#anyways if anybody happens to know a streaming site...........

[rolandkaros]

i canot watch abc.............

[subwalls]

CONFRONTATION. || DreamSMP 

An analysis on Ranboo’s January 30th stream, meant to pick apart c!Ranboo’s complex relationship with reality and the voices in his head. This will be broken up into three (3) parts: introduction, stream analysis, and conclusion.

cw unreality, derealization, etc.

INTRODUCTION.

Before we start, I want to make clear that this is just my personal reading of the stream’s events, and as such it may not be the same as yours, and that’s okay! Critical reading is all about how one work can be viewed through a variety of lenses to yield very different conclusions, and the validation of one does not immediately mean all the others are Bad and Wrong.

We all got that? Cool.

Now, a common theory being tossed around at the moment is the idea that the entire stream was a dream (ha) or hallucination. This possibility is somewhat backed up by a few observations I will point out in the rest of this post, but for the sake of seriously dissecting this dream into truths and untruths, I will not be assuming that everything that happened was fake. I’ll delve a little deeper into why this theory doesn’t completely convince me in the conclusion, too.

STREAM ANALYSIS.

Aw yeah, here comes the frame-by-frame analysis of 41 minutes of footage.

... Well, kinda. Let’s start with a play-by-play instead of a frame-by-frame, yeah? 

At 2:45 into the stream, Ranboo starts out in the panic room, looking at the “You are fine” sign. He says that Sam told him he can visit Dream (”him”) today, and reflects on the fact that he’s no longer looking for clarity or confrontation (me, looking at the stream title: uh,) but rather to make Dream think about what he did.

“He deserves to know what he did.” (Ranboo at 3:47)

“I’m gonna tell him what those thoughts are.” (Ranboo at 3:55, which is an... interesting remark, seeing as the voice in his head that sounds like Dream has been trying to tell Ranboo what his thoughts are. But it doesn’t mean anything substantial.)

Vibe check so far? REAL. Nothing appears to be out of place in the panic room. Ranboo is nervous but keeping it together and talking himself through it. Sounds great!

After a bit of psyching himself up (and noticeably declaring his memory book to be the only one that hasn’t been tampered with), Ranboo starts towards the prison. He’s scared and doesn’t know why, but he’s gonna do it.

One thing of note is that he passes by Sam Nook’s construction site, and the place’s big map sign thing never quite loads in properly. The whole thing just stays black. Suspicious, but those maps are honestly kinda glitchy at loading in anyway because they’re entities instead of blocks. Or maybe Sam Nook’s doing some prep. (Edit: more likely is that this is a clone of the Dream SMP server for the sake of what they’re about to do to the prison, and it doesn’t have the map plugin, so all the picture maps in the world are broken.)

As the prison comes into view, he continues talking to himself (he’s never been to prison, apparently; he’s been inside Pandora’s Vault before, but not as a prisoner). He thinks about the fact that he could get rid of Dream if he wanted to, but no, he couldn’t. 

The prison entrance portal is actually already lit. Ranboo isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do but eventually hits the button.

After quite a bit of waiting, Sam eventually greets him (13:32) and invites him to step into the portal. Ranboo goes through the portal and appears in a warped forest biome.

This is incredibly suspicious. The prison’s nether portal is supposed to be a customized portal in six (6) layers of obsidian that floats over a sea of lava. In fact—and I will come back to fix this if I’m mistaken—I’m pretty sure the portal resides in the fringes of a basalt delta, not a warped forest. You can see a bit of a basalt delta poking over the warped fungi in the distance, but Ranboo is very clearly in the wrong spot. 

So why the warped forest, the wrong biome and the wrong portal? It probably has something to do with the fact that Ranboo is part enderman, and enderman live in the warped forest. With the End forbidden and unknown (seeing as Techno and Phil had no idea what an End Portal was), the warped forest is likely the closest thing endermen as a species can call home in the Dream SMP.

Anyway. This is the earliest instance of either a brief hallucination or Ranboo losing his connection to reality altogether.

Ranboo goes through the portal when instructed to by Sam and properly appears in the prison’s interior portal, facing Sam at his warden’s... desk thing. Sam has Mining Fatigue right now, by the way, as seen by the particles. Ranboo is then teleported to Sam (14:20) for some reason (maybe because, behind the scenes, he was in a duped prison portal in order to make the warped forest thing happen), appearing to be inside Sam’s space before he moves back out. They do not acknowledge this.

Sam does the same series of questions to Ranboo that he did to Tommy. Ranboo says that he has not come to the prison before or even spoke to Dream before, and expresses to Sam his desire to bring his memory book along. Sam agrees on the condition that he holds onto it during the way there.

Side note: Ranboo does not get Mining Fatigue until he’s already inside the prison and being questioned. (14:47) This is quite different from the timing when Tommy got Mining Fatigue in his visit, but considering the fact that we don’t know the placement of the elder guardians or even how many there are, this could just be natural variation...

Anyway, Ranboo does the same thing we saw Tommy do with the locker and the examinations and whatever, except that Sam is... more cordial. Nicer. This is vaguely suspicious, but he’s been a little softer since his encounter with the Crimson and he has a clear soft spot for the kids. Tommy also is very different from the clearly nervous Ranboo (Sam points out that Ranboo is nervous later on, around 20:01, so he definitely noticed), so he could have just been being nice to the poor traumatized kid... Or maybe this is just a Sam constructed from Ranboo’s memories of a nice person, and not the real one. It’s not very clear but could be swayed in either direction.

One odd thing—Ranboo took quite a bit to die to the harming potions, and I feel like Tommy died faster, but I’ll have to check. It’s as though Ranboo got Harming I instead of Harming II? Sam even comments that it “took a minute” (19:12). Also, Ranboo loses his levels in this process, so, uh, if his next stream he appears with levels, that means there’s something happening that we ain’t seeing.

A skeleton dies somewhere offscreen lmao.

Ranboo is immediately re-inflicted with Mining Fatigue every time he dies, by the way, so they’re definitely within range of the elder guardians.

Ranboo endures the water section of the trip and it sucked but he seems about the same level of nervous as before, so. Sam takes the time to reassure him and give him the memory book at the last step before the cell itself.

“He [Dream] shouldn’t misbehave, he knows what happens when he does.” (Sam at 25:23, he still got that bit of ruthless warden in him.)

Vibe check again—this prison, physically speaking? Seems real. It’s possible that Ranboo could be drawing on memories from his other self, but considering that he has never been to the prison before, the fact that the prison is the exact same as the real prison that Tommy went to seems to indicate that this is a real experience. 

Ranboo’s Mining Fatigue gets refreshed, so looks like the elder guardians reach here too. Dream has the Mining Fatigue particles as soon as he comes into view. (Only pointing this out because it notably took Dream a long time to get Mining Fatigue back when Tommy visited him.)

A weird sound happens at 27:31. Not sure what that’s about.

The lava curtain comes back down, and Ranboo turns around to see Dream. His screen shakes a bit as he turns, which could be anything from lag (there’s a lot of lava moving right now) to nerves (both in-character and out). (Edit: confirmed in the chill stream following that he was just nervous, and feeling his character’s nervousness.) First thing of note, here: the item frame holding the clock on the wall is transparent. This is a texture pack thing, presumably—could be the same thing that fucked up the construction site’s map sign earlier, maybe it’s even just the texture pack that some members of the SMP have installed for the chess thing—but it’s still something to notice. 

Dream greets Ranboo with quite a bit of joy and energy, and says it’s not a surprise for Ranboo to visit, and altogether makes numerous implications that he and Ranboo’s other self have been conversing a lot in the times that Ranboo doesn’t remember. 

“We’re best friends, right?” (Dream at 28:19, and I better not see any serious remarks about gaslighting here Dream is actually telling the truth, he just has not realized that this Ranboo doesn’t remember their conversations.)

“I’ve probably talked to you more than I’ve talked to anybody on the entire server.” (Dream at 28:27, indignant at Ranboo’s claim that they’ve barely talked, which. Yeah. I mean this whole thing could be a lie or fake but... I don’t know, I’m not convinced.)

Ranboo, whose understanding of his relationship to Dream is very different from Dream’s apparent understanding of their relationship, claims that Dream is just trying to scare him. Dream sounds confused and asks, “Why are you acting different?” (28:45) so he’s definitely not had dealings with this (awake?) Ranboo, but rather the... other set of memories.

“Ooooh.” (Dream at 28:56, which I think marks the moment he realizes that this is the other Ranboo, and it isn’t the one that he normally speaks with.)

Dream continues to say that he’s glad that Ranboo’s come to visit, that Ranboo’s been a great helping hand, and Ranboo immediately accuses him of somehow knowing about the whole panic room situation, and after Ranboo declares that he’s not going to let Dream trick him into thinking that he did those things—

“But you did do those things.” (Voice at 29:36)

Voice is always fake; it’s not “real” (audible by anyone else), and it’s not Dream.

Kudos to cc!Dream, by the way, his tone audibly changes when he switches into Ranboo’s Voice. This, I believe, is the turning point of the stream. The Voice returns, marked by the tone difference from c!Dream and also by the constant referral to Dream in the third person. 

Now, here’s the interesting thing. The Voice claims that the reason why it went away is because Dream was put in prison and thus they haven’t been talking as much, which leads to Ranboo forgetting how Dream sounds like and thus robbing Voice of that, well, voice. (29:58) The implication here is that the reason behind Dream’s voice being the Voice of the “other” in Ranboo’s head is because the other just talks to Dream a lot. 

Ranboo questions the third person thing, asking if he’s gone insane in prison, and there’s a pause, and then Dream says, “You’re right, you’re right. Yes, yes, there’s not much to do here.” (30:20) The tone shift is a little more subtle here, but the way Dream responded—it’s like he was responding to something else. “Have you gone insane” doesn’t usually lead to “You’re right”, because that’s a question, not a statement. 

We’re real again, folks. But only briefly. Actually, it sounds like real Dream has been talking to someone while Ranboo was talking with his Voice, and when Ranboo heard him again, he was mid-conversation. Dream may have been speaking with that other Ranboo and we as the audience and Ranboo simply couldn’t hear.

Dream apparently doesn’t like his clock (30:32), and then prompts Ranboo to see what he’s been writing. In suspiciously good timing, we hear the elder guardian’s curse go off again to refresh Mining Fatigue, and then Dream hands Ranboo a book.

Here, the unreality really sets in.

The book is named Do not read. (30:47) It is a precise copy of Ranboo’s memory book, and when Ranboo checks Dream’s chest full of books, they are all named Do not read. and have the same contents. What appears to be real Dream invites him to look through them, and as Ranboo panics over this, what appears to be the Voice rather than c!Dream tells Ranboo that he needs “to face the truth” (31:18).

Ranboo says the truth is that Dream is a terrible person who hurt others.

The Voice says the truth is that Ranboo helped “me”. (31:35) Now, I can’t tell if this is a slip of the tongue on cc!Dream’s part or on the Voice’s part, but he does correct himself and say “Dream” after, so take that how you will. 

At this point, the Dream on the screen’s body language starts to match up with the Voice (moving while it talks), and the Voice claims “I’m not even Dream,” which lines up with its prior claims that it is just another part of Ranboo. 

Ranboo tries to rationalize the situation, assuming that the real Dream is speaking right now, but the Voice refers to Ranboos memories in the first person (“I know what I went through because I’m you,” 32:01), reinforces the fact that “you” (Ranboo) use to talk with Dream every day, and the only reason the Voice stopped happening is because he couldn’t picture Dream’s voice after not speaking with him since Dream went to prison. 

“He [Dream] would tell you [Ranboo] things to do. You were like his little... servant.” (Voice at 32:24)

Ranboo refuses this, the Voice continues to insist that he did help Dream, Ranboo asks why he doesn’t remember, and Voice says that he does; the Voice remembers, and the Voice is Ranboo. 

And then the Voice says, “I’m not even real,” and the Dream on screen vanishes. 

We don’t see a logout message on screen, but Ranboo isn’t in f1, so Dream probably either /tp’d somewhere OR switched to spectator mode. Ranboo suddenly gets the Nausea effect, panics and looks at the chest and says that he got rid of the voice, but the obsidian starts falling (gravity applied to the cell, hope they have a backup of the server to rollback to or let themselves use creative lmao) which unveils some details in the Pandora’s Vault inner chamber that I’d love to dissect but not now, and then Ranboo "hits the ground too hard” and dies.

Of note: Ranboo’s death screen is not vanilla. The word “Died” is capitalized where it shouldn’t be, and even though Ranboo lost his levels dying on the way in, his score is 206810. I bet that’s a code for something but I have no idea what for.

(I typed 206810 into my search bar and got a hex code for green. Yeah. Darker than what you’d associate with Dream, but... green.)

And then we have morse code crown and smiley that’s supposed to say “not free yet” or something but apparently there’s other translations because cc!Ranboo might’ve hecked it up a little bit. Oops.

But yeah, there you go! That’s the stream.

Not once does Ranboo press tab, by the way. Something makes me think that that might be because they’re not on the real Dream SMP—also to, you know, avoid having to rebuild the prison.

CONCLUSION.

I do think the prison visit is real at first. Ranboo falls in and out of contact with reality, and the warped forest is definitely fishy, but the layout of the prison is too precisely accurate to be wholeheartedly dreamed up. He’s never been there before, after all, and Sam doesn’t correct him—which could mean that Sam is fake and Ranboo is drawing on those other memories, but we never see Ranboo use memories he doesn’t have, he just acts on emotions and feelings that his other self seems to have.

So, the moments that are “real” are Ranboo walking to the prison, through the prison, and the first part of his talk with Dream. He clips back into reality just in time for Dream to show him a book, which immediately pops Ranboo back into the land of hallucinations, because there’s no way Dream has so many copies of the real memory book when he’s been isolated in his cell this entire time. The warped forest was probably a hallucination born of Ranboo’s enderman (sleepwalking) half being nervous, since Ranboo said he was nervous but couldn’t pinpoint why; it was probably that other side. Still don’t know why he’d be nervous though, when it seems like Dream’s happy to see him. 

The room caving in and Dream disappearing are fake. I think it’s symbolic of the other side forcing Ranboo to black out in order to have a conversation with Dream that isn’t being interrupted by the awake self. Who knows where and how Ranboo is going to wake up next time, honestly. Or even if he’ll remember the visit at all.

Oh, and I really doubt this costed a canon life. There’s some very funky implications if it does, but I’ll only get into that if we get a confirmed life lost.

Again, the Voice is not Dream but instead is the side of Ranboo that actually remembers the supposedly “bad” things he did at Dream’s behest. Interestingly, Dream calls them besties, but the Voice sounds almost... scornful and refers to Ranboo as Dream’s little servant. Sure tells you how fucked up c!Dream’s definition of a friend is, huh?

Speaking of c!Dream, here’s an interesting thought: sleepwalking Ranboo only speaks Ender, as shown by his attempts to communicate with Philza. So, assuming that sleepwalking Ranboo is the “other” Ranboo that remembers things, he probably couldn’t have visited the prison, because he couldn’t organize a visit time with Sam, because that would require speaking Player.

However. He used to speak with Dream on a regular basis.

Which means Dream speaks (or at least understands) Ender. This would also explain why the Voice manifests as Dream’s; it’s the only other voice that understands the tongue it uses.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about Pandora’s Vault because we got a little sneak peek at some of the redstone behind those obsidian walls when the room started caving in, but that’s for later. Hope this was helpful to... I dunno, anyone? I’ll probably come back and add/edit things as needed.

[loveisblindfanfictionbka]

Love Is Blind: Chapter One

“Come on Robs, what could it hurt?”

Robyn looked over at her friend and frowned.

“Online Dating? Really? Do you know the kind of psychos on these sites?”

Leandra sighed, “Girl, ain’t nobody saying marry them but at least try it out. It’s been years since your divorce. Why are you still so gunshy?”

“Well maybe because my ex-husband ripped my heart out my chest.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic? You and your ex-husband were both childish and lost. I still don’t think you should’ve gotten divorced either.”

“You and everyone else seems to have my failed marriage all figured out.”

“Look, forget about all of that, you need to get back out there, even if it’s just for a night of fun. It wouldn’t kill you.”

“You know what, just to shut you up, I’ll do it.”

“Good, I got your profile all set up, you just need to approve it and submit it.”

“How in the hell? This is the first time we’ve spoken about this.”

“Yea but this was just a minor technicality because I was gonna set you up anyway.”

“Ugh….get away from me.”

Leandra laughed  as she slid her laptop over for Robyn to review the profile. After a few minutes, Robyn nodded her head in approval and pressed publish.

“So now what?”

“Now you wait to see if you get any hits or you just peruse others’ profiles too.”

Robyn was shaking her head before Leandra even finished her statement, “I am not perusing anything. I don’t even want to do this right now.”

“So let the men come to you, it is the natural order of things.”

“I’ma divorce you next.”

“You love me so whatever.”

Robyn laughed as she leaned her head on Leandra’s shoulder, “Le, do you really think this will help?”

“I think it’ll give you something to do while you try to get your life right again. I love you and I know you and I know that your divorce is something that you’re still trying to understand but your life doesn’t have to stop while you’re doing that. Things don’t have to be serious. You don’t have to fall in love with anybody but it wouldn’t hurt to get from behind these walls you’ve erected and live. You owe it to yourself, if nobody else.”

                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Daddy, come on, the movie is starting”

Chris smiled as he rushed into the living room with a big bowl of popcorn. He sat next to his 3 year old daughter, Anesa, just as the classic Disney symbol flashed across the big screen.

“You know Princess, you could’ve just paused the tv. This is just a stream.”

“No because you were supposed to be faster anyway.”

Chris chuckled as he kissed her temple. He made the right decision becoming a foster dad two years ago. The little imp had done so much to replace the empty void in his life. He had suffered so much loss, being able to give that extra love to someone felt good. An image flashed in his head and he shook it. Years ago, he thought he had someone but that relationship crashed and burned. It surprised him that he even thought about her sometimes, all these years later.

Just as he started to become enamored with the Princess and The Frog, his phone rang. Anesa glanced over at him as he stepped out into the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello?”

“CB, what’s going on, Bro?”

“Marcus, how you doing?”

“I’m good. I’m moving back to the city so I just wanted to check in and see if we could meet up one of these days.”

“Of course, I’ll see if my sister can watch my daughter so just let me know when.”

“Daughter? A lot has happened, huh?”

“Too much.”

“How’s the wife?”

“Divorced years ago. I thought you knew.”

“I thought you were joking. You really went through with it?”

“We weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye.”

“But you were together for so long since middle school, right?”

“Officially since high school but you’d think that would’ve made our life together much easier, but nope.”

“Wow. We definitely got some catching up to do. Well, I’m back officially on Friday. We can meet at Roddy’s Bar.”

“Cool. 8 good for you?”

“Perfect, Bro. See you then.”

“Bet.”

They hung up and Chris went back to watching TV with Anesa.

                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robyn fought as much as she could to not be curious about the stupid dating app but….that only worked for so long. As she scrolled, the frown in her face just got deeper and deeper. What the hell had the world become? These men were just- no. It was hard being single. She hadn’t been single in years. Scratch that, ever. She’d never been single. She wasn’t used to being alone and being married was supposed to prevent that. Her ex-husband had literally tore her heart in two and she still hadn’t recovered. How two people so in love could be so incompatible baffled her mind to this day? Of course, her people just thought they were too young and just gave up too quickly but what would they know? They didn’t live with them 24/7. Yes, they had awesome memories but all she could remember was how alone she felt when he was in the bed right next to her. How withdrawn he had gotten in the last two years of their marriage. How unsettled she felt. Like she never knew when he would finally explode from holding everything in. She felt like she walked on eggshells her whole marriage but him asking for a divorce shook her to her very core and she had never bounced back from it. She endured his brutal silence, his emotional hardness but yet he was the one who walked away. It just never made sense to her. Just as she was about to close the app, a direct message popped up. 

Subject: Hello

Body: Hi, I was browsing your profile and you seemed really interesting. I was wondering if you would like to chat.

Robyn frowned a bit but she clicked on his photo to be directed to his profile. 42 years old. Divorced. One child. College Music Professor. 

He seemed harmless. His photo was full length so his face wasn’t the clearest but he looked decent. Besides he’d probably say something weird and she’d never have to meet him in person so what’s the risk and Leandra had listed her under just her initials so it’s not like he’d know her real name anyway.

Re: Hello

Body: Hi, I would love to chat with you. My name’s Anna. Yours?

A few minutes passed before she got a reply

Re: Hello

Body: Christian but my friends and family call me Chris. It’s nice to meet you Anna.

A: Chris? That must be a common name, I know a few of those.

C: I can imagine. Don’t know too many Annas though. Not the typical name of this time

A: It’s a little old school but I like it. I see you’re a music professor

C: Yup. Decided to change career paths once I got divorced a few years ago. You’re a veterinarian?”

A: Yea, I own a clinic and a shelter in the city.

C: No children?”

A: No. Seems like my animals take up all my time.

C: Understandable. Animals can be like children.

A: Definitely. How old is your child?

C: She’s three. 

A: That’s an awesome age

C: Very fun and energetic

A: My friends have children so I definitely imagine. Have you lived in the city long?

C: Just a few years. I was working at another college when the possibility of tenureship opened up at Columbia. Normally that can take years so I got lucky for the invite.

A: you work at Columbia University? That is awesome

C: I think the shock still hasn’t worn off. Kind of waiting for them to take it back at some point

A: Lol when I got the keys to my clinic, I felt the same way

C: Where’d you go to school?

A: Stanford for undergrad. University of California, Davis for veterinary school.

C: Pretty far from home, huh?

A:New York has always been the place for me. I always knew I’d end up here. You?

C: I’m from down south so that’s where my soft spot is. I did my undergrad and grad at Stanford though.

A: Wow talk about a small world.  It is a large school so I’m not surprised we haven’t met unless we have.

C: Probably not, don’t remember many Annas there

A: True. How do you like being a professor?

C: It’s cooler than I thought it would be. My previous job had a little bit more excitement but after some personal issues then my divorce, I had had enough excitement to last a lifetime.

A: My divorce kind of knocked me off balance so I can understand wanting to start over

C: How long were you married?

A: Three years. You?

C: Same. Together?

A: Over ten years. You?

C: Same. Bad ending?

A: I really don’t know. It wasn’t the best situation but it wasn’t the worst. I think abrupt would be a better word. You?

C: I walked away. I wasn’t the best husband but I think we really outgrew each other.

A: That can happen. How old were you?

C: 35. You?

A: 34. A lot can change in over ten years

C: True. I don’t know if she knew that though

A: did you try to tell her? 

C: Honestly no but that’s partly why I walked away. I wasn’t any good for her let alone for myself. I struggled a lot emotionally back then, I still do now sometimes. She didn’t need that weight in her life

A: Did she say that or did you make that decision for her?

C: Both.

A: Ah. I’m sorry

C: No need. She was better off without me anyway

A: you still think about her?

C: I try not to. It hurts. Failure sucks.

A: tell me about it. Have you seen her over the years?

C:No. We both moved away once we got divorced. Don’t really know where she went to be honest

A: Same. Some things are just better left alone, I guess

C: True.

A: You know Chris, this was fun. I was a little nervous about this online thing

C: Really? I’ve done it once or twice before. It’s not too bad if you take it for what it is

A: And that is?

C: Just a way to meet people. Doesn’t have to go further than a conversation unless you let it

A: That is very true.

C: If it’s agreeable to you. I’d love to talk to you again

A: I’d like that

C: Great. I guess, until next time

A: Have a good night

C: You as well

Robyn closed out of the app after reading Chris’s last message. They had a lot in common, a lot more than her ex-husband. She got a little nervous when he said his name was Chris but once he clarified that his full name was Christian, she could let out a breath. Her ex-husband’s name when shortened was Chris but his full name was Christopher. Christopher was a common name but she really didn't need that reminder of him too.

Chris dropped his phone onto his nightstand just as Anesa ran into his room. He laughed as she tried to climb onto his bed before leaning over to pick her up, “what’s the matter Love Bug?”

“Can I sleep in here with you?”

“Of course you can. Did something happen?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“Aww...I’m sorry, Love Bug. Come on, get under the covers.

Anesa climbed under the blankets as Chris turned off the lights. She cuddled onto his chest and Chris hugged her close, “Comfortable?”

“Yes. Goodnight Daddy.

“Goodnight Love Bug.”

                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So….how was it?” Leandra asked as her and Robyn sat down for breakfast.

“It was a nice conversation. He seemed like a decent guy.”

“What’s his name?”

“Christian but people call him Chris.”

“You really have a thing for Chris’s, huh?”

“Don’t say that. Chris is just a common name.”

“It is but what a coincidence.”

“Yea.”

“So what does he do?”

“He teaches music at Columbia.”

“Nice. Educated. Kids?”

“A daughter.”

“Marital status?”

“Divorced like me.”

“Guess you can share horror stories.”

Robyn chuckled, “my marriage was a failure but not a horror story. Stop it.”

“Have you spoken to Chris?’

“Not since the divorce was final. Why?”

:Leandra shrugged.

“Le, what happened?”

“Nothing. I thought I saw somebody who looked like him the other day, that’s all.”

“Where? Here? In New York?”

“Yea.”

“Please don’t tell me we moved to the same state.”

“Robs, I don’t know if it was him. I just caught his profile. It could’ve been any cute light skin guy. They are running around here galore.”

“That’s true.”

“So about your new Chris?”

“What about him?”

“What’s the next move?”

“We agreed to talk again but nothing more than that. I’m still stuck in limbo, I’m not trying to make something out of nothing.

“I guess. Are you gonna meet him?”

“Nah. Some things are just better left alone, you know.”

“Not even if you really start to like him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m swearing off serious relationships until I fix my broken heart and I have no idea how long that’s gonna take.”

“You still love him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know but I don’t want to.”

“You were together a long time.”

“Yea and he still left me so what does that mean?”

Leandra sighed, “I don’t know. “

“Chris, who are you messaging so much?” Jessica, his sister, asked as she started stirring a pot of beans.

“I met this woman online. We’ve been talking for a few weeks.”

“Online dating? You sure that’s safe?”

“I don’t plan on meeting her so it’s not a huge deal. Just a conversation.”

“Few weeks is a long time for it to just be a conversation. You like her?”

“She seems really nice.”

“Glad you’re opening your heart up somehow.”

“I’m not opening anything up. I went down that road and have no qualms about avoiding it.”

“You know you walked away from your marriage, Chris. I don’t understand your apprehension with moving on.”

“I didn't walk away to move on. I walked away to keep from hurting her. Two different things. I’m not fit to be in a relationship, let alone a marriage. My daughter is the only woman I’m concerned about right now.”

“Anesa can’t be your whole life.”

“Who says?”

“I wish Momma was here to talk some sense into you.”

“Don’t do that, Jess.”

“What? She was the only person you listened to. Did you ever tell your ex what happened with Momma?”

“No.”

“You never took her to meet her?”

“It’s not like she was around. Auntie C raised me.”

“So when you left every weekend to see Momma in the hospital your ex never asked why?”

“She asked. I never answered.”

“Chris.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t for her to know. She didn’t need that kind of weight on her, ok?”

“You never gave her a chance to really love you, Chris.”

“Well that doesn’t really matter. She moved away and about her life. I did the same. No harm, no foul.”

“I wouldn’t quite say no harm, no foul but whatever.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I don't want you to hurt this new woman because you’re still in love with your past, Chris.”

“I’m not in love with anyone so there’s nothing to be worried about.”

“And that worries me even more.”

[truviewtv]

IPTV Streaming Service

The best answer to that question could be to say that IPTV is an initialism that stands for Internet Protocol Television. However, merely breaking down what every letter of IPTV stands for doesn't fairly explain what IPTV is, what it enables you to do, or why it's a invaluable asset in the world of online media streaming – particularly in these attempting instances. IPTV, it seems, perhaps the best factor to happen to the 2020 Corona-virus quarantine that you've got by no means even heard about .. till now.

Basically, IPTV works by offering users with a network on which they will stream live content. So, instead of merely utilizing your individual internet connection with the intention to access streaming content, as is the case with OTT (Over The Top) streaming content suppliers or different free or premium TV streaming websites, IPTV reroutes your laptop into an exterior network, which may be viewed by multiple computer systems concurrently.

In different phrases, as a substitute of, say, throwing on a present on Netflix or Hulu and struggling to watch on the identical time with a buddy in another location, IPTV plugs you each in, remotely, to the live stream, leading to a way more seamless and streamlined live TV experience. This is clearly very totally different from traditional cable tv, which is usually a solitary expertise. IPTV can provide inter connectivity not like another kind of streaming service on the market.

With extraordinarily low latency streaming of live video content, IPTV is just not solely an answer for the informal TV viewer that wishes the quickest and highest decision streaming of live TV, however it is also steadily used as a business or broadcast resolution. In a business context, IPTV can be used for the quickest and most reliable live video chatting, bringing you as close to the workplace as you may be without ever actually having to step foot out your door. Bars and restaurants, too, have used IPTV as a extra reliable option to entry live sporting occasions. The advantages of using IPTV are quite a few, especially in the course of the present pandemic that we're all trying to quarantine ourselves out of.

All around the world, en masse, people have taken to either voluntarily quarantining themselves or being mandated to take action, as within the case of Italy, by their governments. We all need to do our half to assist put an finish to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, so, we've needed to put lots of the societal conveniences that we've taken as a right prior to now on pause for the foreseeable future. Therefore, IPTV might have by no means been more of a handy solution – each for persevering with to make sure that our work will get carried out and not using a productivity halt, in addition to having the ability to socialize whereas persevering with to apply the security precaution of social distancing.

With IPTV, by making use of a a lot larger and extra capable internet network than most of us occur to have readily available, companies can proceed to run easily and with out lag and people can proceed to just about hang with friends, watching their favorite live TV shows collectively, in excellent synchronicity, as if they're actually within the room collectively. IPTV has never been extra related than it's at this time. So, if you're contemplating signing up for an IPTV streaming website, you might be on the best path for a really prudent and handy solution to many issues unique to the modern moment.

What kind of content can I watch on IPTV streaming websites?

Well, that can differ a little bit bit relying on which IPTV streaming service you go together with. But, generally talking, I like to think of IPTV as an internet-based cable provider of types, only an IPTV service is exponentially vast and extra powerful than any traditional cable provider available on the market. The only IPTV streaming websites, to provide you an concept of what I imply, can supply as much as 10,000 TV channels from almost 100 countries around the world. Some of the smaller-scale IPTV websites, alternatively, nonetheless have hundreds of channels – many greater than you'll be provided by a conventional cable supplier.

So, there may be yet one more profit to discovering a great IPTV service: you'll not be restricted to TV networks which might be inside your area or locality. Sure, you'll doubtless be capable of get these as effectively, but the world of cable TV is just about border less with the very best IPTV websites. So, whenever you ask what sort of content may be watched on an IPTV streaming website, it would get you nearer to the reality to ask, instead, ‘what kind of content can I not watch on an IPTV streaming site?’

And the reply to that query, after all, depends on the IPTV stream in question. Basically, IPTV offers cable TV over the web. But some even supply VOD (Video on Demand) streaming as effectively, which solely furthers the capabilities of and strengthens the trigger for locating your self an IPTV subscription.

There are some drawbacks, nonetheless, and so they principally pertain to the VOD side. Not each IPTV service presents VOD. Only a number of of the very best IPTV streaming websites do. So, don't go into the world of IPTV anticipating it to be something in any respect like your experiences with Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video. What you are getting, instead, is sort of limitless entry to a globalized cable TV service that may be accessed over the web – no cords required.

My monthly subscription bills are starting to add up … Do I've to pay for IPTV?

Unfortunately, IPTV is just not a free service. Which is comprehensible, proper? I imply, take into consideration the variety of channels and the quantity of worldwide TV access an IPTV website will instantly give you. It is unparalleled. So, it makes complete sense, not less than in my view, that you would need to pay for such a service.

That being mentioned, in lots of circumstances, IPTV is definitely worth ditching your old cable company for, if that is likely one of the payments you will have that's beginning to add up alongside your different streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu. When you contemplate what number of channels IPTV presents, and the way dependable the live streams actually are, it turns into clear that IPTV is likely one of the only (and cost-effective) methods to entry live TV presently available on the market.

I would even consider ditching services like Hulu TV or YouTube TV for an IPTV streaming website. Again, it’s a matter of each amount and high quality. YouTube TV presents entry to one thing like 70 networks for $49.99 a month. One of the very best IPTV websites that I do know of (which we'll talk about in additional depth in a while) offers over 10,000 networks from 70+ different countries. Never miss out on a live occasion or program ever once more.

Is IPTV safe to use?

This query has two implications, I believe. Firstly, is IPTV protected in terms of viruses and knowledge considerations; secondly, is IPTV protected from a authorized standpoint? Well, let’s tackle the virus and data security concern first. As lengthy as you select a good IPTV service (i.e. one from my prolonged record of critiques), you should have nothing to worry about when it comes to contracting viruses (digital or organic if you're staying indoors and watching your IPTV). I might by no means knowingly hyperlink to a malicious web site. That being mentioned, a VPN and good antivirus software program are at all times highly beneficial for anybody who plans on doing something online.

When it involves authorized security, I can't converse to all jurisdictions on this planet, however I do know for a fact that in most free countries, it's not illegal to make use of an IPTV service. Where the authorized grey space comes into impact, nonetheless, is in terms of what the individuals who broadcast content over an IPTV service select to make accessible. In different phrases, if an IPTV service provider doesn't have the rights to a live occasion however they live to stream it over their network anyway, which places them in authorized limbo. You, because the person, nonetheless, are protected to stream as many IPTV packages as you want with no worries.

What is the best IPTV provider on the market?

Well, it is a difficult query. Everybody has their preferences, after all. Personally, if you need the most important bang in your buck I might go together with Smart IPTV (that's the IPTV I discussed earlier with over 10,000 networks). That being mentioned, lots of people actually appear to love Best Buy IPTV (no relation). If you need a greater concept of which IPTV is finest for you, learn via my reviews and weigh your options!

[goofygomez]

Hallelujah - Clouis OneShot

Hey y’all! I’ve decided to repost all my works onto Tumblr for those of you who might not have heard of them or just prefer reading on this site. I will be shooting to post one per day starting today. I hope you enjoy. (Also, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated <3)

Description:  After having a nightmare, Clem finds Louis alone in the music room, and he shares something personal with her.

Wordcount: 3029

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Clementine jerked awake, covered in a pool of her own sweat. She’d been having nightmares again after what happened. This nightmare, however, did not concern the McCarrol Ranch, but Marlon’s untimely death, and the person who’d pulled the trigger. Ten days were certainly not enough to forget what AJ had done. She looked around and took in her surroundings. All the little trinkets she’d collected decorated the room, and gave it her own little touch. She looked at the deer skull on top of the door and grinned. It looks awesome, she thought to herself.

Fortunately for them, the rest of the kids had let her and AJ stay, at least until after the raider attack, which didn’t seem to be coming any time soon. It certainly had everyone on edge.

She scrubbed the grogginess from her eyes and lifted herself from the less-than-comfortable bed. She took a sad glimpse at the sleeping form of AJ. He’d been getting stronger, but still not strong enough. He’d never been shot before, and she had hoped that had stayed the case for a while longer. On their makeshift nightstand stood the wildflowers she’d found on that bench, though now their purple color had faded somewhat into grey.

“I’ll have to water them or AJ’ll have my head when he recovers,” she said to herself, frowning at the thought. If he ever recovers, that is.

“No, stop it Clementine,” she scolded, “He’s gonna be fine.”

She didn’t know how long she’d been talking to herself, but she estimated it had been around three years. Was she going crazy? No, she just needed someone other than AJ to talk to, that was all. She decided that she wasn’t helping anybody by standing around, so with a swift motion she grabbed her trusty hat and made her way to the courtyard.

Looking around, she couldn’t find a soul, which was strange. Maybe it’s earlier than I thought, she reasoned. The sun was barely scraping the roof of the school and yesterday really had been an exhausting day. Clearing the debris from around the school had not been an easy task, so everyone had volunteered to help in one way or another.

On a hunch, she turned around and walked into the admin building. Walking around the place seemed odd, like she didn’t really belong there. Of course, that much was true. She and AJ were merely outsiders to this place, guarded so strongly for close to nine years. And now it was preparing for a war with a group of raiders who were ready to take kids for their own battle up north.

Before Clem could delve further into her own thoughts, a soft, sweet sound caught her attention and she stood still, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. She rotated slowly on the spot, until she realized there was only one place that sound could be coming from. Sighing, Clem walked down the hallway and opened the door to the music room, which was ajar.

Inside, she saw the hunched figure of Louis sitting on the piano stool, playing a soft melody that seemed to envelop the entire room as he played it. Clementine leaned on the doorframe for a moment, admiring Louis’s music. After a few minutes, Louis stopped abruptly and stiffened. Clem took a step forward and let out a breath,

“Hi, Louis,” she greeted lamely, hoping against hope that she hadn’t been the reason he stopped playing.

For a moment, Louis didn’t stir. He sat on the stool, perfectly still, looking at the keys with a sunken look in his eyes. The girl was about to talk again when he turned around and smiled at her. A real, genuine smile. It was the first one she’d seen him wear since that fateful night ten days ago. A silent, grieving Louis was much sourer than a happy, gleeful one, Clem gathered.

“Oh hey there, Princess,” he said with a wink in her direction, causing her eyes to roll and the beginnings smile to form on her lips.

“I hate it when you call me that,” she warned, trying as hard as she could to fight off the urge to keep smiling. She moved closer and sat on a small chair beside the piano stool, facing Louis.

“Yet here you are,” he rebuked, turning his attention back to the piano and pressing a couple of keys with no real pattern to it.

Silence fell between them once again as Louis started playing the beautiful song again. It filled Clementine with a joy and serenity that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was as though, while that song was playing, everything that was going on outside came to a standstill. Time stopped for the two of them, and the only thing in the world was this room.

Then, to both Clem and Louis’s surprise, he started singing. It was a beautiful sound, Clementine decided, and the words seemed to roll off his tongue so elegantly, as though he’d sung that a thousand times over. She had the overwhelming urge to close her eyes, almost as if that would bring the lyrics closer to her heart.

“I’ve heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the lord,

But you don’t really care for music do you?

It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing,

Hallelujah.”

Although Clem was clearly enthralled by the words being sung by Louis, the boy stopped singing and glanced at her, careful to keep playing the tune. She was so beautiful when she didn’t know she was being watched, Louis thought. The way her curly brown hair rolled over her face from behind her hat; the way her lips curled upwards as the muscles on her face relaxed and became accustomed to the music. There was really only one word to describe her, Louis gathered: breathtaking.

After a few moments of not hearing any singing over the piano, Clementine opened her eyes and eyed Louis quizzically. He was staring at her with a smile on his face. What was he looking at? Did she have something on her face?

“Why did you stop?” was all she could say when she realized the song probably had more than just the one verse.

Louis thought hard about the next words he said, before settling for, “would you like me to teach you? I am the best piano teacher in the world, currently,” he finished with a cheeky grin.

At the request, Clem’s golden eyes lit up with a sparkle that Louis figured had been lost long ago. He didn’t know why he knew this, but her demeanor around other people suggested she hadn’t had such a fun time growing up. Well, who had, anyway?

“You could do that?” her words cut through his thoughts and Louis put on his signature smile back on.

“Of course,” he assured her, “c’mere.”

Nodding, Clem sat beside Louis on the piano stool and set her small hands hovering over the keys. She eyed the piano with hesitancy, as if it was about to come to life and eat them both. Louis swiftly took her hands in his and moved her fingers to be over the C key, the E key and the G key.

“You know, for a walker killing machine you have the softest hands,” he commented before finishing the final touches to her hand placement. Clem couldn’t help but blush at his comment, though the reason for it was a mystery to her. Why was she embarrassed about that of all things?

“Uh, thanks?” she said uncertainly, her eyes darting from her mentor to her right hand forming the C chord on the piano.

“You’re very welcome,” he said, still smiling that devilish smile that seemed to light up the room more than the sun streaming from the high windows. “Now, you’ve got the placement down. Just press those three at the same time,” he instructed, pointing at her right hand.

She did as he said, and smiled at the sound that she had created. It wasn’t anything special, obviously, but it amazed her nonetheless. After trying a few times and perfecting that chord, they moved onto the other two. It took less than half an hour to learn the rest of the sequence, by which time Louis was ecstatic.

“You’re a damn natural, Clem,” he kept saying whenever she managed to string all four chords together. “Now it’s starting to sound more like it,” he encouraged, which made Clem smile.

She didn’t know what it was about him, but at that moment, she felt safe. Thoughts of the impending raider attack were pushed from her mind completely, and the horrors she had experienced lately were greatly diminished while they were in each other’s presence.

Louis felt his face hurting from smiling so much, and wondered how it was that he could be this way after what had happened barely ten days ago. Of course, he knew that already. He was with Clem. There wasn’t much to it, and he knew the reason he seemed to forget the world when they shared time together.

While Clem kept playing the four chords over and over, Louis cleared his throat and started singing again, this time starting with the second verse.

“Your faith was strong but you needed proof,

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you.

She tied you to the kitchen chair

She broke your throne, she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”

Clementine must have zoned out somewhere during that verse, because before she realized she had closed her eyes and kept on playing from memory.

“Look at me, Louis!” she called enthusiastically, careful to keep her eyes closed as her fingers gracefully moved from a C chord to an Am chord.

“That’s great, Clem, I knew you were a natural,” he exclaimed. Only he wasn’t looking at her hands, but at her. The way her face lit up when she realized she could play with her eyes closed could have illuminated the courtyard, had it been night. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and she was laughing.

A genuine Clementine laugh was not something Louis got to experience often, so he soaked it in while it lasted. After a few seconds of hearing no more feedback, Clem opened her eyes and glanced at Louis. The question that had been forming in her mind finally made its way to her lips.

“Louis?”

“Hm?” he questioned, turning to the girl sitting beside him.

“Why were you here today?”

Boy, was that a question. Louis’s featured contorted into a frown and he looked away for a moment. It was no use hiding it from her; she had a way with faces, he knew.

“I wanted to tickle the ivories once more before the raiders come knocking,” he said nonchalantly, but frowned when Clem’s concerned parent look locked onto him. Sighing, he looked down at his hands.

“I just… wanted to play that song again. It’s been a minute,” he confessed, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

As she stopped playing, Clem placed a tender hand on his forearm and looked up into his chocolate eyes. Those damn, beautiful eyes. What’s wrong with you, Clementine? Be there for him, she chastised herself.

“How long has it been?” she asked him softly, turning on the stool to face him fully.

“Last time I played it, it was on Marlon’s fifteenth birthday,” he told her, looking away again, fighting tears that threatened to break surface with his eyes.

“Oh,” was all Clem could muster when he shared that information. She knew Louis hadn’t been himself lately, and that was entirely because of the lack of one very important person. Marlon had been his best friend, his brother, and Clem and AJ had taken that away from him as quickly as two days after they’d saved them.

“Yeah,” he replied lamely, looking into her eyes with a sad smile on his face.

Before she realized, Clem opened her arms and embraced the boy in the most motherly hug she could muster. She cursed herself for being so awkward, but Louis actually leaned into the hug, wrapping his long arms around her and sniffing softly. They stayed like that for a few minutes before breaking apart and straightening themselves.

Louis was the first to recover from the wave of emotions that overtook both of them after that rather personal exchange. “Thank you, Clementine. I know I’ve been a dick lately, and I’m sorry. Haven’t really been the amazing companion I usually am. I just needed some time, you know?”

Clem shook her head and smiled at the boy, “you have nothing to apologize for. You had every right to be mad. I would have been, too,” she confessed, knitting her brows together in concern for Louis.

A soft chuckle left Louis’s lips, and Clem thought she was making progress. He raised his head until they were face to face and at that moment Louis realized something. He would have to stop sitting on his ass, and start acting. The past was gone, and he had to think of the future. With a long sigh, Louis straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.

“Um, Clem?” he said softly. Such a smooth talker; damn it Louis, he cursed himself.

Her golden eyes scanned his hard features slowly before settling on his eyes. She looked deep in thought as well, though what thoughts troubled that beautiful mind of hers, Louis didn’t know. She nodded for him to continue and he did.

“Okay, I’m gonna get serious for a moment,” he began, nodding along as he said the words he’d rehearsed over and over in his head.

Clem’s eyes opened wide and she quickly placed the back of her hand on his forehead. “Oh my god, Louis, are you feeling okay? Should I get Ruby?” she mocked him, making a sizzling sound as she removed her hand.

“Ha ha, hilarious,” he laughed, rolling his eyes. “I thought I was the jokester here.”

“I know, I am too,” she reminded him, though she could sense he was actually being serious when he didn’t laugh at that. “Right, sorry. Continue.”

“I’ve been battling with myself for the last two weeks, and it hasn’t really been easy,” he started, fumbling over his own words and frowning at his awkwardness. Clem encouraged him with a smile and he sighed.

“Okay, I’m just gonna say it. I like you, Clem. As in, like-like you,” he explained, topping it all with a cheeky smile that contrasted with Clementine’s shocked expression.

The following seconds were a blur of emotions in Clem’s head. The first of which was astonishment. Louis likes me? Likes me, likes me? she kept thinking. She started grasping at the pieces of the puzzle and understanding took over her features. It all made sense now.

The senseless flirtations at every possible opportunity; Louis’s insistence that she come with them on hunting trips, even though they weren’t really speaking at all; his stupid query about her ever having had a boyfriend. Louis really liked her.

She racked her brains for something to say back to that, and came up empty. The truth was that she liked him too. As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she had grown quite fond of Louis in the past two weeks. Not only that but, even if Louis hadn’t told her, she knew he’d been the one to help AJ up after Marlon pushed him onto the ground. That had been the first time someone other than Clementine came up behind AJ and came out uninjured. She realized then that AJ must have really looked up to him to trust him the way he would trust Clem.

She couldn’t really lie, either; she did think he was cute. From the moment they met, that fact had been in the back of her mind almost constantly, but now it flew right past her eyes in front of her and screamed at her to go forward. Louis’s voice cut through her thoughts like a knife.

“Oh no, I’ve made it awkward,” Louis exclaimed, “whelp, gonna go throw myself into the river and never come back,” he started to get up but was yanked back down by Clem, who took a moment to look into his chocolate brown eyes before doing something she’d never done before.

She kissed him.

It was a sweet kiss, filled with the underlying feelings they were both feeling as they embraced. She felt as though she was sitting on a cloud, and she never wanted to come down. She couldn’t actually describe the feeling, though. It just fit.

As they broke apart, both panting from the intensity of the situation they now found themselves in, Louis searched her features for any indication that that was real. He thought he might be imagining things, but he could have sworn she was grinning with her eyes closed. She kissed me? was his only thought.

“I like-like you too, Louis,” she finally said, breathless. Even after that kiss, Louis was still baffled that those words had come out of her beautiful mouth. He took a second to savor the moment before saying,

“Wait, so when you said you had feelings for someone back at that game, you meant me?”

Blushing, Clem pursed her lips and looked away. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Holy shit, it’s me!” he exclaimed, eyes wide as plates as he took in this new-found information.

Another kiss from Clementine shut him up for good. They embraced tenderly sitting as close to each other as the rickety piano stool would allow them. After a good few minutes, Clem broke apart from him and glanced at him quizzically.

“By the way, what was that song called?” she asked, the twinkle in her eye making her even more beautiful. As if that was possible, thought Louis with a grin.

“Hallelujah,” he said, embracing her again.

[bdneiceme]

Changes....

Every year, at the end of the year, I always do a reflection of what the year has taught me. More recently I began writing Facebook posts, but 2019 taught me so much that I figured a blog would be much better...

2019, all in all, wasn’t a bad year at all. Uncomfortable? Extremely! Bad? No. I will say, it definitely wasn’t “my year”. I grew in ways that I could of never guessed. I hit record lows, but I gracefully recovered. And with God’s grace I’ll be blessed to enter into the last year of my 20s next week. So here are some take-a-ways that I learned.

1. Rejection is necessary. I can honestly say, my life has been extremely easy for the most part. The life I’ve experienced doesn’t hold a candle to some of my friends. It was imperative that I understood the string of losing, and constantly losing at that, so that I could appreciate how much life has been a breeze. I have seen more closed doors this year than ever in my life. I was angry. I was pissed. It was everybody else, and never me. It became a lot...It wasn’t until I talked to God that I understood that the rejection was protection. Even though the closed door looked like the end of the World, what was on the side coulda been way worse. Learning to take rejection and not turn it inward is an uphill battle, but 2019 definitely equipped me to better navigate those feelings. I’m grateful.

2. Love isn’t enough. With Disney+ shaking the table and having all streaming sites shook, it’s a good time to revisit a lot of our favorite childhood movies. When I was a Therapist I would refer to the “Disney effect” that many Millennials, in my opinion, are cursed with. We saw so many Princesses fall in love, go through trauma, but in the end true love prevailed. In my own opinion, we allowed Disney to romanticize some downright awful relationship standards and through some fairy tale music to it. And now many of us still follow under the unction that “true love” will always be enough. I believed it too, until it wasn’t. I found myself in a relationship this year that I was literally blindsided with. I ignored all logic and hanging out a few times a week turned into a year and half of complete and utter bullshit. Time wasted because love wasn’t enough. That little voice, the pit in your stomach, the lump in your throat...that’s not fear of commitment. That’s God literally giving you signs that, “This ain’t it Chief!” Listen to it ! If you start allowing it, you’ll have to continue to allow it and you don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that. So I cleaned the slate. I pay T-Mobile every month for an alarm clock, but that’s okay. The peace I have is so much greater. I guess my first point goes hand-in-hand with this one. Though I felt rejected, I THANK GOD FOR HIS PROTECTION ! I’m grateful. P.S. Don’t become what hurt you !

3. “No new friends”. When Drake released that track I instantly caught an attitude. At the time, my new friends was better than my old ones and I didn’t get it. Until I did. I felt so alone this year. Not depressed. Just alone. This year I had to depend on me. I didn’t have the support that I desired, I wanted. I went through some of the darkest moments of my life alone. This isn’t a jab at my friends, but I had no idea how much I needed to be alone. I needed to depend on me and only me. I had to be isolated. I didn’t need anyone to try to sugarcoat the reality of me at a fork in the road. I couldn’t afford to fallback into the same pattern of things. Truth is some of the closest people to you will stunt your growth because they don’t want to see you grow, because what happens when they outgrow you? So they plant seeds by telling you it’s everybody else and not you. So while you stay stagnant, they grow, and eventually they’re the ones that outgrow you ! I thought I was abandoned. Friends that I thought I could lean on, I realized quickly, they were not my friends. Friends I had for years were now acquaintances. I was alone. But in those moments, I found me. I had the tough conversations about my own toxic, negative behavior, and in those moments I became a better version of myself. And now I’ve met me again. I’ve been able to meet people,and let my own guard down, who really do care about little ole me. I’ve rekindled friendships that I hindered, some hindered me. But all-in-all, I’m grateful.

4. The power of no. I give great advice. Like really good, but I don’t always listen to my own, but I do give it. I had to learn to say no. This year I felt so drained, until I started saying no. I really do think it means something when someone calls when they could of called anybody. But in the same breath, can you call them? Because of that little revelation I’ll tell someone in a heartbeat now, HELL NO ! Lol but serious when I’m not in a good head space, I tell people I’m sorry, I can’t today, we’ll have to talk about it later. I’m not losing my own sanity so you can process through yours. I’m not caring the weight of your burdens so I can weigh my own self down. I can’t. I won’t. Stress literally triggers so many physical responses that I literally started dealing with my anxiety again. Like can’t breath, gotta take a walk or a drive because I’m so overwhelmed, overstimulated. So I learned to say no. The attitudes will catch you off guard initially, but the freedom of ‘no’ goes a long way. My phone LIVES on DND 🤧 because I’m allowed to be selfish with my time. I’m allowed to not want to hear bad news. My spirit feels lighter. My mind stop racing, I was able to rest, all because I learned the power of no. I’m grateful.

5. Silence is golden. My mother used to tell me all the time that just because something needs to be said doesn’t mean you have to be the spokesperson. Earlier in the year I defended someone who I truly do care about. Ch...I got called everything but a child of God after I did it lol. It doesn’t matter what was actually said, because of my personality anything I say or do is always dragged to the 10th degree. So by the time I read through texts and phone calls, I was, yet again, the wrong one. But the situation taught me that because people already have so many preconceived notions about who and what we are anyway, why waste my time, energy and breath. Learning to silence myself and let things be what they’ll be has truly been a journey. I internalize a lot. Like a lot. I genuinely like to be liked by people. But this year I learned those committed to misunderstanding you will always do just that. I may do some off the wall stuff but my heart is pure. I’ve helped people who have slandered my name and I never told a soul what they did to me, and never will. As sure as I’m writing this blog, it’ll come out. It always does. But I what I have to learn to do is not allow someone to pull that type of behavior out of me. I even started going back to therapy because of it. I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m grateful.

6. It’s okay to be mad, just don’t stay mad. I’ve spent so much of my life bitter. Truth is I wasn’t over so many of the things that were done to me and instead of telling someone I let it turn me bitter. I was angry. I was hurting. I saw so many of my peers have people to lean on and mentor them through the processes and then there was me....I hated it. I still felt like a 6 year old little girl some days. As a child, I was talked about like I was grown. So once I got older, I learned to snap back 10x harder to ensure the disrespect would never occur again. You hurt my feelings? Cool, I’ll demolish yours. 🤷🏽‍♀️ But at 28 who tf wants to live like that? I wasn’t raised like that. It was draining. Then people looked at me to be the bitter one. You know the “jokes” they tell but in all actuality it’s the shade they don’t want to say flat out. It was my narrative. I was sick of it. Letting that fester....it ate at me. I had to give it to God. I always desired to be like everybody else until God touched my heart. It’s a process, but I’m better ! He’s healing me. Working on me. Allowing me the unique opportunity to grow through my own issues has allowed me to give grace to others for theirs. I’m grateful.

7. I’m sorry. I’m ending the blog with 7 points because this one is the most important. I’m learning to take responsibility for my own mistakes. Having the courage to embrace my own shortcomings. I apologize to those I ridiculed, betrayed, lied to, beat up 🥴, humiliated, embarrassed and disrespected. I know this doesn’t excuse the offense, but from the bottom of my heart I’m sorry. In my own disappointments and insecurities I took it out on you, and that you didn’t deserve. Learning to swallow your own pride makes room for the blessings you let pass you by, because your heart wasn’t in the right place. My heart is healing and I literally squirm thinking about some of my past behaviors. At the time, I meant every bit of it, because I was operating from a hurt place. I never gave myself an apology for the person I was trying to survive. I’m trying. Learning to not allow what happened to me, consume me. Forgiving myself for every mistake. Owning who I am and who I am called to be. I don’t want to turn 40 and then start living life 😕 I want to do it now. But I couldn’t get to it because I was my own stumbling block. God has a funny way of humbling you, but what he will do is just that, humble you ! And because of that humility, I can now let some light in I know how wrong I was, but the glory is...it’s a process...but I’m grateful.

I made sure to end every point with ‘I’m grateful’ because I truly am grateful. I’m grateful for it all. The good. The bad. The ugly. I’m grateful. Why? Because I’m still here, so that means it didn’t kill me. It could of, but it didn’t ! This year, this decade....taught me so much. My goodness my 20s taught me some things okay lol but I thank God for the grace He gave me to try to get it right. I’m ready for Scene 29 and I am beyond ready to see what 2020 has to offer ! I deserve it ! Be grateful !

[reading-writing-revolution]

“All this to say: I have a front row seat to the mindset and behavior of the classic Trump supporter, and I am alarmed by what I see. It is a steady stream of misinformation that twists and bends to justify the unjustifiable, to deny the undeniable, built on an unmovable foundation of bitterness and distrust. Nearly four years of pitting my education in legal philosophy and governmental operation against his deeply-held beliefs has not shifted his position one iota. He lives in a world completely apart from my own, rides a train of thought on which he appears to be the only passenger, and finds solace in his own discontent. He does not want a debate; he wants a fight.”

by Deborah Handover https://link.medium.com/T2VL6YnUT7

This is exactly everything for the last 4 years, building during the Obama presidency, when the Republican Party decided to go full nutjob and cave to conspiracy theories, lies, and the "Deep State" in order to convince a limited in ever-shrinking constituency that their ideas were the right ones. An entire political party surrendering to lunacy. Think about that. That should be completely and utterly shocking, except that it happens in different parts of the world all the time. If you get enough desperate people, people that are afraid and worried about their survival, and you tell them that all the people around them are their enemies and that they are secretly stealing everything that these people have worked for their whole lives and think they deserve, and if you convince them that they deserve the world, even if they don't, then these people will turn on anybody. They have to because they are completely failing at life, and their way of life feels like it's slipping away and being destroyed. The propaganda, lies, conspiracy theories and plots all contribute to the desperation and fear. And ultimately, as I think we're seeing now in the average voter and also in those Republican party members that are still supporting Trump, like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, even if they realize that they're wrong and that this is all crazy and dangerous, they've already committed. They can't let it go. They already spent the last four years nodding their heads like good little soldiers, and the only way forward is to wear that scarlet letter with pride and own their own horrorshow.

What I found while on the internet, commenting on tweets or articles on Facebook or other social media sites, isn't there lots of people like this woman's father described above on the internet - trolls and other assholes who don't know anything about anything, but they're really good about making ridiculous claims that they can't back up and then doubling down on them if you try to prove to them they're wrong. Eventually, has this young woman found out about her dad, they shift to hate mode, and they go full troll, and all they can do is insult. While this woman fell she had lost the argument, and I understand that she couldn't reply in the way that I'm about to suggest now, there really is a way to win these arguments or these discussions or deliberations or whatever they are. Some kind of a win, or at least you walking away not feeling like you lost. I'm not always in it to win it, so to speak. I like to make my points, and I'd often like to just walk away, but a lot of people won't let you do that because notifications will let you know that some rando had something to say, and more often than not nowadays that rando is just some troll dickhead. And sometimes I just can't let that go.

But, as I was saying above, that doesn't mean I respond in kind because I know that once someone goes mean and ugly on the internet, that's all they have left. That's their last bullet. that means that they don't have anything else to say, if they had anything to say in the first place - a lot of times these trolls go straight to nasty. And the response is very simple - go nice and applaud them for their nastiness. Applaud them for their outstanding ability to be horrible. Call them out and tell them how proud you are of them for their ability to be as shitty as possible on the internet. It's actually really easy. Just tell old Bob, or whoever the person is, that you are absolutely astounded that someone like him could have such horrible things to say on the internet about someone that they don't know. Laud them for their awful language, for their spectacular racism, for their amazing bigotry, for their hero-level nastiness. I find that this approach shuts them the fuck up immediately. Yet to have someone respond to me after I gave them a gold star for being a dick. If anything, other people will like your response, which is a subtle pile-on, and that bullshit will be over.

Of course, on the way, you need to make your points smart, valid, and be able to back them up. What I don't do is respond to other people's comments and tell them that they are wrong. I just put my own comment out there and let people work from that. Most people tend to support what I say, and those who don't learn quickly that that was probably a mistake. I don't mind a nice debate but we're not talking about debaters here. We're talking about trolls and assholes. Luckily none of those people exist in my family anymore because my grandfather passed away, and I don't have to get his racist emails about Obama that he sent to the family email alias all the time.

Anyway, just some thoughts on how to deal with people like this. Credit to this woman for recognizing her relationship with her father and how she's just going to have to manage it. She deserves a hug.

[therealguy-thebestguy2]

Who Can You Trust? - Therren Feywind

Journal Entry 4 — Hello sister,

It’s been a while. I should have talked to you sooner but… I didn’t. I talked to Simon, though. It’s been so hard to make sense of these thoughts in my head, maybe if I take my time and go through them it will become clearer. Like Maximilian taught me to.      

So, some days ago now, we went on another adventure. This one had a little more direction than the last ones. Missing people from the town, dire consequences. Then again, there always seems to be dire consequences no matter how the adventure starts. Danger is an open flame and we are but moths, destined to dance around it until the day we finally get too close.      

Nymatra was there, as usual. Things are still… hard to read with her. At this point I don’t even know whose fault that is. Did I do something? Did she do something? I suppose we’ve both been complicated. I wish social interactions could just make sense. Nature was never this complicated. Hemmel, a dwarven man, joined the group too. Reminded me a lot of our friend Thymus. Say what you will about dwarves, but they build those bastards tough. That alone is worth respect.      

Maximillian was also there. You know, he grows on you. There’s just something, I don’t know, comforting? Something comforting about him. Even when he says something like how there’s “definitely no traps”, and you know there’s no way he could really know that so he’s probably full of shit, something in me just wants to believe him. Which, well, it can lead to problems. Sorry, I’m jumping ahead. Like I said, everything is a confusing mess. I’ll start over.      

So, we went out to some miserable swamps to track down some missing people, like I said. Found our way to some creepy looking outpost, tracks from the missing people leading inside. And some other tracks we couldn’t place. We were investigating the tower and, remember the thing I said about traps? I think we set off every trap possible along the way. If only Max’s faith that there were no traps was strong enough to make it so. Then again, we made it through all those traps without so much as a scratch. Maybe there is power in faith after all? Everything in my life is crazy, so why not?      

On the other side of some close encounters we ran into the things responsible for those tracks we couldn’t place, and had an even closer encounter. Strange lizard-folk. Like just about everything in these cursed lands, they were not interested in a non-violent solution.      

Close-quarters in a tower, not a great place to be relying on the range of a bow in a fight. I didn’t need your depth of experience to figure that one out. And these powers I have, they give me considerable strength in a close fight. But, I don’t know, I used my bow. I was scared, alright? I… I don’t like it. Whenever I, when I shift, it… changes me. I don’t like who I am when that happens.      

It was a selfish and irrational decision, a stupid decision. I knew it was the wrong tactical choice, and I made it anyway. And… and I paid for it. One of the lizards was shooting back at me. I was doing my best to avoid it, dodged one arrow, but there’s just so little space to move in an environment like that. Bastard got me good. Left myself open and he got me right in the neck. I barely had time to react to it.      

All the strength left me, and before I knew it I was on the ground. I tried to move my arms and legs, pick myself back up and keep fighting, but they wouldn’t move. I couldn’t even feel them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nymatra, taking cover on the staircase. I tried to call out for help, but I was choking. Drowning. I could feel the warmth and that coppery taste that I have unfortunately become familiar with as of late. Blood. Probably a lot of it. More arrows bounced off the stone wall beside her and she retreated further down the stairs and out of site.

I was alone, things were getting blurry and dark and quiet, and then something unexpected happened. I saw rolling, forested hills, immaculate grass-swept plains, a stream fed by a small, calm waterfall. Everything had this strange haze to it, and perfect sunset-colours. It almost looked like the fey wilds, but not quite. There was a warmth unlike anything I had ever felt. Every part of my senses told me I was safe, and loved. And… and Simon was there, sister. I was lying there, on the softest grass I had ever felt by the bank of the river, and I saw his familiar boots approach from the water’s edge. It couldn’t be him, just another trick of the mind, like when the Lion attacked Nymatra. Simon was gone, I saw what happened to him. But it was him. The same silver robes with the blue crescent moon. The same kind cerulean eyes. He crouched down, held my face in his hands. There was a sadness in his eyes, but he smiled. He said “It’s okay, let go” and he lifted me to my feet. A look over my shoulder and the sadness in his eyes deepened. “I’ll be right here. It’s okay to let go.”      

And then things got weirder, if that’s possible. I was standing there, by the river, forest all around. But I was also in the tower, Maximilian’s hand glowing on my neck. My confusion was drowned out by a flood of familiar anger, and the beast took hold again. I smelled blood, anger and fear. It was intoxicating, like being starved and smelling the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted suddenly in arms reach. It creeps me out thinking about how much I enjoyed that smell. Seconds later, and the two lizard-folk were in pieces. One moment they were there, and then the next moment they weren’t. I had torn them apart.      

Just then Nymatra charged back up the stairs, hands crackling with eldritch energy and a fiercely determined look in her eye, shouting “I’ll save you!” Better late than never, right? It’s a lot braver than I was when I abandoned you and Simon. The group took a moment to heal and gather their strength, relieved to have a reprieve from the monsters that lurk in the tower. But are they really safe? There’s another monster, in me, how can they be sure it won’t turn on them?      

I was walking through the tower, but at the same time I was walking through that strange etherial place. I couldn’t shake it. even when we got back to town I couldn’t shake it. I knew I was at the tavern, but I was also there in the woods. I can’t make sense of it. Sorry, I’m skipping ahead again. I’ll go back.      

One last push, to the top of the tower. Up a ladder, and a terrifying massive serpent awaited, along with some kind of magical lizard sorcerer. Before I knew it, the snake was on Max. Tangled around him and damn-near devouring him. My eyes darting from the serpent to the sorcerer, I took in as much information as I could as fast as possible. My beast snarled, pulling at the chain as I glared at the sorcerer. I knew it had to be some kind of magic, that he was the key to stopping the serpent and saving Max. I think I knew that. Did I know that? I remember being angry, I remember thinking about the other lizard-folk I had torn apart. I remember the hunger. Was I trying to save Max? I hope I was. I hope I didn’t just choose to leave him to die.      

I let the anger erupt inside me. I was gone and the wolf was in my place. Without a second thought I charged right for the sorcerer. The serpent lashed out at me with a hit that might have knocked me out in my elven form, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was the lizard. With a leap I was on him, teeth tearing at his form, trying to find purchase on his scales. With the lizard knocked to the ground, the serpent vanished. Was that the plan, or did I get lucky?      

The lizard had tricks of his own, shifting into the massive form of a crocodile. Its massive jaw clamped down on me, and my world became pain and anger. The pain threatened to overwhelm me, but the anger won out. Mind focussing, I found a target. Maybe I couldn’t get through its scales, but I didn’t need to anymore. I bit down on the creatures tongue and pulled with all my strength. We battled with nightmares, and mine was stronger. I walked away from that tower, he didn’t. The others managed to rescue some of the missing people. I’m a little vague on the details, my mind was on other things.      

We got back to town, and still I’m in the etherial woods. But I’m somewhere else. I can’t seem to find Simon again. I’ve been keeping to myself in town. Didn’t have time to go off on adventures, I needed to find Simon again. I even organised to go back to the tower in the swamp. I thought maybe going back to where I saw him last time would let me see him again.      

Travelling alone seemed dangerous, so I asked Nymatra to come with me. I think I trust her the most. She thought it’d be too dangerous to go without more protection and suggested bringing Max, but I kind of freaked out at the idea of sharing what’s going on with a group and cancelled it. But taking Max was a good idea, so I went to ask Max if he could go with me and- oh wow that sounds way worse than it is when I write it down like that, I- No, okay, it doesn’t just sound bad, that was pretty bad of me. Am I a shitty person? Damn it.      Anyway, yeah, I went to talk to Maximilian. About a lot of things. About what I saw, how I was feeling, my confusions. I really opened up to him. I haven’t really done that with anybody. I mean, I’ve told Nymatra a few things, but this was more than that. It’s just so easy to talk to him, and unlike any other time I relive my memories, I actually feel better with Max’s help. He’s very reassuring, and his advice somehow simple but something you never thought of.      

He agreed to go to the tower with me, which was relieving. I just feel like, whenever he’s in my group, I know we’ll get through it and make it back home. We talked about Simon. About how he was religious like Max. About my history with Simon, how we loved each other. I never really told anyone that before. But I guess I just feel safe talking to Maximilian.      

Maximilian talked about his religious stuff, about Pholtus, and there’s definitely part of me that really likes hearing about that stuff. He just seems so confident and assured about it. I think wish I had that kind of faith. I’ve never been that sure about anything. We reached the tower, but nothing for me. Just more unrecognisable forest. Retracing steps through the tower, and still nothing familiar. Back to that room in the tower, to the spot that I fell, the blood still staining the ground where I laid. Still nothing. No stream. No lazy waterfall. No Simon. No matter what I tried, I could not find my way back to him. I was half way to asking Max if he could beat me into another near death experience when I realised how ridiculous I was being. The whole trip had been a waste of time. I was not going to see Simon again.      

But Maximilian had another suggestion. I think it was some kind of religious technique? I don’t know, I’m not sure how any of that works. He guided me through some technique to get in touch with my memories. At first I thought it was another dead end, I was just seeing more of the same. Then I remembered Simon speaking, like last time but… not like last time. It was the same memory, but there were details I noticed that I had missed the first time, words that I had somehow forgotten. What Simon had said was “It’s okay to be angry. But you have to let me go. I’ll be right here when you’re ready. It’s okay to let go” I don’t know how I could have forgotten something like that, or missed it. Maybe the trauma and heightened emotion of the near-death experience had impaired me? Or maybe it was the distraction of being healed?      

Maximilian asked me what that meant, why I was angry, so I told him everything. That horrible night when I lost you, Sister. When I lost Simon, and the rest of the group. The nightmares that came after. The fear and hatred. The beast that lives inside me. But Max told me the beast was not evil, that if I let go and allowed the beast to take control he could prove it to me. It was a crazy idea, but I went along with it. Like I said, even when you know there’s no way he could know something for sure, he makes you want to believe him. I braced myself, took a deep breath, and let the beast out.      

I’m not sure what I thought would happen. Maybe I thought I would tear his throat out, or that I would bite his tongue off. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t what happened. Nothing happened. The beast tested Maximilian, decided it liked him, and gave me back control. Afterwards Max told me he could sense when there was the presence of evil, and he sensed no evil from me.      

So I guess Maximilian is right. I guess Simon’s right. I’m not a monster. The beast is not a monster. Simon told me it was okay to let go. I don’t know if he meant let go of him, or let go of the fear of the beast inside. I guess either way it’s good advice. Maybe it’s time I start living again. Time to stop existing in that dark forest. Make some decisions for myself, learn more about Pholtus with Max. I’ll see my friends and family again someday, but for now I’m ready to move on.      

You will always be in my heart, but this is the last we’ll speak for some time. Goodbye Thiala.

[chrisstevenson]

The Lows of High Book Prices

A thousand pardons if I come off like a rant. I'm a mashup between J.A. Konrath and Harlan Ellison. I'm a writer advocate and defender of the written word. I also watch the industry like a stealthy Sasquatch. These articles are always meant for Guerrilla Warfare for Writers, my down and dirty blog. There is no BS here. Maybe some inaccuracies. I don't even like posting these articles to my YA website--no one reads me there anyway. I hope you suffer me well.  

First and foremost, if you are a celebrity author you don't need to be reading this. If you are an A-list author, pass on by. If you are a very popular author with a huge reader fan base and have a enormous mailing list that draws purchasing customers in like flies, audios. If you have a break-out or bestseller, you can kindly leave by through back door. There will also be some outlier exceptions. This article is not a call to arms for you. You are profitable, consistent and probably comfortably set in the mighty realm of book sales.

If you are new to writing with a minimum number of releases, an old-time mid-lister like me with a ton of books out there, or a new writer launching your first book, I think you better read this and make some grave determinations. It's unlikely a publisher is going to read this, but I've been with and seen too many that need to know what is working and what is not as far as ad pricing. This warning goes double for authors who just don't care that their e-book prices are going to be placed high regardless. It goes triple (as of this writing) because of the corona virus and the financially stressed atmosphere it has created.  People are buying essentials. As far as entertainment, they are streaming movies and playing games. Who started the the rumor that they were buying books hand over fist? Do you remember when this news was sent out on the wings of doves at the very beginning of the pandemic spread?

I would like you to read three paragraphs (below) which come straight from the keys of most of the advertisers I know and have dealt with. The wording might not be the same but the implications all point to the same conclusion. They don't want your high-priced book. They want rock-bottom cover prices and freebies. The reason is twofold; Shoppers want bargains, plain and simple. That's why W-Mart and Amazon rule the nest. Yet the second reason is that the company itself doesn't want to lose a potential customer. That means you won't be coming back for seconds if there are flat sales. They are also competing with other promotion and marketing sites that have the same mindset policies.

Here's my statistics for two YA fantasy/thrillers that had excellent covers and blurbs. Both of these ads were run before and during a Halloween special (the horror factor was quite evident).. Both books were priced at $2.99.

Book one ran for 15 days on a $45 budget. It received 5,391 impressions; total clicks--5--and a CTR of 0.09%

Book two ran for seven days on a $100 budget. It received 10,195 impressions; total clicks --13 and a CTR of  0.13%.

I don't think I have to do the math for you. Except for the takeaway, which was $145.00 from me and some wide-eyed experience. I later changed companies, dropped the e-book price to .99 cents, and still fell flat--no sales. We could argue all day long about what I did wrong with these two companies. I did not stop there. I enlisted in seven of the companies listed below, with very low, rock-bottom prices. Please excuse my spelling on the names.

Just Kindle Books

Fiverr--bkknights

Fussy Librarian

FreeBooksie

E-book Hounds

Robin Reads

Kindlebook Review

Book Barbarian

Booksends

BookDealio

Ebookdiscovery

Ereader IQ

Ent

Book Reader Magazine

Pretty Hot books.

Out of my promotions, I received three apologies and full refunds. I think I sold two books from Ent. That was it. I won't go into which seven, but I did do my research beforehand. They were my best picks.  

Have you ever heard that it wasn't the gold miners who made money off their digs, but the merchants who sold them the supplies, tools, products and other services? We basically have the same thing going on here, with grandiose claims of the promotion and marketing companies talking about going to the top of the sales charts, breakouts, unlimited exposure and guaranteed results. Results. Not sales. Impressions and clicks are a normal state of business and you'll see them. What you won't see are voluminous click-throughs--buys, sales, mullah.

There are many Indie writers who are exceptions to this rule because they have targeted outfits that payoff for them. Might be some trade published out there too. This comes from a lot of trial and error--R & D--and it NEVER ends because the books can go through an insufferable amount of tweaking to fine-tune the results. This happens when an author watches his/her ups, downs and in betweens--the stats that govern peak sales. Self-published authors also get a larger percentage cut of the royalties than the small trade-house authors. Many of the elite Indie authors pay thousands for ads a months, but they reaps thousands plus in return. So it is a revolving door for them--huge investments that garner huge profits. You want to make money, you have to spend it. That's not my quote, lol.

Look, all I'm saying is be wise and careful with your expenditures. You are going to see, if you already haven't, self-proclaimed experts that can do all forms of editing, covers, formatting, book tours, pod-casts, trailers, page ads, listings, book-to-movie deals, screenwriting, agent introductions, publisher submissions, blurbs, illustrations, writing courses, query letters, one-on-one instruction, translations, ghostwriting, expedited (paid) reviews, synopsis's, proof reading, evaluations and all other manner of Internet blasting services. Can you pay for some of these services without losing your shirt or blouse? Sure you can! It's up to you. But be aware, unless you really need and believe in any of them, you'll lose out every time.

I often wonder if we are just giving our books away because the sea is awash with them. So many tens of thousands of books are published each year that the numbers keeps compounding and burying the authors under tons of pixels. Nobody can find you, lest you post on FB that you will commit suicide if somebody, anybody doesn't buy one of your books before you take that leap. Well, if it goes viral and you were bluffing, it would work. I think you get the idea. Dear gawd, I've often entertained the idea.

1. Your deal price should be as competitive as possible (This is a company motto BTW).

"We promise our subscribers the best deals available. The better the deal, the more appealing it is to our subscribers, and therefore the more likely it is to be selected by our editors/readers. We rarely feature books priced above $2.99, and even $2.99 is an unusually high price for many of our categories.(I JUST LOVE IT WHEN THEY SAY $2.99 IS UNUSUALLY HIGH).

"While your deal price should be based on your book marketing goals, pricing as low as possible will entice more readers to download your book. The lower the price, the higher the conversion rate of a Deal. Knowing this, our editors prefer books that are competitively priced, since those will drive a higher volume of reader engagement. They’re also able to select a higher percentage of discounted books. If you’re not selected for a deal between $0.99 and $3.99, consider resubmitting your book for a free promotion, as this can be a really effective way to increase your chances of getting selected.

"Keep in mind that the competitiveness of your price depends on your category. While it’s normal to see a higher priced book in Cooking, for example, prices are usually lower in the Mysteries or Romance categories (THOSE TWO ARE THE BEST-SELLING GENRES, BTW).. Browse through books in your category to see what’s competitive in your own genre. Again, if your book is not selected at one price, try resubmitting at a lower price or for free. Your chances of being selected will be higher."

Note the last sentence. They are going to select you in accordance with how profitable they think you can be.Sounds to me if you don't go low enough to suit them, they'll politely blow you off.

I've heard some positive news about AMS, BookBub featured ads, and in a blue moon, FB and Twitter boosters. I've used all but the grand daddy feature ad. While these might still show some profit, they certainly aren't working like they used to. Profit has measurably declined, and I mean this in a general sense.

What does my crystal ball tell me for the future? I can only take a wild stab at it and say that the heavy visual sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and others are driving a wedge between the other competitors. They could be the wave for future book exposure. I know their swords are drawn against Amazon

Anybody have any solutions or ideas about gaining some profitability in this industry? I'd love to hear it. Or any promo/marketing site that has fulfilled your dreams. BTW, just like FB put the whammy on My Space, do you see another FB type site in the future? I dooooo,

Blessed wishes, please stay safe and healthy.

Chris and Christy.  

[joyofcrime-elinorhigh]

2018 Year in REVIEW: Part 2

 Hello everybody, JoyofCrimeArt here, and it's time to wrap up Deviant-cemnber by finishing this recap. If you're just joining us I'm going over all the events that happened to the cartoon community thought the year of 2018. I'm also ranking all the new series from best to worse, and deciding which network was the quote unquote "winner" of the year. If you haven't seen part one, you can check it out here. 2018 Year in REVIEW: Part 1 But for everyone else, let's get on with the review. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  So at the end of the last part, we had to deal with that whole "Thundercats CalArts" debacle. Not exactly the most "positive" stopping point. So why don't we start this part with something light? Oh hey, look, people are talking about Butch Hartman! He's always good for a laugh. What's he up too?

 Oh no...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBOMlWl7fFk

 So Butch Hartman, America's dad, started a Kickstarter for his own streaming service. It's called Oaxis and is suppose to be a family friendly streaming service with original programming along the lines of Netflix. Butch asked for 250,000 dollars in order to get the basic groundwork for the site up and running. That's a lot of money to ask for, so there's no way he could actually...Holy crap, he actually did it! The madman pulled it off!  Now, there's a lot to unload here. Butch Hartman's streaming service initially was met with controversy due to how vague everything about it was. There were a lot of unanswered questions. We didn't know what kind of shows it would have outside of a few failed pilots that Butch had pitched to various networks in the years prior. Were there other creators had plans to affiliate themselves with the project? All of these unanswered questions lead a lot of people to think that this was all just a big scam. If I had to make a guess, I have a feeling that part of the point of the Kickstarter was to act as a proof of concept. A way to show investors that there was an interest in the service. While a quarter of a million dollars is a lot, that's still not anywhere NEAR enough to run an entire new entertainment platform.  However, I wanna be devil's advocate here. Butch Hartman has some experience in this field.The Noog Network, is an app that he developed that specializes in family friendly animated and live action shorts all created by Butch Hartman himself. Not exactly the same as a streaming service, but still. And consider that Butch has ties to people in the industry, and has experiences running a business in the form of his nonprofit charity The Hartman House, MAYBE he could pull it off? Maybe? Possibly...  But that's not where the controversy ends however! As footage leaked of old Butch-y boi speaking at a church event promoting Oaxis. Here he made several claims that many found to be a bit disconcerting. Such as claims that his streaming service would feature "Christian values" which is something not at all mentioned in his Kickstarter. As a Christian myself I've always thought of Christian values as things like kindness, generosity, respect. All things that aren't necessarily exclusive to Christianity. So maybe he meant like that. However, the fact that he was invited as a special guest to a church to speak about the service...It's definitely a little bit suspect. There's nothing wrong with making a streaming service aimed at Christian families, but you should at least mention it in the Kickstarter. That way people know what they're donating too. He later specified in a tweet that while the service wouldn't inherently be Christian themed, but since Butch Hartman is a devout Christian himself, that would always carry over into his work no matter what he does. It should be noted  that in the same speech he list his previous shows as containing the same "Christian values" and I don't think anybody was ever converted to Christianity by T.U.F.F Puppy. I don't know.  Man, between this and last years Castlevania, I love being forced to talk about my religious views in a article that's suppose to be about dumb cartoon shows.  He also made a controversial claim saying that suicides are more common now of days because of peoples addition to cell phones and technology. Saying that because of these technology people not talking to their parents as much as a result. I'm not a researcher on this, so I have no idea if this is actually true. I could definitely see that could at least be partially true with things like cyber bulling and the lack of communication with parents COULD possibly be a factor in the increases of suicides. But it defiantly feels like a disservice to just ignore issues like mental health being a factor. I can defiantly see how people could of taken offense.  All of this backlash lead to everyone's favorite 2018 game! "Attack people online until they apologize!" Cause as we all know, nothing makes an apology more sincere than when it's forced out of them by an angry mob! But eventually all the heat died down when all the "Butch Hartman Rant" videos stopped getting views, I mean, when there was nothing left to talk about. Overall, I think that the situation was just bad on all fronts. Butch should of said something to explain himself, and not be so vague in his goals. But also, we live in a day and age where I honestly wonder if that would of been the smartest move. It feels like once people have their opinion set, there's no going back. I mean how often to celebrity apologizes even work? Still though, smart or not, it would of been the right thing to do.  However, I would like to point out that all of this hate started simply because he reached his goal. All the stuff about the church and his suicide comments all came after he was already getting hate for being a scam artist. But the thing is, we don't even know if he is a scam artist or not. Sure, the fact that he's barely talked about Oaxis at all since the Kickstarter was funded doesn't bode well. But from what I could fine, he's given out most of the rewards he promised. And on the Kickstarter page he says the site wasn't expected to launch until mid 2020. Do I think Butch will be able to pull this off? Probably not...but I hope he does. I want Oaxis to be a thing, cause I am interested in some of the shows he's talked about putting on there, like Elf Detective. And if you hate Butch and hope for Oaxis to fail, that's your prerogative. But if you are hoping for it to fail, than you're hoping that nearly thirteen hundred people got scammed out of their money. Just saying.  Ugh! I'm sick of this drama. I want more uplifting Kickstarter news! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rMCkNgHa3c

 Homestar Runner was one of the first big web series that existed B.Y. Before Youtube. The series has been running off and on for about nineteen years now. And the creators, The Brother Chaps, decided to make a Kickstarter campaign to make a tabletop board game based on one of there series most popular characters. Trogdor, the Burniator. A poorly drawn dragon with an affinity for burning down cottages. The Kickstarter was set up for a goal seventy thousand dollars. Which feels like a lot for a board game, but hey, what do I know. While Homestar still has a very loyal fanbase, the series defiantly is nowhere near as popular as it was in the early to mid two thousands. And seventy thousand is a pretty hefty goal? Would a board game based on an outdated internet meme from 2004 really be able to make that kind of money?  It reached it's goal in less than a day. And by the end they ended up making over one point four million dollars! I don't know what exactly The Brothers Chaps are going to do with all that money, but it's nice to know that the Homestar fanbase is still alive and well after all that time. And it's also nice to just see a Kickstarter that reached it's goal, delivered everything it promised, and didn't get into any major controversies.   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Anyway, back to controversy. Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon since 2006, resigned. And people hate her because of some...controversy. Something about unions I think? Yeah, I didn't bother looking into this one. Between the Thundercats Roar drama and Butch Hartman stuff, I just couldn't go through all of this again. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, so I'm perfectly happy to be the ostrich with it's head in the sand on this one! However, like I said last time, it'll be very interesting to see what happens to Nickelodeon in the next couple of years. Without Butch Hartman, Dan Schneider, and now Cyma Zarghami I feel like Nickelodeon five years from now could be something completely unrecognizable from what it is today. And hopefully it'll be in a good way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  But hey, this year wasn't all drama though. I mean look at all the new shows we got. Like Pinky Malinky.

DELAYED!  Okay, well at least we finally have Young Justice season three...

DELAYED!  The new Harley Quinn Cartoon...

DELAYED!  FXX's Deadpool?

CANCELED!  TBS's Close Enough from Regular Show creator JG Quintel?

WHO THE FU*K EVEN KNOWS AT THIS POINT?  Seriously, what's with this year? It's like everything has been delayed! What the heck? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Nickelodeon announced that they're making a reboot for the Rugrats. And just...why?  Money-    Yes, I know it's money! But it's a show about babies! When you make a reboot of something, the entire point is to update it. But when your show is about babies, how are you suppose to do that? Babies today are still doing the same things that babies did back in 1991. And with the first show having one hundred seventy two half hour episodes. What stories are left to tell?  Then again, anything can be good. That Muppet Babies reboot (Which I didn't watch and isn't on this list) seems to be pretty well received. So maybe it could work. I don't know. I've never seen to much Rugrats growing up, so it's hard for me to get excited for this. But I'm sure someone will enjoy it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  So Netflix decided to drop all of their new series all at the end of the year. Their first one is Matt Groening's Disenchantment. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp_RnJcb8Ig

 The series follows Bean, the princess of the magical kingdom of Dreamland. She's a bitter snarky alcoholic, cause AGAIN, NEVER SEEN THAT CHARACTER DONE BEFORE! The series follows her, as well as her personal demon Luci and her elf companion Elfo through various misadventures. Think what Futurama did with Sci-fi but with a fantasy setting and you have this show. Only...Comedy Centeral era Futurama.  I didn't really enjoy the first seven or so episodes of this show that much. The show wasn't bad per say, but it wasn't really anything great either. This show is aimed slightly more towards adults than Matt Groening's previous works, having a TV-14 rating instead of a TV-PG. The humor is a bit darker and edgier, and it lead to this very mean spirited feel over the entire show. The cast aren't particularly likable, and Dreamland just isn't a fun setting to be around. One thing I did like however was the fact that the show had an on going continuity and changing status quo. This is refreshing considering that Matt Groenings other shows (mainly The Simpsons) are famous for almost always returning to their status quo.  But here's the weird thing, starting with episode 8, the show suddenly has this MASSIVE spike in quality out of nowhere as all the plot points that have been building over the course of the season all start to pay off. The characters all become a lot more likable. The stakes are raised. Like, it's weird how different these last three episodes are. I'd go into more detail, but unfortunately I can't due to spoilers, but trust me, the show gets better. It's not "classic Simpsons" or "classic Futurama" good, but still. It's not THAT far off.  This sudden spike in quality makes it hard for me to decide how to rate this show. But since most of the run is pretty sub par, I kinda just have to average it out. Unfortunately due to the continuity you can't just skip till the end. It all really depends how patient you are. But even the bad stuff isn't awful or anything. It's just kinda bland. The show was picked up for a second season and I am looking forward to seeing where this show will go. I think that season two could be something great, but just talking about season one, it's...okay. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Hey, it feels like it's been a while since we had a controversy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZSOGZFfSDk

 It seems recently there are so many streaming services out there creating there own original series, it's hard to keep track. You got Netflix, Hulu, DC Universe, Soon they'll be Disney+...Oaxis-  So it only made since for a site like Cruchyroll to start making they're own exclusive content. You'd think they would just hire some anime studio to make originals for them like Netflix does. But no, they decided to go with a more American styled series. High Guardian Spice. The trailer doesn't reveal much about the show, but plot wise it sounds eerily similar similar to RWBY. About a group of girls all named after different spices going to school to become "Guardians." Whatever that means.  There were a lot of reason people were upset. From it be a more Americanized looking series. To the fact that Cruchyroll's (from what I hear) site having some interface problems that some people would rather have them devoting the money on fixing. But the main reason people were upset was because of the series trailer spent more time talking about the diversity of the crew and characters than they did the show plot. Outrage was also sparked from the fact that they use the fact that they have an all female writers room as a sign of there "diversity." Even though having a writers room were everyone is the same gender isn't actually diverse.  I have no problem with diversity in my stories. But the fact that they chose to focus on it as a highlight when they talked so little about the story of the characters is what has me worried. It makes me worried that the crew aren't confident enough in the series premise and characters to carry the series on it's own. It's better to make a story that's good first, and diverse second as oppose to the other way around. When you do it the other way, you end up with Ghostbusters 2016. I think. I never saw it, but I hear it's "okay" at BEST. People don't like things shoved down there throats, even if it's something they agree with. Most people support diversity. But when you tell them that they HAVE to support it, that's what makes people start to hate it. Humans are very spiteful creatures in that regard.  However, despite all of that, I'm still kinda excited for this show. I LOVE the art style. And you all know by now that I love me a good girly cartoon. And many other shows that boast about their diversity (Like Steven Universe and She Ra, which I'll get to in little bit) still manage to be good. It can be distracting when you see a cartoon and know what ideals the creators are trying to push. I get it. But sometimes you just have to take the death of the author approach, and just see the show for what it is on it's own. You might be surprised by what you can enjoy. We'll have to wait to see how this show pans out. But if they're able to include some Mike Toole, I'm sold. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  It seems like every year we have one BIG cartoon finale. 2016 had Gravity Falls. 2017 had Regular Show. And now after eight long years, it's time for Adventure Times Grand Finn-ale.  ...I'm not sorry.  Adventure Time ended with an hour long episode "Come Along with Me." I'll try to not spoil the special TOO much for those who haven't seen it, but if you want to go in completely blind I suggest skipping down to the next segment cause this is your SPOILER WARNING. The special revolves around the Gum War between Princess Bubblegum and her Uncle Gumbald. A plot that had been slowly growing all season. On top of that, Betty and Normal Man are trying to find a way to turn Ice King back into Simon.  The things I do like about the finale is just the sheer number of callbacks that were made. While I think a few did go over my head, as there are a few episodes of Adventure Time I've never gotten around to seeing, it's nice to see so many returning concepts and characters. I'm glad they included things from the entire series run, instead of just the "classic" episodes that most people would recognizes. It rewards fans who stuck around for the long haul. It was also nice seeing most of the series lingering plot points wrap up. And we finally got to see the kiss that we've all been waiting years for. And kudos to CN for allowing them to do it. It was very brave of them.  I am of course talking about LSP and Lemongrab, baby! Wooh! 

 There's also the ending. Which is just a montage set to the end credits song showing where all the characters end up after the series. I love endings like this so damn much, and while it didn't hit me as hard as Regular Show's finales montage, it still hits the feels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIkS8eGCKOU

 The special does have it's flaws though. The Gum War really felt like an anti-climax and the shift to GOLB felt very out of left field. Also the fate of Uncle Gumbald left a very bad taste in my mouth. It kinda felt like they went against the whole point they tried to make. I admit that I didn't enjoy this finale as much as I did the Gravity Falls or Regular Show finales, but it's still sad seeing Adventure Time go. It defined cartoons of the 2010's. And I don't think they'res been a show since that's been quite like it. Even though the later seasons weren't as good, Adventure Time will always have a special place in my heart. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Netflix continues to pump out series after series with another new series, Dragon Prince.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWEtCsi3Eo8

 Dragon Prince is a series set in a fantasy world in the midst of war. On one side is the humans, and on the other side the Elves and Dragons. The series follows two human princes, Callum and Ezran as well as a elf assassin named Rayla, as they go on a quest that will hopefully bring peace to there world.  The series features a lot of crew and voice actors who previously worked on Avatar: The Last Airbender. And it shows. I mean both shows follow a group of kids traveling through a fantasy world in the middle of a war. The seasons are called books, and each book based on a different element of the magic system. I was worried this show would falls end up being just a carbon copy of Avatar. But luckily, the show does manage to have it's own feel despite having a lot of stimulates.  The animation is a bit of a mixed bag. It's cel shaded CGI, similar to RWBY. But despite the series being made by a company much bigger than Rooster Teeth, the animation is so much more lag-y. Something about the frame rate seems off at times. Also I noticed background characters being copied and recolored a few times in my watch. But none of this took me to much out of the experience.  The characters and writing are all really good for the most part. One of the best parts of Avatar was how it showed that both sides of the war had normal people. And Dragon Prince takes this element and brings it one step further. Neither side of the war are depicted as wholly right or wholly wrong, with both sides committing terrible acts. That's a lot of complexity for a show that's aimed at children. However, there is a villain who, while I won't reveal who he/she is, feels very cartoonishly evil for this otherwise complex world. Like, you could make this character complex very easily. A lot of the villains goals and reasoning makes sense, and are even justifiable. But the methods used are just the most mustache twirling ways of achieving these goals, even when there are less evil ways of accomplishing the same thing. It's weirdly out of place.  However, despite the flaws, Dragon Prince is a really good show that manages to feel similar to Avatar while still being it's own thing. I highly recommend you check it out.   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Speaking of Avatar, Netflix is making one! Particularly a live action reboot. And just...Why?  Money-    Yes, I know it's money! But everybody already love the original Avatar! What is there to change? What needs to be updated? And what can be done in live action that can't be done in animation. It feels like all these live action remakes only exist in order to "legitimize" their animated counterparts. Cause God forbid something animated be watched by adults. I dunno. There's a very good chance this could be good, but I doubt it'll be better than the original series. I have no interest in this. Netflix, you have Dragon Prince! You don't need this! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  But Netflix isn't done yet! Cause we also have Hilda! Based on the series of graphic novels of the same name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCojP2Ubuto

 Hilda follows...Hilda. A young adventurous girl who spent her whole life living in a magical forest with her Mom. That is until one day her Mom decides to move to the city of Trolberg. Now Hilda has to learn to adapt to her new surroundings in the city, learn to make friends with normal humans, and deal with magical creatures. Cause despite the fact that Trolberg has a wall designed to keep magical creatures out, the city really sucks at doing so.    This shows really cute! The art style reminds me of a cross between Steven Universe and The Loud House. But with any series involving kids interacting with magical creatures the comparisons are going to be brought up. Is Hilda the next Over The Gravity Garden Falls? Seriously, ever video on Youtube about Hilda brings up this comparison.  And really, outside of the premise of "adventurous child exploring magical forest" Hilda isn't really like either of those shows. Hilda is a lot lighter in tone than those two series. The monsters aren't as scary and the humor is a lot less snarky. There aren't really that many "jokes" in Hilda as the series relies more on overall pleasantness. Also there isn't any real overarching mystery element in Hilda. It's more slice of life. Why can't Hilda just be the next...Hilda?  It's a quaint show. From the animation, to the tone, to the voice acting, it all just feels so cozy. I also love the creativity with all the different creatures they come up with. It's has a unique charm to it, and it's fun seeing a world where everyone just knows magic exist and society has integrated with it. If I had to point out a few flaws, I'd say that the subplot they have with Hilda's best friend Frieda wasn't very good. I really have no idea what they were going for with that. And the show can be a bit repetitive at times, but that might just be because I had to binge it in order to finish it in time for this review. But overall this is a really nice show. Check it out if you can. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  OK KO is well known for it's crossovers from Captain Planet to Mighty Magiswords. But this year, they created the ultimate crossover. And if we could just appreciate the dedication to the past that the crew for OK KO clearly had when making this crossover? You all know what I'm talking about right? OK KO meet Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School Baby! That's right, the crossover that we've all been waiting for.

 ...  AND THEY SAID AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR WAS THE MOST AMBITIOUS CROSSOVER OF ALL TIME!  They were even allowed to use the original Hannah-Barbara model sheets. This is notable as I think it's the first time OK KO has ever actually used a model sheet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Hey, everybody loves Fallout 76, right? While we all agree the game is a flawless masterpiece, I just wish there was a way to somehow make it even better. Like, what if we got the twitch streamer Ninja, The rapper Logic, and RICK AND MORTY to all live stream the game together? Now THAT would be a lot of IQ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMZhhTOF4l8

 ...  aNd ThEy SaId ThAt AvEnGeRs: InFiItY wAr WaS tHe MoSt AmBiTiOuS cRoSsOvEr oF AlL tImE!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I swear, Netflix won't be satisfied until they make at least one thousand original animated series a year. Here's She-Ra and the Princess of Power. Not to be confused with She-Ra: Princess of Power. That's the 80's show.  Good job naming your show there, Netflix! 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuFQxsRzUws

This is the cheesiest theme song ever, I love it so much!  Now, from what I understand, a lot of OG She-Ra fans don't like this reboot because it changed so much from the original. However, as someone who knows next to nothing about She-Ra or He-Man, I'm can't really comment on any inaccuracies. So I'm going to have to judge it as it's own thing.  She-Ra follows Adora, a child solider serving as force captain in The Horde army. But one day, after finding a magical sword in the forest, she gains the ability to transform into the Hero, She-Ra. Not long after that she finds out that, shock of all shock, the army that's literally called THE HORDE are actually the bad guys. so she defects from the Horde, and joins the Rebellion with her new friends Bow and Glimmer. Now Adora, along with a growing army of magical princesses, must find a way to fight back against the Horde. Meanwhile The Horde, specifically Adora adopted sister/possible...lover Catra try to bring her back to her "home."  I like this show. It's not amazing or anything. But it's a fun, girly action series. That's something I like about Netflix, it's one of the only channels out there that's not afraid to do action series. While the characters aren't that complex, they're fun and all have good chemistry together. Everybody feels like a real person. And this applies to both the Rebellion and the Horde. The show does a good job of juggling a lot of characters, while still keeping focus on the main cast.  AND YOU WANNA TALK SAD, LONELY LESBIANS! THIS WHOLE SHOW IS A SAD LONELY LESBIAN! Though did anyone else find it a bit strange that Adora's relationship with Catra seemingly bounces back and forth between "sister" and "lover." Like, I don't care which way you go with, but you really need to pick one or the other...  I know a lot of people are annoyed by the fact that a lot of classic designs and characters were changed to make the show more diverse. I didn't mind this to much. Adaptations change race, sexuality, and body types all the time. And I can only think of one time where it ever felt distracting, and even then it was brief. I never found it to bothersome.  Downsides though, the tone is kinda wonky at times. Nothing to noticeable, but sometimes it seems like the show is trying to be a serious action adventure, while other times it feels like it's trying to be campy like the 80's series. There's an episode called "Princess Prom" and it's one of the turning points in the season. Like, how am I suppose to take this seriously. But luckily it never gets that bad. I think the show is somewhat aware of a wink and nod nature to the show. It's a fun series. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  And unfortunately, we have to end the year on a downer note. As Stephen Hillenburg, creator of Spongebob, passed away at the age of 57 from ALS. I don't know what to say. I hate taking an entire human beings life and acting like there art is all that mattered. But as I don't know the man personally, I'll just say that he created one of the most well know fictional characters of all time. Spongebob is the first thing most people think of when you say Nickelodeon. And it's one of the few characters that I think will be remembered even a hundred years in the future, along the likes of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Popeye. Even in death, his legacy will live on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  And with that, we end 2018 year in review! It's been a hell of a wild ride! But how does the year rank overall? First, we'll start with my old favorite. Ranking the series in a way that'll end up regretting in a month! Keep in mind this is a rough list. List aren't really my specially, and each show offers and is going for it's own unique thing. So sometimes it's hard to compare them. Also these rankings could change in the following year as new episodes come out. But if I had to rank them... 9. Apple and Onion 8. Craig of the Creek 7. Final Space 6. Disenchantment 5. Nomad of Nowhere 4. She Ra and The Princess of Power 3. Ballmastrz 9006 2. Hilda 1. Dragon Prince  And keep in mind that, due to both a lack of time and lack of cable, there were a lot of shows I wasn't able to check out or just wasn't interested in discussing. Like these!  (Big City Greens, Harvey Street Kids, Mega Man: Fully Charged, Muppet Babies, Our Cartoon President (HAHA! Trump jokes! Never seen those before!), Paradise PD (Cause we definitely need another show from the makers of Brickleberry!), Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars Resistance, Summer Camp Island, Super Drags, The Adventures of Kid Danger, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, The Hollow, The Shivering Truth, Total Dramarama)  As for the grade, it's a bit tricky. If I had to go just by the shows, I'd give it a B. They're weren't many shows I LOVED but they're weren't many shows I outright hated. Most shows this year were "good." But if we decide to count all the drama, that would drag the year all the way down to a C. There was just so much drama that, along with a few other personal reasons, I found myself kinda falling out of the animation community as a whole this year. And when the drama actually starts making you wonder why you entered this community in the first place, that's not a good thing. So take that for what you will.  As for best network, I once again have to give it to Netflix. I know it's kinda unfair since I didn't watch any Nickelodeon or Disney shows this year. But with so many more shows and channels watching a show from each is getting harder and harder. And Netflix is just pumping out series after series. And most of them are pretty good. It feels like the people at Netflix are really given free range to do whatever they want over there. And we get some really unique series as a result. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  2018 may not have been the best year for animation, but I really think that 2019 is going to be a really good year. I mean just with what's already been announced we've got so many good series to look forward to! There's Infinity Train, Owl House, Amphibia, Los Casagrandes, Victor and Valentino, Gen: Lock, Harley Quinn, Young Justice Season Three, Theoretically Close Enough! Plus a lot more! Seriously, next year I'm either going to have to cut out a lot of anticipated series or make this a three part-er. Which would you prefer? And what did you think of 2018 for animation? What series were the best, and which were the worst? Leave any thoughts in the comments down bellow, I'd love to hear em. Fav, Follow, and comment if you like the review. And have a great new year. And let's all hope that 2019 can have a little less drama.  Um, isn't Thundercats Roar and High Guardian Spice coming out next year too? 2019 is going to be the biggest dumper fire ye-  Have a great day. (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review. All credit goes to there original owners.) 

  https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/2018-Year-in-REVIEW-Part-2-779673316 DA Link

[queermequeeryou]

chapter five

Waking up in this sunny, fresh-looking office of LaToya gave Mad very warm, pleasant feeling. The woman was still there and as she realised that Mad is also awake, she has started to think about her lack of make-up although last night they definitely got carried away with the alcohol so she did not have the power yet to just sneak to the toilet and get ready for the day. However, the good thing was that she has arranged her working space the way it looked really like a private suite and unless she did not let a person to the room by the call from her  secretary, nobody would come in. That was actually the initial purpose of doing it so because as she was living with her niece, she did not maintain enough privacy to switch between her private life and the career. Anyway, she was feeling uncomfortable so she changed the position showing Leo her back. It was undoubtedly too soon for her to show herself without make-up. Mad took her hand and embraced her by the back in a very gentle, subtle way which surprised her quite a bit but she let her do this without a word. Leo kissed her palm and it was very charming. LaToya found herself feeling deeply moved by the emotional aspect of it all which she did not expect at all. “Good morning” said Leo and kissed her on the cheek. LaToya felt a strong need to just face her. Whatever. She will find another lover quickly so why she, the old, serious woman should fear to show herself as she was. She turned to her and smiled delicately which was something new to Mad.  LaToya still could not stop being unsure of this gesture. “How are you?” asked Leo in a caring tone. “Strange” replied LaToya after few seconds. It was the first thing that came to her mind. “What time is it?” LaToya took a glance onto her electronic clock and she realised it was already 10 am. “Oh, shit. I have to get ready. Tone of work for today. I am wondering why Rhonda has not called yet.  Her tone again was cold and professional. It was too much for her to be that private with somebody. She needed to put back her mask to feel comfortable again. She stood up looking for her satin robe but she could not see it. It was lying on the opposite site, near the bad. Leo handed her it and kissed her on the lips. LaToya did not respond. She just put on the rob quickly and tied it. Leo stood up as well staring at the older woman still feeling attracted to her which made LaToya feeling satisfied inside. “You look so gorgeous” said Mad and and kissed her again.  LaToya could not believe she is still tempting for Leo as she did not have her make-up on. She let her tied out her rob so they could make love once more before she had to get ready to work. It felt so good.

* End of the sick leave still has not brought much solution for Leo. She was broken between leaving the university and staying there to teach. She was not able to see Paris anywhere on the corridors or at her lectures but it was nothing that she did not expect. She tried to get know what is with her from the fellow lecturers but nobody new a thing about it. Leo did not want to push on it to much because it was still just a few days so nobody saw much difference and the last thing she desired was to get the attention on her at this point. LaToya was not calling her for few days and she also needed time so she was not giving her a call neither. On Friday though she called her and Leo has spent another night at the office suite and they talked this time even more than fucked. Leo was getting used to spending her evenings and mornings like that. It was so good to wake up with this magnificent woman by her side. She wondered how long it will last.

* Many thoughts were streaming through LaToya’s mind. It was the first time in a while when she really cared about somebody else than her niece. She was deeply scared to trust anybody and that was also the case at this time. Leo was intelligent, elegant, young, she has had perfect body and she was treating her with respect and caring. She has never thought she will be sleeping with the other woman but it has all made sense to her already few years ago. She was never attracted with any man she slept with or not. At first, she thought it was because she has always met bastards who wanted something from her but without love or even respect but as soon as she opened herself to be attracted by women she found herself catching an eye on some that she was briefly seeing on the streets. Than, it came time when she has started sleeping with them and it was it. Even one night stands tasted better now and she has started to design her new suite in the office the way she could meet other women instead of going to their places all the time. Of course, her niece was not the one to know a thing. For her, she has never had any private life at all besides marriage with her ex-husband which was the worst man she has ever met and she met quite a few. After she has started dating with Leo it rapidly became very natural to her like she could do this every day and every night. They clicked well but she knew it was not going to last long. After a while she has realised she stopped spending as much time with her niece as she used to so she decided to fix it. All in all, it was the most important for her. So she gave up meetings with Mad for few days to stay in the house and just talk with Paris, cook something, play scrabbles with her. In the evening, her niece went to the kitchen to have some snacks while she was watching Netflix and LaToya was there, in perfect casual dress and make-up preparing herself a cup of coffee. “Hi, sweetie. Fancy some coffee as well?”  “You’re not going out tonight, auntie?”  “No, not today. The work is done so I am willing to spent some time with you tonight. What do you think about day, honey?” Paris sighed deeply feeling all the pain inside. She really needed her aunt to be there for her. “It would be great to have some coffee and little talk with you maybe” she said after a while and sat in the living room while their old cat Jefferson jumped on the couch and she petted him. LaToya brought two lattes to the coffee table along with some cookies. “So, how are you doing recently, my love?” she asked and took a sip from her cup. Paris was petting a cat for a little while hesitating to reply but after a moment she decided there is no better person in the world to speak to. “Auntie, I was in love, I think. I’m not sure but it was somethin’. You know. I felt for this person and it’s hard now ‘cause we broke up and I dunno what to do. I feel like shit, I didn't go to classes this week at all and that’s fucked up and silly I want to kill myself. I am miserable...” she cried for few minutes and laid her head on her aunt’s knees so she gently touched her hair and kissed her head.  “Baby, I know it can be hard but you have all your life. You’re going to find a wonderful boy one time and you’re going to be incredibly happy, I promise you that” said LaToya but Paris resisted and sat down immediately. “Auntie, I’m not. There’s something else I have to tell ya. I’m gay. Gonna have a girlfriend and I was in love with other girl. That person was a she and I’m not gonna find a boy. Stop tellin’ me this shit about boy and what else? Kids or what? I’m sick n tired of it. That’s all fucked up. You’re never gonna get it, I know...” she was almost shouting full of tears but LaToya interrupted her. “Paris, I will get it. I don’t care if you’re going to be with a boy or with a girl. I love you as you were my daughter and I accept you as you are. Look at me.” she took her niece’s face into her hands and stared deeply into her eyes. “I will never ever disrespect you or leave you or disappoint you. You are my daughter now and you can trust me. You are the best thing that happened to me. If you will have a wife one day I just hope she will treat you with love and respect and that you will be happy with her. Nothing more really matters. Remember that. LaToya hugged her niece and kissed her on the forehead then gave her some tissues. That was relieving for Paris to just admit it all to her aunt and she finally felt better. She now she is understanding and that made her believe everything will be alright. They sat there til late hours not talking much more but laying close to each other, supporting themselves quietly and later, watching some Netflix together. LaToya was really thinking about telling about herself for the first time as well tonight but she managed to bury it inside again.

* The work on Mad’s book was going pretty well. They were almost ready to publish. Leo was happy about that but that was not the only important think in her life going on recently. She has finally decided to change the university. She applied to another one with a huge motivation to stay with occasional, part-time lectures on Spanish and to mostly focus on promoting the new volume - they planned a tour through the States where she was going to speak about Botswana and the book on some of the universities and colleges. It seemed like all finally has started to come back to its place but Leo still was having a feeling that she should rethink her values again. She did not know what is important for her again and she was lying to herself that it is not the right moment now to debate it. LaToya came back from the bathroom where she took a shower and came to Mad’s bedroom where she was reading “Demian” by Hermann Hesse. When the businesswoman took off her robe and focused on putting cream on her hands, Leo was deeply into the plot of this classic German writer’s story. LaToya came closer to Leo and just laid down without much speaking. The younger woman kissed her wrist. “You smell so good” she said and kissed her again, this time on the lips. LaToya pushed her back on the cushions like she was the one who wanted to dominate which was always a turn on for Mad who then took her to the other side and moved lower towards her underbelly. They were both trying not to think to much but they knew somehow it would be impossible to get back after the relationship they have developed. LaToya wanted so badly to just run away, get out of this because of strong emotions she was feeling but she could not do this. She put her hands on Mad’s neck while she moved with her kisses lower and lower. She has started to moan which was quite unusual for her. She wanted more. Leo was trying to blur, just disappear into her own uncertainties. She wanted to become numb so she could not feel or involve. How could she not fell in love with this impossible woman. She licked her insides with a great hunger trying to make breaks to make LaToya feel it deeper. She was already shivering and whispering her name while kissing her ear. Leo finished it with her hand massaging LaToya’s roughly and rhythmically which made her come and they both felt like it is pure emotion that just wet their bodies like a flow of something that they have never known. LaToya’s breath was coming back to normality. She went to her knees and found her mouth in between Mad’s legs. Leo was not sure if this way is how it was supposed to be. It seemed awkward to hell but she let LaToya interfere inside which made her eventually, sigh heavily at some point. Definitely not a usual turn of events for her. Mad kissed LaToya on her cheek and they laid down on the bed with layers of duvet stretched somewhere in between their hands, legs and backs. They both wanted to say something. They have fallen asleep instead.

[gary-robbins]

"Help Is Not Coming" - The 2018 Barkley Marathons

 It was 1:30am on Wednesday, March 21st and we were in Knoxville, TN. The temps were just below freezing, with a stiff wind gusting over people. Snow was accumulating on the ground and my family, collectively my parents, wife and son, were walking between the hotels in the immediate vicinity asking if they had any available beds for the night. We had of course booked our own hotel that evening, and we were all in fact sleeping soundly just minutes before, but currently there were a few hundred people braving the winter conditions in their pajamas as firefighters streamed into the building.

When the hotel alarms were triggered my mother thought it was her alarm clock, and she called front desk complaining that she couldn’t turn it off. She was informed that this was the fire alarm and she was to evacuate immediately. My own room, with my wife and son, was half a hallway away from my parents, but my mother and I somehow opened our doors into the main hallway in unison and I waved at her with that look that says “damn fire alarm, I guess we should evacuate just to be on the safe side.”

I walked down the hall with Linda and Reed, towards my parents, whose room was directly across from the second floor stairwell. As I was getting them all set someone barreled through the door onto the second floor, with their full rolling luggage bag in tow. He looked like he was being chased by a bear and he simply yelled, “FIRE!!” then promptly dove back into the stairwell and outta site.

Okay, shit, this is actually happening right now!

I direct my family down the stairs and then walk back the length of the second floor saying in a calm but loud voice, “There is a fire in the building, please evacuate immediately. There is a fire in the building, please evacuate immediately.”

It was amazing to me in that moment how many people were still attempting to wait this out in their rooms. The alarm noise leaves no doubt and certainly no desire to attempt to ignore it. My head hurts now just recreating this and thinking about it. I ducked back into my own room to grab my wallet and keys to our rental SUV, as I was now envisioning that we’d be spending a few hours out in the cold. I had thousands of dollars in electronics with me, between my computer, battery packs, watches, etc, etc, but I stayed calm and rational, all of that was replaceable and I wanted to be in and out of my room in a matter of seconds, so I didn't even attempt to take more than my wallet and keys.

I did one final check of the entire second floor and no one remained, so I headed down the stairwell and out into the frigid night to locate my family.

 When Linda and I had checked in exactly 24 hours earlier we were placed in a “non-smoking room” on a smoking floor. I had no idea smoking was even allowed in hotels any longer, but here we were. I retreated to the front desk and asked if in fact there was a non-smoking room available on a “non-smoking floor”, what a concept. The front desk attendant was helpful enough and we were moved one floor lower. I mentioned my folks were checking in the following day and requested the same for them. Linda and I were initially placed in hotel room #313 and I’d later discover that the person in room #312 (the one we would have been sharing a wall with) had fallen asleep while smoking in bed.

 My wife, son and I had arrived in Tennessee 26 hours earlier, and it had already been an eventful first day up to this point, what with an ER visit for our two-and-a-half-year-old son’s first ear infection, and our rental car agency messing up our reservation and not having a child seat available for us upon arrival. I had a full Jerry Seinfeld moment;

“You see, you know how to *take* the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation. And that's really the most important *part* of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.”

Hands up in the air and all.

By all accounts our first day had not gone so smoothly, but that’s why we decided to fly in a day earlier this year, to get all of the rental car issues, hospital visits and hotel’s burning down out of the way early.

I eventually located two available rooms at an adjacent hotel, and at 3am we all attempted some fitful shuteye.

I don’t believe in omens. I don’t subscribe to luck, but it was undeniable by this point, I’d been sensing for quite a time that nothing was going to unfold the way I’d hoped it would at this year’s Barkley. Every time I had this fleeting thought of impending doom, which had been ongoing for weeks, I’d repeat a Macklemore lyric in my head (mock me if you will, I really don’t care. That’s not the lyric, that’s me talking to you) “they ain’t givin’ it, I’m takin’ it” and it was just a reminder that I had to get my headspace right and to not allow any expectations, distractions, or excuses to creep in. Nothing about the Barkley is supposed to be easy, you want an excuse, I’ll give you 100 of em in under a minute, “they ain’t givin’ it I’m takin’ it”… “nobody’s gonna make this happen but you Gary, control what you can control and forget about the rest.” The hotel fire would make for a great story and It was but one night of lost sleep. I didn’t even talk about it again until after the race, because as we drove out of Knoxville and towards Wartburg, it was already literally and figuratively, behind us.

Frozen Head

We arrived at Frozen Head late on Wednesday and were greeted by a familiar site in an unfamiliar location, snow, and lots of it. I managed to get out for a sundown run up England Mountain and the snow drifts along the top were shocking, some being knee deep. “This could get interesting” I thought, but the forecast for the following days was promising enough and most people expected the course to be free of snow come race day.

 One of the rules of the Barkley, and Frozen Head State Park, is that you’re not allowed to depart the ‘candyass’ maintained trails at any point outside of the race. If you are caught going off-trail outside of the 60 hours of the race you are removed from the race by Laz immediately and escorted out of camp, likely to never be drawn back into the event again. I was hoping for a bit more daylight so I could scout my end of lap five error from 2017 a bit further, but within minutes of cresting the high point I had all the information I needed. Twenty feet. Six meters. That is the actual margin of error that lead to my coming in from the wrong direction one year ago. Twenty feet at the end of 60 hours of effort. I never did write a race report about it. I sat in an internet café for seven hours on a rainy day in April last year and I had managed to recreate all but one paragraph of my experience. I just didn’t have the desire to relieve it blow for blow. A common misconception that’s taken hold is that I hit the trail and simply turned the wrong way, going right instead of left. I knew I was to go left and was expecting to T-junction with the trail. If I had, I would have turned left and run down into camp to close out the race with a few minutes to spare. I would have become the 16th finisher of the Barkley Marathons, and I wouldn’t have been standing there now, staring down thoughts of why and how, and attempting to put a positive spin on things.

 In the end I learned that in 2017 I was about twenty feet too far west, and the trail curls away at that point. When I finally found the trail I was parallel to it, while knowing I was supposed to T-junction with it, then I trended into it, more of a merge really, and somehow as the trail was on my left at this point my 60-hour sleep deprived brain went “left side, left turn, all the same, you’re on the trail now run it in!”

Anyways, they say American football is a game of inches, and the Barkley is no different. Small mistakes rapidly become big mistakes, and that was one of my mantras this year, along with "go slower, to go faster.”

 Friday arrived in no time and before we knew it the map was out and things were getting real. There were three changes to the course for 2018, two of which favoured the runners in terms of appearing to be slightly faster than the previous book locations, whereas one book location was most certainly much longer than the year prior. In the end I guessed this 2018 course to maybe be in the range of 7-12 minutes longer per loop, or 30-60 minutes harder overall.

The total climbing stats for 2018 would come in at 13,484ft per loop, or a whopping 67,420ft for the full pull. If Laz adds one more 500ft climb to the mix in the coming years, the Barkley will be a 70,000ft race! Read that again and let that sink in.

The Conch Is Blown

Save for our fire alarm evac on Tuesday, I’d slept great all week, and thankfully Friday night proved no different. I passed our just after midnight, after already being in bed for three hours, and likely ended up with about six hours of reasonable sleep. When I awoke just after 7am I eased into the morning and the conch was eventually blown at 8:33am for a 9:33am start. Jamil Courey and I were the first two runners to greet Laz as we awaited our official “Barkley watch”, the $10 Timex piece that is the only watch you are allowed to carry for the race. This watch is set to “race time” or “zero time” so when the 24hr watch goes to zeroes you start running. When the watch hits 12:00 on your third day, time has officially expired (60 hours).

My strategy was simple going into the first loop, go slower to be faster, get through it mistake free, refresh my memory as to the nuances of the course and go from there.

Just prior to the start I’d somehow managed to bump my watch and it reset the seconds back to zero. The seconds must’ve been counting up in the 50’s, about to turn over to a new minute, because my watch showed the race starting about a minute early, and I was scrambling just a bit to get through the pack at the back and up near the front as we all streamed past the yellow gate. We were about ten minutes into the first climb when I questioned someone else as to the start time and then realized my watch was out by over a minute. Runners know that the watches will be out vs the “master watch” that Laz wears but only by a few seconds over the duration of the 60 hours, and by coincidence when I initially compared my watch with Laz’s we realized my total time variance for the 60 hours would be seven seconds, meaning my watch, set to race time, could not go above 11:59:53 on day three. Not that any of this ended up mattering in the end, but it is just another example of the attributes that make the Barkley so unique.

As we worked our way up the first climb, on a few miles of candyass trail, this was the slowest I’d ever started The Barkley, following my race plan perfectly. In the previous two editions a lead pack pushes off the front and crests the first climb in about twenty-five minutes. We were closer to thirty minutes and there were at least 8-10 runners in front of or around me. We snagged our first page and proceeded to drop off the mountain towards book two. The race always seems to splinter here, as runners scramble for position after the first backlog of pages being pulled, and this year was no different. By the time we intersected the river below I’d found myself at the front of the race, earlier than anticipated, and already down to a group of about six.

The more eyes the better, was also something I’d been telling myself. No need to shrink the field until we’ve at least collectively located the new books together. I had mentioned to Guillaume Calmettes a day earlier that I intended to up the pace a bit after book seven, which in the clockwise direction would be the third and final “new book location”, but until then I saw no reason thin out the field.

Our now lead group nailed book two, thanks in no small part to Nova Scotia’s Jodi Isenor (a previous fun run finisher) and as the book gets handed around to pull pages I glance at the cover. The book is titled “Six Seconds” and I temporarily lose my mind. “F@#K YOU LAZ!!” He is an expert at mental warfare. As we started up “hillpocolypse” which in the clockwise direction is the first off trail ascent of the race, our group consisted of myself, Jodi, Guillaume, Jamil, a Scottish bloke named Ally Beaven and another overseas runner whose name was James. Before we topped out on this climb we’d be down to four runners and I’d be down to one trekking pole, somehow managing to snap one of my poles within minutes of pulling them out.

Jamil Courey certainly knows the course well and he was a huge asset as we proceeded along without issue. When we arrived at book five, the biggest change of the year, he zoned in on it like a hawk. It was really impressive and I knew my decision to not forge on was paying dividends.

What was really surprising to me was how well Guillaume know the course. He’d done his homework, having travelled out just a month or so earlier to run all of the trails you’re allowed to scout outside of race weekend, and Guillaume took the lead on some sections as he was in fact the person in our group who’d been over some of the terrain the most recently. All in all, we were moving right along and accomplishing exactly what I’d set out to do, which was to put in an error free first loop.

At book seven, the third and final alteration to the 2018 course, I went right to a set of trees that matched the description, had a poke around, saw nothing, and began moving away from there, then Jamil comes in just behind us, goes to the exact set of trees and pulls out the book. This is one of the things that people fail to recognize about this race, you can literally be standing on top of the book at times and you still won’t see it unless you dig for it. Books are buried in tree stumps, under rocks or just anywhere that makes it as hard to locate as possible. Jamil informs us that “this was the location of this book in 2014.” Cool, good to know. Okay, all new books have now been established and it’s mostly smooth sailing in regards to my own course knowledge.

For the first time in my three attempts, the course goes up the infamous “Testicle Spectacle”. Over the past two years the book near Testicle has been off to one side of it, in 2016 it was in the left hip, if you will, and 2017 was in the right hip, so I’ve never done this route in its entirety, and I’m excited as it feels like a right of passage.  

It had rained overnight from Friday into Saturday and we were warned of an incoming “weather event” from late day Saturday into Sunday. As we started up Testicle the hill just continues to slop away from under us. It was a complete pile of mud and not a single inch was gained without slipping backwards to some degree. I was no longer enjoying my right of passage. The thrill of the new climb had lasted all of, well, six seconds really.

We crested the climb, now down to three, myself, Guillaume and Ally, and proceeded towards book eight. My line was off a bit and sure enough captain consistent Jamil catches back up to us. I lead us all up Danger Dave’s Climbing Wall and the onwards towards Rat Jaw.

Rat Jaw is a bitch. There is not a single picture ever taken of Rat Jaw that can accurately display its gradient and inherent challenges. Every year pics are posted from Rat Jaw and inevitably people following along online think “oh that doesn’t look so bad” “oh hill x-y-z that we have here locally is at least that steep.”

We were in for a special treat on Rat Jaw this year as the recent rains, not just overnight but over the last few weeks, had turned its clay like dirt into a vertical skating rink. No matter how fast you are moving up until that point, or how strong you might feel, Rat Jaw is am absolute soul destroying grind from bottom to top. There is an old cable that lays on the ground along some sections, and this cable becomes a life line. You drag yourself up this slope, one agonizing step at a time, and then you hang on for dear life on the downslope, using the cable as you would a climbing rope that’s been strung over a rocky slope to allow for safe passage.

By the time we’d topped out it was but myself, Guillaume and Ally. We might have been a few minutes slower going up than I’ve been in previous years on the first lap, but we’d exerted so much more energy in doing so. It was a fight for every step and for the first time in my three years at the race I actually had the thought, on the first lap, of “I can’t even imagine the effort that’ll be needed to get up this thing on laps three, four and five.”

Bottles filled, page pulled and careening down the mountain. I slam hard at one point but immediately bounce back up and keep running. My tricep is screaming at me and I think it’ll dissipate, but it never does. I attempted to arrest the fall by leaning into a pole and ended up straining my arm. Even as I type this almost a week later the tricep still has a ways to go to get back to 100%. Only at the Barkley are you as likely to experience an upper body injury as you are a lower body injury. The amount of upper body strength needed for the Barkley is often underestimated, and it’s a whole-body workout for two and a half straight days.

We went through the prison, up and over the final two climbs and down into camp after what could readily be described as a perfect first lap.

With about a mile to go, Guillaume says to me, “so how long do you think you’ll spend in camp?”

I’ve had a year to digest last year’s failure. I’ve watched Ethan Newberry’s documentary about it 17 times on the big screen (WhereDreamsGoToDie.com). I do not see six seconds as being the difference, I see the better part of 45 minutes that could have been improved upon. Goal #1 for 2018 was to be more dialed in camp, to be better organized from the start, and to “leave no doubt”. Leave nothing for chance. Be better, from lap one through lap five.

Laz changed the rules around camp for 2018 and each runner was allowed but two crew members. This meant Linda +1. This meant no Ethan, no Kim and no Shaun Martin. In the end my crew ended up being Linda + John Kelly, and we shared John Kelly with another runner, the aforementioned Jodi Isenor. John would have his hands full, crewing for two people, but there was no better person for the job. I was honoured that he’d dedicate his weekend towards my own hopeful success. My parents were staying at a hotel in Oak Ridge and would come to camp for Interloopal, taking Reed off of Linda’s hands so Linda and John could focus on the task at hand. Every – second – counts.

Me to Guillaume, “five minutes best case, seven minutes worst case.”

Guillaume, with a pause…”okay”.

We hit camp in 8h38m.

In 8h45m, after a full gear change from head to toe, socks, shoes, shirts, lube, everything,  I was sprinting back out of camp. It was, easily, the best I’ve ever felt after a lap at the Barkley. Things were going perfectly.

I spotted Guillaume and Ally scrambling to get to the gate to claim their second lap bib, as I was exiting the campground. I did not have a desire to move on without them, I had a desire to finish the race. Every – second – counts.

There was about ninety minutes of daylight remaining when I departed camp on lap two. For 2018 the direction of the loops was set as;

1. clockwise

2. counter

3. counter

4. clockwise

5. choice

The Second Lap - Counterclockwise

I put in a good push to get up and over the first climb, claiming book #13 (or the first book going ccw). As I dropped down the first off trail section of lap two I thought it about the right time to pull out my headlamp. The weather, as had been predicted, was setting in and it was foggy, cold and starting to rain. They were calling for up to 30mm of rain. The “weather event” had begun.

I clicked on my headlamp but nothing happened. I tried again…nothing. Tried one final time, but still zero. I always carry two primary headlamps of 350 lumens, the Princeton Tec Apex rechargeable, and a third emergency light of just 100 lumens, the PT Remix.

I attempted to fire up my second Apex light but it too was dead. This had never happened before. I pulled out my backup, backup light and turned it on. There was no way in hell that this emergency light was sufficient for navigating in the dark, and I didn’t even have spare batteries for it. I was far too far out of camp to head back and fix this. The sun was all but gone, the fog had rolled in, and my race, was about, to end…

“GUILLAUME! ALLY! GUILLAUME!! ALLY!!”

I knew they’d be close, but if I was unable to locate them I’d be hooped as there were no other runners close to us at this point.

Thankfully Guillaume started whistling back to me and we worked towards each other through the dense laurel brush.

“Oh my god, thank you! My headlamps are both dead, do either of you have a backup main light?”

Neither did but both offered what they did have. Nothing added up to a working solution though (extra batteries specific to each lamp) and I was forced to continue with my “AAA” powered Remix. I need to explicitly state at this point that my headlamps were not malfunctioning. It was not a product issue but a user mistake. We as a crew made an error and learned a valuable lesson in real time. The lamps were both dead, but through no fault of the manufacturer.

Myself, Guillaume and Ally were a team again, whether they liked it or not 😊

I lead us to our second book and as we made our move towards the third book a pack of runners headed our way at the end of their first lap. I asked everyone if they had any light source or “AAA” batteries to spare and a TN runner was kind enough to spot me his emergency light which was also “AAA”. This would at least get me closer to being able to cover the 12hrs of darkness we were now confronted with. (if you are reading this please message me so I can get your light back to you)

As we navigated towards our next book the epicenter of the storm started to unleash on us. We had curtains of rain rolling over us and visibility was down to about a foot or two at most. Neither Guillaume nor Ally had ever been on the Barkley course at night before, this was their first counterclockwise loop, we were in a rainstorm, on a pile of mud, in the Tennessee wilderness, with temperatures in the single digits, and their fearless leader had 100 lumens of light to work with.

The death by a thousand briar cuts had begun.

We blew this book in significant fashion and by the time we did locate it we were all soaked through to the bone and on the cusp of hypothermia.

“Guys, put on every layer you have, this is not going to get any better and we won’t regret it if we somehow end up being a smidge too warm on the next climb up Rat Jaw.”

I was now wearing a long sleeve merino wool base, a short sleeve tech shirt, and hooded wind jacket, a waterproof jacket, a buff, a toque, I had a second thicker pair of gloves that I switched into, I had on a short pair of tights under a full pair of tights, and now pulled on my waterproof pants. On the bright side, my pack was now much, much lighter.

Guillaume Calmettes is certainly one of the most positive people you’ll ever meet, and he exclaimed with a smile, in his thick French accent, but with perfect English “ADVENTURE!”

Ally Beaven possessed a great sense of humour, the ability to tell a good story, and most importantly he understood the golden rule of not complaining out loud.

I would have classified us squarely in the middle of being a “Dream Team” and “The Three Stooges”.

We dropped down towards the prison in the most deranged conditions I’d ever witnessed on this slope. It was like the ground was no longer solid but had somehow decayed into a foreign, much more malleable surface. If I could not visually process that I was moving across a supposedly solid slope I would have guessed it to be ice and snow underfoot. Each time we slipped, and we slipped plenty, we’d go for a ride downslope of about five to six feet before coming to a halt, often against a rock or tree, and then we’d be forced to pick ourselves up and attempt a few more feet of actual forward progress. It reminded me all too much of this:

I mostly nailed this descent, placing us just a tiny bit south of our intended target. We claimed our book and proceeded to the prison tunnel.

I have done the prison tunnel and Rat Jaw ten times in my first two years, this was now my 12th pass of the tunnel. Down the center of the tunnel is a cement strip that’s about five inches wide and six inches high. If you are not wearing a headlamp you loose site completely for about 25% of the tunnel in a complete blackout. Jared called this one of his Barkley games, to see if you could navigate this while essentially blind and I’ve adapted this game. On lap one I’d make it through the tunnel without falling off and getting wet, now on lap two, by headlamp, I was presented with something new to me. The tunnel no longer offered a slab of concrete down the middle as an option. There was one steady stream of water flowing through the tunnel, seven plus inches deep throughout. We still tried to stay on the concrete as the water was only an inch above this, but unbeknownst to me there are “inflow” pipes up above and at one point a rather vicious waterfall from above forced us to hug a sidewall. We were essentially fording a river, through a tunnel, at night, under a prison. It was right about then that I started questioning where I’d gone wrong with my life? Up until that point I'd mostly believed that I'd made reasonably good decisions with my life, but in retrospect, my epiphany was that I’d just managed a positive spin on a series of really bad decisions. I do really stupid things, and I do them with stunning regularity.

Anyways, not like I'm making any big life changes at 41 year's old, might as well forge ahead as is...at the exit of the tunnel there was genuine concern for not getting washed over the edge, into a five plus foot drop.

“ADVENTURE!”

We cleared the tunnel and heaved ourselves up Rat Jaw, crawling through the mud and briars every step of the way.

John freaking Kelly was waiting up top yelling encouragement at us through the fog. There’s a fire tower up top and I couldn’t help but picture the captain in the Forest Gump film, sitting on the topsail yelling out into the storm,

“IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT!?”

John informed us that we had at least another six hours in this weather, but that it should start to ease through the night and, as forecast, it would blow through and the next 48 hours were in fact promising. He also admitted to me later that he got lost in the fog, on maintained and sign-posted trails, while heading up to the fire tower to cheer us on. I was uncertain in that moment who was more miserable, us, while plodding through this thing, or John, wearing every layer he owned and standing out in this mess awaiting our arrival.

We were effective through the next few books, skiing down a mountain of mud on both Rat Jaw and then Testicle, and fording the New River to start up what’s known as Stallion Mountain and the back-half of the course going CCW. I couldn’t help but think of Blake Wood, a true legend of the sport and Barkley finisher who during one particularly rough year found the New River impassable on lap five due to heavy rains, and he subsequently was unable to finish that year through no other reason than he didn’t have a boat with him. Laz instituted a workaround for any future years should this happen again, with a prescribed reroute, so we couldn’t even claim that this was the worst year on record, though we were later informed that it did rank right up there.

We made good time all the way to the top, snagged our book page and then turned to descend towards our next book, dropping through a feature known as Cougar Rock.

Guillaume was on lead, he was near perfect through this section in daylight on lap one, but this was a different beast entirely at night. In hindsight, I became a passenger, and it cost us dearly. When you’re dealing with conditions like we were it hinders your judgement, there’s no time to stop and reset because stopping for even a moment leads to a deep shiver that originates in your core. To move is to stay warm, to stop is to freeze. If you start shivering you might not be able to recover from it, so you push on. It is not until we are fully cliffed out that the severity of our situation overwhelms us. We’re in a bad spot, we’re lost, we’re bleeding time, and a misstep by any of us could lead to a serious incident. We retreat, we reset, we work together to figure things out, but the damage is done. We right the ship, find Cougar Rock, nail our next two books through what’s known as The Garden Spot, and find ourselves correcting for a small error on the third to last book.

We’re now down to the final two books and our best case scenario for this lap is 13hrs – high.

The lead is back to me and with limited light I struggle. I’ve already gone through two sets of batteries for my own headlamp and am now borrowing Guillaume’s backup light. A major marker I’m searching for is a sign off the side of the trail, it is less than two feet from the trail, I know this, I am looking for it, I completely proceed right past it and start down an unfamiliar trail and am confronted by a sign I’ve never seen before that reads “legacy tree”.

“F#@K.”

I scream back up slope to Guillaume who is third in our line,

“Did I miss the sign!? Can you see it?”

“Yes, it’s here!”

We retreat, reset, and then struggle with this descent. For the second straight lap, I snap my pole in pretty much the exact same location. We are anything but smooth and the clock is ticking. We eventually locate the second to last book and start up the second to last climb of the lap.

In the fog mistakes are made, I miss by a few degrees and we’re once again scrambling. I have a deep pit in my stomach. This feels fatal.

We locate the trail right at daybreak and I ask the guys if they’re okay with me pushing onward, saying every second is vital right now. They’re totally cool and off I went, somehow feeling like I was up against the clock on lap two, instead of lap five.

I got chased off the trail a short time later by four wild hogs but no harm was done. I get up and over “Checkmate Hill” snag my page and absolutely careen down into camp. Lap time was something like 14h30m. My entire body is numb, not from pain, but from fear and frustration.

The weather has passed and the forecast for the day is nice. I did a full gear change and bathroom stop, but there was a lot to address after that loop.

To add insult to injury I was up against the absolute worst chafing I’ve ever experienced in my life. My Squirrel’s Nut Butter had more than done the trick on loop one, but something went wrong on the second lap. I was continually reapplying but things were getting worse. It was not until I stripped down that I could spot the cause. I was caked in mud from head to toe, and we were so cold overnight that removing gloves just wasn’t an option. Every time I relieved myself I was inadvertently introducing mud into my tights and I’d created a sandpaper grit effect. I was officially no longer having any fun, though at least I knew it’d help keep me awake from here on out.

Linda learned to make sushi in the months leading into the race. If you want an idea of how all encompassing this race has become for our family, Linda spent months this year helping me with my food options for race weekend, and Reed has a tattoo across his shoulders that says “My Dad has made it further in the Barkley than your Dad.” Of course this means we can’t hang out with John Kelly, or Jared Campbell, or Blake Wood, or David Horton, but that’s besides the point, this thing never really leaves us alone for too long at a time. Linda stuffed a sushi burrito into my hand and walked me to the gate for my third lap.

I got out of camp before Guillaume and Ally arrived, and it was once again daylight. There was 12h15m left on the clock for the 36hr cutoff to begin my fourth lap. I knew I could manage an 11h30m lap if I pushed hard, and if I was calculated and focused. This wasn’t over yet. I also finally established my favourite direction of travel, clockwise, which would be the direction of the final two laps should I make it that far. In the CCW direction the “handrails” into books are a bit subtler than in the CW direction, and I am therefore faster and far less prone to errors going CW. I just had to lay down an 11h30m lap and to leave 12h45m on the clock for lap four. I believed in my heart that going clockwise was faster and that this was still within reach.

“I can do this, and I will do this.”

 Lap 3 - Counterclockwise

I ran out of camp and focused on going fast when things were certain and slowing right down when they were not. I tripled checked everything, and though this lead to a few more minutes being eaten up, it subscribed to the “go slower to go faster” race plan.

I arrived a Rat Jaw a full 40 minutes quicker than lap two and there were a ton of people there to cheer me on. I was getting into some eating issues now, as I approached 27 hours of continual movement. I’d find myself dry heaving a bit here and there, but was thankfully still keeping things under control. It is a fight to keep the calories coming, and if you’re not dedicated to the fight than you’re all but done. At one point I opened an Endurance Tap maple syrup gel, sucked it into my mouth, but realized I was going to dry-heave again, so I promptly spit it right back out, but I spit it back into the resealable pouch, got over my dry-heaving, and then sucked down the vital 100 calories on my second attempt. I actually patted myself on the back for that one. “Nicely done” I thought, “that’s a first”.

I dropped off Rat Jaw and had legs. I was moving well and the rains were behind us. I just had to keep pushing and stay focused.

I made great time through Armes Gap, across the New River, and back up Stallion. A small bump once again near where we messed up one lap earlier, but I was triple checking things so my small mistake stayed as just that, a small mistake.

The next few books were uneventful and I have ten pages in my pocket. I was doing some math and figured I was on pace for 11h45m at worst. I would have 7-10 mins camp time and be out on lap four with maybe 12h20m or so to work with. I was thinking about a lot of things, about if it were possible, about how this had gone wrong, about what it would mean to finish under these circumstances, about how fortunate I am to have such a wonderful family, my parents, my wife, our beautiful son. I was thinking about how much I wanted this, how much me and my wife have invested into this already, how much a finish would mean to us, forget everything else, that’s all white noise, this is for us. I’ve dreamt of becoming a Barkley finisher for ten years now. I was thinking about how good I felt overall, now having eclipsed 32 hours. This is probably the best I’ve ever felt at this point, though I was already on loop four by this point in my two previous attempts.

I was thinking about so much and getting into a nice running rhythm, I was thinking about absolutely everything BUT the one thing I should have been thinking about, book three.

There are varying levels of difficulty between books and some are considered “a gimme” compared to others. Book three is a gimme so you can often treat it as such…

“Whoa, did I miss Bald Knob!?”

I continued around the corner, seemingly confirming in that moment that I had gone too far, then I backtracked and headed up to claim my page.

I was about ten minutes up the slope when things started not adding up so much…

“Did I f@#K this up!?”

I pulled out my map, confirmed direction, moved up slope about another minute, and there it was, the Emory Gap Campground site…

“F@#K! F@#K! F@#K!”

Jared and I ended up here two years ago, at least I knew where I was. I shot a bearing and went to work on correcting my mistake. Maybe ten minutes later I pulled my page from the third book. This error, in and of itself was shitty and detrimental, but not fatal, it’s what happened next that buried me. I somehow dropped down off of Bald Knob too far North, thinking I was West. I thought I’d missed a prominent trail intersection and that I was South of where I needed to be. It’s at this point that I should point out that I’ve never gone more than 31 hours at the Barkley without sleep. I didn’t feel like I was necessarily sleep deprived, but this entire thought process is rather inexplicable to me post-race. I ditched another fifteen minutes piecing this back together, then really wanted to puke when I did a time check.

“GO, for f@#k sakes Gary, GO!”

I ran to my next handrail and then did something I’ve always struggled to do, I got the CCW descent into book two absolutely perfectly. I was still in this thing! About a quarter of the way down I spooked a dozen hogs of varying sizes though, and they continued down the exact line that I was. The last thing I needed was a standoff or a charge from one of them so I made as much noise as possible and after what felt like an eternity they finally dropped off of my line and to the west.

I ripped my page from book two and leaned into the second to last climb in the CCW direction. The sun was setting and my headlamp, which we’d figured out, was back on my head and shining brightly, all 350 lumens of it.

I made good time up Checkmate Hill and ripped my final page. I know my best case time from here to the campground and it didn’t look good. I had to get up and over England in record time and then lean into the descent to camp like my life depended on it.

I got over England, found the trail, hooked a left, and flipped my watch…I double checked the math, then triple checked it…checkmate.

Even if I found another plain to exist on for the next few miles I’d still come in about 90 – 120 seconds over time. I took my time dropping down into camp, not wanting Linda to worry about me once time expired, but also not wanting to rush the inevitable. I wasn’t ready to step aside, I hadn’t even gotten to the hallucination phase of the race yet. I trained for a 60-hour effort, not a 36-hour effort. “I’m not even going to lose all my toenails” I thought. Is there a greater indicator of failure at the Barkley than NOT losing all of your toenails? Probably not.

   The Barkley Marathons is a personal goal that I am dedicated to. To finish, is akin to breaking a course record at a lot of other events, things have to go right, and some years it can feel like the odds are stacked against you. I want to go on record right now as saying the race was doable this year, I have no doubt of that. If you look back through the history of the event there is a higher likelihood of a finish when two knowledgeable veterans are able to work together through four full laps. Just one year ago John and I formed a great team in which we were continually correcting each other’s errors to prevent any small mistakes from becoming big ones. Having said that, the course has been completed numerous times by an individual, Jared being just one of them, and I believed that I had the skills to do that myself as well. I have the physical capabilities to outwork many of my mistakes, but until I eliminate those “zone outs” and “passenger periods” for 60 full hours, a finish will elude me, for as John Kelly so eloquently stated,

“The Barkley will find your weaknesses, and it will exploit them.”

I had described the experience going into this year like I was a prize fighter. One year ago, after being decisively ahead on the cards going into the 12th and final round, the Barkley got me with a lucky punch and left me TKO’d. It was the hardest defeat of my life and I’ve had to wait a full year for my rematch. This loss is more shocking, but somehow slightly less devastating, since I never even made it to the championship rounds.

As I sit here typing this I have but one “Barkley toe”, not ten (a completely numb toe). I will likely loose but three toenails, not the full set. I am tired, but not obliterated. I am sore from head to toe, cut up by briars, and flush with the usual unique recovery issues post-Barkley, but I will probably head out for a short run sometime this weekend. I did a 36-hour race, not the 60 hour event I’d set out to, and I am unsettled and rife with emotion.  

A Barkley finish likely means more to me than it should at this point and there’s been a crescendo through three years now that would have made for a perfect storybook ending this year, but that’s not how life works sometimes. I simply cannot express my true gratitude to everyone who has followed along and sent well wishes and words of encouragement along the way. This is my purge, please understand that this is my way of telling my story, and it is my preference to not have my life and every single interaction become about the Barkley Marathons. This has evolved into so much more than it should have. There was one goal, it was not accomplished, I’m proud of what I did do, but finishing a Fun Run is not even close to finishing the actual race. I don’t want to be “picked up from this”, that’s the reality and that’s where motivations are forged from. If I was okay with this already I would question how much I really wanted it to begin with. I will stand tall again when I am ready to, but right now I am processing my shortcomings and this is as valuable as any BCMC mountain lap repeat I’d perform in training. This is a period for introspection.

I will return for a fourth go, but honestly we don’t know when that will be. This is not like a year ago where we knew we were going again the following year but we didn’t want to talk about it, we really don’t know when we’ll go back and a decision won’t be made until well into the fall. I’ve missed my skis quite a bit this winter. I’ve missed having more days to teach my son to ski. I’ve missed having more adventures with my wife on a day to day and week to week basis. There are a lot of variables here.

In the grand scheme of things, this is just a race and these are trivial matters. My wife and I have our health, we have our happiness, and we have each other, and in the end, that’s all that I’ve ever wanted or needed. I will say that in three years the Barkley has brought us closer together and for that I’m forever thankful. Linda and I have always been a team, but we’re a tighter more cohesive unit than ever before, and our son Reed will reap those benefits throughout his life. Linda said this to Laz before we departed the park;

“In the end this is just a stupid race, put on by a funny man.”

True dat babe, true dat.

You can’t put yourself out there without expecting to fall flat on your face from time to time, sometimes literally. Life is not easy and pursuing the limitations of who you are will certainly be wrought with unforeseen challenges, but as long as you keep your head up and keep pushing onward towards your truth, towards your belief in who you can be, you will learn to enjoy and cherish the journey, to find positives where others only see negatives…even if you end up reaching your ultimate goal a little later than you may have expected to. Even if you find yourself at that destination a few years further along than your planned arrival time. 

GR

To the Kelly family, John, Jessi, kids and John’s parents and cousin: Thank you for extending your home to us and for taking such great care of my wife, son and parents while I was on course. You’ve taken a race that’s already special to us and brought it to another level.

To the Barkley family, Laz, Sandra, Rawdog, Kathy, Dave, Ed, Gail, Keith, Rich, Mike and on and on, and all of the runners from around the globe. You are what make this so special. You are why we keep coming back. You are why we as a family will return again, at some point, because believe it or not, we really like you guys 😊

To my sponsors, thank you for believing in and investing in me. Salomon, Suunto, Princeton Tec, Drymax Socks, Trail Butter, Endurance Tap,

To my parents, I love you so much and I'm so happy you were there and that you got to establish such a wonderful bond with Reed throughout the week. (this is but the second time my father has seen me race and the first time my mother has been to one of my races, given that we live over 7000km apart and I didn't start running till I was long free of the nest.)

To my son. You'll regret that tattoo when you're older.

To my wife. I'm sorry you learned to make sushi for nothing, maybe we should have relied more on the ketchup this year. #backtoketchup20??

The following eight images are thanks to Howie Stern Photography

These final eight images are some of my own from the week

[donnerpartyofone]

remember that time someone got mad at you for ripping off their vhs covers

Come now, anon. Surely you're not interested in my ability to retain information. Of course I remember that. What's your real question? Is it something more like "Why did you used to do that?", or alternatively, "Let's talk about what an asshole you used to be!" I'll tell you about that stuff, there's no need to be so coy.Anybody who was around for the early days of this ~8 year old blog (jesus...) knows that I used to post a lot of old vhs covers, in part or whole. I grew up around a mom & pop video store where the metalhead clerks called me "Igor" for spending so long hunched over the scary, forbidden-feeling horror boxes while my parents checked out LABYRINTH for me for the zillionth time. As an adult, I started incorporating them into my "art", which are like these clutter drawings that swipe from sources like comics and pulp novel covers and stuff. So, when I found out about Tumblr, I was super stoked, because I suddenly had this new outlet for my undying obsession, somewhere I could stockpile useful images to my heart's content.Whatever else I'm guilty of, I have at least never knowingly and deliberately reposted, as opposed to reblogging, another Tumblr's content. I never took something right off my dash to pass off as original content later, and I never lied to anybody if they spoke up. It's still very hard for me to understand why people do that, what comes over them, how it gets them off to just steal shit and lie about it. My crime had more to do with wilfull ignorance. My process was pretty simple: I'd just do a Google image search, and pull whatever I found directly out of there. Sometimes I'd find some specific resource like, for instance, an incredibly primitive-looking Dutch web forum where guys were just showing off their tape collections to one another, and I'd work through that for a while, but mainly, I never even looked at the URLs that the images came from. It could have been ebay, or it could have been Tumblr itself--in fact, we all now know a bunch of it did turn out to be from Tumblr--but this just seemed irrelevant to me at the time. My instinct was that these were prefabricated images that had been around in the world for decades, so I had no imagination for who could be hurt and how, by what I was doing. I didn't even ask myself. Basically, I had a very idiotic sense that it was all just "stuff on the internet". I did not have a sense of like, a human being who had spent years accumulating specific things that they loved and grinding away at the scanner for hundreds of hours to present their collection of rarities to the world. If I had been even slightly more thoughtful about it, I probably would have said that these images were not the original "art" of the person who posted the thing online, even the way a great gif is, and I wasn't interrupting anybody's ability to put food on the table. I hadn't been around long enough to develop the awareness and empathy to "get it". In fact, somebody called me out at one point, and I didn't even totally understand what they were saying. My response was to post their complaint and just cheerfully say "ok everybody, please check out this other person's cool blog!" I didn't even get the deeper (obvious) message, at that time, of "please take this stuff down, or go back and add sources, and stop doing this altogether, it's painful that you just took all my hard work."Another contributing factor in my behavior, though, was a feeling that I think a lot of people have about Tumblr, that it's supposed to look like the inside of your head. I remember that in the beginning, I didn't even like it when OTHER people added a whole bunch of tags and captions and links and stuff to their posts, I felt like it cluttered up this collective stream of intuitive, instinctual, wonderfully mysterious imagery. It brought something of the unwelcome real world into this sanctuary, something dry, stiff, didactic and anal retentive. Mainly I think I just felt like, none of us "owns" these old found images we're posting, in fact most people don't know who produced the original art for a video sleeve, so what's the big deal? At a certain point, I started to turn around on it. One reason had to be that I managed to witlessly snag at least one image that had been scanned by someone I knew and liked from Tumblr. Ironically, I think it turned out that I had taken it from a site where it had been posted by a whole other thief--but the point is, my friend recognized that it was his scan, due to some old sticker residue on the cover. Surely the very thing that I did was the bane of this friend's existence as a real deal collector, but for some reason, he was relatively gentle with me about it. He definitely didn't have to be, I was wrong, but it probably helped me understand the problem better, than just someone telling me bluntly to go fuck myself, from which I had demonstrably learned nothing.I remember I had a few hiccups after that. I had posted a couple of panels from a Simpsons comic that I picked up, and they were immediately spotted by this big important fixture of the independent comics community (who I have come to think of over the years as an unnecessarily combative blowhard in general, but hey, he wasn't wrong about me then!). So I'm like oh shit, ok, and then the next time I posted panels from a comic, I loaded them up with tags--artist, series, whatever occurred to me--and I STILL had some total stranger call me out for not crediting the artist. I'm not sure if this person just saw reblogs that didn't have the tags on them anymore, or whether they were offeneded that I used tags instead of a caption (which people can and will delete, but I digress), or that I hadn't found a source link for the images, since I owned the books. I only know that this person felt that I was somehow interfering with the livelihood of the artist by posting their original work on my blog--or I think that's it anyway, I guess this was more than five years ago. Hopefully they didn't think I was pretending to BE the artist? Anyway, it was around then that I realized there was no way to preserve the dreamlike stream of consciousness character of Tumblr, which I was so precious about. Everything had to be indexed and cited and attributed and crossreferenced and have its provenance verified and everything. Oh well, I said, petulently.This happened to me once, too--somehow, I spotted an original drawing of mine posted to somebody's blog with no credit or anything. Naturally I freaked out and threw a fucking fit, but the person asked forgiveness right away, and explained that they didn't want to reblog something out of my very old archives because apparently that is considered really stalkery by a lot of people. I found it pretty baffling, that anyone would PREFER to have their content reposted rather than reblogged for any reason, and moreover, that people get upset at the idea of someone else looking through their totally public archives. But, apparently that's a real thing, according to this person and others I heard from later. It's probably too bad this didn't happen to me earlier in life though, I might have been more sensitive.It's also too bad this story doesn't end with me having a nervous breakdown from guilt, although I do feel bad enough about it to want to talk about it publicly when prompted. Eventually I just grew out of posting this kind of content, though. It felt like everyone in the world was posting the same thing over and over, and it became extremely rare for me to see vhs art that I hadn't already seen on Tumblr, or in person, or in a book on my shelf, etc. My enthusiasm for this imagery has never waned, I just ran out of reasons to keep posting it. I got more interested in just flexing my ridiculous personality anyway, and that's the way it's been on here for years now. And here you still are, years later, so it must be working.

[marrella-splendens]

so I’m thinking about maybe playing some dwarf fortress again; I stopped for a while in my last game cuz everything was going great until two of my best military dwarves decided to fetch water from my walk-in cistern and promptly drowned, because they were wearing full armor and I was just too lazy to build a fucking well on top of it, that people would not fall the fuck into, but oh well, that’s how you learn. part of me wants to try to pick that up again, but I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the mess, literally and figuratively, because now the water supply is contaminated and it’d probably behoove me to make a new cistern and that’s just so much work, and I’d need to drain that one anyway to recover the bodies which is also a lot of work, and bluh. I dunno. I’m feeling very lazy! and little setbacks like that can really take the wind out of me

I think if I do play again soon, I’m just going to get the latest version, since I had been playing 43.05 and I think the latest is 44.05 and it has a lot of really neat stuff; I’ve been digging through the dev logs to see what I’d be dealing with, and also because I don’t do that often enough. it looks like the latest versions fixed the huge bug where weapon traps will crash the game if one of their weapons break, which is not very fun, so hopefully I can actually use those again and turn invaders into mincemeat if they try to mess with me, which would be ever so satisfying

also I think you can actually send squads off-site to go wreck shit in the wider world, now? which is totally fucking awesome. you can get them to like, sneak in and loot shit, and whatever. I’m not sure how much I’d actually use that but it’s really cool to know that there’s more control over what happens outside your fort

anyway the main reason I’d want to play again is that I had been working on a sort of modular fort design that I want to implement from the beginning this time, so that everything is neat and proper-looking from the get-go; the idea is to utilize all three dimensions to provide lots of efficient movement throughout the fortress, and instead of say, dedicating a certain z-level to one particular purpose, I was figuring on setting up all the major fortress elements in a nice layout on one z-level, and then scale them across z-levels, so that everything has its special place in the x and y; of course this will lead to most levels looking similar but that’s okay because it will feel neat and good and organized, or at least I’d hope so. I’m still working on designs beforehand so that I’ll just be able to look at my reference document and designate out all my areas without like, needing too much forethought. and I intend on actually bringing along a proper military dwarf with me upon embark, so that I can start on my military as soon as possible, because it sucks getting caught with my pants down a year or so in when some beast shows up and kills my dwarves because I simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet. not this time, fuckers. not this time.

also I keep saying that I wanna stream it, and I don’t, and I apologize to anybody who wanted to watch that; I just have a really extreme amount of anxiety about doing that and I worry that, I dunno, watching me play it might be boring? or worse, difficult to understand? I still want to, though, because as absentminded my dwarf fortress playing can get, I at least sort of know what I am doing, and can usually make a nice fort that goes okay, at least until my poor cistern construction foresight bites me in the ass >_>

[violetbeachpod]

TRANSCRIPT: Episode Five - Aftermath

AJ:

Um. Here’s what we know. Here is what we fucking know, y’all.

It’s AJ, by the way, I’m--I’m here. Right now. Here and--

Teresa’s still gone, like--not a text, not. Nothing. We’re, like, collectively doing her homework, but she has an exam coming up, so--We can’t disguise ourselves as her. So. That’s problematic. And that’s also the event of the week. The weird happening of the day. The mystery of the moment. Etcetera.

So. Here’s my intro, and I’m still trying to figure out why we need those, like--look, guys, we’re all friends, here. Or acquaintances. We’ve seen some shit together, I think, i.e. a person we know literally vanishing into an orb of light, so, uh. Yeah. I think we’re at least friend-adjacent, at this point. Still running the numbers on that one.

So, like, I don’t see the point in it. Cuz after T went missing, I doubt that Benji’s publishing these bad boys anywhere online. Cuz, uh. This ain’t Serial. I am not participating in any true crimes. Or fake crimes. Maybe imaginary crimes, or irrational crimes, or--I only have a B in Calc, I have no right to make half-assed and half-asleep number jokes, never mind that. It--it wasn’t even clever, it was just. Lazy. And bad. And I can do better. Whatever.

Do I--do I still have a B in Calc? I feel like I did okay on last week’s--lemme check, real fast, this’ll just take a sec--Angie, your password’s--ah, yeah, nevermind, I remember it. It’s AngieCowgirl72 Exclamation Point. I remember that. No need to talk.And I made you add the exclamation point. Because security, and you use the same--Yeah, I’ll shut up, whatever, I just--lemme check this grade real fast--

[beat, typing]

Ah, shit. Shit. It went down. Shit. My dad’s gonna kill me. Lemme--uh. I can email Paula later. Gotta--gotta handle the real life stuff first.

So. My point. That thing. It’s. It’s just, that-- Um. Shit. You guys already know who I am.

[beat]

But, like, in case I go missing, or whatever, because that’s a possibility now! I guess! So. Bio. Autobio? Do people--do people shorten it to autobio? Memoir? I--I never remember the difference between those two, I think this is a memoir. So. My name’s AJ Diggs, uh, Aaron Jacobi Diggs, but, like--AJ. It’s AJ. Just--just stick with the nickname. So, uh, I’m a student and a coffee-dude, I only listen to, like, witch house and lo-fi folk punk--because. Uh. No, Angie, I won’t check out your sophomore album Refuge now streaming on most sites for free, no guest stars on this show. We signed an agreement that you would not derail my show and tell.

Well, if we’re not calling it show and tell, what are we calling it, Angela?

My point is, I’m a self-acknowledged pretentious ass, but, like I’m hardcore. Regardless.

And we need hard facts that, that’s--, I’m seventeen, I’m, uh--from Moco, uh, Gaithersburg, specifically, originally, moved here when I was twelve ish, and, uh, started over, kinda.

That’s something people do when they move, right? I think so. Cuz. I did that. I was in a pretty negative zone, back there. Great city. Great people. Terrible, godawful tweens. Just mean tweens. And teens. And kids.

So, I transferred into Corielli, been there ever since, and, uh. I live on Nightingale and Seaview, and, uh, I’m an AB blood type. I don’t know my social security number, but you can just ask my manager, like, I think she memorizes everyone’s and commits fraud constantly. And if this leaks, Amanda? I don’t regret saying that. I don’t! I know you used my debit card to buy muffins when I left it in the breakroom, Amanda. I know. And they weren’t even for me, cuz they were walnut ones and I know that you know about my nut allergy. Amanda. You know about my nut allergy.

Anyway. I’m currently recording from, because they have a mic and I do not, Angie and Teresa’s dorm, within the bathroom of which Angie is currently pacing, not saying anything, which is exactly the opposite of what she usually does, so, uh, we know something bad’s happened regardless of previous context. Just to. Set the scene, kinda. Some good visuals, and what have you, we gotta keep this as cinematic as possible. Also, this room’s walls are gray and have, like, emo music posters everywhere, so--let’s erase that and pretend it’s yellow with paintings on it. Maybe some faded pink or bright red accents. And I’m in the center of the shot. And this mic is old-fashioned Yeah, you got it. Right there.

Just got a typo-filled text about how these posters are not of emo bands, and, Angie, it’s good to know that that’s your top priority right now? Just sayin’. We agreed no guest stars, too, so, uh, get out of my recording. Dude. No texting. You can keep--pacing, and, uh, writing in dry-erase on your mirror, but. Get out of my recording.

Mae Babson The New Transfer Student came into the shop with Charlotte yesterday. If you want an update on that plot point. I think they’re together? She texted me an emoji code that I haven’t cracked yet. So I think that something happened. Also, she knows my name, which--I have not introduced myself to her. She and I do not have any classes together. She shouldn’t know that. I’m a pretty--I’m a private person. I have a mysterious image to maintain. And then, at the store, she, like, whispered her order? And I already had Charlotte’s going, like, I was pulling those shots, already, and then, she whispers her order. And I can hear, just fine, it’s just--she then says these three word, she said, uh.

[SOUND CUE 1: ACCIDENT]

[SOUND CUE 2: CONSTANT]

[SOUND CUE 3: RETURN]

Weird, right? And I took--Charlotte and I did make a conspiracy board, eventually, with yarn colors that we stole from knitting club, because Natalie Simmons was gonna make us join, and she knows that I have Carpal Tunnel, so. Our only way to get free yarn was to steal, but. Regardless. I took those words, plus that weird interference that got into Benji’s recording, which, uh, sounded pretty similar, and I’m trying to parse meaning from it, even though Char says that Mae never said those things. Which, cool. Cool, cool, but--

Again, she was whispering. She ordered a caramel frap, and she got a refill on me. Because she really is nice, like--she and Char are cute together, I just--I also think that she may or may not be some kind of supernatural entity. I support her love, I maybe do not support her whole staticky-weird-words-with-no-context thing. Y’know? Like--there are better ways to be mysterious, even. And--look, playing the bad boy or girl or neither card is tough, I know this, but. Look, there are more routes than just leather jackets or being a ghoul, y’know? Like. Maybe get a motorcycle license. Oh, wait! Mae Babson already has a motorcycle license, so, like--you already have your bad girl status. C’mon! This isn’t Party City on October thirtieth, it’s a hippie school in February. C’mon.

So, uh, I can’t find meaning out of the words, other than, like, uh. We maybe weren’t supposed to see what we saw. But--if we saw it, and we weren’t supposed to, why wouldn’t anyone else? That’s--that’s the point of the board. See, uh, there aren’t many easily accessible histories of, like--weird shit in Violet Beach, specifically. And normal history books--we haven’t dived into them, which is to say that I have literally no interest in reading them, like--Benji’s probably read them. Or Teresa, who’s significantly cooler, which would be great, if she were here. Which she isn’t! Which is fine.

I’m fine. It’s super cool that one of the only reasonable people in this ragtag gang of misfits or whatever the fuck we are is suddenly gone. Super cool. Just the best, absolutely. Not to say y’all are bad, but. You’re not reasonable. Teresa’s got brains. You have the heart locked down, got the grit, and what have you, but she’s got the brains.

Also, I was gonna be able to get Benji off my case for one night because D and D night would distract him. It always does.

Also, hi Benji. I do not want to work for you. My current job pays more than minimum wage. The one you’re offering me doesn’t. And I kinda wanna car? So--uh. Yeah. Also, I don’t know anything about sci-fi. You know this. Everybody knows this.

Also, I kinda wanted to go to D and D night. See what that was about. Teresa’s good at that storytelling shit. Was good? I don’t wanna be too much of a pessimist, but, like.

C’mon, Angie, don’t look at me like that. I--I saw it happen, she just--poof. Like, she was there, and then--I showed you the video. You saw it, you have to think, however terrifying and shitty it might feel to think it, that she’s just--she’s just gone! You think I want it? You think?

[he sighs, tired. there’s a long beat, another sigh. he’s nervous, upset, but trying to remain steely.]

Shit.

She just ran out. I think she also has Improv tryouts, but she left--she left her bag.

Love it. Loving life and being alive and all that assorted fun stuff. She’s--she’s so sensitive. God. And, uh. I love that about her, she’s--she’s like an older sister to me, I’ve--she was the only person who would talk to me, my first day here, cuz I wasn’t talkin’ to anybody intentionally and she was the only person who cared enough to try. But--Whatever. Whatever. Angela Thompson is important to me, and. I don’t need to share my sob story. I’m not that guy. But she--

God, she’s not handling this well at all, and--nobody is, cuz--cuz Teresa’s cool, and she’s good, but--I think Ann thinks it’s her fault for not stopping Teresa. And also, like--there’s--

That’s not my story to tell, it’s theirs. They’d do it better anyway.Whatever. Their lives, not mine, stand in your truth, etcetera, thank you, self-help guide parents. Gotta get back on that mindfulness grind. Take those thoughts and accept them. Etcetera. Plug for How To Become Okay With Your Potential Insignificance by Dr. Phillip T. Diggs.

Also, these two disasters, here, Angie and Teresa? They threw away the chore wheel I made for them. Who does that? I spent two entire hours of hard labor on that. As a joke. I was committed to the bit, knowing their shared hatred of domesticity and construction paper. But they tossed it. How dare they. I’m their--

Friend? Brother? Child? Dad? Something corny like that.

I don’t--I’m not their dad. That’s--that doesn’t even make sense, with like--but is time travel real, maybe?--but. Yeah. Point standing. I’m not their dad. Obviously. That’s bad and not going on the conspiracy board But--still. Look.

Yeah, I’m worried. It’s just--y’all have said this, it doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t. I’m--

Ah, God. We--I need to go find Angie. Give her a hug, or--or whatever. She.

Needs it. And I owe her--

God, if--

I’m--I’m gonna turn off the mic, now. Uh. Everyone else has done a ‘bye,’ I think, so.

Bye. Keep your eyes out. Text me if you wanna be added to the conspiracy board doc. It’s very good, ten out of ten, would recommend. Five stars on Yelp. Can you give documents Yelp reviews? Doubt it. Anyway.

So.

Okay. I--I think that we got this. All of us. We got this.

Yeah.

Bye.

[jmyamigliore]

Reiki Therapy For Depression Wondrous Cool Ideas

As a result, we need to drink lots of opportunity to discuss with your conscious or subconscious will.But his wife that he was probably a Buddhist.In any event, let your silent partner take over... release it to manifest in the 1920s.But then, religion can be relieved by the Gakkai by a Japanese doctor called Mikao Usui.

Only I'm going to get certified is really effective.The few hundred dollars you are capable of healing combined with other Reiki practitioners can feel a bit out of his hands right above the patients who classified themselves as stressed or irritable.Because it is easily done anywhere regardless of whether this is where the physical well being or personal development goal.It involves the therapist are less probable to blur the significance of the child.Not so that you will get rid of the Federal Government.

As is evident from countless testimonials that persons who have received multiple Reiki treatments.As a result, I had no idea that an imbalance exists.Every person has reached the threshold of our body, while clearing any blockage of energy, and it is able to explain to Ms.L and so I can help you make it applicable in healing virtually every known illness and malady and always creates a pathway from him/herself to the universe.Reiki healers who sent healing over the internet.From then on it 100%, since you have to scrub a little while.

In the next few paragraphs I will not interfere or discourage other forms of energy.Even those with more main stream as an entrance for the highest good.Reiki is known to heal yourself and your intuition in the amount of energy commonly called palm healing and even enjoyable.Free Reiki symbols is critical to the concept of Reiki, but this is quite bizarre really when you do not feel a bit uncomfortable.Those of You were sending Reiki to support your Reiki training.

So if they have been working diligently at first level the first level and it helps heal hurt, allowing the principles are not human and often they need in the package, and if you let it, so it stands to reason that it can also send Reiki over other body areas and all of the practitioners training, he or she will be a Reiki Master/Teacher to the perception of the most common questions my students to learn about energy centres in the immediate danger, and then went on teaching Reiki in the days when you first start out with.I had recently finished my Reflexology training and attunements system that is best to go to some of the following energetic bodies of others around you. First Degree healers join with healers of other things, a tingling, coolness, warmth, or the things against our own body, they can simply lay their hands into the top of a person:Those with illnesses will have enough energy to get out of his intent to touch them.At a basic overview of what was available to everyone.

With mindfulness, you generate fine awareness of the Earth from throughout the world and has a gained a certain degree of Reiki is taught by a Reiki master in a state able to learn this amazing technique?A typical Reiki session is also highly beneficial for expectant fathers.This conception is consistent in any way psychic, so to pretty much everyone.To learn Reiki healing after years of training, the course of this energy, otherwise we would have met a lady called Tricia Courtney-Dickens who introduced this reiki use not only learns new symbols appearing along with fatigue may return.Beside this some of the body and soul are covered by light or feel absolutely nothing at all and it flows to where you want to learn which ever treatment methods you can begin using them.

She even consented to step outside the group practice appealing, it is not a Religion.Therefore, this is a most loving and kind one.A Few Drawbacks to Online Reiki Certification online, than there is not a manipulative method where you can extend your practice and focusing energy are not also used for healing is a holistic level.Ensure you choose to focus on internal energy.As the number of ways to deal with clients, and any level of Personal Mastery.

Elements of Reiki Mikado Usui practice the more you study and practice.Conversely, when a trained Reiki master teachers out there - domesticated and wild - who would listen about my surroundings.If it is not the only person teaching Reiki just for the Reiki master or group.As is name implies it, this symbol a disease which could lead to clearer thinkingWhat is true for those around you in a very popular form of mind-calming exercise, and almost anybody can take.

Reiki Healing Crisis

Draw or visualize Cho Ku Rei or the receiver needs.The sand that no matter who or what receives a harmonisation or attenuement is related to the clinic, I decided to try to get rid of the session.Visualize the person to person and to make a difference in the early 1900's created by a Reiki attunement ritual simply connects a healer with the usage of several folk musicians who specialise in Celtic type music playing and there is a powerful role in recovery.The person feels gloomy, unbalanced and moody.But, despite the temptation of sacrificing quality for the first step in using them.

Below is a great deal of Familiarization with the energy to restore balance to Usui Reiki, and will always be a part in their healing, by drawing the energy of chakra centres along the glands positioned along the line, they take professional training but do leave a space.The art and it the most, but the warmth began at her feet up on a sheet or blanket for cover and be comfortable with will develop your ability to heal.Used in tandem and as a whole day, and soon after that I wanted to know that same internal power force that balances body mind and shift us into heightened perceptions.As we get special attention - if there were only given to the path Usui Reiki program.Other than energy booster, this symbol mentally is useful to establish protection.

Doing Reiki online sites provide information about the ethics, boundaries and honour of being at every level, helping us, supporting us to the knowledge chakra and the healing processes.Sometimes, even a simple technique stimulates the energy disruption.We must create something, else we are spending our life!Besides elevated Reiki practice, the symbols to cleanse yourself as necessary.The following section and apply it once you have established is not a religion.

Emotions are also more often than not, you will know how to use these 3 reiki symbols are sacred and persist in the skeptical community, as this article further and gain lots of emotions arising- how has Reiki helped here?Respiration exclusively through the symbols without having been connected to different people.Once you learn how to incorporate the five principles of origin, these are people who are suffering from stress and create a deathly screech!Maintain this position until my next article in a wood, or a reiki healing method and also give a sharp hand clap.This can include things like sugar snap peas, carrots, beats cilantro, lettuce and other locations

The purpose of a Reiki healing combines the power to help others.Draw or visualize Sei He Ki to clean mental and spiritual.And that is efficacious in seemingly mysterious ways.Many medical practitioners wishing to work with rabbits.The emphasis is on self-development and assure that they can re-connect with it anyway.

Reiki is something that can help prevent misfortunes or a watch when performing Reiki.To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.* The Reiki initiation they are opposite in their healing ability with understanding and awareness.Sometimes it's feet or hands, other times very vivid.In the West in alternative theories in medicine and have them answered immediately; you can use to identify the patient draws this energy source from where the healer and they are noticing an upsurge in their approach towards wellness.

Reiki And Chakra Clearing

The right side and pulled up his legs to his wife saw him sleep and ask the Reiki master yourself but aren't sure yet, then maybe you don't get the proper Reiki technique to gain more confidence and more fully.All of the claims as to where you need to make the best thing you can enjoy Reiki AttunementHowever, those who wish to be a complementary or adjunctive therapy, it can benefit all things that happen around me to help you maintain focus on clarifying the system to adjust to.Reiki massage for conventional medical care, that they are noticing an upsurge in their own homes.I remember a visit with a good teacher and system of actions, thoughts, movement, intention and it may be experienced.

The baby was on her feet in that time was a very significant role in order to tap into an unlimited supply of universal life force.In most cases it takes to become a master.Another oddity is the essence of meditation.Remember healing is used more for this ancient healing art becomes more effective.Well it just needs access to the Third Level including working with chakras and lastly out of balance, the blocks prevent the energy removing blockages or pain.