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jewish-privilege · 5 years

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One of Wenzel Michalski’s early recollections of growing up in southern Germany in the 1970s was of his father, Franz, giving him some advice: “Don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish.” Franz and his mother and his little brother had survived the Holocaust by traveling across swaths of Eastern and Central Europe to hide from the Gestapo, and after the war, his experiences back in Germany suggested that, though the Nazis had been defeated, the anti-Semitism that was intrinsic to their ideology had not. This became clear to Franz when his teachers in Berlin cast stealthily malicious glances at him when Jewish characters — such as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” — came up in literature. “Eh, Michalski, this exactly pertains to you,” he recalls one teacher telling him through a clenched smile. Many years later, when he worked as an animal-feed trader in Hamburg, he didn’t tell friends that he was Jewish and held his tongue when he heard them make anti-Semitic comments. And so Franz told his son Wenzel that things would go easier for him if he remained quiet about being Jewish. “The moment you say it, things will become very awkward.”

As a teenager, Wenzel defied his father’s advice and told a close friend. That friend quickly told his mother, and the next time Wenzel saw her, she reacted quite strongly, hugging him and kissing his face: “Wenzel! Oh, my Wenzel!” Now a stocky, bearded 56-year-old, Wenzel recalled the moment to me on a recent Saturday afternoon. He raised the pitch of his voice as he continued to mimic her: “You people! You are the most intelligent! The most sensitive! You are the best pianists in the world! And the best poets!” In his normal voice again, he added, “Then I understood what my father meant.”

Wenzel Michalski is now the director of Human Rights Watch for Germany. He and his wife, Gemma, an outgoing British expat, live in a cavernous apartment building in the west of Berlin. In their kitchen, Gemma told me that after arriving in Germany in 1989, she often got a strangely defensive reaction when she told people she was Jewish; they would tell her they didn’t feel responsible for the Holocaust or would defend their grandparents as not having perpetrated it. And so, to avoid conversations like these, she, too, stayed quiet about being Jewish.

Recently, the Michalskis’ youngest son became the third generation of the family to learn that telling people he is Jewish could cause problems. The boy — whose parents asked that he be called by one of his middle names, Solomon, to protect his privacy — had attended a Jewish primary school in Berlin. But he didn’t want to stay in such a homogeneous school for good, so just before he turned 14, he transferred to a public school that was representative of Germany’s new diversity — a place, as Gemma described it, where he “could have friends with names like Hassan and Ahmed.”

The first few days there seemed to go well. Solomon, an affable kid with an easy smile, bonded with one classmate over their common affection for rap music. That classmate introduced him to a German-Turkish rapper who would rap about “Allah and stuff,” Solomon told me. In return, he introduced the classmate to American and British rap. Solomon had a feeling they would end up being best friends. On the fourth day, when Solomon was in ethics class, the teachers asked the students what houses of worship they had been to. One student mentioned a mosque. Another mentioned a church. Solomon raised his hand and said he’d been to a synagogue. There was a strange silence, Solomon later recalled. One teacher asked how he had encountered a synagogue.

“I’m Jewish,” Solomon said.

“Everyone was shocked, especially the teachers,” Solomon later told me about this moment. After class, a teacher told Solomon that he was “very brave.” Solomon was perplexed. As Gemma explained: “He didn’t know that you’re not meant to tell anyone.”

The following day, Solomon brought brownies to school for his birthday. He was giving them out during lunch when the boy he had hoped would be his best friend informed him that there were a lot of Muslim students at the school who used the word “Jew” as an insult. Solomon wondered whether his friend included himself in this category, and so after school, he asked for clarification. The boy put his arm around Solomon’s shoulders and told him that, though he was a “real babo” — Kurdish slang for “boss” — they couldn’t be friends, because Jews and Muslims could not be friends. The classmate then rattled off a series of anti-Semitic comments, according to Solomon: that Jews were murderers, only interested in money.

Over the next few months, Solomon was bullied in an increasingly aggressive fashion. One day, he returned home with a large bruise from a punch on the back. On another occasion, Solomon was walking home and stopped into a bakery. When he emerged, he found one of his tormentors pointing what looked like a handgun at him. Solomon’s heart raced. The boy pulled the trigger. Click. The gun turned out to be a fake. But it gave Solomon the scare of his life.

When Solomon first told his parents about the bullying, they resolved to turn it into a teaching moment. They arranged to have Wenzel’s father visit the school to share his story about escaping the Gestapo. But the bullying worsened, Gemma told me, and they felt the school did not do nearly enough to confront the problem. The Michalskis went public with their story in 2017, sharing it with media outlets in order to spark what they viewed as a much-needed discussion about anti-Semitism in German schools. Since then, dozens of cases of anti-Semitic bullying in schools have come to light, including one case last year at the German-American school where my own son attends first grade, in which, according to local news reports, students tormented a ninth grader, for months, chanting things like “Off to Auschwitz in a freight train.” Under criticism for its handling of the case, the administration released a statement saying it regretted the school’s initial response but was taking action and having “intensive talks” with the educational staff.

...For the Michalskis, all this was evidence that German society never truly reckoned with anti-Semitism after the war. Germany had restored synagogues and built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, Wenzel said: “So for a lot of mainstream, middle-class people, that means: ‘We’ve done it. We dealt with anti-Semitism.’ But nobody really dealt with it within the families. The big, the hard, the painful questions were never asked.” In Wenzel’s view, the Muslim students who tormented his child were acting in an environment that was already suffused with native anti-Semitism. “A lot of conservative politicians now say, ‘Oh, the Muslims are importing their anti-Semitism to our wonderful, anti-anti-Semitic culture,’ ” he said. “That’s bull. They’re trying to politicize this.”

Jewish life in Germany was never fully extinguished. After the Nazi genocide of six million Jews, some 20,000 Jewish displaced persons from Eastern Europe ended up settling permanently in West Germany, joining an unknown number of the roughly 15,000 surviving German Jews who still remained in the country after the war. The new German political class rejected, in speeches and in the law, the rabid anti-Semitism that had been foundational to Nazism — measures considered not only to be morally imperative but necessary to re-establish German legitimacy on the international stage. This change, however, did not necessarily reflect an immediate conversion in longstanding anti-Semitic attitudes on the ground. In the decades that followed, a desire among many Germans to deflect or repress guilt for the Holocaust led to a new form of antipathy toward Jews — a phenomenon that came to be known as “secondary anti-Semitism,” in which Germans resent Jews for reminding them of their guilt, reversing the victim and perpetrator roles. “It seems the Germans will never forgive us Auschwitz,” Hilde Walter, a German-Jewish journalist, was quoted as saying in 1968.

Holocaust commemoration in West Germany increasingly became an affair of the state and civic groups, giving rise to a prevailing erinnerungskultur, or “culture of remembrance,” that today is most prominently illustrated by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a funereal 4.7-acre site near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, inaugurated in 2005. But even as Germany’s remembrance culture has been held up as an international model of how to confront the horrors of the past, it has not been universally supported at home. According to a 2015 Anti-Defamation League survey, 51 percent of Germans believe that it is “probably true” that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”; 30 percent agreed with the statement “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.”

...The exact nature of the anti-Semitic threat — and indeed, whether it rises to the level of an existential threat at all — is intensely debated within Germany’s Jewish community. Many see the greatest peril as coming from an emboldened extreme right that is hostile to both Muslims and Jews, as the recent shootings by white supremacists in synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., and mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, horrifically illustrated. Multiple surveys suggest that anti-Muslim attitudes in Germany and other European countries are more widespread than anti-Semitism. At the same time, a number of surveys show that Muslims in Germany and other European countries are more likely to hold anti-Semitic views than the overall population. The 2015 Anti-Defamation League survey, for instance, found that 56 percent of Muslims in Germany harbored anti-Semitic attitudes, compared with 16 percent for the overall population. Conservative Jews see the political left as unwilling to name this problem out of reluctance to further marginalize an already marginalized group or because of leftist anti-Zionism. The far right, anti-Islam A.f.D. — the very political party that, for its relativizing of Nazi crimes, many Jews find most noxious — has sought to exploit these divisions and now portrays itself as a defender of Germany’s Jews against what it depicts as the Muslim threat.

...The early signs are mixed. Sigmount Königsberg is the anti-Semitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, the organization that oversees synagogues and other aspects of local Jewish life. At a cafe next to the domed New Synagogue, which was spared destruction during the pogroms of November 1938, Königsberg, an affable 58-year-old, told me his mother had been liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and had intended to move to Paris. Instead, she became stranded in the German border town of Saarbrücken, and she soon met Königsberg’s father, also a Holocaust survivor. Like other Jewish families, they were ambivalent about remaining in Germany. Königsberg employed an often-used metaphor to describe this unsettledness: Until the 1980s, he said, German Jews “sat on a packed suitcase.” After East and West Germany reunified, many Jews feared a nationalist revival. Despite a wave of racist attacks on immigrants, that revival did not seem to materialize. In fact, the European Union, which was created to temper those impulses, was ascendant. Jews felt more secure, Königsberg told me: “We unpacked the suitcase and stored it in the cellar.”

Now, he believed, that sense of security has eroded. People aren’t heading for the exits yet, he said, but they are starting to think, Where did I put that suitcase?

...[Felix Klein, Germany’s first federal Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism] listed several things the German government should be doing at the federal and state levels to fight anti-Semitism; chief among them was training teachers and the police simply to recognize it. He also said school books should include more lessons about Jewish contributions to Germany. “We only started to talk about Jews when the Nazi period came up in our history lesson,” he said. “We didn’t speak about Jewish life before that, and we didn’t speak about Jewish life after.”

The rise of anti-Semitic acts, Klein told me, was not just a matter of rising hate but a rising willingness to express it. This was because of social media, he said, as well as the A.f.D. and its “brutalization” of the political discourse. There are also the challenges that are caused by anti-Semitism from Muslims, he said, though, he added, according to criminal statistics, this was not the main problem...

He added that the existing statistics should not be used as a pretext “to avoid a discussion regarding anti-Semitism from Muslims.” I asked him if there was any fear that such a conversation would raise tensions between minority groups instead of protecting them. “I think there is a fear,” he said. “This is why I think the right strategy is to denounce any form of anti-Semitism, regardless of the numbers. I don’t want to start a discussion about which one is more problematic or more dangerous than the other.”

He leaned in to underscore this point. “You should not start this discussion, because then you start using one political group against the other. We should not do that.”

...Last year, two-dozen Jewish A.f.D. supporters founded a group called “Jews in the A.f.D.,” or J.A.f.D., asserting, in a “statement of principles,” that it is the only party willing to “thematize Muslim hatred of Jews without trivializing it.” In response, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and 41 other Jewish organizations released a joint statement condemning the A.f.D. as racist and anti-Semitic and warned Jews not to fall for its “apparent concern” for their safety. “We won’t allow ourselves to be instrumentalized by the A.f.D.,” the statement read. “No, the A.f.D. is a danger to Jewish life in Germany.”

On a Sunday afternoon last October, J.A.f.D. held its inaugural event in a gymnasium on the outskirts of the Hessian city of Wiesbaden. A J.A.f.D. supporter in the crowd of attendees, who wore a yarmulke and a Star of David necklace that dangled outside his shirt next to an A.f.D. pin, told me, in a strong Russian accent, that he had emigrated from Moscow in the early 1990s. As reporters gathered around him, he rattled off a series of claims often recited at far-right political gatherings: Muslim immigrants come from an “absolutely alien” culture. They would “bring Shariah law” and “rape” to Germany. When a reporter from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tried to get his name, the man refused to give it. He didn’t trust the lügenpresse — “the lying press” — he said, using a phrase that, long preceding “fake news,” had been deployed by propagandists in Nazi Germany to spread conspiracy theories about newspapers controlled by “world Jewry.”

...The Fraenkelufer Synagogue sits on Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, a snaking, several-mile-long waterway that meets the city’s major river, the Spree, on each end. In September 1945, according to a Chicago Sun reporter, the canal still stank of decayed corpses when 400 Jewish survivors and about 30 American Jewish soldiers gathered for the first postwar synagogue service in Berlin. The main neo-Classical sanctuary that had once stood at the site sat in ruins, but a Jewish-American lieutenant stationed in Berlin named Harry Nowalsky, who could see the synagogue from his bedroom window, had made it a personal mission to restore a smaller, still-intact sanctuary in time for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. On the cool holiday evening, the congregants, as one reporter wrote, “sang songs of Israel with tear-stained faces.”

...Fraenkelufer Synagogue would not exist today without immigration. After the war, Jews from Eastern Europe formed a small congregation. After 1989, Jews from the former Soviet Union joined, but by the turn of the millennium, the congregation had dwindled. That began to change several years ago, with the immigration of young Jews from around the world to the neighborhood, including some of the thousands of Israelis who have migrated to Berlin in recent years — many of whom lean to the political left and are troubled by Israel’s rightward political shift...

One evening last summer, three generations of the Michalski family — Wenzel and Gemma, Wenzel’s father, Franz, and his mother, Petra, as well as Solomon’s siblings — sat in a row at an English-language theater in Berlin to watch Solomon, now 16 and enrolled in a new private school, perform in a play inspired by his experience with anti-Semitic bullying.

The play began with a scene in a classroom where an assignment was written on the board: “Tribalism Divides Communities — Elucidate.” The teenagers portrayed two tribes, the Whoozis and the Whatzits, who, because of ancient rivalries, fight. Eventually, everyone falls to the floor and perishes in a final battle. But then everyone slowly rises.

“So that’s it?” one tribe member said. “Everyone dies in the end?”

“That sucks,” another said.

“Yes, but it’s realistic,” another said.

Solomon had the last line.

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not leaving until we get this right.”

After the play, Gemma told me that she didn’t hold grudges against the kids who bullied her son. “I didn’t give up on those kids,” she said. “The school gave up on those kids.” The attitude from many of the teachers, she said, was: “You can’t talk to them; they’re just Muslims.” This revealed a troubling unwillingness to stand up for, as she put it, “life in a liberal, tolerant democracy for everyone, beyond racism.”

I asked Solomon if he had thought much about anti-Semitism before the bullying episodes. He told me about a trip he took with his grandparents just before the bullying began. They visited the places in Poland, the Czech Republic and eastern Germany where his grandfather had hidden from the Gestapo. “That really opened my mind,” he told me. “I knew about my grandpa’s experiences, but I just, you know, felt really proud to be Jewish after that trip. Then after this whole thing happened, it makes me even more proud to be Jewish. I wouldn’t say I feel more religious. But it’s just the identity, the ethnic background of being Jewish and walking in Berlin as a Jewish boy.” His mother later told me that she found it sad that her son had formed a stronger sense of tribal identity based on the experience of mistreatment. She had not wanted him to forge his identity in fear. “I wanted him to be free,” she said.

Solomon told me that he was happy at his new school. He had made new friends of diverse backgrounds, and they had formed a band called the Minorities. Still, he added, he did not feel free to express his newfound Jewish identity in public. He had wanted to wear a Star of David necklace, he told me, but he and his parents had decided that this was not a good idea. The necklace could be exposed if someone were to pull his shirt back. “The thing is,” he said, “it’s still really dangerous. I mean, it’s not like, ‘O.K., everything is fine now.’ ”

[Read James Angelos’s excellent piece in The New York Times Magazine.]

#long post #germany #antisemitism #islamophobia

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traincat · 5 years

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I wanna ask. If you could re-write Spider-Man: Life Story, what would you do?

I was waiting on talking about Life Story until after it was finished, because there was some slim hope maybe everything was going to turn around, but we’ve got, what, one issue to go, and so I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’t think Spider-Man: Life Story is a good comic. I think it has a very interesting premise – following Spider-Man decade by decade and reimagining the events if time progressed in comics like it does in real life – but its execution totally fails that.

I have three main problems with Spider-Man: Life Story, so I guess my answer to the question is, I would do all of these things completely differently. The first is related to the premise and the execution of the idea. It’s a very intriguing premise, but looking at it practically, it’s also a really hard one to pull off. There are over 800 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, 300 of Spectacular Spider-Man, there’s Web of Spider-Man, Spider-Man Unlimited, Peter Parker: Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, etc. The Marvel wiki lists his appearances total at over 4,000 issues, and while those aren’t all Spider-Man comics or stories that are relevant to his life in the greater picture, that’s a lot of comics to compress. Coming into it, I was hoping for something a little more akin to Marvels, which focused strongly on one or two major events in the Marvel universe per issue, albeit with more of a Spider-Man focus.

That’s not what Spider-Man: Life Story is.

Let me be very clear that Zdarsky clearly knows his Spider-Man canon and history very, very well. I’d actually like to posit that’s part of the problem: Life Story’s so all over the place, throwing around so many different references to different stories, that I cannot imagine it’s an engaging or coherent read for novice Spider-Man readers, and as a more experienced Spider-Man reader, I just find the way it uses canon both frustrating and boring. It takes stories like Kraven’s Last Hunt, the Clone Saga, and the first Morlun story and remixes them in ways that provide nothing new or interesting and that, because of the compressed nature of the story telling, lack any of the emotional depth of the original. Let’s take, for example, the death of Harry Osborn. Now the original event in Spectacular Spider-Man #200 is one of my favorite comics ever. I think it’s a totally perfect issue – but it’s also the denouement of a lot of similarly great comics, like The Child Within. When Harry saves Peter (and it’s very notable that Harry in the original doesn’t intend to outlive killing Peter), it’s this perfect redemption moment in part because we’ve seen Harry struggle with his love for Peter and the life he’s carved out for himself against his father’s toxic influence, his childhood abuse, and his own mental health issues. It’s good because it’s earned.

In Life Story, Harry also dies in the act of saving Peter, ending up impaled on one of Doc Ock’s arms in a battle between Doc Ock, Peter, and Ben Reilly in issue #4. The problem with this being that we hadn’t seen Harry since issue #2, which doesn’t seem like a huge gap – until you realize that each issue is a decade, so that’s at least 10 years of a Harry and Peter relationship we have no context for. We haven’t seen them interact. We have no idea about this legendary friendship. The only proof it even exists is that Harry leaps in front of Peter to take the blow. As Harry dies, his last words are to Peter, saying “you’re my best…” and trailing off. It’s an obvious callback, if you know Spectacular Spider-Man #200, where Harry dies calling Peter his best friend. Except we have no proof of that here; we don’t see Harry and Peter being best friends. For all we know, Harry was trying to call Peter his best investor. Life Story depends so heavily on the already existing canon to fill in the emotional impact its readers are supposed to feel that it doesn’t bother to take the time to establish it itself, which, I think, is ultimately more important than throwing as many references to various Spider-Man plots at the wall at once and seeing what sticks. If I have to depend on the original comics to feel anything for Life Story, why are we even bothering publishing Life Story?

Similarly, in issue #5, which attempts to remix the first Morlun story along with Life Story’s remix of Civil War Take 2: Not In Vietnam This Time, and the death of Ben Reilly, but, you know, boring, when Ben’s death is reported on the news, Peter exclaims that it’s just like Ezekiel warned him!

Ezekiel being a character who never actually appears in this book. (I’m gonna hit on some other things in this exchange in my second and third points, because this whole section really illustrates every single problem I have with Life Story in one go.) So like, I get the whole story here, because I’ve read (and adore) the first Morlun story – which is, IMHO, a million times a better read – but what does this even look like if you haven’t? A clumsy exposition dump at best, I assume, or something that would leave you flipping back previously trying to see if you missed something. The book doesn’t even offer you an old style little citation box in the corner of the panel, telling you what issues you could find the original story in, something that I think would’ve been more than helpful and actually a fun and interesting little addition in a book that insists on being this relentlessly canon heavy without expounding or providing context on a good 50% of it. It also alters bits of canon that I feel ruin the nuance of the original, like when it depicts its version of Flash Thompson as enlisting – while 616 Flash does serve in Vietnam, in the original comics he is drafted, he does not enlist, and after the fact is clearly conflicted and deeply regretful about that service. If you’re setting your comic in the original time period, there’s no reason to alter Flash’s story like that.

The second problem I have is that Spider-Man: Life Story has a big problem in how it depicts women. With the possible exception of Peter’s daughter, depending on how the last issue goes, women in Life Story have two purposes: to sleep with Peter, to die, or both. Aunt May is only there to get dementia and die. Gwen similarly is there to be a plot device in its Clone Saga remix: the “real Gwen” dies, and Clone Gwen, apparently happily married to Original Peter as far as her own recollections, goes off without any on page internal struggle on her part with Ben Reilly upon the discovery that she’s a clone, because clones are meant to be with clones, I guess. I would think it would be difficult to give Gwen less agency in a new version of the story where an older man who is obsessed with her clones her in order to possess her, but somehow Life Story manages it. She’s never seen on page again. As she goes off, in comes Mary Jane to comfort Peter in a far more hollow version of ASM #122′s door scene, to bear his children, to take care of his ailing aunt, to leave him only to take him back, because of course she does, she’s a good woman, to be terrorized by Peter and then beg and plead with Morlun for her children’s lives. Mary Jane goes from her complicated, nuanced character in 616 to a beat down caricature, watching paralyzed with fear in front of the television as Peter fights. Additionally, she becomes her original self’s biggest fear: a battered wife.

Which brings me into our third problem: Peter himself. It’s hard for me to tell whether the intention is to depict Peter as an abusive husband and father, however, by issue five, it’s hard to deny that’s what he is. Look at the above bottom right panel: Peter’s fist is clenched, his wife and children cowering in his shadow. I won’t lie: it’s a deeply uncomfortable page. Part of the reason I wish Life Story was more tightly written was so I could be sure it meant to do the things it is doing with Peter: depicting him as a man who is simultaneously deeply damaged and deeply unlikable. There’s no two ways around this: in Life Story, Peter repeatedly abuses Mary Jane. Not only is there the threat of physical abuse in issue #5, but there’s the fact that he made her take care of his ailing aunt long past the point May should have been kept at home, refusing to put her in a care facility. Let me be very clear as someone who has cared for elderly relatives for dementia: it is not caring to keep a relative with dementia at home past a certain point, especially when, as Peter does in Life Story, you have more than enough money to put them in a good care facility. It is abusive behavior both to May and Mary Jane, predicated solely on Peter’s selfish wishes and egotistical behavior, and it goes against 616 Peter’s characterization. 616 Peter did, at a point in time, put May in a care facility, because it was what she needed at the time, and while he stressed about paying the bills, he still did it, because it was the right thing to do and because he loves her. During the saga of his parents’ “return” (they were robots – I note Life Story chose not to tackle this particular story), when Peter fears May has Alzheimer’s, he tries to make plans about what to do if that does turn out to be the case. He does not force Mary Jane to take care of her. He’s not abusive. Life Story’s Peter is. And worse yet, Mary Jane is expected by the narrative to take him back after that.

To be totally fair, I think Life Story tries to make Peter unlikable on purpose, to show that you can’t do what Peter does over a period of five decades and not have it take it a toll. The problem is there’s a huge gap between a hardened man or even an unlikable man and an abusive one, and Life Story doesn’t seem to understand that. If you look at Spider-Man canon as a bigger picture, there’s a pretty clear pattern present of men who have great power and abuse it among his villains: Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius. Curt Connors and the Lizard are a pretty clear domestic abuse narrative; Martha and Billy Connors live in fear of the reemergence of this violent “other” side that exists in Curt and could manifest itself at any time and upend their lives. What sets Peter apart from his villains is specifically that he is not an abusive man.

Life Story also fails to understand the purpose of Parker Industries – though to be fair I think Dan Slott lost this towards the end, too – as something that does not organically coexist not with Peter Parker, but specifically with Spider-Man. Slott’s Superior Spider-Man is not actually the first appearance of Parker Industries. It first comes up in the prelude to Peter selling his marriage to Mephisto during One More Day, when he’s shown two alternate paths he might have gone down if he hadn’t been bit by the spider. In the life where ordinary Peter Parker forms Parker Industries, he’s rich and respected, but his emotional life is hollow and empty:

(Sensational Spider-Man #41) In the second appearance of Parker Industries, it is founded by Otto Octavius in Peter’s name in a bid to be a “better” version of Peter, ie, a more successful one, the critical message here being that Otto doesn’t understand Spider-Man’s true value as an unselfish protector of the people. To have Peter found Parker Industries of his own free will and volition, with no mitigating circumstances, fundamentally misunderstands the point of Peter as a protector of the people and why his socioeconomic status is important: Peter is not rich in the larger web because he stands for the ordinary people against the corrupt corporate landscape, just like Norman exists as his “biggest” villain because he is the symbol and the representation of that corruption. Life Story fails to understand that within its narrative, and so it fails to understand Peter Parker, especially when it tries to set him up in opposition to either Reed Richards or Tony Stark – both of whom I also find written very poorly.

I admit I was unimpressed with Zdarsky’s Peter in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man because I found his dialogue too rambly and light; I felt like he couldn’t commit to writing a serious Peter; in Life Story he’s writing a very serious Peter, but in a way I feel fundamentally betrays and insults the core of the character. If he writes another Spider-Man series, I hope he’s able to find a middle ground. I will say the covers he did for the book are incredible, though. I’d love to have them as posters.

Basically, if I were redoing Spider-Man: Life Story, I’d focus on these three main points: streamline the canon and cut extraneous references, give the women of the book some actual agency within it, and make sure Peter is not depicted as a domestic abuser. Which, now that I’ve written that out, seems a little bit like scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of things to hope for in a Spider-Man series. There’s one issue to go and while I hope the book goes out on a good note, at this point there’s really no way it can recover from the grim landscape the previous five issues have set.

#peter parker #mary jane watson #marvel comics #spiderman #*replies #traincat talks comics #long post/#abuse mention//

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sunlitroom · 5 years

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Thoughts on ‘The Beginning’

So - as with The Trial of Jim Gordon, I'm going to regard this episode as an extra, and do some meta as opposed to a full recap. My rationale is pretty much the same: this is an optional easter egg, and one that can easily be regarded as outside canon if desired.

Also - I found the deeper message, like that in The Trial of Jim Gordon, was so unpalatable it strained the show’s broader ideas and themes. So I’ve decided it’s not part of canon, for me.

Thoughts after the cut. Same disclaimer as with The Trial of Jim Gordon. I love the show. I tweeted like a maniac as episodes were airing, and got booted from Twitter. I want another network to pick it up.

However, my idea of meta is the old fandom one, which is critical analysis. If that’s not your thing, fine - but that’s what I’ll be doing here.

So, first things first.

I understand the rationale behind the time-jump, to an extent. The two extra episodes were just that - extra. One was spent on The Trial of Jim Gordon, which I have already been salty about in another post. This one was a sort of nod to the fans - offering Batman as a sort of reward. I’ve always been more interested in the story Gotham actually set out to tell, though, the story before Batman. The story of the city and its inhabitants. As such, I was always going to be less taken with an episode which was fundamentally mostly interested in giving us Batman.

But there were a couple of other issues that confused me. Gotham has always presented its own vision of the city, the characters. It’s shown it can be creative with canon, as well as adding its own ideas. Not only, for example, is their take on Oswald unique, but Fish Mooney – so pivotal in his development – only exists within Gotham’s universe. We got the Executioner and Cyrus Gold – yes, but we also got Nathaniel Barnes and Butch Gilzean, who had character and stories and lives all of their own.

I like that it thumbed its nose at Jim’s moustache. But go all the way with it. Yes, we know Batman’s coming. But if you want to continue to focus on Jim, and his wrestling with the notion of heroism – then just do that. Have the courage of your convictions. You can draw inspiration from the 60s series if you want, but you’re not shackled to it: Oswald doesn’t have to don a top hat and become 60s Penguin if you don’t want him to. The city doesn’t have to morph aesthetically into something we saw in the movies. You’ve told your own story. See it through.

That aside - the details.

The flash-forward was also a difficult ask because the story has been unnaturally cut short. Characters who were still wrestling with huge issues didn’t really get to address them in a truncated season and - as such - it’s sort of hard to accept where we find them now.

For example

We’ve seen Jim deal with several demons over the years. He has major issues with authority. His relationship with his father looms large. He wants to be a hero, but gets on better with the villains. He compartmentalises like crazy. He’s emotionally dishonest with others and himself. He enjoys playing dangerous games. He can’t resist a pissing match.

Am I to honestly believe that Jim has been entirely clean and pure in the interim? Why? Because the city was saved after near destruction? That’s happened before – he didn’t change. If anything, he’s more likely to have reverted to old habits once the crisis was over. Is he reformed because he’s a father now? Didn’t stop him killing Theo Galavan while Lee was pregnant.

Jim’s development was still very much in progress. As such, he feels unsatisfying here and - given what we know about him - you can’t help but feel he’s probably been up to his old tricks, but we’re just getting to see the sanitised surface of his life.

Lee likewise generally suffered quite a bit from the truncated season, and is good example of how the flash-forward doesn’t serve characters well.

In season 4, we saw her explore a darker side to her personality that the show has strongly and consistently hinted at since way back in season one, explicitly – when she says that Jerome’s confession of matricide thrilled her, and implicitly, when we wondered why the hell she was working in Arkham. We also saw her enjoy power in season 4. We saw her deeply committed to improving the lot of the residents in the Narrows, even if her way of going about it was short-sighted. We saw her shoot Sofia Falcone point-blank in the head in cold blood. We saw her, although many hated it, form an intense romantic relationship with Ed, where she seemed to find a fulfilment and recognition that she never found with Jim or Mario.

However, in season 5, the show clearly needed her to quickly step into the role of Mrs Jim and stepmother to Barbara. This meant becoming the angel at the hearth again, so it essentially erased those experiences, all that new characterisation.

As such, like Jim, she feels flat here – like we’re only getting to see a facade. She’s back in her old post of intermittently saying supportive things to Jim, and apparently quietly looking forward to him quitting his job. When she's bizarrely given the task of defusing the bomb, as Lucius the tech specialist stands by the side - it really only underlined that stripping her of all that history and characterisation meant that she doesn't really have a real role of her own in the wider workings of the city.

Now to the heart of my problem with this episode.

We’re told, without any explanation, that Oswald was sent to Blackgate shortly after reunification, and Ed to Arkham.

Now, to be honest, I find this fairly implausible. In all the rebuilding efforts, I doubt the authorities would have the will or energy to go back and rake over who committed what crime when the city had been abandoned by the government. And even if they did, both their actions – willingly manning the barricades (Oswald sustaining an injury when doing so), would have likely gone some way to mitigating everything else.

You could argue that it's for some nameless crime they committed later - but the show could easily have indicated that by throwing in a line about some heist or scheme they tried to pull off that ended up with them being put away.

Mayor James - ‘Oswald Cobblepot is getting released tomorrow’

Harvey - ‘Should have got 20 years for that stunt he pulled after reunification - not 10. So should Nygma.’

It didn't take the trouble to do that - so I'm left assuming they were sent away on the basis of crimes committed during the split.

However, this poses us with some problems both in terms of the plot, and more deeply in terms of narrative repercussions. Because if we are going to start to get persnickety about charging people with crimes they’ve committed, and then having them face actual consequences – well, we saw Barbara shoot loads of randoms in season 5. Going back not too far, Lee shot Sofia Falcone in the head. Going back further still, Jim murdered Ogden Barker and Theo Galavan, and was indirectly responsible for several deaths by inviting Sofia Falcone to town.

So – then – if we’ve decided that actually charging people and sending them to prison is now the done thing, why are we so selective with who’s punished? Gotham is a show with a million shades of grey. It gives its villains humanising back stories and motivations – but it ultimately still wants to punish a select few like it’s a black and white universe. You can’t do that when your good guys are equally tainted. Not unless you want to give off an unfortunate stench of hypocrisy, anyway.

Oswald flat-out asks Jim on the pier. I could have escaped this city. I chose to stand shoulder to shoulder with you and defend it. Why was I punished?

It’s telling that Jim never actually furnishes Oswald with any good answer to his question on the pier. Because - over the years - the show itself has never quite figured out how to answer this one. He can’t answer. What could he possibly say?

Why then, do some get away scot-free, while others are punished? Why, as Ed observes, do some get to make choices - while others never get the chance?

Jim and Lee are ‘heroes’ (arguably wandering into designated hero territory, at points). They're never going to face consequences for anything. Jim going on a self-pitying drinking binge doesn’t count - not compared to a ten-year stint in Blackgate or Arkham. Lee never expressed any remorse for Sofia.

As for Barbara, well Barbara is brought back into the heroic fold, too.

First and foremost, she’s offered moral redemption by bearing Jim’s child. Becoming a mother meant all previous sins were forgiven.

When we meet her here, we see now that she’s wealthy and powerful – playing a serious role in the city. It’s empowering in a way – but it’s also a means of re-affirming the established order and putting her back in her box. Remember that Barbara is from one of Gotham's elite families - and she's finally behaving like someone from an elite and wealthy family would do. To make her position clear - she’s explicitly placed in the same category as Bruce here in terms of her wealth and control of the city. I’m assuming that pregnancy also made magically clean whatever money she used to buy up the city when it was on its knees. She didn’t seem to have access to her parents’ cash before now - so she must have used her ill-gotten gains.

(I would argue that strategically buying up parts of the city post-reunification is screamingly Oswald, but like other chunks of his characterisation and storyline, it got sent Barbara’s way in season 5 in a bid to flesh out her character)

Last up, she’s not demanding a romantic relationship with Jim anymore, but they’re now forever safely tied in that context due to their daughter - there’s no mention of Tabitha, or casual mention of a new partner. Troublesome, restless Barbara, poor little rich girl – demanding of Jim’s time and attention, namelessly unhappy, and with a murky ‘past’ is now ‘fixed’ and neutralised.

Thinking about those brought into the fold necessarily asks you to think about those who were excluded.

Oswald might have roots in an elite family, like Barbara, but - crucially - he’s also one part poor immigrant (as well as all his many other markers of 'otherness'). He can’t escape this - we got his jangling east European music as soon as we saw him in this episode, and we were reminded of Gertrud when he said he would lay flowers on her grave as his first act after his release.

Ed’s background is unknown, but we can safely hazard a guess that there’s no moneyed upper-class upbringing there. He was also willing to step up when it counted, and was even used by those in power for their own ends during the break – but none of that counts for anything, apparently, and he finds himself in Arkham. You could argue that Ed is unwell, and needs to be in a hospital – but Arkham is not shown as a hospital in any meaningful sense in the show. It’s an oubliette, where you send those you just can’t be bothered dealing with. It doesn’t look any better here than we’ve seen it before. Why hasn’t anyone tried to improve it? Again, they don’t have to succeed - if you’re determined to stick to canon, but why not suggest that Jim or Lee or Lucius has at least tried to have conditions improved or an official review launched into treatment of inmates? It would go a long way to nodding to the long and complex histories these characters have. However things ended – Lee and Ed had a pretty intense relationship. They cared about each other. She can sleep at nights knowing he’s in Arkham?

Jeremiah might have been clever enough to win himself a scholarship and a way out of the circus – but it’s not enough to enable him to escape his past – either explicitly, when he was hunted down by his resentful brother, or implicitly – when he winds up in a similar situation to the other outsiders. Yes, Jeremiah might have been manipulating the situation – but he was still sent to Arkham and left vulnerable to casual abuse. Whether it’s intended or not, Jeremiah’s accusation of abandonment can be read more deeply. Bruce left town - but, just like Oswald and Ed, the city in general abandoned him.

Selina’s an example who, I would argue, reinforces that this moral order of the universe. She's always been depicted more ambiguously - capable of villainous acts, but tied to the heroes through her bond with Bruce. This is reflected in what we learn about her here. Like Jeremiah, she's been punished by Bruce's abandonment, but her grey heroic status means that she doesn't lose her freedom, despite living a life of crime.

So what picture are we painted of the city?

Aubrey James is back in charge - corrupt as Oswald ever was as mayor, but less competent. The city’s remains were picked clean by Barbara - it’s now seemingly largely owned and controlled by two scions of the city’s elite. The commissioner’s got more than one murder to his name. His wife has one attempted murder to hers - giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that Sofia’s still in her coma. Arkham’s still a hellhole.

What does all that say? Like I said before, you can argue that this was the inevitable endpoint – but you’ve changed the story already, so that doesn’t wash.

What you’re left with is the outsiders comprehensively punished. You can sacrifice your chance at escape and an easy life in favour of standing shoulder to shoulder to defend the city, you can be unwell, you can be a victim – doesn’t count. No matter what you do – you’ll always be an outsider anyway. You can’t win for losing. Some are chosen, some aren’t. And if you’re not, tough luck.

So in this universe, why the hell not don a showy suit and your best hat and commit yourself to villainy? Go for it, I say.

(Yes - I’m aware this is more analysis than it warranted, and it really just wanted to say ‘look Oswald has a monocle and Batman’s here now!’ - but I felt the need for venting meta)

#gotham commentary

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theliberaltony · 5 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): On Monday, a new national Monmouth poll found that Joe Biden’s status as the 2020 Democratic front-runner may be in jeopardy. The former vice president is no longer the sole candidate at the top of the pack: Rather, the pollster found him, at 19 percent support, in a three-way tie for first with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both at 20 percent.

Of course, this is just one poll and Biden still has the highest polling average at 28 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. But it’s also possible that the dynamics of this race, which up until this point have been pretty stable, are finally shifting, with Biden on the decline and Warren and Sanders on the upswing.

In fact, could Warren be the new front-runner? She and Sanders are neck and neck in their RCP polling averages — and according to The Economist’s polling average, she’s actually now in second. What’s more, since Warren entered the race in January, she has steadily moved from polling in the single digits and fifth or sixth place nationally to the double digits and second and third place. So what evidence do we have to support the idea that Warren in the lead (or close to it)? Or if you don’t think Warren is the front-runner, who do you think is?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I think Biden is still pretty clearly the front-runner. The vast majority of polls still give him a healthy lead.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): She’s not in the lead nationally. You could maaaaaayayayayayayaybe convince me that she’s the most likely to win the nomination, though.

nrakich: That said, if your question is, “Is Elizabeth Warren one of the two most likely Democratic nominees?” I would answer yes for sure.

natesilver: C’mon, that’s a cop-out, Nathaniel!

sarahf: srsly

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Could we say that she is a front-runner? I think that’s becoming more and more plausible, and also maybe less of a cop-out.

Warren’s slow but steady growth in support is worth taking very seriously. Maybe she’s not the front-runner but she’s an increasingly serious threat to Biden.

And given the fact that we’ve heard over and over again that voters are concerned about nominating a woman, Warren’s increasing support is that much more impressive.

natesilver: I’d say she’s one of the 20 most likely winners.

nrakich: Fine, I’ll rephrase — I think Warren is the second-most likely nominee.

I still think Biden is the most likely.

Flag, planted.

natesilver: I feel like someone has to play devil’s advocate here.

Maybe I’ll do that? Even though I’m not totally sure I buy it?

sarahf: So, I realize Monmouth is just one poll. And of course, Monmouth wasn’t even the only poll to drop Monday. Morning Consult also released its weekly tracking poll, which found Biden in the lead with 33 percent, Sanders in second with 20 percent and Warren in third at 15 percent. So Nathaniel is right that Biden is still the front-runner — I’m not really disputing that.

What I am curious to know is whether the tides are changing and there is evidence that Warren could usurp the lead.

natesilver: Oh, my devil’s advocate case wouldn’t even reference the Monmouth poll at all. Because I’m a good devil’s advocate, not a facetious one.

sarahf: Ha, so what’s the devil’s advocate argument here?

natesilver: The devil’s advocate case is just that she’s been moving up steadily, she’s the most likely candidate to win Iowa, she has the best favorables in the field, she might have the best campaign organization and Biden — although probably a little UNDER-rated on balance — has a lot of vulnerabilities.

sarahf: Huh, I guess I don’t think of that as a devil’s advocate argument. Sounds like an explanation for why Warren is now in second or third, depending on what polling average you look at, and a reason why she might continue to climb upward in the polls.

nrakich: Here’s how I think the argument goes for why Warren isn’t in first place today but might wind up on top: We don’t hold a national primary day. If we did, Biden would be on much safer ground with his polling lead. But as it stands, Warren has a clear path to winning the first three primary states:

As Nate alluded to, Warren is a good fit for Iowa. She has led some polls there, and she’s not that far behind Biden in others. Relatedly, Biden is relatively weak in Iowa, as Nate wrote recently — he has just the fifth-best favorable rating of any candidate there. (And guess who’s in first?)

Warren is better-liked than Biden in Iowa

Average favorability of Democratic primary candidates in Iowa polls

Favorable Unfavorable Candidate Strongly Somewhat Total Somewhat Strongly Total Warren 46% 34% 80% 6% 4% 11% Harris 40 33 73 6 4 10 Buttigieg 40 32 72 5 3 7 Sanders 32 37 68 15 9 24 Biden 31 36 67 16 8 24 Booker 22 42 63 10 3 13 Klobuchar 15 34 49 11 3 15 Castro 14 34 48 7 3 10 O’Rourke 12 40 52 13 6 19 Gillibrand 8 33 40 14 6 20 Gabbard 7 25 32 13 7 20 Delaney 5 20 25 13 7 20 Yang 5 18 23 14 6 19 Bullock 5 16 21 8 3 11 de Blasio 3 19 22 24 11 35 Bennet 3 16 19 9 3 12 Williamson 2 9 10 17 14 31 Ryan 2 14 16 13 5 18

Average of Iowa polls from Selzer & Co., Change Research and David Binder Research. Totals may not add up exactly due to rounding.

“Strongly” includes respondents who answered “very strongly”

Source: Polls

Plus, as a candidate from next-door Massachusetts, Warren already has home-field advantage in New Hampshire. And if she does win Iowa, that will give her a boost heading into the Granite State.

If she wins Iowa and New Hampshire, she will definitely have a boost going into the next state, Nevada. Nevada is also a heavily unionized state, which seems like a good fit for her. Plus, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is reportedly partial to Warren, and he might be willing to deploy his powerful turnout machine on her behalf. (Although Warren already has a pretty good campaign apparatus in Nevada on her own!)

So despite Biden’s lead in national polls, the actual state-by-state results might lead to a Warren nomination more often.

natesilver: Meh, I think the momentum shit is overrated.

The momentum shit from winning primaries, that is.

Like, it’s not nothing. It’s something! But, if you look at the Obama-Clinton contest in 2008, or Clinton-Sanders in 2016, the vast majority of who does better in which state is determined by demographics, not timing.

nrakich: Right, but I don’t think my argument relies on Warren winning, say, Iowa in order to keep her afloat in subsequent states. Warren has some natural advantages in New Hampshire and Nevada, too. Any momentum from winning previous states just makes her case for winning them even stronger.

natesilver: But then Biden wins South Carolina by six million points and who has the momentum on Super Tuesday?

ameliatd: On the demographics issue, one big question I have about Warren is how she will continue to broaden her support. She’s significantly more popular among white voters than black or Hispanic voters, and that could pose a serious problem for her.

nrakich: Combining Nate’s and Amelia’s points, certainly her weakness with black voters — who constitute almost a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate — is a problem for Warren.

natesilver: WhY aRe YoU gUyS eRaSiNg BeRnIe?

sarahf: Ha, I was just going to get to that.

Ostensibly, Warren and Sanders are roughly in the same place in the polls — Sanders has a poll average of 17.7 percent and Warren 16.0 percent, according to RCP. So are there actually two new front-runners?

ameliatd: How many front-runners is too many front-runners??

natesilver: Not in my view, no. I think Warren and Biden are No. 1 and 2 for likelihood of winning the nomination in some order, and I think Sanders is No. 3.

Why? First of all, Warren’s polls are a bit better than Sanders. She has roughly equal support nationally despite being less well known, and she has slightly better net favorables. She’s doing better in Iowa. And she has more upward momentum, although that can be overrated.

Second, if you put any weight on the sort of “party decides” view of the race, the party establishment seems to view her as being quite a bit more acceptable than Bernie, although she doesn’t have a ton of endorsements yet.

nrakich: Yeah, Sanders does not appear to be interested in expanding his coalition; he’s pretty much been stuck polling in the same 15-to-18 percent range since Biden entered the race, whereas Warren has been steadily winning people over. According to The Economist, only 38 percent of Democrats are considering voting for Sanders, whereas 49 percent are considering voting for Warren … which is even (slightly) more than the 48 percent who are considering voting for Biden!

ameliatd: Warren does seem to be doing quite a bit of work to position herself as a progressive candidate who’s also not a threat to the Democratic establishment — which is not Bernie’s typical M.O.

natesilver: That Economist poll has generally had good numbers for Warren, though. So I’d be a little careful there.

But polls do show that more informed voters are generally more into Warren than Sanders. So that’s another bad sign for Bernie (and Biden). As voters tune in, they seem to gravitate toward Warren more.

sarahf: I also thought the second quarter’s fundraising numbers were particularly telling when it came to support for Warren and Sanders. Warren tripled her numbers from the first quarter and raised the third-most from individual contributors, after Pete Buttiegieg and Biden (and before Sanders). And even though a greater percentage of Sanders’s donations currently come from small donors (or those giving $200 or less) than Warren, a Los Angeles Times analysis found that more than 80 percent of the donors who funded Sanders’s 2016 bid have not given to him this cycle, so this is, to me, evidence of a larger enthusiasm problem with Sanders.

And that’s important, because rightly or wrongly, Warren and Sanders are going to have to work to distinguish themselves from each other.

nrakich: I think they’re already distinguishing themselves, Sarah. Even though they’re not attacking each other, Warren has made clear efforts, as Amelia said, to show that she can play nice with the establishment. Sanders has continued to rail against economic and political institutions.

sarahf: And I guess at this point, Warren and Sanders’s bases are pretty different from each other, right?

natesilver: Well, part of the reason their bases are different now is because Warren has stolen most of the college-educated left from Bernie.

So what’s over in Sanders’s coalition is a bit eclectic — some real dyed-in-the-wool anti-establishment types, but also some non-college educated voters who aren’t necessarily that far to the left but like his populism or just like his message and personality.

nrakich: There is a big gender gap between Warren and Sanders, though. According to a Quinnipiac poll from early August, Sanders is second among men with 19 percent support, and Warren is third with 16 percent. But among women, Warren is second with 24 percent, and Sanders is third with 10 percent. (Biden is in first with both groups.)

sarahf: Are there more opportunities for Warren to continue to take voters away from Sanders? Or is she better off targeting voters from, say, Biden or Harris?

ameliatd: Isn’t Warren already siphoning some support from Harris? There seemed to be overlap between their supporters, at least earlier in the summer.

nrakich: Right. And my guess, Amelia, is that a lot of the voters who jumped on the Harris train after the first debate have since decamped to Warren.

And to Nate’s point, I suspect a lot of those 2016 Sanders voters without college degrees are now with Biden. So Sanders is kind of getting pinched from all sides.

natesilver: Yeah, I definitely think there’s evidence of a Harris-Warren overlap.

ameliatd: I also wonder how much some combination of sexism and electability concerns are holding Warren back, and how that will play out as the primary moves forward. There was some research earlier in the summer suggesting that both Warren and Harris were taking a hit among Democratic voters with more sexist views. And then there are the meta-sexism concerns from people who think a woman will have a harder time getting elected. As she continues to build support, maybe she’s chipping away at the latter? It’s obviously a hard thing to measure.

nrakich: Yeah, Amelia, maybe some voters have realized that Biden isn’t as electable as they thought, after seeing him struggle in the debates.

ameliatd: That would be my guess, Nathaniel. Although it’s interesting that Biden and Warren have yet to be on a debate stage together. If that happens next month (fingers crossed for one night!) maybe that shifts the dynamic between the two?

natesilver: It almost feels like there’s some weird shit like this going on, in terms of how voters are flowing between the candidates.

sarahf: Omg. What is that?

nrakich: Hahaha. I think that’s pretty good! My most recent piece on lanes in the Democratic primary indeed found that there is very little overlap between Sanders and Harris supporters, and not much between Warren and Biden supporters either.

ameliatd: But in terms of Warren being able to pull more supporters from Harris, a strong debate performance against Biden couldn’t hurt.

natesilver: IDK, if we’re forced to have two debates, the DNC could draw the rules up such that candidates who haven’t faced one another yet are more likely to be paired.

sarahf: I’m not so sure Warren can’t eat more into Biden’s support, though. Another thing that I thought was interesting in that Monmouth poll is that they found that among moderates who haven’t been paying as much attention, there is evidence they are swinging toward Sanders or Warren instead of toward a lesser-known candidate who might be more of an ideological fit.

And maybe this is just further proof that lanes don’t really exist, but it is interesting to me that among the more moderate candidates, there doesn’t seem to be an ordained alternative to Biden.

natesilver: Maybe it’s Buttigieg? But he’s still sort of a niche brand.

ameliatd: Is Harris’s name-recognition really that much lower than Warren or Sanders’s, though? It’s interesting, because moderates don’t seem to be flocking to her, and she’s someone who you think they’d be interested in.

natesilver: Yeah, I don’t know why there are so many WHY IS BIDEN STRUGGLING?!?!? takes when Harris is clearly the one who’s had a rough month or so in the polls.

nrakich: Amelia, 79 percent of Democrats can form an opinion of Harris, according to an average of August polls. That’s comparable to the 83 percent who can form an opinion of Warren. Biden and Sanders are noticeably higher — they have almost universal name recognition within the party.

sarahf: It’s true that Harris has had a much rougher month in the polls than Biden, but something else that stuck out to me in Nathaniel’s story was that Biden had the biggest drop of any candidate in his net favorability rating (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) — he dropped 8 points from May to August, and 17 points from the beginning of the year. So I think, even if Harris might be down more at this particular point in time, some of the conventional wisdom might be that she has more of an opportunity to gain back what she’s lost in the polls than Biden?

ameliatd: I wonder if Harris’s flaw is that she’s not so easily categorized. People know who she is, but she’s kind of been staking out a middle ground between the moderates and the liberals. Warren, on the other hand, has a clear brand, which could be helping her right now. Maybe there’s room for Harris to recover, though?

nrakich: Frankly, I think primaries are periods of ebbs and flows. Right now, Harris and Sanders are down, while Biden and Warren are up (Biden more in the absolute sense, Warren more in the relative sense). But Harris and Sanders have shown the ability to appeal to these now-Warren-and-Biden-supporters before. So if they campaign smartly, they could certainly gain them back.

natesilver: Yeah, Amelia, that was basically the critique I had of Harris: She’s trying to split the difference and it … isn’t working, right now at least. But a campaign like Harris’s, which doesn’t have as clearly defined of a base, is inherently liable to be more volatile than someone with more of a base of their own.

ameliatd: But Warren has been steadily gaining support for months. And that seems hard to dismiss, especially with all of this movement. Unless she eventually hits some kind of ceiling, of course.

nrakich: I think it’s definitely a good sign for Warren that her increase has been slow and steady, instead of a Buttigiegian “bump.”

sarahf: OK, pulse check. No one at the beginning of this chat was willing to say Warren is the front-runner, and maybe that’s still true. But let’s wrap by talking about where you see her in the race currently, and what you’re going to be watching for going forward.

natesilver: I’m gonna be watching for whether she can gain more traction with non-college educated voters, and with black voters. And I’m gonna be watching if she gets more endorsements. We haven’t really taken the time in this chat to make the case against Warren, but those three things above would be a big part of it.

ameliatd: I will be really curious to see what happens when Warren ends up on a debate stage with Biden, and whether that helps defuse any more electability concerns.

nrakich: I see Warren as a clear No. 2. And there are a couple of good indicators for her that, if she eventually overtakes Biden, we will point to as early signs of that. But I think I will mostly look to see if coverage of Biden continues to be skeptical and if his favorability ratings continue to decline.

natesilver: Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I sort of disagree with Rakich. I think Warren’s chances are more about Warren than Biden.

Biden’s at, IDK, 29 percent right now. And maybe 23 or 24 percent in Iowa or something. It shouldn’t be that hard for Warren to surpass him even if he doesn’t decline at all.

nrakich: Nate makes a good point, and I could easily see the race boiling down to Warren vs. Biden by Super Tuesday. But for Warren to become a favorite over Biden, as opposed to a co-front-runner? I think Biden has to help out with that.

ameliatd: Warren is gaining on Biden — and seems to be surpassing Sanders — but it’s probably still important to watch how she performs relative to Harris, too.

Despite having some overlap in supporters, they also haven’t gone after each other — does that start to change, if Harris sees Warren as a threat?

sarahf: Yeah, we didn’t really talk about the case against Warren — but I think Nate’s landed on one of her biggest vulnerabilities: Can she win over more voters who aren’t white? Currently, as you’ve all mentioned, the crosstabs aren’t really there, but if she can build support, I think she emerges as a true front-runner. Otherwise, I think someone like Biden (or Harris) continues to have broader appeal.

nrakich: Right, Sarah. There’s also the possibility her favorability ratings decline, too. There is ample opposition research against her, like her claims of Native American ancestry and her past as a Republican, that hasn’t come up a lot in recent months but could still hurt her.

Now that I think about it, one of the benefits to Warren’s steady rise, as opposed to a sudden surge, is that she didn’t immediately get thrust into the “discovery, scrutiny, decline” cycle. Her rise has been so gradual, it might have snuck up on people. So I guess another thing I’ll be looking for is if the media, voters and her opponents start assessing her more critically.

natesilver: We should also maybe be a little bit skeptical of candidates whose support is concentrated among college-educated white people, which happens to be the demographic that the media both caters to and belongs to.

Bernie’s support is actually notably more diverse than Warren’s, and Biden’s certainly is.

ameliatd: But I do think Warren has room to grow, especially among women, if voters are actually starting to be less concerned about electability. Granted, right now, she’s doing much better among white women than women of color right now — but that could change.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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kissykiwi · 6 years

Text

money, money, money (pt. 2)

(part one)

wherein things progress, and harry makes a bit of an ass of himself. (mamma mia au, 4700 words)

Y/N got to sleep in the next day by just a bit. Her Big Ben alarm clock, a gift her grandmother had picked up in a thrift store somewhere in Cheshire, rang furiously as soon as eight o’clock rolled around. The day was to begin.

“Good morning dear. Mr. Styles has asked for breakfast at 9 o’clock -- a pot of tea with the fixings, some toast, and a bit of fruit, if you please -- so you’ve got a bit of time to get ready and have your shower before I need you going,” her mother said, opening the creaky, light blue door to her room. Y/N paused, frozen in her morning stretch, to stare at her mother.

“Mr. Styles? You mean Harry Styles? The travel writer?”

Dee sighed, and suddenly Y/N understood why this information had been so carefully hidden from her. Harry Styles was her favorite author. He’d been around half the world and had quite a knack for colorful descriptions and vivid storytelling alongside a cutting humor. Though she’d never gone farther than a bit into the mainland, his work made her feel like a proper globetrotter.

“Yes, that Mr. Styles. And you are absolutely forbidden from badgering him about his travels. He’s come here for a respite from all that, and I won’t have you stressing him out and running him off the island,” Dee said warningly, shaking one beringed finger. Y/N tried not to pout.

“Okay, heard. Toast, tea, and fruit, and absolutely no mention of the fact that he’s been to every place I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Exactly. Now, up!”

Y/N watched her mother go, and then rolled out of bed. Today wouldn’t be too much of a day, overall -- a few check-ins who would probably fall straight into bed from jetlag and Harry fucking Styles were her only priority. She might even have time to read on the stairs or make it down to the beach in the slow moments. A pair of old cutoffs and one of her tee shirts should do the day. One quick shower later, and her neroli scented soap had her feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day.

“Gooood morning, Helena!” she sang, throwing herself around the doorframe into the kitchen of their main guest building. At the stove, the lady who did the cooking for the Muse turned to grant her a smile.

“Can you believe this new guest, huh? Toast and fruit! Is he a traveler or a hummingbird?” she said, half to Y/N and half to herself. Helena believed strongly in meals that would stick to the ribs, and clearly their new guest was already not quite up to snuff.

“We’re only here to provide what they ask, Len.”

“Well he had better start asking for a proper breakfast before he wastes right away.”

Y/N laughed and picked up the tray of food. Helena had been careful to set out cream and sugar alongside the teapot, and they’d even gotten out the nice jadeite tea set that grandma had sent her mom from Myanmar (it had still been Burma at the time). She’d also sliced apricots nectarines and thrown a few cherries onto the plate, even added a little pot of lemons in case that was how he preferred his tea. A few slices of Mr. Alexandrou’s local whole grain bread had been toasted to a perfect golden brown and were placed delicately to the side with a small pot of local butter. Despite it not being Helena’s preferred fare, it really seemed to represent the best of Kalokairi and her environs.

“You’re an artist Len. I’ll be back for my coffee!”

Y/N trotted away as quickly as she could with a tray full of food (and alright, so maybe it was a bit more of a slow walk), headed to the stairs that carried the kitchen up to the dining balcony.

The dining balcony. That was number two out of Y/N’s eleven favorite spots on the island, with a view that could almost rival the staircase. Though it was just a little rectangle sticking out from the second level of the cliffside building, it had always made Y/N feel like a princess staring over her ocean kingdom. The far left side of the building, facing the north of the island, peeked out upon Calliope’s Beach where this side of the island went to swim. If you faced the building on that side, you could see just past into the citrus orchards where Y/N had spent her childhood munching on oranges and reading fantasy books, and even further in, the houses of some of the locals. Though almost no one who ate up there knew it, the entrance to Euterpe’s Grotto was hidden at the very end of the beach where the island curved northeast. The west view, looking straight off the cliffside, was more of the dazzling blue of the Aegean Sea, and the east peeked into the docks and the little markets that sat behind them. It felt as though all of Kalokairi was encapsulated in a single turn.

“Good morning Mr. Styles,” she said cheerfully as she came up upon the curls she had seen the night before.

He looked up, eyes even greener than they had looked on his book jackets and framed by angirly furrowed brows and purple bags.

“I was told my privacy would be respected when I came here,” he all but snarled.

Y/N tried not to visibly recoil as she set his tray down, though she heard the clink as the tea set jerked slightly.

“Well of course, I mean-- we’re not going to go about on social media screaming that you’re here. But all the same, I’m the daughter of the woman who checked you in last night, and we make a point of greeting our guests by name.”

He stared at her a moment more, gaze both analytical and totally disinterested, and she wondered for a moment if she was actually a ghost. She took a deep breath. He grunted dismissively.

“I did want to ask, Mr. Styles, if you had any questions about the island or what we have to offer here. If you don’t mind me saying so --”

“I do mind, actually,” he started, cutting her off. “Can’t a bloke get some bloody peace around here?”

Y/N’s jaw snapped shut so hard that the canals of her ears hurt faintly.

“Of course.”

She was not ashamed to say that she fled the space after that, taking the stairs in a sprint with cheeks burning like the cherry of a cigarette from sheer fury. It was only the telltale cadence of Georgie’s footfalls at the bottom of the stairs that kept Y/N from running face first into her.

“Who pissed in your coffee?” Georgie asked, grabbing her by the elbows to steady her. Y/N rolled her neck.

“Haven’t had it yet. Did you know we have Harry Styles gracing our humble establishment?” Y/N laughed, clenching her fist.

“You mean your favorite author? The guy whose books I’ve bought you for the past three out of five Christmases?” Georgie asked. Y/N could tell she was confused.

“The guy’s an asshole. Steer carefully around him,” Y/N scoffed. Georgie was frowning at her, face clearly sympathetic, and Y/N wanted to scream.

“I’m so sorry rosie,” Georgie said, stroking her hand softly down Y/N’s arm. Y/N frowned.

“I’m only warning you George. We’ve got him for three months, and whatever his books were like, he is not.”

There was more Georgie wanted to say, that was certainly visible on her face, but she nodded instead.

“Wanna talk about this over coffee?” she asked softly. Y/N didn’t, not really, but it might be easier if she did, so she turned to the worn wooden table and chairs for employees set up in the kitchen. A steaming cup of coffee was set in her usual place, alongside a plate of Helena’s breakfast hash.

“So Harry Styles sucks?” Georgie prompted, taking a mouthful of potatoes. Y/N took a bracing drink.

“Of course he does. He’s massively rich and has met a million interesting people and seen half the world. What time does he has for us small folk?”

Georgie’s eyebrows raised high.

“Not that she’s bitter.”

Y/N glared.

“For the past six years I have lived the rest of the world through him and how funny he is. Now he’s here to stay with us and I find out it’s all an act. Forgive me for my sour grapes.”

Georgie waited for the next shoe to fall.

“It just feels like...” Y/N scrubbed her hands through her hair. “I don’t know. It just feels like everything happens outside of Kalokairi. And when it happens here, it can never be the same.”

“Oh c’mon Y/N. I’d bet you half my paycheck that he’s like that everywhere. You know how rich people are, they forget what it’s like to be ordinary like us. The ants can’t help but bother him,” Georgie pointed out. She poked Y/N’s plate, trying to remind her to eat for the rest of the day, and Y/N managed a morose forkful.

“It’s to be expected. Here I am working my ass off just to keep the walls of this place upright and he’s too high on the fumes of a few euros to be nice to people around him.”

“Never meet your heroes. By the way, he’s already sent down some laundry to be done,” Georgie replied. Y/N groaned and laid her head next to the plate on the table.

---

So Harry may have been a little mean to the cute girl who brought round his brekkie. In his defense, he certainly felt bad about it. He was just feeling so rotten between how tired he was and the start of the morning. There’d been this stunning sunrise he saw lighting up his balcony, and when he went out to watch it he felt so young and inspired and ready again. He’d grabbed his typewriter (which was a bitch to lug around, but always worth it) and set up on the little wrought iron table, and-- nothing.

It was like a million different words were pounding on his chest, begging to be let out of a door that his fingers could no longer be. It was infuriating.

So he’d gone to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling again, and by the time he’d marked down for breakfast, he was properly full to the brim with ire. And then the girl had known his name and he was just so bloody sick of being Harry Styles, Travel Writer that he’d snapped at her. He’d been even angrier when she’d had a reason for knowing it and he realized how rude he’d been.

He rather wished he’d let her speak too, because he didn’t know a stitch of Greek or where he ought to go now the day had begun, and he was a bit too afraid to risk running across her in the registration house. For now, he thought, he’d explore the resort.

It was a precious place, he had to say. The hotel complex itself was basically a square of buildings around a divided courtyard. The structures themselves were all very Greek, covered over with a pale stucco and roofed in with terracotta tiles. All of the doors were a soft shade of blue that matched the walls of the rooms. He was in the building to the north, the longest one, which connected to a dining balcony with one of the most breathtaking sea views he’d ever seen -- and he’d seen a few. The north building turned an L, so that it covered a half of the east side. There was a wide gate heading out of the courtyard that led onto a small, red dust lot, and that was where he’d entered the night before. The other east building on the lot had a spillover of more rooms (the least expensive ones, he assumed, since they looked out on trees and the road down to the markets and the docks). What must have at one time been a goat house was now a bit of storage for food and miscellany, according to the owner, Dee.

Beautiful though the buildings were, Harry could see the wear. In some places the stucco was chipped, and it was more of an off white than the pure, bright white that most Greek tourism brochures tended to picture. On the registration house he’d started in the evening before, on the very south side of the square of buildings, he could see tiles missing in the roof and how nearly all of the blue paint had peeled off the attic window shutters. Nevertheless, every worn patch had a cheerful flower to match it, and the food and comfort of his surroundings was undeniable.

Harry had already gone to inspect the flowers crawling the walls (he was almost fitfully delighted to see that it was an old, lovingly cared for bougainvillea plant), and noted with joy that the little box under the attic window was decorated with a carving of all of the muses and bursting with brightly colored blooms.

The courtyard had a slope to it, and it split like a step in the middle. Dee had explained to him in the ride up to the place that people had kept tripping over the damn thing, so she’d built a wall to make it safer because she wasn’t about to be liable. Then she’d found out that if you closed the gate and it made a suitable dance floor that went well with the courtyard’s outdoor bar, and it had kind of gone from there.

Though there was something almost magical about sitting under the clotheslines heavy with laundry on the east side of the gate, he’d seen stairs on the cliffside as the ferry came sailing in, and he thought that the gate on the southwest side of the courtyard may lead to it. It’d been closed all day, but he didn’t think that meant it would be locked. Those stairs, he thought, would probably be a good place to crack open the book of Ginsberg poems he’d grabbed as he was leaving New York.

To his surprise, the door of the gate he had seen was now open. His hunch had been totally right, he saw. There were the stone steps, and he could smell the faint aroma of cypress on the otherwise salty sea breeze.

He started down them, already thrilled by the view expanding in front of him, but froze when he noticed a head of familiar hair. It was the girl. She had a book in her lap and another stack to her side, and he noticed with a start that one of his was atop the stack.

It was a paperback version of Haggled History: Viewing Europe’s Past on a Budget, one of his prouder works. It was rather dense since it covered quite a few countries, chapter by by chapter, and how best to learn their histories with only a few euros in pocket. It was also less trendy, he supposed, than much of his other work. Apparently, his usual reader wasn’t much for history reference based jokes. He very rarely found himself signing it on his book tours-- and yet there was her version, tattered and well loved. Pages were marked with washi tape, seemingly in the place of a dog ear, and just about a whole pad of post it notes had found their way into the four hundred odd pages. As the gentle wind coming off the water blew her copy open, he could see it was highlighted and marked with a heart next to whatever city it was open to, margins crammed with notes.

Feeling suddenly vaguely ill, Harry turned around and decided that maybe sleeping off his jetlag would be the best use of his afternoon.

---

Georgie, the traitor, had told Dee how Y/N’s meeting with Mr. Styles had gone. Y/N tried not to be too irritated by the fact that her mother was largely unsympathetic -- “he’s just another guest, my rose, and his euros have the same value as anyone else’s. I don’t care what his personality is like.” Still, Dee knew how much his books meant to her (even now, having met the asshole), and Y/N would have liked a smidgen of understanding. Unfortunately, her mother was right. Harry Styles’ money was metaphorically green and all that, and he was giving them quite a bit of it. So Y/N could be nice. Or polite, at the very least.

Alright, she could prevent herself from being openly hostile. Y/N really thought, though, that that should count for something! It wasn’t as though he was being a peach. He’d been here two weeks, and the entire time he’d been surly and frowning. He’d even had the audacity to ask Dee to switch his mattress, as though that was the reason he was sleeping poorly. It hadn’t helped, either, because every time Y/N brought his breakfast (or any other meal. Or an extra pillow. Or had the nerve to even look in his direction), he was still as nasty and short as he’d been that first day.

The worst part though, easily, was the fact that she seemed to be the only person gifted with his special attentions. Her mother had insisted that he’d been a total sweetheart about asking about his bed, Helena declared that she liked him, despite whatever his breakfast choices might be, and even Georgie said that he really wasn’t all that bad.

Y/N was reeling with enough betrayal that this Thursday already felt pretty sour. But then the morning had started unpleasantly, moreso than usual. Big Ben had decided to take a day off (looked like she would have to bring it round to Mr. Hatzidakis to fix, again), so she’d awoken to her mother yelling through her door that she had 15 minutes before Mr. Clark would like his breakfast at 7:30. The food had been ready since Helena worked like an atomic clock, but Y/N’s hastily dealt with hair and puffy eyes were still a dead give to her own tardiness, and Mr. Clark was kind enough to let her know as much as she set down his cuppa and two eggs, scrambled, with sliced tomato and cottage cheese to the side. From there she’d been dashing up and down the service stairs to fill every ridiculous request from the latest batch of uni kids (and who on earth could drink three frappe’s in the space of an hour without their heart beating itself out?), never having time to eat or even get a sip of coffee in, until suddenly it was nine. The worst part of her day.

“Good morning Mr. Styles,” she said breathlessly, setting down his usual plate in front of him. She didn’t have his paper yet (they tended to get a variety of english options sent in for the guests, but this morning’s ferry was running late), but it would be on the way just as soon as she got that damn uni student his fucking Lucky Charms.

Styles grunted in response. “You forget I asked for the Guardian?” he asked mulishly, picking up the container of cream. Y/N sighed, feeling the simmer of anger in her chest roar to a boil.

“No, I-”

“Oi! Miss Waitress! I asked for that cereal,” called one of the Chads from the next table over. His friends snickered, and Y/N felt her fingers twitch at her side.

“-have to do that. I’ll bring the paper with his cereal,” she ground out, wiping an errant piece of hair from her forehead.

“Don’t see why it would have been so hard to do now, but alright,” Harry muttered, and Y/N felt the angry blood in her stomach crawl up her neck. She turned and left. Georgie grabbed her on the stairs.

“Listen, I know you don’t like Styles, but if you’re going to push any of them over the cliffside, pick the frat boys. They keep talking to me as if I don’t know english, and they say it’s because I ‘have an accent’. So do they! It’s just one of those English ones!”

“Duly noted. Have the papers come in yet?”

“Nik is running them up now, should be within five minutes,” Georgie answered as she jogged away. Well, Mr. Styles wasn’t going to love that. Now that the school groups were coming and going, Y/N found that he made a concerted effort not to linger over his breakfast. Helena, with her usual artful arrangement, had set out the cereal and milk alongside a bowl on a tray for Y/N to take, but Nik was nowhere in sight. Unfortunately, the food really couldn’t wait. The university boys seemed to get a kick out of complaining to her about every little thing, so the less room the better. Y/N turned and hauled herself back up the stairs.

“Cereal for you boys,” she said, voice distinctly more cheerful than she was feeling. She set the tray down and was ready to head back to see if Nik was around, but one of them grabbed her wrist.

“Pour the milk, won’t you?” he said, grinning, and Y/N heard her own knuckles crack.

“Of course.”

She poured the milk, trying to ignore the fact that her hands were now literally shaking with suppressed rage, and was once again ready to leave the balcony and maybe punch a wall, when she heard her name being called. It wa by Mr. Styles, who had a face like a thundercloud.

“Thought you said you were bringing my bloody newspaper up. I’ve been waiting all morning, and I understand that you might be busy flirting with England’s finest over there, but I would think you’d still be able to do your job,” he hissed as she drew up near him.

Oh, that was it.

“Listen. I know that in your tenure as one of the unnecessarily rich and stupidly famous airheads that wander this earth of ours, you’ve forgotten that the sun does not, in fact, revolve around your inflated head. Let me remind you though, that you are a guest here, just as they are -- in fact, very much like them since you’re in the running for ‘who treats the service workers worst’ -- and I am only one person running about to help just under eleven of you, all making rapid fire requests. So you’ll forgive me for not pulling the newspaper out of my own asshole just because you request it, but I’d just like to let you know that even if I could, I wouldn’t, because I’ve never had a guest who was less pleasant to be around and a greater disappointment of a person.”

By the end of her monologue, she knew, she was yelling. She just couldn’t help it. Two weeks of berating at the hands of someone she’d admired, someone who was regularly listed as one of the kindest celebrities in his tax bracket, and three days of those fucking university students (which, frankly, was enough). She was just so sick of being kind and amiable and patient with people who treated her like shit. From behind her, a throat cleared.

“Brought the paper up, Y/N. Nik rushed it since the boat was late, but I that didn’t really help,” Georgie said, voice torn between laughter and concern. Y/N turned around, snatched the paper out of her hands, and slapped it in front of Harry Styles so hard that the table shook.

“The Guardian, as per your request,” she snarled, and then she was gone.

---

Harry may have deserved it. “It” being the dressing down he got in front of two amused couples, four first year frat boys, and two lone guests at full volume at 9:10 in the morning. He knew he’d been pushing her, he supposed. But wow, had she gone off. Harry couldn’t help but be angry that she even looked good when she was screaming at him.

Still, it was a pretty shit way to start the day. He’d been unfair to her the entire time he was here, but again, Y/N could have let him know the ferry was running let. She didn’t have to make an ass of him. Although he supposed, again, that he hadn’t really given her the room to let him know. Whatever. Whatever, it had happened, and he planned to relax on the beach to soak it all off, since writing seemed as though it still wasn’t an option. (It was possible, he thought, that the persistent writer’s block was probably a big part of his shit attitude.)

It was only much later that evening, as Harry went to sit on the steps in the dying summer sun and read with ouzo and two small glasses (Helena had insisted, saying it would keep him from looking like an alcoholic), that he realized how different Y/N’s life really was.

There was a little landing in the stairs, just a storey below the resort itself, that had a pathway to the cellars. Harry knew from the chats he’d had with Helena in the courtyard that the little door on the side was rarely used thanks to the stairs from the kitchen, but now he could hear voices from where it was hanging ajar.

“... cannot believe you would ever speak to a customer that way! As a hotelier, you know better than that!” was the first thing Harry heard, Dee’s voice angrier than he had ever heard it. There were muffled sniffles in the background, and not for the first time, Harry felt like a proper asshole.

“I’m not a hotelier mom. I live in a hotel and I help, but I’m not a hotelier. That’s what you do. I’m just here. And I’m sick of being treated like it.” That was Y/N talking, so lowly that he could only barely hear it above the sound of the waves on the rocks below.

“Well while you’re here, a hotelier is what you will act like,” Dee responded, tone unforgiving.

“And how long is that mom?” Y/N was yelling back now, and Harry realized quietly that she had quite the temper on her. “How long am I here? Because I have begged until I was blue in the face to go to college, or Italy, or even Athens, and you’ve never let me! How long do I have to pretend like Kalokairi is all I’ll ever want when we both know it’s not?”

Harry held his breath. There was a long moment of silence.

“Y/N, you know that I don’t have the money for that --”

“I will take out loans for school. I will hitchhike, I will stay in hostels or camp illegally, I will sell everything I own, I don’t care. I just want to see -- fuck, something!” Y/N gasped, begging now. Another long moment.

“Y/N, I need you here. And I need you to do your job, the way I know you can. I’ve told you so many stories, dear. It’s not that much different out there compared to those,” Dee tried to be light in telling her story, but the tone was obviously clipped.

“Mom, I want to explore. I want to meet people, and see things. I want to make my own stories,” Y/N pleaded. Dee sighed.

“And you’ll have them, my rose. One day.”

“When?”

This time Dee didn’t respond. After another long period of quiet, Harry heard the sound of steps walking away, followed by harsh sobs.

Harry felt really, really awful. Here he’d been, so trapped by the weight of his job, that he’d forgotten how much it was that he got to do. Just like Y/N had said. So lost in his own thoughts, Harry didn’t realize that the door was opening on a tearful Y/N until they’d looked up and made eye contact. The anger he’d become so used to settled in on her face. Oh boy.

#harry styles writing #harry styles x reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurb #himagine

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healthbetold · 3 years

Text

SA vaccination call as lockdown hits another state

South Australian health officials urge more people to get COVID-19 vaccinations after a record week of vaccinations at state clinics as parts of Queensland are subject to a snapdown lockdown.

Photo: Tony Lewis / InDaily

Prime Minister Steven Marshall told reporters this morning that South Australia has a “good rate, an increasing rate” of vaccinations, but some people are having trouble booking appointments.

He said SA Health has set up pop-up supermarket stations in areas with lower vaccination rates where people can get help making appointments.

“We want to avoid a lockdown in South Australia,” he said.

“We put in some constraints that we think will help provide extra layers of protection, but the best people can do is take a test when they get sick or develop systems to make sure they use QR codes wherever they go so that they check in and thirdly – if they are authorized – go in and get vaccinated. “

Australia has the lowest vaccination rate of any advanced economy in the OECD, with only about five percent of the population fully vaccinated.

Shadow SA Health Secretary Chris Picton this morning accused Marshall of being dishonest in his comments on the introduction of the vaccine.

“Across the country we’ve had premieres talking about the really bad efforts we’ve seen on the vaccine program that puts us at the bottom of the OECD and, in the 120s, countries around the world for fully vaccinated people.” said.

“Still, here in South Australia, our Prime Minister Steven Marshall went out yesterday and said the introduction of the vaccine had been excellent.

“Of course it’s a race and other countries around the world are doing a lot better than us.”

Commonwealth government data released yesterday shows South Australia has so far administered 217,379 doses of vaccine in state clinics.

The data places South Australia behind NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA.

“We currently have about 67,000 doses in the state government’s supplies, according to data released by the Commonwealth government yesterday,” said Picton.

“A vaccine left in a state government refrigerator does not protect the community.”

But the chief public health officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, said last week SA Health vaccinated more than 33,000 people – the largest intake since the pandemic began.

She said the sites would increase their range of Pfizer vaccines and bookings.

“If we look at adults (in South Australia) – that’s 1.1 million – and our vaccination goal is 80 percent, well over a third of those people got their first dose,” she said.

“On average, around 25 percent of the population is eligible for vaccination.”

Spurrier said new evidence showed that the vaccines not only reduce disease severity and hospitalization rates, but also prevent people from becoming infected.

“When you become infected, it (the vaccine) stops transmission between you and another person,” she said.

“That is why we are so keen that everyone is vaccinated.”

It comes after the National Cabinet agreed yesterday to put in place a flawless compensation system that will allow GPs to administer AstraZeneca to all adults regardless of age.

Anyone willing to speak to their doctor about it can now get AstraZeneca vaccination, while Pfizer remains the vaccine of choice for those under 60.

Spurrier said she supported the decision.

“We need to make sure that the vaccine is available and accessible to everyone,” she said.

“Ultimately, with any drug, it is the patient’s choice and as long as they have had a solid discussion and understood the risks and once they have done this with their GP, it is really up to the individual to make that decision.

“I have no particular problem with this announcement.”

Two new coronavirus cases have been discovered in South Australia in the past 24 hours – a woman in their forties and a man in their fifties who have entered from overseas and are currently quarantined at a Medi-Hotel.

The couple are not related to each other.

There are currently eight active cases in South Australia.

“This means that while we are in a good position in South Australia, there is always a risk of transmission in a hotel. For this reason I will support the prime minister who says that vaccination is the best form of protection, ”said Spurrier.

It comes when the Queensland government announced this morning that the state’s southeastern, Townsville, and two islands would initiate a three-day lockdown after two new COVID-19 cases in the community.

The lockdown begins on Tuesday at 6 p.m. and will be lifted on Friday at 6 p.m. unless the situation worsens.

It includes residents of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley, the Scenic Rim, Gold Coast, Townsville, Magnetic Island, and Palm Island.

Spurrier said she doesn’t want South Australia to be forced into the same situation.

“It’s so damaging, it’s damaging to our economy, it’s awful for us citizens of our state to have these lockdown orders,” she said.

SA enforces local restrictions

State Emergency Coordinator and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens signed a series of new local restrictions last night, which are expected to last for a week.

Masks:

Mask requirement in “high-risk situations” such as in hospitals and care homes for the elderly and the disabled

Mask requirement for people who offer personal care services such as hairdressers

Mask requirement in indoor areas with seating such as cinemas and theaters if their capacity is over 50%

Strongly recommended wearing a mask on public transport, including Ubers and taxis, or any other place where it is not possible to keep the required distance of one person per two square meters

Sealing caps:

A distance requirement of one person per two square meters in all locations

Licensed venues with 50 percent capacity (up from the previous 75 percent cap)

A cap for 150 people at private gatherings, including weddings and funerals

Maximum capacity of 75% in venues with seats

In inpatient elderly care facilities, where less than 70 percent of residents have received an initial dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a resident is limited to two visitors per day

Food and alcohol consumption:

Food and alcohol consumed indoors must be consumed in licensed locations

Common areas with food and drinks (e.g. buffets) are not permitted

It is not allowed to prepare food in a bar

Activities:

Dancing is not permitted in licensed venues

Singing is not permitted indoors unless the singers are playing or rehearsing or singing in an educational establishment

Shisha / Shisha is not allowed

A COVID Safe Plan is required for fitness, recreational and sports activities

Spurrier said the visitor limit on elderly care facilities was imposed in response to the introduction of the vaccine.

She said 89 percent of the state’s elderly care facilities were unaffected by the restriction as 70 percent of their residents were vaccinated.

“This is just one example of where we are moving nationally and also in South Australia,” she said.

“When we know we have high vaccination rates, we can easily make different decisions about such restrictions.”

Stevens told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning that limiting pubs, clubs, restaurants and cafes to 50 percent of capacity would have the “greatest effect”.

“In the last few months we have worked with three employees per four square meters, which corresponds to about 75 percent of the capacity. So this is a reasonable step backwards for these companies and that will obviously have an impact, ”he said.

“The harsh reality is that we have a worrying situation in New South Wales, Queensland is of particular concern to Professor Spurrier and we are also seeing that the Northern Territory and Western Australia are also taking steps to control a possible outbreak there .

“I think it would be naive to expect that we avoided it completely.”

Stevens said authorities could not give an “absolute guarantee” that the restrictions would only last for seven days, but they were “hopeful” that the week-long deadline would give them enough time to see how other states are doing with theirs Circumvented COVID outbreaks.

“It’s a seven-day goal at this point and hopefully after that seven-day period we can go back to where we were 24 hours ago,” he said.

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Australian Hotels Association SA general manager Ian Horne told InDaily that he “estimated” the impact of the restrictions on the state’s economy would be on the order of $ 30 million.

He said the estimate is based on data from the Center of Economic Studies collected after the three-day lockdown last November.

“The cancellations were the same – we got calls from five-star hotels to caravan parks saying the bookings are just falling off,” he said.

“The immediate impact is on workers whose shifts are being cut or reduced, and this time they have no JobKeeper to fall back on.”

Meanwhile, Colin Shearing, CEO of South Australian Independent Retailers, said some supermarkets are already facing the depletion of toilet paper supplies caused by the return of panic buying.

He told InDaily that supermarkets currently have no shopping restrictions, but “that could change in a moment.”

“It’s just moronic behavior,” he said.

“At the moment there is no problem with the supply, but the problem is that the other states are blocked and we are only a small part of the market, of course South Australia will feel the effects as well.

“It’s not as bad as it was last year when we had a full lockdown, but it’s definitely noticeable.”

SA Pathology tested nearly 7,000 people yesterday.

– with AAP

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stormycastles · 7 years

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NPR: How A Shocking Attack Inspired India's Actresses To Fight Harassment

November 4, 2017 | NURITH AIZENMAN

Sayanora Philip (foreground), a singer in Mollywood films, takes a selfie with fellow members of the newly formed Women in Cinema Collective.

Listen here

Every day seems to bring a new high profile case of sexual harassment in American media. It began with accusations against Harvey Weinstein. This week NPR's senior vice president of news was forced to resign over allegations against him.

But this problem is hardly limited to the U.S. For the past several months one of India's major film industries has been made to face up to similar problems in its own ranks after the sexual assault of a prominent actress. In reaction, women movie stars, directors and other film professionals have formed an unprecedented coalition to fight back.

They call themselves the Women in Cinema Collective, and the group includes some of the biggest names in "Mollywood." That's the nickname for the industry that produces movies in the 35-million-strong South Indian state of Kerala in the local language of Malayalam — and which is not to be confused with "Bollywood," the better known nationwide Hindi-language film industry based in the city of Mumbai.

Launched in May, the WCC has been lobbying both the industry and political leaders for a host of reforms — ranging from setting up an official complaints system through which women could report harassment and get justice to the stipulation that production companies must provide such long-denied basics as toilets appropriate for women on set.

Perhaps no one is more surprised at their newfound activism than the women themselves.

"None of us thought we could all stand up and ask for the same thing," says Rima Kallingal, a prominent movie actress. "None of us thought of it."

That all changed on an evening last February, when a Mollywood actress got into a chauffeured car hired by the company producing a film she was working on. According to a judge's summary of allegations made by the state prosecutor, suddenly another vehicle rammed the car from behind. A gang of men jumped out of that vehicle and forced their way into the actress's car. Over the next couple hours they drove around with her as their prisoner, taking photographs and video as they sexually assaulted her.

"I can't even imagine the psychological pressure she went through when she was in that car," recalls Kallingal, who is a close friend of the actress. (As a matter of policy, NPR does not name individuals who are the alleged victims of sexual assaults unless they choose to be identified).

Kallingal believes that, whatever their aim, the assailants assumed the actress would be too traumatized or ashamed at the prospect of the photographs being made public to report the crime.

"That's where she proved everybody wrong," says Kallingal. That same night, after the actress was set free, she contacted the police.

"I still remember going to meet her the very next day," says Kallingal. "How she stood like a rock and was so clear that she was going to come down on every person who was involved in this."

Within days police had arrested several men, including one whom the actress had recognized during the attack as someone who had driven her car during a previous film shoot, according to the judge's summary of the prosecutor's allegations. (An attorney for the man told NPR his client will be pleading not guilty in the case and was not involved in the attack.)

Kallingal says that in India survivors of a sexual assault are often either blamed or pitied as somehow irreparably soiled. So the actress's defiance was a watershed moment.

"She changed the whole narrative with that single act of bravery."

She also inspired her female colleagues to start a conversation they'd never had before. At first they were simply phoning each other out of shock — and to discuss ways they could lend the actress their public support. But the fact that the attack had taken place on a work trip, and, allegedly at the hands of someone who had been employed in the film industry, soon prompted deeper conversations about how safe any of them could feel in an industry that is loosely organized and requires them to show up at all manner of odd hours to remote locations where all but a handful of their colleagues are men.

The more the woman talked, the more they confided in one another about instances of sexual abuse and even assault they had faced on the job.

"It was like we opened a can of worms," says Parvathy Thiruvothu, another top actress. "It was really shocking for everyone once we got together, about 20 of us, that we have been either assaulted or faced the casting couch in the industry over years and we've never spoken about it even with each other. We were all made to believe that it was just us, just that one incident, [that] it doesn't happen to everybody."

The stories they shared ran the gamut: Women getting slapped for expressing creative differences on set. Male actors and directors making lewd comments on set or sending suggestive texts late at night. Directors and male stars or even male crew members insisting that a woman, including not just actresses but support staff such as hair stylists, sleep with them over the weeks that a film was being shot — and docking a woman's pay or getting her blacklisted if she refused. For some women, refusal wasn't even an option.

"I was assaulted," says Thiruvothu. On one of her movies, a powerful man in the industry "would expect me to be in his room to discuss scenes and be physical with me. I was really young at the time, and for him to say 'It's okay, you know, it's very normal' and for me to try to escape — and I didn't. I was forced to be intimate."

What's more, she says, in conversations she's now had with other Mollywood women, they've told her this same man assaulted them as well — and that he's one of a few men who appear to be repeat offenders. "These men are still reigning in this industry as powerful people," she says. "We have our Weinsteins here."

But when it comes to naming them publicly, that's where the parallel with Hollywood ends. Whereas Weinstein's accusers have been greeted with virtually universal support from both their colleagues in Hollywood and the wider public, Mollywood women say they worry the reception would be very different if they were to take on major figures.

"We would be plucked out. We would be hushed down," says Thiruvothu.

And not just because of the blaming and shaming that anyone reporting sexual assault in India may face. In India, being in the movie business in particular can open a woman to accusations of having loose morals, says Bina Paul, a veteran film editor: "It's considered rather taboo to enter cinema." So much so that the first hurdle a woman often faces to joining the industry is her family's disapproval.

Thiruvothu agrees. "Even now as an actor, the way I get comments on social media is that, 'Hey, you sleep around. You're not even a pure woman, you're just a whore."

So when cases do come to light, says Paul, "it's always twisted [as] she was willing to, or she wanted to get ahead in her career."

As for the film industry itself, Mollywood's treatment of the actress who was attacked in February hasn't inspired confidence among the women of the WCC. In July police charged one of the industry's most famous actors with hiring the gang that carried out the attack. According to the judge's summary, the prosecution alleges that the actor, Gopalakrishan Padmanabhan Pillai, who goes by the stage name Dileep, bore a grudge against the actress for precipitating the breakup of his marriage by conveying information about him to his then-wife, with whom the actress was close friends.

An attorney for Dileep says he was not involved in any way. And to the dismay of the women in the WCC, some of the most prominent men in Mollywood have started speaking out in Dileep's defense.

Kallingal, the actress who is close friends with the survivor of the February assault, does not dispute these men's right to maintain Dileep's innocence until he is proven guilty. But she says that by neglecting to simultaneously express concern for the actress they have been essentially conveying that "they stand with him and not with her." Worse, she says, "there are people who are questioning [the actress's] morality, her integrity, her character even."

Thiruvothu and others say this climate explains why few women in India's other film industries — including Bollywood — have come forward through the #metoo campaign that has proven so galvanizing in Hollywood.

"I have friends in every single Indian film industry," says Thiruvothu. "This is not just an issue of [Mollywood]."

How to change the culture of silence? The women of the WCC say they concluded that the first step was to band together.

"We thought our individual voices were not strong enough," says Kallingal. "So we should voice our opinion strongly together, in one voice."

Among their key demands is the establishment of a complaints committee with the power to investigate charges of sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination and to punish the perpetrators with sanctions ranging from reprimands to dismissal — even to legal charges, if warranted.

Indian law actually already requires companies of a certain size to institute such systems. But because the film industry functions more informally — with crews coming together for film shoots for several weeks, then disbanding — the assumption has been that the law does not apply. Now the WCC is consulting legal experts to assess if that's really true, and, even if so, what legal steps would be needed to set up a complaints adjudication system for their industry.

In May members of the WCC also met with the chief minister of the state of Kerala, who agreed to their request to appoint a commission that is now studying the question.

But while addressing harassment is a top priority, the WCC also wants to find ways to remedy a host of other forms of gender discrimination that its members say contribute to making their industry inhospitable to women: unequal pay; a lack of maternity benefits; failure by management to provide bathroom facilities for women on set; contracts that permit movie producers to substitute a nude body double without an actress's consent; and just a general culture of not treating women's contributions seriously.

"In every way they belittle you," says Kallingal.

They're also exploring ways to bring more young women into the industry — state-sponsored scholarships to study at film schools, for instance, or state laws that would incentivise companies to hire more women. And not just as actresses or hair stylists. Right now says Paul, "You don't have women gaffers. You don't have women technical staff. We're so outnumbered. You go on to a film set and there are three women and 80 men."

In addition the WCC is encouraging the industry's professional associations to start training workshops on appropriate workplace behavior. For instance, says Thiruvothu, the men who comment on a woman's body on set, "they really do feel that it is normal to do that and that it's actually a compliment."

But she says it's not just the men who need educating: "The women have been taught to giggle and allow it. We all are part of the problem. We all think it's okay."

Indeed the women say their conversations have made them realize how much they had internalized the view that they should minimize inappropriate behavior by men for the sake of keeping the peace.

Thiruvothu recalls how from childhood, whenever she was pinched or groped — like the time when she was 17 and a man at a shopping mall grazed his hands over her breasts and then just walked past — adults told her it was best not to make a scene.

"That's how society has trained us — to take it all in and implode," she says. "I think we've imploded enough. It's coming out now."

Freelance writer Chhavi Sachdev contributed reporting to this story.

#a non-malayali desi friend heard this on the radio #and called me to ask what this was all about #i'm so proud of them #women in cinema collective #me too #malayalam cinema #parvathy #rima kallingal #bina paul #dileep #bollywood #indian cinema #tamil #telugu #kannada #marathi #bengali #harvey weinstein #npr

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the-dark-side-of-the-blog · 7 years

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Appetite For Destruction 30 Years On:

The most perfect album by the most imperfect of bands. 1987 was the year Appetite came out and changed rock music forever and things looked very different back then for Axl and co. While they might be back together now and reforming some of the attitudes and tendencies that made them (and specifically Axl) the unofficial douche-bags of rock in 1987 what was ahead for GnR was seemingly endless conflict and controversy. Fights with just about every other major rock artist, as well as with each other would soon ensue. Accusations of racism, misogyny and homophobia would tarnish how many viewed the band’s work and of course their (again mostly Axl) attitude toward fans would garner huge criticism and in the case of the riots destruction. Yet for all of their many imperfections there is no getting away from the fact that Appetite for Destruction is the closest to perfection a rock album can be.

So let’s begin with it’s peerless opener. Like a few songs on this album you may have heard Welcome to the Jungle enough times for the rest of your life but that doesn’t take away from the mastery of this track. It is a hard rock anthem of the highest order and one that loses none of it’s power or energy 30 years on. If Appetite was a movie Welcome to the Jungle would be it’s opening establishing shots, but they’d be the most amazing establishing shots ever. It sets the tone for an album full of songs perfectly crafted by Axl and Slash. Their dynamic on this song and album really represents the height of a singer/guitarist duo.��

Welcome to the Jungle is a song with such a clear voice as well. There’s nothing generic about the lyrics what-so-ever, which distinguishes it in an era of bland ballads. That distinctive voice characterizes the whole album. So how do you follow up one of the greatest openers on an album ever, with another killer track that may best define, at least the first half of, the album.

On a surface level It’s So Easy is a celebration of the excesses of their rock n’roll lifestyle, with it’s horribly sexist lyrics and descriptions of destructive behavior but really like so much of this album it is pointing to the emptiness of it all. “It’s so easy but nothing seems to please me” demonstrates how GnR were not just the thoughtless epitome of sex, drugs and rock n’roll they presented themselves as. It shows that there was a prevailing sense of unfulfillment and awareness that this life wasn’t what it was all about, if the title of the album didn’t already indicate as much.

And just before you can catch your breathe here comes the Nightrain. While Axl may not be ranked among rock’s greatest lyricists generally and for good reason, his writing rarely aspired to any kind of poetic profundity, every song on this album just has the most amazing lyrical hook. Here we have “I’m on the Nightrain/Ready to crash and burn/I never learn” which by itself is already amazing not to mention it is surround by just about the most bad-ass rock song ever written.

The next track Out Ta Get Me, would be the lead single on just about anyone else’s album but here it is the weakest track in the first half and feels like a slight detente, even though it is still full of that anger and energy. Coming after it though are another two unmissable classics. Even with it’s comical “Yowzaa” conclusion, Mr Brownstone is a great rock song with another unforgettable hook “We’ve been dancing with Mr Brownstone/Hey’s been knocking/He won’t leave me alone.”

Even for an album wall to wall with classics, there are three songs that do stand out. One is Jungle, another we have yet to get to but you can probably guess what it is, but the middle of this genre defining trifecta comes midway through the album in the form of Paradise City.

A song all about lost horizons “so far away”, perfectly placed in the middle of the album. The iconic chorus juxtaposes the rest of the verses. The simplicity and innocence of that central sentiment “take me down to the paradise city/where the grass is green and the girls are pretty” re-frames much of the debauchery of the album’s first half and bridges us into the the “roses” half of the proceedings. Axl would try again to present his experience as a naive hick in LA’s seedy underbelly with the regrettable One in a Million, but with Paradise City he captures it perfectly to deliver GnR’s most anthemic track.

As Paradise City comes to a crescendo we end the first half of the album and move from the Guns to the Roses. The dichotomy of the album’s two halves is not as simple as first half is all, violence, drugs and debauchery and the second half is all love and flowers, the second half is plenty seedy to at times but there is a shift.

The track-listing of this album is again perfect as we go from Paradise City into My Michelle. While there is this shift from the first half to the second half, My Michelle eases this transition with it’s daddies who work in porno and mommies six feet under ground, it covered in enough dirt to fit nicely in the first half but it’s verse about everyone needing love hints at a tonal shift.

Then comes Think About You a good song that can get lost on an album of great ones. Following Think About You though is a song that would stand-out on any album. A distillation of rock-pop perfection. A song that takes a great album and makes it one of the greatest ever. Quite simply one of the best songs ever recorded. Sweet Child O’Mine.

If you can somehow think back to the first time you listened to it, initially it can almost present itself as just a well crafted ballad but it is so much more than that. The sound of guitar at the beginning is heavenly and the lyrics are subtly brilliant. When you read about Axl’s tragic upbringing and then hear him sing about “childhood memories” it adds a level complication and melancholy to what could seem a straightforward love song. Axl’s talk of the “thunder and rain”, often thought of as a reference to his mother’s mental health problems underlines this sense of melancholy and the final repeated “where do we go now” has an almost existential quality to, once again muddying the seeming idealism of the track. Yet there is no ignoring the sugary optimism inherent in the song and that is part of what makes it so perfect as the 9th track and virtual climax of this album, as all the darkness of the rest of the album is offset and made palatable by the undiluted love of this song. I could write another few thousand words on Sweet Child, it means that much to me. It belong on a very short shortlist of my favorite songs ever. Put simply music has the power to affect you in profound ways and to use the song’s words Sweet Child O’Mine is a track “that takes me away to that special place” and for that I’ll never get sick of hearing it no matter how overplayed it is and for all of their sins part of me will never not love Axl and co, because they gave me this.

Where do we go now? becomes a pretty good question after a song of that power but the album continues strongly with You’re Crazy. After a song as loving and idealized as Sweet Child O’Mine it makes sense that GnR revert back to their more aggressive, cynical side, keeping the balance of the album just right. Again not the most PC song ever and part of a series of crazy-ex-girlfriend songs written by Axl but at least this one is not explicitly misogynistic and has great energy.

Anything Goes is not a bad song but it is the closest thing to a filler track on an album famous for having none. The album would not necessarily benefit from Anything Goes being cut, but it also would not necessarily be detrimental to the album’s legacy either.

And onto the final track we go.Rocket Queen is a great closer but a song maybe remembered for the wrong reasons. It is a song famous for having a recording of Axl and Steve Adler’s girlfriend, having sex. Now while admittedly morally questionable and artistically dubious, it does nonetheless add something of an edge to an album that admittedly already had plenty. More than anything though it distracts from the fact that Rocket Queen is actually a great song and an amazing closer. It perfectly captures so much of what the album as whole is about. It is dripping in grime and seediness but there is also just hints of light amidst the dark. While Axl may literally be screwing his friend’s girlfriend in the song, it is ultimately a song about friendship, at least the second half is. It manages to get take some of that Sweet Child O’Mine positivity and mix it with the sex and drugs of the jungle and for that it makes a great closer to one of rock’s defining albums.

So there you have it, 30 years on and Appetite is still every bit the undeniable masterpiece it was in 1987. Some may say that GnR might have squandered their potential to be one of the greatest rock bands ever in the vein of a Zeppelin or an Aerosmith, but that’s not true because with Appetite for Destruction Slash and Axl secured a legacy befitting of any great rock band. GnR did great work after but they didn’t have to. Appetite for Destruction is a rock album of such near unparalleled perfection, if Axl had never picked up the mic and Slash the guitar, everything still would have been okay because they gave us this and you could never ask for more.

#guns n roses #appetite for destruction #axl rose #slash #not in this lifetime #sweet child o' mine #paradise city #welcome to the jungle #Aerosmith #led zeppelin

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ghostmartyr · 7 years

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SnK 96 Thoughts

The good news is, we’re not in Marley anymore.

That’s it.

Boy do I wish we were in Marley.

That’s maybe an unfair thing to say, because if we were still on Marley, I would probably spend the next five to ten paragraphs complaining about why we shouldn’t be on Marley, but my initial response to this chapter is to ask what is volume 24 ending with that is so important we have to drag out the story like this?

That is definitely an unfair thing to say, but I feel it.

As a piece of the story, I’m mostly okay with this existing. One of the nice things about Isayama not following standard pacing techniques is that unnecessary expansions can contain some nice character moments. His characters are great, so that works out.

In the distant future, where we didn’t wait a month to see Wall Maria falling one more time.

(If the person who suggested that we’ll get back to the Paradis crew once Reiner has finished flashbacking his perspective of the entire manga turns out to be right, I... I don’t even know. No.)

As someone who’s not particularly attached to RAB... uh.

I like how they were always terrible at coming up with plans together (”we were going to do this stretch with two people, but now that we don’t have two people, we’re going to do the exact same plan, only it will nearly kill you before anything is accomplished. aaaand break!”)

I like the page of Bertolt staring up at the wall.

I like Dina walking past Bertolt (she made a promise to the man she loves, after all).

I like every moment Annie is not in a crystal.

But this is so dull, considering where we currently are in the story. We’ve just been introduced to all the horror that is Marely, we’ve seen none of the Paradis cast for four years, in-universe, and instead of doing anything with that, now we’re back to material that the very first chapter covered.

It’s like reading the instruction manual for the desk that you just watched someone put together.

Were previously unknown details established? Yes.

Was there any reason to bother? Depends on how much value you place on the reading of instruction manuals for its own sake.

There are plenty of moments I will be happy that we have now, but mostly I’m staring sideways at my screen and wondering if anyone would notice if I just didn’t bother writing a chapter post this month.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah; blah blah blah blah blah blah blah--blah blah. Blah. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah.

Blah.

One of the interesting tidbits we did get this month was the origin of the story Bertolt tells Eren and Armin.

A man sees a monster and runs for his life, considering nothing else. He leaves his children to die, and survives to kill himself.

Reiner, Annie, and Bertolt don’t have children, but they do leave their friend behind, as well as Jaws. Then they spend the next five years letting their consciences and circumstances tighten the nooses around their necks.

So far, Bertolt’s the only dead one.

I like that he’s the one who the story sticks with. The day it happens is a nightmare for all involved except Ymir, but Reiner and Annie are the ones shouting at each other over it. They don’t need someone else to give their experiences a voice.

Bertolt, who has always believed that he has no will of his own, borrows the dead man’s voice for a little while. He remembers what it’s like to run blindly from death, only for more death to be waiting when he stops.

In other Bertolt news, hey, it took fifty chapters, but I finally believe that Bertolt has a crush on Annie!

I have no feelings about that, but four for you, manga! You go!

Also, despite being the only one to ever suggest that Eren needs help learning how to talk to girls, add Annie to the list of characters who completely misses the obvious in terms of romance.

Dude, if someone strongly objects to you saying you don’t have seductive charms, that might be a slight indication of them considering you attractive. Just saying.

...I think Annie probably has no feelings on Bertolt having a crush on her, either. Tough break, kid. I mean, we already know that you die without telling her, but maybe this makes it easier to be at peace with that.

Speaking of Annie, I forgot how much I appreciate her perspective: “This all sucks, everyone sucks, I am an everyone.”

Going back to the tried and true word producer of comparing Marley kids to Paradis kids, when Historia goes on her rant about how the titans should just go ahead and eat everyone, she’s saving her new friend’s life.

When Annie expresses a similar sentiment, she’s kicking the life out of Reiner.

That about sums up the general psychological health of Marley Eldians versus Paradis Eldians: Appalling, but one side has the option of undergoing treatment.

If you really want to have fun with it, or are just really, really bored and trying to come up with something less boring to say, this chapter is titled, “The Door of Hope.” Taking that literally, RAB knock down that door, opening the rest of the world to hope. That thing Paradis still has, and can fight for under its own name.

The hope Marleyan Eldians have feeds a negative loop that furthers the suffering of their people despite their best efforts. Paradis, as it stands, has grown people who have started taking steps outside their harmful cycles, bringing about positive change to themselves, and possibly the world.

...Taking this another flight down the touchy-feely route, Marley, and the First King, are of the opinion that Spiral energy is going to doom the world, and needs to be contained or destroyed.

The Survey Corps is Team Dai-Gurren.

Anti-Spiral: You continue to struggle, even knowing what you know? Simon: Of course we do! The tomorrow that we're trying to grab for ourselves... is not the tomorrow that you've set out for us! It's the tomorrow that we choose for ourselves: a tomorrow that we choose out of all the infinite universes. We'll fight our way through. We'll keep fighting and protect the universe! We'll stop the Spiral Nemesis too! Anti-Spiral: You can't possibly accomplish all that! Simon: Just watch us!!

Jury’s still out on whether they’re actually Team Dai-Gurren, or some of those no-name Spiral Warrior schmucks that leave a graveyard behind, but the underlying principle that’s shielded the people we know on Paradis is that if there’s a wrong, it should be fought, and it can be fixed, even if they don’t know how yet.

Marleyan Eldians aren’t protected by that belief, so we get Annie repeatedly kicking Reiner in the face in lieu of accomplishing anything helpful.

That sounds about right.

I’ve avoided talking about Reiner this chapter, because I’ve done a lot of complaining already, and I don’t want my dislike of the guy to make this a totally unfun read.

The scene where he brings Annie and Bertolt over to his way of thinking is the latest example of why Reiner’s status as an interesting character doesn’t endear him to me.

Reiner’s tied up in a million different knots before he ever steps foot on Paradis. His mother plants a purpose in his heart that turns to desperate, slavish devotion, that makes him break instead of bend. His father destroys the dream that inspires it all. Once he does reach Paradis, Marcel completely shatters his confidence and self-worth.

All that’s left is his mother.

All that’s left is the mission.

Reiner commits himself beyond sense. He doesn’t simply decide on a course of action; he has to perform. This has to work. He covers up his fragility with twisted cords of steel that refuse to give an inch.

This is how he survives, and he won’t let Bertolt and Annie talk themselves out of it. They’re doing this. If they don’t want to, he’ll make them want to.

“So in other words, you’re going to threaten us to protect yourself?”

Reiner says he doesn’t know, but that’s what he does. The boy who turns into a man who will consistently throw himself in the way of physical harm to protect his comrades will throw them under the bus to help them all out of the street. Physical safety isn’t one of his top priorities outside of this incident, but emotional safety repeatedly sees him lashing out.

He terrorizes Falco because he’s poking holes in a system that Reiner can’t turn his back on.

He screams Marley fanaticism at Galliard for calling him the least likely to be chosen as a Warrior.

He threatens Annie into helping him kill Marco so that Bertolt doesn’t have to.

He makes similar arguments to get them back on track for breaking down the wall, because this can’t end without success.

Reiner’s suffered unspeakably, but he has a nasty tendency to wield that trauma as a weapon against people who are getting in the way of the goals that trauma gave birth to in the first place. He does not bend. He breaks, and reforges, and will break other people to make it to the finish line.

He’s the one who binds himself, Annie, and Bertolt together. He creates the rallying cry of going home. He gives them the fuel to move forward.

Because he needs this to work.

The older he gets, the more he models himself after Marcel and the more he becomes a sturdy soldier, the more he finds his true cause. He finds stability. He can act on belief, not desperation. As he tells Shadis on the final page, he’s here to save humanity, and he means it.

But under the surface is this complete mess that got him to that conclusion, and it still has its grip on him. He doesn’t know what’s right or wrong, but he does know that he’s going to see his duty through until the end. That’s what he has left to work with.

He still needs his mission to go right. It’s quieter now that he has more skill and experience, but deep down he’s just as emotionally fragile as he's always been, and the paths that drives him down at breakneck speed haven’t changed all that much.

Reiner’s a character who just... bothers me, because the emotional destruction he causes people doesn’t seem to register as long as the end is okay.

Not that the end has ever really been okay.

It’s obviously a way more extreme problem as a child (Reiner strangling Annie while he says they’ll all go home together is possibly more disturbing than Eren murdering people at a younger age), but his problem resolution skills could still use a remedial course or five.

Anyway, yeah.

This has been... a post.

To wrap it all up, let me just say that Annie is the best, and despite the whining, seeing the disastrously unchill murder children trying to make things work is always a trip.

...Is that what we find out at the end of 24?

She’s coming out of the crystal?

The 98 hype is real.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 96 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #Reiner Braun #tl;dr #chapter post #sorry this post is what it is #I don't really have anything funny to add #I'm just sorry

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vicostoness · 5 years

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The Debate Over Home Renovation Warehouse

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The Tried and True Method for Home Renovation Warehouse in Step by Step Detail

Before you remodel, follow these actions to acquire your home improvement job on the ideal start. Your house is among your most valuable assets and a place in which you devote a whole lot of time with your loved ones and family members. In any case, a reasonably priced and well-executed renovation project could possibly be just what you've got to earn your house more enjoyable and livable for your family members. The first thing you are going to want to do is assess the reach of your remodel. The very first thing you're going to need to do is assess the reach of your remodel. The most significant thing is to select the opportunity to consider just what the faucet is going to be used for the most. Part of a checklist is a powerful timetable, especially if there's a time limit on your residential remodeling undertaking. With the lack of a guide similar to this checklist, you will certainly lose as much money however, you will also lose your precious time and energy. This guide can help you understand when to fix period features and when to replace them. Switching to Mother Earth's favor won't only help you lower the negative effect on the environment but it is going to also enable you to decrease your monthly bills and enhance the comfort levels of your house. After the time arrives to renovate your premises, it can look like there are a million and one unique things you must consider. Your family could have a problem, too.

The Home Renovation Warehouse Stories

Kitchen interior is a heart of your house and you need to make it a proper one to truly feel comfortable whilst working over there. Frames could be of unique shapes and sizes with various themes. The furniture at Royal Interior are a few of the most beautiful we have observed in Singapore, and I strongly suggest checking it out in the event you have deep pockets. It can likewise be done when specific design ideas to be applied to a home design isn't applicable to the present structure of the home. It should have proper instructions and guide on the way to use it for cleaning purposes. You might adore the house that you bought but it's still possible that some pieces of it just don't reflect your individual taste and fashion. Our second interaction was not as bad. When you decorate, replace the tiles at the identical time to enhance the general aesthetic look. When it has to do with tiles for example, which is among the more prevalent materials and is generally employed in areas which have the inclination to be wet like your kitchen and bathroom, make sure they're not cracked or have chipped edges. Figure out how to update the exterior of your house with new cladding, a new roof or a new driveway, together with advice on the little changes that may make a huge difference. You should also think about lighting and be positive it is wired safely. You might want to have additional lights installed. Read the full article

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 7 years

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[Exclusive] The Sounds of SAW: An Interview with Composer CHARLIE CLOUSER

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/exclusive-sounds-saw-interview-composer-charlie-clouser/

[Exclusive] The Sounds of SAW: An Interview with Composer CHARLIE CLOUSER

Once upon a time, way back in 2004, a then relatively unknown James Wan made his directorial debut with a little film called Saw. The film rocked the horror world and was an instant hit in the genre. Since then, the Saw universe has continued to grow, expand and ask the now infamous question;

“Do you wanna play a game?”

While Saw has experienced different directors, writers, proteges and victims, one of the constants that has helped truly unify the Saw universe is the music of Charlie Clouser. As a former member of NIN and his years working with artists such as Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and David Bowie, Clouser was well versed in the world of electronic and industrial music when he took on his first solo scoring gig with Saw. I recently had the privilege of speaking with Charlie for a bit and we talked about all things Saw, including the upcoming Saw Anthology releases from Lakeshore Records. Check out our conversation below:

Rachel Prin for NOFS: In 2004, the very first Saw movie was released and it was our first introduction to the now infamous “Hello Zepp” theme. Did you realize you were creating a theme at the time?

Charlie Clouser: I kind of had a game plan going in that I discussed a lot with James Wan and Leigh Whannell, that we thought it would add extra impact to that twist ending, and the sort of thing that’s become a sort of trademark in a lot of the Saw movies, the ending reveal montage where there’s a lot of quick cuts and flashbacks to earlier scenes in the movie while Jigsaw’s voice narrates and explains the parts you may not have seen earlier in the film. So it was kind of on purpose that the whole main body of the movie had a score that was just very murky and indistinct and kind of blurry and didn’t really state musical ideas, thematic ideas strongly at all.

As it turns out, if you dissect the notes, chords, harmonies and everything that’s used earlier in the movie, they relate to the “Hello Zepp” theme, but they’re transposed down a couple of semi-tones so that it’s just a slight shift when the actual theme comes in at the end. We really felt like we wanted it to be as if the bright lights get turned on when that ending theme begins. So you spent the whole movie in this cloudy, murky, dark indistinct world of music and sound that then gets really insistent and shattering when it comes in full force at the end. So for that reason the sounds that are used in the ending theme aren’t used elsewhere in the movie and it’s sort of a whole different set of sounds and a different approach.

I knew that in order for that piece of music to work it would have to be fairly simple and kind of repetitive and hypnotic and not have a lot of musical information in there but still kind of start small-ish and then build as the insistent phrases kind of repeat. So once I had that game plan sort of in my mind, the creation of that “Hello Zepp” theme wasn’t something that took days, it really kind of came together kind of quickly because I had already established these kind of mental rules and conditions that it had to fulfill. I did most of the music in a few hours one day, spent the evening arranging it for a string quartet, the next day recorded a string quartet, and boom it was done.

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NOFS: What have been some of the films or composers that have influenced you and your scoring work?

CC: The kind of movies that I wind up liking and enjoying are often well outside the horror genre. Some of my earliest influences, for movie anyways, were all of Kubrick’s. That’s what I wanted to see on screen. Whether it’s movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or his version of Stephen King’s The Shining. I still think it’s the greatest horror movie ever made and even though maybe pure horror fans don’t feel like it fits in with their genre, I always thought that it was just fantastic. And of course the music that Kubrick uses a lot is not composed for his movies, but was music that he found in classical music collections and so forth.

I still remember seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in the theaters for it’s initial release when I was just a little kid and being so struck by these atonal choir pieces, by the composer Gyorgy Ligeti, and it’s just these dense tonal clusters that sounded so other worldly and unlike anything I’d heard before. Of course a lot of other music from that same kind of genre of super modern classical composers is also used in The Shining. There’s a lot of Penderecki, Bartok and these other composers and it’s almost a sonic experiment more than it is traditional classical music. The clattering, rattling, smacking sounds and weird atonal and dissonant elements; those kind of things have always been the pieces of music that stuck with me over the years. Mainly because it wasn’t anything that I knew how to do or just figure out how that music was put together by picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano. It was such a mystery to me how that music came to be and that was what drew me in.

Of course horror movies are perfect avenues to use atonal and dissonant and experimental kinds of music, more so than say an Indiana Jones kind of movie or something, and so that’s sort of what drew me into these kind of movies.

NOFS: Lakeshore Records has recently digitally released (with CD and vinyl forthcoming) the Saw Anthology Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 featuring music from all 8 Saw films. Were you involved in this process and if so what was your role?

CC: Oh yeah. They said ‘Look, you figure it out, you put it together and we’ll put it out’. So, it took me almost a month to go through all of the pieces of music. I literally went with a microscope, inspected and chose, out of the whole sum total of movies (there’s over 550 pieces of music in the source folders across all 8 of the movies). Since it’s coming out on vinyl, each side of a vinyl record is about 20 minutes, so I sort of set up a set of mental rules for myself that each movie would get 1 vinyl side and within that 20 minutes I would try to put my favorite cues from each movie in chronological order so that it felt like a miniature journey through the films themselves.

I didn’t do things like, put all the action cues from all 8 movies all together and that sort of thing. I tried to reduce each movie down to this 20 minute slab that maintained the order in which those pieces of music originally appeared in the film. Once I had that set of rules, I had at least some sort of guidepost that I could use to map things out, and it certainly was agonizing to throw away and skip over so many pieces of music that I liked, but I still wanted it to feel like it balanced. So that each 20 minute chunk from each movie would have a variety of stuff; the thematic melodic material and also some of the crazy action and trap scenes, and some of the weird floaty dark ambient stuff that fills up so much space in those movies.

So having that kind of game plan in place really helped me to organize my thoughts as I went through it. And I did combine a lot of pieces together where I might have 2 or 3 pieces of music that are only 30 or 40 seconds long, and I would combine those together and then graft them on to the front of a longer piece. To create a sort of flowing, landscape of longer pieces instead of just a million short little pieces of music with silence in between them. And I always like it when so many of my favorite albums growing up had that sort of feel, like Pink Floyd albums. Where the songs kind of cross faded against each other and it was just one long seamless experience, so I wanted to kind of emulate that as much as I could for this Anthology project.

NOFS: This is the first time any of the Saw scores have been released on vinyl. How do you view the importance of physical media and what is your connection to medium?

CC: Aside from the obvious sonic differences of listening to something on vinyl vs. CD, or streaming or whatever, the physical experience of holding something that’s large and slightly fragile and has to be treated with some kind of care and respect. You know, you don’t leave your vinyl records lying around on the floor the same way you might leave CD’s laying around in the glove box of your car, or downloads lying around cluttered on the desktop of your computer.

So that process, and that manner in which you have to physically interact with the vinyl certainly forces you to behave a little more carefully with the vinyl that you own. Not to be in such a hurry to grab one and throw it off to the side to listen to another one, and that is helpful because it kind of leads the listener to not be in such a hurry to skip over songs and get to the next one. I always prefer that on vinyl, if you do want to skip over a song you have to carefully lift the tone arm off the record and carefully place it down, as opposed to a CD or a stream where you just hit the next track button. I’m glad that vinyl makes it more difficult to skip over things because then maybe people will take the time and just relax a little bit and let the music flow along.

That’s also kind of why I wanted to combine a bunch of different pieces of music into longer suites and to kind of cross fade them all together so that you can’t get in between every track and it kind of forces the listener to sit back and let this whole 8 minute thing with it’s peaks and valleys kind happen. The resurgence of vinyl and people’s love for a big solid hunk of physical media sort of has parallels in the resurgence we’ve seen recently with big hardware synthesizers for musicians in the studio.

For a long time it seemed like everything was going to just occur inside a computer. We had so many great software programs for creating music that everybody was just jumping on that bandwagon, and then a few years ago we started to see the resurgence of synthesizers that reminded us of the 1980’s. Back when things were big and had lots of knobs and were sort of expensive and delicate. There’s been a real resurgence in that as well and I think it really comes down to the tactile experience of wanting to touch the thing, to feel like you can feel the sound waves emanating from it. I think both of those phenomena are kind of related in some way.

NOFS: Do you have any go-to Saw instruments or techniques that you only use in the Saw films?

CC: Yeah, there’s a whole category of sounds and techniques that I use, that in my mind anyway, that really only apply to that world. I have a bunch of strange handmade acoustic instruments that are basically made out of pieces of scrap metal, which you can play with a violin bow or with sticks and most of them involve some kind of metal sheet or metal rods that’ll produce sound when you operate them. I have a whole family of 5 or 6 variations of that kind of instrument that were built by a metal sculptor and musician named Chas Smith that I’ve known for a long time. In my mind those instruments are restricted for use only on Saw movies because they’ve become a big part of the sonic landscape that I use in those movies. And they also create sounds that are just so heavy-duty scary that they don’t really apply in less insane kind of scoring work.

NOFS: After a 7 year hiatus, did you ever think you’d be coming back to the world of Jigsaw?

CC: You know, I secretly knew that somewhere deep down inside that, even though the 7th movie was called the “Final Chapter”, I knew they weren’t gonna let this thing die. We had been doing the movies every year, one per year for 7 years straight, and it was always a mad dash to get the things finished. So once they decided to take some time off from the franchise I knew we’d be back. I didn’t know when, but they’ve created such a rich kind of cinematic universe of heroes and villains and victims that I knew they’d find a way. And at this point nothing would surprise me in the Saw universe. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there was even more yet to come.

NOFS: So, Saw 9…you in?

CC: Oh I’ll ride that horse into the sunset.

The response to this latest movie from the hardcore Saw fans was really good and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the phone rings and they say ‘Hey get back on the horse because we’re working on the script for the next one’. Of course, if they keep the franchise rolling, I’ll be all in for as many as they care to do. The first Saw movie was the first feature film that I scored by myself so it has a special place in my heart. I’m fine to do as many as they care to roll out. They can count me in.

The digital version of the Saw Anthology Vol. 1 & 2 is currently available from Lakeshore Records and you can find it here. CD & vinyl releases coming soon so stay tuned for more information on that.

Also available from Lakeshore Records, the digital release of the Jigsaw soundtrack. Make sure to check out that release here.

#charlie clouser #horror #horror movie #horror soundtrack #interview #james wan #jigsaw #Lakeshore records #new release #nin #saw #saw anthology #soundtrack #vinyl

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discovery-lies-in-new-eyes · 7 years

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1-101 (don't murder me please)

1. what colors are in your room? Blues, grays, black, and some other brighter and more vibrant colors. 2. who was your favorite school teacher? My English professor Niki!3. what are some passions of yours? Finding the beauty in all things, helping others, arts and crafts (anything I can get my hands on I try to learn how to do - currently woodworking and painting are my faves) 4. when you drink coffee, do you like it black or with cream and sugar? Cream and sugar. 5. are you self-conscious about anything? if so, what? I don't really like to be the center of attention. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess I feel as though I'm not worthy or enough. Why would anyone want to focus their attention on me?...but I'm working on feeling enough. 6. do you have any tips for self-love? Do anything and everything you can to make yourself feel the way you should about yourself. The more you look inward and focus on the love you deserve to give yourself the more I believe it's projected onto others. I found through yoga and meditation that I've grown to love parts of myself that I never thought possible. That I could give myself an hour a week to focus on me. I never realized that every time I said yes to someone else, not that it's a bad thing, and said yes to other things, too often I might add, it meant focusing less on myself. Somewhere down that road I lost interest in me, and I've realized it's time to give a little love back to myself. Even if it's only an hour a week. It's an hour I say yes to myself. An hour to check in...To learn to love my own company. 7. do you have any stuffed animals? Do you name them? I have a LOT of stuffed animals. They're mostly in the garage now-a-days. Recently, my girlfriend and I went to Wild Adventures to celebrate my birthday, and we won one another stuffed animals. I have a little dinosaur named Dino and she has a little purple elephant named Humfrey!8. do you like drawing or painting more? I love both, but currently painting. 9. how do you sleep? Typically on my left side but I roll in my sleep and wake up on my stomach a lot. I'm lucky enough to fall asleep on skype every night with the mot wonderful person. 10. what are some things that always make you smile? My girlfriend! My besties! Animals! Food...definitely food...especially of the taco variety... 😍😍11. living in the city, mountains, small town, or out in the middle of nowhere? Mm. Mountains or city! 12. what's your dream house? A little cabin in the mountains or a beach house. 13. how many pets do you wish to have? All of the petssssss!!! Oh my goshhhhh. 14. have you ever dyed your hair? do you want to? what color? I had highlights a couple of times when I was a teenager, and I've dyed it with temp. dye a couple times but nothing truly lasting. 15. what's your opinion on keeping a diary? I think it's a wonderful thing, to sort your thoughts and feelings and place them in a keepsake...I've tried to keep a steady journal and I'd stick with it for a few days and then stop for a month and then make a new entry...so I never keep up with it enough. 16. what's your opinion on keeping an art journal? See answer to 15! Lol. Very similar. 17. any art tips? Go with what you're feeling. 18. talk about a moment where time stopped. I've had quite a bit in the past 6 months..you know who you are 😊..but one in particular was the moment my girlfriend gave me my last birthday gift. It's one that will definitely last a lifetime. I cried because I was THAT happy! 19. do you keep playlists for your music? I do! 20. is there anyone out there that you trust with your life? There isa very select few, but yes. 21. are you your number one priority? Not often. 22. do you always type correctly or do you make millions of typos? I make typos often when I'm in a hurry or when I'm extra hyper, but typically I enjoy typing correctly. 23. recommend some music!! Sleeping at last, I prevail, Faber drive, and recently I've come to really enjoy Idina Menzel!24. are your nails perfectly painted, chipped, or plain? Plain Jane. 25. do you believe in wishing on a shooting star? I do! 26. did you see the eclipse? describe it!! I saw a few moments of it! A coworker let me borrow their glasses. We only had about 80%.27. tell us what you love about nature. I love that it's the one place I feel grounded (pun totally not intended). The one place I feel as though I can finally breathe. 28. who are you? describe yourself! Ehhhh. I don't wannaaaa. 29. what type of music do you like, and why? All types ranging from classical to heavy metal with the exception of like 98% country and rap. 30. what's your favorite clothing store?why do you love it so much? Hot topic and old navy but I'm a broke ass college kid so once a year will do it... ☹️ I love that hot topic has all of my nerdy pleasures and badass band ts but I love that old navy has pants that actually fit lol. 31. thrift stores or name brand stores? Thrift!!32. do you like wearing your s.o clothes? Oh. My. God. Is. This. Even. A. Question???? I have a giant pile of my gf's clothes on my bed at all times only about a foot away. She sleeps with a giant pile of mine and leaves half on one side of her and half on the other so if she shifts she can still cuddle with my clothing. She wears my shirts and pj pants to bed every night and ahhhhh asdfghjkl!!! 💙😍33. when did you start tumblr? why did you decide to? Umm. Junior year of high school I think? So about...5 years ago? I'm a junior in college now. I didn't really want a tumblr. The person I was dating at the time wanted me to have one so I did if they made it I would use it. I grew to loveee Tumblr instantly. 34. what's your face care routine? I like to wash my face in the shower, and use face masks. 35. freckles or dimples? Omg...the impossible question.. ermmm freckles! 36. name something you think should be banned from the universe. Littering. 37. tell us something you did as a kid that you loved. Every Sunday my dad and I used to go to the flea market. I miss it. 38. mom or dad? Mom. 39. do you buy expensive things just for the aesthetic or do you actually use everything you buy? Well we've already established I'm a broke college student sooo...typically if I buy it I'm going to use it and get its use out of it. I have a few items for show because I treat myself every now and again but not often. 40. tell us about something you're strongly opinionated about. Politics. 41. do you take peoples advice or do you have to figure things out yourself? I try to figure things out but I don't mind asking for advice whether or not I take it. 42. bra or no bra? Aha 😏😏43. would you rather be cute or comfy? Comfyyy! 44. tell us about a moment in your life where everything went just perfect. When I met her. 45. do you believe in anything? aliens? god? bigfoot? I believe in lots of things. Ghosts. Aliens. Purgatory or an "in between." Love. 46. how much water do you drink a day? I try to drink a lot of water, but I will treat myself with a Sprite here or there. Maybe some tea. 47. how do you feel about your natural hair? Ehhh. I used to hate it. I've more recently grown to like it. I wear it natural on occasion but typically straighten it. 48. what does the sky look like right now? clear? cloudy? pink? blue? rainy? It's looks like a sea of glitter because it's night time. 49. would you be a prince or a king? princess or a queen? Maybe a hobbit? 50. tell us about your favorite outfit! All black! Black skinnies, black vans, and a black v-neck! 51. name a few things you love about yourself. My hair. My eyes. My lips. My heart. 52. are you open-minded? I always try to be. 53. do you judge? could someone come to you in any situation they're in and you not judge them? I would hope I make everyone feel safe enough around me to come to me and know that I'll listen and not judge. Unfortunately society has taught us to make more judgements in first 5 seconds of knowing someone than we can count, and I try my best to break that habit. I try to closely follow, "don't judge a book by its cover."54. do you like planning ahead? I do, but it's good to be spontaneous! 55. tell us how you feel about school. I love learning about things and the way they work. 56. talk about your first pet. My first pet...well I was probably only about 5-7 yrs old and I picked out the runt of the litter of puppies my dog had and named her cowgirl. My first pet I had all on my own was a calico kitten named phantom. 57. chocolate or strawberry milk? Um..neither.. but chocolate if I must pick. 58. were you/are you in a fandom? if so, what? I enjoy cosplay but I don't really consider myself to be in a fandom. 59. spotify, pandora, or itunes? Spotify 60. favorite disney princess movie? Umm..they aren't princesses really but Pocahontas, Mulan, and Moana. 61. favorite disney movie...currently Moana 62. what's a subject that you think people don't talk about enough? History, Psychology, and Politics. 63. how long does it take you to let your phone update? Until it requires me to64. describe the fifth picture on your phone! The 5th from the top is a photo I took of a little fairytale garden named lichgate, and the 5th from the bottom is a picture of my beautiful girlfriend! 65. favorite movie and why? V for Vendetta. I'm fascinated with all of the symbolism. 66. do you watch studio ghibli? what's the first one you saw? what's your favorite one? Nope. 67. you're home alone. describe how the setting is. music? what kind of music? tv on? what show? Music of all sorts or TV while I do my homework. 68. how often do you say "i love you"? I try to say it as I feel it. I let someone know when I do. 69. do you have any weird things you obsess over? Office supplies and pennies 70. do you like being single or do you wish you had a partner? I have a partner!!! I love her very very much. I don't know what I'd do without her. 71. what's the last drink you had? Water. 72. talk about the easiest person to talk to. I would have to say my girlfriend. I'm lucky enough to have her as my gf and as my best friend! I also feel as though I could talk to my other besties about anything and everything. 73. give us some of your favorite blogs! Jiljer735, unevxntful, anything regarding the 100 lol 74. if you could have one wish, what would it be? That I could spend every day with the person I love. 75. do you sing in the shower? I love to! I can't promise it's good but I don't really care lol76. how often do you shave? or do you wax? or do you not shave? I like to shave my armpits very often. At least 4 times a week. Legs aren't always clean shaven. Maybe once or twice a week. I like to keep everything else nice a tidy. 77. tell us about a habit you wish you could stop. Biting my nails. 78. do you listen to your own advice? I try to. 79. do you love yourself? if not, are you trying to? I do a lot more than I used to. It's something that requires daily attention. 80. tell us about your favorite halloween!! what did you dress up as? did you get a lot of candy? I don't remember what I dressed up as, but I remember when I used to run around with my older brother hoping from neighborhood to neighborhood.81. first memory that pops in your head, talk about it. ...god take me back... she told me she never really liked the beach but she also hadn't been too too much...I decided to take her for a night trip to the beach. It was early spring, and the nights were still cold. We made it to the coast, and we laid out on a blanket beneath a sea of stars glistening across the water. Soft music playing. We danced to our song. We watched as the waves crashed into the shore sending out a long blue sparkle because of the bioluminescent phytoplankton. 82. how are you? what are you feeling? how has your week gone? I am well, and I feel well. My week has been pretty stressful and incredibly hectic. 83. rant. I hate that I'm stuck here when I really want to be with my girlfriend on her birthday. I was supposed to see her this weekend but because of Hurricane Irma I refuse to let her travel to see me. 84. do you worry about something a lot? if so, what? That I bore people or that I'm not making them happy because they always seem to be distracted or focused on other things when I'm trying to talk to them. 85. do you think long distance works? I absolutely do, and I think it builds a stronger lasting bond. 86. would you date someone younger than you? older than you? Nope. I have a girlfriend. She's 11 months older. I've dated up to 9 years older and 2 years younger though. I prefer older. 87. name some people you'd love to meet. Umm. Idk.... I'd have to really think about it for a while.... I don't have an answer atm. 88. what were some things you were scared of as a kid? Spiders, needles, furbies, and happy clowns...scary clowns are just fine...it's the happy ones you had to look out for! 89. tell us about your favorite birthday. Probably my 21st birthday that just passed! I got to celebrate with my family. 90. how is high school? It sucks monkey balls. I'm happy in college. 91. tell us the worst pick-up line you've ever heard...."how much does a polar bear weigh?" "enough to break the ice"92. every been groped or catcalled? how'd it make you feel? what did you do? I have been groped as well as catcalled. It made me pretty pissed because someone thought so low of me that they whistled at me like a dog or attempted to feel me up 93. opinion of feminism? Rock on! 94. tell us about a time you got embarrassed. Just recently. I don't really care to talk about it. 95. ever had a pregnancy scare? tell us about it! Never. One great thing about being hella gay is you have the best birth control. 96. tell us about your best friend. Well I've mentioned her quite a bit already and she's breath taking. She has the brightest and biggest heart. She inspires me often. Sam, my best friend of 16 going on 17 years is the bomb.com! I haven't been connected with my other bestie in a while but she's always in my heart and on my mind. I miss her like crazy! 97. what's your opinion on planning your life out? I think it's good to have a plan, but again, it's always great to just go and do. Be spontaneous. Do things that scare you. So what if it's awful timing. Make it work. Have an adventure. 98. describe what you think afterlife is like. I hope I'm reincarnated or that when I'm cremated that they'll plant a tree! 99. talking on the phone or texting? I used to say texting but there's nothing like hearing the voice of someone you care dearly for. 100. how do you feel about the way most teachers treat students? I think that most teachers are exactly their title. They're there to teach. Some are without a doubt awful teachers lol. Some are great, but very few are those ones that stick with us for the rest of our lives. I think teachers are incredible. They put up with a LOT of bullshit and yet are still willing to go out of their way to make sure you understand the things you're learning if only you ask. Many are there to help you. Genuinely help you. 101. what's a word you use more than others? Essentially, fuck, hella, uhhh I dunno.

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onlinemarketinghelp · 5 years

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If you’re looking to become an ecommerce entrepreneur, dropshipping is one of the easiest methods you can use to start your online business. But, why?

It doesn’t require much capital to get started. In fact, we wrote a guide detailing how you can start an ecommerce business with $0.00.

You don’t need a physical store. Since we’re talking about ecommerce here, you can run a successful dropshipping business from anywhere in the world. As a digital nomad, you’ll be able to travel the world, while making sure you have no regrets. You also don’t even have to stock any of the inventory yourself.

Everything you might need to learn is available for free online. You can use the vast number of articles, videos, and other educational material to learn on the go and achieve ecommerce success.

In this post, we’ll make sure to cover all major aspects of dropshipping.

Why You Should Try Dropshipping

Let’s say you’ve decided you want to start an ecommerce store. What are your next steps? Most entrepreneurs try to come up with a product idea, look for suppliers, pay for the products and get them into your real-world store. Then, once you receive your merchandise, you’ll try hard to make sales.

The problem is you don’t really know what will sell well, or if you will be able to sell the product at all. There’s a lot of risks involved in the traditional business model.

Here’s an example:

Elena buys 100 units of a particular product line, paying $1,000 in total.

She only sells 10 products and brings in $200 in sales.

Elena quickly realizes that nobody likes her products and decides to close her store.

She experiences a loss of over $800.

Alternatively, if she had tried dropshipping, she would have made $100 in profit in spite of failing to pick the right products at first. Here’s an illustration of this scenario:

Elena uses dropshipping, so she doesn’t buy products in advance;

She only manages to sell 10 products and brings in $200 in sales;

Elena orders the products from her suppliers and has them shipped directly to her customers;

She quickly realizes that nobody likes these products and decides to try a different niche or product instead;

Elena is still happy because she just made $100 in profit.

That’s how two very similar situations can bring very different results, with the key difference being dropshipping. Of course, if everything went well, she would have made $1,000 in profit in the first scenario. But don’t forget that people often overestimate their ability to create a successful ecommerce business, especially if it’s their first time. If you believe in numbers, more than 50% of Shopify store-owners never receive a single order at all.

So here’s the beauty of dropshipping. You don’t have to buy a product before selling it, so you don’t spend your precious budget on stock inventory.

You don’t even have to take our word for it that this system really works at little risk to you. You can read more about ecommerce entrepreneurs who use AliExpress dropshipping successfully here: The Huffington Post, The Next Web, Forbes.

What is AliExpress

AliExpress dropshipping is one of the most popular marketplaces for ecommerce entrepreneurs using the dropshipping business model. You can import the product content and images from AliExpress.com directly to your store, choosing from millions of different items right at your fingertips. You’ll also have the freedom to set your prices and markups. The best part is that after you sell a product, you purchase it from a supplier on AliExpress and then have it shipped directly from their warehouse to your customer. AliExpress dropshipping is simple, easy, and low risk for new ecommerce entrepreneurs.

How to Dropship With AliExpress

While we’ve already covered many of the benefits of dropshipping with AliExpress, this process can still be a bit difficult to grasp. So, before we go on, let’s explore how it works step by step.

How to utilize AliExpress dropshipping,

Firstly you’ll set up your online store using a platform such a Shopify.

Next, using an app like Oberlo, you’re ready to start importing products from the AliExpress Marketplace. Oberlo helps you to streamline and sync your imports from AliExpress with your Shopify storefront by notifying you of any inventory or price changes from your supplier, and it can aid you in sending tracking codes to your customers once their orders have been dispatched.

Finally, when a customer places an order with your store, you’ll then go to your supplier and order that exact same item to be shipped directly to them.

The infographic below offers a good visual representation of how AliExpress dropshipping works.

Why AliExpress Dropshipping

Although AliExpress suppliers are retailers themselves, the vast majority of users on the AliExpress platform are resellers and this is a well-known fact. Because of this AliExpress dropshipping is super simple as suppliers have already worked with dropshippers before and are willing to work to your needs.

To dropship from AliExpress there’s no upfront cost or fee so you can test out products without any financial commitment. Using the Oberlo app with Shopify you can find, import, and sell AliExpress products on your store with only a couple clicks.

FAQs About AliExpress Dropshipping

Now that this dropshipping guide has helped you understand the basics of dropshipping with AliExpress, you might still have unanswered questions. After all, dropshipping isn’t a traditional way of doing ecommerce, and there are additional steps involved in the process.

I work at Oberlo, a software app that helps ecommerce entrepreneurs automate their AliExpress dropshipping businesses. We receive hundreds of questions from budding ecommerce entrepreneurs every day. Here are the three most frequently asked questions we receive, along with the answers.

For a full list, check out this article.

Will My Customers Know If the Products Are Dropshipped From AliExpress?

Unlike other marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy), AliExpress has a very unique infrastructure that is most conducive to dropshipping. I’ve talked with dozens of suppliers using AliExpress. They all dropship, so you’ll find many suppliers who are reliable and familiar with this business model and their role in it.

Thousands of new merchants sign up with Oberlo every month, demonstrating the growing popularity and feasibility of dropshipping. While it can be a leap of faith to put your order fulfillment in the hands of suppliers, rest assured that there are rarely any promotions or invoices in the packages your customers receive. You can even tell your supplier not to include any of these materials to be on the safe side. In addition, you can even arrange for custom packaging and the AliExpress premium shipping known as ePacket. Do keep in mind that the packages your customer receives will have Chinese shipping labels.

Why Should Someone Buy From Me If They Can Buy the Same Product From AliExpress Cheaper?

This is an easy one: because you can do it better! You might be a superior marketer who reaches potential customers first. Also, you might create a more trustworthy brand that people feel safer buying from. In addition, you may also provide extra services or content that builds a relationship with your customer. Remember that the concept of merchants buying products from suppliers for lower prices and stocking them in their stores long predates dropshipping itself. Most stores in your own community likely do the same.

Regarding dropshipping, choose your battles wisely. There are strategies that are more likely to set you apart from competition than others. For one, don’t try to compete on price you will never be the cheapest. Especially with lower-priced products (<$100), the price is not the determining factor at all.

Look at the same product on several popular websites such as Milanoo.com, LightInTheBox.com, DHgate, and AliExpress. These companies are all multi-million dollar businesses. Are these companies price competitive? No. Are they out of business? No! Instead, focus on your marketing strategies and building an awesome brand.

AliExpress Shipping Takes Too Long, My Customers Won’t Wait. What Can I Do About It?

That’s just an assumption on your part, and I strongly suggest you test it. You’ll find that many customers are fine with waiting as long as you make the shipping times apparent on your site so that they know what to expect. While as mentioned above, you shouldn’t look to compete in terms of pricing, it is likely that you’ll be able to offer customers a pretty good deal on products sourced from AliExpress dropshipping even with a markup. People are willing to wait if it means attaining a discount.

Alibaba made over $17.7 billion in sales in one day. Customers of other businesses listed in the price comparison example don’t seem to be concerned with long delivery terms either.

As an ecommerce entrepreneur, your task is to establish clear expectations, define your shipping policy, and display it in the relevant areas of your online store. Seeing that information, some people might leave your site, but you’ll be surprised how many people really don’t care about that.

Another way to mitigate any distaste among customers over long shipping times is to offer free shipping on all of your products. Often, this alone will indicate to them that it’ll likely take a little longer to receive their product. You can account for the shipping costs in your product markups.

AliExpress Premium Shipping

With the AliExpress premium shipping ePacket delivery option, it takes only 7-14 days for most shipments to reach the US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and multiple other countries with bustling economies. We strongly recommend opting for ePacket whenever possible. It’s the perfect shipping option to help you achieve ecommerce success and higher customer satisfaction when you’re dropshipping from AliExpress!

How to Select Trustworthy AliExpress Suppliers

With AliExpress dropshipping, you can easily lose control over the customer experience because you never see the product since it’s shipped directly from your supplier’s warehouse to your customer.

If you’re trying to provide top-notch customer service, which is a must, dropshipping could become a liability. Although AliExpress as a marketplace handles improper suppliers as best as it can, we still suggest being very careful when selecting your dropshipping suppliers.

Here are some top tips from our dropshipping guide on how to select the best suppliers:

Don’t Always Go for the Lowest Price

Here’s an example of how the AliExpress dropshipping marketplace works:

A supplier called Original Hoodies starts selling a high-quality product named “blue hoodie” at $40. Then, another supplier named Competitive Hoodies manufactures the same hoodie but reduces its price to $15 by adding more polyester instead of cotton.

When a merchant such as yourself searches for a blue hoodie, he sees two that look the same, but one is selling for a lower price. In most cases, the merchant will pick the cheaper one. The first supplier, Original Hoodies, becomes unhappy with her sales and also replaces her “blue hoodie” cotton materials with polyester and reduces the price to stay competitive.

While opting for the lowest priced product might seem like the obvious choice, it’s key to remember that this kind of competition can cause the quality of marketplace products to go down. Suppliers try to be price competitive, and each product usually has a number of very similar variations, often at artificially reduced prices.

In short, the price on AliExpress.com goes down with the quality. If you’re trying to create a successful ecommerce business, then you’ll need to research and compare the prices offered from different suppliers. If a number of sellers have similar prices on the same product, but one supplier has a significantly lower price, this usually indicates that they have compromised on the quality of the product.

Here’s a guide that will help you decide what price is right for your products.

Buy From Suppliers That Have 95% and Higher Positive Feedback

A way to generally assess an AliExpress dropshipping supplier is through their positive feedback ratings. The rating systems for products and sellers are extremely important to every marketplace. Imagine you’re walking through a flea market, and someone shouts that the guy in next booth is a scammer. Would you buy from him? Probably not.

The same applies to the virtual AliExpress marketplace. Listen to what other merchants say about each supplier, and learn from that feedback. Essentially, look for the highest-rated suppliers in order to identify the most reliable ones.

Find the feedback ratings by navigating to a given supplier page on AliExpress.com and clicking on the feedback tab. The scores listed here are broken down as follows. The Feedback Score indicates the seller’s sales volume, while Positive Feedback represents the feedback rate the supplier has received. When you’re sourcing products for your store, you should always aim for a 95% or higher in positive feedback and at least a 2,000 feedback score. Also, don’t forget to look at customer picture reviews.

Be Careful With Branded Products

Known luxury brands on AliExpress.com are very rare. You can’t even search for Versace or Chanel products because these search keywords are blocked. If you notice a copyright infringement or a counterfeit item being sold on AliExpress, you should report it here. This could include items that are questionably similar in design to well-known brands or that include logos resembling those of more established ones.

However, it’s also important to note that not all branded products are fake. AliExpress often organizes partnership promotions with brands such as Lenovo as well as others. Just remember to exercise caution, and use your best judgment on this in order to avoid any problems.

Pay Attention to the Responsiveness of the Supplier

To test this, you can even make up an urgent issue and message a supplier about it to see how he or she responds. Things to take note of include the supplier’s response time and his or her command of English, along with the supplier’s ability to understand your problem and provide you with clear information. If he or she just responds with a generic, meaningless message, you can cross that supplier off your list.

After all, chances are good that at some point, you’ll have a real situation like the one you made up, and you’ll want to know your supplier will handle it correctly. When you’re trying to create a successful ecommerce business with AliExpress dropshipping, your suppliers are essential, so always choose wisely.

Look for ePacket Delivery (The Aliexpress Premium Shipping Option)

The delivery time associated with dropshipping with AliExpress is a sensitive topic, especially for new ecommerce entrepreneurs. It is true that this is a common hurdle that most dropshipping ecommerce entrepreneurs must figure out how to deal with. To do so, start by always keeping your eye out for AliExpress dropshipping suppliers that can offer the best delivery options possible for your ecommerce store.

AliExpress Premium Shipping is the best balance between cheapness and speediness. ePacket, also known as AliExpress Premium Shipping, is ideal. With ePacket, delivery takes around 14 business days door-to-door and includes a tracking code, which your customers can use to check for the location of their order.

Pro Tip: Oberlo’s Free Chrome Extension offers a handy feature to identify products with the ePacket delivery option.

How to Dropship With Aliexpress: Order Samples

If you’re trying to achieve ecommerce success, then you may want to make sure that all of your products are as described online by ordering samples for yourself. While this may seem like a perfectly logical ideal, I don’t recommend doing it. If you’re importing 100+ products into your store it isn’t cost-effective to order each and every one of them to check for quality.

Instead, only order samples of products that you’re going to use in your advertising campaigns. Let’s say you have two or three items on which you are currently offering the best deals. You know they’re great, so you plan to use them in your Facebook or Instagram Ads to attract many visitors to your store. Order samples of these ones for sure. Savvy ecommerce entrepreneurs would order samples of these products to ensure that they are of the highest quality. If your top selling products are of great quality it will speak volumes about your store, and you’ll be more likely to gain some valuable social proof.

Since you’re only ordering a few items, pick the Express Delivery option and receive them within a few days.

AliExpress Refunds and Returns?

AliExpress suppliers normally don’t offer returns for orders so this means you will need a plan of action and a returns policy of your own. Two of the most obvious use-cases for returns are:

Your customer never received their order: In this instance, you must deal directly with your AliExpress supplier to resolve this issue as this cannot continue happening. Choosing a different delivery option could be a resolution for this issue. In the case that this does happen you can discuss with your customer if a refund or replacement is the best option for them.

The product was damaged in transit: In the unfortunate case where a product is damaged on it’s way to a customer, it is best to request images of the damaged goods and to issue a refund to the customer. Again speaking with your AliExpress supplier is a good idea if you feel the packaging is not sufficient for the product.

How to Pick the Right Product to Sell

Picking the right products is a key aspect of understanding how to dropship with AliExpress. One article is definitely not enough to answer this question. We created this useful guide for selecting products for your dropshipping business to get you started.

In the midst of all these in-depth materials, however, my approach is very simple. I try to generate a huge list of product ideas and then cross out the ones that aren’t worth testing. Once that’s done, I’m left with a few winners to use in my ads, and then I add some other related products to my store to give it a large enough selection that it looks natural.

Here are the top three sources I consult for finding product ideas:

Whether or not you realize it, your mind is already filled with great product ideas. Think about your own hobbies, products you like, and the trends you observe around you. Take some time to brainstorm, and write down everything that you can think of. At this stage in the process don’t worry so much about whether you think a product will be a bestseller or not. Just add it to your list for now.

Also, be sure to check out other stores for inspiration. Glance through their offerings, best selling lists, and promoted products. The big online retail sites have tons of data to draw from, and they typically employ entire departments of people dedicated to picking their products and organizing sales. Use this information to your benefit as well. The following links are worth checking out on a regular basis: AliExpress Most Popular Products (Weekly), Amazon Best Sellers, eBay Daily Deals, Lazada Top Sellers, LightInTheBox Top Sellers List.

Third, don’t underestimate the power of social shopping sites such as Pinterest, Polyvore, Fancy, and Wanelo. These platforms feature hundreds of millions of different products. This might not be the first place you think to look for product ideas, but they are very valuable as social media, in general, becomes a more dynamic part of our lives. To get the most out of using these sites, create an account on each and subscribe to categories and lists of interest and keep an eye on trending product feeds. See if you can decide what people like the most and then add these items to your list.

Dropshipping Guide to Filtering Product Ideas

When you’re satisfied with the length of your product list, it’s time to refine it down so it only contains the very best ideas.

Look for niche products that are not as readily available on mainstream ecommerce sites or in stores. This will help ensure that you create a successful ecommerce business with products that actually in demand. For instance, even if there is no specific market to pinpoint for selling a regular belt, you can easily draw the conclusion that cycling gear will be of interest among cycling enthusiasts. Find your niche!

There are a few different product categories that have grown to large proportions in the last few years. Odds are a mixture of large scale marketplaces and smaller shops have already seized the opportunity to sell these products. To avoid markets that are already saturated, cross off the following categories from your idea list: jewelry, books, clothing, and electronics. At this stage in the ecommerce game, you’ll need to be more specific in order to find a lucrative niche.

Now, let’s talk about product pricing. In my experience, the sweet spot for a price is between $40 to $60 (with a 200% markup). I arrived at this price range based on the fact that the lower the price, the better the conversion rate. Simultaneously, the higher the price, the more customer support you will be expected to offer.

Scan through your product ideas and enter each one as well as variations on its name into the Google Keywords Analysis tool. Select ‘Keyword Ideas,’ and check how many searches each Low Competition Keyword receives. When using Google Adwords or search engine optimization (SEO), though I personally suggest advertising with Facebook and Instagram, avoid product categories that have little or no search traffic. The key is striking the right balance between keyword competition and search traffic. Here’s a helpful guide for using Google’s Keyword Planner.

Next, go to trends.google.com, search each of your product ideas, and look at the trends. Is the trend increasing or decreasing? Are there any other patterns worth noting? Where are the spikes occurring? Cross out products whose trends are fading as well as seasonal items.

After crossing off any ideas that don’t prove to be worth testing, you’ll be left with a few potential winners. Now it’s time to open a store, and try them out! We’re sure that you’ll find success, especially after reading our guide to AliExpress dropshipping.

A Few Product Ideas I Like

Phone Grips

We all know how fragile the screens of our precious smartphones typically are. Therefore, it’s not surprising that phone grips are currently catching on like wildfire in the world of ecommerce. According to trends, it’s a good time to incorporate these into your store’s inventory.

Magnetic Eyelashes

There’s no product like magnetic eyelashes to serve as a reminder that we live in exciting times! Who knows what they will think up next? This item is very in right now, and lots of people are searching the web in order to buy a set or two of their own.

Fitness Bras and Leggings

Fitness activities and clothing associated with them are both trendy areas to explore as you come up with product ideas. Thanks to new technologies that make sports more social, there is a massive social impact from Instagram and apps like Endomondo or Nike+. It’s a strong business idea for ecommerce entrepreneurs.

MEGIR Watches

A top watch brand available via AliExpress dropshipping offers affordable watches with a look of luxury, and they are well received all over the world. You can find a number of great reviews on Youtube and Instagram to prove the quality.

If you’re looking for other ideas on what to sell, it might help to look here.

At this point in our dropshipping guide using Shopify and AliExpress, you now have the basics for understanding how to dropship with AliExpress, along with tried and true strategies for selecting products. This, however, isn’t the full story. There is one missing piece we have yet to consider.

The Key to Using AliExpress Successfully

I work at Oberlo, the company who created the aforementioned dropshipping automation app. Before launching Oberlo, my brother and I were running a standard dropshipping business and managed all our orders through email. Needless to say, it was tedious! Weary of communicating with dozens of different suppliers, we wondered why we didn’t just add products to our online store directly from the AliExpress marketplace. All the suppliers we were in contact with sold their products there anyway, and we could avoid all the hassle related to email communication, orders getting lost between Excel files, and not having any way of ensuring our suppliers would fulfill the orders.

So, we started adding items to our story directly from AliExpress and were immediately impressed with the results. We soon had 2–3 full-time employees manually placing orders on AliExpress, but even after making this change, things still didn’t feel quite as efficient as they could be. It was extremely time consuming, and we had problems with selling products that turned out to be out of stock.

My colleague was a developer, and we discussed how we could try building a tool to automate the AliExpress dropshipping method to eliminate some of the common errors and tedium associated with it. We had a working prototype within a few weeks of that discussion, and once we began using it, everything started falling into place.

Fast forward a few months, and we sold the successful ecommerce business to our partners in China, which left us with the tool that made the business possible. We launched it publicly in October 2015 and now we call it Oberlo.

We’re extremely happy to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs sell over 2,000,000 products through AliExpress dropshipping since then.

That’s pretty much how dropshipping with AliExpress got started. Oberlo is an invaluable partner in your ecommerce journey because it was built by people like you in order to power ecommerce businesses like yours.

If you plan on using AliExpress dropshipping as part of your business model, we strongly recommend giving Oberlo a try. The app helps you to add hundreds of products to your store, and ship your orders with just a few clicks. In addition, you can track your order delivery information with ease. On top of those great features, you also get full support from our experienced customer success managers.

What Is Oberlo?

Oberlo is a marketplace that makes it easy to find awesome products to sell online.

With Oberlo you can access a huge variety of different products with just a few clicks. Whether it’s fashion, electronics, toys, beauty, or the next trending product – Oberlo makes it easy for you to find products from suppliers all over the world and instantly add them to your own online store.

Once you’ve made a sale your supplier will ship the products from their warehouse straight to your customer’s doorstep – you’ll never need to worry about storing, packaging, or shipping your products. Instead, you can focus on the things which really matter – growing your brand and making sales.

With Oberlo, it costs nothing to add products to your store – you can select the forever free plan to start dropshipping today.

Try Oberlo for Free >>

Want to Learn More?

Here Are the Biggest Dropshipping Niches in the Biggest Markets

Print On Demand Vs. AliExpress Dropshipping: Which is More Profitable?

16 Dropshipping Tips for New Entrepreneurs You Need to Know

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

Is there anything else you’d like to know more about and wish was included in this article? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate Guide to AliExpress Dropshipping appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

If any of you have doubts that you can create a successful ecommerce business with AliExpress dropshipping, I will change your mind in this dropshipping guide.

Without further delay, this is the ultimate guide to dropshipping with AliExpress.

The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping

If you’re looking to become an ecommerce entrepreneur, dropshipping is one of the easiest methods you can use to start your online business. But, why?

It doesn’t require much capital to get started. In fact, we wrote a guide detailing how you can start an ecommerce business with $0.00.

Everything you might need to learn is available for free online. You can use the vast number of articles, videos, and other educational material to learn on the go and achieve ecommerce success.

In this post, we’ll make sure to cover all major aspects of dropshipping.

Why You Should Try Dropshipping

The problem is you don’t really know what will sell well, or if you will be able to sell the product at all. There’s a lot of risks involved in the traditional business model.

Here’s an example:

Elena buys 100 units of a particular product line, paying $1,000 in total.

She only sells 10 products and brings in $200 in sales.

Elena quickly realizes that nobody likes her products and decides to close her store.

She experiences a loss of over $800.

Alternatively, if she had tried dropshipping, she would have made $100 in profit in spite of failing to pick the right products at first. Here’s an illustration of this scenario:

Elena uses dropshipping, so she doesn’t buy products in advance;

She only manages to sell 10 products and brings in $200 in sales;

Elena orders the products from her suppliers and has them shipped directly to her customers;

She quickly realizes that nobody likes these products and decides to try a different niche or product instead;

Elena is still happy because she just made $100 in profit.

So here’s the beauty of dropshipping. You don’t have to buy a product before selling it, so you don’t spend your precious budget on stock inventory.

What is AliExpress

How to Dropship With AliExpress

While we’ve already covered many of the benefits of dropshipping with AliExpress, this process can still be a bit difficult to grasp. So, before we go on, let’s explore how it works step by step.

How to utilize AliExpress dropshipping,

Firstly you’ll set up your online store using a platform such a Shopify.

Finally, when a customer places an order with your store, you’ll then go to your supplier and order that exact same item to be shipped directly to them.

The infographic below offers a good visual representation of how AliExpress dropshipping works.

Why AliExpress Dropshipping

FAQs About AliExpress Dropshipping

For a full list, check out this article.

Will My Customers Know If the Products Are Dropshipped From AliExpress?

Why Should Someone Buy From Me If They Can Buy the Same Product From AliExpress Cheaper?

AliExpress Shipping Takes Too Long, My Customers Won’t Wait. What Can I Do About It?

Alibaba made over $17.7 billion in sales in one day. Customers of other businesses listed in the price comparison example don’t seem to be concerned with long delivery terms either.

AliExpress Premium Shipping

How to Select Trustworthy AliExpress Suppliers

Here are some top tips from our dropshipping guide on how to select the best suppliers:

Don’t Always Go for the Lowest Price

Here’s an example of how the AliExpress dropshipping marketplace works:

Here’s a guide that will help you decide what price is right for your products.

Buy From Suppliers That Have 95% and Higher Positive Feedback

Be Careful With Branded Products

Pay Attention to the Responsiveness of the Supplier

Look for ePacket Delivery (The Aliexpress Premium Shipping Option)

Pro Tip: Oberlo’s Free Chrome Extension offers a handy feature to identify products with the ePacket delivery option.

How to Dropship With Aliexpress: Order Samples

Since you’re only ordering a few items, pick the Express Delivery option and receive them within a few days.

AliExpress Refunds and Returns?

AliExpress suppliers normally don’t offer returns for orders so this means you will need a plan of action and a returns policy of your own. Two of the most obvious use-cases for returns are:

How to Pick the Right Product to Sell

Here are the top three sources I consult for finding product ideas:

Dropshipping Guide to Filtering Product Ideas

When you’re satisfied with the length of your product list, it’s time to refine it down so it only contains the very best ideas.

A Few Product Ideas I Like

Phone Grips

Magnetic Eyelashes

Fitness Bras and Leggings

MEGIR Watches

If you’re looking for other ideas on what to sell, it might help to look here.

The Key to Using AliExpress Successfully

We’re extremely happy to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs sell over 2,000,000 products through AliExpress dropshipping since then.

What Is Oberlo?

Oberlo is a marketplace that makes it easy to find awesome products to sell online.

With Oberlo, it costs nothing to add products to your store – you can select the forever free plan to start dropshipping today.

Try Oberlo for Free >>

Want to Learn More?

Here Are the Biggest Dropshipping Niches in the Biggest Markets

Print On Demand Vs. AliExpress Dropshipping: Which is More Profitable?

16 Dropshipping Tips for New Entrepreneurs You Need to Know

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

Is there anything else you’d like to know more about and wish was included in this article? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate Guide to AliExpress Dropshipping appeared first on Oberlo.

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