#like calling themselves quirky absolves them from

[takaraphoenix]

People who refer to themselves as 💫 so quirky 💫 are never charmingly quirky, they really are always just ☠ so obnoxious ☠

[archivalofsins]

Apologies for re-blogging this twice in a row the pronunciation information is interesting, but the subtitles are telling as well. So, I looked up the difference between the terms and the first result was this-

Someone inquiring about what the difference was as well and the answer was very in character when it comes to Mahiru if I'm being honest.

The top answer compared the two words as the difference between Agape and Eros. One representing unconditional love for someone else's sake and the other being conditional, selfish love for one's own sake.

So, here very well could be saying she's stuck between satisfying her own selfish ideals of love like you stated before and unconditionally loving.

This is something I feel tracks given her first songs title is "This Is How To Be In Love With You" something that I've brought up calling to mind selfcare along with the visuals hinting towards that before. This may also be why she literally states,

"My lethal weapon: “This is how to be in love with you”."

Along with her saying in her voice drama "I was just being myself."

Something that I harped on not really absolving her of anything because anyone can say this. On top of that, it tells us nothing because we don't know what her definition of being herself is.

Anyone can go, "I was just being myself."

However, if the someone else chimes in after that with,

"They fucking shot me in the leg!"

Just for the other person to go, "Yeah, that's my character, I'm a bit quirky that way. Plus it's important to self actualize, ya know? Had to do what was best for me."

Should change one's perspective on that individual's definition of being themselves.

Someone's definition of being themselves could very well be doing things that are objectively wrong with little care or concern for those around them that their actions impact. Something again I have to harp on she comes on the mic and blatantly says that is her definition of being herself-

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you”. My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?"

It's probably difficult for someone to accept when you're blatantly stating they've communicated with you that your behavior is inconvenient for them, and you might be letting your emotions get the best of you to which you responded with I don't care if you feel that way why won't you just accept me for who I am. Because being in love is being with someone always regardless of what you do to them or what they do to you.

"We fought sometimes, I was happy to get hurt. Let’s have matching pain, this sickness is pretty bad. This is a claim of responsibility from the two of us with matching love."

If someone really "really" knows what love is then they'd know if someone truly loved them that person would stick by them through anything and everything! They would accept every aspect of the person they love; their flaws along with their strengths and work through their problems together- That's true love!

"Do you really think you know what love is? If you do, let’s just overheat together."

Q.20 What is the ultimate form of love?

Shidou: Being together death do us part.

Mahiru: Always being together.

It's implied that they attempted to work things out multiple times through lyrics in This Is How To Be In Love With You up to the breaking point in I Love You.

"Even when I test you, even the times we do the breakup ritual. Is because I love you." - "This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you”. My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, are you not here anymore?"

It's exceedingly difficult for me to defend that sort of selfish single-minded behavior. Especially when she keeps going on about how nice he was. It's like give me anything to work with here. Because this isn't simply being delusional it's downright malicious and spiteful.

We literally see a man at his final straw on the ground begging and pleading to which multiple people went dramatic much while I'm just here like he's the one dead, he's the corpse here not her. It's not hard for me to see why someone would have wanted off this twisted merry-go-round.

However, in the end alive or dead he's still fucking stuck there in her narrative. Even in death she's still fucking hanging onto him. He never got off the ride and a lot of people put emphasis on Yuno's right to choose what about his right. As much as I think Mahiru is a good person everyone should have the right to leave a relationship for any reason without someone weaponizing that usually difficult decision against them.

I don't know what to say I might be being mean; I might be taking this too seriously but that's shitty in my opinion. Even with how much I like Mahiru and think she's sweet this is not the sort of behavior I think should be normalized regardless of the person doing it. If someone treats another person like this in real life or anyone into Milgram is being treated like this by a romantic partner or anyone this is not okay.

No matter how people try to mask it as personal positivity, manifesting, or selfcare this is not okay. I believe that someone that loves someone else would care enough about that person, their happiness, wellbeing, and safety enough to admit and say to them my actions hurt you and I'm sorry. Then try not to do the same thing again.

Mistakes happen but when they happen consistently those are choices that begin to reflect one's character. Again if she says what lead to this was her just being herself when she shows us who herself is the most respectful thing to do is meet her where she is.

SADLY THAT PLACE IS HELL!

The bar is in hell! This behavior is objectively unforgivable and if I didn't like her, I'd want her to be guilty. If I wasn't like I really want you to live, be happy, and grow past this. Even though you're stuck in your ways and will probably never change.

At least I recognize that at least I can call myself out for being bias and naively optimistic; I'm not trying to normalize anything this is wrong literally no one should ever let anyone treat them like this. That is the only reason I'm speaking on this at all.

This is simply a situation of it makes great fiction do not let a person treat you like this in real life ever. I cannot stress that enough.

Everyone is worthy of a partner that will take their emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing seriously. Someone who they can feel comfortable with communicating openly to even about things their partner has done that may have hurt them without fear of being dismissed, silenced, or spoken down to.

I'll probably and still probably will get a good deal of flack for saying this even though it's not in the tag. However, the Mahiru situation truly feels like overt sexism to me still. I feel like people have a hard time understanding that even if the outcome is positive sexism can still play a part.

So here are some things that I personally find questionable. Feel free to ignore it though since the series is basically testing biases anyhow of course there would be some noticeable ones.

A. How people assume Mahiru's lover is the one who cheated and not her.

This combined with the assumptions about Kazui cheating really does just give the energy that a lot of people assume men cheat exceedingly more than women. It is true that more men than women cheat. However, according to a self-reporting study conducted it is a marginal difference of 7%. Twenty percent of men reported that they have cheated in comparison to the thirteen percent of women in a survey conducted over the course of 2010-2016.

That then literally goes on to say this-

Outside of the fact that Mahiru literally admits to cheating in the lyrics of her second fucking song and everyone graciously went oh she's referring to the murder. Despite him being on he's knees begging pleading for her to tell him where she's been something also alluded to not only through lyrics but visuals. People really only went as far to go the visuals are a metaphor and that's where critcal thought ended it seems.

Because there's no way saying some shit like this shouldn't raise a few red flags-

"Unfair and stuck between in love and love."

Okay, Mahiru what do you mean by that second use of love. How are you stuck between being in love and love care to elaborate-

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you” My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?"

Um- okay that explains nothing... Your emotions are out of control how, exactly? Accept what about you?

"I don’t need anyone else, as long as I have you. I could do anything as long as you smiled, I actually believed that. The happiness we tightly bound up and suffocated, is no longer here. If I could see you again, I wonder, what would I say to you and how?"

Oh, so you meant stuck between wanting to be in a state of romance and having flings. Um, don't fucking date then or have an open relationship- Oh!

"I guess we can just say that this feeling is happiness. I can’t stop feeling like there’s something missing. What do you think? I know it's not the type of question you want to be asked."

Oh-

"Giving you love to the point of pulling you down." - "The happiness we tightly bound up and suffocated, is no longer here."

This could be referring to the restrictions of a committed relationship. Since that's referred to as tying someone down, tying the knot, making things official. So, this could just as easily be referring to the difficulties or feeling of being confined that comes with having that more serious relationship but still wanting to experience more casual things.

"Stuck between in love and love."

Q.19 What was your lover like?

Shidou: She was a strong person. I'm quite careless in private, so I’ve been relying on her.

Mahiru: Overall just a kind person.

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you”. My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, are you not here anymore?"

Being sung as we see this image

Just to be followed with these lyrics

"Saying I love you but doing what I did, I know I have no right, crossed and covered in sin. My love, it scored an own goal, destroyed my love and me with its weight Tell me, oh tell me why, can’t I just do it right."

and this image

Mahiru literally says I know I don't have the right to say that "I love you" after what I've done and people generously went she means the murder but that's some grade a horseshit. Oh, well Gunsli how do you know that because all of these lyrics are in present tense not past and Mahiru blatantly writes this during her second trial interrogation-

Q.02 How do you feel about your victim?

Shidou: I do not know which one you are referring to.

Mahiru: I loved him.

Specifically past tense. This tells anyone immediately that her song is displaying the situation as it happened without considering the way she feels about him now. Meaning this is a conversation that occurred just like with Yuno and the "What do you want to do? Please tell me." line in Umbilical.

So, she just comes on the mic and admits to cheating but everyone just overlooked that in favor of going fuck men. Something I'm just not behind because when it comes to cheating and domestic violence the gender of the perpetrator shouldn't impact how you feel about objectively shitty behavior.

Mahiru knows what she did was wrong and says so. Despite knowing how much she loves saying, "I love you" enough to make it the title of her song she literally near the climax says she doesn't deserve to say it. To me that says a lot about how she feels regarding her own actions.

Simply put, who cheated or not doesn't matter, and it should never have any impact on if it's excusable/justifiable to take someone's life or not. People can end relationships without someone ending up dead, it's as simple as that to me. If he did cheat fucking dump him and if she cheated and he didn't dump her that's his prerogative but fucking sucks overall.

B. How people were quick to forgive Kazui believing that he cheated and that possibly led to his significant other committing suicide so it isn't murder.

Ummm big talk coming from a fandom that voted two people guilty trial one for what they suspected to be suicides. Futa for the hat girl situation and Mahiru herself for the situation with her boyfriend. Stating Futa's harassment is what led to the victim committing it, so he was responsible and that Mahiru being clingy/suffocating led her significant other to killing himself so in that sense she was also responsible.

However when it came to Kazui cheating an incredibly trust destroying and emotion shattering thing to do to someone you claim to love let alone married leading to someone taking their life- Yeah he wasn't responsible for that he's a man after all they can't control their urges that well. Plus, if he was gay there would be a lot of societal reasons why he would get married just out of convenience or to avoid stigmatization in that sense he is a victim too.

Wow, that's a nice story some have created there. However, being gay doesn't excuse murder or literally using another person that loves may love him and he under this context fully knows loves him to cover his own ass without once being honest to them about his feelings. That's literally emotional manipulation but let's not even go into that part. If driving someone to commit suicide through a relationship/communicative issue is okay here, then why wasn't it okay for the other two?

Well, the circumstances were different.

Yeah, they were a good deal of people assumed Mahiru was lying about dating at all and that Futa was the source of the worst bit of harassment that girl faced despite him downright saying other people were involved.

Kazui on the other hand came on stage singing about the curse of reuniting with someone, how that other person's heart would never change, and how if nothing changed his feelings would float away and disappear. People not only did not question the status of his relationship at all, but immediately attached the most sympathetic narrative they could to it.

Based on the appearance of one guy who is yelling at Kazui who very well could be the other woman's husband or her again because they are wearing very similar clothes.

Yuno, someone we can deduce through context clues slept with somebody else's husband or significant other. Along with directly bringing up how adultery is sensationalized in her very first trial interrogation says this,

Q.18 Which of the other prisoners is most like you?

Haruka: Nobody. They’re all amazing people.

Yuno: Kazui without a doubt.

Second issue if Kazui was fucking married why is his voice line a love confession?! Is he confessing that he loves his wife to his wife? Is his confession to the woman at the bar,

"Er, so…… could you listen to what I say without laughing? I……Hinako, I love you more than anything. I'm so dumb...why did I have to dream?"

Who he's cheating on his wife with if the cheating thing is true?

Hell, to take it a step further- Haruka stole his mother's necklace why didn't anyone just go oh Kazui stole his victims wedding ring at any point? Because he could have done that just because he has a ring doesn't mean he's married or it's his.

As much as I like Kazui he was given a great deal of the benefit of the doubt and leniency. Something I am inclined to believe is because he's conventionally attractive since literally every adult who was voted guilty during trial had conventionally undesirable traits.

I'm bringing him up to go why was it okay for him to cheat yet the idea of Mahiru's boyfriend cheating on her justifies him being murdered somehow. Even though in my opinion Mahiru just literally admits to cheating in her second song. She's not even really that vague about it. Plus, it would make sense if she did cheat because jumping into a committed relationship immediately after gaining some personal freedom without giving oneself time to experience more things considering her upbringing is a good way to end up cheating.

Q.05 Did you have a good relationship with your family?

Shidou: Yes. It really was a family as happy as you could dream of.

Mahiru: I think I was what they call a "sheltered girl". I'm thankful to my mom and dad, but perhaps they were a little strict.

Q.17 Tell us your dating history.

Shidou: I don't remember much but, I had one girlfriend in kindergarten, and in elementary school I had two relationships. I started going out with my wife in the 2nd year of middle school, and we've been together ever since.

Mahiru: I attended a girls middle school and a girls high school, so I didn't date anyone until I started university.

So, jumping into a committed relationship immediately may not have been the healthiest thing to do. Since a romantic relationship is a long-term commitment that comes with a myriad of restrictions especially if it's exclusive or strictly monogamous.

C. Ignoring blatant signs of domestic abuse

Regardless of the circumstance Mahiru's actions caused her partner emotional distress which she continually ignores and revels in ignoring throughout her song.

Literally singing,

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you” My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?"

Then when he is displayed doing something similar her immediate response is to start forcing something in his mouth to shut him up.

Visually implied to be forcing him to eat as she sings,

"I just love you so much."

She even continually repeats throughout, I Love You-

"What you trampled is my, “This is how to be in love with you”."

Which may not only be referring to the audience but him as well and directly after this visual we're back to the merry go round and the next time we see him he's hanging as she keeps singing.

"Mon-mon-monstrously in love, in love! Mon-mon-monstrous, cuz I love you so much! Mon-mon-monstrously in love, in love. A monstrous dilemm... “DIE”."

Die is in quotation marks here something used to indicate what characters within the series have said at a point. We see this done throughout all the songs and these appear to be snippets of conversations or things they said to or around their victims or regarding their crimes.

In a creative way of going, this is a direct quote not an artistic retelling like the rest of the song.

There are several in I Love you.

“See you next week?” , “This is how to be in love with you” , “I love you”, and "DIE".

In This Is How To Be In Love With You there are three.

"I'm ok", “Good Morning!”, "ok".

So, at one point she told him to die, and literally used the English word for it. This means she probably wanted him to die for one reason or another that we don't know yet.

Overall, I'm not saying all this to be like oh yeah Mahiru should be super Guilty just pointing out something that's been annoying me lately. That's why I'm not really tagging this.

[syms-things-5]

Clear The Area - Chapter Two

Previous chapter HERE

Warning: Not explicit (yet); some mild language. 

Summary: 29-year-old nurse Sarah Bernette has worked hard to get where she is. Moving to Boston from a nowhere dump of a town, she’s studied hard and is grateful her stress is finally paying off. Despite being fostered repeatedly throughout her childhood, she’s since found some comfort in the form of her adopted parents, Jocelyn and Noah, and a pseudo-adoptive family of sorts in form of the Evans clan who have treated her as one of her own ever since she moved in with best friend, Shanna. Valuing them above all else, she appreciates their support even more when her long lost birth mother decides to reappear in her life after so many years, and is surprised to find out just how supportive Chris is in particular. As she struggles to maintain a firm grip on both her professional and private lives, she finds an ill-advised solace in her growing mutual attraction with him but how long before everything unravels and threatens to pull the rug out from underneath her?

Note: I apologise for my spelling/grammar errors. 

CHAPTER TWO

Sarah made very little effort to more that day. On occasion, and as often as she could, she preferred the relative safety of a self-made cocoon, with the excessive amount of pillows and duvet lying across her as she lounged on her bed, her wavy brunette locks in a messy bun. The alternative was a run followed by trash television (also one of her favourite guilty pleasures on a day like today) but both of those would have required her to get up and she didn’t feel like that just now. Even her phone telling her it was after one o’clock in the afternoon was enough to shame her into moving. The bedroom windows were as wide open as possible as was necessary for this time of year, and she slipped both feet out from under the covers to let the warm breeze caress her skin and envelope her space, calming her completely.

She must have fallen asleep quite early last night. Shan and Chris had left around 7p to head to their mom’s house, leaving Sarah to indulge in a much-needed shower before making her world-famous grilled cheese with as much as she could physically pack under the grill. She fell into a carb-induced come soon after.

When she woke, Shan had been making various noises around the flat, slamming a couple of drawers here and there before retiring to sleep. Sarah was too tired to check in on her to make sure everything was OK. Shan would no doubt fill her in when she saw her the next morning and they would inevitably catch up on each other’s gossip for the first time that week. Sarah had been working longer hours lately but as always, the first 20 minutes of the every morning was reserved for “Shan Time”; just listening to her vent for a little while. She never minded so much. It meant she didn’t have to pay attention to her own thoughts.

Today, though, she had a full 24 hours of freedom and was intending to make no effort whatsoever to move from her self-imposed exile. She had no plans; a rare treat for herself to do absolutely nothing.

Her laptop was open with numerous tabs keeping her entertained. She checked Facebook, spent 15 minutes on a Buzzfeed article about puppies, then read CNN. Always in that order on a day off. At some point, she’d stumbled upon a gossip article about Chris and Jenny and, against her better judgement, scanned the details. According to a “source”, it was lust at first sight. The pair of them hung out a lot at his apartment where he would hold his famous game nights - that detail she could 100% believe - and soon after she stopped her husband’s weekly visits to set. Her husband seemed quite nice actually, very non-threatening in his appearance, almost dorky, the complete opposite of Chris she realised which seemed a bit dubious. Indeed, Jenny herself appeared to be the complete opposite of who Chris usually pursued. She seemed nice enough, though, and an up-and-coming name in the comedy world. He mentioned her once or twice on the random weekends he would fly back to Boston for some down time during production. She was funny and outspoken. She was quirky too, both physically and intellectually. Sarah thought they might get along if they were to ever have the chance to meet in person. Nevertheless, she had picked up on a lot of insider knowledge thanks to knowing Chris over the years and could spot clickbait a mile away.

“I’m not so sure, y’know,” Sarah jumped as Shan climbed onto her bed behind her with a plate of toast and a fresh coffee in hand. She felt embarrassed to have been caught reading gossip about her brother but Shan seemed nonplussed. “About her. I reckon something happened and he’s burying his head in the sand about it.”

“Did he talk about her last night?”

“No, not really. Mom pushed it a few times and he got annoyed and left. Scott went after him, I think.” Shan seemed relatively blase about the whole thing as she sat cross-legged, munching on her toast. Sarah stole a mouthful of her coffee and closed the laptop, flinching at how sweet she liked it. “This is exactly what he does. He messes around and then doesn’t stick around long enough to deal with the consequences. He’s probably fucked up her relationship for good.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Oh, believe me. It’s textbook for him. He just does whatever he wants to do.” She finished her toast and took her mug back from Sarah. “What was your letter about?”

Sarah’s attention was quickly drawn towards her dresser table and to the brown envelope she’d forgotten about, currently sitting there unopened. She couldn’t bring herself to read its contents last night with how tired she felt and she was good at ignoring things when she wanted to. It was an exceptional talent of hers. 

“I haven’t looked yet.” She admitted. “I just have this...feeling nothing good’s gonna come of it.”

“Shan’s heart pinched for her friend. “Do you think it’s that lady again?”

“i don’t know. Maybe. I thought she would have given up by now but maybe she’s gone via the courts. I was reading about it online and apparently, they can request legal assistance when tracking down a child. Regardless of what the child wants. Can you believe that?”

She could. Shanna had found herself in a similar predicament some years earlier. Indeed, when they first met, their mutual experiences had been something of a conversation point and there followed many, many late nights talking until the small hours, drinking wine and putting the world to rights. It was the first time in her life Sarah had reached some sense of resolution and understanding about the whole thing.

It wasn’t common knowledge but Shan’s birth mother had contacted her a couple of years earlier via some handwritten letters and a few photographs. Turns out her parents had been childhood sweethearts who fell pregnant and ultimately decided they couldn’t raise the child together. There was also an allusion to some religious reason as well but Shan wasn’t altogether interested by that point. She recognised how unbelievably lucky she had been and didn’t want to rock the boar for something that may or may not make her life extra complicated. Sarah also sensed Lisa was struggling a bit with the contact as well although, outwardly, she was supportive of whatever decision Shanna decided to make. Chris and Scott on the other hand? Well, they were not pulling any punches. Chris in particular took the view it was some pathetic attempt to absolve themselves of guilt.

“Do you want me to open it?” Shan offered bringing Sarah back into the room. In all honesty, Shan would have done a lot more. She would have called up the Adoption Agency herself pretending to be Sarah and telling them in no uncertain terms where to stick it if she’d asked her to. It was one of Sarah’s favourite things about her; her unwavering loyalty to the people she loved the most. Act first, ask questions later. When she’d first met Carly, the oldest Evans’ child, she’d pulled her to one side and said “You’re stuck now”. She hadn’t looked back since.

Sarah pondered the letter before getting out of bed and collecting it from the table. She looked it over once more before opening the seam. It felt thicker than yesterday and there was definitely some kind of booklet enclosed. Just as she was about to pull the contents out, however, the front door slammed shut.

“Oh fuck. Sorry. I got annoyed with Chris always ringing the goddamn doorbell all the time so I just gave him the spare key, “ she remembered, quickly sliding off her bed and dashing out of the room. Sarah was going to follow her, another few minutes wasn’t going to make much difference. Then, just as she pulled the letter out a few extra centimetres, curiosity got the better of her. There, in black and white, was the name of biological mother: Charlotte.

Charlotte.

It didn’t sound like an older woman’s name to her. You know how some names have connotations of responsibility and authority and wisdom, and ‘Charlotte’ didn’t seem like one of them. It wasn’t a ‘Joanne’ or a ‘Susan’ or even a ‘Lisa’ now thought about it. Those names provoked feelings of comfort and reassurance. ‘Charlotte’ was the name of a twenty-something pretty blonde who had thousands of followers on Instagram and zero obligations. ‘Charlotte’ drove a swanky soft-top her father bought for her 21st birthday.

She was probably being petulant while staving off thoughts of Charlotte having been a teenage mother who couldn’t face the pressure of raising a child at such a young age. What if she herself had lived a troubled life and something bad had happened to her and she suddenly found herself bereft with a new born baby girl clinging to life in her arms? Or, like Shan’s mother, had some overbearing ogre of a grandmother shadowing her and telling her she would go to hell for having sex out of wedlock? Maybe she had been forced in some way to give her up outside of her control. Suddenly, Charlotte seemed like she could do with her sympathy.

Shan reappeared in Sarah’s doorway and paused before speaking noticing Sarah had the letter open in her hands. She gave her a sympathetic smile.

“Um Chris is here with some beers and stuff. I think Scott is coming over to watch a movie. I haven’t said anything about... you know...” She nodded towards the letter. Sarah smiled back at her but didn’t want to give away much more.

“Sure. I could do with a drink.”

*

A few hours had passed and they had been lying around the flat drinking beers and shouting at Iron Chef, Shan’s favourite lazy day programme. Scott had arrived not long after Chris but dipped in and out to have phone arguments with his boyfriend, Zach. Zach was his first boyfriend in some time that was considerably younger than him but seemed to fit in well with the family. It was perhaps fair to say that Chris was slightly less tolerant of him and possibly wary of any new figure in their lives given how much more visible he had become now that he was a living and breathing embodiment of a superhero. That said, Zach seemed nice and cute and funny, and Scott was clearly crazy about him and had been since Day One.

“Trouble in paradise.” quipped Chris as he walked into the kitchen. The front door was slightly ajar with Scott on the outside of the apartment, pacing up and down the hallway. Sarah had been washing up and wiping down the surfaces following dinner. Chris leaned back against the countertop next to her. “I don’t know why they insist on arguing so much. It’s just flogging a dead horse at this point.”

“He likes him a lot. When you like someone, you make it work not matter how hard things get.” she shoved him to move over a little so she could grab the sponge from behind where he was stood.

“No, you don’t. You ignore their calls and texts until they get the message. If not, you leave the country.” He smirked. Sarah shook her head in disbelief, chuckling, wondering if perhaps he was only half kidding.

“Do you think they’re getting anywhere?” he asked. She knew he was concerned deep down. He couldn’t help himself.

“I’m not sure to be honest. I’ve heard “you’re not listening to me” about seven times.”

Chris winced, folding his arms. They were both now staring at the front door when Scott suddenly returned. Without thinking, they tried their best to look as though they hadn’t just been eaves-dropping on his conversation. Chris reached for the spray, almost performing a full circle in panic. “So, I should just wipe this and then we’re done?”

Scott threw up his arms. “Oh pur-lease you guys. You don’t have to pretend that you couldn’t hear that. I know how loud I was talking.” 

“We weren’t listening!” Chris protested, feighing astonishment.

“You’re holding cleaning products, bro. You’re normally about as useful around the house as a wooden frying pan.”

The kitchen fell quiet as soon as Scott has walked back into the living room. Sarah wished she could have snapped a picture of the stunned look on Chris’ face right at that moment as he stood holding the Jif. He turned to look at her, offended.

“I clean.” he objected.

“are you trying to convince me or yourself?” she avoided eye contact, giggling to herself. She could feel the mock annoyance radiating off him as he stood to the side of her eyeline waiting for her to move. They could be here for some time. He resorted to spraying her hair.

“Hey! That was uncalled for!”

“I’m gonna tell mom you’re bullying me again.” He put the spray down and flashed her an eyebrow raise. She didn’t know why but she felt a blush cover her skin in that moment as he whispered almost intimidatingly close to her ear, “You missed a spot by the way.”

“What?! Where?” She jumped and he laughed out loud. Realising he had been kidding, she threw him a glare and the dishcloth. “If you’re not going to help you can get out of my kitchen.”

“Oh my god that was too easy! Seriously, Sarah, lighten up. It’s only gonna get messy again in a few hours.” He playfully attempted to grab the sponge from her hand but she held it aloft to one side out of his reach. He enjoyed messing with her. It was something he did when there wasn’t a lot else going on and she recognised this, fearing this was going to be the new norm for her now he was practically living here. She’d have to put the lock back on the bathroom door for sure. “Do you think you’ll be retiring to you bachelor pad anytime soon? Some of us have to get up early in the morning.”

His face lost its boyish glee in that moment and she felt like she had kicked a puppy. He picked the dishcloth back up and proceeded to dry a few plates, placing them in a neat pile to one side. He peeked at her from the corner of his eye.

“How about I repay you with beer and household chores?”

*

Next Chapter HERE

[bottomdiluc]

you are everything that is wrong with this fandom. fuck you for running out one of the nicest, sweetest artists that remained for some fucking fluff fanart that you took exception to. i hope one day when you grow up you'll realize the extent of the damage you and your anti kind have spread.

oh, you’re talking about that one sheef artist who told me that they don’t care if their actions hurt people, they’re gonna do what they please?

alrighty, lemme explain you something.

i don’t really care if you read this cause more than likely, you’re not gonna and you just wanted some moral superiority high out of this, but i’ve lost interest in this whole fiasco cause someone acted like getting criticized was the equivalent of death threats. i don’t have any sympathy for people who act like someone being uncomfortable is oppressing them and that really hurtful actions that are perpetuated is just the hurt person overreacting.

i sent that person 7 tweets in a convo they initiated, asking why people are upset at them drawing a canonically gay male character with women. they asked why their sh///llura doodle garnered such negative attention.

and here i come cause i had been considering following them cause i had seen their art around sometimes so i periodically check on blogs that i am considering following so i can scope out their opinions and make sure they don’t produce content i don’t want to see. i won’t excuse a person’s pretty content if they have terrible opinions.

so, here they are, saying their instagram, which i don’t have one, is a mess with people calling it gay erasure and homophobia, and they said they didn’t know why people were calling them homophobic for it. so, i had the idea in mind to approach them and tell them that yes, there are people who find it abhorrent to see people place gay or lesbian characters in m/f relationships. they have the right to feel uncomfortable and their personal reasons are valid. 

i wasn’t really a fan of how they were reacting to the criticism and yeah, perhaps people were going overboard and being really rude, but the general consensus was the same and perhaps if it was stated calmly and differently and without “u deserve to die for drawing this i hope u get the electric chair” or “you should have been aborted” that usually accompanies those kinds of tweets.

so, this is what i told them:

see? that’s the first reply 

i understand that people are less willing to listen to you when you come at them screaming and calling all kinds of insults and that your lack of civility will turn them off from wanting to read what you have to say. 

in it, i addressed that yes, what you’re doing is engaging in harmful content and creating harmful content.

unfortunately, i can’t gather their response to show you, but i’m pretty sure you can go back through their replies and see what they told me.

they had said that it was censorship that people were imposing. they also remarked that they drew m/m content such as sh///nce and sheef, and that there isn’t any way they could be homophobic for drawing that

this is what i told them:

in their response to me was basically “i’ll do what i want, idc if people get upset at what i do, they can just block me and move on.”

and this is my response and the last time i engaged with them:

and here is basically me saying, “hey, don’t be upset if people are uncomfortable with what you’re doing and the depictions you’re creating”. i didn’t kick and scream and cry and call them all kinds of deplorable and terrible names, or @ them constantly and tell them to die or some shit like that. 

this is all due to them being unable to handle people being upset at their actions and criticizing them and acting like people approaching them civilly is akin to sending death threats. y’all really need to stop thinking that your actions are free of criticism and consequences.  

people are are affected by another’s actions, esp a minority group, expressing that they’re uncomfortable and hurt by what you do, and being told in the end:

and you know what? it’s not my fault or my problem that they’re acting childish and blaming people being upset and uncomfortable on them and brushing off any valid concerns.

i don’t give a fuck that they’re leaving, i don’t give a fuck that they blocked every single person that was telling them respectfully why they’re uncomfortable and acting like they were bullying and oppressing them. refusing to see what people have to say when they’re affected by your actions and perpetuating something that they have to suffer for in real life without care or refusing to take the steps to make sure you they cultivate it with concern and caution is pretty immature and dumb as hell.

i have no sympathy for someone who cries and whines about people being uncomfortable about their actions like biphobia or racism or misogyny, actual actions that are legit harmful and not “they like a ship i don’t! this makes me so mad!” kind of bullshit fandom has been producing and creating false dog whistles, who wants to participate in gay erasure and homophobia and then gets upset at others for their reaction to it. 

like i said, i don’t care anymore, they can leave, they can take their sensitivity and thin skin somewhere else. it’s their problem that they don’t want to handle the backlash to their actions, esp ones that hold a heavy weight, for a situation that they created and decided that they couldn’t hold the power anymore and ran off cause it became too much.

fandom doesn’t absolve you of your behavior and people with hefty followings need to realize that their actions are going to reach a large audience. people with big followings tend to use those followings to garner sympathy and paint themselves as a victim of a situation they created and are looking to be excused and that their following can forgive them without doing anything to make up for their behavior.

you perpetuate hurtful behavior? you’re going to get people who won’t be intimidated by the amount of followers you have and and confront you.

i never harassed, bullied, or tried to do what i can to run them off; they chose to overreact to people affected by their actions and blame them for it. it’s not my fault that they’re upset about it, and i frankly don’t care that they didn’t like it.

like i said, this is the first and only time i’ve ever talked to them in 7 tweets, and somehow, that counts as bullying and trying to run people out of the fandom.

but hey, they should get a pass for their gay erasure and admit they know they’re doing it and that they’re gonna continue to produce content that is hurtful to others, and having no problem with seeing a gay character and deciding they don’t have to respect them or the audience it was intended for. all because they’re an artist and people wanna bend over backwards to make sure that assure that person that their hurtful actions are soothed.

but hey, poc or lgbt expressing concern over someone’s behavior are always seen as the aggressive ones out to ruin people’s fun cause they want people to “stop having that fun” cause the fun they’re having is hurting people.

and that is exactly what this artist is claiming, except knowing that their following is gonna believe them regardless of how in the wrong they were.

also, y’all really gotta stop acting like “anti” can be applied to every little situation that causes you infractions. someone letting you know that hey, this action hurts me and i’m concerned about your willingness to engage in it? not an anti. it’s not “anti-like” behavior to want respect and for your boundaries to be respected. it’s not anti behavior because they want you to stop perpetuating the very things that hurt or have hurt them. 

yes, i can recognize an anti’s behavior because they use false narratives to push their agendas and will witch hunt people who engage in content they don’t like and will result to drastic measures to make sure someone doesn’t do that. anti behavior is misusing and abusing social justice language to paint their narrative as righteous regardless of what the situation is.

someone telling you that you’re erasing a canon gay character (you want all the interviews, podcasts, and gifs of them calling shiro “a gay man” and that his lack of reaction to women was supposed to be a hint at his sexuality? i can give you all of them but most of y’all a”ct like you can’t fuckin’ read any of the interviews since sdcc came out) and that it makes them uncomfortable? not an anti, but y’all are are acting like you’re being oppressed for people being upset about shipping a gay man with women. stop acting like the homophobia you’re engaging in is just some small, quirky thing you can ignore and that it’s okay to use because your interests need it to make it happen.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/a-brief-comedy-history-of-the-beastie-boys/

A Brief Comedy History of the Beastie Boys

Photo: Paul Natkin/WireImage

“Our main goal was really just to crack each other up,” Mike “Mike D” Diamond writes in the new Beastie Boys Book, the massive memoir-cum-mixtape that’s bursting with seemingly every anecdote, photograph, paean, and, well, mixtape he and bandmate Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz could fit into its nearly 600 pages, alongside a miniature cookbook, an oral history of a fictional alien made out of ice cream, and a letter from Sasquatch. Diamond is referring specifically to the lyrics on Licensed to Ill, but he may as well have been talking about the Beastie Boys’ entire career — more than 30 years that Diamond, Horovitz, and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch spent goofing on each other, and generally behaving like the smart-assed punks they were. Comedy was always crucial to the Beastie Boys’ success, of course, as essential as their race; as novelist Jonathan Lethem articulates in one of many guest essays, it was comedy that allowed three nice Jewish boys to posture as rhyming-and-stealing street toughs, holding hip-hop at an ironic distance in a way that played off “the special cognitive dissonance of the white boy possessed by culture not possessible to him.” The Beastie Boys debuted at a time when hip-hop was already being dismissed as a fad, evident in the contemporary flurry of novelty rap singles. (Remember “Rappin’ Duke” — duh-ha, duh-ha? “Rappin’ Rodney”? Mel Brooks’s “The Hitler Rap”?) In this case, the Beasties were the novelty. They styled themselves as dopes pretending to be rock stars, which absolved them from so, so much. Comedy allowed them to sneak in the side entrance, bum-rush the whole show.

That said, the Beastie Boys weren’t really a comedy act — at least, not in the sense of someone like Weird Al, or “nerdcore” rappers like MC Chris. They wrote a lot of funny lines, but they mostly fall under the rubric of daffy wordplay over straight-up zingers. And while they were masters of the studio goof-around like “Netty’s Girl” and “Heart Attack Man,” it was usually a lot funnier to just imagine the addled, 4 a.m. context of their creation than to listen to their actual content. (Although, “Boomin’ Granny” is just funny.) Rather, where Beastie Boys intersected with comedy — the source of their quick rise to fame and their continued vitality — lives in that private space of the laugh shared between childhood pals: “We assume they’re joking, and many of us feel let in on the joke,” author Ada Calhoun writes, much more succinctly. Here are some of the most notable times they let us in.

“Cooky Puss” (1983)

The Beastie Boys officially transitioned from hardcore punks into hip-hop pranksters with this single built around a ramshackle dance beat and some rudimentary scratching — although it doesn’t feature much in the way of actual rapping. The vocals, such as they are, consist of a series of obscene prank calls placed to a local Carvel Ice Cream, with Horovitz demanding, with increasing hostility, to talk to Cookie Puss, the chain’s popular alien ice-cream character. As Horovitz explains in the book, “Cooky Puss” was conceived as a parody of Malcolm McLaren’s rap-and-punk-fusing “Buffalo Gals,” a song the group genuinely loved and therefore had to mock, as is the way of the New York hipster. Like “Buffalo Gals,” it became an underground club favorite, too, encouraging the Beastie Boys to pursue hip-hop full-time. But while “Cooky Puss” barely hints at the Beasties’ musical future, it does contain an embryonic form of the band’s doofus savant approach, not to mention kicking off the band’s venerable tradition of telephone skits and stand-up comedy samples. (That’s Steve Martin’s “Wild And Crazy Guy” getting shredded on the turntables). It was a juvenile way of getting noticed, but it worked — though Horovitz now says he feels bad about harassing that poor underpaid Carvel employee who unwittingly became part of hip-hop history, “we thought it was funny at the time”

“(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” (1986)

“We thought it was funny at the time” ends up being a common refrain in the book, especially when it comes to the song — and video — that broke the band wide. “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” was conceived as a parody of “party” songs, part of the group’s general mocking of knucklehead culture. But whatever irony was lost on the listener was completely flushed with the clip, a punk slapstick masterpiece that only crystallized the group’s image as beer-swilling, porno-loving dirtbags. It’s a spoof of “cheesy pop-metal videos (Motley Crue, etc.), with a healthy dose of Blackboard Jungle,” Diamond writes, beginning with two nerds who decide to throw a get-together while their parents are gone, only to have the Beasties crash it with a gaggle of “bad people” (including producer Rick Rubin, young LL Cool J, and a pre-fame Tabitha Soren). The clip played incessantly on MTV, and while Diamond writes that “obviously, us being white had a ton to do with that,” it also helped that it was wacky and louche in all the right ways, a Three Stooges short as filtered through Porky’s. Unfortunately, its massive success meant the Beasties had to play up those stereotypes to a live audience that was increasingly filled with the kind of assholes they were mocking. Eventually the group lost sight of the irony themselves, right around when they started closing every show by inflating a giant, hydraulic dick. (Again, “it seemed funny at the time,” Horovitz writes.) It was a gag they’d spend decades trying to distance themselves from.

The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers (1987)

Although the Licensed to Ill–era Beastie Boys were stomach-scratching caricatures, they still boasted some pretty quick wits. You can see that dichotomy on this legendary appearance on the Joan Rivers–hosted Late Show, which begins with Rivers introducing them by mangling the title as Licensed to Kill, then — upon being corrected — sarcastically shooting back, “That’s a stupid name for an album!” But any potentially awkward trainwreck became accidental TV magic as soon as the trio sloppily draped themselves across Rivers’s set, taking her snarky questions in stride (“How’d you all three get together — Juilliard?”) and playing dutiful, if feisty foils, with Yauch donning Rivers’s glasses and providing snappy retorts about his age (“I’m 12”), and Horovitz insisting he’s actually Frank Zappa’s son (“It’s Dweezil, Moon Unit, and me”). Not all their jokes land, and they probably didn’t do much to dissuade audiences who saw them, to quote Rivers’s intro, as “loudmouth brats,” but it was just an early glimpse of their improv skills, which led to a long, storied tradition of the Beastie Boys hilariously fucking with interviewers.

“Hey Ladies” (1989)

“Sabotage” gets all the attention, but “Hey Ladies” was really where the Beastie Boys’ whole ’70s fetishism began — and arguably, that of the entire 1990s. Like “Sabotage,” the clip’s comedy is largely steeped in costume design, with the Beasties donning wide lapels, garish-print polyesters, neon-yellow pimp suits, and a giant fake butt to strut around a disco floor, Saturday Night Fever–style. But the laughs also come from some surreal sight gags (Vincent van Gogh sitting at the bar; a deadpan mariachi band doing the cowbell break), as well as the group’s unwavering commitment to their characters. That’s particularly true of the blowdryer-toting Horovitz, who tries out his best Travolta with the line, “I’d really love to do your hair sometime.” Cementing the comedy bona fides, “Hey Ladies” was directed by Adam Bernstein, who went on to do the pilots for 30 Rock, Scrubs, and Strangers With Candy, and who directed the similarly funny, fake-butt-adorned video for Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”

Roadside Prophets (1992)

Horovitz’s acting ambitions weren’t limited to just Tony Manero impressions. The same year “Hey Ladies” was released, Horovitz landed the lead in Lost Angels, playing a soulful teen delinquent whom Donald Sutherland tries to rescue. Two years later, he briefly turned up in the neo-noir A Kiss Before Dying, playing a drifter who picks up Matt Dillon. He also had an episode of The Equalizer under his belt. The book barely mentions Horovitz’s acting career, even his more recent, more dignified turns in indies like Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young. (Of Lost Angels, he says only, “Please, if you care about me, do not look it up.”) Meanwhile, it completely ignores his foray into movie comedies, 1992’s Roadside Prophets, a relentlessly quirky, record-geek spin on Easy Rider (crossed with Straight to Hell) that finds Horowitz and X front man John Doe riding motorcycles around the desert, witnessing eccentric cameos from the likes of John Cusack, David Carradine, Timothy Leary, and Don Cheadle. It’s not a great movie; less funny ha-ha, more funny ha-Hey, is that Flea? Still, Horowitz is funny in a squirrelly sort of way — and as in his dramatic turns, Horovitz has a certain likable, sensitive stoner magnetism. Who knows? In an alternate universe, Horovitz might have been chosen to be Keanu Reeves, and Dogstar would have become huge instead of the Beasties.

“Sabotage” (1994)

As Amy Poehler writes of Spike Jonze’s addictive 1994 clip for the Ill Communication standout, “I truly believe there would be no Anchorman, no Wes Anderson, no Lonely Island videos, and no channel called Adult Swim if this video did not exist.” She may be overstating it a tad, but you can see where she’s coming from. There is a shared metamodernist streak, one that film scholar James MacDowell once identified as “a tightrope between a cynically ‘detached’ irony and an emotionally ‘engaged’ sincerity” — something that certainly describes the Beastie Boys paying loving yet ludicrous homage to 1970s cop shows. Plus, as in Anchorman, “Sabotage” gets a whole lot of comic mileage out of bad hair and silly clothes. (“Once we discovered wigs and mustaches, we just couldn’t stop, and would go out in disguises every night,” Jonze writes.) One thing it definitely did do was make Jonze’s bones, paving the way for a foray into movies that walked a similar edge between aloofness and vulnerability. “Sabotage” also significantly raised the bar for all future Beastie Boys videos, which would go on to riff similarly on kaiju (“Intergalactic”) and ’60s spy films (“Body Movin’”). But regardless of whether you consider “Sabotage” some Rosetta stone for millennial humor, it still remains as funny and badass the 1,000th time as it was the first (a hypothesis MTV certainly put to the test).

Nathanial Hörnblowér (1994)

Most of the world first met Nathanial Hörnblowér in 1994, when he stormed the stage at the 1994 Video Music Awards. Taking some much-needed piss out of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” beating “Sabotage” for Best Direction, Hörnblowér — dressed in lederhosen and carting an enormous pipe — railed against the entire “farce” while a baffled Michael Stipe looked on, blurting out, “I had all the ideas for Star Wars!” in his cartoonish Swiss accent before security finally carted him off. But Beastie Boys obsessives and a few unsuspecting journalists were already well familiar with Yauch’s yodeler-auteur alter ego, a filmmaker and renaissance man (he was said to have “pretty much invented snowboarding” and “built his own helicopter out of wood”) who also happened to be Yauch’s uncle. Hörnblowér was credited with directing nearly a dozen of the group’s videos as well as the artwork on Paul’s Boutique, but his greatest contribution to the Beastie Boys was as Yauch’s Tony Clifton–esque escape valve, a mythic personality he could escape into to say the most bizarre shit he could spin — like that time he wrote a letter to New York Times critic Stephanie Zacharek over her negative review of the “Ch-Check It Out” video, demanding she send him a goat. Yauch kept the joke running for years, even directing a 2006 short, A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hörnblowér, in which David Cross assumes the role to cross-country ski across Manhattan and play chess with a dog.

The Hello Nasty Infomercial (1998)

Released into the bowels of basic cable in 1998 (and today rescued on YouTube), the late-night infomercial created to promote the release of Hello Nasty took the group’s zeal for character work and bad wigs in an especially surreal direction. Tamra Davis, who’s helmed comedies like CB4 and Billy Madison (and is married to Diamond), stitched together this parody of low-rent miracle-product pitches, with each member taking a turn in the spotlight: Horovitz as an audience member freaking out over a juicer that plays Beastie Boys songs; Diamond, barely keeping it together as a braying fitness guru; Yauch as a Don Lapre–esque, get-rich-quick schemer. Although the infomercial was a joke, offering things like the all-in-one shampoo, cleaner, and spermicide called Sure Shine, viewers really could order the album via the 1-888 number on the screen, which also directed them to the just-launched website for the band’s Grand Royal record label. All in all, it was a brilliantly ahead-of-the-curve marketing scheme, one couched in a form of anti-comedy whose deadpan non sequiturs, deliberate shoddiness, and butt-ugly sweaters predated Tim and Eric Awesome Show by nearly a decade. So maybe Amy Poehler is onto something.

Futurama (1999)

Joining an esteemed list that includes Leonard Nimoy, Conan O’Brien, and Beck(’s disembodied heads), the Beastie Boys guest star as themselves in the first-season Futurama episode “Hell Is Other Robots,” still headlining arenas in the 31st century — and still doing “Intergalactic” — despite being craniums in jars. The group does a corny a cappella rendition of “Sabotage,” gamely plays along with cracks about the long wait between records (Fry: “Back in the 20th century, I had all five of your albums!” Ad-Rock: “That was a thousand years ago. Now we got seven”), and even turns up in Robot Hell, tormenting Bender with a little rap about the eternal punishment awaiting music bootleggers. The cameo reportedly came about because the Beasties were big fans of creator Matt Groening — “particularly Adam Yauch,” according to their publicist. Unfortunately, conflicts with the recording schedule meant that Yauch had to bow out; that’s Horovitz doing his best MCA impression instead.

“Triple Trouble” (2004)

In the book, Horovitz is a little down on To the 5 Boroughs, saying that the pall cast by September 11 inspired an album where “the serious ones feel a little forced, and the funny ones are a little flat” — an embodiment of a panicked and melancholy time when everyone, quite understandably, got in their own heads. Still, you’d never know it from watching the video for “Triple Trouble,” another Hörnblowér special that finds the group donning outlandish, Dave Navarro–meets–‘N Sync costumes to strut the red carpet and talk shit about Sasquatch, who then kidnaps the Beasties and forces them to play Pong and participate in a drum circle in his cave. As video concepts go, it’s kinda just one long pothead reverie, but it still gets in some decent jokes about celebrity culture and MapQuest — and at a time when dumb shit was more than welcome. Not to mention, it gave us 15 of the greatest seconds ever committed to video: Kanye West learns about Sasquatches.

30 Rock (2009)

The year 2009 was a dark one for the Beastie Boys. While readying an album and another major headlining tour, the group was forced to put everything on hold after Yauch was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his salivary gland. Yauch’s illness also meant that he had to sit out on this guest appearance on 30 Rock, where the group was meant to be part of a star-studded, “We Are the World”–style benefit song being put together by Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, solely to find his ailing father a kidney. Instead, Talib Kweli subbed in, joining Horovitz and Diamond — as well as Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Adam Levine, Norah Jones, and too many others to name — as they rapped about how sometimes it’s better to just have one of something: heads, dogs attacking you (“There, we’ve proved our point!”). The episode ended up airing just a month before the Beastie Boys would play their final live show, a context that makes the otherwise very funny moment feel bittersweet.

Fight for Your Right Revisited (2011)

The same could be said of Yauch’s final video for the group, which brought everything full circle — its dizzying assemblage of celebrity cameos paying testament to the incredible influence the Beastie Boys had, across so many spheres, while also going back to where it literally all began. Picking up where “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” leaves off, the short finds Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock — now played by Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, and Elijah Wood — continuing to wreak drunken havoc across town, having run-ins with so many more famous people that it would be far more efficient to say who isn’t in it. (Okay, here’s a sampling anyway: Amy Poehler. Ted Danson. Rashida Jones. Steve Buscemi. Susan Sarandon. Robert Downey Jr. Maya Rudolph. Dan Aykroyd. Alicia Silverstone. Stanley Tucci. Kirsten Dunst. You get the idea.) Finally, the young Beasties come face to face with none other than their older, time-traveling selves played by Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Jack Black. The generational friction culminates in a dance contest, ending in everyone peeing on each other before they’re arrested by the cops (played by the actual Beastie Boys). It’s crude and sweet, ironically self-aware yet still deeply sentimental, painfully hip but also absurdly dumb — much like the Beastie Boys themselves. All in all, a fitting capper to such an accidental legacy, one created by three dudes who were always just out to make each other laugh.

Source: http://www.vulture.com/2018/11/a-brief-comedy-history-of-the-beastie-boys.html

[lucyariablog]

How to Train Your Brain to Be Creative: Lessons for Marketers

For many years, I worked alongside a talented content marketer who often insisted she just wasn’t “a creative person.” Though there was plenty of evidence to the contrary (I won’t embarrass her by sharing details), she refused to believe her brain was capable of generating big, innovative ideas or turning them into groundbreaking storytelling.

Rather than argue with her, I thought I’d prove her – and, by extension, any other marketer who thinks crafting imaginative, one-of-a-kind content is a task best left to “artistic types” – wrong once and for all.

To do this, I gathered compelling evidence, perspectives, and advice from some of the most imaginative, inspirational, and downright impressive minds in the world of creative content pursuits.

If you don’t create, you stagnate

Beyond the critical role it plays in tech innovation, personal self-expression, product development, and simply making our world a more interesting place, creativity may be the most important determining factor in whether a content marketing program is properly positioned to thrive or doomed to fail.

Creativity in your #contentmarketing program may be the most important factor in its success, says @joderama. Click To Tweet

Imagine how difficult it would be to accomplish any of these long-term business goals without setting off a spark of ingenuity now and again:  

Standing out from your competition. When cutting through the noise in a crowded space, take a lesson from notable marketing vloggers Andrew and Pete: Believing that “playing follow the leader will keep you always in a state of being one step behind,” the duo infused advice-filled videos with their signature quirky charm and forged an award-winning niche for themselves in the process.

Playing follow the leader will keep you always in a state of being one step behind, says @AndrewAndPete. Click To Tweet

Scaling your reach and influence. No single marketing approach will work forever or for everybody. If you want to bring new folks around to your way of thinking – and get them to share it with their friends – have a range of creative broad strokes to entice them.

Overcoming attention fatigue: Over time, even your most popular content pieces can get overshadowed by the shiny things hitting your subscribers’ news feeds and inboxes. Delivering something unexpected can shake loose the cobwebs and reignite the passion they felt when they first signed on to engage with your business.

Reenergizing your content team. It can be hard for content creators to stay focused and motivated when they are producing the same content pieces over and over. Giving them the time and space to explore new ideas can strengthen their sense of ownership over their work – and their job satisfaction.

You could be the next creative mastermind (yes, you!)

Despite what staunch status quo supporters might think, creativity can come from anywhere – and from anyone. Don’t believe me? Maybe the opinion of a creative genius (and minister of silly walks) will hold more weight:

“Creativity is not a talent – it’s a way of operating… (It’s) not an ability that you either have or do not have.” – John Cleese

#Creativity is not a talent, it’s a way of operating, says @johncleese. #cmworld Click To Tweet

Creativity in context

Following this theory, anybody (including my former colleague) can learn to be more creative if they so desire. Of course, it’s going to take some work; but it’s a lot easier if you know how to get yourself into the right frame(s) of mind first.

As Mr. Cleese explained in his well-known 1991 presentation on how to be creative (which informed some thoughts he expressed in his 2015 keynote address at Content Marketing World), people who excel in creative roles are often particularly adept at alternating between two critical states of being:

Open mode – Your mind is relaxed, expansive, contemplative, inclined to humor, and playful, which allows natural creativity to surface.

Closed mode – Your mind is still active, yet its function is more purposeful and focused. It’s where you organize your ideas and decide how to implement them in a meaningful way.

To excel at #creativity – alternate between open mode and closed mode states of being, advises @JohnCleese. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

The Best Content Marketing Books of 2017 to Boost Your Creativity and Productivity

The Rare White Squirrel Who Eats Pumpkins (and Other Stories of Creativity)

Creativity in content

Of course, when you’re talking about creativity from a content marketer’s perspective, you don’t often have the luxury of cultivating the ideal mindset before getting something down on the page. After all, you have deadlines to meet, business goals to reach, and eager subscribers you can’t disappoint just because your creative muse doesn’t have a safe space in which to work her magic.

In fact, if you ask Unthinkable Media’s Jay Acunzo, the whole idea of expecting to be visited by a mythical spirit doling out creative inspiration is a bigger fallacy than the existence of unicorns (which, as we all know, live in abundance in a magical land called Silicon Valley).

The muse is an excuse: In his recent webinar on improving creativity in content marketing, Jay calls BS on the whole idea of invoking an ephemeral spirit to catalyze creativity. As he sees it, the idea of an artistic muse is nothing more than an excuse that allows creative types to absolve themselves of culpability when ideas don’t pan out – or don’t pour forth at all.

Fortunately, Jay believes that once you stop approaching creative endeavors as a product of divine intervention, you can make them happen in a more reliable and constructive way. And, as with Mr. Cleese’s recommendations, it all starts with a simple mental switch.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The 3 Behaviors Driving the Most Creative Content Marketers

Set ground rules for groundbreaking ideas

As Jay explains, what we view as “creative genius” is typically based on a well-polished final product that draws admiration from a broad audience. But what we often fail to consider is how many small moments of action had to happen behind the scenes before that first big success earned its spotlight. (Remember, even Thomas Edison must have had a few epic fails before debuting the light bulb – why else would he have reportedly referred to it as “an invention with 1,000 steps?”)

Similarly, Jay characterizes creativity as a lifetime of small, deliberate motions; not a single, monumental shift. He encourages aspiring innovators to approach creative endeavors by building a manageable process around producing them.

#Creativity is a lifetime of small, deliberate motions, not a single monumental shift, says @jayacunzo. Click To Tweet

“Content creators often shy away from the idea of process because of how the concept is typically applied,” he says. “Yet, structuring your creativity can be a helpful tool if you find the right framework.”

For example, if you are looking to strengthen your creative muscles but don’t have the resources or permission to experiment within your regular content responsibilities, Jay suggests building a body of creative work more gradually, using one of these methods:

Side projects: Carve out a bit of your own free time to build a single idea; but make sure to work consistently as long as it takes to see it to completion.

Side pockets: If your company allows for “10% time” projects (like Google and Coca-Cola have reportedly done), find a small pocket in this allocation to put your creative energies to practical use.

Extractions: Identify a creative effort you admire and deconstruct it to learn what “made it tick.” Once you discover its mechanisms, look for ways to apply what you’ve learned to your content initiatives. Share your ideas with your team, using the original example as proof of its potential to succeed.

“Up the mountain, down the mountain:” If your goal is to write a book, test a single idea in a smaller format, like a tweet. If you get traction, look for a way to incrementally expand it into a larger piece, like a blog post. Continue to build toward your goal, testing your idea’s resonance as you go along. Once you have achieved your intended purpose, go back “down the mountain” to distribute it using the same channels and formats you leveraged in its development.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Get Control of Your Content Marketing Ideas So You Can Take Action

Creativity-block busters

While the right framework can help you nurture your inner innovator, visionary marketers may encounter plenty of other challenges on the path to greater content creativity. Here are a few examples, along with some helpful suggestions for conquering them.

Securing the buy-in to experiment

In her recent post on generating content ideas, Carla Johnson contends it’s often not our ideas that fail to win stakeholder support, but rather how we’ve been conditioned to pitch untested ideas.

It’s not our #content ideas that fail to win stakeholder support, but bad pitching practices. @carlajohnson Click To Tweet

To keep bad pitching practices from killing your best creative ideas, Carla shares a process that aligns with a popular, human-centered approach called design thinking:

Start with an observation. This will provide a practical context and help stakeholders understand the inspiration behind your idea.

Distill the observation’s essence. Next, distill the broader meaning you observed. Bring the big theme anyone can relate to, which demonstrates your understanding of and empathy for the situation.

Relate it to your brand. Connect the dots between your observation and its relevance for your business, which will help provide the necessary aha moment around your creative idea. 

Explain your idea generation. When you preface the explanation of how you generated your idea with the observation, distillation, and relation to your brand, hone in on why your observation matters ­– and how it has an opportunity to create value for your organization.

Don’t start w/ the #content idea. Share an experience & distill into a relatable theme. @carlajohnson Click To Tweet

Conquering procrastination

On the other hand, sometimes it can be better to beg forgiveness later rather than ask for permission first. For example, if you let yourself get too caught up in ideation and explanation, you might run out of creative steam before your content ideas can take shape. This can lead to the total productivity killer known as procrastination – where you delay the creative process because you simply aren’t sure where or how to get it started.

In one of their recent videos, Andrew and Pete offered a few techniques you can use to keep the procrastination bug at bay:

  HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

7 Productivity Killers for Marketers and How to Fix Them

27 Ideas to Break Your Creative Slump

Handling creative criticism

Another issue that often plagues content creators is how to deal with detractors, naysayers, and others who don’t share your drive to shake things up. While it can be hard to hear that your ideas don’t meet someone else’s approval, Jay says that, rather than deflecting negative critiques, creators should embrace any and all feedback: “While we always want our ideas to be right in theory, we need to accept that reality doesn’t always work in absolutes,” he says. “Criticism is a powerful signal that something isn’t connecting.”

Settling the quantity vs. quality debate

While this is a question that seems to pop up in just about every discussion on content creativity, Jay thinks it’s time to shut the door on this question –  which he views as a false, misleading choice – once and for all. “When management asks for quantity, give them results that demonstrate the value of quality,” he advises.

Tap your own keg of creativity

If you are looking for more answers to your big questions on creativity and content, I highly encourage you to watch Jay’s Ask Me Anything webinar on creativity.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you: What inspires you to think outside the box when you face a content marketing challenge? What holds you back from pursuing innovative ideas? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Hear from inspiring creators like Jay Acunzo, Andrew & Pete, and Tina Fey in person at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Train Your Brain to Be Creative: Lessons for Marketers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/06/train-creative-marketers/