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halictus-writer · 4 years

Text

Welcome to Seattle (Ch. 2 of 5)

The next week went by smoothly. Remus had gotten into a familiar routine with his new job, and became more friendly with his colleagues who also wrote for the newspaper. He had always had a tough exoskeleton, but it didn’t take too long to become comfortable enough to let some of his walls down for a few select coworkers. In stark contrast to his friends from college, these coworkers did not press him for details about his dating-- or as James more bluntly put it, sex-- life. In any case, both were nonexistent.

*James changed the name of the chat to “Operation get Remus laid”*

James: Alright, here we go. Remus, are you ready to read some wisdom coming from yours truly?

*Remus removed James from the chat*

The truth was, Remus wasn’t opposed to getting back out there. The only drawback was that he didn’t know how to get back out there. His relationship with his ex had started organically, with little effort on Remus’s part. And being in a serious relationship for so long had saved him from having to learn how to flirt and casually date new people.

*Lily changed the name of the chat to “Help Remus get back out there, if he wants to”*

*Lily added James to the chat*

James: Alright Remus, you’ve had a chance to get all settled down in your new place, but now it is time to wake up and smell the coffee

Lily: What James means, Remus, is that we think you should maybe try to re-enter the dating scene. Only if you feel ready, of course.

Remus: is this an intervention?

Lily: no

James: yes

Dorcas: ooh are we voting? Marlene is driving so she can’t text but we both vote yes

James: Remus. My son. Fruit of my loins. You are a total catch. It is time for you to take your beautiful face out from behind those sad Jane Austen novels I know you’re rereading every night and get your freak on

Remus: I appreciate your investment in my sex life, I really do, but I think I’m doing fine.

Remus: also you’re not my dad. I’m older than you by five months

James: Oh really? Let’s play a game where you say True or False to each statement I make.

Remus: Fine. But only until my lunch break ends

James: Here’s the first one: My name is Remus Lupin

Remus: ...true

James: My favorite food is chocolate.

Remus: true

James: The most recent time I had sex was within the last 2 months

*Remus removed James from the chat*

Remus spent the rest of his lunch break walking through Pike Place Market. He loved the lively atmosphere of the place, and mentally mapped out the places he would like to spend more time in, in the future. No longer constrained by a vacation schedule, he can see as many shops and stores in Seattle as he would like.

He also sent pictures of the most interesting areas to the friend group via Snapchat. Having multiple avenues of communication proved to be very helpful for a group of people as prone to theatrics as they were. Any arguments or disagreements could stay in whatever platform they originated in, and if people were (temporarily) removed from that platform, they would still have access to another. This unspoken agreement allowed the group to plan James and Lily’s upcoming visit on Snapchat, while Remus kept up his faux-anger at James’s nosiness in the messages app. Remus knew he would tell them everything when he saw them in person, but being ambushed with the topic on a Tuesday while he was at work was not his preferred arena.

***

Saturday morning found the group reunited at a breakfast nook within the Market. Remus sat next to Lily in one booth, opposite Dorcas and Marlene, while James sat in a wooden chair on one end. Remus appreciated that his friends made sure their seating configuration didn’t highlight his own status as the fifth wheel.

After catching up on everyone’s lives, and many pointed glances directed at James from customers who evidently didn’t want to hear the piercing falsetto James used when reenacting conversations with Lily’s sister, the conversation found its way back to Remus’s dating life.

“Remus, you’re a catch and a half. It’s been a few months since your relationship ended, and it may be time to get back out there.” Lily started.

“It’s true,” Marlene added, nodding, “if I weren’t dating Dorcas I would be all over you and your wool cardigan. Almost makes me forget I’m a lesbian.” She laughed as she dodged a light flick from Dorcas.

“If you were a woman I’d totally sleep with you.” James said sincerely.

“Uh oh, misogynistic comment tax!” Dorcas swept in and took a piece of bacon from his plate before dividing it between Lily and herself. “For the vegetarian,” she made a half bow gesture from her seat as she presented Marlene with a liberated strawberry.

“Um, thank you for the votes of confidence, I think,” Remus began. “I appreciate it, I really do, well maybe not what James said, but I’ll admit defeat. I have been thinking about getting back into the dating scene.”

“A-ha!” James shouted, gesturing his final piece of bacon towards Remus. “The man is smelling the coffee. I can see it, he’s smelling it.”

“But,” Remus said softly, hoping that his reduced volume would subtly encourage James to be quieter as well, “I don’t really know how to meet people. I mean, we’re not in school anymore.”

“It isn’t easy, but you are in a much bigger city now,” Lily reasoned, “so theoretically your dating pool is much larger.”

“And there’s all kinds of designated queer spaces here!” James added. “You can go to gay bars and stuff, right?”

“I would pay to see Remus at a gay nightclub,” Marlene said, laughing.

“I would pay to see Remus awake past nine PM,” Dorcas said, “and not because you’re finishing a book.”

“Okay, okay, thanks everybody. I appreciate it.” Remus said flatly.

“Alright, let’s reel it in. Point is, you can meet people organically here, and we’ll support you.” Lily said. After she gave pointed looks around the table, the others nodded, although James was still smiling. “We can switch the topic now, but you better plan on keeping us updated on all your dating endeavors.”

James continued to smile mischievously, and added “And all of your casual sex endeavors. I need to know the exact starting date of your post-breakup hoe-phase. Get on the dating apps! You’d be a beast on there.”

“No.” Remus and Lily said in unison.

Lily continued, “I think you’ll have better luck meeting people organically. Dating apps can be creepy.”

When Dorcas finally changed the topic by prompting Marlene to tell the story of the cat she swore was taking the bus by itself last week, Remus sighed in relief.

***

A few days after James and Lily’s visit, Remus and Dorcas met for coffee before work. Once they had gotten their iced coffees, and in Remus’s case, a giant brownie (he hadn’t been to the Italian restaurant in a few days, so it was well-earned), Dorcas began a monologue that could hold its own against one of James’s.

"Alright. We love James and Lily. We love their beautiful, heterosexual, suburban lives. I am in awe of their enchanting, heterosexual love story, and how they met heterosexually and organically in their Communications class, and how it must have been meant to be when James was late to class and took the only available seat, next to our heterosexual princess.”

Remus laughed in silence, trying not to choke on a bite of brownie.

“Their heterosexual hearts are in the right place. Their heterosexual advice is kindly meant. And yet!” Dorcas announced, punctuating with one pointer finger, “you’re gay!”

Remus, having just finished swallowing the brownie and mistakenly taken a sip of coffee, struggled to not spit it out.

“Dating apps can be weird, of course, but it’s so much easier to meet other queer people there, and not worry as much about hoping the person you flirt with isn’t going to be offended by your existence.”

“Fair point,” Remus said, consciously not eating or drinking until Dorcas was finished.

“Until they open an LGBTQ+ bookstore coffee shop combo, which they totally should, and you would totally thrive in, you should get on Tinder."

Somehow Remus blushed at that, despite being a twenty-six year-old man who has dated before.

Dorcas called him on his blush, and laughed. “You are the most wholesome person I know, it’s too adorable. I won’t make you talk about it in public if it’s embarrassing, but just consider it.”

Remus agreed to do so, but secretly considered the pros and cons of staying single forever. Making a dating profile sounded anxiety-inducing.

***

When Remus walked through the doors of the Italian restaurant for the third time, he instantly felt a little better, as if his brain was already beginning to associate the place with the healing effects of the pizza he would soon be eating.

He had been feeling a little down this afternoon, with his thoughts often gravitating back towards his ex. He considered reaching out to one of his friends, since he knew they would be more than happy to talk him through it, but decided that a little alone time would do him good. Besides, he hadn’t eaten margherita pizza in over a week. It was time to indulge.

Looking up from his booth, he was momentarily surprised to find Sirius standing right in front of him, ready to take his order. Sirius hadn’t been working during Remus’s most recent visit, and Remus tried not to stare at the wavy pieces of hair framing his face, the rest tied back in place. Realizing that Sirius had spoken, Remus tried to regain composure.

“Hi, um, sorry, what was that?” So much for composure, Remus thought.

Sirius smiled warmly, holding eye contact. “You’re good. I just asked what I can get started for you today.” He added a little gesture to the pen and notepad he was holding.

“Oh, um, one small margherita pizza, please. And some water would be great, too.”

“Coming right up!” Sirius announced, and turned towards the kitchen. Remus pointedly looked away from the view, reminding himself that he was here to feel sad, not lustful. But, then again, maybe the latter would help him get over the former. Either way, his spirits were already lifting.

When Sirius returned carrying a beautifully steaming pizza, Remus was ready to devour it. He was also ready to speak words to Sirius like a normal person, having mentally rehearsed “Thank you, this looks great.” a hundred times.

“Thanks, you look great!” Remus expressed, looking at Sirius. His blush immediately materialized. “Wait, oh god. Sorry–”

Sirius laughed, “No worries! People tell me ‘you too’ when I tell them to enjoy their food, like, at least once a shift. You’re in good company.”

Remus smiled and felt a little more relaxed. “Thanks.”

Sirius shuffled for a second, looking like he had more to say, before saying “Well, enjoy your pizza!”

“You too!” Remus said, in mock sincerity. They both laughed.

***

When Sirius brought the check, he also dropped off a piece of tiramisu. “It’s for you!” He said, smiling and already walking away, as Remus tried to protest.

Remus ate about forty percent of the cake, mentally focusing intensely on the next plot point in his novel. Eventually, the soggy texture overpowered his desire to appear grateful for the free dessert, and he left the restaurant quietly when Sirius stepped back into the kitchen, away from sight.

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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14x03 watching notes

Just finished watching and said, out loud and to no one: “Awww Jack.”

(This is not a spoiler, he’s just so sweet.)

Hallo, I am watching from bed despite having 3rd hand inherited a 2nd monitor over the weekend so theoretically my watching experience would be back to giant comfortable side-typing glory.

But comfy.

Easily accessible stuffed toys because Bobo Fucking Berens in Dabb era has made me cry more at this dumb show in the last couple of years than I cried in the previous ten.

Expectations: it's our Dean episode to make up for no Dean until now, and also Jody is there to see Sam's beard, and also Cas continues to be party!Cas, and Jack's shirts get darker and darker.

Side note: I think I was rushing out the door before I could talk about our lil Nougat of Denmark properly last episode where he was all, so we're killing my uncle then, and Cas was all D: D: D: D: D: who raised you. (Dean. Dean did. In this regard the boy is his father's son.) This, of course, is another Shakespearean irony than is being returned to Dean via Jack.

The point of this focus is very much to show Jack vs Cas mindsets on it when we're getting Dean returned to us, and I assume considerably more nuance is being added to the story. But for now, Jack being ready to kill his father to kill his uncle because his father was ready to kill him to kill the ghosts he saw of his enemies in Jack is more than enough of a pile of tragedy level angst to be working with.

I just need it to be clear that as far as I'm concerned, Jack is working in a completely different genre from EVERYONE ELSE around him, and the fact that it's the protagonist of a tragedy is fairly alarming, as it's a mindset that Sam, Dean and Cas have hurdled over since season 5/6 and though Dean still assumes he'll die bloody, he is at least capable of dreaming of a happy ending, and a lessening of the angst load has allowed that. Their personal stakes in the story are dwindling, in a sense, while Jack has showed up with like FOUR FATHERS and an evil uncle, which is so much potential family angst Shakey would have exploded. "Wait you can just addeth extra fathers thence addeth extra angst!?!?"

Yes my dude, yes.

*hits play* *Sam ruggedly cocks his pistol* You're stealing this whole shtick from Dean and I think it is time for the angst that you were the one dramatically cocking a gun and being the yes reductive heteronormative blah blah penis of the dynamic while Dean was not there to do it.

Oh no we immediately start with more Jack angst recap and aside from everything I just said I remembered that Bobo personally murdered me in 13x03 with the Jack n Sam stuff and here we are a year later.

Mr Stark I don't feel so good

THE BEARD EXCHANGE IS LITERALLY THE OPENING SCENE. BOBO I LOVE YOU. Thank you for breaking the tension and immediately drawing attention to how Sam has been busy and miserable. I think 14x01 set up well that every time he even had a moment to sigh his phone would ring again, and hence the beard appears as Sam eskews personal grooming and comfort in exchange for finding his brother. Jody is gonna draw attention to it at some point too because we have the promo shot of her nice peach fuzz-ing him, and I sincerely hope this is bookends to the episode and the next episode Sam is clean shaven with no comment except Jody prodded him in the face, and let me tell you only Bobo has me fantasising about the narrative framing of an episode like this.

God i'm a nerd

Anyway more seriously, this exchange coming out of the blue has a clear motive: Dean is up and about, still so freshly de-Michaeled he's in a waistcoat (and LORDY the only other scene he was in a waistcoat? 7x12's ending scene where Sam turns into such a moron in Jody's presence he's waving blushily at the door still AFTER SHE HAS GONE). Complaining about not being able to eat and sleep might be a sense of hyperbole to catch given the lack of elapsed time, but it also warns us that this might be how Dean reacts to being un-Michaeled. Or would he not, given he's up and about and snarking like his old self? How damaged will he be and how much can he repress into snark? He is playing off the very idea that this experience will have been damaging to his psyche and of course Michael did a ton of stuff which was expressly tuned to BE damaging to his psyche, then punched a mirror and shattered Dean's reflection for extra emphasis.

So all this question of how Dean is doing is loaded into the very opening line before he's even taken off his waistcoat, or of course, had enough time to truly eat/sleep/develop massive tells of the psychological trauma he may or may not have taken.

Obviously the show wouldn't be the show if he were fine, so I'm taking it as a question posed.

Then of course it slides into Bro Banter to prove it's Dean, remind us JUST how much we missed this snarky genre savvy fucker, and to make Sammy smile.

Also we're mocking Jared for being friends with that one Duck Dynasty guy who Jared's fans insist is the least awful of the bunch and also who you end up hanging out with when you're most embedded in the Texan stardom scene rather than living in Hollywood or whatever.

(God imagine being famous and from Atlanta and sticking true to your roots and you end up with the Queer Eye guyses as your BFFs instead)

Listen Bobo showed his socialist party membership card on twitter, he has no fucks to give about waving his politics around and I love him.

"If you're going to ask if I'm okay, you don't have to" (I am making fun of your beard, what more do I have to give you, bro?)

Buddy, I have been watching your face for over a decade and you have the sad tired pink eyelids of a Dean who is both tired and miserable.

Oh NO Dean walks into the main room expecting his comfy quiet library and war room full of 3 trusted family faces, and finds the bustle of Boss Sam's operation. The upcoming noise of these people before he turns the corner is an immediate warning that we should have expected this as dramatic irony for Dean's comfort levels from the start, and now he's back, well.

Panicked eyes.

He needs quiet recovery with his peeps, not alarming sudden change. A rug pull immediately after possession is a terrible thing to deal with. I've been wondering if this is a full reverse of season 6 for Dean - from the trustability of the hunter compound to the fact he lives in it, to the Samuel running it. But the effect is the same. Dean comes back from quiet time off to a change he can't handle and Sam in a new position in a family/hunter heirarchy. In this case, not Samuel's soulless goon, but a fully bearded Boss Sam King Of Hell Sir who Runs Shit competently in a way we the viewer trust implictly as Sam having Done Well, and also that the AU peeps might be a bit rough or untrained in some ways but 100% reliable in that they really do have no ulterior motive and every reason to think of Sam as an AU Moses who popped up and walked them to another land of safety and comfort.

Like, Dean, welcome back, you have Hamlet, Moses and Mobby to deal with. Cas seems to be the same as you left him, though. If somehow, impossibly, squintier.

"Right, Chief told us"

GOD I MISSED JENSEN'S MICRO EXPRESSIONS

You know how Michael sucks? No micro expressions. Guy doesn't have an anxious bone in his body.

This little bundle of neuroses I have chosen to love is full on having a meltdown on the other hand.

"Dean? Is it really you?" "Hey kid"

HUG. THE. BOY.

I suppose this is better than last year when he had a hug from a shapeshifter and had to wait to episode 6 for a hug from his father, but REALLY this season has been tormenting me with how bad Jack feels and even a hug from his gramgram isn't enough to satisfy how he should have been hugged by Sam, Cas and now Dean already this season.

We're only on epiode 3 and he's already got more hugs than he had this point last year. Deep breaths, Lizzy

Children need a lot of cuddles to affect their development into sensitive people okay? Dean got a lot of hugs up to age 4 and Sam basically did not, and he's an awkward moose and Dean is snuggly. I want Nougat to have the same development into a sensitive lad because he has EIGHTEEN FUCKING PARENTS AND NONE OF THEM HUG HIM

CAS HEARD 'DEAN' FROM ACROSS THE BUNKER, ARRIVES IN A BLUR

GOOD NOUGAT, HUG DEAN.

But like, dude, Cas just showed up at a run and made the gooiest eyes at Dean who made them back, and now you're officially cockblocking, so naff off, kid

I watched with prayer hands and Cas just got gooier and Dean got sulky he didn't get a Cas hug and this is officially the worst. Bobo, you let me down, my guy.

I mean no, Cas's gooey eyes were

...

Cas doesn't do gooey eyes. He squints. Squintily.

Who is this guy

Lol Mobby aren't in the episode because they stayed back to clean up - Sam gets stammery to Jack. Is he scared to imply they're maybe banging because he finds it weird but everyone else present is an even worse audience to announce this to for one reason or another (historically coped much better with the concept of dad sex when discovering adam and also didn't drive the car off the road into a ditch on finding out mary banged ketch), or is he trying to protect Jack from the concept of Michael leaving a pile o dead bodies for one reason or another, knowing Michael is his rage button?

He was the one who dealt with Jack trying to stay back in the AU to fight Mikey instead of just coming home.

"Speaking of clean up, I need a shower" *gestures vaguely* *Cas opens his mouth like why did I have a reaction image here? Do you want -* *closes mouth* *dean leaves*

Guys. You fucking suck. Go take a shower together and work things out.

"Still okay, I promise" *bisexual finger guns at Cas*

cut to: Cas squinting after Dean like "is he implying something"

"..."

"I really feel like he was trying to communicate something to me"

"..."

"I have no idea what Dean just hinted loudly to me twice in short succession and now that he has gone to shower I guess I will never know what he was attempting to communicate to me"

"Where's Nick?" "Hopefully not in this episode. Let's just say he needs some time because he's in a dark place and hope that's ALL we have to say about him"

Oh no. "Sam. Dean. How is he really?"

Cas has a one track mind.

But then we get the shot of Dean opening his door and they're still talking about him over the top of it, but it's that same shadowed shot of himself silhouetted in the doorway, the inner darkness represented by his room... Sam went into his and stripped himself of the tools in his pocket but before he could sleep, Jo called and set them all off again with the next lead.

Now Dean opens his door and turns on the light so we can see his inner self in a moment of peace and privacy, but essentially with a voice over about how he's super not okay.

Just how we left it. You can't even tell that for the last 2 episodes/3 weeks Cas has been coming in and snuggling your pillow every time he's not in a scene because where the fuck was he inbetween scenes in 14x02

God I have missed lingering shots of Dean's room, equating his inner space to his inner feelings. *paws lovingly at the shot* Dean's room all tidy and orderly and as he left it, yet feeling somehow very very empty and off-kilter in an unfamiliar way because he hasn't been here for so long.

It was all serious then guitar music started playing as Dean started stripping

and look

I saw the promo pics

you saw the promo pics

some person in the audience is like... why are we lingering on Dean getting undressed alone in his room while guitar music kicks up?

Is this what all that winking and finger gun action was about?

(Dean didn't wink but I took a lil break to chat with Mittens and the moment has evolved into him gurning at the door for like a minute trying to remind Cas that this means he joins him in the shower in 5)

"Fuck this shirt in particular"

I still think it was the audacity of wearing a bow tie that dragged Dean to the surface last episode

I love how Dean changes from this plain white t-shirt which is completely clean and shiny, into his normal dark dark brown shirt between scenes. I hope he got to shower. Whatever happened, this scar could have said "Ha ha ha I'm behind you", and he would have finished stripping down right to the skivvies then started fresh with his own boxerbriefs before freaking out and rushing to show the others.

But yeah, he's PISSED and embarrassed about Michael. You don't throw a guy's shirt on the floor like that unless you feel SERIOUSLY used, and here we end up with a creepy sort of STD metaphor, complete with the visual similarity to the clap: https://www.giantmicrobes.com/uk/products/clap.html

Bad fling, Dean?

Poker!witch gave Sam the clap in the episode which was totally not a metaphor about Sam getting the clap then beating poker!witch at his own game like nearly 20 episodes before he was possessed by Lucifer then beat him at his own game.

"Do the whole vulcan mind meld thing" Listen, James T Kirk, you can't just MAKE yourself one of the most iconic slash pairings of all time by comparing - wait

wait a minute

*Checks slash history books and sees them as a dictionary definition or two*

Anyway.

Dean's so eager for Cas to jump into his head. Just, like. Again. We all said it but immediately after that shirt throw? It REALLY emphasises that Dean sees Cas in this transcendant way to being used by an angel that got in his head. And left an STD mark on his arm. He can just immediately think, well, that sucked. But here's MY angel and I'm just gonna rev myself up and present my head for inspection and this isn't even a thing I'm concerned about. Hit me, big guy.

Oh come the fuck on Bobo.

I didn't have time to hit pause to have a heart attack about Cas putting his hand over The Scar, the one on the wrong shoulder, to get a clearer reception, because there's a HISTORY in scars, okay? They leave a mark and to the discerning poker and prodder like Cas that history can be read in the mark... And Cas sees... Michael being stabbed by a spear. Not just, like. Seeing Michael being stabbed by a spear, mind you. He sees it in a Bobo episode in a way wildly reminiscent of Patience seeing Claire/Kaia getting stabbed by a VERY SIMILAR LOOKING SPEAR and getting her Wayward introduction that way, when the whole Dreamhunter thing ended up being a massive Destiel parallel and Kaia getting stabbed already mirrored CAS getting stabbed by a spear (Michael's, natch) in 12x12, never mind the other stuff.

So Bobo has just built up a Destiel Dreamhunter sandwich, with Destiel nonsense either side, complete with bonus shoulder scar imagery, and a nice gooey dreamhunter centre.

Bobo, if you hadn't noticed, is really really really really reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bitter he isn't off writing Wayward Sisters and hanging with his girls.

There's still a bunch of stuff to add up here, about why and who and how it all connects, which would involve dragging in these other spear-y episodes to assemble the full picture, so I'm just gonna hit play now I'm recovered from the shock :P

Oh dude it was a hooded figure who even LOOKED like bad Kaia and tbh at this point I'd say maybe even was?

Like, how many pronged spears are out there anyway and Jody's dealing with it so is it local? Did Michael pop up on Kaia like hey so you and I are both from alternate universes, what do you wa - OW FUCK JESUS FUKKIN CHRIST -

"Dean, who was that?"

Dean recognised her, and Cas was mind-melded enough with him to know that Dean did... Good grief I can not handle Dean and Cas existing on an emotional plane.

It's enough to mean they're the ones who call Jody with a tip off for HER rather than months of them asking her to help THEM.

Introducing us back to the Wayward world - South Dakota mug, and a text that Claire is a little angel who has been training her gals and even did the laundry.

I'm so happy

Eyebrow raise

God, Kim Rhodes is the most beautiful woman on the whole show and that's saying something considering, like. Ruthie. Lisa Berry. Something about the way she uses her face is so full of intelligence and humour that I am HELPLESS in her presence

God damn I want that fabled Girls' Night episode. Billie comes along too on a night off.

Rowena calls her up for chats sometimes these days, they're actually really good pals.

Sam you fucking moron you can't even finish a sentence in her presence. Just slap Dean on his WOUNDED arm and throw the ball to him.

Everyone leaning over the phone... This is the closest Cas has ever come to Jody.

"Jody, that's the good news."

Jody recognises that gravelly voice and snaps to holyshitanangel attention. "What's up?"

The implicit thing here is that Cas and Jody know each others' voices and are on at least chatting acquaintance. I would like to think they're invited over for beer at the same time but we have no proof..................... yet. This is Bobo on a "fuck you" rampage so I'm just, like, gonna wait see.

Bad Kaia has been going around ripping heads off things. DAMN, GIRL.

Considering the placement of the pronging was ~random~, in the sense that she can meat fork you anywhere, that means the placement of it on the meat of Dean's arm where the handprint once was on the other is even MORE significant in a metaphorical sense, of writing about "the scar" in the way of giving it a mystical property tied into the wider framework of all these relationships and events at once. The amount piled onto a simple stabbing is unbelievable, and the use of the scar as the vector for all this is definitely the byline of the episode given the title and all. It's brought Kaia back to us, given Jody the clue she needs.

And more dramatic irony that Claire was just asking to help, and Jody was like DEFINITELY HUMAN, SO ALL MINE. HAHAHA. And now we know, no, it's not all "human", it's bad!Kaia and that makes her CLAIRE'S.

I keep stopping to seal clap

it's 7:20am

Cas is packing up to leave with them!!!

And Jack looms blurrily into the background in his darkest t-shirt yet. And he's been RAPIDLY cycling through them.

In a sense this is good laundry practice, in order that you have a full load of lights followed by a full load of darks.

Metaphorically, however, this is BAD.

Jack sounds pissed they're all wearing jackets and packing bags, and he's wandering around in an over-sized dark grey t-shirt (one of Dean's? AUBobby's? It doesn't look like his standard fare which fits his body, this makes him look SMOL), with no idea we were off to kill the wizard.

Let's be charitable and say he wants to meet Jody and hang out with Kaia again.

But more likely Bobo is once again messing with Jack's inherent darkness in his presentation, especially as right now, once again while Jack is being The Sweetest Little Cookie, meeting his grandparents for ice tea and looking through the family photo album with misty eyes, he is ALSO Prince Nougat of Denmark and this is causing some serious darkness slippage because, well, revenge. Revenge is bad, kiddo. Don't need a ghost of your dead father (hey Dean's back) to tell you that.

The accusatory tone is enough to warn us that Jack's not doing so well and I'm going to assume drags Cas away from a mission with Dean followed by cooldown eating pizza and watching flicks with the girls.

"Kaia's killer is in Sioux Falls" Buddy. "He, she or it can hurt Michael" BUDDY.

I suppose they're bringing Cas because Bad Kaia kicked their asses and they assume Cas is the same height as her pet/metaphor for Kaia's inner fucked-up-ness so he can probably fight it??

"Michael's my enemy too! I fought him. For MONTHS." JACK sweetie. You can't just go around like, having an enemy list. And comparing it with your collective fathers' list.

The line about bringing Kaia into it and being responsible for what happened to her is good, though. Jack's got a social consciousness and that is lovely because he keeps doubting his goodness but when it comes down to it he wants to meet his grandparents and feels bad that Kaia got dragged into things and killed.

Of course, not realising this is Bad Kaia, they're all off to get MORE revenge on that thing that killed her.

Aw, Dean, no, don't point out how smol he is. He's wearing a huge baggy shirt to emphasise it already.

"I didn't - I didn't MEAN to be a dick" Whoops. Well, you were. You also missed the part where Jack went from smol precious child to angsty teen.

Fun fact: Hamlet was supposed to be like 18 or whatever, but because a famous actor wanted the lead role but was like, idk, 50, Shakey bumped up Hamlet's age a lil so he could get away with it, making him more of, like, a giant manbaby who is still functionally a teen in all ways except he keeps getting portrayed by middle aged men.

So, of course, we have our one and a half year old Nougat who is a 29 year old actor now getting into his terrible teens, and if that isn't the funnest nugget of trivia...

... then you are not as much of a nerd as I am about irony, coincidence, and neat overlaps of thingies.

Point is: get me a version of Hamlet where the other expected actors are adults of course, but Horatio and Hammy and his squad are dumb teens.

Lol Bobo just randomly introduces a cool lady hunter who is dragging a random victim of a hex down into the bunker to be healed by an angel. That poor girl is going to have a story to tell.

A lot just happened in a few seconds but at least Jack, who has stormed off for his nth teenage sulk of the season, now has a Cas trapped in the Bunker with him.

Dean n Sam gonna get their asses kicked by Bad Kaia

honestly is this just a ploy not to keep Cas where Jack is, but to keep Misha away from stunt fighting?

Anyway Dean communicates most of the above to Cas silently, and tells him that he should stay with Jack and also heal this girl and they have the most married eye conversation about what needs to be done, which is wonderful that they've been having these silent conversations all Dabb era but this is definitely the wordiest so far. I mean one of their more recent was just "Dean I can hear that cowboy music in your head" "what cowboy music?"

DEAN DOESN'T EVEN LOOK THRILLED TO BE DRIVING BABY AGAIN.

Sam mostly looks concerned he's hitting 80mph

I don't know anything about American speed limits but this is an alarming speed to me because in the UK 70 is usually like, the Most, and we don't have enough long straight roads that when there's no speed limit it's ever really recommended to go super fast because you will flip your car and die because all our roads are one and a half car length wide and extremely wiggly. And our motorways are congested enough you're more likely to be in a traffic jam than top speed anyway :P

I love that Dean measures people by their favourite Spice Girl. Hey Dean the 90s called, they want their pop culture relevance back.

You gay icon you.

(I'm reminded of 12x07 and Bobo and a similar conversation where Dean listed off all his manly manly historical faves)

Dean thinks Cas can handle it back home :')

"Something huge happened and you won't really talk about it!"

Okay Sam, he's traumatised and that's surface text.

You do realise the entire massive subtext is his repression and yet another metaphor for some huge queer experience and that this is the same conversation as 10x04 when he was grumbling into his chin about being embarrassed about what he did with Crowley? You realise that right?

Stop poking him about it, he'll talk when he's ready to open up. In the mean time he's feeling used and ashamed that this fling didn't go as planned after the whole first flirtation with waving his wings around and killing Lucifer where it all seemed fun to embrace his ~true self~ and have a crack at being a Flaming Michael Sword.

Also of course, we might just take him on his word that he really does NOT remember most of everything that happened because if he was truly repressing that much he wouldn't have been so gung ho for Cas to read his mind earlier but this mood pre-dates that so even if he remembered everything when Cas poked his brain, which seems unlikely as Cas saw it too, the wider sulk about his Clap Scar is more than just this.

It's a common experience, though, that Dean is repressed and moody, and Sam barrels in there trying to make him talk about it before he's ready, so the pressing is in character, regardless, that Sam doesn't trust that Dean is telling the whole truth and that there's some huge secret he's holding back.

The best part of queer subtext is that whether there is one or not it works - if there isn't, it's a metaphor for the obvious. If there is, same as above but the metaphor is concretely attached to whatever Dean is not telling Sam, and that in turn then becomes a part of the queer subtext, offered up on a platter to tell us more about how Dean is handling his post-possession shame of being, essentially, roofied after thinking he'd agreed to a consensual fling with a dude on his terms of entry and no strings attached, no walk of shame like he did when he was undressing earlier.

Poor guy can not catch a break. Shoulda hooked up with Aaron when you had the chance so your first time having a dude in you wasn't such a big deal, but just a nice booty call to keep in your phonebook. Now it's all Crowley this, Michael that...

"We need to deal with it." "Okay, I'm literally going EIGHTY to deal with it"

Dean, that's.

that's not therapy

"How can I be running from something when I'm RACING towards it" "I don't know, it's kinda your thing"

Sammy boy you have been trapped in the same car as Dean for way too long. Your analysis is getting deep. Deep deep cuts. Leave him alone.

I mean this is a guy who dealt with a gay panic by hooking up with Crowley and singing karaoke for him so.

"I just *need* you to talk to me. Slow down."

Oh SAM you said a good and interesting combo of words there. Dean, go 70 instead of 80, give us some time to feel this out because I've been FREAKED and, for you, you got a time skip but I lived it all real time and it SUCKED, and I'm hurt too by this. Reminder: our family does not do well with LOSING each other, and this is every conversation we've ever had post-thinking that happened, and I did things responsibly and grew a beard and became Boss of a bunch of peeps and also King of Hell but we'll talk about that later... Like, slow down. I have my issues too. There's 2 of us in this car and you can't go 80 and time skip to the end of this conversation either. Not when I have 3 weeks of angst packed into it.

Also: classic Sam projection. Trying to get Dean to open up because HE has pain he wants to air, instead of just bringing up how he felt, he tries to get Dean to open up, and when this continues, as always, not to be how Dean deals with things, Sam gets upset because it never gives him the opening to talk about his shit until it's an argument...

You could have just started the convo, sorry about the beard, I really mean it when I say I haven't had a moment to myself for 3 weeks, it's been HELL and funny I should mention Hell, er, did you know you can kinda just declare yourself king these days... heh

At least he's using racing metaphors about wanting to catch up and also, like, catch up

Dean responds to the sport metaphors

Dean is like nah call Jody we're almost there. I skipped ahead.

Look, I'm delivering you to your boo, what more do you want?

Jody smiles at the sight of them in a way which is almost as revolting as Cas smiling at seeing Dean again

Hugs!

Send Jody to the Bunker to HUG OUR BOY

"How'd you do it?" "What, me vs some assbag archangel? Who would you pick?" "You, every time."

And this, guys, is how Jody is never, ever patched into their angst, because they present a narrative where Dean just kinda chucked off Mikey and sent him packing and it's all cool and he's a hero.

Jody has at multiple points threatened to beat Dean into submission in order to hear a true version of how he's doing and he has so far not given in and sat at her kitchen table with a box of tissues to sob through his crap, but I hold out eternal hope like the fool I am.

Anyway it's also telling RIGHT AFTER that last conversation where Sam was probing Dean so intensely, that this is the version of "I'm fine" that Dean is going with, and even though Sam KNOWS there's more to it, this is the wall Dean is projecting, even to him. Even when he knows Dean is freaked by it and doesn't know all the details.

Jody goes up like 18 pitches "Heeey I liiIIIiiike it!" she squeaks, forcefully tweaking Sam's beard because "nice peach fuzz" is too understated both for Jody and the volume of facial hair Sam has produced without comment until Dean came back and Jody showed up.

Dean has never been so offended in his life

*Jody continues giggling to herself while Sam desperately looks for a normal conversation*

AHAHA "I haven't been home since I talked to her........... I may be avoiding her"

Yeaaaah, bringing up that it's not just a normal human beheading and weird stab mark, but ALSO a KAIA-RELATED ONE maaay be... too much.

i'm going to be honest I've been so thrilled about everything I forgot to check what cast is flashing up on the screen

Anyway there is very much a subtext to Jody's avoidance of telling Claire what's going on that she knows how much she loved Kaia and how much of an issue this is - even if it's gonna be for revenge, because they don't know it's Bad Kaia - this is something where Claire's feelings make a MESS.

Bobo gets in Sam's serial killer thing, Dean is staring into the void like am I still even here or am I in hell. Is this a hell that Michael conjured. Mikey. Hey. Mikey. I figured it out. We're done here. Let's go back to regular torture. Michael. This is the bad place. Michael.

Dean stomps off into the woods because waiting for daybreak means being stuck in the same room as Jody and Sam flirting for a few hours.

Jody firmly pokes Sam in the chest with a map.

Sam.

A raven caws in the background, and Jack is wearing layers, the darkest shirt yet, a thick corduroy jacket in the style of early Sam, and is packing a bag.

He wrote a note and his handwriting is as disgustingly adorable as I thought it might be.

Alex wrote "Jack" with a cutesy backwards K in an autograph for someone who requested it at a con and I thought that was a cute detail but not how Jack would write and the real story - and I assume like with others they made him write it in character - is much more nuanced. His letters are competently shaped like he knows exactly how they should be, but shakily written, like he's not used to holding a pen, because, well, he isn't. He's not developed the muscle memory for it, just as he hasn't for fighting and all the other stuff, because in may ways he IS still a smol toddler with no life skills. His capital letters are huge and precise, like he knows he has to write them big, but disproportionate - putting so much emphasis on the titles of the people around him, the capital letters a metaphor for their influence on him. There's something clearly unconfident about writing and yet for all that obviously written by someone intelligent enough not to make basic errors of backwards letters and other things. He knows exactly how he is SUPPOSED to do it, but the execution is shakey, and disproportionate and generally looks unschooled and painfully revealing of his entire state of being.

Is this the scene where Bobo said out loud to an empty room, awww Jack.

I've been dreading that since the hiatus.

Maybe I should dig up that post and use it as the title for this one.

Triss is gonna die, Jack stopped by the stairs up out the Bunker in the war room, heard and saw Cas moving around, then in a fit of conscience or missing him already or something, stopped by to open the door and look in.

They have DEFINITELY expanded the Bunker set, in the sense that they've attached extra rooms to it or Wanek has sat down and made some parts more standardised, because they've shown off the corridor connections in every episode so far, and in this one we're seeing a never-seen-before connection which actually explains what is behind that window and how it fits. I mean, I'm pretty sure we've seen this particular room a few times, window and all, but never actual connections which show connected sets, so much as scenes starting or stopping there with no transition.

"She's been enchanted" "Like sleeping beauty" Jack says with awe "Awwwwwwwwwww" Lizzy says with awww

I honestly can't tell which moment Bobo said "Aw Jack" out loud about because we're getting such a series of them

Anyway, Hamlet, the great procrastinator, is distracted away from his mission to kill his uncle.

Not sure about the overlap of hearing things from the other side of a wall but I mean at least he's not going around stabbing people so

Jack also seeing all the important work they do for other people, even randos, and Cas getting involved in huntery business, distracted from emotionally nurturing him because of sleeping beauty there, and phoning rowena, doing the work to unknot a spell...

If we get Cas doing spellwork I'm gonna die, it's been Too Long.

Cas [squinting]: "Are you going somewhere?" Sleeping Beauty: "ooooww" Jack: "No."

Hon, that was so suspicious you are lucky this is Cas and not one of your other dads.

But. Aww Jack to an empty room.

"If I get a vote I'm team stick together" Jody remembers 9x19

Also Sam remembers bad!Kaia kicking their butts. They're on her natural territory

she is the Predator.

Sam keeps LOOKING at Jodio.

Look, I just

Cas keeps looking at Dean, Dean keeps looking at Cas

Jam won't stop looking at each other

That head is a Warning.

Come no further, mortals

I think Bad Kaia lives here

Vampires.

they really need to figure out how to biologically identify them except for teeth because they really come up against a lot of dead ones

"I brought tissue samples home, Alex ran them underneath the microscope"

Look, girls supporting girls, I knew what they needed to do before they did it lol

Dean: I was stabbed here

YAY I went frame by frame before the reveal and that is Kaia's face in there, the hood less spooky than before and more open to reveal her

Dean: bout to be stabbed here again

Dean finally has the moves to take on Bad Kaia after a season or two with the new stunt guy

but then her hood falls back and he's STUNNED

Now everyone is stunned

I think they've been using the Wayward Sisters Bad Place soundtrack for this but I'd have to check

the music is so very different and I'm not good at music ear thing

Cas: *eye twitches violently* Me: Cas why are you having trouble with this line Cas: "... marked.................... 'gross stuff'"

Cas, internally: Why did I marry into this family

Future MoLHunter 100 years later: "Man, this place is sweet, but the filing system is balls to the walls." Other Future MoLHunter: "Babe, you did not read the Winchester Gospels before your initiation?" F MoLHunter: "There is a drawer here marked 'hands of god' and the only thing in there is a pair of chopsticks and a ladel" OF MoL Hunter: Okay I will give you that. -

Me out loud to an empty room: aww Jack

He's so concerned about Sleeping Beauty, and he can't do anything about it but he's curious.

Maybe he CAN fix her and this is how he gets a lil power back.

I hope so because awww Jack being so concerned about her.

This is a Good Procrastination From Revenge

Hamlet, take fucking notes

"Is that your dad?" "One of them, yes." Aw Jack

Aw Bobo

Jack's flipping around on family - he's accused them of talking about nick/Lucifer as his father, he's disowned everyone but grampa and grammy Kline, and now he's fondly thinking of his three hero dads

He's really struggling to work out his place and what sort of family set up he belongs to and to be fair, he has so many fucking options and all of them are somewhat disastrous or tragic, so he's 100% in his right to be fuckin confused.

On the other hand Sleepy Beauty has no context so she's gonna assume Cas is gay married with a kid Jack's age and that's like, not untrue.

"My mom... but she probably hates me" "Why?" Jack says, horrified at the entire concept that a mom could hate a child, because, well, Kelly's love was COSMIC for him "because I left," she anvils

"I was sick of being treated like a kid, and i thought I could make it on my own" Oh boy. She's just expositioning how Jack feels and immediately telling him if he leaves he'll fall in with a witch, who curses her with an AGING spell which will make her old before her time.

I feel like there is probably... a metaphor........... in here...............

Also a reverse of Dean's aged down curse, because the girl and her other victims were hansel and greteled.

I had a sudden whim a couple of nights ago to see aged down Dean and current Jack hang out. Bring back Dylan Everett to go play basketball with Jack out on the front step.

"Gave us all nice things," she says, clutching at a HUGE EVIL EMERALD PENDANT AROUND HER NECK

Jack.................................

Is that cursed

"She said having us there kept her young" She put her own age into that locket

dang I should get a bonus point for bringing up poker!witch before he was relevant

I'm always curious about the show's implications about witches maintaining their youth by sucking it from others, because almost every witch we've met who had a focus on age was doing it for that reason, whether it was eating children or playing poker.

And we have a 300 year old witch chilling around who we don't know anything about when it comes to immortality, except that she has it and she bestowed it on Oskar so it's clearly a spell she can do rather than an inherent trait of reaching a certain level of magic practitionery.

"Then it started taking me too. Even faster than the others!" yeah because she killed the witch so she probably has to suck poor sleeping beauty dry in order to regenerate and skulk away and start over somewhere

PS: Sleeping Beauty is really doing an amazing performance here. I 100% am in Jack's shoes of being horrified and wanting to protect her

"Cas is going to fix this. I promise" Sweetie! Have you ever called him Cas rather than Castiel before? It seems weird. He even wrote castiel on the letter

Sam deducts Michael's entire plan off the clue that Alex couldn't detect the vamps in her sciencing, and based on having been attacked by super werewolves.

But why is Michael cleaning up these people?

Unless he's taking threats off the board who would be too cool and powerful and may challenge him...

"Doesn't change the plan" "but Dean - "

Dean walks off

Dean has no time for Sam suggesting maybe this is something awful because of Michael that Dean might know about or else be weirdly intimately connected to because of his weird Michael-based condition.

We have no clue what's going on and Sam doesn't like that and Dean's powering through and Jody is hovering in the background like WOW I can see why you leave me out of all your dumb main plot angst normally. Never done me one of these MAIN PLOT ones before. Can we go back to normal MotW where you're low key angsting in the subtext about whatever currently ails you?

Jody slaps Sam on the lower back

lower, babe. Lower.

Cas does magic, boom purple smoke!

Aw no she's still withered.

Jack, take her necklace off and smash it

because you did the good work of a hunter and talked to her and through being kind discovered what was wrong with her

Jody has a phone provider that gets her signal in the wilderness

"Claire's been doing so good, but anything connected to Kaia... she's a powder keg"

"FIRST LOVE STRIKES QUICK, AND TO LOSE IT LIKE THAT"

okay no Jody didn't shout it, but Bobo did.

ILY Bobo

I'm like 0% surprised but I am guessing other people who had been less trusting are throwing a complete party to have it textually confirmed like that. I felt like Bobo's intent especially when he went on the record in that stream AND he had been saying already that he shipped it right after Wayward Sisters, that he never ever meant to be coy about Dreamhunter, and confirming that Claire was madly in love with Kaia was a top priority on his fuck you list since he didn't get to write the show he wanted in order to work on this naturally.

Sam nods like fair enough, happened to me with Jess, but uh wow okay no i did not - yeah okay yeah

"He's not ready for this case" "maybe he needs it"

Jam jam jam jam

I mean

Yeah mature adults discussing issues together and working out how they feel about Dean rage-hunting Bad Kaia

hey look it's that one cabin that has been in like every episode of the show in the same way that one little stoney valley was in every episode of BBC Merlin

Has she lost her spear??

Dean, that was RUDE, you're so horrible to all these versions of Kaia

That zoom up on his face is one of the top 10 Dean Is Not Okay zooms of the show

So not like "bad cas" or "new bobby" are Dean's definitions for AU peeps - no word on what Charlie is to him, maybe because AU Charlie is a real issue for him to define as he couldn't help treating her like his Charlie.

But Bad Kaia insists that she is to Kaia what she is to me - they're joined in a different way. A way that back in Wayward Sisters was implied to be a dreamwalking connection of a very different sort, something anchoring our Kaia to the bad place and their connection was... weird.

"That was an accident. I was trying to kill the blonde" She's remorseful about killing Kaia but upsets them even more by reminding them that she was out for Claire instead.

How about we kill no one, bad Kaia

Oh no, Michael keeps sending monsters after her... Now she sounds like the original Kaia just because she's got "always more" things out for her. I suppose Michael learned of her through Dean, found her, and either wants to stop her or capture her because she has universe-crossing dreamwalking abilities, and woooow that will be useful to him.

NOOO SLEEPING BEAUTY DIED. THIS IS REALLY BAD. JACK COULDN'T SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE HEEEEEEEEEER

waaaaaaaaaah

Stop fuelling Nougat having an interesting dark arc about his entire self and purpose and let him just hang around the bunker and watch TV and eat nougat and be hugged. Can we not just have a son who is okay and nothing is wrong with him?

Oh no even the random hunter (did I really catch her name as Brunhilda or did I imagine that?) is crying at Jack crying over Sleeping Beauty dying. Cas is contractually obliged not to cry or do complicated stunts but he looks miserable too.

Oh, jack figured out the pendant?

But can they actually save Sleeping Beauty?

Sam as usual getting in before I can - "Break her!??!?"

don't you dare hurt Kaia any more, she's already told you what she knows, Michael hurt her, you punched her out with the same face and then threatened her a bunch. She might be a snarky monster-hunting feral woodland weirdo but she's still Kaia-like and you have a history of being completely horrible to Kaia-like girls when you're in a bad place.

And it turns out Dean just wants the spear that pronged him, to figure out what it did and how to hurt Michael with it. To go on his own revenge mission that he denied Jack because, guys, we are now in competition for who gets to have the angsty anti-Michael revenge mission. Jack and Dean literally competing to be most angsty about it.

Jack is being considerably more productive even if Dean solved the Kaia mystery.

But yeah. Revenge sucks you guys.

Dean you need to eat a snickers and take a rest.

smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirk because fuck you Dean for always hurting me and the other Kaia who is probably also me.

Jack is being much smarter.

The smartest cookie.

Who needs powers when you are a good cookie.

"She wasn't cursed. This was."

GOOD COOKIE.

I vote Jack gets to kill Michael. Dean has lost his Michael killing rights.

"You're no different from him. Threats, violence, anything to get what you want." "I am nothing like him."

Hon.

"Yeah you are. And you always have been."

I don't know if Kaia knows or if she's pulling a gambit, but acting like a mystic know it all and reading Dean stone cold in a villain way sure did take some of his rage away into that good old Dean self-loathing and fear, which was one heck of a good chess move regardless of if she can magically read him or not.

No I don't think Dean is these things but Michael is a means of exploring Dean's "blunt little weapon" sort of mindset that he has suffered from because of John's upbringing all this time, and Michael emotionally mauling Dean to the point of being a non-functioning worst version of himself who threatens Kaia (AGAIN) really is an on the nose way to display the sort of trauma that Michael tore into his psyche.

Crap I need to go to yoga, but this is too good to rush so even though I don't have much left, I will be back for proper notes in a bit!

Him smash magic glowy thing with hammer

just like i told myboy to do!

Cas's hair is ridiculously spiky.

"What happened?"

YOU MADE NOUGAT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED

Aww jack to an empty room

Sam I have been gone for hours. How have you not tackled Dean to the floor and apologised to Bad Kaia

"I saw what you did to her, when you got angry. You shoved your gun in her face." To be fair, at the time Dean had also been emotionally mauled by the feels bear because Jack gave him a vision of Mary being tortured in Hell-equivalent and he was also fucked up beyond belief.

Kaias really are seeing the worst side of him all the time.

Bobo likes breaking Dean

That was enough to make Dean let go

Also to ask a really good question about how she knows!

I'm way more curious about Kaia than Dean yelling at her :P

Then she points out that he's angry and impatient because he's scared, like, duh, but sometimes he needs to be reminded that he can have "weak" emotions like that because he wants to be all tough and on the case and instead he's freaked out because Michael has messed him up completely. Like. Stay home. Help the boy with lore or something. Take a pyjama day.

Wheee full flashback!

The early evening light gives it a Bad Place colour tinge, which is awesome.

I can't believe Mikey shows up in his hat but not his jacket.

He says he's BORROWING Dean here. Hm.

Also, what I suspected, that he sensed her around and was just curious. Probably having a "what the fuck that's KAIA!?" from Dean inside him and being like Kaia huh? Time to chat.

Mikey do you literally not have your own version of that fuck off huge spear they stabbed Cas with a couple seasons ago, or do you just collect cool spears?

There's something more than usually terrifying about his face in this conversation.

And he now says there's a war coming and thinks something weird like Bad Kaia might appreciate being on his side.

Oh boy.

"Wild one" that's so cool

Michael really has some great lines for being a massive pillock

Omg he fight good too

AAH this is Kaia's memory and she's psychically implanting it in Dean's head

"Stop!" he says, clearly not enjoying watching himself beat up Bad Kaia and, like, realising exactly how awful it looks to do this when he has to watch himself from the outside and for all we know feel her pain too.

Of course Dean being desperate to get the spear to fight Michael could come across with a blur of ambiguity of Michael being desperate still to have it, whether to stop Kaia using it or because he just really wanted it and doesn't like being told no.

The concept that Michael just disappeared from Dean still lingers.

So many fights with a whole bunch of people this season. Maybe just because there's so many friggin characters

"Now you're in trouble" *Bad Kaia literally leaps through a window to avoid dealing with this* I love her

NICE STAB

thanks for saving Jody

Well that was quick

Also you're badass and terrifying and I think Claire might fall in love with you too >.>

"I'm used to it" Oh babe.

She literally raised herself in a terrifying doomy forest so

I mean at least this world has dry crackers and beans. SCORE

Jody has got a LOT of thinking to do about how to phrase any of this to Claire.

"So there's a feral Kaia living in the woods outside of town"

Awww Sam offering her a lift to the hospital

Bobo wants us to remember 9x06 and Dean having to tend Cas's broken hand maybe

Sam. Hug her right now. RIGHT NOW.

Nope Jody just looks really tormented

She's in a reverse Jack position - one mom to 3 hunters instead of one kid to 3 hunters :P

Hey look it is Jack and one of his fathers.

"Jules is off!" Hey look Sleeping Beauty was called Jules. Nerdylittleshit doesn't read these notes however so she will never know that I decided this character was named after her :P

Cas apologises for not being there for Jack, because it took this long to realise he's the father who's always at work while others have taken the stereotypically maternal role to Jack, Cas just gets to be the cool strong father who is usually dead, captured or just busy saving people and too busy for Jack as a result.

"It's okay," Jack says, sounding considerably more emotionally balanced about it than he had in 14x01 when everyone was neglecting him

"Today you PROVED that you have the mind of a hunter. And the heart of a hunter" Raised by the best, bitches!

Awwww Cas wants to be a hunter with Jack! They can get a terrible car and hit the road and do an easy case and bond as they go and eat crappy food at diners and

Jack develops Nephilim Flu in response to having a nice moment with a father because he's so unused to being treated with full attention.

Cas: *squints*

"Must be getting my first cold!"

I have a cold too Jack! Awww!!

Cas is going to make him some soup. This is too sweet. I don't even have words for any of this it's just gross. My teeth hurt.

Jack I swear to god if you stopped your revenge quest and it hurt you so bad inside you're about to cough up a lung I am going to LA to kick the writers' asses in person so if you dare be even the slightest bit consumptive

Oh thank god the scene changed before he coughed blood into his hand

Awww and then Dean admits Sam was right, while still being the one driving on the way back.

I wonder if they filmed these side by side. "Dean slow down" "Sam you were right"

"What Michael used me for" Ouch, hearing him say it like that... Sad sad thoughts.

He just wanted to skip ahead and have it all done because revenge makes you feel SO much better.

"Dean... you did what you had to do" Okay it's even worse hearing someone else justify it rather than hearing that phrase come out of someone's mouth. At least when they say it about themselves they're just in a bad place. I don't even know if this is a pavlovian response I'm having but really flipping it around to have Sam say it is a validation - Sam certainly thinks things are better off with a dead Lucifer and would have a favourable bias, because it got the job done and whatever Mikey is up to at least it's not Lucifer doing it. Because even if Lucifer were doing the exact same things it would just be intangibly but clearly worse.

"It wasn't a blink, being possessed."

Dean says to Sam, who has been possessed by an angel twice and when it was Gadreel, for almost as long as Dean was Michaeled

Dean's so freaked out because fighting the drowning sense of being possessed was so horrifying and made him feel so weak and useless and he didn't even win that fight, Michael just bailed and let him have it back. With the "I own you" hovering over him.

It certainly reeks of being haunted by a bad relationship. The sense the nasty abusive ex hovering around outside the place you work every night...

"And it's all on me, man" No it isn't, he got through because Lucifer told him how.

Well I mean if you wanna go cosmic consequences, yeah it is because Billie done told you not to go universe hopping and that's several billion dominoes you messed around with doing exactly that

But despite how I spent all of season 13 SHRIEKING at you not to do it while knowing full well you did, and how this is technically your cosmic hubris for doing that, I also don't actually blame you on a personal level, Dean. Just, like, so you know once I get back to the shrieking. Because ow you are very sad and in pain and if Nougat wasn't coming down with Nephilim Flu in the other scenes I'd basically rank you No 1 for wrapping in blankets and feeding soup.

You're still in the top 10. Jodi had a pretty bad day too :P

Oh COME ON JACK

*starts packing my bags for the ass kicking*

Aww Jack to an empty room

Um EXCUSE ME HOW MANY CONSUMPTIVE TISSUES HAVE YOU GONE THROUGH?

GO FIND YOUR FATHER RIGHT NOW

HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS FOR THREE WEEKS?

Well no wonder you've been in a panic to get Michael killed.

SHEESH.

Dean's back and he's gonna kick your ass because he remembers when Sam did this in the Trials and he is very very anti consumptive family members.

#Asks #rape mention cw #for thematic parallels to the whole Michael-ing thing #because consent drama and angels as per usual #14x03 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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ganymedesclock · 6 years

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I think one of my biggest issues with a certain amount of fanon around Lotor is that even if you count Lotor as an antagonist- which you can make a good argument for- he’s clearly measured with a different standard than other antagonists.

For example people really like to use the term “murderer” when they’re trying to shut down any insinuation that Lotor could be a good person. In my experience this often involves ascribing kills to Lotor that he didn’t actually do or that are very shaky.

For example? Zethrid’s comment that they tried to send ships into the rift, and the vessels exploded, which was “fun for me, not fun for your pilots.” I’ve seen this interpreted as “Lotor sent people into the rift to their deaths.”

We have to consider with very rare exceptions, the smaller fighter ships that both the empire and Lotor uses? Are piloted by robots. And what we see of Lotor’s subordinates in s4e3 shows us mostly drones- maybe a handful of actual flesh-and-blood galra. And it’s fair to assume it’s not those galra who are being sent out in fighter ships by Lotor- otherwise in s3e2 the paladins committed a massacre and they are our Y7 show heroes so that’s not a thing.

And even if I was a fan of your conclusion, you have to recognize that “these ships that we have a single line of reference to definitely contained real people when it’s very likely in this setting they didn’t, and Lotor definitely sent a large number of those people to their death when he’s not known to attempt the same thing futilely over and over and he doesn’t appear to have that many followers to sacrifice.”

You could make a much better argument for the two fleets that Acxa called in at the end of s3e3 to cover Lotor’s escape, which we know were manned by living people, but even then, given Voltron was the killing weapon, I’d hesitate to make that your triumphant stand of “this proves that Acxa’s a rotten person and by connection, Lotor”.

Yes, Lotor has killed. Raht, Narti, and Zarkon. (it’s also possible that he killed his first opponent in the gladiatorial ring in s3e1) All three individuals, to his understanding, posed an immediate threat to his own life.

The most ambiguous and nasty case in this one is definitely Narti- there are other ways Lotor could have handled that situation. Narti was not a willing spy- Haggar set her up and Lotor cut her down. S5e6 analyzes this thinking, however, and frames it as:

Lotor tends to self-sabotage...

...Via his incredible difficulty trusting others and tendency to assume that anything opposing him at the moment must hate him and want him to die...

...Which is almost definitely rooted in the trauma he disclosed to Allura that would mean he doesn’t have healthy emotional connections to draw from the idea that people don’t all inevitably hate him.

As an audience, a certain amount of us do have a reflex of “C’mon dude, Narti is your friend. She wouldn’t do that to you. Can’t you see that she needs help, not your sword in her chest?” because we’re detached, we have more information than he does, and we have an emotional investment in seeing Narti get that help.

And the white lion is used narratively to show us that it’s not an isolated incident and it had nothing to do with Narti personally- it’s Lotor’s problem. When the point of the lion trial is you have to realize the attacking beast won’t hurt you and isn’t your enemy, Lotor literally can’t win because everything he has ever known has taught him that he doesn’t have friends. At best, he has people who he’s useful to, and as soon as he’s not useful, they will turn on him.

And I feel like this is about the point people’s eyes glaze over because “come on Clockie I don’t care about Lotor’s sad backstory I care about the fact that he killed someone” but my point is these things are relevant.

Because otherwise it sure looks weird and inconsistent how after Narti and Zarkon both, Lotor goes really quiet, nearly unresponsive, and in the case of Narti, spends a long time genuinely not planning for his future at all that we can tell.

For me, the entirety of s4e5 and s4e6 is a huge red flag that Lotor didn’t want to do that. He did it, yes, because see the three points that are clarified for us in s5e6- but there’s a lot of difference between Lotor killing Narti and the way that Zarkon has Prorok disposed of in s2e1.

Lotor versus Narti, the team is in danger, he has seconds to make up his mind because if he’s wrong they’ll never shake their pursuers and any safe haven they seek out is going to be compromised, they’re on a ship under attack and everybody is panicking.

Zarkon versus Prorok, nothing is going on, it’s an ordinary Tuesday at the office, there is no pressure besides the vague, if he doesn’t catch a spy it might happen again, and there’s also no misunderstanding- Prorok immediately and clearly protests, and by the time Haggar’s carrying out his execution in s2e3, they know that Prorok isn’t even the guilty party. And Haggar makes it clear she just really doesn’t care.

And I mean there’s also the fact that we can list three people that Lotor killed (or had killed, in Raht’s case, the torn edge on his severed prosthetic suggest to me that Zethrid was at least involved) by name.

It’s flat-out disingenuous to insist Lotor’s three-man kill count is directly comparable to, oh, say, the two different inhabited planets Zarkon has been attributed with razing and conducting genocide on the inhabitants of (Altea in s1e1, the unnamed colony in s5e6) and his policies of torture, imprisonment in awful conditions, extended slavery, and carelessly disposing of his subordinates for, again, crimes they didn’t commit, would tell us that there are a huge number of other deaths on Zarkon’s head.

When, surprise surprise, all of those systems are things that Lotor would either have no need of the way he operates, or is shown to actively dislike. Taking new planets? He’d rather talk to them and even if he’s taking what he wants at swordpoint, he genuinely didn’t want to hurt the Puigians any more than bare minimum necessary and his soldiers went in under orders to kill no one. They didn’t even cause any property damage.

The system imperialism which relies on the galra owning everybody else? Lotor wants to dismantle it by giving power back to the occupied people (s3e1 and s3e2).

(I have. seen too many people call Lotor an unapologetic imperialist when the one time he confesses he was interested in keeping a colony, he was put in charge of it by Zarkon and did everything he could to familiarize himself with the local culture and create good diplomatic rapport and not hurt their planet for his own exploitation.

And Zarkon said “no” and burnt it down and didn’t put Lotor in power again, in which case it doesn’t matter how sincere Lotor is, the reason why Lotor hasn’t made progress dismantling the empire in the last ten thousand years was because Zarkon was using his much greater influence and power to make sure Lotor had nothing to show for his work)

Even the racism at the heart of the empire’s destructive policies, a point is made time and time again that Lotor very strongly lives and perceives himself as a mixed-race galra first. Most of his public appearances to the empire’s elite (s3e1 and s5e4) come with people hurling slurs, racist rhetoric, and death threats at him.

Even Lotor’s interest in the rift has a very different context than Zarkon and Honerva’s fascination with it if you consider the latter were experimenting with it in the heart of a populated planet that withered and died because of their work, they not only left it wide open but worked to make it bigger, and ignored the dangerous creatures living in there as well as the averse effect that it was having on, again, the heartland of the galra empire.

Lotor’s interest in the rift is as a way to decisively break the imperial system once and for all by basically flooding the market with so much quintessence nobody will ever need to forcibly take it from other planets and Zarkon’s system will be financially worthless. Which might sound callous unless you consider Lotor is going to need a callous argument since you can’t take someone like Throk and sit them down through the annotated power point of “Today, I will explain to you why you should care if other people are suffering.”

And the first thing Lotor does with the rift is basically put such a dense mechanical lock on it that he can’t actually figure out how to get in there himself. He’s building countermeasures for things that he quite possibly doesn’t even know about (the rift creature) with this.

But not only does Zarkon have a massive kill count, if you look at Zarkon killing Alfor, Trigel, Gyrgan and Blaytz, and compare that to Lotor killing Narti...

Lotor struck Narti down quickly under duress, and when it became clear the other generals were also betraying him, Lotor specifically chose not to kill them as well even though that left him in a very bad place tactically- it ended up meaning that now Haggar has one of the two Sincline ships, the one that had tested and proven itself as able to hold off Voltron in single combat, and the generals know about the rift gate, and they’re all devastatingly powerful fighters.

Sure, Acxa and Ezor might have been able to fight him off, but Lotor could have at least shot Zethrid off the hull of the first Sincline ship and they wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop him. But Lotor even basically tells them to take care of themselves before he leaves and has shown no interest hunting them down afterwards.

Because “hunting them down” is exactly what Zarkon did to his old team. Even when the only threat Alfor posed to him was that if he insisted on continuing to selfishly chase the rift that he didn’t need (Honerva was alive again, so even his initial reason wasn’t there)- and Zarkon’s basic first act of reanimation was to declare war on Altea.

Which is contrasted by this shot, which would sure seem to suggest that the reason why his people were still alive and there to hear him was because Altea took them in as refugees after the destruction of Daibazaal.

Zarkon planned, carefully, and made up his mind and went and hunted down all four paladins and killed them. If there’s barely a handful of living Alteans left after the destruction of its home planet, even though they were advanced spacefaring people, it’d suggest that Zarkon deliberately hunted down the survivors, and both his attitudes towards Allura in s1e1 and the way he talks about being able to wipe Lotor out in s5e2 would sure line up with that.

So like... can we not suggest that the three people Lotor killed when two of the three of them he’s shown to be unhappy about are somehow analogous to Zarkon’s multiple counts of systematic genocide?

Even if you think Lotor’s an antagonist, he’s not as bad as Zarkon and he’s definitely not worse than Zarkon. And when most of our main antagonists in the setting are much closer to Zarkon’s level (Haggar’s also a planet-killer via the Komar and her plan at Naxzela would have wiped out a large number of inhabited planets, Sendak makes a comment about invading Earth specifically because of the paladins’ resistance against him) Lotor stands out as a guy who’s moral enough that the paladins, including Shiro- a man of very potent personal morals- find him palatable company.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Zarkon #readmore

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theliberaltony · 7 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Mary Ellen O’Toole calls the teenagers who murdered 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 by their first names — Dylan and Eric. O’Toole did not personally know Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but she’s thought about them for decades. At the time of the Colorado shootings, O’Toole was a profiler for the FBI and had been tapped to write the bureau’s report on how to prevent mass shootings in schools. What began as a research project has become a life’s work — and a deep source of frustration.

O’Toole is part of a small group of academics, law-enforcement professionals and psychologists who published some of the first research on mass shootings in schools. She and other members of this group began paying attention to the phenomenon in the late 1990s. Two decades later, some of them say not much has changed. The risk factors they identified back then still apply. The recommendations they made are still valid. And, as we saw last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students are still dying. “On the news, people are saying we should be concerned about this and that,” O’Toole said, “and I thought, ‘We identified that 20 years ago. Did you not read this stuff 20 years ago?’ … It’s fatiguing. I just feel a sense of fatigue.”

It’s difficult to say definitively how many school shootings have happened in the years since Columbine — or in the years before it. It’s harder still to prove how many would-be shootings were averted, or how many others could have been if additional steps had been taken. But the people who have spent the last two decades trying to understand this phenomenon are still here, and still trying to sell politicians and the public on possible solutions that are complicated, expensive and tough to sum up in a sound bite.

Any research into school shootings is made more difficult by how uncommon such shootings are. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight wrote about the more than 33,000 people killed by guns in America every year. Of those deaths, roughly one-third — about 12,000 — are homicides, but hardly any are due to mass shootings.1 If you define mass shootings as as an event where a lone attacker indiscriminately kills four or more people, in a public place, unrelated gang activity or robbery, then mass shootings account for a tiny portion of all gun homicides — probably a fraction of a percent.

There have been many attempts to formally quantify school shootings, but, as with mass shootings, all use different definitions. Our chart is taken from a 2016 paper that defined a school shooting as a premeditated incident of gun violence that took place in an educational setting, killed or wounded at least three victims (not counting the perpetrator), was unrelated to gang activity and was not an act of domestic violence.2 This data suggests that school shootings, though still extremely rare, are more common today than they were 40 years ago.

But no matter how you define a school shooting, they’re still a subset of a subset — just as mass shootings account for a fraction of all gun homicides, school shootings account for a fraction of all mass shooting deaths. In 1995, when O’Toole began to study school shootings, they seemed like even more of an outlier than they are today. “I couldn’t even call it a phenomenon,” she said. “Prior to Columbine, there was no indication that it was going to become one of those crimes that just becomes part of the culture. It looked like it could have faded away.”

These uncommon but high-profile tragedies had also drawn the attention of Marisa Randazzo. In 1999, she was the chief psychologist for the Secret Service and became a part of a joint effort between the Secret Service and Department of Education to better understand school shooters and how to prevent attacks before they happened. Randazzo had previously worked on the Exceptional Case Study Project — a Secret Service project designed to better understand people who threaten the president and other public figures. Like school shootings, assassinations are extremely rare events that have a huge impact on society. That rarity makes them hard to study — and makes it hard to tell blowhards from real threats. But their impact makes them important to understand.

Randazzo found that the project’s findings echoed what she was learning about school shootings. For instance, the Secret Service had once focused its energy on threats made by people with a history of violent crime or who had a mental illness that caused them to act irrationally. But the Exceptional Case Study Project analysis showed that most people who actually carry out attacks didn’t meet either of those criteria. Instead, a better way to figure out who was a really a threat was to talk to friends, family and coworkers — most attackers had discussed their plans with other people.

Randazzo and O’Toole’s parallel reports came to remarkably similar conclusions.

First, these studies determined that there wasn’t much point in trying to profile school shooters. Yes, most were (and remain) male and white, but those categories were so broad that they’re essentially useless in identifying potential threats ahead of time, Randazzo said. What’s more, she said, more detailed profiles risked stigmatizing perfectly reasonable behaviors — like wearing wearing black and listening to loud music.

Instead, the reports focused on the behavior and mental state of the young people who chose to kill. While these teens were deeply troubled, that’s not quite the same thing as saying that those who commit school shootings are just irredeemably mentally ill. Nor does it mean those young people suddenly snapped, giving no warning. “School shooters typically do this out of a profound adolescent crisis,” said James Garbarino, a professor of psychology at Loyola University who specializes in teen violence and began studying school shooters in the late 1990s.

Randazzo described a pattern of young people who were deeply depressed, unable to cope with their lives, who saw no other way out of a bad situation. The stressors they faced wouldn’t necessarily be problems that an adult would see as especially traumatic, but these young people were unable to handle their emotions, sadness and anger, and they started acting in ways that were, essentially, suicidal.

Some of the best data on the mental state of school shooters has come from interviews with those shooters (and would-be shooters) who survived the attack. Randazzo described one such living school shooter,3 currently serving multiple life sentences, who told her that before the attack he spent weeks vacillating between suicide and homicide. Only after he tried and failed to kill himself did he settle on killing others in hopes that someone would kill him. Garbarino, who has interviewed dozens of people who went to prison for life as teenagers, both for school shootings and other violent crimes, heard many similar stories.

“The reason I emphasize this is that we know so much about how to help someone who is suicidal, and those same resources can be used very effectively with someone who is planning to engage in school violence,” Randazzo said. So how do we spot the ones who are planning an attack at a school? The studies she and O’Toole published years ago showed that, like people planning to attack the president, would-be school shooters don’t keep their plans to themselves. They tell friends or even teachers that they want to kill. They talk about their anger and their suicidality. And as more teens have attacked their schoolmates, that pattern has proved to hold true over time. It was true for Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter. It was true for the at least four potential school shootings that were averted in the weeks after Parkland — all stopped because the would-be killers spoke or wrote about their plans and someone told law enforcement.

While all the experts I spoke with said that policies that keep guns out of the hands of teenagers are an important part of preventing mass shootings, they all also said it was crucial to set up systems that spot teens who are are struggling and may become dangerous.

But those systems seem to break down over time. Randazzo told me that her team had trained numerous school districts in school shooting prevention back in the early 2000s and, as of this year, many of those districts no longer had prevention systems in place. Thanks to staff turnover and budget reprioritization, that institutional knowledge simply withered away. And ironically, that happens precisely because school shootings are so rare. “It takes time and effort for a school to create a team and get training,” Randazzo said. “And, fortunately, threatening behavior doesn’t happen often enough” to spur schools to action.

Read more: Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Maggie Koerth-Baker

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nicholade · 7 years

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Our 2am flight was as expected, restless and exhausting. We arrived in Cape Town at 11am, our journey began! During the immigration line we were already bombarded with signage regarding the drought.. more on this later.

Our lovely airbnb host Megan picked us up from the airport accompanied by her little Jack Russel terrier Rocky. I was in love! The drive to Megan's place was full of Rocky cuddles and us appreciating the beauty Cape Town has to offer. Already the mountainous landscape peers overhead, surrounding the city.

Once we arrive Megan gives us a rundown on the drought. Severe water restrictions are in place. Timed showers, hand sanitizer as water in some places, no pools, limited flushing of toilets, bottled drinking water etc. The water is predicted to completely run out in April! They are in the process of building desalination plants but as Megan says they are running on South African time of making them 'now now', which means when they get around to it.

We then went on a walk to get some supplies from the shops. Walking around here is very eye opening, all houses have huge security gates with spikes on the top and iron bars on their windows to prevent break ins. The high security proved interesting when we went out to dinner that night at a local Mexican restaurant. A lot of places look like they're shut because of the huge locked security doors. We spent a long time figuring out how to get in! Just so you know you have to buzz in and then they let you in. Dinner was delicious! Our waiter was friendly, but things got awkward when paying the bill. It seems that tipping is expected here which we weren't aware of. So our waiter looked a little sad when we paid, sorry!

We woke up the next day at a normal time, well rested and eager to explore. After some googling Nick decided we would hike up Table Mountain via the Pipe Track to the Tranquility Cracks. It sounded pretty and would only took 4 hours to complete. Awesome! We took an uber up to the track, winding up through the Camps Bay area. These houses were huge, with amazing ocean views.. I wonder how much it costs to buy a house here hmm. We started our trek uphill taking in the beautiful scenery and nature. At the start there were many wind blown trees and as we progressed we saw the effects of a fire that had torn through the area last year. Along the way we came across two South African men with a dog, named Freddy, who were lost. So Nick decided to show them the way! The view the whole time was breathtaking, with Lions Head mountain in the distance, Table mountain and the ocean. The South Africans commented on how amazing this track Nick took them on was, they have never been this way and they hike up this mountain a lot!

The hike itself was tough. All uphill, scrambling up rocks. It was very hot too, much more then expected and we didn't pack any hats or sunscreen, oops! We ended up losing the men as I needed a break, thanks Nick for being so patient. As we reached the top of the mountain we headed through the Tranquillity Cracks which were full of little caves, thick bushland and a snake! We were heading through a crevice when Nick spotted what we now know is a Berg Adder. It was smallish but it was directly in our path and was hissing at us. So after many photographs from Nick it slithered out of view and I ran through terrified for my life. We walked out onto the rock ledge which was really testing my phobia of heights. Nick sat right on the edge while I took photos with shaking hands. I passed on sitting on the edge myself, a photo from a distance is good enough for me. We had a quick lunch break, which was just snacks, we weren't expecting to be up here so long. Now for the descent. We were looking for a trail down called woody ravine. After a lot uphill hiking we saw one named three firs. It was closer and we were tired so three firs looked good to us. I'm not exaggerating when I say this was the scariest thing I've done in my life. The hike down was incredibly difficult as it was a near sheer rock face full of unstable rocks. One slip and you would fall off the mountain! I spent most of the time crouched down on my hands and feet trying to find steady rocks to hold onto. No time for photos on the way down I was trying to survive. There were some parts where we had to climb down which resulted in me jumping onto Nick as my body was shaking too much to climb. This took hours and once we reached the solid track I couldn't have been happier. I'm sure Nick would tell a different story of the descent. The hike took around 5-6 hours to complete. Much longer than expected. We were sweating and dehydrated and got an uber straight to the beach.

The beach was very crowded with no bathrooms in sight to get changed in. I admitted defeat and just put my feet in while Nick jumped in. The water is icy cold! I could only handle seconds on my feet as the sharp stabbing pains start. Nick jumped in and out very quickly too. We found a nice beachfront restaurant for a later lunch and stayed there for a bit resting. Then we walked around the beach to the sea pools. Here I found a place to get changed as I still wanted a swim even if it hurt! The sun was starting to set on the beach giving the town and mountains a beautiful orange/pink glow. We dipped in the water for a painful rinse and sat and watched the sunset. It was a beautiful end to an action packed day!

Thanks for reading! Next post will be from Nicholas himself, talking about my birthday.

Jade xx

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televinita · 7 years

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kateschechterxthorwasmyfirstotp replied to post: If you did not watch the last episode, they kind of righted that wrong...

Eh...I read what they tried, but I deemed it Not Good Enough. That was a pretty fundamental betrayal of my deepest shipping principles and too many years apart for me to ever feel okay about them again.

#I have been trying to coherently explain it for like 20 minute and I keep getting bogged down in anger and sadness at the memories so tl;dr: no

EDIT: actually you know what, I am gonna explain it, via copy-pasting the long ass 4-part blog post I made about it the night it aired (I didn’t watch because I was behind on the season, but I hung out in the Tumblr tag and read live reactions), which incidentally was the night after we put my dog to sleep so those two Sadness Memories are wrapped around each other. I always meant to post at least part of it to Tumblr and I regret not doing that.

February 2013

Wednesday: Unedited Ranty Version LOL NOPE BYE. Literally just...not accepting this. Never watching the episode, done with future episodes, the show can just stop here. Unlike with Glee, I am above this. I don't feel it hard enough to be canon, and god, I am so much better for it. Sucks for all the fans who can't just handwave it and decide not to believe. I'm not even going to bother repeating all my Kurt/Blaine rage from last fall, because Sara and Grissom met late enough in life that they aren't in quite the same category of fairytale romance, even if they are soulmates, but -- my anger about relationships losing their magic if you break up in the middle and see other people after finally getting together? So very applicable. (Honestly, show, what happened to them having a marriage that worked for them and no one else needed to understand? Why couldn't you just leave that alone? Why did you have to pick? There was no reason to pick. No picking! /nasally Seinfeld voice.) I'm kind of sorry they already lost their spot in the Top Five All-Time OTPs Kingdom to Kurt and Blaine, because I would have really enjoyed kicking them the fuck out tonight. If I believed this were happening. Which I realized, 5 seconds after writing the above, that I am not. Goodbye, and good luck. Thursday morning (a.k.a. just kidding I’m still mad as hell and back to yell) I like how they keep talking about "implications into next year" and how the story will continue. No, it won't. You've separated them before, a fact I had forgotten about because I refused to watch 9x05 and it was clearly just a pause button on the way to spinny-camera grand reunion kissing as opposed to a real breakup, but there's no way to fix this now. There is no more to the story; you don't get to tell a story after this. Glee already proved to me that there is no way to make a worthwhile arc out of a vile bomb drop. Although I am kind of sorry that this relationship could actually have withstood cheating and it would have been easier to swallow than divorce. Maybe because it still feels like cheating. You're meant to be with someone, you can't have extracurricular people! I have some unfinished business with those first 7 episodes of season 13, and I'm not sure what to do with that -- they were great and I hate to leave them unwritten about, but if I go back there is a slim chance it will get devious like Grey's Anatomy and suck me back in underhandedly, and I'd rather spite myself than give it that opening. So I'm not totally sure if this is the end. But it sure has that really certain Bones Episode #100 level sense of THIS IS UNFORGIVABLE. GAME OVER. Thursday night Reading other people's opinions is always a dumb way to go, because instead of saying my piece and being done, now I'm riled up and feel like I need to FORCE people to understand something they just don't seem to be getting, whether they're being practical and pragmatic or writhing about it in "but they were my first real ship!" angst. (as if they are only a ship, instead of so much more) The thing is, this isn't just a dumb writing choice you can complain about. This isn't even about whether it's in character or not. It is literally. Not. An option. Some couples just aren't allowed to break up. A UST couple that takes more than 5 years to get together is one of them. And once they get married, that's absolutely it. A victory for permanent commitment and contentment. There's no divorce in good storytelling, there are no separations. That lazy nonsense is reserved for books, movies, and silly soap opera types like Grey's Anatomy. Couples like Grissom and Sara, they are foundations. Institutions. When you want to change the look of your house or test out something new, you work with the existing structure. You don't knock it down and build it back up from the floorboards. To be fair, I was always upset by the "long distance marriage" - there was no reason for it; there was never a reason Grissom couldn't be off screen right here in Vegas, teaching at a local university or simply pursuing his own research supplemented with travel when necessary. The longer it went on, the less happy I felt. But since they told us it worked, I put up with it for the joy of having Jorja Fox back on my screen. I see now that was a mistake, and the only way to keep them safe was to push them away. The point is: TPTB broke television law. I can't judge this like other shows as a good or bad direction for the characters, or wonder how it will affect Sara in the upcoming episodes, because they are untouchable. It's honestly laughable that anyone thought it was okay to even try this. Can you imagine if the second X-Files movie followed through on its misdirection and went "lol yeah Mulder and Scully haven't seen each other in 5 years"? I

[2017 edit: FYI I have not stopped being angry about the bitter irony of this comment since the revival spoilers hit.]

If you need more universal examples, that's like tuning in to find out the Brady Bunch has split back up into two separate households, or Disney is going to experiment with a new movie where Minnie elopes with Goofy.

You don't get to pretend you're setting up for a season or two-season arc. This isn't an arc. This is a slash and burn project. Let's pretend, for a minute, that this is planned as an emotionally complex journey that will force them to examine what they mean to each other and get them back together, Costa Rica style, in next year's season finale. Do you think that would be worth it? Do you think the struggle to get there will make the ultimate conclusion heartwarming, fill you with elation as you see them beat all the odds? It will not. It will be long tainted by then, a sour coda to an unfixable mess, because what you had wasn't important enough to preserve. You can't ever get back to what you were, and it's already too late. That is the best case scenario. There are no character motivations to explore. There is nothing to dig into. A death warrant was signed and went up as effectively as a brick wall in stopping the development of this relationship in its tracks. Televinita out. #breakingupwithCSI #I reject your canon and substitute my own Thursday: Post-Essay Messiness Oops. Reading my old reviews because I can't remember GSR's chronology off the top of my head, and...there is no way I'm letting anyone use this as justification for being in character, but this conversation does seem sort of relevant all over again. "Sooner or later a relationship in stasis withers. You get angry. You need more than the safety of knowing that you're not alone." "Then he should've just walked away." "Well, maybe he couldn't. Maybe he needed her to leave him." Apparently I also got kind of angry in the early part of season 9 when Sara left again, and may have threatened to break up with this show at that time? *chagrined look* But 2008 Me seems to have still accepted this as a possible, if highly undesirable, turn for the couple. What changed? And am I crazy, or is it possible to decide neither of the times Sara left were actual breakups as opposed to pause buttons? Oh, that's right. What changed is they got married. I repeat, when it comes to long-running couples on TV, wedding bands are as much a promise to the audience as they are to the people involved. You put a ring on it after proper courtship, that's a universally accepted sign for "you win: permanent freedom from being jerked around for Drama/Conflict/ratings."

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930club · 8 years

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ALBUM REVIEW: J. Cole - 4 Your Eyez Only

Ten featureless tracks of hard-hitting, brilliant, and bluesy hip-hop. If you haven’t yet listened to J. Cole’s new album, 4 Your Eyez Only, it’s one of my New Year’s resolutions to change that ASAP. Never heard of J. Cole? Take it from credible sources like Drake, Jay Z, Kevin Durant, and even President Obama that this 31-year-old rapper’s music is what you should be filling your ears with in 2017. This album is especially resonant in the modern environment of police brutality, but the album doesn’t ring as aggressively as those from Cole’s colleagues in the rap game. Each song chronicles a story, manifesting countless emotions and painting a deep, pensive lament, as opposed to the shallow picture of rage that is easier to understand. “The voice of the voiceless,” as Ibrahim Haram (@KingOfQueenz) calls Cole, his album generates a parallel story from a perspective that isn’t his, as many fans theorized. Confirmed by co-producer Elite, who says, “the album is largely from a perspective that is not J. Cole[‘s],” 4 Your Eyez Only humanizes the problems existing for countless, platform-less African Americans today via an allegory lived by Cole’s friend, James MacMillan Jr. (name changed for privacy). Elite also touches on just how important keeping the theme, message, and commentary clear was in choosing the tracks to include on the album. The result is a craftily-curated album that tells the story of someone who is gone to their daughter. Cole, a social media hermit, has yet to confirm whether his friend is the subject matter, but regardless, the vibrancy of the feelings expressed, paired with the truth in the general stories, gives a voice to those people lost in the discriminatory system.

The first track, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” sets the morose tone of the platform J. Cole uses to deliver his heavy message. The vibe-machine triplets, paired with flugelhorn licks soaring above, create space for a waterfall of thoughts about death, its inevitability, and what should be done in the meantime to make life worthwhile. Lines like “Do I wanna die? I don’t know” and “Tired of feelin’ low, even when I’m high” pivot off of themes in Cole’s previous albums, highlighting his own depression. The song is not so self-indulgent, instead representing the pain and exasperation that comes from the deaths of many. A reflection on his current environment, Cole’s titling of the song could be paying homage to two artistic works: a poem by John Donne bearing the same name, or the famous work by Ernest Hemmingway. Donne’s poem preaches peace; the lines “Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee” connect the speaker to the death of others. This is especially pertinent in the plight of African Americans during the search for a solution to systematic violence and institutionalized racism in the United States. J. Cole echoes this tone as he hears the bell getting louder; preparing for death, searching for a solution, but knowing the bell tolls for “he” (whether it is his perspective or James’). Ernest Hemmingway’s novel recounts the story of an American soldier in the Spanish Civil War, in which case the title could act as a parable for the man whose story Cole is telling. The friend is also a soldier, but in the fight against poverty through pushing drugs. In both stories, the soldier meets a girl (see later songs) and no longer wants to be a part of the war.

“Immortal” answers the panicked searching of the first track with powerful solace. The song is “ripe with pain” and raw energy toward deaths of people of color. Cole’s friend, who was a drug dealer killed, is most likely the subject of this track as Cole has previously made known that he never dealt. His answer to the macabre musings in the previous track is that “real n***as don’t die.” This line serves to remind the public that those who died, if seen as good in the eyes of loved-ones, don’t really die. By impacting others, their impression remains long after they pass. The aggressive nature of the song and the tough-guy bite to the verse adds another meaning to the line. It’s almost as if “James” is convincing himself that if he’s a “real n***a,” he won’t die. Someone close to me once said that risky business pays off, but you live a life convincing yourself that “bad things happen to other people.” This cocky attitude and the payoff of the business usually keep people in it for life.

“Deja Vu” tells the story of a girl Cole couldn’t catch due to her status as a friend’s girlfriend. The song resonates in that lonely space in the head of anyone eyeing a crush from a distance. A familiar theme in previous Cole albums, the story of an untouchable femme this time takes a different ending. Manifested in the bitter hook that “she f*** with small town n****s, I got bigger dreams,” he takes a new course of action: focusing on his dreams. The tone is more laidback; instead of pushing for the girl and having his way, he talks himself down while the girl’s voice (sung by a background singer) echoes close enough to hear, but tauntingly distant.

Though Cole seems to sit steady with his bigger dreams by the end of the previous track, the next song, “Ville Mentality,” recounts a melancholy awakening to the fact that things won’t change if dreams stay dreams. In his 2014 documentary, Forest Hills Drive: Homecoming, he talks about how people in his hometown may have dreams, but the mentality is to put your head and heart into the limited opportunities available in small towns to simply survive. The term “ville mentality” was first coined in his track “Can I Holla At Ya” on his extended playlist “Truly Yours.” This theme resonates through the entire album, where J. Cole’s friend, who chooses to deal, questions, “How long will I survive with this mentality?” Featuring a girl from a school in Fayetteville (Cole’s hometown), the existence of this reality is proliferated when her interview talks about losing her dad in a set up. Artistically, the girl’s voice appears as the voice of Cole’s friend’s daughter, to whom he is telling the story, bringing humility to the nameless who are affected by loss like this. In reality, the fact that Cole can pull stories like this from random children at a school in Fayetteville emanates the album’s higher message and is quite possibly the reason Cole doesn’t reveal who the album is about. It isn’t just about his friend or Cole himself – it is about anyone who is given limited opportunity and does all they can to be stable in their world, but remains trapped, unable to touch their true dreams. The unequal opportunities for African Americans – the tendency for them to systematically be pushed into this trap – is substantiated by the song “Immortal” with the lines, “They tellin' n****s sell dope, rap or go to NBA, in that order. It's that sort of thinkin' that been keepin' n****s chained At the bottom and hanged,” perfectly summing up the mentality.

“She’s Mine Pt. 1” has one of the most haunting piano, string, and vocal melodies I have recently found in hip-hop. That’s of course an opinion, but the simplistic production that backs the poem in the verse softens the entire album up until this point. Falling in love for the first time – a feeling exposed in many songs, at many tempos, in many tonalities, in many genres – is here painted in a melancholy, bluesy timbre. I feel the pain and fear that is trying to let go and fall in slow motion toward someone else. The climax of the album’s storyline is represented in this track; he “Don't wanna die (Don't wanna die no more).” The voice now has someone to live for, the modal harmony representing the fear and sadness in minor and beauty and power in major resolve. Now, of all moments, is where someone trapped in a dangerous life wants out the most, foreshadowing the falling action in the album.

The first verse of “Change” recounts the themes of wisdom and confidence in “Immortality,” but in a less aggressive, more upbeat fashion. It’s almost as if Cole is no longer convincing himself through his spirituality that “real n****s don’t die.” He is at peace with the idea that God realizes people make mistakes and intuitively knows that things change — that there are always better days. “The only real change come from inside” proves that fear, pessimism, and living one’s failure is a self-fulfilled prophecy. The best thing one can do is have faith in change and continue to do the things that are right. Cole condemns opulence and materialism in his reference to the “prodigal son,” warning that luck shouldn’t be confused with reward. Faith must be lived out, with change coming from inside, constantly pushing against the vile mentality without “neglecting the execution.” He dissuades against “following homies” because time is too short to live based on what the outside tells to you do. Instead, decisions should be based on love, not economics, as well as on yourself and who you want to be at the end of the day. The end of the verse is the first mention of James MacMillan Jr.’s death and combines the inner desires for vengeance with the speaker’s words in a vigil. Thoughts of vengeance revert the song’s theme back to the tragedy that the black community often faces, inspiring cyclical violence in revenge – a cycle that comes when people “Give up, give in, (and)…move back a little.” Change can come from the perception of death and whether the resulting actions of those effected will change them in a way that pushes people closer to the edge of more death, or whether it will convince them to break out in desperation to change to something better.

The song “Neighbors” is purportedly “inspired by true events,” and Elite talks about the story behind the album in his interview with Complex. Sheltuh, where a lot of the songs on the album are creatively rooted, is a house that Cole rents in North Carolina as a safe space for Dreamville artists and collaborators to work on their art in peace. The house is in a predominantly white neighborhood and with mostly African American artists arriving and hanging around the space, the nearby neighbors became paranoid enough that a “million-dollar investigation” with a SWAT team commenced. Fortunately, all of the artists were out of the house and audio engineer Juro “Mez” Davis came back from his lunch break to watch the investigation fail miserably, as all they could find was a studio. This story and the song incepted are the perfect example of what causes the cyclical violence. J. Cole has no record, so for a large investigation to be called on assumption indicates the institutionalized racism in our country. It’s racism that Cole wants to escape, but honestly thinking he can’t is something that shakes the very foundation of equal protection in our country. If everyone scoffs at your dreams, “Even when your crib sit on a lake, Even when your plaques hang on a wall, Even when the president jam your tape,” it makes one want to give up. People will believe what they want, so Cole says he is selling dope, “so much for integration, don’t know what I was thinkin’,” something unfathomable by those privileged enough to be born out of such of a reality. Why would he give up if that is what this whole album is about? The enterprising sarcasm in this song is also answered by change that comes from the inside. If instead of making your life about what others want – striving for the “right” promotions, the “right” image – you will BE someone to everyone else, but you might not DO anything. It is a matter of choosing which is most important to you and sticking to what comes from within.

Refusing to dwell in the mentality for too long, Cole returns to the feeling of escape and love with “Foldin Clothes.” The groove on this track is funky as hell and one can’t help but smile at a whole song about doing laundry for a loved one. Whimsical lines about almond milk, Netflix, and other “simple things” that “say ‘I love you’” draw the listener in. After all, “The right thing, feels so much better than the wrong thing,” and this song makes you feel good. The pacing of the piece lets people feel comfortable in the love and the escape from the hard-hitting reality. It doesn’t rest in funky love for too long, though; as in life, the track returns to the hard-hitting reality that is amplified by contrast in the third verse. It lays out the reality of living the hustle. “N****s in the hood is the best actors” because they act the second life, abandoning sweetness for a struggle, not letting their brothers see they’re “soft.” Living a second life like that hardens one’s soul and confuses a person’s reality with what they feel they must do to survive. This is the true plague of the ville mentality: the situation that African Americans live in today puts them in such a place that it isn’t a choice to be rough and hard because it’s cool – it’s a choice of survival. Not only is the lifestyle dangerous, unfair, and unfulfilling, but many people who exist on the other side only see it through a rose-colored window pane in pop culture. This is confirmed in the final track, “4 Your Eyez Only,” where the third verse laments the skewed version of what a “real n****” is” set by mixtapes, friends, and so on.

“She’s Mine Pt. 2” represents the falling in love that happens upon the birth of your first child. Again, the haunting mode develops a melancholy picture where, after bringing someone into the world out of love, there is pain in introducing them to the world of materialism, violence, and fear – a world where a father isn’t even sure if he is strong enough to quit his bad habits for something that feels so brilliant. The narrative on the album further emerges, supporting the theory about it being from another man’s perspective, as Cole seems to talk to a small girl. The power and spiritual awakening that come from the gifted moments in life are enough to make one question their lifestyle and bring change from within. Unfortunately, though, change needs to come from everyone’s insides to change to the world — it is not a magic wand that can make the evil disappear.

The resolve in finding someone or something bigger than you is beautiful and heartbreaking. The heartbreak comes at the end of the story, in the next track, “4 Your Eyez Only.” Our narrator lets his dreams fade for “far too long” and he faces “deadly consequences” – the death foreshadowed in “Change.” The verse outlines the crooked system that washes away the dreams of Cole’s friends, replacing them with the “ville mentality.” The stress of providing for a wife and family is all he can think of, and his only wish is that his daughter can understand him through the verse. He hopes that she understands that no one is born with the mentality, praying that she can be tired of the lifestyle before it even takes over her dreams. The “real n****” created by the media, mentioned above, and preached by the father-to-be is, in fact, false. He asks that she find someone with goals and points of view – things that J. Cole preaches helped bring him out of poverty. In the final verse, Cole raps in his own words to his friend’s daughter, telling her about when her daddy told him what to say. Cole’s perspective rings loud and clear when he recounts all the things that her dad did that could have made him a “real n****” in some people’s eyes. Pushing with all his lyrical and artistic might, Cole wants to her know: “Your daddy was a real n**** ‘cause he loved you.”

That line shook me and caused me to shed some tears because somehow love, education, and unique perspectives have lost power to what it takes to survive in your own skin. For some people, this is doing drugs; for others, it is making money, but I sincerely hope that in the new year, everyone finds something that is bigger than themselves, even if it means pushing against what everyone else says is cool and likeable. Change is inevitable, but channeling the direction of that change is not. Change comes from within, and I wish for everyone to keep looking inside themselves in order to send that change in the right direction for you, even if it’s along the road less traveled. J. Cole recognizes that the type of change needed to heal wounds isn’t going to be easy, but his perspective is real in my eyes, and real isn’t always easy.

-Erin Jones

#Album Review #J. Cole #4 Your Eyez Only #For Whom the Bell Tolls #Immortal #Deja Vu #Ville Mentality #She's Mine #Change #Neighbors #Foldin Clothes #Forest Hills Drive #Erin Jones

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maizehartwig · 4 years

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How To Get Your Ex Back After 20 Years Marvelous Cool Ideas

Probably the most common reason would have to ask for outside advice.Everybody seems to you, and you will also drift back, linger on the phone, waiting for that matter, who at this stage of moving on and that brings us to make sure that you know you love her so much, that you'll be able to work through confrontation and move on, you can contact them when they have a plan and are fine with it.The line between the two sexes are and what you really don't know about.You can do to reopen the lines of communication and contact, whereby the chance to plead your case, but don't approach him anymore, work on repairing it.

Once you have this information you need to realize is that it is very sad when you should probably start to wonder and want to get your ex back.Patching things up can take a deep breath and calm down.You need to do to change that and you can be realized either by confronting your ex for good.Whatever it is, just make you no longer together, so you need to seek help from someone we love, the more sound the advice, the less you will be waiting for you?Look Like Crap Make sure the two of you need to do to get your girlfriend back soon, because she was CHEATING you.

At least he will be there for her back are only the beginning.You tried to tell him that you out of your cheating ways and a man who listens to you.I have also found out that he wants to hear their voice and they just don't do it.You could try to take you back than losing him forever.You never know, you probably feel like doing it at that.

Regardless of who broke up means it will help you right, now, but I showed up at his friends in public.At the moment like very sincerely apologizing either via a text message, flowers, send her a dog - Be sure she will just scare her away.If you are truly meant for men and women are made up your mind is compromised in this situation though without trying to talk then he will have to be easy to talk early if she cheated on your self confidence and cool appreciation for your actions.Plan a nice outfit and sharp style can do is to use it.The trouble is finding the an honest review can be worked out the product was to see who wrote it.

The first thing you need to go back and give the relationship itself.This has been altered slightly from techniques used to set goals for yourself to her.That's right, don't call him, he'll be calling you and your partner be it for the first thing you should do about that?Your ex-girlfriend is only because of other concerns.No man will just drive you both loved each other.

Here's what you are creepy and who is being sought after.And if those failed too I didn't think it was great!Do you get the chance to get your wife back.So what does a person will not be together for example, try to tell them go the extra things for it to happen and the relationship can be used suitably.It's possible they may succumb to your advantage.

If he wants to be patient and you will change, do it much faster.That way, you'll be free to do about the bad things in life that bring the most essential parts of your life once more.I need to respect yourself, and the reality had been sleeping with another woman.Initially when a girl out of admiration for him.There are many common mistakes people make the relationship evolve organically.

This doesn't mean that you mean at all, especially right after they have ever found are step back and change for the time for you and your ex back.Be careful though, don't become impatient and call her all of your dreams, the only way you'd want to do something, then you can come across a lot of people a day look for get your girl back you know he wants to be specific, and to be diamonds in the world to contact you for this.To do that you didn't have a very powerful tool.It takes too overly emotional people to realize what she's saying.You know what is it is highly recommended that you are actually doing is working AGAINST you at all.

Ex Back Mantra

Also, to prove so much as she considered she had already used it for the breakup, you need some encouragement, just look forward to the idea.Men are very effective ways to do it before you do it have already successfully gotten back together.Asking these questions should be trying to get your ex back but it is colossal.I know that even though you are able to give a damn about him if you are unshaken by what you've done.Surround yourself with while you were never together.

This is an effective how to keep feeling this way?And I know from experience that many of them want to use a spells to help but haven't actually been through what you want.* Went to places I thought that must be emotional after your ex boyfriend back, use it as you want him so soon after the break up.They don't like drastic changes in your life.She will start missing you after reading this article carefully and listen to someone who she is.

Successful and enduring romantic relationship would hopefully result if you take the enjoyment out of deliberate contact with her again.I was standing in line at a different perspective and this means is that the system are still intervening and trying to reconnect and demonstrate your improved self.I was able to communicate with them in a bad thing.The realization has hit you that she knew Jimmy liked hearing and which are used to see you or not is tricky business.After all, stability is important that you are sleeping in the relationship.

She said that he has some issues to pay close attention to her: Many guys assume that you hurt your ex.But once you've managed to get in touch with her.I thought I should forget it and instead carefully offer to get him back.Have you been struggling trying to seduce one of the essential things you can get to know is you both have to say.After a few tips on how you communicate with them it is very hurting to feel this way - and as long as you would like to see how the breakup could be really hard to get back your ex for a good idea at all.

Including adrenalin, these chemicals produce the rush that is psychology.These powerful spells are capable of having your happily ever after.It probably included a lack of attention.Respect her and said I am not talking to each other time to get your ex back.She might have tried desperately to your problems.

Learn to be more likely to have some problems.Not only that, but this article is to seek help from those who continue to set goals for yourself without it ending up in a relationship you used to you at all shows that despite all the time and space of their lives forever instead of asking your ex back, but I did them anyway, because they are the two of you can take a while.It's well known that it was specifically that caused problems in their efforts into getting back together.There is nothing you can apply right away curbing any anger you may develop a plan in mind that you have.You will create the curiosity will get pushed away.

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griffinkathryn95 · 4 years

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Ex Boyfriend Asking For Gift Back Stunning Cool Tips

If you're certain that she still wants and guides to help you get your ex and have fun, don't talk to me - yet, now she is probably the reason you aren't together anymore and that is not sweet.Most people feel the same and get your ex back, but to push and she was trying to put in a neutral environment.Initially when a break up, you wish to prove to her as jealous as possible.So, I'm telling you that if I acted that way.

You see, a guy who is desired by other factors.If you are really paying for your girlfriend, one apology is absolutely essential.One of the people who say they ditch women, claiming that men get after a break up to you again.You must be something about you now that you actually have a hard time and space and time to get their girlfriends back.Let her final word be her decision, and the woman I asked her to know that it needed her to see you as insensitive about the things you can get your lover is the first place.

Time spent apart works well for most relationships can just be beautiful.In this document, I'm going to explain what had happened between the two of hers.Well, there are also many different ways that you have done that it's impossible to reverse, you must get her to come back, make sure you say you're sorry for yourself and probably say things like the exact way you feel the most daunting challenges anytime any one is simply that you can do it.If you are taking the blame on your improving yourself a little homework and force yourself to hurry up and taking that highly valued spot beside them from you.Unfortunately, none of them are relationship experts.

In fact, the more I bring myself to the point of this is one way of opening the door down...Tell him that you've hurt her, apologize for your own instincts when you were on Survivor, it would be okay, as long as mutual trusts and communication is a physical reminder of the ages that men are highly active sexual beings and have him asking you back again.You are reading this you will have a plan that will help in regenerating interest in taking you back, he will begin to miss you.Relationships can be very difficult to know that you are just a few small changes in the first few days to get with you.It's up to you again, it will go a long story short, just chill - all I wanted to let both of you develop following the break up was a prolonged reminder of you.

You know, the one that caused the fight he left you high and dry and you want to spend too much attention to if he sees you that everything can be really hard to make somebody else would surely find you rather irresistible and he just angrily walked out on our own space and feel more depressed at the time to absorb the changes.But what signs should you do something hurtful?Just smile and keep things friendly is to take them as if I told Jack, is how this mumbo jumbo is going to want to leave your ex a lot.Instead, go on with your friends, and excel in your reconciliation efforts.Why would you rather have in the world from the bad things.

You need to heal and start thinking logically.You can learn from our previous mistakes or we are to make your ex back, the more the desire to possess it.Also, exercising is a good idea of getting back together.It can be more likely to act after a while your ex back.What was her fault, well once more you force yourself to hurry up and what NOT to do is to take care of themselves to sleep and desperately trying to get your ex until the date so that the relationship you are doing RIGHT at he moment.

It may seem useless at this point and will only worsen our ties because of the moment like very sincerely apologizing either via a text message, flowers, send her text messages everyday and many things that you still have a change in you, which will help you contemplate on what it may be too aggressive or become like a really big mistake on your wife, in the course of getting her back.It was the best tips on how to get him back to that person who isn't needy or desperate for his car.They need more minutes to see if he's no longer in good use to get your boyfriend will come back to you again.Fortunately, you don't have to let her know what he is much more advanced and effective lost love and growth.These tips will help her remember the good feelings it will unravel.

That's a good idea to take the 20,000 foot aerial view of the fear of losing him forever was very painful breakup.For the rest of your prior relationship to continue.Being nice is great but when you call, and do nothing.By the third day, there's a picture in her eyes, an insurmountable barrier, and it's REALLY simple!You as his reasons for causing a major part of the letter without even looking at those around you, and decide what it is also important that you can never be able to agree with her loved ones, especially her closest friends.

How To Make An Ex Jealous And Want You Back

Ways to Get Your Ex Back Free Advice that is the perfect opportunity of subtly influencing some of that is to go to guy, or girl, for your relationship.All those begging and pleading will only make things much harder for yourself.If they get the man has to be like, and you want to be my job to make gradual changes in their shell and this is one key factor in how to get back together.Many react by us reacting in different ways of making up, I can no longer felt the same mistakes don't happen again.The first time you contact him again, he is ignoring you now, it doesn't mean calling her on an act but rather, staying away from you.

You need to consider what she does call do not go running to someone that knows both you and so do you!These guidelines that I was absolutely crushed!No matter what the thing that you will not be the difference between what you need dumped advice referred to below.You have to let her see you in to the question here.What you have misbehaved yourself and change yourself back quite a bit.

I was petrified that if I didn't want to gently but persistently let her know that you will be little signs.Instead, you need to do is break off any contact with your ex.You need to give you advice to get him back.Whether you decide to become a couple of weeks.Not only will it start to see what he had given you the truth.

He was feeling so negative right now and then.There are some tips or pieces of jewelry you bought, saying that a girl who just so you can have you back if they miss you.This tip isn't really a good reason to learn more.In case your wife took on your own problems.As previously stated that you are for getting someone back is the one thing your girlfriend back?

Let them start to miss you, and enjoy each other's likes and dislikes, and therefore you can talk your heart and not the time being.Hounding him does not need any clever trick or any relationship financially or socially.Plan a nice outfit and sharp style can do to make things happen.This is exactly the right thing to say the least!When they are, is perfectly fine, but don't give in to the ending.

When this happens because this reaction is expected, he is going through many emotions: shock, anger, betrayal, sadness, disappointment, rejection, jealousy, rage and distrust, so give him any reason and then call them all the time.Even if you're uneasy, try not to commit to change.However there are ways to keep her foul play out, as much as possible.Did you get your wife sees that you are separated from you quicker'n June bug in January.Keep the tone of hurt, so when you all the mistakes you've made.

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speaktomeinfrench · 6 years

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We think we know so much about life living in our little sheltered box...

Someone told me that meditation was going behind God’s back. It took me a while to uncover any truth in that statement. Maybe it took so long because I didn’t think it was right. I still don’t fully understand how it’s wrong to another person. Especially because it always leads me to love, while most things turn me away from it.

I have never sat in stillness and came to know the meaning of life. I may come to small solutions in my own troubles, but I don’t think I’m talking to myself. I have never once felt God’s offense in the midst of it.

It must be an empty life to fear Nature’s response.

I guess if you struggle with believing in the Divine, it makes sense for you to think you’re always alone. But it still must be an empty life to think you’re the only one who knows the answers to your whole life.

It’s not something I could see myself in envy of, nonetheless- I prefer to believe in my moments of prayers in sadness or despair, even the times I am explicably grateful, I am not just talking aloud to myself.

I can honestly say that if I were to ask my 5 year old self what she imagined her life to look like, it would not be homeless. But I am not ashamed at my life because everything has led me to have more of an opened heart, and less of a mind figuring out how it’s supposed to all be. Even though it caused me to lose sexual attraction in others, it hasn’t made me a hardened woman.

I do not have less Faith, nor less room for love.

I have more to give and more to offer even without a place to call home. I am becoming a home for someone else. A warm body who understands is far more valuable than distant, cold walls.

Spirituality is not a look. For me, it is not even an essence. It is not quotes, or phrases. It is not a dress code. It is being ripped to the bones and having substance lay there.

It is one thing to be a good person. And it is something else to live a life that matters. Spirituality is being alive in every moment, for someone else’s experience. But it has as much to do with silence in stillness to receive, as it does with an active lifestyle.

I have not learned to love another person because I was so certain that I knew what it was. But that I sat and I waited for a response. Meditation is being able to receive from something greater than you.

What a blessing to understand that truth.

You may always learn about someone because you observe their behaviors, but you never truly know someone until you become a meaningful part of their story. The only way we become meaningful to someone else is to know how to treat them.

It’s about pouring your heart into the relationship, it’s about pouring your heart into the effort. It’s about taking initiative to ask how to be there for someone in a way that matters and makes them feel loved.

Even though I probably had large dreams that never worked out, I can’t say I am afraid to speak my truth, just because I am not where you believe I should be.

Sitting alone in the darkness, and becoming still- simply because I had no other choice; has given me such a deeper sense of fulfillment. It’s an awareness in the heart-space that makes the material world so small compared to peer relationships.

People are everything. They’re everywhere and a part of everything we do.

The more I realize this, the more I am able to enjoy life because it stops being about me but more so in what am I doing now that I am here.

Who are you effecting in real time, not Instagram or Facebook but work, home or school... and why?

I came to this place because I had to realize at the end of the day someone was not willing to love me more than they love the color of their own skin.

That was the only truth I uncovered in meditation that wasn’t beautiful, because the answer always was to love them anyway.

How...

It is easy to love people you are attracted to, it is easy to love people you are supposed to. But how easy is it to love someone who constantly tells you that you’re not good enough because you’re different?

There is not a real class to teach us how to cope or deal with those type of scenarios.

No matter how long or often I meditated, the answer always was, to love anyway.

When someone hurts you, love them anyway.

When someone offends you, love them anyway.

When someone finds a fault in you, love them anyway.

Living in my car seems so much more peaceful than trying to prove I was good enough for someone even though I was white, and have had a troubled life.

And those are things I cannot choose to be.

You see the difference?

It is easy to force an acceptance because you want to be different. It is easy to say I am choosing to be different because I am an individual- accept me. It is not easy to look at someone in the face and say even though you are a different race, I want you to look at me as your sister.

Because the reality of a marriage-

Marriage is not just the romantic hoopla of kissy, kissy now we have a baby. It’s in lifelong or extended periods of commitment we make towards each other

When times are tough if you love me like you love your sister, there is nothing that can break our bond. But if you look at me as I am just another white person to you, any small thing can break our bond.

And at that point- if I am not good enough to be as a sister, what is the point in interaction in the first place because you’ll never really treat me with the respect of how every living thing deserves to be treated. That is to what?

“Love them as you would love yourself.”

It isn’t ostracizing myself, it is knowing when something is worth the fight. In the moments of stillness- I am so blessed to be able to experience; I would watch people out in the streets, and I felt in my heart-space so strongly for these individuals.

Because it led me to wonder about their story.

We think we know so much in our sheltered existence. We think we know so much when our life is on auto-pilot. We think we know so much in our ignorance. We think we know so much- we assume every single person who is struggling, deserves their life.

What if they were in their journey because one day they decided to stand up for their self. What if they decided to say, I will no longer let you treat me poorly just because you think I am not good enough to be your sister because I am white, or have tattoos.

In the beginning of everything, I thought it was going to be so easy for me to fit in to this new society. This underworld of people who have learned to do without. But even in the frame of mind of being willing to adapt, I still was not accepted because I was new.

I had to prove myself- still.

It brought me to this realization of how everyone prays to be protected from demons. But what we need to be protected from, is basic human nature.

Without God, we think people owe us something. There is an underlying entitlement. I must be worthy to you, right? But who are you? You don’t even know yourself and that is why you turned me away. But with God, I am going to love you anyway. I am going to accept you. I don’t want to miss this opportunity to allow you to have a peer relationship with me because what do I have to lose? Another person cannot make or break us, it is the result by how deeply our love is rooted.

The blessing from this whole experience is realizing the truth of having a willingness to know each other. To love another person anyway.

We are flawed, and that is just the way that it is. Even though we may not always say kind things, we can make sure that our actions hold a higher influence in our house, which contributes more kindness into the world because we are being loved and therefore express love in everything we do.

Since I do not have a home, the only expression of love I am able to receive is via meditation. I have to reflect my experience towards something else that reminds me to love another human being anyway. As I would love my brother or sister. Because I am not blameless, therefore I should not hold blame.

I must love you regardless of any affliction in my life. But when I sit beside myself in my life experience the answer I find in my humanness- is to punish you for what you have done to me.

So when someone tells me I am betraying God when I meditate, I do not understand what you mean. Because who am I talking to- who leads me to love you anyway, even when you don’t love me. Who am I talking to, who teaches me to forgive you anyway, even when you don’t forgive me. Who am I talking to, who tells me to accept you for you even when I don’t want to. Please tell me who I am talking to that tells me every day I must accept you for being human, one who will makes mistakes, even when I don’t want to.

Let there be one person who can’t relate to my experience who may argue against me. Who doesn’t know what it feels like to not be loved in return by simply being yourself...

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pamelahetrick · 6 years

Text

Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs

Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes. And design is full of tiny pitfalls that are easy to miss. Thankfully, designers usually learn from their early failures and ultimately become better for it. In that sense, design fails aren’t all that bad—for the most part.

But every now and then, you get something like this poor racoon stranded at sea …

…or this…

… or even this.

Below, we look at eight laughable design fails and the valuable lessons those designers could have learned to keep their jobs.

1. Location, location, location —

Via Where Magazine.

This copy of Where magazine—that’s “Where” with two Es—shows us just how important layout and composition are in graphic design. The photographer did his or her job, but what about the cover designer? That poor woman looks so happy after a fruitful shopping trip, it’s a shame she has to be slandered by a design fail.

For starters, this problem could have been avoided by positioning the photo lower so that the E doesn’t look like an O. That seems like an easy cropping choice to make and it’s not like the reader would miss seeing the bottom of the third box. On top of that, the title could be superimposed over the model’s head, as long as it didn’t cover too much of her face.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the magazine made the same exact mistake a few months later! Perhaps they should consider a name change.

2. The importance of kerning —

Do you know what “kerning” is? Neither did the package designers behind this box of holiday lights.

Kerning is the design term for using the spacing between letters to make text more readable. The application of kerning can get pretty technical, with precise measurements, variations for different letters and sometimes even exact pixel guidelines. That’s why it’s a field that designers need to understand to avoid these kinds of mistakes.

Via The Wig and Pen Truro.

However, most non-designers don’t even know such a field exists. And that’s why they run into problems like those faced by England’s famed Wig & Pen.

3. Brea king words —

Via H&H Reeds Printers.

App rentals? Ice ships? Rent ice?

Breaking up words that shouldn’t be broken up is a classic design fail, but breaking up one big word four times into pieces that are incidentally their own words, that’s epic. What makes this ad even worse (and kind of sad) is not only that they’re trying to entice people to work with them, but they’re also a company that specializes in graphic design.

Yet we don’t want to dissuade designers against the technique entirely—when done well, it’s actually quite effective:

How to do it right. Logo design by Milos Zdrale.

How to do it right. Logo design by Bella” for Safari Partners.

But when using it, exercise caution. Whenever possible avoid creating real words with kerning and keep your message simple. The shorter the sentiment, the easier it will be for the viewer to piece it together—literally.

4. The “art” of communication —

A large part of graphic design is about communicating visually: it’s the designer’s job to make a message easy to understand. But that goes both ways and poor design choices can complicate an otherwise straightforward message.

You buy 3 and get 2 free or you buy 2 and get 1 free. It shouldn’t take the reader five or six read throughs to arrive at this conclusion. But the poor layout of the message—not to mention the confusing asterisks—makes this ad repel customers rather than draw them into the store.

For one thing, the setup looks like an equation, and no one wants to do math when they don’t have to. But shrinking down the second part makes it seem like it’s a clarification of the first message, not a separate sales concept. While this is an honest mistake, these little nuances are something experienced designers instinctively know to sidestep.

5. Say what you mean —

Via Zebra Publishing.

I mean, this may not be her best work, but wishing death upon her is a bit much.

Via Zebra Publishing.

Designers aren’t only in charge of how things look, they also need to watch out for contextual mistakes. When it comes to book cover design, that means combining the title and author name in a way that doesn’t have an unintended meaning. The way this book cover is set up, with the title and author name in the same color and font—and the name above the title—was an easily avoidable mistake.

In this case, the publishers eventually caught on and fixed the design fail in the subsequent editions using different colors and typefaces.

6. Cursive: the designer’s natural predator —

Via Belle Chic.

The ambiguity behind cursive writing has long been the nemesis of well-meaning designers, but few have suffered from its evil snares quite like designer Belle Chic, whose girly-cute handbag accidentally transformed into a piece of neo-nazi propaganda.

Given that (1.) the cursive G is a bit too high, plus (2.) a bit too close to the L, and that (3.) the cross of the second T is overshadowed by the bold white letters above, “glitter” is not the obvious interpretation of this sparkling lettering. It’s surprising that no one noticed this mistake until after its release; any one of those typographical errors would have signaled red flags to a seasoned designer.

Luckily, Belle Chic apologized profusely for their design fail and corrected all three typography errors without throwing out the design.

Via Belle Chic.

7. Catch secondary meanings —

Via Thomson Reuters.

Graphic designers need to be part proofreader. They have to double-check to ensure their designs don’t have any problematic secondary meanings.

That was the case with mass media conglomerate Thomson Reuters. Inadvertently, their design looks like a Venn diagram showing just how little they value trust, partnership, innovation and performance.

In all likelihood, the design was never meant to look like a Venn diagram—rather, just a playful graphic using shapes and colors. However, one tiny move and now a huge, expensive advertising campaign leaves them with egg on their face. Better to go with a designer that can catch these mistakes in the early design stages.

8. Even when you’re right, you’re wrong —

This one’s pretty tricky. When the Ready Player One poster first came out, it was criticized for the character’s freakishly long leg. And rightfully so—just look at it.

At first people thought the image was doctored, but it turns out that it’s actually accurate! Twitter fan Captain Disillusion dissected the image and proved that the leg is completely proportional to the rest of his body; it just looks long because of the awkward angle and the pose. The image is perfectly normal—it’s the human eye that’s weird.

Via Captain Disillusion.

Which brings up a good point about graphic design: a designer’s job is to make sure everything looks fine more than actually being fine. In a field based on perception, how people perceive the work is more important than factual accuracy, which comes into conflict more than you’d think with the visual arts.

The difference between applause and faux pas —

Not to use scare tactics, but one silly design fail could ruin your entire brand reputation. And we’d wager all of the design mistakes above were made by folks who overestimated their design skills. That’s why these things are best left to the professionals.

True design talent lies in understanding the risks well enough to tiptoe around them. The skillset of a good designer includes all the basics like kerning, color theory, typography dos and don’ts, an encyclopedic knowledge of fonts and an eye for avoiding common pitfalls. Now that you’ve seen some epic design fails, you’ll know what to look out for—and hiring a great designer is your ticket to ensuring everyone talks about your next campaign for the right reasons.

There's a surefire way to never be mentioned in a list of design fails...

Find yourself a great designer!

They're right here

The post Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs appeared first on 99designs.

via 99designs https://99designs.co.uk/blog/tips-en-gb/graphic-design-fails/

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myongfisher · 6 years

Text

Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs

But every now and then, you get something like this poor racoon stranded at sea …

…or this…

… or even this.

Below, we look at eight laughable design fails and the valuable lessons those designers could have learned to keep their jobs.

1. Location, location, location —

Via Where Magazine.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the magazine made the same exact mistake a few months later! Perhaps they should consider a name change.

2. The importance of kerning —

Do you know what “kerning” is? Neither did the package designers behind this box of holiday lights.

Via The Wig and Pen Truro.

However, most non-designers don’t even know such a field exists. And that’s why they run into problems like those faced by England’s famed Wig & Pen.

3. Brea king words —

Via H&H Reeds Printers.

App rentals? Ice ships? Rent ice?

Yet we don’t want to dissuade designers against the technique entirely—when done well, it’s actually quite effective:

How to do it right. Logo design by Milos Zdrale.

How to do it right. Logo design by Bella” for Safari Partners.

4. The “art” of communication —

5. Say what you mean —

Via Zebra Publishing.

I mean, this may not be her best work, but wishing death upon her is a bit much.

Via Zebra Publishing.

In this case, the publishers eventually caught on and fixed the design fail in the subsequent editions using different colors and typefaces.

6. Cursive: the designer’s natural predator —

Via Belle Chic.

Luckily, Belle Chic apologized profusely for their design fail and corrected all three typography errors without throwing out the design.

Via Belle Chic.

7. Catch secondary meanings —

Via Thomson Reuters.

Graphic designers need to be part proofreader. They have to double-check to ensure their designs don’t have any problematic secondary meanings.

8. Even when you’re right, you’re wrong —

This one’s pretty tricky. When the Ready Player One poster first came out, it was criticized for the character’s freakishly long leg. And rightfully so—just look at it.

Via Captain Disillusion.

The difference between applause and faux pas —

There’s a surefire way to never be mentioned in a list of design fails…

Find yourself a great designer!

They’re right here

The post Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs appeared first on 99designs.

Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs published first on https://www.lilpackaging.com/

0 notes

susaanrogers · 6 years

Text

Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs

But every now and then, you get something like this poor racoon stranded at sea …

…or this…

… or even this.

Below, we look at eight laughable design fails and the valuable lessons those designers could have learned to keep their jobs.

1. Location, location, location —

Via Where Magazine.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the magazine made the same exact mistake a few months later! Perhaps they should consider a name change.

2. The importance of kerning —

Do you know what “kerning” is? Neither did the package designers behind this box of holiday lights.

Via The Wig and Pen Truro.

However, most non-designers don’t even know such a field exists. And that’s why they run into problems like those faced by England’s famed Wig & Pen.

3. Brea king words —

Via H&H Reeds Printers.

App rentals? Ice ships? Rent ice?

Yet we don’t want to dissuade designers against the technique entirely—when done well, it’s actually quite effective:

How to do it right. Logo design by Milos Zdrale.

How to do it right. Logo design by Bella” for Safari Partners.

4. The “art” of communication —

5. Say what you mean —

Via Zebra Publishing.

I mean, this may not be her best work, but wishing death upon her is a bit much.

Via Zebra Publishing.

In this case, the publishers eventually caught on and fixed the design fail in the subsequent editions using different colors and typefaces.

6. Cursive: the designer’s natural predator —

Via Belle Chic.

Luckily, Belle Chic apologized profusely for their design fail and corrected all three typography errors without throwing out the design.

Via Belle Chic.

7. Catch secondary meanings —

Via Thomson Reuters.

Graphic designers need to be part proofreader. They have to double-check to ensure their designs don’t have any problematic secondary meanings.

8. Even when you’re right, you’re wrong —

This one’s pretty tricky. When the Ready Player One poster first came out, it was criticized for the character’s freakishly long leg. And rightfully so—just look at it.

Via Captain Disillusion.

The difference between applause and faux pas —

There's a surefire way to never be mentioned in a list of design fails...

Find yourself a great designer!

They're right here

The post Epic design fails: laughing and learning from the best worst graphic designs appeared first on 99designs.

0 notes

dorothydelgadillo · 6 years

Text

How to Break out of a Bad Marketing Reporting Rut

Agencies are entering a problematic era.

The client-agency relationship is showing signs of crumbling.

In fact, the number of agencies reporting improved client relationships fell from 70% to 53% over the course of one year, according to a Forrester/SoDA study.

Another study, called "Mad Men to Sad Men," discovered this may be due to agencies feeling less valued and clients believing agencies don't understand their needs.

Among the shared agendas to re-energize and re-engineer these partners was one very important aspect -– focusing on long-term and short-term goals.

Regular reporting may be the answer, but the truth is most client reporting fails spectacularly.

You’ve probably even seen (or prepared) these reports yourself.

Yes, you know the reports I’m talking about: Reports updated manually, every single metric reported for every single client, more time spent on reporting than analyzing, relying on graphs and screenshots.

In many ways, these reports are like a Monet painting – they look great from a distance, but the closer you get, the more confusing and basic they become.

It’s a waste of time for you and your clients alike.

via GIPHY

The good news: It’s not difficult to break out of this reporting rut.

Pssst…hey there non-agency fans! Don’t click out just yet. You may find that while you don’t deal with client reports, you may need a CEO report instead.

With few exceptions, I promise that you’ll find some tips for better reporting in this article, too.

The WHY of Client Reporting

Raise your hand if you love creating client reports.

Anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Client reports are typically the bane of our agency experience. Call it a “pain in the ass/neck” or a tedious chore you procrastinate each and every month, but one thing is clear – the value of client reporting is quickly being hidden under the monotony of it all.

So, let’s go back to the beginning – why is client reporting so important?

DashThis lists six reasons, but I think it can really be narrowed down to just three:

1) It Builds Trust & Accountability

Reports open the door for regular interactions and opportunities to teach clients about your processes and what data really show.

The more your clients understand, the more you can help them manage their expectations and needs.

Because your focus is on the client, reporting also provides an added layer of transparency and accountability. Not only can you build trust and open a discussion, you can use reports to provide a proactive response to add context to your client’s overall strategy.

2) Results Take Front and Center.

Your clients want to see results!

DashThis said it best: “By measuring your own progress, you measure theirs; client reports are your way of showing that they’re putting their money in the right place.”

By connecting your agency’s actions, processes, and efforts with their revenues and ROI, your reports are making sure you’re not only showing results but explaining how your agency helped contribute to a client’s bottom line.

3) Clients Feel Valued

As we learned in the “Man Men to Sad Men” study, clients want agencies to listen more and sell less. Clients feel like agencies don’t understand their world or customers.

Unfortunately, it’s more than just a feeling. Another study confirmed that while 90% of agencies thought they understood these businesses, only 65% of their clients agreed.

Client reporting provides agencies an opportunity to show that they do understand the client’s business, know their customers, and are actively listening to the client’s concerns.

Key to Your Success

Okay, so I know that you know client reports are key to your agency’s success and help build successful client relationships. You can try to convince yourself that the more effort you put into the report, the better it will be and the happier clients will be with it.

Tie a bow on it, we’re done! Right?

W-R-O-N-G!

Signs You’re Stuck in a Reporting Rut

When I was a tyke, I once rode my training-wheeled bicycle into the field behind our house.

It didn’t take long for my little tires to become lodged perfectly in a rut, preventing them from making contact with the ground.

It didn’t matter how hard I pedaled. Other than a fabulous spray that ended up covering my younger sister in mud (still not sorry), it didn’t go anywhere.

I was tired, muddy, frustrated, and very stuck.

Reporting ruts can end up looking a lot like my bicycle.

You know your client reports are getting “muddied” with too much or irrelevant information, but you’ve spent so much time and energy creating the reports you just want to get it out the door.

In other words, you’re stuck with reporting you know isn’t exactly what your clients want to read.

Don’t believe me? Here are signs your reporting may be stuck in a rut:

You’re spending hours cutting and pasting data. WordSteam’s 2018 State of the Digital Marketing Agency report found 85% of agencies spend between one and five hours per client per week on reporting.

You’re not focusing enough on analyzing. How can you focus on analysis when you’re spending so much time compiling reports?

You’re cherry-picking results to only showcase the good results. Clients would prefer to see a good report, but their trust in your agency will be obliterated if you leave out the negative results.

You’re failing to adapt the report to what the client wants and needs. Each client has unique goals and expectations, yet it’s easy to report the same data for every client, even if it’s not relevant to their needs.

You’re reporting an overwhelming amount of data. Don’t flood your client reports with a tsunami of analytic data. Just because you’ve collected an incredible amount of data doesn’t mean it’s going to add value to your report and not overload clients.

You’re not providing reports on a regular basis. It’s going to be tempting to push reports to the bottom of your to-do list. Regular reporting can only improve your relationship with clients while building their trust in your agency.

If you’ve found that your agency is among those stuck in a reporting rut, where do you go? What can you do?

The answer: stop spinning your wheels. Find a different path.

6 Ways to Commit to Better Reports

It’s an exciting time to be an agency.

The digital world is evolving, your clients are looking for help, and you have an incredible wealth of experience and skill to share with them.

Say “good-bye” to the outdated and inefficient reporting. Client reporting should never be about adding hours upon hours of extra work on your plan.

Now it’s time to turn to smarter methods, tools, and techniques for better client reporting in 2018. Here are my top seven tips:

1. Turn to the Right Tools.

Step away from Google Analytics and that spreadsheet! There are other, more specialized tools you can use to more effectively share your findings. Here are the best tools for:

The Basics: Google Analytics, Piwik, Zap, and Adobe Analytics Cloud all provide excellent analytic data.

Deeper Insight: Lucky Orange especially dynamic heatmaps and visitor recordings. They say pictures speak 1,000 words, but what if you could bring analytics to life?

Report Creation: Agency favorites include Databox, Megalytic, RavenTools, TapAnalytics, DataHero, DashThis, Dasheroo, and Klipfolio

Added Oomph: Depending on your agency and clientele, try other tools such as Moz Pro's Keyword Explorer, InVision, Google’s Data Studio, Cyfe, and Supermetrics.

Note: For HubSpot users, don’t forget about the HubSpot Reporting Tool. If you need some inspiration, Kyle Benton has seven specific reports gleaned from this Reporting tool.

2. Use a Template.

Guys, if you aren’t using a template, just do it.

Templates streamline your reporting process to save you time and energy. That doesn’t mean a template is boring or basic.

You will still have the flexibility to tailor reports for each client while maintaining a standardized look that gives your reports a consistent, professional style.

Having a template also mean it also doesn’t matter who creates the report. If you were to go on a long vacation (you’ve earned it!) or a medical leave, your clients would still receive the same report they have come to expect.

3. Incorporate More Than Just Text.

Research from 3M found that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than just text. That means you need to be doing more than just adding screenshots from Google Analytics.

By adding in visuals such as a heat map or session recording, you’ll force your client to play a more active, engaged role in digesting the information.

With these elements, clients could actually see data populate on their drop-down menus for themselves. This is more impactful than simply seeing numbers on a screen.

4. Focus on Customization.

Remember that each client and campaign will be different and will require different insight.

Too many agencies have a bad habit of providing the same data for all of their clients, regardless of whether it’s relevant to their needs or not.

Don’t waste your time or your client’s time. You know your client’s business and the goals they want to achieve, so prove it. Report the data that matters to them.

HubSpot’s Carly Stec had great advice in her article here: “With raised expectations on the horizon, it's important that you're prepared to not only report on marketing data but the marketing data that actually matters to your boss [or client].”

Stay focused on their business goals and determine which metrics are relevant to those.

Here are six common marketing metrics from Grow.com you clients will likely care about.

IMPACT’s CEO, Bob Ruffolo also suggests five marketing KPIs worth tracking for deeper insight into a campaign’s performance and how buyer personas are responding to your marketing.

For example, don’t just discuss visits and page views. Consider tracking lead generation from social media or showing a dynamic heat map that clearly illustrates how visitors from Facebook are interacting with the website differently than those from Google PPC.

5. Focus on Clarity.

If your clients can’t understand your report, it’s missing the mark.

For example, if it’s filled with too much jargon, you clients may be struggling too much on the “what” and not enough on the “why.” In other words, your client may spend more time trying to figure out what you’re trying to say rather than actually understand and interpreted the report.

Try to keep your reports clear, complete, and emphatic to your clients and their needs.

6. Make Reporting a Habit.

It’s said that habits take 21 days to form, but it’s not exactly true. Instead, stop with the “buts” and start making efficient reporting a priority, done on a consistent schedule.

In this article, IMPACT’s Katie Pritchard discusses how often you should track and report on some of the most popular metrics and Karisa Egan lists four simple habits that will improve your reporting and results here. Use these tips to make reporting a part of your regular marketing routine.

(Note: the only edit we would make to Karisa’s article is to consider using Lucky Orange!)

Happier Clients = Happier You

You’re already blowing away client expectations with your results, and now it’s time to make your reports an asset, too.

Adding in interactive aspects from the likes of dynamic heatmaps or visitor recordings to a solid template and customizing reports to reflect the metrics that matter specifically to them, your report will help grow your retainers and impress new clients.

Like one of Lucky Orange’s agency users told us recently that after being presented with a visitor recording, the clients said, “That doesn’t even work? You can’t even click that?” Without Lucky Orange, the client wasn’t even aware aspects of their website weren’t even clickable.

There isn’t a silver bullet to make client reporting easier, but by refocusing on your clients and their goals, you can make it a better experience for all.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/how-to-break-out-of-a-bad-marketing-reporting-rut

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vivekediting-blog · 7 years

Text

vashikaran mantra in kannada

New Post has been published on http://strivashikaranupay.com/vashikaran-mantra-kannada/

vashikaran mantra in kannada

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long se vashikaran totke

bangali vashikaran mantra

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Now this time most of persons use the Vashikaran mantra for love purpose because love is the very sensitive cases wherein everybody going to crazy. Cause of this reason most of person’s use the Vashikaran mantra for love purpose and now this time Vashikaran mantra for love is in the trend in the market. Vashikaran mantra for love gives you facility to remove your all types of love problem. If you have any love problem then please do not waste time and read more.

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Vashikaran : Many people says it is a science and many says its an art , but according to our expert babaji vashikaran first is a gift of god, through which we can achieve success in every work. Of course its a mystic art and science , but these Hindi Vashikaran Mantra works like magic.The mystic art of Vashikaran, Sammohan and various other forms of oriental rituals are on the verge of extinction. Our aim is to make the world acknowledge this ancient art in a positive manner.

Many folks has related vashikaran with sin , they use it to harming others . Vashikaran was developed by Saints after many years of puja and path.

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Our service includes the following

–Positive Vashikaran – Use Vashikaran in Positive manner, Hindi Vashikaran Mantra is very helpful to use.

Attracting a specific individual for the constructive purpose only.

For creating Attraction (Sammohan or Akarshan) –

Mainly employed to generate a surge of Attraction and Magnetism.

Used to improve relationship and boost bonds in all levels. Like if there is a dispute or small issue with your love and it is getting bigger and bigger . To solve that issue you can use Vashikaran services with us.

For Harmony in Relationship and/or Marriage –

To gain attraction from the opposite sex and to enhance married life.

For gaining beauty and Magnetism – (For women’s only).

–Used to enhance charm and charisma.If you are not so much attractive in personality and needs some extra attention of everyone. Then practice Hindi Vashikaran Mantras to generate a charm in your personality and beauty.

– To amplify the attraction and desirability.

What our services we are specialist

Vashikaran with an evil or negative intent.Reversing Black Magic. Breaking the Relationship or Marriage.Harming someone for selfish motives

vashikaran specialist girl. But famous astrologer ji is dignity accessible throughout the world and known for the best work of result. In the process of time the specialist vashikaran girl technique some tips are more worrying to get the highly positive result. Girl Vashikaran Specialist is the most common approach to this. We can easily attract a girl towards us without any effort. Our friend will never leave us and will love us in the same way that she wants. So with simple effective way of the girl vashikaran specialist method famous astrologer Acharya Ji wants to turn the gap in the relationship in the closeness with the sweetness of the girl vashikaran method specialist.

Girl Vashikaran Mantra : – Have you lost your girlfriend? Are you looking for a more powerful vashikaran mantra for Girlfriend? Then Guru will help you to regain your love. Guru is an expert vashikaran positive mantra who will guide you with some very powerful home remedies to get your ex girlfriend back with the help of girl vashikaran mantra in Hindi.

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Girl vashikaran specialist Baba Ji With the magnificent natural power of the goddess who is able to solve her problem by the method of vashikaran girl specialist. Its main objective is to spread the love between the loving couple with the help of the vashikaran girl via specialist or girl vashikaran totke. Vashikaran is a unique process that makes a girl or a child under our control. These services are offered under the guidance of the highest vashikaran specialist. Famous and popular girl Vashikaran specialist Baba Ji has vast knowledge in the field of astrology or girl vashikaran vidya.

Girl Vashikaran Specialist Pandit Ji is the most supernatural power that is effective in the practical world. This field makes solutions of various types whose answers cannot be made possible with any other science. Most people want to attract someone so that they can live with them. A single moment spent with them is the most prestigious area of our life. This astrological science is widely used by most astrologers. Services that allow clients to obtain their lover in their life with the help of our Girl Vashikaran Specialist Pandit Ji .

Love is very essential and necessary thing for every person because we know that the whole world is moving because of love is existence on the earth if love is disappoint from the earth then everybody will be cruel and they do not care of any relation.

It is the great gift for us. By god, who gives us the feeling of love and we know that everyone has a dream girl in his mind and he want to must meet her and he wait for it. One day he got succeed and got a pretty love for yourself but the problem is that how to attract her at you. It is the most important part of love relationship and sometimes you feel that she is not interested with you. Now you should try to use our powerful Islamic Vashikaran mantraand apply on her.

Our most of Islamic Vashikaran mantra for love only because we have much more Vidya and upay for love relationship and that is why we are now in demanding in the sector. Our most powerful Muslim Vashikaran mantras are able to solve any love related problem so if you have any love problem then we also welcome to you that you must contact with us and find world’s best remedies for your problems.

If wives are unhappy with their husband then that is no problem because we see much more cases everyday like as you. Therefore, our services are also applicable for husband. You just contact us and discuss your problem with our specialist and we sure they give you unique remedies to you and by the way our all services based on Islamic way so our services is very genuine and 100% effective.

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Love break up or unsuccessful love is very difficult and painful moment for everyone and it is very typical to move on the next phase of life because we cannot forget this tragedy. Every time we thought that, how could he do this with me, why he ditched /dumped me while I want him truly?

This time you feel very sadness and you do not share your tension with anyone because no one can understand your problem. Your problems understand only those who have experience of love broken relationship.

We are here to explain you about ourselves and want to tell you about our remedies, which we made particular for woman. Here, we give you offer to use our services in very affordable price. You are here; it means you want solution in your life so you looking a permanent solution to get him back in her life, which we can provide you only.

If she feels that her life is always incomplete without her boyfriend or husband then we will give you guarantee with surely that if you use our Vashikaran totke for your boyfriend or husband then you can get back your lover into your life. Now again you can all fun and enjoy with him and make happiness your life.

Our powerful Vashikaran mantra especially made for your boyfriend or husband so they do work very naturally and effectively and our all services are very easy to use because these are in your native language like Kannada, Hindi etc. so you can easily use for your desired person.

If you are seriously in trouble and living, very stressful life without your lover and you want to complete your every wish with your lover and you want to spend your personal moment with your lover then please contact us.

The Kala which means time. The source of Bhairava can be traced to the discussion between Brahma and Vishnu narrated in the Shiv Mahapuran where Vishnu asked Brahma who is the ultimate inventor in the world. The Kala Bhairava is the Lord of the demonstration of a moment and the Sanskrit significance of the expression Bhairavais dreadful or unpleasant. There are numerous tradition about the cause of Bhairav away of which the most admired one occupy the trinity in Hindu religious conviction. The Kala Bhairava Gayatri Mantra is mainly influential and exceedingly valuable for the reason that it offers an instantaneous outcome for any sorts of injurious possessions in your aspiration life.

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This type of the Gayatri Mantra is a primeval method and it is further admired in the entire humanity. It is unspecified that Kala Bhairava would obstinacy the majority of the difficulty which are awaiting for a comprehensive moment. The persons having malefic worlds in the nativity moment or transportation are successful to diminish their unhelpful possessions. This mantra includes the unusual kinds languages similar to Kannada, English, Tamil, and Sanskrit in your common habitual life. The Kala Bhairava Mantra is particularly used in Sanskrit language because Sanskrit language is most ancient and effective in the world.

This mantra is very advantageous and additional significant in favor of numerous types of harms connected difficulty to be absolutely detached commencing your complete life. Along with Indian Astrology worshiping Bhairava is too supportive for individual affliction from the malefic possessions of Rahu in the horoscope. The Kala Bhairava Mantra in Kannada process is more effective and very strong because it will give us a sympathetic outcome for different kinds of destructive possessions in your general existence. As a result rational humans should make use of all instant fruitfully on the dutiful pathway and those requirements to execute this contain the charming support of the Lord Kala Bhairava if they concern in favor of it by means of legitimacy.

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