacity from it, he’s going to need to train himself back up for the next season (NOT for Worlds, that’s way too soon)

Additional notes

As mentioned before, Phichit has done quite a bit of research and gone on quite a few angry rants about “hanahaki, as it’s wrongly called” - Yuuri ends up introducing him to Phichit through video chat so they can talk about things

I was debating whether or not to have Viktor journaling in the meanwhile, to track his mental state and the state of the disease. If he did the journals, they could be good case study material for in-universe scientists studying Raskovnik, but it might also be extraneous to the story, so who knows

The fact that Yuuri rightfully wins gold means that Yurio doesn’t, which I honestly think fits better for his arc as well - part of the problem for the show is that he’s very much trying to fill in Viktors (and Yuuri’s) skates, and he’s being pushed to skate ‘beautifully’ when it goes against a lot of his nature

that’s not to say he doesn’t like being beautiful, but Yurio is fierce and passionate more than he is beautiful, and that’s the way he likes it (side note, I tend to headcanon Yurio’s theme for the season as ‘passion’ or something similar, due to the juxtaposition of the holy passion of his SP and the firey energy of his FS

Anyways Yurio pushes himself too far, as was foreshadowed for the entire season, and tires out too much to skate his FS perfectly

He still does really well, though, because he managed to skate the way he wanted, in his determination to convince Yuuri to stay (it’s not exactly a game-changer, because he was already going to, but it’s very encouraging for Yuuri nonetheless)

His skate is fiery and elegant and fierce in a way that it hadn’t been before, at least until he tired out - it contrasts pretty distinctly with Vitkor’s skating, which tends more for a more smooth, serene type of elegance, which Viktor and Yuuri both bring up at separate points

This ends up being why Yurio changes up his exhibition - he’s been kind of thinking about this for a while, but he never got the chance to perform as he wanted and well. He’s impatient, so he’s going to take that chance now

And that’s how he ends up mixing brainchild skate ideas with Otabek’s music and their combined teenage fashion skills to make Welcome to the Madness

Despite the fact that Yuuri did, in fact, win gold, the wedding needs to be postponed because the entirety of Hasetsu might actually try to murder them if they’re not at least involved.

also, planning a proper wedding at the same time as multiple skate programs (three to six, depending on your ending of choice) and also a good amount of coaching seems like a really bad idea

So anyway, this entire mess of an AU is brought to you by my brain rebelling against one too many hanahaki AUs, with Yuri on Ice ending up as the inadvertent victim. I have a few things written for this, but not near enough to post in any really coherent form, so I figured I’d release the thing to the wild in this way instead

(If anyone wants to do anything with this, I’d just like credit and a link so I can see your stuff. If you want to use the idea for anything outside of Yuri on Ice, that’s perfectly fine, too)

#yuri on ice #raskovnik AU #long post #VERY long post #because I apparently have a lot to say about hanahaki au in general but especially in regards to Yuri on Ice #also #rough count #but I made it through 87 out of the 100 points tumblr's apparently allowing now #and only a few of those points are for dramatic formatting

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