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distinguished-slacker · 4 years ago

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Owari no Seraph — An Analysis of Shinoa and Mitsuba’s Friendship

(Warning: A long post that nobody asked for and I had to make the panels tightly packed into one image each due to the Tumblr 10 images per post restriction so I am not taking responsibility for any brain aneurysms I might cause. I am serious, it’s really LONG.)

(Why? Because this cursed manga needs more girl power.)

(Note: Friendship)

We always speak about friendships like the ones between Yuu and Mika, and Guren and Shinya but we rarely talk about the one in the girls’ side, which is the the friendship between Shinoa and Mitsuba. It is the only female friendship we actually have in Owari no Seraph since we haven’t seen Chess and Horn ever since Nagoya arc, and we barely get to see how Mito, Sayuri and Shigure act with each other as friends when the topic of conversation is not Guren.

I agree that Shinoa and Mitsuba’s friendship is cute and funny. However, as I reread the manga I realised that their relationship is deeper than that, that each contributed into the development of the other to a degree but at the same there is a wall that keeps them from growing closer but of which none of them is aware of, and how their distance has been exacerbated by some faults that makes me believe their relationship is deteriorating.

So I decided to make a deep analysis with some theorising about their friendship throughout the manga where I make it sound more complex than the sexualised joke Kagami has made of it :D

The first time we had a glimpse of their friendship is of course when Mitsuba debuted in chapter 8 of the manga as the fifth and last member of Shinoa squad. She is first seen complaining to Guren about why was she placed in a squad full of rookies being most visibly infuriated by the fact that the “sarcastic airhead Hīragi Shinoa” was chosen as the squad leader instead of her. When Shinoa appears, she addresses Mitsuba as “Micchan” (or Mi-chan/Mitsu/whatever translation) and mocks her, angering Mitsuba more and driving her to manifest her weapon to fight Shinoa. This scene shows that they have known each other before Shinoa squad was established. The question was when? Shinoa described her life before the catastrophe occurred as “living under a rock” and how she “didn’t see or speak with anyone at all” in the afterword of volume 17, which can be further proved by the events of the Catastrophe at 16 light novels. Shinoa and Mitsuba were bound to meet because of their statuses as Hīragi and Sangū respectively but Shinoa was always kept in the shadows by her family so it’s quite unlikely that they have met as children before the catastrophe.

The only possibility for them to have met is for military reasons rather than for family reasons. In chapter 3, before Shinoa squad was formed, it was revealed that Shinoa is part of the vampire extermination unit but we don’t know for how long. Considering that Mitsuba used the argument of joining the vampire extermination unit at the age of thirteen to explain why would she make a better squad leader than Shinoa, it’s safe to assume that Shinoa joined later than Mitsuba. However, Shinoa received Shikama Dōji as a weapon in 2012 when she was 7 (6 if Kagami could do maths but whatever...) so I doubt the army would let a capable and armed person have a relaxing life for so many years when she could be used for fighting instead since there is a shortage of soldiers (unless Shinoa used her power as a Hīragi, which sometimes works in her favour, to avoid military duties). Moreover, I doubt that the army would place an unexperienced soldier straight into the extermination unit, which is the most dangerous unit in the Japanese Imperial Demon Army, regardless of their status, especially a child. So even if Mitsuba said she joined this unit when she was 13, there is a small chance that she has been a soldier before that but was tasked with easier jobs like being a wall guard and the same thing could be applied to Shinoa. In other words, it’s likely that these two girls have known each other for a good number of years before the timeline of Vampire Reign began.

The reason why I want to believe that Shinoa and Mitsuba met a considerable time ago before the start of the series is because of Shinoa’s attitude towards her. Shinoa has lived a life lacking family love and social interaction which caused her to become apathetic and unemotional up until the formation of Shinoa squad. But somehow there is this girl, who is the only one whom Shinoa gives a cute nickname, has a lot of interest on teasing her and feels comfortable enough to barge into her shower and be seen naked when that is a situation where a person is really vulnerable. I mean, considering Mitsuba’s personality, it’s understandable why Shinoa feels so free to act like that around her but still it’s emotionally detached Hīragi Shinoa we are talking about.

(From top to bottom, and left to right: chapters 8, 9, 19, 29 and 43)

One thing that bothers me is how Kagami made it look like as if Shinoa was completely empty before being influenced by Yuu’s ‘kindness’ when that is not true at all and Shinoa was able to show a caring side before that.

One example of this is in the same chapter where Mitsuba debuted, shown in the top-left panel. In this chapter Mitsuba is acting so bossy and arrogant here that to be honest anyone would find her annoying. However, Mitsuba’s constant shouting about battle formation is to ensure that everyone adheres to the rules to avoid any danger, especially considering the reckless attitude Yuu has displayed here about killing vampires as soon as he sees them. In reality, Mitsuba’s behaviour is a defence mechanism in order to hide her traumas regarding the death of her previous squad members and Shinoa knows this well. Shinoa knows Mitsuba is a kind person on the inside, going to the extent of even calling ��adorable” how Mitsuba feels that their lives are her responsibility, and that’s why she tells Yuu to bear with Mitsuba because Shinoa doesn’t want him to hate her.

In the panel below the first one which occurs in the next chapter when the girls are in the showers, Shinoa comforts Mitsuba telling her it wasn’t necessarily her fault that the entire squad got annihilated (as some of the members were already killed before Mitsuba made any reckless move, Mitsuba was too young and it was the leader’s decision to sacrifice himself for her). Speaking about this, Shinoa is the only one in the squad who knows about Mitsuba’s past and it makes me wonder whether Mitsuba herself told Shinoa about this or Shinoa discovered it since as a Sangū, Mitsuba must be well known in the army so her failure might have been spread around and Shinoa happened to discover it. It depends on how much of friends they were before the beginning of the manga; whether they were friends before that or they were somewhat distant but strengthened their friendship when the squad was established. After all, it is hinted that they live together in the chapter where they tried to cook for the guys though Shinoa said it was her room (but it wasn’t specified if it was Mitsuba’s too) so maybe Mitsuba decided to come over for that event. In the anime there was a bunk bed in the room next to the living room which wasn’t shown in the manga but still it doesn’t hurt mentioning it.

This one is a very subtle panel. In the middle panel that happened in chapter 29 after Shinoa and Narumi squad finished their mission of killing Lucal Wesker in Nagoya arc, Yuu realises that people really do die in these missions and Mitsuba replies to him with a “Your friends die. That’s the reality of battle...I...I’ve seen this...” while recalling her previous squad’s members deaths. Shinoa quickly picks up on this and touches her elbow in comfort, as highlighted by the green circle pointed by the green arrow, and gives a speech that reminds Mitsuba that she is not alone anymore and has people who are still alive for her to protect. I really love this moment because Shinoa was so perceptive of the little changes happening within Mitsuba.

In the right panel, it might look like Shinoa is throwing the bothersome job to explain the squad’s situation to Mitsuba, which might be true considering how Shinoa is sometimes, but I like this panel because it shows that Shinoa lets Mitsuba have her part and act as her second in command since being squad leader is what Mitsuba initially wanted. Mitsuba seems to be happy to act as her second in command which shows their relationship is more chill than what their first scene together in the manga made it look like.

Like Shinoa cares for Mitsuba, Mitsuba cares for Shinoa too. In the bottom-left panel which is taken from chapter 19, Kimizuki is suspicious of Shinoa after Yoichi and him were interrogated and tortured by the Hīragis, going as far as thinking she was using Yuu and saying that this is nothing but a “sickness” where he is forced to “play comrades”. Mitsuba quickly defends her by stopping Kimizuki because she knows Shinoa is only making them hide Yuu’s transformation out of genuine care for a comrade. Curiously, this scene parallels to a scene in chapter 99 that occurs after Shinoa makes Shikama Dōji submit. Kimizuki starts shouting at Shinoa thinking that she has been using them all while laughing behind their backs the whole time. This time Mitsuba doesn’t intervene. There are three possibilities for this: one is that Mitsuba is simply being relegated to the sidelines due to constricted space in the current events of the manga, two, that Mitsuba cannot act because this whole situation confuses her which is understandable, and three, that Mitsuba and Shinoa are becoming more distant, which I will explain later in this post.

I tried to find more panels of Mitsuba visibly showing care for Shinoa in the beginning and middle of the manga but it was hard but this is not Mitsuba’s fault, neither Shinoa’s. To be brief, Shinoa is a tough nut to crack. With her personality it’s hard to get emotionally close to her. Add to that that Mitsuba has her emotional baggage too which makes her emotionally constipated, this sets a wall between the girls so I hope Kagami will do something with it later in the manga where it breaks. Yuu already achieved it, so why not Mitsuba who is supposedly Shinoa’s only female friend and even best friend?

(Left: chapter 26 and Right: chapter 45)

When Guren knocked Mitsuba out during the squad mock battle and when Mitsuba was attacked by Crowley, Shinoa always jumped to protect her regardless of the risk. Have a look at Shinoa’s pained face when Mitsuba told them to leave her behind or Shinoa’s determined face when she told Makoto to follow Kimizuki and Yoīchi in order to rescue Mitsuba. That raw emotion. Seriously, is it me or ironically in the beginning of the manga Shinoa showed far more emotion despite being claimed to be initially cold?

(Top left: chapter 19, bottom left: chapter 26 and right: chapter 24)

Does someone else miss when these two girls used to team up to annoy the boys? These scenes might seem for pure comedic purposes but they are actually deeper than what they look like. When Mitsuba debuted, she was not only strict with others but with herself too. Due to her past failure and family expectations, she was forcing herself to grow up quicker, to be the perfect soldier and follow the rules even if that put herself under pressure. However, as she got more involved with the squad she became more free and Shinoa’s personality started started to rub off on her. There are two scenes where Shinoa starts with her pranks and Mitsuba follows with them. It’s vastly thanks to Shinoa that Mitsuba started to act like the teenager she is and that’s really wholesome. I mean, just look at how happy Mitsu is at the bottom left panel or her smirk, something unusual for her, in the bottom right panel when they abandon Kimizuki on the side of the highway (lmao poor Kimizuki). This duo have a great dynamic!

Interestingly, as the series progresses, you can see how both Mitsuba and Shinoa’s characters start acquiring qualities from the other. The always so stiff and temperamental Mitsuba becomes more laid-back and honest while Shinoa goes through the process of discovering more emotions within herself and expressing actual interest on other things. But the problem is that while Mitsuba’s change was influenced by the squad, Shinoa’s was primarily by influenced by Yuu.

(Top left: chapter 8, bottom left and middle right: chapter 48, top right: chapter 17 and bottom right: chapter 43)

It is known that Shinoa loves to tease Mitsuba. In fact, her favourite person to tease is Mitsu because in the fanbook Shinoa said that someone who gets bullied easily is “1. Micchan 2.Micchan 3.Micchan” and even Mitsuba said that she hears Shinoa talk about her a lot.

The first thing Shinoa does when they reunite in chapter 8 is tease her. In chapter 48 when they are talking in the girls’ toilet you can see Shinoa looking at Mitsuba with soft and sweet expressions. Shinoa is really comfortable around her and Mitsuba’s personality allows Shinoa to be herself. Shinoa even said “I really like you when you always react to me like this.” with a gentle laugh which is something rare for her to say.

However, there are times where I personally feel that Shinoa should set some limits to herself regarding how much she teases Mitsuba and with what topics she uses to tease her like when she joked about Mitsuba not being a virgin in chapter 43 because the combined blood of the squad that Mika drank was gross. Although I find hilarious how Mitsuba reacted with a “I am SO going to kill you someday!!” but limits are limits, especially if it’s in front of everyone.

Another panel that was used for comedic purposes that I find somewhat off is the one in chapter 17 showed at the top right corner. Before this panel, Mitsuba says with a serious face that she hopes “things go okay for Yuu” in the interview with the Hīragi family and Shinoa starts teasing Mitsuba saying that she is in love with Yuu. Shinoa teases her but her gaze is at the building not at Mitsuba, her focus is on Yuu, and so it feels as if she teased Mitsuba to cover something else. And what is that something else? Easy. This scene happens not longer after Shinoa confronts Guren in his office about him drugging Yuu where Guren asks Shinoa if she fell in love with him. Ever since this moment Shinoa started to doubt about her feelings and I feel that she teased Mitsuba about her being in love with Yuu to cover her own feelings and that is not a nice thing to do to a friend.

Shinoa annoyed her many times throughout, Mitsuba never really got seriously angry at her aside from an occasional initial outburst. Mitsuba shows great patience with Shinoa, unless there is something we don’t know since we have never gotten an inner monologue of Mitsuba but I will talk about this later.

(Chapter 17)

In the same chapter but some panels before, Shinoa makes fun of Mitsuba addressing her incompetence paralleling to how she made fun of her when they met in chapter 8. Mitsuba just got out of an interview with the Hīragis where she has been promoted, and Shinoa mocks her about how easily she can climb up the ranks just because she is a Sangū and not because of her abilities. On one hand, considering Mitsuba’s severe low self-esteem Shinoa shouldn’t be joking with this a lot but on the other hand, it’s because Shinoa is like this that Mitsuba is comfortable with her. Mitsuba doesn’t like it when everyone talks bad behind her back while praising her on the front, so Shinoa, who is the only one who is honest with her, makes Mitsuba feel at ease (let’s not count Yuu here because that guy is clueless about the weight that the hierarchy holds within the JIDA).

In the middle panel we can see how Shinoa talks about herself to Mitsuba and the same thing can be said with the toilet scene in chapter 48. Mitsuba is the only one out of the squad who knows about Shinoa’s life within the Hīragi family and some story with her older sister Mahiru (I know this is because those higher ranking family members have access to that information but nevertheless this gives Mitsuba an advantage when it comes to bonding with Shinoa). However, Shinoa is here just stating facts but doesn’t open emotionally to Mitsuba so that wall between them persists. Considering that they might have been friends for years, it’s mostly Shinoa’s closed heart the main reason that made their friendship stagnant. But of course, this is not Shinoa’s fault since she is a product of her terrible childhood.

When you look deeper into it, they don’t have the emotional bond and trust they should have with each other.

In the right panel, that’s where the real problem in their friendship starts. Please zoom and have a look at the section surrounded by the vertical amber rectangle. Have a look at Mitsuba’s expression. She is angry and not for comedic purposes. Shinoa has just asked Mitsuba how much information about Yuu she “bribed” the Hīragis with in exchange for her promotion. It doesn’t even look like Shinoa is joking here. She actually thought that Mitsuba, her closest friend, would fall so low as to sell a comrade for a promotion that she didn’t even want in the first place. Look at the region surrounded by the horizontal amber rectangle and you can see that despite Mitsuba already told Shinoa she did not say a thing, Shinoa keeps asking her if she said anything about Yuu going berserk in the battlefield as if she doesn’t fully trust Mitsuba. To be honest, Shinoa crossed the line here and I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t read the beginning of the manga since in the anime they made it different.

This is the beginning of the popular scenario where a friendship is tested when a guy comes in between.

(From top to bottom: chapters 57, 70 and 75)

In chapter 57, Guren reveals to everyone a shocking fact; Shinoa was born with a demon inside her because of a crazy experiment. Mitsuba is the one who looks the most visibly shocked and when she asks Shinoa what does he mean by that Shinoa instead looks away to where Yuu is even though he didn’t ask her anything unlike Mitsuba. To me, this where Mitsuba and Shinoa’s friendship officially entered the amber region.

Then, in chapter 70, Aoi starts choking Mitsuba, asking her why she is not dead and branding her as traitor. Shinoa didn’t try to stop it but it’s understandable since going against Aoi could be punished, especially because they are in JIDA territory, and that Yuu was already doing the job of defending Mitsuba. What I found curious about this is that the whole time Aoi was talking bad about Mitsuba being a traitor we get scenes with Yuu, and even a glimpse of Kimizuki and Yoichi as highlighted by the blue square but not of Shinoa. Shinoa is only shown just after Yuu says “I’m Mitsuba’s family” as if this choice in the structuring of these panels is implying that Yuu saying something nice to another girl gets more reaction from Shinoa than when said girl, who is a friend of Shinoa too, is in a problem. What hurts me the most is that even if there was no need for Shinoa to intervene, we don’t get any shocked or sad expression of her while Aoi puts her hands on Mitsuba’s neck or starts insulting her.

Shinoa’s priorities changed and this is further seen when she is turning into a vampire in chapter 75 and everyone is around the wheeled stretcher where Shinoa is lying on but she looks only at Yuu. I could say that maybe she looked at Yuu instead of anyone else because he was closer to Shinoa’s face but then when Shinoa is taken to the doctors and scientists the last thing she thinks of is “Yuuichi...ro” and only Yuuichiro.

(Chapter 86)

I guess we are going into the orange area now...While Shinoa changes, Mitsuba stays relatively the same. The panel where Mitsuba runs to Shinoa and hugs her in tears is the greatest proof of how much Mitsuba cares for Shinoa, which is impacting for the readers since we haven’t got much of their friendship for a long time up until that point. Now, if we compare Shinoa’s facial expressions in this chapter with the ones I have previously shown in chapters like 45 (when Crowley attacked Mitsuba) and 48 (when they talked in the toilet), you can see the difference. Before, Shinoa’s face was full of genuine happiness, care and worry but now she is poker faced. She completely disregards Mitsuba’s concern for her and crying. She doesn’t show a shocked face, doesn’t hug Mitsuba back or doesn’t even tell her “Sorry for making you worry, Micchan” or something like that. She turns the situation into a boob joke and Mitsuba simply replies back. Then, we get an emotional panel again of Mitsuba asking Shinoa if she is really herself again (and if you zoom to where the green arrow as pointing at you can see Mitsuba’s red eyes from crying a lot) but then Shinoa continues with the boob joke like nothing. Sure, I understand that Shinoa has fallen in love and her priorities are somewhere else, but could she at least show more concern for Mitsuba?

Now some people might tell me that I am making a huge deal out of it, that’s it normal Shinoa is not comforting her or acting accordingly to the situation because Shinoa is emotionally stagnant and dense but this is actually not true at all. Please have a look at this image below:

(Chapters 85 and 90)

The first and only person Shinoa thinks about after being freed from her possession in chapter 85 is “Yuuichiro” (or Yuu-san if the translators did it properly). She doesn’t think about the rest of her squad even though she is supposed to be the squad leader.

Then here is where we can make the comparison. In chapter 86, Mitsuba was crying because she was scared since Shinoa was ‘dying’ by turning into a vampire, Yuu got kidnapped, and Kimizuki, Yoichi and Makoto left her without telling her a thing when the war broke out. Mitsuba informs her of this. Four chapters later, in chapter 90, which probably happened like half an hour or an hour in the OnS universe after Mitsuba cried, when Yoichi says Yuu was crying Shinoa gets worked up saying “I have to rescue him”. Shinoa hasn’t even seen with her own eyes that Yuu was crying yet she is prepared to go and help him when she didn’t do it for the girl who was crying right in front of her just some minutes ago. This shows clear favouritism towards Yuu. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having the person you like as your first priority. It’s almost the natural thing to occur, especially considering that this is the first time Shinoa feels like this. However, it’s because of things like this that the possibility of Shinoa eventually losing the closest friend she has exists.

(Also if someone wants to object to that part saying that Shinoa didn’t comfort Yuu in the end I will just say that it’s not weird considering Yuu was acting all happy go lucky and on the outside he didn’t look like needed comfort even if he really did.)

Also, many people noticed the use of “I” instead of “We” in “I have to rescue him” and “Yuuichiro... Hang in there. I’m on my way.” even though she is with the whole squad and I especially find it more surprising considering that when she said this last phrase, Mitsuba was next to her (or behind her from our perspective) showing that Shinoa doesn’t think of Mitsuba as much as she used to in the past. This mirrors what Mahiru told Shinoa in chapter 56, even though Shinoa couldn’t hear her, about how “sexual desire and lust” (I am going to put “crush” here instead because this might be too far someone like Shinoa) “corrupts you” “to the point where you don’t care about the world and its future anymore” and this already started with Shinoa’s care for the squad decreasing at the expense of her care for Yuu increasing.

Additionally, if you are a fan of this manga art style you might have took an interest on its illustrations and might have noticed that ever since Osaka arc there have not been many illustrations of them together anymore. At most it’s just Shinoa alone. Whether it implies their distance or Yamamoto simply does not have the time of making complex illustrations again, I don’t know.

(Chapters 54 and 96, and volume 17 afterword ending on chapter 69)

Boob jokes. The worst part. Boob jokes. The first time I guess it was okay but it just keeps repeating and it’s not only in the manga. I even looked at the anime fanbook, and watched the CD Dramas and some clips of the game Owari no Seraph: Unmei no Hajimari (which all take place at the time before the squad defected the army) and I realised that there are more times where Shinoa makes a comment about Mitsuba’s chest. Some people say that this significant number of times Shinoa starts a boob conversation may indicate that rather than being jealous, she is obsessed and actually attracted to Mitsuba. But ships aside (I want to keep this post as ship-free as possible), it’s not nice that every time these two have an interaction, which is rare lately and so special because of its rarity, the topic is boobs. It’s not even funny and it degrades their relationship. Why Kagami cannot treat their relationship like the boys’s and give them scenes where they talk about their emotions rather than body parts? After all, the friendship between Shinoa and Mitsuba is not that different to Yuu and Mika’s or Guren and Shinya’s for reasons like sharing a past together. The major difference I can only find between them is their biological sexes and this is not an excuse for this bias.

But since I am the type of person who likes to looks deeper into every joke I am going to do it for these ones. The only thing that I find refreshing about these jokes is that at the beginning every time Shinoa made a comment about Mitsuba’s body, Mitsu was always embarrassed, exhausted and denying any claims. But because Shinoa started this topic of conversation so many times Mitsuba has gathered the experience and skill points to retort her insults😂 Shinoa has awakened Bad Girl Mitsu, and Dethroned Sass Queen is now on the losing end loool just joking.

It might seem that everything that I mentioned in this post until now it’s a lot for Shinoa and Mitsuba but remember that for them, ever since they arrived to the JIDA and all this mess started around chapter 70 they have been in the same day in the OnS universe (even if for us it has been years) and only two days passed at most ever since Shikama Dōji started influencing Shinoa’s views on Yuu in chapter 66 (although Shikama Dōji probably talked to her about him offscreen a lot of times before this chapter). It has been only one bad day, it’s okay, there is no need to panic, Mitsuba and Shinoa are still super best friends and will be...or that is what I would like to say because one, if in just one day Shinoa’s feelings became this crazy imagine how she would be after a longer time if no one stops her? And two, Mitsuba is starting to notice Shinoa’s feelings for Yuu:

(From left to right: chapters 10, 19 and 99)

As I mentioned in a previous post, the number of times Mitsuba is realising that Shinoa feels something for Yuu from afar in the manga is around 3 or 4 (I am not including the fourth since I am not really sure about it), with the most recent being the most eye catching. Now, you might tell me that Mitsuba is just jealous which I would agree since the first panel gives that impression by going with the typical cliché where the second girl is jealous of the first girl. But then if you look at the whole three panels there is nothing that exactly shows a jealous expression on Mitsuba’s face but rather she is just concerned or surprised. It’s hard to decipher her emotions here but if you look closely at the middle and right panel you might notice something in common: Shinoa is placing her hand on top of Yuu’s. So it’s more likely that Mitsuba is looking at this specifically rather than at the whole picture of Yuu and Shinoa together considering that these latter two have gotten scenes together many times but Mitsuba never looked at them and acted normal. Kagami is the type of subverting our expectations like when Yuu was supposed to be the main protagonist but sometimes he seems to be a cover and the real protagonist of the story is Guren (this is just my impression). For this case, Shinoa has been called a “dispassionate observer” by Shikama Dōji in chapter 72 but sometimes I feel that the observer is Mitsuba.

This could explain why we have never gotten a glimpse of Mitsuba’s heart and demon even though she is a main female deuteragonist and the only one unaddressed in Shinoa squad. It might seem that she is patient and a stagnant character, but all these subtle moments might be building up to a potential Mitsuba mini arc that will be about her relationship with Shinoa? After all, what Mitsuba cares about the most is her squad, so bonds is a likely theme. Moreover, in the fanbook Mitsuba’s favourite person was stated to be Shinoa (while for everyone else it was ‘Yuu’). It’s possible that she will confront Shinoa about this because Shinoa never tells her anything about herself so Mitsuba has to do all the guessing and Shinoa has grown distant from her. No way Mitsuba is fine with that. Looking at this, it’s normal we haven’t gotten much of them because looking at the current events of the manga, now is not the time to sit down (it’s not like they either have the time) and do something that might sever bonds anymore. This is why I came to the conclusion that if it’s not just bad writing, then Kagami deteriorating their friendship is something intentional.

Now, how will Shinoa and Mitsuba’s friendship proceed from here will rely mainly on two factors. One is whether what Shinoa feels for Yuu is genuine or a result of Shikama Dōji and Mahiru brainwashing her, and two, whether Mitsuba feels something for Yuu too or not. For one, I am not going to jump to conclusions regarding Shinoa’s feelings for Yuu and I will just say that regardless of whichever route Kagami chooses, Shinoa still has to cherish her friendship with Mitsuba. For two, it’s ambiguous as I can say as many arguments for Mitsuba having a crush on Yuu as arguments against. So let’s wait and see. However, I want to say that making Mitsuba crush on Yuu would be unwise considering that it’s already hard enough with Mika and Shinoa, so adding Mitsuba would mean pointlessly adding more fuel to the fire, especially considering Yuu’s personality and that he might not end up with anyone by the end of the series.

However, if somehow Kagami decides to take the route where one, Shinoa’s love for Yuu moves forwards and two, it happens at the expense of her friendship with Mitsuba and others, I will start calling Kagami a hypocrite. This is because we are talking about the guy who said that the focus of OnS is not romance, but family and bonds. Therefore, I would be disgusted at his bias of exploring only the theme of family and bonds within male friendships at the expense of destroying female friendships just for romance.

I theorise that this confrontation (not a cat fight) will happen around when Shinoa will entirely lose the strength to keep restraining Sika and become possessed again (unless Yuu is here to save the day of course). For this to happen we will need a scene with Mitsuba talking with Tenjiryū in which we can finally see how she feels in order to set everything up before this moment, and another scene that will be a flashback of Shinoa and Mitsuba meeting for the first time when younger so we can actually understand the magnitude of their friendship.

And how this confrontation will happen? To be honest I don’t think that there is any person capable of putting up a fight against a Shikama Dōji possessed Shinoa (unless the main character’s plot armor is used here again) so Mitsuba confronting Shinoa will be at an emotional level where Mitsuba might voice her preoccupations and will tell Shinoa to trust her more instead of keeping things to herself because they are friends. This will be a perfect opportunity for the wall that Shinoa put between them to break and for Mitsuba to be finally given the chance of paying back everything that Shinoa did for her.

The reason why Shinoa needs to be stopped is easy. If she keeps going like this, at this rate she will take the same path as Mahiru where she moves everyone out of the way in order to obsess over one thing, being alone with no one to give advice to her or stop her when she will be making dangerous decisions. All this emotional outburst Shinoa has shown recently is not healthy because she is being rushed instead of being allowed to do things at her pace. She needs to calm down, and realise that where she should be emotionally expressive is with her friends as a whole group.

If you managed to read the whole post, I am sorry aghjskwkashs but it’s just that I wanted people to give attention to this underrated friendship😭💔 It’s so underrated so that’s why I wrote such a long post because I wanted to include every single detail (I hope I didn’t miss anything🤔) and searched for as many images as I can for evidence (sorry for making it so compact that the images might look blurry due to Tumblr restrictions🤧).

P.S. When I will be a granny (considering the fuckin slow pace of this damn manga) I wish to go back to this post and assess whether I was an amazing analyst or an idiot for trusting Kagami😂

#owari no seraph #seraph of the end #hiiragi shinoa #shinoa hiiragi #mitsuba sanguu #mitsuba sangu #sanguu mitsuba #sangu mitsuba #sote

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kuronekonerochan · 5 years ago

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The laziest compilation of thoughts about the mess that was Alice (spoilers)

I finish a lot of shitty dramas. Like a lot. I could review them, but I won’t bc there’s too many and I’m too lazy (when you ff some dramas from 45min to 5 per episode it doesn’t really count as watching too many dramas bc it’s really a commercial break, lol). Some I watch for the so bad it’s good content, or love hate watching or just to have something to watch while I eat, even if they’re boring af. It’s also a tiny bit of ocd bc I need to see how they end (even the ones I drop I check out the finale). I only drop the ones that as Marie Kondo says *Do Not Spark Joy, more specifically...annoy me and make me cranky.

I sometimes bitch about it on DMs with ranty spoilers without structure and that reference other unrelated dramas or shows, because ADHD and my mind refuses to stay on topic, which would make it probably unintelligible except if you are in the niche who happens to have watched the other unrelated dramas, so it’s probably useless as a review.

That said, here are some random disconnected thoughts about Alice.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS BEWARE

(this is like partly copypaste of DM rants bc I am that lazy biatch. Also, fair warning I will seem super harsh or this drama because that’s the thing about a bitching dm versus a proper review... I am not bringing up all the points and talking about the good and what I liked as well as the bad, it’s just the bad...and although the drama is imo a mess, it does have some good in it. So if it were a review I’d always argue pros and cons...ranty thoughs who cares about pros? boring..I will not be bothered with devil’s advocate).

This was fascinating to watch, interesting but not good... but like a trainwreck.

I continued watching this mess despite the headache inducing convoluted plot (I watched a lot of timetravel stuff and I love it...encompassing all the theories about it, from butterfly effect, to effectively changing the future (with characters forgetting it or keeping it in memory because “eye of the storm” theory, the “efforts are futile and you can try to change it but the future is set in stone”, to “small changes can be made but big events are fixed points in time”, to “every change creates a new time line” and multiverse, etc... and trust me, all of them can be done well when well written or turn out a confusing illogical mess and that has nothing to do with the theory chosen, but with presenting how time travel works for that story and what the basic rules are and sticking to them...or when something happens that contradicts them, come up with an explanation as to why that happens.

I don’t mean the drama should be an exposition borefest with too much pseudosciency jargon...but this drama gives you too little in the way of rules and the viewers sort of figure out how timetravel works (which is not bad per se, huge fan of show don’t tell...but there’s a limit to how much they cannot tell or the characters chose not to ask just for the sake of plot and not without any logic to it). Anyways, the little “rules” that we gather along the way...the writing doesn’t stick to them and keeps contradicting itself without addressing or explaining it and hoping we’re so confused we don’t notice. Some dramas you just say “eh, forget it, it doesn’t make sense, let’s turn off our brains and enjoy it”, but here if I wanted to try and follow what was going on at all it required “brain on” mode for their convoluted plot twists...which also made me aware of so may plotholes the time road should have looked like Swiss Cheese. I could go into them...but I cannot be bothered and the list would be extensive and still incomplete, so I will just put 3 here bc I can’t help it:

1) Hot Daddy with emotional turmoil the entire drama of “Oh no, I abandoned her in 92 and regretted it, it happened 1 year ago for me, and now I find out she died in 2010. How was she, did she suffer? What did she know? Oh god, if only I were a time traveler eventually going rogue who could show up and talk to her any time in the timeline between 92 and 2010...Alas, I have to live in misery with the consequences of my actions...there is just ABSOLUTELY no way of solving this. I guess I’ll just keep making unauthorized time travel journeys from 2050′s time agency back to the year of 2020 and only 2020 to constantly be blindsided by murder attempts on everyone everywhere without having a clue to what’s going on when I could simply go back to before 2010 and talk to the one person who is proven to know what is going on.” Here is where there could be a bullshit reason as to why he could go only go to 2020 and not before, but the drama didn’t even bother.

2) They say Tae Yi’s mom was originally a time traveler who settled with her physicist dad in the past, eventually making way for her to discover time travel herself. The mom is missing and this is never addressed again.

3) The book...who wrote it? Because I have guesses but they never outright answer it... and if the biatch author knew that stuff why the alice in wonderland stupid analogies?

Coward, or petty, or both.... or maybe just a chaos gremlin godlike entity who wanted to watch them all squirm, like the author from Extraordinary You...and that I could get behind, but sadly they don’t go that metaphysical/theological with the plot...which is honestly the main problem with this drama. It seems ambitious in concept but it’s never explored decently in any way, not in the pseudoscience, not in the philosophical sense of the meaning of time/space/existence, not even in its relationships, with the constant back and forth and weirdness of it.

Besides the timetravel migraine, we had the weirdest directing, that made the relationship between the leads feel a bit too incesty...which was the main reason I kept watching this drama...morbid curiosity of how they wrapped up this mess of a plot AND especially the relationship payoff...would it keep being weird with trope romance drama scenes like the female lead and second female lead facing off and being jealous, or that weird hair washing that felt more sensual than maternal? I knew it wouldn’t happen but my inner chaos gremlin wanted kdramaland to grow some balls and go full “predestination: oedipus edition” with this mess. Alas they sort of did, mostly didn’t. Even that angle was a whole inconsistent mess: there were times where it felt too romantic, then for a short minute I misguidedly shipped the journalist friend, then it seemed the dude was ace, then they calmed their tits with the whole weird romantic vibes and it got platonic cute, then with the memory merge thing finally motherly vibes, then I shipped the journalist again for 1 sec only...and then the ending:

Alice ended with the lead solving every problem by shooting himself (technically) in the head...and that's the second meta perfectly fitting ending for a drama with a good cast and terrible writing that drove itself into a corner this year, after the sleepless princess ended with the leads jumping off a cliff. I don't think it's a self aware choice of the writers, or an admission that they themselves know it was bad, but the irony is delicious.

Spoiler for the ending: he undoes timey wimey stuff from when his mom first got killed in high school and closed the time travel door. So he became an architect and new Tae Yi just woke up in her bed remembering everything, but in reality she had just come back from a conference abroad and had never met him. So mom TaeYi didn't die then, but never got back on screen after the time undo so who the f knows what happened to her.

Also, if new Tae Yi remembers, does that mean hot daddy from the future does as well, but he is just stuck in the future without a time door to ever see them again? The drama doesn’t care answering that and forgets his character is even a thing...I will miss you, my fave who looked emotionally and literally constipated 24/7 (it doesn’t care answering much at all tbf... a little known fact about the time travel paradoxes according to the physics of this world is that besides doppelganger chickenpox it induces severe lazy writing).

Anyways new Tae Yi went looking for architect (? okay...I guess) ML after she woke up, at first he didn't remember her, but it ends with him meeting her, apparently remembering her and they stare at each other... you know, like any bad traditional romantic kdrama finale....so there is still THAT vibe.

Honestly, the usual romantic ballad score for scenes between the leads WAS NOT the most intelligent choice for this drama in specific but boy did they stick with it (not to mention the ending song... that goes, in english “we be like Bonnie and Clyde we ride or die...which...k, sure)...so technically the ending was exactly the cliche post amnesia running back to each other and staring for the final scene while romantic music blasts trope. Take it as you will.

#alice #sbs alice #kdrama #mine #kdrama edit #kdrama rant #kdrama rambles #sleepless princess #cdrama #just the reference tho #alice kdrama #alice sbs

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martyrgargoyle · 5 years ago

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Hey I know the Tyler post is about racism and not homophobia and I don’t want to change the topic from that but I just wanted to add on that he did something very similar in 2015. When gay marriage was legalized fans asked him to say something and he posted a long rant about his mental illness and basically implied posting was a burden to him. I just wanted to bring that to light as well cause it’s not the first time he’s made something unrelated about his own problems

you’re right anon, good memory! he’s also been known to show disinterest when meeting fans and they say he inspired him to come out and be themselves, usually brushing past it. i didn’t include these in the original post since it was focusing on his racist past/excusing racism but if you look at the notes app rant he did for gay marriage, it follows the rant he did on twitter recently too! here’s the two rants compared (text) for anyone that wants them/need an alt text:

2015 TXT, on his silence on gay marriage being legalized:

“it breaks my heart to see that not posting would lead to some of you to believe that i do not love and support you. that is simply not true. any day where love defeats hate, you can know i am celebrating, just maybe not on twitter. as for the silence: through personal experience, i want to create and influence something that might help others navigate through the battlefield that is the brain. and for those who understand that terminology, you know what battle i am talking about. but while at this mental ground zero, i have found any influence added on, no matter how noble, becomes too heavy for me to carry. i am not strong enough. be patient with me as i grow, that some day i might be able to carry more weight. but for now, i write what i know. both josh and i mean this, with love and support, tyler”

his full 2020 twitter rant (in TXT) when told he shouldn’t joke about blm:

‘your own mental health should always be a priority. i’m amazed at how easy it is to forget that simple fact. it’s something that can sneak up on you, then eventually you check in on it and realize it’s in really bad shape. i’m trying to cut through to who really needs to hear this. this is tough, but it’s not hopeless. fighting for your mental health is not public, it’s not glorious, it’s not even interesting, but it’s the greatest challenge you will face. i use music, humor, being alone, breaks from social media, family, uncomfortable and honest conversations with friends, and sometimes crying. a few tools, but they don’t all work for everyone. find what helps you take back ground lost. i really don’t know if i can even handle everything that’s happening right now. the scariest place to be is when you find yourself in a spot where you can’t find an answer to the question, “what’s the point?” there has to be a point. according to the world health organization: Close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. according to American Foundation of Suicide Prevention: On average, there are 132 suicides per day. mentally/emotionally, i can only carry so much, because what i do care about is so heavy, the thought of adding more on top of it makes me want to stop trying. but we can never stop trying. this site, along with many others, has been a guide. it’s not perfect, but it’s the right direction. [link to afsp.org] starting September 6th is national suicide prevention awareness week. what does that mean exactly? i don’t know. but if it can get a single person’s attention at the right time, it’s everything. #keepgoing. i respect all the warriors out there fighting for different causes. there is honor in it, purpose, and it can make our world better. i just want to remind you what i’m fighting for: your mental health is more important today than it ever has been. you’re not alone. you don’t know what someone else is going through. what other invisible weights they may be struggling to carry. keep that in mind as you go about your interactions. and take care of yourself, please. this isn’t a notes app moment. i’m doubling down on my platform tweet. it was fantastic.”

Lots of words! Here's a basic breakdown for people that may need help to see what was the similarities:

RED: I highlighted these since they stood out the most to me when comparing similarities and basically sums it up if you're skimming. Other than these lines being basically the same and not even hidden in the fact, he's shifting the weight and importance on HIS mental health. Not anyone else's or the situation at hand that caused outrage. Instead, he's using his mental health as an excuse while proceeding to tell us that it's a burden for him to support POC and LGBT and to be patient WITH HIM while dealing with other people's lives.

In both rants he's avoiding the issue that caused his fans to be hurt. Instead of holding any responsibility or giving an apology for any harm he caused to the wellbeing of his audience; he flips it and turns it to them and blaming them for how he may have hurt them/caused worries. i know a lot of people say it isn't a big deal BUT please remember who he directs his music for and his audience. he knows its a lot of mentally ill people, specifically younger adults or teenagers. and while there's nothing wrong with that, blaming and saying they're at fault for having a lot of hopes and seeing him as a general inspiration and getting hurt at the idea of him not supporting them finally being able to love someone legally; it can and did cause a lot of damage and insecurity in his more impressionable fan base.

for the blm one, it was even worse. he openly mocked the movement and people that protest to an impressionable audience and to his fanbase that again, see him as a huge inspiration in fighting for peace and justice since he inspires them to have a voice. so he not only showed the younger fans/planted the confusion of its okay to mock this movement, he also laughed in the face of people that admire him and are trying to fight for a change. and this is from a WHITE perspective, i cant even imagine how his POC fans felt and the betrayal they felt to see their hero mock their struggle and demand to not be discriminated against :(

#sorry for the long wait!#i been goin through it hhhh but hopefully this made sense!#sry if a bit messy!#anyone feel free to reword it and make a post and ill reblog the better version #but yea tyler been having a shady history #tyler jøseph #fuck tyler joseph #tyler joseph #21 piløts #21p #21 pilots #long post #anon #answered #txt #asks

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go-diane-winchester · 7 years ago

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Why Misha chose destiel

One heller was very affronted that I was critical of Misha. Now, on Tumblr there are many anti tags. Jensen has one. Jared has one. Even little Jack Kline, poor baby, has one. Only the Misha fans demand passionately, as to how we could possibly see anything wrong with this ''smol bean''. They are very shocked with others for having an anti-Misha tag. And they get angry with me for not using the anti-Misha tag and blasting his bad behavior in the public domain. Why should there not be an anti-Misha tag? And why must you go in there, read all the posts and then complain? And why must you complain to me about not using the anti-tags? Hellers are very confusing people. Anywho, this one, who thinks Misha is ready for sainthood, sent me many messages about a post where I exposed another heller for going into the anti-tags and hijacking the post. That post is called ''Looking for negativity in the anti-tags and screeching when you find it''. You can read her drivel there. This is one of the messages.

Why is heller hate Misha's fault?

Misha has been on the show for ten years. In those ten years, Jensen never told him about NJCon? He never told Misha about Jaxcon? He never told Misha about the incessant shipping questions that he deals with. Misha never asked J2 why there is no shipping and sexuality questions allowed at cons? Really? I think he did. And I think Misha said the same thing heller snowflakes say. "But Jensen, if you don't go along they will call you a bigot." And they do. They kicked up such a fuss about it, and mass media became aware of it. Universities are aware of it. Jensen's reputation is in tatters. So Jensen [Misha's best friend, apparently] never told him about the homophobia accusations. What kind of a person lets his friend roast on a spit like that, but still saying things like this to incite his filthy goons ''Jensen and I don't write much destiel because we live it''. Oh, it's so funny. Misha is such a kidder, right?

One weird thing I noticed about Misha is that he never distracts from destiel. Even when he was asked about Megstiel, he said two things. First ''Meg is the only one who ever flirted with Cas, well other than Dean'' [This is queer baiting] and second ''Cas has eyes only for Dean''. He actively killed the Megstiel idea despite the fact that it was his only legitimate canon ship, in favor of a non-canon ship. What a stupid thing to do? Why would you do that, if you don't have any agenda? I have noticed he never pushes sastiel, his only other pairing, unless Jared is on stage with him, flirting with him, in good fun. Because, with Jared right in front of him, he cant push any destiel and he cant ignore sastiel. But when he is by himself, he doesn't like to push sastiel. And I always wondered why. I mean, Jared is sexually a little more brave than Jensen. Jared is certainly more touchy-feely than Jensen. Jared is more likely to kiss another guy on the mouth and not blush about it the way Jensen would. If Misha had pushed sastiel and not destiel, I think Jared would be less shy in helping to make it canon. Jensen is shy and no, that is not homophobia.

So why not push sastiel. I think its because when Misha first came to the show. J2 and wincest were the big pairings. If he wanted to create a niche, he had to choose one J or the other. Although, he stumbled onto destiel first because that is what he said. But then when you realize that there is another better ship available with a less shy co-star, why not take that one? Why take the abrasive, difficult one who doesn't want to be touched? Misha angers me but I would never call him stupid. He is not stupid. He was smart enough to intern at the white house. So the guy is an idiot. If he goes up against one J, he is essentially competing with the other. Even though I protect both my boys equally, I am going to do something that the stans will hate. I am going to pick up faults in the Js. Just bear with me okay. I have to do this. Besides, no human being is flawless. Jensen is extremely standoffish. His personality is a litte cold with people he considers strangers. However, between the two Js, he is the one that has the most recognition in his field. Jensen has collected many nominations and awards during his acting career than Jared has. Jared has equal footing with Misha. Jared and Misha have the same amount of accolades attached to their acting careers.

Dean is a louder, far more showier character than Sam is. In fact, despite being of different ''species'', personality-wise Sam and Castiel are very similar. Jared suffers from clinical depression, and as someone who suffers from a similar condition, I know something obscure about our types. We are sometimes disheveled creatures. Unlike Jensen who is healthier and always makes an appearance, with every strand of hair in place, Jared is sometimes completely untidy and wears a beanie. Sometimes his clothing looks creased. I can actually gauge how healthy he is during a panel, just by looking at his attire. Misha is probably not aware of this. And this is not a critique of his view on mental health. Although I have receipts of his hellers mocking mental health. Between the two Js, Jensen is the one who is difficult to compete with, because Misha is going to have to compete with his acting, his character and his looks. Jared [and by extension Sam] is an easier option.

Did they discuss destiel in private?

That is a good question. Have anyone on staff ever discussed destiel. Because the only one who seems enthusiastic about it, is Misha. When Jensen was asked but the Dean Cas dynamic at a previous Jib panel, he said that there have not been that many Dean Cas scenes, which he enjoyed, because he felt the Dean Cas thing was getting out of proportion, and he knew he and Misha didn't play their characters like that. When Misha was notified of this, he exclaimed ''that motherf*cker''. So you tell me. Why the discrepancy? Why is Jensen saying one thing and when Misha is confronted with it, he reacts terribly. Oh but he's just joking right?

Misha was told that there was no need to entertain shipping questions. He waves that rule during his panel and I have noticed at the recent Denvercon, that nobody asked him about destiel so he nonchalantly mentions Cockles. Why would you do that, but when you are asked a destiel question, you call the shippers perverts? You are the one encouraging them. He doesn't respect the destiel shippers. He uses them to keep him relevant. What do the other people affiliated with Supernatural say? Look at their tweets. Jim Michaels, Guy Norman Bee, Adam Glass, Eric Kripke, Chad Kennedy, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles all say that there is no destiel. The only one who says otherwise is Misha Collins. When Samantha Smith was asked about destiel, she didn't acknowledge it and the fans attacked her on twitter. Didn't she notify Misha of this? She kept it to herself? For what? The only person who doesn't amend or dispute destiel [as far as I know] is Bob Singer, a slithering snake in the grass, and Sera Gamble's hugest headache whilst she was the show runner.

Does Misha enjoy any harassment that is caused by his meddling?

I have receipts of abusive tweets sent to Jared where he was also tagged. Jared doesn't respond. There may be two reasons. Firstly, unlike Misha, Jared is a full time actor of Supernatural. He simply doesn't have the time to look through thousands of tweets per day. I have receipts of Misha reading his tweets and responding to them. Another equally feasible reason might be that Jared [and I know my condition so I can vouch for this one] has no control over his mouth. Even though he has the full right to call out bad customer services, there are other tweets that I acknowledge that he shouldn't have sent. Jared is one of my babies. But I can acknowledge when he has put himself in a difficult situation. That is why he constantly says that Jensen tells him ''Dude, you are better than this''. Jensen even said during a panel ''don't just acknowledge that you will do wrong. Learn from your mistakes.'' I think Jensen sat Jared down and spoke to him about this. I think Jared listened because apparently, Jared's online activity has dropped dramatically since. Personally, I think people like Jared and me shouldn't be on twitter etc. Its not good for us. Studies show that SM actually exacerbates depression.

Jared said, at a recent con, that he is aware that he cant please everyone, so he wont. I am happy to hear that, because it means heller's online taunts are not messing him up the way they used to. The biggest proof of Misha's awareness of the situation is William Shatner. Shatner tweeted that Jared is aware of fans who want him off the show. Shatner called them out as destiel shippers, and boy did the hellers converge on him for it. Receipts are on other posts. So Shatner is friends with Misha, he even participated in Gishwhes, and knows the truth which he blasted on a media outlet, and despite following Shatner and Jared, Misha still doesn't know any of this? Really? Shatner never spoke to Misha about this?

So Misha follows Jensen on Twitter, but didn't get an inkling of the filth being spewed at Jensen, only by Misha's fans, because Jensen said Destiel doesn't exist at Jaxcon? So he read nothing? And Jensen didn't tell him? But they are supposed to be good friends, right? Wouldn't you tell your best friend that you were being bullied by his fans? What kind of friendship is that? When Jensen broke down behind the scenes at Jibcon, when he met a fan [that is the officlal explanation] Misha witnessed it, so why would he bring up the same topic when Jensen is on stage, already emotionally fragile. And then he sits there and watches Jensen fall apart. It happened in front of his face, backstage. Why would he pick up the topic again when he is onstage? If you are such a loving, caring person [and destiel is cockle's fault apparently] why would you do something that heartless. Fans, including myself, were angry that Daniela came on stage, and poured them brimming glasses of whisky. She never did that before, to my knowledge. They had always poured their own drinks and never so much.

Some people guesstimate that Daniela shipped destiel too, which is why Jibcon was such a ''dance monkey dance'' type of environment. Remember Misha's fake orgasm and the Hitch dialogue reading. They didn't choose that. Jibcon is planned the way it is. That is probably why 6 months after Jaxcon, Jensen wasn't looking forward to the panel, and he fell apart as soon as it arrived. Either Daniela poured them alcohol to make Jensen lose his inhibitions more, or she could see that he was tense and wanted him to loosen up. We may never know because after so many years of Jibcon being seen as a destiel con [a perception she never corrected] after Jensen broke down on stage and Jared cut the panel short, suddenly Jibcon was never a destiel con. Suddenly she banned shipping questions at Jibcon. Suddenly the Cockles panel became the J2M panel. I think Jared told her off after the last Cockles panel. So suddenly she is neutral now. And Misha saw none of this? Really? He must be the dumbest person ever to have all this happening around him, that he doesn't know. So he doesn't follow Daniela online? He didn't see the fighting? Stop making excuses for him.

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theclacks · 8 years ago

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Buffy Season 7 Thoughts

Current Emotional State:

So yeah. That is it. After starting in March 2017 (thanks to the 20th anniversary), I officially finished the series Jan 1st 2018.

And hooboy. Straight out the gate, I’d say it its now in my top three shows of all time (i.e. Doctor Who, Stargate, and BtVS). That’s right. It beat out ATLA. (Sorry ATLA but you never ripped my heart out like the others.)

IDK, a part of me is still kind of like “why did it take me this long to watch this show” and another part is glad, because I watched DW, SG1, and ATLA all around the same year or two of my life, and to get completely walloped by something a decade later... well it’s wonderful. Completely and truly wonderful.

BtVS & AtS Recap Master Post located here

So, starting with predictions that I made during my S6 recap...

On predictions that I made during my S6 recap:

- Spike comes back to Sunnydale and becomes tentative friendship bros with Buffy with continual underlying UST that’s never resolved again because of the attempted rape and also because none of my ships can ever be happy It was resolved. It was fucking resolved. I don’t care that they never kissed on screen and Spike didn’t believe Buffy when she said she loved him (still crying forever, Spike you idiot), there was a confession. And even before that, Buffy telling Spike that she believed in him, and that she wasn’t ready for him to leave, and sleeping beside him for those final nights. THAT WAS MORE THAN I’D EVER BEEN EXPECTING. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL (NO CHECK AND I’M HAPPY FOR IT)

- Dawn and Spike eventually work through his attempted rape and become bros again Yeah, their relationship went up in flames (NO CHECK)

- Dawn takes a level in badassery, will fight things Aside from the first episode or two when Buffy’s giving her training, Dawn pretty much got shafted when the potentials arrived (NO CHECK)

- Buffy’s perma-death/rebirth will be addressed re: slayer chain of dead slayers leading to new slayer (CHECK... SORT OF?)

- Anya stays a vengeance demon because fuck Xander (NO CHECK)

- Willow finds a happy place between using no magic whatsoever and trying to fry the earth (CHECK)

- Giles hangs out in Sunnydale again because Giles (CHECK)

- Anya stays in command of the magic shop because it’s her magic shop… even though Willow kind of destroyed it She stayed in command but the other characters stopped visiting, so... (CHECK?)

- Clem continues to have cameos because he’s Clem and he’s awesome (HELLA CHECK)

On Spuffy:

I’ve written enough about these two in my earlier posts. I might make a completely separate post where I talk gush about their development over the course of the series but yeah. In this post, all I’ll say is that I thought Seeing Red would be the official end to their relationship. I thought even with the soul, their connection would be like a giant white elephant that’d never be directly addressed again... and then I got S7, aka the giant, canon, hurt/comfort fic.

Also, I didn’t cry during Chosen, but “No, you don’t. But thanks for saying” kept playing through my head over and over and over again, gutting my heart into numbness, and then sometime during the next day, it morphed into “Quite right, too” and I was so confused, thinking where did that dialogue come from, and then I remembered:

And it’s ridiculously bizarre, since Doctor Who’s Doomsday has been a traumatic thing that’s been a scar on my heart for the last decade, so I naturally think of it as the older, original traumatic “I love you” DENIED scene, but then I look at when Chosen actually aired and Chosen came out first? So if anything Doctor Who cribbed off Buffy? (And both cribbed off Star Wars and “I know” but that one doesn’t count because there wasn’t actually a failure to communicate between Hans and Leia, just Hans being Hans.)

Oh, and then the day after I watched Chosen, as I was getting ready in the morning, I made the mistake of listening to Sarah Brown Eyes which is about a guy reminiscing about the first time he met the love of his life after she’s already died. And then the song ends with “come, let’s dance” and there’s a sad instrumental section and I STARTED BAWLING. STRAIGHT OUT BAWLING.

So, thanks BtVS for that. I haven’t done that for a fictional couple since 2008. I appreciated the jump start to my heart.

Okay, officially moving on.

On Andrew:

AKA the best reoccuring character. I loved his arc in this season, going from a comic puppet of the first evil to a still-comic, yet emotionally redemptive who can’t hide behind “i was just following other people/didn’t know better”. He was the best, and Storyteller was one of my favorite episodes

On Buffy’s relationship with Giles:

I really wish they’d had the time to wrap a bow on this, but I can understand why they didn’t. As it is, their relationship kind of ended in Lies My Parents Told Me with Buffy shutting the door on him and his tendency to decide what’s best for her. But I’m not sure they held to that? Or rather, in Chosen it was kind of back to situation normal re: Willow, Xander, Giles, and Buffy being in the final pow-wow together. Either way, I liked that Buffy stood up for herself, that Giles was finally acknowledged as fallible as opposed to the savior woosh he got at the end of S6.

On Anya, Willow, and Xander:

I feel like the three of them got kind of shafted this season? Xander didn’t really have an arc or purpose other than “fix Summers house when monsters break it”. Oh, and his convo with Dawn in Potential. I really did like the episode Potential... I just wish the whole “you still have purpose” extended past the boundaries of that episode? Which honestly is the subject of another post I’ll write, entitled Xander vs Sokka: Giving Purpose to the Powerless.

And then yeah, Willow intentionally stayed on the backburner for the majority of the season (her best moments were in AtS), and Anya... oh Anya. I understand why she was un-Vengeance Demon-fied, but I still wish she’d stayed a Vengance Demon. Mostly because as soon as she lost her powers, the show for the most part ignored her.

Which is a crime.

Actually...

On Anya specifically:

I’m gonna let some time pass before I do a “thoughts on BtVS as a whole”, but I want to say right now. Anya was my favorite surprise of the series. Every other character or major, major plot development, I’d been warned, or hinted, or inadvertently spoiled for.

Anya (aside from her name) was a complete unknown. When she appeared in S3 as Anyanka the Vengeance Demon, I thought... no, that can’t be “Anya the eventually reoccuring character.” And then she was. And was amazing. And continued to be amazing for the next four seasons.

I love Anya. She is everything I aspire to in life.

Now that I’ve talked about minute character stuff, let’s go to major S7 plot stuff:

On the Potentials:

Honestly, everything I’m gonna say is not groundbreaking thoughts re: fandom. I actually liked the potentials, but I didn’t like how there were so many of them, and how some of their actress were not that great. I didn’t like how Chao Ahn was the one who couldn’t speak English and was the butt of language jokes. They could’ve easily had a French or German-speaking potential.

On the First Evil and other villains:

The mark of a great villain (for me) is how much they reflect and/or personally tie in with the heroes. It’s why Angelus remains my number one fave BtVS villain (and why S2 is still my favorite season from a plot standpoint). It’s why I’m still super pissed that Maggie Walsh (unpowered, rigid, military-backed, older woman to Buffy’s powered, improvisational, rogue, younger self) was killed off in favor of Adam (generic evil dude)... even though I now understand it was because of behind the scenes actor stuff.

So yeah. I started off with high hopes re: the First Evil... and then got let down a bit when psychological enemy was pushed aside in favor of the Turok-han and then later Caleb. Though, honestly, I was more fine with the Turok-han than I was with Caleb. Caleb was... meh. (Sorry, Nathan Fillion.) If I had to guess, I’d say the writers couldn’t think of a good way to keep the First a constant threat without relying on minions that could physically attack the heroes. IDK.

On Spike’s soul:

Once again, this is a topic I’ve talked about before in my per episode recaps, but overall, I really like how they ended up handling it. It makes sense that he’d more easily adapt to it and wouldn’t do an abrupt personality shift like Angel because he voluntarily got his. I still hold to my S6 theory, that (if it hadn’t been for the First tormenting him) he could’ve returned to Sunnydale with no one (except Anya) being the wiser.

BUT! At the same time, it did make him a lot more mellow and self-reflective. Gave him self-doubt as well. And Get It Done and Lies My Parents Told Me were excellent episodes that showcased that.

On Sunnydale getting sucked into crater, Buffy being one of thousands of Slayers, and ending the show with a “well, what happens now”/“possibly anything” kind of feel:

I loved it. It was a great ending. And together with Spike coming back in AtS, and the comics, and whatever, it makes for a ending that fans can play around with however they want. It’s an amazing launching point for new stories, and honestly...

I’d take that open ending over a 19-years-later, “All was well”, ship-killing epilogue any day.

So... thanks, BtVS. It was one hell of a ride.

(PS: If you liked these thought posts and wanna see more inner workings of my mind, my current BtVS fanfic is over here.)

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy #buffy meta #/////#clacks from theclacks

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michaelandy101-blog · 5 years ago

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12 of the Best Marketing Techniques for 2020

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/12-of-the-best-marketing-techniques-for-2020/

12 of the Best Marketing Techniques for 2020

When content marketing was gaining steam, there were really only a few techniques you could leverage.

On a typical day, you’d write a blog post, hope it ranked on Google, send it to your email subscribers, and post it to your social media profiles.

That was pretty much it.

This is still the main strategy most marketers use nowadays, but since content marketing has exploded in popularity since its early adoption, it has developed into a much more nuanced and complex type of marketing with many techniques for reaching and resonating with an audience.

To help you learn about the most effective marketing techniques around today, we’ve rounded up the best ones to add to your content marketing arsenal.

Best Marketing Techniques

CTA Copy Test

Email Preview

Blog Post Title Test

Brand Storytelling

A Topic-Based Content Strategy

Growing Email Subscriptions

Historical Optimization

Podcasting

Link Building

Social Media Based Public Relations

Audience Segmentation

Brand Extensions

1. CTA Copy Test

Every company has a different set of customers, so there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for designing the most optimal CTAs. To figure out which CTA copy will produce the best results for your company, you must discover what your unique set of customers prefer.

With A/B testing, you can run an experiment between two variables, like a red and blue CTA, and identify which one produces better results. A/B testing shouldn’t be confused with multivariate testing, though, which allows you to simultaneously test many variables.

To conduct an A/B test, you can use HubSpot’s A/B testing kit. With this kit, you’ll get guidelines for A/B testing, learn what variables to test, and gain access to a simple significance calculator to track your results.

2. Email Preview

Did you know that more than 50 percent of U.S. respondents check their personal email account more than 10 times a day, and it is by far their preferred way to receive updates from brands.

This means that there isn’t a lot of room for error when you send an email. To avoid any issues, a great marketing technique to implement is to begin previewing your email in different email providers before sending.

There are plenty of tools you can use to preview your emails such as HubSpot’s free email software. With an email preview tool, you can test your emails before you send them and see how they look in every service provider.

3. Blog Post Title Test

When you write a blog post, do you use the first title you came up with or do you write a few?

Most marketers write several headlines before deciding which one to use. However, it’s not always easy to decide.

To make this decision, you can run an A/B test and see which types of titles work best for your audience.

Additionally, you can use tools like this headline analyzer to see what you can do to improve your headline.

4. Brand Storytelling

In the neuroscience field, researchers have proven that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and resonate emotionally with them. The human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to well-crafted narrative — that’ll never change.

So just like your favorite Netflix show, you can craft a series on YouTube to entice your viewers subscribe to your updates. This can get your audience more excited for your show’s newest season than they currently are for the latest season of Stranger Things.

Before you green light another slew of listicles, how-to posts, and ultimate guides, remember how powerful storytelling is and consider crafting a YouTube series, podcast, or social media hashtag chock-full of conflict, surprise, and emotion that your viewers will relate to your brand.

5. A Topic-Based Content Strategy

Since people heavily rely on Google to provide accurate and relevant answers for most of their questions today, Google needs to understand the intent and context behind every single search.

To do this, Google has evolved to recognize topical connections across users’ queries, look back at similar queries that users have searched for in the past, and surface the content that best answers them. As a result, Google will deliver content that they deem the most authoritative on the topic.

To help Google recognize your content as a trusted authority on marketing, sales, and customer service topics, consider implementing the pillar-cluster model on your blog.

Essentially, the pillar-cluster model is a topic-based based content strategy. This means that you generate and organize ideas for your blog by topic.

By creating a single pillar page (an ultimate guide, for instance) that provides a high-level overview of a topic and hyperlinks to cluster pages (subtopic blog posts) that delve into the topic’s subtopics, you can signal to Google that your pillar page is an authority on the topic.

Hyperlinking all of the cluster pages to the pillar page also spreads domain authority across the cluster, so your cluster pages get an organic boost if your pillar page ranks higher, and your cluster pages can even help your pillar page rank higher if they start ranking for the specific keywords they’re targeting.

youtube

6. Growing Email Subscriptions

As of now, subscribing to your favorite online publications through email is the best way to keep up with their latest stories and news. And since it takes an average of six to eight touch points to generate a qualified sales lead, persuading people to subscribe to your emails and, in turn, constantly consume your content will generate more leads and revenue for your business.

Growing an engaged, loyal subscriber base also speaks volumes about the quality of your content and its emotional resonance. Even though hoards of content saturate the internet and most people’s inboxes today, people are still actively engaging with your content, which is a clear sign that they actually value it.

To build your email list, you’ll want to use an email marketing software like HubSpot. This way you can create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails without needing a developer.

7. Historical Optimization

In 2015, HubSpot made a revolutionary discovery about our organic monthly blog traffic — the overwhelming majority of it came from posts published prior to that month. In fact, 76% of monthly blog views came from these old posts.

Today, the groundbreaking revelation rings louder than ever — 89% of our monthly blog views currently come from posts that were published at least six months prior, and we’ve developed an entire strategy dedicated to refreshing and republishing these historical pieces of content.

These types of blog posts are called “updates”, and they comprise 35-40% of HubSpot’s editorial calendar. By refreshing posts with new information and effectively republishing them as new blog posts, HubSpot can build upon its existing organic value that these posts have accumulated through backlinks and user engagement and double or even triple their traffic. This process also helps HubSpot optimize our blog for efficiency, decreasing the amount of new content we have to create while increasing our organic traffic and conversions.

8. Podcasting

According to a content format study conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital, people age 12 and older are listening to online audio content at unprecedented levels. On average, people spend 17 hours per week tuning into their favorite podcasts, online radio shows, and audiobooks. There are also 14 million more weekly podcast listeners this year compared to last year, which is more than Guinea’s entire population.

The demand for audio content has exploded, but that doesn’t mean people will listen to your branded podcast just because it’s a podcast. In reality, they’ll only listen to it if it can hold their attention and, ultimately, entertain them. Otherwise, producing yet another interview-an-expert podcast like everyone else will only add to the noise flooding the internet.

9. Link Building

Earning high-quality inbound links from websites and pages with high authority scores is crucial for boosting your domain authority. But, unfortunately, “If you write it, they will link to it,” is not a viable SEO tactic.

An effective method for earning high-quality links is by asking other websites that have the same or higher domain or page authority score than you to link to your top content. You should also make sure your content is relevant to the referring website’s content.

Another way you can earn quality backlinks is by using Backlinko’s skyscraper method. The skyscraper method is an SEO strategy where you find content that ranks well for keywords you want to rank for and then create content that’s better than the top ranking posts. Then, you use SEO tools to find all the sites that have linked to your competitor’s content and ask the most relevant sites to replace your competitor’s link with a link to your improved content.

10. Social Media Based Public Relations

Today, over 30% of time spent online is dedicated to social media. Needless to say, people spend more time on social media than ever before. And public relations professionals are pivoting their strategy from solely focusing on placing their stories in news outlets’ publications to concentrating on driving traffic to their social media profiles too.

In order to successfully pitch your stories to journalists and news outlets nowadays, you need to account for the content that performs well on their social media profiles and their publication. So before you pitch your story, make sure it’s relevant and interesting to the news outlet’s social audience.

11. Audience Segmentation

In a world overflowing with digital noise, creating irrelevant or unwarranted content won’t catch anyone’s attention.

To create personalized marketing campaigns for each slice of your target market, consider leveraging audience segmentation, which separates your target market into specific, accessible groups of people based on personal attributes like their demographics, psychographics, and behavioral information.

To properly implement an audience segmentation strategy, you can use a marketing software like HubSpot. For example, with HubSpot’s marketing software, there’s a lead collection and tracking feature where you can segment and nurture your leads. This makes it easy to build an email list, automate campaigns, and expand your database.

12. Brand Extensions

Big companies often extend their brand to develop new products in industries that they don’t have any market share in. These initiatives are called brand extensions, and they allow companies to leverage their brand awareness and equity to create more revenue streams.

Historically, the most successful brand extensions are the ones that closely tie to the company’s flagship product or core brand, like Gerber’s baby clothes and Dole’s frozen fruit bars. So by entering tangential markets that can preserve your brand’s unique associations and perceived quality, you can develop new products that consumers intuitively understand the benefits of, even though they’ve never seen them on a shelf.

On the flip side, a company can also exploit its brand, and, in turn, damage it. If they develop a product in a market that isn’t closely tied to their flagship product or core brand, audiences might attach undesirable associations to a brand, weaken its existing associations, and hurt its established products’ perceived quality.

When you’re developing a new marketing plan, it’s important to consider new marketing techniques. Don’t forget to continuously innovate on your strategies.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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curejulie · 8 years ago

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fic idea for otayurijj, though it could be read as pliroy<--otabek at first although I guess I haven’t fully fleshed it out yet, I may never get to write it so just dumping my thoughts here.

chapter 1 background:

- JJ and Otabek are friends, perhaps simply by the virtue of being 19 (along with Leo) and also due to the time otabek spent in Canada.

- despite their year spent together at the rink, they don’t necessarily click. otabek keeps JJ at arm’s length. at best, they’re distant friends. more than acquaintances but not quite at the level to be friends.

- JJ never stops with the friendly overtures, though otabek more than likely politely declines his offer to hang out most of the time. they message more they talk in person, although that’s not saying much. JJ respects the low communication need from otabek and that’s that.

opening:

- story begins a month post-GPF, JJ texts otabek and asks about his budding friendship with yuri. much like his personality otabek’s texts are short, terse, and infrequent. JJ manages to convey to otabek that he would like to make more friends with the ice skaters at his age range, and persuades otabek to convince yuri to have lunch with the three of them while they were all attending a skating event in france.

- otabek complies, because he thinks both yuri and JJ could use more friends and could work out their strained (non-existent relationship).

- yuri is surprisingly compliant to otabek’s request (because it’s otabek), but he complains about JJ all the while walking towards meeting location. otabek constantly assures yuri that JJ is actually a good person. they meet JJ at a cafe in Paris.

- JJ gifts yuri a custom-made white tiger plush (per otabek’s advice) wearing his FP costume, with a gold medal. yuri is absolutely overjoyed (”kuso yabai”) but he tries not to show it, but the way he’s cradling the tiger in his lap gives it away.

- JJ apologizes sincerely for starting off on the wrong foot and shakes hands with yuri, wanting to start off fresh as friends. Yuri agrees to do so, but he still sits next to Otabek and even when JJ tries to make conversation he makes Otabek answer for him. lunch is good, but a little awkward due to this odd three way conversation.

- JJ and Yuri exchange numbers on a friendly note, although Yuri doesn’t bother texting him other than to thank him for the gift (and uploads it to instagram, but with no real identifying tags). the three part ways.

- JJ also tells Otabek he still doesn’t feel confident in texting yuri even though he clearly won him over with the gift.

- two months later, yuri’s grandfather has a heart attack scare and is hospitalized. emotionally distressed, yuri calls otabek and asks him to stay with him while his grandfather recovers. otabek doesn’t even tell his coach or family when he books the first ticket to st. petersburg.

- the first night, yuri can’t sleep, so he has otabek join him in bed, and otabek strokes his hair until he falls asleep. he knows, and probably has known then he has been harboring feelings for yuri that’s hard to categorize, verbalize or even to express, but decides this is nice for now. otabek falls asleep next him.

- otabek spends the next three days with yuri at home and in the hospital. when they’re at home doing domestic chores, otabek wishes he could freeze this moment in time and keep them for safekeeping.

- yuri’s grandfather is discharged within days, and otabek returns home (coach is probably furious). he sees a flurry of texts from JJ, asking about yuri and how he was faring, and how his grandfather was faring. word spreads fast in the figure skating grapevine, it seems. JJ sounds quite worried, asking if it was proper to send flowers to his house or if that wasn’t russian tradition.

- otabek is very tired from his trip but feels obligated to update JJ, so he lets him know yuri was okay, his grandfather has recovered very quickly, and he didn’t think it wasn’t proper. he suggests JJ to message yuri himself, but JJ quickly responds that he doesn’t feel right to message yuri abut a family issues. otabek, for the first time, realizes JJ does have a quite sensitive side.

- yuri asks otabek about flowers sent to his home, with no sender’s name. yuri thinks it’s otabek and pre-emptively thanks him but otabek tells him it was not him. he doesn’t tell yuri who he thinks sent it either, especially not after yuri tells him he was surprised the sender knew his favorite flowers, because it reminded him of his mother. otabek feels something heavy in his chest at the omission.

- a couple months have passed by since yuri’s grandfather incident. yuri excitedly tells otabek he grew 1.3 cm. otabek takes to drinking vitamin D and calcium fortified milk on the daily.

- JJ and otabek message each other infrequently, just very dry conversations about progress on the rink. in the past month, JJ’s messages have been shorter and less excited from his usual self. otabek figures he’s been busy shooting CFs and other off-rink work.

- otabek is having an off day, and somehow during his motorcycle ride his handphone flies out of his jacket and breaks on the sidewalk. it’s still usable but the screen is damaged beyond repair. he lets yuri know he won’t be available for a few days and he sends the phone off to repair.

- although the repair should have taken 2 days at most, it ends up taking 5 days because otabek either misses the repair shop closing time and other technical mishaps.

- otabek boots up his phone late after training to find pictures of yuri in disneyworld. with JJ. he’s baffled. there are also gotten a billion messages from both of them. otabek usually responds in a timely manner but the normally calm otabek feels himself a bit agitated and confused so he decides to sleep it off.

chapter 2: JJ POV

- getting engaged at 18 was probably not the best idea, and most certainly living with someone before marriage as well. JJ and Isabella have been fighting more and more after the GPF, and they decide to go on a break.

- JJ misses Isabella a lot but he knows intuitively this break isn’t really temporary. he’s torn up inside and it’s showing in his performances. he goes on a small break, without letting any of his fellow skaters know.

- JJ doesn’t feel really safe confiding in anyone about his breakup--certainly not his local friends since they know too much (and many have taken sides or wished to remain third party). he lets Leo know what’s going on with him, and he is quite supportive.

- JJ doesn’t feel it’s right to burden otabek with his current situation. (he’s actually not sure how otabek would deal with emotions). he’s typed out a message to otabek many times, but has deleted it just as much.

- instead he decides to bring up a topic that otabek is obviously emotionally tied with--yuri. he half wonders how they got to be friends in such a short amount of time. in truth, JJ was absolutely floored by yuri’s progress and performance, and though he liked to tease yuri, he wished they started off as friends first, so he builds up on the momentum to ask otabek to have lunch with him and yuri.

- he asks otabek for advice for a gift to get yuri on placing gold, and otabek gives him pointed advice, with more words than JJ has ever seen him use in all of his messages with JJ. he decides to get a custom made white tiger doll, just cute but also just fierce enough to represent yuri.

- JJ actually has a good time during lunch with both of them. he can’t forget that look on yuri’s face when he gifted him the doll--and feels like yuri has slowly warmed up to him during lunch. he feels a lot better just hanging out with people unrelated to his hometown, and figures this was the release he needed.

- they exchange numbers at otabek’s suggestion--though JJ feels too nervous to message yuri first, for some reason, as if he’s texting after a first date. yuri saves him the grief and messages him first, thanking him for the doll. JJ responds excitedly (too soon), but yuri doesn’t message back. JJ makes a note to save Yuri’s birthday to his calendar and to commission a lion plush in time.

- when news of yuri’s grandfather spreads, JJ texts otabek, but doesn’t get a response. he actually personally goes to a florist and takes his time learning about flowers and flower messages. he sends gladiolus and gardenia flowers, somehow arranging a friend in russia to order in his place.

- a month later, isabella asks to meet JJ and they rekindle. they schedule another lunch date on the spot. JJ is confused but overjoyed, as their one year anniversary is coming up.

- however, JJ misread her intentions--she really wanted to stay friends, which she makes very clear on their next date. JJ feels like an idiot for having rushed through his heart instead of his brain.

- he remembers just then that he had booked plane tickets and tickets to disneyworld several months prior in preparation for the anniversary. he can cancel the plane tickets but not to disneyworld...he would have given the tickets to his siblings but they are in school. all in all, JJ just wants to flee canada and just not think about anything.

- that night he decides getting drunk was the best option. upon his fourth beer, he somehow worked up to courage (yolo) to one sidedly spam yuri about how sad he was because of what happened with him and isabella. he also manages to ask yuri if he’d want to come. he’s sure yuri would say no but he’s drunk and he’s going to say stupid stuff, he might as well do it now.

- yuri responds: yes. and when. JJ nearly drops his beer and asks yuri if he’s serious. yuri responds that he has never been to disneyworld and he’s always wanted to go...and that he would go if JJ paid for everything.

- (yuri also isn’t heartless--he knows JJ must be considerable upset to message him all of a sudden and unleash his sob story on him, and probably could use a break)

- JJ suddenly gets the feeling...he doesn’t know how otabek would feel about this, but what if he’s looking too much into it...asks yuri if he needs permission from otabek. yuri actually gets angry, exclaiming he doesn’t need permission from anyone to go anywhere he wants. JJ thinks the outburst is cute, and then they arrange for yuri to come to florida. the conversation with yuri wakes JJ up from inebriation faster than an icy cold shower.

- JJ messages otabek out of courtesy, but he figures yuri would probably tell him. he lies awake in bed and tries to process what just happened, and so fast.

Chapter 3:

- JJ and Yuri meet at Orlando international. JJ is nervous about the whole thing, and Yuri whacks him on the head, tells him to cheer up BECAUSE THEY’RE GOING TO DISNEY WORL

- JJ starts loosening up considerably once at the park. He prepared Minnie and Mickey mouse ears for the occasion....and Yuri makes him wear the Minnie one. Yuri has become a total child, laughing freely and enjoying the rides. JJ feels like he’s never seen this side of Yuri and although he’s been to the Disney parks several times with his family, it feels like a brand new experience and he’s much happier for it.

- The ears get wet on splash mountain, and yuri wants to check out the stores anyway so they shop for a new hats/ears. they decide to shop for each other and yuri presents him with goofy hat + ears (”because you’re stupidly tall and you have a dumb laugh”) and JJ presents him with donald duck hat (”you’re small and angry, all the time”). they both laugh at how apt the descriptions are and decide to purchase new hats.

- yuri..finds out JJ is actually fun, a teenager who likes to make jokes and tease just like him, and feels decidedly less neutral about his new....friend.

....I have only thought about here, it’s also been a while since I’ve been in disney so I’ll have to brush up on the attractions there.

IF YOU READ UP TO THIS MUCH PLS LIKE N SUBSCRIBE no, I mean, thanks. I plan such grandiose fics and I just don’t have the time or mental brain power to see the idea to completion so I figure sharing my ideas would be the best way to help this starved fandom (yes).

#headcanon #jjyuri #pliroy #otayurijj #jjyuriota

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stephenmccull · 5 years ago

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Readers And Tweeters: Doctors Chime In On Telemedicine Costs

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.

Next Time Take Time To Consult Doctors On Telehealth

As a cardiologist and pediatrician at the University of Mississippi, I take issue with your article about telemedicine (“Telehealth Will Be Free, No Copays, They Said. But Angry Patients Are Getting Billed,” April 27). Describing the care sessions as “phone chats,” as the headline on the companion NPR article did, substantially misrepresents what we do. Why did the article get published without the point of view of a single physician? The nature of this complaint boils down to this — I would never try to ask you to write journal articles for me, for free. We, in medicine, ask the same of you. If all phone consultations with physicians were free, we would never have time to see patients in the office. I urge you to write follow-up articles with a more balanced set of sources and realize how your article can now be used as ammunition to further constrain the way doctors practice. It is appropriate to remind readers to check their insurance coverage before they agree to a telephone consultation. It is not appropriate to then also call for free telephone or telehealth consultations.

― Dr. Frank Han, Jackson, Mississippi

https://t.co/IODxilXTmo

Risk of exposure vs risk of accruing high copay and then not being able to pay another bill in this economy. What an unacceptable dilemma

— Mukta Baweja, MD (@muktabaweja) May 4, 2020

— Dr. Yasmin Brahmbhatt, Philadelphia (responding to Dr. Mukta Baweja, New York City)

The article on telehealth was misleading and does the public a disservice by suggesting that physicians are approaching telehealth simply to increase their incomes.

Telehealth allows us physicians to see our patients and help them during a time of physical distancing. We are doing this not because it is “lucrative,” but to serve our communities, to do our jobs, and to take care of our patients while keeping them and our staff safe and healthy.

My practice revenue is down 85%. We have had a drastic reduction in patient visits, and I have already furloughed four of my 10 employees. These calls are far from lucrative, but, yes, they do help us keep the doors open.

Many other professionals charge for their time. After seeing patients throughout the day, we spend hours returning phone calls in the evening. These calls are not reimbursed; and frankly, they should be.

Phone calls and telehealth visits are not “chats.” They are medical consultations. You call your doctor for professional advice and guidance. You call your mother or your friends for a chat.

―Dr. Rachel Schreiber, Rockville, Maryland

In a fragmented health system – the obvious can often be complicated >> Telehealth Will Be Free, No Copays, They Said. But Angry Patients Are Getting Billed. https://t.co/ERxge4u9oy via @khnews

— Peter Borden (@peter_borden) April 27, 2020

— Peter Borden, Boston

Jay Hancock’s story on telephone visits did not speak to physicians. Physicians should have been charging for telephone visits in the past (if the sessions met the criteria: initiated by the patient, not related to office visits or results from an office visit, or did not lead to an office visit), but reimbursement was only $14 per call. And many times the telephone calls did not meet billing criteria. However, with shelter-in-place laws and the pandemic, medical care has drastically changed. Patients don’t want to come to the office. They are thrilled to have telephone visits instead. Physicians are doing exponentially more of these telephone visits that meet billing criteria. Office visits have drastically decreased. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has changed reimbursement for telephone visits to be the same as for video visits, retroactive to March. Charging for telephone visits will help keep doctors’ offices financially afloat so medical care is available for patients in the future. This story is missing the perspective of physicians and also patients who are very happy with the telephone visits.

— Dr. Catherine Nelson, San Mateo, California

I am writing on behalf of the American Academy of Dermatology, which represents more than 20,000 dermatologists and their patients. All physicians, including dermatologists, are committed to providing the highest-quality patient care and have worked to safely offer care throughout the pandemic.

Your recent article correctly outlines how patients are utilizing telehealth to continue receiving care during the pandemic and describes discrepancies in how they’re being billed. While your article addresses these discrepancies in telehealth billing, it does not fully represent the significant challenges faced by patients, physicians and insurers as the health care system shifted abruptly in response to the pandemic.

Physicians are facing significant challenges including:

Lack of consistency. Many of the current telemedicine insurance policies are inconsistent and include differing reporting and delivery requirements, which creates a significant burden on practices and may delay the delivery of care.

Confusion surrounding reimbursement. Reimbursement levels and patient cost sharing for telemedicine visits vary across insurers. Many are following CMS and reimbursing in parity and eliminating patient responsibility while others are maintaining that patients must meet their standard obligations. This disparity has many practices collecting a deductible and refunding the patient’s deductible or copayment once the claim is processed appropriately.

Opportunity to work together. During this time of uncertainty, insurers and physicians are coming together to maintain continuity of care for patients. With any new process, challenges remain. Finding ways to harmonize the disparate requirements physicians are facing is paramount.

Our hope is that you will find this information helpful in providing a full picture of the medical profession’s intense obligation to keep Americans safe during the pandemic while administering quality care.

— Dr. Bruce H. Thiers, president of the American Academy of Dermatology, Rosemont, Illinois

We need more efforts like this one to train more mental health professionals to support care team members, and ordinary citizens who have had to deal with the extraordinary. Thank you, University of California! https://t.co/18d4P7PP2l

— Liz Boehm (@LizBoehm) May 1, 2020

— Liz Boehm, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thank you. The rest of the news leaves me numb, but I finally wept at all the loss around us and could emotionally process what is actually happening….thanks to this deeply human series.

— Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (@rachelkauder) April 16, 2020

— Rachel Kauser Nalebuff, Brooklyn, New York

Privy To Details About Community Spread

Regarding your series “Lost on the Frontline,” one critical topic was overlooked: fecal transmission and “contact tracing” of toilets. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nothing about a fecal vector on its website, Chinese and U.S. researchers have been publishing their data on the coronavirus and feces for months. Toilet facilities for exclusive use by staff could be an overlooked vector that is tragically spreading this pathogen among health care workers.

An asymptomatic patient passes contaminated bowel movements for up to a week prior to feeling ill. Decades of research on uncovered flush toilets have shown their aerosol plume spreads bacterial and viral pathogens in a wide arc. Any location with a communal-use restroom has an inadvertent COVID-19 warehouse/distribution center (if it has been used by an infected person). The CDC can’t say, with any certainty, how long the coronavirus survives on various surfaces and whether it is infectious.

“Contact tracing” must consider which toilets were used by people who tested positive for COVID-19 during the preceding seven days. And then who used those facilities after the contaminated individuals. This flushed-toilet hypothesis, if valid, could explain cluster outbreaks in “contained” settings with designated staff toilets, e.g., ICUs, hospital admitting/triage departments, police precinct stations, corporate conference gatherings, restaurants, etc.

It might help to reflect on the CDC’s befuddlement at the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Philadelphia July 1976. Though the pathogen was a simple bacterium and the cohort of ill persons relatively contained and traceable, the agency’s epidemiologists and public health investigators were scratching their perplexed heads until a second outbreak in April 1977 enlightened them.

Getting beyond “respiratory droplets” may take even longer. This pandemic started as a gastrointestinal virus in the Wuhan market. The Coral Princess outbreak has recently been traced to an infected food worker. Until some bright epidemiologist redirects serious attention to fecal transmission and toilets, health care workers will continue to be at high risk of exposure to this deadly virus.

— Tom Heusel, retired registered nurse, Eugene, Oregon

1/2 Every crisis, from wars to 9/11 to #COVID19, begs the question of whether tracking for the greater good is worth more than the concerns it creates. Now that #data & #tracking #technology is so much more powerful, the question is more thorny than ever. https://t.co/xDmxh9pIbw

— Dr. Christopher Chen (@DrChrisChen) April 20, 2020

— Dr. Christopher Chen, Miami

The Nuts And Bolts Of COVID Care

Your recent piece (“As Ventilators Become Crucial In Saving Lives, Repair Roadblocks Remain,” April 17) highlights an important and pressing issue.

As the COVID-19 pandemic puts unprecedented strain on our health care system, it is essential that we ensure medical devices are working safely and effectively. While third-party servicers play a crucial role in the post-market maintenance ecosystem, the fact is many operate in a regulatory “wild West.” In most cases, federal regulators do not even know about specific maintenance companies much less what their qualifications may or may not be. A 2018 Food and Drug Administration report estimated that the “total number of firms performing medical device servicing in the U.S. is between 16,520 and 20,830.” In other words, we do not even have a clear sense of the number of third-party servicers who work closely with medical equipment — a troubling reality, to say the least.

Non-manufacturer third-party servicers do not have to register with the FDA and are not held to the same quality, safety and regulatory requirements as original equipment manufacturer (OEM) servicers.

It is also important to remember that not all “right-to-repair” products are the same. If a repair goes awry with a mobile phone, at worst it may need to be replaced entirely. But the consequences of an improperly repaired medical device such as an MRI machine or ventilator can bring life-altering risks. That is why the FDA holds OEMs to specific quality and safety requirements and why we have advocated that, at a minimum, the agency should:

Know which third-party services are performing maintenance work

Assure all technicians are properly trained

Assure qualified parts are always used

Require detailed service records are maintained

Require applicable safety issues or events to be reported to the manufacturer in a timely manner.

It is unfortunate that some third-party servicers have chosen to use the COVID-19 pandemic to alarm the public and advance their business agenda. Instead of pushing for more unregulated servicing, they should register with the FDA, adopt quality management systems, and develop a mechanism for reporting adverse events.

— Patrick Hope, executive director of the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance

It's beyond absurd that having enough ventilators is literally a question of life and death…there are ventilators in storage we could repair…and some manufacturers won't share service information.

This is why we need #RightToRepairhttps://t.co/JXvQJWozgJ

— Pat Kelly-Fischer (@PatKellyCO) April 21, 2020

— Pat Kelly-Fischer, Denver

An Insurer Far From Interested In Bailout Money

Julie Appleby and Steven Findlay’s April 28 story, “Health Insurers Prosper As COVID-19 Deflates Demand For Elective Treatments,” implies that all health insurers are looking for a government bailout asking, “So why is the industry looking to Congress for help?” Not true. UnitedHealth Group, which includes UnitedHealthcare and Optum, will not request or accept any government relief money. Instead, we are focused on leveraging the full strength of our resources to support the health and safety of the people and communities we serve.

We are flexing our financial resources, clinical expertise and national reach in dozens of ways to help address society’s most critical needs. We’ve broadened health care access for patients by waiving cost sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment, reduced prior authorizations, enabled and encouraged the use of free telehealth, offered early prescriptions refills, donated an initial $70 million to COVID-related causes, and delivered nearly $2 billion in accelerated payments to help care providers during a challenging financial time.

The 325,000 people of UnitedHealth Group are committed to doing as much as we can for the people and communities we are honored to serve during this difficult time.

― Kirsten Gorsuch, chief communications officer for UnitedHealthcare, Minnetonka, Minnesota

"Health Insurers Prosper As #COVID19 Deflates Demand For Elective Treatments"

So much wrong with this system when patients are not getting care, healthcare workers are dying, and only insurance companies are making $$ @choo_ek @ASALifeline @drjessigold https://t.co/G9kky6iVKO

— Ed Mariano, MD (@EMARIANOMD) April 29, 2020

— Dr. Ed Mariano, Palo Alto, California

A Need To Expose Negligence?

Thank you for your exposé on assisted living facilities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic (“COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry,” April 9). My comments are regarding what is missing from the article. Welltower Inc. is the largest player in the industry and it is not mentioned. Ventas, the second-largest player, is not mentioned either. The fact that neither the states nor the federal government took steps when they found how inferior the care was received no analysis.

And, finally, the federal law ― the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act — that empowers these Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to be so careless with their residents is at the core of the maltreatment of the elderly. No one is addressing the RIDEA Act of 2007.

I have a lawsuit based on the alleged negligence of my mother in Sunrise of Stamford in Connecticut, and my legal team argued that although Welltower was “just a holding company,” under RIDEA it too had liability since it shared in the profits of the operating company. My point is that so much of this industry is ignored. I am fighting for someone to go deeper than the obvious.

― Ted Schachter, founder of Alzheimer’s Defense Fund, New York City

>800,000 are in Assisted Living nationwide, a dangerous theater in the #Coronavirus war. Financial losses, sicker residents, limited oversight, too few employees, may force some centers into bankruptcy & put frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.https://t.co/YOAKkve2Xm

— C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) April 9, 2020

— Dr. C. Michael Gibson, Boston

Readers And Tweeters: Doctors Chime In On Telemedicine Costs published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

0 notes

dinafbrownil · 5 years ago

Text

Readers And Tweeters: Doctors Chime In On Telemedicine Costs

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.

Next Time Take Time To Consult Doctors On Telehealth

― Dr. Frank Han, Jackson, Mississippi

https://t.co/IODxilXTmo

Risk of exposure vs risk of accruing high copay and then not being able to pay another bill in this economy. What an unacceptable dilemma

— Mukta Baweja, MD (@muktabaweja) May 4, 2020

— Dr. Yasmin Brahmbhatt, Philadelphia (responding to Dr. Mukta Baweja, New York City)

The article on telehealth was misleading and does the public a disservice by suggesting that physicians are approaching telehealth simply to increase their incomes.

Phone calls and telehealth visits are not “chats.” They are medical consultations. You call your doctor for professional advice and guidance. You call your mother or your friends for a chat.

―Dr. Rachel Schreiber, Rockville, Maryland

In a fragmented health system – the obvious can often be complicated >> Telehealth Will Be Free, No Copays, They Said. But Angry Patients Are Getting Billed. https://t.co/ERxge4u9oy via @khnews

— Peter Borden (@peter_borden) April 27, 2020

— Peter Borden, Boston

— Dr. Catherine Nelson, San Mateo, California

Physicians are facing significant challenges including:

— Dr. Bruce H. Thiers, president of the American Academy of Dermatology, Rosemont, Illinois

— Liz Boehm (@LizBoehm) May 1, 2020

— Liz Boehm, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thank you. The rest of the news leaves me numb, but I finally wept at all the loss around us and could emotionally process what is actually happening….thanks to this deeply human series.

— Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (@rachelkauder) April 16, 2020

— Rachel Kauser Nalebuff, Brooklyn, New York

Privy To Details About Community Spread

— Tom Heusel, retired registered nurse, Eugene, Oregon

— Dr. Christopher Chen (@DrChrisChen) April 20, 2020

— Dr. Christopher Chen, Miami

The Nuts And Bolts Of COVID Care

Your recent piece (“As Ventilators Become Crucial In Saving Lives, Repair Roadblocks Remain,” April 17) highlights an important and pressing issue.

Know which third-party services are performing maintenance work

Assure all technicians are properly trained

Assure qualified parts are always used

Require detailed service records are maintained

Require applicable safety issues or events to be reported to the manufacturer in a timely manner.

— Patrick Hope, executive director of the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance

This is why we need #RightToRepairhttps://t.co/JXvQJWozgJ

— Pat Kelly-Fischer (@PatKellyCO) April 21, 2020

— Pat Kelly-Fischer, Denver

An Insurer Far From Interested In Bailout Money

The 325,000 people of UnitedHealth Group are committed to doing as much as we can for the people and communities we are honored to serve during this difficult time.

― Kirsten Gorsuch, chief communications officer for UnitedHealthcare, Minnetonka, Minnesota

"Health Insurers Prosper As #COVID19 Deflates Demand For Elective Treatments"

So much wrong with this system when patients are not getting care, healthcare workers are dying, and only insurance companies are making $$ @choo_ek @ASALifeline @drjessigold https://t.co/G9kky6iVKO

— Ed Mariano, MD (@EMARIANOMD) April 29, 2020

— Dr. Ed Mariano, Palo Alto, California

A Need To Expose Negligence?

― Ted Schachter, founder of Alzheimer’s Defense Fund, New York City

— C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) April 9, 2020

— Dr. C. Michael Gibson, Boston

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/readers-and-tweeters-doctors-chime-in-on-telemedicine-costs/

0 notes

gordonwilliamsweb · 5 years ago

Text

Readers And Tweeters: Doctors Chime In On Telemedicine Costs

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.

Next Time Take Time To Consult Doctors On Telehealth

― Dr. Frank Han, Jackson, Mississippi

https://t.co/IODxilXTmo

Risk of exposure vs risk of accruing high copay and then not being able to pay another bill in this economy. What an unacceptable dilemma

— Mukta Baweja, MD (@muktabaweja) May 4, 2020

— Dr. Yasmin Brahmbhatt, Philadelphia (responding to Dr. Mukta Baweja, New York City)

The article on telehealth was misleading and does the public a disservice by suggesting that physicians are approaching telehealth simply to increase their incomes.

Phone calls and telehealth visits are not “chats.” They are medical consultations. You call your doctor for professional advice and guidance. You call your mother or your friends for a chat.

―Dr. Rachel Schreiber, Rockville, Maryland

In a fragmented health system – the obvious can often be complicated >> Telehealth Will Be Free, No Copays, They Said. But Angry Patients Are Getting Billed. https://t.co/ERxge4u9oy via @khnews

— Peter Borden (@peter_borden) April 27, 2020

— Peter Borden, Boston

— Dr. Catherine Nelson, San Mateo, California

Physicians are facing significant challenges including:

— Dr. Bruce H. Thiers, president of the American Academy of Dermatology, Rosemont, Illinois

— Liz Boehm (@LizBoehm) May 1, 2020

— Liz Boehm, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thank you. The rest of the news leaves me numb, but I finally wept at all the loss around us and could emotionally process what is actually happening….thanks to this deeply human series.

— Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (@rachelkauder) April 16, 2020

— Rachel Kauser Nalebuff, Brooklyn, New York

Privy To Details About Community Spread

— Tom Heusel, retired registered nurse, Eugene, Oregon

— Dr. Christopher Chen (@DrChrisChen) April 20, 2020

— Dr. Christopher Chen, Miami

The Nuts And Bolts Of COVID Care

Your recent piece (“As Ventilators Become Crucial In Saving Lives, Repair Roadblocks Remain,” April 17) highlights an important and pressing issue.

Know which third-party services are performing maintenance work

Assure all technicians are properly trained

Assure qualified parts are always used

Require detailed service records are maintained

Require applicable safety issues or events to be reported to the manufacturer in a timely manner.

— Patrick Hope, executive director of the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance

This is why we need #RightToRepairhttps://t.co/JXvQJWozgJ

— Pat Kelly-Fischer (@PatKellyCO) April 21, 2020

— Pat Kelly-Fischer, Denver

An Insurer Far From Interested In Bailout Money

The 325,000 people of UnitedHealth Group are committed to doing as much as we can for the people and communities we are honored to serve during this difficult time.

― Kirsten Gorsuch, chief communications officer for UnitedHealthcare, Minnetonka, Minnesota

"Health Insurers Prosper As #COVID19 Deflates Demand For Elective Treatments"

So much wrong with this system when patients are not getting care, healthcare workers are dying, and only insurance companies are making $$ @choo_ek @ASALifeline @drjessigold https://t.co/G9kky6iVKO

— Ed Mariano, MD (@EMARIANOMD) April 29, 2020

— Dr. Ed Mariano, Palo Alto, California

A Need To Expose Negligence?

― Ted Schachter, founder of Alzheimer’s Defense Fund, New York City

— C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) April 9, 2020

— Dr. C. Michael Gibson, Boston

Readers And Tweeters: Doctors Chime In On Telemedicine Costs published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

0 notes

toolongtoputontwitter · 7 years ago

Text

Crowder didn’t debunk a thing. He’s just a smooth talking liar.

1:30 says mass shooting aren’t defined so it’s misleading…. Just because there is no standard definition doesn’t mean the report by Jaclyn Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass did not apply the same standards to the US and Europe. If their report did not apply the same standard it is up Crowder to check the facts than simply claim it’s misleading. That is him being misleading, not the report or Vox.

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/mass-shootings.html

1:40 “They want to plant the idea that a rise in legally owned guns you see an increase in gun crime…” He wants to set his audience up to disbelieve their own eyes.

2:00 “They’re not using per capita. The United States has more population than the other countries” *Crowder shows the number of public mass shootings slide but LEAVES OUT the next Vox chart that states 2000-2014, number of shootings PER 1 million people* He’s just claiming people are trying to pull a fast one instead of admitting the video is going to make the same point 3 seconds later.

2:39 Then he complains that the per capita report is misleading because of fatalities vs injuries. So he’s moving the goal post from “they’re not dealing with per capita” and then pivoted to “fatalities matter more than the per capita” just so the audience doesn’t have time to notice what he said 30 seconds ago.

Also, if fatalities mattered so much he should go into why Finland shootings are more fatal. Maybe America has a better healthcare system.

2:45: VOX: “This tragedy seems to be happen more often in the US” *posts graph excluding gang, domestic violence* That actually deceases the number of mass shootings. Crowder: “It SEEMS to be happening because violent crime has decreased in the US.” Here Crowder is intentionally ignoring that the topic is MASS SHOOTINGS not violent crime. Just because violent crime is decreasing does not change the fact that the number of mass shootings are still going up.

3:15 Crowder: “before she cherry picking data”

At no point did Crowder point out what data was cherry picked, the Vox report is still going off of the Jaclyn Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass report which he has not proven was using two standards to define mass shooting between US and Europe

Crowder: “now she’s getting very specific” - The chart Vox is referring to now is the Mother Jones/Harvard (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/mass-shootings-rising-harvard/ & https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/mass-shootings-increasing-harvard-research/), that report’s standards are defined as ”attacks that took place in public, in which the shooter and the victims generally were unrelated and unknown to each other, and in which the shooter murdered four or more people.” And the graph specifically stated “excluding gang, domestic violence”, so it’s not misleading, Crowder is ignoring the standards placed by each report while refusing to inform his audience which standards are in place and which reports have higher numbers and why. If the variations mattered he would have told the audience by now what they were and which report applied to them.

Then he drags up “gun free zones” and “psychopathic outliers”, which are unrelated to his complaint to cherry picking, this is to prevent his audience from realizing the report is accurately portraying the assertion that mass shootings are on the rise while using a consistent standard similar to the FBI’s definition of mass murder. He knows he is doing this.

3:55 Crowder complains that Vox is dragging up Muslim extremists and claims that the video shouldn’t bring up Muslims because of the first chart that specifically excluded gang violence and terrorism. He’s intentionally ignoring that a chart does not dictate the direction of the discussion and the Vox video is about mass shootings and gun violence so terrorism should be included too.

4:15 Crowder says Obama is about taking away 2A, Obama never suggested that, he wants comprehensive background checks and that is a huge difference, so he is applying a straw man fallacy again.

4:40: Crowder “Real quick because we’ll come back to this “80% of those gun related homicides IN THE UNITED STATES are drug related. Let’s go.” *flashes article for 2 seconds that highlights the “80%” but the sentences state “In New Orleans, between 35-55% of homicides are classified as gang-related. In Chicago, an estimated 80% of homicides are gang-relate. And in Baltimore, the police commissioner states that 80% of homicides are drug-related. (But again, most of this depends on methods of keeping records, and , often, personal opinions.)”

Here Crowder is intentionallly lying what that article said and hiding the truth by flashing the article, hoping no one stopped to actually look at what it said and realize that drug-related and gang-related are not the same and Chicago and Baltimore do not represent the US as a whole.

Crowder clearly thinks his audience is dumb and he might be right.

5:05 Vox: ranks suicide among the highest developed countries and how many were done with guns. Crowder: “She want to ignore that because we want to get to American suicides” HUH?

5:11: Crowder: “Suicide is a terrible thing but to use it as a political tool to remove law abiding citizens basic right to self-preservation is a terrible thing too.” He doesn’t know what Vox wants the government to do and there are other ways beyond guns to preserve oneself. In fact, asking for better regulations is about self-preservation too and he is wanting to deny that from us.

5:20: Crowder: “surprise these are unfree countries with highly regulated gun control” *lists other countries with higher suicide rates that doesn’t state what year it’s from and a map related to 2002* He doesn’t list which countries regulated their guns or how nor does he delve into cultural attitude about suicide or if a wait period exists.

6:00 “Sorry Poland, Korea, Japan, apparently you’re not developed countries” Again Crowder is making a straw man fallacy by ignoring that she stated UN stated top ten developed countries. He does this to confuse his audience about how suicides relate to the countries we relate to the most.

6:35: Vox: *lists facts to point out that most people who attempt suicide but fail do not die from suicide, guns don’t offer a second chance, and mostly white men die from guns. Crowder: “now we get into the personal stories that hit you right in the feels.” No, they stated facts and that is all they are doing. Then he starts going into culture which he should have brought up around 6:00. But he doesn’t want to. Because talking about white men dying from suicide with guns is important to white men and people who care about white men. So again he’s derailing.

6:49: Crowder: “look at Australia, no change in gun related suicide after the gun ban.” *quickly shows graph that shows decrease of gun suicides while suicide spiked between 1996 (when the ban started) and 1998. There is no gun ban, there were two buyback programs and 26 uncompensated amnesties, and people have to have a license to own a gun.

7:55: Crowder goes back to the 80% of homicides are DRUG related *Flashes a headline claiming there’s a gang problem then flashes an article and zooms in so audience can not read it.*

Even The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, disagrees with his assertion and claims that the Department of Justice’s National Gang Center says 15-33% of gun-related homicides are linked with gang and drug activity. (https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/here-are-8-stubborn-facts-gun-violence-america)

But that site's citations don’t offer that information.

However the US Department of Justice cites in their 1980-2008 report (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf): page 26 “involving adult or juvenile gang violence increased from about 220 homicides in 1980 to 960 homicides in 2008. Gang violence accounted for 1% of all homicides in 1980 and 6% of all homicides in 2008.” The chart on homicides (categorized by felony, argument, gang, other, and unknown) shows homicide by gang remaining between 220 and 1000 deaths each year. Drug related deaths were lumped in with felony related murders. Even though gangs use guns the most out of all the categories (92% in 2008) but that still is not 80% of all homicides.

The % of drug related homicides range from 3.9% out of 14,831 (578) in 2007 to 7.4% out of 18,954 in 1989 (https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/duc.cfm)

So it is obvious that Crowder is intentionally lying about gang and drug related homicides making up 80% of homicides. Gangs use guns the most out of all the categories (92% in 2008) but that still is not 80% of all homicides.

8:00: Crowder says the US is nothing like these other countries when it comes to homicide *Shows a map pointing out cities world wide along with only Chicago and Baltimore in the US..* This is misleading because the US ranks #90 out of 230 with a homicide rate of 5.35 per 100000 people in 2016, so pointing out two cities isn’t give a clear picture on how we compare to the countries with similar socioeconomic situations like us.

8:25: Vox: *Displays speech of a mother who lost her son to a man who had a gun illegally* Crowder: “She’s yelling at me like I shouldn’t have a gun… again anecdotal information to emotionally manipulate you anyway.“

He’s making a joke to avoid a simple truth that crimes are happening by people who illegally have guns. He is trying to kill any discussion of gun control with emotional manipulation himself by lightening the mood rather than letting his viewers take a moment to contemplate consequences for lack of gun control. He is also emotionally manipulating his fans to take angry people’s speeches personally rather than objectively accept that they are angry and think of ways to solve the problem.

8:30: Crowder: “It’s sad this lady’s son got shot BUT he was shot by gang members. Statistically gang members aren’t buy their heat at Walmart… one of the shooters was already a criminal and could not legally buy a gun.” He is pivoting his audience away from empathizing and understanding her point where she made it clear a criminal shot her kid by implying that she didn’t make that point at all by reiterating what she said and giving more info.

8:45: Crowder points out that Chicago has strict gun laws but the highest homicide rate and then smiles, shrugs, and moves on. Who in their right mind would smile over that? He clearly doesn’t want his audience to be angry with reality or consider that other states are supplying the guns. He is only smiling to distract people.

9:00 VOX: *shows charts on burglary and assault from 2013 that show the US is not the highest with burglary and assualt* Crowder brings up Britain % of hot burglaries and compares them to the US, but doesn’t mention stats on per capita of burglaries. He then proceeds to claim Vox is manipulating their audience by switching topics even though that is exactly what he just did by bringing in unrelated information to confuse his audiences form understanding that Vox is explaining why they are bringing up burglary and assault to make a solid point that US is more lethal despite having less crimes per 100,000 people than other countries that have more gun regulations than the US.

He knows what he is doing.

9:45: Crowder “…manipulated. Because yes the US has more gang on gang crime where as Europe has more predator victim crime.” This is why he lied about gang and drug related homicides making up 80% of all of the US homicides. He wants to keep people ignorant of the fact that gang and drug related homicides make up 13.4% of all homicides so people will ignore the burglary and assault stats.

Also note, he doesn’t give any stats on gangs-related homicides in Europe.

10:09 Vox: compares number of deaths from 2000-2013 caused by AIDS, ODs, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, terrorism, and guns. AIDs the the second leading cause of death in that graph. Guns was the highest. Crowder: “Why did she bring up AIDS? AIDS is not a serious problem for most Americans unless they’re involved in specific activities” *shows stats on how people get HIV* Aids killed over 150,000. Guns was near 400,000. He is intentionally trying to manipulate his audience into ignoring that guns kill a significant amount of people compared to other issues we consider important. Then he switches the topic to how people get HIV, even though we already know, just to bring out prejudices against gays and drug users to dull our concern about the spread and prevention. That is also why he is trying to push the 80% drug-related gun homicides lie. He wants to encourage people not to care by bringing out their negative reactions to drug-users.

10:30 Crowder: “Why would you add drugs to that list even though 80% of gun homicides are drug related?” Because ODing on illegal drugs is a justifiable issue to be concerned about and has a significantly high number.

He is pushing that lie that 80% gun homicides are related to drugs when in truth he’s only talking about Baltimore. Considering that Gun homicides in 2007 was 10,129 (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8), while the total homicides ranges between 14,831 and 14,916 based on the source. So it’s obvious drug related gun homicides do not make up 80% of all gun homicides since 578 is 3.9% of 14,831 and that is only 5.71% (578/10,129) of gun-homicides.

Crowder is lying and you should find another person that respects the truth and their audience.

10:38 Crowder: “How are war casualties not gun related?” Crowder wants the audience to not see the difference between our troops dying to fight extremists and civilian homicides.

10:50: Crowder: “I’m also imagining that this would be skewed considering San Bernardino would be included in gun deaths and not in terrorism.” San bernardino happened in 2015 while the graph for 2000-2013. Even if it was included in either or both categories the numbers would make any significant difference. He just wants to complain about little things because he has nothing better to say.

11:07: Crowder notes that the bar on gun deaths is including accidents, homicides and suicides in an attempt to counter the narrator who said “IT SHOULD BE CLEAR BY NOW, that this level of gun violence is a uniquely American problem among the developed world…“ She didn’t imply the bar was only homicides, but assuming the audience is smart enough to make the distinction between gun deaths and gun homicides and keep up with the other graphs.

11:10: Crowder: “That’s important because when compared to homicide rates world wide, the US ranks number 28….” *briefly passes over a list that does not show where the US ranks it just shows a list of stats relating to gun homicide* Others state we rank at 90 with the highest homicides. The countries above are not all developed so her statement is not misleading in any way.

“This is a pivotal sleight of hand here because this includes total firearm deaths right before she pivots.” Again, she did not imply that bar was only gun homicides.

11:14 Crowder tries to confuse his audiences’ train of thought by lying that the next graph Vox shows is going to lead people to conclude that legal gun ownership is the reason why gun homicide are so high, but the graph is adding addition information to add to the fact that people inbox the US have less restrictions to own guns. Crowder emphasizes on LEGAL GUN OWNERSHIP so people don’t consider that these other countries also offer legal gun ownership but with more regulations than the US.

11:50: He brings up the 28th rank again but still is ignoring that countries suffering with homicide rates are still less developed while Vox wanted to keep the standard on developed nations because the US has more in common with them.

12:07 Crowder: “It also ironically unravels her own point, if gun ownership is so drastically higher in the US but we’re only 28th rank an overall gun homicide rate that means proportionally legal gun owners in the US are committing less crimes.“ He is ignoring her point that gun access is easier to obtain which allows people to stockpile weapons with ease.

12:40: Crowder rather focus on the chart pointing out that the US is the only developed country to grant citizens the right to bear arms. He says this is a negative things, but when you look at how other countries force their citizen to earn the privilege it is obvious that simply having a right does not make a country safer.

12:47: Crowder: “which is tipping their hand because that’s ultimately their end goal and they’ll tell you your crazy if you say leftist just want to take your guns away.” He’s not crazy he’s an intelligent fear monger and a liar. He doesn’t want to show his audience the polls where people say they want background checks, adding people with mental illnesses to the gun background check system, raising the age, banning bump stocks, basing high capacity ammo mags, banning assault-styled weapons. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/02/589849342/npr-poll-after-parkland-number-of-americans-who-want-gun-restrictions-grows

No one talks about having the government invade homes and confiscate weapons. It’s not something anyone talks about. And you can ask any person and they’ll all agree it would be ridiculous to have guns confiscated or end all sales of firearms. We accept guns are necessary since other people have them, we just want to end the escalation of guns’ lethal capacity.

12:53 Crowder: “Brief history lesson the US has 2A because of a very different history than other countries… the US decide to fight for freedom and keep that freedom and hang on that right to ensure we were never taken over by a tyrant like Hitler” *points out that those other countries were taken over by Hitler including Germany* Germany was stripped of their guns after WW1 but they voted him in and assassinating him wouldn’t have ended the Nazi movement. He doesn’t go into depth on which countries had what regulations in place during WW2 , which is a shame. But still those regulations did not deny citizens the ability to own guns.

13:13 He is still pushing that lie that 80% of gun homicides are drug-related. Then he goes on with saying that most gun crime happens in populated areas, urban cities and then adds that bureaus say it’s nearly impossible to compare crimes across different countries. His point about comparison has no place to be added with population density because the problem is that different countries have different definition to define crimes. Also his point does not relate to the Vox’s graph.

13:53: “You can’t trust someone who can’t spell Obama’s name right.”

You can’t trust someone who intentionally lies over and over.

13:55: Describes Obama making valid points about getting background checks as “demagoguery” is like complaining about people getting a licenses before driving. We shouldn’t let dangerous people buy guns legally.

14:03 “Hence the background checks. Oh wait that’s a bad thing now.” Vox never described the background checks as bad or causing problems. Crowder only wants to confuse his audience on the position Vox is taking.

14:15 Crowder points out that gun homicides have gone down by 39% then adds “this steep scary graph is designed to plant the idea in your head that more legal gun owners equals more gun crime.” He only pointed out homicide but gun crime is more than homicide and he doesn’t look at large US cities, he’s looking at the general population in the US. Other studies, but not all, have seen a positive correlation between gun prevalence and homicide rates. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/firearm-prevalence-violent-crime.html

14:40 Crowder: “this unravels her argument because regardless of background checks the amount of gun crime committed by legal firearm owners is either the same or very likely lower than before rendering this graph irrelevant.”

He does not state the amount of gun crime committed by legal gun owners. But if you look at Pittsburgh (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/27/new-evidence-confirms-what-gun-rights-advocates-have-been-saying-for-a-long-time-about-crime/?utm_term=.4c1da631629a) the Fabio study says that 79% of perpetrators carried a firearm owned by someone else, while 18% legally owned the gun themselves. The study showed that 30% of guns that were at a crime scene were stolen and of that 40% of those guns weren’t reported by the owners as stolen. 62% of the gun owners did not know where the gun was lost. One reason for gun owners not noticing that they lost their gun is that they have too many guns to notice when one goes missing. So what many legal gun owners are doing is being negligent with their weapons or selling them on the black market. Thus legal owners are breaking laws or being reckless with their guns and that should be a felony because they are enabling gun crime. It doesn’t matter if legal gun owners are not committing nearly as much gun-crimes as illegal gun owners because they still are part of the problem that causes gun crime by not taking responsibility to ensure their guns do not get stolen and reporting the theft when it happens.

14:50 Vox: *shows graph of gun death rate on a point chart. The US has the most guns and the highest death rate* Crowder: “See the slight-of-hand? We were just talking about homicide, and gun purchases, now we’re back to gun deaths, not homicide or violent crime because those would include suicides or violent intruders or criminals being killed by law abiding gun owning homeowners.”

He’s not making a coherent statement but he’s trying to say that Vox is flip flopping between death rate and crime rate, which can be confusing, but to people familiar with the subject can make the distinction. He’s ignoring that the countries on the point chart are the same countries listed in the suicide, assault, and burglary stats: Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Canada, and Norway.

Despite the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland having higher burglary rates, than the US, while Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand having higher assault rates, it’s obvious Crowder is doing the sleight-of-hand by trying to make his viewers forget that the crime rate is higher in these countries despite having lower gun deaths. He also wants his audience to ignore that suicides with guns is probably why the US has a higher number of suicides than other countries listed.

15:45 Vox: *Points out suicide rate in the US by states and gun homicide while pointing out Idaho have lots of guns but lower homicide rates. Then backs up the graph with a separate study that takes poverty, unemployment, and crime into consideration when showing that gun homicides positively correlated to gun prevalence.* Crowder: “Actually no, those outliers can be explained because there’s a strong correlation between gun deaths and big populated cities and gang violence.”

He didn’t point out any outliers, granted the point chart does not specify which state each point belongs to. New Orleans is what he was referring too, but that still doesn’t change the fact that the correlation is clearly there. Nor does it explain away why Mississippi is so high while Massachusetts is so low.

And him simply dismissing the study did a control on poverty, unemployment, and crime is not a valid argument. Every time he points out sleight of hand he is the one making it by dismissing Vox’s point while not using any substantial evidence to back up his dismissal.

15:52 Crowder: “… and IF this particular study doesn’t include big cities, but poverty, it renders it irrelevant…” Crowder admits he did not read this study and does not know if it includes cities or not. Even if it did not do a control for city size it does not matter because the study did a control for crime which he based as a urban city problem.

15:55 Crowder: “…because poverty is the biggest indicator for violent crime far more so than mere gun ownership.” He is trying to make his audience forget that Vox just stated that the study did a control for poverty.

16:09 Vox: “the correlation between gun ownership and gun suicide is strong. It makes sense.” *shows point graph of suicide rates for each state that shows a positive correlation between suicide and % of household gun ownership.* Crowder: “no it doesn’t, none of it does, look behind you there’s what made sense.” He rather make a contrarian statement than explain why it doesn’t make sense. So he’s using the sleight of hand to confuse viewers.

16:24: Vox: “depression with a gun is more dangerous than depression without one.” Crowder: “this again? This brings us back to the fact that the US does not have an abnormally high suicide rate….” Just because the US has a similar suicide rate to the listed countries does not change the fact that guns are used in most suicide attempts in the US more than other countries.

16:26” Crowder: “…so now she wants to blame the conjoining of guns and depression but earlier she admitted that middle-aged white men make up an abnormally high percentage of the suicide rate even though women are more likely to suffer from depression….” *briefly flashes a headline*

Crowder doesn’t want people to understand that men and women handle depression differently and use different methods to kill themselves and men are more effective at killing themselves because they use guns more often than women. Women are 73% less likely to use firearms compared to men. Methods are correlated with different situations. Overdosing is more common with long term depression while firearms are more common with reactions to acute mental health crises. (https://www.verywellmind.com/gender-differences-in-suicide-methods-1067508)

The fact that she is pointing out that guns and depression are a more lethal combination does not disprove that there is a correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates since, as previously noted, guns are a more lethal method.

16:35 Crowder: “so again the mind trickery, we’ve gone from blaming the gun to now blame depression and the gun which counteracts her previous statement on suicides to begin with”

Technically no, she originally said temporary crises was where suicide stemmed from and here she is reiterating that guns and mental health are still a lethal combination.

17:07 Crowder: ”So here’s the big takeaway this video has equally represented mass shootings, suicide, and gang violence as though they proportionally contribute to the gun related problem despite the fact 80% of gun homicides in the United States are drug related…” He will not stop pushing that lie. The percentage is 5.71%

17:21 “…despite the fact that the biggest indicators of gun crime are big populated areas and poverty…” Dragging up cities and poverty does not change the fact that America still has a gun problem, nor does he bother to provide stats on showing a correlation between poverty or population to the rate of gun homicides. He just states it, expecting his viewers to take his word for it, while ignoring that other countries that Vox compared America too also have poverty and dense populations.

17:25 Crowder: “Despite the fact that the United States is not even in the top 25 in firearm related deaths.” Comparing the US to other countries less like itself is not a way to counter the success of gun control in countries more like the US.

17:30: Crowder: “Despite the fact the US does not have an abnormally high suicide rate.” He is ignoring that guns prevalence and suicide correlate strongly among the states and since guns are used more in crises than depression, less guns would likely decrease the suicide rate.

17:36 Crowder: “Despite the fact that was increased legal gun ownership, gun crime has actually steadily declined.” He is ignoring that mass shootings are increasing and despite standards being different the increase is still apparent among all studies. Just because gun crime is decreasing does not mean crime will not go up in the future.

17:41 Crowder: “Despite the fact that Vox had a beautiful canvas to work with at the outset by using the relative umbrella term “mass shooting” which was completely undefined and even included acts of terrorism like San Bernardino.” He is assuming the authors of the first report he is referring to did not use the same criteria for the US and other countries. He is also assuming where San Bernardino was placed and ignoring that the graph did not include incidences in 2015.

17:54 “It’s one thing to get your information wrong, it’s another to deliberately mislead people because the facts don’t stack up with your narrative. When you look at the actual statistics and data that WE’VE presented here…”

What he presented were a few quick glimpses of articles, headlines, lists, and maps. Nothing substantial that refutes Vox’s stats. He intentionally lied about one article supporting 80% drug-related claim.

He is only saying this because he is applying Goebbels, a Nazi propaganda minister, advice by accusing the opposition of what he is guilty of, since he keeps telling people that 80% of all of the US’s gun-homicides are drug-related while only flashing an article stating that Chicago and Baltimore gun homicides are gang and drug related, relatively.

The fact he touted the 80% lie 4 times while accusing the Vox video of deliberately misleading multiple times shows he knows what he is doing.

He is a slimy pos sealed in a veneer of civility.

18:08: Crowder: “there are some solution where we could find common ground…”

If he is willing to tout a lie four times, he is not interested in common ground. Especially when he shows a headline of one proposal: Meet “Project Exile”: the proven, effective anti-gun crime proposal that LIBERALS HATE. He is not interested in liberals agreeing with him, he wants to “own” them. Project Exile has not received much attention from liberals so his title is to influence his viewers to think liberals do not believe in harsher penalties to stop gun crimes.

Maxim Walters, Bobby Scott, some black leaders, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, Angel Shamya of Keepandbeararms.com, former NRA director Russ Howard, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, and Libertarian Party president candidate Harry Browne oppose the projects but that isn’t simply just liberals.

By the looks of Project Exile, the stats show a significant decrease in homicides and robberies when controlling for other variables. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Exile) But that still doesn’t prevent criminals from getting guns illegally and that should be addressed even if Project Exile is implemented across the country because gun homicides still happens and theft of weapons will still occur.

18:30 Crowder: “Let’s assume for a second that you believe everything Vox presented here to be true that the US had a staggeringly high suicide rate…” The stats don’t lie, and it was never implied that the US had a higher suicide rate than others. It was pointing out the US has a higher number of suicides by guns compared to other countries.

18:35: Crowder: “… abnormally high homicide rate.” It is abnormal to other developed countries that are the most similar to the US by being developed. Pointing out other countries with higher homicide rates that are undeveloped is not a fair comparison because of socioeconomic issues.

18:37: Crowder: “That there was a correlation between legal gun owners and gun violence.” The stats don’t lie there is a correlation in the US and since there’s more guns people are more likely to loss them or sell them on the black market.

18:43: Crowder: “How do you fix that problem? That’s important, they’ve already shown you. It wouldn’t be some kind of an arbitrary assault weapons ban which really these weapons don’t comprise of most of this gun violence anyway. It wouldn’t be some kind of limitation on magazine capacities. It would have to be of course an all-out gun ban. Declaring that you legally do not have the right to self-preservation which is in fact what several Supreme Court justices argued before the High Court. That none of you have the right to own firearms period for any reason unless your jurisdiction deems it so, but don’t worry, you’re just crazy…”

He isn’t crazy, he is intentionally lying about liberals’ intents and ignoring polls. He’s probably being paid by the NRA to spout the 80% lie and “liberals want to take your guns” rhetoric.

youtube

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charly-ra · 7 years ago

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The Benefits and Challenges of B2B SaaS Marketing

Maybe it’s easy to believe, but B2B marketing is easier for different types of products. Some make creative or interesting marketing campaigns manageable, while other industries and products are almost impossible to advertise. This can be for a variety of factors: niche, the product itself, or how the products are used.

Luckily, for SaaS (software as a service) products, B2B digital marketing has a lot of benefits. Creative campaigns might be easier to create and the ability to produce revenue completely online (often without having to go through a salesperson first) definitely makes digital marketing more appealing.

Plus, it can be easier to scale growth because the checkout process can be done 24/7 without the requirement of employees to prepare contracts or walk customers through the sales process.

Here are some other areas where virtual products or SaaS marketing has perks:

Online Demos

When you have a virtual product, it’s much easier to do online demos or walk-throughs for clients because the product itself is online, so users can actually experience it in real time, instead of imagining what it’s like physically (like you would for a virtual tour of an office building, for example). It is easier for customers to see themselves and their employees using the product because they are viewing the actual platform.

For many B2B companies, demos are a good compromise between the traditional sales cycle that some still go through (of meeting the prospect and building a relationship before purchase) and the online aspect, where buyers can get the information they are looking for quickly.

A personalized demo can be scheduled online automatically with a calendar scheduling app that chooses the salesperson based on availability or turn. This makes setting up live demos easy and painless on both ends.

What’s more, you can even do on-demand demos so prospects can instantly view a demo without having to wait to schedule one.

If 1-on-1 demos won’t work with your business model, another option is a landing page walk-through with screenshots instead of a video format. This “product walk-through” is useful if there is too much to explain in a 1-on-1 demo or your product is too detailed. It gives users more time to review the information and visuals. Like an on-demand demo, it can also be done on a customer’s own time, so they can review it as many times as possible.

Before your organization starts promoting or scheduling demos of any format, make sure to do practice runs with colleagues to ensure all main points are being covered. Some organizations even record the first few sessions with real customers to get feedback and adjust accordingly.

Scheduling or using an on-demand online demo can be a great lead generation tool. Prospects that have gotten that far in the buying cycle are likely to be extremely interested in the product and want to see how it can work for them specifically.

Many SaaS products have CTAs for lead generation demos at the end of blog posts, in sidebars, and on product pages. Because many B2B organizations are buying SaaS product licenses for several employees at once, online demos are a more hands-on approach that can help marketers and the sales team demonstrate the product’s value.

Online Training

Another common content marketing tactic that works well with SaaS is offering online training to current and potential prospects. Offering continuing education has a few benefits: it really does offer value to others, and it gives your organization a chance to be a thought leader in the industry. It can also cut down on customer support inquiries if users are able to find out information on their own.

Online Training Formats

There are lots of training formats B2B companies can offer. They include:

Training Libraries: Articles, ebooks, white papers, and other content for people to become more educated about industry topics.

Interviews: These can be done through video or written formats, and are often appealing to prospects because it gives them access to experts that they may not have otherwise. No matter the industry, getting experts to share their insight is enticing to potential buyers because it offers them insights they can implement in their own processes.

Certifications: Many larger SaaS companies, like Salesforce and Hubspot, offer certifications for their own products. Users like getting certified in different areas because it increases their own expertise. In addition, it gives SaaS companies the opportunity to get users more invested in their products and to make sure they are taking advantage of all the features they are paying for.

Classes: Several organizations offer industry classes as well that give users a certificate of completion. These classes aren’t specific to the software, so users can take what they learn to other jobs or while using other software. Social media scheduling and listening tool Hootsuite uses a hybrid of these last two options: They offer Hootsuite certification and social media courses.

Webinars: These live presentations are usually about an hour and are a great way to engage current and potential users in real-time online. Some organizations make webinars available to paid users only as a perk for existing customers, whereas others want non-users to sign up, as they can be a valuable lead generation tool. Many companies offer webinars weekly because they consistently generate good sources of leads for their product.

Online training, in whatever format, is useful for driving additional upselling from existing users. According to Cobloom, SaaS companies make, on average, four times more ROI (return on investment) than what they would spend acquiring new users. That being said, it makes sense to continue to develop content and training for existing customers to keep their interest. This can lead to additional profit.

For instance, Hootsuite sells their industry courses for an additional cost, thus making more revenue per user. When companies offer a lot of value in their paid services, businesses don’t mind paying if it’s going to make a difference in their own bottom line.

Easier to Upsell With Marketing

Upselling is more involved in B2B marketing than simply offering higher ROI. Using specific arms of marketing, like community building and social media, upselling to existing customers is easier when customers feel loyalty and camaraderie with a brand.

When users depend on a SaaS product to help them with a significant part of their workload, they quickly buy into what it offers. This is because of the frequency of use and the fact that they want the product to work. It is a complete hassle to decide to switch to a new project management platform or a data research platform and then have it not work like you want.

This means they are more emotionally invested, something that can be embraced with online communities and through social media. WordPress is a good example of this. Their support forums are robust and active with regular non-employee users who help one another solve problems. The world’s most popular CMS has also spurned dozens of non-affiliated websites that share information and tutorials with other users, like WPBeginner, as well as theme and plugin marketplaces.

This love for the product can help marketers offer better customer service, engagement, and listening to users on a variety of platforms, from Facebook to Quora. When users are passionate about a product, they are not only much more likely to create user-generated content about the software platform, but may also recommend and mention it multiple places online. Marketers can monitor these mentions to respond to questions, offer gratitude to existing customers, or simply be active in the conversation.

More Nimble

Having such passionate online users also can make for better product development. Because users are online using a SaaS product, they can instantly provide feedback as to how it works. This can help B2B SaaS companies be more nimble and responsive to what users want.

When users give direct feedback (through support requests, social media, instant chat, or survey popups), there are several departments involved. Customer support can help solve any issues, and the digital marketers can use the information to write new blog posts, create more training to answer frequently asked questions, or serve as the first line of interaction when feedback comes in through social media or community forums.

Any customer feedback is extremely valuable to marketers, as it gives them an actual glimpse into their target audience’s expectations and needs. This can help create better-optimized campaigns that address more of what users are looking for.

Another way to gain insight into users’ needs is through anonymous usage data. Many SaaS platforms let users know they monitor the way they use the software anonymously, and this data is invaluable to developers and others to learn how users are actually using the product.

This data can be used to improve features, remove what’s not working, and clear up any confusion that is preventing users from not utilizing the entire platform. This is a unique aspect of SaaS that isn’t usually available to tangible products (unless they are connected to the internet).

Takeaways from this usage data are also helpful for marketers: they can see the features that users enjoy the most and elaborate on it in their landing pages, email campaigns, and other promotions. For instance, statistics from anonymous usage data can prove a compelling case: “75% of customers use our software daily” or “Only 5% of all customers subscribe to our service for less than 12 months.”

By pivoting quickly, SaaS companies can continue to stay competitive with others in the industry and learn when to fix something quickly. For physical products, it may take months or years to realize and change the same types of issues.

Challenges to SaaS Marketing

Of course, SaaS marketing isn’t the perfect industry to be a B2B marketer in. There are still issues with marketing a non-tangible product. Some of these include:

Users feeling like they aren’t getting their money’s worth: It can be difficult to “prove” that a SaaS product is worth its ongoing cost if it’s not something users can hold. This can be remedied by offering case studies and testimonials that show how the software helps an organization be better, instead of simply stating what they offer.

Faster cancellations: The benefits that SaaS companies get for being nimble when it comes to marketing and product development can also work in the opposite manner. Often, unless there’s a long-term contract, it can take an existing user less than a minute to go through their account and click the “cancel subscription” button. This can be difficult for newer software companies that need to build a long-term user base in order to grow effectively.

Advanced online platforms and servers: An e-commerce website for a commercial paint company is likely going to be less complicated than an entire online interface that must run online software seamlessly for thousands or millions of users at once. This need for reliable online connectivity can be a major cost and factor that affects every department within the organization.

More competition: This is highly dependent on the industry, but some fields are already so cluttered with existing SaaS products, it can be extremely difficult to be successful. While this doesn’t mean the same competition doesn’t exist in non-tangible products, SaaS organizations take a risk every time they enter a competitive niche.

Because physical products have their own challenges with manufacturing and development, it isn’t really equal to compare SaaS and tangible products. However, from a marketing standpoint, it may be more pertinent to do so since a marketer may be deciding to work in-house at one company versus another (or which clients to focus on).

Either way, B2B digital marketing brings about its own set of challenges and benefits for every client, which is part of what makes it interesting. However, SaaS marketing campaigns have a lot to work with: instant feedback, anonymous user data, and engaging customer acquisition opportunities, like webinars and certifications.

from http://bit.ly/2NMHnOn

#Digital Marketing

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