¤OtakuStarchild¤

endless list of things i love ↳ lord of the rings (2001 - 2003)

1: Malcom Evans, political cartoonist

7: sortimid on deviant art

9: gigis_lab on Instagram

16: @victoriaskeller (site unknown)

Redraw Credits:

8: sortimid on deviantart

9 & 15: destineytomoon on tumblr

10: tokimekiwaku

Balance of Power

Chapter 2 - ‘In proving foresight may be vain:’

[Second line, Seventh Stanza of the poem “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785” By Robert Burns] 

Avengers AU - Spinoff from Half-Life 

Characters: Dr Helen Cho; Secretary of State, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross; Dr Michael Morbius, AKA Morbius the Living Vampire; Colonel Helmut Zemo; Pietro Maximoff

Word Count: 3649

Location: Seoul, Korea - U-Gin Genetics Research Labs

Time Reference: Events here at U-Gin begin around the same time as the dinner date with Tony and Malaki in Chapter 6(T5). Seoul, Korea is 13 hours ahead of New York, US. UTC +9 hours.

Time Clocks Here 

Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | 

—————————————–

Out on the floor of the lab, Helen has dismissed the Secretary from her mind so she can focus on the work in front of her. The first order of business is the defrosting of the soldier so they can determine if his body’s ability to survive has remained intact. She also needs to know if Michael - Dr Morbius, she reminds herself to keep it professional out here - will be able to keep up with her team speaking Korean or will she need to interpret for him. The techs, under her watchful eye, get started on cycling the cryogenics in the unit.  She has another tech start rigging something that will allow them to transfer the soldier to one of their own units for the rest of the treatment. 

Not until after that does she makes her way over to where Michael is in a serious discussion with one of the phlebotomists on the team. He turns to her as she approaches, a look of frustration on his face. 

“Ah Dr Cho. Could you please explain to your assistant here that it is necessary to draw my blood for our work today. She seems to think I’m being irrational.”

Helen suppresses a smile. She is pretty sure that Ms Hyung, her top assistant when it comes to handling and processing blood and blood products, hadn’t said Michael was irrational. The woman is too professional for that. Still, this request is out of the ordinary, which even for someone used to working with superheroes can be hard to accept. Watching Michael, she asks him something that has been on her mind for a little while now. 

“Are you comfortable with us using your blood as part of the experiment, Dr Morbius? I know it was part of the initial plan, but things have changed since then.” Helen is certain that his blood is indeed necessary for the operations to succeed, but she doesn’t want to coerce him like Ross had intended.

He seems suddenly, inordinately pleased as he pulls a stool over to the counter where the smaller of the two centrifuges sits. “Yes, I am, Dr Cho, thank you for asking. I’ve come to accept the -” he pauses as though to taste the word before he says it, “uniqueness of my blood as well as the many useful properties it contains. I assure you, having my blood drawn is not a new experience for me. I’m just not sure how to convey that to Ms Hyung. Please speak to her for me.”

“Certainly, Dr Morbius.” 

i honestly believe that sleep deprivation is the biggest ignored/neglected root cause of health dangers that prematurely kill adults

ask me sometime about the role of sleep in the leptin ghrelin cycle and how its interruption destabilizes weight homeostasis

or about the new research showing that heart disease is not caused by fat, like we thought for years, but by inflammation in the circulatory system whose root cause is unknown but one of the prime suspects is, you guessed it, sleep deprivation

but nobody wants to hear that lack of sleep is killing people. employers don’t want to hear it. and god knows that having sold their waking hours to capitalism to survive workers don’t want to lose the only time they have left to them to live their lives, mostly stolen from sleep

our society places almost zero value on sleep

on enough sleep

on uninterrupted sleep

on regular, predictable, cycling sleep

- Humans are not meant to sleep for extended periods of uninterrupted sleep. 

By this I don’t mean “humans shouldn’t have 8+ hours of sleep a night”; I mean that we are supposed to sleep for four to five hours (ish), then get up and do something relaxing like reading for a half hour to an hour, then get another bout of four to five hours. This is what our bodies were designed for. 

Sleeping the whole night through was a fad started with the advent of the lightbulb. Sleeping the whole night through is so recent (and artificial) that First Sleep and Second Sleep are mentioned in Dickens’ novels.

- Lack of sleep for even a single night severely compromises your immune system.

If you’re planning on getting little sleep or pulling an all-nighter, make sure to eat lots of fruit and veggies/take vitamins that day. Or even better, get yourself some bee propolis. It’s a natural remedy used for thousands of years in Latin America and is insanely good for boosting up compromised immune systems (if you get the drop kind, put 3 to 4 drops in a spoonful of honey and mix well with a 2nd spoon to mask the strong taste). It has no side effects and is all but impossible to overdose on.

- According to several government bodies around the world, chronic lack of sleep is literally tied for 1st place as the worst kind of torture (the other is solitary isolation)

- Expecting a teen to get up for 8:30 classes is the equivalent of expecting an adult to be at work at 4 am.

After babies, teens are the age group that needs the most amount of sleep. Puberty is exhausting, and the body needs time to recharge. Ideally, a teen should be getting between 10 to 12 hours of sleep at the bare minimum. Most teens are lucky if they manage to get 8. And that’s a gigantic problem; not only does lack of sleep affect mood (which is extra significant when your hormones are already riding a rollercoaster to begin with), but also has massive effects on growth, which is kinda what the whole puberty thing is supposed to be about.

- According to research “starting work before 10 a.m. is tantamount to torture and is making staff sick and stressed”

- Humans were not designed to have the same sleep cycle across the species. Much the opposite in fact.

Night owls and morning people are an actual thing. Because we’re pack creatures, Nature came up with a clever way for our ancestors to always have someone on the lookout for predators and threats: make people naturally alert at varying times so that there’s always someone alert to keep watch. 

“Celebrate Your YOUness with an adventure-packed evening at Denver Zoo! Whether it’s in the animal kingdom or your own community, we all thrive when our unique selves come together in beautiful harmony. After all, we’re each perfect exactly the way we are. So come join this celebration where birds of every feather can flock together and show off their true colors in wild and amazing ways. Explore a festive world of music, entertainment, food and drinks, community conversations and fascinating animal experiences all highlighting the LGBTQIA+ community and organizations.”

Avengers AU - If Tony was Peter’s biological father

Tony is super protective of his son. And Peter, inspired by his dad, becomes Spiderman anyway (his dad and his Uncle Rhodey figure him out in a second though).